[ZNPaaneah]

I think it is important that we understand how the industrial revolution started, this way we can more easily see what word of the Lord was violated.

I grew up in NY. I made very many wood fires, and my father had us split logs that we later used in our fireplace. We didn't live in NYC, but in Westchester. In NYC no one used wood. Mostly they had boilers or perhaps coal. Same with our school. In upstate NY wood was everywhere and many people made a living selling wood. You could see the signs for firewood as you drove by. But then in the 70s I lived in England, in Norfolk. There everyone used coal. It was easy to see why. You have a small bucket of coal (compared to our much larger pile of wood) by a small iron stove similar to a Franklin stove. In the morning you add a couple of chunks of coal and open up the vent. At night you tamp down the vent. Compared to wood it was cleaner, neater, and much easier. Also even though I travelled the countryside in England, Wales and Scotland you never saw anyone burning wood. It turns out this is true of all land that is crowded. As towns grow coal is a much better source for fires than wood.

But coal mines have major problems. Often you will have a shaft leading down to the coal mine that is 800 feet or more straight down. This requires an elevator which initially was powered by horses. Flooding was also a major issue and so they needed pumps to pump water out also powered by horses. Then moving the coal was another issue. Imagine being underground and having to drag hundreds of pounds of coal behind you for a quarter of mile back to the elevator. Very quickly they discovered the advantage of a railway at reducing the friction. They even built railways from the mines down to the port. A brakeman would control the car on the way down, filled with coal, on the way back horses would pull it back up. Also, fires and explosions were a major problem so they needed to develop lights that would not cause explosions. They also needed government regulation since the owners of the mine didn't really care that miners got killed without them. Now if you are at a coal mine there will be lots of "garbage", coal that is too small to sell. The coal is essentially free to burn whereas providing grain for the horses to do all the work is not. That is why the first steam engine invented was designed to pump water out of a coal mine.

So let's look at Israel. A small strip of land with very limited forests and wood. By law they are forbidden to import wood from other countries and instead are told they have "a rich land". At the time of Solomon they have a large, well organized, centralized government. Solomon is also famous for his mines. No doubt his mines had all the same issues that mines in England had. If Solomon had obeyed God's command to not go to Egypt for horses and Lebanon for Cedars he would have had no choice but come up with the same creative solutions that the English came up with.

We know that pumps had been invented, we know that rails were used to move heavy carts, and we have found a working steam engine that is thousands of years old (toy).

Therefore it is my conclusion that at the time of Solomon we were on the brink of the industrial revolution. However, his many wives turned him aside.

Ps 81:8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee:
O Israel, if thou wouldest hearken unto me!
9 There shall no strange god be in thee;
Neither shalt thou worship any foreign god.
10 I am Jehovah thy God,
Who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt:
Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11 But my people hearkened not to my voice;
And Israel would none of me.
12 So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart,
That they might walk in their own counsels.
13 Oh that my people would hearken unto me,
That Israel would walk in my ways!
14 I would soon subdue their enemies,
And turn my hand against their adversaries.
15 The haters of Jehovah should [d]submit themselves unto him:
But their time should endure for ever.
16 He would feed them also with the [e]finest of the wheat;
And with honey out of the rock would I satisfy thee.

Just imagine what would happen if Israel had discovered the industrial revolution hundreds of years before the Babylonians rode into visit. They would have found cars, trains, airplanes, high rise buildings made of concrete and steel. The entire world would have been able to leap frog the dirty part of the industrial revolution.