1 SAMUEL-2 KINGS
by C.F. Keil & F. Delitzsch To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God:
THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL INTRODUCTION TITLE, CONTENTS, CHARACTER, AND ORIGIN OF THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL.
The books of Samuel originally formed one undivided work, and in the Hebrew MSS they do so still. The division into two books originated with the Alexandrian translators (LXX), and was not only adopted in the Vulgate and other versions, but in the sixteenth century it was introduced by Daniel Bomberg into our editions of the Hebrew Bible itself. In the Septuagint and Vulgate, these books are reckoned as belonging to the books of the Kings, and have the heading, Basileiw>n prw>th deute>ra (Regum, i. et ii.). In the Septuagint they are called “books of the kingdoms,” evidently with reference to the fact that each of these works contains an account of the history of a double kingdom, viz.: the books of Samuel, the history of the kingdoms of Saul and David; and the books of Kings, that of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. This title does not appear unsuitable, so far as the books before us really contain an account of the rise of the monarchy in Israel. Nevertheless, we cannot regard it as the original title, or even as a more appropriate heading than the one given in the Hebrew canon, viz., “the book of Samuel,” since this title not only originated in the fact that the first half (i.e., our first book) contains an account of the acts of the prophet Samuel, but was also intended to indicate that the spirit of Samuel formed the soul of the true kingdom in Israel, or that the earthly throne of the Israelitish kingdom of God derived its strength and perpetuity from the Spirit of the Lord which lived in the prophet. The division into two books answers to the contents, since the death of Saul, with which the first book closes, formed a turning-point in the development of the kingdom.
The Books of Samuel contain the history of the kingdom of God in Israel, from the termination of the age of the judges to the close of the reign of king David, and embrace a period of about 125 years, viz., from about 1140 to 1015 B.C. The first book treats of the judgeship of the prophet Samuel and the reign of king Saul, and is divided into three sections, answering to the three epochs formed by the judicial office of Samuel (ch. 1-7), the reign of Saul from his election till his rejection (ch. 8-15), and the decline of his kingdom during his conflict with David, whom the Lord had chosen to be the leader of His people in the place of Saul (ch. 16-31). The renewal of the kingdom of God, which was now thoroughly disorganized both within and without, commenced with Samuel. When the pious Hannah asked for a son from the Lord, and Samuel was given to her, the sanctuary of God at Shiloh was thoroughly desecrated under the decrepit high priest Eli by the base conduct of his worthless sons, and the nation of Israel was given up to the power of the Philistines. If Israel, therefore, was to be delivered from the bondage of the heathen it was necessary that it should be first of all redeemed from the bondage of sin and idolatry, that its false confidence in the visible pledges of the gracious presence of God should be shaken by heavy judgments, and the way prepared for its conversion to the Lord its God by deep humiliation.
At the very same time, therefore, at which Samuel was called to be the prophet of God, the judgment of God was announced upon the degraded priesthood and the desecrated sanctuary. The first section of our book, which describes the history of the renewal of the theocracy by Samuel, does not commence with the call of Samuel as prophet, but with an account on the one hand of the character of the national religion in the time of Eli, and on the other hand of the piety of the parents of Samuel, especially of his mother, and with an announcement of the judgment that was to fall upon Eli’s house (ch. 1-2). Then follow first of all the call of Samuel as prophet (ch. 3), and the fulfilment of the judgment upon the house of Eli and the house of God (ch. 4); secondly, the manifestation of the omnipotence of God upon the enemies of His people, by the chastisement of the Philistines for carrying off the ark of the covenant, and the victory which the Israelites gained over their oppressors through Samuel’s prayer (ch. 5-7:14); and lastly, a summary of the judicial life of Samuel (1 Sam 7:15-17).
The second section contains, first, the negotiations of the people with Samuel concerning the appointment of a king, the anointing of Saul by the prophet, and his election as king, together with the establishment of his kingdom (ch. 8-12); and secondly, a brief survey of the history of his reign, in connection with which the only events that are at all fully described are his first successful conflicts with the Philistines, and the war against the Amalekites which occasioned his ultimate rejection (ch. 13-15). In the third section (ch. 16-31) there is a much more elaborate account of the history of Saul from his rejection till his death, since it not only describes the anointing of David and his victory over Goliath, but contains a circumstantial account of his attitude towards Saul, and the manifold complications arising from his long-continued persecution on the part of Saul, for the purpose of setting forth the gradual accomplishment of the counsels of God, both in the rejection of Saul and the election of David as king of Israel, to warn the ungodly against hardness of heart, and to strengthen the godly in their trust in the Lord, who guides His servants through tribulation and suffering to glory and honour. The second book contains the history of the reign of David, arranged in four sections: (1) his reign over Judah in Hebron, and his conflict with Ishbosheth the son of Saul, whom Abner had set up as king over the other tribes of Israel (ch. 1-4): (2) the anointing of David as king over all Israel, and the firm establishment of his kingdom through the conquest of the citadel of Zion, and the elevation of Jerusalem into the capital of the kingdom; the removal of the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem; the determination to build a temple to the Lord; the promise given him by the Lord of the everlasting duration of his dominion; and lastly, the subjugation of all the enemies of Israel (ch. 5- 8:14), to which there is appended a list of the principal officers of state (1 Sam 8:15-18), and an account of the favour shown to the house of Saul in the person of Mephibosheth (ch. 9): (3) the disturbance of his reign through his adultery with Bathsheba during the Ammonitish and Syrian war, and the judgments which came upon his house in consequence of this sin through the wickedness of his sons, viz., the incest of Amnon and rebellion of Absalom, and the insurrection of Sheba (ch. 10-20): (4) the close of his reign, his song of thanksgiving for deliverance out of the hand of all his foes (ch. 22), and his last prophetic words concerning the just ruler in the fear of God (1 Sam 23:1-7).
The way is prepared for these, however, by an account of the expiation of Saul’s massacre of the Gibeonites, and of various heroic acts performed by his generals during the wars with the Philistines (ch. 21); whilst a list of his several heroes is afterwards appended in 1 Sam 23:8-39, together with an account of the numbering of the people and consequent pestilence (ch. 24), which is placed at the close of the work, simply because the punishment of this sin of David furnished the occasion for the erection of an altar of burnt-offering upon the site of the future temple. His death is not mentioned here, because he transferred the kingdom to his son Solomon before he died; and the account of this transfer forms the introduction to the history of Solomon in the first book of Kings, so that the close of David’s life was most appropriately recorded there.
So far as the character of the historical writing in the books of Samuel is concerned, there is something striking in the contrast which presents itself between the fulness with which the writer has described many events of apparently trifling importance, in connection with the lives of persons through whom the Lord secured the deliverance of His people and kingdom from their foes, and the summary brevity with which he disposes of the greatest enterprises of Saul and David, and the fierce and for the most part tedious wars with the surrounding nations; so that, as Thenius says, “particular portions of the work differ in the most striking manner from all the rest, the one part being very brief, and written almost in the form of a chronicle, the other elaborate, and in one part composed with really biographical fulness.”
This peculiarity is not to be accounted for from the nature of the sources which the author had at his command; for even if we cannot define with precision the nature and extent of these sources, yet when we compare the accounts contained in these books of the wars between David and the Ammonites and Syrians with those in the books of Chronicles (2 Sam and 10 with 1 Chron 18-19), we see clearly that the sources from which those accounts were derived embraced more than our books have given, since there are several places in which the chronicler gives fuller details of historical facts, the truth of which is universally allowed. The preparations for the building of the temple and the organization of the army, as well as the arrangement of the official duties of the Levites which David undertook, according to 1 Chron 22-28, in the closing years of his life, cannot possibly have been unknown to the author of our books.
Moreover, there are frequent allusions in the books before us to events which are assumed as known, though there is no record of them in the writings which have been handed down to us, such as the removal of the tabernacle from Shiloh, where it stood in the time of Eli (1 Sam 1:3,9, etc.), to Nob, where David received the shewbread from the priests on his flight from Saul (1 Sam 21:1ff.); the massacre of the Gibeonites by Saul, which had to be expiated under David (2 Sam 21); the banishment of the necromancers out of the land in the time of Saul (1 Sam 28:3); and the flight of the Beerothites to Gittaim (2 Sam 4:3). From this also we must conclude, that the author of our books knew more than he thought it necessary to mention in his work. But we certainly cannot infer from these peculiarities, as has often been done, that our books are to be regarded as a compilation.
Such an inference as this simply arises from an utter disregard of the plan and object, which run through both books and regulate the selection and arrangement of the materials they contain. That the work has been composed upon a definite plan, is evident from the grouping of the historical facts, in favour of which the chronological order generally observed in both the books has now and then been sacrificed. Thus, in the history of Saul and the account of his wars (1 Sam 14:47-48), the fact is also mentioned, that he smote the Amalekites; whereas the war itself, in which he smote them, is first described in detail in ch. 15, because it was in that war that he forfeited his kingdom through his transgression of the divine command, and brought about his own rejection on the part of God.
The sacrifice of the chronological order to the material grouping of kindred events, is still more evident in the history of David. In 2 Sam 8 all his wars with foreign nations are collected together, and even the wars with the Syrians and Ammonites are included, together with an account of the booty taken in these wars; and then after this, viz., in ch. 10-12, the war with the Ammonites and Syrians is more fully described, including the circumstances which occasioned it, the course which it took, and David’s adultery which occurred during this war.
Moreover, the history of Saul, as well as that of David, is divided into two self-contained periods, answering indeed to the historical course of the reigns of these two kings, but yet so distinctly marked off by the historian, that not only is the turning-point distinctly given in both instances, viz., the rejection of Saul and the grievous fall of David, but each of these periods is rounded off with a comprehensive account of the wars, the family, and the state officials of the two kings (1 Sam 14:47-52, and 2 Sam 8). So likewise in the history of Samuel, after the victory which the Israelites obtained over the Philistines through his prayer, everything that had to be related concerning his life as judge is grouped together in 1 Sam 7:15-17, before the introduction of the monarchy is described; although Samuel himself lived till nearly the close of the reign of Saul, and not only instituted Saul as king, but afterwards announced his rejection, and anointed David as his successor.
These comprehensive accounts are anything but proofs of compilations from sources of different kinds, which ignorance of the peculiarities of the Semitic style of writing history has led some to regard them as being; they simply serve to round off the different periods into which the history has been divided, and form resting-places for the historical review, which neither destroy the material connection of the several groups, nor throw any doubt upon the unity of the authorship of the books themselves. And even where separate incidents appear to be grouped together, without external connection or any regard to chronological order, on a closer inspection it is easy to discover the relation in which they stand to the leading purpose of the whole book, and the reason why they occupy this position and no other (see the introductory remarks to 2 Sam 9; 21:1- 24:25).
If we look more closely, however, at the contents of these books, in order to determine their character more precisely, we find at the very outset, in Hannah’s song of praise, a prophetic glance at the anointed of the Lord (1 Sam 2:10), which foretells the establishment of the monarchy what was afterwards accomplished under Saul and David. And with this there is associated the rise of the new name, Jehovah Sabaoth, which is never met with in the Pentateuch or in the books of Joshua and Judges; whereas it occurs in the books before us from the commencement (1 Sam 1:3,11, etc.) to the close. (For further remarks on the origin and signification of this divine name, see at 1 Sam 1:3.) When Israel received a visible representative of its invisible God-king in the person of an earthly monarch; Jehovah, the God of Israel, became the God of the heavenly hosts.
Through the establishment of the monarchy, the people of Jehovah’s possession became a “world-power;” the kingdom of God was elevated into a kingdom of the world, as distinguished from the other ungodly kingdoms of the world, which it was eventually to overcome in the power of its God. In this conflict Jehovah manifested himself as the Lord of hosts, to whom all the nations and kingdoms of this world were to become subject. Even in the times of Saul and David, the heathen nations were to experience a foretaste of this subjection. When Saul had ascended the throne of Israel, he fought against all his enemies round about, and extended his power in every direction in which he turned (1 Sam 1:14,47- 48). But David made all the nations who bordered upon the kingdom of God tributary to the people of the Lord, as the Lord gave him victory wherever he went (1 Sam 2:8,14-15); so that his son Solomon reigned over all the kingdoms, from the stream (the Euphrates) to the boundary of Egypt, and they all brought him presents, and were subject to him (1 Kings 5:1).
But the Israelitish monarchy could never thus acquire the power to secure for the kingdom of God a victory over all its foes, except as the king himself was diligent in his endeavours to be at all times simply the instrument of the God-king, and exercise his authority solely in the name and according to the will of Jehovah. And as the natural selfishness and pride of man easily made this concentration of the supreme earthly power in a single person merely an occasion for self-aggrandisement, and therefore the Israelitish kings were exposed to the temptation to use the plenary authority entrusted to them even in opposition to the will of God; the Lord raised up for Himself organs of His own Spirit, in the persons of the prophets, to stand by the side of the kings, and make known to them the will and counsel of God. The introduction of the monarchy was therefore preceded by the development of the prophetic office into a spiritual power in Israel, in which the kingdom was to receive not only a firm support to its own authority, but a strong bulwark against royal caprice and tyranny.
Samuel was called by the Lord to be His prophet, to convert the nation that was sunk in idolatry to the Lord its God, and to revive the religious life by the establishment of associations of prophets, since the priests had failed to resist the growing apostasy of the nation, and had become unfaithful to their calling to instruct and establish the congregation in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. Even before the call of Samuel as a prophet, there was foretold to the high priest Eli by a man of God, not only the judgment that would fall upon the degenerate priesthood, but the appointment of a faithful priest, for whom the Lord would build a permanent house, that he might ever walk before His anointed (1 Sam 2:26-36). And the first revelation which Samuel received from God had reference to the fulfilment of all that the Lord had spoken against the house of Eli (1 Sam 3:11ff.). The announcement of a faithful priest, who would walk before the anointed of the Lord, also contained a prediction of the establishment of the monarchy, which foreshadowed its worth and great significance in relation to the further development of the kingdom of God. And whilst these predictions of the anointed of the Lord, before and in connection with the call of Samuel, show the deep spiritual connection which existed between the prophetic order and the regal office in Israel; the insertion of them in these books is a proof that from the very outset the author had this new organization of the Israelitish kingdom of God before his mind, and that it was his intention not simply to hand down biographies of Samuel, Saul, and David, but to relate the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God at the time of its elevation out of a deep inward and outward decline into the full authority and power of a kingdom of the Lord, before which all its enemies were to be compelled to bow.
Israel was to become a kingship of priests, i.e., a kingdom whose citizens were priests and kings. The Lords had announced this to the sons of Israel before the covenant was concluded at Sinai, as the ultimate object of their adoption as the people of His possession (Ex 19:5-6). Now although this promise reached far beyond the times of the Old Covenant, and will only receive its perfect fulfilment in the completion of the kingdom of God under the New Covenant, yet it was to be realized even in the people of Israel so far as the economy of the Old Testament allowed. Israel was not only to become a priestly nation, but a royal nation also; not only to be sanctified as a congregation of the Lord, but also to be exalted into a kingdom of God. The establishment of the earthly monarchy, therefore, was not only an eventful turning-point, but also an “epoch-making” advance in the development of Israel towards the goal set before it in its divine calling.
And this advance became the pledge of the ultimate attainment of the goal, through the promise which David received from God (2 Sam 7:12-16), that the Lord would establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. With this promise God established for His anointed the eternal covenant, to which David reverted at the close of his reign, and upon which he rested his divine announcement of the just ruler over men, the ruler in the fear of God (2 Sam 23:1-7). Thus the close of these books points back to their commencement. The prophecy of the pious mother of Samuel, that the Lord would give strength unto His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed (1 Sam 2:10), found a fulfilment in the kingdom of David, which was at the same time a pledge of the ultimate completion of the kingdom of God under the sceptre of the Son of David, the promised Messiah.
This is one, and in fact the most conspicuous, arrangement of the facts connected with the history of salvation, which determined the plan and composition of the work before us. By the side of this there is another, which does not stand out so prominently indeed, but yet must not be overlooked. At the very beginning, viz., in ch. 1, the inward decay of the house of God under the high priest Eli is exhibited; and in the announcement of the judgment upon the house of Eli, a long-continued oppression of the dwelling-place (of God) is foretold (1 Sam 2:32). Then, in the further course of the narrative, not only is the fulfilment of these threats pointed out, in the events described in 1 Sam 4; 6:19-7:2, and 22:11-19; but it is also shown how David first of all brought the ark of the covenant, about which no one had troubled himself in the time of Saul, out of its concealment, had a tent erected for it in the capital of his kingdom upon Mount Zion, and made it once more the central point of the worship of the congregation; and how after that, when God had given him rest from his enemies, he wished to build a temple for the Lord to be the dwellingplace of His name; and lastly, when God would not permit him to carry out this resolution, but promised that his son would build the house of the Lord, how, towards the close of his reign, he consecrated the site for the future temple by building an altar upon Mount Moriah (2 Sam 24:25).
Even in this series of facts the end of the work points back to the beginning, so that the arrangement and composition of it according to a definite plan, which has been consistently carried out, are very apparent. If, in addition to this, we take into account the deep-seated connection between the building of the temple as designed by David, and the confirmation of his monarchy on the part of God as exhibited in 2 Sam 7, we cannot fail to observe that the historical development of the true kingdom, in accordance with the nature and constitution of the Old Testament kingdom of God, forms the leading thought and purpose of the work to which the name of Samuel has been attached, and that it was by this thought and aim that the writer was influenced throughout in his selection of the historical materials which lay before him in the sources that he employed.
The full accounts which are given of the birth and youth of Samuel, and the life of David, are in the most perfect harmony with this design. The lives and deeds of these two men of God were of significance as laying the foundation for the development and organization of the monarchical kingdom in Israel. Samuel was the model and type of the prophets; and embodied in his own person the spirit and nature of the prophetic office, whilst his attitude towards Saul foreshadowed the position which the prophet was to assume in relation to the king. In the life of David, the Lord himself education the king of His kingdom, the prince over His people, to whom He could continue His favour and grace even when he had fallen so deeply that it was necessary that he should be chastised for his sins. Thus all the separate parts and sections are fused together as an organic whole in the fundamental thought of the work before us. And this unity is not rendered at all questionable by differences such as we find in the accounts of the mode of Saul’s death as described in 1 Sam 31:4 and 2 Sam 1:9-10, or by such repetitions as the double account of the death of Samuel, and other phenomena of a similar kind, which can be explained without difficulty; whereas the assertion sometimes made, that there are some events of which we have two different accounts that contradict each other, has never yet been proved, and, as we shall see when we come to the exposition of the passages in question, has arisen partly from unscriptural assumptions, partly from ignorance of the formal peculiarities of the Hebrew mode of writing history, and partly from a mistaken interpretation of the passages themselves.
With regard to the origin of the books of Samuel, all that can be maintained with certainty is, that they were not written till after the division of the kingdom under Solomon’s successor. This is evident from the remark in 1 Sam 27:6, that “Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day.” For although David was king over the tribe of Judah alone for seven years, it was not till after the falling away of the ten tribes from the house of David that there were really “kings of Judah.” On the other hand, nothing can be inferred with certainty respecting the date of composition, either from the distinction drawn between Israel and Judah in 1 Sam 11:8; 17:52; 18:16, and 2 Sam 3:10; 24:1, which evidently existed as early as the time of David, as we may see from 2 Sam 2:9-10; 5:1-5; 19:41; 20:2; or from the formula “to this day,” which we find in 1 Sam 5:5; 6:18; 30:25; Sam 4:3; 6:18; 18:18, since the duration of the facts to which it is applied is altogether unknown; or lastly, from such passages as 1 Sam 9:9; 2 Sam 13:18, where explanations are given of expressions and customs belonging to the times of Saul and David, as it is quite possible that they may have been altogether changed by the time of Solomon. In general, the contents and style of the books point to the earliest times after the division of the kingdom; since we find no allusions whatever to the decay of the kingdoms which afterwards took place, and still less to the captivity; whilst the style and language are classical throughout, and altogether free from Chaldaisms and later forms, such as we meet with in the writings of the Chaldean period, and even in those of the time of the captivity.
The author himself is quite unknown; but, judging from the spirit of his writings, he was a prophet of the kingdom of Judah. It is unanimously admitted, however, that he made use of written documents, particularly of prophetic records made by persons who were contemporaries of the events described, not only for the history of the reigns of Saul and David, but also for the life and labours of Samuel, although no written sources are quoted, with the exception of the “book of Jasher,” which contained the elegy of David upon Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:18); so that the sources employed by him cannot be distinctly pointed out. The different attempts which have been made to determine them minutely, from the time of Eichhorn down to G. Em. Karo (de fontibus librorum qui feruntur Samuelis Dissert. Berol. 1862), are lacking in the necessary proofs which hypotheses must bring before they can meet with adoption and support.
If we confine ourselves to the historical evidence, according to 1 Chron 29:29, the first and last acts of king David, i.e., the events of his entire reign, were recorded in the “dibre of Samuel the seer, of Nathan the prophet, and of Gad the seer.” These prophetic writings formed no doubt the leading sources from which our books of Samuel were also drawn, since, on the one hand, apart from sundry deviations arising from differences in the plan and object of the two authors, the two accounts of the reign of David in 2 Sam and 1 Chron 11-21 agree for the most part so thoroughly word for word, that they are generally regarded as extracts from one common source; whilst, on the other hand, the prophets named not only lived in the time of David but throughout the whole of the period referred to in the books before us, and took a very active part in the progressive development of the history of those times (see not only 1 Sam 1-3; 7:1-10:27; 12; 15:1-16:23, but also 1 Sam. 19:18-24; 22:5; 2 Sam. 7:7:12; 24:11-18).
Moreover, in 1 Chron 27:24, there are “chronicles (diaries or annals) of king David” mentioned, accompanied with the remark that the result of the census appointed by David was not inserted in them, from which we may infer that all the principal events of his reign were included in these chronicles. And they may also have formed one of the sources for our books, although nothing certain can be determined concerning the relation in which they stood to the writings of the three prophets that have been mentioned. Lastly, it is every evident from the character of the work before us, that the author had sources composed by eye-witnesses of the events at his command, and that these were employed with an intimate knowledge of the facts and with historical fidelity, inasmuch as the history is distinguished by great perspicuity and vividness of description, by a careful delineation of the characters of the persons engaged, and by great accuracy in the accounts of localities, and of subordinate circumstances connected with the historical events. FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL I. HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL UNDER THE PROPHET SAMUEL.
The call of Samuel to be the prophet and judge of Israel formed a turningpoint in the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. As the prophet of Jehovah, Samuel was to lead the people of Israel out of the times of the judges into those of the kings, and lay the foundation for a prosperous development of the monarchy. Consecrated like Samson as a Nazarite from his mother’s womb, Samuel accomplished the deliverance of Israel out of the power of the Philistines, which had been only commenced by Samson; and that not by the physical might of his arm, but by the spiritual power of his word and prayer, with which he led Israel back from the worship of dead idols to the Lord its God. And whilst as one of the judges, among whom he classes himself in 1 Sam 12:11, he brought the office of judge to a close, and introduced the monarchy; as a prophet, he laid the foundation of the prophetic office, inasmuch as he was the fist to naturalize it, so to speak, in Israel, and develope it into a power that continued henceforth to exert the strongest influence, side by side with the priesthood and monarchy, upon the development of the covenant nation and kingdom of God. For even if there were prophets before the time of Samuel, who revealed the will of the Lord at times to the nation, they only appeared sporadically, without exerting any lasting influence upon the national life; whereas, from the time of Samuel onwards, the prophets sustained and fostered the spiritual life of the congregation, and were the instruments through whom the Lord made known His purposes to the nation and its rulers.
To exhibit in its origin and growth the new order of things which Samuel introduced, or rather the deliverance which the Lord sent to His people through this servant of His, the prophetic historian goes back to the time of Samuel’s birth, and makes us acquainted not only with the religious condition of the nation, but also with the political oppression under which it was suffering at the close of the period of the judges, and during the high-priesthood of Eli. At the time when the pious parents of Samuel were going year by year to the house of God at Shiloh to worship and offer sacrifice before the Lord, the house of God was being profaned by the abominable conduct of Eli’s sons (ch. 1-2). When Samuel was called to be the prophet of Jehovah, Israel lost the ark of the covenant, the soul of its sanctuary, in the war with the Philistines (ch. 3-4). And it was not till after the nation had been rendered willing to put away its strange gods and worship Jehovah alone, through the influence of Samuel’s exertions as prophet, that the faithful covenant God gave it, in answer to Samuel’s intercession, a complete victory over the Philistines (ch. 7). In accordance with these three prominent features, the history of the judicial life of Samuel may be divided into three sections, viz.: ch. 1-2; 3-6; and 7.
SAMUEL’S BIRTH AND DEDICATION TO THE LORD. HANNAH’S SONG OF PRAISE. 1 SAMUEL 1-2:10.
While Eli the high priest was judging Israel, and at the time when Samson was beginning to fight against the Philistines, a pious Israelitish woman prayed to the Lord for a son (vv. 1-18). Her prayer was heard. She bore a son, to whom she gave the name of Samuel, because he had been asked for from the Lord. As soon as he was weaned, she dedicated him to the Lord for a lifelong service (vv. 19-28), and praised the Lord in a sing of prophetic character for the favour which He had shown to His people through hearkening to her prayer (1 Sam 2:1-10).
1 SAMUEL. 1:1-8
Samuel’s pedigree.
Verse 1. His father was a man of Ramathaim-zophim, on the mountains of Ephraim, and named Elkanah. Ramathaim-zophim, which is only mentioned here, is the same place, according to v. 3 (comp. with v. 19 and 1 Sam 2:11), which is afterwards called briefly ha-Ramah, i.e., the height.
For since Elkanah of Ramathaim-zophim went year by year out of his city to Shiloh, to worship and sacrifice there, and after he had done this, returned to his house to Ramah (v. 19; 1 Sam 2:11), there can be no doubt that he was not only a native of Ramathaim-zophim, but still had his home there; so that Ramah, where his house was situated, is only an abbreviated name for Ramathaim-zophim. f1 This Ramah (which is invariably written with the article, ha-Ramah), where Samuel was not only born (vv. 19ff.), but lived, laboured, died (1 Sam 7:17; 15:34; 16:13; 19:18-19,22-23), and was buried (1 Sam 25:1; 28:3), is not a different place, as has been frequently assumed, from the Ramah in Benjamin (Josh 18:25), and is not to be sought for in Ramleh near Joppa (v. Schubert, etc.), nor in Soba on the north-west of Jerusalem (Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 329), nor three-quarters of an hour to the north of Hebron (Wolcott, v. de Velde), nor anywhere else in the tribe of Ephraim, but is identical with Ramah of Benjamin, and was situated upon the site of the present village of er-Râm, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem, upon a conical mountain to the east of the Nablus road (see at Josh 18:25). This supposition is neither at variance with the account in ch. 9-10 (see the commentary upon these chapters), nor with the statement that Ramathaimzophim was upon the mountains of Ephraim, since the mountains of Ephraim extended into the tribe-territory of Benjamin, as is indisputably evident from Judg 4:5, where Deborah the prophetess is said to have dwelt between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. The name Ramathaim-zophim, i.e., “the two heights (of the) Zophites” appear to have been given to the town to distinguish it from other Ramah’s, and to have been derived from the Levitical family of Zuph or Zophai (see Chron 6:26,35), which emigrated thither from the tribe of Ephraim, and from which Elkanah was descended. The full name, therefore, is given here, in the account of the descent of Samuel’s father; whereas in the further history of Samuel, where there was no longer the same reason for giving it, the simple name Ramah is invariably used. f3 The connection between Zophim and Zuph is confirmed by the fact that Elkanah’s ancestor, Zuph, is called Zophai in 1 Chron 6:26, and Zuph or Ziph in 1 Chron 6:35. Zophim therefore signifies the descendants of Zuph or Zophai, from which the name “land of Zuph,” in 1 Sam 9:5, was also derived (see the commentary on this passage). The tracing back of Elkanah’s family through four generations to Zuph agrees with the family registers in 1 Chron 6, where the ancestors of Elkanah are mentioned twice-first of all in the genealogy of the Kohathites (v. 26), and then in that of Heman, the leader of the singers, a grandson of Samuel (v. 33)-except that the name Elihu, Tohu, and Zuph, are given as Eliab, Nahath, and Zophai in the first instance, and Eliel, Toah, and Ziph (according to the Chethibh) in the second-various readings, such as often occur in the different genealogies, and are to be explained partly from the use of different forms for the same name, and partly from their synonymous meanings. Tohu and Toah, which occur in Arabic, with the meaning to press or sink in, are related in meaning to nachath or nuach, to sink or settle down.
From these genealogies in the Chronicles, we learn that Samuel was descended from Kohath, the son of Levi, and therefore was a Levite. It is no valid objection to the correctness of this view, that his Levitical descent is never mentioned, or that Elkanah is called an Ephrathite. The former of these can very easily be explained from the fact, that Samuel’s work as a reformer, which is described in this book, did not rest upon his Levitical descent, but simply upon the call which he had received from God, as the prophetic office was not confined to any particular class, like that of priest, but was founded exclusively upon the divine calling and endowment with the Spirit of God. And the difficulty which Nägelsbach expresses in Herzog’s Cycl., viz., that “as it was stated of those two Levites (Judg 17:7; 19:1), that they lived in Bethlehem and Ephraim, but only after they had been expressly described as Levites, we should have expected to find the same in the case of Samuel’s father,” is removed by the simple fact, that in the case of both those Levites it was of great importance, so far as the accounts which are given of them are concerned, that their Levitical standing should be distinctly mentioned, as is clearly shown by Judg 17:10,13, and 19:18; whereas in the case of Samuel, as we have already observed, his Levitical descent had no bearing upon the call which he received from the Lord. The word Ephrathite does not belong, so far as the grammatical construction is concerned, either to Zuph or Elkanah, but to “a certain man,” the subject of the principal clause, and signifies an Ephraimite, as in Judg 12:5 and 1 Kings 11:26, and not an inhabitant of Ephratah, i.e., a Bethlehemite, as in 1 Sam 17:12 and Ruth 1:2; for in both these passages the word is more precisely defined by the addition of the expression “of Bethlehem-Judah,” whereas in this verse the explanation is to be found in the expression “of Mount Ephraim.” Elkanah the Levite is called an Ephraimite, because, so far as his civil standing was concerned, he belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, just as the Levite in Judg 17:7 is described as belonging to the family of Judah. The Levites were reckoned as belonging to those tribes in the midst of which they lived, so that there were Judaean Levites, Ephraimitish Levites, and so on (see Hengstenberg, Diss. vol. ii. p. 50).
It by no means follows, however, from the application of this term to Elkanah, that Ramathaim-zophim formed part of the tribe- territory of Ephraim, but simply that Elkanah’s family was incorporated in this tribe, and did not remove till afterwards to Ramah in the tribe of Benjamin. On the division of the land, dwelling-places were allotted to the Levites of the family of Kohath, in the tribes of Ephraim, Dan, and Manasseh (Josh 21:5,21ff.). Still less is there anything at variance with the Levitical descent of Samuel, as Thenius maintains, in the fact that he was dedicated to the Lord by his mother’s vow, for he was not dedicated to the service of Jehovah generally through this view, but was set apart to a lifelong service at the house of God as a Nazarite (vv. 11, 22); whereas other Levites were not required to serve till their twenty-fifth year, and even then had not to perform an uninterrupted service at the sanctuary.
On the other hand, the Levitical descent of Samuel receives a very strong confirmation from his father’s name. All the Elkanahs that we meet with in the Old Testament, with the exception of the one mentioned in 2 Chron 28:7, whose genealogy is unknown, can be proved to have been Levites; and most of them belong to the family of Korah, from which Samuel was also descended (see Simonis, Onomast. p. 493). This is no doubt connected in some way with the meaning of the name Elkanah, the man whom God has bought or acquired; since such a name was peculiarly suitable to the Levites, whom the Lord had set apart for service at the sanctuary, in the place of the first-born of Israel, whom He had sanctified to himself when He smote the first-born of Egypt (Num 3:13ff., 44ff.; see Hengstenberg, ut sup.).
Verse 2-3. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah (grace or gracefulness) and Peninnah (coral), the latter of whom was blessed with children, whereas the first was childless. He went with his wives year by year µwOy µwOy , as in Ex 13:10; Judg 11:40), according to the instructions of the law (Ex 34:23; Deut 16:16), to the tabernacle at Shiloh (Josh 18:1), to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts. “Jehovah Zebaoth” is an abbreviation of “Jehovah Elohe Zebaoth,” or ab;x; µyhila’ hwO;hy] ; and the connection of Zebaoth with Jehovah is not to be regarded as the construct state, nor is Zebaoth to be taken as a genitive dependent upon Jehovah. This is not only confirmed by the occurrence of such expressions as “Elohim Zebaoth” (Ps. 59:6; 80:5,8,15,20; 84:9) and “Adonai Zebaoth” (Isa 10:16), but also by the circumstance that Jehovah, as a proper name, cannot be construed with a genitive. The combination “Jehovah Zebaoth” is rather to be taken as an ellipsis, where the general term Elohe (God of), which is implied in the word Jehovah, is to be supplied in thought (see Hengstenberg, Christol. i. p. 375, English translation); for frequently as this expression occurs, especially in the case of the prophets, Zebaoth is never used alone in the Old Testament as one of the names of God. It is in the Septuagint that the word is first met with occasionally as a proper name ( Sabaw>q ), viz., throughout the whole of the first book of Samuel, very frequently in Isaiah, and also in Zech 13:2. In other passages, the word is translated either ku>riov , or qeo>v tw>n duna>mewn , or pantokra>twr ; whilst the other Greek versions use the more definite phrase ku>riov stratiw>n instead.
This expression, which was not used as a divine name until the age of Samuel, had its roots in Gen 2:1, although the title itself was unknown in the Mosaic period, and during the times of the judges (see p. 366). It represented Jehovah as ruler over the heavenly hosts (i.e., the angels, according to Gen 32:2, and the stars, according to Isa 40:26), who are called the “armies” of Jehovah in Ps 103:21; 148:2; but we are not to understand it as implying that the stars were supposed to be inhabited by angels, as Gesenius (Thes. s. v.) maintains, since there is not the slightest trace of any such notion in the whole of the Old Testament. It is simply applied to Jehovah as the God of the universe, who governs all the powers of heaven, both visible and invisible, as He rules in heaven and on earth. It cannot even be proved that the epithet Lord, or God of Zebaoth, refers chiefly and generally to the sun, moon, and stars, on account of their being so peculiarly adapted, through their visible splendour, to keep alive the consciousness of the omnipotence and glory of God (Hengstenberg on Ps 24:10).
For even though the expression ab;x; (their host), in Gen 2:1, refers to the heavens only, since it is only to the heavens (vid., Isa 40:26), and never to the earth, that a “host” is ascribed, and in this particular passage it is probably only the stars that are to be thought of, the creation of which had already been mentioned in Gen 1:14ff.; yet we find the idea of an army of angels introduced in the history of Jacob (Gen 32:2-3), where Jacob calls the angels of God who appeared to him the “camp of God,” and also in the blessing of Moses (Deut 33:2), where the “ten thousands of saints” (Kodesh) are not stars, but angels, or heavenly spirits; whereas the fighting of the stars against Sisera in the song of Deborah probably refers to a natural phenomenon, by which God had thrown the enemy into confusion, and smitten them before the Israelites (see at Judg 5:20).
We must also bear in mind, that whilst on the one hand the tribes of Israel, as they came out of Egypt, are called Zebaoth Jehovah, “the hosts of Jehovah” (Ex 7:4; 12:41), on the other hand the angel of the Lord, when appearing in front of Jericho in the form of a warrior, made himself known to Joshua as “the prince of the army of Jehovah,” i.e., of the angelic hosts.
And it is in this appearance of the heavenly leader of the people of God to the earthly leader of the hosts of Israel, as the prince of the angelic hosts, not only promising him the conquest of Jericho, but through the miraculous overthrow of the walls of this strong bulwark of the Canaanitish power, actually giving him at the same time a practical proof that the prince of the angelic hosts was fighting for Israel, that we have the material basis upon which the divine epithet “Jehovah God of hosts” was founded, even though it was not introduced immediately, but only at a later period, when the Lord began to form His people Israel into a kingdom, by which all the kingdoms of the heathen were to be overcome.
It is certainly not without significance that this title is given to God for the first time in these books, which contain an account of the founding of the kingdom, and (as Auberlen has observed) that it was by Samuel’s mother, the pious Hannah, when dedicating her son to the Lord, and prophesying of the king and anointed of the Lord in her song of praise (1 Sam 2:10), that this name was employed for the first time, and that God was addressed in prayer as “Jehovah of hosts” (v. 11). Consequently, if this name of God goes hand in hand with the prophetic announcement and the actual establishment of the monarchy in Israel, its origin cannot be attributed to any antagonism to Sabaeism, or to the hostility of pious Israelites to the worship of the stars, which was gaining increasing ground in the age of David, as Hengstenberg (on Ps 24:10) and Strauss (on Zeph 2:9) maintain; to say nothing of the fact, that there is no historical foundation for such an assumption at all. It is a much more natural supposition, that when the invisible sovereignty of Jehovah received a visible manifestation in the establishment of the earthly monarchy, the sovereignty of Jehovah, if it did possess and was to possess any reality at all, necessarily claimed to be recognised in its all-embracing power and glory, and that in the title “God of (the heavenly hosts” the fitting expression was formed for the universal government of the God-king of Israel-a title which not only serves as a bulwark against any eclipsing of the invisible sovereignty of God by the earthly monarchy in Israel, but overthrew the vain delusion of the heathen, that the God of Israel was simply the national deity of that particular nation. f4 The remark introduced in v. 3b, “and there were the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests of the Lord,” i.e., performing the duties of the priesthood, serves as a preparation for what follows. This reason for the remark sufficiently explains why the sons of Eli only are mentioned here, and not Eli himself, since, although the latter still presided over the sanctuary as high priest, he was too old to perform the duties connected with the offering of sacrifice. The addition made by the LXX, HJli> kai> , is an arbitrary interpolation, occasioned by a misapprehension of the reason for mentioning the sons of Eli.
Verse 4-5. “And it came to pass, the day, and he offered sacrifice” (for, “on which he offered sacrifice”), that he gave to Peninnah and her children portions of the flesh of the sacrifice at the sacrificial meal; but to Hannah he gave ãaæ dj;a, hn;m; , “one portion for two persons,” i.e., a double portion, because he loved her, but Jehovah had shut up her womb: i.e., he gave it as an expression of his love to her, to indicate by a sign, “thou art as dear to me as if thou hadst born me a child” (O. v. Gerlach). This explanation of the difficult word ãaæ , of which very different interpretations have been given, is the one adopted by Tanchum Hieros., and is the only one which can be grammatically sustained, or yields an appropriate sense.
The meaning face (facies) is placed beyond all doubt by Gen 3:19 and other passages; and the use of ãaæ as a synonym for µynip; in 1 Sam 25:23, also establishes the meaning “person,” since µynip; is used in this sense in 2 Sam 17:11.
It is true that there are no other passages that can be adduced to prove that the singular ãaæ was also used in this sense; but as the word was employed promiscuously in both singular and plural in the derivative sense of anger, there is no reason for denying that the singular may also have been employed in the sense of face ( pro>swpon ). The combination of ãaæ with dj;a, hn;m; in the absolute state is supported by many other examples of the same kind (see Ewald, §287, h). The meaning double has been correctly adopted in the Syriac, whereas Luther follows the tristis of the Vulgate, and renders the word traurig, or sad. But this meaning, which Fr. Böttcher has lately taken under his protection, cannot be philologically sustained either by the expression µynip; lpæn; (Gen 4:6), or by Dan 11:20, or in any other way. ãaæ and ãaæ do indeed signify anger, but anger and sadness are two very different ideas. But when Böttcher substitutes “angrily or unwillingly” for sadly, the incongruity strikes you at once: “he gave her a portion unwillingly, because he loved her!” For the custom of singling out a person by giving double or even large portions, see the remarks on Gen 43:34.
Verse 6. “And her adversary (Peninnah) also provoked her with provocation, to irritate her.” The µGæ is placed before the noun belonging to the verb, to add force to the meaning. µ[ær; (Hiphil), to excite, put into (inward) commotion, not exactly to make angry.
Verse 7. “So did he (Elkanah) from year to year (namely give to Hannah a double portion at the sacrificial meal), as often as she went up to the house of the Lord. So did she (Peninnah) provoke her (Hannah), so that she wept, and did not eat.” The two ˆKe correspond to one another. Just as Elkanah showed his love to Hannah at every sacrificial festival, so did Peninnah repeat her provocation, the effect of which was that Hannah gave vent to her grief in tears, and did not eat.
Verse 8. Elkanah sought to comfort her in her grief by the affectionate appeal: “Am I not better to thee bwOf , i.e., dearer) than ten children?” Ten is a found number for a large number.
1 SAMUEL. 1:9-11
Hannah’s prayer for a son. “After the eating at Shiloh, and after the drinking,” i.e., after the sacrificial meal was over, Hannah rose up with a troubled heart, to pour out her grief in prayer before God, whilst Eli was sitting before the door-posts of the palace of Jehovah, and vowed this vow: “Lord of Zebaoth, if Thou regardest the distress of Thy maiden, and givest men’s seed to Thy maiden, I will give him to the Lord all his life long, and no razor shall come upon his head.” The choice of the infinitive absolute ht;v; instead of the infinitive construct is analogous to the combination of two nouns, the first of which is defined by a suffix, and the second written absolutely (see e.g., tr;m]zi `z[o , Ex 15:2; cf. 2 Sam 23:5, and Ewald, §339, b). The words from `yli[e onwards to vp,n, rmæ form two circumstantial clauses inserted in the main sentence, to throw light upon the situation and the further progress of the affair.
The tabernacle is called “the palace of Jehovah” (cf. 1 Sam 2:22), not on account of the magnificence and splendour of the building, but as the dwelling-place of Jehovah of hosts, the God-king of Israel, as in Ps 5:8, etc. hz;Wzm] is probably a porch, which had been placed before the curtain that formed the entranced into the holy place, when the tabernacle was erected permanently at Shiloh. vp,n, rmæ , troubled in soul (cf. 2 Kings 4:27). hk;B; hk;B; is really subordinate to llæp; , in the sense of “weeping much during her prayer.” The depth of her trouble was also manifest in the crowding together of the words in which she poured out the desire of her heart before God: “If Thou wilt look upon the distress of Thine handmaid, and remember and not forget,” etc. “Men’s seed” (semen virorum), i.e., a male child. vyai is the plural of vyai , a man (see Ewald, §186-7), from the root cae , which combines the two ideas of fire, regarded as life, and giving life and firmness. The vow contained two points: (1) she would give the son she had prayed for to be the Lord’s all the days of his life, i.e., would dedicate him to the Lord for a lifelong service, which, as we have already observed at p. 374, the Levites as such were not bound to perform; and (2) no razor should come upon his head, by which he was set apart as a Nazarite for his whole life (see at Num 6:2ff., and Judg 13:5). The Nazarite, again, was neither bound to perform a lifelong service nor to remain constantly at the sanctuary, but was simply consecrated for a certain time, whilst the sacrifice offered at his release from the vow shadowed forth a complete surrender to the Lord. The second point, therefore, added a new condition to the first, and one which was not necessarily connected with it, but which first gave the true consecration to the service of the Lord at the sanctuary. At the same time, the qualification of Samuel for priestly functions, such as the offering of sacrifice, can neither be deduced from the first point in the vow, nor yet from the second.
If, therefore, at a later period, when the Lord had called him to be a prophet, and had thereby placed him at the head of the nation, Samuel officiated at the presentation of sacrifice, he was not qualified to perform this service either as a Levite or as a lifelong Nazarite, but performed it solely by virtue of his prophetic calling.
1 SAMUEL. 1:12-14
But when Hannah prayed much (i.e., a long time) before the Lord, and Eli noticed her mouth, and, as she was praying inwardly, only saw her lips move, but did not hear her voice, he thought she was drunken, and called out to her: “How long dost thou show thyself drunken? put away thy wine from thee,” i.e., go away and sleep off thine intoxication (cf. 1 Sam 25:37). ble `l[æ rbæd; , lit. speaking to her heart. `l[æ is not to be confounded with lae (Gen 24:45), but has the subordinate idea of a comforting address, as in Gen 34:3, etc.
1 SAMUEL. 1:15-16
Hannah answered: “No, my lord, I am a woman of an oppressed spirit. I have not drunk wine and strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord (see Ps 42:5). Do not count thine handmaid for a worthless woman, for I have spoken hitherto out of great sighing and grief.” µynip; ˆtæn; , to set or lay before a person, i.e., generally to give a person up to another; here to place him in thought in the position of another, i.e., to take him for another. jæyci , meditation, inward movement of the heart, sighing.
1 SAMUEL. 1:17
Eli then replied: “Go in peace, and the God of Israel give (grant) thy request hl;aev] for hl;aev] ), which thou hast asked of Him.” This word of the high priest was not a prediction, but a pious wish, which God in His grace most gloriously fulfilled.
1 SAMUEL. 1:18
Hannah then went her way, saying, “Let thine handmaid find grace in thine eyes,” i.e., let me be honoured with thy favour and thine intercession, and was strengthened and comforted by the word of the high priest, which assured her that her prayer would be heard by God; and she did eat, “and her countenance was no more,” sc., troubled and sad, as it had been before.
This may be readily supplied from the context, through which the word countenance µynip; ) acquires the sense of a troubled countenance, as in Job 9:27.
1 SAMUEL. 1:18
Hannah then went her way, saying, “Let thine handmaid find grace in thine eyes,” i.e., let me be honoured with thy favour and thine intercession, and was strengthened and comforted by the word of the high priest, which assured her that her prayer would be heard by God; and she did eat, “and her countenance was no more,” sc., troubled and sad, as it had been before.
This may be readily supplied from the context, through which the word countenance µynip; ) acquires the sense of a troubled countenance, as in Job 9:27.
1 SAMUEL. 1:19-20
Samuel’s birth, and dedication to the Lord.
The next morning Elkanah returned home to Ramah (see at v. 1) with his two wives, having first of all worshipped before the Lord; after which he knew his wife Hannah, and Jehovah remembered her, i.e., heard her prayer. “In the revolution of the days,” i.e., of the period of her conception and pregnancy, Hannah conceived and bare a son, whom she called Samuel; “for (she said) I have asked him of the Lord.” The name laeWmv] ( Samouh>l , LXX) is not formed from [mæv; = µve and lae , name of God (Ges. Thes. p. 1434), but from lae [æWmv] , heard of God, a Deo exauditus, with an elision of the [ (see Ewald, §275, a., Not. 3); and the words “because I have asked him of the Lord” are not an etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded upon the facts.
Because Hannah had asked him of Jehovah, she gave him the name, “the God-heard,” as a memorial of the hearing of her prayer.
1 SAMUEL. 1:21-22
When Elkanah went up again with his family to Shiloh, to present his yearly sacrifice and his vow to the Lord, Hannah said to her husband that she would not go up till she had weaned the boy, and could present him to the Lord, that he might remain there for ever. µwOy jbæz, , the sacrifice of the days, i.e., which he was accustomed to offer on the days when he went up to the sanctuary; really, therefore, the annual sacrifice. It follows from the expression “and his vow,” that Elkanah had also vowed a vow to the Lord, in case the beloved Hannah should have a son. The vow referred to the presentation of a sacrifice. And this explains the combination of wOdd]niAta, with jbæz; . f5 Weaning took place very late among the Israelites. According to 2 Macc. 7:28, the Hebrew mothers were in the habit of suckling their children for three years. When the weaning had taken place, Hannah would bring her son up to the sanctuary, to appear before the face of the Lord, and remain there for ever, i.e., his whole life long. The Levites generally were only required to perform service at the sanctuary from their twenty-fifth to their fiftieth year (Num 8:24-25); but Samuel was to be presented to the Lord immediately after his weaning had taken place, and to remain at the sanctuary for ever, i.e., to belong entirely to the Lord. To this end he was to receive his training at the sanctuary, that at the very earliest waking up of his spiritual susceptibilities he might receive the impressions of the sacred presence of God. There is no necessity, therefore, to understand the word lmæG; (wean) as including what followed the weaning, namely, the training of the child up to his thirteenth year (Seb. Schmidt), on the ground that a child of three years old could only have been a burden to Eli: for the word never has this meaning, not even in 1 Kings 11:20; and, as O. v.
Gerlach has observed, his earliest training might have been superintended by one of the women who worshipped at the door of the tabernacle (1 Sam 2:22).
1 SAMUEL. 1:23
Elkanah expressed his approval of Hannah’s decision, and added, “only the Lord establish His word,” i.e., fulfil it. By “His word” we are not to understand some direct revelation from God respecting the birth and destination of Samuel, as the Rabbins suppose, but in all probability the word of Eli the high priest to Hannah, “The God of Israel grant thy petition” (v. 17), which might be regarded by the parents of Samuel after his birth as a promise from Jehovah himself, and therefore might naturally excite the wish and suggest the prayer that the Lord would graciously fulfil the further hopes, which the parents cherished in relation to the son whom they had dedicated to the Lord by a vow. The paraphrase of rbæd; in the rendering given by the LXX, to> exelqo>n ek tou> sto>mato>v sou , is the subjective view of the translator himself, and does not warrant an emendation of the original text.
1 SAMUEL. 1:24-25
As soon as the boy was weaned, Hannah brought him, although still a r[ænæ , i.e., a tender boy, to Shiloh, with a sacrifice of three oxen, an ephah of meal, and a pitcher of wine, and gave him up to Eli when the ox (bullock) had been slain, i.e., offered in sacrifice as a burnt-offering. The striking circumstance that, according to v. 24, Samuel’s parents brought three oxen with them to Shiloh, and yet in v. 25 the ox rpæ ) alone is spoken of as being slain (or sacrificed), may be explained very simply on the supposition that in v. 25 that particular sacrifice is referred to, which was associated with the presentation of the boy, that is to say, the burnt-offering by virtue of which the boy was consecrated to the Lord as a spiritual sacrifice for a lifelong service at His sanctuary, whereas the other two oxen served as the yearly festal offering, i.e., the burnt-offerings and thank-offerings which Elkanah presented year by year, and the presentation of which the writer did not think it needful to mention, simply because it followed partly from v. 3 and partly from the Mosaic law. f
6 1 SAMUEL. 1:26-28
When the boy was presented, his mother made herself known to the high priest as the woman who had previously prayed to the Lord at that place (see vv. 11ff.), and said, “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath granted me my request which I asked of Him: therefore I also make him one asked of the Lord all the days that he liveth; he is asked of the Lord.” ykinOa; µGæ : I also; et ego vicissim (Cler.). lyaiv]hi , to let a person ask, to grant his request, to give him what he asks (Ex 12:36), signifies here to make a person “asked” lWav; ). The meaning to lend, which the lexicons give to the word both here and Ex 12:36, has no other support than the false rendering of the LXX, and is altogether unsuitable both in the one and the other. Jehovah had not lent the son to Hannah, but had given him (see v. 11); still less could a man lend his son to the Lord. The last clause of v. 28, “and he worshipped the Lord there,” refers to Elkanah, qui in votum Hannae consenserat, and not to Samuel. On a superficial glance, the plural hj;v; , which is found in some Codd., and in the Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, appears the more suitable; but when we look more closely at the connection in which the clause stands, we see at once that it does not wind up the foregoing account, but simply introduces the closing act of the transference of Samuel. Consequently the singular is perfectly appropriate; and notwithstanding the fact that the subject is not mentioned, the allusion to Samuel is placed beyond all doubt. When Hannah had given up her son to the high priest, his father Elkanah first of all worshipped before the Lord in the sanctuary, and then Hannah worshipped in the song of praise, which follows in 1 Sam 2:1-10.
1 SAMUEL. 2:1-10
Hannah’s song of praise.-The prayer in which Hannah poured out the feelings of her heart, after the dedication of her son to the Lord, is a song of praise of a prophetic and Messianic character. After giving utterance in the introduction to the rejoicing and exulting of her soul at the salvation that had reached her (v. 1), she praises the Lord as the only holy One, the only rock of the righteous, who rules on earth with omniscience and righteousness, brings down the proud and lofty, kills and makes alive, maketh poor and maketh rich (vv. 2-8). She then closes with the confident assurance that He will keep His saints, and cast down the rebellious, and will judge the ends of the earth, and exalt the power of His king (vv. 9, 10).
This psalm is the mature fruit of the Spirit of God. The pious woman, who had gone with all the earnest longings of a mother’s heart to pray to the Lord God of Israel for a son, that she might consecrate him to the lifelong service of the Lord, “discerned in her own individual experience the general laws of the divine economy, and its signification in relation to the whole history of the kingdom of God” (Auberlen, p. 564). The experience which she, bowed down and oppressed as she was, had had of the gracious government of the omniscient and holy covenant God, was a pledge to her of the gracious way in which the nation itself was led by God, and a sign by which she discerned how God not only delivered at all times the poor and wretched who trusted in Him out of their poverty and distress, and set them up, but would also lift up and glorify His whole nation, which was at that time so deeply bowed down and oppressed by its foes. Acquainted as she was with the destination of Israel to be a kingdom, from the promises which God had given to the patriarchs, and filled as she was with the longing that had been awakened in the nation for the realization of these promises, she could see in spirit, and through the inspiration of God, the king whom the Lord was about to give to His people, and through whom He would raise it up to might and dominion.
The refusal of modern critics to admit the genuineness of this song is founded upon an a priori and utter denial of the supernatural saving revelations of God, and upon a consequent inability to discern the prophetic illumination of the pious Hannah, and a complete misinterpretation of the contents of her song of praise. The “proud and lofty,” whom God humbles and casts down, are not the heathen or the national foes of Israel, and the “poor and wretched” whom He exalts and makes rich are not the Israelites as such; but the former are the ungodly, and the latter the pious, in Israel itself. And the description is so well sustained throughout, that it is only by the most arbitrary criticism that it can be interpreted as referring to definite historical events, such as the victory of David over Goliath (Thenius), or a victory of the Israelites over heathen nations (Ewald and others). Still less can any argument be drawn from the words of the song in support of its later origin, or its composition by David or one of the earliest of the kings of Israel. On the contrary, not only is its genuineness supported by the general consideration that the author of these books would never have ascribed a song to Hannah, if he had not found it in the sources he employed; but still more decisively by the circumstance that the songs of praise of Mary and Zechariah, in Luke 1:46ff. and 68ff., show, through the manner in which they rest upon this ode, in what way it was understood by the pious Israelites of every age, and how, like the pious Hannah, they recognised and praised in their own individual experience the government of the holy God in the midst of His kingdom.
Verse 1. The first verse forms the introduction to the song. Holy joy in the Lord at the blessing which she had received impelled the favoured mother to the praise of God: 1 My heart is joyful in the Lord, My horn is exalted in the Lord, My mouth is opened wide over mine enemies:
For I rejoice in Thy salvation.
Of the four members of this verse, the first answers to the third, and the second to the fourth. The heart rejoices at the lifting up of her horn, the mouth opens wide to proclaim the salvation before which the enemies would be dumb. “My horn is high” does not mean ‘I am proud’ (Ewald), but “my power is great in the Lord.” The horn is the symbol of strength, and is taken from oxen whose strength is in their horns (vid., Deut 33:17; Ps 75:5, etc.). The power was high or exalted by the salvation which the Lord had manifested to her. To Him all the glory was due, because He had proved himself to be the holy One, and a rock upon which a man could rest his confidence. 2 None is holy as the Lord; for there is none beside Thee; And no rock is as our God. 3 Speak ye not much lofty, lofty; Let (not) insolence go out of thy mouth!
For the Lord is an omniscient God, And with Him deeds are weighed.
Verse 2-3. God manifests himself as holy in the government of the kingdom of His grace by His guidance of the righteous to salvation (see at Ex 19:6). But holiness is simply the moral reflection of the glory of the one absolute God. This explains the reason given for His holiness, viz., “there is not one (a God) beside thee” (cf. 2 Sam 22:32). As the holy and only One, God is the rock (vid., Deut 32:4,15; Ps 18:3) in which the righteous can always trust. The wicked therefore should tremble before His holiness, and not talk in their pride of the lofty things which they have accomplished or intend to perform. HboG; is defined more precisely in the following clause, which is also dependent upon laæ by the word `qt;[; , as insolent words spoken by the wicked against the righteous (see Ps 31:19). For Jehovah hears such words; He is “a God of knowledge” (Deus scientiarum), a God who sees and knows every single thing.
The plural h[;De has an intensive signification. `hl;yli[ ˆkæT; alo might be rendered “deeds are not weighed, or equal” (cf. Ezek 18:25-26; 33:17).
But this would only apply to the actions of men; for the acts of God are always just, or weighed. But an assertion respecting the actions of men does not suit the context. Hence this clause is reckoned in the Masora as one of the passages in which alo stands for wOl] (see at Ex 21:8). “To Him (with Him) deeds are weighed:” that is to say, the acts of God are weighed, i.e., equal or just. This is the real meaning according to the passages in Ezekiel, and not “the actions of men are weighed by Him” (De Wette, Maurer, Ewald, etc.): for God weighs the minds and hearts of men (Prov 16:2; 21:2; 24:12), not their actions. This expression never occurs. The weighed or righteous acts of God are described in vv. 4-8 in great and general traits, as displayed in the government of His kingdom through the marvellous changes which occur in the circumstances connected with the lives of the righteous and the wicked. 4 Bow-heroes are confounded, And stumbling ones gird themselves with strength; 5 Full ones hire themselves out for bread, And hungry ones cease to be.
Yea, the barren beareth seven (children), And she that is rich in children pines away. 6 The Lord kills and makes alive; Leads down into hell, and leads up. 7 The Lord makes poor and makes rich, Humbles and also exalts. 8 He raises mean ones out of the dust, He lifts up poor ones out of the dunghill, To set them beside the noble; And He apportions to them the seat of glory:
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, And He sets the earth upon them.
Verse 4-8. In v. 4, the predicate tjæ is construed with the nomen rectum rwOBGi , not with the nomen regens tv,q, , because the former is the leading term (vid., Ges. §148, 1, and Ewald, §317, d.). The thought to be expressed is, not that the bow itself is to be broken, but that the heroes who carry the bow are to be confounded or broken inwardly. “Bows of the heroes” stands for heroes carrying bows. For this reason the verb is to be taken in the sense of confounded, not broken, especially as, apart from Isa. 51:56, ha;F;jæ is not used to denote the breaking of outward things, but the breaking of men.
Verse 5-8. [æbec; are the rich and well to do; these would become so poor as to be obliged to hire themselves out for bread. ldej; , to cease to be what they were before. The use of `d[æ as a conjunction, in the sense of “yea” or “in fact,” may be explained as an elliptical expression, signifying “it comes to this, that.” “Seven children” are mentioned as the full number of the divine blessing in children (see Ruth 4:15). “The mother of many children” pines away, because she has lost all her sons, and with them her support in her old age (see Jer 15:9). This comes from the Lord, who kills, etc. (cf.
Deut 32:39). The words of v. 6 are figurative. God hurls down into death and the danger of death, and also rescues therefrom (see Ps 30:3-4). The first three clauses of v. 8 are repeated verbatim in Ps 113:7-8. Dust and the dunghill are figures used to denote the deepest degradation and ignominy.
The antithesis to this is, sitting upon the chair or throne of glory, the seat occupied by noble princes. The Lord does all this, for He is the creator and upholder of the world. The pillars qWxm; , from qWx = qxæy; ) of the earth are the Lord’s; i.e., they were created or set up by Him, and by Him they are sustained. Now as Jehovah, the God of Israel, the Holy One, governs the world with His almighty power, the righteous have nothing to fear. With this thought the last strophe of the song begins: 9 The feet of His saints He will keep, And the wicked perish in darkness; For by power no one becomes strong. 10 The Lord-those who contend against Him are confounded.
He thunders above him in the heavens; The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, That He may lend might to His king, And exalt the horn of His anointed.
Verse 9-10. The Lord keeps the feet of the righteous, so that they do not tremble and stumble, i.e., so that the righteous do not fall into adversity and perish therein (vid., Ps. 56:14; 116:8; 121:3). But the wicked, who oppress and persecute the righteous, will perish in darkness, i.e., in adversity, when God withdraws the light of His grace, so that they fall into distress and calamity. For no man can be strong through his own power, so as to meet the storms of life. All who fight against the Lord are destroyed.
To bring out the antithesis between man and God, “Jehovah” is written absolutely at the commencement of the sentence in v. 10: “As for Jehovah, those who contend against Him are broken,” both inwardly and outwardly ha;F;jæ , as in v. 4). The word `l[æ , which follows, is not to be changed into `l[æ . There is simply a rapid alternation of the numbers, such as we frequently meet with in excited language. “Above him,” i.e., above every one who contends against God, He thunders.
Thunder is a premonitory sign of the approach of the Lord to judgment. In the thunder, man is made to feel in an alarming way the presence of the omnipotent God. In the words, “The Lord will judge the ends of the earth,” i.e., the earth to its utmost extremities, or the whole world, Hannah’s prayer rises up to a prophetic glance at the consummation of the kingdom of God. As certainly as the Lord God keeps the righteous at all times, and casts down the wicked, so certainly will He judge the whole world, to hurl down all His foes, and perfect His kingdom which He has founded in Israel. And as every kingdom culminates in its throne, or in the full might and government of a king, so the kingdom of God can only attain its full perfection in the king whom the Lord will give to His people, and endow with His might. The king, or the anointed of the Lord, of whom Hannah prophesies in the spirit, is not one single king of Israel, either David or Christ, but an ideal king, though not a mere personification of the throne about to be established, but the actual king whom Israel received in David and his race, which culminated in the Messiah. The exaltation of the horn of the anointed to Jehovah commenced with the victorious and splendid expansion of the power of David, was repeated with every victory over the enemies of God and His kingdom gained by the successive kings of David’s house, goes on in the advancing spread of the kingdom of Christ, and will eventually attain to its eternal consummation in the judgment of the last day, through which all the enemies of Christ will be made His footstool.
SAMUEL’S SERVICE BEFORE ELI.
UNGODLINESS OF ELI’S SONS. DENUNCIATION OF JUDGMENT UPON ELI AND HIS HOUSE.
1 SAMUEL. 2:11-17
Samuel the servant of the Lord under Eli. Ungodliness of the sons of Eli. forms the transition to what follows. After Hannah’s psalm of thanksgiving, Elkanah went back with his family to his home at Ramah, and the boy (Samuel) was serving, i.e., ministered to the Lord, in the presence of Eli the priest. The fact that nothing is said about Elkanah’s wives going with him, does not warrant the interpretation given by Thenius, that Elkanah went home alone. It was taken for granted that his wives went with him, according to 1 Sam 1:21 (“all his house”). hwOhy]ATA, TREVE, which signifies literally, both here and in 1 Sam 3:1, to serve the Lord, and which is used interchangeably with YY YNEP]Ata, treve (v. 18), to serve in the presence of the Lord, is used to denote the duties performed both by priests and Levites in connection with the worship of God, in which Samuel took part, as he grew up, under the superintendence of Eli and according to his instruction.
Verse 12. But Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas (v. 34), were l[æYæliB] ˆBe , worthless fellows, and knew not the Lord, sc., as He should be known, i.e., did not fear Him, or trouble themselves about Him (vid., Job 18:21; Hos 8:2; 13:4).
Verse 13-14. “And the right of the priests towards the people was (the following).” Mishpat signifies the right which they had usurped to themselves in relation to the people. “If any one brought a sacrifice ( jbæz, jæbezO vyaiAlK; is placed first, and construed absolutely: ‘as for every one who brought a slain-offering’), the priest’s servant (lit. young man) came while the flesh was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and thrust into the kettle, or pot, or bowl, or saucepan. All that the fork brought up the priest took. This they did to all the Israelites who came thither to Shiloh.”
Verse 15-16. They did still worse. “Even before the fat was consumed,” i.e., before the fat portions of the sacrifice had been placed in the altar-fire for the Lord (Lev 3:3-5), the priest’s servant came and demanded flesh of the person sacrificing, to be roasted for the priest; “for he will not take boiled flesh of thee, but only yjæ , raw, i.e., fresh meat.” And if the person sacrificing replied, “They will burn the fat directly (lit. ‘at this time,’ as in Gen 25:31; 1 Kings 22:5), then take for thyself, as thy soul desireth,” he said, “No wOl] for alo ), but thou shalt give now; if not, I take by force.”
These abuses were practised by the priests in connection with the thankofferings, with which a sacrificial meal was associated. Of these offerings, with which a sacrificial meal was associated. Of these offerings, the portion which legally fell to the priest as his share was the heave-leg and wavebreast.
And this he was to receive after the fat portions of the sacrifice had been burned upon the altar (see Lev 7:30-34). To take the flesh of the sacrificial animal and roast it before this offering had been made, was a crime which was equivalent to a robbery of God, and is therefore referred to here with the emphatic particle µGæ , as being the worst crime that the sons of Eli committed. Moreover, the priests could not claim any of the flesh which the offerer of the sacrifice boiled for the sacrificial meal, after burning the fat portions upon the altar and giving up the portions which belonged to them, to say nothing of their taking it forcibly out of the pots while it was being boiled.
Verse 17. Such conduct as this on the part of the young men (the priests’ servants), was a great sin in the sight of the Lord, as they thereby brought the sacrifice of the Lord into contempt. xaæn; , causative, to bring into contempt, furnish occasion for blaspheming (as in 2 Sam 12:14). “The robbery which they committed was a small sin in comparison with the contempt of the sacrifices themselves, which they were the means of spreading among the people” (O. v. Gerlach). Minchah does not refer here to the meat-offering as the accompaniment to the slain-offerings, but to the sacrificial offering generally, as a gift presented for the Lord.
1 SAMUEL. 2:18-21
Samuel’s service before the Lord.
Samuel served as a boy before the Lord by the side of the worthless sons of Eli, girt with an ephod of white material dBæ , see at Ex 28:42). The ephod was a shoulder-dress, no doubt resembling the high priest’s in shape (see Ex 28:6ff.), but altogether different in the material of which it was made, viz., simple white cloth, like the other articles of clothing that were worn by the priests. At that time, according to 1 Sam 22:18, all the priests wore clothing of this kind; and, according to 2 Sam 6:14, David did the same on the occasion of a religious festival. Samuel received a dress of this kind even when a boy, because he was set apart to a lifelong service before the Lord. rgæj; is the technical expression for putting on the ephod, because the two pieces of which it was composed were girt round the body with a girdle.
Verse 19. The small ly[im] also (Angl. “coat”), which Samuel’s mother made and brought him every year, when she came with her husband to Shiloh to the yearly sacrifice, was probably a coat resembling the meïl of the high priest (Ex 28:31ff.), but was made of course of some simpler material, and without the symbolical ornaments attached to the lower hem, by which that official dress was distinguished. Verse 20. The priestly clothing of the youthful Samuel was in harmony with the spiritual relation in which he stood to the high priest and to Jehovah. Eli blessed his parents for having given up the boy to the Lord, and expressed this wish to the father: “The Lord lend thee seed of this woman in the place of the one asked for hl;aev] ), whom they (one) asked for from the Lord.” The striking use of the third pers. masc. laæv; instead of the second singular or plural may be accounted for on the supposition that it is an indefinite form of speech, which the writer chose because, although it was Hannah who prayed to the Lord for Samuel in the sight of Eli, yet Eli might assume that the father, Elkanah, had shared the wishes of his pious wife. The apparent harshness disappears at once if we substitute the passive; whereas in Hebrew active constructions were always preferred to passive, wherever it was possible to employ them (Ewald, §294, b.). The singular suffix attached to µwOqm; after the plural Ëlæy; may be explained on the simple ground, that a dwelling-place is determined by the husband, or master of the house.
Verse 21. The particle yKi , “for” (Jehovah visited), does not mean if, as, or when, nor is it to be regarded as a copyist’s error. It is only necessary to supply the thought contained in the words, “Eli blessed Elkanah,” viz., that Eli’s blessing was not an empty fruitless wish; and to understand the passage in some such way as this: Eli’s word was fulfilled, or still more simply, they went to their home blessed; for Jehovah visited Hannah, blessed her with “three sons and two daughters; but the boy Samuel grew up with the Lord,” i.e., near to Him (at the sanctuary), and under His protection and blessing.
1 SAMUEL. 2:22-23
Eli’s treatment of the sins of his sons.
The aged Eli reproved his sons with solemn warnings on account of their sins; but without his warnings being listened to. From the reproof itself we learn, that beside the sin noticed in vv. 12-17, they also committed the crime of lying with the women who served at the tabernacle (see at Ex 38:8), and thus profaned the sanctuary with whoredom. But Eli, with the infirmities of his old age, did nothing further to prevent these abominations than to say to his sons, “Why do ye according to the sayings which I hear, sayings about you which are evil, of this whole people.” µy[ir; µk,yreb]DiAta, is inserted to make the meaning clearer, and lKo tae is dependent upon [mæv; . “This whole people” signifies all the people that came to Shiloh, and heard and saw the wicked doings there.
1 SAMUEL. 2:24
ˆBe laæ , “Not, my sons,” i.e., do not such things, “for the report which I hear is not good; they make the people of Jehovah to transgress.” `rbæ[; is written without the pronoun hT;aæ in an indefinite construction, like jlæv; in 1 Sam 6:3 (Maurer). Ewald’s rendering as given by Thenius, “The report which I hear the people of God bring,” is just as inadmissible as the one proposed by Böttcher, “The report which, as I hear, the people of God are spreading.” The assertion made by Thenius, that `rbæ[; , without any further definition, cannot mean to cause to sin or transgress, is correct enough no doubt; but it does not prove that this meaning is inadmissible in the passage before us, since the further definition is actually to be found in the context.
1 SAMUEL. 2:25
“If man sins against man, God judges him; but if a man sins against Jehovah, who can interpose with entreaty for him?” In the use of llæp; and yit¦palel-low there is a paranomasia which cannot be reproduced in our language. pileel signifies to decide or pass sentence (Gen 48:11), then to arbitrate, to settle a dispute as arbitrator (Ezek 16:52; Ps 106:30), and in the Hithpael to act as mediator, hence to entreat. And these meanings are applicable here. In the case of one man’s sin against another, God settles the dispute as arbitrator through the proper authorities; whereas, when a man sins against God, no one can interpose as arbitrator. Such a sin cannot be disposed of by intercession. But Eli’s sons did not listen to this admonition, which was designed to reform daring sinners with mild words and representation; “for,” adds the historian, “Jehovah was resolved to slay them.” The father’s reproof made no impression upon them, because they were already given up to the judgment of hardening. (On hardening as a divine sentence, see the discussions at Ex 4:21.)
1 SAMUEL. 2:26
The youthful Samuel, on the other hand, continued to grow in stature, and in favour with God and man (see Lev. 2:52).
1 SAMUEL. 2:27-36
Announcement of the judgment upon Eli and his house.
Before the Lord interposed in judgment, He sent a prophet (a “man of God,” as in Judg 13:6) to the aged Eli, to announce as a warning for all ages the judgment which was about to fall upon the worthless priests of his house. In order to arouse Eli’s own conscience, he had pointed out to him, on the one hand, the grace manifested in the choice of his father’s house, i.e., the house of Aaron, to keep His sanctuary (vv. 27b and 28), and, on the other hand, the desecration of the sanctuary by the wickedness of his sons (v. 29). Then follows the sentence: The choice of the family of Aaron still stood fast, but the deepest disgrace would come upon the despisers of the Lord (v. 30): the strength of his house would be broken; all the members of his house were to die early deaths. They were not, however, to be removed entirely from service at the altar, but to their sorrow were to survive the fall of the sanctuary (vv. 31-34).
But the Lord would raise up a faithful priest, and cause him to walk before His anointed, and from him all that were left of the house of Eli would be obliged to beg their bread (vv. 35, 36). To arrive at the true interpretation of this announcement of punishment, we must picture to ourselves the historical circumstances that come into consideration here. Eli the high priest was a descendant of Ithamar, the younger son of Aaron, as we may see from the fact that his great-grandson Ahimelech was “of the sons of Ithamar” (1 Chron 24:3). In perfect agreement with this, Josephus (Ant. v. 11, 5) relates, that after the high priest Ozi of the family of Eleazar, Eli of the family of Ithamar received the high-priesthood. The circumstances which led to the transfer of this honour from the line of Eleazar to that of Ithamar are unknown. We cannot imagine it to have been occasioned by an extinction of the line of Eleazar, for the simple reason that, in the time of David, Zadok the descendant of Eleazar is spoken of as high priest along with Abiathar and Ahimelech, the descendants of Eli (2 Sam 8:17; 20:25).
After the deposition of Abiathar he was reinstated by Solomon as sole high priest (1 Kings 2:27), and the dignity was transmitted to his descendants.
This fact also overthrows the conjecture of Clericus, that the transfer of the high-priesthood to Eli took place by the command of God on account of the grievous sins of the high priests of the line of Eleazar; for in that case Zadok would not have received this office again in connection with Abiathar. We have, no doubt, to search for the true reason in the circumstances of the times of the later judges, namely in the fact that at the death of the last high priest of the family of Eleazar before the time of Eli, the remaining son was not equal to the occasion, either because he was still an infant, or at any rate because he was too young and inexperienced, so that he could not enter upon the office, and Eli, who was probably related by marriage to the high priest’s family, and was no doubt a vigorous man, was compelled to take the oversight of the congregation; and, together with the supreme administration of the affairs of the nation as judge, received the post of high priest as well, and filled it till the time of his death, simply because in those troublous times there was not one of the descendants of Eleazar who was able to fill the supreme office of judge, which was combined with that of high priest.
For we cannot possibly think of an unjust usurpation of the office of high priest on the part of Eli, since the very judgment denounced against him and his house presupposes that he had entered upon the office in a just and upright way, and that the wickedness of his sons was all that was brought against him. For a considerable time after the death of Eli the highpriesthood lost almost all its significance. All Israel turned to Samuel, whom the Lord established as His prophet by means of revelations, and whom He also chose as the deliverer of His people. The tabernacle at Shiloh, which ceased to be the scene of the gracious presence of God after the loss of the ark, was probably presided over first of all after Eli’s death by his grandson Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, as his successor in the highpriesthood.
He was followed in the time of Saul by his son Ahijah or Ahimelech, who gave David the shew-bread to eat at Nob, to which the tabernacle had been removed in the meantime, and was put to death by Saul in consequence, along with all the priests who were found there. His son Abiathar, however, escaped the massacre, and fled to David (1 Sam 22:9-20; 23:6). In the reign of David he is mentioned as high priest along with Zadok; but he was afterwards deposed by Solomon (2 Sam 15:24; 17:15; 19:12; 20:25; 1 Kings 2:27).
Different interpretations have been given of these verses. The majority of commentators understand them as signifying that the loss of the highpriesthood is here foretold to Eli, and also the institution of Zadok in the office. But such a view is too contracted, and does not exhaust the meaning of the words. The very introduction to the prophet’s words points to something greater than this: “Thus saith the Lord, Did I reveal myself to thy father’s house, when they were in Egypt at the house of Pharaoh?” The ha interrogative is not used for µwOlv; (nonne), but is emphatic, as in Jer 31:20. The question is an appeal to Eli’s conscience, which he cannot deny, but is obliged to confirm. By Eli’s father’s house we are not to understand Ithamar and his family, but Aaron, from whom Eli was descended through Ithamar. God revealed himself to the tribe-father of Eli by appointing Aaron to be the spokesman of Moses before Pharaoh (Ex 4:14ff. and 27), and still more by calling Aaron to the priesthood, for which the way was prepared by the fact that, from the very beginning, God made use of Aaron, in company with Moses, to carry out His purpose of delivering Israel out of Egypt, and entrusted Moses and Aaron with the arrangements for the celebration of the passover (Ex 12:1,43). This occurred when they, the fathers of Eli, Aaron and his sons, were still in Egypt at the house of Pharaoh, i.e., still under Pharaoh’s rule.
Verse 28. “And did I choose him out of all the tribes for a priest to myself.” The interrogative particle is not to be repeated before rjæB; , but the construction becomes affirmative with the inf. abs. instead of the perfect. “Him” refers back to “thy father” in v. 27, and signifies Aaron. The expression “for a priest” is still further defined by the clauses which follow: m’ `l[æ `hl;[; , “to ascend upon mine altar,” i.e., to approach my altar of burnt-offering and perform the sacrificial worship; “to kindle incense,” i.e., to perform the service in the holy place, the principal feature in which was the daily kindling of the incense, which is mentioned instar omnium; “to wear the ephod before me,” i.e., to perform the service in the holy of holies, which the high priest could only enter when wearing the ephod to represent Israel before the Lord (Ex 28:12). “And have given to thy father’s house all the firings of the children of Israel” (see at Lev 1:9).
These words are to be understood, according to Deut 18:1, as signifying that the Lord had given to the house of Aaron, i.e., to the priesthood, the sacrifices of Jehovah to eat in the place of any inheritance in the land, according to the portions appointed in the sacrificial law in Lev 6-7, and Num 18.
Verse 29. With such distinction conferred upon the priesthood, and such careful provision made for it, the conduct of the priests under Eli was an inexcusable crime. “Why do ye tread with your feet my slain-offerings and meat-offerings, which I have commanded in the dwelling-place?” Slainoffering and meat-offering are general expressions embracing all the altarsacrifices. ˆwO[m; is an accusative (“in the dwelling”), like tyiBæ , in the house. “The dwelling” is the tabernacle. This reproof applied to the priests generally, including Eli, who had not vigorously resisted these abuses. The words which follow, “and thou honourest thy sons more than me,” relate to Eli himself, and any other high priest who like Eli should tolerate the abuses of the priests. “To fatten yourselves with the first of every sacrificial gift of Israel, of my people.” `µ[æ serves as a periphrasis for the genitive, and is chosen for the purpose of giving greater prominence to the idea of `µ[æ (my people). tyviare , the first of every sacrificial gift (minchah, as in v. 17), which Israel offered as the nation of Jehovah, ought to have been given up to its God in the altar-fire because it was the best; whereas, according to vv. 15, 16, the sons of Eli took away the best for themselves.
