The utter uncertainty as to the number and position of the four rows of pillars is sufficient in itself to render it quite impossible to draw any plan of the building that could in the slightest degree answer to the reality. Moreover, there is no allusion at all in the description given in the text to either entrance or exit, orto staircases and other things, and the other buildings are still more scantily described, so that nothing certain can be determined with regard to their relative position or their probable connection with one another. For this reason, after studying the matter again and again, I have been obliged to relinquish the intention to illustrate the description in the text by drawings.
an entrance. c-^a^y, in front of them, /.<•. In front of the pillars which formed this portio Tin- last word, and pillars and threshold in front of them," refer to the porch. Tins had pillars, probably on both fthe doorway, which carried i'; and in front of them w -'-'. according to the
Chaldee N~:^r, the moulding or framework of the thre hold, a ihold-like entrance, with steps, - Ver, 7. " And the throne-hall, where he judged, the judgment-hall, he made and (indeed) cov< witl r, from floor to Horn-." The throne-hall and the judgment-hall are therefore one and the same hall, which was both judgment and an audience-chamber, and in which, no doubt, thei d the splendid throne described in ch.
But it is distinguished from the pillar-hall by the repetition of
It probably followed immediately upon this, hut clearly distinguished from it by the fact that itwas covered with cedar P?!?? **¥ PPjHJ?- These words are wry obacun The gendering given by Thenius, "panelled from the floor to the beams of the roof/' is open to these objections: (1) that)DD generally does Q( ':i to i>(tn>l, hut simply to CCVCT, and th.it |DD
*~s- in particular cannot possibly be taken in a different sense an that which it hears in \ where it denotes the i built above the portico of pillars; and (2)
that the altera! inn of the >nd yp~\?n into rriTpn has no critical warrant m the rendering of the fundamcnto a? cctlum ejus. or m that of the Yul ivimento u d sum- mitatcm, whereas the LXX. and chald. both read v~~"~ iy. But even if we were to read nnipn> this would not of itself signify the roof beams, inasmuch as in ch. vi. 1G ntvgn ur ni^ipn receivi more i definition from the i ion
[BDn rtfvp (niiip) in ver. 15. The words in question cannot have any other meaning than this: ''from tin- one floor to the other," ither from the floor of the throne-hall to the floor of the pillar-hall (described in ver. 6), or more probably from the lower floor to the upper, inasmuch as there were rooms built over the throne-room, just as in the case of the house of the forest of Lebanon; for Vi?")P may denote not only the lower floor, but also the floor of upper rooms, which served at the same time as the ceiling of the lower rooms. So much, at any rate, may be gathered from these words, with all their obscurityr, that the throne-hall was not an open pillar-hall, but was only open in front, and was shut in by solid walls on the other three sides. — to wh bly through the tl illy from the throne) hall was like I built Like the dwelling-house, |Vi is to be understock] as relating to the courtyard or fore-court surrounding the front halls.- -Vers. LO, LI. '• Ami the foundation was Laid with costly, large stones of ten and eight cubite («& in Length, and of corresponding breadth ami thickness). And above (the foundation, and therefore the visible walls, were) costly stones, after the measure of that which is hewn, and cedars."— Wr. 12. And (as for) the great Court, there were round it three rows (i.r. it was formed of three ■i hewn stones and a row of hewn cedar beams, as m the inner court of the house of Jehovah (see at eh. vi. 36) and the hall of the house. ^Qfl signifies "and so with the court," Brving as a comparison, as in Prov. xxv. 3, 20, and frequently in Proverbs (see Dietrich in Ges. Lex. s.v.), and Ewald, 10, b), so that there is no necessity for the un-Hebraic conure of Then ins, I^TOa. rvan D7UO in all probability refers not to the temple-hall, hut to the pillar-hall of the palace, the surrounding wall of which was oi' the same nature as the wall of the great, i.e. the other or hinder, court.1
1 The situation of this palace in Jerusalem is not defined. Ewald supposes (Gesch. iii. p. 317) that it was probably built on the southern continuation of the temple-mountain, commonly called Ophel, i.e. Hill. But " nothing more is needed to convince us that it cannot have stood upon Ophel, than a single glance at any geographical outline of Ophel on one of the best of the modern maps, and a recollection of the fact that, according to Neh. iii. 26, 31, it was upon Ophel, where the king's palace is said to have stood, that the templesocagers and shopkeepers had their places of abode after the captivity" (Thenius). The view held by earlier travellers and pilgrims to Zion, and defended by Berggren (p. 109 sqq.), namely, that the ancient Solomonian and Asmonaean palaces stood upon Moriah on the western side of the temple, is equally untenable. For the xystus, above which, according to Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 16, 3, the Asmonaean palace stood, was connected with the temple by a bridge, and therefore did not stand upon Moriah, but upon Zion or the oivu Kohis, since this bridge, according to Josephus, Bell. Jud. vi. 6, 2, connected the temple with the upper city. Moreover, it clearly follows from the passages of Josephus already noticed (p. 84 sq.), in which he refers to the substructures of the temple area, that the temple occupied the whole of Moriah towards the west, and extended as far as the valley of the Tyropoeon, and consquently there was no room for a palace on that side. When Josephus affirms, therefore (Ant. viii. 5, 2), that Solomon's palace stood opposite to the temple (oLvrixpvg 'i-^uv vuov), it can only have been built on the northeast side of Zion, as most of the modern writers assume (see W. Krafft, husband wm d again as tin the art of weaving. Bezaleel also oombined [n himself all tliesc talenta Of course Hiram was merely a foreman or leader of these different branches of art; and he oertainly did not come alone, but brought several assistants with him, who carried out different works under his superintendence. — The enumi tion of them commences with the pillars of the temple-hall
(temple) hon in front of the hall of the temple, One eighteen cubits high, and a thread of twelve cubits butrounded -panned; the other pillar.'1 The statement of the height of the one pillar and that of the circumference of the other is to bo understood as an abbreviated expression, signifying that the height and thiekness mentioned applied to the one as well as to the other, or that they were alike in height and circumference. According to the Chronicles, they were thirty-live cubits long; which many expositors understand as signifying that the Length of the two together was thirty-five cubits, so that each one was only IT.1, cubits long, for which the full number 18 is substituted in our text. But this mode of reconciling the discrepancy I8 very improbable, and is hardly in harmony with the words of the Chronicles. The number 35 evidently arose from confounding the numeral letters it = 18 with r6 = 35. The correctness of the number 18 is confirmed by 2 Kings xxv. 17 and Jer. Iii. 21. The pillars were hollow, the brass being four linger-breadths in thickness (Jer. Iii. 21); and they were cast in the Jordan valley (ver. 46). — Ver. 1G. "And he made two capitals (nVinb), to set them on the heads of the pillars, cast in brass, five cubits the height of the one and of the other capital." If, on the other hand, in 2 Kings xxv. 17 the height of the capital is said to have been three cubits, this discrepancy cannot be explained on the supposition that the capitals had been reduced two cubits in the course of time; but the statement rests, like the parallel passage in Jer. Iii. 22, upon an error of the text, i.e. upon the substitution of y (3) for n (5). — Ver. 17. " Plait {i.e. ornaments of plait), plait-work and cords (twist, resembling) chain-work, were on the capitals, which were upon the heads of the pillars, seven on the one capital and seven on the other capital." Consequently this decoration consisted of seven twists arranged as festoons, which were hung round the capitals of the f a cubit in diameter, a tangent dra is mentioned, bom which we may Bee that the rounding with the chain-like plaited work and the pomegranates enclosing it did oot oover the capital to the very top, but only the lower portion of it The decoration of the upper part is described in ver. 1'.': ■ And capitals, which were upon the top of the pillars, were (or, 1 1 ii am made) lily-work after the manner of the hall, four cubits." The lily-work occupied, according to ver. 20, the upper portion of the capitals, which is here called H^nS), as a crown set upon the lower portion. It was lily-work, i.e. sculpture in the form of flowering lilies. The wordsntoM ya^N dSig are obscure. According to Bottcher and Thenius, E?")X"l is intended to indicate the position of the pillars within the hall, so that their capitals sustained the lintel of the doorway. But even if EPttta were rendered, within the hall, as it is by Bottcher, it is impossible to how this meaning could be obtained from the words " capitals upon the head of the pillars lily-work within the hall." In that case we must at least have " the pillars within the hall;" and DftMa would be connected with DHttsyn, instead of being separated from it by fM »1&PD. Even if we were to introduce a stop after fiW and take D^szi by itself, the expression " in (or at) the hall " would not in itself indicate the position of the pillars in the doorway, to say nothing of the fact that it is only in ver. 21 that anything is said concerning the position of the pillars. Again, the measurement " four cubits " cannot be understood, as it is by Thenius, as denoting the diameter of the capitals of the pillars; it must rather indicate the measure of the lily-work, that is to say, it affirms that there were four cubits of lily-work on the capitals, which were five cubits high, — in other wrords, the lily -work covered the four upper cubits of the capitals; from which it still further follows, that the plaited work which formed the decoration of the lower portion of the capitals was only one cubit broad or high. Consequently UAK2 cannot be understood in any other sense than " in the manner of or according to the hall," and can only express the thought, that there wTas lily-work on the capitals of the pillars as there was on the hall. For the vindication of this use of 2 cover to the eye exactly four small circles, although mathematically it touches only one of them in one point," is not correct according to any measurement. For if the tangent touches one of these smaller circles with mathematical exactness, to the eye there will be covered either three or five half circles, or even seven, but never four.
xactly ■ fashion of the OflMUnmtelii D unitedly covered a cul.it. in a re was t k of of a pomegranates. reasons for dis* n ting fi this u in the exj ositiun of the hfl set up the pillars at the hall of the Holy Place, and <t up the 1 i^ht pillar, and called its name Jac/tm, and... the left... fa Instead oi' Sf^n D^l6 we have m 2 Chron. iii. 15 **& the Holy PlaO This uii([uestionahly implies that the two brazen pillars stood unconnected in front of the hall, on the right and left sides of it, and not within the hall as supporters of the roof. Nevertheless many have decided in favour of the latter view. But of the four arguments used by Thenius in proof that this was the position of the pillars, there is no force whatever in the first, which is founded upon Amos ix. 1, unl we assume, aa Merz and others do, that the words of the prophet, " Smite the capital, that the thresholds may shake, and break them (the capitals of the pillars), that they may fall upon the head of all," refer to the temple at Jerusalem, and not. as Thenius and others suppose, to the temple erected at Bethel for the calf-worship. For even if the temple at Bethel had really had a portal supported by pillars, it would by no means follow that the pillars Jachin and Boaz in Solomon's temple supported the roof of the hall, as it is nowhere stated that the temple of Jeroboam at Bethel was an exact copy of that of Solomon. And even with the only correct interpretation, in which the words of Amos are made to refer to the temple at Jerusalem, the argument founded upon them in support of the position of the pillars as bearers of the hall rests upon the false idea, tbat the D'ED, which are shaken by the smiting of the capital, are the beams lying upon the top of the pillars, or the supcrliminaria of the hall. It is impossible to prove that *)? has any such meaning. The beam over the entrance, or upon the doorposts, is called ■tfpBto in Ex. xii. 7, 22, 23, whereas *)? denotes the threshold, i.e. the lower part of the framework of the door, as is evident from Judg. xix. 27. The words of the prophet are not to be interpreted architecturally, but to be taken in a rhetorical sense; " so that by the blow, which strikes the capital, and causes the thresholds to tremble, such a blow is intended as shakes the temple in all its joints" (Baur on Amos ix. 1). " "Vinson, a kind of ornament at the top of the pillars, and D"spn) the thresholds, are opposed to one another, to express the thought that the building is to be shaken and destroyed a summo usque ad imum, a cajpite ad calcem " (Hengstenberg, Christol. i. p. 366 transl.). The other arguments derived from the solemn charac:uled to
I the stability and ih, which not only the temple
.in outward building, bat the kingdom of God in I rael as eml in the tempi tn th< Lord, who Had oh the tempi iwelling-place in the midst of Bis people.1
— In vci. '2'2 it tin that there was lily-work apon t he i of the pillars, — ition which ma\ cplained from iiiiir;nic" of this emblem of the capitals of the pillars; and then the apitala finish nint of it — ten cubit Q one upper rim to the otht I from the upper rim to the one and a line of thirty cubits encircled it round about,"
_, which is exp: 15 by Dtfl The relation of the diam.ie en ence i -ed in whole numbers which ar to the mathematical proportions.
