1 Kingschapter 9
28 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, with a heart of integrity and uprightness, doing all I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and ordinances,
Introduction
Jeremiah, by tradition, History, 1 Kings Overview.
The historian writes this chapter for readers who had walked past the ruins of the house it describes. It opens with the LORD speaking to the king a second time and then turns to the business of a great kingdom. Its first hearers knew the forts, the roads and the port it names, and some knew what was left of them. Listen for the condition set on the house and the traveller who asks what happened to it. Notice how the chapter counts the building years and settles the king's accounts. Wealth and warning stand together here.
Context
- Who
- Israelites watching their king become a regional trading power
- What
- The LORD's second appearance to Solomon with a promise and a warning, followed by notes on the towns given to Hiram, the forced labour, the fortified cities and the fleet sent to Ophir.
- Where
- Jerusalem, the fortress cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, twenty towns in Galilee, and the port of Ezion-geber on the Red Sea.
- When
- About 946 BC and the years after, once the twenty years of building on both houses were complete.
- Why
- To set the conditions of the covenant over the house and the throne at the height of the reign, and to record how the kingdom was built and supplied.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to Solomon at the twenty-year mark, and its first nine verses belong to the LORD, who appears to him a second time.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The time is about 946 BC and the years after it. The chapter sums the seven years of 6:38 and the thirteen of 7:1 into one figure of twenty at 9:10.
The places run from the capital outward. Millo and the wall stand in Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer sat on the road junctions that controlled movement through the country. Then come twenty towns in Galilee, and last the port of Ezion-geber beside Eloth at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba.
The occasion is the settlement of accounts after the building. Solomon pays Hiram in land, Hiram inspects the towns and rejects them, the levy is explained, and the labour policy is stated plainly.
A first hearer knew several things the chapter assumes. He knew Gezer had come as a dowry, an Egyptian force having burned the Canaanite city and handed it over with Pharaoh's daughter, which was Egypt's habit of securing trade routes by limited campaigns. He knew what the levy meant for his own household, since the descendants of the Canaanite peoples were conscripted as permanent labour while Israelites served as soldiers, officers and commanders. He also knew that Ezion-geber opened a sea road his own tribes had no skill for. Hiram supplied the sailors, and the ships came back from Ophir with four hundred and twenty talents of gold.
Significance
The first hearers were shown a kingdom at its height with a warning nailed to the front of it. The forts, the fleet and the gold all stand under the sentence about the ruined house at 9:7 to 9.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The generation reading in exile had walked past those ruins. The chapter told them the answer to the traveller's question had been on record for four centuries, that they forsook the LORD their God.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
Rashi is quoted here from the Metsudah Tanach series of Lakewood, New Jersey, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. The second appearing is read as a conditional grant rather than as a settled gift. On the promise that God's eyes and heart will be there always, Rashi gives Targum Jonathan first, that the Presence will dwell there if God's will is done. He then puts the condition in his own words, that the eyes and the heart are there if the heart and the will are there (Rashi on I Kings 9:3:1). The translation adds the tradition it stands in, that the Presence remained at the western wall after the house was destroyed.
The warning that follows is read against the law. Rashi holds that the threat to the house is the sanction already written in Leviticus for a people who will not listen, and he cites it (Rashi on I Kings 9:7:1). On the line about the house being high, he reads the tense as a promise with a limit. The house stands exalted while they have not sinned, and once they sin every passer by is appalled and hisses (Rashi on I Kings 9:8:1). The translation notes two other readings of the same word there. Ralbag takes it as the present, that the house is high now, and Radak takes it to mean that the house will be destroyed.
The twenty years Rashi adds up from the book itself, seven for the temple and thirteen for the palace (Rashi on I Kings 9:10:1). The cities Hiram refused carry the chapter's sharpest note. Rashi reads the name Cabul as a land of chains, a marsh where the foot sinks and sticks fast, and the translation records Radak with him on the poor ground. It records a second reading beside it. The men of that place wore chains of silver and gold, and Hiram would have no dealings with people so wealthy and so spoiled (Rashi on I Kings 9:13:1).
