Solomon Builds His Palace: The building of the temple structure is finished, and perhaps we expect to hear next how the whole project was brought to completion through its furnishing. Not so! The description of the temple is not picked up again until 7:13. Instead, we find ourselves reading of the royal palace complex. Why do the authors delay their account of the completion of the temple? Did they wish simply to describe all the building work together, before moving on? Did they want to subordinate the secular to the sacred by “losing” the account of the palace building in the midst of the temple building account? Or did they want to suggest that Solomon’s priorities were not in such good order as his words in 5:3–6 might have led us to believe? The way 6:38 leads into 7:1 suggests that i…