1 Kings9chapter 9

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 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.”

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.”

1 Kings 9:3

“How can God say that he will always be in this temple when he threatens to destroy the house? The gifts of God are without second thoughts, as far as it depends on him, but our wickedness turns them away from us. In fact, he …”

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 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.”

1 Kings 9:4-5

“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.”

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

“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.”

1 Kings 9:7-9

“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.”

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 Kings 9:8-9

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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 9:11

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 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.”

1 Kings 9:15

“Levy - See the marginal reference note. Millo - See 2Sa 5:9 note. The Septuagint commonly render the word ἡ ἄκρα hē akra, “the citadel,” and it may possibly have been the fortress on Mount Zion connected with the Maccabean struggles (1 Macc. 4:41; 13:49-52). Its exact site has not been determined. And the wall of Jerusalem - David’s fortification 2Sa 5:9; 1Ch 11:8 had been hasty, and had now - fifty years later - fallen into decay. Solomon therefore had to “repair the breaches of the city of David” 1Ki 11:”

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.”

1 Kings 9:16

“Solomon was not himself a warlike prince, but the king of Egypt, who was, took cities for him to build. Then he built cities for convenience, for store, for his chariots, and for his horsemen,”

1 Kings 9:18

“And Baalath,.... A city in the tribe of Dan, Jos 19:44. and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land; or "Tamar", as in the Cetib, or Scriptural reading; for we go according to the marginal reading, and so Thamato in Ptolemy (p); and is thought by some to be the same with Tamar in Eze 47:19, which Jerom there says is Palmyra.”

1 Kings 9:18

“And Tadmor in the wilderness - This is almost universally allowed to be the same with the celebrated Palmyra, the ruins of which remain to the present day, and give us the highest idea of Solomon’s splendor and magnificence. Palmyra stood upon a fertile plain surrounded by a barren desert, having the river Euphrates on the east. The ruins are well described by Messrs. Dawkes and Wood, of which they give fine representations. They are also well described in the ancient part of the Universal History, vol. i., p. 367-”

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

“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 Kings 9:20-21

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”