First Kings 9:15 (R.S.V.) reads, "And this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon levied to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer."
Admittedly little in this text would attract the theologian or the spiritual devotionalist, but for the archeologist and the Biblical historian it contains riches.
Evidently Solomon embarked on a large-scale construction plan that required forced labor. Such a situation bespeaks a master plan, organized from a central bureau, and indicates that archeologists excavating these sites should find a similarity of architectural conception and construction.
Three of these sites, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, all strategically located on main highways, have been excavated with results that have strikingly confirmed the Biblical record. Gezer was extensively excavated in the early twentieth century when the science of archeology was still young; at that time it was reported that very little of the Solomonic city had been found. Megiddo was dug during the 1930's by a well-financed team from America, which discovered a large Solomonic city with such public buildings as storehouses, and gubernatorial palaces. The city gates were also uncovered.
But the real story began with the excavations at Hazor undertaken by the Israelis, directed by a former military chief of staff, Yigael Yadin. Yadin's team found impressive re mains of the city of Solomon mentioned in the Bible text, including a distinctive type of wall construction known as a casemate wall (two narrow, parallel walls interspersed with cross-walls). Pottery recovered from within these casemates testified that the construction was from Solomon's time. Archeologists found a large, distinctive gate with six guardrooms (three on either side) flanking the entrance into the city. This gate was virtually identical in dimensions and construction to the one found earlier at Megiddo.
Excitement ran through archeological circles when this discovery was announced, for it tended to confirm 1 Kings 9:15. But where was the gate at Gezer, the other city mentioned along with Hazor and Megiddo? Was the Biblical record to be only partially confirmed?
Yadin, the archeologist who explored Hazor, turned to "excavating in a book" with most interesting results. In published reports of the Gezer excavations he found plans describing a series of walls which he recognized as one side of a typical Solomonic gate. Yadin suggested that this structure should be dated to the time of Solomon (tenth century B.C.) and not to the second century B.C. Maccabean period, as the original excavators had done.
Fortunately, just at this time an American archeological group was reexamining Gezer, and volunteered to check the structure in the light of Yadin's suggestions. (Among this group was Orley Berg, an executive editor of MINISTRY.) When the digging was finally completed, a Solomonic gate, complete on both sides and identical in size and construction to the Hazor and Megiddo gates, had emerged from the debris. All three sites were thus found to have identical city gates during the time of Solomon!
But the skeptics pointed out that whereas Hazor and Gezer had re mains of casemate walls the wall at Megiddo was of solid, thick construction, with periodic sections offset from each other.
Undaunted, Yadin began a small excavation at Megiddo near the gate and over the remains of the city wall. He believed that beneath the offset-inset wall, wrongly attributed by the Megiddo excavators to Solomon, a casemate wall would be found. At his earlier excavation of Hazor an offset-inset wall identical to the one at Megiddo had been found on top of the casemate wall of Solomon's time, and he was convinced the same would prove true at Megiddo. Sure enough, upon re moving the stones of the upper off set-inset wall he uncovered a perfect casemate wall of practically identical size and construction as the ones at Hazor and Gezer.
Incidentally, Yadin's short dig at Megiddo indicated that the so-called "stables of Solomon" were not at all from the time of Solomon, but con temporary with the offset-inset wall probably from the time of Ahab, who, like Solomon, was a great dealer in horses and chariots. Scholars even debate the function of these buildings, for they could easily be storehouses, as well as stables.
One thing is certain, however: the construction of the walls of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer (along with their gates) very strongly reflect the genius of one architectural conception, thus harmonizing remarkably with 1 Kings 9:15.
