mthia rehovah, which involved faith in the true
1, when taken in in with Id queen had been oonv<,1 with rather than the harp, the strings being carried over the sounding-board upon a bridge, t lie latter being of a pitcher shape w ithout any Bounding bridge, as in the case of the harps. — Ver. 13,
Solomon gave the queen of Saha all that she wished and asked for. beside what he gave her " according to the hand," i.e. the might, of the king; that is to say, in addition to the presents answering to his might and his wealth, which he was obliged to give as a king, according to the Oriental custom. In the Chronicles (ver. 12) we find ''beside that which she had brought (ns*3n) to the king," which is an abbreviated expression tor "beside that which he gave her in return for what she had brought to him," or beside the return presents corresponding to her gilts to him, as it has been already correctly paraphrased by the Targum.
Vers. 14-22. Solomon's Wealth and the Use he made of it (cf. 2 Chron.ix. 13-21). — Ver. 14. The gold which Solomon received in one year amounted to 666 talents, — more than seventeen million thalers (two million and a half sterling — Tit.). 666 is evidently a round number founded upon an approximative valuation, nnx njra is rendered in the Vulg. per annos sin- (jalos; but this is hardly correct, as the Ophir fleet, the produce of which is at any^rate included, did not arrive every year, but once in three years. Thenius is wrong in supposing that this revenue merely applies to the direct taxes levied upon the Israelites. It includes all the branches of Solomon's revenue, whether derived from his commerce by sea and land (cf. vers. 28, 29) or from the royal domains (1 Chron. xxvii. 26-31), or received in the form of presents from foreign princes, who either visited him like the queen of Saba or sent ambassadors to him (vers. 23, 24), excepting the duties and tribute from conquered kings, which are specially mentioned in ver. 15. Tin ^EONOiap, beside what came in (p'ix>&? sa) from the travelling traders and the commerce of the merchants, and from all the kings, etc. *£;3N Dnnn (a combination resembling our merchantmen; cf. Ewald, § 287, e, p. 721) are probably the tradesmen or smaller dealers who travelled about in the country, and Dv?5! the wholesale dealers. This explanation of Dnn cannot be rendered doubtful by the objection that "Vifi only occurs elsewhere in connection with the wandering about of spies; for OT signified originally to go about, spy out, or retail scandal, and after that to trade, and go about as a tradesman. 2~}V\} *??£ are not kings of the auxiliary and allied nations (Chald., Ges.), but kings of the mixed population, and according to Jer. xxv. 24, more especially of the population of Arabia Deserta fOTBa myfa), which bordered upon Palestine; for 3TJ is a mixed 'crowd ' of all kinds of men, who either attach themselves to a nation (Ex. xii. 38), or live in the midst of it as foreigners (Xeh. xiii. 3), hence a number of mercenaries (Jer. 1. 37). In 2 Chron. ix. 14, Wn fa therefore correctly explained by the term TgJ, which does not mean the whole of Arabia, but " only a tract of country not very extensive on the east and south of Palestine" (Gesenius), as these tribes were tributary to Solomon. pan nina, the governors of the land, are probably the officers named in eh. iv. 7-10. As they collected the duties in the form of natural productions and delivered them in that form, so also did the tradesmen and merchants pay their duties, and the subj nil tribes of Arabia £t tribute, in natura. This explains in a very simple manner why th' from the revenue I - lomon whi came in the form of □ una. foreign w< rd, which;.
found the ffebrew langoa the times of the prians, and sprang from the - it paksha, a companion or of paJcha in the earl; and S:
smaller (r::-_\ dypei).... like all the shields of the ancients were made of Wood or z, and I. I with gold plate instead of leather (see I ',,<,/. ii sqq.). Btfijf anj.nam-. julatum, Id mixed with metal of a different kind, hut, tainly use pure gold for th« aamental shiel: hun- dred sheki gold he spread upon one target," that is I he used for gilding one target. Six hundred shekel lid weigh about 17$ lbs., so that the value of the gold upon a target would be more than 5000 thalers (£750), supposing that the Mosaic shekel is meant. But this is rendered doubtful by the fact that the gold upon the small shields is estimated at three minae. If, for example, the three mina are equal to three hundred shekels, according to 2 Chron. ix. 16, as is generally assumed, a hundred shekels are reckoned as one mina; and as the mina only contained fifty Mosaic shekels, according to Ezek xiv. 12, the reference must be to shekels after the king's weight (2 Sam. xiv. 26), which were only half the sacred shekel (see my bibl. Archdol. iL p. 135). Consequently the gold plate upon one target was not quite 9 lbs., and that upon a shield not quite 4J lbs. These shields were intended for the body-guard to carry on state occasions (ch. xiv. 27, 28; 2 Chron. xii. 10), and were kept in the house of the forest of Lebanon (ch. vii. 2). — Vers. 18-20. Solomon had a great throne of ivory made, and had it overlaid with fine ^old. f^'NDD is not a throne made of ivory, but one merely ornamented with ivory; and we are to imagine the gilding as effected by laying the gold simply upon the wood, and inserting the ivory within the gold plate. tWD, a Tiojphal participle of TT3: aurum depuratum, hence = "rintj in 2 Chron. ix. 1 7. The throne had six steps, and a " rounded head on the hinder part thereof," i.e. a back which was arched above or rounded off,1 and rflj, arms, i.e. arms on both sides of the seat pn^n Dipo), and two lions standing by the side of the arms. Beside this there were twelve lions upon the six steps, namely two upon each step, one on this side and one on that. Instead of D""}N (ver. 20) we find rti*}K in ver. 19, just as we do in both verses of the Chronicles, not because the reference is to artificial, inanimate figures and not to natural lions, as Thenius supposes, but because the plural ending &- is an unusual one with this word; and even where natural lions are spoken of, we always find FftnK in other passages (cf. Judg. xiv. 5; 2 Sam. i. 23; 2 Kings xvii. 25; Song of Sol. iv. 8, etc.). The lions were symbols of the ruler's authority; and the twelve lions upon the steps may possibly have pointed to the rule over the twelve tribes of Israel, which was concentrated in the throne; not " watchers of the throne," as Thenius thinks. This throne was so splendid a work, that the historian observes that nothing of the kind had ever been made for any other kingdom. Upon the
1 Instead of ynriND IIDS^ $W BW11 we have in the Chronicles &22)
D^tnSD ND3? Dnta, " and a footstool in gold fastened to the throne " (the plural DHnND refers to the footstool and the steps). Now, however easily
D'tnND may have been written by mistake for VHriND, 2T\t t^33 cannot have grown out of ^ijy C'fcO by any such mistake. The quid-pro-quo of the LXX. for ^JJJ EJfcO> Trporopccl ftooxuvi in which y\ty is certainly confounded with ^y, does not warrant the conjecture of Thenius, that the Chronicler found ^jy in his original and substituted t>^2 (lamb), whereupon £03 (lamb) was changed by another hand into {j?23, footstep, and £>&o was dropped altogether.
early Assyrian monuments we do indeed find high scats depicted, which are very artistically worked, and provided with backs and arms, and some with the arms supported by figures of animals (see Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 301), but none resembling Solomon's throne. It is not till a later acre that the more splendid thrones appear (rid. Rosenmiiller, A. 11. N. Mbrgcnlavd, iii. pp. 17G sqcp). — Vera 21, 22. The drinking vessels of Solomon also were all of gold, and all the vessels of the hoi of the forest of Lebanon of costly gold pup ■ see at ch. vi. 20). Silver was counted as nothing, because the Tarshish fleet arrived once in tlnv. bringing gold, silver, etc. (see at ch ix. 28).
In vei 29 everything that had b stated concerning the wealth, wisdom, and revenue of Solomon is Bummed up and 24 poinl back to ch. v. 9-14. bw: Solomon became sater, n r, on account of the r. rmrrfci all the world, corresponds I mqpsvvj in ch. v. 14. The foreignout of all land-, who cameon account of his wisdom, brought Solomon present Id and silver i rriefo lUt dresses, which are still customary pi in the I pfifc, mon made silver like stones in Jem, and cedars like the in the Lowland for abundano hyperboli description of his collection of enormous quantities of precious metals and costly wood &o$ mulberry fig-trei m Palestine in its pi I; /;,/.
iii. 27), and arc only met in any abundance in Egypt; but in ancient times they abounded in the Lowlands of Palestine to such ai:it, that they w- ommon building w the going out of horses from Egypt for Solomon, a company of king s merchants fetched (horses) for a definite price." This is the only possible explanation of the verse according to the Masoretic punctuation; but to obtain it, the first njpD must be connected with s^r\p [n opposition to the accents, and the second must be pointed WpD. This is the rendering adopted by Ge- senilis in his Thesaurus and Lexicon (ed. Dietr. s. v. ™.?9). The meaning company or troop may certainly be justified from Gen. i. 10, Ex. vii. 19, and Lev. xi. 36, where the word signifies an accumulation of water. Still there is something very strange not only in the application of the word both to a company of traders and also to a troop of horses, but also in the omission of Dsp!D (horses) after the second njpD. Hence the rendering of the LXX. and Vulgate deserves attention, and may possibly be the one to be preferred (as Michaelis, Bertheau on Chron., and Movers assume). The translators of these versions have taken nipo as the name of a place, ef 'Eicove, or rather i/c Kove, de Coa.1 According to this, the rendering would be: " And as for the going out of horses from Egypt and Koa (or Kawe) for Solomon, the kings traders fetched them from Koa (Kawe) for a fixed price." It is true that the situation of Koa cannot be more precisely defined; but there seems to be very little doubt that it was a place for the collection of customs upon the frontier of Egypt. — Ver. 29. " And there came up and went out a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty shekels; and so (in the same manner as for Solomon) they led them out for all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Aram through their hand." n??1P, like 2T\ i*1 2 Sam. viii. 4, x. 18, and Ezek. xxxix. 20, denotes a chariot with the team of horses belonging to it, possibly three horses (see at ch. v. 6), not quadriga (Clericus and others), or two draught horses and two as a reserve (Thenius). Eor the inference, that if a horse cost 150 shekels, a team of four would be obtained for 600, is not quite a certain one, since the chariot itself would certainly not be given in. A hundred and fifty shekels are a little more than 130 thalers (£19, 10s. — Tr.), and 600 would be 525 thalers (£78, 15s.). These amounts are sufficient to show how untenable the opinion of Movers is, that the sums mentioned are not the prices paid for horses and chariots, but the payment made for their exit, or the customs duty. And his other opinion is equally erroneous, namely that the chariots and horses were state carriages and horses of luxury intended for the king. — The merchants are called the king's
1 That Kovi or Kui is the earliest reading of the LXX., and not the Ik O'Kovi of the Cod. Vat. and Alex., is very evident from the statement which we find in the Onomaxt. of Eusebius (ed. Larsow et Parth. p. 260), KwS, Tr^noiop AtyvfTov; for which Jerome has Coa, quae estjuxta AZgyptum, after the Vulgate.