Verse 30. For this reason, the saying of the Lord, “Thy house (i.e., the family of Eli) and thy father’s house (Eli’s relations in the other lines, i.e., the whole priesthood) shall walk before me for ever” (Num 25:13), should henceforth run thus: “This be far from me; but them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be despised.” The first declaration of the Lord is not to be referred to Eli particularly, as it is by C. a Lapide and others, and understood as signifying that the high-priesthood was thereby transferred from the family of Eleazar to that of Ithamar, and promised to Eli for his descendants for all time. This is decidedly at variance with the fact, that although “walking before the Lord” is not a general expression denoting a pious walk with God, as in Gen 17:1, but refers to the service of the priests at the sanctuary as walking before the face of God, yet it cannot possibly be specially and exclusively restricted to the right of entering the most holy place, which was the prerogative of the high priest alone.
These words of the Lord, therefore, applied to the whole priesthood, or the whole house of Aaron, to which the priesthood had been promised, “for a perpetual statute” (Ex 29:9). This promise was afterwards renewed to Phinehas especially, on account of the zeal which he displayed for the honour of Jehovah in connection with the idolatry of the people at Shittim (Num 25:13). But even this renewed promise only secured to him an eternal priesthood as a covenant of peace with the Lord, and not specially the high-priesthood, although that was included as the culminating point of the priesthood. Consequently it was not abrogated by the temporary transfer of the high-priesthood from the descendants of Phinehas to the priestly line of Ithamar, because even then they still retained the priesthood. By the expression “be it far from me,” sc., to permit this to take place, God does not revoke His previous promise, but simply denounces a false trust therein as irreconcilable with His holiness. That promise would only be fulfilled so far as the priests themselves honoured the Lord in their office, whilst despisers of God who dishonoured Him by sin and presumptuous wickedness, would be themselves despised.
This contempt would speedily come upon the house of Eli.
Verse 31. “Behold, days come,”-a formula with which prophets were accustomed to announce future events (see 2 Kings 20:17; Isa 39:6; Amos 4:2; 8:11; 9:13; Jer 7:32, etc.)- “then will I cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall be no old man in thine house.” To cut off the arm means to destroy the strength either of a man or of a family (see Job. 1 Sam 22:9; Ps 37:17). The strength of a family, however, consists in the vital energy of its members, and shows itself in the fact that they reach a good old age, and do not pine away early and die. This strength was to vanish in Eli’s house; no one would ever again preserve his life to old age.
Verse 32. “And thou wilt see oppression of the dwelling in all that He has shown of good to Israel.” The meaning of these words, which have been explained in very different ways, appears to be the following: In all the benefits which the lord would confer upon His people, Eli would see only distress for the dwelling of God, inasmuch as the tabernacle would fall more and more into decay. In the person of Eli, the high priest at that time, the high priest generally is addressed as the custodian of the sanctuary; so that what is said is not to be limited to him personally, but applies to all the high priests of his house. ˆwO[m; is not Eli’s dwelling-place, but the dwelling-place of God, i.e., the tabernacle, as in v. 29, and is a genitive dependent upon rxæ . b f1 y; , in the sense of benefiting a person, doing him good, is construed with the accusative of the person, as in Deut 28:63; 8:16; 30:5.
The subject to the verb b f1 y; is Jehovah, and is not expressly mentioned, simply because it is so clearly implied in the words themselves. This threat began to be fulfilled even in Eli’s own days. The distress or tribulation for the tabernacle began with the capture of the ark by the Philistines (1 Sam 4:11), and continued during the time that the Lord was sending help and deliverance to His people through the medium of Samuel, in their spiritual and physical oppression. The ark of the covenant-the heart of the sanctuary-was not restored to the tabernacle in the time of Samuel; and the tabernacle itself was removed from Shiloh to Nob, probably in the time of war; and when Saul had had all the priests put to death (1 Sam 21:2; 22:11ff.), it was removed to Gibeon, which necessarily caused it to fall more and more into neglect. Among the different explanations, the rendering given by Aquila ( kai> epible>yei ? epible>yhv ] anti’zeelon katoikeeteeri’ou) has met with the greatest approval, and has been followed by Jerome (et videbis aemulum tuum), Luther, and many others, including De Wette. According to this rendering, the words are either supposed to refer to the attitude of Samuel towards Eli, or to the deposition of Abiathar, and the institution of Zadok by Solomon in his place (1 Kings 2:27). But rxæ does not mean the antagonist or rival, but simply the oppressor or enemy; and Samuel was not an enemy of Eli any more than Zadok was of Abiathar. Moreover, if this be adopted as the rendering of rxæ , it is impossible to find any suitable meaning for the following clause. In the second half of the verse the threat of v. 31 is repeated with still greater emphasis. kaal-hayaamiym, all the time, i.e., so long as thine house shall exist.
Verse 33. “And I will not cut off every one to thee from mine altar, that thine eyes may languish, and thy soul consume away; and all the increase of thine house shall die as men.” The two leading clauses of this verse correspond to the two principal thoughts of the previous verse, which are hereby more precisely defined and explained. Eli was to see the distress of the sanctuary; for to him, i.e., of his family, there would always be some one serving at the altar of God, that he might look upon the decay with his eyes, and pine away with grief in consequence. vyai signifies every one, or any one, and is not to be restricted, as Thenius supposes, to Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, the brother of Ichabod; for it cannot be shown from Sam 14:3 and 22:20, that he was the only one that was left of the house of Eli. And secondly, there was to be no old man, no one advanced in life, in his house; but all the increase of the house was to die in the full bloom of manhood. vyai , in contrast with ˆqez; , is used to denote men in the prime of life.
Verse 34. “And let this be the sign to thee, what shall happen to (come upon) thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas; in one day they shall both die.”
For the fulfilment of this, see 1 Sam 4:11. This occurrence, which Eli lived to see, but did not long survive (1 Sam 4:17ff.), was to be the sign to him that the predicted punishment would be carried out in its fullest extent.
Verse 35. But the priesthood itself was not to fall with the fall of Eli’s house and priesthood; on the contrary the Lord would raise up for himself a tried priest, who would act according to His heart. “And I will build for him a lasting house, and he will walk before mine anointed for ever.”
Verse 36. Whoever, on the other hand, should still remain of Eli’s house, would come “bowing before him (to get) a silver penny and a slice of bread,” and would say, “Put me, I pray, in one of the priests’ offices, that I may get a piece of bread to eat.” hr;wOga , that which is collected, signifies some small coin, of which a collection was made by begging single coins.
Commentators are divided in their opinions as to the historical allusions contained in this prophecy. By the “tried priest,” Ephraem Syrus understood both the prophet Samuel and the priest Zadok. “As for the facts themselves,” he says, “it is evident that, when Eli died, Samuel succeeded him in the government, and that Zadok received the highpriesthood when it was taken from his family.” Since his time, most of the commentators, including Theodoret and the Rabbins, have decided in favour of Zadok. Augustine, however, and in modern times Thenius and O. v. Gerlach, give the preference to Samuel. The fathers and earlier theologians also regarded Samuel and Zadok as the type of Christ, and supposed the passage to contain a prediction of the abrogation of the Aaronic priesthood by Jesus Christ. f7 This higher reference of the words is in any case to be retained; for the rabbinical interpretation, by which Grotius, Clericus, and others abidenamely, that the transfer of the high-priesthood from the descendants of Eli to Zadok, the descendant of Eleazar, is all that is predicted, and that the prophecy was entirely fulfilled when Abiathar was deposed by Solomon (1 Kings 2:27)-is not in accordance with the words of the text. On the other hand, Theodoret and Augustine both clearly saw that the words of Jehovah, “I revealed myself to thy father’s house in Egypt,” and, “Thy house shall walk before me for ever,” do not apply to Ithamar, but to Aaron. “Which of his fathers,” says Augustine, “was in that Egyptian bondage, form which they were liberated when he was chosen to the priesthood, excepting Aaron? It is with reference to his posterity, therefore, that it is here affirmed that they would not be priests for ever; and this we see already fulfilled.” The only thing that appears untenable is the manner in which the fathers combine this historical reference to Eli and Samuel, or Zadok, with the Messianic interpretation, viz., either by referring vv. 31-34 to Eli and his house, and then regarding the sentence pronounced upon Eli as simply a type of the Messianic fulfilment, or by admitting the Messianic allusion simply as an allegory.
The true interpretation may be obtained from a correct insight into the relation in which the prophecy itself stands to its fulfilment. Just as, in the person of Eli and his sons, the threat announces deep degradation and even destruction to all the priests of the house of Aaron who should walk in the footsteps of the sons of Eli, and the death of the two sons of Eli in one day was to be merely a sign that the threatened punishment would be completely fulfilled upon the ungodly priests; so, on the other hand, the promise of the raising up of the tried priest, for whom God would build a lasting house, also refers to all the priests whom the Lord would raise up as faithful servants of His altar, and only receives its complete and final fulfilment in Christ, the true and eternal High Priest. But if we endeavour to determine more precisely from the history itself, which of the Old Testament priests are included, we must not exclude either Samuel or Zadok, but must certainly affirm that the prophecy was partially fulfilled in both.
Samuel, as the prophet of the Lord, was placed at the head of the nation after the death of Eli; so that he not only stepped into Eli’s place as judge, but stood forth as priest before the Lord and the nation, and “had the important and sacred duty to perform of going before the anointed, the king, whom Israel was to receive through him; whereas for a long time the Aaronic priesthood fell into such contempt, that, during the general decline of the worship of God, it was obliged to go begging for honour and support, and became dependent upon the new order of things that was introduced by Samuel” (O. v. Gerlach). Moreover, Samuel acquired a strong house in the numerous posterity that was given to him by God. The grandson of Samuel was Heman, “the king’s seer in the words of God,” who was placed by David over the choir at the house of God, and had fourteen sons and three daughters (1 Chron 6:33; 25:4-5).
But the very fact that these descendants of Samuel did not follow their father in the priesthood, shows very clearly that a lasting house was not built to Samuel as a tried priest through them, and therefore that we have to seek for the further historical fulfilment of this promise in the priesthood of Zadok. As the word of the Lord concerning the house of Eli, even if it did not find its only fulfilment in the deposition of Abiathar (1 Kings 2:27), was at any rate partially fulfilled in that deposition; so the promise concerning the tried priest to be raised up received a new fulfilment in the fact that Zadok thereby became the sole high priest, and transmitted the office to his descendants, though this was neither its last nor its highest fulfilment. This final fulfilment is hinted at in the vision of the new temple, as seen by the prophet Ezekiel, in connection with which the sons of Zadok are named as the priests, who, because they had not fallen away with the children of Israel, were to draw near to the Lord, and perform His service in the new organization of the kingdom of God as set forth in that vision (Ezek 40:46; 43:19; 44:15; 48:11). This fulfilment is effected in connection with Christ and His kingdom. Consequently, the anointed of the Lord, before whom the tried priest would walk for ever, is not Solomon, but rather David, and the Son of David, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
SAMUEL CALLED TO BE A PROPHET. CH. 3.
1 SAMUEL. 3:1-9
At the time when Samuel served the Lord before Eli, both as a boy and as a young man (1 Sam 2:11,21,26), the word of the Lord had become dear, i.e., rare, in Israel, and “Prophecy was not spread.” xræp , from xræp , to spread out strongly, to break through copiously (cf. Prov 3:10). The “word of the Lord” is the word of God announced by prophets: the “vision,” “visio prophetica.” It is true that Jehovah had promised His people, that He would send prophets, who should make known His will and purpose at all times (Deut 18:15ff.; cf. Num 23:23); but as a revelation from God presupposed susceptibility on the part of men, the unbelief and disobedience of the people might restrain the fulfilment of this and all similar promises, and God might even withdraw His word to punish the idolatrous nation. Such a time as this, when revelations from God were universally rare, and had now arisen under Eli, in whose days, as the conduct of his sons sufficiently proves, the priesthood had fallen into very deep corruption. Verse 2-4. The word of the Lord was then issued for the first time to Samuel. Vv. 2-4 form one period. The clause, “it came to pass at that time” (v. 2a), is continued in v. 4a, “that the Lord called,” etc. The intervening clauses from `yli[e to µyhila’ ˆwOra; are circumstantial clauses, intended to throw light upon the situation. The clause, “Eli was laid down in his place,” etc., may be connected logically with “at that time” by the insertion of “when” (as in the English version: Tr.). The dimness of Eli’s eyes is mentioned, to explain Samuel’s behaviour, as afterwards described.
Under these circumstances, for example, when Samuel heard his own name called out in sleep, he might easily suppose that Eli was calling him to render some assistance. The “lamp of God” is the light of the candlestick in the tabernacle, the seven lamps of which were put up and lighted every evening, and burned through the night till all the oil was consumed (see Ex 30:8; Lev 24:2; 2 Chron 13:11, and the explanation given at Ex 27:21).
The statement that this light was not yet extinguished, is equivalent to “before the morning dawn.” “And Samuel was lying (sleeping) in the temple of Jehovah, where the ark of God was.” lk;yhe does not mean the holy place, as distinguished from the “most holy,” as in 1 Kings 6:5; 7:50, f8 but the whole tabernacle, the tent with its court, as the palace of the Godking, as in 1 Sam 1:9; Ps 11:4. Samuel neither slept in the holy place by the side of the candlestick and table of shew-bread, nor in the most holy place in front of the ark of the covenant, but in the court, where cells were built for the priests and Levites to live in when serving at the sanctuary (see at v. 15). “The ark of God, i.e., the ark of the covenant, is mentioned as the throne of the divine presence, from which the call to Samuel proceeded.
Verse 5-9. As soon as Samuel heard his name called out, he hastened to Eli to receive his commands. But Eli bade him lie down again, as he had not called him. At first, no doubt, he thought the call which Samuel had heard was nothing more than a false impression of the youth, who had been fast asleep. But the same thing was repeated a second and a third time; for, as the historian explains in v. 6, “Samuel had not yet known Jehovah, and (for) the word of Jehovah was not yet revealed to him.” (The perfect [dæy; after µr,f, , though very rare, is fully supported by Ps 90:2 and Prov 8:25, and therefore is not to be altered into [dæy; , as Dietrich and Böttcher propose.) He therefore imagined again that Eli had called him. But when he came to Eli after the third call, Eli perceived that the Lord was calling, and directed Samuel, if the call were repeated, to answer, “Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth.”
1 SAMUEL. 3:10-11
When Samuel had lain down again, “Jehovah came and stood,” sc., before Samuel. These words show that the revelation of God was an objectively real affair, and not a mere dream of Samuel’s. “And he called to him as at other times” (see Num 24:1; Judg 16:20), etc.). When Samuel replied in accordance with Eli’s instructions, the Lord announced to him that He would carry out the judgment that had been threatened against the house of Eli (vv. 11-14). “Behold, I do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle,” sc., with horror (see 2 Kings 21:12; Jer 19:3; Hab 1:5).
1 SAMUEL. 3:12-14
On that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house (see 1 Sam 2:30ff.), beginning and finishing it,” i.e., completely. rB,Di rv,a\Ata, µyqihe , to set up the word spoken, i.e., to carry it out, or accomplish it. In v. 13 this word is communicated to Samuel, so far as its essential contents are concerned. God would judge “the house of Eli for ever because of the iniquity, that he knew his sons were preparing a curse for themselves and did not prevent them.” To judge on account of a crime, is the same as to punish it. µl;wO[Ad[æ , i.e., without the punishment being ever stopped or removed. wOl llæq; , cursing themselves, i.e., bringing a curse upon themselves. “Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of the house of Eli shall not µai , a particle used in an oath, equivalent to assuredly not) be expiated by slain-offerings and meatofferings (through any kind of sacrifice) for ever.” The oath makes the sentence irrevocable. (On the facts themselves, see the commentary on Sam 2:27-36.)
1 SAMUEL. 3:15
Samuel then slept till the morning; and when he opened the doors of the house of Jehovah, he was afraid to tell Eli of the revelation which he had received. Opening the doors of the house of God appears to have been part of Samuel’s duty. We have not to think of doors opening into the holy place, however, but of doors leading into the court. Originally, when the tabernacle was simply a tent, travelling with the people from place to place, it had only curtains at the entrance to the holy place and court. But when Israel had become possessed of fixed houses in the land of Canaan, and the dwelling-place of God was permanently erected at Shiloh, instead of the tents that were pitched for the priests and Levites, who encamped round about during the journey through the desert, there were erected fixed houses, which were built against or inside the court, and not only served as dwelling-places for the priests and Levites who were officiating, but were also used for the reception and custody of the gifts that were brought as offerings to the sanctuary. These buildings in all probability supplanted entirely the original tent-like enclosure around the court; so that instead of the curtains at the entrance, there were folding doors, which were shut in the evening and opened again in the morning. It is true that nothing is said about the erection of these buildings in our historical books, but the fact itself is not to be denied on that account. In the case of Solomon’s temple, notwithstanding the elaborate description that has been given of it, there is nothing said about the arrangement or erection of the buildings in the court; and yet here and there, principally in Jeremiah, the existence of such buildings is evidently assumed. ha;r]mæ , visio, a sign or vision. This expression is applied to the word of God which came to Samuel, because it was revealed to him through the medium of an inward sight or intuition.
1 SAMUEL. 3:16-18
When Samuel was called by Eli and asked concerning the divine revelation that he had received, he told him all the words, without concealing anything; whereupon Eli bowed in quiet resignation to the purpose of God: “It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good.” Samuel’s communication, however, simply confirmed to the aged Eli what God had already made known to him through a prophet, But his reply proves that, with all his weakness and criminal indulgence towards his wicked sons, Eli was thoroughly devoted to the Lord in his heart. And Samuel, on the other hand, through his unreserved and candid communication of the terribly solemn word of God with regard to the man, whom he certainly venerated with filial affection, not only as high priest, but also as his own parental guardian, proved himself to be a man possessing the courage and the power to proclaim the word of the Lord without fear to the people of Israel.
1 SAMUEL. 3:19-21
Thus Samuel grew, and Jehovah was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground, i.e., left no word unfulfilled which He spoke through Samuel. (On lpæn; , see Josh 21:45; 23:14; 1 Kings 8:56.) By this all Israel from Dan to Beersheba (see at Judg 20:1) perceived that Samuel was found trustworthy, or approved (see Num 12:7) as a prophet of Jehovah.
And the Lord continued to appear at Shiloh; for He revealed himself there to Samuel “in the word of Jehovah,” i.e., through a prophetic announcement of His word. These three verses form the transition from the call of Samuel to the following account of his prophetic labours in Israel.
At the close of v. 21, the LXX have appended a general remark concerning Eli and his sons, which, regarded as a deduction from the context, answers no doubt to the paraphrastic treatment of our book in that version, but in a critical aspect is utterly worthless.
WAR WITH THE PHILISTINES. LOSS OF THE ARK. DEATH OF ELI AND HIS SONS. CH. 4.
At Samuel’s word, the Israelites attacked the Philistines, and were beaten (vv. 1, 2). They then fetched the ark of the covenant into the camp according to the advice of the elders, that they might thereby make sure of the help of the almighty covenant God; but in the engagement which followed they suffered a still greater defeat, in which Eli’s sons fell and the ark was taken by the Philistines (vv. 3-11). The aged Eli, terrified at such a loss, fell from his seat and broke his neck (vv. 12-18); and his daughter-inlaw was taken in labour, and died after giving birth to a son (vv. 19-22).
With these occurrences the judgment began to burst upon the house of Eli.
But the disastrous result of the war was also to be a source of deep humiliation to all the Israelites. Not only were the people to learn that the Lord had departed from them, but Samuel also was to make the discovery that the deliverance of Israel from the oppression and dominion of its foes was absolutely impossible without its inward conversion to its God. 1 SAMUEL 4:1,2 Verse 1, 2. The two clauses, “The word of Samuel came to all Israel,” and “Israel went out,” etc., are to be logically connected together in the following sense: “At the word or instigation of Samuel, Israel went out against the Philistines to battle.” The Philistines were ruling over Israel at that time. This is evident, apart from our previous remarks concerning the connection between the commencement of this book and the close of the book of Judges (see pp. 204ff.), from the simple fact that the land of Israel was the scene of the war, and that nothing is said about an invasion on the part of the Philistines. The Israelites encamped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines were encamped at Aphek. The name Ebenezer (“the stone of help”) was not given to the place so designated till a later period, when Samuel set up a memorial stone there to commemorate a victory that was gained over the Philistines upon the same chosen battle-field after the lapse of twenty years (1 Sam 7:12). According to this passage, the stone was set up between Mizpeh and Shen. The former was not the Mizpeh in the lowlands of Judah (Josh 15:38), but the Mizpeh of Benjamin (Josh 18:26), i.e., according to Robinson, the present Neby Samwil, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem, and half an hour to the south of Gibeon (see at Josh 18:26). The situation of Aphek has not been discovered. It cannot have been far from Mizpeh and Ebenezer, however, and was probably the same place as the Canaanitish capital mentioned in Josh 12:18, and is certainly different from the Aphekah upon the mountains of Judah (Josh 15:53); for this was on the south or south-west of Jerusalem, since, according to the book of Joshua, it belonged to the towns that were situated in the district of Gibeon.
Verse 2. When the battle was fought, the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines, and in battle-array four thousand men were smitten upon the field. `Ëræ[; , sc., hm;j;l]mi , as in Judg 20:20,22, etc. hk;r;[mæ , in battle-array, i.e., upon the field of battle, not in flight. “In the field,” i.e., the open field where the battle was fought.
1 SAMUEL. 4:3-4
On the return of the people to the camp, the elders held a council of war as to the cause of the defeat they had suffered. “Why hath Jehovah smitten us today before the Philistines?” As they had entered upon the war by the word and advice of Samuel, they were convinced that Jehovah had smitten them. The question presupposes at the same time that the Israelites felt strong enough to enter upon the war with their enemies, and that the reason for their defeat could only be that the Lord, their covenant God, had withdrawn His help. This was no doubt a correct conclusion; but the means which they adopted to secure the help of their God in continuing the war were altogether wrong. Instead of feeling remorse and seeking the help of the Lord their God by a sincere repentance and confession of their apostasy from Him, they resolved to fetch the ark of the covenant out of the tabernacle at Shiloh into the camp, with the delusive idea that God had so inseparably bound up His gracious presence in the midst of His people with this holy ark, which He had selected as the throne of His gracious appearance, that He would of necessity come with it into the camp and smite the foe. In v. 4, the ark is called “the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of hosts, who is enthroned above the cherubim,” partly to show the reason why the people had the ark fetched, and partly to indicate the hope which they founded upon the presence of this sacred object. (See the commentary on Ex 25:20-22). The remark introduced here, “and the two sons of Eli were there with the ark of the covenant of God,” is not merely intended to show who the guardians of the ark were, viz., priests who had hitherto disgraced the sanctuary, but also to point forward at the very outset to the result of the measures adopted.
1 SAMUEL. 4:5
On the arrival of the ark in the camp, the people raised so great a shout of joy that the earth rang again. This was probably the first time since the settlement of Israel in Canaan, that the ark had been brought into the camp, and therefore the people no doubt anticipated from its presence a renewal of the marvellous victories gained by Israel under Moses and Joshua, and for that reason raised such a shout when it arrived.
1 SAMUEL. 4:6-8
When the Philistines heard the noise, and learned on inquiry that the ark of Jehovah had come into the camp, they were thrown into alarm, for “they thought (lit. said), God (Elohim) is come into the camp, and said, ‘Woe unto us! For such a thing has not happened yesterday and the day before (i.e., never till now). Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the very gods that smote Egypt with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.’ “ The Philistines spoke of the God of Israel in the plural., ryDiaæ µyhila’ , as heathen who only knew of gods, and not of one Almighty God. Just as all the heathen feared the might of the gods of other nations in a certain degree, so the Philistines also were alarmed at the might of the God of the Israelites, and that all the more because the report of His deeds in the olden time had reached their ears (see Ex 15:14-15).
The expression “in the wilderness” does not compel us to refer the words “smote with all the plagues” exclusively to the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea (Ex 14:23ff.). “All the plagues” include the rest of the plagues which God inflicted upon Egypt, without there being any necessity to supply the copula w before rB;d]mi , as in the LXX and Syriac.
By this addition an antithesis is introduced into the words, which, if it really were intended, would require to be indicated by a previous xr,a, or xr,a, .
According to the notions of the Philistines, all the wonders of God for the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt took place in the desert, because even when Israel was in Goshen they dwelt on the border of the desert, and were conducted thence to Canaan.
1 SAMUEL. 4:9
But instead of despairing, they encouraged one another, saying, “Show yourselves strong, and be men, O Philistines, that we may not be obliged to serve the Hebrews, as they have served you; be men, and fight!”
1 SAMUEL. 4:10-11
Stimulated in this way, they fought and smote Israel, so that every one fled home (“to his tent,” see at Josh 22:8), and 30,000 men of Israel fell. The ark also was taken, and the two sons of Eli died, i.e., were slain when the ark was taken-a practical proof to the degenerate nation, that Jehovah, who was enthroned above the cherubim, had departed from them, i.e., had withdrawn His gracious presence. f
9 1 SAMUEL. 4:12-14
The tidings of this calamity were brought by a Benjaminite, who came as a messenger of evil tidings, with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head-a sign of the deepest mourning (see Josh 7:6)-to Shiloh, where the aged Eli was sitting upon a seat by the side hk;n; is a copyist’s error for dy; ) of the way watching; for his heart trembled for the ark of God, which had been taken from the sanctuary into the camp without the command of God. At these tidings the whole city cried out with terror, so that Eli heard the sound of the cry, and asked the reason of this loud noise (or tumult), whilst the messenger was hurrying towards him with the news.
1 SAMUEL. 4:15
Eli was ninety-eight years old, and “his eyes stood,” i.e., were stiff, so that he could no more see (vid., 1 Kings 14:4). This is a description of the socalled black cataract (amaurosis), which generally occurs at a very great age from paralysis of the optic nerves.
1 SAMUEL. 4:16-18
When the messenger informed him of the defeat of the Israelites, the death of his sons, and the capture of the ark, at the last news Eli fell back from his seat by the side of the gate, and broke his neck, and died. The loss of the ark was to him the most dreadful of all-more dreadful than the death of his two sons. Eli had judged Israel forty years. The reading twenty in the Septuagint does not deserve the slightest notice, if only because it is perfectly incredible that Eli should have been appointed judge of the nation in his seventy-eight year.
1 SAMUEL. 4:19-22
The judgment which fell upon Eli through this stroke extended still further.
His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was with child (near) to be delivered. dlæy; , contracted from dlæy; (from dlæy; : see Ges. §69, 3, note 1; Ewald, §238, c.). When she heard the tidings of the capture (‘el-hilaaqach, “with regard to the being taken away”) of the ark of God, and the death of her father-in-law and husband, she fell upon her knees and was delivered, for her pains had fallen upon her (lit. had turned against her), and died in consequence. Her death, however, was but a subordinate matter to the historian. He simply refers to it casually in the words, “and about the time of her death,” for the purpose of giving her last words, in which she gave utterance to her grief at the loss of the ark, as a matter of greater importance in relation to his object.
As she lay dying, the women who stood round sought to comfort her, by telling her that she had brought forth a son; but “she did not answer, and took no notice ( ble tWv = ble µWc , animum advertere ; cf. Ps 62:11), but called to the boy (i.e., named him), Ichabod dwObK; yai , no glory), saying, The glory of Israel is departed,” referring to the capture of the ark of God, and also to her father-in-law and husband. She then said again, “Gone hl,G, , wandered away, carried off) is the glory of Israel, for the ark of God is taken.” The repetition of these words shows how deeply the wife of the godless Phinehas had taken to heart the carrying off of the ark, and how in her estimation the glory of Israel had departed with it. Israel could not be brought lower. With the surrender of the earthly throne of His glory, the Lord appeared to have abolished His covenant of grace with Israel; for the ark, with the tables of the law and the capporeth, was the visible pledge of the covenant of grace which Jehovah had made with Israel.
HUMILIATION OF THE PHILISTINES BY MEANS OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT.
Whilst the Israelites were mourning over the loss of the ark of God, the Philistines were also to derive no pleasure from their booty, but rather to learn that the God of Israel, who had given up to them His greatest sanctuary to humble His own degenerate nation, was the only true God, beside Whom there were no other gods. Not only was the principal deity of the Philistines thrown down into the dust and dashed to pieces by the glory of Jehovah; but the Philistines themselves were so smitten, that their princes were compelled to send back the ark into the land of Israel, together with a trespass-offering, to appease the wrath of God, which pressed so heavily upon them.
1 SAMUEL. 5:1-2
The Ark in the Land of the Philistines.
Vv. 1-6. The Philistines carried the ark from Ebenezer, where they had captured it, into their capital, Ashdod (Esdud; see at Josh 13:3), and placed it there in the temple of Dagon, by the side of the idol Dagon, evidently as a dedicatory offering to this god of theirs, by whose help they imagined that they had obtained the victory over both the Israelites and their God.
With regard to the image of Dagon, compounded of man and fish, i.e., of a human body, with head and hands, and a fish’s tail, see, in addition to Judg 16:23, Stark’s Gaza, pp. 248ff., 308ff., and Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains, pp. 466-7, where there is a bas-relief from Khorsabad, in which “a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man, wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants’ tusks, and the lower part resembling the body of a fish. It has the hand lifted up, as if in astonishment or fear, and is surrounded by fishes, crabs, and other marine animals” (Stark, p. 308). As this bas-relief represents, according to Layard, the war of an Assyrian king with the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, most probably of Sargon, who had to carry on a long conflict with the Philistian towns, more especially with Ashdod, there can hardly be any doubt that we have a representation of the Philistian Dagon here. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature, for which the fish with its innumerable multiplication was specially adapted, and set forth the idea of the giver of all earthly good.
1 SAMUEL. 5:3
The next morning the Ashdodites found Dagon lying on his face upon the ground before the ark of Jehovah, and restored him to his place again, evidently supposing that the idol had fallen or been thrown down by some accident.
1 SAMUEL. 5:4-5
But they were obliged to give up this notion when they found the god lying on his face upon the ground again the next morning in front of the ark of Jehovah, and in fact broken to pieces, so that Dagon’s head and the two hollow hands of his arms lay severed upon the threshold, and nothing was left but the trunk of the fish ˆwOgD; ). The word Dagon, in this last clause, is used in an appellative sense, viz., the fishy part, or fish’s shape, from gD; , a fish. ˆT;p]mi is no doubt the threshold of the door of the recess in which the image was set up. We cannot infer from this, however, as Thenius has done, that with the small dimensions of the recesses in the ancient temples, if the image fell forward, the pieces named might easily fall upon the threshold. This naturalistic interpretation of the miracle is not only proved to be untenable by the word træK; , since kaaruwt means cut off, and not broken off, but is also precluded by the improbability, not to say impossibility, of the thing itself. For if the image of Dagon, which was standing by the side of the ark, was thrown down towards the ark, so as to lie upon its face in front of it, the pieces that were broken off, viz., the head and hands, could not have fallen sideways, so as to lie upon the threshold. Even the first fall of the image of Dagon was a miracle. From the fact that their god Dagon lay upon its face before the ark of Jehovah, i.e., lay prostrate upon the earth, as though worshipping before the God of Israel, the Philistines were to learn, that even their supreme deity had been obliged to fall down before the majesty of Jehovah, the God of the Israelites. But as they did not discern the meaning of this miraculous sign, the second miracle was to show them the annihilation of their idol through the God of Israel, in such a way as to preclude every thought of accident. The disgrace attending the annihilation of their idol was probably to be heightened by the fact, that the pieces of Dagon that were smitten off were lying upon the threshold, inasmuch as what lay upon the threshold was easily trodden upon by any one who entered the house. This is intimated in the custom referred to in v. 5, that in consequence of this occurrence, the priests of Dagon, and all who entered the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, down to the time of the historian himself, would not step upon the threshold of Dagon, i.e., the threshold where Dagon’s head and hands had lain, but stepped over the threshold (not “leaped over,” as many commentators assume on the ground of Zeph 1:5, which has nothing to do with the matter), that they might not touch with their feet, and so defile, the place where the pieces of their god had lain.
1 SAMUEL. 5:6
The visitation of God was not restricted to the demolition of the statue of Dagon, but affected the people of Ashdod as well. “The hand of Jehovah was heavy upon the Ashdodites, and laid them waste.” heesheem, from µmev; , when applied to men, as in Mic 6:13, signifies to make desolate not only by diseases, but also by the withdrawal or diminution of the means of subsistence, the devastation of the fields, and such like. That the latter is included here, is evident from the dedicatory offerings with which the Philistines sought to mitigate the wrath of the God of the Israelites (1 Sam 6:4-5,11,18), although the verse before us simply mentions the diseases with which God visited them. f10 “And He smote them with `aapaaliym, i.e., boils:” according to the Rabbins, swellings on the anus, mariscae (see at Deut 28:27). For `plym the Masoretes have invariably substituted E¦choriym, which is used in 1 Sam 6:11,17, and was probably regarded as more decorous. Ashdod is a more precise definition of the word them, viz., Ashdod, i.e., the inhabitants of Ashdod and its territory.
1 SAMUEL. 5:7-8
“When the Ashdodites saw that it was so,” they were unwilling to keep the ark of the God of Israel any longer, because the hand of Jehovah lay heavy upon them and their god Dagon; whereupon the princes of the Philistines ˆr,s, , as in Josh 13:3, etc.) assembled together, and came to the resolution to “let the ark of the God of Israel turn (i.e., be taken) to Gath” (v. 8). The princes of the Philistines probably imagined that the calamity which the Ashdodites attributed to the ark of God, either did not proceed from the ark, i.e., from the God of Israel, or if actually connected with the presence of the ark, simply arose from the fact that the city itself was hateful to the God of the Israelites, or that the Dagon of Ashdod was weaker than the Jehovah of Israel: they therefore resolved to let the ark be taken to Gath in order to pacify the Ashdodites. According to our account, the city of Gath seems to have stood between Ashdod and Akron (see at Josh 13:3).
1 SAMUEL. 5:9
But when the ark was brought to Gath, the hand of Jehovah came upon that city also with very great alarm. lwOdG; hm;Whm] is subordinated to the main sentence either adverbially or in the accusative. Jehovah smote the people of the city, small and great, so that boils broke out upon their hinder parts.
1 SAMUEL. 5:10-12
They therefore sent the ark of God to Ekron, i.e., Akir, the north-western city of the Philistines (see at Josh 13:3). But the Ekronites, who had been informed of what had taken place in Ashdod and Gath, cried out, when the ark came into their city, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to me, to slay me and my people” (these words are to be regarded as spoken by the whole town); and they said to all the princes of the Philistines whom they had called together, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, that it may return to its place, and not slay me and my people. For deadly alarm tw,m; hm;Whm] , confusion of death, i.e., alarm produced by many sudden deaths) ruled in the whole city; very heavy was the hand of God there. The people who did not die were smitten with boils, and the cry of the city ascended to heaven.” From this description, which simply indicates briefly the particulars of the plagues that God inflicted upon Ekron, we may see very clearly that Ekron was visited even more severely than Ashdod and Gath. This was naturally the case. The longer the Philistines resisted and refused to recognise the chastening hand of the living God in the plagues inflicted upon them, the more severely would they necessarily be punished, that they might be brought at last to see that the God of Israel, whose sanctuary they still wanted to keep as a trophy of their victory over that nation, was the omnipotent God, who was able to destroy His foes.
1 SAMUEL. 6:1-3
The Ark of God Sent Back.
The ark of Jehovah was in the land (lit. the fields, as in Ruth 1:2) of the Philistines for seven months, and had brought destruction to all the towns to which it had been taken. At length the Philistines resolved to send it back to the Israelites, and therefore called their priests and diviners (see at Num 23:23) to ask them, “What shall we do with regard to the ark of God; tell us, with what shall we send it to its place?” “Its place” is the land of Israel, and hm; does not mean “in what manner” (quomodo: Vulgate, Thenius), but with what, wherewith (as in Mic 6:6). There is no force in the objection brought by Thenius, that if the question had implied with what presents, the priests would not have answered, “Do not send it without a present;” for the priests did not confine themselves to this answer, in which they gave a general assent, but proceeded at once to define the present more minutely.
They replied, “If they send away the ark of the God of Israel jlæv; is to be taken as the third person in an indefinite address, as in 1 Sam 2:24, and not to be construed with hT;aæ supplied), do not send it away empty (i.e., without an expiatory offering), but return Him (i.e., the God of Israel) a trespass-offering.” µv;a; , lit. guilt, then the gift presented as compensation for a fault, the trespass-offering (see at Lev. 5:14-26). The gifts appointed by the Philistines as an asham were to serve as a compensation and satisfaction to be rendered to the God of Israel for the robbery committed upon Him by the removal of the ark of the covenant, and were therefore called asham, although in their nature they were only expiatory offerings. For the same reason the verb bWv , to return or repay, is used to denote the presentation of these gifts, being the technical expression for the payment of compensation for a fault in Num 5:7, and in Lev. 5:23 for compensation for anything belonging to another, that had been unjustly appropriated. “Are ye healed then, it will show you why His hand is not removed from you,” sc., so long as ye keep back the ark.
The words ap;r; za; are to be understood as conditional, even without µai , which the rules of the language allow (see Ewald, §357, b.); this is required by the context. For, according to v. 9, the Philistine priests still thought it a possible thing that any misfortune which had befallen the Philistines might be only an accidental circumstance. With this view, they could not look upon a cure as certain to result from the sending back of the ark, but only as possible; consequently they could only speak conditionally, and with this the words “we shall know” agree.
1 SAMUEL. 6:4-5
The trespass-offering was to correspond to the number of the princes of the Philistines. rp;s]mi is an accusative employed to determine either measure or number (see Ewald, §204, a.), lit., “the number of their princes:” the compensations were to be the same in number as the princes. “Five golden boils, and five golden mice,” i.e., according to v. 5, images resembling their boils, and the field-mice which overran the land; the same gifts, therefore, for them all, “for one plague is to all and to your princes,” i.e., the same plague has fallen upon all the people and their princes. The change of person in the two words, lKo , “all of them,” i.e., the whole nation of the Philistines, and ˆr,s, , “your princes,” appears very strange to us with our modes of thought and speech, but it is by no means unusual in Hebrew. The selection of this peculiar kind of expiatory present was quite in accordance with a custom, which was not only widely spread among the heathen but was even adopted in the Christian church, viz., that after recovery from an illness, or rescue from any danger or calamity, a representation of the member healed or the danger passed through was placed as an offering in the temple of the deity, to whom the person had prayed for deliverance; and it also perfectly agrees with a custom which has prevailed in India, according to Tavernier (Ros. A. u. N. Morgenland iii. p. 77), from time immemorial down to the present day, viz., that when a pilgrim takes a journey to a pagoda to be cured of a disease, he offers to the idol a present either in gold, silver, or copper, according to his ability, of the shape of the diseased or injured member, and then sings a hymn.
Such a present passed as a practical acknowledgement that the god had inflicted the suffering or evil. If offered after recovery or deliverance, it was a public expression of thanksgiving. In the case before us, however, in which it was offered before deliverance, the presentation of the images of the things with which they had been chastised was probably a kind of fine or compensation for the fault that had been committed against the Deity, to mitigate His wrath and obtain a deliverance from the evils with which they had been smitten.
This is contained in the words, “Give glory unto the God of Israel! peradventure He will lighten His (punishing) hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land.” The expression is a pregnant one for “make His heavy hand light and withdraw it,” i.e., take away the punishment. In the allusion to the representations of the field-mice, the words “that devastate the land” are added, because in the description given of the plagues in ch. 5 the devastation of the land by mice is not expressly mentioned. The introduction of this clause after `rB;k][æ , when contrasted with the omission of any such explanation after `aap¦leeykem, is a proof that the plague of mice had not been described before, and therefore that the references made to these in the Septuagint at 1 Sam 5:3,6, and ch. 6:1, are nothing more than explanatory glosses. It is a well-known fact that field-mice, with their enormous rate of increase and their great voracity, do extraordinary damage to the fields. In southern lands they sometimes destroy entire harvests in a very short space of time (Aristot. Animal. vi. 37; Plin. h. n. x. c. 65; Strabo, iii. p. 165; Aelian, etc., in Bochart, Hieroz. ii. p. 429, ed. Ros.).
1 SAMUEL. 6:6
“Wherefore,” continued the priests, “will ye harden your heart, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? (Ex 7:13ff.) Was it not the case, that when He (Jehovah) had let out His power upon them ( B `llæ[; , as in Ex 10:2), they (the Egyptians) let them (the Israelites) go, and they departed?” There is nothing strange in this reference, on the part of the Philistian priests, to the hardening of the Egyptians, and its results, since the report of those occurrences had spread among all the neighbouring nations (see at 1 Sam 4:8). And the warning is not at variance with the fact that, according to v. 9, the priests still entertained some doubt whether the plagues really did come from Jehovah at all: for their doubts did not preclude the possibility of its being so; and even the possibility might be sufficient to make it seem advisable to do everything that could be done to mitigate the wrath of the God of the Israelites, of whom, under existing circumstances, the heathen stood not only no less, but even more, in dread, than of the wrath of their own gods.
1 SAMUEL. 6:7-9
Accordingly they arranged the sending back in such a manner as to manifest the reverence which ought to be shown to the God of Israel was a powerful deity (vv. 7-9). The Philistines were to take a new cart and make it ready `hc;[; ), and to yoke two milch cows to the cart upon which no yoke had ever come, and to take away their young ones (calves) from them into the house, i.e., into the stall, and then to put the ark upon the cart, along with the golden things to be presented as a trespass-offering, which were to be in a small chest by the side of the ark, and to send it (i.e., the ark) away, that it might go, viz., without the cows being either driven or guided. From the result of these arrangements, they were to learn whether the plague had been sent by the God of Israel, or had arisen accidentally. “If it (the ark) goeth up by the way to its border towards Bethshemesh, He (Jehovah) hath done us this great evil; but if not, we perceive that His hand hath not touched us.
It came to us by chance, i.e., the evil came upon us merely by accident. In `l[æ , ˆBe , and rjæaæ (v. 7), the masculine is used in the place of the more definite feminine, as being the more general form. This is frequently the case, and occurs again in vv. 10 and 12. zG;r]aæ , which only occurs again in vv. 8, 11, and 15, signifies, according to the context and the ancient versions, a chest or little case. The suffix to tae refers to the ark, which is also the subject to `hl;[; (v. 9). lWbG] , the territory of the ark, is the land of Israel, where it had its home. hr,q]mi is used adverbially: by chance, or accidentally. The new cart and the young cows, which had never worn a yoke, corresponded to the holiness of the ark of God. To place it upon an old cart, which had already been used for all kinds of earthly purposes, would have been an offence against the holy thing; and it would have been just the same to yoke to the cart animals that had already been used for drawing, and had had their strength impaired by the yoke (see Deut 21:3). The reason for selecting cows, however, instead of male oxen, was no doubt to be found in the further object which they hoped to attain. It was certainly to be expected, that if suckling cows, whose calves had been kept back from them, followed their own instincts, without any drivers, they would not go away, but would come back to their young ones in the stall.
And if the very opposite should take place, this would be a sure sign that they were driven and guided by a divine power, and in fact by the God whose ark they were to draw into His own land. From this they would be able to draw the conclusion, that the plagues which had fallen upon the Philistines were also sent by this God. There was no special sagacity in this advice of the priests; it was nothing more than a cleverly devised attempt to put the power of the God of the Israelites to the text, though they thereby unconsciously and against their will furnished the occasion for the living God to display His divine glory before those who did not know Him.
1 SAMUEL. 6:10-12
The God of Israel actually did what the idolatrous priests hardly considered possible. When the Philistines, in accordance with the advice given them by their priests, had placed the ark of the covenant and the expiatory gifts upon the cart to which the two cows were harnessed, “the cows went straight forward on the way to Bethshemesh; they went along a road going and lowing (i.e., lowing the whole time), and turned not to the right or to the left; and the princes of the Philistines went behind them to the territory of Bethshemesh.” Ër,D, rvæy; , lit., “they were straight in the way,” i.e., they went straight along the road. The form rvæy; for hn;r]væyyi is the imperf. Kal, third pers. plur. fem., with the preformative y instead of t , as in Gen 30:38 (see Ges. §47, Anm. 3; Ewald, §191, b.). Bethshemesh, the present Ainshems, was a priests’ city on the border of Judah and Dan (see at Josh 15:10).
1 SAMUEL. 6:13-14
The inhabitants of Bethshemesh were busy with the wheat-harvest in the valley (in front of the town), when they unexpectedly saw the ark of the covenant coming, and rejoiced to see it. The cart had arrived at the field of Joshua, a Bethshemeshite, and there it stood still before a large stone. And they (the inhabitants of Bethshemesh) chopped up the wood of the cart, and offered the cows to the Lord as a burnt-offering. In the meantime the Levites had taken off the ark, with the chest of golden presents, and placed it upon the large stone; and the people of Bethshemesh offered burntofferings and slain-offerings that day to the Lord. The princes of the Philistines stood looking at this, and then returned the same day to Ekron.
That the Bethshemeshites, and not the Philistines, are the subject to [qæB; , is evident from the correct interpretation of the clauses; viz., from the fact that in v. 14a the words from `hl;g;[ to lwOdG; ˆb,a, are circumstantial clauses introduced into the main clause, and that [qæB; is attached to ha;r; jmæc; , and carries on the principal clause.
1 SAMUEL. 6:15-18
V. 15a contains a supplementary remark, therefore dræy; is to be translated as a pluperfect. After sacrificing the cart, with the cows, as a burnt-offering to the Lord, the inhabitants of Bethshemesh gave a further practical expression to their joy at the return of the ark, by offering burnt-offerings and slain-offerings in praise of God. In the burnt-offerings they consecrated themselves afresh, with all their members, to the service of the Lord; and in the slain-offerings, which culminated in the sacrificial meals, they sealed anew their living fellowship with the Lord. The offering of these sacrifices at Bethshemesh was no offence against the commandment, to sacrifice to the Lord at the place of His sanctuary alone. The ark of the covenant was the throne of the gracious presence of God, before which the sacrifices were really offered at the tabernacle. The Lord had sanctified the ark afresh as the throne of His presence, by the miracle which He had wrought in bringing it back again.-In vv. 17 and 18 the different atoning presents, which the Philistines sent to Jehovah as compensation, are enumerated once more: viz., five golden boils, one for each of their five principal towns (see at Josh 13:3), and “golden mice, according to the number of all the Philistian towns of the five princes, from the fortified city to the village of the inhabitants of the level land” (perazi; see at Deut 3:5).
The priests had only proposed that five golden mice should be sent as compensation, as well as five boils (v. 4). But the Philistines offered as many images of mice as there were towns and villages in their five states, no doubt because the plague of mice had spread over the whole land, whereas the plague of boils had only fallen upon the inhabitants of those towns to which the ark of the covenant had come. In this way the apparent discrepancy between v. 4 and v. 18 is very simply removed. The words which follow, viz., wgw`l[æ jnæy; rv,a , “upon which they had set down the ark,” show unmistakeably, when compared with vv. 14 and 15, that we are to understand by lwOdG; lbea; the great stone upon which the ark was placed when it was taken off the cart. The conjecture of Kimchi, that this stone was called Abel (luctus), on account of the mourning which took place there (see v. 19), is extremely unnatural.
Consequently there is no other course left than to regard lb,ae as an error in writing for ˆb,a, , according to the reading, or at all events the rendering, adopted by the LXX and Targum. But `d[æ (even unto) is quite unsuitable here, as no further local definition is required after the foregoing yzir;p] rp,Ko `d[æ , and it is impossible to suppose that the Philistines offered a golden mouse as a trespass-offering for the great stone upon which the ark was placed. We must therefore alter `d[æ into `d[e : “And the great stone is witness (for `d[e in this sense, see Gen 31:52) to this day in the field of Joshua the Bethshemeshite,” sc., of the fact just described.
1 SAMUEL. 6:19-21
Disposal of the Ark of God.
As the ark had brought evil upon the Philistines, so the inhabitants of Bethshemesh were also to be taught that they could not stand in their unholiness before the holy God: “And He (God) smote among the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked at the ark of Jehovah, and smote among the people seventy men, fifty thousand men.” In this statement of numbers we are not only struck by the fact that the 70 stands before the 50,000, which is very unusual, but even more by the omission of the copula w before the second number, which is altogether unparalleled. When, in addition to this, we notice that 50,000 men could not possibly live either in or round Bethshemesh, and that we cannot conceive of any extraordinary gathering having taken place out of the whole land, or even from the immediate neighbourhood; and also that the words vyai ãl,a, µyVimij are wanting in several Hebrew MSS, and that Josephus, in his account of the occurrence, only speaks of seventy as having been killed (Ant. vi. 1, 4); we cannot come to any other conclusion than that the number 50,000 is neither correct nor genuine, but a gloss which has crept into the text through some oversight, though it is of great antiquity, since the number stood in the text employed by the Septuagint and Chaldee translators, who attempted to explain them in two different ways, but both extremely forced.
Apart from this number, however, the verse does not contain anything either in form or substance that could furnish occasion for well-founded objections to its integrity. The repetition of hk;n; simply resumes the thought that had been broken off by the parenthetical clause yy ˆwOra; ha;r; yKi ; and `µ[æ is only a general expression for V awOB vyai . The stroke which fell upon the people of Bethshemesh is sufficiently accounted for in the words, “because they had looked,” etc. There is no necessity to understand these words, however, as many Rabbins do, as signifying “they looked into the ark,” i.e., opened it and looked in; for if this had been the meaning, the opening would certainly not have been passed over without notice. ha;r; with b means to look upon or at a thing with lust or malicious pleasure; and here it no doubt signifies a foolish staring, which was incompatible with the holiness of the ark of God, and was punished with death, according to the warning expressed in Num 4:20.
This severe judgment so alarmed the people of Bethshemesh, that they exclaimed, “Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God!”
Consequently the Bethshemeshites discerned correctly enough that the cause of the fatal stroke, which had fallen upon them, was the unholiness of their own nature, and not any special crime which had been committed by the persons slain. They felt that they were none of them any better than those who had fallen, and that sinners could not approach the holy God.
Inspired with this feeling, they added, “and to whom shall He go away from us?” The subject to `hl;[; is not the ark, but Jehovah who had chosen the ark as the dwelling-place of His name. In order to avert still further judgments, they sought to remove the ark from their town. They therefore sent messengers to Kirjath-jearim to announce to the inhabitants the fact that the ark had been sent back by the Philistines, and to entreat them to fetch it away.
1 SAMUEL. 7:1
The inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim complied with this request, and brought the ark into the house of Abinadab upon the height, and sanctified Abinadab’s son Eleazar to be the keeper of the ark. Kirjath-jearim, the present Kuryet el Enab (see at Josh 9:17), was neither a priestly nor a Levitical city. The reason why the ark was taken there, is to be sought for, therefore, in the situation of the town, i.e., in the fact that Kirjath-jearim was the nearest large town on the road from Bethshemesh to Shiloh. We have no definite information, however, as to the reason why it was not taken on to Shiloh, to be placed in the tabernacle, but was allowed to remain in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim, where a keeper was expressly appointed to take charge of it; so that we can only confine ourselves to conjectures. Ewald’s opinion (Gesch. ii. 540), that the Philistines had conquered Shiloh after the victory described in ch. 4, and had destroyed the ancient sanctuary there, i.e., the tabernacle, is at variance with the accounts given in 1 Sam 21:6; 1 Kings 3:4; 2 Chron 1:3, respecting the continuance of worship in the tabernacle at Nob and Gibeon.
There is much more to be said in support of the conjecture, that the carrying away of the ark by the Philistines was regarded as a judgment upon the sanctuary, which had been desecrated by the reckless conduct of the sons of Eli, and consequently, that even when the ark itself was recovered, they would not take it back without an express declaration of the will of God, but were satisfied, as a temporary arrangement, to leave the ark in Kirjath-jearim, which was farther removed from the cities of the Philistines. And there it remained, because no declaration of the divine will followed respecting its removal into the tabernacle, and the tabernacle itself had to be removed from Shiloh to Nob, and eventually to Gibeon, until David had effected the conquest of the citadel of Zion, and chosen Jerusalem as his capital, when it was removed from Kirjath-jearim to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6). It is not stated that Abinadab was a Levites; but this is very probable, because otherwise they would hardly have consecrated his son to be the keeper of the ark, but would have chosen a Levite for the office. CONVERSION OF ISRAEL TO THE LORD BY SAMUEL. VICTORY OVER THE PHILISTINES.
SAMUEL AS JUDGE OF ISRAEL.
1 SAMUEL. 7:2-4
Purification of Israel from idolatry.
Twenty years passed away from that time forward, while the ark remained at Kirjath-jearim, and all Israel mourned after Jehovah. Then Samuel said to them, “If ye turn to the Lord with all your heart, put away the strange gods from the midst of you, and the Astartes, and direct your heart firmly upon the Lord, and serve Him only, that He may save you out of the hand of the Philistines.” And the Israelites listened to this appeal. The single clauses of vv. 2 and 3 are connected together by vav consec., and are not to be separated from one another. There is no gap between these verses; but they contain the same closely and logically connected thought, which may be arranged in one period in the following manner: “And it came to pass, when the days multiplied from the time that the ark remained at Kirjath-jearim, and grew to twenty years, and the whole house of Israel mourned after Jehovah, that Samuel said,” etc.
The verbs hb;r; , hy;h; , and hh;n; , are merely continuations of the infinitive bvæy; , and the main sentence is resumed in the words laeWmv] rmæa; . The contents of the verses require that the clauses should be combined in this manner. The statement that twenty years had passed can only be understood on the supposition that some kind of turning-point ensued at the close of that time. The complaining of the people after Jehovah was no such turning-point, but became one simply from the fact that this complaining was followed by some result. This result is described in v. 3. It consisted in the fact that Samuel exhorted the people to put away the strange gods (v. 3); and that when the people listened to his exhortation (v. 4), he helped them to gain a victory over the Philistines (vv. 5ff.). hh;n; , from hh;n; , to lament or complain (Micah. 1 Sam 2:4; Ezek 32:18). “The phrase, to lament after God, is taken from human affairs, when one person follows another with earnest solicitations and complaints, until he at length assents. We have an example of this in the Syrophenician woman in Matt 15.” (Seb. Schmidt). The meaning “to assemble together,” which is the one adopted by Gesenius, is forced upon the word from the Chaldee ‘it¦n¦hiy, and it cannot be shown that the word was ever used in this sense in Hebrew. Samuel’s appeal in v. 3 recalls to mind Josh 24:14, and Gen 35:2; but the words, “If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts,” assume that the turning of the people to the Lord their God had already inwardly commenced, and indeed, as the participle bWv expresses duration, had commenced as a permanent thing, and simply demand that the inward turning of the heart to God should be manifested outwardly as well, by the putting away of all their idols, and should thus be carried out to completion. The “strange gods” (see Gen 35:2) are described in v. 4 as “Baalim.” On Baalim and Ashtaroth, see at Judg 2:11,13. ble ˆWK, to direct the heart firmly: see Ps 78:8; 2 Chron 30:19.
1 SAMUEL. 7:5-14
Victory obtained over the Philistines through Samuel’s prayer.
When Israel had turned to the Lord with all its heart, and had put away all its idols, Samuel gathered together all the people at Mizpeh, to prepare them for fighting against the Philistines by a solemn day for penitence and prayer. For it is very evident that the object of calling all the people to Mizpeh was that the religious act performed there might serve as a consecration for battle, not only from the circumstance that, according to v. 7, when the Philistines heard of the meeting, they drew near to make war upon Israel, but also from the contents of v. 5: “Samuel said (sc., to the heads or representatives of the nation), Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord.” His intention could not possibly have been any other than to put the people into the right relation to their God, and thus to prepare the way for their deliverance out of the bondage of the Philistines. Samuel appointed Mizpeh, i.e., Nebi Samwil, on the western boundary of the tribe of Benjamin (see at Josh 18:26), as the place of meeting, partly no doubt on historical grounds, viz., because it was there that the tribes had formerly held their consultations respecting the wickedness of the inhabitants of Gibeah, and had resolved to make war upon Benjamin (Judg 20:1ff.), but still more no doubt, because Mizpeh, on the western border of the mountains, was the most suitable place for commencing the conflict with the Philistines. Verse 6-9. When they had assembled together here, “they drew water and poured it out before Jehovah, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the Lord.” Drawing water and pouring it out before Jehovah was a symbolical act, which has been thus correctly explained by the Chaldee, on the whole: “They poured out their heart like water in penitence before the Lord.” This is evident from the figurative expressions, “poured out like water,” in Ps 22:15, and “pour out thy heart like water,” in Lam 2:19, which are used to denote inward dissolution through pain, misery, and distress (see 2 Sam 14:14). Hence the pouring out of water before God was a symbolical representation of the temporal and spiritual distress in which they were at the time-a practical confession before God, “Behold, we are before Thee like water that has been poured out;” and as it was their own sin and rebellion against God that had brought this distress upon them, it was at the same time a confession of their misery, and an act of the deepest humiliation before the Lord. They gave a still further practical expression to this humiliation by fasting µWx ), as a sign of their inward distress of mind on account of their sin, and an oral confession of their sin against the Lord. By the word µv; , which is added to rmæa; , “they said “there,” i.e., at Mizpeh, the oral confession of their sin is formally separated from the two symbolical acts of humiliation before God, though by this very separation it is practically placed on a par with them.
What they did symbolically by the pouring out of water and fasting, they explained and confirmed by their verbal confession. µv; is never an adverb of time signifying “then;” neither in Ps 14:5; 132:17, nor Judg 5:11. “And thus Samuel judged the children of Israel at Mizpeh.” fpæv; does not mean “he became judge” (Mich. and others), any more than “he punished every one according to his iniquity” (Thenius, after David Kimchi). Judging the people neither consisted in a censure pronounced by Samuel afterwards, nor in absolution granted to the penitent after they had made a confession of their sin, but in the fact that Samuel summoned the nation to Mizpeh to humble itself before Jehovah, and there secured for it, through his intercession, the forgiveness of its sin, and a renewal of the favour of its God, and thus restored the proper relation between Israel and its God, so that the Lord could proceed to vindicate His people’s rights against their foes.
When the Philistines heard of the gathering of the Israelites at Mizpeh (vv. 7, 8), their princes went up against Israel to make war upon it; and the Israelites, in their fear of the Philistines, entreated Samuel, “Do not cease to cry for us to the Lord our God, that He may save us out of the hand of the Philistines.” V. 9. “And Samuel took a milk-lamb (a lamb that was still sucking, probably, according to Lev 22:27, a lamb seven days old), and offered it whole as a burnt-offering to the Lord.” lyliK; is used adverbially, according to its original meaning as an adverb, “whole.” The Chaldee has not given the word at all, probably because the translators regarded it as pleonastic, since every burnt-offering was consumed upon the altar whole, and consequently the word lyliK; was sometimes used in a substantive sense, as synonymous with `hl;[o (Deut. 33:10; Ps. 51:21). But in the passage before us, lyliK; is not synonymous with `hl;[o , but simply affirms that the lamb was offered upon the altar without being cut up or divided.
Samuel selected a young lamb for the burnt-offering, not “as being the purest and most innocent kind of sacrificial animal,”-for it cannot possibly be shown that very young animals were regarded as purer than those that were full-grown-but as being the most suitable to represent the nation that had wakened up to new life through its conversion to the Lord, and was, as it were, new-born. For the burnt-offering represented the man, who consecrated therein his life and labour to the Lord. The sacrifice was the substratum for prayer. When Samuel offered it, he cried to the Lord for the children of Israel; and the Lord “answered,” i.e., granted, his prayer.
Verse 10. When the Philistines advanced during the offering of the sacrifice to fight against Israel, “Jehovah thundered with a great noise,” i.e., with loud peals, against the Philistines, and threw them into confusion, so that they were smitten before Israel. The thunder, which alarmed the Philistines and threw them into confusion µmæh; , as in Josh 10:10), was the answer of God to Samuel’s crying to the Lord.
Verse 11. As soon as they took to flight, the Israelites advanced from Mizpeh, and pursued and smote them to below Beth-car. The situation of this town or locality, which is only mentioned here, has not yet been discovered. Josephus (Ant. vi. 2, 2) has me>cri KorraJi>wn .
Verse 12. As a memorial of this victory, Samuel placed a stone between Mizpeh and Shen, to which he gave the name of Eben-ha-ezer, i.e., stone of help, as a standing memorial that the Lord had thus far helped His people. The situation of Shen is also not known. The name Shen (i.e., tooth) seems to indicate a projecting point of rock (see 1 Sam 14:4), but may also signify a place situated upon such a point.
Verse 13. Through this victory which was obtained by the miraculous help of God, the Philistines were so humbled, that they no more invaded the territory of Israel, i.e., with lasting success, as they had done before. This limitation of the words “they came no more” (lit. “they did not add again to come into the border of Israel”), is implied in the context; for the words which immediately follow, “and the hand of Jehovah was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel,” show that they made attempts to recover their lost supremacy, but that so long as Samuel lived they were unable to effect anything against Israel. This is also manifest from the successful battles fought by Saul (ch. 13 and 14), when the Philistines had made fresh attempts to subjugate Israel during his reign. The defeats inflicted upon them by Saul also belong to the days of Samuel, who died but a very few years before Saul himself. Because of these battles which Saul fought with the Philistines, Lyra and Brentius understand the expression “all the days of Samuel” as referring not to the lifetime of Samuel, but simply to the duration of his official life as judge, viz., till the commencement of Saul’s reign. But this is at variance with v. 15, where Samuel is said to have judged Israel all the days of his life. Seb. Schmidt has given, on the whole, the correct explanation of v. 13: “They came no more so as to obtain a victory and subdue the Israelites as before; yet they did return, so that the hand of the Lord was against them, i.e., so that they were repulsed with great slaughter, although they were not actually expelled, or the Israelites delivered from tribute and the presence of military garrisons, and that all the days that the judicial life of Samuel lasted, in fact all his life, since they were also smitten by Saul.”
Verse 14. In consequence of the defeat at Ebenezer, the Philistines were obliged to restore to the Israelites the cities which they had taken from them, “from Ekron to Gath.” This definition of the limits is probably to be understood as exclusive, i.e., as signifying that the Israelites received back their cities up to the very borders of the Philistines, measuring these borders from Ekron to Gath, and not that the Israelites received Ekron and Gath also. For although these chief cities of the Philistines had been allotted to the tribes of Judah and Dan in the time of Joshua (Josh 13:3-4; 15:45-46), yet, notwithstanding the fact that Judah and Simeon conquered Ekron, together with Gaza and Askelon, after the death of Joshua (Judg 1:18), the Israelites did not obtain any permanent possession. “And their territory” (coasts), i.e., the territory of the towns that were given back to Israel, not that of Ekron and Gath, “did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites;” i.e., the Canaanitish tribes also kept peace with Israel after this victory of the Israelites over the Philistines, and during the time of Samuel. The Amorites are mentioned, as in Josh 10:6, as being the most powerful of the Canaanitish tribes, who had forced the Danites out of the plain into the mountains (Judg 1:34-35).
1 SAMUEL. 7:15-17
Samuel’s judicial labours.
With the calling of the people to Mizpeh, and the victory at Ebenezer that had been obtained through his prayer, Samuel had assumed the government of the whole nation; so that his office as judge dates from his period, although he had laboured as prophet among the people from the death of Eli, and had thereby prepared the way for the conversion of Israel to the Lord. As his prophetic labours were described in general terms in 1 Sam 3:19-21, so are his labours as judge in the verses before us: viz., in v. their duration-”all the days of his life,” as his activity during Saul’s reign and the anointing of David (ch. 15-16) sufficiently prove; and then in vv. 16, 17 their general character- “he went round from year to year” bbæs; serves as a more precise definition of Ëlæh; , he went and travelled round) to Bethel, i.e., Beitin (see at Josh 7:2), Gilgal, and Mizpeh (see at. v. 5), and judged Israel at all these places.
Which Gilgal is meant, whether the one situated in the valley of the Jordan (Josh 4:19), or the Jiljilia on the higher ground to the south-west of Shiloh (see at Josh 8:35), cannot be determined with perfect certainty. The latter is favoured partly by the order in which the three places visited by Samuel on his circuits occur, since according to this he probably went first of all from Ramah to Bethel, which was to the north-east, then farther north or north-west to Jiljilia, and then turning back went towards the south-east to Mizpeh, and returning thence to Ramah performed a complete circuit; whereas, if the Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan had been the place referred to, we should expect him to go there first of all from Ramah, and then towards the north-east to Bethel, and from that to the south-west to Mizpeh; and partly also by the circumstance that, according to 2 Kings 2:1 and 4:38, there was a school of the prophets at Jiljilia in the time of Elijah and Elisha, the founding of which probably dated as far back as the days of Samuel. If this conjecture were really a well-founded one, it would furnish a strong proof that it was in this place, and not in the Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan, that Samuel judged the people.
But as this conjecture cannot be raised into a certainty, the evidence in favour of Jiljilia is not so conclusive as I myself formerly supposed (see also the remarks on 1 Sam 9:14). twOmwOqM]hæAlK; tae is grammatically considered an accusative, and is in apposition to laer;c]yiAta, , lit., Israel, viz., all the places named, i.e., Israel which inhabited all these places, and was to be found there. “And this return was to Ramah;” i.e., after finishing the annual circuit he returned to Ramah, where he had his house. There he judged Israel, and also built an altar to conduct the religious affairs of the nation. Up to the death of Eli, Samuel lived and laboured at Shiloh (1 Sam 3:21). But when the ark was carried away by the Philistines, and consequently the tabernacle at Shiloh lost what was most essential to it as a sanctuary, and ceased at once to be the scene of the gracious presence of God, Samuel went to his native town Ramah, and there built an altar as the place of sacrifice for Jehovah, who had manifested himself to him. The building of the altar at Ramah would naturally be suggested to the prophet by these extraordinary circumstances, even if it had not been expressly commanded by Jehovah.
II. THE MONARCHY OF SAUL FROM HIS ELECTION TILL HIS ULTIMATE REJECTION.
The earthly monarchy in Israel was established in the time of Samuel, and through his mediation. At the pressing desire of the people, Samuel installed the Benjaminite Saul as king, according to the command of God.
The reign of Saul may be divided into two essentially different periods: viz., (1) the establishment and vigorous development of his regal supremacy (ch. 8-15); (2) the decline and gradual overthrow of his monarchy (ch. 16-31). The establishment of the monarchy is introduced by the negotiations of the elders of Israel with Samuel concerning the appointment of a king (ch. 8).
This is followed by (1) the account of the anointing of Saul as king (1 Sam 9:1-10:16), of his election by lot, and of his victory over the Ammonites and the confirmation of his monarchy at Gilgal (1 Sam 10:17-11:15), together with Samuel’s final address to the nation (ch. 12); (2) the history of Saul’s reign, of which only his earliest victories over the Philistines are given at all elaborately (1 Sam 13:1-14:46), his other wars and family history being disposed of very summarily (1 Sam 14:47-52); (3) the account of his disobedience to the command of God in the war against the Amalekites, and the rejection on the part of God with which Samuel threatened him in consequence (ch. 15). The brevity with which the history of his actual reign is treated, in contrast with the elaborate account of his election and confirmation as king, may be accounted for from the significance and importance of Saul’s monarchy in relation to the kingdom of God in Israel.
The people of Israel traced the cause of the oppression and distress, from which they had suffered more and more in the time of the judges, to the defects of their own political constitution. They wished to have a king, like all the heathen nations, to conduct their wars and conquer their enemies.
Now, although the desire to be ruled by a king, which had existed in the nation even from the time of Gideon, was not in itself at variance with the appointment of Israel as a kingdom of God, yet the motive which led the people to desire it was both wrong and hostile to God, since the source of all the evils and misfortunes from which Israel suffered was to be found in the apostasy of the nation from its God, and its coquetting with the gods of the heathen. Consequently their self-willed obstinacy in demanding a king, notwithstanding the warnings of Samuel, was an actual rejection of the sovereignty of Jehovah, since He had always manifested himself to His people as their king by delivering them out of the power of their foes, as soon as they returned to Him with simple penitence of heart.
Samuel pointed this out to the elders of Israel, when they laid their petition before him that he would choose them a king. But Jehovah fulfilled their desires. He directed Samuel to appoint them a king, who possessed all the qualifications that were necessary to secure for the nation what it looked for from a king, and who therefore might have established the monarchy in Israel as foreseen and foretold by Jehovah, if he had not presumed upon his own power, but had submitted humbly to the will of God as made known to him by the prophet. Saul, who was chosen from Benjamin, the smallest but yet the most warlike of all the tribes, a man in the full vigour of youth, and surpassing all the rest of the people in beauty of form as well as bodily strength, not only possessed “warlike bravery and talent, unbroken courage that could overcome opposition of every kind, a stedfast desire for the well-being of the nation in the face of its many and mighty foes, and zeal and pertinacity in the execution of his plans” (Ewald), but also a pious heart, and an earnest zeal for the maintenance of the provisions of the law, and the promotion of the religious life of the nation.
He would not commence the conflict with the Philistines until sacrifice had been offered (1 Sam 13:9ff.); in the midst of the hot pursuit of the foe he opposed the sin committed by the people in eating flesh with the blood (1 Sam 14:32-33); he banished the wizards and necromancers out of the land (1 Sam 28:3,9); and in general he appears to have kept a strict watch over the observance of the Mosaic law in his kingdom. But the consciousness of his own power, coupled with the energy of his character, led his astray into an incautious disregard of the commands of God; his zeal in the prosecution of his plans hurried him on to reckless and violent measures; and success in his undertakings heightened his ambition into a haughty rebellion against the Lord, the God-king of Israel. These errors come out very conspicuously in the three great events of his reign which are the most circumstantially described.
When Saul was preparing for war against the Philistines, and Samuel did not appear at once on the day appointed, he presumptuously disregarded the prohibition of the prophet, and offered the sacrifice himself without waiting for Samuel to arrive (1 Sam 13:7ff.). In the engagement with the Philistines, he attempted to force on the annihilation of the foe by pronouncing the ban upon any one in his army who should eat bread before the evening, or till he had avenged himself upon his foes. Consequently, he not only diminished the strength of the people, so that the overthrow of the enemy was not great, but he also prepared humiliation for himself, inasmuch as he was not able to carry out his vow (1 Sam 14:24ff.). But he sinned still more grievously in the war with the Amalekites, when he violated the express command of the Lord by only executing the ban upon that nation as far as he himself thought well, and thus by such utterly unpardonable conduct altogether renounced the obedience which he owed to the Lord his God (ch. 15). All these acts of transgression manifest an attempt to secure the unconditional gratification of his own self-will, and a growing disregard of the government of Jehovah in Israel; and the consequence of the whole was simply this, that Saul not only failed to accomplish that deliverance of the nation out of the power of its foes which the Israelites had anticipated from their king, and was unable to inflict any lasting humiliation upon the Philistines, but that he undermined the stability of his monarchy, and brought about his own rejection on the part of God.
From all this we may see very clearly, that the reason why the occurrences connected with the election of Saul as king as fully described on the one hand, and on the other only such incidents connected with his enterprises after he began to reign as served to bring out the faults and crimes of his monarchy, was, that Israel might learn from this, that royalty itself could never secure the salvation it expected, unless the occupant of the throne submitted altogether to the will of the Lord. Of the other acts of Saul, the wars with the different nations round about are only briefly mentioned, but with this remark, that he displayed his strength and gained the victory in whatever direction he turned (1 Sam 14:47), simply because this statement was sufficient to bring out the brighter side of his reign, inasmuch as this clearly showed that it might have been a source of blessing to the people of God, if the king had only studied how to govern his people in the power and according to the will of Jehovah. If we examine the history of Saul’s reign from this point of view, all the different points connected with it exhibit the greatest harmony.
Modern critics, however, have discovered irreconcilable contradictions in the history, simply because, instead of studying it for the purpose of fathoming the plan and purpose which lie at the foundation, they have entered upon the inquiry with a twofold assumption: viz., (1) that the government of Jehovah over Israel was only a subjective idea of the Israelitish nation, without any objective reality; and (2) that the human monarchy was irreconcilably opposed to the government of God.
Governed by these axioms, which are derived not from the Scriptures, but from the philosophical views of modern times, the critics have found it impossible to explain the different accounts in any other way than by the purely external hypothesis, that the history contained in this book has been compiled from two different sources, in one of which the establishment of the earthly monarchy was treated as a violation of the supremacy of God, whilst the other took a more favourable view. From the first source, ch. 8, 1 Sam 10:17-27,11-12, and 15 are said to have been derived; and ch. 9- 10:17, 13, and 14 from the second.
ISRAEL’S PRAYER FOR A KING. 1 SAMUEL 8.
As Samuel had appointed his sons as judges in his old age, and they had perverted justice, the elders of Israel entreated him to appoint them a king after the manner of all the nations (vv. 1-5). This desire not only displeased Samuel, but Jehovah also saw in it a rejection of His government; nevertheless He commanded the prophet to fulfil the desire of the people, but at the same time to set before them as a warning the prerogatives of a king (vv. 6-9). This answer from God, Samuel made known to the people, describing to them the prerogatives which the king would assume to himself above the rest of the people (vv. 10-18). As the people, however, persisted in their wish, Samuel promised them, according to the direction of God, that their wishes should be gratified (vv. 19-22).
1 SAMUEL. 8:1-5
Verse 1-2. The reason assigned for the appointment of Samuel’s sons as judges is his own advanced age. The inference which we might draw from this alone, namely, that they were simply to support their father in the administration of justice, and that Samuel had no intention of laying down his office, and still less of making the supreme office of judge hereditary in his family, is still more apparent from the fact that they were stationed as judges of the nation in Beersheba, which was on the southern border of Canaan (Judg 20:1, etc.; see at Gen 21:31). The sons are also mentioned again in 1 Chron 6:13, though the name of the elder has either been dropped out of the Masoretic text or has become corrupt.
Verse 3. The sons, however, did not walk in the ways of their father, but set their hearts upon gain, took bribes, and perverted justice, in opposition to the command of God (see Ex 23:6,8; Deut 16:19).
Verse 4-5. These circumstances (viz., Samuel’s age and the degeneracy of his sons) furnished the elders of Israel with the opportunity to apply to Samuel with this request: “Appoint us a king to judge us, as all the nations” (the heathen), sc., have kings. This request resembles so completely the law of the king in Deut 17:14 (observe, for example, the expression µyiwOGhæAlk;K] ), that the distinct allusion to it is unmistakeable.
The custom of expressly quoting the book of the law is met with for the first time in the writings of the period of the captivity. The elders simply desired what Jehovah had foretold through His servant Moses, as a thing that would take place in the future and for which He had even made provision.
1 SAMUEL. 8:6-8
Nevertheless “the thing displeased Samuel when they said,” etc. This serves to explain rb;d; , and precludes the supposition that Samuel’s displeasure had reference to what they had said concerning his own age and the conduct of his sons. At the same time, the reason why the petition for a king displeased the prophet, was not that he regarded the earthly monarchy as irreconcilable with the sovereignty of God, or even as untimely; for in both these cases he would not have entered into the question at all, but would simply have refused the request as ungodly or unseasonable. But “Samuel prayed to the Lord,” i.e., he laid the matter before the Lord in prayer, and the Lord said (v. 7): “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee.” This clearly implies, that not only in Samuel’s opinion, but also according to the counsel of God, the time had really come for the establishment of the earthly sovereignty in Israel. In this respect the request of the elders for a king to reign over them was perfectly justifiable; and there is no reason to say, with Calvin, “they ought to have had regard to the times and conditions prescribed by God, and it would no doubt have come to pass that the regal power would have grown up in the nation. Although, therefore, it had not yet been established, they ought to have waited patiently for the time appointed by God, and not to have given way to their own reasons and counsels apart from the will of God.” For God had not only appointed no particular time for the establishment of the monarchy; but in the introduction to the law for the king, “When thou shalt say, I will set a king over me,” He had ceded the right to the representatives of the nation to deliberate upon the matter.
Nor did they err in this respect, that while Samuel was still living, it was not the proper time to make use of the permission that they had received; for they assigned as the reason for their application, that Samuel had grown old: consequently they did not petition for a king instead of the prophet who had been appointed and so gloriously accredited by God, but simply that Samuel himself would give them a king in consideration of his own age, in order that when he should become feeble or die, they might have a judge and leader of the nation. Nevertheless the Lord declared, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. As they have always done from the day that I brought them up out of Egypt unto this day, that they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.” This verdict on the part of God refers not so much to the desire expressed, as to the feelings from which it had sprung.
Externally regarded, the elders of Israel had a perfect right to present the request; the wrong was in their hearts. f13 They not only declared to the prophet their confidence in his administration of his office, but they implicitly declared him incapable of any further superintendence of their civil and political affairs. This mistrust was founded upon mistrust in the Lord and His guidance. In the person of Samuel they rejected the Lord and His rule. They wanted a king, because they imagined that Jehovah their God-king was not able to secure their constant prosperity. Instead of seeking for the cause of the misfortunes which had hitherto befallen them in their own sin and want of fidelity towards Jehovah, they searched for it in the faulty constitution of the nation itself. In such a state of mind as this, their desire for a king was a contempt and rejection of the kingly government of Jehovah, and was nothing more than forsaking Jehovah to serve other gods. (See 1 Sam 10:18-19, and ch. 12:7ff., where Samuel points out to the people still more fully the wrong that they have committed.)
1 SAMUEL. 8:9
In order to show them wherein they were wrong, Samuel was instructed to bear witness against them, by proclaiming the right of the king who would rule over them. µyrit;a `dW[ `dW[ neither means “warn them earnestly” (De Wette), nor “explain and solemnly expound to them” (Thenius). B] `dW[ means to bear witness, or give testimony against a person, i.e., to point out to him his wrong. The following words, wgw T;d]Gæhiw] , are to be understood as explanatory, in the sense of “by proclaiming to them.” “The manner (mishpat) of the king” is the right or prerogative which the king would claim, namely, such a king as was possessed by all the other nations, and such an one as Israel desired in the place of its own God-king, i.e., a king who would rule over his people with arbitrary and absolute power.
1 SAMUEL. 8:10-18
In accordance with the instructions of God, Samuel told the people all the words of Jehovah, i.e., all that God had said to him, as related in vv. 7-9, and then proclaimed to them the right of the king.
Verse 11. “He will take your sons, and set them for himself upon his chariots, and upon his saddle-horses, and they will run before his chariot;” i.e., he will make the sons of the people his retainers at court, his charioteers, riders, and runners. The singular suffix attached to hb;K;r]m, is not to be altered, as Thenius suggests, into the plural form, according to the LXX, Chald., and Syr., since the word refers, not to war-chariots, but to the king’s state-carriage; and vr;p; does not mean a rider, but a saddlehorse, as in 2 Sam 1:6; 1 Kings 5:6, etc.
