1 It was this which gave rise to the legend in Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 6), that it was through this queen that the root of the true balsam (Opobalsamwn), which was afterwards cultivated in gardens at Jericho and Engedi, was first of all brought to Palestine (cf. Movers, Phonizkr, ii. 3, p. 226 sqq.).
rather than the harp, the strings being carried over the sounding-board upon a bridge, the latter being of a pitcher shape without any sounding bridge, as in the case of the harps. — Ver. 13. Solomon gave the queen of Saba 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 micdit 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 (njonn) to the king," which is an abbreviated expression for " beside that which he gave her in return for what she had brought to him," or beside the return presents corresponding to her gifts 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 — Tr.). 666 is evidently a round number founded upon an approximative valuation, nns njK>3 is rendered in the Vulg. per annos singulos; 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. 'Jin ^ND ^iDp, beside what came in (nb?V? K3) from the travelling traders and the commerce of the merchants, and from all the kings, etc. T?N D'nnn (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 Era*! the wholesale dealers. This explanation of &~\n cannot be rendered doubtful by the objection that Wi only occurs elsewhere in connection with the wandering about of spies; for??"l signified originally to go about, spy out, or retail scandal, and after that to trade, and go about as a tradesman. 3"jyn wd 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 ("131S3 W?l^), which bordered upon Palestine; for T)V 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 (Neh. xiii. 3), hence a number of mercenaries (Jer. 1. 37). In 2 Chron. ix. 14, 3Jjn is therefore correctly explained by the term 2Hg, 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. pNH rrin^ the governors of the land, are probably the officers named in ch. iv. 7-19. 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 subjugated pastoral tribes of Arabia their tribute, in natura. This explains in a very simple manner why these revenues are separated from the revenue of Solomon which came in the form of money, nna is a foreign word, which first found its way into the Hebrew language after the times of the Assyrians, and sprang from the Sanscrit paJcsha, a companion or friend, which took the form of pakkha in Prakrit, and probably of pakha in the early Persian (vid. Benfey and Stern, die Monatsnamcn, p. 195). — Vers. 16, 17. Solomon had 500 ornamental shields made, 200 larger ones (ps^, scuta, targets), and 300 smaller (D*???, clypei). These shields, like all the shields of the ancients, were made of wood or basket-work, and covered with gold plate instead of leather (see my hill. Archaol. ii. pp. 296 sqq.). tMHB> nnr does not mean aurum jugulatum, i.e. gold mixed with metal of a different kind, but, as Kimchi has shown, aurum diductum, beaten gold, from Dn{£ to stretch; since Solomon would certainly use pure gold for these ornamental shields. " Six hundred shekels of gold he spread upon one target," that is to say, he used for gilding one target. Six hundred shekels would weigh about 1 7 J 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 minse. If, for example, the three minae 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.
xlv. 12, the reference must be to shekels after the kings weight (2 Sam. xiv. 26), which were only half the sacred shekel (see my bibl. Archaol. iL p. 135). Consequently the gold plate upon one target was not quite 9 lbs., and that upon a shield not quite 4^ 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 c^old. J^"KD3 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. tB%D, a hophal participle of TTQ ■ auricm dejpuratum, hence = TfclB 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 J"iT; arms, i.e. arms on both sides of the seat (njBfn DipD)^ 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^K (ver. 20) we find JtivJ** 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 rrt*T|K 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
CfriND KD3P DHte, " and a footstool in gold fastened to the throne " (the plural D^iriND refers to the footstool and the steps). Now, however easily
DVrtND may have been written by mistake for ynriKD, 3HT B>23 cannot have grown out of ^ijy gjfco by any such mistake. The quid-pro-quo of the LXX. for {jfay £>iO, KpoTopxl poaxuv, in which ^fay is certainly confounded with i>jy, does not warrant the conjecture of Thenius, that the Chronicler found *}))} in his original and substituted &22 (lamb), whereupon 55733 (lamb) was changed by another hand into Kb3, footstep, and £>&<") was dropped altogether.
