1 Kings 5:16

three thousand and three hundred This number differs by 300 from that given in the Chronicles. If the total of the census of the strangers there given be correct, then we ought to read 3600 as the number of the overseers. The LXX. has τρεῖς χιλιάδες καὶ ἑξακόσιοι, and adds that they were employed for 3 years in preparing the stones and the wood.

The stone work was most probably given to the levy of strangers and the work of cutting and dressing timber to the 10,000 Israelites who came month and month about. The word rendered -hewers" in 1 Kings 5:15 is so regularly used of workers in stone, that the LXX. nearly always renders the verb by λατομέω and its participle by λατόμοι (stone cutters).

which ruled over the people The root-sense of the verb, which is -to trample on," or -break down," gives the idea that the ruling was after the fashion of taskmasters.