traders, not because a portion of their profits went into the royal treasury as the tax upon trade (Bertheau), nor as the brokers who bought for the king (Thenius), but because they carried on their trade for the king's account. DT£3 cannot be adduced as evidence to the contrary; for linguists require no proof that this cannot mean " auf ihre Hand? as Thenius assumes. Bottchi lanation is the right one, namely, " through their hand," in-:ucli as they brought the fa and chariots themselve to those kings who livi. without emplo]
intermedi The kings of the -*~~ the Bittites in the wi. 3), and of Aram, part Soloi hia
• idolatry into whii 5 in hia king so1 himself t that many fa suddenly, but gradually, Id, and was nut a onciation of the worship of whom he to the day oi his death (eh.;. but consisted simply in the his h as no longer thoroughly the d (ch. xi. 4), and that he inclined tow, idols of his foreign wives and built them alt 3^; that is to E it consisted merely in a syncretic mixture of Jehovah-worship and idolatry, by which the worship which should be paid solely and exclusively to the true God was not only injured, but was even turned into idolatry itself, Jehovah the only true God being placed on a level with the worthless gods of the heathen. — Love to foreign wives no doubt presupposed an inclination to foreign customs; it was not, however, idolatry in itself, but was still reconcilable with that sincere worship of Jehovah which is attributed to Solomon in the earlier years of his reign. At the same time it was a rock on which living faith and true adherence to the Lord might at last suffer shipwreck. And we may even infer from the repeated warnings of God (ch. iii. 14, vi. 12, ix. 4), that from the earliest years of his reign Solomon was in danger of falling into idolatry. This danger did, indeed, spring in his case from his inclination to foreign customs; but this inclination was again influenced by many of the circumstances of his reign, which we must regard as contributing more remotely to his eventual fall. And among the first of these we must place the splendour and glory of his reign. Through long and severe conflicts David had succeeded in conquering all the enemies of Israel, and had not only helped his people to peace and prosperity, but had also raised the kingdom to great power and glory. And Solomon inherited these fruits of his father's reign. Under the blessings of peace he was not only able to carry out the work of building a splendid temple, which his father had urged upon him, but was also able, by a wise use of the sources already existing and by opening new ones, still further to increase the treasures which he had collected, and thereby to exalt the splendour of his kingdom. The treaty with Hiram of Tyre, which enabled him to execute the intended state buildings in Jerusalem, was followed by alliances for the establishment of a widespread commerce both by sea and land, through which ever increasing treasures of gold and silver, and other costly goods, were brought to the king. As this accumulation of riches helped to nourish his inclination to a love of show, and created a kind of luxury which was hardly reconcilable with the simplicity of manners and the piety of a servant of God, so the foreign trade led to a toleration of heathen customs and religious views which could not fail to detract from the reverence paid to Jehovah, however little the trade with foreigners might be in itself at variance with the nature of the Old Testament kingdom of God. And again, even the great wisdom of king Solomon might also become a rock en- dangering his life of faith, not so much in the manner suggested by J. J. Hess (Gcsch. Dav. it SW. ii. p. 413), namely, that an excessive thirst for inquiry might easily seduce him from the open and clearer regions of the kingdom of truth into the darker ones of the kingdom of lies, f magic, and so lead I the paths of superstition; as because the widespread fame of his wisdom brought d pushed and wise men from distant lands to, lem and into alliance with the kini:. and their homage flattered the van the human heart, and led to a things are none of them blamed in the Scriptures, be. they
1 not of n idolatry, but might simply give an indirect imp it, by ' wall of part, the worship of the tn I then <! and all other kit Q r.f his kingdom; and t!
is blamed is that, in O] the command in Dent. xvii.
Ammonitish, and other wives of the nations with whom the were not to intermarry. All that the law expressly prohibited was marriage with Canaanitish women (Deut. vii. 1-3; Ex, xxxiv. 16); consequently the words " of the nation-," etc., are not to be taken as referring merely to the Sidonian and Hittite women (J. D. Mich.); but this prohibition is extended here to all the tribes enumerated in ver. 2, just as in Ezra ix. 2 sqq., x. 3, Neh. xiii. 23; not from a rigour surpassing the law, but in accordance with the spirit of the law, namely, because the reason appended to the law, nc in idololatriam a siqirrstificsis midicribus pclliccrcntur (Clericus), applied to all these nations. The Moabites and Ammonites, moreover, were not to be received into the congregation at all, not even to the tenth generation, and of the Edomites only the children in the third generation were to be received (Deut. xxiii. 4, 8, 9). There was all the less reason, therefore, for permitting marriages with them, that is to say, so long as they retained their nationality or their heathen ways. The words EJ?... ^3n-N? are connected in form with Josh, xxiii. 12, but, like the latter, they really rest upon Ex. xxxiv. 16 and Deut. vii. 1-3. In the last clause Erin is used with peculiar emphasis: Solomon clave to these nations, of which God had said such things, to love, i.e. to enter into the relation of love or into the marriage relation, with them. P^n is used of the attachment of a man to his wife (Gen. ii. 4) and also to Jehovah (Deut. iv. 4, x. 20, etc.). — Vers. 3-8 carry out still further what has been already stated. In ver. 3 the taking of many wives is first explained. He had seven hundred Tfcvto D*BO women of the first rank, who were exalted into princesses, and three hundred concubines. These are in any case round numbers, that is to say, numbers which simply approximate to the reality, and are not to be understood as affirming that Solomon had all these wives and concubines at the same time, but as including all the women who were received into his harem during the whole of his reign, whereas the sixty queens and eighty concubines mentioned in Song of Sol. vi. 8 are to be understood as having been present in the court at one time. Even in this respect Solomon sought to equal the rulers of other nations, if not to surpass them.1 — These women " inclined his heart," i.e. determined the inclina-
1 Nevertheless these numbers, especially that of the wives who were raised to the rank of princesses, appear sufficiently large to suggest the possibility of an error in the numeral letters, although Oriental rulers carried this custom to a very great length, as for example Darius Codomannus, of whom it is related that he took with him 360 pellices on his expedition against Alexander (see Curtius, iii. 3, 24; A then. Deipnos. iii. 1).
tion of his heart. Ver. 4. In the time of old age, when the flesh gained the supremacy over the spirit, they turned his heart to other gods, so that it waa no longer wholly with Jehovah, his God. d!# j entirely devoted to the
Lord (cf. ch. viii. 61), lik heart of David his miner, who had indeed grievously sinned, hut had not fallen into idolatry. — Vers. 5-8. He walked alter the Ashtaroth. etc. A I ling to ver. 7, the idolatry here condemned consisted in the fact that lie built altars to the deities of all his I D wives, upon not stated that he himself also Bu1 even the building of altars for idols in idolatry which waa in with true fidelity to the aaanitish trilx a; her worship slanted i:
l 5,the abomination of tl. rafoum naanites, to whom i valley ohinnom from the tim. the children b to Milooi igh thi informa- tion prevenJ nnining the precise di the two. Mileom \ to the Ohm
Bhipped as king of his people and ■ s such is depicted upon coins with a sword, lance, and shield in his hands, and with two torch at Num. xxi. 29).
The enumeration of the different idols is incomplete; Chemosh being omitted in ver. 5, and Astarte, to whom Solomon also built an altar in Jerusalem, according to 2 Kings xxiii. 13, in ver. 7. Still this incomplete] does not warrant our filling up tin1 supposed gaps by emendations of the text. 'W y~)?} b>JW, as in Judg. ii. 11, iii. 7, etc. '" ^HM N?*?, a pregnant expression for '*'JW rD$ fc&D, as in Num. xiv. 24, xxxii. 11, 12, etc. — These places of sacrifice (n9?> seu at c^- *& 2) Solomon built upon the mountain in front, i.e. to the east, of Jerusalem, and, according to the more precise account in 2 Kings xxiii. 13, to tht1 right, that is to say, on the southern side, of the Mount of Corruption, — in other words, upon the southern peak of the Mount of Olives; and consequently this peak has been called in church tradition from the time of Brocardus onwards, either Mons Offensionis, after the Vulgate rendering of rrrrj'ttn "in in 2 Kings xxiii. 13, or Mons Scandali, Mount of Offence (vid. Eob. Pal. i. 565 and 566).— Ver. 8. " So did he for all his foreign wives," viz. built altars for their gods; for instance, in addition to those already named, he also built an altar for Astarte. These three altars, which are only mentioned in the complete account in 2 Kings xxiii. 13, were sufficient for all the deities of the foreign wives. For the Hittites and Edomites do not appear to have had any deities of their own that were peculiar to themselves. The Hittites no doubt worshipped Astarte in common with the Sidonians, and the Edomites probably worshipped Milcom. In the whole of the Old Testament the only place in which gods of the Edomites are mentioned is 2 Chron. xxv. 20, and there no names are given. Of course we must except Pharaoh's daughter, according to ver. 1, and the remarks already made in connection with that verse; for she brought no idolatrous worship to Jerusalem, and consequently even in later times we do not find the slightest trace of Egyptian idolatry in Jerusalem and Judah.1 Burning incense (niTtpip») is mentioned before sacrificing (ninarp), because vegetable offerings took precedence of animal sacrifices in the nature-worship of Hither Asia (vid. Bahr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 237 sqq.). — Vers. 9 sqq. Through this apostasy from the Lord his God, who had appeared
1 From the fact that.these places of sacrifice still existed even in the time of Josiah, notwithstanding the reforms of Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, and Hezekiah, which rooted out all public idolatry, at least in Jerusalem, Movers infers (Phoniz. ii. 3, p. 207), and that not without reason, that there was an essential difference between these sacred places and the other seats of Israelitish idolatry which were exterminated, namely, that in their national character they were also the places of worship for the foreigners settled in and near Jerusalem, e.g. the Sidonian, Ammonitish, and Moabitish merchants, which were under the protection of treaties, since this is the only ground on which bun twice (ch. in. 5 sqq. and ix. 2 sqq.) and had warned him against idolatry («*] b a oonlimiation of the participle
The emphasis lies upon t] | had ap] to him
Lht' l'UIl t warning him, and had not merely ised him warned
Pained, [n | this, the following annouu at is ma him, no doubt ti tedium it mthv lifetime for thy I. howl> il I will mencement of Solomon's idolatry, but it is brought by njn] Di£] ver. i-i) into logical connection with the punishment with which he is threatened in consequence of that idolatry, because it was not till a later period that it produced any perceptible effect upon his government, yet it ought from the very first to have preserved him from self-security.