The rest is administration read plainly. The levy of this chapter is the labour tax described at the end of the passage, raised to build the works the chapter lists (Rashi on I Kings 9:15:1). The gift Pharaoh made of Gezer, Rashi calls a dowry (Rashi on I Kings 9:16:1). Tadmor in the wilderness he places near settled ground, and the translation notes Ralbag again, that the city had desert on one side and farmland on the other (Rashi on I Kings 9:18:1). The store cities he gives from the Targum (Rashi on I Kings 9:19:1). Pharaoh's daughter moving out of the city of David he ties back to her coming into it in the third chapter (Rashi on I Kings 9:24:1). Eleven further notes stand in the corpus without an English text and are cited and unquoted. Malbim stands at Malbim on I Kings 9:4:1, 9:5:1, 9:9:1, 9:12:1 and 9:14:1. Radak stands at 9:1:1, 9:6:1 and 9:22:1, and Metzudat David at 9:2:1, 9:17:1 and 9:21:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. The second appearing draws the longest run in the chapter, nine locators on the third verse. The corpus holds Berakhot 62b:20 with Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 12:7 and the Glick Edition at Yevamot 12:3. It holds Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 4:5:6, Bamidbar Rabbah 8:1 and Aggadat Bereshit 68:2. It holds Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 20:21:8, and Midrash Tanchuma Buber at Shemot 10:1 and Vayigash 11:1.
The condition and the warning carry their own set. On the first verse the corpus holds Megillah 31a:15 and Jerusalem Talmud Rosh Hashanah 1:1:2. On the fourth it holds Sifrei Devarim 162:5, and on the sixth Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bechukotai 5:1. On the seventh it holds Midrash Tanchuma, Bechukotai 3:1 with Otzar Midrashim, Midrash Shelosha v'Arba'ah 1:24. On the eighth it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Amalek 4:31 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 951:33.
The twenty years draw eight locators on the tenth verse. The corpus holds Kohelet Rabbah 2:4:1 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Bachodesh 1:4. It holds Midrash Lekach Tov at Exodus 19:1:1 and Numbers 8:26:1, and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 19:1:1. It holds Sifrei Bamidbar 64:2 and 78:1, and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 164:9.
The land of Cabul draws nine on the thirteenth verse, which is where the tradition argues the name out. The corpus holds Shabbat 54a:2 with Ein Yaakov, Shabbat 5:3 and Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 5:2:4, and Shabbat 54a:3 stands on the twelfth. It holds Pesachim 51a:3 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 49. It holds Midrash Lekach Tov at Deuteronomy 32:27:1 and 33:29:1, with Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:27:6 and Sifrei Devarim 322:8. On the sixteenth it holds Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 18:1:7, and on the eighteenth Yevamot 16b:3. The labour taken from the peoples left in the land draws Yevamot 79a:10 on the twenty-second, with Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 8:9 and the Glick Edition at Yevamot 8:7. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and this site reports it as theirs. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on I Kings 9:3:1 to 9:25:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J, reported CC-BY; Malbim, Malbim on I Kings 9:4:1, 9:5:1, 9:9:1, 9:12:1 and 9:14:1, cited by ref because Sefaria holds no English version; Radak, Radak on I Kings 9:1:1, 9:6:1 and 9:22:1, and noted by the Metsudah translation at 9:8:1 and 9:13:1; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on I Kings 9:2:1, 9:17:1 and 9:21:1, cited by ref because Sefaria holds no English version; Ralbag, noted at Rashi on I Kings 9:8:1 and 9:18:1 by the Metsudah translation; Targum Jonathan, cited by Rashi at Rashi on I Kings 9:3:1 and 9:19:1; The Sefaria corpus on disk, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/1-kings/9.json, fetched 2026-09-19, the forty Midrash and Talmud locators cited above, 2026.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The second appearing: a warning fastened to the promise
1 Kings 9:1-2
when Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD: The LORD appears “a second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon”, where the young king asked for a hearing heart (3:5-15). This answer comes after both houses stand finished. The form is the same, and the content moves from a young king’s request to a covenant’s terms.
