1 Kings4chapter 4

1 Kings 4:7-19

twelve officers over all Israel: Twelve officers divide the kingdom's provisioning by month rather than by the tribes' old boundaries, and the districts named mix tribal territory with cities and regions redrawn under the crown. Verse 19 closes the list with a line the bench reads two ways: some take it to mean Geber alone administered all of Gilead where two kings once ruled, others that Judah, the king's own tribe, received no separate officer and no month's charge, exempted rather than omitted by oversight. Either reading rests on the same silence, since the text names no twelfth district lying in Judah though it names every other tribe.

Ben-hur means son of Hur, and five of the governors are named only by their fathers. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that rural Syria and Arabia still named men as the sons of their fathers. Albert Barnes matches this district to Ephraim.

Ben-deker's district lay in the tribe of Dan, and John Gill places Makaz, Shaalbim and the other towns along its border. Several appear in Dan's allotment at Joshua 19:41-43. Beth-shemesh received the returning ark in 1 Samuel 6.

Albert Barnes matches Ben-hesed's district to the land of Judah, which bears on the question of a governor for Judah at verse 19. Socoh is a town of Judah's lowland at Joshua 15:35. Hepher was a clan of Manasseh.

John Gill places Naphath-dor, the district of Dor, in Manasseh west of the Jordan. Albert Barnes reads the marriage as the royal practice of binding chief officials to the king, and he takes Ben-abinadab for Solomon's cousin through David's brother Abinadab. Gill dates the wedding to later years of good service.

Taanach, Megiddo and Beth-shean were cities of Manasseh, and John Gill carries the district past Jokmeam into Zebulun. The district held the plain below Jezreel. Baana shares his father's name, Ahilud, with Jehoshaphat the recorder of verse 3.

Ramoth-gilead was a city of refuge in Gad, and the sixty walled cities of Argob were taken in the conquest of Bashan at Deuteronomy 3:4. Adam Clarke reads the bronze bars as plated gate bars. Albert Barnes explains the five governors named only by their fathers as damage to the list the writer copied.

Mahanaim lay east of the Jordan. Jacob named it at Genesis 32:2, Ishbosheth ruled from it in 2 Samuel 2:8, and David stayed there when he fled from Absalom. John Gill infers rich land from the month of provision it owed the king.

Ahimaaz is the second governor married to a daughter of Solomon, after Ben-abinadab in verse 11. Matthew Henry commends the matches, for the princesses married Israelite officers of their father's court and stayed clear of foreign princes outside the covenant. Ahimaaz alone carries no father's name.

Baana son of Hushai governed Asher and Aloth. John Gill takes him for a son of Hushai the Archite, David's friend, and reads Aloth as the heights near the Ladder of Tyre. Asher was rich in oil.

Issachar formed one district under one governor. John Gill notes that Asher before it and Benjamin after it were whole tribes in the same way, each feeding the king's table for a month. This Jehoshaphat is a different man from Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud, the recorder of verse 3.

Shimei son of Ela governed Benjamin, the tribe of Saul. John Gill notes that his father's name marks this Shimei apart from the Shimei of Benjamin who cursed David and was put to death at 2:46.

Sihon and Og were the two Amorite kings Israel defeated east of the Jordan in Numbers 21, and their lands now fell to one governor. John Wesley and Albert Barnes read the closing clause as a note on Geber's wide charge. The Berean text gives Judah a governor of its own.

as the sand which is by the sea: Judah and Israel multiplied as the sand of the sea is the promise the Lord swore to Abraham at Genesis 22:17, and for one generation under Solomon the oath reads as present fact rather than future hope. The verse pairs that fulfillment with plain contentment, eating and drinking, and making merry, the peace that made the multiplying visible to a watching nation. The same sand-of-the-shore picture returns at verse 29 to measure Solomon's own wisdom, so the chapter weighs both a people and a king on the same shore.

1 Kings 4:21-24

from the river unto the land of the Philistines: Solomon's dominion runs from the river to the land of the Philistines and the border of Egypt, the span promised to Abraham at Genesis 15:18, unto the great river, the river Euphrates, and for these years the border reaches the promise's own edge. The daily provision, thirty measures of fine flour and threescore of meal beside the oxen, sheep and game, feeds a court gathered from client kingdoms that brought presents and served him, and the peace on every side is what makes such a table possible. Farrar and the older commentators read this abundance as the high point later prophets look back toward when they picture the kingdom restored.