early Assyrian monuments we do indeed find high seats 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 age that the more splendid thrones appear (vid. Eosenmiiller, A. u. N. Morgcnland, iii. pp. 176 sqq.). — Vers. 21, 22. The drinking vessels of Solomon also were all of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon of costly gold ("Wp: see at ch. vi. 20). Silver was counted as nothing, because the Tarshish fleet arrived once in three years, bringing gold, silver, etc. (see at ch. ix. 28). In vers. 23-29 everything that had to be stated concerning the wealth, wisdom, and revenue of Solomon is summed up as a conclusion (cf. 2 Chron. ix. 22-28 and i. 14-17). — Vers. 23 and 24 point back to ch. v. 9-14. 7^5: Solomon became greater, not was greater, on account of the Vdv consec. pxn*?^ all the world, corresponds to D^yrrpzi in ch. v. 1 4. The foreigners out of all lands, who came on account of his wisdom, brought Solomon presents: gold and silver vessels, clothes (pSiy?Vy court dresses, which are still customary presents in the East), P^?., armour, spices, horses and mules. — Ver. 26 is simply a repetition of ch. v. 6 (compare also ch. ix. 19); and ver. 27 is merely a further extension of ver. 21. The words of ver. 27, "Solomon made silver like stones in Jerusalem, and cedars like the sycamores in the lowland for abundance," are a hyperbolical description of his collection of enormous quantities of precious metals and costly wood. &??'?, sycomori, mulberry fig-trees, are very rare in Palestine in its present desolate state (see Rob. Pal. iii. 27), and are only met in any abundance in Egypt; but in ancient times they abounded in the lowlands of Palestine to such an extent, that they were used as common building wood (vid. Isa. ix. 9, on which Theodoret observes, tovtcov (avKa/jbivcov) 7] HcCKaiG-rivri ireirXrjpaiTaL). According to 1 Chron. xxvii. 28, the sycamore forests in the lowland of Judah were royal domains'— Vers. 28, 29 (cf. 2 Chron. i. 16, 17). "And (as for) 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 nipD must be connected with *Vjb in opposition to the accents, and the second must be pointed nji?D. This is the rendering adopted by Ge- senilis in his Thesaurus and Lexicon (ed. Dietr. s. v. nJp9). 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 D^piD (horses) after the second 'TipD. 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 mpD as the name of a place, e£ 'Etcove, or rather etc Kove, de Coa} According to this, the rendering would be: " And as for the going out of horses from Egypt and Koa (or Kawe) for Solomon, the king's 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??"lP, like 22"! in 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 ix. QiKovi of the Cod. Vat. and Alex., is very evident from the statement which we find in the Onomast. of Eusebius (ed. Larsow et Parth. p. 260), K&/B, x^a/o* AiyvKTov; for which Jerome has Coa, qux 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. B*V3 cannot be adduced as evidence to the contrary; for linguists require no proof that this cannot mean " auf Hire Hand]' as Thenius assumes. Bottcher's explanation is the right one, namely, " through their hand," inasmuch as they brought the horses and chariots themselves even to those kings who lived at a greater distance, without employing intermediate agents. The kin^s of the D^nn the Hittites in the wider sense ( = Canaanites, as in Josh. i. 4, 2 Kings vii. 6, Ezek. xvi. 3), and of Aram, were in part Solomon's vassals, since his rule extended over all the Canaanites with the exception of the Phoenicians, and over several kingdoms of Aram.
The idolatry into which Solomon fell in his old age appears so strange in a king so wise and God-fearing as Solomon showed himself to be at the dedication of the temple, that many have been quite unable to reconcile the two, and have endeavoured to show either that Solomon's worship of idols was psychologically impossible, or that the knowledge of God and the piety attributed to him are unhistorical. But great wisdom and a refined knowledge of God are not a defence against the folly of idolatry, since this has its roots in the heart, and springs from sensual desires and the lust of the flesh. The cause assigned in the biblical account for Solomon's falling away from the Lord, is that he loved many strange, i.e. foreign or heathen, wives, who turned his heart from Jehovah to their own gods in his old age. Consequently the falling away did not take place suddenly, but gradually, as Solomon got old, and was not a complete renunciation of the worship of Jehovah, to whom he offered solemn sacrifices three times a year, and that certainly to the day of his death (ch. ix. 25), but consisted simply in the fact that his heart was no longer thoroughly devoted to the Lord (ch. xi 4), and that he inclined towards the idols of his foreign wives and built them altars (vers. 5-8); that is to say, it consisted merely in a syncretic mixture of Jehovah -worship and idolatry, by w7hich 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 (Gesch. Dav. u. Sal. 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, i.e. of magic, and so lead him to the paths of superstition; as because the widespread fame of his wisdom brought distinguished and wise men from distant lands to Jerusalem and into alliance with the king, and their homage flattered the vanity of the human heart, and led to a greater and greater toleration of heathen ways. But these things are none of them blamed in the Scriptures, because they did not of necessity lead to idolatry, but might simply give an indirect impulse to it, by lessening the wall of partition between the worship of the true God and that of heathen deities, and making apostasy a possible thing. The Lord Himself had promised and had given Solomon wisdom, riches, and glory above all other kings for the glorification of his kingdom; and these gifts of God merely contributed to estrange his heart from the true God for the simple reason, that Solomon forgot the commandments of the Lord and suffered himself to be besotted by the lusts of the flesh, not only so as to love many foreign wives, but so as also to take to himself wives from the nations with which Israel was not to enter into any close relationship whatever.