1 Kings 9:1
“And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of the Lord,.... Which was done in seven years, 1Ki 6:38. and the king's house; his own palace, which was finished in thirteen years, 1Ki 7:1, and all Solomon's desire which he was pleased to do; all his other buildings, the house for Pharaoh's daughter, the house of the forest of Lebanon, and may include his vineyards, gardens, orchards, and pools of water, made for his pleasure, Ecc 2:4 in which he succeeded and prospered, 2Ch 7:11.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
1 Kings 9:1
“And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house--This first verse is connected with 1Ki 9:11, all that is contained between 1Ki 9:2-10 being parenthetical.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
the LORD appeared to him a second time: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and Matthew Henry place this vision on the night after the dedication, following 2 Chronicles 7:12. Albert Barnes ties it to verse 1 and Solomon's twenty-fourth year, and dates the dedication thirteen years after the temple was finished. The vision answers the prayer of chapter 8.
1 Kings 9:2
“The comparing of it with that intimates that it was the very night after he had finished the solemnities of his festival, for so that was, 2 Chron. i.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
by putting My Name there forever: The LORD has “consecrated this temple you have built by putting My Name there forever”. This fulfills the place of Deuteronomy 12 where the LORD would choose to put his name. The words “My eyes and My heart will be there for all time” go beyond Solomon’s request at 8:29.
1 Kings 9:3
The answer given by God to Solomon’s prayer is reported more fully in 2Ch 7:12-22. When God puts His Name in the temple He does it, in intention, “forever.” He will not arbitrarily withdraw it; there it will remain “forever,” so far as God is concerned. But the people may by unfaithfulness drive it away 1Ki 9:7-9. And mine eyes and my heart - An answer in excess of the prayer 1Ki 8:29; “Not Mine eyes only, but Mine eyes and Mine heart.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:3
“For ever - As long as the Mosaic dispensation lasts; whereas hitherto my worship has been successively in several places. Eyes - My watchful and gracious providence.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Kings 9:4-5
with a heart of integrity and uprightness: The promise to David at 2 Samuel 7:12-16 returns here with a condition. David’s line stands, and each king’s share in it rests on walking “as your father David walked, with a heart of integrity and uprightness”. Solomon hears the terms David kept, with David held up as the standard.
1 Kings 9:4
“If we perform our part of the covenant, God will not fail to perform his; if we improve the grace God has given us, he will confirm us to the end. Let not the children of godly parents expect the entail of the blessing, unless they tread in the steps of those that have gone before them to heaven, and keep up the virtue and piety of their ancestors.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
establish your royal throne over Israel forever: John Gill reads forever as a line of David's descendants on the throne of Israel until the coming of the Messiah. Solomon had pleaded these same words at 8:25. The LORD now answers that plea in His own voice.
1 Kings 9:5
“Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever,.... In a succession in his posterity, until the coming of the Messiah: as I promised unto David thy father, saying, there shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel; not fail one of his posterity to sit upon it; see 2Sa 7:12.”
1 Kings 9:6-7
if indeed you or your sons turn away: The condition now turns: serving other gods will “cut off Israel from the land” and put this temple out of the LORD’s presence. The words “an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples” state in advance what 2 Kings 17 and 25 narrate in full.
1 Kings 9:6
“At all turn - Rather, “If ye shall wholly turn from following Me.” (See 2Ch 7:19.) The Israelites were not to be cut off, except for an entire defection.”
an object of scorn and ridicule: The threat fell on the temple twice, when Babylon burned it at 2 Kings 25:9 and when Rome destroyed the temple built in its place. Lactantius tells the second fall, with Vespasian subduing the Jews, overthrowing Jerusalem and barring the survivors from their land. Both falls left Israel scorned.
1 Kings 9:7
“After a short time the emperor Vespasian subdued the Jews and laid waste their lands with the sword and fire, besieged and reduced them by famine, overthrew Jerusalem, led the captives in triumph and prohibited the others who were left from ever returning to their native land.”
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius · written before 325 · Epitome of the Divine Institutes 46patristic
1 Kings 9:8-9
will be appalled and will hiss: The temple becomes a sight: all who pass by “will be appalled and will hiss” and ask why the LORD has done this. The text gives in advance the answer that 2 Kings 17:7-23 gives: “they have forsaken the LORD their God” and “have embraced other gods”.
