Ecclesiastes 2:7

I got me servants and maidens Better, I bought. The picture of Oriental state was incomplete without this element, and the slave trade, of which the Midianites were the chief representatives in the patriarchal history. (Genesis 37:28), had probably been carried on without intermission, and supplied both the household and the harem of Solomon. In the Cushi of 2 Samuel 18:21, in his namesake of Jeremiah 36:14, in Ebedmelech, the Cushite, or Ethiopian, of Jeremiah 38:7, we have instances of the presence of such slaves in the royal households. The history of every ancient nation shews the universality of the traffic. Of these slaves each great household had two classes: (1) those "bought with money," men of other races, captives in war, often, probably, negroes (Jeremiah 38:7) who were employed in the more menial offices (Genesis 11:11-12; Genesis 11:23), and (2) those born in the house (Genesis 14:14; Genesis 15:3; Jeremiah 2:14), the -sons of the handmaids" (Exodus 23:12), who rose into more confidential service, the οἰκογενεῖς of the Greeks, the vernaeof the Latins. On the assumption that the book was written under the Ptolemies, their court would present the same features in an even more conspicuous manner.

great and small cattle Better, oxen and sheep. The daily provision for Solomon's household (1 Kings 4:22) gives some idea of the magnitude of his flocks and herds. See also 1 Chronicles 27:29; 1 Kings 5:3.