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The Bird Who Died Protecting the Shamir for Solomon

To build the Temple without iron, Solomon needed the shamir worm. It was guarded by a bird who had sworn an oath to an angel. Solomon got it by trickery.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Prohibition Hidden in Plain Sight
  2. What the Shamir Was and Where It Lived
  3. How Solomon Found the Nest
  4. The Oath and Its Price
  5. The Temple Built Without Sound

The Prohibition Hidden in Plain Sight

The Torah said it plainly: no hammer, no chisel, no blade should strike the stones of God's house while it was being built. First Kings 6:7 was explicit. The house was built of stone dressed at the quarry, and no iron tool was heard in the Temple while it was being built.

This was not symbolic language. The stones still had to be cut. They had to be shaped, fitted, dressed to dimension. If not by iron tools, then by something else entirely. When Solomon asked the Sages how to proceed, they searched their memory for an ancient creature: the shamir.

What the Shamir Was and Where It Lived

The shamir was one of ten things created at twilight on the sixth day of creation, in the last moments before the first Sabbath. It had no size worth measuring; a grain of barley was large compared to it. But it could split granite. It had cut the precious stones for the High Priest's breastplate in the wilderness, stones too hard and too sacred to be touched by iron. Moses had used it, then it had passed out of human hands.

According to the Legends of the Jews, which compiled this tradition from multiple midrashic sources, God had entrusted the shamir to the Angel of the Sea. The Angel of the Sea had given it to a moor-hen, a bird of a particular species, to guard. The moor-hen had sworn an oath to the angel: she would protect the shamir and not lose it.

The bird kept the shamir in lead, the only material that could contain it without being split. She used it to carry seeds to barren mountains, splitting the rock so that trees could take root and birds could eventually nest there. The shamir in her care was making the world more habitable. It was not an idle artifact. It was working.

How Solomon Found the Nest

Asmodeus, the king of demons, told Solomon where the bird's nest was. He knew because demons, by their nature, know the locations of things kept in secret. Solomon's men found the nest, waited until the moor-hen left, and covered it with glass. When the bird returned and could not reach her eggs and chicks through the sealed nest, she did what the demon had predicted: she went to retrieve the shamir to cut through the glass.

Solomon's servant made noise at that moment. The bird startled, dropped the shamir, and it was taken. The servant seized it and carried it back to Jerusalem.

The Oath and Its Price

When the moor-hen understood what had happened, that the shamir she had sworn to guard was gone and her oath was broken, she could not survive the knowledge. The Legends of the Jews records that she killed herself.

This was the detail the tradition found necessary to include. Solomon had what he needed. The Temple would be built. But the creature who had faithfully guarded the shamir for uncounted years, who had sworn an oath to an angel and kept it, had now been tricked by human cleverness into breaking the covenant she had maintained. She could not live with that. The bird who used the shamir to plant trees in barren mountains died because she had been used as the means to steal the very thing she had sworn to protect.

The Temple Built Without Sound

The stones of the Temple were cut without any tool of iron touching them in Jerusalem. The quarry work could use iron; the prohibition was on the sacred site itself. When the dressed stones arrived at the Temple Mount, they fit together in silence. Not a single stroke of hammer or axe echoed in that space while the house was being raised. What the shamir had made possible was the literal fulfillment of the Torah's requirement: a house of peace, built in peace, without the sound of weapons.

The cost of that silence was the oath of a bird and the life of the creature who kept it. Solomon had what he had been promised since before he was born, a Temple worthy of God's presence. He had gotten it the way difficult things are often gotten: by using something smaller and more innocent than himself.

ShamirSolomonTempleAsmodeusAngels
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Legends of the Jews 5:134Legends of the Jews

One such legend, recounted in Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, involves a mythical creature of immense power: the shamir. The shamir? What’s that? Imagine a tiny worm, or perhaps a stone, possessing the ability to cut through the hardest substances known to humankind. Diamonds? Granite? Child’s play for the shamir!

The Asmodeus says the king of demons, who, in this story, is in thrall to Solomon, the shamir wasn't just lying around. Oh no. It was entrusted by God himself to the Angel of the Sea. And that angel? He wasn't handing it out to just anyone. He entrusted it to… a moor-hen. Yes, a bird. But not just any bird. This moor-hen had sworn an oath to protect the shamir with her life.

Why a moor-hen, you ask? Well, the story explains that the moor-hen used the shamir for a vital purpose. She would fly to desolate, uninhabited mountains, use the shamir to split the rocks, and then plant seeds in the cracks. These seeds would then grow, covering the barren landscape with vegetation, making it habitable. A tiny creature, doing monumental work.

So, Solomon, ever the resourceful king, devised a plan. He sent a servant to find the moor-hen's nest and cover it with a piece of glass. When the mother bird returned, she was distraught! She couldn't reach her young. Driven by maternal instinct, she flew off and retrieved the precious shamir, placing it on the glass in an attempt to break through.

That's when the servant sprung his trap. He let out a shout, startling the bird so badly that she dropped the shamir and flew away in a panic. The servant grabbed the coveted prize and brought it back to Solomon.

Success. Solomon had the shamir! But here's where the story takes a somber turn. The moor-hen, realizing she had broken her sacred oath to the Angel of the Sea, was so overcome with grief and shame that she… committed suicide.

A pretty heavy ending. What are we supposed to take from this?

This legend, found in Legends of the Jews, isn't just a cool story about a magical worm. It’s a poignant exploration of responsibility, the weight of oaths, and the lengths to which creatures will go to fulfill their purpose. It also highlights the cost, sometimes, of achieving even the noblest goals. The shamir helped build the Temple, but at what price? It leaves you pondering the delicate balance between ambition and ethics, doesn't it? And the unexpected heroes, or heroines, who often hold the keys to unlocking the extraordinary. In this case, a seemingly ordinary moor-hen, entrusted with a power that shaped the very landscape.

Full source
Gittin 68a-bHebraic Literature (1901)

When Solomon set out to build the Temple, he faced a strange obstacle hidden in plain sight in the Torah. Scripture says that "the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building" (1 Kings 6:7). Iron could not touch the stones of a house meant for peace.

So Solomon asked the Sages: "How shall I shape these stones without iron?" They remembered an ancient creature, one of the ten things created at twilight on the sixth day of creation, the Shameer, a worm no bigger than a grain of barley, whose touch could split the hardest substance on earth. It was the same creature Moses had used to cut the precious stones of the Ephod, the High Priest's breastplate.

Hunting a Worm Through the Demon Kingdom

Where was the Shameer? The Sages told Solomon: summon a male and female demon and interrogate them. He did. They knew nothing, but they knew who would, Ashmedai, king of the demons.

Ashmedai, they reported, lived in a distant mountain. There he had dug a pit, filled it with water, covered it with a stone, and sealed it with his own seal. Every morning he ascended to heaven and studied in the celestial academy of wisdom. Every afternoon he descended and studied in the earthly academy. Then he checked his seal, broke it, drank, resealed the pit, and vanished.

This story, preserved in Gittin 68a-b, pictures Temple-building as an act that reaches down into creation's undergrowth and up into the academies of angels. A tiny worm held in the beak of a moorhen would, in the end, shape the stones that held the Shechinah.

Even Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, needed the cooperation of worms and demons to build a house for God.

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