1 Kings 9:8
“The Hebrew text runs - “And this house shall be high: every one,” etc. The meaning appears to be, “This house shall be high” (i. e., conspicuous) “in its ruin as in its glory.” And shall hiss - In contempt. This expression first appears in the time of Hezekiah 2Ch 29:8; Mic 6:16. It is especially familiar to Jeremiah (Jer 18:16; Jer 19:8, etc.).”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:8
“Their sin will be read in their punishment. They deserted the temple, and therefore God deserted it; they profaned it with their sins and laid it common, and therefore God profaned it with his judgments and laid it waste.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
have embraced other gods: The Hebrew verb means to take hold of. Adam Clarke explains it from the custom of a poor man who grasps the feet of a patron and claims his protection. The LORD who brought their fathers out of Egypt is the one they let go.
1 Kings 9:9
“Have taken hold upon other gods - When an indigent person claims the protection of a superior, he casts himself down before him, and lays hold of his feet; and this expression is frequently used when there is no prostration: I have taken hold of thy feet. When a person is called into the presence of the Burman monarch, he is said to go to the golden foot. - Ward’s Customs.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Twenty cities that Hiram called Cabul
1 Kings 9:10-11
at the end of the twenty years: Solomon gives Hiram “twenty towns in the land of Galilee”. He pays in land instead of silver and gold, which the law of the king at Deuteronomy 17:17 warns a ruler against amassing. The older commentators note that the law gave Solomon no clear right to give away tribal land.
1 Kings 9:10
“At the end of twenty years - He employed seven years and a half in building the temple, and twelve years and a half in building the king’s house; see 1Ki 7:1; 2Ch 8:1.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
twenty towns in the land of Galilee: John Wesley and Matthew Henry place these towns outside the land given to the tribes, so the king had them to give. Adam Clarke reads the gift as the produce of the towns until the gold of Hiram was paid back. The towns return to Solomon at 2 Chronicles 8:2.
1 Kings 9:11
“It should seem, these were not allotted to any of the tribes of Israel (for the border of Asher came up to them, Josh. xix. 27 , which intimates that it did not include them), but continued in the hands of the natives till Solomon made himself master of them, and then made a present of them to Hiram. It becomes those that are great and good to be generous.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:11
“By the spirit, if not by the letter, of the Law, Solomon had no right to give away these cities, or any part of the inheritance of Israel Lev. 25:13-34. But the exigences of a worldly policy caused the requirements of the Law to be set aside.”
1 Kings 9:12-14
he was not pleased with them: Hiram goes out from Tyre to inspect the towns, and “he was not pleased with them”, a Phoenician trader’s verdict on inland Galilean hill country. He calls them “the Land of Cabul, as they are called to this day”, a name the commentators read as displeasing or as worthless clay.
1 Kings 9:12
“They pleased him not - It is a reasonable conjecture that, when a question arose with respect to a cession of land, Hiram had cast his eyes on the bay or harbour of Acco, or Ptolemais, and was therefore the more disappointed when he received an inland tract of mountain territory.”
the Land of Cabul: Adam Clarke notes a place called Cabul on the border of Asher at Joshua 19:27, and the Septuagint rendered the word as border. John Wesley judged the land good but heavy clay, a poor fit for the merchants of Tyre. Hiram still addresses Solomon as brother.
1 Kings 9:13
“Cabul - That is, of dirt, as most interpret it. Because, though the land was very good, yet being a thick and stiff clay, and therefore requiring great pains to manure it, it was very unsuitable to the disposition of the Tyrians, who were delicate, and lazy, and luxurious, and wholly given to merchandise.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:13
“Cabul is said to be a Phoenician word, and signified “displeasing” (see margin). There is some reason to believe that the cities thus despised by Hiram were restored to Solomon 2Ch 8:2, and that Solomon rebuilt them and colonized them with Israelites.”
120 talents of gold: John Gill and the Berean read the verb as had sent, so the gold came before the towns and paid for the building. Adam Clarke calls it a loan, repaid by a tax. Albert Barnes reads it as a later gift, sent to show that Hiram took no offense.