Verse 12. “And to make himself chiefs over thousands and over fifties;”- the greatest and smallest military officers are mentioned, instead of all the soldiers and officers (comp. Num 31:14; 2 Kings 1:9ff., with Ex 18:21,25). µWc is also dependent upon jqæl; (v. 11) “and to plough his field vyrij; , lit. the ploughed), and reap his harvest, and make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots.”
Verse 13. “Your daughters he will take as preparers of ointments, cooks, and bakers,” sc., for his court.
Verse 14-17. All their possessions he would also take to himself: the good (i.e., the best) fields, vineyards, and olive-gardens, he would take away, and give to his servants; he would tithe the sowings and vineyards (i.e., the produce which they yielded), and give them to his courtiers and servants. syris; , lit. the eunuch; here it is used in a wider sense for the royal chamberlains. Even their slaves (men-servants and maid-servants) and their beasts of draught and burden he would take and use for his own work, and raise the tithe of the flock. The word rWjB; , between the slaves (menservants and maid-servants) and the asses, is very striking and altogether unsuitable; and in all probability it is only an ancient copyist’s error for µk,yreq]Bi , your oxen, as we may see from the LXX rendering, ta> bouko>lia . The servants and maids, oxen and asses, answer in that case to one another; whilst the young men are included among the sons in vv. 11, 12. In this way the king would make all the people into his servants or slaves. This is the meaning of the second clause of v. 17; for the whole are evidently summed up in conclusion in the expression, “and ye shall be his servants.”
Verse 18. Israel would then cry out to God because of its king, but the Lord would not hear it then. This description, which contains a fearful picture of the tyranny of the king, is drawn from the despotic conduct of the heathen kings, and does not presuppose, as many have maintained, the times of the later kings, which were so full of painful experiences.
1 SAMUEL. 8:19-20
With such a description of the “right of the king” as this, Samuel had pointed out to the elders the dangers connected with a monarchy in so alarming a manner, that they ought to have been brought to reflection, and to have desisted from their demand. “But the people refused to hearken to the voice of Samuel.” They repeated their demand, “We will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and conduct our battles.” 1 SAMUEL 8:21,22 These words of the people were laid by Samuel before the Lord, and the Lord commanded him to give the people a king. With this answer Samuel sent the men of Israel, i.e., the elders, away. This is implied in the words, “Go ye every man unto his city,” since we may easily supply from the context, “till I shall call you again, to appoint you the king you desire.”
ANOINTING OF SAUL AS KING.
1 SAMUEL. 9:1-10
When the Lord had instructed Samuel to appoint a king over the nation, in accordance with its own desire, He very speedily proceeded to show him the man whom He had chosen. Saul the Benjaminite came to Samuel, to consult him as a seer about his father’s she-asses, which had been lost, and for which he had been seeking in all directions in vain (1 Sam 9:1-14). And the Lord had already revealed to the prophet the day before, that He would send him the man who had been set apart by Him as the king of Israel; and when Samuel met with Saul, He pointed him out as the man to whom He had referred (vv. 15-17). Accordingly, Samuel invited Saul to be his guest at a sacrificial meal, which he was about to celebrate (vv. 18-24). After the meal he made known to him the purpose of God, anointed him as king (vv. 25-27; 1 Sam 10:1), and sent him away, with an announcement of three signs, which would serve to confirm his election on the part of God (1 Sam 10:2-16). This occurrence is related very circumstantially, to bring out distinctly the miraculous interposition of God, and to show that Saul did not aspire to the throne; and also that Samuel did not appoint of his own accord the man whom he was afterwards obliged to reject, but that Saul was elected by God to be king over His people, without any interference on the part of either Samuel or himself. f14 Saul searches for his father’s asses.
The elaborate genealogy of the Benjaminite Kish, and the minute description of the figure of his son Saul, are intended to indicate at the very outset the importance to which Saul attained in relation to the people of Israel, Kish was the son of Abiel: this is in harmony with 1 Sam 14:51. But when, on the other hand, it is stated in 1 Chron 8:33; 9:39, that Ner begat Kish, the difference may be reconciled in the simplest manner, on the assumption that the Ner mentioned there is not the father, but the grandfather, or a still more remote ancestor of Kish, as the intervening members are frequently passed over in the genealogies. The other ancestors of Kish are never mentioned again. lyijæ rwOBGi refers to Kish, and signifies not a brave man, but a man of property, as in Ruth 2:1. This son Saul (i.e., “prayed for:” for this meaning of the word, comp. 1 Sam 1:17,27) was “young and beautiful.” It is true that even at that time Saul had a son grown up (viz., Jonathan), according to 1 Sam 13:2; but still, in contrast with his father, he was “a young man,” i.e., in the full vigour of youth, probably about forty or forty-five years old. There is no necessity, therefore, to follow the Vulgate rendering electus. No one equalled him in beauty. “From his shoulder upwards he was higher than any of the people.”
Such a figure as this was well adapted to commend him to the people as their king (cf. 1 Sam 10:24), since size and beauty were highly valued in rulers, as signs of manly strength (see Herod. iii. 20, vii. 187; Aristot. Polit. iv. c. 24). Verse 3-5. Having been sent out by his father to search for his she-asses which had strayed, Saul went with his servant through the mountains of Ephraim, which ran southwards into the tribe-territory of Benjamin (see at 1 Sam 1:1), then through the land of Shalishah and the land of Shaalim, and after that through the land of Benjamin, without finding the asses; and at length, when he had reached the land of Zuph, he determined to return, because he was afraid that his father might turn his mind from the asses, and trouble himself about them (the son and servant). ˆmi ldej; , to desist from a thing, to give it up or renounce it.
As Saul started in any case from Gibeah of Benjamin, his own home (1 Sam 10:10ff., 26, 11:4; 15:34; 23:19; 26:1), i.e., the present Tuleil el Phul, which was an hour or an hour and a half to the north of Jerusalem (see at Josh 18:28), and went thence into the mountains of Ephraim, he no doubt took a north-westerly direction, so that he crossed the boundary of Benjamin somewhere between Bireh and Atarah, and passing through the crest of the mountains of Ephraim, on the west of Gophnah (Jifna), came out into the land of Shalishah. Shalishah is unquestionably the country round (or of) Baal- shalishah (2 Kings 4:42), which was situated, according to Eusebius (Onom. s.v. Baithsarisa’th: Beth-sarisa or Beth-salisa), in regione Thamnitica, fifteen Roman miles to the north of Diospolis (Lydda), and was therefore probably the country to the west of Jiljilia, where three different wadys run into one large wady, called Kurawa; and according to the probable conjecture of Thenius, it was from this fact that the district received the name of Shalishah, or Three-land. They proceeded thence in their search to the land of Shaalim: according to the Onom. (s.v.), “a village seven miles off, in finibus Eleutheropoleos contra occidentem.” But this is hardly correct, and is most likely connected with the mistake made in transposing the town of Samuel to the neighbourhood of Diospolis (see at 1 Sam 1:1).
For since they went on from Shaalim into the land of Benjamin, and then still further into the land of Zuph, on the south-west of Benjamin, they probably turned eastwards from Shalishah, into the country where we find Beni Mussah and Beni Salem marked upon Robinson’s and v. de Velde’s maps, and where we must therefore look for the land of Shaalim, that they might proceed thence to explore the land of Benjamin from the north-east to the south-west. If, on the contrary, they had gone from Shaalim in a southerly or south-westerly direction, to the district of Eleutheropolis, they would only have entered the land of Benjamin at the south-west corner, and would have had to go all the way back again in order to go thence to the land of Zuph. For we may infer with certainty that the land of Zuph was on the south-west of the tribe-territory of Benjamin, from the fact that, according to 1 Sam 10:2, Saul and his companion passed Rachel’s tomb on their return thence to their own home, and then came to the border of Benjamin. On the name Zuph, see at 1 Sam 1:1.
Verse 6. When Saul proposed to return home from the land of Zuph, his servant said to him, “Behold, in this city (‘this,’ referring to the town which stood in front of them upon a hill) is a man of God, much honoured; all that he saith cometh surely to pass: now we will go thither; perhaps he will tell us our way that we have to go” (lit. have gone, and still go, sc., to attain the object of our journey, viz., to find the asses). The name of this town is not mentioned either here or in the further course of this history.
Nearly all the commentators suppose it to have been Ramah, Samuel’s home. But this assumption has no foundation at all in the text, and is irreconcilable with the statements respecting the return in 1 Sam 10:2-5.
The servant did not say there dwells in this city, but there is in this city (v. 6; comp. with this v. 10, “They went into the city where the man of God was,” not “dwelt”).
It is still more evident, from the answer given by the drawers of water, when Saul asked them, “Is the seer here?” (v. 11)-viz., “He came to-day to the city, for the people have a great sacrifice upon the high place” (v. 12)- that the seer (Samuel) did not live in the town, but had only come thither to a sacrificial festival. Moreover, “every impartial man will admit, that the fact of Samuel’s having honoured Saul as his guest at the sacrificial meal of those who participated in the sacrifice, and of their having slept under the same roof, cannot possibly weaken the impression that Samuel was only there in his peculiar and official capacity. It could not be otherwise than that the presidency should be assigned to him at the feast itself as priest and prophet, and therefore that the appointments mentioned should proceed from him. And it is but natural to assume that he had a house at his command for any repetition of such sacrifices, which we find from 2 Kings 4 to have been the case in the history of Elisha” (Valentiner). And lastly, the sacrificial festival itself does not point to Ramah; for although Samuel had built an altar to the Lord at Ramah (1 Sam 7:17), this was by no means the only place of sacrifice in the nation. If Samuel offered sacrifice at Mizpeh and Gilgal (1 Sam 7:9; 10:8; 13:8ff.), he could also do the same at other places. What the town really was in which Saul met with him, cannot indeed be determined, since all that we can gather from 1 Sam 10:2, is, that it was situated on the south-west of Bethlehem.
Verse 7-8. Saul’s objection, that they had no present to bring to the man of God, as the bread was gone from their vessels, was met by the servant with the remark, that he had a quarter of a shekel which he would give.
Verse 9-10. Before proceeding with the further progress of the affair, the historian introduces a notice, which was required to throw light upon what follows; namely, that beforetime, if any one wished to inquire of God, i.e., to apply to a prophet for counsel from God upon any matter, it was customary in Israel to say, We will go to the seer, because “he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a seer.” After this parenthetical remark, the account is continued in v. 10. Saul declared himself satisfied with the answer of the servant; and they both went into the town, to ask the man of God about the asses that were lost.
1 SAMUEL. 9:11-12
As they were going up to the high place of the town, they met maidens coming out of the town to draw water; and on asking them whether the seer was there, they received this answer: “Yes; behold, he is before thee: make haste, now, for he has come into the town to-day; for the people have a sacrifice to-day upon the high place.” Bamah (in the singular) does not mean the height or hill generally; but throughout it signifies the high place, as a place of sacrifice or prayer.
1 SAMUEL. 9:13
“When ye come into the city, ye will find him directly before he goes up to the high place to eat.” ˆKe not only introduces the apodosis, but corresponds to K, as, so: here, however, it is used with reference to time, in the sense of our “immediately.” “For the people are not accustomed to eat till he comes, for he blesses the sacrifice,” etc. Ërær; , like eulogei>n , refers to the thanksgiving prayer offered before the sacrificial meal. “Go now for him; yet will meet him even to-day.” The first tae is placed at the beginning for the sake of emphasis, and then repeated at the close. µwOy , “Even to-day.”
1 SAMUEL. 9:14-16
When they went into the town, Samuel met them on his way out to go to the high place of sacrifice. Before the meeting itself is described, the statement is introduced in vv. 15-17, that the day before Jehovah had foretold to Samuel that the man was coming to him whom he was to anoint as captain over his people. ˆz,aO hl,G, , to open any one’s ear, equivalent to reveal something to him (1 Sam 20:12; 2 Sam 7:27, etc.). jlæv; , I will send thee, i.e., “I will so direct his way in my overruling providence, that he shall come to thee” (J. H. Mich.). The words, “that he may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines; for I have looked upon my people, for their cry is come unto me,” are not at all at variance with 1 Sam 7:13. In that passage there is simply the assertion, that there was no more any permanent oppression on the part of the Philistines in the days of Samuel, such as had taken place before; but an attempt to recover their supremacy over Israel is not only not precluded, but is even indirectly affirmed (see the comm. on 1 Sam 7:13).
The words before us simply show that the Philistines had then begun to make a fresh attempt to contend for dominion over the Israelites. “I have looked upon my people:” this is to be explained like the similar passage in Ex 2:25, “God looked upon the children of Israel,” and Ex 3:7, “I have looked upon the misery of my people.” God’s looking was not a quiet, inactive looking on, but an energetic look, which brought help in trouble. “Their cry is come unto me:” this is word for word the same as in Ex 3:9.
As the Philistines wanted to tread in the footsteps of the Egyptians, it was necessary that Jehovah should also send His people a deliverer from these new oppressors, by giving them a king. The reason here assigned for the establishment of a monarchy is by no means at variance with the displeasure which God had expressed to Samuel at the desire of the people for a king (1 Sam 8:7ff.); since this displeasure had reference to the state of heart from which the desire had sprung.
1 SAMUEL. 9:17
When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord answered him, sc., in reply to the tacit inquiry, ‘Is this he?’ “Behold, this is the man of whom I spake to thee.” `rx;[; , coercere imperio.
1 SAMUEL. 9:18-24
The thread of the narrative, which was broken off in v. 15, is resumed in v. 18. Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate, and asked him for the seer’s house. The expression r[ævæ Ëw,T; is used to define more precisely the general phrase in v. 14, `ry[i Ëw,T; awOB; and there is no necessity to alter `ry[i in v. 14 into r[ævæ , as Thenius proposes, for `ry[i Ëw,T; awOB does not mean to go (or be) in the middle of the town, as he imagines, but to go into, or enter, the town; and the entrance to the town was through the gate.
Verse 19-21. Samuel replied, “I am the seer: go up before me to the high place, and eat with me to-day; and to-morrow I will send thee away, and make known to thee all that is in thy heart.” Letting a person go in front was a sign of great esteem. The change from the singular `hl;[; to the plural lkæa; may be explained on the ground that, whilst Samuel only spoke to Saul, he intended expressly to invite his servant to the meal as well as himself. “All that is in thine heart” does not mean “all that thou hast upon thy heart,” i.e., all that troubles thee, for Samuel relieved him of all anxiety about the asses at once by telling him that they were found; but simply the thoughts of thy heart generally. Samuel would make these known to him, to prove to him that he was a prophet. He then first of all satisfied him respecting the asses (v. 20): “As for the asses that were lost to thee to-day three days (three days ago), do not set thy heart upon them (i.e., do not trouble thyself about them), for they are found.” After this quieting announcement, by which he had convinced Saul of his seer’s gift, Samuel directed Saul’s thoughts to that higher thing which Jehovah had appointed for him: “And to whom does all that is worth desiring of Israel belong?
Is it not to thee, and to all thy father’s house? “The desire of Israel” (optima quaeque Israel , Vulg.; “the best in Israel,” Luther) is not all that Israel desires, but all that Israel possesses of what is precious or worth desiring (see Hag 2:7). “The antithesis here is between the asses and every desirable thing” (Seb. Schmidt). Notwithstanding the indefinite character of the words, they held up such glorious things as in prospect for Saul, that he replied in amazement (v. 21), “Am not I a Benjaminite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family is the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin ( nb fb,ve is unquestionably a copyist’s error for nb fb,ve ); and how speakest thou such a word to me?” Samuel made no reply to this, as he simply wanted first of all to awaken the expectation in Saul’s mind of things that he had never dreamt of before.
Verse 22. When they arrived at the high place, he conducted Saul and his servant into the cell (the apartment prepared for the sacrificial meal), and gave them (the servant as well as Saul, according to the simple customs of antiquity, as being also his guest) a place at the upper end among those who had been invited. There were about thirty persons present, no doubt the most distinguished men of the city, whilst the rest of the people probably encamped in the open air.
Verse 23-24. He then ordered the cook to bring the piece which he had directed him to set aside, and to place it before Saul, namely the leg and `l[æ (the article in the place of the relative; see Ewald, §331, b.); i.e., not what was over it, viz., the broth poured upon it (Dathe and Maurer), but what was attached to it (Luther). The reference, however, is not to the kidney as the choicest portion (Thenius), for the kidneys were burned upon the altar in the case of all the slain sacrifices (Lev 3:4), and only the flesh of the animals offered in sacrifice was applied to the sacrificial meal. What was attached to the leg, therefore, can only have been such of the fat upon the flesh as was not intended for the altar. Whether the right or left leg, is not stated: the earlier commentators decide in favour of the left, because the right leg fell to the share of the priests (Lev 7:32ff.). But as Samuel conducted the whole of the sacrificial ceremony, he may also have offered the sacrifice itself by virtue of his prophetic calling, so that the right leg would fall to his share, and he might have it reserved for his guest.
In any case, however, the leg, as the largest and best portion, was to be a piece of honour for Saul (see Gen 43:34). There is no reason to seek for any further symbolical meaning in it. The fact that it was Samuel’s intention to distinguish and honour Saul above all his other guests, is evident enough from what he said to Saul when the cook had brought the leg: “Behold, that which is reserved is set before thee µWc is the passive participle, as in Num 24:21); for unto this time hath it been kept for thee, as I said I have invited the people.” d[ewOm is either “to the appointed time of thy coming,” or possibly, “for the (this) meeting together.” Samuel mentions this to give Saul his guest to understand that he had foreseen his coming in a supernatural way. rmæa; , saying, i.e., as I said (to the cook).
1 SAMUEL. 9:25-27
When the sacrificial meal was over, Samuel and Saul went down from the high place into the town, and he (Samuel) talked with him upon the roof (of the house into which Samuel had entered). The flat roofs of the East were used as placed of retirement for private conversation (see at Deut 22:8). This conversation did not refer of course to the call of Samuel to the royal dignity, for that was not made known to him as a word of Jehovah till the following day (v. 27); but it was intended to prepare him for that announcement: so that O. v. Gerlach’s conjecture is probably the correct one, viz., that Samuel “talked with Saul concerning the deep religious and political degradation of the people of God, the oppression of the heathen, the causes of the inability of the Israelites to stand against these foes, the necessity for a conversion of the people, and the want of a leader who was entirely devoted to the Lord.” f15 Verse 26-27. “And they rose up early in the morning: namely, when the morning dawn arose, Samuel called to Saul upon the roof (i.e., he called from below within the house up to the roof, where Saul was probably sleeping upon the balcony; cf. 2 Kings 4:10), Get up, I will conduct thee.”
As soon as Saul had risen, “they both (both Samuel and Saul) went out (into the street).” And when they had gone down to the extremity of the town, Samuel said to Saul, “Let the servant pass on before us (and he did so), and do thou remain here for the present; I will show thee a word of God.”
1 SAMUEL. 10:1
Samuel then took the oil-flask, poured it upon his (Saul’s) head, kissed him, and said, “Hath not Jehovah (equivalent to ‘Jehovah assuredly hath’) anointed thee to be captain over His inheritance?” µwOlv; , as an expression of lively assurance, receives the force of an independent clause through the following yKi , “is it not so?” i.e., “yea, it is so, that,” etc., just as it does before µai in Gen 4:7. hl;jnæ , (His (Jehovah’s) possession, was the nation of Israel, which Jehovah had acquired as the people of His own possession through their deliverance out of Egypt (Deut 4:20; 9:26, etc.). Anointing with oil as a symbol of endowment with the Spirit of God; as the oil itself, by virtue of the strength which it gives to the vital spirits, was a symbol of the Spirit of God as the principle of divine and spiritual power (see at Lev 8:12). Hitherto there had been no other anointing among the people of God than that of the priests and sanctuary (Ex 30:23ff.; Lev 8:10ff.). When Saul, therefore, was consecrated as king by anointing, the monarchy was inaugurated as a divine institution, standing on a par with the priesthood; through which henceforth the Lord would also bestow upon His people the gifts of His Spirit for the building up of His kingdom.
As the priests were consecrated by anointing to be the media of the ethical blessings of divine grace for Israel, so the king was consecrated by anointing to be the vehicle and medium of all the blessings of grace which the Lord, as the God-king, would confer upon His people through the institution of a civil government. Through this anointing, which was performed by Samuel under the direction of God, the king was set apart from the rest of the nation as “anointed of the Lord” (cf. 1 Sam 12:3,5, etc.), and sanctified as the dygin; , i.e., its captain, its leader and commander.
Kissing was probably not a sign of homage or reverence towards the anointed of the Lord, so much as “a kiss of affection, with which the grace of God itself was sealed” (Seb. Schmidt). f
16 1 SAMUEL. 10:2-7
To confirm the consecration of Saul as king over Israel, which had been effected through the anointing, Samuel gave him three more signs which would occur on his journey home, and would be a pledge to him that Jehovah would accompany his undertakings with His divine help, and practically accredit him as His anointed. These signs, therefore, stand in the closest relation to the calling conveyed to Saul through his anointing.
Verse 2. The first sign: “When thou goest away from me to-day (i.e., now), thou wilst meet two men at Rachel’s sepulchre, on the border of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say unto thee, The asses of thy father, which thou wentest to seek, are found. Behold, they father hath given up twOntoa\h; yreb]DiAta, , the words (i.e., talking) about the asses, and troubleth himself about you, saying, What shall I do about my son?” According to Gen 35:16ff., Rachel’s sepulchre was on the way from Bethel to Bethlehem, only a short distance from the latter place, and therefore undoubtedly on the spot which tradition has assigned to it since the time of Jerome, viz., on the site of the Kubbet Rahil, half an hour to the north-west of Bethlehem, on the left of the road to Jerusalem, about an hour and a half from the city (see at Gen 35:20). This suits the passage before us very well, if we give up the groundless assumption that Saul came to Samuel at Ramah and was anointed by him there, and assume that the place of meeting, which is not more fully defined in ch. 9, was situated to the southwest of Bethlehem. f17 The expression “in the border of Benjamin” is not at variance with this. It is true that Kubbet Rahil is about an hour and a quarter from the southern boundary of Benjamin, which ran past the Rogel spring, through the valley of Ben-hinnom (Josh 18:16); but the expression hr;Wbq] `µ[i must not be so pressed as to be restricted to the actual site of the grave, since otherwise the further definition “at Zelzah” would be superfluous, as Rachel’s tomb was unquestionably a well-known locality at that time. If we suppose the place called Zelzah, the situation of which has not yet been discovered, f18 to have been about mid-way between Rachel’s tomb and the Rogel spring, Samuel could very well describe the spot where Saul would meet the two men in the way that he has done. This sign, by confirming the information which Samuel had given to Saul with reference to the asses, was to furnish him with a practical proof that what Samuel had said to him with regard to the monarchy would quite as certainly come to pass, and therefore not only to deliver him from all anxiety as to the lost animals of his father, but also to direct his thoughts to the higher destiny to which God had called him through Samuel’s anointing.
Verse 3-4. The second sign (vv. 3, 4): “Then thou shalt go on forward from thence, and thou shalt come to the terebinth of Tabor; and there shall meet thee there three men going up to God to Bethel, carrying one three kinds, one three loaves of bread, and one a bottle of wine. They will ask thee after thy welfare, and give thee two loaves; receive them at their hands.” The terebinth of Tabor is not mentioned anywhere else, and nothing further can be determined concerning it, than that it stood by the road leading from Rachel’s tomb to Gibeah. f19 The fact that the three men were going up to God at Bethel, shows that there was still a place of sacrifice consecrated to the Lord at Bethel, where Abraham and Jacob had erected altars to the Lord who had appeared to them there (Gen 12:8; 13:3-4; 28:18-19; 35:7); for the kids and loaves and wine were sacrificial gifts which they were about to offer. µwOlv; laæv; , to ask after one’s welfare, i.e., to greet in a friendly manner (cf. Judg 18:15; Gen 43:27). The meaning of this double sign consisted in the fact that these men gave Saul two loaves from their sacrificial offerings. In this he was to discern a homage paid to the anointed of the Lord; and he was therefore to accept the gift in this sense at their hand.
Verse 5, 6. The third sign (vv. 5, 6) Saul was to receive at Gibeah of God, where posts of the Philistines were stationed. Gibeath ha-Elohim is not an appellative, signifying a high place of God, i.e., a high place dedicated to God, but a proper name referring to Gibeah of Benjamin, the native place of Saul, which was called Gibeah of Saul from the time when Saul resided there as king (v. 16: cf. 1 Sam 11:4; 15:34; 2 Sam 21:6; Isa 10:29). This is very apparent from the fact that, according to vv. 10ff., all the people of Gibeah had known Saul of old, and therefore could not comprehend how he had all at once come to be among the prophets. The name Gibeah of God is here given to the town on account of a bamah or sacrificial height which rose within or near the town (v. 13), and which may possibly have been renowned above other such heights, as the seat of a society of prophets. yTiv]lip] byxin] are not bailiffs of the Philistines, still less columns erected as signs of their supremacy (Thenius), but military posts of the Philistines, as 1 Sam 13:3-4, and 2 Sam 8:6,14, clearly show.
The allusion here to the posts of the Philistines at Gibeah is connected with what was about to happen to Saul there. At the place where the Philistines, those severe oppressors of Israel, had set up military posts, the Spirit of God was to come upon Saul, and endow him with the divine power that was required for his regal office. “And it shall come to pass, when thou comest to the town there, thou wilt light upon a company of prophets coming down from the high place (bamah, the sacrificial height), before them lyre and tambourin, and flute, and harp, and they prophesying.” lb,j, signifies a rope or cord, then a band or company of men. It does not follow that because this band of prophets was coming down from the high place, the high place at Gibeah must have been the seat of a school of the prophets. They might have been upon a pilgrimage to Gibeah. The fact that they were preceded by musicians playing, seems to indicate a festal procession.
Nebel and Kinnor are stringed instruments which were used after David’s time in connection with the psalmody of divine worship (1 Chron 13:8; 15:20; Ps 33:2; 43:4, etc.). The nebel was an instrument resembling a lyre, the kinnor was more like a guitar than a harp. Toph: the tambourin, which was played by Miriam at the Red Sea (Ex 15:20). Chalil: the flute; see my Bibl. Archaeology, ii. §137. By the prophesying of these prophets we are to understand an ecstatic utterance of religious feelings to the praise of God, as in the case of the seventy elders in the time of Moses (Num 11:25). Whether it took the form of a song or of an enthusiastic discourse, cannot be determined; in any case it was connected with a very energetic action indicative of the highest state of mental excitement. (For further remarks on these societies of prophets, see at 1 Sam 19:18ff.)
Verse 6. “And the Spirit of Jehovah will come upon thee, and thou wilt prophesy with them, and be changed into another man.” “Ecstatic states,” says Tholuck (die Propheten, p. 53), “have something infectious about them. The excitement spreads involuntarily, as in the American revivals and the preaching mania in Sweden, even to persons in whose state of mind there is no affinity with anything of the kind.” But in the instance before us there was something more than psychical infection. The Spirit of Jehovah, which manifested itself in the prophesying of the prophets, was to pass over to Saul, so that he would prophesy along with them ab;n; formed like a verb hl for tabnth ; so again in v. 13), and was entirely to transform him. This transformation is not to be regarded indeed as regeneration in the Christian sense, but as a change resembling regeneration, which affected the entire disposition of mind, and by which Saul was lifted out of his former modes of thought and feeling, which were confined within a narrow earthly sphere, into the far higher sphere of his new royal calling, was filled with kingly thoughts in relation to the service of God, and received “another heart” (v. 9). Heart is used in the ordinary scriptural sense, as the centre of the whole mental and psychical life of will, desire, thought, perception, and feeling (see Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol. pp. 248ff., ed. 2).
Through this sign his anointing as king was to be inwardly sealed.
Verse 7. “When these signs are come unto thee (the Kethibh tb’ynh is to be read awOB, as in Ps 45:16 and Est 4:4; and the Keri awOB is a needless emendation), do to thee what thy hand findeth, i.e., act according to the circumstances (for this formula, see Judg 9:33); for God will be with thee.”
The occurrence of the signs mentioned was to assure him of the certainty that God would assist him in all that he undertook as king. The first opportunity for action was afforded him by the Ammonite Nahash, who besieged Jabesh-gilead (ch. 11).
1 SAMUEL. 10:8
In conclusion, Samuel gave him an important hint with regard to his future attitude: “And goest thou before me down to Gilgal; and, behold, I am coming down to thee, to offer burnt-offerings, and to sacrifice peaceofferings: thou shalt wait seven days, till I come to thee, that I may show thee what thou art to do.” The infinitive clause wgw `hl;[; is undoubtedly dependent upon the main clause dræy; , and not upon the circumstantial clause which is introduced as a parenthesis. The thought therefore is the following: If Saul went down to Gilgal to offer sacrifice there, he was to wait till Samuel arrived. The construction of the main clause itself, however, is doubtful, since, grammatically considered, dræy; can either be a continuation of the imperative `hc;[; (v. 7), or can be regarded as independent, and in fact conditional.
The latter view, according to which dræy; supposes his going down as a possible thing that may take place at a future time, is the one required by the circumstantial clause which follows, and which is introduced by hNehi ; for if dræy; were intended to be a continuation of the imperative which precedes it, so that Samuel commanded Saul to go down to Gilgal before him, he would have simply announced his coming, that is to say, he would either have said dræy; or dræy; ynæa . The circumstantial clause “and behold I am coming down to thee” evidently presupposes Saul’s going down as a possible occurrence, in the event of which Samuel prescribes the course he is to pursue. But the conditional interpretation of dræy; is still more decidedly required by the context. For instance, when Samuel said to Saul that after the occurrence of the three signs he was to do what came to his hand, he could hardly command him immediately afterwards to go to Gilgal, since the performance of what came to his hand might prevent him from going to Gilgal. If, however, Samuel meant that after Saul had finished what came to his hand he was to go down to Gilgal, he would have said, “And after thou hast done this, go down to Gilgal,” etc.
But as he does not express himself in this manner, he can only have referred to Saul’s going to Gilgal as an occurrence which, as he foresaw, would take place at some time or other. And to Saul himself this must not only have presented itself as a possible occurrence, but under the existing circumstances as one that was sure to take place; so that the whole thing was not so obscure to him as it is to us, who are only able to form our conclusions from the brief account which lies before us. If we suppose that in the conversation which Samuel had with Saul upon the roof (1 Sam 9:25), he also spoke about the manner in which the Philistines, who had pushed their outposts as far as Gibeah, could be successfully attacked, he might also have mentioned that Gilgal was the most suitable place for gathering an army together, and for making the necessary preparations for a successful engagement with their foes.
If we just glance at the events narrated in the following chapters, for the purpose of getting a clear idea of the thing which Samuel had in view; we find that the three signs announced by Samuel took place on Saul’s return to Gibeah (vv. 9-16). Samuel then summoned the people to Mizpeh, where Saul was elected king by lot (vv. 17-27); but Saul returned to Gibeah to his own house even after this solemn election, and was engaged in ploughing the field, when messengers came from Jabesh with the account of the siege of that town by the Ammonites. On receiving this intelligence the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him, so that he summoned the whole nation with energy and without delay to come to battle, and proceeded to Jabesh with the assembled army, and smote the Ammonites (1 Sam 11:1-11).
Thereupon Samuel summoned the people to come to Gilgal and renew the monarchy there (1 Sam 11:12-15); and at the same time he renewed his office of supreme judge (ch. 12), so that now for the first time Saul actually commenced his reign, and began the war against the Philistines (1 Sam 13:1), in which, as soon as the latter advanced to Michmash with a powerful army after Jonathan’s victorious engagement, he summoned the people to Gilgal to battle, and after waiting there seven days for Samuel in vain, had the sacrifices offered, on which account as soon as Samuel arrived he announced to him that his rule would not last (1 Sam 13:13ff.).
Now, it cannot have been the first of these two gatherings at Gilgal that Samuel had in his mind, but must have been the second. The first is precluded by the simple fact that Samuel summoned the people to go to Gilgal for the purpose of renewing the monarchy; and therefore, as the words “come and let us go to Gilgal” (1 Sam 11:14) unquestionably imply, he must have gone thither himself along with the people and the king, so that Saul was never in a position to have to wait for Samuel’s arrival. The second occurrence at Gilgal, on the other hand, is clearly indicated in the words of 1 Sam 13:8, “Saul tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed,” in which there is almost an express allusion to the instructions given to Saul in the verse before us. But whilst we cannot but regard this as the only true explanation, we cannot agree with Seb.
Schmidt, who looks upon the instructions given to Saul in this verse as “a rule to be observed throughout the whole of Samuel’s life,” that is to say, who interprets dræy; in the sense of “as often as thou goest down to Gilgal.”
For this view cannot be grammatically sustained, although it is founded upon the correct idea, that Samuel’s instructions cannot have been intended as a solitary and arbitrary command, by which Saul was to be kept in a condition of dependence.
According to our explanation, however, this is not the case; but there was an inward necessity for them, so far as the government of Saul was concerned. Placed as he was by Jehovah as king over His people, for the purpose of rescuing them out of the power of those who were at that time its most dangerous foes, Saul was not at liberty to enter upon the war against these foes simply by his own will, but was directed to wait till Samuel, the accredited prophet of Jehovah, had completed the consecration through the offering of a solemn sacrifice, and had communicated to him the requisite instructions from God, even though he should have to wait for seven days. f
20 1 SAMUEL. 10:9-16
When Saul went away from Samuel, to return to Gibeah, “God changed to him another heart,”-a pregnant expression for “God changed him, and gave him another heart” (see at v. 6); and all these signs (the signs mentioned by Samuel) happened on that very day. As he left Samuel early in the morning, Saul could easily reach Gibeah in one day, even if the town where he had met with Samuel was situated to the south-west of Rachel’s tomb, as the distance from that tomb to Gibeah was not more than three and a half or four hours.
Verse 10. The third sign is the only one which is minutely described, because this caused a great sensation at Gibeah, Saul’s home. “And they (Saul and his attendant) came thither to Gibeah.” “Thither” points back to “thither to the city” in v. 5, and is defined by the further expression “to Gibeah” (Eng. version, “to the hill:” Tr.). The rendering e>keiqen (LXX) does not warrant us in changing µv; into µv; ; for the latter would be quite superfluous, as it was self-evident that they came to Gibeah from the place where they had been in the company of Samuel. Verse 11. When those who had known Saul of old saw that he prophesied with the prophets, the people said one to another, “What has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” This expression presupposes that Saul’s previous life was altogether different from that of the disciples of the prophets.
Verse 12. And one from thence (i.e., from Gibeah, or from the crowd that was gathered round the prophets) answered, “And who is their father?” i.e., not “who is their president?” which would be a very gratuitous question; but, “is their father a prophet then?” i.e., according to the explanation given by Oehler (Herzog’s Real. Enc. xii. p. 216), “have they the prophetic spirit by virtue of their birth?” Understood in this way, the retort forms a very appropriate “answer” to the expression of surprise and the inquiry, how it came to pass that Saul was among the prophets. If those prophets had not obtained the gift of prophecy by inheritance, but as a free gift of the Lord, it was equally possible for the Lord to communicate the same gift to Saul. On the other hand, the alteration of the text from ba; (their father) into ba; (his father), according to the LXX, Vulg., Syr., and Arab., which is favoured by Ewald, Thenius, and others, must be rejected, for the simple reason that the question, Who is his father? in the mouth of one of the inhabitants of Gibeah, to whom Saul’s father was so well known that they called Saul the son of Kish at once, would have no sense whatever. From this the proverb arose, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”-a proverb which was used to express astonishment at the appearance of any man in a sphere of life which had hitherto been altogether strange to him.
Verse 13-16. When Saul had left off prophesying, and came to Bamah, his uncle asked him and his attendant where they had been; and Saul told him, that as they had not found the asses anywhere, they had gone to Samuel, and had learned from him that the asses were found. But he did not relate the words which had been spoken by Samuel concerning the monarchy, from unambitious humility (cf. vv. 22, 23) and not because he was afraid of unbelief and envy, as Thenius follows Josephus in supposing. From the expression “he came to Bamah” (Eng. ver. “to the high place”), we must conclude, that not only Saul’s uncle, but his father also, lived in Bamah, as we find Saul immediately afterwards in his own family circle (see vv. 14ff.). SAUL ELECTED KING. HIS ELECTION CONFIRMED.
1 SAMUEL. 10:17-27
Saul’s Election by Lot.
After Samuel had secretly anointed Saul king by the command of God, it was his duty to make provision for a recognition of the man whom God had chosen on the part of the people also. To this end he summoned the people to Mizpeh, and there instructed the tribes to choose a king by lot.
As the result of the lot was regarded as a divine decision, not only was Saul to be accredited by this act in the sight of the whole nation as the king appointed by the Lord, but he himself was also to be more fully assured of the certainty of his own election on the part of God.— f21 Verse 17. `µ[æ is the nation in its heads and representatives. Samuel selected Mizpeh for this purpose, because it was there that he had once before obtained for the people, by prayer, a great victory over the Philistines (1 Sam 7:5ff.).
Verse 18-19. “But before proceeding to the election itself, Samuel once more charged the people with their sin in rejecting God, who had brought them out of Egypt, and delivered them out of the hand of all their oppressors, by their demand for a king, that he might show them how dangerous was the way which they were taking now, and how bitterly they would perhaps repent of what they had now desired” (O. v. Gerlach; see the commentary on ch. 8). The masculine xjæl; is construed ad sensum with hk;l;m]mæ . In wOl rmæa; the early translators have taken wOl] for alo , which is the actual reading in some of the Codices. But although this reading is decidedly favoured by the parallel passages, 1 Sam 8:19; 12:12, it is not necessary; since yKi is used to introduce a direct statement, even in a declaration of the opposite, in the sense of our “no but” (e.g., in Ruth 1:10, where wOl] precedes). There is, therefore, no reason for exchanging wOl] for alo .
Verse 20-21. After this warning, Samuel directed the assembled Israelites to come before Jehovah (i.e., before the altar of Jehovah which stood at Mizpeh, according to 1 Sam 7:9) according to their tribes and families (alaphim: see at Num 1:16); “and there was taken (by lot) the tribe of Benjamin.” dkeL;hii , lit. to be snatched out by Jehovah, namely, through the lot (see Josh 7:14,16). He then directed the tribe of Benjamin to draw near according to its families, i.e., he directed the heads of the families of this tribe to come before the altar of the Lord and draw lots; and the family of Matri was taken. Lastly, when the heads of the households in this family came, and after that the different individuals in the household which had been taken, the lot fell upon Saul the son of Kish. In the words, “Saul the son of Kish was taken,” the historian proceeds at once to the final result of the casting of the lots, without describing the intermediate steps any further. When the lot fell upon Saul, they sought him, and he could not be found.
Verse 22. Then they inquired of Jehovah, “Is any one else come hither?” and Jehovah replied, “Behold, he (whom ye are seeking) is hidden among the things.” The inquiry was made through the high priest, by means of the Urim and Thummim, for which hwO;hy] laæv; was the technical expression, according to Num 27:21 (see Judg 20:27-28; 1:1, etc.). There can be no doubt, that in a gathering of the people for so important a purpose as the election of a king, the high priest would also be present, even though this is not expressly stated. Samuel presided over the meeting as the prophet of the Lord. The answer given by God, “Behold, he is hidden,” etc., appears to have no relation to the question, “Is any one else come?” The Sept. and Vulg. have therefore altered the question into ei> e>ti e>rcetai oJ anh>r , utrumnam venturus esset; and Thenius would adopt this as an emendation.
But he is wrong in doing so; for there was no necessity to ask whether Saul would still come: they might at once have sent to fetch him. What they asked was rather, whether any one else had come besides those who were present, as Saul was not to be found among them, that they might know where they were to look for Saul, whether at home or anywhere else. And to this question God gave the answer, “He is present, only hidden among the things.” By yliK] (the things or vessels, Eng. ver. the stuff) we are to understand the travelling baggage of the people who had assembled at Mizpeh. Saul could neither have wished to avoid accepting the monarchy, nor have imagined that the lot would not fall upon him if he hid himself.
For he knew that God had chosen him; and Samuel had anointed him already. He did it therefore simply from humility and modesty. “In order that he might not appear to have either the hope or desire for anything of the kind, he preferred to be absent when the lots were cast” (Seb.
Schmidt).
Verse 23-25. He was speedily fetched, and brought into the midst of the (assembled) people; and when he came, he was a head taller than all the people (see 1 Sam 9:2). And Samuel said to all the people, “Behold ye whom the Lord hath chosen! for there is none like him in all the nation.”
Then all the people shouted aloud, and cried, “Let the king live!” Saul’s bodily stature won the favour of the people (see the remarks on 1 Sam 9:2).
Samuel then communicated to the people the right of the monarchy, and laid it down before Jehovah. “The right of the monarchy” (meluchah) is not to be identified with the right of the king (melech), which is described in Sam 8:11 and sets forth the right or prerogative which a despotic king would assume over the people; but it is the right which regulated the attitude of the earthly monarchy in the theocracy, and determined the duties and rights of the human king in relation to Jehovah the divine King on the one hand, and to the nation on the other. This right could only be laid down by a prophet like Samuel, to raise a wholesome barrier at the very outset against all excesses on the part of the king. Samuel therefore wrote it in a document which was laid down before Jehovah, i.e., in the sanctuary of Jehovah; though certainly not in the sanctuary at Bamah in Gibeah, as Thenius supposes, for nothing is known respecting any such sanctuary. It was no doubt placed in the tabernacle, where the law of Moses was also deposited, by the side of the fundamental law of the divine state in Israel. When the business was all completed, Samuel sent the people away to their own home.
Verse 26. Saul also returned to his house at Gibeah, and there went with him the crowd of the men whose hearts God had touched, sc., to give him a royal escort, and show their readiness to serve him. lyijæ is not to be altered into lyijæ ˆBe , according to the free rendering of the LXX, but is used as in Ex 14:28; with this difference, however, that here it does not signify a large military force, but a crowd of brave men, who formed Saul’s escort of honour.
Verse 27. But as it generally happens that, where a person is suddenly lifted up to exalted honours or office, there are sure to be envious people found, so was it here: there were l[æYæliB] ˆBe , worthless people, even among the assembled Israelites, who spoke disparagingly of Saul, saying, “How will this man help us?” and who brought him no present. Minchah: the present which from time immemorial every one has been expected to bring when entering the presence of the king; so that the refusal to bring a present was almost equivalent to rebellion. But Saul was “as being deaf,” i.e., he acted as if he had not heard. The objection which Thenius brings against this view, viz., that in that case it would read mk] hy;h; aWh , exhibits a want of acquaintance with the Hebrew construction of a sentence. There is no more reason for touching hy;h; than Ëlæh; in v. 26. In both cases the apodosis is attached to the protasis, which precedes it in the form of a circumstantial clause, by the imperfect, with vav consec. According to the genius of our language, these protases would be expressed by the conjunction when, viz.: “when Saul also went home,...there went with him,” etc.; and “when loose (or idle) people said, etc., he was as deaf.”
1 SAMUEL. 11:1-5
Saul’s Victory over the Ammonites.
Even after the election by lot at Mizpeh, Saul did not seize upon the reins of government at once, but returned to his father’s house in Gibeah, and to his former agricultural occupation; not, however, merely from personal humility and want of ambition, but rather from a correct estimate of the circumstances. The monarchy was something so new in Israel, that the king could not expect a general and voluntary recognition of his regal dignity and authority, especially after the conduct of the worthless people mentioned in 1 Sam 10:27, until he had answered their expectations from a king (1 Sam 8:6,20), and proved himself a deliverer of Israel from its foes by a victorious campaign. But as Jehovah had chosen him ruler over his people without any seeking on his part, he would wait for higher instructions to act, before he entered upon the government. The opportunity was soon given him.
Verse 1-5. Nahash, the king of the Ammonites (cf. 1 Sam 12:12; 2 Sam 10:2), attacked the tribes on the east of the Jordan, no doubt with the intention of enforcing the claim to part of Gilead asserted by his ancestor in the time of Jephthah (Judg 11:13), and besieged Jabesh in Gilead, f23 according to Josephus the metropolis of Gilead, and probably situated by the Wady Jabes (see at Judg 21:8); from which we may see that he must have penetrated very far into the territory of the Israelites. The inhabitants of Jabesh petitioned the Ammonites in their distress, “Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee;” i.e., grant us favourable terms, and we will submit.
Verse 2. But Nahash replied, “On this condition tazO, lit. at this price, b pretii) will I make a covenant with you, that I may put out all your right eyes, and so bring a reproach upon all Israel.” From the fact that the infinitive hqæn; is continued with µWc , it is evident that the subject to hqæn; is Nahash, and not the Israelites, as the Syriac, Arabic, and others have rendered it. The suffix to µWc is neuter, and refers to the previous clause: “it,” i.e., the putting out of the right eye. This answer on the part of Nahash shows unmistakeably that he sought to avenge upon the people of Israel the shame of the defeat which Jephthah had inflicted upon the Ammonites.
Verse 3-4. The elders of Jabesh replied: “Leave us seven days, that we may send messengers into all the territory of Israel; and if there is no one who saves us, we will come out to thee,” i.e., will surrender to thee. This request was granted by Nahash, because he was not in a condition to take the town at once by storm, and also probably because, in the state of internal dissolution into which Israel had fallen at that time, he had no expectation that any vigorous help would come to the inhabitants of Jabesh. From the fact that the messengers were to be sent into all the territory of Israel, we may conclude that the Israelites had no central government at that time, and that neither Nahash nor the Jabeshites had heard anything of the election that had taken place; and this is still more apparent from the fact that, according to v. 4, their messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, and laid their business before the people generally, without applying at once to Saul.
Verse 5. Saul indeed did not hear of the matter will he came (returned home) from the field behind the oxen, and found the people weeping and lamenting at these mournful tidings. “Behind the oxen,” i.e., judging from the expression “yoke of oxen” in v. 7, the pair of oxen with which he had been ploughing.
1 SAMUEL. 11:6-11
When the report of the messengers had been communicated to him, “the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him, and his anger was kindled greatly,” sc., at the shame which the Ammonites had resolved to bring upon all Israel.
Verse 7. He took a yoke of oxen, cut them in pieces, and sent (the pieces) into every possession of Israel by messengers, and said, “Whoever cometh not forth after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.” The introduction of Samuel’s name after that of Saul, is a proof that Saul even as king still recognised the authority which Samuel possessed in Israel as the prophet of Jehovah. This symbolical act, like the cutting up of the woman in Judg 19:29, made a deep impression. “The fear of Jehovah fell upon the people, so that they went out as one man.” By “the fear of Jehovah” we are not to understand dei>ma paniko>n (Thenius and Böttcher), for Jehovah is not equivalent to Elohim, nor the fear of Jehovah in the sense of fear of His punishment, but a fear inspired by Jehovah. In Saul’s energetic appeal the people discerned the power of Jehovah, which inspired them with fear, and impelled them to immediate obedience.
Verse 8. Saul held a muster of the people of war, who had gathered together at (or near) Bezek, a place which was situated, according to the Onom. (s. v. Bezek), about seven hours to the north of Nabulus towards Beisan (see at Judg 1:4). The number assembled were 300,000 men of Israel, and 30,000 of Judah. These numbers will not appear too large, if we bear in mind that the allusion is not to a regular army, but that Saul had summoned all the people to a general levy. In the distinction drawn between the children of Judah and the children of Israel we may already discern a trace of that separation of Judah from the rest of the tribes, which eventually led to a formal secession on the part of the latter.
Verse 9. The messengers from Jabesh, who had been waiting to see the result of Saul’s appeal, were now despatched with this message to their fellow-citizens: “To-morrow you will have help, when the sun shines hot,” i.e., about noon.
Verse 10. After receiving these joyful news, the Jabeshites announced to the Ammonites: “To-morrow we will come out to you, and ye may do to us what seemeth good to you,”-an untruth by which they hoped to assure the besiegers, so that they might be fallen upon unexpectedly by the advancing army of Saul, and thoroughly beaten. Verse 11. The next day Saul arranged the people in three divisions varo , as in Judg 7:16), who forced their way into the camp of the foe from three different sides, in the morning watch (between three and six o’clock in the morning), smote the Ammonites “till the heat of the day,” and routed them so completely, that those who remained were all scattered, and there were not two men left together.
1 SAMUEL. 11:12-13
Renewal of the Monarchy.
Saul had so thoroughly acted the part of a king in gaining this victory, and the people were so enthusiastic in his favour, that they said to Samuel, viz., after their return from the battle, “Who is he that said, Saul should reign over us!” The clause `l[æ Ëlæm; lWav; contains a question, though it is indicated simply by the tone, and there is no necessity to alter lWav; into lWav;h\ . These words refer to the exclamation of the worthless people in Sam 10:27. “Bring the men (who spoke in this manner), that we may put them to death.” But Saul said, “There shall not a man be put to death this day; for to-day Jehovah hath wrought salvation in Israel;” and proved thereby not only his magnanimity, but also his genuine piety. f
24 1 SAMUEL. 11:14-15
Samuel turned this victory to account, by calling upon the people to go with him to Gilgal, and there renew the monarchy. In what the renewal consisted is not clearly stated; but it is simply recorded in v. 15 that “they (the whole people) made Saul king there before the Lord in Gilgal.” Many commentators have supposed that he was anointed afresh, and appeal to David’s second anointing (2 Sam 2:4 and 5:3). But David’s example merely proves as Seb. Schmidt has correctly observed, that the anointing could be repeated under certain circumstances; but it does not prove that it was repeated, or must have been repeated, in the case of Saul. If the ceremony of anointing had been performed, it would no doubt have been mentioned, just as it is in 2 Sam 2:4 and 5:3. But Ëlæm; does not mean “they anointed,” although the LXX have rendered it e>crise Samouh>l , according to their own subjective interpretation.
The renewal of the monarchy may very well have consisted in nothing more than a solemn confirmation of the election that had taken place at Mizpeh, in which Samuel once more laid before both king and people the right of the monarchy, receiving from both parties in the presence of the Lord the promise to observe this right, and sealing the vow by a solemn sacrifice. The only sacrifices mentioned are zebachim shelamim, i.e., peaceofferings.
These were thank-offerings, which were always connected with a sacrificial meal, and when presented on joyous occasions, formed a feast of rejoicing for those who took part, since the sacrificial meal shadowed forth a living and peaceful fellowship with the Lord. Gilgal is in all probability the place where Samuel judged the people every year (1 Sam 7:16). But whether it was the Gilgal in the plain of the Jordan, or Jiljilia on higher ground to the south-west of Shiloh, it is by no means easy to determine.
The latter is favoured, apart from the fact that Samuel did not say “Let us go down,” but simply “Let us go” (cf. 1 Sam 10:8), by the circumstance that the solemn ceremony took place after the return from the war at Jabesh; since it is hardly likely that the people would have gone down into the valley of the Jordan to Gilgal, whereas Jiljilia was close by the road from Jabesh to Gibeah and Ramah.
SAMUEL’S ADDRESS AT THE RENEWAL OF THE MONARCHY.
Samuel closed this solemn confirmation of Saul as king with an address to all Israel, in which he handed over the office of judge, which he had hitherto filled, to the king, who had been appointed by God and joyfully recognised by the people. The good, however, which Israel expected from the king depended entirely upon both the people and their king maintaining that proper attitude towards the Lord with which the prosperity of Israel was ever connected. This truth the prophet felt impelled to impress most earnestly upon the hearts of all the people on this occasion. To this end he reminded them, that neither he himself, in the administration of his office, nor the Lord in His guidance of Israel thus far, had given the people any reason for asking a king when the Ammonites invaded the land (vv. 1-12).
Nevertheless the Lord had given them a king, and would not withdraw His hand from them, if they would only fear Him and confess their sin (vv. 13- 15). This address was then confirmed by the Lord at Samuel’s desire, through a miraculous sign (vv. 16-18); whereupon Samuel gave to the people, who were terrified by the miracle and acknowledged their sin, the comforting promise that the Lord would not forsake His people for His great name’s sake, and then closed his address with the assurance of his continued intercession, and a renewed appeal to them to serve the Lord with faithfulness (vv. 19-25). With this address Samuel laid down his office as judge, but without therefore ceasing as prophet to represent the people before God, and to maintain the rights of God in relation to the king. In this capacity he continued to support the king with his advice, until he was compelled to announce his rejection on account of his repeated rebellion against the commands of the Lord, and to anoint David as his successor.
1 SAMUEL. 12:1-6
Verse 1-6. The time and place of the following address are not given. But it is evident from the connection with the preceding chapter implied in the expression rmæa; , and still more from the introduction (vv. 1, 2) and the entire contents of the address, that it was delivered on the renewal of the monarchy at Gilgal.
Verse 1-2. Samuel starts with the fact, that he had given the people a king in accordance with their own desire, who would now walk before them. hNehi with the participle expresses what is happening, and will happen still. µynip; Ëlæh; must not be restricted to going at the head in war, but signifies the general direction and government of the nation, which had been in the hands of Samuel as judge before the election of Saul as king. “And I have grown old and grey byci from byci ); and my sons, behold, they are with you.” With this allusion to his sons, Samuel simply intended to confirm what he had said about his own age. By the further remark, “and I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day,” he prepares the way for the following appeal to the people to bear witness concerning his conduct in office.
Verse 3. “Bear witness against me before the Lord,” i.e., looking up to the Lord, the omnipotent and righteous God-king, “and before His anointed,” the visible administrator of His divine government, whether I have committed any injustice in my office of judge, by appropriating another’s property, or by oppression and violence xxær; , to pound or crush in pieces, when used to denote an act of violence, is stronger than qvæ[; , with which it is connected here and in many other passages, e.g., Deut 28:33; Amos 4:1), or by taking atonement money rp,Ko , redemption or atonement money, is used, as in Ex 21:30 and Num 35:31, to denote a payment made by a man to redeem himself from capital punishment), “so that I had covered my eyes with it,” viz., to exempt from punishment a man who was worthy of death. The µyrit;a ], which is construed with µyli[‘h, , is the b instrumenti, and refers to rp,Ko ; consequently it is not to be confounded with ˆmi , “to hide from,” which would be quite unsuitable here. The thought is not that the judge covers his eyes from the copher, that he may not see the bribe, but that he covers his eyes with the money offered him as a bribe, so as not to see and not to punish the crime committed.
Verse 4. The people answered Samuel, that he had not done them any kind of injustice.
Verse 5. To confirm this declaration on the part of the people, he then called Jehovah and His anointed as witnesses against the people, and they accepted these witnesses. laer;c]yiAlK; is the subject to rmæa; ; and the Keri rmæa; , though more simple, is by no means necessary. Samuel said, “Jehovah be witness against you,” because with the declaration which the people had made concerning Samuel’s judicial labours they had condemned themselves, inasmuch as they had thereby acknowledged on oath that there was no ground for their dissatisfaction with Samuel’s administration, and consequently no well-founded reason for their request for a king.
Verse 6. But in order to bring the people to a still more thorough acknowledgment of their sin, Samuel strengthened still more their assent to his solemn appeal to God, as expressed in the words “He is witness,” by saying, “Jehovah (i.e., yea, the witness is Jehovah), who made Moses and Aaron, and brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt.” The context itself is sufficient to show that the expression “is witness” is understood; and there is no reason, therefore, to assume that the word has dropped out of the text through a copyist’s error. `hc;[; , to make, in a moral and historical sense, i.e., to make a person what he is to be; it has no connection, therefore, with his physical birth, but simply relates to his introduction upon the stage of history, like poiei>n , Heb 3:2. But if Jehovah, who redeemed Israel out of Egypt by the hands of Moses and Aaron, and exalted it into His own nation, was witness of the unselfishness and impartiality of Samuel’s conduct in his office of judge, then Israel had grievously sinned by demanding a king. In the person of Samuel they had rejected Jehovah their God, who had given them their rulers (see 1 Sam 8:7). Samuel proves this still further to the people from the following history.
1 SAMUEL. 12:7-12
“And now come hither, and I will reason with you before the Lord with regard to all the righteous acts which He has shown to you and your fathers.” hq;d;x] , righteous acts, is the expression used to denote the benefits which Jehovah had conferred upon His people, as being the results of His covenant fidelity, or as acts which attested the righteousness of the Lord in the fulfilment of the covenant grace which He had promised to His people.
Verse 8-12. The first proof of this was furnished by the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their safe guidance into Canaan (“this place” is the land of Canaan). The second was to be found in the deliverance of the people out of the power of their foes, to whom the Lord had been obliged to give them up on account of their apostasy from Him, through the judges whom He had raised up for them, as often as they turned to Him with penitence and cried to Him for help. Of the hostile oppressions which overtook the Israelites during this period of the judges, the following are singled out in v. 9: (1) that by Sisera, the commander-in-chief of Hazor, i.e., that of the Canaanitish king Jabin of Hazor (Judg 4:2ff.); (2) that of the Philistines, by which we are to understand not so much the hostilities of that nation described in Judg 3:31, as the forty years’ oppression mentioned in Judg 10:2 and 13:1; and (3) the Moabitish oppression under Eglon (Judg 3:12ff.). The first half of v. 10 agrees almost word for word with Judg 10:10, except that, according to Judg 10:6, the Ashtaroth are added to the Baalim (see at 1 Sam 7:4 and Judg 2:13). Of the judges whom God sent to the people as deliverers, the following are named, viz., Jerubbaal (see at Judg 6:32), i.e., Gideon (Judg 6), and Bedan, and Jephthah (see Judg 11), and Samuel. There is no judge named Bedan mentioned either in the book of Judges or anywhere else.
The name Bedan only occurs again in 1 Chron 7:17, among the descendants of Machir the Manassite: consequently some of the commentators suppose Jair of Gilead to be the judge intended. But such a supposition is perfectly arbitrary, as it is not rendered probable by any identity in the two names, and Jair is not described as having delivered Israel from any hostile oppression. Moreover, it is extremely improbable that Samuel should have mentioned a judge here, who had been passed over in the book of Judges on account of his comparative insignificance. There is also just as little ground for rendering Bedan as an appellative, e.g., the Danite (ben-Dan), as Kimchi suggests, or corpulentus as Böttcher maintains, and so connecting the name with Samson. There is no other course left, therefore, than to regard Bedan as an old copyist’s error for Barak (Judg 4), as the LXX, Syriac, and Arabic have done-a conclusion which is favoured by the circumstance that Barak was one of the most celebrated of the judges, and is placed by the side of Gideon and Jephthah in Heb 11:32.
The Syriac, Arabic, and one Greek MS (see Kennicott in the Addenda to his Dissert. Gener.), have the name of Samson instead of Samuel. But as the LXX, Chald., and Vulg. all agree with the Hebrew text, there is no critical ground for rejecting Samuel, the more especially as the objection raised to it, viz., that Samuel would not have mentioned himself, is far too trivial to overthrow the reading supported by the most ancient versions; and the assertion made by Thenius, that Samuel does not come down to his own times until the following verse, is altogether unfounded. Samuel could very well class himself with the deliverers of Israel, for the simple reason that it was by him that the people were delivered from the forty years’ tyranny of the Philistines, whilst Samson merely commenced their deliverance and did not bring it to completion. Samuel appears to have deliberately mentioned his own name along with those of the other judges who were sent by God, that he might show the people in the most striking manner (v. 12) that they had no reason whatever for saying to him, “Nay, but a king shall reign over us,” as soon as the Ammonites invaded Gilead. “As Jehovah your God is your king,” i.e., has ever proved himself to be your King by sending judges to deliver you. 13-18a. After the prophet had thus held up before the people their sin against the Lord, he bade them still further consider, that the king would only procure for them the anticipated deliverance if they would fear the Lord, and give up their rebellion against God.
1 SAMUEL. 12:13
“But now behold the king whom ye have chosen, whom ye have asked for! behold, Jehovah hath set a king over you.” By the second hNehi , the thought is brought out still more strongly, that Jehovah had fulfilled the desire of the people. Although the request of the people had been an act of hostility to God, yet Jehovah had fulfilled it. The word rjæB; , relating to the choice by lot (1 Sam 10:17ff.), is placed before laæv; rv,a , to show that the demand was the strongest act that the people could perform. They had not only chosen the king with the consent or by the direction of Samuel; they had even demanded a king of their own self-will.
1 SAMUEL. 12:14
Still, since the Lord had given them a king, the further welfare of the nation would depend upon whether they would follow the Lord from that time forward, or whether they would rebel against Him again. “If ye will only fear the Lord, and serve Him,...and ye as well as the king who rules over you will be after Jehovah your God.” µai , in the sense of modo, if only, does not require any apodosis, as it is virtually equivalent to the wish, “O that ye would only!” for which µai with the imperfect is commonly used (vid., 2 Kings 20:19; Prov 24:11, etc.; and Ewald, §329, b.). There is also nothing to be supplied to hwO;hy] hy;h; , since rjæaæ hy;h; , to be after or behind a person, is good Hebrew, and is frequently met with, particularly in the sense of attaching one’s self to the king, or holding to him (vid., 2 Sam 2:10; 1 Kings 12:20; 16:21-22). This meaning is also at the foundation of the present passage, as Jehovah was the God-king of Israel.
1 SAMUEL. 12:15
“But if ye do not hearken to the voice of Jehovah, and strive against His commandment, the hand of Jehovah will be heavy upon you, as upon your fathers.” W in the sense of as, i.e., used in a comparative sense, is most frequently placed before whole sentences (see Ewald, §340, b.); and the use of it here may be explained, on the ground that ba’aboteeykem contains the force of an entire sentence: “as it was upon your fathers.” The allusion to the fathers is very suitable here, because the people were looking to the king for the removal of all the calamities, which had fallen upon them from time immemorial. The paraphrase of this word, which is adopted in the Septuagint, epi> to>n basile>a uJmw>n , is a very unhappy conjecture, although Thenius proposes to alter the text to suit it.
1 SAMUEL. 12:16-17
In order to give still greater emphasis to his words, and to secure their lasting, salutary effect upon the people, Samuel added still further: Even now ye may see that ye have acted very wickedly in the sight of Jehovah, in demanding a king. This chain of thought is very clearly indicated by the words hT;[æAµGæ , “yea, even now.” “Even now come hither, and see this great thing which Jehovah does before your eyes.” The words hT;[æAµGæ , which are placed first, belong, so far as the sense is concerned, to dhAta, War] ; and bxæy; (“place yourselves,” i.e., make yourselves ready) is merely inserted between, to fix the attention of the people more closely upon the following miracle, as an event of great importance, and one which they ought to lay to heart. “Is it not now wheat harvest? I will call to Jehovah, that He may give thunder lwOq , as in Ex 9:23, etc.) and rain. Then perceive and see, that the evil is great which ye have done in the eyes of Jehovah, to demand a king.” The wheat harvest occurs in Palestine between the middle of May and the middle of June (see by Bibl. Arch. i. §118). And during this time it scarcely ever rains. Thus Jerome affirms (ad Am. c. 4): “Nunquam in fine mensis Junii aut in Julio in his provinciis maximeque in Judaea pluvias vidimus.” And Robinson also says in his Palestine (ii. p. 98): “In ordinary seasons, from the cessation of the showers in spring until their commencement in October and November, rain never falls, and the sky is usually serene” (see my Arch. i. §10). So that when God sent thunder and rain on that day in answer to Samuel’s appeal to him, this was a miracle of divine omnipotence, intended to show to the people that the judgments of God might fall upon the sinners at any time. Thunderings, as “the voice of God” (Ex 9:28), are harbingers of judgment.
Verse 18-25. This miracle therefore inspired the people with a salutary terror. “All the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel,” and entreated the prophet, “Pray for thy servants to the Lord thy God, that we die not, because we have added to all our sins the evil thing, to ask us a king.”
1 SAMUEL. 12:20-21
Samuel thereupon announced to them first of all, that the Lord would not forsake His people for His great name’s sake, if they would only serve Him with uprightness. In order, however, to give no encouragement to any false trust in the covenant faithfulness of the Lord, after the comforting words, “Fear not,” he told them again very decidedly that they had done wrong, but that now they were not to turn away from the Lord, but to serve Him with all their heart, and not go after vain idols. To strengthen this admonition, he repeats the rWs alo in v. 21, with the explanation, that in turning from the Lord they would fall away to idols, which could not bring them either help or deliverance. To the yKi after rWs the same verb must be supplied from the context: “Do not turn aside (from the Lord), for (ye turn aside) after that which is vain.” WhTo , the vain, worthless thing, signifies the false gods. This will explain the construction with a plural: “which do not profit and do not save, because they are emptiness” (tohu), i.e., worthless beings (elilim, Lev 19:4; cf. Isa 44:9 and Jer 16:19).
1 SAMUEL. 12:22
“For yKi gives the reason for the main thought of the previous verse, ‘Fear not, but serve the Lord,’ etc.) the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake; for it hath pleased the Lord (for laæy; , see at Deut 1:5) to make you His people.” The emphasis lies upon His. This the Israelites could only be, when they proved themselves to be the people of God, by serving Jehovah with all their heart. “For His great name’s sake,” i.e., for the great name which He had acquired in the sight of all the nations, by the marvellous guidance of Israel thus far, to preserve it against misapprehension and blasphemy (see at Josh 7:9).
1 SAMUEL. 12:23
Samuel then promised the people his constant intercession: “Far be it from me to sin against the Lord, that I should cease to pray for you, and to instruct you in the good and right way,” i.e., to work as prophet for your good. “In this he sets a glorious example to all rulers, showing them that they should not be led astray by the ingratitude of their subordinates or subjects, and give up on that account all interest in their welfare, but should rather persevere all the more in their anxiety for them” (Berleb.
Bible). 1 SAMUEL 12:24,25 Lastly, he repeats once more his admonition, that they would continue stedfast in the fear of God, threatening at the same time the destruction of both king and people if they should do wrong (on v. 24a, see 1 Sam 7:3 and Josh 24:14, where the form arey; is also found). “For see what great things He has done for you” (shown to you), not by causing it to thunder and rain at Samuel’s prayer, but by giving them a king. `µ[i ldæG; , as in Gen 19:19.
SAUL’S REIGN, AND HIS UNSEASONABLE SACRIFICE IN THE WAR AGAINST THE PHILISTINES.
1 SAMUEL. 13:1
The history of the reign of Saul commences with this chapter; and according to the standing custom in the history of the kings, it opens with a statement of the age of the king when he began to reign, and the number of years that his reign lasted. If, for example, we compare the form and contents of this verse with 2 Sam 2:10; 5:4; 1 Kings 14:21; 22:42; 2 Kings 8:26, and other passages, where the age is given at which Ishbosheth, David, and many of the kings of Judah began to reign, and also the number of years that their reign lasted, there can be no doubt that our verse was also intended to give the same account concerning Saul, and therefore that every attempt to connect this verse with the one which follows is opposed to the uniform historical usage.
Moreover, even if, as a matter of necessity, the second clause of v. 1 could be combined with v. 2 in the following manner: He was two years king over Israel, then Saul chose 3000 men, etc.; the first half of the verse would give no reasonable sense, according to the Masoretic text that has come down to us. wObl]m;B] lWav; hn;v;AˆB, cannot possibly be rendered “jam per annum regnaverat Saul,” “Saul had been king for a year,” or “Saul reigned one year,” but can only mean “Saul was a year old when he became king.” This is the way in which the words have been correctly rendered by the Sept. and Jerome; and so also in the Chaldee paraphrase (“Saul was an innocent child when he began to reign”) this is the way in which the text has been understood.
It is true that this statement as to his age is obviously false; but all that follows from that is, that there is an error in the text, namely, that between ˆBe and hn,v; the age has fallen out-a thing which could easily take place, as there are many traces to show that originally the numbers were not written in words, but only in letters that were used as numerals. This gap in the text is older than the Septuagint version, as our present text is given there.
There is, it is true, an anonymus in the hexapla, in which we find the reading uiJo>v tria>konta etw>n Saou>l ; but this is certainly not according to ancient MSS, but simply according to a private conjecture, and that an incorrect one. For since Saul already had a son, Jonathan, who commanded a division of the army in the very first years of his reign, and therefore must have been at least twenty years of age, if not older, Saul himself cannot have been less than forty years old when he began to reign.
Moreover, in the second half of the verse also, the number given is evidently a wrong one, and the text therefore equally corrupt; for the rendering “when he had reigned two years over Israel” is opposed both by the parallel passages already quoted, and also by the introduction of the name Saul as the subject in v. 2a, which shows very clearly that v. commences a fresh sentence, and is not merely the apodosis to v. 1b. But Saul’s reign must have lasted longer than two years, even if, in opposition to all analogies to be found elsewhere, we should understand the two years as merely denoting the length of his reign up to the time of his rejection (ch. 15), and not till the time of his death. Even then he reigned longer than that; for he could not possibly have carried on all the wars mentioned in Sam 14:47, with Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah and the Philistines, in the space of two years. Consequently a numeral, say k , twenty, must also have dropped out before hn,v; µyinæv] (two years); since there are cogent reasons for assuming that his reign lasted as long as twenty or twenty-two years, reckoning to the time of his death. We have given the reasons themselves in connection with the chronology of the period of the judges (pp. 206f.). f
26 1 SAMUEL. 13:2-7
The war with the Philistines (ch. 13-14) certainly falls, at least so far as the commencement is concerned, in the very earliest part of Saul’s reign. This we must infer partly from the fact, that at the very time when Saul was seeking for his father’s asses, there was a military post of the Philistines at Gibeah (1 Sam 10:5), and therefore the Philistines had already occupied certain places in the land; and partly also from the fact, that according to this chapter Saul selected an army of 3000 men out of the whole nation, took up his post at Michmash with 2000 of them, placing the other thousand at Gibeah under his son Jonathan, and sent the rest of the people home (v. 2), because his first intention was simply to check the further advance of the Philistines. The dismission of the rest of the people to their own homes presupposes that the whole of the fighting men of the nation were assembled together.
But as no other summoning together of the people has been mentioned before, except to the war upon the Ammonites at Jabesh (1 Sam 11:6-7), where all Israel gathered together, and at the close of which Samuel had called the people and their king to Gilgal (1 Sam 11:14), the assumption is a very probable one, that it was there at Gilgal, after the renewal of the monarchy, that Saul formed the resolution at once to make war upon the Philistines, and selected 3000 fighting men for the purpose out of the whole number that were collected together, and then dismissed the remainder to their homes. In all probability Saul did not consider that either he or the Israelites were sufficiently prepared as yet to undertake a war upon the Philistines generally, and therefore resolved, in the first place, only to attack the outpost of the Philistines, which was advanced as far as Gibeah, with a small number of picked soldiers. According to this simple view of affairs, the war here described took place at the very commencement of Saul’s reign; and the chapter before us is closely connected with the preceding one.
Verse 2. Saul posted himself at Michmash and on the mount of Bethel with his two thousand men. Michmash, the present Mukhmas, a village in ruins upon the northern ridge of the Wady Suweinit, according to the Onom. (s. v. Machmas), was only nine Roman miles to the north of Jerusalem, whereas it took Robinson three hours and a half to go from one to the other (Pal. ii. p. 117). Bethel (Beitin; see at Josh 7:2) is to the north-west of this, at a distance of two hours’ journey, if you take the road past Deir- Diwan. The mountain rhæ ) of Bethel cannot be precisely determined.
Bethel itself was situated upon very high ground; and the ruins of Beitin are completely surrounded by heights (Rob. ii. p. 126; and v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 178-9). Jonathan stationed himself with his thousand men at (by) Gibeah of Benjamin, the native place and capital of Saul, which was situated upon Tell el Phul (see at Josh 18:28), about an hour and a half form Michmas.
Verse 3-4. “And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was at Geba,” probably the military post mentioned in 1 Sam 10:5, which had been advanced in the meantime as far as Geba. For Geba is not to be confounded with Gibeah, from which it is clearly distinguished in v. 16 as compared with v. 15, but is the modern Jeba, between the Wady Suweinit and Wady Fara, to the north-west of Ramah (er-Râm; see at Josh 18:24). “The Philistines heard this. And Saul had the trumpet blown throughout the whole land, and proclamation made: let the Hebrews hear it.” rmæa; after rp;wOv [qæT; points out the proclamation that was made after the alarm given by the shophar (see 2 Sam 20:1; 1 Kings 1:34,39, etc.). The object to “let them hear” may be easily supplied from the context, viz., Jonathan’s feat of arms. Saul had this trumpeted in the whole land, not only as a joyful message for the Hebrews, but also as an indirect summons to the whole nation to rise and make war upon the Philistines. In the word [mæv; (hear), there is often involved the idea of observing, laying to heart that which is heard.
If we understand [mæv; in this sense here, and the next verse decidedly hints at it, there is no ground whatever for the objection which Thenius, who follows the LXX, has raised to `yrib][i [mæv; . He proposes this emendation, µyrib][ih; W[v]p]yi , “let the Hebrews fall away,” according to the Alex. text hqeth>kasin oiJ dou>loi , without reflecting that the very expression ohi dou’loi is sufficient to render the Alex. reading suspicious, and that Saul could not have summoned the people in all the land to fall away from the Philistines, since they had not yet conquered and taken possession of the whole. Moreover, the correctness of [mæv; is confirmed by W[m]v; laer;c]yiAlk;w[ in v. 4. “All Israel heard,” not the call to fall away, but the news, “Saul has smitten a garrison of the Philistines, and Israel has also made itself stinking with the Philistines,” i.e., hated in consequence of the bold and successful attack made by Jonathan, which proved that the Israelites would no longer allow themselves to be oppressed by the Philistines. “And the people let themselves be called together after Saul to Gilgal.” q[ex;hi , to permit to summon to war (as in Judg 7:23-24). The words are incorrectly rendered by the Vulgate, “clamavit ergo populus post Saul,” and by Luther, “Then the people cried after Saul to Gilgal.” Saul drew back to Gilgal, when the Philistines advanced with a large army, to make preparations for the further conflict (see at v. 13).
Verse 5. The Philistines also did not delay to avenge the defeat at Geba.
They collected an innumerable army: 30,000 chariots, 6000 horsemen, and people, i.e., foot-soldiers, without number (as the sand by the sea-shore; cf.
Judg 7:12; Josh 11:4, etc.). bk,r, by the side of vr;p; can only mean war chariots. 30,000 war chariots, however, bear no proportion whatever to 6000 horsemen, not only because the number of war chariots is invariably smaller than that of the horsemen (cf. 2 Sam 10:18; 1 Kings 10:26; Chron 12:3), but also, as Bochart observes in his Hieroz. p. i. lib. ii. c. 9, because such a number of war chariots is never met with either in sacred or profane history, not even in the case of nations that were much more powerful than the Philistines. The number is therefore certainly corrupt, and we must either read 3000 ( la vwOkv; instead of la µyviwOlv] ), according to the Syriac and Arabic, or else simply 1000; and in the latter case the origin of the number thirty must be attributed to the fact, that through the oversight of a copyist the l of the word laer;c]yi was written twice, and consequently the second l was taken for the numeral thirty.
This army was encamped “at Michmash, before (i.e., in the front, or on the western side of) Bethaven:” for, according to Josh 7:2, Bethaven was to the east of Michmash; and hm;d]qi when it occurs in geographical accounts, does not “always mean to the east,” as Thenius erroneously maintains, but invariably means simply “in front” (see at Gen 2:14). f27 Verse 6-7. When the Israelites saw that they had come into a strait (tsarlow), for the people were oppressed (by the Philistines), they hid themselves in the caves, thorn-bushes, rocks (i.e., clefts of the rocks), fortresses ( µyjirix] : see at Judg 9:46), and pits (which were to be found in the land); and Hebrews also went over the Jordan into the land of Gad and Gilead, whilst Saul was still at Gilgal; and all the people (the people of war who had been called together, v. 4) trembled behind him, i.e., were gathered together in his train, or assembled round him as leader, trembling or in despair.
The Gilgal mentioned here cannot be Jiljilia, which is situated upon the high ground, as assumed in the Comm. on Joshua, pp. 68f., but must be the Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan. This is not only favoured by the expression dræy; (the Philistines will come down from Michmash to Gilgal, v. 12), but also by `hl;[; (Samuel went up from Gilgal to Gibeah, v. 15), and by the general attitude of Saul and his army towards the Philistines. As the Philistines advanced with a powerful army, after Jonathan’s victory over their garrison at Geba (to the south of Michmash), and encamped at Michmash (v. 5); and Saul, after withdrawing from Gilgal, where he had gathered the Israelites together (vv. 4, 8, 12), with Jonathan and the six hundred men who were with him when the muster took place, took up his position at Geba (vv. 15, 16), from which point Jonathan attacked the Philistine post in the pass of Michmash (v. 23, and 1 Sam 14:1ff.): Saul must have drawn back from the advancing army of the Philistines to the Gilgal in the Jordan valley, to make ready for the battle by collecting soldiers and presenting sacrifices, and then, after this had been done, must have advanced once more to Gibeah and Geba to commence the war with the army of the Philistines that was encamped at Michmash. If, on the other hand, he had gone northwards to Jiljilia from Michmash, where he was first stationed, to escape the advancing army of the Philistines; he would have had to attack the Philistines from the north when they were encamped at Michmash, and could not possibly have returned to Geba without coming into conflict with the Philistines, since Michmash was situated between Jiljilia and Geba.
1 SAMUEL. 13:8-15
Saul’s untimely sacrifice.
Saul waited seven days for Samuel’s coming, according to the time appointed by Samuel (see at 1 Sam 10:8), before proceeding to offer the sacrifices through which the help of the Lord was to be secured for the approaching campaign (see v. 12); and as Samuel did not come, the people began to disperse and leave him. The Kethib ljæy; is either the Niphal ljæy; , as in Gen 8:12, or Piel ljeyæy]wæ ; and the Keri ljæy; (Hiphil) is unnecessary. The verb d[æy; may easily be supplied to laeWmv] rv,a from the word d[ewOm (see Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 851).
Verse 9. Saul then resolved, in his anxiety lest the people should lose all hart and forsake him altogether if there were any further delay, that he would offer the sacrifice without Samuel. `hl;[o `hl;[; does not imply that Saul offered the sacrifice with his own hand, i.e., that he performed the priestly function upon this occasion. The co-operation of the priests in performing the duties belonging to them on such an occasion is taken for granted, just as in the case of the sacrifices offered by David and Solomon (2 Sam 24:25; 1 Kings 3:4; 8:63).
