They gave money to the stonecutters and craftsmen, and gave food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, so they would bring cedar wood from Lebanon to Joppa by sea, according to the authorisation given them by King Cyrus of Persia.
So David gave orders to gather the resident foreigners that were in the land of Israel, and he appointed stonecutters to cut finished stones for building God’s house.
When David had settled into his palace, he said to the prophet Nathan, ‘Look! I am living in a cedar house while the ark of the Lord’s covenant is under tent curtains.’
So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders, along with the Gebalites, quarried the stone and prepared the timber and stone for the temple’s construction.
‘Therefore, command that cedars from Lebanon be cut down for me. My servants will be with your servants, and I will pay your servants’ wages according to whatever you say, for you know that not a man among us knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians.’
King Hiram of Tyre sent his emissaries to Solomon when he heard that he had been anointed king in his father’s place, for Hiram had always been friends with David.