Chapter 4
So President Solomon ruled the whole caravansary. And he had princes. And he had scribes. And he had a recorder. And Zalmon A‑hole was his Top Thug, whom Solomon appointed as captain of his shock troops. He also had officers over the shock troops. And the robot Nicholas was Solomon’s bellboy, and the android named Man served as his butler. And President Solomon also had one friend. And there was a man who managed his household. And someone who collected taxes for him. And an overseer for the slaves. And there were a dozen bakers who provided pastries for the presidential residence: and each one also made many other succulent desserts.
So the wayfarers of the caravan were numerous: as the sand which is by the sea for multitude. And they were experts in eating and drinking and merrymaking.
And Solomon was president over all the nations from the Potomac to the land of the Sea People, and even into the borders of Egypt. And the surrounding countries brought presents to him, to appease his volatile nature; daily Solomon received the following from terrified foreigners: two hundred bushels of fine flour; fifteen tons of meal; ten fat oxen; twenty rams from out of their pastures; one hundred sheep, in addition to gazelles and roebucks, fallowdeer and fatted fowl.
For Solomon had dominion over all the region known as Eldorado, and he maintained a tense peace with every nation round about him. And he had forty thousand stalls for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. And barley and straw were fed to his horses and dromedaries.
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God gave President Solomon a tremendous amount of wisdom and understanding. Solomon was wiser than all the eastern magi added together with all the wisdom of Ancient Egypt. He had more understanding than anyone: He was wiser than Moses combined with Confucious and Siddhartha Gautama, plus Albert Einstein multiplied by Leonardo da Vinci, Jesus Christ, and the Seven Sages of Greece. Even the supercomputer named Deep Blue, which was the first machine to win a game of chess against a reigning human world champion, got beaten when it played against President Solomon.
So Solomon’s fame spread through all the surrounding lands. And he spoke several hundreds of proverbs; and the ditties that he composed were a thousand and five. And he gave lectures on vegetation, covering everything from cedar trees to hyssop; he also wrote essays about beasts, and fowl, and creeping things, and fishes. (Basically, anything that my old rap group made a song about, Solomon also taught about. My old rap group is probably the only thing that was almost as smart as Solomon; and we made a total of three thousand and five rap songs: that’s even more than Solomon’s ditties.)
Chapter 5
Near the caravan in Eldorado was a place called Tyre, a wealthy and powerful country that did a large amount of commercial trade. This country of Tyre is the focus of the Lord GOD’s curse in the scroll of Ezekiel (28:12-16), where the prophet says:
The word of Yahweh God came unto me, saying: ‘Take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and tell him: “By the multitude of your merchandise you were filled with lawlessness, and you have sinned: therefore I will cast you as profane out of the mountain of God; and I will destroy you!’”
This king of Tyre whom Yahweh cursed was named Hiram. He was the son of Belial, David’s handler among the Creditor Class. Now this King Hiram son of Belial sent emissaries to Solomon; for he had heard that a select committee had anointed him president in place of his father; for Hiram, like his own father Belial, was ever a lover of David.
Then Solomon replied to Hiram, son of Belial, saying: “You know how my father David was prohibited from building a house for our Volcano-god Yahweh, because my father could not stop warring with everyone everywhere. But Yahweh our God has given my own presidency peace, because all our enemies have been assassinated; so, now, I aim to build a large temple for our Volcano. For I was told that Yahweh said to my father: ‘Not you, but your son, shall construct me a Permanent Tabernacle.’ Therefore, I do hereby place an order to purchase mega tons of cedar trees from you, O Hiram son of Belial, king of Tyre. I will pay you for all the supplies, and for all the labor, and for all the shipping. Because we wayfarers of the caravan know that nobody can cut timber like you Tyrants, oops I mean Tyrians.”
Then, when Hiram the son of Belial and king of Tyre heard these words of President Solomon, he rejoiced greatly, and said: “Blessed be Yahweh on this occasion. The god of the caravan gave to David a wise successor, since he decided to place a large order to buy our goods and services.”
