Spirits and Demons Who Built the Temple of Solomn
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The biblical account of Solomon's Temple in 1 Kings 5–8 describes an immense human workforce of Israelites, Phoenicians, craftsmen, and laborers; it does not say that spirits or demons constructed the sanctuary. Yet a remarkable later Jewish tradition transformed Solomon into a ruler who possessed authority over the supernatural world. The fullest surviving account appears in the Testament of Solomon, a pseudepigraphal work preserved in Greek and incorporating Jewish, magical, and later Christian elements. Its opening explicitly presents Solomon as having mastered the “spirits of the air, on the earth and under the earth” and says that through them he accomplished the extraordinary works of the Temple.
The first of these beings is Ornias, a demon who troubles a young Temple worker by taking part of his wages and food. Solomon receives a supernatural ring from the archangel Michael, bearing a pentalpha, through which he is given authority to bind demons and use them in building Jerusalem. Ornias is captured and brought before Solomon; after being sealed, he is ordered to cut the stones for the Temple. The story is strikingly conscious of the biblical prohibition against iron tools: Ornias is described as being afraid of iron while Solomon compels him to continue the work.
Ornias then becomes the means by which Solomon summons Beelzeboul, described as the prince or ruler of the demons. Beelzeboul in turn brings other spirits before the king, creating an extraordinary supernatural hierarchy around Solomon. The text does not portray all of these beings as builders; many are interrogated about their powers, their astrological associations, and the angels capable of restraining them. But several are explicitly put to work. One demon is ordered to cut marble, another to work with materials for the Temple, and later Solomon declares that some demons are assigned to the heavy work of construction, while others are confined or employed in the preparation of gold and silver.
Among the more visually extraordinary beings is the lion-shaped spirit, whose name is given as Rath in the surviving translation. Solomon assigns its legion to carry wood, while the lion-shaped demon itself is ordered to saw the wood with its teeth for the Temple furnace. Another dragon-shaped spirit is condemned to saw marble. The text also describes Ephippas, a powerful demon associated with the Red Sea, who is brought before Solomon and ordered to make bricks. The supernatural labor is therefore not merely metaphorical: within the story, demons physically handle the materials from which the Temple is being constructed.
The tradition takes an even more dramatic turn with Ephippas and Abezithibod. Ephippas is said to have brought a great column from the Red Sea and raised it at the Temple, while Abezithibod, identified as a son of Beelzeboul, assists him. Elsewhere, Solomon orders demons to fetch water for the Temple and assigns others to heavy construction work. The narrative eventually declares that Solomon “built the entire Temple”, after which the assembled kings marvel at the sanctuary. These details belong to the literary world of the Testament of Solomon, not to the biblical account, and the work's precise date and stages of composition remain disputed.
A related but distinct Jewish tradition centers on Ashmedai (Asmodeus), the king of the demons, in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 68a–b. Solomon needs the shamir, the mysterious agent capable of cutting stone without iron, because of the requirement expressed in 1 Kings 6:7. Lesser demons tell him that Ashmedai knows where it can be found. Solomon captures Ashmedai, who eventually reveals that the shamir is held by the angelic minister of the sea and entrusted to a wild bird. Here Ashmedai is not presented as one of Solomon's stonecutting laborers in the manner of Ornias; his role is to reveal the means by which the Temple stones can be worked without iron. Together, these traditions preserve one of the strangest developments in Jewish memory of Solomon: the biblical king who built the Temple becomes, in later literature, a sovereign capable of binding demons, commanding spirits, and compelling supernatural beings to labor on the house of God.
Although the tradition cannot be traced directly to Babylonian mythology, its portrayal of Solomon as a master of spirits and magic reflects the wider Mesopotamian magical environment in which Jewish demonological traditions developed and were later transmitted during and post Babylonian period.