Vers. 1-13. Solomon's Love of many Wives and Idolatry. — Vers. 1, 2. "Solomon loved many foreign wives, and that along with the daughter of Pharaoh/' '£> 03T1W, standing as it does between '"i rrin.35 DT? and nvzsiD, cannot mean " and especially the daughter of P.," as Thenius follows the earlier commentators in supposing, but must mean, as in ver. 25, "and that with, or along with," i.e. actually beside the daughter of Pharaoh. She is thereby distinguished from the foreign wives who turned away Solomon's heart from the Lord, so that the blame pronounced upon those marriages does not apply to his marriage to the Egyptian princess (see at ch. iii. 1). All that is blamed is that, in opposition to the command in Deut. xvii. 17, Solomon loved (1) many foreign wives, and (2) Moabitish, Ammonitish, and other wives, of the nations with whom the Israelites were not to intermarry. All that the law expressly prohibited was marriage with Canaanitish women (Deut. vii. 1-3; Ex. xxxiv. 1 6); consequently the words " of the nations," 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 supcrstititsis mulieribus 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 2?3... tttarnft 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 DrQ is used with peculiar emphasis: Solomon clave to these nations, of which God had said such things, to love, ix. to enter into the relation of love or into the marriage relation, with them. P2i 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 T&Vff WW) 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 Codoraannus, of whom it is related that he took with him 360 pellices on his expedition against Alexander (see Curtius, iii. 3, 24; Athen. Deipnos. iii. 1).
tion of his heart. Yer. 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 was no longer wholly with Jehovah, his God. Ew, integer, i.e. entirely devoted to the Lord (cf. ch. viii. 61), like the heart of David his father, who had indeed grievously sinned, but had not fallen into idolatry. — Vers. 5-8. He walked after the Ashtaroth, etc. According to ver. 7, the idolatry here condemned consisted in the fact that he built altars to the deities of all his foreign wives, upon which they offered incense and sacrifice to their idols. It is not stated that he himself also offered sacrifice to these idols. But even the building of altars for idols was a participation in idolatry which was irreconcilable with true fidelity to the Lord. rnfrB^ Astarte, was the chief female deity of all the Canaanitisli tribes; her worship was also transplanted from Tyre to Carthage, where it flourished greatly. She was a moongoddess, whom the Greeks and Eomans called sometimes Aphrodite, sometimes Urania, Xekrjvalrj, Cozlestis, and Juno (see the Comm. on Judg. ii. 13). £'3??, which is called n?b (without the article) in ver. 7, and D3po in Jer. xlix. 1, 3, and Amos i. 15, the abomination of the Ammonites, must not be confounded with the Molcch (Jl?®*?, always with the article) of the early Canaanites, to whom children were offered in sacrifice in the valley of Benhinnom from the time of Ahaz onwards (see the Comm. on Lev. xviii. 21), since they had both of them their separate places of worship in Jerusalem (cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 10 and 13), and nothing is ever said about the offering of children in sacrifice to Milcom; although the want of information prevents us from determining the precise distinction between the two. Milcom was at any rate related to the Chemosh of the Moabites mentioned in ver. 7; for Chemosh is also described as a god of the Ammonites in Judg. xi. 24, whereas everywhere else he is called the god of the Moabites (Num. xxi. 29; Amos i. 15, etc.). Chemosh was a sun-god, who was worshipped as king of his people and as a god of war, and as such is depicted upon coins with a sword, lance, and shield in his hands, and with two torches by his side (see 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 incompleteness does not warrant our filling up the supposed gaps by emendations of the text. *ttl y\7\ ty})*if as in Judg. ii. 11, Hi. 7, etc. '" ^jJH NpD, a pregnant expression for '*'fW nj$ fc&D, as in Num. xiv. 24, xxxii. 11, 12, etc. — These places of sacrifice (n??, see at ch. iii. 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 the 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 IVfTOipn 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 Hittitesand 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 (rrtTtppD) is mentioned before sacrificing (nirmtp), 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 to him twice (ch. iii. 5 sqq. and ix. 2 sqq.) and had warned him against idolatry (nyn is a continuation of the participle n$T??)j Solomon drew down upon himself the anger of Jehovah. The emphasis lies upon the fact that God had appeared to him Himself for the purpose of warning him, and had not merely caused him to be warned by prophets, as Theodoret has explained. In consequence of this, the following announcement is made to him, no doubt through the medium of a prophet, possibly Ahijah (ver. 29): " Because this has come into thy mind, and thou hast not kept my covenant,... I will tear the kingdom from thee and give it to thy servant; nevertheless I will not do it in thy lifetime for thy father David's sake: howbeit I will not tear away the whole kingdom; one tribe I will give to thy son." In this double limitation of the threatened forfeiture of the kingdom there is clearly manifested the goodness of God (heUvvat, ti)v ufierpov dyaOoTTjTa — Theodoret); not, however, with reference to Solomon, who had forfeited the divine mercy through his idolatry, but with regard to David and the selection of Jerusalem: that is to say, not from any special preference i"<>r David and Jerusalem, but in order that the promise made to David (2 Sam. vii.), and the choice of Jerusalem as the place where His name should be revealed which was connected with that promise, might stand iinmoveably as an act of grace, which no sin of men could overturn (vid. ver. oO). For *in« D3V see the Coiiiiu. on vers. 31, 32.