1 Kings 9:14
“And Hiram sent to the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold. Not after the cities had been given him, but before; and it may be rendered "had sent" (m), and is the sum of the gold he furnished him with for the temple, 1Ki 9:11 which, according to Brerewood (n), was 540,000 pounds of our money; and, according to another (o) writer, it amounted to 1,466,400 ducats of gold, taking a talent at 12,220 ducats. (m) ישלח "miserat", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (n) De Ponderibus & Pretiis, Vet. Num. c. 5. (o) Scheuchzer. Physic.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:14
“Sixscore talents of gold - This was the sum which Hiram had lent, and in order to pay this Solomon had laid a tax upon his people, as we afterward learn. The whole is very darkly expressed.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The levy, the store-cities, and Pharaoh's daughter's house
1 Kings 9:15-19
the wall of Jerusalem, as well as Hazor: The account of the forced labor names its projects: the temple, the palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and “Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer”. Gezer needed rebuilding because Pharaoh had set it on fire and “given it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife”.
given it as a dowry to his daughter: Gezer had been assigned to Ephraim and named a Levitical city, yet Adam Clarke notes that the Canaanites held it until Pharaoh's campaign. Joshua 16:10 records that Ephraim left them there. Matthew Henry observes that the king of Egypt, a man of war, captured a city for Solomon to build.
1 Kings 9:16
“Pharaoh - had gone up, and taken Gezer - This city Joshua had taken from the Canaanites, Jos 10:33; Jos 12:12, and it was divided by lot to the tribe of Ephraim, and was intended to be one of the Levitical cities; but it appears that the Canaanites had retaken it, and kept possession till the days of Solomon, when his father-in-law, Pharaoh king of Egypt, retook it, and gave it to Solomon in dowry with his daughter.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lower Beth-horon: Solomon rebuilt Lower Beth-horon, and John Gill adds Upper Beth-horon from 2 Chronicles 8:5, both towns on the border of Ephraim. The road through them climbed from the plain to Jerusalem. Joshua chased the Amorites up that road at Joshua 10:10.
1 Kings 9:17
“And Solomon built Gezer,.... Rebuilt it, it having been burnt, at least great part of it, by Pharaoh when he took it: and Bethhoron the nether; and the upper also, 2Ch 8:5, which belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, and were on the borders of it, between that and Benjamin, Jos 16:3.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:17
“Beth-horon the nether - See the marginal reference note.”
Tamar in the Wilderness of Judah: The Hebrew writes Tamar and reads Tadmor, and 2 Chronicles 8:4 records that Solomon built Tadmor. Albert Barnes and Adam Clarke take Tadmor, the desert city of Palmyra, and the Berean keeps Tamar of Judah. John Gill places Baalath in the land of Dan.
Albert Barnes reads the store cities as depots for the army, and what he desired to build as houses for the king's pleasure in Jerusalem. Adam Clarke counts the cost. Such building meant heavy taxes on the people, and 12:4 records their complaint.
1 Kings 9:19
“The cities of store” contained provisions stored up for the troops (compare 2Ch 32:28). They seem to have been chiefly in the north - in Hamath 2Ch 8:4 and Naphtali 2Ch 16:4. On the “cities for his chariots,” see 1Ki 10:26 note. By “that which Solomon desired to build” (see the margin) seem to be intended “pleasaunces” in or near the capital, and in the Lebanon range, built especially for the enjoyment of the king.
1 Kings 9:20-23
(the people who were not Israelites)—: The peoples left from Joshua’s conquest, the “Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites”, become Solomon’s forced laborers, and Israel is spared. Israelites serve instead as “his men of war, his servants, his officers, his captains”. Over the whole work stand “550 supervisors over the people who did the work”.