Verse 10-12. The offering of the sacrifice was hardly finished when Samuel came and said to Saul, as he came to meet him and salute him, “What hast thou done?” Saul replied, “When I saw that the people were scattered away from me, and thou camest not at the time appointed, and the Philistines were assembled at Michmash, I thought the Philistines will come down to me to Gilgal now (to attack me), before I have entreated the face of Jehovah; and I overcame myself, and offered the burnt-offering.” yy’ µynip; hl;j; : see Ex 32:11.
Verse 13-14. Samuel replied, “Thou hast acted foolishly, (and) not kept the commandment of Jehovah thy God, which He commanded thee: for now (sc., if thou hadst obeyed His commandment) Jehovah would have established thy sovereignty over Israel for ever; but now (sc., since thou hast acted thus) thy sovereignty shall not continue.” The antithesis of ˆWK `hT;[æ and µWq alo `hT;[æ requires that we should understand these two clauses conditionally. The conditional clauses are omitted, simply because they are at once suggested by the tenor of the address (see Ewald, §358, a.). The yKi (for) assigns the reason, and refers to lkæs; (“thou hast done foolishly”), the wgwrmæv; alo being merely added as explanatory. The noncontinuance of the sovereignty is not to be regarded as a rejection, or as signifying that Saul had actually lost the throne so far as he himself was concerned; but µWq alo (shall not continue) forms the antithesis to µl;wO[Ad[æ ˆykihe (established for ever), and refers to the fact that it was not established in perpetuity by being transmitted to his descendants.
It was not till his second transgression that Saul was rejected, or declared unworthy of being king over the people of God (ch. 15). We are not compelled to assume an immediate rejection of Saul even by the further announcement made by Samuel, “Jehovah hath sought him a man after his own heart; him hath Jehovah appointed prince over His people;” for these words merely announce the purpose of God, without defining the time of its actual realization. Whether it would take place during Saul’s reign, or not till after his death, was known only to God, and was made contingent upon Saul’s further behaviour. But if Saul’s sin did not consist, as we have observed above, in his having interfered with the prerogatives of the priests by offering the sacrifice himself, but simply in the fact that he had transgressed the commandment of God as revealed to him by Samuel, to postpone the sacrifice until Samuel arrived, the punishment which the prophet announced that God would inflict upon him in consequence appears a very severe one, since Saul had not come to the resolution either frivolously or presumptuously, but had been impelled and almost forced to act as he did by the difficulties in which he was placed in consequence of the prophet delaying his coming.
But wherever, as in the present instance, there is a definite command given by the Lord, a man has no right to allow himself to be induced to transgress it, by fixing his attention upon the earthly circumstances in which he is placed. As Samuel had instructed Saul, as a direct command from Jehovah, to wait for his arrival before offering sacrifice, Saul might have trusted in the Lord that he would send His prophet at the right time and cause His command to be fulfilled, and ought not to have allowed his confidence to be shaken by the pressing danger of delay. The interval of seven days and the delay in Samuel’s arrival were intended as a test of his faith, which he ought not to have lightly disregarded. Moreover, the matter in hand was the commencement of the war against the principal enemies of Israel, and Samuel was to tell him what he was to do (1 Sam 10:8). So that when Saul proceeded with the consecrating sacrifice for that very conflict, without the presence of Samuel, he showed clearly enough that he thought he could make war upon the enemies of his kingdom without the counsel and assistance of God. This was an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of Jehovah, for which the punishment announced was by no means too severe.
Verse 15. After this occurrence Samuel went up to Gibeah, and Saul mustered the people who were with him, about six hundred men.
Consequently Saul had not even accomplished the object of his unseasonable sacrifice, namely, to prevent the dispersion of the people. With this remark the account of the occurrence that decided the fate of Saul’s monarchy is brought to a close.
1 SAMUEL. 13:16-23
Disarming of Israel by the Philistines.
The following account is no doubt connected with the foregoing, so far as the facts are concerned, inasmuch as Jonathan’s brave heroic deed, which brought the Israelites a splendid victory over the Philistines, terminated the war for which Saul had entreated the help of God by his sacrifice at Gilgal; but it is not formally connected with it, so as to form a compact and complete account of the successive stages of the war. On the contrary, the 16th verse, where we have an account of the Israelitish warriors and their enemies, commences a new section of the history, in which the devastating march of the Philistines through the land, and the disarming of the Israelites by these their enemies, are first of all depicted (vv. 17-23); and then the victory of the Israelites through Jonathan’s daring and heroic courage, notwithstanding their utter prostration, is recorded (1 Sam 14:1-46), for the purpose of showing how the Lord had miraculously helped His people. f28 Verse 16. The two clauses of this verse are circumstantial clauses: “But Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people that were with him, were sitting, i.e., tarrying, in Geba of Benjamin (the present Jeba; see at v. 3); and the Philistines had encamped at Michmash.” Just as in vv. 2-4 it is not stated when or why Saul went from Michmash or Geba to Gilgal, but this change in his position is merely hinted at indirectly at the close of v. 4; so here Saul’s return from Gilgal to Geba with the fighting men who remained with him is not distinctly mentioned, but simply taken for granted as having already occurred.
Verse 17-18. Then the spoiler went out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies. varo vwOkv; is made subject to the verb to define the mode of action (see Ewald, §279, c.); and rashim is used here, as in 1 Sam 11:11. tjæv; , according to the context, is a hostile band that went out to devastate the land. The definite article points it out as well known. One company took the road to Ophrah into the land of Shual, i.e., went in a north-easterly direction, as, according to the Onom., Ophrah of Benjamin was five Roman miles to the east of Bethel (see at Josh 18:23). Robinson supposes it to have been on the site of Tayibeh. The land of Shual (foxland) is unknown; it may possibly have been identical with the land of Saalim (1 Sam 9:5). The other company turned on the road to Beth-horon (Beit-ur: see at Josh 10:11), that is to say, towards the west; the third, “the way to the territory that rises above the valley of Zeboim towards the desert.” These descriptions are obscure; and the valley of Zeboim altogether unknown. There is a town of this name µy[ibox] , different from µy[ibox] , Deut 29:22; Gen 14:2,8; or µyaibox] , Hos 11:8, in the vale of Siddim) mentioned in Neh 11:34, which was inhabited by Benjaminites, and was apparently situated in the south-eastern portion of the land of Benjamin, to the north-east of Jerusalem, from which it follows that the third company pursued its devastating course in a south-easterly direction from Michmash towards Jericho. “The wilderness” is probably the desert of Judah. The intention of the Philistines in carrying out these devastating expeditions, was no doubt to entice the men who were gathered round Saul and Jonathan out of their secure positions at Gibeah and Geba, and force them to fight.
Verse 19-21. The Israelites could not offer a successful resistance to these devastating raids, as there was no smith to be found in the whole land: “For the Philistines thought the Hebrews might make themselves sword or spear” rmæa; followed by ˆpe , “to say, or think, that not,” equivalent to being unwilling that it should be done). Consequently (as the words clearly imply) when they proceeded to occupy the land of Israel as described in v. 5, they disarmed the people throughout, i.e., as far as they penetrated, and carried off the smiths, who might have been able to forge weapons; so that, as is still further related in v. 20, all Israel was obliged to go to the Philistines, every one to sharpen his edge-tool, and his ploughshare, and his axe, and his chopper. According to Isa 2:4; Mic 4:3, and Joel 4:10, tae is an iron instrument used in agriculture; the majority of the ancient versions render it ploughshare. The word hv;rejmæ is striking after the previous tv,r,jmæ (from machareshet); and the meaning of both words is uncertain.
According to the etymology, machareshet might denote any kind of edgetool, even the ploughshare. The second hv;rejmæ is rendered to> dre>panon autou> (his sickle) by the LXX, and sarculum by Jerome, a small garden hoe for loosening and weeding the soil. The fact that the word is connected with µDor]qæ , the axe or hatchet, favours the idea that it signifies a hoe or spade rather than a sickle. Some of the words in v. 21 are still more obscure. hy;h; , which is the reading adopted by all the earlier translators, indicates that the result is about to be given of the facts mentioned before: “And there came to pass,” i.e., so that there came to pass (or arose), hp, hr;yxip] , “a blunting of the edges.” hr;yxip] , bluntness, from rxæp; , to tear, hence to make blunt, is confirmed by the Arabic futâr, gladius fissuras habens, obtusus ensis, whereas the meaning to hammer, i.e., to sharpen by hammering, cannot be established.
The insertion of the article before hr;yxip] is as striking as the omission of it before hp, ; also the stat. abs. instead of the construct p¦tsiyrat. These anomalies render it a very probable conjecture that the reading may have been hapiym hap¦tsiyr (inf. Hiph. nomin.). Accordingly the rendering would be, “so that bluntness of the edges occurred in the edge-tools, and the ploughshares, and the trident, and the axes, and the setting of the goad.” ˆwOvL]qi vwOkv; is to be regarded as a nom. comp. like our trident, denoting an instrument with three prongs, according to the Chaldee and the Rabbins (see Ges. Thes. p. 1219). ˆwObr]D; , stimulus, is probably a pointed instrument generally, since the meaning goad is fully established in the case of ˆwObr]D; in Eccl 12:11. f29 Verse 22. On the day of battle, therefore, the people with Saul and Jonathan were without either sword or spear; Saul and Jonathan were the only persons provided with them. The account of the expedition of the Israelites, and their victory over the Ammonites, given in v. 11, is apparently at variance with this description of the situation of the Israelites, since the war in question not only presupposes the possession of weapons by the Israelites, but must also have resulted in their capturing a considerable quantity. The discrepancy is very easily removed, however, when we look carefully at all the circumstances. For instance, we can hardly picture the Israelites to ourselves as amply provided with ordinary weapons in this expedition against the Ammonites. Moreover, the disarming of the Israelites by the Philistines took place for the most part if not entirely after this expedition, viz., at the time when the Philistines swept over the land with an innumerable army after Jonathan had smitten their garrison at Geba (vv. 3, 5), so that the fighting men who gathered round Saul and Jonathan after that could hardly bring many arms with them. Lastly, the words “there was neither sword nor spear found in the hands of all the people with Saul and Jonathan” must not be too closely pressed, but simply affirm that the 600 fighting men of Saul and Jonathan were not provided with the necessary arms, because the Philistines had prevented the possibility of their arming themselves in the ordinary way by depriving the people of all their smiths.
Verse 23. forms the transition to the heroic act of Jonathan described in ch. 14.: “An outpost of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash;” i.e., the Philistines pushed forward a company of soldiers to the pass rb;[mæ , the crossing place) of Michmash, to prevent an attack being made by the Israelites upon their camp. Between Geba and Michmash there runs the great deep Wady es Suweinit, which goes down from Beitin and Bireh (Bethel and Beeroth) to the valley of the Jordan, and intersects the ridge upon which the two places are situated, so that the sides of the wady form very precipitous walls. When Robinson was travelling from Jeba to Mukhmas he had to go down a very steep and rugged path into this deep wady (Pal. ii. p. 116). “The way,” he says in his Biblical Researches, p. 289, “was so steep, and the rocky steps so high, that we were compelled to dismount; while the baggage mules got along with great difficulty. Here, where we crossed, several short side wadys came in from the south-west and north-west. The ridges between these terminate in elevating points projecting into the great wady; and the most easterly of these bluffs on each side were probably the outposts of the two garrisons of Israel and the Philistines. The road passes around the eastern side of the southern hill, the post of Israel, and then strikes up over the western part of the northern one, the post of the Philistines, and the scene of Jonathan’s adventure.”
JONATHAN’S HEROIC ACT, AND ISRAEL’S VICTORY OVER THE PHILISTINES. SAUL’S WARS AND FAMILY.
1 SAMUEL. 14:1-15
Jonathan’s heroic act.
With strong faith and confidence in the might of the Lord, that He could give the victory even through the hands of very few, Jonathan resolved to attack the outpost of the Philistines at the pass of Mukhmas, accompanied by his armour-bearer alone, and the Lord crowned his enterprise with a marvellous victory.
Verse 1-2. Jonathan said to his armour-bearer, “We will go over to the post of the Philistines, that is over there.” To these words, which introduce the occurrences that followed, there are attached from ba; to v. 5 a series of sentences introduced to explain the situation, and the thread of the narrative is resumed in v. 6 by a repetition of Jonathan’s words. It is first of all observed that Jonathan did not disclose his intentions to his father, who would hardly have approved of so daring an enterprise. Then follows a description of the place where Saul was stationed with the six hundred men, viz., “at the end of Gibeah (i.e., the extreme northern end), under the pomegranate-tree (Rimmon) which is by Migron.” Rimmon is not the rock Rimmon (Judg 20:45), which was on the north-east of Michmash, but is an appellative noun, signifying a pomegranate-tree. Migron is a locality with which we are not acquainted, upon the north side of Gibeah, and a different place from the Migron which was on the north or north-west of Michmash (Isa 10:28). Gibeah (Tuleil el Phul) was an hour and a quarter from Geba, and from the pass which led across to Michmash. Consequently, when Saul was encamped with his six hundred men on the north of Gibeah, he may have been hardly an hour’s journey from Geba.
Verse 3. Along with Saul and his six hundred men, there was also Ahiah, the son of Ahitub, the (elder) brother of Ichabod, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the priest at Shiloh, and therefore a great-grandson of Eli, wearing the ephod, i.e., in the high priest’s robes. Ahiah is generally supposed to be the same person as Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub (1 Sam 22:9ff.), in which case Ahiah (‘achiyaah, brother, i.e., friend of Jehovah) would be only another form of the name Ahimelech (i.e., brother or friend of the King, viz., Jehovah). This is very probable, although Ahimelech might have been Ahaiah’s brother, who succeeded him in the office of high priest on account of his having died without sons, since there is an interval of at least ten years between the events related in this chapter and those referred to in ch. 22. Ahimelech was afterwards slain by Saul along with the priests of Nob (1 Sam 22:9ff.); the only one who escaped being his son Abiathar, who fled to David and, according to 1 Sam 30:7, was invested with the ephod.
It follows, therefore, that Ahiah (or Ahimelech) must have had a son at least ten years old at the time of the war referred to here, viz., the Abiathar mentioned in 1 Sam 30:7, and must have been thirty or thirty-five years old himself, since Saul had reigned at least twenty-two years, and Abiathar had become high priest a few years before the death of Saul. These assumptions may be very easily reconciled with the passage before us. As Eli was ninety-eight years old when he died, his son Phinehas, who had been killed in battle a short time before, might have been sixty or sixty-five years old, and have left a son of forty years of age, namely Ahitub. Forty years later, therefore, i.e., at the beginning of Saul’s reign, Ahitub’s son Ahiah (Ahimelech) might have been about fifty years old; and at the death of Ahimelech, which took place ten or twelve years after that, his son Abiathar might have been as much as thirty years of age, and have succeeded his father in the office of high priest. But Abiathar cannot have been older than this when his father died, since he was high priest during the whole of David’s forty years’ reign, until Solomon deposed him soon after he ascended the throne (1 Kings 2:26ff.). Compare with this the remarks on 2 Sam 8:17. Jonathan had also refrained from telling the people anything about his intentions, so that they did not know that he had gone.
Verse 4-5. In vv. 4, 5, the locality is more minutely described. Between the passes, through which Jonathan endeavoured to cross over to go up to the post of the Philistines, there was a sharp rock on this side, and also one upon the other. One of these was called Bozez, the other Seneh; one (formed) a pillar qWxm; ), i.e., a steep height towards the north opposite to Michmash, the other towards the south opposite to Geba. The expression “between the passes” may be explained from the remark of Robinson quoted above, viz., that at the point where he passed the Wady Suweinit, side wadys enter it from the south-west and north-west. These side wadys supply so many different crossings. Between them, however, on the north and south walls of the deep valley, were the jagged rocks Bozez and Seneh, which rose up like pillars to a great height. These were probably the “hills” which Robinson saw to the left of the pass by which he crossed: “Two hills of a conical or rather spherical form, having steep rocky sides, with small wadys running up behind so as almost to isolate them. One is on the side towards Jeba, and the other towards Mukhmas” (Pal. ii. p. 116).
Verse 6. And Jonathan said to his armour-bearer, “Come, we will go over to the post of these uncircumcised; it may be that Jehovah will work for us; for (there is) no hindrance for Jehovah to work salvation by many or few.”
Jonathan’s resolution arose from the strong conviction that Israel was the nation of God, and possessed in Jehovah an omnipotent God, who would not refuse His help to His people in their conflict with the foes of His kingdom, if they would only put their whole trust in Him.
Verse 7. As the armour-bearer approved of Jonathan’s resolution wOl hf;n; , turn hither), and was ready to follow him, Jonathan fixed upon a sign by which he would ascertain whether the Lord would prosper his undertaking.
Verse 8-10. “Behold, we go over to the people and show ourselves to them. If they say to us, Wait µmæD; , keep quiet) till we come to you, we will stand still in our place, and not go up to them; but if they say thus, Come up unto us, then we will go up, for Jehovah hath (in that case) delivered them into our hand.” The sign was well chosen. If the Philistines said, “Wait till we come,” they would show some courage; but if they said, “Come up to us,” it would be a sign that they were cowardly, and had not courage enough to leave their position and attack the Hebrews. It was not tempting God for Jonathan to fix upon such a sign by which to determine the success of his enterprise; for he did it in the exercise of his calling, when fighting not for personal objects, but for the kingdom of God, which the uncircumcised were threatening to annihilate, and in the most confident belief that the Lord would deliver and preserve His people. Such faith as this God would not put to shame.
Verse 11-13. When the two showed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines, they said, “Behold, Hebrews come forth out of the holes in which they have hidden themselves.” And the men of the garrison cried out to Jonathan and his armour-bearer, “Come up to us, and we will tell you a word,” i.e., we will communicate something to you. This was ridicule at the daring of the two men, whilst for all that they had not courage enough to meet them bravely and drive them back. In this Jonathan received the desired sign that the Lord had given the Philistines into the hand of the Israelites: he therefore clambered up the rock on his hands and feet, and his armour-bearer after him; and “they (the Philistines) fell before Jonathan,” i.e., were smitten down by him, “and his armour-bearer was slaying behind him.”
Verse 14. The first stroke that Jonathan and his armour-bearer struck was (amounted to) about twenty men “on about half a furrow of an acre of field.” hn;[mæ , a furrow, as in Ps 129:3, is in the absolute state instead of the construct, because several nouns follow in the construct state (cf. Ewald, §291, a.). dm,,x, , lit. things bound together, then a pair; here it signifies a pair or yoke of oxen, but in the transferred sense of a piece of land that could be ploughed in one morning with a yoke of oxen, like the Latin jugum, jugerum. It is called the furrow of an acre of land, because the length only of half an acre of land was to be given, and not the breadth or the entire circumference. The Philistines, that is to say, took to flight in alarm as soon as the brave heroes really ascended, so that the twenty men were smitten one after another in the distance of half a rood of land. Their terror and flight are perfectly conceivable, if we consider that the outpost of the Philistines was so stationed upon the top of the ridge of the steep mountain wall, that they would not see how many were following, and the Philistines could not imagine it possible that two Hebrews would have ventured to climb the rock alone and make an attack upon them. Sallust relates a similar occurrence in connection with the scaling of a castle in the Numidian war (Bell. Jugurth. c. 89, 90).
Verse 15. And there arose a terror in the camp upon the field (i.e., in the principal camp) as well as among all the people (of the advanced outpost of the Philistines); the garrison (i.e., the army that was encamped at Michmash), and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked, sc., with the noise and tumult of the frightened foe; “and it grew into a trembling of God,” i.e., a supernatural terror miraculously infused by God into the Philistines. The subject to the last hy;h; is either hd;r;j , the alarm in the camp, or all that has been mentioned before, i.e., the alarm with the noise and tumult that sprang out of it.
1 SAMUEL. 14:16-23
Flight and defeat of the Philistines.
Verse 16. The spies of Saul at Gibeah saw how the multitude (in the camp of the Philistines) melted away and was beaten more and more. The words µlæh; Ëlæy; are obscure. The Rabbins are unanimous in adopting the explanation magis magisque frangebatur, and have therefore probably taken µlh as an inf. absol. µwOlv; , and interpreted µlæh; according to Judg 5:26. This was also the case with the Chaldee; and Gesenius (Thes. p. 383) has adopted the same rendering, except that he has taken µlæh; in the sense of dissolutus, dissipatus est. Others take µwOlv; as adverbial (“and thither”), and supply the correlate µlh (hither), so as to bring out the meaning “hither and thither.” Thus the LXX render it e>nqen ( NT:1759a ) kai> e>nqen ], but they have not translated Ëlæy; at all.
Verse 17. Saul conjectured at once that the excitement in the camp of the Philistines was occasioned by an attack made by Israelitish warriors, and therefore commanded the people: an;Awdq]pi , “Muster (number) now, and see who has gone away from us;” and “Jonathan and his armour-bearer were not there,” i.e., they were missing.
Verse 18. Saul therefore resolved to ask God, through the priest Ahiah, what he should do; whether he should go out with his army against the Philistines or no. But whilst he was talking with the priest, the tumult in the camp of the Philistines became greater and greater, so that he saw from that what ought to be done under the circumstances, and stopped the priest’s inquiring of God, and set out with his people without delay. We are struck, however, with the expression in v. 18, “Bring hither the ark of God,” and the explanation which follows, “for the ark of God was at that time with the children of Israel,” inasmuch as the ark was then deposited at Kirjath-jearim, and it is a very improbable thing that it should have been in the little camp of Saul. Moreover, in other cases where the high priest is spoken of as inquiring the will of God, there is no mention made of the ark, but only of the ephod, the high priest’s shoulder-dress, upon which there were fastened the Urim and Thummim, through which inquiry was made of God. And in addition to this, the verb vgæn; is not really applicable to the ark, which was not an object that could be carried about at will; whereas this verb is the current expression used to signify the fetching of the ephod (vid., 1 Sam 23:9; 30:7).
All these circumstances render the correctness of the Masoretic text extremely doubtful, notwithstanding the fact that the Chaldee, the Syriac, and Arabic, and the Vulgate support it, and recommend rather the reading adopted by the LXX, prosa>gage to> Efou>d oJ>ti auto>v h>ren to> Efou>d en th> hJme>ra ekei>nh enw>pion Israh>l , which would give as the Hebrew text, laer;c]yi µynip; aWh µwOy dwOpae ac;n; aWh yKi dwOpae vgæn; . In any case, laer;c]yi ˆBe at the end of the verse should be read yis’ ˆBe or µynip; , since uw gives no sense at all.
Verse 19. “It increased more and more;” lit. increasing and becoming greater. The subject wgwˆwOmh; is placed absolutely at the head, so that the verb Ëlæy; is appended in the form of an apodosis. dy; ãsæa; , “draw thy hand in” (back); i.e., leave off now.
Verse 20. “And (i.e., in consequence of the increasing tumult in the enemy’s camp) Saul had himself, and all the people with him, called,” i.e., called together for battle; and when they came to the war, i.e., to the place of conflict, “behold, there was the sword of the one against the other, a very great confusion,” in consequence partly of terror, and partly of the circumstance alluded to in v. 21.
Verse 21-22. “And the Hebrews were with the Philistines as before (yesterday and the day before yesterday), who had come along with them in the camp round about; they also came over to Israel, which was with Saul and Jonathan.” bybis; means distributed round about among the Philistines. Those Israelites whom the Philistines had incorporated into their army are called Hebrews, according to the name which was current among foreigners, whilst those who were with Saul are called Israel, according to the sacred name of the nation. The difficulty which many expositors have found in the word hy;h; has been very correctly solved, so far as the sense is concerned, by the earlier translators, by the interpolation of “they returned:” Wbt; (Chald.), epestra>fhsan (LXX), reversi sunt (Vulg.), and similarly the Syriac and Arabic. We are not at liberty, however, to amend the Hebrew text in this manner, as nothing more is omitted than the finite verb hy;h; before the infinitive hy;h; (for this construction, see Gesenius, Gramm. §132, 3, Anm. 1), and this might easily be left out here, since it stands at the beginning of the verse in the main clause. The literal rendering would be, they were to be with Israel, i.e., they came over to Israel. The fact that the Hebrews who were serving in the army of the Philistines came over to Saul and his host, and turned their weapons against their oppressors, naturally heightened the confusion in the camp of the Philistines, and accelerated their defeat; and this was still further increased by the fact that the Israelites who had concealed themselves on the mountains of Ephraim also joined the Israelitish army, as soon as they heard of the flight of the Philistines (v. 22).
Verse 23. “Thus the Lord helped Israel that day, and the conflict went out beyond Bethaven.” Bethaven was on the east of Michmash, and, according to v. 31, the Philistines fled westwards from Michmash to Ajalon. But if we bear in mind that the camp of the Philistines was on the eastern side of Michmash before Bethaven, according to 1 Sam 13:5, and that the Israelites forced their way into it from the south, we shall see that the battle might easily have spread out beyond Bethaven, and that eventually the main body of the enemy might have fled as far as Ajalon, and have been pursued to that point by the victorious Israelites.
1 SAMUEL. 14:24-31
Saul’s precipitate haste.
Verse 24. The men of Israel were pressed (i.e., fatigued) on that day, sc., through the military service and fighting. Then Saul adjured the people, saying, “Cursed be the man that eateth bread until the evening, and (till) I have avenged myself upon mine enemies.” hl;a; , fut. apoc. of hl,ayO for hl,a\yæ , from hl;a; , to swear, Hiphil to adjure or require an oath of a person. The people took the oath by saying “amen” to what Saul had uttered. This command of Saul did not proceed from a proper attitude towards the Lord, but was an act of false zeal, in which Saul had more regard to himself and his own kingly power than to the cause of the kingdom of Jehovah, as we may see at once from the expression wgw µqæn; , “till I have avenged myself upon mine enemies.” It was a despotic measure which not only failed to accomplish its object (see vv. 30, 31), but brought Saul into the unfortunate position of being unable to carry out the oath (see v. 45). All the people kept the command. “They tasted no bread.” yTim]Qæniw] is not to be connected with µqæn; as an apodosis.
Verse 25. “And all the land (i.e., all the people of the land who had gathered round Saul: vid., v. 29) came into the woody country; there was honey upon the field.” r[æyæ signifies here a woody district, in which forests alternated with tracts of arable land and meadows.
Verse 26. When the people came into the wood and saw a stream of honey (or wild or wood bees), “no one put his hand to his mouth (sc., to eat of the honey), because they feared the oath.”
Verse 27. But Jonathan, who had not heard his father’s oath, dipped (in the heat of pursuit, that he might not have to stop) the point of his staff in the new honey, and put it to his mouth, “and his eyes became bright;” his lost strength, which is reflected in the eye, having been brought back by this invigorating taste. The hnart is probably to be read hn;a,r]Ti , the eyes became seeing, received their power of vision again. The Masoretes have substituted as the Keri rwOa , from rwOa , to become bright, according to v. 29; and this is probably the correct reading, as the letters might easily be transposed.
Verse 28-30. When one of the people told him thereupon of his father’s oath, in consequence of which the people were exhausted `µ[æ `ãW[ belongs to the man’s words; and `ãW[ is the same as in Judg 4:21), Jonathan condemned the prohibition. “My father has brought the land (i.e., the people of the land, as in v. 25) into trouble `rkæ[; , see at Gen 34:30): see how bright mine eyes have become because I tasted a little of this honey.
How much more if the people had eaten to-day of the booty of its enemies, would not the overthrow among the Philistines truly have then become great?” yKi ãaæ , lit. to this (there comes) also that = not to mention how much more; and `hT;[æ yKi is an emphatic introduction of the apodosis, as in Gen 31:42; 43:10, and other passages, and the apodosis itself is to be taken as a question.
1 SAMUEL. 14:31-46
Result of the battle, and consequences of Saul’s rashness.
Verse 31. “On that day they smote the Philistines from Michmash to Ajalon,” which has been preserved in the village of Yâlo (see at Josh 19:42), and was about three geographical miles to the south-west of Michmash; “and the people were very faint,” because Saul had forbidden them to eat before the evening (v. 24).
Verse 32. They therefore “fell voraciously upon the booty”-(the Chethibh `hc;[; is no doubt merely an error in writing for `hf;[; , imperf. Kal of `fy[i with Dagesh forte implic. instead of `fy[i , as we may see from 1 Sam 15:19, since the meaning required by the context, viz., to fall upon a thing, cannot be established in the case of `hc;[; with lae . On the other hand, there does not appear to be any necessity to supply the article before ll;v; , and this Keri seems only to have been taken from the parallel passage in Sam 15:19)-”and took sheep, and oxen, and calves, and slew them on the ground xr,a, , lit. to the earth, so that when they were slaughtered the animal fell upon the ground, and remained lying in its blood, and was cut in pieces), and ate upon the blood” µD; `l[æ , with which µD; lae , “lying to the blood,” is interchanged in v. 34), i.e., the flesh along with the blood which adhered to it, by doing which they sinned against the law in Lev 19:26.
This sin had been occasioned by Saul himself through the prohibition which he issued.
Verse 33-34. When this was told to Saul, he said, “Ye act faithlessly towards Jehovah” by transgressing the laws of the covenant; “roll me now (lit. this day) a large stone. Scatter yourselves among the people, and say to them, Let every one bring his ox and his sheep to me, and slay here” (upon the stone that has been rolled up), viz., so that the blood could run off properly upon the ground, and the flesh be separated from the blood.
This the people also did.
Verse 35. As a thanksgiving for this victory, Saul built an altar to the Lord. tBæ llæj; tae , “he began to build it,” i.e., he built this altar at the beginning, or as the first altar. This altar was probably not intended to serve as a place of sacrifice, but simply to be a memorial of the presence of God, or the revelation of God which Saul had received in the marvellous victory.
Verse 36. After the people had strengthened themselves in the evening with food, Saul wanted to pursue the Philistines still farther during the night, and to plunder among them until the light (i.e., till break of day), and utterly destroy them. The people assented to this proposal, but the priest (Ahiah) wished first of all to obtain the decision of God upon the matter. “We will draw near to God here” (before the altar which has just been built).
Verse 37. But when Saul inquired of God (through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest), “Shall I go down after the Philistines? wilt Thou deliver them into the hand of Israel?” God did not answer him. Saul was to perceive from this, that the guilt of some sin was resting upon the people, on account of which the Lord had turned away His countenance, and was withdrawing His help.
Verse 38-39. When Saul perceived, this, he directed all the heads of the people (pinnoth, as in Judg 20:2) to draw near to learn whereby (wherein) the sin had occurred that day, and declared, “As truly as Jehovah liveth, who has brought salvation to Israel, even if it were upon Jonathan my son, he shall die.” The first yKi in v. 39 is explanatory; the second and third serve to introduce the words, like oJ>ti , quod; and the repetition serves to give emphasis, lit., “that even if it were upon my son, that he shall die.” “And of all the people no one answered him,” from terror at the king’s word.
Verse 40-41. In order to find out the guilt, or rather the culprit, Saul proceeded to the lot; and for this purpose he made all the people stand on one side, whilst he and his son Jonathan went to the other, and then solemnly addressed Jehovah thus: “God of Israel, give innocence (of mind, i.e., truth). And the lot fell upon Saul and Jonathan dkæl; , as in 1 Sam 10:20-21); and the people went out,” sc., without the lot falling upon them, i.e., they went out free.
Verse 42. When they proceeded still further to cast lots between Saul and his son lpæn; , sc., lr;wOG; cf. 1 Chron 26:14; Neh 11:11, etc.), Jonathan was taken. f30 Verse 43-44. When Saul asked him what he had done, Jonathan confessed that he had tasted a little honey (see v. 27), and resigned himself to the punishment suspended over him, saying, “Behold, I shall die;” and Saul pronounced sentence of death upon him, accompanying it with an oath (“God do so,” etc.: vid., Ruth 1:17).
Verse 45. But the people interposed, “Shall Jonathan die, who has achieved this great salvation (victory) in Israel? God forbid! As truly as Jehovah liveth, not a hair shall fall from his head upon the ground; for he hath wrought (the victory) with God to-day.” Thus the people delivered Jonathan from death. The objection raised by the people was so conclusive, that Saul was obliged to yield.
What Jonathan had done was not wrong in itself, but became so simply on account of the oath with which Saul had forbidden it. But Jonathan did not hear the oath, and therefore had not even consciously transgressed.
Nevertheless a curse lay upon Israel, which was to be brought to light as a warning for the culprit. Therefore Jehovah had given no reply to Saul. But when the lot, which had the force of a divine verdict, fell upon Jonathan, sentence of death was not thereby pronounced upon him by God; but is was simply made manifest, that through his transgression of his father’s oath, with which he was not acquainted, guilt had been brought upon Israel. The breach of a command issued with a solemn oath, even when it took place unconsciously, excited the wrath of God, as being a profanation of the divine name. But such a sin could only rest as guilt upon the man who had committed, or the man who occasioned it.
Now where the command in question was one of God himself, there could be no question, that even in the case of unconscious transgression the sin fell upon the transgressor, and it was necessary that it should either be expiated by him or forgiven him. But where the command of a man had been unconsciously transgressed, the guilt might also fall upon the man who issued the command, that is to say, if he did it without being authorized or empowered by God. In the present instance, Saul had issued the prohibition without divine authority, and had made it obligatory upon the people by a solemn oath. The people had conscientiously obeyed the command, but Jonathan had transgressed it without being aware of it. For this Saul was about to punish him with death, in order to keep his oath.
But the people opposed it. They not only pronounced Jonathan innocent, because he had broken the king’s command unconsciously, but they also exclaimed that he had gained the victory for Israel “with God.” In this fact (Jonathan’s victory) there was a divine verdict. And Saul could not fail to recognise now, that it was not Jonathan, but he himself, who had sinned, and through his arbitrary and despotic command had brought guilt upon Israel, on account of which God had given him no reply.
Verse 46. With the feeling of this guilt, Saul gave up any further pursuit of the Philistines: he “went up” (sc., to Gibeah) “from behind the Philistines,” i.e., desisting from any further pursuit. But the Philistines went to their place, i.e., back into their own land.
1 SAMUEL. 14:47-52
General Summary of Saul’s other Wars, and Account of his Family.
Verse 47. “But Saul had taken the sovereignty.” As Saul had first of all secured a recognition of himself as king on the part of all the tribes of Israel, through his victory over the Ammonites at Jabesh (1 Sam 11:12ff.), so it was through the victory which he had gained over the Philistines, and by which these obstinate foes of Israel were driven back into their own land, that he first acquired the kingship over Israel, i.e., first really secured the regal authority over the Israelites. This is the meaning of hk;Wlm] dkæl; ; and this statement is not at variance either with the election of Saul by lot (1 Sam 10:17ff.), or with his confirmation at Gilgal (1 Sam 11:14-15). But as Saul had to fight for the sovereignty, and could only secure it by successful warfare, his other wars are placed in the foreground in the summary account of his reign which follows (vv. 47, 48), whilst the notices concerning his family, which stand at the very beginning in the case of other kings, are not mentioned till afterwards (vv. 49-51).
Saul fought successfully against all the enemies of Israel round about; against Moab, the Ammonites, Edom, the kings of Zobah, a district of Syria on this side the Euphrates (see at 2 Sam 8:3), and against the Philistines. The war against the Ammonites is described in ch. 11; but with the Philistines Saul had to wage repeated war all the days of his life (v. 52).
The other wars are none of them more fully described, simply because they were of no importance to the history of the kingdom of God, having neither furnished occasion for any miraculous displays of divine omnipotence, nor brought about the subjection of hostile nations to the power of Israel. “Whithersoever he turned, he inflicted punishment.” This is the rendering which Luther has very aptly given to [vær; ; for [vær; signifies to declare wrong, hence to condemn, more especially as applied to judges: here it denotes sentence or condemnation by deeds. Saul chastised these nations for their attacks upon Israel.
Verse 48. “And he acquired power;” lyijæ `hc;[; (as in Num 24:18) does not merely signify he proved himself brave, or he formed an army, but denotes the development and unfolding of power in various respects. Here it relates more particularly to the development of strength in the war against Amalek, by virtue of which Saul smote this arch-enemy of Israel, and put an end to their depredations. This war is described more fully in ch. 15, on account of its consequences in relation to Saul’s own sovereignty.
Verse 49-51. Saul’s family.-V. 49. Only three of his sons are mentioned, namely those who fell with him, according to 1 Sam 31:2, in the war with the Philistines. Jisvi is only another name for Abinadab (1 Sam 31:2; Chron 8:33; 9:39). In these passages in the Chronicles there is a fourth mentioned, Esh-baal, i.e., the one who is called Ish-bosheth in 2 Sam 2:8, etc., and who was set up by Abner as the antagonist of David. The reason why he is not mentioned here it is impossible to determine. It may be that the name has fallen out simply through some mistake in copying: the daughters Michal and Merab are mentioned, with special reference to the occurrence described in 1 Sam 18:17ff. Verse 50-51. Abner the general was also Saul’s cousin. For “son of Abiel” (ben Abiel) we must read “sons of Abiel” (bne Abiel: see 1 Sam 9:1).
Verse 52. The statement, “and the war was hard (severe) against the Philistines as long as Saul lived,” merely serves to explain the notice which follows, namely, that Saul took or drew to himself every strong man and every brave man that he saw. If we observe this, which is the true relation between the two clauses in this verse, the appearance of abruptness which we find in the first notice completely vanishes, and the verse follows very suitably upon the allusion to the general. The meaning might be expressed in this manner: And as Saul had to carry on a severe war against the Philistines his whole life long, he drew to himself every powerful man and every brave man that he met with.
WAR WITH AMALEK. SAUL’S DISOBEDIENCE AND REJECTION. CH. 15.
As Saul had transgressed the commandment of God which was given to him through Samuel, by the sacrifice which he offered at Gilgal in the war with the Philistines at the very commencement of his reign, and had thereby drawn upon himself the threat that his monarchy should not be continued in perpetuity (1 Sam 13:13-14); so his disobedience in the war against the Amalekites was followed by his rejection on the part of God. The Amalekites were the first heathen nation to attack the Israelites after their deliverance out of Egypt, which they did in the most treacherous manner on their journey from Egypt to Sinai; and they had been threatened by God with extermination in consequence. This Moses enjoined upon Joshua, and also committed to writing, for the Israelites to observe in all future generations (Ex 17:8-16). As the Amalekites afterwards manifested the same hostility to the people of God which they had displayed in this first attack, on every occasion which appeared favourable to their ravages, the Lord instructed Samuel to issue the command to Saul, to wage war against Amalek, and to smite man and beast with the ban, i.e., to put all to death (vv. 1-3).
But when Saul had smitten them, he not only left Agag the king alive, but spared the best of the cattle that he had taken as booty, and merely executed the ban upon such animals as were worthless (vv. 4-9). He was rejected by the Lord for this disobedience, so that he was to be no longer king over Israel. His rejection was announced to him by Samuel (vv. 10- 23), and was not retracted in spite of his prayer for the forgiveness of his sin (vv. 24-35). In fact, Saul had no excuse for this breach of the divine command; it was nothing but open rebellion against the sovereignty of God in Israel; and if Jehovah would continue King of Israel, He must punish it by the rejection of the rebel. For Saul no longer desired to be the medium of the sovereignty of Jehovah, or the executor of the commands of the God-king, but simply wanted to reign according to his own arbitrary will.
Nevertheless this rejection was not followed by his outward deposition.
The Lord merely took away His Spirit, had David anointed king by Samuel, and thenceforward so directed the steps of Saul and David, that as time advanced the hearts of the people were turned away more and more from Saul to David; and on the death of Saul, the attempt of the ambitious Abner to raise his son Ishbosheth to the throne could not possibly have any lasting success.
1 SAMUEL. 15:1-3
Verse 1-3. The account of the war against the Amalekites is a very condensed one, and is restricted to a description of the conduct of Saul on that occasion. Without mentioning either the time or the immediate occasion of the war, the narrative commences with the command of God which Samuel solemnly communicated to Saul, to go and exterminate that people. Samuel commenced with the words, “Jehovah sent me to anoint thee to be king over His people, over Israel,” in order to show to Saul the obligation which rested upon him to receive his commission as coming from God, and to proceed at once to fulfil it. The allusion to the anointing points back not to 1 Sam 11:15, but to ch. 10:1.
Verse 2. “Thus saith the Lord of Zebaoth, I have looked upon what Amalek did to Israel, that it placed itself in his way when he came up out of Egypt” (Ex 17:8). Samuel merely mentions this first outbreak of hostility on the part of Amalek towards the people of Israel, because in this the same disposition was already manifested which now made the people ripe for the judgment of extermination (vid., Ex 17:14). The hostility which they had now displayed, according to v. 33, there was no necessity for the prophet to mention particularly, since it was well known to Saul and all Israel. When God looks upon a sin, directs His glance towards it, He must punish it according to His own holiness. This rqæp] points at the very outset to the punishment about to be proclaimed.
Verse 3. Saul is to smite and ban everything belonging to it without reserve, i.e., to put to death both man and beast. The last clause wgwtWm is only an explanation and exemplification of wgwµræj; . “From man to woman,” etc., i.e., men and women, children and sucklings, etc.
1 SAMUEL. 15:4-9
Saul summoned the people to war, and mustered them (those who were summoned) at Telaim (this was probably the same place as the Telem mentioned in Josh 15:24, and is to be looked for in the eastern portion of the Negeb). “Two hundred thousand foot, and ten thousand of the men of Judah:” this implies that the two hundred thousand were from the other tribes. These numbers are not too large; for a powerful Bedouin nation, such as the Amalekites were, could not possibly be successfully attacked with a small army, but only by raising the whole of the military force of Israel.
Verse 5. He then advanced as far as the city of the Amalekites, the situation of which is altogether unknown, and placed an ambush in the valley. byri does not come from byri , to fight, i.e., to quarrel, not to give battle, but was understood even by the early translators as a contracted form of byri , the Hiphil of bræa; . And modern commentators have generally understood it in the same way; but Olshausen (Hebr. Gramm. p. 572) questions the correctness of the reading, and Thenius proposes to alter ljænæ byri into hm;j;l]mi Ëro[\Yæwæ . ljænæ refers to a valley in the neighbourhood of the city of the Amalekites.
Verse 6-7. Saul directed the Kenites to come out from among the Amalekites, that they might not perish with them ãsæa; , imp. Kal of ãsæa; ), as they had shown affection to the Israelites on their journey out of Egypt (compare Num 10:29 with Judg 1:16). He then smote the Amalekites from Havilah in the direction towards Shur, which lay before (to the east of) Egypt (cf. Gen 25:18). Shur is the desert of Jifar, i.e., that portion of the desert of Arabia which borders upon Egypt (see at Gen 16:7). Havilah, the country of the Chaulotaeans, on the border of Arabia Petraea towards Yemen (see at Gen 10:29). Verse 8-9. Their king, Agag, he took alive (on the name, see at Num 24:7), but all the people he banned with the edge of the sword, i.e., he had them put to death without quarter. “All,” i.e., all that fell into the hands of the Israelites. For it follows from the very nature of the case that many escaped, and consequently there is nothing striking in the fact that Amalekites are mentioned again at a later period (1 Sam 27:8; 30:1; 2 Sam 8:12). The last remnant was destroyed by the Simeonites upon the mountains of Seir in the reign of Hezekiah (1 Chron 4:43). Only, king Agag did Saul and the people (of Israel) spare, also “the best of the sheep and oxen, and the animals of the second birth, and the lambs and everything good; these they would not ban.” hn,v]mi , according to D.
Kimchi and R. Tanch., are ˆfbl µyynv , i.e., animalia secundo partu edita, which were considered superior to the others (vid., Roediger in Ges. Thes. p. 1451); and rKæ , pasture lambs, i.e., fat lambs.
There is no necessity, therefore, for the conjecture of Ewald and Thenius, ˆm;v]mæ , fattened, and µr,K, , vineyards; nor for the far-fetched explanation given by Bochart, viz., camels with two humps and camel-saddles, to say nothing of the fact that camel-saddles and vineyards are altogether out of place here. In “all that was good” the things already mentioned singly are all included. hk;al;m] , the property; here it is applied to cattle, as in Gen 33:14. hz,b]min] = hz;B; , despised, undervalued. The form of the word is not contracted from a noun hz,b]mi and the participle hz;B; (Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 463), but seems to be a participle Niph. formed from a noun hz,b]mi . But as such a form is contrary to all analogy, Ewald and Olshausen regard the reading as corrupt. ssæm; (from ssæm; ): flowing away; used with reference to diseased cattle, or such as have perished. The reason for sparing the best cattle is very apparent, namely selfishness. But it is not so easy to determine why Agag should have been spared by Saul. It is by no means probable that he wished thereby to do honour to the royal dignity. O. v.
Gerlach’s supposition, that vanity or the desire to make a display with a royal slave was the actual reason, is a much more probable one.
1 SAMUEL. 15:10-11
The word of the Lord came to Samuel: “It repenteth me that I have made Saul king, for he hath turned away from me, and not set up (carried out) my word.” (On the repentance of God, see the remarks on Gen 6:6.) That this does not express any changeableness in the divine nature, but simply the sorrow of the divine love at the rebellion of sinners, is evident enough from v. 29. yy rjæaæ bWv , to turn round from following God, in order to go his own ways. This was Saul’s real sin. He would no longer be the follower and servant of the Lord, but would be absolute ruler in Israel. Pride arising from the consciousness of his own strength, led him astray to break the command of God. What more God said to Samuel is not communicated here, because it could easily be gathered and supplied from what Samuel himself proceeded to do (see more particularly vv. 16ff.). In order to avoid repetitions, only the principal feature in the divine revelation is mentioned here, and the details are given fully afterwards in the account of the fulfilment of the instructions. Samuel was deeply agitated by this word of the Lord. “It burned (in) him,” sc., wrath ãaæ , compare Gen 31:36 with 30:2), not on account of the repentance to which God had given utterance at having raised up Saul as king, nor merely at Saul’s disobedience, but at the frustration of the purpose of God in calling him to be king in consequence of his disobedience, from which he might justly dread the worst results in relation to the glory of Jehovah and his own prophetic labours. f31 The opinion that l] hr;j; is also used to signify deep distress cannot be established from 2 Sam 4:8. “And he cried to Jehovah the whole night,” sc., praying for Saul to be forgiven. But it was in vain. This is evident from what follows, where Samuel maintains the cause of his God with strength and decision, after having wrestled with God in prayer.
1 SAMUEL. 15:12
The next morning, after receiving the revelation from God (v. 11), Samuel rose up early, to go and meet Saul as he was returning from the war. On the way it was told him, “Saul has come to Carmel”- i.e., Kurmul, upon the mountains of Judah to the south-east of Hebron (see at Josh 15:55)- ”setting himself a memorial” dy; , a hand, then a memorial or monument, inasmuch as the hand calls attention to anything: see 2 Sam 18:18), “and has turned and proceeded farther, and gone down to Gilgal” (in the valley of the Jordan, as in 1 Sam 13:4).
1 SAMUEL. 15:13
When Samuel met him there, Saul attempted to hide his consciousness of guilt by a feigned friendly welcome. “Blessed be thou of the Lord” (vid., Ruth 2:20; Gen 14:19, etc.) was his greeting to the prophet; “I have set up the word of Jehovah.”
1 SAMUEL. 15:14-15
But the prophet stripped his hypocrisy at once with the question, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears, and a lowing of oxen that I hear?”
Saul replied (v. 15), “They have brought them from the Amalekites, because the people spared the best sheep and oxen, to sacrifice them to the Lord thy God; and the rest we have banned.” So that it was not Saul, but the people, who had transgressed the command of the Lord, and that with the most laudable intention, viz., to offer the best of the cattle that had been taken, as a thank-offering to the Lord. The falsehood and hypocrisy of these words lay upon the very surface; for even if the cattle spared were really intended as sacrifices to the Lord, not only the people, but Saul also, would have had their own interests in view (vid., v. 9), since the flesh of thank-offerings was appropriated to sacrificial meals.
1 SAMUEL. 15:16-19
Samuel therefore bade him be silent. hp;r; , “leave off,” excusing thyself any further. “I will tell thee what Jehovah hath said to me this night.” (The Chethibh rmæa; is evidently a copyist’s error for rmæa; .) “Is it not true, when thou wast little in thine eyes (a reference to Saul’s own words, 1 Sam 9:21), thou didst become head of the tribes of Israel? and Jehovah anointed thee king over Israel, and Jehovah sent thee on the way, and said, Go and ban the sinners, the Amalekites, and make war against them, until thou exterminatest them. And wherefore hast thou nor hearkened to the voice of Jehovah, and hast fallen upon the booty,” etc.? `fy[i , see at 1 Sam 14:32.)
Even after this Saul wanted to justify himself, and to throw the blame of sparing the cattle upon the people.
1 SAMUEL. 15:20
“Yea, I have hearkened to the voice of Jehovah rv,a serving, like yKi , to introduce the reply: here it is used in the sense of asseveration, utique, yea), and have brought Agag the king of the Amalekites, and banned Amalek.” Bringing Agag he mentioned probably as a practical proof that he had carried out the war of extermination against the Amalekites.
1 SAMUEL. 15:21
Even the sparing of the cattle he endeavoured to defend as the fulfilment of a religious duty. The people had taken sheep and oxen from the booty, “as firstlings of the ban,” to sacrifice to Jehovah. Sacrificing the best of the booty taken in war as an offering of first-fruits to the Lord, was not indeed prescribed in the law, but was a praiseworthy sign of piety, by which all honour was rendered to the Lord as the giver of the victory (see Num 31:48ff.). This, Saul meant to say, was what the people had done on the present occasion; only he overlooked the fact, that what was banned to the Lord could not be offered to Him as a burnt-offering, because, being most holy, it belonged to Him already (Lev 27:29), and according to Deut 13:16, was to be put to death, as Samuel had expressly said to Saul (v. 3).
1 SAMUEL. 15:22-23
Without entering, therefore, into any discussion of the meaning of the ban, as Saul only wanted to cover over his own wrong-doings by giving this turn to the affair, Samuel put a stop to any further excuses, by saying, “Hath Jehovah delight in burnt-offerings and slain-offerings as in hearkening to the voice of Jehovah? (i.e., in obedience to His word.)
Behold, hearing (obeying) is better than slain-offerings, attending better than fat of rams.” By saying this, Samuel did not reject sacrifices as worthless; he did not say that God took no pleasure in burnt-offerings and slain-offerings, but simply compared sacrifice with obedience to the command of God, and pronounced the latter of greater worth than the former. “It was as much as to say that the sum and substance of divine worship consisted in obedience, with which it should always begin, and that sacrifices were, so to speak, simple appendices, the force and worth of which were not so great as of obedience to the precepts of God” (Calvin). But it necessarily follows that sacrifices without obedience to the commandments of God are utterly worthless; in fact, are displeasing to God, as Ps 50:8ff., Isa 1:11ff., 66:3, Jer 6:20, and all the prophets, distinctly affirm. There was no necessity, however, to carry out this truth any further. To tear off the cloak of hypocrisy, with which Saul hoped to cover his disobedience, it was quite enough to affirm that God’s first demand was obedience, and that observing His word was better than sacrifice; because, as the Berleb. Bible puts it, “in sacrifices a man offers only the strange flesh of irrational animals, whereas in obedience he offers his own will, which is rational or spiritual worship” (Rom 12:8). This spiritual worship was shadowed forth in the sacrificial worship of the Old Testament. In the sacrificial animal the Israelite was to give up and sanctify his own person and life to the Lord. (For an examination of the meaning of the different sacrifices, see Pent. pp. 505ff., and Keil’s Bibl Archäol. §41ff.) But if this were the design of the sacrifices, it was clear enough that God did not desire the animal sacrifice in itself, but first and chiefly obedience to His own word.
In v. 22, bwOf is not to be connected as an adjective with jbæz, , “more than good sacrifice,” as the Sept. and Thenius render it; it is rather to be taken as a predicate, “better than slain-offerings,” and jbæz, is placed first simply for the sake of emphasis. Any contrast between good and bad sacrifices, such as the former construction would introduce into the words, is not only foreign to the context, but also opposed to the parallelism. For lyiaæ bl,j, does not mean fat rams, but the fat of rams; the fat portions taken from the ram, which were placed upon the altar in the case of the slain-offerings, and for which bl,j, is the technical expression (compare Lev 3:9,16, with vv. 4, 11, etc.). “For,” continued Samuel (v. 23), “rebellion is the sin of soothsaying, and opposition is heathenism and idolatry.” yrim] and rxæp; are the subjects, and synonymous in their meaning. µs,q, ha;F;jæ , the sin of soothsaying, i.e., of divination in connection with the worship of idolatrous and demoniacal powers.
In the second clause idols are mentioned instead of idolatry, and compared to resistance, but without any particle of comparison. Opposition is keeping idols and teraphim, i.e., it is like worshipping idols and teraphim. ˆw,a; , nothingness, then an idol or image (vid., Isa 66:3; Hos 4:15; 10:5,8).
On the teraphim as domestic and oracular deities, see at Gen 31:19.
Opposition to God is compared by Samuel to soothsaying and oracles, because idolatry was manifested in both of them. All conscious disobedience is actually idolatry, because it makes self-will, the human I, into a god. So that all manifest opposition to the word and commandment of God is, like idolatry, a rejection of the true God. “Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He hath rejected thee, that thou mayst be no longer king.” Ël,m, = Ël,m, hy;h; (v. 26), away from being king.
1 SAMUEL. 15:24-25
This sentence made so powerful an impression upon Saul, that he confessed, “I have sinned: for I have transgressed the command of the Lord and thy words, because I feared the people, and hearkened to their voice.” But these last words, with which he endeavoured to make his sin appear as small as possible, show that the consciousness of his guilt did not go very deep. Even if the people had really desired that the best of the cattle should be spared, he ought not as king to have given his consent to their wish, since God had commanded that they should all be banned (i.e., destroyed); and even though he has yielded from weakness, this weakness could not lessen his guilt before God. This repentance, therefore, was rather the effect of alarm at the rejection which had been announced to him, than the fruit of any genuine consciousness of sin. “It was not true and serious repentance, or the result of genuine sorrow of heart because he had offended God, but was merely repentance of the lips arising from fear of losing the kingdom, and of incurring public disgrace” (C. v. Lapide). This is apparent even from v. 25, but still more from v. 30. In v. 25 he not only entreats Samuel for the forgiveness of his sin, but says, “Return with me, that I may pray to the Lord.” The bWv presupposes that Samuel was about to go away after the executing his commission. Saul entreated him to remain that he might pray, i.e., not only in order to obtain for him the forgiveness of his sin through his intercession, but, according to v. 30, to show him honour before the elders of the people and before Israel, that his rejection might not be known.
1 SAMUEL. 15:26-29
This request Samuel refused, repeating at the same time the sentence of rejection, and turned to depart. “Then Saul laid hold of the lappet of his mantle (i.e., his upper garment), and it tore” (lit. was torn off). That the Niphal [ræq; is correct, and is not to be altered into tae [ræq; , “Saul tore off the lappet,” according to the rendering of the LXX, as Thenius supposes, is evident from the explanation which Samuel gave of the occurrence (v. 28): “Jehovah hath torn the sovereignty of Israel from thee to-day, and given it to thy neighbour, who is better than thou.” As Saul was about to hold back the prophet by force, that he might obtain from him a revocation of the divine sentence, the tearing of the mantle, which took place accidentally, and evidently without any such intention on the part of Saul, was to serve as a sign of the rending away of the sovereignty from him.
Samuel did not yet know to whom Jehovah would give it; he therefore used the expression [ære , as [ære is applied to any one with whom a person associates. To confirm his own words, he adds in v. 29: “And also the Trust of Israel doth not lie and doth not repent, for He is not a man to repent.” jxæn, signifies constancy, endurance, then confidence, trust, because a man can trust in what is constant. This meaning is to be retained here, where the word is used as a name for God, and not the meaning gloria, which is taken in 1 Chron 29:11 from the Aramaean usage of speech, and would be altogether unsuitable here, where the context suggests the idea of unchangeableness. For a man’s repentance or regret arises from his changeableness, from the fluctuations in his desires and actions. This is never the case with God; consequently He is laer;c]yi jxæn, , the unchangeable One, in whom Israel can trust, since He does not lie or deceive, or repent of His purposes. These words are spoken the oprepw>v (theomorphically), whereas in v. 11 and other passages, which speak of God as repenting, the words are to be understood anqrwpopaqw>v (anthropomorphically; cf. Num 23:19).
1 SAMUEL. 15:30-31
After this declaration as to the irrevocable character of the determination of God to reject Saul, Samuel yielded to the renewed entreaty of Saul, that he would honour him by his presence before the elders and the people, and remained whilst Saul worshipped, not merely “for the purpose of preserving the outward order until a new king should take his place” (O. v.
Gerlach), but also to carry out the ban upon Agag, whom Saul had spared.
1 SAMUEL. 15:32
After Saul had prayed, Samuel directed him to bring Agag the king of the Amalekites. Agag came ˆd;[mæ , i.e., in a contented and joyous state of mind, and said (in his heart), “Surely the bitterness of death is vanished,” not from any special pleasure at the thought of death, or from a heroic contempt of death, but because he thought that his life was to be granted him, as he had not been put to death at once, and was now about to be presented to the prophet (Clericus).
1 SAMUEL. 15:33
But Samuel pronounced the sentence of death upon him: “As thy sword hath made women childless, so be thy mother childless before women!” hV;ai is to be understood as a comparative: more childless than (other) women, i.e., the most childless of women, namely, because her son was the king. From these words of Samuel, it is very evident that Agag had carried on his wars with great cruelty, and had therefore forfeited his life according to the lex talionis. Samuel then hewed him in pieces “before the Lord at Gilgal,” i.e., before the altar of Jehovah there; for the slaying of Agag being the execution of the ban, was an act performed for the glory of God. 1 SAMUEL 15:34,35 After the prophet had thus maintained the rights of Jehovah in the presence of Saul, and carried out the ban upon Agag, he returned to his own home at Ramah; and Saul went to his house at Gibeah. From that time forward Samuel broke off all intercourse with the king whom Jehovah had rejected. “For Samuel was grieved for Saul, and it repented the Lord that he had made Saul king,” i.e., because Samuel had loved Saul on account of his previous election; and yet, as Jehovah had rejected him unconditionally, he felt that he was precluded from doing anything to effect a change of heart in Saul, and his reinstatement as king.
III. SAUL’S FALL AND DAVID’S ELECTION.
Although the rejection of Saul on the part of God, which was announced to him by Samuel, was not followed by immediate deposition, but Saul remained king until his death, the consequences of his rejection were very speedily brought to light. Whilst Samuel, by the command of God, was secretly anointing David, the youngest son of Jesse, at Bethlehem, as king (1 Sam 16:1-13), the Spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul, and an evil spirit began to terrify him, so that he fell into melancholy; and his servants fetched David to the court, as a man who could play on stringed instruments, that he might charm away the king’s melancholy by his playing (1 Sam 16:14-23). Another war with the Philistines soon furnished David with the opportunity for displaying his heroic courage, by the defeat of the giant Goliath, before whom the whole army of the Israelites trembled; and to attract the eyes of the whole nation to himself, as the deliverer of Israel from its foes (1 Sam 17:1-54), in consequence of which Saul placed him above the men of war, whilst Saul’s brave son Jonathan formed a bond of friendship with him (1 Sam 17:55-18:5).
But this victory, in commemorating which the women sang, “Saul hath slain a thousand, David ten thousand” (1 Sam 18:7), excited the jealousy of the melancholy king, so that the next day, in an attack of madness, he threw his spear at David, who was playing before him, and after that not only removed him from his presence, but by elevating him to the rank of chief captain, and by the promise to give him his daughter in marriage for the performance of brave deeds, endeavoured to entangle him in such conflicts with the Philistines as should cost him his life. And when this failed, and David prospered in all his undertakings, he began to be afraid of him, and cherished a lifelong hatred towards him (1 Sam 18:6-30).
Jonathan did indeed try to intercede and allay his father’s suspicions, and effect a reconciliation between Saul and David; but the evil spirit soon drove the jealous king to a fresh attack upon David’s life, so that he was obliged to flee not only from the presence of Saul, but from his own house also, and went to Ramah, to the prophet Samuel, whither, however, Saul soon followed him, though he was so overpowered by the Spirit of the prophets, that he would not do anything to David (ch. 19).
Another attempt on the part of Jonathan to change his father’s mind entirely failed, and so excited the wrath of Saul, that he actually threw the spear at his own son; so that no other course now remained for David, than to separate himself from his noble friend Jonathan, and seek safety in flight (ch. 20). He therefore fled with his attendant first of all to Nob, where Ahimelech the high priest gave him some of the holy loaves and the sword of Goliath, on his representing to him that he was travelling hastily in the affairs of the king. He then proceeded to Achish, the king of the Philistines, at Gath; but having been recognised as the conqueror of Goliath, he was obliged to feign madness in order to save his life; and being driven away by Achish as a madman, he went to the cave of Adullam, and thence into the land of Moab. But he was summoned by the prophet to return to his own land, and went into the wood Hareth, in the land of Judah; whilst Saul, who had been informed by the Edomite Doeg of the occurrence at Nob, ordered all the priests who were there to be put to death, and the town itself to be ruthlessly destroyed, with all the men and beasts that it contained. Only one of Ahimelech’s sons escaped the massacre, viz., Abiathar; and he took refuge with David (ch. 21-22).
Saul now commenced a regular pursuit of David, who had gradually collected around him a company of 600 men. On receiving intelligence that David had smitten a marauding company of Philistines at Keilah, Saul followed him, with the hope of catching him in this fortified town; and when this plan failed, on account of the flight of David into the wilderness of Ziph, because the high priest had informed him of the intention of the inhabitants to deliver him up, Saul pursued him thither, and had actually surrounded David with his warriors, when a messenger arrived with the intelligence of an invasion of the land by the Philistines, and he was suddenly called away to make war upon these foes (ch. 23). But he had no sooner returned from the attack upon the Philistines, than he pursued David still farther into the wilderness of Engedi, where he entered into a large cave, behind which David and his men were concealed, so that he actually fell into David’s hands, who might have put him to death.
But from reverence for the anointed of the Lord, instead of doing him any harm, David merely cut off a corner of his coat, to show his pursuer, when he had left the cave, in what manner he had acted towards him, and to convince him of the injustice of his hostility. Saul was indeed moved to tears; but he was not disposed for all that to give up any further pursuit (ch. 24). David was still obliged to wander about from place to place in the wilderness of Judah; and at length he was actually in want of the necessaries of life, so that on one occasion, when the rich Nabal had churlishly turned away the messengers who had been sent to him to ask for a present, he formed the resolution to take bloody revenge upon this hardhearted fool, and was only restrained from carrying the resolution out by the timely and friendly intervention of the wise Abigail (ch. 25). Soon after this Saul came a second time into such a situation, that David could have killed him; but during the night, whilst Saul and all his people were sleeping, he slipped with Abishai into the camp of his enemy, and carried off as booty the spear that was at the king’s head, that he might show him a second time how very far he was from seeking to take his life (ch. 26).
But all this only made David’s situation an increasingly desperate one; so that eventually, in order to save his life, he resolved to fly into the country of the Philistines, and take refuge with Achish, the king of Gath, by whom he was now received in the most friendly manner, as a fugitive who had been proscribed by the king of Israel. At his request Achish assigned him the town of Ziklag as a dwelling-place for himself and his men, whence he made sundry excursions against different Bedouin tribes of the desert. In consequence of this, however, he was brought into a state of dependence upon this Philistian prince (ch. 27); and shortly afterwards, when the Philistines made an attack upon the Israelites, he would have been perfectly unable to escape the necessity of fighting in their ranks against his own people and fatherland, if the other princes of the Philistines had not felt some mistrust of “these Hebrews,” and compelled Achish to send David and his fighting men back to Ziklag (ch. 29).
But this was also to put an end to his prolonged flight. Saul’s fear of the power of the Philistines, and the fact that he could not obtain any revelation from God, induced him to have recourse to a necromantist woman, and he was obliged to hear from the mouth of Samuel, whom she had invoked, not only the confirmation of his own rejection on the part of God, but also the announcement of his death (ch. 28). In the battle which followed on the mountains of Gilboa, after his three sons had been put to death by his side, he fell upon his own sword, that he might not fall alive into the hands of the archers of the enemy, who were hotly pursuing him (ch. 31), whilst David in the meantime chastised the Amalekites for their attack upon Ziklag (ch. 30).
It is not stated anywhere how long the pursuit of David by Saul continued; the only notice given is that David dwelt a year and four months in the land of the Philistines (1 Sam 27:7). If we compare with this the statement in Sam 5:4, that David was thirty years old when he became king (over Judah), the supposition that he was about twenty years old when Samuel anointed him, and therefore that the interval between Saul’s rejection and his death was about ten years, will not be very far from the truth. The events which occurred during this interval are described in the most elaborate way, on the one hand because they show how Saul sank deeper and deeper, after the Spirit of God had left him on account of his rebellion against Jehovah, and not only was unable to procure any longer for the people that deliverance which they had expected from the king, but so weakened the power of the throne through the conflict which he carried on against David, whom the Lord had chosen ruler of the nation in his stead, that when he died the Philistines were able to inflict a total defeat upon the Israelites, and occupy a large portion of the land of Israel; and, on the other hand, because they teach how, after the Lord had anointed David ruler over His people, and had opened the way to the throne through the victory which he gained over Goliath, He humbled him by trouble and want, and trained him up as king after His own heart.
On a closer examination of these occurrences, which we have only briefly hinted at, giving their main features merely, we see clearly how, from the very day when Samuel announced to Saul his rejection by God, he hardened himself more and more against the leadings of divine grace, and continued steadily ripening for the judgment of death. Immediately after this announcement an evil spirit took possession of his soul, so that he fell into trouble and melancholy; and when jealousy towards David was stirred up in his heart, he was seized with fits of raving madness, in which he tried to pierce David with a spear, and thus destroy the man whom he had come to love on account of his musical talent, which had exerted so beneficial an influence upon his mind (1 Sam 16:23; 18:10-11; 19:9-10). These attacks of madness gradually gave place to hatred, which developed itself with full consciousness, and to a most deliberately planned hostility, which he concealed at first not only from David but also from all his own attendants, with the hope that he should be able to put an end to David’s life through his stratagems, but which he afterwards proclaimed most openly as soon as these plans had failed.
When his hostility was first openly declared, his eagerness to seize upon his enemy carried him to such a length that he got into the company of prophets at Ramah, and was so completely overpowered by the Spirit of God dwelling there, that he lay before Samuel for a whole day in a state of prophetic ecstasy (1 Sam 19:22ff.). But this irresistible power of the Spirit of God over him produced no change of heart. For immediately afterwards, when Jonathan began to intercede for David, Saul threw the spear at his own son (1 Sam 20:33), and this time not in an attack of madness or insanity, but in full consciousness; for we do not read in this instance, as in ch. 18-19, that the evil spirit came upon him. He now proceeded to a consistent carrying out of his purpose of murder. He accused his courtiers of having conspired against him like Jonathan, and formed an alliance with David (1 Sam 22:6ff.), and caused the priests at Nob to be murdered in cold blood, and the whole town smitten with the edge of the sword, because Ahimelech had supplied David with bread; and this he did without paying any attention to the conclusive evidence of his innocence (1 Sam 22:11ff.). He then went with 3000 men in pursuit of David; and even after he had fallen twice into David’s hands, and on both occasions had been magnanimously spared by him, he did not desist from plotting for his life until he had driven him out of the land; so that we may clearly see how each fresh proof of the righteousness of David’s cause only increased his hatred, until at length, in the war against the Philistines, he rashly resorted to the godless arts of a necromancer which he himself had formerly prohibited, and eventually put an end to his own life by falling upon his sword.
Just as clearly may we discern in the guidance of David, from his anointing by Samuel to the death of Saul, how the Lord, as King of His people, trained him in the school of affliction to be His servant, and led him miraculously on to the goal of his divine calling. Having been lifted up as a young man by his anointing, and by the favour which he had acquired with Saul through his playing upon the harp, and still more by his victory over Goliath, far above the limited circumstances of his previous life, he might very easily have been puffed up in the consciousness of the spiritual gifts and powers conferred upon him, if God had not humbled his heart by want and tribulation. The first outbursts of jealousy on the part of Saul, and his first attempts to get rid of the favourite of the people, only furnished him with the opportunity to distinguish himself still more by brave deeds, and to make his name still dearer to the people (1 Sam 18:30).
When, therefore, Saul’s hostility was openly displayed, and neither Jonathan’s friendship nor Samuel’s prophetic authority could protect him any longer, he fled to the high priest Ahimelech, and from him to king Achish at Gath, and endeavoured to help himself through by resorting to falsehood. He did save himself in this way no doubt, but he brought destruction upon the priests at Nob. And he was very soon to learn how all that he did for his people was rewarded with ingratitude. The inhabitants of Keilah, whom he had rescued from their plunderers, wanted to deliver him up to Saul (1 Sam 23:5,12); and even the men of his own tribe, the Ziphites, betrayed him twice, so that he was no longer sure of his life even in his own land. But the more this necessarily shook his confidence in his own strength and wisdom, the more clearly did the Lord manifest himself as his faithful Shepherd. After Ahimelech had been put to death, his son Abiathar fled to David with the light and right of the high priest, so that he was now in a position to inquire the will and counsel of God in any difficulty into which he might be brought (1 Sam 23:6).
On two occasions God brought his mortal foe Saul into his hand, and David’s conduct in both these cases shows how the deliverance of God which he had hitherto experienced had strengthened his confidence in the Lord, and in the fulfilment of His promises (compare ch. 24 with ch. 26).
And his gracious preservation from carrying out his purposes of vengeance against Nabal (ch. 25) could not fail to strengthen him still more.
Nevertheless, when his troubles threatened to continue without intermission, his courage began to sink and his faith to waver, so that he took refuge in the land of the Philistines, where, however, his wisdom and cunning brought him into a situation of such difficulty that nothing but the grace and fidelity of his God could possibly extricate him, and out of which he was delivered without any act of his own.
In this manner was the divine sentence of rejection fulfilled upon Saul, and the prospect which the anointing of David had set before him, of ascending the throne of Israel, carried out to completion. The account before us of the events which led to this result of the various complications, bears in all respects so thoroughly the stamp of internal truth and trustworthiness, that even modern critics are unanimous in acknowledging the genuine historical character of the biblical narrative upon the whole. At the same time, there are some things, such as the supposed irreconcilable discrepancy between Sam 16:14-23 and ch. 17:55-58, and certain repetitions, such as Saul’s throwing the spear at David (1 Sam 18:10 and 19:9-10), the treachery of the Ziphites (ch. 23:19ff. and 26:1ff.), David’s sparing Saul (1 Sam 24:4ff. and 26:5 ff), which they cannot explain in any other way than by the favourite hypothesis that we have here divergent accounts, or legendary traditions derived from two different sources that are here woven together; whereas, as we shall see when we come to the exposition of the chapters in question, not only do the discrepancies vanish on a more thorough and minute examination of the matter, but the repetitions are very clearly founded on facts. ANOINTING OF DAVID. HIS PLAYING BEFORE SAUL. CH. 16.
After the rejection of Saul, the Lord commanded Samuel the prophet to go to Bethlehem and anoint one of Jesse’s sons as king; and when he went to carry out this commission, He pointed out David, the youngest of eight sons, as the chosen one, whereupon the prophet anointed him (vv. 1-13).
Through the overruling providence of God, it came to pass after this, that David was brought to the court of Saul, to play upon the harp, and so cheer up the king, who was troubled with an evil spirit (vv. 14-23).
1 SAMUEL. 16:1-13
Anointing of David.
Verse 1. The words in which God summoned Samuel to proceed to the anointing of another king, “How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, whom I have rejected, that he may not be king over Israel?” show that the prophet had not yet been able to reconcile himself to the hidden ways of the Lord; that he was still afraid that the people and kingdom of God would suffer from the rejection of Saul; and that he continued to mourn for Saul, not merely from his own personal attachment to the fallen king, but also, or perhaps still more, from anxiety for the welfare of Israel. He was now to put an end to this mourning, and to fill his horn with oil and go to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for the Lord had chosen a king from among his sons.
Verse 2-3. But Samuel replied, “How shall I go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me.” This fear on the part of the prophet, who did not generally show himself either hesitating or timid, can only be explained, as we may see from v. 14, on the supposition that Saul was already given up to the power of the evil spirit, so that the very worst might be dreaded from his madness, if he discovered that Samuel had anointed another king. That there was some foundation for Samuel’s anxiety, we may infer from the fact that the Lord did not blame him for his fear, but pointed out the way by which he might anoint David without attracting attention (vv. 2, 3). “Take a young heifer with thee, and say (sc., if any one ask the reason for your going to Bethlehem), I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.” There was no untruth in this, for Samuel was really about to conduct a sacrificial festival and was to invite Jesse’s family to it, and then anoint the one whom Jehovah should point out to him as the chosen one. It was simply a concealment of the principal object of his mission from any who might make inquiry about it, because they themselves had not been invited. “There was no dissimulation or falsehood in this, since God really wished His prophet to find safety under the pretext of the sacrifice. A sacrifice was therefore really offered, and the prophet was protected thereby, so that he was not exposed to any danger until the time of full revelation arrived” (Calvin).
Verse 4. When Samuel arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the city came to meet him in a state of the greatest anxiety, and asked him whether his coming was peace, or promised good. The singular rmæa; may be explained on the ground that one of the elders spoke for the rest. The anxious inquiry of the elders presupposes that even in the time of Saul the prophet Samuel was frequently in the habit of coming unexpectedly to one place and another, for the purpose of reproving and punishing wrong-doing and sin.
Verse 5. Samuel quieted them with the reply that he was come to offer sacrifice to the Lord, and called upon them to sanctify themselves and take part in the sacrifice. It is evident from this that the prophet was accustomed to turn his visits to account by offering sacrifice, and so building up the people in fellowship with the Lord. The reason why sacrifices were offered at different places was, that since the removal of the ark from the tabernacle, this sanctuary had ceased to be the only place of the nation’s worship. vDeqæt]hi , to sanctify one’s self by washings and legal purifications, which probably preceded every sacrificial festival (vid., Ex 19:10,22). The expression, “Come with me to the sacrifice,” is constructio praegnans for “Come and take part in the sacrifice.” “Call to the sacrifice” (v. 3) is to be understood in the same way. jbæz, is the slain-offering, which was connected with every sacrificial meal. It is evident from the following words, “and he sanctified Jesse and his sons,” that Samuel addressed the general summons to sanctify themselves more especially to Jesse and his sons. For it was with them that he was about to celebrate the sacrificial meal.
Verse 6-7. When they came, sc., to the sacrificial meal, which was no doubt held in Jesse’s house, after the sacrifice had been presented upon an altar, and when Samuel saw the eldest son Eliab, who was tall and handsome according to v. 7, “he thought (lit. he said, sc., in his heart), Surely His anointed is before Jehovah,” i.e., surely the man is now standing before Jehovah whom He hath chosen to be His anointed. But Jehovah said to him in the spirit, “Look not at his form and the height of his stature, for I have rejected him: for not as man seeth (sc., do I see); for man looketh at the eyes, and Jehovah looketh at the heart.” The eyes, as contrasted with the heart, are figuratively employed to denote the outward form.
Verse 8-10. When Jesse thereupon brought up his other sons, one after another, before Samuel, the prophet said in the case of each, “This also Jehovah hath not chosen.” As Samuel must be the subject to the verb rmæa; in vv. 8-10, we may assume that he had communicated the object of his coming to Jesse.
Verse 11. After the seventh had been presented, and the Lord had not pointed nay one of them out as the chosen one, “Samuel said to Jesse, Are these all the boys?” When Jesse replied that there was still the smallest, i.e., the youngest, left, and he was keeping the sheep, he directed him to fetch him; “for,” said he, “we will not sit down till he has come hither,” bbæs; , to surround, sc., the table, upon which the meal was arranged. This is implied in the context.
Verse 12-13. When David arrived-and he was ruddy, also of beautiful eyes and good looks ynimod]aæ , used to denote the reddish colour of the hair, which was regarded as a mark of beauty in southern lands, where the hair is generally black. `µ[i is an adverb here = therewith), and therefore, so far as his looks and figure were concerned, well fitted, notwithstanding his youth, for the office to which the Lord had chosen him, since corporeal beauty was one of the outward distinctions of a king-the Lord pointed him out to the prophet as the chosen one; whereupon he anointed him in the midst of his brethren. Along with the anointing the Spirit of Jehovah came upon David from that day forward. But Samuel returned to Ramah when the sacrificial meal was over. There is nothing recorded concerning any words of Samuel to David at the time of the anointing and in explanation of its meaning, as in the case of Saul (1 Sam 10:1).
In all probability Samuel said nothing at the time, since, according to v. 2, he had good reason for keeping the matter secret, not only on his own account, but still more for David’s sake; so that even the brethren of David who were present knew nothing about the meaning and object of the anointing, but may have imagined that Samuel merely intended to consecrate David as a pupil of the prophets. At the same time, we can hardly suppose that Samuel left Jesse, and even David, in uncertainty as to the object of his mission, and of the anointing which he had performed. He may have communicated all this to both of them, without letting the other sons know. It by no means follows, that because David remained with his father and kept the sheep as before, therefore his calling to be king must have been unknown to him; but only that in the anointing which he had received he did not discern either the necessity or obligation to appear openly as the anointed of the Lord, and that after receiving the Spirit of the Lord in consequence of the anointing, he left the further development of the matter to the Lord in childlike submission, assured that He would prepare and show him the way to the throne in His own good time.
1 SAMUEL. 16:14-23
David’s Introduction to the Court of Saul.
Verse 14. With the rejection of Saul on the part of God, the Spirit of Jehovah had departed from him, and an evil spirit from Jehovah had come upon him, who filled him with fear and anguish. The “evil spirit from Jehovah” which came into Saul in the place of the Spirit of Jehovah, was not merely an inward feeling of depression at the rejection announced to him, which grew into melancholy, and occasionally broke out in passing fits of insanity, but a higher evil power, which took possession of him, and not only deprived him of his peace of mind, but stirred up the feelings, ideas, imagination, and thoughts of his soul to such an extent that at times it drove him even into madness. This demon is called “an evil spirit (coming) from Jehovah,” because Jehovah had sent it as a punishment, or “an evil spirit of God” (Elohim: v. 15), or briefly “a spirit of God” (Elohim), or “the evil spirit” (v. 23, compare 1 Sam 18:10), as being a supernatural, spiritual, evil power; but never “the Spirit of Jehovah,” because this is the Spirit proceeding from the holy God, which works upon men as the spirit of strength, wisdom, and knowledge, and generates and fosters the spiritual or divine life. The expression [ræ hwO;hy] jæWr (1 Sam 19:9) is an abbreviated form for hwO;hy] tae [ræ jæWr , and is to be interpreted according.