Vers. 14-40. Solomon's Opponents. — Although the punishment with which Solomon was threatened for his apostasy was not to be inflicted till after his death, the Lord raised up several adversaries even during his lifetime, who endangered the peace of his kingdom, and were to serve as constant reminders that he owed his throne and his peaceable rule over the whole of the kingdom inherited from his father solely to the mercy, the fidelity, and the long-suffering of God. — The rising up of Hadad and Eezon took place even before the com- we can satisfactorily explain their undisturbed continuance at Jerusalem. But this -would not preclude their having been built by Solomon for the worship of his foreign wives; on the other hand, it is much easier to explain their being built in the front of Jerusalem, and opposite to the temple of Jehovah, if from the very first regard was had to the foreigners who visited Jerusalem. The objection offered by Thenius to this view, which Bertheau had already adopted (zur Gesch. der Isr. p. 323), has been shown by Bottcher (N. exeg. jEhrenl. ii. p. 95) to be utterly untenable.
mencemeilt of Solomon's idolatry, but it is brought by flftlj DjJJI (ver. 14) 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 (T1K in ver. 17, according to an interchange of n and K 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 Comm. on Gen. xxxvi. 31 sqq.). Mn before Dfr£3 stands in the place of the relative "1B&: " 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 fled, ns rvn is analogous to By nvj, to have to do with any one, though in a hostile sense, as in the phrase to go to war with (ns) a person, whereas By njn generally means to be upon the side of any one. The correctness of the reading ni\"i3 is confirmed by all the ancient versions, which have simply paraphrased the meaning in different ways. Eor Bbttcher has already shown that the LXX. did not read ntena, as Thenius supposes. The words from T)VV2 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. u 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 Idumoean 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 Midianites sometimes in the peninsula of Sinai on the eastern side of the Elanitic Gulf, where Edrisi and Abulfeda mention a city of Madian (see at Ex. ii. 15), and sometimes on the east of the Moabitish territory (see at Num. xxii. 4 and Judg. vi. 1). Here, at any rate, we must think of the neighbourhood of the Elanitic Gulf, though not necessarily of the city of Madian, five days' journey to the south of Aela; and probably of the country to which Moses fled from Egypt. Paran is the desert of that name between the mountains of Sinai and the south of Canaan (see at Num. x. 12), through which the Haj route from Egypt by Elath to Mecca still runs. Hadad would be obliged to take the road by Elath in order to go to Egypt, even if he had taken refuge with the Midianites on the east of Moab and Edom. — Vers. 18 sqq. Erom Paran they took men with them as guides through the desert. Tims Hadad came to Egypk> where Pharaoh received him hospitably, and gave them a house and maintenance (p[)?), and also assigned him land (H?) to cultivate for the support of the fugitives who had come with him, and eventually, as he found great favour in his eyes, gave him for a wife the sister of his own wife, queen Tachpenes, who bare him a son, Genuhath. This son was weaned by Tachpenes in the royal palace, and then brought up among (with) the children of Pharaoh, the royal princes. According to Eosellini and "Wilkinson (Ges. Thcs. p. 1500), Tachpenes was also the name of a female deity of Egypt. The wife of Pharaoh is called nryain, i.e. the mistress among the king's wives, as being the principal consort. In the case of the kings of Judah this title is given to the king's mother, probably as the president in the harem, whose place was taken by the reigning queen after her death. The weaning, probably a family festival as among the Hebrews (Gen. xxi. 8) and other ancient nations (yid. Dougtoei Analccta ss. i. 22 sq.), was carried out by the queen in the palace, because the boy wTas to be thereby adopted among the royal children, to be brought up with them. — Vers. 21, 22. When Hadad heard in Egypt of the death of David and Joab, he asked permission of Pharaoh to return to his own country. Pharaoh replied, u What is there lacking to thee with me?" This answer was a 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 (Dnx), 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: x.cti oiuiarps-^su "Ad?o (i.e. Hadad) si$ ty,u yqv ccvrov' ocvty) yi kolkioc ijv tnor/ioev" Ahsp' xotl kftccpv- 3'ju.Y}<7£v'lopccfa, kcx.1 ifiocotTisvceu \v yf,'E^o)pc. 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 (Gesch. 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 engaged 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 reign; 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." Tin Tj'x is an abbreviated expression, to which •"CT may easily be supplied, as it has been by the LXX. (vid. Ewald, ^ 292, b, 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 connected together 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 interpolated what is stated concerning Rezon in vers. 23 and 24 after "■Efl^n in ver. 14, and consequently have been obliged to alter '\y\ fDb> VW in ver. 25 into *ctl fc«* Ixrocj, because they had previously cited Hadad and Rezon as adversaries, whereas in the Hebrew text these words apply to Rezon alone. But the rest of ver. 25, namely the words from njnrrnfcO onwards, they have not given till the close of ver. 22 (LXX.); and in order to connect this with what precedes, they have interpolated the words ko.1 ccviorpiipsv "Al;p ti; tvjv yr.v avrov. The Alexandrians were induced to resort 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 very same words (vers. 14 and 23), but more especially by the fact that in ver. 25 of the Hebrew text the injury done to Solomon by Hadad is merely referred to in a supplementary manner in connection with Rezon's enterprise, and indeed is inserted parenthetically within the account of the latter. The Alexandrian translators did not know what to make of this, because they did not understand njnrrn&O and took f)Nl for riSN Mm i KocKtoc. With this reading vp*i which follows was necessarily understood as referring to Hadad; and as Hadad was an Edomite, TpW) D"lS"by had to be altered into l&tvtktvat* iv yy 'Eo^a. 