1 Kings 9:20
“And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,.... Who were not destroyed in the times of Joshua, or since, but dwelt in several cities of the land of Israel from those times; see Jdg 1:1, which were not of the children of Israel; not natives of the land of Israel, though they might be proselytes, at least some of them.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:20
“Herein he observed God's law ( Lev. xxv. 44 , Thy bondmen shall be of the heathen ), and fulfilled Noah's curse upon Canaan, A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren, Gen. ix.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Adam Clarke sets beside this a practice of Sesostris of Egypt. That king built temples with war captives and inscribed on each that no native had labored on it. Solomon laid the forced labor on the peoples who remained in the land in the same way.
1 Kings 9:21
“Those - He used them as bondmen, and imposed bodily labours upon them. "But why did not Solomon destroy them as God had commanded, when now it was fully in his power to do so?" The command of destroying them, Deut. vii, 2, did chiefly, if not only, concern that generation of Canaanites, who lived in, or, near the time of the Israelites entering into Canaan.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:21
“A tribute of bond-service - He made them do the most laborious part of the public works, the Israelites being generally exempt. When Sesostris, king of Egypt, returned from his wars, he caused temples to be built in all the cities of Egypt, but did not employ one Egyptian in the work, having built the whole by the hands of the captives which he had taken in his wars. Hence he caused this inscription to be placed upon each temple: - Ουδεις εγχωριος εις αυτα μεμοχθηκε. No native has labored in these Diodor. Sic. Bibl., lib. i., c.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
did not consign any of the Israelites: Solomon's levy of 30,000 men from all Israel at 5:13 to 14 sits hard against this verse. Albert Barnes reconciles them. Forced labor did not make an Israelite a slave, and Matthew Henry reads the exemption as honoring the people of the LORD as free men.
1 Kings 9:22
“Comparing this with 1Ki 5:13-14, it would seem that a modified service of forced labor for one-third of each year was not regarded as reducing those who were subject to it to the condition of bondmen.”
550 supervisors over the people: Chronicles divides the overseers differently, with 250 chief officers at 2 Chronicles 8:10 and 3,600 supervisors over the people at 2 Chronicles 2:18. Kings gives 550 here and 3,300 at 5:16. Both books reach the same total of 3,850, and Albert Barnes sends the reader to 5:16 for the figures.
1 Kings 9:23
“Five hundred and fifty - See 1Ki 5:16 note.”
had come up from the City of David: Pharaoh’s daughter moves to the palace Solomon built for her, and the same sentence ties the move to the building of “the supporting terraces”. The verse records the move plainly, and the list of Solomon’s foreign wives waits at 11:1. She is the first of them named by residence.
1 Kings 9:24
“Compare the marginal reference. Solomon was not satisfied that Pharaoh’s daughter should remain in the palace of David, which was on Mount Zion, in the immediate vicinity of the temple, because he regarded the whole vicinity of the temple as made holy by the presence of the ark of God. His own palace was on the other (western) hill, probably directly opposite to the temple, the valley of the Tyropoeum running between them.”
Ships at Ezion-geber and gold out of Ophir
Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings: The words “Three times a year” name the three pilgrim feasts, unleavened bread, weeks and tabernacles, and Solomon’s offerings now keep that rhythm. The burnt offerings, peace offerings and incense are offered through the priests. The words “So he completed the temple” close an account that opened at 6:1.
1 Kings 9:25
“Three times - i. e., (see the marginal reference) the three solemn Feasts - the Feast of unleavened bread, the Feast of weeks, and the Feast of tabernacles. Did Solomon offer ... and he burnt incense - Not with his own hand, but by his priests 1Ki 8:6; 2Ch 5:7-14. In sacred, as in ordinary, history, men are said to do that which they cause to be done.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Kings 9:25
“With his sacrifices he burnt incense, not himself (that was king Uzziah's crime), but the priest for him, at his charge, and for his particular use. It is said, He offered on the altar which he himself built.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Kings 9:26-28
on the shore of the Red Sea: A port at Ezion-geber, “near Eloth in Edom”, gives Solomon a southern outlet that his father’s conquest of Edom opened. Hiram supplies “men who knew the sea”, a skill Israel’s inland tribes lacked. From Ophir they bring “420 talents” of gold, and the commentators place Ophir in Arabia or India.