Vers. 14-22. The first adversary was Hadad the Edomite, a man of royal birth. The name Tin (T7K in ver. 17, according to an interchange of n and X which is by no means rare) was also borne by a prse-Mosaic king of Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 35), from which we may see that it was not an uncommon name in the royal family of the Edomites. But the conjecture of Ewald and Thenius, that our Hadad was a grandson of Hadar, the last of the kings mentioned there, is quite a groundless one, since it rests upon the false assumption that Hadar (called Hadad in the Chronicles by mistake) reigned in the time of David (see the Coiiiin. on Gen. xxxvi. 31 sqq.). Wfl before DVlKS stands in the place of the relative "NSta: " of royal seed he = who was of the royal seed in Edom" (cf. Ewald, § 332, a). — Vers. 15 sqq. When David had to do with the Edomites,... Hadad lied. HN rrn is analogous to DV n^y\ to have to do with any one, though in a hostile sense, as in the phrase to go to war with (DK) a person, whereas DV njn generally means to be upon the side of any one. The correctness of the reading nvnn is confirmed by all the ancient versions, which have simply paraphrased the meaning in different ways. For Bottcher has already shown that the LXX. did not read niana, as Thenius supposes. The words from rripya to the end of ver. 1G form explanatory circumstantial clauses. On the circumstance itself, compare 2 Sam. viii. 13, 14, with the explanation given there. "The slain," whom Joab went to bury, were probably not the Israelites who had fallen in the battle in the Salt valley (2 Sam. viii. 13), but those who had been slain on the invasion of the land by the Edomites, and still remained unburied. After their burial Joab defeated the Edomites in the valley of Salt, and remained six months in Edom till he had cut off every male. " All Israel " is the whole of the Israelitish army. " Every male " is of course only the men capable of bearing arms, who fell into the hands of the Israelites; for " Hadad and others fled, and the whole of the Idumaean race was not extinct " (Clericus). Then Hadad fled, while yet a little boy, with some of his father's
Edomitish servants, to go to Egypt, going first of all to Midian and thence to Paran. The country of Midian cannot be more precisely defined, inasmuch as we meet with Midianitea sometimes in the peninsula of Sinai on the eastern side of the Elanitic Gulf, where Edrisi and Almlfeda mention a city of Madian (see at Ex. ii. 15), and sometimes on the ea the
Moabitish territory (see at Num. xxii. 4 and Judg. vi. 1 Here, at any rate, we must think of the neighbourhood of the Klanitic Gulf, though not necessarily of the city of Madian.: • lays' journey to the south of Aela; and probably of the country to which Moses fled from,,,, \s the desert of that name between the mountain Sinai and the south of Canaan by Elatli to M« -till nu lad would be obliged to take tin,' road by Klatli m Old vpt, e\ }ie li;l(l token i ii the Midianitea on the i \ Moab
; baraoh red him hospitably, and gave tl.
"~x,nhiv' who had with him, and eventually be found j favour in
•■ him for a wifi own WilCi qiu.rI1 wi\ the principeJ •:. in H,
Judah this title is the king's mother, the president in ti whose place was taken by the family festival as among the Ii IK1 ut;
ancient nations (vid. Dougta i Anal to k lS can!
out by the queen in the paJao - was to thereby adopted among the royal children, to be brought np with them.— Vers, i' l. 22. When Eadad heard Pt of the death of David and Joab, he asked permission of Pharaoh to return to his own country. Pharaoh replied, "What is there lacking to thee with me \u This answer was e pure expression of love and attachment to Hadad, and involved the request that he would remain. But Hadad answered, " No, but let me go." We are not told that Pharaoh then let him go, but this must be supplied; just as in Num. x. 32 we are not told what Hobab eventually did in consequence of Moses' request, but it has to be supplied from the context. The return of Hadad to his native land is clearly to be inferred from the fact that, according to vers. 14 and 25, he rose up as an adversary of Solomon.1
Vers. 23-25. A second adversary of Solomon was Bezon, the son of Eliadah (for the name see at ch. xv. 18), who had fled from his lord Hadadezer, king of Zobah, and who became the captain of a warlike troop p^?), when David smote them (DAK), ie. the troops of his lord (2 Sam. viii. 3, 4). Eezon probably fled from his lord for some reason which is not assigned,
1 The LXX. have supplied what is missing e conjectura: xccl duiorps-tyiv " Aoep (i.e. Hadad) slg r'Av yvju ocvrou' c&vtvi ij k entice yu £7roiY}asu"A^sp' xctl sfiotpv- QvuYioiv ' lapxfa, kocI ifioHxihsvaeu Iv yfi ' TZtiup,. Thenius proposes to alter the Hebrew text accordingly, and draws this conclusion, that " shortly after the accession of Solomon, Hadad, having returned from Egypt, wrested from the power of the Israelites the greatest part of Edom, probably the true mountainland of Edom, so that certain places situated in the plain, particularly Eziongeber, remained in the hands of the Israelites, and intercourse could be maintained with that port through the Arabah, even though not quite without disturbance." This conclusion, which is described as " historical," is indeed at variance with 1 Kings xxii. 48, according to which Edom had no king even in the time of Jehoshaphat, but only a vicegerent, and also with 2 Kings viii. 20, according to which it was not till the reign of Jehoshaphat's son Joram that Edom fell away from Judah. But this discrepancy Thenius sets aside by the remark at 1 Kings xxii. 48, that in Jehoshaphat's time the family of Hadad had probably died out, and Jehoshaphat prudently availed himself of the disputes which arose concerning the succession to enforce Judah's right of supremacy over Edom, and to appoint first a vicegerent and then a new king, though perhaps one not absolutely dependent upon him. But this conjecture as to the relation in which Jehoshaphat stood to Edom is proved to be an imaginary fiction by the fact that, although the history does indeed mention a revolt of the Edomites from Judah (2 Chron. xx.; see at 1 Kings xxii. 48), it not only says nothing whatever about the dying out of the royal family of Hadad or about disputes concerning the succession, but it does not even hint at them. — But with regard to the additions made to this passage by the LXX., to which even Ewald (Gesck. iii. p. 276) attributes historical worth, though without building upon them such confident historical combinations as Thenius, we may easily convince ourselves of their critical worthlessness, if we only pass our eye over the whole section (vers. 14-25), instead of merely singling out those readings of the LXX. which support our preconceived opinions, and overlooking all the rest, after the thoroughly unscientific mode of criticism adopted by a Thenius or Bbttcher.
when the latter was encjasjed in war with David, before his complete overthrow, and collected together a company from the fugitives, with which he afterwards marched to Damascus, and having taken possession of that city, made himself king over it. This probably did not take place till towards the close of David's reign, or even after his death, though it was at the very beginning of Solomon's reiim; for " he became an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon (i.e. during the whole of his reign), and that with (beside) the mischief which Hadad did, and he abhorred Israel (i.e. became disgusted with the Israelitish rule), and became king over Aram." "H-n "^ *s an abbreviated expression, to which nfe^J may easily be supplied, as it has been by the LXX. {rid. Ewald, § 292, l, Anm.). It is impossible to gather from these few words in what the mischief done by Hadad to Solomon con-
For example, the LXX. have connect* ber the two accounts respecting the adversaries Hadad and Rezon who rose up against Solomon (ver. 14 and ver. 23), which are separated in the Hebrew text, and have interpolate! what is stated concerning Rezon in \ and 24 after "Slsn in ver. 14, and consequently have been obliged to alter 'V) JDfef \T1 in ver. 2T> into koci
Y.iotv 1x.to.-j, because they had previously cited Hadad and Rezon as adversaries, whereas in the Hebrew text these words apply to Kezon alone. But the rest of ver. 20, namely the words from njTVTOKl onwards, they have not given till the close of ver. 22 (I. XX.); and in order to connect this with what precedes, they have interpolated the words y.tti ccviarci'^/iv "Ao-o tl; nj» yr,'j cfjrcl. The Alexandrians were indue to this intertwining of the accounts concerning Hadad and Rezon, which are kept separate in the Hebrew text, partly by the fact that Hadad and Rezon are introduced as adversaries of Solomon with the (yen. 14 and 28), but more especially by the fact that in ver. 25 of the Hebrew text the injury done to Solomon by I merely referred to in a supplementary manner in connection with Rezon's enterprise, and ii rted parenthetically within the account of the latter. The Alexandrian translators did not know what to make of this, because they did not understand njnrrnNI and took nsi for HNT> *v~r> n x-ocki'cc. With this reading *pq which follows was necessarily understood as referring to Hadad; and as Hadad was an Edomite, Tpc^ D1S"^y bad to be altered into fflmrtXtt Kouu. Consequently all the alterations of the LXX. in this section are simply the result of an arbitrary treatment of the Hebrew text, which they did not really understand, and consist of a collocation of all that is homogeneous, as every reader of this translation who is acquainted with the original text must see so clearly even at the very beginning of the chapter, where the number of Solomon's wives is taken from ver. 3 of the Hebrew text and interpolated into ver. 1, that, as Thenius observes, "the true state of the case can only be overlooked from superficiality of observation or from preconceived opinion."
sisted.1 Kezon, on the other hand, really obtained possession of the rule over Damascus. Whether at the beginning or not till the end of Solomon's reign cannot be determined, since all that is clearly stated is that he was Solomon's adversary during the whole of his reign, and attempted to revolt from him from the very beginning. If, however, he made himself king of Damascus in the earliest years of his reign, he cannot have maintained his sway very long, since Solomon afterwards built or fortified Tadmor in the desert, which he could not have done if he had not been lord over Damascus, as the caravan road from Gilead to Tadmor (Palmyra) went past Damascus.2
Vers. 26—40. Attempted rebellion of Jeroboam the Ejphraimite. — Hadad and Eezon are simply described as adversaries (19^) of Solomon; but in the case of Jeroboam it is stated that " he lifted up his hand against the king," i.e. he stirred up a tumult or rebellion. 2 T D'nn is synonymous with 3 T nk>3 in 2 Sam. xviii. 28, xx. 21. It is not on account of this rebellion, which was quickly suppressed by Solomon, but on account of the later enterprise of Jeroboam, that his personal history is so minutely detailed. Jeroboam was an Ephraimite CO"!??; as in 1 Sam. i. 1, Judg. xii. 5) of Zereda, i.e. Zarthan, in the Jordan valley (see ch. vii. 46), son of a widow, and "tt?* i-e- no^ a subject (Then.), but an officer, of Solomon. All that is related of his rebellion against the king is the circumstances under which it took place, lew "Uin nr this is how it stands with, as in Josh. v. 4. Solomon built Millo (ch. ix. 15), and closed the rent (the defile?) in the city of David. p.?j rwptura, cannot be a rent or breach in the wall of the city of David, inasmuch as noin is not added, and since the fortification of the city by David (2 Sam. v. 9) no
1 What Josephus (Ant. viii. 7, 6) relates concerning an alliance between Hadad and Rezon for the purpose of making hostile attacks upon Israel, is merely an inference drawn from the text of the LXX., and utterly worthless.
