2 Chronicles1chapter 1

The chapter explains an oddity before it happens. Why does a king of Jerusalem go to Gibeon to worship? Because Israel's holy things were still in two places: the ark was in the tent David pitched in Jerusalem, but the tabernacle Moses made in the wilderness, with the great bronze altar Bezalel built, still stood at Gibeon. The thousand burnt offerings went up on the oldest altar in the nation.

Seeking a word from God by spending a night at a sanctuary was a recognized practice across the ancient world, and it is what happens here — God appears to Solomon that night.

The closing paragraph is a trade report. Solomon's horses came from Egypt and from Kue, the region of Cilicia in what is now southern Turkey, and his agents bought them at fixed prices — six hundred shekels of silver for a chariot, a hundred and fifty for a horse — and resold them to the Hittite and Aramean kings farther north. Judah sat on the land bridge between Egypt and the north, and the crown taxed everything that crossed it.

The line that silver became as common as stones in Jerusalem, and cedar as plentiful as the ordinary sycamore of the lowland, is a proverb of plenty rather than a measurement.