— V< r. 24. And colocvntb ran round it under its brim, cubit, surrounding the sea in two rows; the colocynths " cast in its ca I at the same time as the vessel
If. Instead of &$%*, gourds (see at ch. vi 18), we find nuw 0*T5?j figures u, in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and in the last clause merely "V^T1, an evident error of the pen, DHpz being substituted by mistake for D*>PD, and afterwards interpreted D'npn Tttcn. The assumption by which the early expositors removed the discrepancy, namely, that they were casts of bullocks' heads, is not to be thought of, for the simple reason that D*lp2 signifies oxen and not the heads of oxen. How far apart the two rows of gourd-like ornaments were, it is impossible
1 There is do necessity to refute the fanciful notion of Ewald, that these pillars, " when they were erected and consecrated, were certainly named after men who were held in estimation at that time, probably after the younger sons of Solomon/' and that of Thenius, that jyn pa*, "He (the Lord) estab- lishes with strength," was engraved upon them as an inscription.
tlu-iii. an.l all their backi [taunedj inwards was allowt: certain seasons ft *£■ cleausmg of the pavement of the court from here in the persona «>f its priests, to appear dean and holy before tin4 Lord Just as the number twelve unquestionably si: the allusion to the twelve tribes of the covenant nation,.<), in the choice Of oxen or bullocks as supporters of the basin, it is impossible to overlook the significance of this selection of the first and highest of the saeritieial animals to represent the priestly service, especially it' we compare the position of the lions on made ten stands of bi h four cubits Long, four cubits broad, and three cubits high rn:z*:\.stands or stools (Luther), is the name given to these vessels from their purpose, viz. to serve as supports to the basins which were used for washing the flesh of the sacrifices. Tiny were square chests cast in brass, of the dimensions given. — Vers. 28, 29. Their work (their construction) was the following: they had ^">3DO( lit. surroundings, i.e. panels or flat sides, and that between E'?1?"', co mm isswrm, i.e. frames or borders, which enclosed the sides, and were connected together at the angles; and upon the panels within the borders (there were figures of) lions, oxen, and cherubim. The statement in Josephus, that each centre was divided into three compartments, has nothing to support it in the biblical text, nor is it at all probable in itself, inasmuch as a division of this kind would have rendered the figures placed upon them insignificantly small. " And upon the borders was a base above." |3 is a noun, and has been rendered correctly by the Chaldee N™?, basis. The meaning is, above, over the borders, there was a pedestal for the basin upon the chest, which is more fully described in ver. 31. To take |2 as an adverb does not give a suitable sense. For if we adopt the rendering, and upon the corner borders (or ledges) likewise above (De Wette and Ewald), — i.e. there were also figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim upon the corner borders, the blood of the sacrifices; and there is still a fountain just in the neighbourhood of the spot on which, according to ver. 39, the brazen sea must have stood (see Schultz's plan); and in the time of the Crusaders there was a large basin, covered by a dome supported by columns (see Robinson, Pal. i. 4-46). But even if the later temple was supplied with the water required by means of artificial water-pipes, the Solomonian origin of these arrangements or designs is by no means raised even to the rank of probability.
1 The description which follows will be more easily understood by comparing with it the sketch given in my biblische ArcJidologie, Taf. iii. fig. 4.
— it is impossible to tell what the meaning of TJpSD can be, to say nothing of the fact that on the cornel borders th<.Id hardly be room for such figures as these. This last argument also tells kinst the rendering adopted by Thrums: " and upon the corner bor bove as well as below the lions and oxen, were)
portable meaning to the ]-. When, en the other hand, Theniua objects to our view that ti. 1 in question is spoken of for the time in ver. 31, and that the expression uaboye the ner bordi ■ would mely unsuitable, since the tal in question v. I he fanner
• quite minute description of the i indthelal from tlf corner boi as and side of tin- chi V\ il I he and th< wp- i Italy, so afl to turn with them; and Thru OT to be connec '
• ly with what imined. IsO with '-"- nt?ru But this latl mded; and tl i altogether im. tble with the 1 had naves (DY"- ver. 33), from which we must infer that they revolved upon the axles. The words Dn?nbn| VribgD nyanw are ambiguous. They may either be rendered, "and its four feet had shoulder-pieces," or, as Thenius supposes, " and its four feet served as shoulderpieces." nbvs means stepping feet, feet bent out as if for steppin- (Ex. xxv. 12). The suffix attached to vnoya refers to nriao, the masculine being often used indefinitely instead of the feminine, as in DHJ in ver. 28. Thenius compares these feet to the a/ia^oTToSes of the Greeks, and imagines that they were divided below, like fork-shaped upright contrivances, in which, as in forks, the wheels turned with the axles, so that the axle-peg, which projected outwards, had a special apparatus, instead of the usual pin, in the form of a stirrup-like and on the lower side hand-shaped holder (T), which was fastened to the lower rim of the n^3P, and descended perpendicularly so as to cover the foot, and the general arrangement of the wheels themselves received greater strength in consequence. These feet, which were divided in the shape of forks, are supposed to be called riDHS (shoulders), because they were not attached underneath at the edge of the stand, but being cast with the corner rims passed down in the inner angles, so that their uppermost portion was under the basin, and the lowest portion was under the stand, which we are to picture to ourselves as without a bottom, and projecting as a split foot, held the wheel, and so formed its shoulder-pieces. But we cannot regard this representation as either in accordance with the text, or as really correct. Even if DH? nbfl3 could in any case be grammatically rendered, " they served them (the wheels and axles) as shoulders," although it would be a very questionable course to take DH7 in a different sense here from that which it bears in the perfectly similar construction in ver. 28, the feet which carried the stand could not possibly be called the shoulders of the wheels and their axles, since they did not carry the wheels, but the ^J^P. Moreover, this idea is irreconcilable wTith the following words: " below the basin were the shoulder-pieces cast." If, for example, as Thenius assumes, the mcclwnah had a cover which was arched like a dome, and had a neck in the centre into which the basin was inserted by its lower rim, the shoulder-pieces, supposing that they were cast upon the inner borders of the chest, would not be below the basin, but simply below the corners of the lid of the chest, so that they would stand in no direct
108 THE riBST BOOK OF KINGS.
relation whatever to the basin. We must therefore give the preference to the rendering, which is grammatically the m natural one, " and its feet had shoulder-pieces," and understand words as signifying that from the feet, which i.led of tree from the four oorner borders of the chest down to the axles, the; nded Bhoulder-pieoes, which ran along the out- best ai tched to the lower of the bs whi upon the lid of the chest, and i either shoulder-] n the foui of the cfa the variou in whi h ~z'-': ling nnio b^k in tli would i and tfa l-WOrfa I nth) be tl. into winch tfa optied, 1 n the basin being let off into the meckonah chest through the headshaped neck, by means of B tap 01 plug. The mouth was really tin1 lower or contracted portion of the shell-shaped basin, which was about a cubit in height within the neck and upwards, that is to say, in all, inasmuch as it went partly into the neck and rose in part above it. The ffljl (the mouth thereof) which follows is the (upper) opening of the crown-like neck of the lid vi' the meckonah. This was rounded, g-nkjjD, stand-work, i.e., according to De Wette'a correct paraphrase, formed after the style of the foot of a pillar, a cubit and a half in diameter. " And also upon the mouth of it (the mcchonah) was carved work." The Da (also) refers to the fact that the sides of the meckonah were already ornamented with carving. DfPrfttDD, the panels of the crown-like neck (n")nb) and its mouth (n*B) were square, like the panels of the sides of the meckonah chest. The fact that panels are spoken of in connection with this neck, may be explained on the assumption that with its height of one cubit and its circumference of almost five cubits (which follows from its having a diameter of a cubit and a half) it had stronger borders of brass to strengthen its bearing power, while between them it consisted of thinner plates, which are called fillings or panels. — In vers. 32, 33, the wheels are more minutely described. Every stool had four wheels under the panels, i.e. not against the sides of the chest, but under them, and rrtT, hands or holders of the wheels, i.e. special contrivances for fastening the wheels to the axles, probably larger and more artistically worked than the linch-pins of ordinary carriages. These HiT were only required when the wheels turned upon the axles, and not when they were fastened to them. The height of the wheel was a cubit and a half, i.e. not half the height, but the whole. For with a half height of a cubit and a half the wheels would have been three cubits in diameter; and as the chest was only four cubits long, the hinder wheels and front wheels would almost have touched one another. The work (construction) of the wheels resembled that of (ordinary) carriage wheels; but everything about them (holders, felloes, spokes, and naves) was cast in brass. — In ver. 34 the description passes to the upper portion of the mechonah. " And he made four shoulder-pieces at the four corners of one (i.e. of every) stand; out of the stand were its shoulder-pieces." nisna are the shoulder-pieces already mentioned in ver. 30, which were attached to the feet below, or above the O with t alight inclination the middle of t! k ur oa]!Ut rim of the basin whirl, rested upon the oapiftal of the lid of the the stands fire on the right side of tin- house and five on tin; I j and the (brazen) sea he put upon the right side eastwards, opposite to the south. The right side is the south side, and the left the north side. Consequently the stands were not placed on the light and left, i.e. on each side of the altar of hiirnt- offering, hut on each side of the house, i.e. of the temple-hall; while the brazen sea stood farther forward between the hall and the altar, only more towards the south, i.e. to the south-east of the hall and the south-west of the altar of burnt-offering. The basins upon the stands were for washing (according to 2 Chron. iv. G), namely, " the work of the burnt-offering," that is to say, for cleansing the flesh and fat, which were to be consumed upon the altar of burnt-offering. \\y means of the stands on wheels, they could not only easily bring the water required near to the priests who were engaged in preparing the sacrifices, but could also let down the dirty water into the chest of the stand by means of a special contrivance introduced for the purpose, and afterwards take it away. As the introduction of carriages for the basins arose from the necessities of the altar-service, so the preparation of ten such stands, and the size of the basins, was occasioned by the greater extension of the sacrificial worship, in which it often happened that a considerable number of sacriiices had to be made ready for the altar at the same time. The artistic work of these stands and their decoration with figures were intended to show that these vessels were set apart for the service of the sanctuary. The emblems are to some extent the same as those on the walls of the sanctuary, viz. cherubim, palms, and flowers, which had therefore naturally the same meaning here as they had there; the only difference being that they were executed there in gold, whereas here they were in brass, to correspond to the character of the court. Moreover, there were also figures of lions and oxen, pointing no doubt to the royal and priestly characters, which were combined,
Gelehrten Naclir. 1859, pp. 131-146, is not only obscure, but almost entirely erroneous, since he proposes in the most arbitrary way to make several alterations in the biblical text, on the assumption that the Solomonian stands were constructed just like the small bronze four-wheeled kettle -carriages (hardly a foot in size) which have been discovered in Mecklenburg, Steyermark, and other places of Europe. See on this subject G. C. F. Lisch, "iiber die ehernen Wagenbecken der Bronzezeit," in the Jahrbb. des Vereins f. Mecklenb. Geschiclte, ix. pp. 373, 374, where a sketch of a small carriage of this kind is given.
