miraculous act having been accomplished in this erecting a temple of stones hewn at a distance; and in the account of the building of the temple in the Book of Chronicles no reference is made to the circumstance, which would have been the case had any marvel attended it.
The Septuagint renders the passage, ὁ οἶκος λίθοις ἀκροτόμοις ἀργοῖς ᾠκοδομήθη. The word ἀκρότομος is used by the LXX in three places, for חַלָּמִישׁ, which is rough, hard, unhewn stone. Where it says in Deuteronomy (viii. 15), “Who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint,” the LXX use ἀκρότομος. Where the Psalmist says, “Who turned the flint-stone into a springing well” (Ps. cxiv. 8), and Job, “He putteth His hand upon the rock” (xxviii. 9), they employ ἀκρότομος. So, too, in the Book of Wisdom (xi. 4), “Water was given them out of the flinty rock,” ἐκ πέτρας ἀκροτόμου, which is paralleled by “the hard stone,” λίθος σκληρός. And in Ecclesiasticus, Ezekias is said to have “digged the hard rock with iron,” ὤρυξε σιδήρῳ ἀκρότομον (xlviii. 17).
Λίθος ἀκρότομος is, therefore, not a hewn stone, but one with natural angles, unhewn. Thus Suidas uses the expression, σκληρὰ καὶ ἄτμητος, and Theodotion calls the sharp stone used by Zipporah in
