Solomon Forced Demons to Build the Temple

Solomon sat on the throne with a ring on his finger and a demon kneeling in front of him, and he opened the questioning with the smallest possible ask. "What is your name?"

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The demon said Beelzeboul. Prince of the spirits of the air. His seat had been the pinnacle of the sky. Solomon pointed at the floor. Beelzeboul came down.

The Ring Michael Brought

Before that kneeling, a boy on the Temple site had been wasting. Food vanished from his pack at night. Money vanished from his belt. A spirit named Ornias had been coming in the dark and draining him, and Solomon could not catch a thing he could not see. He prayed until his throat went raw.

The archangel Michael brought a small ring. A seal sat in the stone, cut with the Name. "Take it, Solomon, son of David," Michael said. "With this you shall lock up the demons of the earth, male and female, and with their help you shall build Jerusalem, but you must wear it and not take it off."

Solomon put the ring on. He called Ornias first, because the boy was still thin. Then he worked his way up the air until the prince himself had to kneel.

Beelzeboul Came Down to the Floor

What Solomon wanted first was not labor. He wanted the map of heaven, because a king who builds God's house wants to know what stands over it. "If you would gain a respite," he said, "discourse to me about the things in heaven."

Beelzeboul leaned forward and began to teach him to burn gums and light lamps until he could watch the dragons that drag the sun. Solomon heard enough to know the demon was bargaining for a pause, not offering a gift.

"Be silent," Solomon said. "Go saw the marble."

The prince of the air stood, took a saw, and went to the quarry. The information was noted and set aside. The house came first.

Thirty-Six Names Before the Throne

After Beelzeboul they came one by one. Thirty-six spirits of the zodiac, each compelled to name itself, to say what it ruined in a body or a house, and to name the angel set over it. Metathiax caused the kidneys to ache, and fled from Adonael. Katanikotael sent hard temper through a household. Bianakith, the last of the thirty-six, laid waste to houses and made flesh decay.

Solomon wrote every name. He did not hang the writing on a door. He pointed at the work.

Some he sent to fetch water for the courts. Some he locked in prisons until the walls needed them. Some he ordered to sit by fire and lead, smelting the gold and silver that would line the sanctuary. Others cut marble outside the city until their hands, which had never been made for building, learned the weight of a block.

Angels stood over the line. The demons were not working only under a ring. They were working under watch, so that the house of God would not be sabotaged by the same workforce that raised it. The Temple rose clean anyway.

The Temple Stood. The King Did Not

Jerusalem had rest. Kings came from the ends of the earth with gold, cedar, and stones that would not rot, to see what had been built. The queen of the South bowed to the floor and tested his wisdom until she glorified the God of Israel. Solomon had quiet in all the earth, and the ring was still on his hand.

Then he marched against the Jebusites and saw a woman there, the daughter of a man of that place, and he wanted her among his wives. Her priests would not give her unless he bent toward their gods, toward Raphan and toward Molekh. He said he would not worship a strange god. They told the maiden not to sleep beside him until he complied.

They put five grasshoppers in his palm. Crush these in Molekh's name, they said, and she will come to you. He crushed them. The Name on the ring did not leave the stone, but the glory that had animated it went out of him at once. He became weak in his words. He became foolish in his mouth. After that they made him raise houses for Baal and Rapha and Molekh beside the house he had raised for God.

He wrote what had happened so that the last things would be remembered, not only the first. The Temple was already finished. The demons were already locked to their tasks. The pillar some of them still held had not fallen. But the channel through which the Name had run into Solomon's hand was gone. What remained was ordinary brilliance, remarkable and human. The house stood. The king who built it was less than he had been.