ling to Ex. xix. o, in tl..:i vonhipping thi Lotd in ing a i hut the mak bunt- tlu' J.'i dan valley he cast them — in thickened earth between Sucooth and Zarthan," where the ground, according to Burckhardt, Syr. ii. p. 593, is marly throughout n?7i*'? n-JV;P3, "by thickening of the earth," the forms being made in the ground by stamping together the clayey soil. Xuccotk was on the other side of the Jordan, — not, however, at the ford near Bethsean (Then ius), but on the south side of the Jabbok (see at Judg. viii. 5 and Gen. xxxiii. 17). Zarthan or Zvrtda was in the Jordan valley on this side, probably at Karn Sartabeh (see at Judg. vii. 22 and Josh. iii. 16. The casting-place must have been on this side of the Jordan, as the (eastern) bank on the other side has scarcely any level ground at all. The circumstance that a place on the other side is mentioned in connection with one on this side, may be explained from the fact that the two places were obliquely opposite to one another, and in the valley on tins side there was no large place in the neighbourhood above Zarthan which could be appropriately introduced to define the site of the casting-place. — Ver. 47. Solomon left all these vessels of excessive number unweighed. n^ does not mean he laid them down (= set them up: Movers), but he let them lie, i.e. unweighed, as the additional clause, " the weight of the brass was not ascertained," clearly shows. This large quantity of brass, according to 1 Chron. xviii. 8, David had taken from the cities of Hadadezer, adding also the brass presented to him by Toi. — Vers. 48-50. The golden vessels of the Holy Place (cf. 2 Chron. iv. 19-22). The vessels enumerated here are divided, by the repetition of "WD 3?! in vers- 49 and 50, into twro classes, which were made of fine gold; and to this a third class is added in ver. 506 which was made of gold of inferior purity. As TUD 3nj is governed in both instances by b>JW as an accusative of the material, the snt (gold) attached to the separate vessels must be taken as an adjective. " Solomon made all the vessels in the house of Jehovah (i.e. had them which is proved to be apocryphal by the marvellous combination of the king's house and the house of God, though it is nevertheless regarded by Thenius as genuine, and as an interesting notice respecting certain pillars in the enclosure of the inner court of the temple, and in the king's palace!
made): the golden altar, and tl Men table on whi I the Bhew-bn od the candled..... tub
10, the temple with its courts, and not i th< Holy
Place, or the Le-honse in I ricterei but it by no taking tlie bb (all) as referring to those llow, is to be found in i that t: ] wjt}j and put in the II ly Pla •. I:..: accouir which the loaves of e u in 2 himselfj as Xhenios fancies, The number ten, moreover, is required and proved to be oorrect in the case of the tables, by the occurrence of the same number in connection with the candlestioka In no single passage of the Old Testament is it stated that there was only one table of shew-bread in the Holy Tlace of Solomon's temple.1 The tables were certainly made of wood, like the Mosaic table of shew-bread, probably of cedar wood, and only overlaid with gold (see at Ex. xxv. 23-30). " And the candlesticks, five on the right and five on the left, before the back-room." These were also made in imitation of the Mosaic candlestick (see Ex. xxv. 31 sqq.), and were probably placed not near to the party wall in a straight line to the right and left of the door leading into the Most Holy Place, but along the two longer sides of the Holy Place; and the same with the tables, except that they stood nearer to the side walls with the candlesticks in front of them, so that the whole space might be lighted more brilliantly. The altar of burntoffering, on the contrary, stood in front of and very near to the entrance into the Most Holy Place (see at ch. vi. 20). — In the following clause (vers. 49& and 50a) the ornaments of the candlesticks are mentioned first, and then the rest of the smaller golden vessels are enumerated, l"^?, the flower- work, with which the candlesticks were ornamented (see Ex. xxv. 33). The word is evidently used collectively here, so that the D^?3 mentioned along with them in the book of Exodus (I.e.) are included, tfttn, the lamps, which were placed upon the shaft and arms of the candlestick (Ex. xxv. 37). ^nppftn, the snuffers (Ex. xxv. 38). fiisp, basins in Ex. xii. 22, here probably deep dishes (Schalen). TfrtiStO, knives. rrtP"J??, bowls (Schalen) or cans with spouts for the wine for the libations; according to 2 Chron. iv. 8, there were a hundred of these made. niB3, small flat vessels,
1 Nothing can be learned from 2 Chron. xxlx. 18 concerning the number of the vessels in the Holy Place. If we were to conclude from this passage that there were no more vessels in the Holy Place than are mentioned there, we should also have to assume, if we would not fall into a most unscientific inconsistency, that there was neither a candlestick nor a golden altar of incense in the Holy Place. The correct meaning of this passage may be gathered from the words of king Abiam in 2 Chron. xiii. 11: " We lay the shew-bread upon the pure table, and light the golden candlestick every evening;" from which it is obvious that here and there only the table and the candlestick are mentioned, because usually only one table had shew-bread upon it, and only one candlestick was lighted.
probably for carrying the incense to the altar. ri^r.n»Di extinguishers; see at Ex. xxv. 38. — Ver. 506. The nine were also of gold, possibly of inferior quality. These were either the hinges of the doors, or more probably the sockets, in which the pegs of the doors turned. They wore provided for the doors of the inner temple, viz. the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. W6 must supply Vdv before Wp.
All the vessels mentioned in vers. 48 and I to the
Holy Place of the temple, and were the MOD in the tabernacle; so that the remarks made in the Comm. on K\. XXV. 30 and.'5 9, and xxx. 1-10, as to their purpose and signification, apply to tliem as well Only the number of the tallies and candli was ten tin. If • multiplication of the number of these twoi ant of the in in tli room, the number was fixed at I the idea of oompl ■ by that muni new vessel was made fot tie- ICosI Holy I the
Ifo the covenant placed then b. viii 4:
oompaie the remarks on thu — Tie ant of the ' the b aght to a close in "■ 1:
all thu. that ki: d made in the hou be I tnd Soloi t all thai crated by his father, (namely I and I id (wh the honae of Jehovah." bo much gold and;
nded upon the building, it migl nge that
Solomon should not d up all I by his father, bat should still b rtion of it almost incalculable amount md brass, and:
ale d private I the freewill ofl i able • to the building of tl tnple a x. 14), so that a re le remnant ought still be left of the treasure of the:ary, which \ ft first eetablished by
David, but had been commenced I anal and Saul, and in which David i, Joab and others, ha sited a portion of the gold and silver that they had taken as booty (1 Chron. xxvL 20-28). Tor it is evident that not a little had found its way into this treasure through t lie successful wars of David, from the fact that golden shields were taken from the generals of lladadezer, and that these were consecrated to the Lord along with the silver, golden, and hrazen vessels offered as gifts of homage by king Toi of Hamath, in addition to the gold and silver which David had consecrated from the defeated Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, Philistines, and Amalekites (2 Sam. viii. 7, 11, 12; 1 Chron. xviii. 7, 10, ll).1
This solemn transaction consisted of three parts, and the chapter arranges itself in three sections accordingly: viz. (a) the conveyance of the ark and the tabernacle, together with its vessels, into the temple, with the words spoken by Solomon on the occasion (vers. 1-21); (b) Solomon's dedicatory prayer (vers. 22-53); (c) the blessing of the congregation, and the offering of sacrifice and observance of a feast (vers. 54-66). — The parallel account to this in 2 Chron. v. 2-vii. 10, in addition to certain minor alterations of words and constructions, intro-
1 The amazing extent to which this booty may possibly have reached, may be inferred from the accounts we have concerning the quantity of the precious metals in Syria in the Macedonian age. In the gaza regia of Damascus, Alexander found 2600 talents of gold and 600 talents of uncoined silver (Curt. iii. 13, 1G, cf. Arrian, ii. 11, 10). In the temple of Jupiter at Antioch there was a statue of this god of solid silver fifteen cubits high (Justin, xxxix. 2, 5. 6); and in the temple at Hierapolis there was also a golden statue (Lucian, de Dea Syi\ § 31). According to Appian (Parth. 28, ed. Schweigh.), this temple was so full of wealth, that Crassus spent several days in weighing the vessels of silver and gold. And from the unanimous testimony of the ancients, the treasures of the palaces and temples of Asia in the earlier times were greater still. Of the many accounts which Bahr (Symbolik, i. p. 258 sqq.) and Movers (Phunizicr, ii. 3, p. 40 sqq.) have collected together on this subject, we will mention only a few here, the credibility of which cannot be disputed. According to Varro (in Plin. xxxiii. 15), Cyrus had taken 34,000 pounds of gold as booty after the conquest of Asia, beside the gold wrought into vessels and ornaments, and 500,000 talents of silver. In Susa, Alexander took 40,000, or, according to other accounts, 50,000, talents from the royal treasury; or, as it is still more definitely stated, 40,000 talents of uncoined gold and silver, and 9000 talents of coined dariks. Alexander had these brought to Ecbatana, where he accumulated 180,000 talents. Antigonus afterwards found in Susa 15,000 talents more in vessels and wrought gold and silver. In Persepolis, Alexander took 120,000 talents, and in Pasargada 6000 talents. For the proofs, see Movers, pp. 42, 43.