Verse 15-16. When Saul’s attendants, i.e., his officers at court, perceived the mental ailment of the king, they advised him to let the evil spirit which troubled him be charmed away by instrumental music. “Let our lord speak (command); thy servants are before thee (i.e., ready to serve thee): they will seek a man skilled in playing upon the harp; so will it be well with thee when an evil spirit of God comes upon thee, and he (the man referred to) plays with his hands.” The powerful influence exerted by music upon the state of the mind was well known even in the earliest times; so that the wise men of ancient Greece recommended music to soothe the passions, to heal mental diseases, and even to check tumults among the people. From the many examples collected by Grotius, Clericus, and more especially Bochart in the Hieroz. P. i. l. 2, c. 44, we will merely cite the words of Censorinus (de die natali, c. 12): “Pythagoras ut animum sua semper divinitate imbueret, priusquam se somno daret et cum esset expergitus, cithara ut ferunt cantare consueverat, et Asclepiades medicus phreneticorum mentes morbo turbatas saepe per symphoniam suae naturae reddidit .”
Verse 17-18. When Saul commanded them to seek out a good player upon a stringed instrument in accordance with this advice, one of the youths r[ænæ , a lower class of court servants) said, “I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, skilled in laying, and a brave man, and a man of war, eloquent, and a handsome man, and Jehovah is with him.” The description of David is “a mighty man” and “a man of war” does not presuppose that David had already fought bravely in war, but may be perfectly explained from what David himself afterwards affirmed respecting his conflicts with lions and bears (1 Sam 17:34-35). The courage and strength which he had then displayed furnished sufficient proofs of heroism for any one to discern in him the future warrior.
Verse 19-20. Saul thereupon sent to ask Jesse for his son David; and Jesse sent him with a present of an ass’s burden of bread, a bottle of wine, and a buck-kid. Instead of the singular expression µj,l, rwOmj , an ass with bread, i.e., laden with bread, the LXX read µj,l, rm,jo , and rendered it go>mor a>rtwn ; but this is certainly wrong, as they were not accustomed to measure bread in bushels. These presents show how simple were the customs of Israel and in the court of Saul at that time.
Verse 21-23. When David came to Saul and stood before him, i.e., served him by playing upon his harp, Saul took a great liking to him, and nominated him his armour-bearer, i.e., his adjutant, as a proof of his satisfaction with him, and sent to Jesse to say, “Let David stand before me,” i.e., remain in my service, “for he has found favour in my sight.” The historian then adds (v. 23): “When the (evil) spirit of God came to Saul lae , as in 1 Sam 19:9, is really equivalent to `l[æ ), and David took the harp and played, there came refreshing to Saul, and he became well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” Thus David came to Saul’s court, and that as his benefactor, without Saul having any suspicion of David’s divine election to be king of Israel. This guidance on the part of God was a school of preparation to David for his future calling. In the first place, he was thereby lifted out of his quiet and homely calling in the country into the higher sphere of court-life; and thus an opportunity was afforded him not only for intercourse with men of high rank, and to become acquainted with the affairs of the kingdom, but also to display those superior gifts of his intellect and heart with which God had endowed him, and thereby to gain the love and confidence of the people. But at the same time he was also brought into a severe school of affliction, in which his inner man was to be trained by conflicts from without and within, so that he might become a man after God’s heart, who should be well fitted to found the true monarchy in Israel.
DAVID’S VICTORY OVER GOLIATH. CH. 17:1-54.
A war between the Philistines and the Israelites furnished David with the opportunity of displaying before Saul and all Israel, and greatly to the terror of the enemies of his people, that heroic power which was firmly based upon his bold and pious trust in the omnipotence of the faithful covenant God (vv. 1-3). A powerful giant, named Goliath, came forward from the ranks of the Philistines, and scornfully challenged the Israelites to produce a man who would decide the war by a single combat with him (vv. 4-11). David, who had returned home for a time from the court of Saul, and had just been sent into the camp by his father with provisions for his elder brothers who were serving in the army, as soon as he heard the challenge and the scornful words of the Philistine, offered to fight with him (vv. 15-37), and killed the giant with a stone from a sling; whereupon the Philistines took to flight, and were pursued by the Israelites to Gath and Ekron (vv. 38-54).
1 SAMUEL. 17:1-11
Verse 1 Some time after David first came to Saul for the purpose of playing, and when he had gone back to his father to Bethlehem, probably because Saul’s condition had improved, the Philistines made a fresh attempt to subjugate the Israelites. They collected their army together (machaneh, as in Ex 14:24; Judg 4:16) to war at Shochoh, the present Shuweikeh, in the Wady Sumt, three hours and a half to the south-west of Jerusalem, in the hilly region between the mountains of Judah and the plain of Philistia (see at Josh 15:35), and encamped between Shochoh and Azekah, at Ephes-dammim, which has been preserved in the ruins of Damûm, about an hour and a half east by north of Shuweikeh; so that Azekah, which has not yet been certainly traced, must be sought for to the east or north-east of Damûm (see at Josh 10:10).
Verse 2-3. Saul and the Israelites encamped opposite to them in the terebinth valley (Emek ha-Elah), i.e., a plain by the Wady Musur, and stood in battle array opposite to the Philistines, in such order that the latter stood on that side against the mountain (on the slope of the mountain), and the Israelites on this side against the mountain; and the valley ay]Gæ , the deeper cutting made by the brook in the plain) was between them.
Verse 4-5. And the (well-known) champion came out of the camps of the Philistines µyinæBe vyai , the middle-man, who decides a war between two armies by a single combat; Luther, “the giant,” according to the anh>r dunato>v of the LXX, although in v. 23 the Septuagint translators have rendered the word correctly anee’r ho amessai’os, which is probably only another form of ho mesai’os), named Goliath of Gath, one of the chief cities of the Philistines, where there were Anakim still left, according to Josh 11:22. His height was six cubits and a span (6 1/4 cubits), i.e., according to the calculation made by Thenius, about nine feet two inches Parisian measure-a great height no doubt, though not altogether unparalleled, and hardly greater than that of the great uncle of Iren, who came to Berlin in the year 1857 (see Pentateuch, p. 869, note). f32 The armour of Goliath corresponded to his gigantic stature: “a helmet of brass upon his head, and clothes in scale armour, the weight of which was five thousand shekels of brass.” The meaning scales is sustained by the words tc,q,c]qæ in Lev 11:9-10, and Deut 14:9-10, and twOcq]c]qæ in Ezek 29:4. tc,q,c]qæ ˆwOyr]vi , therefore, is not qw>rax aJlusidwto>v (LXX), a coat of mail made of rings worked together like chains, such as were used in the army of the Seleucidae (1 Macc. 6:35), but according to Aquila’s folidwto>n (scaled), a coat made of plates of brass lying one upon another like scales, such as we find upon the old Assyrian sculptures, where the warriors fighting in chariots, and in attendance upon the king, wear coats of scale armour, descending either to the knees or ankles, and consisting of scales of iron or brass, which were probably fastened to a shirt of felt or coarse linen (see Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 335). The account of the weight, 5000 shekels, i.e., according to Thenius, Dresden pounds, is hardly founded upon the actual weighing of the coat of mail, but probably rested upon a general estimate, which may have been somewhat too high, although we must bear in mind that the coat of mail not only covered the chest and back, but, as in the case of the Assyrian warriors, the lower part of the body also, and therefore must have been very large and very heavy. f33 Verse 6. And “greaves of brass upon his feet, and a brazen lance (hung) between his shoulders,” i.e., upon his back. ˆwOdyKi signifies a lance, or small spear. The LXX and Vulgate, however, adopt the rendering aspi>v calkh> , clypeus aeneus; and Luther has followed them, and translates it a brazen shield. Thenius therefore proposes to alter ˆwOdyKi into ˆgem; , because the expression “between his shoulders” does not appear applicable to a spear or javelin, which Goliath must have suspended by a strap, but only to a small shield slung over his back, whilst his armour-bearer carried the larger ˆxi in front of him. But the difficulty founded upon the expression “between his shoulders” has been fully met by Bochart (Hieroz. i. 2, c. 8), in the examples which he cites from Homer, Virgil, etc., to prove that the ancients carried their own swords slung over their shoulders ( amfi> d> w>moisin : Il. ii. 45, etc.). And Josephus understood the expression in this way (Ant. vi. 9, 1). Goliath had no need of any shield to cover his back, as this was sufficiently protected by the coat of mail. Moreover, the allusion to the ˆwOdyKi in v. 45 points to an offensive weapon, and not to a shield.
Verse 7. “And the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the point of it six hundred shekels of iron” (about seventeen pounds). For xje , according to the Keri and the parallel passages, 2 Sam 21:19; 1 Chron 20:5, we should read `x[e , wood, i.e., shaft. Before him went the bearer of the zinnah, i.e., the great shield.
Verse 8. This giant stood and cried to the ranks of the Israelites, Why come ye out to place yourselves in battle array? Am I not the Philistine, and ye the servants of Saul? Choose ye out a man who may come down to me” (into the valley where Goliath was standing). The meaning is: “Why would you engage in battle with us? I am the man who represents the strength of the Philistines, and ye are only servants of Saul. If ye have heroes, choose one out, that we may decide the matter in a single combat.”
Verse 9-10. “If he can fight with me, and kill me, we will be your servants; if I overcome him, and slay him, ye shall be our servants, and serve us.” He then said still further (v. 10), “I have mocked the ranks of Israel this day (the mockery consisted in his designating the Israelites as servants of Saul, and generally in the triumphant tone in which he issued the challenge to single combat); give me a man, that we may fight together!”
Verse 11. At these words Saul and all Israel were dismayed and greatly afraid, because not one of them dared to accept the challenge to fight with such a giant.
1 SAMUEL. 17:12-31
Verse 12 David’s arrival in the camp, and wish to fight with Goliath.- David had been dismissed by Saul at that time, and having returned home, he was feeding his father’s sheep once more (Vv. 12-15). Now, when the Israelites were standing opposite to the Philistines, and Goliath was repeating his challenge every day, David was sent by his father into the camp to bring provisions to his three eldest brothers, who were serving in Saul’s army, and to inquire as to their welfare (vv. 16-19). He arrived when the Israelites had placed themselves in battle array; and running to his brethren in the ranks, he saw Goliath come out from the ranks of the Philistines, and heard his words, and also learned from the mouth of an Israelite what reward Saul would give to any one who would defeat this Philistine (vv. 20-25). He then inquired more minutely into the matter; and having thereby betrayed his own intention of trying to fight with him (vv. 26, 27), he was sharply reproved by his eldest brother in consequence (vv. 28, 29). He did not allow this to deter him, however, but turned to another with the same question, and received a similar reply (v. 30); whereupon his words were told to the king, who ordered David to come before him (v. 31).
This is, in a condensed form, the substance of the section, which introduces the conquest of Goliath by David in the character of an episode. This first heroic deed was of the greatest importance to David and all Israel, for it was David’s first step on the way to the throne, to which Jehovah had resolved to raise him. This explains the fulness and circumstantiality of the narrative, in which the intention is very apparent to set forth most distinctly the marvellous overruling of all the circumstances by God himself. And this circumstantiality of the account is closely connected with the form of the narrative, which abounds in repetitions, that appear to us tautological in many instances, but which belong to the characteristic peculiarities of the early Hebrew style of historical composition. f34 Verse 12-15. Vv. 12-15 are closely connected with the preceding words, “All Israel was alarmed at the challenge of the Philistine; but David the son of that Ephratite (Ephratite, as in Ruth 1:1-2) of Bethlehem in Judah, whose name was Jesse,” etc. The verb and predicate do not follow till v. 15; so that the words occur here in the form of an anacolouthon. The traditional introduction of the verb hy;h; between rwiD; and ben-’iysh (David was the son of that Ephratite) is both erroneous and misleading. If the words were to be understood in this way, hy;h; could no more be omitted here than hy;h; in 2 Chron 22:3,11. The true explanation is rather, that vv. 12-15 form one period expanded by parentheses, and that the historian lost sight of the construction with which he commenced in the intermediate clauses; so that he started afresh with the subject rwiD; in v. 15, and proceeded with what he had to say concerning David, doing this at the same time in such a form that what he writes is attached, so far as the sense if concerned, to the parenthetical remarks concerning Jesse’s eldest sons.
To bring out distinctly the remarkable chain of circumstances by which David was led to undertake the conflict with Goliath, he links on to the reference to his father certain further notices respecting David’s family and his position at that time. Jesse had eight sons and was an old man in the time of Saul. vyai awOB, “come among the weak.” vyai generally means, no doubt, people or men. But this meaning does not give any appropriate sense here; and the supposition that the word has crept in through a slip of the pen for hn,v; , is opposed not only by the authority of the early translators, all of whom read vyai , but also by the circumstance that the expression hn,v; awOB does not occur in the whole of the Old Testament, and that µwOy awOB alone is used with this signification.
Verse 13-14. “The three great (i.e., eldest) sons of Jesse had gone behind Saul into the war.” Ëlæy; , which appears superfluous after the foregoing Ëlæh; , has been defended by Böttcher, as necessary to express the pluperfect, which the thought requires, since the imperfect consec. Ëlæh; , when attached to a substantive and participial clause, merely expresses the force of the aorist. Properly, therefore, it reads thus: “And then (in Jesse’s old age) the three eldest sons followed, had followed, Saul;” a very ponderous construction indeed, but quite correct, and even necessary, with the great deficiency of forms, to express the pluperfect. The names of these three sons agree with 1 Sam 16:6-9, whilst the third, Shammah, is called Shimeah h[;m]vi ) in 2 Sam 13:3,32, shim¦`aay in 2 Sam 21:21, and a[;m]vi in 1 Chron 2:13; 20:7.
Verse 15. “But David was going and returning away from Saul:” i.e., he went backwards and forwards from Saul to feed his father’s sheep in Bethlehem; so that he was not in the permanent service of Saul, but at that very time was with his father. The latter is to be supplied from the context.
Verse 16-17. The Philistine drew near (to the Israelitish ranks) morning and evening, and stationed himself for forty days (in front of them). This remark continues the description of Goliath’s appearance, and introduces the account which follows. Whilst the Philistine was coming out every day for forty days long with his challenge to single combat, Jesse sent his son David into the camp. “Take now for thy brethren this ephah of parched grains (see Lev 23:13), and these ten loaves, and bring them quickly into the camp to thy brethren.”
Verse 18. “And these ten slices of soft cheese (so the ancient versions render it) bring to the chief captain over thousand, and visit thy brethren to inquire after their welfare, and bring with you a pledge from them”-a pledge that they are alive and well. This seems the simplest explanation of the word `hB;ru[ , of which very different renderings were given by the early translators.
Verse 19. “But Saul and they (the brothers), and the whole of the men of Israel, are in the terebinth valley,” etc. This statement forms part of Jesse’s words.
Verse 20-21. In pursuance of this commission, David went in the morning to the waggon-rampart, when the army, which was going out (of the camp) into battle array, raised the war-cry, and Israel and the Philistines placed themselves battle-array against battle-array. wgwlyijæ is a circumstantial clause, and the predicate is introduced with [æWr , as wgwlyijæ is placed at the head absolutely: “and as for the army which, etc., it raised a shout.” bamil¦chaamaah heereea`, lit. to make a noise in war, i.e., to raise a warcry.
Verse 22. David left the vessels with the provisions in the charge of the keeper of the vessels, and ran into the ranks to inquire as to the health of his brethren.
Verse 23. Whilst he was talking with them, the champion (middle-man) Goliath drew near, and spoke according to those words (the words contained in vv. 8ff.), and David heard it. lp twOr[\Mæmi is probably an error for lp hk;r;[mæ (Keri, LXX, Vulg.; cf. v. 26). If the Chethibh were the proper reading, it would suggest an Arabic word signifying a crowd of men (Dietrich on Ges. Lex.).
Verse 24-25. All the Israelites fled from Goliath, and were sore afraid.
They said laer;c]yi vyai is a collective noun), “Have ye seen this man who is coming? ha;r; , with Dagesh dirim as in 1 Sam 10:24. Surely to defy Israel is he coming; and whoever shall slay him, the king will enrich him with great wealth, and give him his daughter, and make his father’s house (i.e., his family) free in Israel,” viz., from taxes and public burdens. There is nothing said afterwards about the fulfilment of these promises. But it by no means follows from this, that the statement is to be regarded as nothing more than an exaggeration, that had grown up among the people, of what Saul had really said. There is all the less probability in this, from the fact that, according to v. 27, the people assured him again of the same thing. In all probability Saul had actually made some such promises as these, but did not feel himself bound to fulfil them afterwards, because he had not made them expressly to David himself.
Verse 26-27. When David heard these words, he made more minute inquiries from the bystanders about the whole matter, and dropped some words which gave rise to the supposition that he wanted to go and fight with this Philistine himself. This is implied in the words, “For who is the Philistine, this uncircumcised one (i.e., standing as he does outside the covenant with Jehovah), that he insults the ranks of the living God!” whom he has defied in His army. “He must know,” says the Berleburger Bible, “that he has not to do with men, but with God. With a living God he will have to do, and not with an idol.” Verse 28. David’s eldest brother was greatly enraged at his talking thus with the men, and reproved David: “Why hast thou come down (from Bethlehem, which stood upon high ground, to the scene of the war), and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the desert?” “Those few sheep,” the loss of only one of which would be a very great loss to our family. “I know thy presumption, and the wickedness of thy heart; for thou hast come down to look at the war;” i.e., thou art not contented with thy lowly calling, but aspirest to lofty things; it gives thee pleasure to look upon bloodshed. Eliab sought for the splinter in his brother’s eye, and was not aware of the beam in his own. The very things with which he charged his brother-presumption and wickedness of heart-were most apparent in his scornful reproof.
Verse 29-30. David answered very modestly, and so as to put the scorn of his reprover to shame: “What have I done, then? It was only a word”-a very allowable inquiry certainly. He then turned from him (Eliab) to another who was standing by; and having repeated his previous words, he received the same answer from the people.
Verse 31. David’s words were told to Saul, who had him sent for immediately.
1 SAMUEL. 17:32-40
David’s resolution to fight with Goliath; and his equipment for the conflict.
Verse 32. When in the presence of Saul, David said, “Let no man’s heart (i.e., courage) fail on his account (on account of the Philistine, about whom they had been speaking): thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
Verse 33-35. To Saul’s objection that he, a mere youth, could not fight with this Philistine, a man of war from his youth up, David replied, that as a shepherd he had taken a sheep out of the jaws of a lion and a bear, and had also slain them both. The article before yria and bDo points out these animals as the well-known beasts of prey. By the expression bwODhæAta,w] the bear is subordinated to the lion, or rather placed afterwards, as something which came in addition to it; so that tae is to be taken as a nota accus. (vid., Ewald, §277, a), though it is not to be understood as implying that the lion and the bear went together in search of prey. The subordination or addition is merely a logical one: not only the lion, but also the bear, which seized the sheep, did David slay. hz, , which we find in most of the editions since the time of Jac. Chayim, 1525, is an error in writing, or more correctly in hearing, for hc, , a sheep. “And I went out after it; and when it rose up against me, I seized it by its beard, and smote it, and killed it.” ˆq;z; , beard and chin, signifies the bearded chin. Thenius proposes, though without any necessity, to alter ˆq;z; into wOnwOrg]Bi , for the simple but weak reason, that neither lions nor bears have any actual beard. We have only to think, for example, of the li>v hu>ge>neiov in Homer (Il. xv. 275, xvii. 109), or the barbam vellere mortuo leoni of Martial (x. 9). Even in modern times we read of lions having been killed by Arabs with a stick (see Rosenmüller, Bibl. Althk. iv. 2, pp. 132-3). The constant use of the singular suffix is sufficient to show, that when David speaks of the lion and the bear, he connects together two different events, which took place at different times, and then proceeds to state how he smote both the one and the other of the two beasts of prey.
Verse 36-38. “Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear; and the Philistine, this uncircumcised one, shall become like one of them (i.e., the same thing shall happen to him as to the lion and the bear), because he has defied the ranks of the living God.” “And,” he continued (v. 37), “the Lord who delivered me out of the hand (the power) of the lion and the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” David’s courage rested, therefore, upon his confident belief that the living God would not let His people be defied by the heathen with impunity. Saul then desired for him the help of the Lord in carrying out his resolution, and bade him put on his own armour-clothes, and bird on his armour. dmæ (his clothes) signifies probably a peculiar kind of clothes which were worn under the armour, a kind of armour-coat to which the sword was fastened.
Verse 39-40. When he was thus equipped with brazen helmet, coat of mail, and sword, David began to walk, but soon found that he could do nothing with these. He therefore said to Saul, “I cannot go in these things, for I have not tried them;” and having taken them off, he took his shepherd’s staff in his hand, sought out five smooth stones from the brook-valley, and put them in the shepherd’s thing that he had, namely his shepherd’s bag.
He then took the sling in his hand, and went up to the Philistine. In the exercise of his shepherd’s calling he may have become so skilled in the use of the sling, that, like the Benjaminites mentioned in Judg 20:16, he could sling at a hair’s-breadth, and not miss. VERSE 17:41-54. David and Goliath: fall of Goliath, and flight of the Philistines.
Verse. 41. The Philistine came closer and closer to David.
Verse 42-44. When he saw David, “he looked at him, and despised him,” i.e., he looked at him contemptuously, because he was a youth (as in 1 Sam 16:12); “and then said to him, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with sticks?” (the plural lQemæ is used in contemptuous exaggeration of the armour of David, which appeared so thoroughly unfit for the occasion); “and cursed David by his God (i.e., making use of the name of Jehovah in his cursing, and thus defying not David only, but the God of Israel also), and finished with the challenge, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the field” (to eat). It was with such threats as these that Homer’s heroes used to defy one another (vid., Hector’s threat, for example, in Il. xiii. 831-2).
Verse 45-47. David answered this defiance with bold, believing courage: “Thou comest to me with sword, and javelin, and lance; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Saboath, the God of the ranks of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will Jehovah deliver thee into my hand; and I shall smite thee, and cut off thine head, and give the corpse of the army of the Philistines to the birds this day....And all the world shall learn that Israel hath a God; and this whole assembly shall discover that Jehovah bringeth deliverance (victory) not by sword and spear: for war belongeth to Jehovah, and He will give you into our hand.” Whilst Goliath boasted of his strength, David founded his own assurance of victory upon the Almighty God of Israel, whom the Philistine had defied. rg,p, is to be taken collectively. laer;c]yi µyhila’ vye does not mean “God is for Israel,” but “Israel hath a God,” so that Elohim is of course used here in a pregnant sense. This God is Jehovah; war is his, i.e., He is the Lord of war, who has both war and its results in His power.
Verse 48-49. When the Philistines rose up, drawing near towards David µWq and Ëlæy; simply serve to set forth the occurrence in a more pictorial manner), David hastened and ran to the battle array to meet him, took a stone out of his pocket, hurled it, and hit the Philistine on his temples, so that the stone entered them, and Goliath fell upon his face to the ground. Verse 50-51. V. 50 contains a remark by the historian with reference to the result of the conflict: “Thus was David stronger than the Philistine, with a sling and stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him without a sword in his hand.” And then in v. 51 the details are given, namely, that David cut off the head of the fallen giant with his own sword. Upon the downfall of their hero the Philistines were terrified and fled; whereupon the Israelites rose up with a cry to pursue the flying foe, and pursued them “to a valley, and to the gates of Ekron.” The first place mentioned is a very striking one.
The “valley” cannot mean the one which divided the two armies, according to v. 3, not only because the article is wanting, but still more from the facts themselves. For it is neither stated, nor really probable, that the Philistines had crossed that valley, so as to make it possible to pursue them into it again. But if the word refers to some other valley, it seems very strange that nothing further should be said about it. Both these circumstances render the reading itself, ny’, suspicious, and give great probability to the conjecture that ny’ is only a copyist’s error for Gath, which is the rendering given by the LXX, especially when taken in connection with the following clause, “to Gath and to Ekron” (v. 52).
Verse 52. “And wounded of the Philistines fell on the way to Shaaraim, and to Gath and to Ekron.” Shaaraim is the town of Saarayim, in the lowland of Judah, and has probably been preserved in the Tell Kefr Zakariya (see at Josh 15:36). On Gath and Ekron, see at Josh 13:3.
Verse 53. After returning from the pursuit of the flying foe, the Israelites plundered the camp of the Philistines. rjæaæ qlæD; , to pursue hotly, as in Gen 31:36.
Verse 54. But David took the head of Goliath and brought it to Jerusalem, and put his armour in his tent. lh,ao is an antiquated term for a dwellingplace, as in 1 Sam 4:10; 13:2, etc. The reference is to David’s house at Bethlehem, to which he returned with the booty after the defeat of Goliath, and that by the road which ran past Jerusalem, where he left the head of Goliath. There is no anachronism in these statements; for the assertion made by some, that Jerusalem was not yet in the possession of the Israelites, rests upon a confusion between the citadel of Jebus upon Zion, which was still in the hands of the Jebusites, and the city of Jerusalem, in which Israelites had dwelt for a long time (see at Josh 15:63, and Judg 1:8). Nor is there any contradiction between this statement and 1 Sam 21:9, where Goliath’s sword is said to have been preserved in the tabernacle at Nob: for it is not affirmed that David kept Goliath’s armour in his own home, but only that he took it thither; and the supposition that Goliath’s sword was afterwards deposited by him in the sanctuary in honour of the Lord, is easily reconcilable with this. Again, the statement in 1 Sam 18:2, to the effect that, after David’s victory over Goliath, Saul did not allow him to return to his father’s house any more, is by no means at variance with this explanation of the verse before us. For the statement in question must be understood in accordance with 1 Sam 17:15, viz., as signifying that from that time forward Saul did not allow David to return to his father’s house to keep the sheep as he had done before, and by no means precludes his paying brief visits to Bethlehem.
JONATHAN’S FRIENDSHIP. SAUL’S JEALOUSY AND PLOTS AGAINST DAVID.
David’s victory over Goliath was a turning-point in his life, which opened the way to the throne. But whilst this heroic deed brought him out of his rural shepherd life to the scene of Israel’s conflict with its foes, and in these conflicts Jehovah crowned all his undertakings with such evident success, that the Israelites could not fail to discern more and more clearly in him the man whom God had chosen as their future king; it brought him, on the other hand, into such a relation to the royal house, which had been rejected by God, though it still continued to reign, as produced lasting and beneficial results in connection with his future calling. In the king himself, from whom the Spirit of God had departed, there was soon stirred up such jealousy of David as his rival to whom the kingdom would one day come, that he attempted at first to get rid of him by stratagem; and when this failed, and David’s renown steadily increased, he proceeded to open hostility and persecution. On the other hand, the heart of Jonathan clung more and more firmly to David with self-denying love and sacrifice. This friendship on the part of the brave and noble son of the king, not only helped David to bear the more easily all the enmity and persecution of the king when plagued by his evil spirit, but awakened and strengthened in his soul that pure feeling of unswerving fidelity towards the king himself, which amounted even to love of his enemy, and, according to the marvellous counsel of the Lord, contributed greatly to the training of David for his calling to be a king after God’s own heart. In the account of the results which followed David’s victory over Goliath, not only for himself but also for all Israel, the friendship of Jonathan is mentioned first (vv. 55-1 Sam 1 Sam 18:5); and this is followed by an account of the growing jealousy of Saul in its earliest stages (vv. 6-30).
1 SAMUEL. 17:55-56
Jonathan’s friendship.
Vv. 55-58. The account of the relation into which David was brought to Saul through the defeat of Goliath is introduced by a supplementary remark, in vv. 55, 56, as to a conversation which took place between Saul and his commander-in-chief Abner concerning David, whilst he was fighting with the giant. So far, therefore, as the actual meaning is concerned, the verbs in vv. 55 and 56 should be rendered as pluperfects.
When Saul saw the youth walk boldly up to meet the Philistine, he asked Abner whose son he was; whereupon Abner assured him with an oath that he did not know. In our remarks concerning the integrity of this section (pp. 482f.) we have already observed, with regard to the meaning of the question put by Saul, that it does not presuppose an actual want of acquaintance with the person of David and the name of his father, but only ignorance of the social condition of David’s family, with which both Abner and Saul may hitherto have failed to make themselves more fully acquainted. f35 1 SAMUEL 17:57,58 When David returned “from the slaughter of the Philistine,” i.e., after the defeat of Goliath, and when Abner, who probably went as commander to meet the brave hero and congratulate him upon his victory, had brought him to Saul, the king addressed the same question to David, who immediately gave him the information he desired. For it is evident that David said more than is here communicated, viz., “the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite,” as we have already observed, from the words of Sam 18:1, which presuppose a protracted conversation between Saul and David. The only reason, in all probability, why this conversation has not been recorded, is that it was not followed by any lasting results either for Jesse or David.
1 SAMUEL. 18:1-2
The bond of friendship which Jonathan formed with David was so evidently the main point, that in v. 1 the writer commences with the love of Jonathan to David, and then after that proceeds in v. 2 to observe that Saul took David to himself from that day forward; whereas it is very evident that Saul told David, either at the time of his conversation with him or immediately afterwards, that he was henceforth to remain with him, i.e., in his service. “The soul of Jonathan bound itself (lit. chained itself; cf. Gen 44:30) to David’s soul, and Jonathan loved him as his soul.” The Chethibh waye’ehaabow with the suffix ow attached to the imperfect is very rare, and hence the Keri bhæa; (vid., Ewald, §249, b., and Olshausen, Gramm. p. 469). bWv , to return to his house, viz., to engage in his former occupation as shepherd.
1 SAMUEL. 18:3
Jonathan made a covenant (i.e., a covenant of friendship) and (i.e., with) David, because he loved him as his soul.
1 SAMUEL. 18:4
As a sign and pledge of his friendship, Jonathan gave David his clothes and his armour. Meil, the upper coat or cloak. Maddim is probably the armour coat (vid., 1 Sam 17:39). This is implied in the word `d[æ , which is repeated three times, and by which the different arms were attached more closely to dmæ . For the act itself, compare the exchange of armour made by Glaucus and Diomedes (Hom. Il. vi. 230). This seems to have been a common custom in very ancient times, as we meet with it also among the early Celts (see Macpherson’s Ossian).
1 SAMUEL. 18:5
And David went out, sc., to battle; whithersoever Saul sent him, he acted wisely and prosperously lkæc; , as in Josh 1:8: see at Deut 29:8). Saul placed him above the men of war in consequence, made him one of their commanders; and he pleased all the people, and the servants of Saul also, i.e., the courtiers of the king, who are envious as a general rule.
1 SAMUEL. 18:6-16
Saul’s jealousy towards David.f36 Saul had no sooner attached the conqueror of Goliath to his court, than he began to be jealous of him. The occasion for his jealousy was the celebration of victory at the close of the war with the Philistines.
Verse 6-7. “When they came,” i.e., when the warriors returned with Saul from the war, “when (as is added to explain what follows) David returned from the slaughter,” i.e., from the war in which he had slain Goliath, the women came out of all the towns of Israel, “to singing and dancing,” i.e., to celebrate the victory with singing and choral dancing (see the remarks on Ex 15:20), “to meet king Saul with tambourines, with joy, and with triangles.” hj;m]ci is used here to signify expressions of joy, a fête, as in Judg 16:23, etc. The striking position in which the word stands, viz., between two musical instruments, shows that, the word is to be understood here as referring specially to songs of rejoicing, since according to v. their playing was accompanied with singing. The women who “sported” qjæc; ), i.e., performed mimic dances, sang in alternate choruses (“answered,” as in Ex 15:21), “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.”
Verse 8. Saul was enraged at this. The words displeased him, so that he said, “They have given David ten thousands, and to me thousands, and there is only the kingdom more for him” (i.e., left for him to obtain). “In this foreboding utterance of Saul there was involved not only a conjecture which the result confirmed, but a deep inward truth: if the king of Israel stood powerless before the subjugators of his kingdom at so decisive a period as this, and a shepherd boy came and decided the victory, this was an additional mark of his rejection” (O. v. Gerlach).
Verse 9. From that day forward Saul was looking askance at David. `ˆwæ[; , a denom. verb, from `ˆyi[æ , an eye, looking askance, is used for `ˆwæ[; (Keri).
Verse 10-11. The next day the evil spirit fell upon Saul (“the evil spirit of God;” see at 1 Sam 16:14), so that he raved in his house, and threw his javelin at David, who played before him “as day by day,” but did not hit him, because David turned away before him twice. hit¦nabee’ does not mean to prophesy in this instance, but “to rave.” This use of the word is founded upon the ecstatic utterances, in which the supernatural influence of the Spirit of God manifested itself in the prophets (see at 1 Sam 10:5). lWf , from lWf , he hurled the javelin, and said (to himself), “I will pierce David and the wall.” With such force did he hurl his spear; but David turned away from him, i.e., eluded it, twice. His doing so a second time presupposes that Saul hurled the javelin twice; that is to say, he probably swung it twice without letting it go out of his hand-a supposition which is raised into certainty by the fact that it is not stated here that the javelin entered the wall, as in 1 Sam 19:10. But even with this view lWf is not to be changed into lFoyi , as Thenius proposes, since the verb l f1 n; cannot be proved to have ever the meaning to swing. Saul seems to have held the javelin in his hand as a sceptre, according to ancient custom.
Verse 12-13. “And Saul was afraid of David, because the Spirit of Jehovah was with him, and had departed from Saul;” he “removed him therefore from him,” i.e., from his immediate presence, by appointing him chief captain over thousand. In this fear of David on the part of Saul, the true reason for his hostile behaviour is pointed out with deep psychological truth. The fear arose from the consciousness that the Lord had departed from him-a consciousness which forced itself involuntarily upon him, and drove him to make the attempt, in a fit of madness, to put David to death.
The fact that David did not leave Saul immediately after this attempt upon his life, may be explained not merely on the supposition that he looked upon this attack as being simply an outburst of momentary madness, which would pass away, but still more from his firm believing confidence, which kept him from forsaking the post in which the Lord had placed him without any act of his own, until he saw that Saul was plotting to take his life, not merely in these fits of insanity, but also at other times, in calm deliberation (vid., 1 Sam 19:1ff.).
Verse 14-16. As chief commander over thousand, he went out and in before the people, i.e., he carried out military enterprises, and that so wisely and prosperously, that the blessing of the Lord rested upon all he did. But these successes on David’s part increased Saul’s fear of him, whereas all Israel and Judah came to love him as their leader. David’s success in all that he took in hand compelled Saul to promote him; and his standing with the people increased with his promotion. But as the Spirit of God had departed from Saul, this only filled him more and more with dread of David as his rival. As the hand of the Lord was visibly displayed in David’s success, so, on the other hand, Saul’s rejection by God was manifested in his increasing fear of David.
1 SAMUEL. 18:17-30
Craftiness of Saul in the betrothal of his daughters to David.
Vv. 17ff. As Saul had promised to give his daughter for a wife to the conqueror of Goliath (1 Sam 17:25), he felt obliged, by the growing love and attachment of the people to David, to fulfil this promise, and told him that he was ready to do so, with the hope of finding in this some means of destroying David. He therefore offered him his elder daughter Merab with words that sounded friendly and kind: “Only be a brave man to me, and wage the wars of the Lord.” He called the wars with the Philistines “wars of Jehovah,” i.e., wars for the maintenance and defence of the kingdom of God, to conceal his own cunning design, and make David feel all the more sure that the king’s heart was only set upon the welfare of the kingdom of God. Whoever waged the wars of the Lord might also hope for the help of the Lord. But Saul had intentions of a very different kind. He thought (“said,” sc., to himself), “My hand shall not be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him;” i.e., I will not put him to death; the Philistines may do that. When Saul’s reason had returned, he shrank from laying hands upon David again, as he had done before in a fit of madness.
He therefore hoped to destroy him through the medium of the Philistines.
Verse 18. But David replied with true humility, without suspecting the craftiness of Saul: “Who am I, and what is my condition in life, my father’s family in Israel, that I should become son-in-law to the king?” yjæ ymi is a difficult expression, and has been translated in different ways, as the meaning which suggests itself first (viz., “what is my life”) is neither reconcilable with the ymi (the interrogative personal pronoun), nor suitable to the context. Gesenius (Thes. p. 471) and Böttcher give the meaning “people” for yjæ , and Ewald (Gramm. §179, b.) the meaning “family.” But neither of these meanings can be established. yjæ seems evidently to signify the condition in life, the relation in which a person stands to others, and ymi is to be explained on the ground that David referred to the persons who formed the class to which he belonged. “My father’s family” includes all his relations. David’s meaning was, that neither on personal grounds, nor on account of his social standing, nor because of his lineage, could he make the slightest pretension to the honour of becoming the son-in-law of the king.
Verse 19. But Saul did not keep his promise. When the time arrived for its fulfilment, he gave his daughter to Adriel the Meholathite, a man of whom nothing further is known. F37 Verse 20-21. Michal is married to David.-The pretext under which Saul broke his promise is not given, but it appears to have been, at any rate in part, that Merab had no love to David. This may be inferred from vv. 17, 18, compared with v. 20. Michal, the younger daughter of Saul, loved David. When Saul was told this, the thing was quite right in his eyes. He said, “I will give her to him, that she may become a snare to him, and the hand of the Philistines may come upon him” (sc., if he tries to get the price which I shall require a dowry; cf. v. 25). He therefore said to David, “In a second way µyinæv] , as in Job. 33:14) shalt thou become my son-in-law.”
Saul said this casually to David; but he made no reply, because he had found out the fickleness of Saul, and therefore put no further trust in his words.
Verse 22. Saul therefore employed his courtiers to persuade David to accept his offer. In this way we may reconcile in a very simple manner the apparent discrepancy, that Saul is said to have offered his daughter to David himself, and yet he commissioned his servants to talk to David privately of the king’s willingness to give him his daughter. The omission of v. 21b in the Septuagint is to be explained partly from the fact that µyinæv] points back to vv. 17-19, which are wanting in this version, and partly also in all probability from the idea entertained by the translators that the statement itself is at variance with vv. 22ff. The courtiers were to talk to David fl; , “in private,” i.e., as though they were doing it behind the king’s back.
Verse 23. David replied to the courtiers, “Does it seem to you a little thing to become son-in-law to the king, seeing that I am a poor and humble man?” “Poor,” i.e., utterly unable to offer anything like a suitable dowry to the king. This reply was given by David in perfect sincerity, since he could not possibly suppose that the king would give him his daughter without a considerable marriage portion. Verse 24-25. When this answer was reported to the king, he sent word through his courtiers what the price was for which he would give him his daughter. He required no dowry (see at Gen 34:12), but only a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, i.e., the slaughter of a hundred Philistines, and the proof that this had been done, to avenge himself upon the enemies of the king; whereas, as the writer observes, Saul supposed that he should thus cause David to fall, i.e., bring about his death by the hand of the Philistines.
Verse 26-27. But David was satisfied with Saul’s demand, since he had no suspicion of his craftiness, and loved Michal. Even before the days were full, i.e., before the time appointed for the delivery of the dowry and for the marriage had arrived, he rose up with his men, smote two hundred Philistines, and brought their foreskins, which were placed in their full number before the king; whereupon Saul was obliged to give him Michal his daughter to wife. The words “and the days were not full” (v. 26) form a circumstantial clause, which is to be connected with the following sentence, “David arose,” etc. David delivered twice the price demanded. “They made them full to the king,” i.e., they placed them in their full number before him.
Verse 28-29. The knowledge of the fact that David had carried out all his enterprises with success had already filled the melancholy king with fear.
But when the failure of this new plan for devoting David to certain death had forced the conviction upon him that Jehovah was with David, and that he was miraculously protected by Him; and when, in addition to this, there was the love of his daughter Michal to David; his fear of David grew into a lifelong enmity. Thus his evil spirit urged him ever forward to greater and greater hardness of heart.
Verse 30. The occasion for the practical manifestation of this enmity was the success of David in all his engagements with the Philistines. As often as the princes of the Philistines went out (sc., to war with Israel), David acted more wisely and prosperously than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was held in great honour. With this general remark the way is prepared for the further history of Saul’s conduct towards David. JONATHAN’S INTERCESSION FOR DAVID.
SAUL’S RENEWED ATTEMPTS TO MURDER HIM. DAVID’S FLIGHT TO SAMUEL.
1 SAMUEL. 19:1-3
Jonathan warded off the first outbreak of deadly enmity on the part of Saul towards David. When Saul spoke to his son Jonathan and all his servants about his intention to kill David ( DWId;Ata, tymih;l] , i.e., not that they should kill David, but “that he intended to kill him”), Jonathan reported this to David, because he was greatly attached to him, and gave him this advice: “Take heed to thyself in the morning; keep thyself in a secret place, and hide thyself. I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where thou art, and I will talk to my father about thee ( B] rbæd; , as in Deut 6:7; Ps 87:3, etc., to talk of or about a person), and see what (sc., he will say), and show it to thee.” David was to conceal himself in the field near to where Jonathan would converse with his father about him; not that he might hear the conversation in his hiding-place, but that Jonathan might immediately report to him the result of his conversation, without there being any necessity for going far away from his father, so as to excite suspicion that he was in league with David.
1 SAMUEL. 19:4-5
Jonathan then endeavoured with all the modesty of a son to point out most earnestly to his father the grievous wickedness involved in his conduct towards David. “Let not the king sin against his servant, against David; for he hath not sinned against thee, and his works are very good (i.e., very useful) to thee. He hath risked his life (see at Judg 12:3), and smitten the Philistines, and Jehovah hath wrought a great salvation of all Israel. Thou hast seen it, and rejoiced; and wherefore wilt thou sin against innocent blood, to slay David without a cause?”
1 SAMUEL. 19:6-7
These words made an impression upon Saul. He swore, “As Jehovah liveth, he (David) shall not be put to death;” whereupon Jonathan reported these words to David, and brought him to Saul, so that he was with him again as before. But this reconciliation, unfortunately, did not last long.
1 SAMUEL. 19:8-10
Another great defeat which David had inflicted upon the Philistines excited Saul to such an extent, that in a fit of insanity he endeavoured to pierce David with his javelin as he was playing before him. The words Ruach Jehovah describe the attack of madness in which Saul threw the javelin at David according to its higher cause, and that, as implied in the words Ruach Jehovah in contrast with Ruach Elohim (1 Sam 18:10; 16:15), as inflicted upon him by Jehovah. The thought expressed is, that the growth of Saul’s melancholy was a sign of the hardness of heart to which Jehovah had given him up on account of his impenitence. David happily escaped this javelin also. He slipped away from Saul, so that he hurled the javelin into the wall; whereupon David fled and escaped the same night, i.e., the night after this occurrence. This remark somewhat anticipates the course of the events, as the author, according to the custom of Hebrew historians, gives the result at once, and then proceeds to describe in detail the more exact order of the events.
1 SAMUEL. 19:11-12
“Saul sent messengers to David’s house,” to which David had first fled, “to watch him (that he might not get away again), and to put him to death in the (next) morning.” Michal made him acquainted with this danger, and then let him down through the window, so that he escaped. The danger in which David was at that time is described by him in Ps 59, from which we may see how Saul was surrounded by a number of cowardly courtiers, who stirred up his hatred against David, and were busily engaged in getting the dreaded rival out of the way.
1 SAMUEL. 19:13-14
Michal then took the teraphim- i.e., in all probability an image of the household gods of the size of life, and, judging from what follows, in human form-laid it in the bed, and put a piece of woven goats’ hair at his head, i.e., either round or over the head of the image, and covered it with the garment (beged, the upper garment, which was generally only a square piece of cloth for wrapping round), and told the messengers whom Saul had sent to fetch him that he was ill. Michal probably kept teraphim in secret, like Rachel, because of her barrenness (see at Gen 31:19). The meaning of `z[e rybiK] is doubtful. The earlier translators took it to mean goat-skin, with the exception of the Seventy, who confounded rybiK] with dbeK; , liver, upon which Josephus founds his account of Michal having placed a still moving goat’s liver in the bed, to make the messengers believe that there was a breathing invalid beneath. rybiK] , from rbæK; , signifies something woven, and `z[e goats’ hair, as in Ex 25:4. But it is impossible to decide with certainty what purpose the cloth of goats’ hair was to serve; whether it was merely to cover the head of the teraphim with hair, and so make it like a human head, or to cover the head and face as if of a person sleeping. The definite article not only before µypir;T] and dg,B, , but also with `z[e rybiK] , suggests the idea that all these things belonged to Michal’s house furniture, and that `z[e rybiK] was probably a counterpane made of goats’ hair, with which persons in the East are in the habit of covering the head and face when sleeping.
1 SAMUEL. 19:15-17
But when Saul sent the messengers again to see David, and that with the command, “Bring him up to me in the bed,” and when they only found the teraphim in the bed, and Saul charged Michal with this act of deceit, she replied, “He (David) said to me, Let me go; why should I kill thee?”- ”Behold, teraphim were (laid) in the bed.” The verb can be naturally supplied from v. 13. In the words “Why should I kill thee?” Michael intimates that she did not mean to let David escape, but was obliged to yield to his threat that he would kill her if she continued to refuse. This prevarication she seems to have considered perfectly justifiable.
1 SAMUEL. 19:18-24
David fled to Samuel at Ramah, and reported to him all that Saul had done, partly to seek for further advice from the prophet who had anointed him, as to his further course, and partly to strengthen himself, by intercourse with him, for the troubles that still awaited him. He therefore went along with Samuel, and dwelt with him in Naioth. nwyt (to be read tywin; according to the Chethibh, for which the Masoretes have substituted the form tywin; , vv. 19, 23, and 1 Sam 20:1), from hw,n; or hwn , signifies dwellings; but here it is in a certain sense a proper name, applied to the coenobium of the pupils of the prophets, who had assembled round Samuel in the neighbourhood of Ramah. The plural tywin; points to the fact, that this coenobium consisted of a considerable number of dwelling-places or houses, connected together by a hedge or wall.
Verse 19-20. When Saul was told where this place was, he sent messengers to fetch David. But as soon as the messengers saw the company of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing there as their leader, the Spirit of God came upon them, so that they also prophesied.
The singular ha;r; is certainly very striking here; but it is hardly to be regarded as merely a copyist’s error for the plural ha;r; , because it is extremely improbable that such an error as this should have found universal admission into the MSS; so that it is in all probability to be taken as the original and correct reading, and understood either as relating to the leader of the messengers, or as used because the whole company of messengers were regarded as one body. The hap leg hq;hlæ signifies, according to the ancient versions, an assembly, equivalent to qahalaah, from which it arose according to Kimchi and other Rabbins by simple inversion.
Verse 21. The same thing happened to a second and third company of messengers, whom Saul sent one after another when the thing was reported to him.
Verse 22-24. Saul then set out to Ramah himself, and inquired, as soon as he had arrived at the great pit at Sechu (a place near Ramah with which we are not acquainted), where Samuel and David were, and went, according to the answer he received, to the Naioth at Ramah. There the Spirit of God came upon him also, so that he went along prophesying, until he came to the Naioth at Ramah; and there he even took off his clothes, and prophesied before Samuel, and lay there naked all that day, and the whole night as well. `µwOr[; , gumno>v , does not always signify complete nudity, but is also applied to a person with his upper garment off (cf. Isa 20:2; Mic 1:8; John 21:7). From the repeated expression “he also,” in vv. 23, 24, it is not only evident that Saul came into an ecstatic condition of prophesying as well as his servants, but that the prophets themselves, and not merely the servants, took off their clothes like Saul when they prophesied.
It is only in the case of `µwOr[; lpæn; that the expression “he also” is not repeated; from which we must infer, that Saul alone lay there the whole day and night with his clothes off, and in an ecstatic state of external unconsciousness; whereas the ecstasy of his servants and the prophets lasted only a short time, and the clear self-consciousness returned earlier than with Saul. This different is not without significance in relation to the true explanation of the whole affair. Saul had experienced a similar influence of the Spirit of God before, namely, immediately after his anointing by Samuel, when he met a company of prophets who were prophesying at Gibeah, and he had been thereby changed into another man (1 Sam 10:6ff.). This miraculous seizure by the Spirit of God was repeated again here, when he came near to the seat of the prophets; and it also affected the servants whom he had sent to apprehend David, so that Saul was obliged to relinquish the attempt to seize him.
This result, however, we cannot regard as the principal object of the whole occurrence, as Vatablus does when he says, “The spirit of prophecy came into Saul, that David might the more easily escape from his power.”
Calvin’s remarks go much deeper into the meaning: “God,” he says, “changed their (the messengers’) thoughts and purpose, not only so that they failed to apprehend David according to the royal command, but so that they actually became the companions of the prophets. And God effected this, that the fact itself might show how He holds the hearts of men in His hand and power, and turns and moves them according to His will.” Even this, however, does not bring out the full meaning of the miracle, and more especially fails to explain why the same thing should have happened to Saul in an intensified degree. Upon this point Calvin simply observes, that “Saul ought indeed to have been strongly moved by these things, and to have discerned the impossibility of his accomplishing anything by fighting against the Lord; but he was so hardened that he did not perceive the hand of God: for he hastened to Naioth himself, when he found that his servants mocked him;” and in this proceeding on Saul’s part he discovers a sign of his increasing hardness of heart.
Saul and his messengers, the zealous performers of his will, ought no doubt to have learned, from what happened to them in the presence of the prophets, that God had the hearts of men in His power, and guided them at His will; but they were also to be seized by the might of the Spirit of God, which worked in the prophets, and thus brought to the consciousness, that Saul’s raging against David was fighting against Jehovah and His Spirit, and so to be led to give up the evil thoughts of their heart. Saul was seized by this mighty influence of the Spirit of God in a more powerful manner than his servants were, both because he had most obstinately resisted the leadings of divine grace, and also in order that, if it were possible, his hard heart might be broken and subdued by the power of grace. If, however, he should nevertheless continue obstinately in his rebellion against God, he would then fall under the judgment of hardening, which would be speedily followed by his destruction. This new occurrence in Saul’s life occasioned a renewal of the proverb: “Is Saul also among the prophets?” The words “wherefore they say” do not imply that the proverb was first used at this time, but only that it received a new exemplification and basis in the new event in Saul’s experience. The origin of it has been already mentioned in Sam 10:12, and the meaning of it was there explained.
This account is also worthy of note, as having an important bearing upon the so-called Schools of the Prophets in the time of Samuel, to which, however, we have only casual allusions. From the passage before us we learn that there was a company of prophets at Ramah, under the superintendence of Samuel, whose members lived in a common building (nwyt), and that Samuel had his own house at Ramah (1 Sam 7:17), though he sometimes lived in the Naioth (cf. vv. 18ff.). The origin and history of these schools are involved in obscurity. If we bear in mind, that, according to 1 Sam 3:1, before the call of Samuel as prophet, the prophetic word was very rare in Israel, and prophecy was not widely spread, there can be no doubt that these unions of prophets arose in the time of Samuel, and were called into existence by him. The only uncertainty is whether there were other such unions in different parts of the land beside the one at Ramah. In 1 Sam 10:5,10, we find a band of prophesying prophets at Gibeah, coming down from the sacrificial height there, and going to meet Saul; but it is not stated there that this company had its seat at Gibeah, although it may be inferred as probable, from the name “Gibeah of God” (see the commentary on 1 Sam 10:5-6).
No further mention is made of these in the time of Samuel; nor do we meet with them again till the times of Elijah and Elisha, when we find them, under the name of sons of the prophets (1 Kings 20:35), living in considerable numbers at Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho (vid., 2 Kings 4:38; 2:3,5,7,15; 4:1; 6:1; 9:1). According to 1 Sam 4:38,42-43, about a hundred sons of the prophets sat before Elisha at Gilgal, and took their meals together. The number at Jericho may have been quite as great; for fifty men of the sons of the prophets went with Elijah and Elisha to the Jordan (comp. 1 Sam 2:7 with vv. 16, 17). These passages render it very probable that the sons of the prophets also lived in a common house. And this conjecture is raised into a certainty by 1 Sam 6:1ff. In this passage, for example, they are represented as saying to Elisha: “The place where we sit before thee is too strait for us; let us go to the Jordan, and let each one fetch thence a beam, and build ourselves a place to dwell in there.”
It is true that we might, if necessary, supply µynip; from v. 1, after µv; bvæy; , “to sit before thee,” and so understand the words as merely referring to the erection of a more commodious place of meeting. But if they built it by the Jordan, we can hardly imagine that it was merely to serve as a place of meeting, to which they would have to make pilgrimages from a distance, but can only assume that they intended to live there, and assemble together under the superintendence of a prophet. In all probability, however, only such as were unmarried lived in a common building. Many of them were married, and therefore most likely lived in houses of their own (2 Kings 4:1ff.). We may also certainly assume the same with reference to the unions of prophets in the time of Samuel, even if it is impossible to prove that these unions continued uninterruptedly from the time of Samuel down to the times of Elijah and Elisha. Oehler argues in support of this, “that the historical connection, which can be traced in the influence of prophecy from the time of Samuel forwards, may be most easily explained from the uninterrupted continuance of these supports; and also that the large number of prophets, who must have been already there according to 1 Kings 18:13 when Elijah first appeared, points to the existence of such unions as these.”
But the historical connection in the influence of prophecy, or, in other words, the uninterrupted succession of prophets, was also to be found in the kingdom of Judah both before and after the times of Elijah and Elisha, and down to the Babylonian captivity, without our discovering the slightest trace of any schools of the prophets in that kingdom.
All that can be inferred from 1 Kings 18 is, that the large number of prophets mentioned there (vv. 4 and 13) were living in the time of Elijah, but not that they were there when he first appeared. The first mission of Elijah to king Ahab (ch. 17) took place about three years before the events described in 1 Kings 18, and even this first appearance of the prophet in the presence of the king is not to be regarded as the commencement of his prophetic labours. How long Elijah had laboured before he announced to Ahab the judgment of three years’ drought, cannot indeed be decided; but if we consider that he received instructions to call Elisha to be his assistant and successor not very long after this period of judgment had expired (1 Kings 19:16ff.), we may certainly assume that he had laboured in Israel for many years, and may therefore have founded unions of the prophets. In addition, however, to the absence of any allusion to the continuance of these schools of the prophets, there is another thing which seems to preclude the idea that they were perpetuated from the time of Samuel to that of Elijah, viz., the fact that the schools which existed under Elijah and Elisha were only to be found in the kingdom of the ten tribes, and never in that of Judah, where we should certainly expect to find them if they had been handed down from Samuel’s time.
Moreover, Oehler also acknowledges that “the design of the schools of the prophets, and apparently their constitution, were not the same under Samuel as in the time of Elijah.” This is confirmed by the fact, that the members of the prophets’ unions which arose under Samuel are never called “sons of the prophets,” as those who were under the superintendence of Elijah and Elisha invariably are (see the passages quoted above). Does not this peculiar epithet seem to indicate, that the “sons of the prophets” stood in a much more intimate relation to Elijah and Elisha, as their spiritual fathers, than the aybin; lb,j, or aybin; hq;hlæ did to Samuel as their president? (1 Sam 19:20.) hab¦biy’iym b¦neey does not mean filii prophetae, i.e., sons who are prophets, as some maintain, though without being able to show that ˆBe is ever used in this sense, but filii prophetarum, disciples or scholars of the prophets, from which it is very evident that these sons of the prophets stood in a relation of dependence to the prophets (Elijah and Elisha), i.e., of subordination to them, and followed their instructions and admonitions. They received commissions from them, and carried them out (vid., 2 Kings 9:1). On the other hand, the expressions lb,j, and hq;hlæ simply point to combinations for common working under the presidency of Samuel, although the words `l[æ bxæn; certainly show that the direction of these unions, and probably the first impulse to form them, proceeded from Samuel, so that we might also call these societies schools of the prophets.
The opinions entertained with regard to the nature of these unions, and their importance in relation to the development of the kingdom of God in Israel, differ very widely from one another. Whilst some of the fathers (Jerome for example) looked upon them as an Old Testament order of monks; others, such as Tennemann, Meiners, and Winer, compare them to the Pythagorean societies. Kranichfeld supposes that they were free associations, and chose a distinguished prophet like Samuel as their president, in order that they might be able to cement their union the more firmly through his influence, and carry out their vocation with the greater success. f38 The truth lies between these two extremes. The latter view, which precludes almost every relation of dependence and community, is not reconcilable with the name “sons of the prophets,” or with 1 Sam 19:20, where Samuel is said to have stood at the head of the prophesying prophets as `l[æ bxæn; , and has no support whatever in the Scriptures, but is simply founded upon the views of modern times and our ideas of liberty and equality. The prophets’ unions had indeed so far a certain resemblance to the monastic orders of the early church, that the members lived together in the same buildings, and performed certain sacred duties in common; but if we look into the aim and purpose of monasticism, they were the very opposite of those of the prophetic life. The prophets did not wish to withdraw from the tumult of the world into solitude, for the purpose of carrying on a contemplative life of holiness in this retirement from the earthly life and its affairs; but their unions were associations formed for the purpose of mental and spiritual training, that they might exert a more powerful influence upon their contemporaries.
They were called into existence by chosen instruments of the Lord, such as Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, whom the Lord had called to be His prophets, and endowed with a peculiar measure of His Spirit for this particular calling, that they might check the decline of religious life in the nation, and bring back the rebellious “to the law and the testimony.” Societies which follow this as their purpose in life, so long as they do not lose sight of it, will only separate and cut themselves off from the external world, so far as the world itself opposes them, and pursues them with hostility and persecution. The name “schools of the prophets” is the one which expresses most fully the character of these associations; only we must not think of them as merely educational institutions, in which the pupils of the prophets received instruction in prophesying or in theological studies. f39 We are not in possession indeed of any minute information concerning their constitution. Prophesying could neither be taught nor communicated by instruction, but was a gift of God which He communicated according to His free will to whomsoever He would. But the communication of this divine gift was by no means an arbitrary thing, but presupposed such a mental and spiritual disposition on the part of the recipient as fitted him to receive it; whilst the exercise of the gift required a thorough acquaintance with the law and the earlier revelations of God, which the schools of the prophets were well adapted to promote. It is therefore justly and generally assumed, that the study of the law and of the history of the divine guidance of Israel formed a leading feature in the occupations of the pupils of the prophets, which also included the cultivation of sacred poetry and music, and united exercises for the promotion of the prophetic inspiration.
That the study of the earlier revelations of God was carried on, may be very safely inferred from the fact that from the time of Samuel downwards the writing of sacred history formed an essential part of the prophet’s labours, as has been already observed at pp. 8, 9 (translation). The cultivation of sacred music and poetry may be inferred partly from the fact that, according to 1 Sam 10:5, musicians walked in front of the prophesying prophets, playing as they went along, and partly also from the fact that sacred music not only received a fresh impulse from David, who stood in a close relation to the association of prophets at Ramah, but was also raised by him into an integral part of public worship. At the same time, music was by no means cultivated merely that the sons of the prophets might employ it in connection with their discourses, but also as means of awakening holy susceptibilities and emotions in the soul, and of lifting up the spirit of God, and so preparing it for the reception of divine revelations (see at 2 Kings 3:15). And lastly, we must include among the spiritual exercises prophesying in companies, as at Gibeah (1 Sam 10:5) and Ramah (ch. 19:20).
The outward occasion for the formation of these communities we have to seek for partly in the creative spirit of the prophets Samuel and Elijah, and partly in the circumstances of the times in which they lived. The time of Samuel forms a turning-point in the development of the Old Testament kingdom of God. Shortly after the call of Samuel the judgment fell upon the sanctuary, which had been profaned by the shameful conduct of the priests: the tabernacle lost the ark of the covenant, and ceased in consequence to be the scene of the gracious presence of God in Israel.
Thus the task fell upon Samuel, as prophet of the Lord, to found a new house for that religious life which he had kindled, by collecting together into closer communities, those who had been awakened by his word, not only for the promotion of their own faith under his direction, but also for joining with him in the spread of the fear of God and obedience to the law of the Lord among their contemporaries.
But just as, in the time of Samuel, it was the fall of the legal sanctuary and priesthood which created the necessity for the founding of schools of the prophets; so in the times of Elijah and Elisha, and in the kingdom of the ten tribes, it was the utter absence of any sanctuary of Jehovah which led these prophets to found societies of prophets, and so furnish the worshippers of Jehovah, who would not bend their knees to Baal, with places and means of edification, as a substitute for what the righteous in the kingdom of Judah possessed in the temple and the Levitical priesthood. But the reasons for the establishment of prophets’ schools were not to be found merely in the circumstances of the times. There was a higher reason still, which must not be overlooked in our examination of these unions, and their importance in relation to the theocracy. We may learn from the fact that the disciples of the prophets who were associated together under Samuel are found prophesying (1 Sam 10:10; 19:20), that they were also seized by the Spirit of God, and that the Divine Spirit which moved them exerted a powerful influence upon all who came into contact with them.
Consequently the founding of associations of prophets is to be regarded as an operation of divine grace, which is generally manifested with all the greater might where sin most mightily abounds. As the Lord raised up prophets for His people at the times when apostasy had become great and strong, that they might resist idolatry with almighty power; so did He also create for himself organs of His Spirit in the schools of the prophets, who united with their spiritual fathers in fighting for His honour. It was by no means an accidental circumstance, therefore, that these unions are only met with in the times of Samuel and of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. These times resembled one another in the fact, that in both of them idolatry had gained the upper hand; though, at the same time, there were some respects in which they differed essentially from one another. In the time of Samuel the people did not manifest the same hostility to the prophets as in the time of Elijah. Samuel stood at the head of the nation as judge even during the reign of Saul; and after the rejection of the latter, he still stood so high in authority and esteem, that Saul never ventured to attack the prophets even in his madness.
Elijah and Elisha, on the other hand, stood opposed to a royal house which was bent upon making the worship of Baal the leading religion of the kingdom; and they had to contend against priest of calves and prophets of Baal, who could only be compelled by hard strokes to acknowledge the Lord of Sabaoth and His prophets. In the case of the former, what had to be done was to bring the nation to a recognition of its apostasy, to foster the new life which was just awakening, and to remove whatever hindrances might be placed in its way by the monarchy. In the time of the latter, on the contrary, what was needed was “a compact phalanx to stand against the corruption which had penetrated so deeply into the nation.” These differences in the times would certainly not be without their influence upon the constitution and operations of the schools of the prophets.
JONATHAN’S LAST ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE HIS FATHER TO DAVID.
1 SAMUEL. 20:1-11
After the occurrence which had taken place at Naioth, David fled thence and met with Jonathan, to whom he poured out his heart. f40 Though he had been delivered for the moment from the death which threatened him, through the marvellous influence of the divine inspiration of the prophets upon Saul and his messengers, he could not find in this any lasting protection from the plots of his mortal enemy. He therefore sought for his friend Jonathan, and complained to him, “What have I done? what is my crime, my sin before thy father, that he seeks my life?”
Verse 2. Jonathan endeavoured to pacify him: “Far be it! thou shalt not die: behold, my father does nothing great or small (i.e., not the smallest thing; cf. 1 Sam 25:36 and Num 22:18) that he does not reveal to me; why should my father hide this thing from me? It is not so.” The wOl after hNehi stands for alo : the Chethibh `hc;[; is probably to be preferred to the Keri `hc;[; , and to be understood in this sense: “My father has (hitherto) done nothing at all, which he has not told to me.” This answer of Jonathan does not presuppose that he knew nothing of the occurrences described in Sam 19:9-24, although it is possible enough that he might not have been with his father just at that time; but it is easily explained from the fact that Saul had made the fresh attack upon David’s life in a state of madness, in which he was no longer master of himself; so that it could not be inferred with certainty from this that he would still plot against David’s life in a state of clear consciousness. Hitherto Saul had no doubt talked over all his plans and undertakings with Jonathan, but he had not uttered a single word to him about his deadly hatred, or his intention of killing David; so that Jonathan might really have regarded his previous attacks upon David’s life as nothing more than symptoms of temporary aberration of mind.
Verse 3. But David had looked deeper into Saul’s heart. He replied with an oath (“he sware again,” i.e., a second time), “Thy father knoweth that I have found favour in thine eyes (i.e., that thou art attached to me); and thinketh Jonathan shall not know this, lest he be grieved. But truly, as surely as Jehovah liveth, and thy soul liveth, there is hardly a step (lit. about a step) between me and death.” yKi introduces the substance of the oath, as in 1 Sam 14:44, etc.
Verse 4-5. When Jonathan answered, “What thy soul saith, will I do to thee,” i.e., fulfil every wish, David made this request, “Behold, to-morrow is new moon, and I ought to sit and eat with the king: let me go, that I may conceal myself in the field (i.e., in the open air) till the third evening.” This request implies that Saul gave a feast at the new moon, and therefore that the new moon was not merely a religious festival, according to the law in Num 10:10; 28:11-15, but that it was kept as a civil festival also, and in the latter character for two days; as we may infer both from the fact that David reckoned to the third evening, i.e., the evening of the third day from the day then present, and therefore proposed to hide himself on the new moon’s day and the day following, and also still more clearly from vv. 12, 27, and 34, where Saul is said to have expected David at table on the day after the new moon. We cannot, indeed, conclude from this that there was a religious festival of two days’ duration; nor does it follow, that because Saul supposed that David might have absented himself on the first day on account of Levitical uncleanness (v. 26), therefore the royal feast was a sacrificial meal. It was evidently contrary to social propriety to take part in a public feast in a state of Levitical uncleanness, even though it is not expressly forbidden in the law.
Verse 6. “If thy father should miss me, then say, David hath asked permission of me to hasten to Bethlehem, his native town; for there is a yearly sacrifice for the whole family there.” This ground of excuse shows that families and households were accustomed to keep united sacrificial feasts once a year. According to the law in Deut 12:5ff., they ought to have been kept at the tabernacle; but at this time, when the central sanctuary had fallen into disuse, they were held in different places, wherever there were altars of Jehovah-as, for example, at Bethlehem (cf. Sam 16:2ff.). We see from these words that David did not look upon prevarication as a sin.
Verse 7. “If thy father says, It is well, there is peace to thy servant (i.e., he cherishes no murderous thoughts against me); but if he be very wroth, know that evil is determined by him.” hl;K; , to be completed; hence to be firmly and unalterably determined (cf. 1 Sam 25:17; Est 7:7). Seb. Schmidt infers from the closing words that the fact was certain enough to David, but not to Jonathan. Thenius, on the other hand, observes much more correctly, that “it is perfectly obvious from this that David was not quite clear as to Saul’s intentions,” though he upsets his own previous assertion, that after what David had gone through, he could never think of sitting again at the king’s table as he had done before.
Verse 8. David made sure that Jonathan would grant this request on account of his friendship, as he had brought him into a covenant of Jehovah with himself. David calls the covenant of friendship with Jonathan (1 Sam 18:3) a covenant of Jehovah, because he had made it with a solemn invocation of Jehovah. But in order to make quite sure of the fulfilment of his request on the part of Jonathan, David added, “But if there is a fault in me, do thou kill me hT;aæ used to strengthen the suffix); for why wilt thou bring me to thy father?” sc., that he may put me to death.
Verse 9. Jonathan replied, “This be far from thee!” sc., that I should kill thee, or deliver thee up to my father. hl;ylij; points back to what precedes, as in v. 2. “But yKi after a previous negative assertion) if I certainly discover that evil is determined by my father to come upon thee, and I do not tell it thee,” sc., “may God do so to me,” etc. The words are to be understood as an asseveration on oath, in which the formula of an oath is to be supplied in thought. This view is apparently a more correct one, on account of the cop. w before alo , than to take the last clause as a question, “Shall I not tell it thee?”
Verse 10. To this friendly assurance David replied, “Who will tell me?” sc., how thy father expresses himself concerning me; “or what will thy father answer thee roughly?” sc., if thou shouldst attempt to do it thyself. This is the correct explanation given by De Wette and Maurer. Gesenius and Thenius, on the contrary, take owOa in the sense of “if perchance.” But this is evidently incorrect; for even though there are certain passages in which owOa may be so rendered, it is only where some other case is supposed, and therefore the meaning or still lies at the foundation. These questions of David were suggested by a correct estimate of the circumstances, namely, that Saul’s suspicions would leave him to the conclusion that there was some understanding between Jonathan and David, and that he would take steps in consequence to prevent Jonathan from making David acquainted with the result of his conversation with Saul.
Verse 11. Before replying to these questions, Jonathan asked David to go with him to the field, that they might there fix upon the sign by which he would let him know, in a way in which no one could suspect, what was the state of his father’s mind.
1 SAMUEL. 20:12-23
In the field, where they were both entirely free from observation, Jonathan first of all renewed his covenant with David, by vowing to him on oath that he would give him information of his father’s feelings towards him (vv. 12, 13); and then entreated him, with a certain presentiment that David would one day be king, even then to maintain his love towards him and his family for ever (vv. 14-16); and lastly, he made David swear again concerning his love (v. 17), and then gave him the sign by which he would communicate the promised information (vv. 18-23).
Verse 12-15. Vv. 12 and 13a are connected. Jonathan commences with a solemn invocation of God: “Jehovah, God of Israel!” and thus introduces his oath. We have neither to supply “Jehovah is witness,” nor “as truly as Jehovah liveth,” as some have suggested. “When I inquire of my father about this time to-morrow, the day after to-morrow (a concise mode of saying ‘to-morrow or the day after’), and behold it is (stands) well for David, and then I do not send to thee and make it known to thee, Jehovah shall do so to Jonathan,” etc. (“The Lord do so,” etc., the ordinary formula used in an oath: see 1 Sam 14:44). The other case is then added without an adversative particle: “If it should please my father evil against thee (lit. as regards evil), “I will make it known to thee, and let thee go, that thou mayest go in peace; and Jehovah be with thee, as He has been with my father.” In this wish there is expressed the presentiment that David would one day occupy that place in Israel which Saul occupied then, i.e., the throne.-In vv. 14 and 15 the Masoretic text gives no appropriate meaning.
Luther’s rendering, in which he follows the Rabbins and takes the first alo (v. 14) by itself, and then completes the sentence from the context (“but if I do it not, show me no mercy, because I live, not even if I die”), contains indeed a certain permissible sense when considered in itself; but it is hardly reconcilable with what follows, “and do not tear away thy compassion for ever from my house.” The request that he would show no compassion to him (Jonathan) even if he died, and yet would not withdraw his compassion from his house for ever, contains an antithesis which would have been expressed most clearly and unambiguously in the words themselves, if this had been really what Jonathan intended to say. De Wette’s rendering gives a still more striking contradiction: “But let not (Jehovah be with thee) if I still live, and thou showest not the love of Jehovah to me, that I doe not, and thou withdrawest not thy love from my house for ever.” There is really no other course open than to follow the Syriac and Arabic, as Maurer, Thenius, and Ewald have done, and change the alo in the first two clauses in v. 14 into aWl or aluw] , according to the analogy of the form aWl (1 Sam 14:30), and to render the passage thus: “And mayest thou, if I still live, mayest thou show to me the favour of the Lord, and not if I doe, not withdraw thy favour from my house for ever, not even alo ) when Jehovah shall cut off the enemies of David, every one from the face of the earth!” “The favour of Jehovah” is favour such as Jehovah shall cut off,” etc., shows very clearly Jonathan’s conviction that Jehovah would give to David a victory over all his enemies.
Verse 16. Thus Jonathan concluded a covenant with the house of David, namely, by bringing David to promise kindness to his family for ever. The word tyriB] must be supplied in thought to træK; , as in 1 Sam 22:8 and Chron 7:18. “And Jehovah required it (what Jonathan had predicted) at the hand of David’s enemies.” Understood in this manner, the second clause contains a remark of the historian himself, namely, that Jonathan’s words were really fulfilled in due time. The traditional rendering of vqæB; as a relative preterite, with rmæa; understood, “and said, Let Jehovah take vengeance,” is not only precluded by the harshness of the introduction of the word “saying,” but still more by the fact, that if rmæa; (saying) is introduced between the copula vav and the verb vqæB; , the perfect cannot stand for the optative vqæB; , as in Josh 22:23.
Verse 17. “And Jonathan adjured David again by his love to him, because he loved him as his own soul” (cf. 1 Sam 18:1,3); i.e., he once more implored David most earnestly with an oath to show favour to him and his house.
Verse 18-19. He then discussed the sign with him for letting him know about his father’s state of mind: “To-morrow is new moon, and thou wilt be missed, for thy seat will be empty,” sc., at Saul’s table (see at v. 5). “And on the third day come down quickly (from thy sojourning place), and go to the spot where thou didst hide thyself on the day of the deed, and place thyself by the side of the stone Ezel.” The first words in this (19th) verse are not without difficulty. The meaning “on the third day” for the verb vLevi cannot be sustained by parallel passages, but is fully established, partly by yviyliv] , the third day, and partly by the Arabic usage (vid., Ges.
Thes. s. v.). daom] after dræy; , lit., “go violently down,” is more striking still.
Nevertheless the correctness of the text is not to be called in question, since vlæv; is sustained by trisseu’sei in the Septuagint, and daom] dræy; by descende ergo festinus in the Vulgate, and also by the rendering in the Chaldee, Arabic, and Syriac versions, “and on the third day thou wilt be missed still more,” which is evidently merely a conjecture founded upon the context. The meaning of hc,[mæ µwOy is doubtful. Gesenius, De Wette, and Maurer render it “on the day of the deed,” and understand it as referring to Saul’s deed mentioned in 1 Sam 19:2, viz., his design of killing David; others render it “on the day of business,” i.e., the working day (Luther, after the LXX and Vulgate), but this is not so good a rendering. The best is probably that of Thenius, “on the day of the business” (which is known to thee). Nothing further can be said concerning the stone Ezel than that Ezel is a proper name.
Verse 20. “And I will shoot off three arrows to the side of it (the stone Ezek), to shoot for me at the mark,” i.e., as if shooting at the mark. The article attached to yXiji is either to be explained as denoting that the historian assumed the thing as already well known, or on the supposition that Jonathan went to the field armed, and when giving the sign pointed to the arrows in his quiver. In the word dxæ the Raphe indicates that the suffix of h is not a mere toneless h , although it has no mappik, having given up its strong breathing on account of the harsh x sound.
Verse 21. “And, behold hNehi , directing attention to what follows as the main point), I will send the boy (saying), Go, get the arrows. If I shall say to the boy, Behold, the arrows are from thee hitherwards, fetch them; then come, for peace is to thee, and it is nothing, as truly as Jehovah liveth.”
Verse 22. “But if I say to the youth, Behold, the arrows are from thee farther off; then go, for Jehovah sendeth thee away,” i.e., bids thee flee.
The appointment of this sign was just as simple as it was suitable to the purpose.
Verse 23. This arrangement was to remain an eternal secret between them. “And (as for) the word that we have spoken, I and thou, behold, the Lord is between me and thee for ever,” namely, a witness and judge in case one of us two should break the covenant (vid., Gen 31:48-49). This is implied in the words, without there being any necessity to assume that `d[e had dropped out of the text. “The word” refers not merely to the sign agreed upon, but to the whole matter, including the renewal of the bond of friendship.
1 SAMUEL. 20:24-34
Verse 24-25. On the new moon’s day Saul sat at table, and as always, at his seat by the wall, i.e., at the top, just as, in eastern lands at the present day, the place of honour is the seat in the corner (see Harmar Beobachtungen ii. pp. 66ff.). “And Jonathan rose up, and Abner seated himself by the side of Saul, and David’s place remained empty.” The difficult passage, “And Jonathan rose up,” etc., can hardly be understood in any other way than as signifying that, when Abner entered, Jonathan rose from his seat by the side of Saul, and gave up the place to Abner, in which case all that is wanting is an account of the place to which Jonathan moved. Every other attempted explanation is exposed to much graver difficulties. The suggestion made by Gesenius, that the cop. w should be supplied before rneb]aæ , and bvæy; referred to Jonathan (“and Jonathan rose up and sat down, and Abner sat down by the side of Saul”), as in the Syriac, is open to this objection, that in addition to the necessity of supplying w, it is impossible to see why Jonathan should have risen up for the purpose of sitting down again. The rendering “and Jonathan came,” which is the one adopted by Maurer and De Wette, cannot be philologically sustained; inasmuch as, although µWq is used to signify rise up, in the sense of the occurrence of important events, or the appearance of celebrated of persons, it never means simply “to come.” And lastly, the conjecture of Thenius, that µWq should be altered into way¦qadeem, according to the senseless rendering of the LXX, proe’fthase to’n Iona’than, is overthrown by the fact, that whilst qideem does indeed mean to anticipate or come to meet, it never means to sit in front of, i.e., opposite to a person.
Verse 26. On this (first) day Saul said nothing, sc., about David’s absenting himself, “for he thought there has (something) happened to him, that he is not clean; surely yKi ) he is not clean” (vid., Lev 15:16ff.; Deut 23:11).
Verse 27-29. But on the second day, the day after the new moon (lit., the morrow after the new moon, the second day: ynive is a nominative, and to be joined to hy;h; , and not a genitive belonging to vd,jo ), when David was absent from table again, Saul said to Jonathan, “Why is the son of Jesse not come to meat, neither yesterday nor to-day?” Whereupon Jonathan answered, as arranged with David (compare vv. 28 and 29 with v. 6). “And my brother, he hath commanded me,” i.e., ordered me to come. hw;x; as in Ex 6:13, and ja; , the elder brother, who was then at the head of the family, and arranged the sacrificial meal.
Verse 30-31. Saul was greatly enraged at this, and said to Jonathan, “Son of a perverse woman `hw;[; is a participle, Niph. fem. from `hw;[; ) of rebellion,”- i.e., son of a perverse and rebellious woman (an insult offered to the mother, and therefore so much the greater to the son), hence the meaning really is, “Thou perverse, rebellious fellow,”- “do I not know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own shame, and to the shame of thy mother’s nakedness?” rjæB; , to choose a person out of love, to take pleasure in a person; generally construed with b pers., here with l] , although many Codd. have b here also. “For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the earth, thou and thy kingdom (kingship, throne) will not stand.” Thus Saul evidently suspected David as his rival, who would either wrest the government from him, or at any rate after his death from his son. “Now send and fetch him to me, for he is a child of death,” i.e., he has deserved to die, and shall be put to death.