A cor was the same measure as the homer, and Albert Barnes sets it at 86 gallons by Josephus or 44 by the rabbis. Adam Clarke gives nearly seventy-six. Barnes records the estimate that some fourteen thousand people ate at the king's table from this flour.

The ten fat oxen were stall-fed and the twenty range oxen came from pasture, as Adam Clarke sets out the list. Albert Barnes calls the wild animals uncertain and suggests wild goats, gazelles and wild oxen from the wilder parts of Syria. Assyrian sculptures show game at royal feasts.

Tiphsah is Thapsacus, a town at the lowest ford of the Euphrates, and Albert Barnes derives its name from pasach, to pass over. Gaza stood at the southwest edge. Barnes adds that holding the ford served Solomon's trade by land.

under his vine and under his fig tree: Every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, becomes the prophets' own picture of the peace still to come: Micah pictures the messianic age in the same words, and Zechariah promises the same rest to the men around Joshua the high priest. Solomon's reign is that picture's one clear fulfillment in the Old Testament narrative, brief as it was, and the prophets reach back to it to describe what has not yet lasted. The verse names the land by its two farthest border towns, Dan in the north and Beersheba in the south, a formula that measures the kingdom at its widest peaceful extent.

1 Kings 4:26-28

forty thousand stalls of horses: stands beside four thousand at 2 Chronicles 9:25, a number the bench treats as a copyist's difference between the Hebrew letters for forty and four rather than two separate counts, and the manuscripts divide on which figure is original. The horses are the first clause of the three the law of the king forbade at Deuteronomy 17:16, multiplying horses, and the narrator states the number here without comment, saving the sharper report of horses fetched from Egypt for chapter ten. The same twelve officers who supplied the king's table in verses 22 and 23 also carried barley and straw to every stall, one administration feeding both the court and the stud.

Matthew Henry reads the monthly turns of the governors as good housekeeping for King Solomon's table, generous in spending and careful in providing. He sets beside it the word of Ecclesiastes that more goods bring more mouths. Each month had its supplier.

Barley with chopped straw was common horse fodder. The Hebrew word rekesh behind the other horses meant swift coursers to Albert Barnes and Adam Clarke, and Clarke ties them to the king’s messages across distant provinces. Barnes reads the required place as the cities where the horses were kept.

1 Kings 4:29-31

wisdom and understanding exceeding much: God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, the sand-of-the-shore language of verse 20 now measuring the king rather than the nation he ruled. Ethan the Ezrahite and Heman carry the same names given in the titles of Psalms 89 and 88, and while the identification is not certain, the bench has long weighed whether these are the very men Solomon is said to surpass. His fame reaches nations round about before a single proverb is quoted, so the chapter states the wisdom's reputation before it opens the collection of it.

John Wesley reads the men of the East as Chaldeans, Persians and Arabians, and Albert Barnes as the Bene Kedem, desert tribes of the middle Euphrates to whom Job belonged. Their wisdom ran to proverbs and nature, like Solomon's. Egypt's learning took in geometry, medicine, astronomy and magic.

Adam Clarke takes Ethan, Heman and Calcol for older men named at 1 Chronicles 2:6. Albert Barnes reads them as Solomon’s contemporaries. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that Mahol means dance, so the sons of Mahol may have been musicians.

1 Kings 4:32-34

three thousand proverbs: and a thousand and five songs are the historical anchor behind the wisdom books that follow: the book of Proverbs draws on this output without claiming to reprint all of it, and the Song of Solomon is one song kept out of the thousand and five. His subject runs from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop growing out of the wall, trees, beasts, fowl, creeping things and fishes, a catalogue the commentators read as natural history rather than fable. The chapter closes with kings of every nation sending to hear him, the scene the queen of Sheba enacts in person two chapters later.

Solomon's subjects ran from the cedar in Lebanon, the grandest tree of the land, to the hyssop, a small plant in the wall, the greatest to the least. His writings on trees, animals, birds and fish are lost. John Wesley held that Scripture stands whole without them.

Matthew Henry reads Solomon, whose wisdom drew men of all nations and the kings of the earth, as a type of Christ. A type pictures Christ ahead of time. All the treasures of wisdom are hidden in Christ, Henry writes, and hidden for use.