4.). Solomon assembled the elders of l rael, and all the heads of the tribes, the princes of the fathers' houses (wbJ rnzsn, contracted from ntoRn rva Wbj of the [sraeli repre- of the whole congregation, to himself at Jerusalem, to bring the ark of the 1 1 out of the city of David, i.e.
q Mount Zion (see the Comm. on 2 Sam vi L6, 17), into the temple which he hail built upon Moriah. (On the use of the conl form of the Imperfect?!Ji£ after **, Ewald, b.) — Ver. 2. all the men of Israel (£& the heads of the tribes and families mentioned in ver. L) assem-
I together to the king in the month Bthanim, i.e. the seventh month, at tin4 feast" G< -enius explains the iiaiiic D^nsn m 55 codd. D^n^Kn) as meaning " month of the flowing brooks," after iTPtJ in Prov. xiii. 15 Bottcher, on the other hand, supposes it to denote the eouino But apart from other grounds, the plural by no means favours this. r does the seventh month answer to the period between the middle of our Sep- iber and the middle of October. supposed by Thenius, who founds upon this supposition the explanation already rejei
Bottcher, viz. " month of;" but it corresponds to the period between the new moon of October and the new moon of November, during which the rainy season commences in Palestine (Bob. PdL ii. p. OG sqq.), so that this month may very well have received its name from the constant flowing of the brooks. The explanation, " that is the seventh month," is added, however (here as in ch. vi. 1, 38), not because the arrangement of the months was a different one before the captivity (Thenius), but because different names came into use for the months during the captivity. 3na is construed with the article: " because the feast intended was one that was wTell known, and had already been kept for a long time (viz. the feast of tabernacb The article overthrows the explanation given by Thenius, who supposes that the reference is to the festivities connected with the dedication of the temple itself. — Vers. 3, 4. After the arrival of all the eiders (i.e. of the representatives of the nation, more particularly described in ver. 1), the priests carried the ark and brought it up (sc. into the temple), with the tabernacle and all the holy vessels in it. The expression Erik VV*±, which follows, introduces as a supplementary notice, according to the general diffuseness of the early Hebrew style of narrative, the more precise statement that the priests and Levites brought up these fonner in 2 Chron, L 4 as ocmpaied with ver. 3, but is the rifice (cli. iii. 4). The tabernacle with tl in it, to which, irk of • nant, that had Long sions, according t<> the spirit i law, which enjoined, in ii. iii. 31 and iv. 5 Bqq., that the ark of th aant and the rest of t' bould I;'.• I had carefully wrapped them up; and tl.- I were prohibited from din aching them, on i sin ith, ver. 7 that "the j liett 1 the ark." etc., in exact agreement With our vi. 23 sqq.). The latter statement is explained in ver. 7. " For the cherubim were spreading out wings towards the place of the ark, and so covered (lit. threw a shade) over the ark and over its poles from above." If the outspread wings of the great cherubic figures threw a shade not only over the ark of the covenant, but also over its poles, the ark was probably so placed that the poles ran from north to south, and not from east to west, as they are sketched in my Archdologie. — Ver. 8. " And the poles were long, and there were seen their heads {i.e. they were so long that their heads were seen) from the Holy Place before the hinder room; but on the outside (outside the Holy Place, say in the porch) they were not seen." *3"U? cannot be rendered: they had lengthened the poles, from which Kimchi and others have inferred that they had made new and longer carrying-poles, since the form of the tense in this connection cannot be the pluperfect, and in that case, moreover, the object would be indicated by DN as in ch. iii. 14; but T"!^ is used intransitively, " to be long," lit. to show length, as in Ex. xx. 12, Deut. v. 16, etc. The remark to the effect that the poles were visible, indicates that the precept of the law in Ex. xxv. 15, according to which the poles were to be left in the ark, was observed in Solomon's temple also. Any one could convince himself of this, for the poles were there " to this day." The author of our books has retained this chronological allusion as he found it in his original sources; for when he composed his work, the temple was no longer standing. It is impossible, however, to ascertain from this statement how the heads of the poles could be seen in the Holy Place, — whether from the fact that they reached the curtain and formed elevations therein, if the poles ran from front to back; or wThether, if, as is more probable, they ran from south to north, the front heads were to be seen, simply when the curtain was drawn back.1 — Ver. 9. " There was nothing in the ark but the two tables of stone, which Moses had put there at Horeb, when Jehovah concluded the covenant with Israel." The intention of this remark is
1 The proof which Thenius has endeavoured to give by means of a drawing of the correctness of the latter view, is founded upon untenable assumptions (see Bbttcher, jEhrenl. ii. p. G9). It by no means follows from the expression ~\*27 "03~7y that the heads of the poles were visible as far off as the door of the Holy Place, but simply that they could be seen in the Holy Place, though not outside.
>), had not be-. in the lapse of time, ytfa fore rna is not a pronoun, but i conjunction: when, from the time that, as in Dent rna without rma m I
The glory of the Lord, which is like a consuming fire (Ex. xxiv. 17; Deut iv. 24, i\. '<*>), before which unholy man cannot stand, manifested itself in tin; cloud. This marvellous manifestation of the glory of God took place only at the dedication; after that the cloud was only visible in the Most Holy Place on the great day of atonement, when the high priest entered it. — The Chronicles contain a long account at this place of the playing and singing of the Levites at these solemnities (vid. 2 Chron. v. 12-14).
Vers. 12-21. Solomon extols this marvellous yroof of the favour of the Lord. — Ver. 12. Then spake Solomon, "Jehovah hath spoken to dwell in the darkness." "Solomon saw that the temple was filled with a cloud, and remembered that God had been pleased to appear in a cloud in the tent of Moses also. Hence he assuredly believed that God was in this cloud also, and that, as formerly He had filled the tabernacle, so He would now fill the temple and dwell therein" (Seb. Schmidt). ">en* fW rrtfl^ which Thenius still renders incorrectly, " the Lord intends to dwell in the darkness," refers, as Rashi, C. a Lap., and others have seen, to the utterances of God in the Pentateuch concerning the manifestation of His gracious presence among His people, not merely to Lev. xvi. 2 (I will appear in the cloud), but also to Ex. xix. 9, where the Lord said to Moses, " I come to thee \^V\} 3V3," and still more to Ex. xx. 2 1 and Deut. iv. 11, v. 19, according to which God came down upon Sinai?B1^3. Solomon took the word?B*W from these passages. That he meant by this the black, dark cloud which filled the temple, is perfectly obvious from the combination ^V™ R?!? ^n Deut. v- 19 and iv. II.1 Solomon saw this word of Jehovah realized in cloud which hindered the priests from performing the service was, according to the distinct words of the text, the cloud which filled the house; and the explanatory clause, " for the glory of the Lord filled the house of Jehovah," indicates in the most unmistakeable terms that it was the vehicle of the glory of God, and therefore was not a cloud of smoke formed by the burning sacrifices, but the cloud in which God manifested His invisible being to His people, — the very same cloud in which Jehovah was to appear above the Capporeth, when the high priest entered the Most Holy Place on the day of atonement, so that he was commanded not to enter it at all times, and, when he entered, to cover the Capporeth with the cloud of the burning incense (Lev. xvi. 2, 13).
1 Thenius, however, has built up all kinds of untenable conjectures as to alterations of the text, upon the erroneous assumption that ny means the the filling of the temple with the cloud, and learned there! that the Lord would dwell in this temple Hence, being finnly winced of th- Jehovah in the ckrad which filled to dwell in, a pla Thy v, m
" And Jehovah has set up Hia word." 'Ul D|W supplies the explanation of Vva too (hath fuliilled with his hand) in ver, 1 5.
God had caused Solomon to take possession of the throne of I 'avid; and Solomon had built the temple and prepared a place there for the ark of the covenant. The ark is thereby declared to be the kernel and star of the temple, because it was the throne of the glory of God.
Vers. 22-53. Second Act of the feast of dedication: Solomon a dedicatory prayer (cf. 2 Chron. vi. 12-42). — Ver. 22. "Then Solomon stood before the altar of Jehovah in front of all the assembly of Israel, and stretched out his hands towards heaven." It is evident from ver. 54 that Solomon uttered the prayer which follows upon his knees. The Chronicles contain the same account as we have here, with this addition, that it is said to have taken place on a " scaffold," or kind of pulpit f^1?) specially erected for the purpose.1 The altar, to the front of which Solomon went, was the altar of burnt-offering in the court, where the congregation was gathered together. The expression ^ '&?np"v3 favours the idea that Solomon offered the prayer upon his knees with his face turned towards the congregation, and not with his back to the people and his face turned towards the temple, as Thenius supposes. — The substance of the prayer is closely connected with the prayer of Moses, especially with the blessings and curses therein (vid. Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii.). Commencing with the praise of God, who " keepeth covenant and truth" towards His servants, and has thus far performed to His servant David the promise that He gave him (vers. 23, 24), Solomon entreats the Lord still further to fulfil this promise of His (vers. 25, 26), and to keep His eyes constantly open over the temple, to hearken to the prayers of His people, and to avert the curse threatened against sinners from all who shall call upon Him in this temple (vers. 27-53). — Vers. 23, 24. By granting the blessing promised to His people, the Lord has
1 Bottcher is right in his assertion, that the opinion expressed by Thenius and Cappellus, that this passage in the Chronicles has been dropped out of our text through a copyist's oversight, is a very improbable one; although the reasons he assigns are for the most part untenable. The omission may be explained in a very simple manner, from the fact that the introduction of this circumstance had no bearing upon the design or contents of tbe dedicatory prayer.
Thy people shall bring before Thee therein, rww in ver. 28 oontinuea the optative W |D*£ in ver. 26; and ver. 27 contains an intermediate thought, with which Solomon meets certain oonta ideas of the gracious presence of God in the temple.
is the commencement of a new section is overthrown by the inadmissible rendering of H^tt, " but Thou turnest Thyself" (Thenins). — With the words, M Should God really dwell upon the earth.' behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens (i.e. the heavens in their widest extent, cf. JJeut. x. 14) cannot contain Thee, to say nothing ('? f)N; cf. Ewald, § 354, c) of this house which I have built," in which the infinitude of God and ffig exaltation above the world are expressed as clearly and forcibly as possible, Solomon does not intend to guard against the delusion that God really dwells in temples (J. D. Mich.), but simply to meet the erroneous idea that He dwells in the temple as men dwell in a house, namely, shut up within it, and not also outside and above it, — a delusion which sometimes forced its way into the unspiritual nation, but which was always attacked by the prophets (cf. Mic. iii. 11; Jer. vii. 4, etc.). For it is evident that Solomon did combine with his clear perception of the infinite exaltation of God a firm belief in His real presence in the temple, and did not do homage to the abstract idealism of the rationalists, not merely from his declaration in vers. 12 sqq. that he had built this temple as a dwellingplace for God, but also from the substance of all the following prayers, and primarily from the general prayer in vers. 28 and 29, that God would take this temple under His special protection, and hearken to every prayer directed towards it. The distinction between npDfi nsnn and nri is the following: npan denotes prayer in general, praise, supplication, and thanksgiving; nann^ supplication or entreaty, prayer for help and mercy; and nrj, jubilation, prayer as the joyous utterance of praise and thanksgiving. — Ver. 29. "That Thine eyes may be open upon this house night and day." UST/*, speciali quaclam providentia in hanc domum directi (Mich.). The following clause, " upon the place of which Thou hast said, My name shall be there " (namely, 2 Sam. vii. 1 3, vnyplicite), contains within itself the ground upon which the prayer rests. Because the name of God will be in the temple, i.e. because God will manifest His gracious presence there, He will also keep His m u upon it, so afl to heel the pra f Solomon direi towards it r«n Bfpan Sx -'toward this place): because Solomon also was praying in the court towards the temple. — In \vr. "and hear the supplication of TL-. rot and of Thv people Israel," fa ins by asking that those prayers may be heard which the king and |.11 henceforth bring in the temple r^:— rrssi;:.