Verse 32-34. When Jonathan replied, “My father, why shall he die? what has he done?” Saul was so enraged that he hurled his javelin at Jonathan (cf. 1 Sam 18:11). Thus Jonathan saw that his father had firmly resolved to put David to death, and rose up from the table in fierce anger, and did not eat that day; for he was grieved concerning David, because his father had done him shame. hl;K; is a substantive in the sense of unalterable resolution, like the verb in v. 9. yniVehæ vd,johæAµwOyB] , on the second day of the new moon or month.
1 SAMUEL. 20:35-42
The next morning Jonathan made David acquainted with what had occurred, by means of the sign agreed upon with David. The account of this, and of the meeting between Jonathan and David which followed, is given very concisely, only the main points being touched upon. In the morning (after what had occurred) Jonathan went to the field, rwiD; d[ewOm , either “at the time agreed upon with David,” or “to the meeting with David,” or perhaps better still, “according to the appointment (agreement) with David,” and a small boy with him.
Verse 36. To the latter he said, namely as soon as they had come to the field, Run, get the arrows which I shoot. The boy ran, and he shot off the arrows, “to go out beyond him,” i.e., so that the arrows flew farther than the boy had run. The form yXiji for xje only occurs in connection with disjunctive accents; beside the present chapter (vv. 36, 37, 38, Chethibh) we find it again in 2 Kings 9:24. The singular is used here with indefinite generality, as the historian did not consider it necessary to mention expressly, after what he had previously written, that Jonathan shot off three arrows one after another.
Verse 37-39. When the boy came to the place of the shot arrow (i.e., to the place to which the arrow had flown), Jonathan called after him, “See, the arrow is (lies) away from thee, farther off;” and again, “Quickly, haste, do not stand still,” that he might not see David, who was somewhere near; and the boy picked up the arrow and came to his lord. The Chethibh yXiji is evidently the original reading, and the singular is to be understood as in v. 37; the Keri yXiji is an emendation, according to the meaning of the words.
The writer here introduces the remark in v. 39, that the boy knew nothing of what had been arranged between Jonathan and David.
Verse 40. Jonathan then gave the boy his things (bow, arrows, and quiver), and sent him with them to the town, that he might be able to converse with David for a few seconds after his departure, and take leave of him unobserved.
Verse 41. When the boy had gone, David rose (from his hiding-place) from the south side, fell down upon his face to the ground, and bowed three times (before Jonathan); they then kissed each other, and wept for one another, “till David wept strongly,” i.e., to such a degree that David wept very loud. bg,n, lx,ae , “from the side of the south,” which is the expression used to describe David’s hiding-place, according to its direction in relation to the place where Jonathan was standing, has not been correctly rendered by any of the early translators except Aquila and Jerome. In the Septuagint, the Chaldee, the Syriac, and the Arabic, the statement in v. 19 is repeated, simply because the translators could not see the force of bg,n, lx,ae , although it is intelligible enough in relation to what follows, according to which David fled from thence southwards to Nob.
Verse 42. All that is given of the conversation between the two friends is the parting word spoken by Jonathan to David: “Go in peace. What we two have sworn in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever:” sc., let it stand, or let us abide by it. The clause contains an aposiopesis, which may be accounted for from Jonathan’s deep emotion, and in which the apodosis may be gathered from the sense. For it is evident, from a comparison of v. 23, that the expression “for ever” must be understood as forming part of the oath.-Ch. 1 Sam 21:1. David then set out upon his journey, and Jonathan returned to the town. This verse ought, strictly speaking, to form the conclusion of ch. 20.
The subject to “arose” is David; not because Jonathan was the last one spoken of (Thenius), but because the following words, “and Jonathan came,” etc., are in evident antithesis to “he arose and went.” DAVID’S FLIGHT TO NOB, AND THENCE TO GATH.
After the information which David had received from Jonathan, nothing remained for him in order to save his life but immediate flight. He could not return to the prophets at Ramah, where he had been miraculously preserved from the first outbreak of Saul’s wrath, because they could not ensure him permanent protection against the death with which he was threatened. He therefore fled first of all to Nob, to Ahimelech the high priest, to inquire the will of God through him concerning his future course (1 Sam 22:10,15), and induced him to give him bread and the sword of Goliath, also, under the pretext of having to perform a secret commission from the king with the greatest speed; for which Saul afterwards took fearful vengeance upon the priests at Nob when he was made acquainted with the affair through the treachery of Doeg (vv. 1-9). David then fled to Gath to the Philistian king Achish; but here he was quickly recognised as the conqueror of Goliath, and obliged to feign insanity in order to save his life, and then to flee still farther (vv. 10-15). The state of his mind at this time he poured out before God in the words of Ps 56; 52, and 34.
1 SAMUEL. 21:1-9
David at Nob.
Verse 1-2. The town of Nob or Nobeh (unless indeed the form bnO stands for nobaah here and in 1 Sam 22:9, and the h attached is merely h local, as the name is always written bnO in other places: vid., 1 Sam 22:11,32; 2 Sam. 21:16; Isa. 10:32; Neh. 11:32) was at that time a priests’ city (1 Sam 22:19), in which, according to the following account, the tabernacle was then standing, and the legal worship carried on. According to Isa 10:30,32, it was between Anathoth (Anata) and Jerusalem, and in all probability it has been preserved in the village of el-Isawiyeh, i.e., probably the village of Esau or Edom, which is midway between Anata and Jerusalem, an hour from the latter, and the same distance to the south-east of Gibeah of Saul (Tell el Phul), and which bears all the marks of an ancient place, partly in its dwellings, the stones of which date from a great antiquity, and partly in many marble columns which are found there (vid., Tobler, Topogr. v.
Jerusalem ii. p. 720). Hence v. Raumer (Pal. p. 215, ed. 4) follows Kiepert in the map which he has appended to Robinson’s Biblical Researches, and set down this place as the ancient Nob, for which Robinson indeed searched in vain (see Pal. ii. p. 150). Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, most probably the same person as Ahiah (1 Sam 14:3), was “the priest,” i.e., the high priest (see at ch. 14:3).
When David came to him, the priest “went trembling to meet him” ha;r]qi dræj; ) with the inquiry, “Why art thou alone, and no one is with thee?” The unexpected appearance of David, the son-in-law of the king, without any attendants, alarmed Ahimelech, who probably imagined that he had come with a commission from the king which might involve him in danger. David had left the few servants who accompanied him in his flight somewhere in the neighbourhood, as we may gather from v. 2, because he wished to converse with the high priest alone.
Ahimelech’s anxious inquiry led David to resort to the fabrication described in v. 2: “The king hath commanded me a business, and said to me, No one is to know anything of this matter, in which (lit. in relation to the matter with regard to which) I send thee, and which I have entrusted to thee (i.e., no one is to know either the occasion or the nature of the commission): and the servants I have directed to such and such a place.” yowda`, Poel, to cause to know, point, show. Ahimelech had received no information as yet concerning the most recent occurrences between Saul and David; and David would not confess to him that he was fleeing from Saul, because he was evidently afraid that the high priest would not give him any assistance, lest he should draw down the wrath of the king. This falsehood brought he greatest calamities upon Ahimelech and the priests at Nob (1 Sam 22:9-19), and David was afterwards obliged to confess that he had occasioned it all (1 Sam 22:22).
Verse 3. “And now what is under thy hand? give into my hand (i.e., hand me) five loaves, or whatever (else) is to be found.” David asked for five loaves, because he had spoken of several attendants, and probably wanted to make provision for two or three days (Thenius).
Verse 4. The priest answered that he had no common bread, but only holy bread, viz., according to v. 6, shew-bread that had been removed, which none but priests were allowed to eat, and that in a sacred place; but that he was willing to give him some of these loaves, as David had said that he was travelling upon an important mission from the king, provided only that “the young men had kept themselves at least from women,” i.e., had not been defiled by sexual intercourse (Lev 15:18). If they were clean at any rate in this respect, he would in such a case of necessity depart from the Levitical law concerning the eating of the shew-bread, for the sake of observing the higher commandment of love to a neighbour (Lev 19:18; cf. Matt 12:5-6; Mark 2:25-26). f42 Verse 5. David quieted him concerning this scruple, and said, “Nay, but women have been kept from us since yesterday and the day before.” The use of µai yKi may be explained from the fact, that in David’s reply he paid more attention to the sense than to the form of the priest’s scruple, and expressed himself as concisely as possible. The words, “if the young men have only kept themselves from women,” simply meant, if only they are not unclean; and David replied, That is certainly not the case, but women have been kept from us; so that µai yKi has the meaning but in this passage also, as it frequently has after a previous negative, which is implied in the thought here as in 2 Sam 13:33. “When I came out, the young men’s things were holy (Levitically clean); and if it is an unholy way, it becomes even holy through the instrument.”
David does not say that the young men were clean when he came out (for the rendering given to r[ænæ yliK] in the Septuagint, pa>nta ta> paida>ria , is without any critical value, and is only a mistaken attempt to explain the word yliK] , which was unintelligible to the translator), but simply affirms that vd,qo r[ænæ yliK] , i.e., according to Luther’s rendering (der Knaben Zeug war heilig), the young men’s things (clothes, etc.) were holy. yliK] does not mean merely vessels, arms, or tools, but also the dress (Deut 22:5), or rather the clothes as well as such things as were most necessary to meet the wants of life.
By the coitus, or strictly speaking, by the emissio seminis in connection with the coitus, not only were the persons themselves defiled, but also every article of clothing or leather upon which any of the semen fell (Lev 15:18); so that it was necessary for the purpose of purification that the things which a man had on should all be washed. David explains, with evident allusion to this provision, that the young men’s things were holy, i.e., perfectly clean, for the purpose of assuring the priest that there was not the smallest Levitical uncleanness attaching to them. The clause which follows is to be taken as conditional, and as supposing a possible case: “and if it is an unholy way.” Ër,D, , the way that David was going with his young men, i.e., his purpose of enterprise, by which, however, we are not to understand his request of holy bread from Ahimelech, but the performance of the king’s commission of which he had spoken. yKi ãaæ , lit. besides (there is) also that, = moreover there is also the fact, that it becomes holy through the instrument; i.e., as O. v. Gerlach has correctly explained it, “on the supposition of the important royal mission, upon which David pretended to be sent, through me as an ambassador of the anointed of the Lord,” in which, at any rate, David’s meaning really was, “the way was sanctified before God, when he, as His chosen servant, the preserver of the true kingdom of God in Israel, went to him in his extremity.” That yliK] in the sense of instrument is also applied to men, is evident from Isa 13:5 and Jer 50:25.
Verse 6-7. The priest then gave him (what was) holy, namely the shewloaves “that were taken from before Jehovah,” i.e., from the holy table, upon which they had lain before Jehovah for seven days (vid., Lev 24:6- 9).-In v. 7 there is a parenthetical remark introduced, which was of great importance in relation to the consequences of this occurrence. There at the sanctuary there was a man of Saul’s servants, `rx;[; , i.e., “kept back (shut off) before Jehovah:” i.e., at the sanctuary of the tabernacle, either for the sake of purification or as a proselyte, who wished to be received into the religious communion of Israel, or because of supposed leprosy, according to Lev 13:4. His name was Doeg the Edomite, h[;r; ryBiaæ , “the strong one (i.e., the overseer) of the herdsmen of Saul.” f43 Verse 8. David also asked Ahimelech whether he had not a sword or a javelin at hand; “for I have neither brought my sword nor my (other) weapons with me, because the affair of the king was pressing,” i.e., very urgent, xjæn; , hap leg, literally, compressed.
Verse 9. The priest replied, that there was only the sword of Goliath, whom David slew in the terebinth valley (1 Sam 17:2), wrapped up in a cloth hanging behind the ephod (the high priest’s shoulder-dress)-a sign of the great worth attached to this dedicatory offering. He could take that.
David accepted it, as a weapon of greater value to him than any other, because he had not only taken this sword as booty from the Philistine, but had cut off the head of Goliath with it (see 1 Sam 17:51). When and how this sword had come into the tabernacle is not known (see the remarks on 1 Sam 17:54). The form hz, for hz, is only met with here. On the Piska, see at Josh 4:1.
1 SAMUEL. 21:10-11
David with Achish at Gath.-David fled from Nob to Achish of Gath. This Philistian king is called Abimelech in the heading of Ps 34, according to the standing title of the Philistian princes at Gath. The fact that David fled at once out of the land, and that to the Philistines at Gath, may be accounted for from the great agitation into which he had been thrown by the information he had received from Jonathan concerning Saul’s implacable hatred. As some years had passed since the defeat of Goliath, and the conqueror of Goliath was probably not personally known to many of the Philistines, he might hope that he should not be recognised in Gath, and that he might receive a welcome there with his few attendants, as a fugitive who had been driven away by Saul, the leading foe of the Philistines. f44 But in this he was mistaken. He was recognised at once by the courtiers of Achish. They said to their prince, “Is not this David the king of the land?
Have they not sung in circles, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?” (cf. 1 Sam 18:6-7). “King of the land” they call David, not because his anointing and divine election were known to them, but on account of his victorious deeds, which had thrown Saul entirely into the shade. Whether they intended by these words to celebrate David as a hero, or to point him out to their prince as a dangerous man, cannot be gathered from the words themselves, nor can the question be decided with certainty at all (cf. 1 Sam 29:5).
1 SAMUEL. 21:12-13
But David took these words to heart, and was in great fear of Achish, lest he should treat him as an enemy, and kill him. In order to escape this danger, “he disguised his understanding (i.e., pretended to be out of his mind) in their eyes (i.e., before the courtiers of Achish), behaved insanely under their hands (when they tried to hold him as a madman), scribbled upon the door-wings, and let his spittle run down into his beard.” The suffix to hn;v; is apparently superfluous, as the object, wOm[]mæAta, , follows immediately afterwards. But it may be accounted for from the circumstantiality of the conversation of every-day life, as in 2 Sam 14:6, and (though these cases are not perfectly parallel) Ex 2:6; Prov 5:22; Ezek 10:3 (cf. Gesenius’ Gramm. §121, 6, Anm. 3). hw;T; , from hw;T; , to make signs, i.e., to scribble. The LXX and Vulgate render it etumpani’zein, impingebat, he drummed, smote with his fists upon the wings of the door, which would make it appear as if they had read waayaataap (from ãpæT; ), which seems more suitable to the condition of a madman whose saliva ran out of his mouth. 1 SAMUEL 21:14,15 By this dissimulation David escaped the danger which threatened him; for Achish thought him mad, and would have nothing to do with him. “Wherefore do ye bring him to me? Have I need of madmen, that ye have brought this man hither to rave against me? Shall this man come into my house?” Thus Achish refused to receive him into his house. But whether he had David taken over the border, or at any rate out of the town; or whether David went away of his own accord; or whether he was taken away by his servants, and then hurried as quickly as possible out of the land of the Philistines, is not expressly mentioned, as being of no importance in relation to the principal object of the narrative. All that is stated is, that he departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam.
DAVID’S WANDERINGS IN JUDAH AND MOAB.
MASSACRE OF PRIESTS BY SAUL.
1 SAMUEL. 22:1-5
Having been driven away by Achish, the Philistian king at Gath, David took refuge in the cave Adullam, where his family joined him. The cave Adullam is not to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, as some have inferred from 2 Sam 23:13-14, but near the town Adullam, which is classed in Josh 15:35 among the towns in the lowlands of Judah, and at the foot of the mountains; though it has not yet been traced with any certainty, as the caves of Deir Dubban, of which Van de Velde speaks, are not the only large caves on the western slope of the mountains of Judah.
When his brethren and his father’s house, i.e., the rest of his family, heard of his being there, they came down to him, evidently because they no longer felt themselves safe in Bethlehem from Saul’s revenge. The cave Adullam cannot have been more than three hours from Bethlehem, as Socoh and Jarmuth, which were near to Adullam, were only three hours and a half from Jerusalem (see at Josh 12:15).
Verse 2. There a large number of malcontents gathered together round David, viz., all who were in distress, and all who had creditors, and all who were embittered in spirit (bitter of soul), i.e., people who were dissatisfied with the general state of affairs or with the government of Saul-about four hundred men, whose leader he became. David must in all probability have stayed there a considerable time. The number of those who went over to him soon amounted to six hundred men (1 Sam 23:13), who were for the most part brave and reckless, and who ripened into heroic men under the command of David during his long flight. A list of the bravest of them is given in 1 Chron 12, with which compare 2 Sam 23:13ff. and 1 Chron 11:15ff.
Verse 3-5. David proceeded thence to Mizpeh in Moab, and placed his parents in safety with the king of the Moabites. His ancestress Ruth was a Moabitess. Mizpeh: literally a watch-tower or mountain height commanding a very extensive prospect. Here it is probably a proper name, belonging to a mountain fastness on the high land, which bounded the Arboth Moab on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, most likely on the mountains of Abarim or Pisgah (Deut 34:1), and which could easily be reached from the country round Bethlehem, by crossing the Jordan near the point where it entered the Dead Sea. As David came to the king of Moab, the Moabites had probably taken possession of the most southerly portion of the eastern lands of the Israelites; we may also infer this from the fact that, according to 1 Sam 14:47, Saul had also made war upon Moab, for Mizpeh Moab is hardly to be sought for in the actual land of the Moabites, on the south side of the Arnon (Mojeb). tae ... an;Aaxeye , “May my father and my mother go out with you.” The construction of ax;y; with tae is a pregnant one: to go out of their home and stay with you (Moabites). “Till I know what God will do to me.” Being well assured of the justice of his cause, as contrasted with the insane persecutions of Saul, David confidently hoped that God would bring his flight to an end.
His parents remained with the king of Moab as long as David was dWxm; , i.e., upon the mount height, or citadel. This can only refer to the place of refuge which David had found at Mizpeh Moab. For it is perfectly clear from v. 5, where the prophet Gad calls upon David not to remain any longer dWxm; , but to return to the land of Judah, that the expression cannot refer either to the cave Adullam, or to any other place of refuge in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem. The prophet Gad had probably come to David from Samuel’s school of prophets; but whether he remained with David from that time forward to assist him with his counsel in his several undertakings, cannot be determined, on account of our want of information. In 1 Chron 21:9 he is called David’s seer. In the last year of David’s reign he announced to him the punishment which would fall upon him from God on account of his sin in numbering the people (2 Sam 24:11ff.); and according to 1 Chron 29:29 he also wrote the acts of David.
In consequence of this admonition, David returned to Judah, and went into the wood Hareth, a woody region on the mountains of Judah, which is never mentioned again, and the situation of which is unknown. According to the counsels of God, David was not to seek for refuge outside the land; not only that he might not be estranged from his fatherland and the people of Israel, which would have been opposed to his calling to be the king of Israel, but also that he might learn to trust entirely in the Lord as his only refuge and fortress.
1 SAMUEL. 22:6-7
Murder of the Priests by Saul.
Vv. 6ff. When Saul heard that David and the men with him were known, i.e., that information had been received as to their abode or hiding-place, he said to his servants when they were gathered round him, “Hear,” etc.
The words, “and Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk upon the height,” etc., show that what follows took place in a solemn conclave of all the servants of Saul, who were gathered round their king to deliberate upon the more important affairs of the kingdom. This sitting took place at Gibeah, the residence of Saul, and in the open air “under the tamarisk.” hm;r; , upon the height, not “under a grove at Ramah” (Luther); for Ramah is an appellative, and hm;r; , which belongs to lv,ae tjæTæ , is a more minute definition of the locality, which is indicated by the definite article (the tamarisk upon the height) as the well-known place where Saul’s deliberative assemblies were held. From the king’s address (“hear, ye Benjaminites; will the son of Jesse also give you all fields and vineyards?”) we perceive that Saul had chosen his immediate attendants form the members of his own tribe, and had rewarded their services right royally. µk,L]kul]AµGæ is placed first for the sake of emphasis, “You Benjaminites also,” and not rather to Judahites, the members of his own tribe. The second lKo (before µWc ) is not a dative; but l merely serves to give greater prominence to the object which is placed at the head of the clause: As for all of you, will he make (you: see Ewald, §310, a.).
1 SAMUEL. 22:8
“That you have all of you conspired against me, and no one informs me of it, since my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse.” trok]Bi , lit. at the making of a covenant. Saul may possibly have heard something of the facts related in 1 Sam 20:12-17; at the same time, his words may merely refer to Jonathan’s friendship with David, which was well known to him. w¦’eeyncholeh, “and no one of you is grieved on my account...that my son has set my servant (David) as a lier in wait against me,” i.e., to plot against my life, and wrest the throne to himself. We may see from this, that Saul was carried by his suspicions very far beyond the actual facts. “As at this day:” cf. Deut 8:18, etc.
1 SAMUEL. 22:9-10
The Edomite Doeg could not refrain from yielding to this appeal, and telling Saul what he had seen when staying at Nob; namely, that Ahimelech had inquired of God for David, and given him food as well as Goliath’s sword. For the fact itself, see 1 Sam 21:1-10, where there is no reference indeed to his inquiring of God; though it certainly took place, as Ahimelech (v. 15) does not disclaim it. Doeg is here designated bxæn; , “the superintendent of Saul’s servants,” so that apparently he had been invested with the office of marshal of the court.
1 SAMUEL. 22:11-15
On receiving this information, Saul immediately summoned the priest Ahimelech and “all his father’s house,” i.e., the whole priesthood, to Nob, to answer for what they had done. To Saul’s appeal, “Why have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse, by giving him bread?”
Ahimelech, who was not conscious of any such crime, since David had come to him with a false pretext, and the priest had probably but very little knowledge of what took place at court, replied both calmly and worthily (v. 14): “And who of all thy servants is so faithful (proved, attested, as in Num 12:7) as David, and son-in-law of the king, and having access to thy private audience, and honoured in thy house?” The true explanation of ËT,[]mæv]miAla, rs; may be gathered from a comparison of 2 Sam 23:23 and 1 Chron 11:25, where t[æmæv]mi occurs again, as the context clearly shows, in the sense of a privy councillor of the king, who hears his personal revelations and converses with him about them, so that it corresponds to our “audience.” rWs , lit. to turn aside from the way, to go in to any one, or to look after anything (Ex 3:3; Ruth 4:1, etc.); hence in the passage before us “to have access,” to be attached to a person.
This is the explanation given by Gesenius and most of the modern expositors, whereas the early translators entirely misunderstood the passage, though they have given the meaning correctly enough at 2 Sam 23:23. But if this was the relation in which David stood to Saul-and he had really done so for a long time-there was nothing wrong in what the high priest had done for him; but he had acted according to the best of his knowledge, and quite conscientiously as a faithful subject of the king.
Ahimelech then added still further (v. 15): “Did I then begin to inquire of God for him this day?” i.e., was it the first time that I had obtained the decision of God for David concerning important enterprises, which he had to carry out in the service of the king? “Far be from me,” sc., any conspiracy against the king, like that of which I am accused. “Let not the king lay it as a burden upon thy servant, my whole father’s house (the omission of the cop. w before tyyBeAlk;B] may be accounted for from the excitement of the speaker); for thy servant knows not the least of all this.” tawoAlk;B] , of all that Saul had charged him with.
1 SAMUEL. 22:16-17
Notwithstanding this truthful assertion of his innocence, Saul pronounced sentence of death, not only upon the high priest, but upon all the priests at Nob, and commanded his xWr , “runner,” i.e., halberdiers, to put the priests to death, because, as he declared in his wrath, “their hand is with David (i.e., because they side with David), and because they knew that he fled and did not tell me.” Instead of the Chethibh ˆz,aO, it is probably more correct to read ˆz,aO, according to the Keri, although the Chethibh may be accounted for if necessary from a sudden transition from a direct to an indirect form of address: “and (as he said) had not told him.” This sentence was so cruel, and so nearly bordering upon madness, that the halberdiers would not carry it out, but refused to lay hands upon “the priests of Jehovah.”
1 SAMUEL. 22:18
Saul then commanded Doeg to cut down the priests, and he at once performed the bloody deed. On the expression “wearing the linen ephod,” compare the remarks at 1 Sam 2:18. The allusion to the priestly clothing, like the repetition of the expression “priests of Jehovah,” serves to bring out into its true light the crime of the bloodthirsty Saul and his executioner Doeg. The very dress which the priests wore, as the consecrated servants of Jehovah, ought to have made them shrink from the commission of such a murder.
1 SAMUEL. 22:19
But not content with even this revenge, Saul had the whole city of Nob destroyed, like a city that was laid under the ban (vid., Deut 13:13ff.). So completely did Saul identify his private revenge with the cause of Jehovah, that he avenged a supposed conspiracy against his own person as treason against Jehovah the God-king.
1 SAMUEL. 22:20-23
The only one of the whole body of priests who escaped this bloody death was a son of Ahimelech, named Abiathar, who “fled after David,” i.e., to David the fugitive, and informed him of the barbarous vengeance which Saul had taken upon the priests of the Lord. Then David recognised and confessed his guilt. “I knew that day that the Edomite Doeg was there, that he (i.e., that as the Edomite Doeg was there, he) would tell Saul: I am the cause of all the souls of thy father’s house,” i.e., of their death. bbæs; is used here in the sense of being the cause of a thing, which is one of the meanings of the verb in the Arabic and Talmudic (vid., Ges. Lex. s. v.). “Stay with me, fear not; for he who seeks my life seeks thy life: for thou art safe with me.” The abstract mishmereth, protection, keeping (Ex 12:6; 16:33-34), is used for the concrete, in the sense of protected, well kept.
The thought is the following: As no other is seeking thy life than Saul, who also wants to kill me, thou mayest stay with me without fear, as I am sure of divine protection. David spoke thus in the firm belief that the Lord would deliver him from his foe, and give him the kingdom. The action of Saul, which had just been reported to him, could only strengthen him in this belief, as it was a sign of the growing hardness of Saul, which must accelerate his destruction.
DAVID DELIVERS KEILAH. HE IS BETRAYED BY THE ZIPHITES, AND MARVELLOUSLY SAVED FROM SAUL IN THE DESERT OF MAON.
The following events show how, on the one hand, the Lord gave pledges to His servant David that he would eventually become king, but yet on the other hand plunged him into deeper and deeper trouble, that He might refine him and train him to be a king after His own heart. Saul’s rage against the priests at Nob not only drove the high priest into David’s camp, but procured for David the help of the “light and right” of the high priest in all his undertakings. Moreover, after the prophet Gad had called David back to Judah, an attack of the Philistines upon Keilah furnished him with the opportunity to show himself to the people as their deliverer. And although this enterprise of his exposed him to fresh persecutions on the part of Saul, who was thirsting for revenge, he experienced in connection therewith not only the renewal of Jonathan’s friendship on this occasion, but a marvellous interposition on the part of the faithful covenant God.
1 SAMUEL. 23:1-14
Rescue of Keilah.
Verse 1. After his return to the mountains of Judah, David received intelligence that Philistines, i.e., a marauding company of these enemies of Israel, were fighting against Keilah, and plundering the threshing-floors, upon which the corn that had been reaped was lying ready for threshing.
Keilah belonged to the towns of the lowlands of Judah (Josh 15:44); and although it has not yet been discovered, was certainly very close to the Philistian frontier.
Verse 2. After receiving this information, David inquired of the Lord (through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest) whether he should go and smite these Philistines, and received an affirmative answer. Verse 3-6. But his men said to him, “Behold, here in Judah we are in fear (i.e., are not safe from Saul’s pursuit); how shall we go to Keilah against the ranks of the Philistines?” In order, therefore, to infuse courage into them, he inquired of the Lord again, and received the assurance from God, “I will give the Philistines into thy hand.” He then proceeded with his men, fought against the Philistines, drove off their cattle, inflicted a severe defeat upon them, and thus delivered the inhabitants of Keilah. In v. 6 a supplementary remark is added in explanation of the expression “inquired of the Lord,” to the effect that, when Abiathar fled to David to Keilah, the ephod had come to him. The words “to David to Keilah” are not to be understood as signifying that Abiathar did not come to David till he was in Keilah, but that when he fled after David (1 Sam 22:20), he met with him as he was already preparing for the march of Keilah, and immediately proceeded with him thither. For whilst it is not stated in 1 Sam 22:20 that Abiathar came to David in the wood of Hareth, but the place of meeting is left indefinite, the fact that David had already inquired of Jehovah (i.e., through the oracle of the high priest) with reference to the march to Keilah, compels us to assume that Abiathar had come to him before he left the mountains for Keilah. So that the brief expression “to David to Keilah,” which is left indefinite because of its brevity, must be interpreted in accordance with this fact.
Verse 7-9. As soon as Saul received intelligence of David’s march to Keilah, he said, “God has rejected him (and delivered him) into my hand.” rkæn; does not mean simply to look at, but also to find strange, and treat as strange, and then absolutely to reject (Jer 19:4, as in the Arabic in the fourth conjugation). This is the meaning here, where the construction with dy; is to be understood as a pregnant expression: “rejection and delivered into my hand” (vid., Ges. Lex. s. v.). The early translators have rendered it quite correctly according to the sense rkæm; , pe>praken , tradidit, without there being any reason to suppose that they read rkæm; instead of rkæn; . “For he hath shut himself in, to come (= coming, or by coming) into a city with gates and bolts.”
Verse 8. He therefore called all the people (i.e., men of war) together to war, to go down to Keilah, and to besiege David and his men.
Verse 9-12. But David heard that Saul was preparing mischief against him (lit. forging, hecheriysh, from vr;j; ; Prov 3:29; 6:14, etc.), and he inquired through the oracle of the high priest whether the inhabitants of Keilah would deliver him up to Saul, and whether Saul would come down; and as both questions were answered in the affirmative, he departed from the city with his six hundred men, before Saul carried out his plan. It is evident from vv. 9-12, that when the will of God was sought through the Urim and Thummim, the person making the inquiry placed the matter before God in prayer, and received an answer; but always to one particular question. For when David had asked the two questions given in v. 11, he received the answer to the second question only, and had to ask the first again (v. 12).
Verse 13. “They went whithersoever they could go” (lit. “they wandered about where they wandered about”), i.e., wherever they could go without danger.
Verse 14. David retreated into the desert (of Judah), to the mountain heights (that were to be found there), and remained on the mountains in the desert of Ziph. The “desert of Judah” is the desert tract between the mountains of Judah and the Dead Sea, in its whole extent, from the northern boundary of the tribe of Judah to the Wady Fikreh in the south (see at Josh 15:61). Certain portions of this desert, however, received different names of their own, according to the names of different towns on the border of the mountains and desert. The desert of Ziph was that portion of the desert of Judah which was near to and surrounded the town of Ziph, the name of which has been retained in the ruins of Tell Zif, an hour and three-quarters to the south-east of Hebron (see at Josh 15:55). 14b. “And Saul sought him all the days, but God delivered him not into his hand.” This is a general remark, intended to introduce the accounts which follow, of the various attempts made by Saul to get David into his power. “All the days,” i.e., as long as Saul lived.
1 SAMUEL. 23:15-17
David in the Deserts of Ziph and Maon.
The history of David’s persecution by Saul is introduced in vv. 15-18, with the account of an attempt made by the noble-minded prince Jonathan, in a private interview with his friend David, to renew his bond of friendship with him, and strengthen David by his friendly words for the sufferings that yet awaited him. Vv. 15, 16 are to be connected together so as to form one period: “When David saw that Saul was come out...and David was in the desert of Ziph, Jonathan rose up and went to David into the wood.” vr,j , from choresh, with h paragogic, signifies a wood or thicket; here, however, it is probably a proper name for a district in the desert of Ziph that was overgrown with wood or bushes, and where David was stopping at that time. “There is no trace of this wood now. The land lost its ornament of trees centuries ago through the desolating hand of man” (v. de Velde). “And strengthened his hand in God,” i.e., strengthened his heart, not by supplies, or by money, or any subsidy of that kind, but by consolation drawn from his innocence, and the promises of God (vid., Judg 9:24; Jer 23:14). “Fear not,” said Jonathan to him, “for the hand of Saul my father will not reach thee; and thou wilt become king over Israel, and I will be the second to thee; and Saul my father also knows that it is so.” Even though Jonathan had heard nothing from David about his anointing, he could learn from David’s course thus far, and from his own father’s conduct, that David would not be overcome, but would possess the sovereignty after the death of Saul. Jonathan expresses here, as his firm conviction, what he has intimated once before, in 1 Sam 20:13ff.; and with the most loving selfdenial entreats David, when he shall be king, to let him occupy the second place in the kingdom. It by no means follows from the last words (“Saul my father knoweth”), that Saul had received distinct information concerning the anointing of David, and his divine calling to be king. The words merely contain the thought, he also sees that it will come. The assurance of this must have forced itself involuntarily upon the mind of Saul, both from his own rejection, as foretold by Samuel, and also from the marvellous success of David in all his undertakings.
1 SAMUEL. 23:18-20
The treachery of the Ziphites forms a striking contrast to Jonathan’s treatment of David. They went up to Gibeah to betray to Saul the fact that David was concealed in the wood upon their mountain heights, and indeed “upon the hill Hachilah, which lies to the south of the waste.” The hill of Ziph is a flattened hill standing by itself, of about a hundred feet in height. “There is no spot from which you can obtain a better view of David’s wanderings backwards and forwards in the desert than from the hill of Ziph, which affords a true panorama. The Ziphites could see David and his men moving to and fro in the mountains of the desert of Ziph, and could also perceive how he showed himself in the distance upon the hill Hachilah on the south side of Ziph (which lies to the right by the desert); whereupon they sent as quickly as possible to Saul, and betrayed to him the hidingplace of his enemy” (v. de Velde, ii. pp. 104-5). Jeshimon does not refer here to the waste land on the north-eastern coast of the Dead Sea, as in Num 21:20; 23:28, but to the western side of that sea, which is also desert. v. 20 reads literally thus: “And now, according to all the desire of thy soul, O king, to come down (from Gibeah, which stood upon higher ground), come down, and it is in us to deliver him (David) into the hand of the king.”
1 SAMUEL. 23:21
For this treachery Saul blessed them: “Be blessed of the Lord, that ye have compassion upon me.” In his evil conscience he suspected David of seeking to become his murderer, and therefore thanked God in his delusion that the Ziphites had had compassion upon him, and shown him David’s hiding-place.
1 SAMUEL. 23:22
In his anxiety, however, lest David should escape him after all, he charged them, “Go, and give still further heed ˆWK without ble , as in Judg 12:6), and reconnoitre and look at his place where his foot cometh (this simply serves as a more precise definition of the nominal suffix in µwOqm; , his place), who hath seen him there (sc., let them inquire into this, that they may not be deceived by uncertain or false reports): for it is told me that he dealeth very subtilly.”
1 SAMUEL. 23:23
They were to search him out in every corner (the object to [dæy; must be supplied from the context). “And come ye again to me with the certainty (i.e., when you have got some certain intelligence concerning his hidingplace), that I may go with you; and if he is in the land, I will search him out among all the thousands (i.e., families) of Judah.”
1 SAMUEL. 23:24
With this answer the Ziphites arose and “went to Ziph before Saul” (who would speedily follow with his warriors); but David had gone farther in the meantime, and was with his men “in the desert of Maon, in the steppe to the south of the wilderness.” Maon, now Maïn, is about three hours and three-quarters S.S.E. of Hebron (see at Josh 15:55), and therefore only two hours from Ziph, from which it is visible. “The table-land appears to terminate here; nevertheless the principal ridge of the southern mountains runs for a considerable distance towards the south-west, whereas towards the south-east the land falls off more and more into a lower table-land.”
This is the Arabah or steppe on the right of the wilderness (v. de Velde, ii. pp. 107-8).
1 SAMUEL. 23:25
Having been informed of the arrival of Saul and his men (warriors), David went down the rock, and remained in the desert of Maon. “The rock” is probably the conical mountain of Main (Maon), the top of which is now surrounded with ruins, probably remains of a tower (Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 194), as the rock from which David came down can only have been the mountain (v. 26), along one side of which David went with his men whilst Saul and his warriors went on the other, namely when Saul pursued him into the desert of Maon.
1 SAMUEL. 23:26-27
“And David was anxiously concerned to escape from Saul, and Saul and his men were encircling David and his men to seize them; but a messenger came to Saul.... Then Saul turned from pursuing David.” The two clauses, “for Saul and his men” (v. 26b), and “there came a messenger” (v. 27), are the circumstantial clauses by which the situation is more clearly defined: the apodosis to rwiD; hy;h; does not follow till bWv in v. 28. The apodosis cannot begin with Ëa;l]m because the verb does not stand at the head.
David had thus almost inextricably fallen into the hands of Saul; but God saved him by the fact that at that very moment a messenger arrived with the intelligence, “Hasten and go (come), for Philistines have fallen into the land,” and thus called Saul away from any further pursuit of David.
1 SAMUEL. 23:28
From this occurrence the place received the name of Sela-hammahlekoth, “rock of smoothnesses,” i.e., of slipping away or escaping, from qlæj; , in the sense of being smooth. This explanation is at any rate better supported than “rock of divisions, i.e., the rock at which Saul and David were separated” (Clericus), since qlæj; does not mean to separate.
DAVID SPARES SAUL IN THE CAVE. CH. 24.
1 SAMUEL. 24:1
Whilst Saul had gone against the Philistines, David left this dangerous place, and went to the mountain heights of Engedi, i.e., the present Ainjidy (goat-fountain), in the middle of the western coats of the Dead Sea (see at Josh 15:62), which he could reach from Maon in six or seven hours.
The soil of the neighbourhood consists entirely of limestone; but the rocks contain a considerable admixture of chalk and flint. Round about there rise bare conical mountains, and even ridges of from two to four hundred feet in height, which mostly run down to the sea. The steep mountains are intersected by wadys running down in deep ravines to the sea. “On all sides the country is full of caverns, which might then serve as lurking-places for David and his men, as they do for outlaws at the present day” (Rob. Pal. p. 203).
1 SAMUEL. 24:1-8
Verse 1-2. When Saul had returned from his march against the Philistines, and was informed of this, he set out thither with three thousand picked men to search for David and his men in the wild-goat rocks. The expression “rocks of the wild goats” is probably not a proper name for some particular rocks, but a general term applied to the rocks of that locality on account of the number of wild goats and chamois that were to be found in all that region, as mountain goats are still (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 204).
Verse 3. When Saul came to the sheep-folds by the way, where there was a cave, he entered it to cover his feet, whilst David and his men sat behind in the cave. V. de Velde (R. ii. p. 74) supposes the place, where the sheepfolds by the roadside were, to have been the Wady Chareitun, on the south-west of the Frank mountain, and to the north-east of Tekoah, a very desolate and inaccessible valley. “Rocky, precipitous walls, which rise up one above another for many hundred feet, form the sides of this defile. Stone upon stone, and cliff above cliff, without any sign of being habitable, or of being capable of affording even a halting-place to anything but wild goats.” Near the ruins of the village of Chareitun, hardly five minutes’ walk to the east, there is a large cave or chamber in the rock, with a very narrow entrance entirely concealed by stones, and with many side vaults in which the deepest darkness reigns, at least to any one who has just entered the limestone vaults from the dazzling light of day.
It may be argued in favour of the conjecture that this is the cave which Saul entered, and at the back of which David and his men were concealed, that this cave is on the road from Bethlehem to Ain-jidy, and one of the largest caves in that district, if not the largest of all, and that, according to Pococke (Beschr. des Morgenl. ii. p. 61), the Franks call it a labyrinth, the Arabs Elmaama, i.e., hiding-place, whilst the latter relate how at one time thirty thousand people hid themselves in it “to escape an evil wind,” in all probability the simoom. The only difficulty connected with this supposition is the distance from Ain-jidy, namely about four or five German miles (fifteen or twenty English), and the nearness of Tekoah, according to which it belongs to the desert of Tekoah rather than to that of Engedi. “To cover his feet” is a euphemism according to most of the ancient versions, as in Judg 3:24, for performing the necessities of nature, as it is a custom in the East to cover the feet. It does not mean “to sleep,” as it is rendered in this passage in the Peschito, and also by Michaelis and others; for although what follows may seem to favour this, there is apparently no reason why any such euphemistic expression should have been chosen for sleep. “The sides of the cave:” i.e., the outermost or farthest sides.
Verse 4. Then David’s men said to him, “See, this is the day of which Jehovah hath said to thee, Behold, I give thine enemy into thy hand, and do to him what seemeth good to thee.” Although these words might refer to some divine oracle which David had received through a prophet, Gad for example, what follows clearly shows that David had received no such oracle; and the meaning of his men was simply this, “Behold, to-day is the day when God is saying to thee:” that is to say, the speakers regarded the leadings of providence by which Saul had been brought into David’s power as a divine intimation to David himself to take this opportunity of slaying his deadly enemy, and called this intimation a word of Jehovah. David then rose, up, and cut off the edge of Saul’s cloak privily. Saul had probably laid the meil on one side, which rendered it possible for David to cut off a piece of it unobserved. Verse 5. But his heart smote him after he had done it; i.e., his conscience reproached him, because he regarded this as an injury done to the king himself.
Verse 6. With all the greater firmness, therefore, did he repel the suggestions of his men: “Far be it to me from Jehovah (on Jehovah’s account: see at Josh 22:29), that µai , a particle denoting an oath) I should do such a thing to my lord, the anointed of Jehovah, to stretch out my hand against him.” These words of David show clearly enough that no word of Jehovah had come to him to do as he liked with Saul.
Verse 7. Thus he kept back his people with words ( [ F1 vi , verbis dilacere), and did not allow them to rise up against Saul, sc., to slay him.
1 SAMUEL. 24:8-10
But when Saul had gone out of the cave, David went out, and called, “My lord king,” that when the king looked round he might expostulate with him, with the deepest reverence, but yet with earnest words, that should sharpen his conscience as to the unfounded nature of his suspicion and the injustice of his persecution. “Why dost thou hearken to words of men, who say, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt? Behold, this day thine eyes have been that Jehovah hath given thee to-day into my hand in the cave, and they said rmæa; , thought) to kill thee, and I spared thee:” lit. it (mine eye) spared thee (cf. Gen 45:20; Deut 7:16, etc., which show that `ˆyi[æ is to be supplied).
1 SAMUEL. 24:11
To confirm what he said, he then showed him the lappet of his coat which he had cut off, and said, “My father, see.” In these words there is an expression of the childlike reverence and affection which David cherished towards the anointed of the Lord. “For that I cut off the lappet and did not kill thee, learn and see (from this) that (there is) not evil in my hand (i.e., that I do not go about for the purpose of injury and crime), and that I have not sinned against thee, as thou nevertheless layest wait for my soul to destroy it.”
1 SAMUEL. 24:12-13
After he had proved to the king in this conclusive manner that he had no reason whatever for seeking his life, he invoked the Lord as judge between him and his adversary: “Jehovah will avenge me upon thee, but my hand will not be against thee. As the proverb of the ancients yniwOmd]qæ is used collectively) says, Evil proceedeth from the evil, but my hand shall not be upon thee.” The meaning is this: Only a wicked man could wish to avenge himself; I do not.
1 SAMUEL. 24:14
And even if he should wish to attack the king, he did not possess the power. This thought introduces v. 14: “After whom is the king of Israel gone out? After whom dost thou pursue? A dead dog, a single flea.” By these similes David meant to describe himself as a perfectly harmless and insignificant man, of whom Saul had no occasion to be afraid, and whom the king of Israel ought to think it beneath his dignity to pursue. A dead dog cannot bite or hurt, and is an object about which a king ought not to trouble himself (cf. 2 Sam 9:8 and 16:9, where the idea of something contemptible is included). The point of comparison with a flea is the insignificance of such an animal (cf. 1 Sam 26:20).
1 SAMUEL. 24:15
As Saul had therefore no good ground for persecuting David, the latter could very calmly commit his cause to the Lord God, that He might decide it as judge, and deliver him out of the hand of Saul: “Let Him look at it, and conduct my cause,” etc.
1 SAMUEL. 24:16-18
These words made an impression upon Saul. David’s conduct went to his heart, so that he wept aloud, and confessed to him: “Thou art more righteous than I, for thou hast shown me good, and I (have shown) thee evil; and thou hast given me a proof of this to-day.”
1 SAMUEL. 24:19
“If a man meet with his enemy, will he send him (let him go) in peace?”
This sentence is to be regarded as a question, which requires a negative reply, and expresses the thought: When a man meets with an enemy, he does not generally let him escape without injury. But thou hast acted very differently towards me. This thought is easily supplied from the context, and what follows attaches itself to this: “The Lord repay thee good for what thou hast done to me this day.”
1 SAMUEL. 24:20-21
This wish was expressed in perfect sincerity. David’s behaviour towards him had conquered for the moment the evil demon of his heart, and completely altered his feelings. In this better state of mind he felt impelled even to give utterance to these words, “I know that thou wilt be king, and the sovereignty will have perpetuity in thy hand.” Saul could not prevent this conviction from forcing itself upon him, after his own rejection and the failure of all that he attempted against David; and it was this which drove him to persecute David whenever the evil spirit had the upper hand in his soul. But now that better feelings had arisen in his mind, he uttered it without envy, and merely asked David to promise on oath that he would not cut off his descendants after his death, and seek to exterminate his name from his father’s house. A name is exterminated when the whole of the descendants are destroyed-a thing of frequent occurrence in the East in connection with a change of dynasties, and one which occurred again and again even in the kingdom of the ten tribes (vid., 1 Kings 15:28ff., 1 Sam 16:11ff.; 2 Kings 10).
1 SAMUEL. 24:22
when David had sworn this, Saul returned home. But David remained upon the mountain heights, because he did not regard the passing change in Saul’s feelings as likely to continue. dWxm; (translated “the hold”) is used here to denote the mountainous part of the desert of Judah. It is different in 1 Sam 22:5.
1 SAMUEL. 24:22
when David had sworn this, Saul returned home. But David remained upon the mountain heights, because he did not regard the passing change in Saul’s feelings as likely to continue. dWxm; (translated “the hold”) is used here to denote the mountainous part of the desert of Judah. It is different in 1 Sam 22:5. DEATH OF SAMUEL. NABAL AND ABIGAIL.
1 SAMUEL. 25:1
The death of Samuel is inserted here, because it occurred at that time. The fact that all Israel assembled together to his burial, and lamented him, i.e., mourned for him, was a sign that his labours as a prophet were recognised by the whole nation as a blessing for Israel. Since the days of Moses and Joshua, no man had arisen to whom the covenant nation owed so much as to Samuel, who has been justly called the reformer and restorer of the theocracy. They buried him “in his house at Ramah.” The expression “his house” does not mean his burial-place or family tomb, nor his native place, but the house in which he lived, with the court belonging to it, where Samuel was placed in a tomb erected especially for him. After the death of Samuel, David went down into the desert of Paran, i.e., into the northern portion of the desert of Arabia, which stretches up to the mountains of Judah (see at Num 10:12); most likely for no other reason than because he could no longer find sufficient means of subsistence for himself and his six hundred men in the desert of Judah.
1 SAMUEL. 25:2-13
The following history of Nabal’s folly, and of the wise and generous behaviour of his pious and intelligent wife Abigail towards David, shows how Jehovah watched over His servant David, and not only preserved him from an act of passionate excitement, which might have endangered his calling to be king of Israel, but turned the trouble into which he had been brought into a source of prosperity and salvation.
Verse 2-3. At Maon, i.e., Main or the mountains of Judah (see at Josh 15:55), there lived a rich man lwOdG; , great through property and riches), who had his establishment at Carmel. hc,[mæ , work, occupation, then establishment, possessions (vid., Ex 23:15). Carmel is not the promontory of that name (Thenius), but the present Kurmul on the mountains of Judah, scarcely half an hour’s journey to the north-west of Maon (see at Josh 15:55). This man possessed three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and was at the sheep-shearing at Carmel. His name was Nabal (i.e., fool): this was hardly his proper name, but was a surname by which he was popularly designated on account of his folly. His wife Abigail was “of good understanding,” i.e., intelligent, “and of beautiful figure;” but the husband was “harsh and evil in his doings.” He sprang from the family of Caleb.
This is the rendering adopted by the Chaldee and Vulgate, according to the Keri wOBliK; . The Chethibh is to be read yBliK] , “according to his heart;” though the LXX ( a>nqrwpov kuniko>v ) and Josephus, as well as the Arabic and Syriac, derive it from bl,K, , and understand it as referring to the dog-like, or shameless, character of the man.
Verse 4-8. When David heard in the desert (cf. v. 1) that Nabal was shearing his sheep, which was generally accompanied with a festal meal (see at Gen 38:12), he sent ten young men up to Carmel to him, and bade them wish him peace and prosperity in his name, and having reminded him of the friendly services rendered to his shepherds, solicit a present for himself and his people. µwOlv; wOl laæv; , ask him after his welfare, i.e., greet him in a friendly manner (cf. Ex 18:7). The word yjæ is obscure, and was interpreted by the early translators merely according to uncertain conjectures. The simplest explanation is apparently in vitam, long life, understood as a wish in the sense of “good fortune to you” (Luther, Maurer, etc.); although the word yjæ in the singular can only be shown to have the meaning life in connection with the formula used in oaths, vp,n, yjæ , etc.
But even if yjæ must be taken as an adjective, it is impossible to explain yjæ in any other way than as an elliptical exclamation meaning “good fortune to the living man.” For the idea that the word is to be connected with rmæa; , “say to the living man,” i.e., to the man if still alive, is overthrown by the fact that David had no doubt that Nabal was still living. The words which follow are also to be understood as a wish, “May thou and thy house, and all that is thine, be well!” After this salutation they were to proceed with the object of their visit: “And now I have heard that thou hast sheepshearers.
Now thy shepherds have been with us; we have done them no harm Ëlæy; , as in Judg 18:7: on the form, see Ges. §53, 3, Anm. 6), and nothing was missed by them so long as they were in Carmel.” When living in the desert, David’s men had associated with the shepherds of Nabal, rendered them various services, and protected them and their flocks against the southern inhabitants of the desert (the Bedouin Arabs); in return for which they may have given them food and information. Thus David proved himself a protector of his people even in his banishment. ax;m; , “so may the young men (those sent by David) find favour in thine eyes! for we have come to a good (i.e., a festive) day. Give, I pray, what thy hand findeth (i.e., as much as thou canst) to thy servant, and to thy son David.” With the expression “thy son” David claims Nabal’s fatherly goodwill. So far as the fact itself is concerned, “on such a festive occasion near a town or village even in our own time, an Arab sheikh of the neighbouring desert would hardly fail to put in a word either in person or by message; and his message both in form and substance would be only the transcript of that of David” (Robinson, Palestine, p. 201).
Verse 9. David’s messengers delivered their message to Nabal, jæWn , “and sat down,” sc., awaiting the fulfilment of their request. The rendering given by the Chaldee ( Wqs;p] , cessaverunt loqui) and the Vulgate (siluerunt) is less suitable, and cannot be philologically sustained. The Septuagint, on the other hand, has kai> aneph>dhse , “and he (Nabal) sprang up,” as if the translators had read µWq (vid., LXX at 1 Sam 20:34). This rendering, according to which the word belongs to the following clause, gives a very appropriate sense, if only, supposing that µWq really did stand in the text, the origin and general adoption of jæWn could in any way be explained.
Verse 10. Nabal refused the petitioners in the most churlish manner: “Who is David? who the son of Jesse?” i.e., what have I to do with David? “There by many servants now-a-days who tear away every one from his master.” Thus, in order to justify his own covetousness, he set down David as a vagrant who had run away from his master.
Verse 11. “And I should take my bread and my water (i.e., my food and drink), and my cattle,...and give them to men whom I do not know whence they are?” jqæl; is a perfect with vav consec., and the whole sentence is to be taken as a question.
Verse 12-13. The messengers returned to David with this answer. The churlish reply could not fail to excite his anger. He therefore commanded his people to gird on the sword, and started with 400 men to take vengeance upon Nabal, whilst 200 remained behind with the things. 1 SAMUEL 25:14-31.
However intelligible David’s wrath may appear in the situation in which he was placed, it was not right before God, but a sudden burst of sinful passion, which was unseemly in a servant of God. By carrying out his intention, he would have sinned against the Lord and against His people.
But the Lord preserved him from this sin by the fact that, just at the right time, Abigail, the intelligent and pious wife of Nabal, heard of the affair, and was able to appease the wrath of David by her immediate and kindly interposition.
Verse 14-16. Abigail heard from one of (Nabal’s) servants what had taken place Ërær; , to wish any one prosperity and health, i.e., to salute, as in Sam 13:10; and f[æy; , from `fy[i , to speak wrathfully: on the form, see at Sam 15:19 and 14:32), and also what had been praiseworthy in the behaviour of David’s men towards Nabal’s shepherds; how they had not only done them no injury, had not robbed them of anything, but had defended them all the while. “They were a wall (i.e., a firm protection) round us by night and by day, as long as we were with them feeding the sheep,” i.e., a wall of defence against attacks from the Bedouins living in the desert.
Verse 17. “And now,” continued the servant, “know and see what thou doest; for evil is determined (cf. 1 Sam 20:9) against our master and all his house: and he (Nabal) is a wicked man, that one cannot address him.”
Verse 18-19. Then Abigail took as quickly as possible a bountiful present of provisions-two hundred loaves, two bottles of wine, five prepared (i.e., slaughtered) sheep `hc;[; , a rare form for `hc;[; : see Ewald, §189, a.), five seahs (an ephah and two-thirds) of roasted grains (Kali: see 1 Sam 17:17), a hundred qWMxæ (dried grapes, i.e., raisin-cakes: Ital. simmuki), and two hundred fig-cakes (consisting of pressed figs joined together)-and sent these gifts laden upon asses on before her to meet David whilst she herself followed behind to appease his anger by coming to meet him in a friendly manner, but without saying a word to her husband about what she intended to do.
Verse 20. When she came down riding upon the ass by a hidden part of the mountain, David and his men came to meet her, so that she lighted upon them. rhæ rt,se , a hidden part of the mountain, was probably a hollow between two peaks of a mountain. This would explain the use of the word dræy; , to come down, with reference both to Abigail, who approached on the one side, and David, who came on the other.
Verse 21-22. Vv. 21 and 22 contain a circumstantial clause introduced parenthetically to explain what follows: but David had said, Only for deception (i.e., for no other purpose than to be deceived in my expectation) have I defended all that belongs to this man (Nabal) in the desert, so that nothing of his was missed, and (for) he hath repaid me evil for good. God do so to the enemies of David, if I leave, etc.; i.e., “as truly as God will punish the enemies of David, so certainly will I not leave till the morning light, of all that belongeth to him, one that pisseth against the wall.” This oath, in which the punishment of God is not called down upon the swearer himself (God do so to me), as it generally is, but upon the enemies of David, is analogous to that in 1 Sam 3:17, where punishment is threatened upon the person addressed, who is there made to swear; except that here, as the oath could not be uttered in the ears of the person addressed, upon whom it was to fall, the enemies generally are mentioned instead of “to thee.” There is no doubt, therefore, as to the correctness of the text.
The substance of this imprecation may be explained from the fact that David is so full of the consciousness of fighting and suffering for the cause of the kingdom of God, that he discerns in the insult heaped upon him by Nabal an act of hostility to the Lord and the cause of His kingdom. The phrase ryqi ˆtæv; , mingens in parietem, is only met with in passages which speak of the destruction of a family or household to the very last man (viz., besides this passage, 1 Kings 14:10; 16:11; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8), and neither refers primarily to dogs, as Ephraem Syrus, Juda ben Karish, and others maintain; nor to the lowest class of men, as Winer, Maurer, and others imagine; nor to little boys, as L. de Dieu, Gesenius, etc., suppose; but, as we may see from the explanatory clause appended to 1 Kings 14:10; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8, to every male (quemcumque masculi generis hominem: vid., Bochart, Hieroz. i. pp. 776ff., and Rödiger on Ges. Thes. pp. 1397-8).
Verse 23-24. V. 23 is connected with v. 20. When Abigail saw David, she descended hastily from the ass, fell upon her face before him, bowed to the ground, and fell at his feet, saying, “Upon me, me, my lord, be the guilt; allow thy handmaid to reveal the thing to thee.” She takes the guilt upon herself, because she hopes that David will not avenge it upon her.
Verse 25-26. She prayed that David would take no notice of Nabal, for he was what his name declared-a fool, and folly in him; but she (Abigail) had not seen the messengers of David. “The prudent woman uses a good argument; for a wise man should pardon a fool” (Seb. Schmidt). She then endeavours to bring David to a friendly state of mind by three arguments, introduced with `hT;[æ (vv. 26, 27), before asking for forgiveness (v. 28).
She first of all pointed to the leadings of God, by which David had been kept from committing murder through her coming to meet him. f45 “As truly as Jehovah liveth, and by the life of thy soul! yea, the Lord hath kept thee, that thou camest not into blood-guiltiness, and thy hand helped thee” (i.e., and with thy hand thou didst procure thyself help). rv,a , introducing her words, as in 1 Sam 15:20, lit. “as truly as thou livest, (so true is it) that,” etc. In the second place, she points to the fact that God is the avenger of the wicked, by expressing the wish that all the enemies of David may become fools like Nabal; in connection with which it must be observed, in order to understand her words fully, that, according to the Old Testament representation, folly is a correlate of ungodliness, which inevitably brings down punishment. f46 The predicate to the sentence “and they that seek evil to my lord” must be supplied from the preceding words, viz., “may they become just such fools.”
Verse 27. It is only in the third line that she finally mentions the present, but in such a manner that she does not offer it directly to David, but describes it as a gift for the men in his train. “And now this blessing hk;r;B] here and 1 Sam 30:26, as in Gen 33:11: cf. hJ eulogi>a , 2 Cor 9:5-6), which thine handmaid hath brought, let it be given to the young men in my lord’s train” (lit. “at the feet of:” cf. Ex 11:8; Judg 4:10, etc.).
Verse 28. The shrewd and pious woman supports her prayer for forgiveness of the wrong, which she takes upon herself, by promises of the rich blessing with which the Lord would recompense David. She thereby gives such clear and distinct expression to her firm belief in the divine election of David as king of Israel, that her words almost amount to prophecy: “For Jehovah will make my lord a lasting house (cf. 1 Sam 2:35; and for the fact itself, 2 Sam 7:8ff., where the Lord confirms this pious wish by His own promises to David himself); for my lord fighteth the wars of Jehovah (vid., 1 Sam 18:17), and evil is not discovered in thee thy whole life long.” [ræ , evil, i.e., misfortune, mischief; for the thought that he might also be preserved from wrong-doing is not expressed till v. 31. “All thy days,” lit. “from thy days,” i.e., from the beginning of thy life.
Verse 29. “And should any one rise up to pursue thee,...the soul of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of the living with the Lord thy God.” The metaphor is taken from the custom of binding up valuable things in a bundle, to prevent their being injured. The words do not refer primarily to eternal life with God in heaven, but only to the safe preservation of the righteous on this earth in the grace and fellowship of the Lord. But whoever is so hidden in the gracious fellowship of the Lord in this life, that no enemy can harm him or injure his life, the Lord will not allow to perish, even though temporal death should come, but will then receive him into eternal life. “But the soul of thine enemies, He will hurl away in the cup of the sling.” “The cup (caph: cf. Gen 32:26) of the sling” was the cavity in which the stone was placed for the purpose of hurling.
Verse 30,31. Abigail concluded her intercession with the assurance that the forgiveness of Nabal’s act would be no occasion of anguish of heart to David when he should have become prince over Israel, on account of his having shed innocent blood and helped himself, and also with the hope that he would remember her. From the words, “When Jehovah shall do to my lord according to all the good that He hath spoken concerning him, and shall make thee prince over Israel,” it appears to follow that Abigail had received certain information of the anointing of David, and his designation to be the future king, probably through Samuel, or one of the pupils of the prophets. There is nothing to preclude this assumption, even if it cannot be historically sustained. Abigail manifests such an advance and maturity in the life of faith, as could only have been derived from intercourse with prophets. It is expressly stated with regard to Elijah and Elisha, that at certain times the pious assembled together around the prophets. What prevents us from assuming the same with regard to Samuel? The absence of any distinct testimony to that effect is amply compensated for by the brief, and for the most part casual, notices that are given of the influence which Samuel exerted upon all Israel.
Verse 31. V. 31 introduces the apodosis to v. 30: “So will this (i.e., the forgiveness of Nabal’s folly, for which she had prayed in v. 28) not be a stumbling-block (pukah: anything in the road which causes a person to stagger) and anguish of heart (i.e., conscientious scruple) to thee, and shedding innocent blood, and that my lord helps himself. wgw Ëpov]liw] is perfectly parallel to wgwhq;Wp , and cannot be taken as subordinate, as it is in the Vulgate, etc., in the sense of “that thou hast not shed blood innocently,” etc. In this rendering not only is the vav cop. overlooked, but “not” is arbitrarily interpolated, to obtain a suitable sense, which the Vulgate rendering, quod effuderis sanguinem innoxiam, does not give. b f1 y; is to be taken conditionally: “and if Jehovah shall deal well with my lord, then,” etc.
1 SAMUEL. 25:32-38
Verse 32-34. These words could not fail to appease David’s wrath. In his reply he praised the Lord for having sent Abigail to meet him (v. 32), and then congratulated Abigail upon her understanding and her actions, that she had kept him from bloodshed (v. 33); otherwise he would certainly have carried out the revenge which he had resolved to take upon Nabal (v. 34). µl;Wa is strongly adversative: nevertheless. [[ær; , inf. constr. Hiph. of [[ær; . yKi , oJ>ti , introduces the substance of the affirmation, and is repeated before the oath: µai aleWl yKi , (that) if thou hadst not, etc., (that) truly there would not have been left (cf. 2 Sam 2:27). The very unusual form taabo’tiy, an imperfect with the termination of the perfect, might indeed possibly be a copyist’s error for awOB (Olsh. Gr. pp. 452, 525), but in all probability it is only an intensified form of the second pers. fem. imperf., like awOB (Deut 33:16; cf. Ewald, §191, c.).
Verse 35. David then received the gifts brought for him, and bade Abigail return to her house, with the assurance that he had granted her request for pardon. µynip; ac;n; , as in Gen 19:21, etc.
Verse 36. When Abigail returned home, she found her husband at a great feast, like a king’s feast, very merry `l[æ , “therewith,” refers to hT,v]mi : cf.
Prov 23:30), and drunken above measure, so that she told him nothing of what had occurred until the break of day.
Verse 37. Then, “when the wine had gone from Nabal,” i.e., when he had become sober, she related the matter to him; whereat he was so terrified, that he was smitten with a stroke. This is the meaning of the words, “his heart died within him, and it became as stone.” The cause of it was not his anger at the loss he had sustained, or merely his alarm at the danger to which he had been exposed, and which he did not believe to be over yet, but also his vexation that his wife should have made him humble himself in such a manner; for he is described as a hard, i.e., an unbending, self-willed man.
Verse 38. About ten days later the Lord smote him so that he died, i.e., the Lord put an end to his life by a second stroke. 1 SAMUEL 25:39-44.
When David heard of Nabal’s death, he praised Jehovah that He had avenged his shame upon Nabal, and held him back from self-revenge. wgwbræ rv,a , “who hath pleaded the cause of my reproach (the disgrace inflicted upon me) against Nabal.” “Against Nabal” does not belong to “my reproach,” but to “pleaded the cause.” The construction of byri with ˆmi is a pregnant one, to fight (and deliver) out of the power of a person (vid., Ps 43:1); whereas here the fundamental idea is that of taking vengeance upon a person.
Verse 40-41. He then sent messengers to Abigail, and conveyed to her his wish to marry her, to which she consented without hesitation. With deep reverence she said to the messengers (v. 41), “Behold, thy handmaid as servant (i.e., is ready to become thy servant) to wash the feet of the servants of my lord;” i.e., in the obsequious style of the East, “I am ready to perform the humblest possible services for thee.”
Verse 42. She then rose up hastily, and went after the messengers to David with five damsels in her train, and became his wife.
Verse 43. The historian appends a few notices here concerning David’s wives: “And David had taken Ahinoam from Jezreel; thus they also both became his wives.” The expression “also” points to David’s marriage with Michal, the daughter of Saul (1 Sam 18:28). Jezreel is not the city of that name in the tribe of Issachar (Josh 19:18), but the one in the mountains of Judah (Josh 15:56).
Verse 44. But Saul had taken his daughter Michal away from David, and given her to Palti of Gallim. Palti is called Paltiel in 2 Sam 3:15. According to Isa 10:30, Gallim was a place between Gibeah of Saul and Jerusalem. Valentiner supposes it to be the hill to the south of Tuleil el Phul (Gibeah of Saul) called Khirbet el Jisr. After the death of Saul, however, David persuaded Ishbosheth to give him Michal back again (see 2 Sam 3:14ff.).
DAVID IS BETRAYED AGAIN BY THE ZIPHITES, AND SPARES SAUL A SECOND TIME.
1 SAMUEL. 26:1-12
The repetition not only of the treachery of the Ziphites, but also of the sparing of Saul by David, furnishes no proof in itself that the account contained in this chapter is only another legend of the occurrences already related in 1 Sam 23:19-24:23. As the pursuit of David by Saul lasted for several years, in so small a district as the desert of Judah, there is nothing strange in the repetition of the same scenes. And the assertion made by Thenius, that “Saul would have been a moral monster, which he evidently was not, if he had pursued David with quiet deliberation, and through the medium of the same persons, and had sought his life again, after his own life had been so magnanimously spared by him,” not only betrays a superficial acquaintance with the human heart, but is also founded upon the mere assertion, for which there is no proof, that Saul was evidently no so; and it is proved to be worthless by the fact, that after the first occasion on which his life was so magnanimously spared by David, he did not leave off seeking him up and down in the land, and that David was obliged to seek refuge with the Philistines in consequence, as may be seen from ch. 27, which Thenius himself assigns to the same source as ch. 24.
The agreement between the two accounts reduces it entirely to outward and unessential things. It consists chiefly in the fact that the Ziphites came twice to Saul at Gibeah, and informed him that David was stopping in their neighbourhood, in the hill Hachilah, and also that Saul went out twice in pursuit of David with 3000 men. But the three thousand were the standing body of men that Saul had raised from the very beginning of his reign out of the whole number of those who were capable of bearing arms, for the purpose of carrying on his smaller wars (1 Sam 13:2); and the hill of Hachilah appears to have been a place in the desert of Judah peculiarly well adapted for the site of an encampment. On the other hand, all the details, as well as the final results of the two occurrences, differ entirely from one another. When David was betrayed the first time, he drew back into the desert of Maon before the advance of Saul; and being completely surrounded by Saul upon one of the mountains there, was only saved from being taken prisoner by the circumstance that Saul was compelled suddenly to relinquish the pursuit of David on account of the report that the Philistines had invaded the land (1 Sam 23:25-28).
But on the second occasion Saul encamped upon the hill of Hachilah, whilst David had drawn back into the adjoining desert, from which he crept secretly into Saul’s encampment, and might, if he had chosen, have put his enemy to death (1 Sam 26:3ff.). There is quite as much difference in the minuter details connected with the sparing of Saul. On the first occasion, Saul entered a cave in the desert of Engedi, whilst David and his men were concealed in the interior of the cave, without having the smallest suspicion that they were anywhere near (1 Sam 24:2-4). The second time David went with Abishai into the encampment of Saul upon the hill of Hachilah, while the king and all his men were sleeping (1 Sam 26:3,5). It is true that on both occasions David’s men told him that God had given his enemy into his hand; but the first time they added, Do to him what seemeth good in thy sight; and David cut off the lappet of Saul’s coat, whereupon his conscience smote him, and he said, “Far be it from me to lay my hand upon the Lord’s anointed” (1 Sam 24:5-8).
In the second instance, on the contrary, when David saw Saul in the distance lying by the carriage rampart and the army sleeping round him, he called to two of his heroes, Ahimelech and Abishai, to go with him into the camp of the sleeping foe, and then went thither with Abishai, who thereupon said to him, “God hath delivered thine enemy into thy hand: let me alone, that I may pierce him with the spear.” But David rejected this proposal, and merely took away the spear and water-bowl that were at Saul’s head (1 Sam 26:6-12). And lastly, notwithstanding the fact that the words of David and replies of Saul agree in certain general thoughts, yet they differ entirely in the main. On the first occasion David showed the king that his life had been in his power, and yet he had spared him, to dispel the delusion that he was seeking his life (1 Sam 24:10-16). On the second occasion he asked the king why he was pursuing him, and called to him to desist from his pursuit (1 Sam 26:18ff.). But Saul was so affected the first time that he wept aloud, and openly declared that David would obtain the kingdom; and asked him to promise on oath, that when he did, he would not destroy his family (1 Sam 24:17-23). The second time, on the contrary, he only declared that he had sinned and acted foolishly, and would to David no more harm, and that David would undertake and prevail; but he neither shed tears, nor brought himself to speak of David’s ascending the throne, so that he was evidently much more hardened than before (1 Sam 27:21-25). These decided differences prove clearly enough that the incident described in this chapter is not the same as the similar one mentioned in ch. 23 and 24, but belongs to a later date, when Saul’s enmity and hardness had increased.
Verse 1-2. The second betrayal of David by the Ziphites occurred after David had married Abigail at Carmel, and when he had already returned to the desert of Judah. On vv. 1 and 2 compare the explanations of 1 Sam 23:19 and 24:3. Instead of “before (in the face of) Jeshimon” (i.e., the wilderness), we find the situation defined more precisely in 1 Sam 23:19, as “to the right (i.e., on the south) of the wilderness” (Jeshimon).
Verse 3-4. When David saw (i.e., perceived) in the desert that Saul was coming behind him, he sent out spies, and learned from them that he certainly had come (‘el-naakown, for a certainty, as in 1 Sam 23:23).
Verse 5-7. Upon the receipt of this information, David rose up with two attendants (mentioned in v. 6) to reconnoitre the camp of Saul. When he saw the place where Saul and his general Abner were lying-Saul was lying by the waggon rampart, and the fighting men were encamped round about him-he said to Ahimelech and Abishai, “Who will go down with me into the camp to Saul?” Whereupon Abishai declared himself ready to do so; and they both went by night, and found Saul sleeping with all the people.
Ahimelech the Hittite is never mentioned again; but Abishai the son of Zeruiah, David’s sister (1 Chron 2:16), and a brother of Joab, was afterwards a celebrated general of David, as was also his brother Joab (2 Sam 16:9; 18:2; 21:17). Saul’s spear was pressed (stuck) into the ground at his head, as a sign that the king was sleeping there, for the spear served Saul as a sceptre (cf. 1 Sam 18:10).
Verse 8-11. When Abishai exclaimed, “God hath delivered thine enemy into thy hand: now will I pierce him with the spear into the ground with a stroke, and will give no second” (sc., stroke: the Vulgate rendering gives the sense exactly: et secundo non opus erit, there will be no necessity for a second), David replied, “Destroy him not; for who hath stretched out his hand against the anointed of the Lord, and remained unhurt?” hq;n; , as in Ex 21:19; Num 5:31. He then continued (in vv. 10, 11): “As truly as Jehovah liveth, unless Jehovah smite him (i.e., carry him off with a stroke; cf. 1 Sam 25:38), or his day cometh that he dies (i.e., or he dies a natural death; ‘his day’ denoting the day of death, as in Job 14:6; 15:32), or he goes into battle and is carried off, far be it from me with Jehovah (meey¦haaowh, as in 1 Sam 24:7) to stretch forth my hand against Jehovah’s anointed.” The apodosis to v. 10 commences with hl;ylij; , “far be it,” or “the Lord forbid,” in v. 11. “Take now the spear which is at his head, and the pitcher, and let us go.”
Verse 12. They departed with these trophies, without any one waking up and seeing them, because they were all asleep, as a deep sleep from the Lord had fallen upon them. lWav; tvaræ stands for v ytevoa\ræm]mi , “from the head of Saul,” with m dropped. The expression “a deep sleep of Jehovah,” i.e., a deep sleep sent or inflicted by Jehovah, points to the fact that the Lord favoured David’s enterprise.
1 SAMUEL. 26:13-20
“And David went over to the other side, and placed himself upon the top of the mountain afar off (the space between them was great), and cried to the people,” etc. Saul had probably encamped with his fighting men on the slope of the ill Hachilah, so that a valley separated him from the opposite hill, from which David had no doubt reconnoitred the camp and then gone down to it (v. 6), and to which he returned after the deed was accomplished. The statement that this mountain was far off, so that there was a great space between David and Saul, not only favours the accuracy of the historical tradition, but shows that David reckoned far less now upon any change in the state of Saul’s mind than he had done before, when he followed Saul without hesitation from the cave and called after him (1 Sam 24:9), and that in fact he rather feared lest Saul should endeavour to get him into his power as soon as he woke from his sleep.
Verse 14. David called out to Abner, whose duty it was as general to defend the life of his king. And Abner replied, “Who art thou, who criest out to the king?” i.e., offendest the king by thy shouting, and disturbest his rest.
Verse 15-16. David in return taunted Abner with having watched the king carelessly, and made himself chargeable with his death. “For one of the people came to destroy thy lord the king.” As a proof of this, he then showed him the spear and pitcher that he had taken away with him. ha;r; is to be repeated in thought before tjæpæxæAta, : “look where the king’s spear is; and (look) at the pitcher at his head,” sc., where it is. These reproaches that were cast at Abner were intended to show to Saul, who might at any rate possibly hear, and in fact did hear, that David was the most faithful defender of his life, more faithful than his closest and most zealous servants.
Verse 17-19. When Saul heard David’s voice (for he could hardly have seen David, as the occurrence took place before daybreak, at the latest when the day began to dawn), and David had made himself known to the king in reply to his inquiry, David said, “Why doth my lord pursue his servant? for what have I done, and what evil is in my hand?” He then gave him the well-meant advice, to seek reconciliation for his wrath against him, and not to bring upon himself the guilt of allowing David to find his death in a foreign land. The words, “and now let my lord the king hear the saying of his servant,” serve to indicate that what follows is important, and worthy of laying to heart. In his words, David supposes two cases as conceivable causes of Saul’s hostility: (1) if Jehovah hath stirred thee up against me; (2) if men have done so.
In the first case, he proposes as the best means of overcoming this instigation, that He (Jehovah) should smell an offering. The Hiphil jræy, only means to smell, not to cause to smell. The subject is Jehovah.
Smelling a sacrifice is an anthropomorphic term, used to denote the divine satisfaction (cf. Gen 8:21). The meaning of the words, “let Jehovah smell sacrifice,” is therefore, “let Saul appease the wrath of God by the presentation of acceptable sacrifices.” What sacrifices they are which please God, is shown in Ps 51:18-19; and it is certainly not by accident merely that David uses the word minchah , the technical expression in the law for the bloodless sacrifice, which sets forth the sanctification of life in good works. The thought to which David gives utterance here, namely, that God instigates a man to evil actions, is met with in other passages of the Old Testament. It not only lies at the foundation of the words of David in Ps 51:6 (cf. Hengstenberg on Psalms), but is also clearly expressed in Sam 24:1, where Jehovah instigates David to number the people, and where this instigation is described as a manifestation of the anger of God against Israel; and in 2 Sam 16:10ff., where David says, with regard to Shimei, that God had bade him curse him.
These passages also show that God only instigates those who have sinned against Him to evil deeds; and therefore that the instigation consists in the fact that God impels sinners to manifest the wickedness of their hearts in deeds, or furnishes the opportunity and occasion for the unfolding and practical manifestation of the evil desire of the heart, that the sinner may either be brought to the knowledge of his more evil ways and also to repentance, through the evil deed and its consequences, or, if the heart should be hardened still more by the evil deed, that it may become ripe for the judgment of death. The instigation of a sinner to evil is simply one peculiar way in which God, as a general rule, punishes sins through sinners; for God only instigates to evil actions such as have drawn down the wrath of God upon themselves in consequence of their sin. When David supposes the fact that Jehovah has instigated Saul against him, he acknowledges, implicitly at least, that he himself is a sinner, whom the Lord may be intending to punish, though without lessening Saul’s wrong by this indirect confession.
The second supposition is: “if, however, children of men” (sc., have instigated thee against me); in which case “let them be cursed before the Lord; for they drive me now (this day) that I dare not attach myself to the inheritance of Jehovah (i.e., the people of God), saying, Go, serve other gods.” The meaning is this: They have carried it so far now, that I am obliged to separate from the people of God, to fly from the land of the Lord, and, because far away from His sanctuary, to serve other gods. The idea implied in the closing words was, that Jehovah could only be worshipped in Canaan, at the sanctuary consecrated to Him, because it was only there that He manifested himself to His people, and revealed His face or gracious presence (vid., Ps 42:2-3; 84:11; 143:6ff.). “We are not to understand that the enemies of David were actually accustomed to use these very words, but David was thinking of deeds rather than words” (Calvin).
Verse 20. “And now let not my blood fall to the earth far away from the face of the Lord,” i.e., do not carry it so far as to compel me to perish in a foreign land. “For the king of Israel has gone out to seek a single flea (vid., 1 Sam 24:15), as one hunts a partridge upon the mountains.” This last comparison does not of course refer to the first, so that “the object of comparison is compared again with something else,” as Thenius supposes, but it refers rather to the whole of the previous clause. The king of Israel is pursuing something very trivial, and altogether unworthy of his pursuit, just as if one were hunting a partridge upon the mountains. “No one would think it worth his while to hunt a single partridge that had flown to the mountains, when they may be found in coveys in the fields” (Winer, Bibl.
R. W. ii. p. 307). This comparison, therefore, does not presuppose that ar;q; must be a bird living upon the mountains, as Thenius maintains, so as to justify his altering the text according to the Septuagint. These words of David were perfectly well adapted to sharpen Saul’s conscience, and induce him to desist from his enmity, if he still had an ear for the voice of truth.
1 SAMUEL. 26:21-25
Moreover, Saul could not help confessing, “I have sinned: return, my son David; I will do thee harm no more, because my life was precious in thine eyes that day.” A good intention, which he never carried out. “He declared that he would never do any more what he had already so often promised not to do again; and yet he did not fail to do it again and again. He ought rather to have taken refuge with God, and appealed to Him for grace, that he might not fall into such sins again; yea, he should have entreated David himself to pray for him” (Berleb. Bible).
He adds still further, “Behold, I have acted foolishly, and have gone sore astray;” but yet he persists in this folly. “There is no sinner so hardened, but that God gives him now and then some rays of light, which show him all his error. But, alas! when they are awakened by such divine movings, it is only for a few moments; and such impulses are no sooner past, than they fall back again immediately into their former life, and forget all that they have promised.”