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 Eezon, 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 Ephraimite. — Hadad and Eezon are simply described as adversaries (1?^) 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. 3 T D*ifl is synonymous with? *lj fc&o 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 P^JW* as *n ^ Sam. i. 1, Judg. xii. 5) of Zereda, i.e. Zarthan, in the Jordan valley (see ch. vii. 46), son of a widow, and "TO, i.e. not 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. -it^K nyin 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, pa, ruptura, 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 pjn 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 rvk]} pflV 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 Tyropceon, 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, Gesch. in. p. 330). Compare flf*?, a gap in the coast, a bay. On the occasion of this building, Jeroboam proved himself a Vn iteS, i.e. a very able and energetic man; so that when Solomon saw the young man, that he was doing work, i.e. 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 he attempted a rebellion against Solomon. This is indicated by fW "OTH *tl in ver. 2 7. According to ch. xii. 4, the reason for the rebellion is to be sought for in the appointment of the Ephraimites to heavy works. This awakened afresh the old antipathy of that tribe to Judah, and Jeroboam availed himself of this to instigate a rebellion. — Vers. 29 sqq. At that time the prophet Ahijah met him in the field and disclosed to him the word of the Lord, that he should become king over Israel. ^^ riya: at that time, viz. the time when Jeroboam had become overseer over the heavy works, and not after he had already stirred up the rebellion. For the whole of the account in vers. 29—39 forms part of the explanation of?l^r3n T D^n which commences with ver. 27&, so that rwa VF1 N'nn is closely connected with fow 1gB3 in ver. 28, and there is no such gap in the history as is supposed by Thenius, who builds upon this opinion most untenable conjectures as to the intertwining of different sources. At that time, as Jeroboam was one day going out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah of Shilo (Seilun) met him by the way PT£[8)i with a new upper garment wrrapped around him; and when they were alone, he rent the new garment, that is to say, his own, not Jeroboam's, as Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 388) erroneously supposes, into twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam, " Take thee ten pieces, for Jehovah saith, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and give thee ten tribes; and one tribe shall remain to him (Solomon) for David's sake," etc. The new nDpfef was probably only a large four-cornered cloth, which was thrown over the shoulders like the Heik of the Arabs, and enveloped the whole of the upper portion of the body (see my bibl. Archdol. ii. pp. 36,3 7). 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. 2 0, " 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 Kehoboam. 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 been 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 ch. xii. 17). On the other hand, whilst the northern border of the tribe of Benjamin, with the cities of Bethel, Kamah, and Jericho, fell to the kingdom of Jeroboam (ch. xii. 29, xv. 17, 21, xvi. 34), several of the cities of the tribe of Dan were included in the kingdom of Judah, namely, Ziklag, which Achish had presented to David, and also Zorea and Ajalon (2 Chron. xi. 10, xxviii. 18), in which Judah obtained compensation for the cities of Benjamin of which it had been deprived.1 Consequently there
1 On the other hand, the fact that in Ps. lxxx. 2 Benjamin is placed between Ephraim and Manasseh is no proof that it belonged to the kingdom of Israel; nor can this be inferred from the fact that Benjamin, as the tribe to which Saul belonged, at the earlier split among the tribes took the side of those which were opposed to David, and that at a still later period a rebellion originated with Benjamiu. For in Ps. lxxx. 2 the exposition is disputed, and the jealousy of Benjamin towards Judah appears to have become extinct with the dying out of the royal house of Saul. Again, the explanation suggested by Oehler (Herzog's Cycl.) of the repeated statement that the house of David was to receive only one tribe, namely, that there was not a single whole tribe belonging to the southern kingdom beside 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 'Ui nay ]yzh see at ver. 13. Tor ver. 33 compare vers. 4-8. The plurals ^3W, vinfl^, 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. p?""i?, 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). Wfett *3 HntTK, " 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 was 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 H37DD (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, riw J5/% for this, i.e. because of the apostasy already mentioned; " only not all the days," i.e. not for ever. »i|PK] 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 ^£2 T D"W 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. 29 is closely connected with ver. 28, that this 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 Cycl.). 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 eveTy 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 give to him. Jeroboam might have learned how he ought to act under these circumstances from the example of David, who had far more ground, according to human opinion, for rebelling against Saul, his persecutor and mortal foe, and who nevertheless, even when God had delivered his enemy into his hand, so that he might have slain him, did not venture to lay his hand upon the anointed of the Lord, but waited in pious submission to the leadings of his God, till the Lord opened the way to the throne through the death of Saul. By the side of David's behaviour towards Saul the attempt of Jeroboam has all the appearance of a criminal rebellion, so that Solomon would have been perfectly justified in putting him to death, if Jeroboam had not escaped from his hands by a flight into Egypt. — On Shishak see at ch. xiv. 25.
