1 Kings9chapter 9

1 Kings 9:10-11

at the end of twenty years: At the twenty-year mark, seven for the temple and thirteen for the palace summed together, Solomon settles his debt to Hiram with twenty cities in Galilee, land rather than the silver and gold the law of the king warns a ruler against amassing (Deut 17:17). The commentators note that strict Mosaic practice gave Solomon no clear right to alienate tribal land this way, even though a king's wider policy carried the day. The parenthesis names what Solomon owed Hiram in timber and gold, and only then does the sentence name what he paid.

John Wesley and Matthew Henry place these towns outside the land given to the tribes of Israel, 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 9:12-14

they pleased him not: Hiram travels out from Tyre to inspect the cities and they please him not, a Phoenician trader's plain verdict on inland Galilean hill country. He calls them the land of Cabul, a word the commentators read as displeasing or as worthless clay ground, and the name stands unto this day, a note the narrator drops without resolving the two kings' dispute. Hiram's own gift of sixscore talents of gold closes the account from his side, the same sum the parenthesis of verse 11 has already flagged as owed.

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.

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 from the king of Tyre, sent to show that Hiram took no offense at the towns.

1 Kings 9:15-19

the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor: This is the reason of the levy names the building program plainly: the house of the Lord, Solomon's own house, Millo, Jerusalem's wall, and the fortress cities Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, a list that puts the temple first and the frontier last. Gezer's history explains why it needed rebuilding: Pharaoh had burned it and given it as dowry with his daughter, so an Egyptian king's campaign becomes Solomon's construction project. The list closes with store cities, chariot cities, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and every part of his dominion, the same acquisitive reach the law of the king had already warned against.

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.

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.

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 supply depots for the army, mostly in the north, and what he desired to build as houses for the king's pleasure in Jerusalem and Lebanon. Adam Clarke counts the cost. Such building meant heavy taxes on the people, and 12:4 records their complaint.

1 Kings 9:20-23

which were not of the children of Israel: The peoples left from Joshua's conquest, Amorite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite, become Solomon's labor force, a tribute of bondservice that Israel itself is spared; Matthew Henry reads it against Genesis 9's word on Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Israelites instead stand as men of war, servants, princes, captains and rulers over chariots and horsemen, and five hundred and fifty chief officers oversee the whole work. Wesley notes the destruction command of Deuteronomy 7:2 had chiefly concerned the generation that entered the land, which is why bondservice rather than conquest meets these descendants generations later.

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.

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 of one month in three did not make an Israelite a slave, and Matthew Henry reads the exemption as honoring the people of the LORD as free men.

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 back to 5:16 for the figures.

came up out of the city of David: Pharaoh's daughter moves from the city of David to the house Solomon built for her, and the narrator ties the move to Millo's building in the same sentence. Barnes reads the move as Solomon keeping his Egyptian wife's residence apart from ground made holy by the ark's former presence on Zion. The verse offers no censure, though the chapter that lists Solomon's foreign wives waits at 11:1, and this is the first of them named by residence rather than by number.

three times in a year: names the three pilgrim feasts, unleavened bread, weeks and tabernacles, the fixed rhythm Solomon's own offerings now keep at the altar he built. Burnt offerings, peace offerings, and incense are rendered through the priests at the king's charge, the construction Scripture regularly uses for a king's public acts he causes done rather than performs with his own hand. So he finished the house closes an account that opened at 6:1, an inclusio marking the whole building narrative complete.

1 Kings 9:26-28

on the shore of the Red sea: A port beside Eloth on the Red sea gives Solomon a southern outlet his father's conquest of Edom had opened to Judah's crown, and Hiram supplies shipmen with knowledge of the sea that Israel's own inland tribes did not have. Four hundred and twenty talents of gold return from Ophir in one voyage, a location the commentators place variously in Arabia or India, its exact site unresolved since antiquity. The chapter that opened with the Lord's warning about turning aside closes with the wealth that chapter 10 will show becoming its own kind of test.

Tyre lay on the Mediterranean, and John Gill found it hard to see how the servants of Hiram reached a fleet on 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.

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.