In noticing successively Solomon’s excessive accumulation of silver and gold 1 Kings 10:14, his multiplication of horses 1 Kings 10:26, and his multiplication of wives, the writer has in mind the warning of Moses against these three forms of princely ostentation, all alike forbidden to an Israelite... [ Continue Reading ]
YE SHALL NOT GO IN UNTO THEM ... - These words are not a quotation from the Pentateuch. They merely give the general meaning of the two passages prohibiting intermarriage with neighboring idolators (marginal references). Strictly speaking, the prohibition in the Law of intermarriage was confined to... [ Continue Reading ]
These numbers seem excessive to many critics, and it must be admitted that history furnishes no parallel to them. In Song of Solomon 6:8 the number of Solomon’s legitimate wives is said to be sixty, and that of his concubines eighty. It is, perhaps probable, that the text has in this place suffered... [ Continue Reading ]
OLD - About fifty or fifty-five. From his age at his accession (1 Kings 2:2 note) he could not have been more than about sixty at his death. The true nature of Solomon’s idolatry was neither complete apostasy - an apostasy from which there could be no recovery; nor a mere toleration, rather praise-w... [ Continue Reading ]
WENT AFTER - This expression is common in the Pentateuch, and always signifies actual idolatry (see Deuteronomy 11:28; Deuteronomy 13:2; Deuteronomy 28:14, etc.). For Ashtoreth, or Astarte, the goddess of the Zidonians, see Exodus 34:13, note; Deuteronomy 16:21, note. On the tomb of a Phoenician kin... [ Continue Reading ]
Chemosh (Numbers 21:29 note), seems to have been widely worshipped in Western Asia. His name occurs frequently on the “Moabite-Stone.” Car-Chemish, “the fort of Chemosh,” a great city of the northern Hittites, must have been under his protection. In Babylon he seems to have been known as Chomus-belu... [ Continue Reading ]
ONE TRIBE - i. e., (marginal reference) the tribe of Judah. Benjamin was looked upon as absorbed in Judah, so as not to be really a tribe in the same sense as the others. Still, in memory of the fact that the existing tribe of Judah was a double one 1 Kings 12:2 l, the prophet Ahijah tore his garmen... [ Continue Reading ]
The writer has reserved for this place the various troubles of Solomon’s reign, not allowing them to interrupt his previous narrative. He has, consequently, not followed chronological order. Hadad’s 1 Kings 11:23 and Rezon’s opposition belong to the early years of Solomon’s reign. Hadad was a royal... [ Continue Reading ]
The verse gives certain additional particulars of David’s conquest of Edom (marginal references). Joab was left, or sent, to complete the subjugation of the country, with orders to exterminate all the grown male inhabitants. It was not very often that David acted with any extreme severity in his war... [ Continue Reading ]
EVERY MALE IN EDOM - i. e., every male whom he could find. As did Hadad and his company 1 Kings 11:17, so others would escape in various directions. The Edomite nation was not destroyed on the occasion.... [ Continue Reading ]
MIDIAN - A town in the south of Judah. Paran is the desert tract immediately to the south of Judaea, the modern desert of et-Tih. PHARAOH - King of the twenty-first (Tanite) dynasty; probably he was Psusennes I, Manetho’s second king. It appears to have been the policy of the Pharaohs about this ti... [ Continue Reading ]
That Hadad should wait for the death of Joab before requesting leave to return to Idumaea shows how terrible an impression had been made by the severe measures which that commander had carried out twenty-five or thirty years previously 1 Kings 11:16. The inability of refugees to depart from an Orien... [ Continue Reading ]
REZON - Possibly the same as the Hezion of 1 Kings 15:18; but probably one who interrupted the royal line of the Damascene Hadads, which was restored after his death. We may arrange the Damascus-kings of this period as follows: RE-DO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH! Hadadezer (or Hadad I), about 1040 B.C. (con... [ Continue Reading ]
AND (THEY) REIGNED - A very slight emendation gives the sense, “they made him king at Damascus.”... [ Continue Reading ]
ZEREDA - See Judges 7:22. LIFTED UP HIS HAND AGAINST THE KING - i. e., “he rebelled.” Compare marginal reference.... [ Continue Reading ]
Millo was probably fortified in Solomon’s twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year.... [ Continue Reading ]
A MIGHTY MAN OF VALOR - Here “a man of strength and activity.” It is a vague term of commendation, the exact force of which must be fixed by the context. See Ruth 2:1; 1 Samuel 9:1, etc. Solomon made Jeroboam superintendent of all the forced labor (“the charge”) exacted from his tribe - the tribe o... [ Continue Reading ]
AT THAT TIME - Probably after Jeroboam’s return from Egypt (see 1 Kings 11:40). THE SHILONITE - An inhabitant of Shiloh in Mount Ephraim, the earliest and most sacred of the Hebrew sanctuaries (Joshua 18:10; Jdg 18:31; 1 Samuel 4:3, etc.)... [ Continue Reading ]
The first instance of the “acted parable.” Generally this mode was adopted upon express divine command (see Jeremiah 13:1; Ezekiel 3:1). A connection may be traced between the type selected and the words of the announcement to Solomon (1 Kings 11:11. Compare 1 Samuel 15:26).... [ Continue Reading ]
Translate - “Howbeit I will not take ought of the kingdom out of his hand.” The context requires this sense.... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT DAVID MAY HAVE A LIGHT - Compare the marginal references. The exact meaning of the expression is doubtful. Perhaps the best explanation is, that “light” here is taken as the essential feature of a continuing “home.”... [ Continue Reading ]
See the marginal references. To “build a sure house,” or “give a house,” is to give a continuity of offspring, and so secure the perpetuity of a family. The promise, it will be observed, is conditional; and as the condition was not complied with, it did not take effect (see 1 Kings 14:8). The entire... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT NOT FOREVER - David had been distinctly promised that God should never fail his seed, whatever their shortcomings Psalms 89:28. The fulfillment of these promises was seen, partly in the Providence which maintained David’s family in a royal position until Zerubbabel, but mainly in the preservatio... [ Continue Reading ]
Compare 1 Kings 11:26. The announcement of Ahijah was followed within a little while by rebellion on the part of Jeroboam. As Solomon’s luster faded, as his oppression became greater and its objects more selfish, and as a prospect of deliverance arose from the personal qualities of Jeroboam 1 Kings... [ Continue Reading ]
THE BOOK OF THE ACTS OF SOLOMON - See the marginal reference and Introduction.... [ Continue Reading ]
Josephus gave Solomon a reign of 80 years, either because he wished to increase the glory of his country’s greatest king, or through his having a false reading in his copy of the Septuagint Version. It is, no doubt, remarkable that the three successive kings, Saul, David, and Solomon, should have ea... [ Continue Reading ]