Verse 22-23. David then bade the king send a servant to fetch back the spear and pitcher, and reminded him again of the recompense of God: “Jehovah will recompense His righteousness and His faithfulness to the man into whose hand Jehovah hath given thee to-day; and (for) I would not stretch out my hand against the anointed of the Lord.” Verse 24-25. “Behold, as thy soul has been greatly esteemed in my eyes today, so will my soul be greatly esteemed in the eyes of Jehovah, that He will save me out of all tribulation.” These words do not contain any “sounding of his own praises” (Thenius), but are merely the testimony of a good conscience before God in the presence of an enemy, who is indeed obliged to confess his wrong-doing, but who no longer feels or acknowledges his need of forgiveness. For even Saul’s reply to these words in v. 25 (“Blessed art thou, my son David: thou wilt undertake, and also prevail:” lkoy; lkoy; , lit. to vanquish, i.e., to carry out what one undertakes) does not express any genuine goodwill towards David, but only an acknowledgment, forced upon him by this fresh experience of David’s magnanimity, that God was blessing all his undertakings, so that he would prevail. Saul had no more thoughts of any real reconciliation with David. “David went his way, and Saul turned to his place” (cf. Num 24:25). Thus they parted, and never saw each other again. There is nothing said about Saul returning to his house, as there was when his life was first spared (1 Sam 24:23). On the contrary, he does not seem to have given up pursuing David; for, according to ch. 27, David was obliged to take refuge in a foreign land, and carry out what he had described in v. 19 as his greatest calamity.
DAVID AT ZIKLAG IN THE LAND OF THE PHILISTINES.
In his despair of being able permanently to escape the plots of Saul in the land of Israel, David betook himself, with his attendants, to the neighbouring land of the Philistines, to king Achish of Gath, and received from him the town of Ziklag, which was assigned him at his own request as a dwelling-place (vv. 1-7). From this point he made attacks upon certain tribes on the southern frontier of Canaan which were hostile to Israel, but described them to Achish as attacks upon Judah and its dependencies, that he might still retain the protection of the Philistian chief (vv. 8-12). David had fled to Achish at Gath once before; but on that occasion he had been obliged to feign insanity in order to preserve his life, because he was recognised as the conqueror of Goliath. This act of David was not forgotten by the Philistines even now. But as David had been pursued by Saul for many years, Achish did not hesitate to give a place of refuge in his land to the fugitive who had been outlawed by the king of Israel, the archenemy of the Philistines, possibly with the hope that if a fresh war with Saul should break out, he should be able to reap some advantage from David’s friendship.
1 SAMUEL. 27:1-7
Verse 1-7. The result of the last affair with Saul, after his life had again been spared, could not fail to confirm David in his conviction that Saul would not desist from pursuing him, and that if he stayed any longer in the land, he would fall eventually into the hands of his enemy. With this conviction, he formed the following resolution: “Now shall I be consumed one day by the hand of Saul: there is no good to me (i.e., it will not be well with me if I remain in the land), but yKi after a negative) I will flee into the land of the Philistines; so will Saul desist from me to seek me further (i.e., give up seeking me) in the whole of the territory of Israel, and I shall escape his hand.”
Verse 2. Accordingly he went over with the 600 men who were with him to Achish, the king of Gath. Achish, the son of Maoch, is in all probability the same person not only as the king Achish mentioned in 1 Sam 21:11, but also as Achish the son of Maachah (1 Kings 2:39), since Maoch and Maachah are certainly only different forms of the same name; and a fifty years’ reign, which we should have in that case to ascribe to Achish, it not impossible.
Verse 3-4. Achish allotted dwelling-places in his capital, Gath, for David and his wives, and for all his retinue; and Saul desisted from any further pursuit of David when he was informed of his flight to Gath. The Chethibh ãsæy; is apparently only a copyist’s error for ãsæy; .
Verse 5-6. In the capital of the kingdom, however, David felt cramped, and therefore entreated Achish to assign him one of the land (or provincial) towns to dwell in; whereupon he gave him Ziklag for that purpose. This town was given to the Simeonites in the time of Joshua (Josh 19:5), but was afterwards taken by the Philistines, probably not long before the time of David, and appears to have been left without inhabitants in consequence of this conquest. The exact situation, in the western part of the Negeb, has not been clearly ascertained (see at Josh 15:31). Achish appears to have given it to David. This is implied in the remark, “Therefore Ziklag came to the kings of Judah (i.e., became their property) unto this day.”
Verse 7. The statement that David remained a year and four months in the land of the Philistines, is a proof of the historical character of the whole narrative. The µwOy before the “four months” signifies a year; strictly speaking, a term of days which amounted to a full year (as in Lev 25:29: see also 1 Sam 1:3,20; 2:19).
1 SAMUEL. 27:8-9
From Ziklag David made an attack upon the Geshurites, Gerzites, and Amalekites, smote them without leaving a man alive, and returned with much booty. The occasion of this attack is not mentioned, as being a matter of indifference in relation to the chief object of the history; but it is no doubt to be sought for in plundering incursions made by these tribes into the land of Israel. For David would hardly have entered upon such a war in the situation in which he was placed at that time without some such occasion, seeing that it would be almost sure to bring him into suspicion with Achish, and endanger his safety. `hl;[; , “he advanced,” the verb being used, as it frequently is, to denote the advance of an army against a people or town (see at Josh 8:1). At the same time, the tribes which he attacked may have had their seat upon the mountain plateau in the northern portion of the desert of Paran, so that David was obliged to march up to reach them. fvæp; , to invade for the purpose of devastation and plunder.
Geshuri is a tribe mentioned in Josh 13:2 as living in the south of the territory of the Philistines, and is a different tribe from the Geshurites in the north-east of Gilead (Josh 12:5; 13:11,13; Deut 3:14). These are the only passages in which they are mentioned. The Gerzites, or Gizrites according to the Keri, are entirely unknown. Bonfrere and Clericus suppose them to be the Gerreni spoken of in 2 Macc. 13:24, who inhabited the town of Gerra, between Rhinocolura and Pelusium (Strabo, xvi. 760), or Gerron (Ptol. iv. 5). This conjecture is a possible one, but is very uncertain nevertheless, as the Gerzites certainly dwelt somewhere in the desert of Arabia. At any rate Grotius and Ewald cannot be correct in their opinion that they were the inhabitants of Gezer (Josh 10:33). The Amalekites were the remnant of this old hereditary foe of the Israelites, who had taken to flight on Saul’s war of extermination, and had now assembled again (see at 1 Sam 15:8-9). “For they inhabit the land, where you go from of old to Shur, even to the land of Egypt.” The rv,a before `µl;wO[ may be explained from the fact that awOB is not adverbial here, but is construed according to its form as an infinitive: literally, “where from of old thy coming is to Shur.” rv,a cannot have crept into the text through a copyist’s mistake, as such a mistake would not have found its way into all the MSS. The fact that the early translators did not render the word proves nothing against its genuineness, but merely shows that the translators regarded it as superfluous. Moreover, the Alexandrian text is decidedly faulty here, and `µl;wO[ is confounded with µl;[e , apo> Gela>m . Shur is the desert of Jifar, which is situated in front of Egypt (as in 1 Sam 15:7). These tribes were nomads, and had large flocks, which David took with him as booty when he had smitten the tribes themselves. After his return, David betook himself to Achish, to report to the Philistian king concerning his enterprise, and deceive him as to its true character.
1 SAMUEL. 27:10-11
Achish said, “Ye have not made an invasion to-day, have ye?” laæ , like mh> , is an interrogative sense; the ha has dropped out: vid., Ewald, §324, b.
David replied, “Against the south of Judah, and the south of the Jerahmeelites, and into the south of the Kenites,” sc., we have made an incursion. This reply shows that the Geshurites, Gerzites, and Amalekites dwelt close to the southern boundary of Judah, so that David was able to represent the march against these tribes to Achish as a march against the south of Judah, to make him believe that he had been making an attack upon the southern territory of Judah and its dependencies. The Negeb of Judah is the land between the mountains of Judah and the desert of Arabia (see at Josh 15:21). The Jerahmeelites are the descendants of Jerahmeel, the first-born of Hezron (1 Chron 2:9,25-26), and therefore one of the three large families of Judah who sprang from Hezron. They probably dwelt on the southern frontier of the tribe of Judah (vid., 1 Sam 30:29).
The Kenites were proteges of Judah (see at ch. 15:6, and Judg 1:16). In v. 11 the writer introduces the remark, that in his raid David left neither man nor woman of his enemies alive, to take them to Gath, because he thought “they might report against us, and say, Thus hath David done.” There ought to be a major point under rwiD; `hc;[; , as the following clause does not contain the words of the slaughtered enemies, but is a clause appended by the historian himself, to the effect that David continued to act in that manner as long as he dwelt in the land of the Philistines. fp;v]mi , the mode of procedure; lit. the right which he exercised (see 1 Sam 8:9).
1 SAMUEL. 27:12
V. 12 is connected with v. 10; Achish believed David’s words, and said (to himself), “He hath made himself stinking (i.e., hated) among his own people, among Israel, and will be my servant (i.e., subject to me) for ever.”
DAVID IN THE ARMY OF THE PHILISTINES.
ATTACK UPON ISRAEL. SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR.
The danger into which David had plunged through his flight into the land of the Philistines, and still more through the artifice with which he had deceived the king Achish as to his real feelings, was to be very soon made apparent to him. For example, when the Philistines went to war again with Israel, Achish summoned him to go with his men in the army of the Philistines to the war against his own people and land, and David could not disregard the summons. But even if he had not brought himself into this danger without some fault of his own, he had at any rate only taken refuge with the Philistines in the greatest extremity; and what further he had done, was only done to save his own life. The faithful covenant God helped him therefore out of this trouble, and very soon afterwards put an end to his persecution by the fact that Saul lost his life in the war. 1 SAMUEL 28:1,2 Verse 1-2. “In those days,” i.e., whilst David was living in the land of the Philistines, it came to pass that the Philistines gathered their armies together for a campaign against Israel. And Achish sent word to David that he was to go with him in his army along with his men; and David answered (v. 2), “Thereby (on this occasion) thou shalt learn what thy servant will do.” This reply was ambiguous. The words “what thy servant will do” contained no distinct promise of faithful assistance in the war with the Israelites, as the expression “thy servant” is only the ordinary periphrasis for “I” in conversation with a superior. And there is just as little ground for inferring from 1 Sam 29:8 that David was disposed to help the Philistines against Saul and the Israelites; for, as Calovius has observed, even there he gives no such promise, but “merely asks for information, that he may discover the king’s intentions and feelings concerning him: he simply protests that he has done nothing to prevent his placing confidence in him, or to cause him to shut him out of the battle.”
Judging from his previous acts, it would necessarily have been against his conscience to fight against his own people. Nevertheless, in the situation in which he was placed he did not venture to give a distinct refusal to the summons of the king. He therefore gave an ambiguous answer, in the hope that God would show him a way out of this conflict between his inmost conviction and his duty to obey the Philistian king. He had no doubt prayed earnestly for this in his heart. And the faithful God helped His servant: first of all by the fact that Achish accepted his indefinite declaration as a promise of unconditional fidelity, as his answer “so ˆKe , itaque, i.e., that being the case, if thy conduct answers to thy promise) “I will make thee the keeper of my head” (i.e., of my person) implies; and still more fully by the fact that the princes of the Philistines overturned the decision of their king (1 Sam 29:3ff.).
1 SAMUEL. 28:3-25
Saul with the witch at Endor.
The invasion of Israel by the Philistines, which brought David into so difficult a situation, drove king Saul to despair, so that in utter helplessness he had recourse to ungodly means of inquiring into the future, which he himself had formerly prohibited, and to his horror had to hear the sentence of his own death. This account is introduced with the remark in v. 3 that Samuel was dead and had been buried at Ramah (cf. 1 Sam 25:1; `ry[i , with an explanatory vav, and indeed in his own city), and that Saul had expelled “those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land” (on the terms employed, oboth and yiddonim, see at Lev 19:31). He had done this in accordance with the law in Lev 19:31; 20:27, and Deut 18:10ff.
Verse 4-5. When the Philistines advanced and encamped at Shunem, Saul brought all Israel together and encamped at Gilboa, i.e., upon the mountain of that name on the north-eastern edge of the plain of Jezreel, which slopes off from a height of about 1250 feet into the valley of the Jordan, and is not far from Beisan. On the north of the western extremity of this mountain was Shunem, the present Sulem or Solam (see at Josh 19:18); it was hardly two hours distant, so that the camp of the Philistines might be seen from Gilboa. When Saul saw this, he was thrown into such alarm that his heart greatly trembled. As Saul had been more than once victorious in his conflicts with the Philistines, his great fear at the sight of the Philistian army can hardly be attributed to any other cause than the feeling that God had forsaken him, by which he was suddenly overwhelmed.
Verse 6. In his anxiety he inquired of the Lord; but the Lord neither answered him by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets, that is to say, not by any of the three media by which He was accustomed to make known His will to Israel. hwO;hy] laæv; is the term usually employed to signify inquiring the will and counsel of God through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest (see at Judg 1:1); and this is the case here, with the simple difference that here the other means of inquiring the counsel of God are also included. On dreams, see at Num 12:6. According to Num 27:21, Urim denotes divine revelation through the high priest by means of the ephod. But the high priest Abiathar had been with the ephod in David’s camp ever since the murder of the priests at Nob (1 Sam 22:20ff., 23:6; 30:7). How then could Saul inquire of God through the Urim? This question, which was very copiously discussed by the earlier commentators, and handled in different ways, may be decided very simply on the supposition, that after the death of Ahimelech and the flight of his son, another high priest had been appointed at the tabernacle, and another ephod made for him, with the choshen or breastplate, and the Urim and Thummim. It is no proof to the contrary that there is nothing said about this.
We have no continuous history of the worship at the tabernacle, but only occasional notices. And from these it is perfectly clear that the public worship at the tabernacle was not suspended on the murder of the priests, but was continued still. For in the first years of David’s reign we find the tabernacle at Gibeon, and Zadok the son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar, officiating there as high priest (1 Chron 16:39, compared with 1 Sam 5:38 and 6:38); from which it follows with certainty, that after the destruction of Nob by Saul the tabernacle was removed to Gibeon, and the worship of the congregation continued there. From this we may also explain in a very simple manner the repeated allusions to two high priests in David’s time (2 Sam 18:17; 15:24,29,35; 1 Chron 15:11; 18:16). The reason why the Lord did not answer Saul is to be sought for in the wickedness of Saul, which rendered him utterly unworthy to find favour with God.
Verse 7-14. Instead of recognising this, however, and searching his own heart, Saul attempted to obtain a revelation of the future in ungodly ways.
He commanded his servants (v. 7) to seek for a woman that had a familiar spirit. Baalath-ob: the mistress (or possessor) of a conjuring spirit, i.e., of a spirit with which the dead were conjured up, for the purpose of making inquiry concerning the future (see at Lev 19:31). There was a woman of this kind at Endor, which still exists as a village under the old name upon the northern shoulder of the Duhy or Little Hermon (see at Josh 17:11), and therefore only two German (ten English) miles from the Israelitish camp at Gilboa.
Verse 8. Saul went to this person by night and in disguise, that he might not be recognised, accompanied by two men; and said to her, “Divine to me through necromancy, and bring me up whomsoever I tell thee.” The words “bring me up,” etc., are an explanation or more precise definition of “divine unto me,” etc. Prophesying by the Ob was probably performed by calling up a departed spirit from Sheol, and obtaining prophecies, i.e., disclosures concerning one’s own fate, through the medium of such a spirit. On the form q¦cowmiy (Chethibh), see at Judg 9:8.
Verse 9. Such a demand placed the woman in difficulty. As Saul had driven the necromantists out of the land, she was afraid that the unknown visitor (for it is evident from v. 12 that she did not recognise Saul at first) might be laying a snare for her soul with his request, to put her to death, i.e., might have come to her merely for the purpose of spying her out as a conjurer of the dead, and then inflicting capital punishment upon her according to the law (Lev 20:27).
Verse 10-11. But when Saul swore to her that no punishment should fall upon her on that account hr;q; µai , “shall assuredly not fall upon thee”), an oath which showed how utterly hardened Saul was, she asked him, “Whom shall I bring up to thee?” and Saul replied, “Bring me up Samuel,” sc., from the region of the dead, or Sheol, which was thought to be under the ground. This idea arose from the fact that the dead were buried in the earth, and was connected with the thought of heaven as being above the earth. Just as heaven, regarded as the abode of God and the holy angels and blessed spirits, is above the earth; so, on the other hand, the region of death and the dead is beneath the ground. And with our modes of thought, which are so bound up with time and space, it is impossible to represent to ourselves in any other way the difference and contrast between blessedness with God and the shade-life in death.
Verse 12. The woman then commenced her conjuring arts. This must be supplied from the context, as v. 12 merely states what immediately ensued. “When the woman saw Samuel, she cried aloud,” sc., at the form which appeared to her so unexpectedly. These words imply most unquestionably that the woman saw an apparition which she did not anticipate, and therefore that she was not really able to conjure up departed spirits or persons who had died, but that she either merely pretended to do so, or if her witchcraft was not mere trickery and delusion, but had a certain demoniacal background, that the appearance of Samuel differed essentially from everything she had experienced and effected before, and therefore filled her with alarm and horror. The very fact, whoever, that she recognised Saul as soon as Samuel appeared, precludes us from declaring her art to have been nothing more than jugglery and deception; for she said to him, “Why hast thou cheated me, as thou art certainly Saul?” i.e., why hast thou deceived me as to thy person? why didst thou not tell me that thou wast king Saul? Her recognition of Saul when Samuel appeared may be easily explained, if we assume that the woman had fallen into a state of clairvoyance, in which she recognised persons who, like Saul in his disguise, were unknown to her by face.
Verse 13. The king quieted her fear, and then asked her what she had seen; whereupon she gave him a fuller description of the apparition: “I saw a celestial being come up from the earth.” Elohim does not signify gods here, nor yet God; still less an angel or a ghost, or even a person of superior rank, but a celestial (super-terrestrial), heavenly, or spiritual being.
Verse 14. Upon Saul’s further inquiry as to his form, she replied, “An old man is ascending, and he is wrapped in a mantle.” Meïl is the prophet’s mantle, such as Samuel was accustomed to wear when he was alive (see Sam 15:27). Saul recognised from this that the person who had been called up was Samuel, and he fell upon his face to the ground, to give expression to his reverence. Saul does not appear to have seen the apparition itself.
But it does not follow from this that there was no such apparition at all, and the whole was an invention on the part of the witch. It needs an opened eye, such as all do not possess, to see a departed spirit or celestial being. The eyes of the body are not enough for this.
Verse 15-17. Then Samuel said, “Why hast thou disturbed me (sc., from my rest in Hades; cf. Isa 14:9), to bring me up?” It follows, no doubt, from this that Samuel had been disturbed from his rest by Saul; but whether this had been effected by the conjuring arts of the witch, or by a miracle of God himself, is left undecided. Saul replied, “I am sore oppressed, for the Philistines fight against me, and God has departed from me, and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams; then I had thee called (on the intensified form ar;q; , vid., Ewald, §228, c.), to make known to me what I am to do.” The omission of any reference to the Urim is probably to be interpreted very simply from the brevity of the account, and not from the fact that Saul shrank from speaking about the oracle of the high priest, on account of the massacre of the priests which had taken place by his command.
There is a contradiction, however, in Saul’s reply: for if God had forsaken him, he could not expect any answer from Him; and if God did not reply to his inquiry through the regularly appointed media of His revelation, how could he hope to obtain any divine revelation through the help of a witch? “When living prophets gave no answer, he thought that a dead one might be called up, as if a dead one were less dependent upon God than the living, or that, even in opposition to the will of God, he might reply through the arts of a conjuring woman. Truly, if he perceived that God was hostile to him, he ought to have been all the more afraid, lest His enmity should be increased by his breach of His laws. But fear and superstition never reason” (Clericus). Samuel points out this contradiction (v. 16): “Why dost thou ask me, since Jehovah hath departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?” The meaning is: How canst thou expect an answer under these circumstances from me, the prophet of Jehovah? `r[; , from `r[; , signifies an enemy here (from `ry[i , fervour); and this meaning is confirmed by Ps 139:20 and Dan 4:16 (Chald.). There is all the less ground for any critical objection to the reading, as the Chaldee and Vulgate give a periphrastic rendering of “enemy,” whilst the LXX, Syr., and Arab. have merely paraphrased according to conjectures.
Samuel then announced his fate (vv. 17-19): “Jehovah hath performed for himself, as He spake by me wOl , for himself, which the LXX and Vulg. have arbitrarily altered into wOl , soi> , tibi (to thee), is correctly explained by Seb.
Schmidt, ‘according to His grace, or to fulfil and prove His truth’); and Jehovah hath rent the kingdom out of thy hand, and given it to thy neighbour David.” The perfects express the purpose of God, which had already been formed, and was now about to be fulfilled.
Verse 18-19. The reason for Saul’s rejection is then given, as in 1 Sam 15:23: “Because rv,a , according as) thou...hast not executed the fierceness of His anger upon Amalek, therefore hath Jehovah done this thing to thee this day.” “This thing” is the distress of which Saul had complained, with its consequences. ˆtæn; , that Jehovah may give (= for He will give) Israel also with thee into the hand of the Philistines. “To-morrow wilt thou and thy sons be with me (i.e. in Sheol, with the dead); also the camp of Israel will Jehovah give into the hand of the Philistines,” i.e., give up to them to plunder. The overthrow of the people was to heighten Saul’s misery, when he saw the people plunged with him into ruin through his sin (O. v. Gerlach). Thus was the last hope taken from Saul. His day of grace was gone, and judgment was now to burst upon him without delay.
Verse 20. These words so alarmed him, that he fell his whole length upon the ground; for he had been kneeling hitherto (v. 14). He “fell straightway (lit. he hastened and fell) upon the ground. For he was greatly terrified at the words of Samuel: there was also no strength in him, because he had eaten no food the whole day and the whole night,” sc., from mental perturbation or inward excitement. Terror and bodily exhaustion caused him to fall powerless to the ground.
Verse 21-22. The woman then came to him and persuaded him to strengthen himself with food for the journey which he had to take. It by no means follows from the expression “came unto Saul,” that the woman was in an adjoining room during the presence of the apparition, and whilst Samuel was speaking, but only that she was standing at some distance off, and came up to him to speak to him when he had fallen fainting to the ground. As she had fulfilled his wish at the risk of her own life, she entreated him now to gratify her wish, and let her set a morsel of bread before him and eat. “That strength may be in thee when thou goest thy way” (i.e., when thou returnest).
This narrative, when read without prejudice, makes at once and throughout the impression conveyed by the Septuagint at 1 Chron 10:13: ephrw>thse Saou>l en tw> eggastrimu>qw tou> zhth>sai kai> apekri>nato autw> Samouh>l oJ profh>thv ; and still more clearly at Ecclus. 46:20, where it is said of Samuel: “And after his death he prophesied, and showed the king his end, and lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy, to blot out the wickedness of the people.” Nevertheless the fathers, reformers, and earlier Christian theologians, with very few exceptions, assumed that there was not a real appearance of Samuel, but only an imaginary one. According to the explanation given by Ephraem Syrus, an apparent image of Samuel was presented to the eye of Saul through demoniacal arts. Luther and Calvin adopted the same view, and the earlier Protestant theologians followed them in regarding the apparition as nothing but a diabolical spectre, a phantasm, or diabolical spectre in the form of Samuel, and Samuel’s announcement as nothing but a diabolical revelation made by divine permission, in which truth is mixed with falsehood. f47 It was not till the seventeenth century that the opinion was expressed, that the apparition of Samuel was merely a delusion produced by the witch, without any real background at all. After Reginald Scotus and Balth.
Becker had given expression to this opinion, it was more fully elaborated by Ant. van Dale, in his dissert. de divinationibus idololatricis sub V. T.; and in the so-called age of enlightenment this was the prevailing opinion, so that Thenius still regards it as an established fact, not only that the woman was an impostor, but that the historian himself regarded the whole thing as an imposture. There is no necessity to refute this opinion at the present day. Even Fr. Boettcher (de inferis, pp. 111ff.), who looks upon the thing as an imposture, admits that the first recorder of the occurrence “believed that Samuel appeared and prophesied, contrary to the expectation of the witch;” and that the author of the books of Samuel was convinced that the prophet was raised up and prophesied, so that after his death he was proved to be the true prophet of Jehovah, although through the intervention of ungodly arts (cf. Ezek 14:7,9). But the view held by the early church does not do justice to the scriptural narrative; and hence the more modern orthodox commentators are unanimous in the opinion that the departed prophet did really appear and announce the destruction of Saul, not, however, in consequence of the magical arts of the witch, but through a miracle wrought by the omnipotence of God.
This is most decidedly favoured by the fact, that the prophetic historian speaks throughout of the appearance, not of a ghost, but of Samuel himself. He does this not only in v. 12, “When the woman saw Samuel she cried aloud,” but also in vv. 14, 15, 16, and 20. It is also sustained by the circumstance, that not only do the words of Samuel to Saul, in vv. 16-19, create the impression that it is Samuel himself who is speaking; but his announcement contains so distinct a prophecy of the death of Saul and his sons, that it is impossible to imagine that it can have proceeded from the mouth of an impostor, or have been an inspiration of Satan. On the other hand, the remark of Calvin, to the effect that “God sometimes give to devils the power of revealing secrets to us, which they have learned from the Lord,” could only be regarded as a valid objection, provided that the narrative gave us some intimation that the apparition and the speaking were nothing but a diabolical delusion.
But it does nothing of the kind. It is true, the opinion that the witch conjured up the prophet Samuel was very properly disputed by the early theologians, and rejected by Theodoret as “unholy, and even impious;” and the text of Scripture indicates clearly enough that the very opposite was the case, by the remark that the witch herself was terrified at the appearance of Samuel (v. 12). Shöbel is therefore quite correct in saying: “It was not at the call of the idolatrous king, nor at the command of the witch-neither of whom had the power to bring him up, or even to make him hear their voice in his rest in the grave-that Samuel came; nor was it merely by divine ‘permission,’ which is much too little to say. No, rather it was by the special command of God that he left his grave (?), like a faithful servant whom his master arouses at midnight, to let in an inmate of the house who has wilfully stopped out late, and has been knocking at the door. ‘Why do you disturb me out of my sleep?’ would always be the question put to the unwelcome comer, although it was not by his noise, but really by his master’s command, that he had been aroused. Samuel asked the same question.”
The prohibition of witchcraft and necromancy (Deut 18:11; Isa 8:19), which the earlier writers quote against this, does not preclude the possibility of God having, for His own special reasons, caused Samuel to appear. On the contrary, the appearance itself was of such a character, that it could not fail to show to the witch and the king, that God does not allow His prohibitions to be infringed with impunity. The very same thing occurred here, which God threatened to idolaters through the medium of Ezekiel (Ezek 14:4,7,8): “If they come to the prophet, I will answer them in my own way.” Still less is there any force in the appeal to Luke 16:27ff., where Abraham refuses the request of the rich man in Hades, that he would send Lazarus to his father’s house to preach repentance to his brethren who were still living, saying, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” For this does not affirm that the appearance of a dead man is a thing impossible in itself, but only describes it as useless and ineffectual, so far as the conversion of the ungodly is concerned.
The reality of the appearance of Samuel from the kingdom of the dead cannot therefore be called in question, especially as it has an analogon in the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration of Christ (Matt 17:3; Luke 9:30-31); except that this difference must not be overlooked, namely, that Moses and Elijah appeared “in glory,” i.e., in a glorified form, whereas Samuel appeared in earthly corporeality with the prophet’s mantle which he had worn on earth. Just as the transfiguration of Christ was a phenomenal anticipation of His future heavenly glory, into which He was to enter after His resurrection and ascension, so may we think of the appearance of Moses and Elijah “in glory” upon the mount of transfiguration as an anticipation of their heavenly transfiguration in eternal life with God. It was different with Samuel, whom God brought up from Hades through an act of His omnipotence.
This appearance is not to be regarded as the appearance of one who had risen in a glorified body; but though somewhat spirit-like in its external manifestation, so that it was only to the witch that it was visible, and not to Saul, it was merely an appearance of the soul of Samuel, that had been at rest in Hades, in the clothing of the earthly corporeality and dress of the prophet, which were assumed for the purpose of rendering it visible. In this respect the appearance of Samuel rather resembled the appearances of incorporeal angels in human form and dress, such as the three angels who came to Abraham in the grove at Mamre (Gen 18), and the angel who appeared to Manoah (Judg 13); with this exception, however, that these angels manifested themselves in a human form, which was visible to the ordinary bodily eye, whereas Samuel appeared in the spirit-like form of the inhabitants of Hades. In all these cases the bodily form and clothing were only a dress assumed for the soul or spirit, and intended to facilitate perception, so that such appearances furnish no proof that the souls of departed men possess an immaterial corporeality. f48 Verse 23-24. On Saul’s refusing to take food, his servants (i.e., his two attendants) also pressed him, so that he yielded, rose up from the ground, and sat down upon the bed (Mittah: i.e., a bench by the wall of the room provided with pillows); whereupon the woman quickly sacrificed (served up) a stalled calf, baked unleavened cakes, and set the food she had prepared before the king and his servants. The woman did all this from natural sympathy for the unhappy king, and not, as Thenius supposes, to remove all suspicion of deception from Saul’s mind; for she had not deceived the king at all.
Verse 25. When Saul and his servants had eaten, they started upon their way, and went back that night to Gilboa, which was about ten miles distant, where the battle occurred the next day, and Saul and his sons fell. “Saul was too hardened in his sin to express any grief or pain, either on his own account or because of the fate of his sons and his people. In stolid desperation he went to meet his fate. This was the terrible end of a man whom the Spirit of God had once taken possession of and turned into another man, and whom he had endowed with gifts to be the leader of the people of God” (O. v. Gerlach).
REMOVAL OF DAVID FROM THE ARMY OF THE PHILISTINES.
1 SAMUEL. 29:1-5
Whilst Saul derived no comfort from his visit to the witch at Endor, but simply heard from the mouth of Samuel the confirmation of his rejection on the part of God, and an announcement of his approaching fate, David was delivered, through the interposition of God, from the danger of having to fight against his own people.
Verse 1. The account of this is introduced by a fuller description of the position of the hostile army. “The Philistines gathered all their armies together towards Aphek, but Israel encamped at the fountain in (at) Jezreel.” This fountain is the present Ain Jalûd (or Ain Jalût, i.e., Goliath’s fountain, probably so called because it was regarded as the scene of the defeat of Goliath), a very large fountain, which issues from a cleft in the rock at the foot of the mountain on the north-eastern border of Gilboa, forming a beautifully limpid pool of about forty or fifty feet in diameter, and then flowing in a brook through the valley (Rob. Pal. iii. p. 168).
Consequently Aphek, which must be carefully distinguished from the towns of the same name in Asher (Josh 19:30; Judg 1:31) and upon the mountains of Judah (Josh 15:53) and also at Ebenezer (1 Sam 4:1), is to be sought for not very far from Shunem, in the plain of Jezreel; according to Van de Velde’s Mem., by the side of the present el Afûleh, though the situation has not been exactly determined. The statement in the Onom., “near Endor of Jezreel where Saul fought,” is merely founded upon the Septuagint, in which a[;B] is erroneously rendered en Endoo’r.
Verse 2-3. When the princes of the Philistines (sarne, as in Josh 13:3) advanced by hundreds and thousands (i.e., arranged in companies of hundreds and thousands), and David and his men came behind with Achish (i.e., forming the rear-guard), the (other) princes pronounced against their allowing David and his men to go with them. The did not occur at the time of their setting out, but on the road, when they had already gone some distance (compare v. 11 with 1 Sam 30:1), probably when the five princes (Josh 13:3) of the Philistines had effected a junction. To the inquiry, “What are these Hebrews doing?” Achish replied, “Is not this David, the servant of Saul the king of Israel, who has been with me days already, or years already? and I have found nothing in him since his coming over unto this day.” hm;Wam] , anything at all that could render his suspicious, or his fidelity doubtful. lpæn; , to fall away and go over to a person; generally construed with lae (Jer 37:13; 38:19, etc.) or `l[æ (Jer 21:9; 37:14; 1 Chron 12:19- 20), but here absolutely, as the more precise meaning can be gathered from the context.
Verse 4. But the princes, i.e., the four other princes of the Philistines, not the courtiers of Achish himself, were angry with Achish, and demanded, “Send the man back, that he may return to his place, which thou hast assigned him; that he may not go down with us into the war, and may not become an adversary (satan) to us in the war; for wherewith could he show himself acceptable to his lord (viz., Saul), if not with the heads of these men?” µwOlv; , nonne, strictly speaking, introduces a new question to confirm the previous question. “Go down to the battle:” this expression is used as in 1 Sam 26:10; 30:24, because battles were generally fought in the plains, into which the Hebrews were obliged to come down from their mountainous land. “These men,” i.e., the soldiers of the Philistines, to whom the princes were pointing.
Verse 5. To justify their suspicion, the princes reminded him of their song with which the women in Israel had celebrated David’s victory over Goliath (1 Sam 18:7).
1 SAMUEL. 29:6-11
After this declaration on the part of the princes, Achish was obliged to send David back.
Verse 6-7. With a solemn assertion-swearing by Jehovah to convince David all the more thoroughly of the sincerity of his declaration-Achish said to him, “Thou art honourable, and good in my eyes (i.e., quite right in my estimation) are thy going out and coming in (i.e., all thy conduct) with me in the camp, for I have not found anything bad in thee; but in the eyes of the princes thou art not good (i.e., the princes do not think thee honourable, do not trust thee). Turn now, and go in peace, that thou mayest do nothing displeasing to the princes of the Philistines.”
Verse 8-9. Partly for the sake of vindicating himself against this suspicion, and partly to put the sincerity of Achish’s words to the test, David replied, “What have I done, and what hast thou found in thy servant, since I was with thee till this day, that I am not to come and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?” These last words are also ambiguous, since the king whom David calls his lord might be understood as meaning either Achish or Saul. Achish, in his goodness of heart, applies them without suspicion to himself; for he assures David still more earnestly (v. 9), that he is firmly convinced of his uprightness. “I know that thou art good in my eyes as an angel of God,” i.e., I have the strongest conviction that thou hast behaved as well towards me as an angel could; but the princes have desired thy removal.
Verse 10. “And now get up early in the morning with the servants of thy lord (i.e., Saul, whose subjects David’s men all were), who have come with thee; get ye up in the morning when it gets light for you (so that ye can see), and go.”
Verse 11. In accordance with this admonition, David returned the next morning into the land of the Philistines, i.e., to Ziklag; no doubt very light of heart, and praising God for having so graciously rescued him out of the disastrous situation into which he had been brought and not altogether without some fault of his own, rejoicing that “he had not committed either sin, i.e., had neither violated the fidelity which he owed to Achish, nor had to fight against the Israelites” (Seb. Schmidt).
DAVID AVENGES UPON THE AMALEKITES THE PLUNDERING AND BURNING OF ZIKLAG.
1 SAMUEL. 30:1-10
During David’s absence the Amalekites had invaded the south country, smitten Ziklag and burnt it down, and carried off the women and children whom they found there; whereat not only were David and his men plunged into great grief on their return upon the third day but David especially was involved in very great trouble, inasmuch as the people wanted to stone him. But he strengthened himself in the Lord his God (vv. 1-6).
Verse 1-5. Vv. 1-4 form one period, which is expanded by the introduction of several circumstantial clauses. The apodosis to “It came to pass, when,” etc. (v. 1), does not follow till v. 4, “Then David and the people,” etc. But this is formally attached to v. 3, “so David and his men came,” with which the protasis commenced in v. 1 is resumed in an altered form. “It came to pass, when David and his men came to Ziklag...the Amalekites had invaded...and had carried off the wives...and had gone their way, and David and his men came into the town (for ‘when David and his men came,’ etc.), and behold it was burned.... Then David and the people with him lifted up their voice.” “On the third day:” after David’s dismission by Achish, not after David’s departure from Ziklag. David had at any rate gone with Achish beyond Gath, and had not been sent back till the whole of the princes of the Philistines had united their armies (1 Sam 29:2ff.), so that he must have been absent from Ziklag more than two days, or two days and a half.
This is placed beyond all doubt by vv. 11ff., since the Amalekites are there described as having gone off with their booty three days before David followed them, and therefore they had taken Ziklag and burned it three days before David’s return. These foes had therefore taken advantage of the absence of David and his warriors, to avenge themselves for David’s invasions and plunderings (1 Sam 27:8). Of those who were carried off, “the women” alone expressly mentioned in v. 2, although the female population and all the children had been removed, as we may see from the expression “small and great” (vv. 3, 6). The LXX were therefore correct, so far as the sense is concerned, in introducing the words kai> pa>nta before µyrit;a rv,a . “They had killed no one, but (only) carried away.” ghæn; , to carry away captive, as in Isa 20:4. Among those who had been carried off were David’s two wives, Ahinoam and Abigail (vid., 1 Sam 25:42-43; 27:3).
Verse 6-10. David was greatly distressed in consequence; “for the people thought (‘said,’ sc., in their hearts) to stone him,” because they sought the occasion of their calamity in his connection with Achish, with which many of his adherents may very probably have been dissatisfied. “For the soul of the whole people was embittered (i.e., all the people were embittered in their souls) because of their sons and daughters,” who had been carried away into slavery. “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God,” i.e., sought consolation and strength in prayer and believing confidence in the Lord (vv. 7ff.). This strength he manifested in the resolution to follow the foes and rescue their booty from them. To this end he had the ephod brought by the high priest Abiathar (cf. 1 Sam 23:9), and inquired by means of the Urim of the Lord, “Shall I pursue this troop? Shall I overtake it?” These questions were answered in the affirmative; and the promise was added, “and thou wilt rescue.” So David pursued the enemy with his six hundred men as far as the brook Besor, where the rest, i.e., two hundred, remained standing (stayed behind).
The words `rmæ[; rtæy; , which are appended in the form of a circumstantial clause, are to be connected, so far as the facts are concerned, with what follows: whilst the others remained behind, David pursued the enemy still farther with four hundred men. By the word rtæy; the historian has somewhat anticipated the matter, and therefore regards it as necessary to define the expression still further in v. 10b. We are precluded from changing the text, as Thenius suggests, by the circumstance that all the early translators read it in this manner, and have endeavoured to make the expression intelligible by paraphrasing it. These two hundred men were too tired to cross the brook and go any farther. rgæp; , which only occurs here and in v. 21, signifies, in Syriac, to be weary or exhausted.) As Ziklag was burnt down, of course they found no provisions there, and were consequently obliged to set out in pursuit of the foe without being able to provide themselves with the necessary supplies. The brook Besor is supposed to be the Wady Sheriah, which enters the sea below Ashkelon (see v. Raumer, Pal. p. 52).
1 SAMUEL. 30:11-12
On their further march they found an Egyptian lying exhausted upon the field; and having brought him to David, they gave him food and drink, namely “a slice of fig-cake (cf. 1 Sam 25:18), and raisin-cakes to eat; whereupon his spirit of life returned (i.e., he came to himself again), as he had neither eaten bread nor drunk water for three days.”
1 SAMUEL. 30:13-14
To whom belongest thou? and whence art thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days agone I fell sick.
When David asked him whence he had come (to whom, i.e., to what people or tribe, dost thou belong?), the young man said that he was an Egyptian, and servant of an Amalekite, and that he had been left behind by his master when he fell sick three days before (“to-day three,” sc., days): he also said, “We invaded the south of the Crethites, and what belongs to Judah, and the south of Caleb, and burned Ziklag with fire.” ytireK] , identical with ytireK] (Ezek 25:16; Zeph 2:5), denotes those tribes of the Philistines who dwelt in the south-west of Canaan, and is used by Ezekiel and Zephaniah as synonymous with Philistim. The origin of the name is involved in obscurity, as the explanation which prevailed for a time, viz., that it was derived from Creta, is without sufficient foundation (vid., Stark, Gaza, pp. 66 and 99ff.). The Negeb “belonging to Judah” is the eastern portion of the Negeb. One part of it belonged to the family of Caleb, and was called Caleb’s Negeb (vid., 1 Sam 25:3).
1 SAMUEL. 30:15-16
This Egyptian then conducted David, at his request, when he had sworn that he would neither kill him nor deliver him up to his master, down to the hostile troops, who were spread over the whole land, eating, drinking, and making merry, on account of all the great booty which they had brought out of the land of the Philistines and Judah.
1 SAMUEL. 30:17
David surprised them in the midst of their security, and smote them from the evening twilight till the evening of the next day, so that no one escaped, with the exception of four hundred young men, who fled upon camels.
Nesheph signifies the evening twilight here, not the dawn-a meaning which is not even sustained by Job 7:4. The form maachaaraataam appears to be an adverbial formation, like µm;wOy .
1 SAMUEL. 30:18-19
Through this victory David rescued all that the Amalekites had taken, his two wives, and all the children great and small; also the booty that they had taken with them, so that nothing was missing.
1 SAMUEL. 30:20
V. 20 is obscure: “And David took all the sheep and the oxen: they drove them before those cattle, and said, This is David’s booty.” In order to obtain any meaning whatever from this literal rendering of the words, we must understand by the sheep and oxen those which belonged to the Amalekites, and the flocks taken from them as booty; and by “those cattle,” the cattle belonging to David and his men, which the Amalekites had driven away, and the Israelites had now recovered from them: so that David had the sheep and oxen which he had taken from the Amalekites as booty driven in front of the rest of the cattle which the Israelites had recovered; whereupon the drovers exclaimed, “This (the sheep and oxen) is David’s booty.” It is true that there is nothing said in what goes before about any booty that David had taken from the Amalekites, in addition to what they had taken from the Israelites; but the fact that David had really taken such booty is perfectly obvious from vv. 26-31, where he is said to have sent portions of the booty of the enemies of Jehovah to different places in the land. If this explanation be not accepted, there is no other course open than to follow the Vulgate, alter µynip; into µynip; , and render the middle clause thus: “they drove those cattle (viz., the sheep and oxen already mentioned) before him,” as Luther has done. But even in that case we could hardly understand anything else by the sheep and oxen than the cattle belonging to the Amalekites, and taken from them as booty.
1 SAMUEL. 30:20
V. 20 is obscure: “And David took all the sheep and the oxen: they drove them before those cattle, and said, This is David’s booty.” In order to obtain any meaning whatever from this literal rendering of the words, we must understand by the sheep and oxen those which belonged to the Amalekites, and the flocks taken from them as booty; and by “those cattle,” the cattle belonging to David and his men, which the Amalekites had driven away, and the Israelites had now recovered from them: so that David had the sheep and oxen which he had taken from the Amalekites as booty driven in front of the rest of the cattle which the Israelites had recovered; whereupon the drovers exclaimed, “This (the sheep and oxen) is David’s booty.” It is true that there is nothing said in what goes before about any booty that David had taken from the Amalekites, in addition to what they had taken from the Israelites; but the fact that David had really taken such booty is perfectly obvious from vv. 26-31, where he is said to have sent portions of the booty of the enemies of Jehovah to different places in the land. If this explanation be not accepted, there is no other course open than to follow the Vulgate, alter µynip; into µynip; , and render the middle clause thus: “they drove those cattle (viz., the sheep and oxen already mentioned) before him,” as Luther has done. But even in that case we could hardly understand anything else by the sheep and oxen than the cattle belonging to the Amalekites, and taken from them as booty.
1 SAMUEL. 30:21-31
When David came back to the two hundred men whom he had left by the brook Besor ( µbuyviwOy , they made them sit, remain), they went to meet him and his warriors, and were heartily greeted by David.
Verse 22. Then all kinds of evil and worthless men of those who had gone with David to the battle replied: “Because they have not gone with us (lit. with me, the person speaking), we will not give them any of the booty that we have seized, except to every one his wife and his children: they may lead them away, and go.” Verse 23-24. David opposed this selfish and envious proposal, saying, “Do not so, my brethren, with that tae , the sign of the accusative, not the preposition; see Ewald, §329, a.: lit. with regard to that) which Jehovah hath done to us, and He hath guarded us (since He hath guarded us), and given this troop which came upon us into our hand. And who will hearken to you in this matter? But yKi , according to the negation involved in the question) as the portion of him that went into the battle, so be the portion of him that stayed by the things; they shall share together.” dræy; is a copyist’s error for dræy; .
Verse 25. So was it from that day and forward; and he (David) made it (this regulation as to the booty) “the law and right for Israel unto this day.”
Verse 26-29. When David returned to Ziklag, he sent portions of the booty to the elders of Judah, to his friends, with this message: “Behold, here ye have a blessing of the booty of the enemies of Jehovah” (which we took from the enemies of Jehovah); and this he did, according to v. 31, to all the places in which he had wandered with his men, i.e., where he had wandered about during his flight from Saul, and in which he had no doubt received assistance. Sending these gifts could not fail to make the elders of these cities well disposed towards him, and so to facilitate his recognition as king after the death of Saul, which occurred immediately afterwards. Some of these places may have been plundered by the Amalekites, since they had invaded the Negeb of Judah (v. 14). The cities referred to were Bethel,-not the Bethel so often mentioned, the present Beitin, in the tribe of Benjamin, but Betheul (1 Chron 4:30) or Bethul, in the tribe of Simeon (Josh 19:4), which Knobel supposes to be Elusa or el Khalasa (see at Josh 15:30).
The reading Baiqsou>r in the LXX is a worthless conjecture. Ramah of the south, which was allotted to the tribe of Simeon, has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 19:8). Jattir has been preserved in the ruins of Attir, on the southern portion of the Mountains of Judah (see at Josh 15:48). Aroër is still to be seen in ruins, viz., in the foundations of walls built in enormous stones in Wady Arara, where there are many cavities for holding water, about three hours E.S.E. of Bersaba, and twenty miles to the south of Hebron (vid., Rob. Pal. ii. p. 620, and v. de Velde, Mem. p. 288). Siphmoth (or Shiphmoth, according to several MSS) is altogether unknown. It may probably be referred to again in 1 Chron 27:27, where Zabdi is called the Shiphmite; but it is certainly not to be identified with Sepham, on the north-east of the sea of Galilee (Num 34:10-11), as Thenius supposes. Eshtemoa has been preserved in the village of Semua, with ancient ruins, on the south-western portion of the mountains of Judah (see at Josh 15:50). Racal is never mentioned again, and is entirely unknown. The LXX have five different names instead of this, the last being Carmel, into which Thenius proposes to alter Racal. But this can hardly be done with propriety, as the LXX also introduced the Philistian Gath, which certainly does not belong here; whilst in v. 30 they have totally different names, some of which are decidedly wrong. The cities of the Jerahmeelites and Kenites were situated in the Negeb of Judah (1 Sam 27:10), but their names cannot be traced.
Verse 30-31. Hormah in the Negeb (Josh 15:30) is Zephath, the present Zepáta, on the western slope of the Rakhma plateau (see at Josh 12:14).
Cor-ashan, probably the same place as Ashan in the Shephelah, upon the border of the Negeb, has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 15:42).
Athach is only mentioned here, and quite unknown. According to Thenius, it is probably a mistaken spelling for Ether in the tribe of Simeon (Josh 19:7; 15:43). Hebron, the present el Khulil, Abraham’s city (see at Josh 10:3; Gen 23:17).
DEATH AND BURIAL OF SAUL AND HIS SONS.
The end of the unhappy king corresponded to his life ever since the day of his rejection as king. When he had lost the battle, and saw his three sons fallen at his side, and the archers of the enemy pressing hard upon him, without either repentance or remorse he put an end to his life by suicide, to escape the disgrace of being wounded and abused by the foe (vv. 1-7). But he did not attain his object; for the next day the enemy found his corpse and those of his sons, and proceeded to plunder, mutilate, and abuse them (vv. 8-10). However, the king of Israel was not to be left to perish in utter disgrace. The citizens of Jabesh remembered the deliverance which Saul had brought to their city after his election as king, and showed their gratitude by giving an honourable burial to Saul and his sons (vv. 11-13).
There is a parallel to this chapter in 1 Chron 10, which agrees exactly with the account before us, with very few deviations indeed, and those mostly verbal, and merely introduces a hortatory clause at the end (vv. 13, 14).
1 SAMUEL. 31:1-7
Verse 1-7. The account of the war between the Philistines and Israel, the commencement of which has already been mentioned in 1 Sam 28:1,4ff., and 29:1, is resumed in v. 1 in a circumstantial clause; and to this there is attached a description of the progress and result of the battle, more especially with reference to Saul. Consequently, in 1 Chron 10:1, where there had been no previous allusion to the war, the participle µjæl; is changed into the perfect. The following is the way in which we should express the circumstantial clause: “Now when the Philistines were fighting against Israel, the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and slain men fell in the mountains of Gilboa” (vid., 1 Sam 28:4). The principal engagement took place in the plain of Jezreel. But when the Israelites were obliged to yield, they fled up the mountains of Gilboa, and were pursued and slain there.
Verse 2-6. The Philistines followed Saul, smote (i.e., put to death) his three sons (see at 1 Sam 14:49), and fought fiercely against Saul himself.
When the archers tv,q, vyai is an explanatory apposition to hr;y; ) hit him, i.e., overtook him, he was greatly alarmed at them lWj , from lyji or lWj ), and called upon his armour-bearer to pierce him with the sword, “lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and play with me,” i.e., cool their courage upon me by maltreating me. But as the armourbearer would not do this, because he was very much afraid, since he was supposed to be answerable for the king’s life, Saul inflicted death upon himself with his sword; whereupon the armour-bearer also fell upon his sword and died with his king, so that on that day Saul and this three sons and his armour-bearer all died; also “all his men” (for which we have “all his house” in the Chronicles), i.e., not all the warriors who went out with him to battle, but all the king’s servants, or all the members of his house, sc., who had taken part in the battle. Neither Abner nor his son Ishbosheth was included, for the latter was not in the battle; and although the former was Saul’s cousin and commander-in-chief (see 1 Sam 14:50-51), he did not belong to his house or servants.
Verse 7. When the men of Israel upon the sides that were opposite to the valley (Jezreel) and the Jordan saw that the Israelites (the Israelitish troop) fled, and Saul and his sons were dead, they took to flight out of the cities, whereupon the Philistines took possession of them. `rb,[e is used here to signify the side opposite to the place of conflict in the valley of Jezreel, which the writer assumed as his standpoint (cf. 1 Sam 14:40); so that `qm,[e `rb,[e is the country to the west of the valley of Jezreel, and ˆDer]yæ `rb,[e the country to the west of the Jordan, i.e., between Gilboa and the Jordan.
These districts, i.e., the whole of the country round about the valley of Jezreel, the Philistines took possession of, so that the whole of the northern part of the land of Israel, in other words the whole land with the exception of Peraea and the tribe-land of Judah, came into their hands when Saul was slain.
1 SAMUEL. 31:8-10
On the day following the battle, when the Philistines tripped the slain, they found Saul and his three sons lying upon Gilboa; and having cut off their heads and plundered their weapons, they went them (the heads and weapons) as trophies into the land of the Philistines, i.e., round about to the different towns and hamlets of their land, to announce the joyful news in their idol-temples (the writer of the Chronicles mentions the idols themselves) and to the people, and then deposited their weapons (the weapons of Saul and his sons) in the Astarte-houses. But the corpses they fastened to the town-wall of Beth-shean, i.e., Beisan, in the valley of the Jordan (see at Josh 17:11). Beth-azabbim and Beth-ashtaroth are composite words; the first part is indeclinable, and the plural form is expressed by the second word: idol-houses and Astarte-houses, like bethaboth (father’s-houses: see at Ex 6:14).
On the Astartes, see at Judg 2:13. It is not expressly stated indeed in vv. 9, 10, that the Philistines plundered the bodies of Saul’s sons as well, and mutilated them by cutting off their heads; but varo and yliK] , his (i.e., Saul’s) head and his weapons, alone are mentioned. At the same time, it is every evident from v. 12, where the Jabeshites are said to have taken down from the wall of Beth-shean not Saul’s body only, but the bodies of his sons also, that the Philistines had treated the corpses of Saul’s sons in just the same manner as that of Saul himself. The writer speaks distinctly of the abuse of Saul’s body only, because it was his death that he had chiefly in mind at the time. To the word jlæv; we must supply in thought the object varo and yliK] from the preceding clause. jY;wiG] and jY;wiG] (vv. 10 and 12) are the corpses without the heads. The fact that the Philistines nailed them to the town-wall of Beth-shean presupposes the capture of that city, from which it is evident that they had occupied the land as far as the Jordan. The definite word Beth-ashtaroth is changed by the writer of the Chronicles into Beth-elohim, temples of the gods; or rather he has interpreted it in this manner without altering the sense, as the Astartes are merely mentioned as the principal deities for the idols generally. The writer of the Chronicles has also omitted to mention the nailing of the corpses to the wall of Beth-shean, but he states instead that “they fastened his skull in the temple of Dagon,” a fact which is passed over in the account before us. From this we may see how both writers have restricted themselves to the principal points, or those which appeared to them of the greatest importance (vid., Bertheau on 1 Chron 10:10).
1 SAMUEL. 31:11-13
When the inhabitants of Jabesh in Gilead heard this, all the brave men of the town set out to Beth-shean, took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, brought them to Jabesh, and burned them there. “But their bones they buried under the tamarisk at Jabesh, and fasted seven days,” to mourn for the king their former deliverer (see ch. 11). These statements are given in a very condensed form in the Chronicles (vv. 11, 12). Not only is the fact that “they went the whole night” omitted, as being of no essential importance to the general history; but the removal of the bodies from the town-wall is also passed over, because their being fastened there had not been mentioned, and also the burning of the bodies. The reason for the last omission is not to be sought for in the fact that the author of the Chronicles regarded burning as ignominious, according to Lev 20:14; 21:9, but because he did not see how to reconcile the burning of the bodies with the burial of the bones.
It was not the custom in Israel to burn the corpse, but to bury it in the ground. The former was restricted to the worst criminals (see at Lev 20:14). Consequently the Chaldee interpreted the word “burnt” as relating to the burning of spices, a custom which we meet with afterwards as a special honour shown to certain of the kings of Judah on the occasion of their burial (2 Chron 16:14; 21:19; Jer 34:5). But this is expressed by hp;rec; wOl ãræc; , “to make a burning for him,” whereas here it is stated distinctly that “they burnt them.” The reason for the burning of the bodies in the case of Saul and his sons is to be sought for in the peculiarity of the circumstances; viz., partly in the fact that the bodies were mutilated by the removal of the heads, and therefore a regular burial of the dead was impossible, and partly in their anxiety lest, if the Philistines followed up their victory and came to Jabesh, they should desecrate the bodies still further. But even this was not a complete burning to ashes, but merely a burning of the skin and flesh; so that the bones still remained, and they were buried in the ground under a shady tree. Instead of “under the (wellknown) tamarisk” (eshel), we have hl;ai tjæTæ (under the strong tree) in Chron 10:11. David afterwards had them fetched away and buried in Saul’s family grave at Zela, in the land of Benjamin (2 Sam 21:11ff.). The seven days’ fast kept by the Jabeshites was a sign of public and general mourning on the part of the inhabitants of that town at the death of the king, who had once rescued them from the most abominable slavery.
In this ignominious fate of Saul there was manifested the righteous judgment of God in consequence of the hardening of his heart. But the love which the citizens of Jabesh displayed in their treatment of the corpses of Saul and his sons, had reference not to the king as rejected by God, but to the king as anointed with the Spirit of Jehovah, and was a practical condemnation, not of the divine judgment which had fallen upon Saul, but of the cruelty of the enemies of Israel and its anointed. For although Saul had waged war almost incessantly against the Philistines, it is not known that in any one of his victories he had ever been guilty of such cruelties towards the conquered and slaughtered foe as could justify this barbarous revenge on the part of the uncircumcised upon his lifeless corpse. 2 SAMUEL INTRODUCTION TO 2 SAMUEL This book contains the history of David’s reign, arranged according to its leading features: viz., (1) the commencement of his reign as king of Judah at Hebron, whereas the other tribes of Israel adhered to the house of Saul (ch. 1-4); (2) his promotion to be king over all Israel, and the victorious extension of his sway (ch. 5-9); (3) the decline of his power in consequence of his adultery (ch. 10-20); (4) the close of his reign (ch. 21-24). Parallels and supplements to this history, in which the reign of David is described chiefly in its connection with the development of the kingdom of God under the Old Testament, are given in ch. 11-28 of the first book of Chronicles, where we have an elaborate description of the things done by David, both for the elevation and organization of the public worship of God, and also for the consolidation and establishment of the whole kingdom, and the general administration of government.
I. DAVID KING OVER JUDAH; AND ISHBOSHETH KING OVER ISRAEL When David received the tidings at Ziklag of the defeat of Israel and the death of Saul, he mourned deeply and sincerely for the fallen king and his noble son Jonathan (ch. 1). He then returned by the permission of God into the land of Judah, namely to Hebron, and was anointed king of Judah by the elders of that tribe; whereas Abner, the cousin and chief general of Saul, took Ishbosheth, the only remaining son of the fallen monarch, and made him king over the other tribes of Israel at Mahanaim (2 Sam 2:1-11).
This occasioned a civil war. Abner marched to Gibeon against David with the forces of Ishbosheth, but was defeated by Joab, David’s commander-in- chief, and pursued to Mahanaim, in which pursuit Abner slew Asahel the brother of Joab, who was eagerly following him (2 Sam 2:12-32).
Nevertheless, the conflict between the house of David and the house of Saul continued for some time longer, but with the former steadily advancing and the latter declining, until at length Abner quarrelled with Ishbosheth, and persuaded the tribes that had hitherto adhered to him to acknowledge David as king over all Israel. After the negotiations with David for effecting this, he was assassinated by Joab on his return from Hebron-an act at which David not only expressed his abhorrence by a solemn mourning for Abner, but declared it still more openly by cursing Joab’s crime (ch. 3).
Shortly afterwards, Ishbosheth was assassinated in his own house by two Benjaminites; but this murder was also avenged by David, who ordered the murderers to be put to death, and the head of Ishbosheth, that had been delivered up to him, to be buried in Abner’s tomb (ch. 4). Thus the civil war and the threatened split in the kingdom were brought to an end, though without any complicity on the part of David, but rather against his will, viz., through the death of Abner, the author of the split, and of Ishbosheth, whom he had placed upon the throne, both of whom fell by treacherous hands, and received the reward of their rebellion against the ordinance of God. David himself, in his long school of affliction under Saul, had learned to put all his hope in the Lord his God; and therefore, when Saul was dead, he took no steps to grasp by force the kingdom which God had promised him, or to remove his rival out of the way by crime.
DAVID’S CONDUCT ON HEARING OF SAUL’S DEATH. HIS ELEGY UPON SAUL AND JONATHAN.
David received the intelligence of the defeat of Israel and the death of Saul in the war with the Philistines from an Amalekite, who boasted of having slain Saul and handed over to David the crown and armlet of the fallen king, but whom David punished with death for the supposed murder of the anointed of God (vv. 1-16). David mourned for the death of Saul and Jonathan, and poured out his grief in an elegiac ode (vv. 17-27). This account is closely connected with the concluding chapters of the first book of Samuel.
2 SAMUEL. 1:1-16
David receives the news of Saul’s death.
Vv. 1-4. After the death of Saul, and David’s return to Ziklag from his campaign against the Amalekites, there came a man to David on the third day, with his clothes torn and earth strewed upon his head (as a sign of deep mourning: see at 1 Sam 4:12), who informed him of the flight and overthrow of the Israelitish army, and the death of Saul and Jonathan.
Verse 1-3. V. 1 may be regarded as the protasis to v. 2, so far as the contents are concerned, although formally it is rounded off, and bvæy; forms the apodosis to hy;h; : “It came to pass after the death of Saul, David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites (1 Sam 30:1-26), that David remained at Ziklag two days. And it came to pass on the third day,” etc.
Both of these notices of the time refer to the day, on which David returned to Ziklag from the pursuit and defeat of the Amalekites. Whether the battle at Gilboa, in which Saul fell, occurred before or after the return of David, it is impossible to determine. All that follows from the juxtaposition of the two events in v. 1, is that they were nearly contemporaneous. The man “came from the army from with Saul,” and therefore appears to have kept near to Saul during the battle.
Verse 4. David’s inquiry, “How did the thing happen?” refers to the statement made by the messenger, that he had escaped from the army of Israel. In the answer, rv,a serves, like yKi in other passages, merely to introduce the words that follow, like our namely (vid., Ewald, §338, b.). “The people fled from the fight; and not only have many of the people fallen, but Saul and Jonathan his son are also dead.” µGæ : not only...but also.
Verse 5-10. To David’s further inquiry how he knew this, the young man replied (vv. 6-10), “I happened to come ar;q; = ar;q; ) up to the mountains of Gilboa, and saw Saul leaning upon his spear; then the chariots (the warchariots for the charioteers) and riders were pressing upon him, and he turned round and saw me,...and asked me, Who art thou? and I said, An Amalekite; and he said to me, Come hither to me, and slay me, for the cramp xb;v; according to the Rabbins) hath seized me (sc., so that I cannot defend myself, and must fall into the hands of the Philistines); for my soul (my life) is still whole in me. Then I went to him, and slew him, because I knew that after his fall he would not live; and took the crown upon his head, and the bracelet upon his arm, and brought them to my lord” (David). “After his fall” does not mean “after he had fallen upon his sword or spear” (Clericus), for this is neither implied in lpæn; nor in wOtynij\Al[æ ˆ[;v]ni (“supported, i.e., leaning upon his spear”), nor are we at liberty to transfer it from 1 Sam 31:4 into this passage; but “after his defeat,” i.e., so that he would not survive this calamity.
This statement is at variance with the account of the death of Saul in 1 Sam 31:3ff.; and even apart from this it has an air of improbability, or rather of untruth in it, particularly in the assertion that Saul was leaning upon his spear when the chariots and horsemen of the enemy came upon him, without having either an armour-bearer or any other Israelitish soldier by his side, so that he had to turn to an Amalekite who accidentally came by, and to ask him to inflict the fatal wound. The Amalekite invented this, in the hope of thereby obtaining the better recompense from David. The only part of his statement which is certainly true, is that he found the king lying dead upon the field of battle, and took off the crown and armlet; since he brought these to David. But it is by no means certain whether he was present when Saul expired, or merely found him after he was dead.
Verse 11-12. This information, the substance of which was placed beyond all doubt by the king’s jewels that were brought, filled David with the deepest sorrow. As a sign of his pain he rent his clothes; and all the men with him did the same, and mourned with weeping and fasting until the evening “for Saul and for Jonathan his son, for the people of Jehovah, and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword” (i.e., in battle). “The people of Jehovah” and the “house or people of Israel” are distinguished from one another, according to the twofold attitude of Israel, which furnished a double ground for mourning. Those who had fallen were first of all members of the people of Jehovah, and secondly, fellowcountrymen. “They were therefore associated with them, both according to the flesh and according to the spirit, and for that reason they mourned the more” (Seb. Schmidt). “The only deep mourning for Saul, with the exception of that of the Jabeshites (1 Sam 31:11), proceeded from the man whom he had hated and persecuted for so many years even to the time of his death; just as David’s successor wept over the fall of Jerusalem, even when it was about to destroy Himself” (O. v. Gerlach).
Verse 13. David then asked the bringer of the news for further information concerning his own descent, and received the reply that he was the son of an Amalekite stranger, i.e., of an Amalekite who had emigrated to Israel.
Verse 14-16. David then reproached him for what he had done: “How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thine hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?” and commanded one of his attendants to slay him (vv. 15ff.), passing sentence of death in these words: “Thy blood come upon thy head (cf. Lev 20:9; Josh 2:1;(1); for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the Lord’s anointed.” f50 David regarded the statement of the Amalekite as a sufficient ground for condemnation, without investigating the truth any further; though it was most probably untrue, as he could see through his design of securing a great reward as due to him for performing such a deed (vid., 2 Sam 4:10), and looked upon a man who could attribute such an act to himself from mere avarice as perfectly capable of committing it. Moreover, the king’s jewels, which he had brought, furnished a practical proof that Saul had really been put to death. This punishment was by no means so severe as to render it necessary to “estimate its morality according to the times,” or to defend it merely from the standpoint of political prudence, on the ground that as David was the successor of Saul, and had been pursued by him as his rival with constant suspicion and hatred, he ought not to leave the murder of the king unpunished, if only because the people, or at any rate his own opponents among the people, would accuse him of complicity in the murder of the king, if not of actually instigating the murderer.
David would never have allowed such considerations as these to lead him into unjust severity. And his conduct requires no such half vindication.
Even on the supposition that Saul had asked the Amalekite to give him his death-thrust, as he said he had, it was a crime deserving of punishment to fulfil this request, the more especially as nothing is said about any such mortal wounding of Saul as rendered his escape or recovery impossible, so that it could be said that it would have been cruel under such circumstances to refuse his request to be put to death. If Saul’s life was still “full in him,” as the Amalekite stated, his position was not so desperate as to render it inevitable that he should fall into the hands of the Philistines. Moreover, the supposition was a very natural one, that he had slain the king for the sake of a reward. But slaying the king, the anointed of the Lord, was in itself a crime that deserved to be punished with death. What David might more than once have done, but had refrained from doing from holy reverence for the sanctified person of the king, this foreigner, a man belonging to the nation of the Amalekites, Israel’s greatest foes, had actually done for the sake of gain, or at any rate pretended to have done. Such a crime must be punished with death, and that by David who had been chosen by God and anointed as Saul’s successor, and whom the Amalekite himself acknowledge in that capacity, since otherwise he would not have brought him the news together with the royal diadem.
2 SAMUEL. 1:17-18
David’s elegy upon Saul and Jonathan.
An eloquent testimony to the depth and sincerity of David’s grief for the death of Saul is handed down to us in the elegy which he composed upon Saul and his noble son Jonathan, and which he had taught to the children of Israel. It is one of the finest odes of the Old Testament; full of lofty sentiment, and springing from deep and sanctified emotion, in which, without the slightest allusion to his own relation to the fallen king, David celebrates without envy the bravery and virtues of Saul and his son Jonathan, and bitterly laments their loss. “He said to teach,” i.e., he commanded the children of Judah to practise or learn it. tv,q, , bow,; i.e., a song to which the title Kesheth or bow was given, not only because the bow is referred to (v. 22), but because it is a martial ode, and the bow was one of the principal weapons used by the warriors of that age, and one in the use of which the Benjaminites, the tribe-mates of Saul, were particularly skilful: cf. 1 Chron 8:40; 12:2; 2 Chron 14:7; 17:17. Other explanations are by no means so natural; such, for example, as that it related to the melody to which the ode was sung; whilst some are founded upon false renderings, or arbitrary alterations of the text, e.g., that of Ewald (Gesch. i. p. 41), Thenius, etc. This elegy was inserted in “the book of the righteous” (see at Josh 10:13), from which the author of the books of Samuel has taken it.
The ode is arranged in three strophes, which gradually diminish in force and sweep (viz., vv. 19-24, 25-26, 27), and in which the vehemence of the sorrow so gradually modified, and finally dies away. Each strophe opens with the exclamation, “How are the mighty fallen!” The first contains all that had to be said in praise of the fallen heroes; the deepest mourning for their death; and praise of their bravery, of their inseparable love, and of the virtues of Saul as king. The second commemorates the friendship between David and Jonathan. The third simply utters the last sigh, with which the elegy becomes silent. The first strophe runs thus: 19 The ornament, O Israel, is slain upon thy heights!
Oh how are the mighty fallen! 20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph! 21 Ye mountains of Gilboa, let now dew or rain be upon you, or fields of first-fruit offerings:
For there is the shield of the mighty defiled, The shield of Saul, not anointed with oil. 22 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back, And the sword of Saul returned not empty. 23 Saul and Jonathan, beloved and kind, in life And in death they are not divided.
Lighter than eagles were they; stronger than lions. 24 Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in purple with delight; Who put a golden ornament upon your apparel!
2 SAMUEL. 1:19
The first clause of v. 19 contains the theme of the entire ode. ybix] does not mean the gazelle here (as the Syriac and Clericus and others render it), the only plausible support of which is the expression “upon thy heights,” whereas the parallel rwOBGi shows that by ybix] we are to understand the two heroes Saul and Jonathan, and that the word is used in the appellative sense of ornament. The king and his noble son were the ornament of Israel. They were slain upon the heights of Israel. Luther has given a correct rendering, so far as the sense is concerned (die Edelsten, the noblest), after the inclyti of the Vulgate. The pronoun “thy high places” refers to Israel. The reference is to the heights of the mountains of Gilboa (see v. 21). This event threw Israel into deep mourning, which commences in the second clause.
2 SAMUEL. 1:20
The tidings of this mourning were not to be carried out among the enemies of Israel, lest they should rejoice thereat. Such rejoicing would only increase the pain of Israel at the loss it had sustained. Only two of the cities of Philistia are mentioned by name, viz., Gath, which was near, and Askelon, which was farther off by the sea. The rejoicing of the daughters of the Philistines refers to the custom of employing women to celebrate the victories of their nation by singing and dancing (cf. 1 Sam 18:6).
2 SAMUEL. 1:21
Even nature is to join in the mourning. May God withdraw His blessing from the mountains upon which the heroes have fallen, that they may not be moistened by the dew and rain of heaven, but, remaining in eternal barrenness, be memorials of the horrible occurrence that has taken place upon them. bagil¦bia` haareey is an address to them; and the preposition b¦ with the construct state is poetical: “mountains in Gilboa” (vid., Ewald, §289, b.). In laæ the verb hy;h; is wanting. The following words, hm;WrT] hd,c; , are in apposition to the foregoing: “and let not fields of first-fruit offerings be upon you,” i.e., fields producing fruit, from which offerings of first-fruits were presented. This is the simplest and most appropriate explanation of the words, which have been very differently, and in some respects very marvellously rendered. The reason for this cursing of the mountains of Gilboa was, that there the shield of the heroes, particularly of Saul, had been defiled with blood, namely the blood of those whom the shield ought to defend. l[æG; does not mean to throw away (Dietrich.), but to soil or defile (as in the Chaldee), then to abhor. “Not anointed with oil,” i.e., not cleansed and polished with oil, so that the marks of Saul’s blood still adhered to it. yliB] poetical for alo . The interpolation of the words “as though” (quasi non esset unctus oleo, Vulgate) cannot be sustained.
2 SAMUEL. 1:22
Such was the ignominy experienced upon Gilboa by those who had always fought so bravely, that their bow and sword did not turn back until it was satisfied with the blood and fat of the slain. The figure upon which the passage is founded is, that arrows drink the blood of the enemy, and a sword devours their flesh (vid., Deut 32:42; Isa 34:5-6; Jer 46:10). The two principal weapons are divided between Saul and Jonathan, so that the bow is assigned to the latter and the sword to the former.
2 SAMUEL. 1:23-24
In death as in life, the two heroes were not divided, for they were alike in bravery and courage. Notwithstanding their difference of character, and the very opposite attitude which they assumed towards David, the noble Jonathan did not forsake his father, although his fierce hatred towards the friend whom Jonathan loved as his own soul might have undermined his attachment to his father. The two predicates, ne’ehaab, loved and amiable, and µy[in; , affectionate or kind, apply chiefly to Jonathan; but they were also suitable to Saul in the earliest years of his reign, when he manifested the virtues of an able ruler, which secured for him the lasting affection and attachment of the people. In his mourning over the death of the fallen hero, David forgets all the injury that Saul has inflicted upon him, so that he only brings out and celebrates the more amiable aspects of his character. The light motion or swiftness of an eagle (cf. Hab 1:8), and the strength of a lion (vid., 2 Sam 17:10), were the leading characteristics of the great heroes of antiquity.-Lastly, in v. 24, David commemorates the rich booty which Saul had brought to the nation, for the purpose of celebrating his heroic greatness in this respect as well. yniv; was the scarlet purple (see at Ex 25:4). “With delights,” or with lovelinesses, i.e., in a lovely manner.
The second strophe (vv. 25 and 26) only applies to the friendship of Jonathan: 25 Oh how are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan (is) slain upon thy heights! 26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:
Thou wast very kind to me:
Stranger than the love of woman was thy love to me!
2 SAMUEL. 1:25-26
V. 25 is almost a verbal repetition of v. 19. rxæ (v. 26) denotes the pinching or pressure of the heart consequent upon pain and mourning. al;p; , third pers. fem., like a verb hl with the termination lengthened (vid., Ewald, §194, b.), to be wonderful or distinguished. hb;haæ , thy love to me. Comparison to the love of woman is expressive of the deepest earnestness of devoted love.
2 SAMUEL. 1:27
The third strophe (v. 27) contains simply a brief aftertone of sorrow, in which the ode does away: Oh how are the mighty fallen, The instruments of war perished! “The instruments of war” are not the weapons; but the expression is a figurative one, referring to the heroes by whom war was carried on (vid., Isa 13:5). Luther has adopted this rendering (die Streitbaren).
DAVID KING OVER JUDAH, AND ISHBOSHETH KING OVER ISRAEL. BATTLE AT GIBEON.
2 SAMUEL. 2:1-3
1-4a. After David had mourned for the fallen king, he went, in accordance with the will of the Lord as sought through the Urim, to Hebron, and was there anointed king by the tribe of Jabesh, for the love which they had shown to Saul in burying his bones (vv. 1-7), and reigned seven years and a half at Hebron over Judah alone (vv. 10 and 11). Abner, on the other hand, put forward Ishbosheth the son of Saul, who still remained alive, as king over Israel (vv. 8 and 9); so that a war broke out between the adherents of Ishbosheth and those of David, in which Abner and his army were beaten, but the brave Asahel, the son-in-law of David, was slain by Abner (vv. 12- 32). The promotion of Ishbosheth as king was not only a continuation of the hostility of Saul towards David, but also an open act of rebellion against Jehovah, who had rejected Saul and chosen David prince over Israel, and who had given such distinct proofs of this election in the eyes of the whole nations, that even Saul had been convinced of the appointment of David to be his successor upon the throne. But David attested his unqualified submission to the guidance of God, in contrast with this rebellion against His clearly revealed will, not only by not returning to Judah till he had received permission from the Lord, but also by the fact that after the tribe of Judah had acknowledged him as king, he did not go to war with Ishbosheth, but contented himself with resisting the attack made upon him by the supporters of the house of Saul, because he was fully confident that the Lord would secure to him in due time the whole of the kingdom of Israel. David’s return to Hebron, and anointing as king over Judah.
Verse 1. “After this,” i.e., after the facts related in ch. 1, David inquired of the Lord, namely through the Urim, whether he should go up to one of the towns of Judah, and if so, to which. He received the reply, “to Hebron,” a place peculiarly well adapted for a capital, not only from its situation upon the mountains, and in the centre of the tribe, but also from the sacred reminiscences connected with it from the olden time. David could have no doubt that, now that Saul was dead, he would have to give up his existing connection with the Philistines and return to his own land. But as the Philistines had taken the greater part of the Israelitish territory through their victory at Gilboa, and there was good reason to fear that the adherents of Saul, more especially the army with Abner, Saul’s cousin, at its head, would refuse to acknowledge David as king, and consequently a civil war might break out, David would not return to his own land without the express permission of the Lord. Vv. 2-4a. When he went with his wives and all his retinue (vid., 1 Sam 27:2) to Hebron and the “cities of Hebron,” i.e., the places belonging to the territory of Hebron, the men of Judah came (in the persons of their elders) and anointed him king over the house, i.e., the tribe, of Judah. Just as Saul was made king by the tribes after his anointing by Samuel (1 Sam 11:15), so David was first of all anointed by Judah here, and afterwards by the rest of the tribes (2 Sam 5:3). 4b-7. A new section commences with dgæn; . The first act of David as king was to send messengers to Jabesh, to thank the inhabitants of this city for burying Saul, and to announce to them his own anointing as king. As this expression of thanks involved a solemn recognition of the departed king, by which David divested himself of even the appearance of a rebellion, the announcement of the anointing he had received contained an indirect summons to the Jabeshites to recognise him as their king now.
2 SAMUEL. 2:6-7
“And now,” sc., that ye have shown this love to Saul your lord, “may Jehovah show you grace and truth.” “Grace and truth” are connected together, as in Ex 34:6, as the two sides by which the goodness of God is manifested to men, namely in His forgiving grace, and in His trustworthiness, or the fulfilment of His promises (vid., Ps 25:10). “And I also show you this good,” namely the prayer for the blessing of God (v. 5), because ye have done this (to Saul). In v. 7 there is attached to this the demand, that now that Saul their lord was dead, and the Judaeans had anointed him (David) king, they would show themselves valiant, namely valiant in their reverence and fidelity towards David, who had become their king since the death of Saul. dy; qzæj; , i.e., be comforted, spirited (cf. Judg 7:11). It needed some resolution and courage to recognise David as king, because Saul’s army had fled to Gilead, and there was good ground for apprehending opposition to David on the part of Abner. Ishbosheth, however, does not appear to have been proclaimed king yet; or at any rate the fact was not yet known to David. µGæ does not belong to tae , but to the whole clause, as tae is placed first merely for the sake of emphasis.
2 SAMUEL. 2:8-9
Promotion of Ishbosheth to be king over Israel.
The account of this is attached to the foregoing in the form of an antithesis: “But Abner, the chief captain of Saul (see at 1 Sam 14:50), had taken Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and led him over to Mahanaim.” Ishbosheth had probably been in the battle at Gilboa, and fled with Abner across the Jordan after the battle had been lost. Ishbosheth (i.e., man of shame) was the fourth son of Saul (according to 1 Chron 8:33; 9:39): his proper name was Esh-baal (i.e., fire of Baal, probably equivalent to destroyer of Baal).
This name was afterwards changed into Ishbosheth, just as the name of the god Baal was also translated into Bosheth (“shame,” Hos 9:10; Jer 3:24, etc.), and Jerubbaal changed into Jerubbosheth (see at Judg 8:35). Ewald’s supposition, that bosheth was originally employed in a good sense as well, like aidw>v and djæpæ (Gen 31:53), cannot be sustained. Mahanaim was on the eastern side of the Jordan, not far from the ford of Jabbok, and was an important place for the execution of Abner’s plans, partly from its historical associations (Gen 32:2-3), and partly also from its situation. There he made Ishbosheth king “for Gilead,” i.e., the whole of the land to the east of the Jordan (as in Num 32:29; Josh 22:9, etc.). “For the Ashurites:” this reading is decidedly faulty, since we can no more suppose it to refer to Assyria (Asshur) than to the Arabian tribe of the Assurim (Gen 25:3); but the true name cannot be discovered. f51 “And for Jezreel,” i.e., not merely the city of that name, but the plain that was named after it (as in 1 Sam 29:1). “And for Ephraim, and Benjamin, and all (the rest of) Israel,” of course not including Judah, where David had already been acknowledged as king.
