1 Kings 5:13-18 (ESV)
King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the draft. Solomon also had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country, besides Solomon's 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work. At the king's command they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. So Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the men of Gebal did the cutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.
Leadership has been around for a long time. One might say that the industrial revolution of the USA did much to hone the leadership acumen. However, Solomon established quite a leadership paradigm a long time ago. In the above passage we see that Solomon had, based upon these numbers, 160,000 people working on the Temple. He had 3,300 “chief officers.” This word for “officers” is:
(Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary) “natsab”, “to stand, station, set up, erect.” Found in both ancient and modern Hebrew, this word goes back at least to ancient Ugaritic. It is found approximately 75 times in the Hebrew Bible.
One might actually laugh that the word actually means to “stand.” The role of these officers was to “stand” over the work. Of course, most workers do believe that leaders simply “stand” around. But, that was, indeed, their job. They were to oversee the work and make sure it was completed the way that God had intended it through the vision of Solomon.
God established leadership well before mankind did. God designed the structure of leadership and the purpose of leadership.
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