2 Compare Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 276. It is true that more could be inferred from 2 Chron. viii. 3, if the conquest of the city of Hamath by Solomon were really recorded in that passage, as Bertheau supposes. But although ^y pfn is used to signify the conquest of tribes or countries, we cannot infer the conquest of the city of Hamath from the words, " Solomon went to Hamath Zobah n^V ptm and built Tadmor," etc., since all that n^y pTIT distinctly expresses is the establishment of his power over the land of Hamath Zobah. And this Solomon could have done by placing fortifications in that province, because he was afraid of rebellion, even if Hamath Zobah had not actually fallen away from his power.
hostile attack had ever been made upon Jerusalem; but in all probability it denotes the ravine which separated Zion from Moriah and Ophel, the future Tyropaum, through the closing of which the temple mountain was brought within the city wall, and the • fortification of the city of David was completed (Thenius, Ewald, Gcsch. ill p. 330). Compare pTBD, a gap in the coast, a bay On the occasion of this building, Jeroboam proved himself a yn "fal, i.e. a very able and energetic man; so that when Solomon saw the young man, that he was doing work, urging it forward, he committed to him the oversight over all the heavy work of the house of Joseph. It must have been while occupying this post that lie attempted a rebellion agar Solomon. This is indicated by 'U1 Wl Ttl m Vl According to cli. xii. 4, the reason for the rebellion is to be sought for in the appointment of the Ephraimil w works. This awakened afresh the old antipathy of that tril rudah, and tboam availed himself of this to in ifi,)n. V< sqq. At that time the prop] met him in the field and disci him the word of tl I rd, that he should I rael tfnnnpa that tin. the time when Jeroboam had h,. W(„.].S( ail(1 not after he had already stirred up I allien. F< i the whole
-:z t Dnn wnich comm< with \;h, so that nja sti no such gap in tfa; i,v Xhenins, v, builds upon this opinion most untenable oonjecttu to the mtertwini]!it sources. At that time, as Jeroboam was one day going out of -; Jem, tl phet Ahijah of
Shilo (Seilun) d m by the way >T^, with a new upper
as Ewald '. lii. p. 388], into twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam, " Take thee ten pieces, for Jehovah saith, 1 will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and give tfa tribes; and one tribe shall remain to him (Solomon)
for David's sake," etc. The new nojfc was probably only a large four-cornered cloth, which was thrown over the shoulders like the Hcik of the Arabs, and enveloped the whole of the upper portion of the body (see my bill Archdol. ii pp. 36, 37). By the tearing of the new garment into twelve pieces, of which Jeroboam was to take ten for himself, the prophetic announcement was symbolized in a very emphatic manner. This symbolical action made the promise a completed fact. " As the garment was torn in pieces and lay before the eyes of Jeroboam, so had the division of the kingdom already taken place in the counsel of God " (0. v. Gerlach). There was something significant also in the circumstance that it was a new garment, which is stated twice, and indicates the newness, i.e. the still young and vigorous condition, of the kingdom (Thenius).
In the word of God explaining the action it is striking that Jeroboam was to receive ten tribes, and the one tribe was to remain to Solomon (vers. 31, 32, 35, 36, as in ver. 13). The nation consisted of twelve tribes, and Ahijah Lad torn his garment into twelve pieces, of which Jeroboam was to take ten; so that there were two remaining. It is evident at once from this, that the numbers are intended to be understood symbolically and not arithmetically. Ten as the number of completeness and totality is placed in contrast with one, to indicate that all Israel was to be torn away from the house of David, as is stated in ch. xii. 20, "they made Jeroboam king over all Israel," and only one single fragment was to be left to the house of Solomon out of divine compassion. This one tribe, however, is not Benjamin, the one tribe beside Judah, as Hupfeld (on Ps. lxxx.), C. a Lap., Mich., and others suppose, but, according to the distinct statement in ch. xii. 20, "the tribe of Judah only." Nevertheless Benjamin belonged to Judah; for, according to ch. xii. 21, Kehoboam gathered together the whole house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin to fight against the house of Israel (which had fallen away), and to bring the kingdom again to himself. And so also in «2 Chron. xi. 3 and 23 Judah and Benjamin are reckoned as belonging to the kingdom of Eehoboam. This distinct prominence given to Benjamin by the side of Judah overthrows the explanation suggested by Seb. Schmidt and others, namely, that the description of the portion left to Eehoboam as one tribe is to be explained from the fact that Judah and Benjamin, on the border of which Jerusalem was situated, were regarded in a certain sense as one, and that the little Benjamin was hardly taken into consideration at all by the side of the great Judah. For if Ahijah had regarded Benjamin as one with Judah, he would not have torn his garment into twelve pieces, inasmuch as if Benjamin was to be merged in Judah, or was not to be counted along with it as a distinct tribe, the whole nation could only be reckoned as eleven tribes. Moreover the twelve tribes did not so divide themselves, that Jeroboam really received ten tribes and Eehoboam only one or only two. In reality there were three tribes that fell to the kingdom of Judah, and only nine to the kingdom of Israel, Ephraim and Manasseh being reckoned as two tribes, since the tribe of Levi was not counted in the political classification. The kingdom of Judah included, beside the tribe of Judah, both the tribe of Benjamin and also the tribe of Simeon, the territory of which, according to Josh, xix. 1-9, was within the tribe-territory of Judah and completely surrounded by it, so that the Simeonites would have I een obliged to emigrate and give up their tribe-land altogether, if they desired to attach themselves to the kingdom of Israel. But it cannot be inferred from 2 Chron. xv. 9 and xxxiv. 6 that an emigration of the whole tribe had taken place (see also at eh. xii. 17). On the other hand, whilst the northern border of the tribe of Benjamin, with the cities of Bethel, Ramah, and Jericho, fell to the kingdom of Jeroboam (ch, \i; w. 17, 21, \vi. 34),
! of the e;; the tribe of Pan were included in the kingdom of Judah, namely, Ziklag, which Achish had presented to David, and alflO Xuiva and AjalOD (2 Chion. xi. 10, xxviii. 18), in which Judah obtain, d I >mpensatioD for the cities of Qjamin of which it had been deprived.1 I [uently there
1 On the other hand, the fact that in Pfc lxxx. L' Benjamin is placed between Ephraim and liana I thai it I I to the kingdom of Earael;
nor can this be inferred from the met thai Benjamin, as the tribe to which b'aul belonged, at the earlier fplit among the tribes took the tide of those which were o] Darid, and that at a still hit Uion originated with Benjamin. For in Pa. boot 2 the exposition ii disputed, and the jealousy of Benjamin towardl.Judah appears to have become extinct with the dying out of the royal house of Saul. Again, the explanation suggested by Oehler (Hersogi < VM of the repeated statement that the house of David was to receive only i ne tribe, namely, that there was not a single whole tribe belonging to the southern kingdom Judah, is by no means satisfactory.
For it cannot be proved that any portion of the tribe of Simeon ever belonged to the kingdom of Israel, although the number ten was not complete without it. And it oannot be inferred from 2 Chron. xv. 9 that Simeonites had settled outside their tribe-territory. And, as a rule, single families or households that may have emigrated cannot be taken into consideration as having any bearing upon the question before us, since, according to the very same passage of the Chronicles, many members of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh had emigrated to the kingdom of Judah.
only remained nine tribes for the northern kingdom. For 'ttl *W }V^h see at ver. 13. For ver. 33 compare vers. 4-8. The plurals ^^ry, Vinna*, and wH are not open to critical objection, but are used in accordance with the fact, since Solomon did not practise idolatry alone, but many in the nation forsook the Lord along with him. Pp?, with a Chaldaic ending (see Ges. § 87, 1, a). In vers. 34-36 there follows a more precise explanation: Solomon himself is not to lose the kingdom, but to remain prince all his life, and his son is to retain one tribe; both out of regard to David (vid. vers. 12 and 13). N^3 *3 tifttPK, " but I will set him for prince," inasmuch as leaving him upon the throne was not merely a divine permission, but a divine act. " That there may be a light to my servant David always before me in Jerusalem." This phrase, which is repeated in ch. xv. 4, 2 Kings viii. 19, 2 Chron. xxi. 7, is to be explained from 2 Sam. xxi. 17, where David's regal rule is called the light which God's grace had kindled for Israel, and affirms that David was never to want a successor upon the throne. — Vers. 37-39. The condition on which the kingdom of Jeroboam wras to last was the same as that on which Solomon had also been promised the continuance of his throne in ch. iii. 14, vi. 12, ix. 4, namely, faithful observance of the commandments of God. The expression, " be king over all that thy soul desireth," is explained in what follows by " all Israel." It is evident from this that Jeroboam had aspired after the throne. On the condition named, the Lord would build him a lasting house, as He had done for David (see at 2 Sam. vii. 16). In the case of Jeroboam, however, there is no allusion to a lasting duration of the HDjpD (kingdom) such as had been ensured to David; for the division of the kingdom was not to last for ever, but the seed of David was simply to be chastised. riKT J5w, for this, i.e. because of the apostasy already mentioned; " only not all the days," i.e. not for ever. WW is explanatory so far as the sense is concerned: " for I will humble." Jeroboam did not fulfil this condition, and therefore his house was extirpated at the death of his son (ch. xv. 28 sqq.). — Ver. 40 is a continuation of ^E3 T D*V1 in ver. 26; for vers. 27—39 contain simply an explanation of Jeroboam's lifting up his hand against Solomon. It is obvious from this that Jeroboam had organized a rebellion against Solomon; and also, as ver. 2 9 is closely connected with ver. 28, that tins did not take place till after the prophet had foretold his reigning over ten tribes after Solomon's death. But this did not justify Jeroboam's attempt; nor was Ahijah's announcement an inducement or authority to rebel. Ahijah's conduct was perfectly analogous to that of Samuel in the case of Saul, and is no more to be attributed to selfish motives than his was, as though the prophetic order desired to exalt itself above the human sovereign (Ewald; see, on the other hand, Oehler's article in Herzog's Ci/cl.). For Ahijah expressly declared to Jeroboam that Jehovah would let Solomon remain prince over Israel during the remainder of his life. This deprived Jeroboam of every pretext for rebellion. Moreover the prophet's announcement, even without this restriction, gave him no right to seize with his own hand and by means of rebellion upon that throne which God intended to > him. Jeroboam might have learned how he ought to act under these circum b from the example of David, who had far D '-mud, according to human opinion, for rebelling aj d, his persecutor and mortal foe, and who neverthi vrn when God had delivered his enemy into his hand, BO that he might have slain him, did not ventr, Lay his hand upon the anointed oft' d, but waited in pious submission bo th M G 1, till the Lord opened the way to the throne through the death of Saul. By the side of David baviour toward 8 al the attempt of J< am has all the appe of a criminal rebellion, so that Solomon would have been perfectly justified in putting him to death, if Jei boam had oot ped to his hands by a fligb pt. — On Shishak at ch.
of the original works, in which further LnfbrmatJ md iCerning his acts and his wisdom see the Introduction); the length of his reign, vi th, burial, and successor. Solomon did not live to a vei t, age, since he was not more than twenty yean old when he ascended the throne. — Whether Solomon turned to the Lord again with all his heart, a question widely di I by the older commentators (see cannot be ascertained from the Scriptures. If the Preacher Kohclcth) is traceable to Solomon so far as the leading thoughts are concerned, we should find in this fact an evidence of his conversion, or at least a proof that at the close of his life Solomon discovered the vanity of all earthly possessions and aims, and declared the fear of God to be- the only abiding good, with which a man can stand before the judgment of God.
IL— HISTORY OF THE KINGDOMS OF IBRAEL AND JUDAH TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FORMER.