1 Kings 9:26
“And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Eziongeber,.... Which was one of the stations of the Israelites, near the wilderness of Sin, or Paran, Num 33:35, it signifies the backbone of a man; and it is said (w) the ridge of rocks before this port were in that form, covered by the sea at high water, and sticking up with various points in a line when it was low. Josephus says (x) in his time it was called Berenice, which is placed by Mela (y) between the Heroopolitic bay, and the promontory Strobilus, or Pharan.”
2 more voices on this verse
1 Kings 9:26
“A navy of ships - Literally, אני oni, a ship: in the parallel place, 2Ch 8:17, it is said that Hiram sent him אניות oniyoth, ships; but it does not appear that Solomon in this case built more than one ship, and this was manned principally by the Tyrians.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Kings 9:26
“Probably that wilderness now began to be peopled by the Edomites, which it was not then. To them this port had belonged, but, David having subdued the Edomites, it now pertained to the crown of Judah. The fleet traded to Ophir in the East Indies, supposed to be that which is now called Ceylon.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
men who knew the sea: Tyre lay on the Mediterranean, and John Gill found it hard to see how the servants of Hiram reached the Red Sea. John Wesley places a colony of Tyre on the Red Sea, and Albert Barnes thinks men of Tyre already traded there. Matthew Henry sees one nation serving another.
1 Kings 9:27
“And Hiram sent in his navy his servants,.... And, according to 2Ch 8:18, ships also but how he could send them from Tyre, which lay in the Mediterranean sea, to the above ports in the Red sea, without going a great way round, is not easy to conceive. Perhaps, as Gussetins conjectures (c), Hiram had a port in the Red sea for building and sending out ships, for the sake of his eastern navigation, and from thence he sent them to Solomon's ports in the same sea; but if what R.”
2 more voices on this verse
1 Kings 9:27
“Shipmen - See 1Ki 5:6 note. With respect to the acquaintance of the Phoenicians with this particular sea, it may be observed that they are not unlikely to have had trading settlements there, as they had in the Persian Gulf, even at this early period. The commerce with Ophir was probably an established trade, previously either in their hands or in those of the Egyptians, when Solomon determined to have a share in it. The Egyptians had navigated the other arm of the Red Sea, and perhaps its lower parts, from a much more ancient period.”
1 Kings 9:27
“Knowledge of the sea - For which the Tyrians were famous. He sent also ships to join with Solomon's, not from Tyre, the city of Phoenicia; but from an island in the Red-sea, called Tyre, because it was a colony of the Tyrians, as Strabo notes.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
They sailed to Ophir: 2 Chronicles 8:18 puts the gold at 450 talents. John Wesley places Ophir in Ceylon, reached by ships that kept close to the coast. Matthew Henry notes that the land of Israel had no gold, and he counts the fruit of the land as the better wealth.
1 Kings 9:28
“And they came to Ophir - No man knows certainly, to this day, where this Ophir was situated. There were two places of this name; one somewhere in India, beyond the Ganges, and another in Arabia, near the country of the Sabaeans, mentioned by Job, Job 22:24: Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust; and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks. And Job 28:16: It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. Calmet places this country at the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
1 Kings 9:28
“It is agreed, that it was a part of the East-Indies, probably Ceylon, which though very remote from us, yet was far nearer the Red-sea, from whence they might easily sail to it in those ancient times, because they might (according to the manner of those first ages) sail all along near the coast, though the voyage was thereby more tedious, which was the reason why three years were spent in it.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Kings 9:28
“Canaan, the holy land, the glory of all lands, had no gold in it, which teaches us that that part of the wealth of this world which is for hoarding and trading is not the best part of it, but that which is more immediately for the present support and comfort of life, our own and others'; such were the productions of Canaan.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
How this psalm is built
The form: A covenant oracle in a dream, followed by an administrative record of the twenty years after the building, as Keil and Delitzsch classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| If, and if | The oracle turns on one word used twice in opposite directions. Verses 4 and 5 give the promise on a condition, that Solomon walk as David walked. Verses 6 and 7 give the threat on the opposite condition, that Israel or its children turn from following the LORD. Matthew Henry reads the pair as the covenant's accounting begun before any king after Solomon has reigned a day.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 1 Kings 9:4. | 1 Kings 9:4, 1 Kings 9:6 |