Vers. 41—43. Conclusion of the history of Solomon. — Notice of the original works, in which further information can be found concerning his acts and his wisdom (see the Introduction); the length of his reign, viz. forty years; his death, burial, and successor. Solomon did not live to a very great age, since he was not more than twenty years old when he ascended the throne. — Whether Solomon turned to the Lord again with all his heart, a question widely discussed by the older commentators (see Pfeifferi Dubia vex. p. 435; Buddei hist. eccl. ii. p. 273 sqq.), cannot be ascertained from the Scriptures. If the Preacher Koheleth) 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 ISRAEL 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-King 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 related is, 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 kings, only five 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 the others, it is true that Joasli and Amaziah walked for a long time in the ways of the Lord, but in the closing years of their reign the}' forsook the God of their fathers to serve idols and worship them (2 Cliron. xxiv. 18 and xxv. 14 sqq.). Even Behoboam was strengthened at the outset in the worship of Jehovah by the Levites who emigrated from the kingdom of the ten tribes to Judah; but in the course of three years he forsook the law of the Lord, and Judah with him, so that altars of high places, Baal columns, and Asherah idols, were set up on every hill and under every green tree, and there were even male prostitutes in the land, and Judah practised all the abominations of the nations that were cut off before Israel (1 Kings xiv. 23, 24; 2 Chron. xi. 13-17, xii. 1). In all these sins of his father Abijam also walked (1 Kings xv. 3). At a later period, in the reign of Joram, the worship of Baal was transplanted from Israel to Judah and Jerusalem, and was zealously maintained by Ahaziah and his mother Athaliah. It grew still worse under Ahaz, who even went so far as to set up an idolatrous altar in the court of the temple and to close the temple doors, for the purpose of abolishing altogether the legal worship of Jehovah. But notwithstanding this repeated spread of idolatry, the apostasy 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 mucli 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, with 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 towards 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 Jorani, 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. For beside the sin of Jeroboam, that which was the ground of its isolation continued to increase, 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 upon Judah, because Israel had filled up the measure of sin earlier than Judah.
The chronological computation of this period, both as a whole and in its separate details, is one of the more difficult features connected with this portion of the history of the Israelitish kingdom. As our books give not only the length of time that every king both of Israel and Judah reigned, but also the time when every king of Israel ascended the throne, calculated according to the year of the reign of the contemporaneous king of Judah, and vice versa, these accounts unquestionably furnish us with very important help in determining the chronology of the separate data; but this again is rendered difficult and uncertain by the fact, that the sum-total of the years of the 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 But if the application of them in the several cases is not to he dependent upon mere caprice, the reconciliation of the sum-totals of the years that the different kin^s reigned with the differences which we 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 Nisan to Nisan, and that with such precision, that even a single day before or after Nisan 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,2 — 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 Widerspriiche in den Jahrreihen der Konige Judex 's und Israel's und andere Dijj'trenzen in der bill. Chronologie auszugleichen; Theol. Stud. u. 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 kings in the kingdom of Judah between Amaziah and Uzziah.
anni regibus, ac dies quideiu units in anno (ridel, post calendas Nisani) instar anni computalur." — Ibid.: PI3K> DICTI n:*^ f]lD3 TriX D1\ " units 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 Ecangelu n (Hamb. 1852), p. 52 sqq. They are sufficient of themselves to refute the assertion of Joach. Hartmanu, 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. 16); and in the kingdom of Israel there is no necessity to assume a single regency, and only two interregna (the first after Jeroboam EL, 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.2
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 Judah, 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 xv. 1. The reasons for this will be given in connection with the passages themselves.
2 Not 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 Usserii Annates Vet. et Novi Test., but also with such data of ancient history as have been astronomically established. For the fourth year of Jehoiakim, with which the captivity or seventy years1 servitude of the Jews in Babylon commences, coincides with the twenty-first year of the reign of Nabopolasar, in the fifth year of whose reign an eclipse of the moon, recorded in Almagest, was observed, which eclipse, according to the calculation of Ideler (in the Abhdll. der Berliner Academie der Wissensch. fur histor. Klasse of the year 1814, pp. 202 and 224), took place on April 22 of the year G21 B.C. Consequently the twenty-first year of Nabopolasar, in which he died, coincides with the year 605 B.C.; and the first conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which occurred before the death of Nabopolasar, took place in the year 606 B.C. — Compare with this Marc. Niebuhr's Geschkhte Assurs and Babels, p. 47. Among other things, this scholar observes, at p. 5, 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. 83 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 Nabouas., i.e. 605 B.C., the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, 144 ser. Nab., or 604 B.C., and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple to the year 162 ser. Nab., 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 E cents 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...
Ithobal, king of Tyre and Sidon.
Destruction of the Kingdom king of Assyria So, king of Egypt
Salman asar, king of Assyria
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, besieges Jerusalem Merodach-Baladan's embassy.
Esarhaddon sends colonists to Samaria.
Nabopolasar, king of Babylon
Battle at Megiddo with Pharaoh-Necho...
