HIRAM hī’ rəm (חִירָ֨ם; LXX Χιράμ; but Χειράμ, in 2 Sam 5:11 and 1 Chron 14:1). 1. The king of Tyre in the reigns of David and Solomon, with whom he lived on very friendly terms. After David captured Jerusalem and made it his capital, Hiram sent him wood, carpenters, and stonemasons to build his palace (2 Sam 5:11). On Solomon’s ascension to the throne, Hiram wrote him that he hoped that the long-existing friendship between David and him would continue between Solomon and him. Solomon asked for help in building a temple and a new palace, projects which took him twenty years to complete. Hiram sent him wood—cedar, pine, and algum—from the forests of Lebanon and all the gold he needed (1 Kings 5:1f.; 2 Chron 2:3f.), together with all the skilled workmen necessary for erecting and furnishing them. In return, Solomon sent him every year food for his household—twenty thousand cors of wine and twenty thousand cors of olives (1 Kings 9:10-14). He also gave Hiram twenty cities in Galilee, but when Hiram inspected them, he told Solomon he was not well pleased with them (1 Kings 9:10-14). When Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, on the shore of the Red Sea, in Edom, Hiram sent him experienced seamen to work with Solomon’s men on the ships. Once every three years they brought to Solomon gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.

Josephus says (Apion I. 17, 18) that the father of Hiram was Abibalus, who had been king of Tyre before him; that Hiram and Solomon wrote many letters to each other, consulting one another on problems they had—at which Solomon was the better at offering solutions; and that he died at the age of fifty-three after a prosperous reign of thirty-four years.

2. A skilled craftsman sent by Hiram to Solomon to help him build his palace and the Temple. His father was a native of Tyre of a family of craftsmen, but his mother was of the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kings 14:2). 2 Chronicles 2:13 says she was of the daughters of Dan. He was skilled in working with all sorts of materials—gold and silver, copper and iron, wood, and cloth—and was a fine engraver. Among the important metal parts of the Temple and its furnishings that he made were the two bronze pillars, called Jachin and Boaz, the elaborate capitals on the pillars, the molten sea and the twelve oxen on which it rested, ten bases of bronze, ten basins of bronze, and the pots, shovels, and tossing-bowls used in the Temple.