After the death of Solomon the Israelitish kingdom of God was rent asunder, through the renunciation of the Davidic sovereignty by the ten tribes, into the two kingdoms of Israel (the ten tribes) and Judah; and through this division not only was the external political power of the Israelitish state weakened, but the internal spiritual power of the covenant nation was deeply shaken. And whilst the division itself gave rise to two small and weak kingdoms in the place of one strong nation, the power of both was still further shaken by their attitude towards each other. — The history of the two kingdoms divides itself into three epochs. In the first epoch, i.e. the period from Jeroboam to Omri in Israel, and from Eehoboam to Asa in Judah (1 Kings xii.-xvi.), they maintained a hostile attitude towards each other, until Israel sustained a severe defeat in a great war with Judah; and on the renewal of its attacks upon Judah, king Asa called the Syrians to his help, and thereby entangled Israel in long and severe conflicts with this powerful neighbouring state. The hostility terminated in the second epoch, under Ahab and his sons Ahaziah and Joram in Israel, and under Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah of Judah, since the two royal families connected themselves by marriage, and formed an alliance for the purpose of a joint attack upon their foreign foes, until the kings of both kingdoms, viz. Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah, were slain at the same time by Jehu (1 Kings xvii.-2 Kings x. 27). This period of union was followed in the third epoch, from Jehu in Israel and Joash in Judah onwards, by further estrangement and reciprocal attacks, which led eventually to the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians through the untheocratical policy of Ahaz.
If we take a survey of the attitude of the two kingdoms towards the Lord, the invisible God-Kinc? of His people during these three epochs, to all appearance the idolatry was stronger in the kingdom of Judah than in the kingdom of Israel. For in the latter it is only under Ahab and his two sons, under whom the worship of Baal was raised into the state religion at the instigation of Jezebel the Phoenician wife of Ahab, that we meet with the actual worship of idols. Of the other kings both before and afterwards, all that is rela: that they walked in the ways of Jeroboam, and did not desist from his sin, the worship of the calves. In the kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, out of thirteen k: nly live were so truly devoted to the Lord that they promoted the worship of Jehovah and opposed idolatry (viz. Asa, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Jotham, and Hezekiah). of tin- others, it is true that Joash and Amaziah walked for a long time in the ways of the Lord, but in the closing yean of their reign they forsook the God of their fathers to idols and worship them 2 Chron xxiv. IS and.\xv.
the worship of Jehovah by the Levites who emigrated from the kingdom of the ten tribes to Judah; but in the course of thi k the law of the Lord, and Judah with him, so that altars of high plai; al columns, and Aaherah idols, w< set up on every hill and und< ami there v.
n male prostitutes in tin- land, and Judah ] I all the abominations of the nations that:,• |;,]
these sins of his lather Ab;jam also walked (1 Kings XV.
At a later period, in the reign of Jorum, tl - hip of Baal was transplant, d from Israel to Judah and Jerusalem, and v, ilously maintained by Aha/iah and his mother Athaliah. [1 W still worse under Aliaz, wl. so far ^et up an idolatrous altar in the court of the temple and to close the temple door-, for the purpose of abolishing altogether the legal worship of Jehovah. But notwithstanding this repeated spread of idolatry, tl. from the Lord was not so great and deep in the kingdom of Judah as in the kingdom of Israel. This is evident from the fact that idolatry could not strike a firm root there, inasmuch as the kings who were addicted to it were always followed by pious and God-fearing rulers, who abolished the idolatrous abominations, and nearly all of whom had long reigns; so that during the 253 years which intervened between the division of the kingdom and the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, idolatry did not prevail in Judah for much more than fifty-three years/ and for about 200 years the worship of the true God was maintained according to the commandment of the law. This constant renewal of a victorious reaction against the foreign deities shows very clearly that the law of God, witli its ordinances and institutions for divine worship, had taken firm and deep root in the people and kingdom, and that the reason why idolatry constantly revived and lifted up its head afresh was, that the worship of Jehovah prescribed in the law made no concessions to the tendency to idolatry in hearts at enmity against God. It was different with the kingdom of the ten tribes. There the fact that idolatry only appeared in the reigns of Ahab and his sons and successors, is to be accounted for very simply from the attitude of that kingdom toAvards the Lord and His lawful worship. Although, for instance, the secession of the ten tribes from the house of David was threatened by God, as a punishment that would come upon Solomon and his kingdom on account of Solomon's idolatry; on the part of the rebellious tribes themselves it was simply the ripe fruit of their evil longing for a less theocratic and more heathen kingdom, and nothing but the work of opposition to the royal house appointed by Jehovah, which had already shown itself more than once in the reign of David, though it had been suppressed again by the weight of his government, which was strong in the Lord.
This opposition became open rebellion against the Lord, when Jeroboam, its head, gave the ten tribes a religious constitution opposed to the will of God for the purpose of establishing his throne, and not only founded a special sanctuary for his subjects, somewhat after the model of the tabernacle or of the temple at Jerusalem, but also set up golden calves as symbols and images of Jehovah the invisible God, to whom no likeness can be made. This image-worship met the wishes and religious cravings of the sensual and carnally-minded people, because it so far filled up the gap between the legal
1 Namely, fourteen years under Rehoboam, three under Abijah, six under Joram, one under Ahaziah, six under Athaliah, and sixteen under Ahaz, — in all forty-six years; to which we have also to add the closing years of the reigns of Joash and Amaziah.
worship of Jehovah and the worship of the nature-deities, that the contrast between Jehovah and the Baalim almost entirely disappeared, and the principal ground was thereby removed for the opposition on the part of the idolatrous nation to the stringent and exclusive worship of Jehovah. In this respect the worship of the calves worked more injuriously upon the religious and moral "life of the nation than the open worship of idols. This sin of Jeroboam is therefore "the ground, the root and cause of the very sinful development of the kingdom of Israel, which soon brought down the punishment of God, since even from the earliest time one judgment after another fell openly upon the kingdom. Tor beside the sin of Jeroboam, that which was the ground of its isolation continued to inert and gave rise to tumult, opposing aspirants to the throne, and revolutionary movements in the nation, so that the house of Israel was often split up within itself" (Ziegler). Therefore the judgment, with which even from the time of Moses the covenant nation had been threatened in case of obstinate rebellion against its God, namely the judgment of dispersion among the heathen, fell upon the ten tribes much earlier than in Jndah ise Israel had filled up the measure of sin earlier
The chronological computation of this period, both as a whole and in its sepai f the more difficult features connected with this portion of the history of the Israelite!* kingdom. As our 1 ks gite not only the length of time that ry king both of and Jndah I i, but also the time when every king of J>rael ascended the throne, calcuhr according to the year of the reign of the contemporaneous king of Jndah, and mm versa, these accounts unquestionably furnish us with very important help in determining the chronoL of the separate data; but this again is rendered difficult and uncertain by the fact, that the sum-total of the years of tl several kings is greater, as a rule, than the number of years that they can possibly have reigned according to the synchronistic accounts of the contemporaneous sovereigns in the other kingdom. Chronologists have therefore sought from time immemorial to reconcile the discrepancies by assuming inaccuracies in the accounts, or regencies and interregna. " The necessity for such assumptions is indisputable, from the fact that the discrepancies in the numbers of the years are absolutely irreconcilable without them.1 Cut if the application of them in the several cases is not to be dependent upon mere caprice, the reconciliation of the sum-totals of the years that the different kin^s reicmed with the differences which wre obtain from the chronological data in the synchronistic accounts must be effected upon a fixed and well-founded historical principle, regencies and interregna being only assumed in cases where there are clear indications in the text. Most of the differences can be reconciled by consistently observing and applying the principle pointed out in the Talmud, viz. that the years of the kings are reckoned from Xisan to Xisan, and that with such precision, that even a single day before or after Xisan is reckoned as equal to a year, — a mode of reckoning which is met with even in the New Testament, e.g. in the statement that Jesus rose from the dead after three days, or on the third day, and also in the writings of Josephus, so that it is no doubt an early Jewish custom,' — for, according to this, it is not necessary to assume a single interregnum in the kingdom of Judah, and only one regency (that
1 This is indirectly admitted even by 0. Wolff (in his Versuch die Widerspriichc in den Jahrreihen dcr Konige Judo's und Israel's und andere Dijfftrenzen in der bill. Clironologie auszugleichen; Thcol. Stud. >/. Krit. 1858, p. 625 sqq.), though for the most part he declares himself opposed to such assumptions as arbitrary loopholes, inasmuch as, with his fundamental principle to adhere firmly to the years of the reigns of the kings of Judah as normative, he is only able to effect a reconciliation by shortening at his pleasure the length of the reigns given in the text for the kings of Israel in the period extending from Rehoboam to the death of Ahaziah of Judah, and in the following period by arbitrarily interpolating a thirty-one years' interregnum of the Israelitish kin^s in the kingdom of Judah between Amaziah and Uzziah.
anni regibus, ac dies quidem nuns in anno (ridel, post calendas Nisani) iustar anni computatur." — Ibid.: rUK* 31C'n n:B* 5)102 inx DV, u unus dies in Jine anni pro anno computatur." For the examples of the use of this mode of calculation in Josephus, see Wieseler, chronol. Synapse der vier Evangelkn (Hamb. 1852), p. 52 sqq. They are sufficient of themselves to refute the assertion of Joach. Hartmann, Systema chronol. bibL, Rostoch. 1777, p. 253 sq., that this is a mere invention of the Rabbins and later commentators, even though the biblical writers may not have carried it out to such an extent as to reckon one single day before or after the commencement of Nisan as equal to a whole year, as is evident from 2 Kings xv. 17 and 23.
of Joram with his father Jehoshaphat), which is clearly indicated in the text (2 Kings viii. 1 6); and in the kingdom of Israel there is no necessity to assume a single regency, and only two interregna (the first after Jeroboam il, the second between Pekah and Hoshea). — If, for example, we arrange the chronological data of the biblical text upon this principle, we obtain for the period between the division of the kingdom and the Babylonian captivity the following table, which only differs from the statements in the text in two instances,1 and has a guarantee of its correctness in the fact that it coincides with the well-established chronological data of the universal history of the ancient world."
1 Namely, in the fact that the commencement of the reign of Jehoahaz of Israel is placed in the twenty-second year of Joash of Jttdab, and not in the twenty-third, according to 2 Kings xiii. 1, and that that of Azariah or Uzziah of Judah is placed in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam of Israel, and not the twenty-seventh, according to 2 Kings XT. 1. The reasons for this will be given in connection with the passages themselves.