Battle at Carchemish and conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar
Pharaoh-Hophra, king of Egypt.
Evil-merodach. Cyrus sole ruler
From the Division of the Kingdom to the Ascent of the Throne by Ahab in the 38 th 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 Kehoboam, 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 Kehoboam, 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 Kehoboam, 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 Kehoboam'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 Kehoboam. 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 Kehoboam, 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 Kehoboam 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. Secession of the Ten Tribes (cf. 2 Chron. x. 1-xi. 4). — Vers. 1-4. Rehoboam went to Shechem, because all Israel had come thither to make him king. " All Israel," according to what follows (cf. vers. 20 and 21), was the ten tribes beside Judah and Benjamin. The right of making king the prince whom God had chosen, i.e. of anointing him and doing homage to him (compare 1 Chron. xii. 38, where T^P1? alternates with v^? ^?, 2 Sam. ii. 4, v. 3), was an old traditional right in Israel, and the tribes had exercised 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. 1}2). The ten tribes of Israel made use of this right on Eehoboam'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 successor of Solomon, they had gone to Sichem, the present Nabulus (see at Gen. xii. 6 and xxxiii. 18), the place where the ancient national gatherings were held in the tribe of Ephraim (Josh. xxiv. 1), and where Abimelech the son of 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 Kimchi 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 W3J1 in ver. 3 that the apodosis occurs to the protasis 'W JW? W, 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 f^s 3B>2 DTO»a, " and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt," into tfTO?? 'T $fa, " 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. *p3Nl JYlhgD Pj?n, " 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 (iTVlV') from which the whole district of Gerizim, the table-land, received the name of the land of ZeriraJi, 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. But in return for this, he had secured for his people not only the blessings of undisturbed peace 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 occasion for complaint. But when, as is too often the case, men overlooked the advantages and blessings 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 he had oppressed his people with excessive burdens.
Vers. 5-24. In order that the request of the tribes might be maturely weighed, Eehoboam directed them to appear before him again in three days, and in the meantime discussed the matter with the older counsellors, who had served his father. — Ver. 7. These counsellors said (the singular ">2T1 is
Now this castle was the citadel of the city in which Jeroboam was born, to which he had just returned, and from which they fetched him to take part in the negotiations with Rehoboam. Its ruins are still in existence, according to Robinson (Pal. iii. p. 99), and from all that has been said it was not called Zeredah (ch. xi. 26), but (after the castle) Zerira." This is what Thenius says. But if we read the two longer additions of the LXX. quite through, we shall easily see that the words MKooopwz ru> ^cchcipuv ryu tv o'psi 'Ecppx'tp, do not give any more precise historical information concerning the building of the Millo mentioned in ch. xi. 27, since this verse is repeated immediately afterwards in the following form: ouro; uzoog/xws ty,u ocKpctu tv reel; oipasatu oi'kov "'JLtppa.'ifA, ovrog ovvix.'kiiGZ rp ttg'Xiu iAa/3/S, — but are nothing more than a legendary supplement made by an Alexandrian, which has no more value than the statement that Jeroboam's mother was named Sarira and was yvjr) Tropur,. The name of the city lapipa. is simply the Greek form of the Hebrew rmv which the LXX. have erroneously adopted in the place of rm^' as the reading in ch. xi. 26. But in the additional clauses in question in the Alexandrian version, "2upipoc is made into the residence of king Jeroboam and confounded with Thirza; what took place at Thirza according to ch. xiv. 17 (of the Hebrew text) being transferred to Sarira, and the following account being introduced, viz. that Jeroboam's wife went Ik lupipcc 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. — These 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." ^BjjJ, from IPP, littleness, i.e, the little finger (for the form, see Ewald, §255, h), — 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." M1W, 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 *J?y 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.— Ver. 15. "And the king hearkened not to the people (to their request for their burdens to be reduced), for it was H3D niiT DJJD a turning from the Lord, that He might establish His word" (ch. xi. 31 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, pJ"iD,
P_.iViD, i.e. the Greek fA»potyutt, a whip. See the various explanations in contributed to the fulfilment of the counsel of God through his own folly, and brought about the accomplishment of the sentence pronounced upon Solomon. — Ver. 16. The harsh word supplied the discontented with an apparently just occasion for saying, * What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse! To thy tents, 0 Israel! Now see to thy house, David! " i.e. take care of thy house. David, the tribe-father, is mentioned in the place of his family. These words, with which Sheba had once preached rebellion in the time of David (2 Sam. xx. 1), give expression to the deeprooted aversion which was cherished by these tribes towards the Davidic monarchy, and that in so distinct and unvarnished a manner, that we may clearly see that there were deeper causes for the secession than the pretended oppression of Solomon's government; that its real foundation was the ancient jealousy of the tribes, which had been only suppressed for the time by David and Solomon, but had not been entirely eradicated, whilst this jealousy again had its roots in the estrangement of these tribes from the Lord, and from His law and righteousness. — Ver. 17. But the sons of Israel, who dwelt in the cities of Judah, over these Eehoboam became king. These " sons of Israel " are