So Hiram son of Belial, king of Tyre, sent Solomon cedar trees and fir trees until his desire was satiated. And President Solomon in return gave Hiram the son of Belial twenty thousand measures of wheat, plus a fifth of a tithe of one million baths of pure oil, as an annually recurring payment.
And Yahweh, for his part, gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him in the dream. And there was peace between the president of the caravan and Hiram son of Belial: and they together signed a treaty.
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Now President Solomon issued an executive order inflicting the populace with forced labor. Thirty thousand workers at a time, in rotating shifts of ten thousand people. (In the past, Yahweh led their ancestors out of Egypt, to rescue them from similar subjection.) Additionally, there were seventy thousand porters, and eighty thousand quarriers in the hills, apart from thirty-three hundred overseers who were supervising the gangs performing the toil.
Chapter 6
Thus it came to pass, in the four hundred and eightieth year after the workforce had escaped from servitude in Ancient Egypt, that the descendants of that workforce began to slave away at another pyramid.
And the dimensions of this tomb that President Solomon built for Yahweh were as follows: its length was sixty cubits; the breadth was twenty cubits; and its height was thirty cubits.
And it had a porch. And windows of narrow lights.
And Solomon compelled the workers to build chambers round about, against the great hall and the oracle or shrine. And he permitted no use of tools within the place as it was being constructed: neither hammer nor ax nor any iron implement could be employed; but every stone had to be cut and fashioned to perfection far away, back at the quarry, so that it remained quiet within the structure, to let God rest in peace.
And there was a door for the middle chamber on the right side of the pyramid. And there was a winding staircase.
And the walls and ceiling were covered with wood, and the floor was covered with planks of fir. And boards of cedar encased the oracle, which was intended to be the most holy place. And this cedar was carved with knops and open flowers. For the Ark of Remembrance was supposed to be set within this place called the oracle.
Then the space of the oracle was overlaid with pure gold. And there was a partition with chains of gold at the oracle’s entryway. And within the oracle were two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits high, with wings five cubits long. And their wings remained stretched out at all times, and extended to the uttermost; though they never could fly. And the walls of the interior were carved with figures of cherubims and palm trees and open flowers.
It took eleven years to complete this construction project. And, at the same time, President Solomon was building a residence for himself: and that project took thirteen years.
Chapter 7
As for President Solomon’s personal residence, its dimensions were one hundred cubits by fifty cubits by thirty cubits. And it had four rows of cedar pillars. And three rows of windows. And all the doors and posts were square. And there was a porch.
President Solomon also made a little side-house for the Egyptian Pharaoh’s daughter, whom he had married.
And he made two brass chapiters to go on top of the pillars in his own house, with nets of checker work, and wreaths of chains. And on top of the chapiters were pomegranates, and upon the top of the pillars was lily work.
And he made a molten sea. And underneath were knops compassing it. It stood upon twelve oxen, in teams of three facing each of the four cardinal directions, so all their hinder parts were inward. And it was shaped like a cup, a handsbreadth thick, whose brim resembled the petals of a lily. And it contained two thousand baths.
On the borders between the ledges were lions, oxen, cherubims, and palm trees. And every base had four brazen wheels: and the four corners thereof had undersetters. Then he made ten lavers of brass: one laver contained forty baths.
And Hiram the son of Belial made shovels and basons.
And Solomon made all the vessels that pertained unto the house of Yahweh: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, whereupon the shewbread was, the candlesticks of pure gold, before the oracle, with the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs of gold, and the bowls, and the snuffers, and the basons, and the spoons, and the censers of pure gold; and the hinges of gold, both for the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the outhouse.
So was ended all the work that President Solomon made. He built himself a personal residence, with an extra house for his wife, and on the far side a brazen sea; also, Solomon commanded a place for the LORD to be built, and he finished it with forced labor. It was Yahweh’s “Forever Home.”
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