| The question and its answer, supplied in advance | Verse 8 puts a question in the mouth of travellers passing the ruined house, asking why the LORD has done this to the land and to the house. Verse 9 answers it in the same breath: they forsook the LORD who brought their fathers out of Egypt, and took hold on other gods. The full narration of that answer waits until 2 Kings 17:7 to 23.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 1 Kings 9:8. | 1 Kings 9:8, 1 Kings 9:9, 2 Kings 17:7 |
| So he finished the house | The building narrative opened at 1 Kings 6:1 with the foundation laid in the fourth year. Verse 25 closes it with the same verb, so he finished the house, after the account of the king's three yearly offerings at the altar he had built. The whole construction record stands between those two sentences.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 1 Kings 9:25. | 1 Kings 6:1, 1 Kings 9:25 |
| The reason of the levy | Verses 15 to 19 name what the forced labour was raised for, and the list runs from the sanctuary outward. The house of the LORD comes first, then Solomon's own house, then Millo and the wall of Jerusalem, then Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, then the store cities and the chariot cities. It closes on whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and in all the land of his dominion.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 1 Kings 9:15. | 1 Kings 9:15, 1 Kings 9:19 |
| Cabul | Hiram inspects the twenty Galilean cities and they please him not, so he names the district Cabul at verse 13. The commentators read the word as displeasing or as worthless ground, and the narrator lets the name stand unto this day without settling the dispute between the two kings. John Wesley and Albert Barnes both take it as a trader's plain verdict on inland hill country.John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, on 1 Kings 9:13. | 1 Kings 9:12, 1 Kings 9:13 |
The debated concept
10 more paragraphs on the patterns
The first question is how the promise can be for ever and conditional in the same oracle. Verse 3 says God has hallowed the house to put His name there for ever, and verses 6 and 7 say the house will be cast out of His sight if Israel turns. Albert Barnes holds the permanence and the warning as one sentence of covenant rather than two. John Wesley reads for ever as the phrase Scripture uses of an ordinance standing while its condition stands. Keil and Delitzsch read the conditional layer as running over an underlying promise to David that survives it. The page states the readings and settles none.
The second question is whether Solomon could give the twenty cities away. Albert Barnes and Matthew Henry both note that strict Mosaic practice gave a king no clear right to alienate tribal land, and both observe that the king's wider policy carried the day. Deuteronomy 17:17 had already warned the king against amassing silver and gold, and the payment here is land rather than money.
The third is what Cabul means. The two readings, displeasing and worthless ground, are reported by John Wesley and Albert Barnes, and the text supplies no gloss of its own.
The New Testament's use
The chapter is not quoted in the New Testament. Its warning is taken up by event rather than by citation. Jesus says of the temple standing in His own day that not one stone shall be left on another, at Matthew 24:2 and Luke 21:6. That is verse 7's sentence carried forward to the second house.
The hissing of verse 8 becomes a standing figure in the prophets. Jeremiah 19:8 and Jeremiah 49:17 use the same pairing of astonishment and hissing, and Lamentations 2:15 has passers-by hiss at the fallen city.
The divine connection
The second appearance answers the first. At Gibeon in 1 Kings 3:5 to 15 Solomon asked for a hearing heart at the start of his reign, and here the answer comes once both houses stand finished. Keil and Delitzsch mark the dream form as the same and the content as moved from a young king's request to a covenant's terms.
Verse 3 goes further than the prayer asked. Solomon had asked at 1 Kings 8:29 that God's eyes be open toward the house night and day, and the answer gives His eyes and His heart there perpetually. Albert Barnes reads the addition as deliberate.
The chapter supplies the book's own thesis. Everything that follows in Kings, through the division, the two kingdoms and both captivities, is the working out of verses 6 to 9. The reader is told the cause before the fall is narrated, which is why 2 Kings 17:7 to 23 can state it as a verdict already known.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 1 Kings 9:8; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Kings, 1861 to 1875, on 1 Kings 9:1 and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 1 Kings 9:4.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings; Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, EPITOME OF THE DIVINE INSTITUTES 46 and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.