. by the following Por>n nm fa for these u wilt hear them op to the pli I Thine ah b. ^N pant - d ■ to hear the prayer, which i ode to heaven. In the Chronicles we find throughout the explanatory |B Ti.: and for- pensation with the addition of ■ fifth of it- value, but to ffering as an expiation of the... mrnittfid by taking a False oath But as this punishment could only be inflicted when thf guilty person afterwards confessed his guilt, many false oaths might have been sworn in the cases in question and have remained unpunished, so far as men were concerned. Solomon therefore prays that the Lord will hear every such oath that shall have been sworn before the altar, and work (Wty), i.e. actively interpose, and judge His servants, to punish the guilty and justify the innocent. The construction EWn JJDBTi (vers. 32, 34, 36, etc.) can be explained more simply from the adverbial use of the accusative (Ewald, § 300, Z>), than from?H D*D#n in ver. 30. WlhaterTjnn, to give (bring) his way upon his head, ue. to cause the merited punishment to fall upon him (cf. Ezek. ix. 10, xi. 21, etc.). V&)}?vy} and P*« pwi recall Deut. xxv. 2. For ta^no 6 nn compared Sam. xxii. 21, 25.— The following cases are all taken from Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii.
Vers. 33 and 34. The second petition, — " If Thy people Israel are smitten by the enemy, because they have sinned against Thee, and they turn to Thee and confess Thy name,... then hear... and bring them back into the land," — refers to the threatenings in Lev. xxvi. 17 and Deut. xxviii. 25, where the nation is threatened with defeat and subjugation on the part of enemies, who shall invade the land, in which case prisoners of war are carried away into foreign lands, but the mass of the people remain in the land, so that they who are beaten can pray to the Lord in the temple, that He will forgive them their sin, save them out of the power of the enemy, and bring back the captives and fugitives into their fatherland.
Vers. 35 and 36. The third prayer refers to the remission of the punishment of drought threatened against the land, when the heaven is shut up, according to Lev. xxvi. 1 9, Deut. xi. 1 7, xxviii. 23. D:^n *3, because Thou humblest them (LXX.,Vulg.); not "that Thou nearest them " (Chald. and others). uTnn *3} because Thou teachest them the good way. These words correspond to D:yn "o, and contain a motive for forgiveness. Because God teaches His people and seeks by means of chastisements to bring them back to the good way when they fail to keep His commandments, He must forgive when they recognise the punishment as a divine chastisement and come to Him with penitential prayer.
Vers. 37-40. The fourth prayer relates to the removal of other land-plagues: famine (Lev. xxvi. 19, 20, and 26; Deut. xxviii. 23); pestilence (Lev. xxvi. 25); blight and mildew witli nariK without la, — in the Chronicles by Vd \ ict the plague of 1 vividly 1 foreigners " (Thenius), for ^ is never u ed in this sense; but it is t<> be connected with VQfft in ver. 43, as •* v-'f frequently occurs (Bertheau). — Ver. 42 is a parenthesis inserted in explanation of *JW ]VD7 \ " for they will hear/' etc. The strong hand and the outstretched arm are connected together as a standing expression for the wondrous manifestations of the divine omnipotence in the guidance of Israel, as in Deut. iv. 34, v. 15, etc. With S&inm K» the pKD K31 in ver. 41 is resumed, and the main thought continued. — Yer. 43. The reason for the liea ring of the prayers of foreigners is " that all nations may know Thy name to fear Thee," etc, as in Deut. xxviii. 1 0. An examination of this original passage, from which tfjpj *|DB> *3 'til?y is taken and transferred to the temple, shows that the common explanations of this phrase, viz. " that this house is called after Thy name," or " that Thy name is invoked over this temple (at its dedication)," are erroneous. The name of the Lord is always used in the Scriptures to denote the working of God among His people or in His kingdom (see at 2 Sam. vi. 2). The naming of this name over the nation, the temple, etc., presupposes the working of God within it, and denotes the confession and acknowledgment of that working. This is obvious from such passages as Jer. xiv. 9, where the expression " Thy name is called over us " is only a further explanation of the word " Thou art in the midst of us;" and from Isa. lxiii. 19, where "we are they over whom Thou hast not ruled from eternity " is equivalent to " over whom Thy name has not been called." The name of Jehovah will be named over the temple, when Jehovah manifests His gracious presence within it in such a manner, that the nations who pray towards it experience the working of the living God within His sanctuary. It is in this sense that it is stated in 2 Sam. vi. 2 that the name of Jehovah is named above the ark of the covenant (see the Comm. in loc). — There are no cases on record of the worship of foreigners in connection with Solomon's temple, though there are in connection with the temple built after the captivity (vid. Josephus, Ant. xi. 8, 5, that of Alexander the Great; xii. 2, 5 sqq., that of Ptolemseus Philadelphus; and 2 Mace. iii. 2, 3, that of Seleucus).
Finally, in vers. 44-50 Solomon also asks, that when prayers are directed towards the temple by those who are far away both from Jerusalem and the temple, they may be heard. The sixth case, in vers. 44 and 45, is, if Israel should be engaged in war h an by the appointment of and tl.
v which Thou undertaken in faith in
■serves. on tl.n bannooj with the < i btbepnyaraof brmcliteswl it a distal
• -,'iicrs at the tame place, an ►ccause they ar.
aatora number as i s an outward i.. — r:
myn, to act perversely, m a conscious perversion of justii and P**J as;i passionate rebellion against God (cf. [sa Lvii 20). — A en rrh DWW: literally, " and make (place) them for
(•(impassion before their captors, that they may have compassion upon them," i.<\ cause them to meet with compassion from their enemies, who have carried them away.— In vers. 51-53 Solomon closes with general reasons, which should secure the hearing of his prayer on the part of God. Bertheau follows the earlier commentators in admitting that these reasons refer not merely to the last petitions, hut to all the preceding ones.1 The plea "for they are Thy people," etc. (ver. 51), is taken from Dent iv. 10; and that in ver. 53, "Thou didst separate them," etc., is taken from Lev. xx. 24, 2G, compared with Ex. xix. 5. '1:1 ^ry rtWj " that Thine eyes may be opened," follows upon FIPOPI ("then hear Thou") in ver. 49; just as ver. 29 at the commencement of the prayer follows upon rMM in ver. 28. The recurrence of the same expression shows that the prayer is drawing to a close, and is rounded off by a return to the thought with which it opened. " As Thou spakest by Moses" points back to Ex. xix. 5. — In 2 Chron. vi. 40-42 the conclusion of the prayer is somewhat altered, and closes with the appeal to the Lord to cause salvation and grace to go forth from the temple over His people.
Vers. 54-66. Concluding Act of the dedication of the temple. Vers. 54-61. Blessing the congregation. — After the conclusion of the prayer, Solomon rose up from his knees and blessed all the assembled congregation, rums VEOl is a circumstantial clause, which must be connected with the previous words and rendered thus: " from lying upon his knees with his hands spread out towards heaven." " And he stood," i.e. he came from the altar and stood nearer to the assembled congregation. The blessing begins with praise to the Lord for the fulfilment of His promises (ver. 16), and consists in the petition that the Lord will always fulfil his (Solomon's) prayers, and
1 Seb. Schmidt has already given the following explanation: "These things which I have asked for myself and for my people do Thou, 0 Lord, because it is for Thy people that I have prayed, and I am their king: therefore hear Thou the prayers of Thy servant and Thy people. For in ver. 52 he makes mention of his own case and of the cases of all the rest, in which they would call upon the Lord.
1 ( le, in l' txvii 9 in connection with 3$; and it frequently ocoui in Jeremiah. - Y< i. day these naj words, which 1 have prayed ir to
Jehovah <>ur God day ami night, thai 11<- may Beoure the right irvant ami of II. p p] day lediprayer was followed by a magnificent sacrifice offered by tlio king and all [srael bhank-offeric »u-
(rdance with tin* magnitude of the manifestation of divine] of 22,0 tid 120,000 sheep. This enormous number oi ificial animal—, in which J. 1). Michaelis found serious difficulties, Thenius endeavours to id'' as too i ai that as offered in days, reckoning the sarin; ial day at twelve full hours, there must have been about fii n and about t\ five sheep slaughl. and offered in sacrifi< -unite for the king alone. This calculation would he conclusive, if there wen- any foundation for the thj options upon which it rests: namely, (1) that the number of sacrifices mentioned was offered the king alone; (2) that the slaughtering and preparation of the sacrificial animals could only he performed by the pri< and L: and (3) that the whole oi' th< 1 of th sacrificial animals was to be consumed upon the altar. But " three assumption 11 erroneous. There is nothing in the account about their being " for the king alone." For it is obvious that the words " and Solomon offered a sacrifice" are to be understood as signifying that the Jang had these sacrifices offered for himself alone, but that the words refer to the sacrifices offered by the king and all Israel for the consecration of the temple, from the simple fact that in ver. 02 Solomon and all Israel'' are expressly mentioned as offering sacrifice, and that after the statement of the number of the sacrifices we find these words in ver. 63: "so the kino- and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of Jehovah." Moreover it is very evident from the law in Lev. i. and iii. that at the offering of sacrifice the slaughtering, flaying, and preparation of the sacrificial animals were performed by an}r Israelite, and that it was only the sprinkling of the blood against the altar and the hum:!!- of tl iticial portion Jtar which were the exclusive: the | In order to form a cone the enormous irambei of sa which dd be slaughtered on any oik* day, we will i • - the notice in Josephus BelLJwLvi • ly menl I in the run. on the 1' L iii p. 51 translation. that in the of the the procure! (ttu dh the pri i count the namher of the il lambs, and that they counted 250 000, which were.<!
bel ninth and « I • the day, and of which the bl prinkled npon the altar, [f then it possible than 00 lambs in thi of the i sprinkle the blood ui the altar, th- i lifficulty in slaughl and p at t: the temple on i the seven <: f the t \:in resent at l 0< And with very Lit!
