1 Kings 6:7 seems strange to us. Some commentators find it parallels with Exodus 20:25 and Deuteronomy 27:5. These verses forbid the use of cutting or shaping tools on the building of the altar. Yet, something different appears as the issue here. In the law of Moses there was no distinction made concerning a place where the tools might be used; instead, it was a complete prohibition of the use of tools in the building of the altar. Moreover, in the law the prohibition was specifically focused on the altar and nothing else.
What, then, can we make of this? Some commentators link the statement in the verse to the idea that in the quarrying of the stones they were found to be already perfectly suitable for the building of the temple. Other interpreters propose the idea that it suggests a superstitious understanding that God would miraculously cause the stones to come apart in this manner.
Yet it is possible to ask when the fear of superstitious explanations becomes an anti-supernatural bias that denies the possibility of any miraculous activity at all. The Hebrew word salemah is an adjective that often means perfect,
full,
or complete
in the Old Testament, and the ESV translation prepared
is not often the meaning in the Old Testament.
Regardless of how we handle the issue stated above, the question remains unanswered concerning the reason that the writer wished to make it a point that no sound of stone-shaping tools was heard on the site where the building took place. It may be that any suggestion would be mere speculation beyond showing us that the construction of the temple was done with reverence.
7 When the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.