members of the ten tribes who had settled in Judah in the course of ages (cf. ver. 23); and the Simeonites especially are included, since they were obliged to remain in the kingdom of Judah from the very situation of their tribeterritory, and might very well be reckoned among the Israelites who dwelt in the cities of Judah, inasmuch as at first the whole of their territory was allotted to the tribe of Judah, from which they afterwards received a portion (Josh. xix. 1). The verse cannot possibly mean that " the tribe of Judah declared in favour of their countryman Eehoboam as king " (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 399). — Ver. 18. In order to appease the agitated tribes and commence negotiations with them, Eehoboam sent Adoram, the superintendent of the tribute, to them (see at ch. iv. 6). Eehoboam entrusted him with the negotiation, because the tribes had complained that the tribute burdens were too severe, and the king was no doubt serious in his wish to meet the demands of the people. But the very fact that he sent this man only increased the bitterness of feeling, so that they stoned him to death, and Eehoboam himself was obliged to summon up all his strength (pssnn) 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, see 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 kin^ to 2:0 to war with their brethren the Israelites, " for this thing was from the Lord." WJ1 "9To " 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 word. UWJ fl??J, " 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 rchti BW^,
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. F133, 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 Nabxdus or Nablus, 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 order also to give internal strength to his kingdom, Jeroboam resolved to provide for his subjects a substitute for the sacrificial worship in the temple by establishing new sacra, and thus to take away all occasion for making festal journeys to Jerusalem, from which he apprehended, and that probably not without reason, a return of the people to the house of David, and consequently further danger for his own life. " If this people go up to perform sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, their heart will turn to their lord, king Rehoboam," etc. — Ver. 28. He therefore consulted, sc. with his counsellors, or the heads of the nation, who had helped him to the throne, and made two calves of gold. 3Hj vjy are young oxen, not of pure gold however, or cast in brass and gilded, but in all probability like the golden calf which Aaron had cast for the people at Sinai, made of a kernel of wood, which was then covered with gold plate (see the Comm. on Ex. xxxii. 4). That Jeroboam had in his mind not merely the Egyptian Apis-worship generally, but more especially the image-worship which Aaron introduced for the people at Sinai, is evident from the words borrowed from Ex. xxxii. 4, with which he studiously endeavoured to recommend his new form of worship to the people: " Behold, this is thy God, 0 Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." rri^P D??"3^, it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem; not " let your going suffice," because IP is not to be taken in a partitive sense here, as it is in Ex. ix. 28 and Ezek. xliv. 6. What Jeroboam meant to say by the words, " Behold thy God," etc., was, " this is no new religion, but this was the form of worship which our fathers used in the desert, with Aaron himself leading the way" (Seb. Schmidt). And whilst the verbal allusion to that event at Sinai plainly shows that this worship was not actual idolatry, i.e?wa,s 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 were 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 Bcitin, 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. — Dan, 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 Byn: 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 IrtKFniffl inarms*: 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, niDn rv? (see at ch. iil 2), instead of the house of God, which the Lord had sanctified as the place of worship by filling it with His gracious presence. The singular 2 n^n may he accounted for from the antithesis to rrfrv 1Y3, upon which it rests. There was no necessity to say expressly that there was a house of high places at Bethel and Dan, i.e. in two places, because it followed as a matter of course that the golden calves could not stand in the open air, but were placed in a temple, by which the sacrificial altar stood. These places of worship were houses of high places, Bamoth, because the ark of the covenant was wanting, and therewith the gracious presence of God, the Shcchinah, for which no symbol invented by men could be a substitute. Moreover Jeroboam made " priests from the mass of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi." D?? n^j?Pj i-c- not of the poorest of the people (Luther and others), but from the last of the people onwards, that is to say, from the whole of the people any one without distinction even to the very last, instead of the priests chosen by God out of the tribe of Levi. For this meaning of J")toi?o see Gen. xix. 4 and Ezek. xxxiii. 2, also Lud. de Dieu on this passage. This innovation on the part of Jeroboam appears very surprising, if we consider how the Ephraimite Micah (Judg. xvii. 10 sqq.) rejoiced that he had obtained a Levite to act as priest for his image-worship, and can only be explained from the fact that the Levites did not consent to act as priests in the worship before the golden calves, but set their faces against it, and therefore, as is stated in 2 Clnon. xi. 13, 14, were obliged to leave their district towns and possessions and emigrate into the kingdom of Judah. — Ver. 32. Jeroboam also transferred to the eighth month the feast which ought to have been kept in the seventh month (the feast of tabernacles, Lev. xxiii. 34 sqq.). The pretext for this arbitrary alteration of the law, which repeatedly describes the seventh month as the month appointed by the Lord (Lev. xxiii. 34, 39, and 41), he may have found 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 bibl. Archaol. ii. §118, Anm. 3, and § 119, Anm. 2), since this feast of the ingathering of the produce of the threshing-floor and wine-press (Ex. xxiii. 16; Lev. xxiii. 39; Deut. xvi. 13) was a feast of 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-