only have h Bprinklinj of tl altar of lain. might n- jh for the burnii. ( that only the fat | ns of the thank-' if;ind. did not require mnoh room; sines t: rning and evening burnt-offeringB were added daily, and I fcel otlt-iings they would certainly not consist of a lamb only, but at least of one bullock, and they were burned whole, although the altar of burntoffering with a surface of 144 square yards (see my bihl. Archdol. i. p. IL'7) would hold a very large quantity of sacrificial flesh at once. In ver. 04, however, it is expressly stated that Solomon sanctified the middle of the court, which was before the house of Jehovah, to burn the burnt-offering and meat-offering and the fat portions of the thank-offerings there, because the brazen altar was too small to hold these sacrifices. " The middle of the court" pvnn ipn) is the whole of the inner portion of the court of the priests, which was in front of the temple-house and formed the centre of the court surrounding the temple. Of course we have not to imagine that the sacrifices were offered upon the stone pavement of the court, but must assume that there were auxiliary altars erected in the inner court around the brazen altar. By the burnt-offering and the meat-offering (belonging to it: npiyrrns; nmQrrnw) we are not to understand certain burnt-offerings, which were offered for a definite number of thank-offerings, as Thenius supposes. The singular and the definite article are both at variance with this. The reference is rather to the (well-known) daily morning and evening burnt-offerings with their meat-offering, and in this case, no doubt, to such a festal sacrifice as is prescribed in Num. xxviii. for the great yearly feasts. — Ver. 65. Thus Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the neighbourhood of Hamath to the brook of Egypt, i.e. from the whole land in its fullest extent from north to south. * The district of Hamath" i.e. Epiphania on the Orontes, is mentioned as the northern boundary (cf. Num. xxxiv. 8, xiii. 21, Josh. xiii. 5, etc.); and " the brook of Egypt" (D?TO? ^™), Rhinocorura, as the southern boundary (cf. Num. xxxiv. 8, Josh. xv. 4). " The feast " i}^), which Solomon held with the people " seven days and seven days, fourteen days," is not the feast of the dedication, but, as in ver. 2, the feast of tabernacles, wdiich fell in the seventh month; and the meaning of the verse is, that on that occasion the feast of the seventh month w7as kept for fourteen days, namely, seven days as the feast of the dedication, and seven days as the feast of tabernacles. We are obliged to take the words in this way, partly on account of the evident reference to Jnn (at the feast) in ver. 2 in the expression snn-n** (the feast) in this verse, and partly on account of the statement which follows in of tlii in thi I phrased thus in the Chronicles: 3? 7? KSfr?^ "aD that came into bis mind/1 and, in accordance with the context, Lb very properly restricted to these two principal buildings by the clause, •• in the bouse of Jehovah and in his own house." — V< qq.
The divine promise to Solomon, that his prayer should be answered, is closely connected with the Bubstance of the prayer; but in our account we have only a brief summary, whereas in the Chronicles it is given more elaborately (rid. 2 Chron, vii 1 2 1 6), " I have sanctified this house which then hast built, to put my name tin: For the expression, see I)eut. xii. 11. The sanctifying consisted in the fact, that Jehovah put His name in the temple; i.e. that by filling the temple with the cloud which visibly displayed ETia pr< sence, lie consecrated it as the scene of the manifestation of His grace. To Solomon's prayer, "^\lay Thine eyes stand open over this house" (ch. viii. 29), the Lord replies, giving always more than we ask, "My eyes and my rt shall be there perpetually." — Vers. 4 and 5 contain the special answer to ch. viii. I'."* and 2(k — Vers. 0-0 refer to the prayer for the turning away of the curse, to which the Lord replies: If ye and your children turn away from me, and do not keep my commandments, but worship other gods, this house will not protect you from the curses threatened in the law, but they will be fill tilled in all their terrible force upon you and upon this temple. This threat follows the Pentateuch exactly in the words in which it is expressed; ver. 7 being founded upon Dent, xxviii. 37, 45, and Go, and the curse pronounced upon Israel in Dent. xxix. 23-26 being transferred to the temple in vers. 8 and 9. — *?B bVD rb%yf to dismiss, i.e. to reject from before my face. " This house will be P v?," i.e. will stand high, or through its rejection will be a lofty example for all that pass by. The temple stood upon a high mountain, so that its ruins could not fail to attract the attention of all who went past. The expression pvy is selected with an implied allusion to Deut. xxvi. 19 and xxviii. 1. God there promises to make Israel fly?, high, exalted above all nations. This blessing will be turned into a curse. The temple, w7hich wTas high and wTidely renowmed, shall continue to be high, but in the opposite sense, as an example of the rejection of Israel from the presence of God.1
Vers. 10-2S. The M:;y which the BUILDINGS were erected. — In order that all which still remained to \ concerning Solomons buildi might be grouped together, different notices are introduced here, namely, as to his relation
Hiram, the erection of several fortresses, and the tribu: labour, and also bis maritime expeditions; and t:
geneous materials are so arm: indicate the which enabled Solomon to c: i many and such magniru
Hiram, who furnished him with buildii v labour which 25); (3:iich 1.
bote th: to a misinterr - r imagines, since the MMllioe of this a; is only nifty an exalted j*csitic xallation of dignity or period. EE &J (then he gave) in ver. 11 introduces the apodosis to rPO »iTJ (and it came to pass, etc.) in ver. 10; and ver. 11 contains a circumstantial clause inserted as a parenthesis. Hiram had supported Solomon according to his desire with cedar wood and cypress wood, and with gold; and Solomon e him in return, after his buildings were completed, twenty cities in the land of Galil. But these cities did not please Hiram. "When he went out to see them, he said, " "What kind of cities are these (HO in a contemptuous sense) which thou hast given me, my brother?" W as in ch. xx. 32, 1 Mace, x. 18, XL 30, 2 Mace. xi. 22, as a conventional expression used by princes in their intercourse with one another. "And he called the land Cabul unto this day;" i.e. it retained this name even to later times. The land of Galil is a part of the country which was afterwards known as Galihra. namely, the northern portion of it, as is evident from the fact that in Josh, xx. 7, xxi. 32, Kales in the mountains of Xaphtali, to the northwest of Lake Hulch, is distinguished from the Kadesh in southern Palestine by the epithet?v|3. It is still more evident from 2 Kings xv. 29 and Isa. viii. 23 that Galil embraced the northern part of the tribe of Xaphtali; whilst the expression used by Isaiah, ttfin byJ, also shows that this district was for the most part inhabited by heathen {i.e. non-Israelites). The twenty cities in Galil, which Solomon gave to Hiram, certainly belonged therefore to the cities of the Canaanites mentioned in 2 Sam. xxiv. 7; that is to say, they were cities occupied chiefly by a heathen population, and in all probability they were in a very bad condition. Consequently they did not please Hiram, and he gave to the district the contemptuous name of the land of Cahul. Of the various interpretations given to the word Cabul (see Ges. Thcs. p. 656), the one proposed by Hiller (Onomast. p. 435), and adopted by > Eeland, Ges., Maurer, and others, viz. that it is a contraction of 33«??, sicut id quod evanuit tanquam nihil, has the most to support it, since this is the meaning required by the context. At the same time it is possible, and even probable, that it had originally a different signification, and is derived from /?3 = Jon in the sense of to pawn, as Gesenius and Dietrich suppose. This is favoured by the occurrence of the name Cabul in Josh. xix. 27, where it is probably derivable from?33, to fetter, and signifies literally a fortress or castle; but in this instance it has no connection with the land of Cabul, since it is still preserved in the village of Cabul to the south-east of Acre (see the Comm. on Josh. le). The "land of Cabul" would therefore mean the pawned laud; and in the mouths of the people this would be twisted into -good for nothing." In this case fTfm would have to lie taken impersonally: "they called;" and the notice respecting this name would be simply an explanation of the way in which the people interpreted it, Hiram, however, did not retain this district, but gave it back to Solomon, who then completed the cities (2 Chron. viii. 2.).1 The only way in which we can give to ver. 14 a meaning in harmony witli the context, is by taking it as a supplernentuiv explanation of 3HJ3I... Kin... ETWl in ver. 11, and so renderin rfyfa as a pluperfei in ch. vii.
: "Hiram had sent the king a hui and twenty tali - of gold." If we reckon I lue of gold as being ten tin, the worth of sill hundred and tw - dd would to be regarded a an, which Solomon obtaii m Hi:
him to complete his building Although David may have collected together the n for the building of the temple, and Solomoi; I also siderable yearly revenues. <! m tribute paid by snbjug and partly from I his buildings were so extensive, inasmuch as he erected a 1 lumber of <r splendid \ his revenues mi mpletiou of these crated tr. - of the i the erection of cities and palaces, lie might find himself comi the wealthy king Hiram, which he bly int. 'ii by ceding to him twenty cities on the border of the Phcenii territory. But as ti:ease the kirn ud ho gave them b mon, the latter will no doubt have repaid the amount borrowed during the last twenl s of his rei^n.
1 This simple method of reconciling the account before us with the apparently discrepant notice in the Chronicles, concerning which even Movers (>/ie UbUscke Chronik, p. 159) observes, that the chronicler interpolated it from a second (?) source, is so natural, that it is difficult to conceive how Bertheau can object to it; since he admits that the accounts in the books of Kings and Chronicles are incomplete extracts from common and more elaborate sources.