- Xot only with the ordinary chronological calculation as to the beginning and end of this entire period, which has been adopted in most text -books of the biblical history, and taken from U.-serii Annates Vet et Novi Test, but also with such data of ancient history as have been astronomically established. For the fourth year of Jchoiakim, with which the captivity or seventy years1 servitude of the.lews in Babylon commences, coincides with the twenty-first year of the reign of Nabopolasar, in the iifth year of wl. reign an eclipse of the moon, recorded in Almagest, was observed, which eclipse, according to the calculation of Ideler (in the AbhdU. der Berliner Academie der rVissensch. JUr hittor. Klasst of the year 1314, pp. 202 and 224), took place on April 22 of the year 621 B.C. Consequently the twenty-first year of Nabopolasar, in which he died, coincides with the year G()o B.C.; and the first conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which occurred before the death of Nabopolasar, took place in the year GOG B.C. — Compare with this Marc. Niebuhr's Geschichte Assurs und Babels, p. 17. Among other things, this scholar observe-, at p. o, note 1, that " the whole of the following investigation has given us no occasion whatever to cherish any doubts as to the correctness of the narratives and numbers in the Old Testament;" and again, at p. 88 sqq., he has demonstrated the agreement of the chronological data of the Old Testament from Azariah or Uzziah to the captivity with the Canon of Ptolemy, and in so doing has only deviated two years from the numbers given in our chronological table, by assigning the battle at Carchemish to the year 143 sera Xahonas., i.e. C05 B.C., the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, 144 ser. Nab., or G04 B.C., and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple to the year 1G2 ter. Nub., or 586 B.C., — a difference which arises chiefly from the fact that Niebuhr reckons the years of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar given in the Old Test, from the death of Nabopolasar in the year 605, and assumes that the first year of Nebuchadnezzar corresponded to the year 605 B.C.
Clironological View of the Principal Events from the Division of the Kingdom to the Babylonian Captivity.
Rehoboam,reigned 17 years
Jeroboam, reigned 22 years
Jeroboam +. Anarchy 11 years
Shishak of Egypt, plunders Jerusalem..
Serah the Cushite Benhadad 1. of Syria.
Ithobal, king of Tyre and Sidon.
Destruction of the Kingdom king of Assyria So, king of Egypt
Salmanasar, king of Assyria
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, besieges Jerusalem lach-Baladan's embassy.
Esarhaddon sends colonists to Samaria.
Nabopolasar, king <>f Babylon
Battle at Megiddo with l'haraoh-Necho...
tie at Carchemish and conquest of Jerusalem
Stcond conquest of Jerusalem and deportation
Pharaoh-Hophra, king of Egypt.
Evil-merodach. Cyrus sole ruler
1. From the Division of the Kingdom to the Ascent of the Throne by Ahab in the 38th year of Asa King of Judah.
This epoch embraces only fifty-seven years, which are filled up in the kingdom of Judah by the reigns of three kings, and in the kingdom of Israel by six rulers from four different houses, Jeroboam's sin of rebellion against the ordinance and commandment of God having produced repeated rebellions, so that one dynasty was ever rising up to overthrow and exterminate another. — Commencing with the secession of the ten tribes from Rehoboam, we have first of all an account of the founding of the kingdom of Israel (ch. xii.), and of the predictions of the prophets concerning the introduction of the calf-worship (ch. xiii.) and the rejection of Jeroboam and his house by God (ch. xiv. 1-20); and after this the most important facts connected with the reigns of Rehoboam, Abijam, and Asa are given (ch. xiv. 21-xv. 24); and, finally, a brief history of the kingdom of Israel from the ascent of the throne by Nadab to the death of Omri (ch. xv. 25-xvi. 28).
CHAP. XII. SECESSION OF THE TEN TRIBES FROM THE HOUSE OF DAVID, AND FOUNDING OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.
The jealousy which had prevailed from time immemorial between Ephraim and Judah, the two most powerful tribes of the covenant nation, and had broken out on different occasions into open hostilities (Judg. viii. 1 sqq.; 2 Sam. ii. 9, xix. 42 sqq.), issued, on the death of Solomon, in the division of the kingdom; ten tribes, headed by Ephraim, refusing to do homage to Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, and choosing Jeroboam the Ephraimite as their king. Now, although the secession of the ten tribes from the royal house of David had been ordained by God as a punishment for Solomon's idolatry, and not only had Solomon been threatened with this punishment, but the sovereignty over ten tribes had been promised to Jeroboam by the prophet Ahijah, whilst the secession itself was occasioned by Rehoboam's imprudence; yet it was essentially a rebellion against the Lord and His anointed, a conspiracy on the part of these tribes against Judah and its king Rehoboam. Eor apart from the fact that the tribes had no right to choose at their pleasure a different king from the one who was the lawful heir to the throne of David, the very circumstance that the tribes who were discontented with Solomon's government did not come to Jerusalem to do homage to Rehoboam, but chose Sichem as the place of meeting, and had also sent for Jeroboam out of Egypt, showed clearly enough that it was their intention to sever themselves from the royal house of David; so that the harsh reply given by Rehoboam to their petition that the service imposed upon them might be lightened, furnished them with the desired opportunity for carrying out the secession upon which they had already resolved, and for which Jeroboam was the suitable man. And we have already shown at ch. xi. 40 that the promise of the throne, which Jeroboam had already received from God, neither warranted him in rebelling against Solomon, nor in wresting to himself the government over the tribes that were discontented with the house of David after Solomon's death. The usurpation of the throne was therefore Jeroboam's first sin (vers. 1-24), to which he added a second and much greater one immediately after his ascent of the throne, namely, the establishment of an unlawful worship, by which he turned the political division into a religious schism and a falling away from Jehovah the God-King of His people (vers. 25-33).
Vers. 1-24. Secf.ssion or the Ten Tribes (cf. 2 Chron. x. 1— xi 4). — Vers. 1-1. Rehoboam went to Shecheni, because all Israel had come thither to make him king. "All Israel," according to what follows (cf. vers. 20 and 21), was the ton tribes beside Judah ami Benjamin The right of making king the prince whom God had chosen, i.r. of anointing him and doing homage to him (compare 1 Chron. x\\..'is, win -re TrP'"? alternates with IJ^OplJB'D, 2 Sam. ii. 4, v. 3), was an old traditional right, in Israel, and the trib had ••<! it not only in the case of
Saul and David (1 Sam. xi. 15; 2 Sam. ii. 4, v. 3), but in that of Solomon also (1 Chron. xxix. 22). The ten tribes of [srael made use of this right on Rehoboam's ascent of the throne; but instead of coming to Jerusalem, the residence of the king and capital of the kingdom, as they ought to have done, and doing homage there to the legitimate bu< i oi S Lomon, they had gone to Sichem, the present Nabulus (see at (Jen. xii. G and xxxiii. 18), the place where the ancient national gatherings were held in the tribe of Kphraini Josh. xxiv. 1), and where Abimelech the son oi' Gideon had offered himself as king in the time of the Judges (Judg. ix. 1 sqq.). On the choice of Sichem as the place for doing homage Kimehi has quite correctly observed, that " they sought an opportunity for transferring the government to Jeroboam, and therefore were unwilling to come to Jerusalem, but came to Sichem, which belonged to Ephraim, whilst Jeroboam was an Ephraimite." If there could be any further doubt on the matter, it would be removed by the fact that they had sent for Jeroboam the son of Xebat to come from Egypt, whither he had fled from Solomon (ch. xi. 40), and attend this meeting, and that Jeroboam took the lead in the meeting, and no doubt suggested to those assembled the demand which they should lay before Eehoboam (ver. 4).1 — The construction of vers. 2 and 3 is a complicated one, since it is only in 1N3*} in ver. 3 that the apodosis occurs to the protasis 't}1!PbB>3 Wf and several circumstantial clauses intervene. " And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard, sc. that Solomon was dead and Eehoboam had been made king... he was still in Egypt, however, whither he had fled from king Solomon; and as Jeroboam was living in Egypt, they had sent and called him... that Jeroboam came and the whole congregation of Israel," etc. On the other hand, in 2 Chron. x. 2 the construction is very much simplified, and is rendered clearer by the alteration of 'T 3^3 DVre»3, " and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt," into pn»B)D "V ntfn, " that Jeroboam returned from Egypt."2 — Ver. 4. The persons assembled desired that the burdens which Solomon had laid upon them should be lightened, in which case they would serve Eehoboam, i.e. would yield obedience to him as their king. *p3K fYihgB pjpn^ " make light away from the service of thy father,"
1 " This pretext was no doubt furnished to the people by Jeroboam, -who, because he had formerly been placed above Ephraim as superintendent of the works, could most craftily suggest calumnies, from the things which he knew better than others." — (Seb. Schmidt.)
2 At the same time, neither this explanation in the Chronicles, nor the fact that the Vulgate has the same in our text also, warrants our making alterations in the text, for the simple reason that the deviation in the Chronicles and Vulgate is so obviously nothing but an elucidation of our account, which is more obscurely expressed. There is still less ground for the interpolation, which Thenius has proposed, from the clauses contained in the Septuagint partly after ch. xi. 43, partly in ch. xii. between vers. 24 and 25, and in an abbreviated form once more after ch. xiii. 34, so as to obtain the following more precise account of the course of the rebellion which Jeroboam instigated, and of which we have not a very minute description in ch. xi. 26: " Solomon having
appointed Jeroboam superintendent of the tributary labour in Ephraim, for the purpose of keeping in check the Sichemites, who were probably preeminently inclined to rebel, directed him to make a fortress, which already existed upon Mount Gerizim under the name of Millo, into a strong prison (nTHtf) from which the whole district of Gerizim, the table-land, received the name of the land of Zerirah, and probably made him governor of it and invested him with great power. When holding this post, Jeroboam rebelled against Solomon, but was obliged to flee. Having now returned from Egypt, lie assembled the members of his own tribe, and with them he first of all besieged this prison, for the purpose of making himself lord of the surrounding district
i.e. reduce what was imposed upon us by thy father. Solomon had undoubtedly demanded greater performances from the people than they had previously been accustomed to, not only to meet the cost of maintaining the splendour of his court, but also and principally to carry out his large and numerous buildings. Ihit in return for this, ho had secured for his people not only the Missings of nndistnrb ce throughout his whole reign, but also great wealth from the trade and tribute of the subjugated nations, so that there cannot have been any well-grounded oceasion for complaint. But when, as is too often the case, men overlooked the advantages and I ga which they owed to his government, and fixed their attention in a one-sided manner merely upon the performances which the king demanded, it might appear as though lie had oppressed his people with excessive
Vers. 5-24. In Older that the request of the tribes might be maturely weighed, Rehoboam directed them to appear before him again in thre. and in the meantime di tin4 matter with the older COUHS4 UorSj who had s<ty< d his
this ca I ef the city in which Jeroboam i rn, to which In- had just returned, ami from which they fetched him to take pari in the negotiations with Rehoboam. 1 -till in • cording
Zeredafa (ch. \i. 26), hut (after the i 'a." This is what Thenins
says. Hut if we read the two longer additions of the I. XX. quite through,
«lo not gire any more precj J information concerning the building of the Millo mentioned inch.xi. 27, repeated immediately
. /, — hut arc nothing more than a legendary supplement made by. which has no more value than the itatement thai Jeroboam'a mother was named Sarira and waa yv«j
,/;. The name of the city I imply the Greek form of the fTTTC as the reading in ch. x in the additional clauses in q.
