Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Kings 5:16

"besides Solomon`s chief officers that were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, who bare rule over the people that wrought in the work." — 1 Kings 5:16 (ASV)

The chief of Solomon’s officers we should certainly have supposed to have been taken from the Israelites (as clearly were the 550 named in 1 Kings 9:23). But the passage in Chronicles (2 Chronicles 2:18)—reckoning them at 3,600—seems to imply that they were, like the overseers of Israel in the Egyptian bondage (Exodus 5:14–15), taken from the subject races.