Vers. 15—23. Solomons tribute service, and the building of the cities. (Cf. 2 Chron. viii. 3-10.) The other means by which Solomon made it possible to erect so many buildings, was by compelling the remnants of the Canaanitish population that were still in the land to perform tributary labour. Dftn inn PIT, " this is the case with regard to the tribute." For dd TOjn^ compare ch. v. 27. To the announcement of the object which Solomon had in view in raising tributary labourers, namely, to build, etc., there is immediately appended a list of all the buildings completed by him (vers. 15—19); and it is not till ver. 20 that we have more precise details concerning the tribute itself. Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities enumerated, are for the most part not new buildings, but simply fortifications, or the completion of buildings already in existence. David had already built the castle of Millo and the wall of Jerusalem (2 Sam. v. 9); so that Solomon's building was in both cases merely fortifying more strongly. On Millo see the fuller remarks at 2 Sam. v. 9; and on the building of the wall, those at ch. iii. 1 and xi. 27. As Solomon thereby closed the breach of the city of David according to ch. xi. 27, he probably extended the city wall so as to enclose the temple mountain; and he may possibly have also surrounded the lower city with a wall, since David had only built a fortification round about the upper city upon Zion (see at 2 Sam. v. 9). — Hazor: an old royal city of the Canaanites above Lake Hulch, which has not yet been discovered (see at Josh. xi. 1). Megiddo; i.e. Lcjun (see at ch. iv. 12). Gezer: also an old Canaanitish royal city, which stood close to the Philistian frontier, probably on the site of the present village of el Kubab (see at Josh. x. 33). — Ver. 16. This city had been taken and burned down by the king of Egypt; its Canaanitish inhabitants had been put to death; and the city itself had been given as a marriage portion to his daughter who was married to Solomon. Nothing is known concerning the occasion and object of Pharaoh's warlike expedition against this city. The conjecture of Thenius, that the Canaanitish inhabitants of Gezer had drawn upon themselves the vengeance of Pharaoh, mentioned here, through a piratical raid upon the Egyptian coast, is open to this objection, that according to all accounts concerning its situation, Gezer was not situated near the sea-coast, but very far inland. — Ver. 1 7. This city Solomon built: i.e. he not only rebuilt it, but also fortified it. He did the same also to Lower
Bethhoron, i.e. Beit-Ur Tachta, on the western slope of the mountains, four hours' journey from Gibeon. According to 2 Cliron. viii. 5, Solomon also fortified Upper Bethhoron, which was separated by a deep wady from Lower Bethhoron, that lay to the west (see Comm. on Josh. x. 10 and xvi. 3). The two Bethhorons and Gezer were very important places for the protection of the mountainous country of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Judah against In.stile invasions from the Philistian plain. The situation of Alegiddo on the southern edge of the plain of Jezivel, tlirough which the high read from u • rn i oast to the Jordan ran, was equally Important; and so also was llazor as a border I \ against Syria in the northern part of the land. — Ver. l! Solomon also trails Le, fortified, BaakUh and Tadmor in the desert. According to Josh xix. 41, Baaiath wa t Dan, and thei Joaephna (Ant. viii. 6, 1)
justly ob: was not far from I; and i [Uently is identified with either Baalgad ox Baalbek in Coele- ion {L'h'thib) ia eithei now irding to Ewald may possibly have simply arisen from Aramaean expansion, but which.1 the name for I among the Arabs
:i in the present day Ljj, / pal ■.. The Gre< ka and Romai h | in w1' Syrian desert, on '! i and the Euphrates, irding to modern account jonrney from thl till magnificent ruins which att< former g]. this wealthy and, under qui this explanal 11 doubt by the given up; v of Thorn ■ in southern Judah (Erek. rlvii 19, xlviii 28), which Thenius has since adopted, and ha led in favour of Palmyra, without being led astray by the attempt of Hitzig to explain the name from the Sanscrit (i wrgld. Ztschr. viii. p. 222 sqoj. The expression pxz appears superfluous, as all the cities named before were situated in the land or kingdom of Solomon, and Tadmor is sufficiently defined by I2n©3 (in the desert). The text is evidently faulty, and either the name of the land, namely Hamath (according to 2 Chron. viii. 4), has dropped out, or H.N? is to be taken in connection with what follows (according to the Cod. Al. of the LXX.), and the cop. 1 before ny-ps nx must be erased and inserted before H?? (" and in the land of all the magazine-cities"). — Ver. 19. The "magazinecities " (n^spfsn n.V) were fortified cities, in which the produce of the land was collected, partly for provisioning the army, and partly for the support of the rural population in times of distress (2 Chron. xvii. 12, xxxii. 28), similar to those which Pharaoh had built in the land of Goshen (Ex. i. 11). If they were situated on the great commercial roads, they may also have served for storing provisions for the necessities of travellers and their beasts of burden. The cities for the war-chariots p?"!?) and cavalry (D^&han) were probably in part identical with the magazine-cities, and situated in different parts of the kingdom. There were no doubt some of these upon Lebanon, as we may on the one hand infer from the general importance of the northern frontier to the security of the whole kingdom, and still more from the fact that Solomon had an opponent at Damascus in the person of Eezin (ch. xi. 24), who could easily stir up rebellion in the northern provinces, which had only just been incorporated by David into the kingdom; and as we may on the other hand clearly gather from 2 Chron. xvi. 4, according to which there were magazine-cities in the land of JSTaphtali. Finally, the words " and what Solomon had a desire to build " embrace all the rest of his buildings, which it would have occupied too much space to enumerate singly. That the words P^C1 n^ are not to be so pressed as to be made to denote simply " the buildings undertaken for pure pleasure," like the works mentioned in Eccles. ii. 4 sqq., as Thenius and Bertheau suppose, is evident from a comparison of ver. 1, where all Solomon's buildings except the temple and palace, and therefore the fortifications as well as others, are included in the expression " all his desire." — Fuller particulars concerning the tributary workmen are given in ver. 20 sqq. The Canaanitish population that was left in the land were made use of for this purpose, — namely, the descendants of the Canaanites who had not been entirely exterminated by the Israelites. " Their children,"
etc., supplies a more precise definition of the expression " all the people," etc, in ver. 20. (For the fact itself, see the commentary on ch. v. 58.) — Ver. 22. Solomon did not make Israelites into tributary slaves; but they were warriors, ministers, and civil and military oflicers. cri-V are the kind's servants; E'Tf, the heads of the military and civil service; DTO, royal adjutants (see at 2 Sam. xxiii. S); Nf*TO S3T\ ni", captains over the royal war-chariots and cavalrv. — For v compare ch. v. 30.
24 and 25 contain two notices, with which the account of Solomon's build:'. Both verses point ch. iii. 2-4), and show how the incongruitii | at the comi.;,v ]n\s have finished 1 her a house ol her own brought up from the i nfrj one up, ib n|) ii. house built mon built Millo.1- building i pic, tl. the alt
•h." " Three times in •,v]y from this notic |:ation of joined that pod in which tLe harem waa, rests upon the that Millo was evidently int belter t!..- liar. rn. an ion which cannot 1 | probability, to say nothing of a certainty. The building of Millo immediately after the entrance of IV daughter into the hou.- 1 for her, may Lave arisen from tl. -hat
I»avid (/.-Solomon — Tr.) could not und the fortification of JerneeJem by means of this castle till after his own palace was finished, because he had not the requisite labour at command for carrying on all these buildings at the same time.
(2 Cliron. viii. 13). The words which follow, tax WpiTj, "and indeed burning (the sacrifice) at the (altar) which was before Jehovah," cannot be taken as parallel to the preceding clause, and understood as referring to the incense, which was offered along with the bleeding sacrifices, because Wpn is not a preterite, but an inf. absol., which shows that this clause merely serves as an explanation of the preceding one, in the sense of, " namely, burning the sacrifices at the altar which was before Jehovah." *),PP;? is the technical expression here for the burning of the portions of the sacrificial flesh upon the altar, as in Ex. xxix. 18, Lev. i. 9, etc. On the use of "»BW after ins, which Thenius and Bottcher could not understand, and on which they built up all kinds of conjectures, see Ewald, § 333, a, note. — rrcpiTTMJ D?£'i, " and made the house complete," i.e. he put the temple into a state of completion, by offering the yearly sacrifices there from that time forward, or, as Bottcher explains it, gave it thereby its full worth as a house of God and place of worship. Bp&\ is to be taken grammatically as a continuation of the inf. abs.'wpn.
Vers. 26-28. He sends ships to Ophir. — Solomon built a fleet (^x is collective, ships or fleet; the nom. unitatis is n»px) at Eziongeber, near Eloth, on the coast of the Eed Sea (^D"D!: see at Ex. x. 1 9), in the land of Edom; and Hiram sent in the fleet " shipmen that had knowledge of the sea " along with Solomon's servants to Ophir, whence they brought to king Solomon 420 talents of gold. Eziongeber, a harbour at the northeastern end of the Elanitic Gulf, was probably the " large and beautiful town of Asziun" mentioned by Makrizi (see at Num. xxxiii. 35), and situated on the great bay of Wctdij Emrag (see Euppell, Rciscn in Nubicn, pp. 252—3). Eloth (lit. trees, a grove, probably so named from the large palm-grove in the neighbourhood), or Elath (Deut. ii. 8; 2 Kings xiv. 22: see at Gen. xiv. 6), the Aila and JElana of the Greeks and Eomans, Arab. Aileh, was situated at the northern point of the (Elanitic) gulf, which took its name from the town; and in the time of the Eathers it was an important commercial town. It was not far from the small modern fortress of Ahdba, where heaps of rubbish still show the spot on which it formerly stood (compare Euppell, Nub. p. 248, with plates 6 and 7, and Eobinson, Pal. i. p. 251 sqq.). — The corresponding text, 2 Chron. viii. 17, 18, differs in many respects from the account before us. The state-
148 Tin: first book of kings.
merit in the Chronicles, thai Solomon went to 1". r and
Elath, is but;i very unimportant deviation; for the building the fleet makes it a wry probable thing in itself that Solon should h i 1 on thai account the I wna on the
Illanitic Gulf, which were very near to one anoth make th*' requisite arrangement tor this important
27, wh^re, in the pla at that Hiran only way in which II ■ • ber
.. |. and the requisite m ave had bar ■. Arabs; her plan 1 y
'. I ' •.. the laiddk ages the account ui Makrizi in 1 I Reisen in Synai. p. SSL fax as they were aot to be obtained upon the Bpot At any rate, Solomon was obliged to call the Tynans to his help for the building of the ships, since the Israelites, who had hitherto carried on ao maritime trade at all, were altogether inexperienced in shipbuilding. Moreover, the country round Eziongebei would hardly furnish wood adapted for the purpose, as there are only palms to be found there, whose spongy wood, however useful it may be for the inside of houses, cannot be applied to the building of ships. But if Hiram had ships built for Solomon by his own men and sent him sailors who were accustomed to the sea, he would certainly have some of his own ships engaged in this maritime trade; and this explains the statement in ch. x. 22.
The destination of the fleet was Ophir, whence the ships brought 420 or (according to the Chronicles) 450 talents of gold. The difference between 420 and 450 may be accounted for from the substitution of the numeral letter 3 (50) for 3 (20). The sum mentioned amounted to eleven or twelve million dollars (from £1,600,000 to £1,800,000— Tr.), and the question arises, whether this is to be taken as the result of one voyage, or as the entire profits resulting from the expeditions to Ophir. The words admit of either interpretation, although they are more favourable to the latter than to the former, inasmuch as there is no allusion whatever to the fact that they brought this amount all at once or on every voyage. (See also at ch. x. 14 and 22.) The question as to the situation of Ophir has given rise to great dispute, and hitherto no certain conclusion has been arrived at; in fact, it is possible that there are no longer any means of deciding it. Some have endeavoured to prove that it was in southern Arabia, others that it was on the eastern coast of Africa, and others again that it was in Hither India.1 The decision is dependent upon a
1 Compare the thorough examination of the different views concerning Ophir in C. Ritter's Erdk. xiv. pp. 348-431, with the briefer collection made by Gesenius in his Thes. p. 141 sq. and in the Allgem. Encyclop. der Wissenschaft u. Kiinsle, 3 Sect. Bd. 4, p. 201 sqq., and by Pressel, art. " Ophir," in Herzog's Cyclopaedia. — We need not dwell upon the different opinions held by the earlier writers. But among modern authors, Niebuhr, Gesenius, Rosenmuller, and Seetzen decide in favour of Arabia; Quatremere (Me'moire sur le pays d' Ophir in Mem. de VInstit. roy. 1845, t. xv. P. ii. p. 350 sqq.) and Movers, who takes Ophir to be the name of an emporium on the eastern coast of Africa, in favour of Sofala; while Chr. Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, these grounds we can COine to DO other conclusion than that the expression in 2 Chron. ix. 21, " ships going to Tarshish," is simply a mistaken exposition of the term " Tarshish fleet," — a mistake which may easily be explained from the fact, that at the time when the Chronicles were written, the voyages not only of the Israelites but also of the Tynans both to Ophir and Tarshish had long since ceased, and even the geographical situation of these places was then unknown to the Jews (see my Introduction to the Old Test. p. 442, ed. 2).