tion in the Alexandrian version, 1u:..x ia made into the ace of kin"
Jeroboam and confounded with Tkirza; what took place at Thirza according to ch. xiv. 17 (of the H Dg transferred to Sarira. and the following account being introduced, viz. that Jeroboam'a wife went U Ixz.-.x to the prophet Ahijah to consult him concerning her sick son, and on returning heard of the child's death as she was entering the city of Sarira. — Ti remarks will be quite sufficient to prove that the Alexandrian additions have not the least historical worth.
used, because one of them spoke in the name of the whole), " If thou wilt be subservient to this people to-day (now), and servest them, and hearkenest to them,... they will serve thee for ever/' — Vers. 8 sqq. But Eehoboam forsook this advice, and asked the younger ministers who had grown up with him. They advised him to overawe the people by harsh threats. "My little finger is strong'er than my father's loins." *3Dj?, from IPP, littleness, i.e. the little finger (for the form, see Ewald, §255, b), — a figurative expression in the sense of, I possess much greater might than my father. " And now, my father laid a heavy yoke upon you, and I will still further add to your yoke (lay still more upon you): my father chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scorpions." E^py, scorpiones, are whips with barbed points like the point of a scorpion's sting.1 This advice was not only imprudent, " considering all the circumstances " (Seb. Schmidt), but it was unwise in itself, and could only accelerate the secession of the discontented. It was the language of a tyrant, and not of a ruler whom God had placed over His people. This is shown in vers. 13, 14: " The king answered the people harshly, and forsook the counsel of the old men," i.e. the counsellors who were rich in experience, and spoke according to the counsels of the young men, who flattered his ambition. It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the advice of the old men would have been followed by so favourable a result; it might probably have been so for the moment, but not for a permanency. For the king could not become the "132 of the people, serve the people, without prejudicing the authority entrusted to him by God; though there is no doubt that if he had consented to such condescension, he would have deprived the discontented tribes of all pretext for rebellion, and not have shared in the sin of their secession.— Yer. 15. "And the king hearkened not to the people (to their request for their burdens to be reduced), for it was nziD nirr Dyo a turning from the Lord, that He might establish His word " (ch. xi. 3 1 sqq.), i.e. by a divine decree, that Eehoboam
1 The Rabbins give this explanation: virgx, spinis instructs. Isidor. Hispal. Origg. v. c. 27, explains it in a similar manner: virga si est nodosa vel aculeata, scorpio vocatur. The Targ. and Syr., on the other hand, pJlD,
P_-iViD, i.e. the Greek pxpxyuoi, a whip. See the various explanations in atributed to the fulfilment of the counsel of God through his own folly, and brought about the accomplishment of the senace pronounced upon Solomon, — Ver. 16. The harsh word Supplied the discontented with an apparently just occasion for saying, "What portion have we in David I We hare no inheritance in the son i by tents, 0 Esrael I Now to thy ho e David:" I.', of thy Kk I uvid, the tribe-lather, is mentioned in the place of his family. Tl words, with which Sheba had oik iched rebellion in the time of David m. xx. 1 the d< lion which cherished by these tri ids the Davidic monai od that in and unvarnished a maimer, that we may clearly see that there Wei causes for thi o than the pretended op] \ S >lomon's; that al foundation was the ancient t* the tribes, which had I Jv BUppreSSed lor the whilst thi i had u the estran menl of 1 Lord, and from His law and fche: Judah, am became king. Thi rho had settled in Judah m the the kingdom of Judah from the * of their tri
Who dwelt in the cil tdah, inasmuch: he whole of their territory wi | to th I I Judah, from m favour of their countryman 1; king" Bwald,
Dtendent of the tribute, to them (see at <h.
iv. I Rehoboam entrusted him with tie-:
the tribes had complained that the tril and the king was no doubt Beri - in his wish to n. the demands of the: But th hat he this man only increased the bittern feeling, so that tl.
stoned him to death, and Behoboani himself was obliged to summon up all his strength (rssnn) to escape a similar fate by a speedy flight to his chariot. — Ver. 19. Thus Israel fell away from the house of David " unto this day" (for this formula, Bee p. 13). — Ver. 20. The secession was completed by the fact that all Israel (of the ten tribes) called Jeroboam to the assembly of the congregation and made him king " over all Israel," so that the tribe of Judah alone adhered to the house of David (see at ch. xi. 32). Ver. 20 commences in the same manner as ver. 2, to indicate that it closes the account commenced in ver. 2. — Vers. 21-24. But after the return of Behoboam to Jerusalem he was still desirous of bringing back the seceders by force of arms, and raised for that purpose an army of 180,000 men out of all Judah, the tribe of Benjamin, and the rest of the people, i.e. the Israelites dwelling in the cities of Judah, — a number which does not appear too large according to 2 Sam. xxiv. 9. But the prophet Shemaiah, a prophet who is not mentioned again, received instructions from God to forbid the kirn* to cro to war with their brethren the Israelites, " for this thing wras from the Lord." Hjn TOT}, " this thing, i.e. his being deprived of the sovereignty over ten tribes, but not their rebellion" (Seb. Schmidt). For the fact itself, see the remark on ver. 15. The king and the people hearkened to this wrord. tt& n#?, " they turned to go," i.e. they gave up the intended expedition and returned home. In 2 Chron. xi. 4 we have the explanatory phrase nrita owrj.
Vers. 25-33. Founding of the Kingdom of Israel. — Ver. 25. When Jeroboam had become king, it was his first care to give a firmer basis to his sovereignty by the fortification of Sichem and Pnuel. 133, to build, is used here in the sense of fortifying, because both cities had stood for a long time, and nothing is known of their having been destroyed under either Solomon or David, although the tower of Sichem had been burnt down by Abimelech (Judg. ix. 49), and the tower of Pnuel had been destroyed by Gideon (Judg. viii. 17). Sichem, a place well known from the time of Abraham downwards (Gen. xii. 6), was situated upon the mountains of Ephraim, between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and still exists under the name of Nabulus or Nciblus, a name corrupted from Flavia Neapolis. Jeroboam dwelt therein, i.e. he chose it at first as his residence, though he afterwards resided in Thirza (see ch. xiv. 17). Pnuel was situated, according to Gen. xxxii. 31, on the other side of the Jordan, on the northern bank of the Jabbok (not the southern side, as Thenius supposes); and judging from Gen. xxxii 22 sqq. and Judg. viii. 8 sqq., it was on the caravan road, which led through Gilead to Damascus, and thence past Palmyra and along the Euphrates to Mesopotamia. It was probably on account of its situation that Jeroboam fortified it, to defend his sovereignty over Gilead against hostile attacks from the north-east and east. — Vers. 26 sqq. In aider also to internal strength to his kingdom, Jeroboam resolved to provide for his subjects a substitute for the sacriticial worship in the temple by establishing new iacro, and thus to take av. all occasion for making festal journeys to •' ilem, from wh he apprehended, and that probably not without return of the people to the house of David, and consequently further danger for his own life. u If th to perform liliee in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, their heart will turn to their lord, king Rehoboam," etc — Ver. 28. He th fore consulted, •& with his OOUUSelL I he heads of the nation, who had helped him t«» the throne, and made two calves of gold
2!Xl Id how in brass and gilded, hut in all probability lik Iden calf which
Aaron had i iple at Sinai, made of a Icei on 1 mi had in his mind not me: the Egyptian '.-hip generally, but mon cially the
. \ii. -1. with which he studiously endeavour, d nunend his new form of worship to the | i, this is th who brought thee up out of the land of i ' rfc'- —^~-^, it is too much for J.; not " let your going to say by ti. Is, " Behold thy God,'. " this is no new religion, hut t". arm of worship which our fail.
used iu the desert, with Aaron himself leading the way" (Seb. Schmidt). And whilst th al allusion to that event at Sinai plainly shows that this worship was not actual idolatry, i.e.* was not a worship of Egyptian idols, from which it is constantly distinguished in our books as well as in Hosea and Amos, but that Jehovah was worshipped under the image of the calves or young oxen; the choice of the places in which the golden calves wore set up also shows that Jeroboam desired to adhere as closely as possible to ancient traditions. He did not select his own place of residence, but Bethel and Dan. Bethel, on the southern border of his kingdom, which properly belonged to the tribe of Benjamin (Josh, xviii. 13 and 22), the present Beitin, had already been consecrated as a divine seat by the vision of Jehovah which the patriarch Jacob received there in a dream (Gen. xxviii. 11, 19), and Jacob gave it the name of Bethel, house of God, and afterwards built an altar there to the Lord (Gen. xxxv. 7). And Jeroboam may easily have fancied, and have tried to persuade others, that Jehovah would reveal Himself to the descendants of Jacob in this sacred place just as well as He had done to their forefather. — Ban, in the northern part of the kingdom, on the one source of the Jordan, formerly called Laish (Judg. xviii. 26 sqq.), was also consecrated as a place of worship by the image-worship established there by the Danites, at which even a grandson of Moses had officiated; and regard may also have been had to the convenience of the people, namely, that the tribes living in the north would not have to go a long distance to perform their worship; — Ver. 30. But this institution became a sin to Jeroboam, because it violated the fundamental law of the Old Testament religion, since this not only prohibited all worship of Jehovah under images and symbols (Ex. xx. 4), but had not even left the choice of the place of worship to the people themselves (Deut. xii. 5 sqq.). " And the people went before the one to Dan." The expression " to Dan" can only be suitably explained by connecting it with syn: the people even to Dan, i.e. the people throughout the whole kingdom even to Dan. The southern boundary as the terminus a quo is not mentioned; not because it was for a long time in dispute, but because it was already given in the allusion to Bethel. ^C1?? is neither the golden calf at Dan nor (as I formerly thought) that at Bethel, but is to be interpreted according to the preceding nnxrrnx) "insrrnx: one of the two, or actually both the one and the other (Thenius). The sin of which Jeroboam was guilty consisted in the fact that he no longer allowed the people to go to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, but induced or compelled them to worship Jehovah before one or the other of the calves which he had set up, or (as it is expressed in ver. 31) made a house of high places, rriDB rra (see at ch. iiL 2), instead of the horn* of God, which the Lord had sanctified as the place of worship by filling it with His gracious presence. The singular 3 JV2 may be accounted for from the antithesis to njnj T\%2t upon which it rests. Then' was no necessity to Bay exi that there was a hou e i I high places at Bethel and Han, /.<•. in two plao ause it followed as a matter of that the golden calves could not stand in the open air, but were placed in a temple, by which the sacrificial altar Btood These pla of worship were hoi I he ark vciiant was wanting, and therewith the gracious preof God, thi kinah, for which no symbol invented by d could be a • at ■. M< am made " pri< from the mass of the | who were not of the sons i I L vi." Dpn nrrx:, q (j of the poorest of the people Lather and others), but from the last <'f the people onwi that is to say, from the whole of the people any one without distinction even to the very last, instead of the pi I d out of the tril Levi 1: I hi::. I nte^o a G 4 innovation on the; oam a ing, if we lei how the Ephraiinite Micah Judg, xvii l1
■ he had ol I a L vite to act as pri( his image-worship, and can onlj cplaini a the (act that the Leviti in th< hip fore the ^ '.:lid tin I their d and j u ito the king- month thi which I t i ha ■ I in the nth for tin- arbitrary alb i law, which n
. mIi month as the month app by the Lord and 4], he may h. ind in the fact that in the northern portion of the kingdom the corn ripened a month later than in the more southern Judah (see my hJA. A ii.
gathering of the produce of the threshing-floor and wine-press thanksgiving for the gathering in of all the fruits of the ground.
