outweighs that of building cheaply. "Quality built" construction may cost more upfront but it is

less expensive in the long run.

 Forced Labor

 Forced labor is labor where individuals are forced to do work at the will of their task

master. The type of labor people were forced to do was generally the physically exhausting

work that people were not very willing to do for pay. According to the 1 Kings 9, Solomon used

only foreigners as forced laborers. These laborers were the people who; quarried stone, carried

stone, cut logs, and carried logs. These tasks were not punishment given to the people but rather

necessary tasks to carry on construction. The following passage details who the forced laborers

were and what they built:

 Now this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon levied to build the house
 of the LORD, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and
 Gezer. [16] {For} Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it
 with fire, and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it {as} a dowry to
 his daughter, Solomon's wife. [17] So Solomon rebuilt Gezer and the lower Beth-horon
 [18] and Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land {of Judah,} [19] and all the
 storage cities which Solomon had, even the cities for his chariots and the cities for his
 horsemen, and all that it pleased Solomon to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the
 land under his rule. [20] {As for} all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites,
 the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, who were not of the sons of Israel, [21] their
 descendants who were left after them in the land whom the sons of Israel were unable to
 destroy utterly, from them Solomon levied forced laborers, even to this day. [22] But
 Solomon did not make slaves of the sons of Israel; for they were men of war, his servants,
 his princes, his captains, his chariot commanders, and his horsemen. [23] These {were} the
 chief officers who {were} over Solomon's work, five hundred and fifty, who ruled over the
 people doing the work (1 Kings 9:15-23 NASB).

"The Hebrew slaves fared far better than the Grecian, Roman and other slaves of later years. In

general, the treatment they received and the rights they could claim made their lot reasonably

good. Of course a slave was a slave, and there were masters who disobeyed God and even

abused their 'brothers in bonds'" (Rafferty 1913). Though the treatment of the Israelite slaves

was better than some other cultures it was still difficult and unappealing.