The name Ophir occurs first of all in Gen. x. 29 among the tribes of Southern Arabia, that were descended from Joktan, between Seba and Havilah, i.e. the Sabceans and Chaulotaeans. Hence it appears most natural to look for the gold-land of Ophir in Southern Arabia. But as there is still a possibility that the Joktanide tribe of Ophir, or one branch of it, may subsequently have emigrated either to the eastern coast of Africa or even to Hither India, and therefore that the Solomonian Ophir may have been an Arabian colony outside Arabia, the situation of this gold country cannot be determined without further evidence from Gen. x. 29 alone; but before arriving at an actual decision, we must first of all examine the arguments that may be adduced in support of each of the three countries named. Sofala in Eastern Africa, in the Mozambique Channel, has nothing in common with the name Ophir, but is the Arabic ft\j^ (Heb.
n?zv), i.e. lowland or sea-coast; and the old Portuguese accounts of the gold mines in the district of Fur a there, as well as the pretended walls of the queen of Saba, have far too little evidence to support them, to have any bearing upon the question before ns. The supposed connection between the name Ophir and the city of SouTrdpa mentioned by Ptolemaeus, or Ovirirapa by Periplus (Gcogr. min. i. p. 30), in the neighbourhood of Goa, or the shepherd tribe of Abhira, cannot be sustained. Xovirdpa or Sufdrct (Edrisi) answers to the Sanscrit Supdra, i.e. beautiful coast (c£ Lassen, TVid. Alterthk. i. p. 107); and Ovirwapa in Periplus is no doubt simply a false reading for Xovirapa, which has nothing in common with *V£iK. And the shepherd tribe of Abhira can hardly come into consideration, because the country which they inhabited, to the south-east of the mouths of the Indus, has no gold. — Again, the hypothesis that India is intended derives just as little support from the circumstance that, with the exception of Gen \ the LXX. have alw vnta either Zocpipd or Sovftp, which i he C ptic lei the name used 1:• India, and that Jo8ephua, who the CM Test in the hir, — nan that the larehi&h fli in aa:' the I the difi le would I i Bfandeb and tl might occupy more than i the time in amply a] diterran i with which tfcej wen the voyage as given here cannot furnish any decisive proof that the fleet sailed beyond Southern Arabia to the East Indies. And lastly, the same remarks apply to the goods brought from Ophir, which many regard as decisive evidence in favour of India. The principal article for which Ophir became so celebrated, viz. the gold, is not found either in Sufdra near Goa, or in the land of Abhira. Even if India be much richer in gold than was formerly supposed (cf. Lassen, ii. p. 592), the rich gold country lies to the north of Cashmir (see Lassen, ii. pp. 603-4). Moreover, not only is it impossible to conceive what £Oods the Phoenicians can have offered to the Indian merchants for their gold and the other articles named, since large sums of gold were sent to India every year in the Roman times to pay for the costly wares that were imported thence (see Eoscher, pp. 53, 54); but it is still less possible to comprehend how the shepherd tribe of Abhira could have come into possession of so much gold as the Ophir fleet brought home. The conjecture of Eitter (Erdk. xiv. p. 399) and Lassen (ii. p. 592), that this tribe had come to the coast not very long before from some country of their own where gold abounded, and that as an uncultivated shepherd tribe they attached but very little value to the gold, so that they parted with it to the Phoenicians for their purple cloths, their works in brass and glass, and for other things, has far too little probability to appear at all admissible. If the Abhira did not know the value of the gold, they would not have brought it in such quantities out of their original home into these new settlements. "VVe should therefore be obliged to assume that they were a trading people, and this would be at variance with all the known accounts concerning this tribe. — As a rule, the gold treasures of Hither Asia were principally obtained from Arabia in the most ancient times. If we leave Havilah (Gen. ii. 11) out of the account, because its position cannot be determined familiar, and to the period when the Phoenician navigation had reached its fullest development, so that it has no bearing upon the time of Solomon and a voyage upon the Arabian Sea, with which the Phoenicians were hitherto quite unacquainted. — Again, the calculation made by Lassen (ii. pp. 590-1), according to which a voyage from Eziongeber to the mouth of the Indus could have been accomplished in a hundred days, is founded upon the assumption that the Phoenicians were already acquainted with the monsoon and knew what was the best time for the navigation of the Red Sea, — an assumption which can neither be proved nor shown to be probable.
1 54 the ram BOOK ok kings.
with certainty, the only other place specially p | to in the intry is i in the south-v Semen moo with 1 Id, with ] ad with pi ind in Arabia ind, the wealth of is still undiscovered The derivation of it from the Sanserif pukker (Lassen and Ritter), has been set aside by
■ nius as inappropriate, and mocha, moehdta, which ls said to signify sandal-wood in Sanscrit, lias been sin.id.
But no evidence has been adduced in its favour, nor is the word to be found in Wilson's Sanscrit Lexicon. If, however, this derivation were correct,?N would be the Arabic article, and the introduction of this article in connection with the word mocha would be a proof that the sandal-wood, together with its name, came to the Hebrews through merchants who spoke Arabic. — The other articles from Ophir mentioned in ch. x. 22 are MTMlfi^ o&ovres eke^avrwot (LXX.), denies clephantorum or chcr (Vulg.),?NDP1 #, elephants' teeth (Targ.). But however certain the meaning of the word may thus appear, the justification of this meaning is quite as uncertain. In other cases ivory is designated by the simple term H? (ch. x. 18, xxii. 39; Ps. xlv. 9; Amos iii. 15, etc.), whereas Ezekiel (xxvii. 15) calls the whole tusk $ ™:"!i?, horns of the tooth. D^n is said to signify elephants here; and according to Benary it is contracted from Q^sn, the Sanscrit word iblia, elephant; according to Ewald, from D*2OT, from the Sanscrit Kalabha; and according to Hitzig, from &*?•?? = D*??f » Libyi; or else D%?«:!?tf is a false reading for EP33JT1 |P, ivory and ebony, according to Ezek. xxvii. 15 (see Ges. Thes. p. 1453). Of these four derivations the first two are decidedly wrong: the first, because ibha as a name for the elephant only occurs, according to Weber, in the later Indian writings, and is never used in the earlier writings in this sense (vid. Roediger, Addenda ad Ges. thes. p. 115); the second, because Kalabha does not signify the elephant, but catulum elephanti, before it possesses any teeth available for ivory. The third is a fancy which its originator himself has since given up; and the fourth a conjecture, which is not raised to a probability even by the attempt of Bottcher to show that E^n is a case of backward assimilation from B*?3f?, because the asyndeton D^nn;sy between two couples connected by 1 is without any analogy, and the passages adduced by Bottcher, viz. Deut. xxix. 22, Josh. xv. 54 sqq., and even Ezek. xxvii. 33, are to be taken in quite a different way. — The rendering of D*Bp by apes, and the connection of the name not only with the Sanscrit and Malabar kapi, but also with the Greek k^tto? and /a}/3o?, also /cet/3o?, are much surer; but, on the other hand, the assumption
1 56 thk first book of kin that the Greeks lik< thi Semiti I the word f the Indians along with the aiiiiiial.-. ifl very in. | r«$irOf in i co?) gem rally, but simply of loo of whi( ing t-. tl. mony,J and the
India by sea, since the hi storica] character of these statements very weighty grounds; yet it is evident that there was a very early intercourse between Mast India and Africa, reaching far beyond all historical testimony, from the following well-established facts: that the Egyptians made use of Indigo in the dyeing of their stuffs, and this could only have been brought to them from India; that muslins, which were likewise of Indian origin, are found among the materials in which the mummies enveloped; and that in the graves of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who ceased to reign in the year 147G B.C., then' have been discovered vases of Chinese porcelain (cf. Lassen, ii. p. 59G). And the intercourse between the southern coast of Arabia and Hither India may have been quite as old, if not older; so that Indian productions may have been brought to Hither Asia by the Salueans long before the time of Solomon (vid, Lassen, ii. pp. 593-4, and Movers, Phoniz. ii. 3, pp. 247, 2oG). But the commercial intercourse between Arabia and the opposite coast of Ethiopia, by which African productions reached the trading inhabitants of Arabia, was unquestionably still older than the trade with India. If we weigh well all these points, there is no valid ground for looking outside Arabia for the situation of the Solomonian Ophir. But we shall no doubt be obliged to give up the hope of determining with any greater precision that particular part of the coast of Arabia in which Ophir was situated, inasmuch as hitherto neither the name Ophir nor the existence of gold-fields in Arabia has been established by modern accounts, and moreover the interior of the great Arabian peninsula is still for the most part a terra incognita}
1 If the notice of Eupolemus contained in a fragment in Eusebius (prsepar. ev. ix. 30), to the effect that David (a mistake for Solomon) sent miners to the island of Ovptpq (for which Gesenius conjectures that we should read Ou^pyj or Ov<pr,p) in the Red Sea, which was rich in gold mines, and that they brought gold thence to Judaea, could be proved to be historical through any earlier testimony, Ophir would have been an island of the Erythraean Sea, either Dalilak inside Bab el Mandeb, or Diu Zokatara (the Sanscrit Dwipa Sukhatara, i.e. the happy island) by the present Cape Guardafui. But this notice is evidently simply a conjecture founded upon the Old Testament, having no historical value.
ibly t In oiiL^li the <) { » h: r vi oonvin truth i which had 1 ting it to the
: for tl. and j and wh It in the
• And Bpake to Solomon all that she had upon her heart," ■/>. in tins connection, whatever riddles she had it in her mind to lay before him; "and Solomon told her all her sayings,' was able to solve all her riddles. There is no ground for thinking of Bayings of a religious nature, as the earlier commentators supposed, but simply of sayings the meaning of which was conded, and the understanding of which indicated very deep wisdom. — Vers. 4, 5. She saw man, i.e. Solomon's palace, not the temple, and " the food of his table," 'i.e. both the great variety of food that was placed upon the king's table (eh. v. 3), and also the costly furniture of the table (ver. 21), and " the seat of his retainers and the standing of his servants," i.e. the places in the palace assigned to the ministers and servants of the king, which were contrived with wisdom and arranged in plendid manner. DHajJ are the chief oilicers of the king, viz. ministers, counsellors, and aides de camp; D^rn^p, the court servants; 38*0, the rooms of the courtiers in attendance; ID?©, the standing-place, i.e. the rooms of the inferior servants' " and their clothing," which they received from the king; and vptfo, not his cup-bearers (LXX., Vulg.), but as in Gen.°xl. 21, the drink, i.e. probably the whole of the drinking arrangements; Wfy and his ascent, by which he was accustomed to go into the house of Jehovah. W& does not mean burnt-offering here, as the older translators have rendered it, but ascent, as in Ezek. xl. 26, and as the Chronicles have correctly explained it by in£g. For burnt-offering is not to be thought of in this connection, because the queen had nothing to see or to be astonished at in the presentation of such an offering. ir6'y is most likely "the king's outer entrance" into the temple, mentioned in 2 Kings xvi. 18; and the passage before us would lead us to suppose that this was a work of art, or an artistic arrangement. 'W ^ *&, « and there was no more spirit in her:" she was beside
She then said with astonishment to Solomon, that of what her eyes now saw she had not heard the half, through the report which had reached her of his affairs and of his wisdom, and which had hitherto appeared incredible to her; and not only congratulated his servants, who stood continually near him and could hear his wisdom, but also praised Jehovah his God, that out of His eternal love to His people Israel He had given them a king