But the true reason was to be found in his intention to make the separation in a religious point of view as complete as pos-
Bible, although Jeroboam retained the day of the month, the fifteenth, for the sake of the weak who took offence at his innovations. For we may see very clearly that many beside the Levites were very discontented with these illegal institutions, from the notice in 2 Chron. xi. 1G, that out of all the tribes those who were devoted to the Lord from the heart went to Jerusalem to sacrilice to the God of the fathers there. " And he sacrificed upon the altar." This clause is connected with the preceding one, in the sense of: he instituted the feast and offered sacrifices thereat. In ver. 32b (from HtPP |3 onwards) and ver. 33, what has already been related concerning Jeroboam's religious institutions is brought to a close by a comprehensive repetition of the leading points. " Thus did he in Bethel, (namely) to offer sacrifice to the calves; and there he appointed the priests of the high places which he had made, and oifered sacrifice upon the altar which he had made at Bethel, on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, which he himself had devised, and so made a feast for the children of Israel and sacrificed upon the altar to burn." **??? signifies scorsum, by himself alone, i.e. in this connection, i.q. " from his own heart." The Kcri is?? is therefore a correct explanation as to the fact; but it is a needless correction from Neh. vi. 8. The last clause, TDpnp...?vi), leads on to what follows, and it would be more correct to take it in connection with ch. xiii. 1 and render it thus: and when he was offering sacrifice upon the altar to burn, behold there came a man of God, etc. Thenius has rendered?JW incorrectly, and he stood at the altar. This thought would have been expressed by 'on by TOPI, as in ch. xiii. 1. By TOp? we are not to understand the burning or offering of incense, but the burning of the sacrificial portions of the flesh upon the altar, as in Lev. i. 9, 13, 17, etc.
A prophet out of Judah announces to Jeroboam the eventual overthrow of the idolatrous wrorship, and attests his divine mission by miraculous signs upon the altar at Bethel and the hardened king (vers. 1-10); but on the way back he allows himself to be enticed by an old prophet out of Bethel to go into his house, contrary to the express command of the Lord, and while sitting at table with him has to hear from his mouth the divine threat, that on account of his transgression of the command of God he will not come into the sepulchre of his fathers. Tliis threat was fulfilled on his way home; and the marvellous fulfilment made so deep an impression upon the old prophet, that he confirmed the testimony which he had given concerning the worship at the high places (vers. 11 These marvellous occurrences not only teach how Jeroboam brought about the overthrow of his dynasty by his thorough hardening against the word of God (vers, but they also ah phi I not more: ly defined till after the event, and adduces in support of this the apparently j at, that the prediction of particular historical events is without analogy, and generally that the introduction either of particular | • i jons by name or of definite numbers is opposed to the ven:;ce tinotion between soothsaying and prediction, however, is not that the latter merely utters general ideas concerning the future, whilst the former announces special occurrences beforehand: but soothsaying is the foretelling of all kinds' of accidental things; prophecy, on the contrary, the foretelling of the progressive development of the kingdom of God, not merely in general, but in its several details, according to the circumstances and necessities of each particular age, and that in such a manner that the several concrete details of the prophecy rest upon the general idea of the revelation of salvation, and are thereby entirely removed from the sphere of the accidental. It is true that perfectly concrete predictions of particular events, with the introduction of names and statement of times, are much more rare than the predictions of the progressive development of the kingdom of God according to its general features; but they are not altogether wanting, and we meet with them in every case where it was of importance to set before an ungodly generation in the most impressive manner the truth of the divine threatenings or promises. The allusion to Coresh in Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1, is analogous to the announcement before us. But in both cases the names are closely connected with the destination of the persons in the prophecy, and are simply a concrete description of what God will accomplish through these men. Hence the name WBfr£ occurs primarily according to its appellative meaning alone, viz. " he whom Jehovah supports," from new, to support, and expresses this thought: there will be born a son to the house of David, whom Jehovah will support or establish, so that he shall execute judgment upon the priests of the high places at Bethel. This prophecy was then afterwards so fulfilled by the special arrangement of God, that the king who executed this judgment bore the name of Joshiyaliu as his proper name. And so also V~}p was originally an appellative in the sense of sun. The judgment which the prophet pronounced upon the altar was founded upon the jus talionis. On the very same altar on which the priests offer sacrifice to the D yJJ! shall they themselves be offered, and the altar shall be defiled for ever by the burning of men's bones upon it. D*J£ nto?P, " men's bones," does not stand for " their (the priests') bones," but is simply an epithet used to designate human corpses, which defile the place where they lie (2 Kings xxiii. 16). — Ver. 3. In confirmation of his word the prophet added a miracle (naiD, repas, portcntum, see at Ex. iv. 21): " this is the sign that the Lord hath spoken (through me): behold the altar will be rent in pieces, and the ashes upon it will be poured out." ptfa is the ashes of the fat of the sacrificial animals. The pouring out of the sacrificial ashes in consequence of the breaking up of the altar was a penal sign, which indicated, along with the destruc- tunned upon it. — Ver. 4. The king, enraged at this announ mcut, stretched out his hand against the prophet with the words, " Seize him" — and his hand dried up, so that he was: able to draw it back again. *-■-* I try up, Lc to becom in consequi ace oft miraculous withdrawal of the vital energy. Thus Jeroboam i in the limbs of his own body the ned judgment of God.— -Vera 5, 6. The penal miracle announced in tl. 1 of Jehovah, £a in the strength of the I effect immediately upon the altar; and the defiant king was now obliged to entreat the man of God, savin i pray, thi I the Lord th\ I and pi me, that my hand may return to me,M it thai I may 1 to draw il. And on the part i ogly d "If tl in with thee, noi I and drink 1 in this place; for thus hath JehoA communicated by God, that lie wished none of the faithful to join with them in eating and drinking" (C. a Lap.). He was not to return by the way by which lie came, that no one might look out for him, and force him to a delay which was irreconcilable with his commission, or "lest by chance being brought hack by Jeroboam, he should do anything to please him which was unworthy of a prophet, or from which it might be inferred that idolaters might hope for some favour from the Deity" (Budd.).
Vers. 1 1—3 2. Seduction of the man of God by an old prophet, and his consequent punishment. — Vers. 11-1 9. The man of God had resisted the invitations of Jeroboam, and set out by a different road to return to Judah. An old prophet at Bethel heard from his sons what had taken place (the singular fo3 W3J as compared with the plural DV1BDM may be explained on the supposition that first of all one son related the matter to his father, and that then the other sons supported the account given by the first); had his ass saddled; hurried after him, and found him sitting under the terebinth (the tree well known from that event); invited him to come into his house and eat with him; and when the latter appealed to the divine prohibition, said to him (ver. 1 8), " I am a prophet also as thou art, and an angel has said to me in the word of the Lord: Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat and drink," and lied to him (p ^ns without a copula, because it is inserted as it were parenthetically, simply as an explanation)— then he went back with him, and ate and drank in his house. — Vers. 20-22. As they were sitting at table the word of the Lord came to the old prophet, so that he cried out to the man of God from Judah: " Because thou hast been rebellious against the command of the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment,... thou wilt not come to the grave of thy fathers," i.e. thou wilt meet with a violent death by the way. This utterance was soon fulfilled. — Vers. 23 sqq. After he had eaten he saddled the ass for him, i.e. for the prophet whom he had fetched back, and the latter (the prophet from Judah) departed upon it. On the road a lion met him and slew him; " and his corpse was cast in the road, but the ass stood by it, and the lion stood by the corpse." The lion, contrary to its nature, had neither consumed the prophet whom it had slain, nor torn in pieces and devoured the ass upon which he rode, but had remained standing by the corpse and by the ass, that the slaying of the prophet might not be regarded as a misfortune that had befallen him by accident, but that the hand of the Lord might Le manifest therein, so that passers-by saw this marvel and related it in Bethel — Ver. 26. When the old prophet I B bhel heard of this, he said, " It is the man of ©od, who was disobedient to the word of the Lord; the Lord hath delivered him to the lion, so that it hath torn him F&,frangcret confri I of the word of the Lord, which He spake to him." — V< re. 27 He thereupon had his i and went and found the upon his ass, and brought it into his own city, and laid the in his grave witli ti VIM,in> inciled with eith divine revelation which came to him at the table, announcing to the Judaan prophet the punishment of his trai.:on of the commandment of God, and v. so speedily fulfilled (v, I -24); or with the honour which he paid to the dead man after this punishmer' fallen upon him, by burying him in his own grave;:ill less with his con- formation of his declaration concerning the altar at Bethel (vei. 29-32), We must therefore follow Ephr. Syr., Theodor., Hengstenberg, and others, and regard the old prophet as a true prophet, who with good intentions, and not n under the influence of human envy" (Thenius), but impelled by the desire to enter into a closer relation to the man of God from Judah and to strengthen himself through his prophetic gifts, urged him to enter his house. The fact that he made use of sinful means in order to make more sure of securing the end desired, namely, of the false pretence that he had been directed by an angel to do this, may be explained, as Hengstenberg suggests (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 149), on the ground that when Jeroboam introduced his innovations, he had sinned by keeping silence, and that the appearance of the Juda'an prophet had brought him to a consciousness of this sin, so that he had been seized with shame on account of his fall, and was anxious to restore himself to honour in his own eyes and those of others by intercourse with this witness to the truth. But however little the lie itself can be excused or justified, we must not attribute to him alone the consequences by which the lie was followed in the case of the Judsean prophet. For whilst he chose reprehensible means of accomplishing what appeared to be a good end, namely, to raise himself again by intercourse with a true prophet, and had no wish to injure the other in any way, the Judiean prophet allowed himself to be seduced to a transgression of the clear and definite prohibition of God simply by the sensual desire for bodily invigoration by meat and drink, and had failed to consider that the divine revelation which he had received could not be repealed by a pretended revelation from an angel, because the word of God does not contradict itself. He was therefore obliged to listen to a true revelation from God from the mouth of the man whose pretended revelation from an angel he had too carelessly believed, namely, to the announcement of punishment for his disobedience towards the commandment of God, which punishment he immediately afterwards endured, " for the destruction of the flesh, but for the preservation of the spirit: 1 Cor. xv. 5 " (Bcrlcb. Bible). That the punishment fell upon him alone and not upon the old prophet of Bethel also, and that for apparently a smaller crime, may be accounted for " not so much from the fact that the old prophet had lied with a good intention (this might hold good of the other also), as from the fact that it was needful to deal strictly with