2 SAMUEL. 2:10-11
Length of the reigns of Ishbosheth over Israel, and David at Hebron. The age of Ishbosheth is given, as is generally the case at the commencement of a reign. He was forty years old when he began to reign, and reigned two years; whereas David was king at Hebron over the house of Judah seven years and a half. We are struck with this difference in the length of the two reigns; and it cannot be explained, as Seb. Schmidt, Clericus, and others suppose, on the simple assumption that David reigned two years at Hebron over Judah, namely up to the time of the murder of Ishbosheth, and then five years and a half over Israel, namely up to the time of the conquest of Jerusalem: for this is at variance with the plain statement in the text, that “David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah seven years and a half.” The opinion that the two years of Ishbosheth’s reign are to be reckoned up to the time of the war with David, because Abner played the principal part during the other five years and a half that David continued to reign at Hebron, is equally untenable. We may see very clearly from ch. 3-5 not only that Ishbosheth was king to the time of his death, which took place after that of Abner, but also that after both these events David was anointed king over Israel in Hebron by all the tribes, and that he then went directly to attack Jerusalem, and after conquering the citadel of Zion, chose that city as his own capital. The short duration of Ishbosheth’s reign can only be explained, therefore, on the supposition that he was not made king, as David was, immediately after the death of Saul, but after the recovery by Abner of the land which the Philistines had taken on this side the Jordan, which may have occupied five years. f
52 2 SAMUEL. 2:12-13
War between the supporters of Ishbosheth and those of David.-Vv. 12, 13.
When Abner had brought all Israel under the dominion of Ishbosheth, he also sought to make Judah subject to him, and went with this intention from Mahanaim to Gibeon, the present Jib, in the western portion of the tribe of Benjamin, two good hours to the north of Jerusalem (see at Josh 9:3), taking with him the servants, i.e., the fighting men, of Ishbosheth.
There Joab, a son of Zeruiah, David’s sister (1 Chron 2:16), advanced to meet him with the servants, i.e., the warriors of David; and the two armies met at the pool of Gibeon, i.e., probably one of the large reservoirs that are still to be found there (see Rob. Pal. ii. pp. 135-6; Tobler, Topogr. v.
Jerusalem, ii. pp. 515-6), the one encamping upon the one side of the pool and the other upon the other.
2 SAMUEL. 2:14-16
Abner then proposed to Joab that the contest should be decided by a single combat, probably for the purpose of avoiding an actual civil war. “Let the young men arise and wrestle before us.” sichaq, to joke or play, is used here to denote the war-play of single combat. As Joab accepted this proposal, twelve young warriors for Benjamin and Ishbosheth, and twelve from David’s men, went over, i.e., went out of the two camps to the appointed scene of conflict; “and one seized the other’s head, and his sword was (immediately) in the side of the other (his antagonist), so that they fell together.” The clause [ære dxæ br,j, is a circumstantial clause: and his sword (every one’s sword) was in the side of the other, i.e., thrust into it. Sending the sword into the opponent’s side is thus described as simultaneous with the seizure of his head. The ancient translators expressed the meaning by supplying a verb (ene’peexan, defixit: LXX, Vulg.). This was a sign that the young men on both sides fought with great ferocity, and also with great courage. The place itself received the name of Helkath-hazzurim, “field of the sharp edges,” in consequence (for this use of zur, see Ps 89:44).
2 SAMUEL. 2:17-19
As this single combat decided nothing, there followed a general and very sore or fierce battle, in which Abner and his troops were put to flight by the soldiers of David. The only thing connected with this, of which we have any further account, is the slaughter of Asahel by Abner, which is mentioned here (vv. 18-23) on account of the important results which followed. Of the three sons of Zeruiah, viz., Joab, Abishai, and Asahel, Asahel was peculiarly light of foot, like one of the gazelles; and he pursued Abner most eagerly, without turning aside to the right or to the left.
2 SAMUEL. 2:20-22
Then Abner turned round, asked him whether he was Asahel, and said to him, “Turn to thy right hand or to thy left, and seize one of the young men and take his armour for thyself,” i.e., slay one of the common soldiers, and take his accoutrements as booty, if thou art seeking for that kind of fame.
But Asahel would not turn back from Abner. Then he repeated his command that he would depart, and added, “Why should I smite thee to the ground, and how could I then lift up my face to Joab thy brother?” from which we may see that Abner did not want to put the young hero to death, out of regard for Joab and their former friendship.
2 SAMUEL. 2:23
But when he still refused to depart in spite of this warning, Abner wounded him in the abdomen with the hinder part, i.e., the lower end of the spear, so that the spear came out behind, and Asahel fell dead upon the spot. The lower end of the spear appears to have been pointed, that it might be stuck into the ground (vid., 1 Sam 26:7); and this will explain the fact that the spear passed through the body. The fate of the young hero excited such sympathy, that all who came to the place where he had fallen stood still to mourn his loss (cf. 2 Sam 20:12).
2 SAMUEL. 2:24
But Joab and Abishai pursued Abner till the sun set, and until they had arrived at the hill Ammah, in front of Giah, on the way to the desert of Gibeon. Nothing further is known of the places mentioned here.
2 SAMUEL. 2:25-26
The Benjaminites then gathered in a crowd behind Abner, and halted upon the top of a hill to beat back their pursuers; and Abner cried out to Joab, “Shall the sword then devour for ever (shall there be no end to the slaughter)? dost thou not know that bitterness arises at last? and how long wilt thou not say to the people, to return from pursuing their brethren?”
Thus Abner warns Joab of the consequences of a desperate struggle, and calls upon him to put an end to all further bloodshed by suspending the pursuit.
2 SAMUEL. 2:27-28
Joab replied, “If thou hadst not spoken (i.e., challenged to single combat, v. 14), the people would have gone away in the morning, every one from his brother,” i.e., there would have been no such fratricidal conflict at all.
The first yKi introduces the substance of the oath, as in 1 Sam 25:34; the second gives greater force to it (vid., Ewald, §330, b.). Thus Joab threw all the blame of the fight upon Abner, because he had been the instigator of the single combat; and as that was not decisive, and was so bloody in its character, the two armies had felt obliged to fight it out. But he then commanded the trumpet to be blown for a halt, and the pursuit to be closed.
2 SAMUEL. 2:29
Abner proceeded with his troops through the Arabah, i.e., the valley of the Jordan, marching the whole night; and then crossing the river, went through the whole of Bithron back to Mahanaim. Bithron is a district upon the eastern side of the Jordan, which is only mentioned here. Aquila and the Vulgate identify it with Bethhoron; but there is no more foundation for this than for the suggestion of Thenius, that it is the same place as Bethharam, the later Libias, at the mouth of the Nahr Hesbân (see at Num 32:36). It is very evident that Bithron is not the name of a city, but of a district, from the fact that it is preceded by the word all, which would be perfectly unmeaning in the case of a city. The meaning of the word is a cutting; and it was no doubt the name given to some ravine in the neighbourhood of the Jabbok, between the Jordan and Mahanaim, which was on the north side of the Jabbok.
2 SAMUEL. 2:30-31
Joab also assembled his men for a retreat. Nineteen of his soldiers were missing besides Asahel, all of whom had fallen in the battle. But they had slain as many as three hundred and sixty of Benjamin and of Abner’s men. This striking disproportion in the numbers may be accounted for from the fact that in Joab’s army there were none but brave and well-tried men, who had gathered round David a long time before; whereas in Abner’s army there were only the remnants of the Israelites who had been beaten upon Gilboa, and who had been still further weakened and depressed by their attempts to recover the land which was occupied by the Philistines.
2 SAMUEL. 2:32
On the way back, David’s men took up the body of Asahel, and buried it in his father’s grave at Bethlehem. They proceeded thence towards Hebron, marching the whole night, so that they reached Hebron itself at daybreak. “It got light to them (i.e., the day dawned) at Hebron.”
DAVID ADVANCES AND ISHBOSHETH DECLINES. ABNER GOES OVER TO DAVID,
AND IS MURDERED BY JOAB 2 SAMUEL. 3:1
“And the war became long (was protracted) between the house of Saul and the house of David; but David became stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul weaker and weaker.” Ëlæy; , when connected with another verb or with an adjective, expresses the idea of the gradual progress of an affair (vid., Ges. §131, 3, Anm. 3). The historian sums up in these words the historical course of the two royal houses, as they stood opposed to one another. “The war” does not mean continual fighting, but the state of hostility or war in which they continued to stand towards one another.
They concluded no peace, so that David was not recognised by Ishbosheth as king, any more than Ishbosheth by David. Not only is there nothing said about any continuance of actual warfare by Abner or Ishbosheth after the loss of the battle at Gibeon, but such a thing was very improbable in itself, as Ishbosheth was too weak to be able to carry on the war, whilst David waited with firm reliance upon the promise of the Lord, until all Israel should come over to him.
2 SAMUEL. 3:2-5
Growth of the House of David.
Proof of the advance of the house of David is furnished by the multiplication of his family at Hebron. The account of the sons who were born to David at Hebron does not break the thread, as Clericus, Thenius, and others suppose, but is very appropriately introduced here, as a practical proof of the strengthening of the house of David, in harmony with the custom of beginning the history of the reign of every king with certain notices concerning his family (vid., 2 Sam 5:13ff.; 1 Kings 3:1; 14:21; 15:2,9, etc.). We have a similar list of the sons of David in 1 Chron 3:1-4.
The first two sons were born to him from the two wives whom he had brought with him to Hebron (1 Sam 25:42-43). The Chethibh dlæy; is probably only a copyist’s error for dlæy; , which is the reading in many Codices. From Ahinoam-the first-born, Amnon (called Aminon in 2 Sam 13:20); from Abigail-the second, Chileab. The latter is also called Daniel in 1 Chron 3:1, and therefore had probably two names. The lamed before Ahinoam and the following names serves as a periphrasis for the genitive, like the German von, in consequence of the word son being omitted (vid., Ewald, §292, a.). The other four were by wives whom he had married in Hebron: Absalom by Maachah, the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, a small kingdom in the north-east of Bashan (see at Deut 3:14); Adonijah by Haggith; Shephatiah by Abital; and Ithream by Eglah. The origin of the last three wives is unknown. The clause appended to Eglah’s name, viz., “David’s wife,” merely serves as a fitting conclusion to the whole list (Bertheau on 1 Chron 3:3), and is not added to show that Eglah was David’s principal wife, which would necessitate the conclusion drawn by the Rabbins, that Michal was the wife intended.
2 SAMUEL. 3:6-39
Decline of the House of Saul.
Vv. 6-11. Abner’s quarrel with Ishbosheth.-During the war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner adhered firmly to the house of Saul, but he appropriated one of Saul’s concubines to himself. When Ishbosheth charged him with this, he fell into so violent a rage, that he at once announced to Ishbosheth his intention to hand over the kingdom to David. Abner had certainly perceived the utter incapacity of Ishbosheth for a very long time, if not from the very outset, and had probably made him king after the death of Saul, merely that he might save himself from the necessity of submitting to David, and might be able to rule in Ishbosheth’s name, and possibly succeed in paving his own way to the throne. His appropriation of the concubine of the deceased monarch was at any rate a proof, according to Israelitish notions, and in fact those generally prevalent in the East, that he was aiming at the throne (vid., 2 Sam 16:21; 1 Kings 2:21). But it may gradually have become obvious to him, that the house of Saul could not possibly retain the government in opposition to David; and this may have led to his determination to persuade all the Israelites to acknowledge David, and thereby to secure for himself an influential post under his government. This will explain in a very simple manner Abner’s falling away from Ishbosheth and going over to David.
Verse 6-7. v. 6 and 7 constitute one period, expanded by the introduction of circumstantial clauses, the hy;h; (it came to pass) of the protasis being continued in the rmæa; (he said) of v. 7b. “It came to pass, when there was war between the house of Saul and the house of David, and Abner showed himself strong for the house of Saul, and Saul had a concubine named Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, that he (Ishbosheth) said to Abner, Why hast thou gone to my father’s concubine?” The subject to “said” is omitted in the apodosis; but it is evident from v. 8, and the expression “my father,” that Ishbosheth is to be supplied. Even in the second circumstantial clause, “and Saul had a concubine,” the reason why this is mentioned is only to be gathered from Ishbosheth’s words. b¦ qzæj; : to prove one’s self strong for, or with, a person, i.e., to render him powerful help. lae awOB means “to cohabit with.” It was the exclusive right of the successor to the throne to cohabit with the concubines of the deceased king, who came down to him as part of the property which he inherited.
Verse 8. Abner was so enraged at Ishbosheth’s complaint, that he replied, “Am I a dog’s head, holding with Judah? To-day (i.e., at present) I show affection to the house of Saul thy father, towards his brethren and his friends, and did not let thee fall into the hand of David, and thou reproachest me to-day with the fault with the woman?” “Dog’s head” is something thoroughly contemptible. hd;Why] rv,a , lit. which (belongs) to Judah, i.e., holds with Judah. Verse 9-10. “God do so to Abner,...as Jehovah hath sworn to David, so will I do to him.” The repetition of yKi serves to introduce the oath, as in Sam 2:27. “To take away the kingdom from the house of Saul, and set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan to Beersheba.”
We do not know of any oath with which God had promised the kingdom to David; but the promise of God in itself is equivalent to an oath, as God is the true God, who can neither lie nor deceive (1 Sam 15:29; Num 23:19).
This promise was generally known in Israel. “From Dan to Beersheba” (as in Judg 20:1).
Verse 11. Ishbosheth could make no reply to these words of Abner, “because he was afraid of him.” 2 SAMUEL 3:12-21. Abner goes over to David.
Verse 12. Abner soon carried out his threat to Ishbosheth. He sent messengers to David in his stead (not “on the spot,” or immediately, a rendering adopted by the Chaldee and Symmachus, but for which no support can be found) with this message: “Whose is the land?” i.e., to whom does it belong except to thee? and, “Make a covenant with me; behold, so is my hand with thee (i.e., so will I stand by thee), to turn all Israel to thee.”
Verse 13. David assented to the proposal on this condition: “Only one thing do I require of thee, namely, Thou shalt not see my face, unless thou first of all bringest me Michal, the daughter of Saul, when thou comest to see my face.” Ëa\ybih’ ynep]liAµai yKi , “except before thy bringing,” i.e., unless when thou hast first of all brought or delivered “Michal to me.” This condition was imposed by David, not only because Michal had been unjustly taken away from him by Saul, after he had rightfully acquired her for his wife by paying the dowry demanded, and in spite of her love to him (1 Sam 18:27; 19:11-12), and given to another man (1 Sam 25:44), so that he could demand her back again with perfect justice, and Ishbosheth could not refuse to give her up to him, but probably on political grounds also, namely, because the renewal of his marriage to the king’s daughter would show to all Israel that he cherished no hatred in his heart towards the fallen king. Verse 14. Thereupon, namely when Abner had assented to this condition, David sent messengers to Ishbosheth with this demand: “Give (me) my wife Michal, whom I espoused to me for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines” (see 1 Sam 18:25,27). David sent to Ishbosheth to demand the restoration of Michal, that her return might take place in a duly legal form, “that it might be apparent that he had dealt justly with Paltiel in the presence of his king, and that he had received his wife back again, and had not taken her by force from her husband” (Seb. Schmidt).
Verse 15. Ishbosheth probably sent Abner to Gallim (1 Sam 25:44) to fetch Michal from her husband Paltiel (see at 1 Sam 25:44), and take her back to David. The husband was obliged to consent to this separation.
Verse 16. When he went with his wife, weeping behind her, to Bahurim, Abner commanded him to turn back; “and he returned.” Bahurim, Shimei’s home (2 Sam 19:17; 1 Kings 2:8), was situated, according to 2 Sam 16:1,5, and 17:18, upon the road from Jerusalem to Gilgal, in the valley of the Jordan, not far from the Mount of Olives, and is supposed by v.
Schubert (R. iii. p. 70) to have stood upon the site of the present Abu Dis, though in all probability it is to be sought for farther north (see Rob. Pal. ii. p. 103). Paltiel had therefore followed his wife to the border of the tribe of Judah, or of the kingdom of David.
Verse 17-18. But before Abner set out to go to David, he had spoken to the elders of Israel (the tribes generally, with the exception of Benjamin see v. 19 and Judah): “Both yesterday and the day before yesterday (i.e., a long time ago), ye desired to have David as king over you. Now carry out your wish: for Jehovah hath spoken concerning David, Through my servant David will I save my people Israel out of the power of the Philistines and all their enemies.” [væy; is an evident mistake in writing for [væy; , which is found in many MSS, and rendered in all the ancient versions.
Verse 19-20. Abner had spoken in the same way in the ears of Benjamin.
He spoke to the Benjaminites more especially, because the existing royal family belonged to that tribe, and they had reaped many advantages in consequence (vid., 1 Sam 22:7). The verb hy;h; in the circumstantial clause (v. 17), and the verb rbæd; in v. 19, which serves as a continuation of the circumstantial clause, must be translated as pluperfects, since Abner’s interview with the elders of Israel and with Benjamin preceded his interview with David at Hebron. We may see from Abner’s address to the elders, that even among the northern tribes the popular voice had long since decided for David. In 1 Chron 12 we have historical proofs of this.
The word of Jehovah concerning David, which is mentioned in v. 18, is not met with anywhere in this precise form in the history of David as it has come down to us. Abner therefore had either some expression used by one of the prophets (Samuel or Gad) in his mind, which he described as the word of Jehovah, or else he regarded the anointing of David by Samuel in accordance with the command of the Lord, and the marvellous success of all that David attempted against the enemies of Israel, as a practical declaration on the part of God, that David, as the appointed successor of Saul, would perform what the Lord had spoken to Samuel concerning Saul (1 Sam 9:16), but what Saul had not fulfilled on account of his rebellion against the commandments of the Lord.
Verse 19-20. When Abner had gained over the elders of Israel and Benjamin to recognise David as king, he went to Hebron to speak in the ears of David “all that had pleased Israel and the whole house of Benjamin,” i.e., to make known to him their determination to acknowledge him as king. There went with him twenty men as representatives of all Israel, to confirm Abner’s statements by their presence; and David prepared a meal for them all.
Verse 21. After the meal, Abner said to David, “I will raise and go and gather together all Israel to my lord the king, that they may make a covenant with thee (i.e., do homage to thee before God as king), and thou mayest become king over all that thy soul desireth,” i.e., over all the nation of God; whereupon David took leave of him, and Abner went away in peace. The expression “in peace” serves to prepare the way for what follows. It is not stated, however, that David sent him away in peace (without avenging himself upon him), but that “David sent him away, and he went in peace.” Apart altogether from the mildness of David’s own character, he had no reason whatever for treating Abner as an enemy, now that he had given up all opposition to his reigning, and had brought all the Israelites over to him. What Abner had done for Ishbosheth, including his fighting against David, was indeed a sinful act of resistance to the will of Jehovah, which was not unknown to him, and according to which Samuel had both called and anointed David king over the nation; but for all that, it was not an ordinary act of rebellion against the person of David and his rightful claim to the throne, because Jehovah had not yet caused David to be set before the nation as its king by Samuel or any other prophet, and David had not yet asserted the right to reign over all Israel, which had been secured to him by the Lord and guaranteed by his anointing, as one which the nation was bound to recognise; but, like a true servant of God, he waited patiently till the Lord should give him the dominion over all His people. 2 SAMUEL 3:22-30. Abner assassinated by Joab.
Verse 22. After Abner’s departure, the servants of David returned with much booty from a marauding expedition, and Joab at their head. The singular awOB may be explained from the fact that Joab was the principal person in the estimation of the writer. dWdG] , lit. from the marauding host, i.e., from the work of a marauding host, or from a raid, which they had been making upon one of the tribes bordering upon Judah.
Verse 23-25. When Joab learned Lit. they told him) that Abner had been with David, and he had sent him away again, he went to David to reproach him for having done so. “What hast thou done? Behold, Abner came to thee; why then hast thou sent him away, and he is gone quite away?” i.e., so that he could go away again without being detained (for this meaning of the inf. abs., see Ewald, §280, b.). “Thou knowest (or more correctly as a question, Dost thou know?) Abner, the son of Ner, that he came to persuade thee (i.e., to make thee certain of his intentions), and to learn thy going out and in (i.e., all thine undertakings), and to learn all that thou wilt do” (i.e., all thy plans). Joab hoped in this way to prejudice David against Abner, to make him suspected as a traitor, that he might then be able to gratify his own private revenge with perfect impunity.
Verse 26. For Abner had only just gone away from David, when Joab sent messengers after him, no doubt in David’s name, though without his knowledge, and had him fetched back “from Bor-hasirah, i.e., the cistern of Sirah.” Sirah is a place which is quite unknown to us. According to Josephus (Ant. vii. 1, 5), it was twenty stadia from Hebron, and called Beesira’.
Verse 27. When he came back, Joab “took him aside into the middle of the gate, to talk with him in the stillness,” i.e., in private, and there thrust him through the body, so that he died “for the blood of Asahel his brother,” i.e., for having put Asahel to death (2 Sam 2:23). Verse 28-30. When David heard this, he said, “I and my kingdom are innocent before Jehovah for ever of the blood of Abner. Let it turn lWj , to twist one’s self, to turn or fall, irruit) upon the head of Joab and all his father’s house (or so-called family)! Never shall there be wanting træK; laæ , let there not be cut off, so that there shall not be, as in Josh 9:23) in the house of Joab one that hath an issue (vid., Lev 15:2), and a leper, and one who leans upon a stick (i.e., a lame person or cripple; Ël,p, , according to the LXX skuta>lh , a thick round staff), and who falls by the sword, and who is in want of bread,” The meaning is: May God avenge the murder of Abner upon Joab and his family, by punishing them continually with terrible diseases, violent death, and poverty. To make the reason for this fearful curse perfectly clear, the historian observes in v. 30, that Joab and his brother Abishai had murdered Abner, “because he had slain their brother Asahel at Gibeon in the battle” (2 Sam 2:23). This act of Joab, in which Abishai must have been in some way concerned, was a treacherous act of assassination, which could not even be defended as blood-revenge, since Abner had slain Asahel in battle after repeated warnings, and only for the purpose of saving his own life. The principal motive for Joab’s act was the most contemptible jealousy, or the fear lest Abner’s reconciliation to David should diminish his own influence with the king, as was the case again at a later period with the murder of Amasa (2 Sam 20:10). 2 SAMUEL 3:31-39. David’s mourning for Abner’s death.
Vv. 31, 32. To give a public proof of his grief at this murder, and his displeasure at the crime in the sight of all the nation, David commanded Joab, and all the people with him (David), i.e., all his courtiers, and the warriors who returned with Joab, to institute a public mourning for the deceased, by tearing their clothes, putting on sackcloth, i.e., coarse hairy mourning and penitential clothes, and by a funeral dirge for Abner; i.e., he commanded them to walk in front of Abner’s bier mourning and in funeral costume, and to accompany the deceased to his resting-place, whilst David as king followed the bier.
Verse 32. Thus they buried Abner at Hebron; and David wept aloud at his grave, and all the people with him. Verse 33,34. Although the appointment of such a funeral by David, and his tears at Abner’s grave, could not fail to divest the minds of his opponents of all suspicion that Joab had committed the murder with his cognizance (see at v. 37), he gave a still stronger proof of his innocence, and of the sincerity of his grief, by the ode which he composed for Abner’s death: 33 Like an ungodly man must Abner die! 34 Thy hands were not bound, and thy feet were not placed in fetters.
As one falls before sinners, so hast thou fallen!
Verse 33-34. The first strophe (v. 33) is an expression of painful lamentation at the fact that Abner had died a death which he did not deserve. “The fool” (nabal) is “the ungodly,” according to Israelitish ideas (vid., Ps 14:1). The meaning of v. 34 is: Thou hadst not made thyself guilty of any crime, so as to have to die like a malefactor, in chains and bonds; but thou hast been treacherously murdered. This dirge made such an impression upon all the people (present), that they wept still more for the dead.
Verse 35. But David mourned so bitterly, that when all the people called upon him to take some food during the day, he declared with an oath that he would not taste bread or anything else before the setting of the sun. µj,l, hr;B; does not mean, as in 2 Sam 13:5, to give to eat, on account of the expression “all the people,” as it can hardly be imagined that all the people, i.e., all who were present, could have come to bring David food, but it signifies to make him eat, i.e., call upon him to eat; whilst it is left uncertain whether David was to eat with the people (cf. 2 Sam 12:17), i.e., to take part in the funeral meal that was held after the burial, or whether the people simply urged him to take some food, for the purpose of soothing his own sorrow. µai yKi are to be taken separately: yKi , oJ>ti , introducing the oath, and µai being the particle used in an oath: “if,” i.e., assuredly not.
Verse 36. “And all the people perceived it (i.e., his trouble), and it pleased them, as everything that the king did pleased all the people.”
Verse 37. All the people (sc., who were with the king) and all Israel discerned on that day (from David’s deep and heartfelt trouble), that the death of Abner had not happened (proceeded) from the king, as many may probably at first have supposed, since Joab had no doubt fetched Abner back in David’s name.
Verse 38,39. Finally, David said to his (confidential) servants: “Know ye not (i.e., surely perceive) that a prince and great man has this day fallen in Israel?” This sentence shows how thoroughly David could recognise the virtues possessed by his opponents, and how very far he was from looking upon Abner as a traitor, because of his falling away from Ishbosheth and coming over to him, that on the contrary he hoped to find in him an able general and a faithful servant. He would at once have punished the murderer of such a man, if he had only possessed the power. “But,” he adds, “I am this day (still) weak, and only anointed king; and these men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too strong for me. The Lord reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness.” The expression “to-day” not only applies to the word “weak,” or tender, but also to “anointed” (to-day, i.e., only just anointed). As David was still but a young sovereign, and felt himself unable to punish a man like Joab according to his deserts, he was obliged to restrict himself at first to the utterance of a curse upon the deed (v. 29), and to leave the retribution to God. He could not and durst not forgive; and consequently, before he died, he charged Solomon, his son and successor, to punish Joab for the murder of Abner and Amasa (1 Kings 2:5).
MURDER OF ISHBOSHETH, AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MURDERERS.
2 SAMUEL. 4:1-6
Murder of Ishbosheth.
Verse 1. When the son of Saul heard of the death of Abner, “his hands slackened,” i.e., he lost the power and courage to act as king, since Abner had been the only support of his throne. “And all Israel was confounded;” i.e., not merely alarmed on account of Abner’s death, but utterly at a loss what to do to escape the vengeance of David, to which Abner had apparently fallen a victim.
Verse 2,3. Saul’s son had two leaders of military companies (for lWav;Aˆb, Wyh; we must read v ˆBe hy;h; ): the one was named Baanah, the other Rechab, sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “of the sons of Benjamin,” i.e., belonging to them; “for Beeroth is also reckoned to Benjamin” `l[æ , over, above, added to). Beeroth, the present Bireh (see at Josh 9:17), was close to the western frontier of the tribe of Benjamin, to which it is also reckoned as belonging in Josh 18:25. This remark concerning Beeroth in the verse before us, serves to confirm the statement that the Beerothites mentioned were Benjaminites; but that statement also shows the horrible character of the crime attributed to them in the following verses. Two men of the tribe of Benjamin murdered the son of Saul, the king belonging to their own tribe.
Verse 3. “The Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and were strangers there unto this day.” Gittaim is mentioned again in Neh 11:33, among the places in which Benjaminites were dwelling after the captivity, though it by no means follows from this that the place belonged to the tribe of Benjamin before the captivity. It may have been situated outside the territory of that tribe. It is never mentioned again, and has not yet been discovered. The reason why the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and remained there as strangers until the time when this history was written, is also unknown; it may perhaps have been that the Philistines had conquered Gittaim.
Verse 4. Before the historian proceeds to describe what the two Beerothites did, he inserts a remark concerning Saul’s family, to show at the outset, that with the death of Ishbosheth the government of this family necessarily became extinct, as the only remaining descendant was a perfectly helpless cripple. He was a son of Jonathan, smitten (i.e., lamed) in his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came from Jezreel of Saul and Jonathan, i.e., of their death. His nurse immediately took him and fled, and on their hasty flight he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth (according to Simonis, for tv,b ha,p]mæ , destroying the idol); but in 1 Chron 8:34 and 9:40 he is called Meribbaal (Baal’s fighter), just as Ishbosheth is also called Eshbaal (see at 2 Sam 2:8). On his future history, see ch. 9, 16:1ff., and 19:25ff.
Verse 5. The two sons of Rimmon went to Mahanaim, where Ishbosheth resided (2 Sam 2:8,12), and came in the heat of the day (at noon) into Ishbosheth’s house, when he was taking his mid-day rest.
Verse 6. “And here they had come into the midst of the house, fetching wheat (i.e., under the pretext of fetching wheat, probably for the soldiers in their companies), and smote him in the abdomen; and Rechab and his brother escaped.” The first clause in this verse is a circumstantial clause, which furnishes the explanation of the way in which it was possible for the murderers to find their way to the king. The second clause continues the narrative, and hk;n; is attached to awOB (v. 5). f
53 2 SAMUEL. 4:7-8
Punishment of the murderers by David.
Verse 7. As the thread of the narrative was broken by the explanatory remarks in v. 6, it is resumed here by the repetition of the words wgwawOB: “They came into the house, as he lay upon his bed in his bed-chamber, and smote him, and slew him,” for the purpose of attaching the account of the further progress of the affair, viz., that they cut off his head, took it and went by the way of the Arabah (the valley of the Jordan: see 2 Sam 2:29) the whole night, and brought the head of Ishbosheth unto David to Hebron with these words: “Behold (= there thou hast) the head of Ishbosheth, the son of Saul thine enemy, who sought thy life; and thus hath Jehovah avenged my lord the king this day upon Saul and his seed.” No motive is assigned for this action. But there can be little doubt that it was no other than the hope of obtaining a great reward from David. Thus they presumed “to spread the name of God and His providence as a cloak and covering over their villany, as the wicked are accustomed to do” (Berleb. Bible).
2 SAMUEL. 4:9-11
But David rewarded them very differently from what they had expected.
He replied, “As Jehovah liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity, the man who told me, Behold, Saul is dead, and thought he was a messenger of good to me, I seized and slew at Ziklag (vid., 2 Sam 1:14- 15), to give him a reward for his news: how much more when wicked men have murdered a righteous man in his house upon his bed, should I not require his blood at your hand, and destroy you from the earth?” The several parts of this reply are not closely linked together so as to form one period, but answer to the excited manner in which they were spoken. There is first of all the oath, “As truly as Jehovah liveth,” and the clause appended, “who redeemed my soul,” in which the thought is implied that David did not feel it necessary to get rid of his enemies by the commission of crimes. After this (v. 10) we have an allusion to his treatment of the messenger who announced Saul’s death to him, and pretended to have slain him in order that he might obtain a good reward for his tidings. yKi , like oJ>ti , simply introduces the address. dgæn; is placed at the head absolutely, and made subordinate to the verb by µyrit;a\ after zjæa; . l¦titiy-low, “namely, to give him.” rv,a is employed to introduce the explanation, like our “namely” (vid., Ewald, §338, b.). hr;wOcB] , good news, here “the reward of news.” The main point follows in v. 11, beginning with yKi ãaæ , “how much more” (vid., Ewald, §354, c.), and is introduced in the form of a climax.
The words vyai are also written absolutely, and placed at the head: “men have slain,” for “how much more in this instance, when wicked men have slain.” “Righteous” (zaddik), i.e., not guilty of any wicked deed or crime.
The assumption of the regal power, which Abner had forced upon Ishbosheth, was not a capital crime in the existing state of things, and after the death of Saul; and even if it had been, the sons of Rimmon had no right to assassinate him. David’s sentence then follows: “And now that this is the fact, that ye have murdered a righteous man, should I not,” etc. r[æB; , to destroy by capital punishment, as in Deut 13:6, etc. µD; vqæB; (= µD; vræD; , Gen 9:5), to require the blood of a person, i.e., to take blood-revenge.
2 SAMUEL. 4:12
David then commanded his servant to slay the murderers, and also to make the punishment more severe than usual. “They cut off their hands and feet,”-the hands with which they had committed the murder, and the feet which had run for the reward-”and hanged the bodies by the pool at Hebron” for a spectacle and warning, that others might be deterred from committing similar crimes (cf. Deut 21:22; J. H. Michaelis). In illustration of the fact itself, we may compare the similar course pursued by Alexander towards the murderer of king Darius, as described in Justin’s history (2 Sam 12:6) and Curtius (7:5). They buried Ishbosheth’s head in Abner’s grave at Hebron. Thus David acted with strict justice in this case also, not only to prove to the people that he had neither commanded nor approved of the murder, but from heartfelt abhorrence of such crimes, and to keep his conscience void of offence towards God and towards man. II. THE GOVERNMENT OF DAVID OVER ALL ISRAEL IN THE TIME OF ITS STRENGTH AND GLORY.
After the death of Ishbosheth, David was anointed in Hebron by all the tribes as king over the whole of Israel (2 Sam 5:1-5). He then proceeded to attack the Jebusites in Jerusalem, conquered their fortress Zion, and made Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom; fortifying it still further, and building a palace in it (2 Sam 5:6-16), after he had twice inflicted a defeat upon the Philistines (2 Sam 5:17-25). But in order that the chief city of his kingdom and the seat of his own palace might also be made the religious centre of the whole nation as a congregation of Jehovah, he first of all brought the ark of the covenant out of its place of concealment, and had it conveyed in a festal procession to Zion, and deposited there in a tent which had been specially prepared for it, as a place of worship for the whole congregation (ch. 6). He then resolved to erect for the Lord in Jerusalem a temple fitted for His name; and the Lord gave him in return the promise of the eternal perpetuity of his throne (ch. 7). To this there is appended a cursory account of David’s wars with the neighbouring nations, by which not only his own sovereignty, but the Israelitish kingdom of God, was raised into a commanding power among the nations and kingdoms of the world. In connection with all this, David still maintained his affection and fidelity towards the fallen royal family of Saul, and showed compassion towards the last remaining descendant of that family (ch. 9).
This account of the unfolding of the power and glory of the kingdom of Israel, through the instrumentality of David and during his reign, is so far arranged chronologically, that all the events and all the enterprises of David mentioned in this section occurred in the first half of his reign over the whole of the covenant nation. The chronological arrangement, however, is not strictly adhered to, so far as the details are concerned; but the standpoint of material resemblance is so far connected with it, that all the greater wars of David are grouped together in ch. 8 (see the introduction to ch. 8). It is obvious from this, that the plan which the historian adopted was first of all to describe the internal improvement of the Israelitish kingdom of God by David, and then to proceed to the external development of his power in conflict with the opposing nations of the world. DAVID ANOINTED KING OVER ALL ISRAEL.
JERUSALEM TAKEN, AND MADE THE CAPITAL OF THE KINGDOM. VICTORIES OVER THE PHILISTINES.
2 SAMUEL. 5:1-5
David Anointed King over all Israel.
Verse 1-3 (compare with this the parallel passages in 1 Chron 11:1-3).
After the death of Ishbosheth, all the tribes of Israel (except Judah) came to Hebron in the persons of their representatives the elders (vid., v. 3), in response to the summons of Abner (2 Sam 3:17-19), to do homage to David as their king. They assigned three reasons for their coming: (1.) “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh,” i.e., thy blood-relations, inasmuch as all the tribes of Israel were lineal descendants of Jacob (vid., Gen 29:14; Judg 9:2). (2.) “In time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast the leader of Israel (thou leddest out and broughtest in Israel),” i.e., thou didst superintend the affairs of Israel (see at Num 27:17; and for the fact itself, Sam 18:5). ax;y; hy;h; is an error in writing for ax;y; hy;h; , and awOB for awOB, with the ynæa dropped, as in 1 Kings 21:21, etc. (vid., Olshausen, Gr. p. 69). (3.) They ended by asserting that Jehovah had called him to be the shepherd and prince over His people. The remarks which we have already made at 2 Sam 3:18 respecting Abner’s appeal to a similar utterance on the part of Jehovah, are equally applicable to the words of Jehovah to David which are quoted here: “Thou shalt feed my people Israel,” etc. On the Piska, see the note to Josh 4:1.
Verse 3. “All the elders of Israel came” is a repetition of v. 1a, except that the expression “all the tribes of Israel” is more distinctly defined as meaning “all the elders of Israel.” “So all the elders came;...and king David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord (see at 2 Sam 3:21): and they anointed David king over (all) Israel.” The writer of the Chronicles adds, “according to the word of the Lord through Samuel,” i.e., so that the command of the Lord to Samuel, to anoint David king over Israel (1 Sam 16:1,12), found its complete fulfilment in this.
Verse 4-5. The age of David when he began to reign is given here, viz., thirty years old; also the length of his reign, viz., seven years and a half at Hebron over Judah, and thirty-three years at Jerusalem over Israel and Judah. In the books of Chronicles these statements occur at the close of David’s reign (1 Chron 29:27).
2 SAMUEL. 5:6-10
Conquest of the Stronghold of Zion, and Choice of Jerusalem as the Capital of the Kingdom (cf. 1 Chron 11:4,9).-These parallel accounts agree in all the main points; but they are both of them merely brief extracts from a more elaborate history, so that certain things, which appeared of comparatively less importance, are passed over either in the one or the other, and the full account is obtained by combining the two. The conquest of the citadel Zion took place immediately after the anointing of David as king over all the tribes of Israel. This is apparent, not only from the fact that the account follows directly afterwards, but also from the circumstance that, according to v. 5, David reigned in Jerusalem just as many years as he was king over all Israel.
Verse 6. The king went with his men (i.e., his fighting men: the Chronicles have “all Israel,” i.e., the fighting men of Israel) to Jerusalem to the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, i.e., the natives or Canaanites; “and they said (the singular rmæa; is used because ysiWby] is a singular form) to David, Thou wilt not come hither (i.e., come in), but the blind and lame will drive thee away: to say (i.e., by which they meant to say), David will not come in.” rWs is not used for the infinitive, but has been rightly understood by the LXX, Aben Ezra, and others, as a perfect. The perfect expresses a thing accomplished, and open to no dispute; and the use of the singular in the place of the plural, as in Isa 14:32, is to be explained from the fact that the verb precedes, and is only defined precisely by the subject which follows (vid., Ewald, §319, a.). The Jebusites relied upon the unusual natural advantages of their citadel, which stood upon Mount Zion, a mountain shut in by deep valleys on three different sides; so that in their haughty self-security they imagined that they did not even need to employ healthy and powerful warriors to resist the attack made by David, but that the blind and lame would suffice.
Verse 7-8. However, David took the citadel Zion, i.e., “the city of David.”
This explanatory remark anticipates the course of events, as David did not give this name to the conquered citadel, until he had chosen it as his residence and capital (vid., v. 9). ˆwOYxi (Sion), from tsaayaah, to be dry: the dry or arid mountain or hill. This was the name of the southern and loftiest mountain of Jerusalem. Upon this stood the fortress or citadel of the town, which had hitherto remained in the possession of the Jebusites; whereas the northern portion of the city of Jerusalem, which was upon lower ground, had been conquered by the Judaeans and Benjaminites very shortly after the death of Joshua (see at Judg 1:8).-In v. 8 we have one circumstance mentioned which occurred in connection with this conquest. On that day, i.e., when he had advanced to the attack of the citadel Zion, David said, “Every one who smites the Jebusites, let him hurl into the waterfall (i.e., down the precipice) both the lame and blind, who are hateful to David’s soul.”
This is most probably the proper interpretation of these obscure words of David, which have been very differently explained. Taking up the words of the Jebusites, David called all the defenders of the citadel of Zion “lame and blind,” and ordered them to be cast down the precipice without quarter. rWNxi signifies a waterfall (catarracta) in Ps 42:8, the only other passage in which it occurs, probably from tsaanar, to roar. This meaning may also be preserved here, if we assume that at the foot of the steep precipice of Zion there was a waterfall probably connected with the water of Siloah. It is true we cannot determine anything with certainty concerning it, as, notwithstanding the many recent researches in Jerusalem, the situation of the Jebusite fortress and the character of the mountain of Zion in ancient times are quite unknown to us. This explanation of the word zinnor is simpler than Ewald’s assumption that the word signifies the steep side of a rock, which merely rests upon the fact that the Greek word katarra>kthv originally signifies a plunge. [gæn; should be pointed as a Hiphil [Gæyæw] . The Masoretic pointing [gæn; arises from their mistaken interpretation of the whole sentence. The Chethibh wanc might be the third pers. perf., “who hate David’s soul;” only in that case the omission of rv,a would be surprising, and consequently the Keri anec; is to be preferred. “From this,” adds the writer, “the proverb arose, ‘The blind and lame shall not enter the house;’ “ in which proverb the epithet “blind and lame,” which David applied to the Jebusites who were hated by him, has the general signification of “repulsive persons,” with whom one does not wish to have anything to do. In the Chronicles not only is the whole of v. omitted, with the proverb to which the occurrence gave rise, but also the allusion to the blind and lame in the words spoken by the Jebusites (v. 6); and another word of David’s is substituted instead, namely, that David would make the man who first smote the Jebusites, i.e., who stormed their citadel, head and chief; and also the statement that Joab obtained the prize. The historical credibility of the statement cannot be disputed, as Thenius assumes, on the ground that Joab had already been chief (sar) for a long time, according to 2 Sam 2:13: for the passage referred to says nothing of the kind; and there is a very great difference between the commander of an army in the time of war, and a “head and chief,” i.e., a commander-in-chief. The statement in v. 8 with regard to Joab’s part, the fortification of Jerusalem, shows very clearly that the author of the Chronicles had other and more elaborate sources in his possession, which contained fuller accounts than the author of our books has communicated.
Verse 9. “David dwelt in the fort,” i.e., he selected the fort or citadel as his palace, “and called it David’s city.” David may have been induced to select the citadel of Zion as his palace, and by so doing to make Jerusalem the capital of the whole kingdom, partly by the natural strength of Zion, and partly by the situation of Jerusalem, viz., on the border of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, and tolerably near to the centre of the land. “And David built, i.e., fortified (the city of Zion), round about from Millo and inwards.” In the Chronicles we have bybiS;hæAd[æw] , “and to the environs or surroundings,” i.e., to the encircling wall which was opposite to the Millo.
The fortification “inwards” must have consisted in the enclosure of Mount Zion with a strong wall upon the north side, where Jerusalem joined it as a lower town, so as to defend the palace against the hostile attacks on the north or town side, which had hitherto been left without fortifications.
The “Millo” was at any rate some kind of fortification, probably a large tower or castle at one particular part of the surrounding wall (comp. Judg 9:6 with vv. 46 and 49, where Millo is used interchangeably with Migdal).
The name (“the filling”) probably originated in the fact that through this tower or castle the fortification of the city, or the surrounding wall, was filled or completed. The definite article before Millo indicates that it was a well-known fortress, probably one that had been erected by the Jebusites.
With regard to the situation of Millo, we may infer from this passage, and Chron 11:8, that the tower in question stood at one corner of the wall, either on the north-east or north-west, “where the hill of Zion has the least elevation and therefore needed the greatest strengthening from without” (Thenius on 1 Kings 9:15). This is fully sustained both by 1 Kings 11:27, where Solomon is said to have closed the breach of the city of David by building (fortifying) Millo, and by 2 Chron 32:5, where Hezekiah is said to have built up all the wall of Jerusalem, and made Millo strong, i.e., to have fortified it still further (vid., 1 Kings 9:15 and 24).
Verse 10. And David increased in greatness, i.e., in power and fame, for Jehovah the God of hosts was with him.
2 SAMUEL. 5:11-16
David’s Palace, Wives and Children (comp. 1 Chron 14:1-7). King Hiram of Tyre sent messengers to David, and afterwards, by the express desire of the latter, cedar-wood and builders, carpenters and stone-masons, who built him a house, i.e., a palace. Hiram (Hirom in 1 Kings 5:32; Huram in the Chronicles; LXX Ceira>m ; Josephus, Ei>ramov and Ei>rwmov ), king of Tyre, was not only an ally of David, but of his son Solomon also. He sent to the latter cedarwood and builders for the erection of the temple and of his own palace (1 Kings 5:21ff.; 2 Chron 2:2ff.), and fitted out a mercantile fleet in conjunction with him (1 Kings 9:27-28; 2 Chron 9:10); in return for which, Solomon not only sent him an annual supply of corn, oil, and wine (1 Kings 5:24; 2 Chr. 2:9), but when all the buildings were finished, twenty years after the erection of the temple, he made over to him twenty of the towns of Galilee (1 Kings 9:10ff.). It is evident from these facts that Hiram was still reigning in the twenty-fourth, or at any rate the twentieth, year of Solomon’s reign, and consequently, as he had assisted David with contributions of wood for the erection of his palace, that he must have reigned at least forty-five or fifty years; and therefore that, even in the latter case, he cannot have begun to reign earlier than the eighth year of David’s reign over all Israel, or from six to ten years after the conquest of the Jebusite citadel upon Mount Zion. This is quite in harmony with the account given here; for it by no means follows, that because the arrival of an embassy from Hiram, and the erection of David’s palace, are mentioned immediately after the conquest of the citadel of Zion, they must have occurred directly afterwards.
The arrangement of the different events in the chapter before us is topical rather than strictly chronological. Of the two battles fought by David with the Philistines (vv. 17-25), the first at any rate took place before the erection of David’s palace, as it is distinctly stated in v. 17 that the Philistines made war upon David when they heard that he had been anointed king over Israel, and therefore in all probability even before the conquest of the fortress of the Jebusites, or at any rate immediately afterwards, and before David had commenced the fortification of Jerusalem and the erection of a palace. The historian, on the contrary, has not only followed up the account of the capture of the fortress of Zion, and the selection of it as David’s palace, by a description of what David gradually did to fortify and adorn the new capital, but has also added a notice as to David’s wives and the children that were born to him in Jerusalem. Now, if this be correct, the object of Hiram’s embassy cannot have been “to congratulate David upon his ascent of the throne,” as Thenius maintains; but after he had ascended the throne, Hiram sent ambassadors to form an alliance with this powerful monarch; and David availed himself of the opportunity to establish an intimate friendship with Hiram, and ask him for cedar-wood and builders for his palace. f56 Verse 12-14. “And David perceived (sc., from the success of his enterprises) that Jehovah had firmly established him king over Israel, and that He had exalted his kingdom for His people Israel’s sake,” i.e., because He had chosen Israel as His people, and had promised to make it great and glorious.
To the building of David’s palace, there is appended in vv. 13-15 the account of the increase of his house by the multiplication of his wives and concubines, and of the sons who were born to him at Jerusalem (as in Chron 14:3ff.). Taking many wives was indeed prohibited in the law of the king in Deut 17:17; but as a large harem was considered from time immemorial as part of the court of an oriental monarch, David suffered himself to be seduced by that custom to disregard this prohibition, and suffered many a heartburn afterwards in consequence, not to mention his fearful fall in consequence of his passion for Bathsheba. The concubines are mentioned before the wives, probably because David had taken many of them to Jerusalem, and earlier than the wives. In the Chronicles the concubines and omitted, though not “intentionally,” as they are mentioned in 1 Chron 3:9; but as being of no essential importance in relation to the list of sons which follows, because no difference was made between those born of concubines and those born of wives. “Out of Jerusalem,” i.e., away from Jerusalem: not that the wives were all born in Jerusalem, as the words which follow, “after he was come from Hebron,” clearly show. In the Chronicles, therefore, it is explained as meaning “in Jerusalem.” The sons are mentioned again both in 1 Chron 14:5-7 and in the genealogy in Chron 3:5-8. Shammua is called Shimea in 1 Chron 3:5, according to a different pronunciation. Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon were sons of Bathsheba according to 1 Chron 3:5.
Verse 15-16. Elishua is written incorrectly in 1 Chron 3:6 as Elishama, because Elishama follows afterwards. There are two names after Elishua in 1 Chron 3:6-7, and 14:6-7, viz., Eliphalet and Nogah, which have not crept into the text from oversight or from a wrong spelling of other names, because the number of the names is given as nine in 1 Chron 3:8, and the two names must be included in order to bring out that number. And, on the other hand, it is not by the mistake of a copyist that they have been omitted from the text before us, but it has evidently been done deliberately on account of their having died in infancy, or at a very early age. This also furnishes a very simple explanation of the fact, that the name Eliphalet occurs again at the end of the list, namely, because a son who was born later received the name of his brother who had died young. Eliada, the last but one, is called Beeliada in 1 Chron 14:7, another form of the name, compounded with Baal instead of El. David had therefore nineteen sons, six of whom were born in Hebron (2 Sam 3:2ff.), and thirteen at Jerusalem.
Daughters are not mentioned in the genealogical accounts, because as a rule only heiresses or women who acquired renown from special causes were included in them. There is a daughter named Thamar mentioned afterwards in 2 Sam 13:1.
2 SAMUEL. 5:17-25
David gains two Victories over the Philistines (compare 1 Chron 14:8-17).-Both these victories belong in all probability to the interval between the anointing of David at Hebron over all Israel and the conquest of the citadel of Zion. This is very evident, so far as the first is concerned, from the words, “When the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel” (v. 17), not when David had conquered the citadel of Zion. Moreover, when the Philistines approached, David “went down to the hold,” or mountain fortress, by which we cannot possibly understand the citadel upon Zion, on account of the expression “went down.” If David had been living upon Zion at the time, he would hardly have left this fortification when the Philistines encamped in the valley of Rephaim on the west of Jerusalem, but would rather have attacked and routed the enemy from the citadel itself. The second victory followed very soon after the first, and must therefore be assigned to the same period. The Philistines evidently resolved, as soon as the tidings reached them of the union of all the tribes under the sovereignty of David, that they would at once resist the growing power of Israel, and smite David before he had consolidated his government.
Verse 17-18. “The Philistines went up to seek David,” i.e., to seek him out and smite him. The expression vqæB; presupposes that David had not yet taken up his abode upon Zion. He had probably already left Hebron to make preparations for his attack upon the Jebusites. When he heard of the approach of the Philistines, he went down into the mountain fortress. “The hold” cannot be the citadel of Zion (as in vv. 7 and 9), because this was so high that they had to go up to it on every side; and it is impossible to sustain the opinion advanced by Bertheau, that the verb dræy; (to go down) is used for falling back into a fortification. dWxm; (the hold), with the definite article, is probably the mountain stronghold in the desert of Judah, into which David withdrew for a long time to defend himself from Saul (vid., 2 Sam 23:14 and 1 Chron 12:8). In v. 18 the position of the Philistines is more minutely defined. The verse contains a circumstantial clause: “The Philistines had come and spread themselves out in the valley of Rephaim,” a valley on the west of Jerusalem, and only separated from the valley of Ben-hinnom by a narrow ridge of land (see at Josh 15:8).
Instead of v f1 n; the Chronicles have fvæp; , they had invaded, which is perfectly equivalent so far as the sense is concerned.
Verse 19-20. David inquired of the Lord by the Urim whether he should go out against the foe, and whether God would give them into his hand; f57 and when he had received an answer in the affirmative to both these questions, he went to Baal-perazim (lit. into Baal-perazim), and smote them there, and said (v. 20), “Jehovah hath broken mine enemies before me like a water-breach,” i.e., has smitten them before me, and broken their power as a flood breaks through and carries away whatever opposes it.
From these words of David, the place where the battle was fought received the name of Baal-perazim, i.e., “possessor of breaches” (equivalent to Bruch-hausen or Brechendorf, Breach-ham or Break-thorpe). The only other passage in which the place is mentioned is Isa 28:21, where this event is alluded to, but it cannot have been far from the valley of Rephaim.
Verse 21. The Philistines left their idols behind them there. They had probably brought them to the war, as the Israelites once did their ark, as an auxiliary force. “And David took them away.” The Chronicles have “their gods” instead of “their idols,” and “they were burned with fire” instead of ac;n; , “he took them away,” took them as booty. The reading in the Chronicles gives the true explanation of the fact, as David would certainly dispose of the idols in the manner prescribed in the law (Deut 7:5,25). The same reading was also most probably to be found in the sources employed by our author, who omitted it merely as being self-evident. In this way David fully avenged the disgrace brought upon Israel by the Philistines, when they carried away the ark in the time of Eli.
Verse 22. Although thoroughly beaten, the Philistines soon appeared again to repair the defeat which they had suffered. As David had not followed up the victory, possibly because he was not sufficiently prepared, the Philistines assembled again in the valley of Rephaim.
Verse 23. David inquired once more of the Lord what he was to do, and received this answer: “Thou shalt not go up (i.e., advance to meet the foe, and attack them in front); turn round behind them, and come upon them (attack them) opposite to the Baca-shrubs.” ak;B; , a word which only occurs here and in the parallel passage in 1 Chron 14:14, is rendered api>ouv , pear-trees, by the LXX, and mulberry-trees by the Rabbins. But these are both of them uncertain conjectures. Baca, according to Abulfadl, is the name given in Arabic to a shrub which grows at Mecca and resembles the balsam, except that it has longer leaves and larger and rounder fruit, and from which, if a leaf be broken off, there flows a white pungent sap, like a white tear, which is all probability gave rise to the name ak;B; = hk;B; , to weep (vid., Celsii, Hierob. i. pp. 338ff., and Gesenius, Thes. p. 205).
Verse 24. “And when thou hearest the rush of a going in the tops of the baca-shrubs, then bestir thyself,” or hasten; “for Jehovah has gone out before thee, to smite the army of the Philistines.” “The sound of a going,” i.e., of the advance of an army, was a significant sign of the approach of an army of God, which would smite the enemies of Jehovah and of His servant David; like the visions of Jacob (Gen 32:2-3) and Elisha (2 Kings 6:17). “Then thou shalt bestir thyself,” lit. be sharp, i.e., active, quick: this is paraphrased in the Chronicles by “then thou shalt go out to battle.”
Verse 25. David did this, and smote the Philistines from Geba to the neighbourhood of Gezer. In the Chronicles we find “from Gibeon” instead of from Geba. The former is unquestionably the true reading, and Geba an error of the pen: for Geba, the present Jeba, was to the north of Jerusalem, and on the east of Ramah (see at Josh 18:24); so that it is quite unsuitable here. But that is not the case with Gibeon, the present el Jib, on the northwest of Jerusalem (see at Josh 9:3); for this was on the way to Gezer, which was four Roman miles to the north of Amws, and is probably to be sought for on the site of the present el Kubab (see at Josh 10:33). f59 REMOVAL OF THE ARK TO JERUSALEM After David had selected the citadel of Zion, or rather Jerusalem, as the capital of the kingdom, he directed his attention to the organization and improvement of the legally established worship of the congregation, which had fallen grievously into decay since the death of Eli, in consequence of the separation of the ark from the tabernacle. He therefore resolved first of all to fetch out the ark of the covenant, as the true centre of the Mosaic sanctuary, from its obscurity and bring it up to Zion; and having deposited it in a tent previously prepared to receive it, to make this a place of worship where the regular worship of God might be carried on in accordance with the instructions of the law. That he should make the capital of his kingdom the central point of the worship of the whole congregation of Israel, followed so naturally from the nature of the kingdom of God, and the relation in which David stood, as the earthly monarch of that kingdom, towards Jehovah the God-king, that there is no necessity whatever to seek for even a partial explanation in the fact that David felt it desirable to have the high priest with the Urim and Thummim always close at hand.
But why did not David remove the Mosaic tabernacle to Mount Zion at Jerusalem at the same time as the ark of the covenant, and so restore the divinely established sanctuary in its integrity? This question can only be answered by conjectures. One of the principal motives for allowing the existing separation of the ark from the tabernacle to continue, may have been that, during the time the two sanctuaries had been separated, two high priests had arisen, one of whom officiated at the tabernacle at Gibeon, whilst the other, namely Abiathar, who escaped the massacre of the priests at Nob and fled at once to David, had been the channel of all divine communications to David during the time of his persecution by Saul, and had also officiated as high priest in his camp; so that he could no more think of deposing him from the office which he had hitherto filled, in consequence of the reorganization of the legal worship, than he could of deposing Zadok, of the line of Eleazar, the officiating high priest at Gibeon. Moreover, David may from the very first have regarded the service which he instituted in connection with the ark upon Zion as merely a provisional arrangement, which was to continue till his kingdom was more thoroughly consolidated, and the way had been thereby prepared for erecting a fixed house of God, and so establishing the worship of the nation of Jehovah upon a more durable foundation. David may also have cherished the firm belief that in the meantime the Lord would put an end to the double priesthood which had grown out of the necessities of the times, or at any rate give him some direct revelation as to the arrangements which he ought to make.
We have a parallel account of the removal of the ark of the covenant to Zion in 1 Chr. 13:15 and 16, which agrees for the most part verbatim, at all events in all essential points, with the account before us; but the liturgical side of this solemn act is very elaborately described, especially the part taken by the Levites, whereas the account given here is very condensed, and is restricted in fact to an account of the work of removing the ark from Kirjath-jearim to Jerusalem as carried out by David. David composed the 24th Psalm for the religious ceremonies connected with the removal of the ark to Mount Zion.
2 SAMUEL. 6:1-10
The ark fetched from Kirjath-jearim.
Verse 1. “David assembled together again all the chosen men in Israel, thirty thousand.” ãsæy; for ãsewOy is the Kal of ãsæa; , as in 1 Sam 15:6; Ps 104:29. `dwO[ , again, once more, points back to 2 Sam 5:1 and 3, where all Israel is said to have assembled for the first time in Hebron to anoint David king. It is true that that assembly was not convened directly by David himself; but this was not the point in question, but merely their assembling a second time (see Bertheau on 1 Chron 13:5). rWjB; does not mean “the young men” here ( nea>nia , LXX), or “the fighting men,” but, according to the etymology of the word, “the picked men.” Instead of thirty thousand, the LXX have seventy chiliads, probably with an intentional exaggeration, because the number of men in Israel who were capable of bearing arms amounted to more than thirty thousand. The whole nation, through a very considerable body of representatives, was to take part in the removal of the ark. The writer of the Chronicles gives a more elaborate account of the preparations for these festivities (1 Chron 13:1-5); namely, that David took counsel with the heads of thousands and hundreds, and all the leaders, i.e., all the heads of families and households, and then with their consent collected together the whole nation from the brook of Egypt to Hamath, of course not every individual, but a large number of heads of households as representatives of the whole. This account in the Chronicles is not an expansion of the brief notice given here; but the account before us is a condensation of the fuller description given in the sources that were employed by both authors.
Verse 2. “David went with all the people that were with him to Baale- Jehuda, to fetch up the ark of God from thence.” The words hd;Why] yle[]Bæmi cause some difficulty on account of the ˆmi , which is used instead of the accusative with h loc., like ht;l;[\Bæ in the Chronicles; yet the translators of the Septuagint, Chaldee, Vulgate, and other versions, all had the reading ˆmi in their text, and l[æBæ has therefore been taken as an appellative and rendered apo> tw>n arco>ntwn Iouda> (“from the rulers of Judah”), or as Luther renders it, “from the citizens of Judah.” This is decidedly incorrect, as the word “thence” which follows is perfectly unintelligible on any other supposition than that Baale-Jehudah is the name of a place. Baale-Jehudah is another name of the city of Kirjath-jearim (Josh 15:60; 18:14), which is called Baalah in Josh 15:9 and 1 Chron 13:6, according to its Canaanitish name, instead of which the name Kirjathjearim (city of the woods) was adopted by the Israelites, though without entirely supplanting the old name.
The epithet “of Judah” is a contraction of the fuller expression “city of the children of Judah” in Josh 18:14, and is added to distinguish this Baal city, which was situated upon the border of the tribe of Judah, from other cities that were also named after Baal, such as Baal or Baalath-beer in the tribe of Simeon (1 Chron 4:33; Josh 19:8), Baalath in the tribe of Dan (Josh 19:44), the present Kuryet el Enab (see at Josh 9:17). The ˆmi (from) is either a very ancient error of the pen that crept by accident into the text, or, if genuine and original, it is to be explained on the supposition that the historian dropped the construction with which he started, and instead of mentioning Baale-Jehudah as the place to which David went, gave it at once as the place from which he fetched the ark; so that the passage is to be understood in this way: “And David went, and all the people who were with him, out of Baale-Jehudah, to which they had gone up to fetch the ark of God” (Kimchi).
In the sentence which follows, a difficulty is also occasioned by the repetition of the word µve in the clause ar;q; rv,a , “upon which the name is called, the name of Jehovah of hosts, who is enthroned above the cherubim.” The difficulty cannot be solved by altering the first µve into µv; , as Clericus, Thenius, and Bertheau suggest: for if this alteration were adopted, we should have to render the passage “where the name of Jehovah of hosts is invoked, who is enthroned above the cherubim (which are) upon it (i.e., upon the ark);” and this would not only introduce an unscriptural thought into the passage, but it would be impossible to find any suitable meaning for the word `l[æ , except by making very arbitrary interpolations. Throughout the whole of the Old Testament we never meet with the idea that the name of Jehovah was invoked at the ark of the covenant, because no one was allowed to approach the ark for the purpose of invoking the name of the Lord there; and upon the great day of atonement the high priest was only allowed to enter the most holy place with the cloud of incense, to sprinkle the blood of the atoning sacrifice upon the ark.
Moreover, the standing expression for “call upon the name of the Lord” is yy µve ar;q; ; whereas p l[æ yy µve ar;q]ni signifies “the name of Jehovah is called above a person or thing.” Lastly, even if `l[æ belonged to bWrK] bvæy; , it would not only be a superfluous addition, occurring nowhere else in connection with kh bvæy; , not even in 1 Chron 13:6 (vid., 1 Sam 4:4; Kings 19:15; Isa 37:16; Ps 99:1), but such an addition if made at all would necessarily require `l[æ rv,a (vid., Ex 25:22). The only way in which we can obtain a biblical thought and grammatical sense is by connecting `l[æ with the rv,a before ar;q; : “above which (ark) the name of Jehovah- Zebaoth is named,” i.e., above which Jehovah reveals His glory or His divine nature to His people, or manifests His gracious presence in Israel. “The name of God denotes all the operations of God through which He attests His personal presence in that relation into which He has entered to man, i.e., the whole of the divine self-manifestation, or of that side of the divine nature which is turned towards men” (Oehler, Herzog’s Real- Encycl. x. p. 197). From this deeper meaning of “the name of God” we may probably explain the repetition of the word µve , which is first of all written absolutely (as at the close of Lev 24:16), and then more fully defined as “the name of the Lord of hosts.”
Verse 3-4. “They set the ark of God upon a new cart, and took it away from the house of Abinadab.” byKir]hi means here “to put (load) upon a cart,” and ac;n; to take away, i.e., drive off: for there are grammatical (or syntactical) reasons which make it impossible to render ac;n; as a pluperfect (“they had taken”), on account of the previous wyrkbw.
The ark of the covenant had been standing in the house of Abinadab from the time when the Philistines had sent it back into the land of Israel, i.e., about seventy years (viz., twenty years to the victory at Ebenezer mentioned in 1 Sam 7:1ff., forty years under Samuel and Saul, and about ten years under David: see the chronological table on pp. 210f.). The further statement, that “Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, drove the cart,” may easily be reconciled with this. These two sons were either born about the time when the ark was first taken to Abinadab’s house, or at a subsequent period; or else the term sons is used, as is frequently the case, in the sense of grandsons. The words from vd;j; (the last word in v. 3) to Gibeah in v. 4 are wanting in the Septuagint, and can only have been introduced through the error of a copyist, whose eye wandered back to the first `hl;g;[ in v. 3, so that he copied a whole line twice over; for they not only contain a pure tautology, a merely verbal and altogether superfluous and purposeless repetition, but they are altogether unsuitable to the connection in which they stand.
Not only is there something very strange in the repetition of the vd;j; without an article after `hl;g;[ ; but the words which follow, h ˆwOra; `µ[i (with the ark of God), cannot be made to fit on to the repeated clause, for there is no sense whatever in such a sentence as this: “They brought it (the ark) out of the house of Abinadab, which is upon the hill, with the ark of God.” The only way in which the words “with the ark” can be made to acquire any meaning at all, is by omitting the repetition referred to, and connecting them with the new cart in v. 3: “Uzzah and Ahio...drove the cart with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark.” ghæn; , to drive (a carriage), is construed here with an accusative, in 1 Chron 13:7 with b] , as in Isa 11:6.
Verse 5. And David and all the house (people) of Israel were qjæc; , sporting, i.e., they danced and played, before Jehovah. vwOrB] `x[e lKo , “with all kinds of woods of cypresses.” This could only mean, with all kinds of instruments made of cypress wood; but this mode of expression would be a very strange one even if the reading were correct. In the Chronicles, however (v. 8), instead of this strange expression, we find µyriyvib]W z[Oalk;B; , “with all their might and with songs.” This is evidently the correct reading, from which our text has sprung, although the latter is found in all the old versions, and even in the Septuagint, which really combines the two readings thus: en orga>noiv hJrmosme>noiv en iscu>i> kai> en wdai>v , where en orga>noiv hJrmosme>noiv is evidently the interpretation of vwOrB] `x[e lKo ; for the text of the Chronicles cannot be regarded as an explanation of Samuel. Moreover, songs would not be omitted on such a festive occasion; and two of the instruments mentioned, viz., the kinnor and nebel (see at 1 Sam 10:5), were generally played as accompaniments to singing.
The vav before µyriyviB] , and before the different instruments, corresponds to the Latin et...et, both...and. ãTo , the timbrel. lxæl;x] [næ[]næm] , sistris et cymbalis (Vulg., Syr.), “with bells and cymbals” (Luther). µy[[n][ænæm] , from [æWn , are instruments that are shaken, the sei>stra , sistra, of the ancients, which consisted of two iron rods fastened together at one end, either in a semicircle or at right angels, upon which rings were hung loosely, so as to make a tinkling sound when they were shaken. µylix]l]x, = tl,xem] are cymbals or castanets. Instead of µy[in][ænæm] , we find hr;x]xoj , trumpets, mentioned in the Chronicles in the last rank after the cymbals. It is possible that sistra were played and trumpets blown, so that the two accounts complete each other. Verse 6-7. When the procession had reached the threshing-floor of Nachon, Uzzah stretched out his hand to lay hold of the ark, i.e., to keep it from falling over with the cart, because the oxen slipped. And the wrath of the Lord was kindled, and God slew Uzzah upon the spot. Goren nachon means “the threshing-floor of the stroke” (nachon from hk;n; , not from ˆWK); in the Chronicles we have goren chidon, i.e., the threshing-floor of destruction or disaster ˆwOdyKi = dyKi , Job 21:20). Chidon is probably only an explanation of nachon, so that the name may have been given to the threshing-floor, not from its owner, but from the incident connected with the ark which took place there. Eventually, however, this name was supplanted by the name Perez-uzzah (v. 8). The situation of the threshingfloor cannot be determined, as all that we can gather from this account is that the house of Obed-edom the Gathite was somewhere near it; but no village, hamlet, or town is mentioned. f60 Jerome paraphrases rq;B; fmæv; yKi thus: “Because the oxen kicked and turned it (the ark over.” But fmæv; does not mean to kick; its true meaning is to let go, or let lie (Ex 23:11; Deut 15:2-3), hence to slip or stumble.
The stumbling of the animals might easily have turned the cart over, and this was what Uzzah tried to prevent by laying hold of the ark. God smote him there “on account of the offence” lvæ , hap leg from hl;v; , in the sense of erring, or committing a fault). The writer of the Chronicles gives it thus: “Because he had stretched out his hand to the ark,” though of course the text before us is not to be altered to this, as Thenius and Bertheau suggest.
Verse 8. “And David was angry, because Jehovah had made a rent on Uzzah, and called the place Perez-uzzah” (rent of Uzzah). xr,p, xræp , to tear a rent, is here applied to a sudden tearing away from life. l] hr;j; is understood by many in the sense of “he troubled himself;” but this meaning cannot be grammatically sustained, whilst it is quite possible to become angry, or fall into a state of violent excitement, at an unexpected calamity.
The burning of David’s anger was not directed against God, but referred to the calamity which had befallen Uzzah, or speaking more correctly, to the cause of this calamity, which David attributed to himself or to his undertaking. As he had not only resolved upon the removal of the ark, but had also planned the way in which it should be taken to Jerusalem, he could not trace the occasion of Uzzah’s death to any other cause than his own plans. He was therefore angry that such misfortune had attended his undertaking.
In his first excitement and dismay, David may not have perceived the real and deeper ground of this divine judgment. Uzzah’s offence consisted in the fact that he had touched the ark with profane feelings, although with good intentions, namely to prevent its rolling over and falling from the cart.
Touching the ark, the throne of the divine glory and visible pledge of the invisible presence of the Lord, was a violation of the majesty of the holy God. “Uzzah was therefore a type of all who with good intentions, humanly speaking, yet with unsanctified minds, interfere in the affairs of the kingdom of God, from the notion that they are in danger, and with the hope of saving them” (O. v. Gerlach). On further reflection, David could not fail to discover where the cause of Uzzah’s offence, which he had atoned for with his life, really had lain, and that it had actually arisen from the fact that he (David) and those about him had decided to disregard the distinct instructions of the law with regard to the handling of the ark.
According to Num 4 the ark was not only to be moved by none but Levites, but it was to be carried on the shoulders, not in a carriage; and in v. 15, even the Levites were expressly forbidden to touch it on pain of death. But instead of taking these instructions as their rule, they had followed the example of the Philistines when they sent back the ark (1 Sam 6:7ff.), and had placed it upon a new cart, and directed Uzzah to drive it, whilst, as his conduct on the occasion clearly shows, he had no idea of the unapproachable holiness of the ark of God, and had to expiate his offence with his life, as a warning to all the Israelites.
Verse 9-10. David’s excitement at what had occurred was soon changed into fear of the Lord, so that he said, “How shall the ark of Jehovah come to me?” If merely touching the ark of God is punished in this way, how can I have it brought near me, up to the citadel of Zion? He therefore relinquished his intention of bringing it into the city of David, and placed it in the house of Obed-edom the Gathite. Obed-edom was a Levite of the family of the Korahites, who sprang from Kohath (compare Ex 6:21; 18:16, and 1 Chron 26:4), and belonged to the class of Levitical doorkeepers, whose duty it was, in connection with other Levites, to watch over the ark in the sacred tent (1 Chron 15:18,24). He is called the Gittite or Gathite from his birthplace, the Levitical city of Gath-rimmon in the tribe of Dan (Josh 21:24; 19:45).
2 SAMUEL. 6:11-12
Removal of the ark of God to the city of David (cf. 1 Chron 15).-Vv. 11, 12. When the ark had been in the house of Obededom for three months, and David heard that the Lord had blessed his house for the sake of the ark of God, he went thither and brought it up to the city of David with gladness i.e., with festal rejoicing, or a solemn procession. (For hj;m]ci , in the sense of festal rejoicing, or a joyous fête, see Gen 31:27; Neh 12:43, etc.) On this occasion, however, David adhered strictly to the instructions of the law, as the more elaborate account given in the Chronicles clearly shows. He not only gathered together all Israel at Jerusalem to join in this solemn act, but summoned the priests and Levites, and commanded them to sanctify themselves, and carry the ark “according to the right,” i.e., as the Lord had commanded in the law of Moses, and to offer sacrifices during the procession, and sin songs, i.e., psalms, with musical accompaniment. In the very condensed account before us, all that is mentioned is the carrying of the ark, the sacrificing during the march, and the festivities of the king and people. But even from these few facts we see that David had discovered his former mistake, and had given up the idea of removing the ark upon a carriage as a transgression of the law.
2 SAMUEL. 6:13
The bearers of the ark are not particularly mentioned in this account; but it is very evident that they were Levites, as the Chronicles affirm, from the fact that the ark was carried this time, and not driven, as before. “And it came to pass, when the bearers of the ark of Jehovah had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatted calf” (i.e., had them sacrificed). These words are generally understood as meaning, that sacrifices of this kind were offered along the whole way, at the distance of six paces apart. This would certainly have been a possible thing, and there would be no necessity to assume that the procession halted every six paces, until the sacrificial ceremony was completed, but the ark might have continued in progress, whilst sacrifices were being offered at the distances mentioned. And even the immense number of sacrificial animals that would have been required is no valid objection to such an assumption. f61 We do not know what the distance really was: all that we know is, that it was not so much as ten miles, as Kirjath-jearim was only about twelve miles from Jerusalem, so that a few thousand oxen, and the same number of fatted calves, would have been quite sufficient. But the words of the text do not distinctly affirm that sacrifices were offered whenever the bearers advanced six paces, but only that this was done was soon as the bearers had taken the first six steps. So that, strictly speaking, all that is stated is, that when the procession had started and gone six paces, the sacrifice was offered, namely, for the purpose of inaugurating or consecrating the solemn procession. In 1 Chron 15 this fact is omitted; and it is stated instead (v. 26), that “when God helped the Levites that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, they offered seven bullocks and seven rams,” i.e., at the close of the procession, when the journey was ended, to praise God for the fact that the Levites had been enabled to carry the ark of God to the place appointed for it, without suffering the slightest harm.
2 SAMUEL. 6:14-15
“And David danced with all his might before the Lord (i.e., before the ark), and was girded with a white ephod (shoulder-dress).” Dancing, as an expression of holy enthusiasm, was a customary thing from time immemorial: we meet with it as early as at the festival of thanksgiving at the Red Sea (Ex 15:20); but there, and also at subsequent celebrations of the different victories gained by the Israelites, none but women are described as taking part in it (Judg 11:34; 21:19; 1 Sam 18:6). The white ephod was, strictly speaking, a priestly costume, although in the law it is not prescribed as the dress to be worn by them when performing their official duties, but rather as the dress which denoted the priestly character of the wearer (see at 1 Sam 22:18); and for this reason it was worn by David in connection with these festivities in honour of the Lord, as the head of the priestly nation of Israel (see at 1 Sam 2:18). In v. 15 it is still further related, that David and all the house (nation) of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with jubilee and trumpet-blast. h[;WrT] is used here to signify the song of jubilee and the joyous shouting of the people. In the Chronicles (v. 28) the musical instruments played on the occasion are also severally mentioned.
2 SAMUEL. 6:16
When the ark came (i.e., was carried) into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and there she saw king David leaping and dancing before Jehovah, and despised him in her heart. hy;h; , “and it came to pass,” for hy;h; , because there is no progress made, but only another element introduced. awOB is a perfect: “the ark had come,...and Michal looked through the window,...there she saw,” etc. Michal is intentionally designated the daughter of Saul here, instead of the wife of David, because on this occasion she manifested her father’s disposition rather than her husband’s. In Saul’s time people did not trouble themselves about the ark of the covenant (1 Chron 13:3); public worship was neglected, and the soul for vital religion had died out in the family of the king. Michal possessed teraphim, and in David she only loved the brave hero and exalted king: she therefore took offence at the humility with which the king, in his pious enthusiasm, placed himself on an equality with all the rest of the nation before the Lord.
2 SAMUEL. 6:17
When the ark was brought to the place appointed for it upon Mount Zion, and was deposited in the tent which David had prepared for it, he offered burnt-offerings and thank-offerings before the Lord. “In its place” is still further defined as “in the midst of the tent which David,” etc., i.e., in the Most Holy Place; for the tent would certainly be constructed according to the type of the Mosaic tabernacle. The burnt-offerings and peace-offerings were offered to consecrate the newly erected house of God.
2 SAMUEL. 6:18-19
When the offering of sacrifice was over, David blessed the people in the name of the Lord, as Solomon did afterwards at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8:55), and gave to all the (assembled) people, both men and women, to every one a slice of bread, a measure (of wine), and a cake for a festal meal, i.e., for the sacrificial meal, which was celebrated with the shelamim after the offering of the sacrifices, and after the king had concluded the liturgical festival with a benediction. µj,l, hL;jæ is a round cake of bread, baked for sacrificial meals, and synonymous with kikarlechem (1 Chron 16:3), as we may see from a comparison of Ex 29:23 with Lev 8:26 (see the commentary on Lev 8:2). But the meaning of the hap leg rp;v]a, is uncertain, and has been much disputed. Most of the Rabbins understand it as signifying a piece of flesh or roast meat, deriving the word from cae and rpæ ; but this is certainly false. There is more to be said in favour of the derivation proposed by L. de Dieu, viz., from the Ethiopic rp,v, , netiri, from which Gesenius and Roediger (Ges. Thes. p. 1470) have drawn their explanation of the word as signifying a measure of wine or other beverage. For hv;yvia , the meaning grape-cake or raisin-cake is established by Son of Sol. 2:5 and Hos 3:1 (vid., Hengstenberg, Christol. on Hos 3:1). The people returned home after the festal meal.
2 SAMUEL. 6:20-23
When David returned home to bless his house, as he had previously blessed the people, Michal came to meet him with scornful words, saying, “How has the king of Israel glorified himself to-day, when he stripped himself before the eyes of the maids of his servants, as only one of the loose people strips himself!” The unusual combination hl,G, hl,G, is explained by Ewald (§240, e., p. 607) in this manner, that whilst, so far as the sense of the clause is concerned, the second verb ought to be in the infinitive absolute, they were both written with a very slight change of form in the infinitive construct; whereas others regard hl,G, as an unusual form of the infinitive absolute (Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 430), or a copyist’s error for nig¦loh (Thenius, Olsh. Gr. p. 600). The proud daughter of Saul was offended at the fact, that the king had let himself down on this occasion to the level of the people. She availed herself of the shortness of the priests’ shoulder-dress, to make a contemptuous remark concerning David’s dancing, as an impropriety that was unbecoming in a king. “Who knows whether the proud woman did not intend to sneer at the rank of the Levites, as one that was contemptible in her eyes, since their humble service may have looked very trivial to her?” (Berleb. Bible.)
Verse 21-22. David replied, “Before Jehovah, who chose me before thy father and all his house, to appoint me prince over the people of Jehovah, over Israel, before Jehovah have I played (lit. joked, given utterance to my joy). And I will be still more despised, and become base in my eyes: and with the maidens of whom thou hast spoken, with them will I be honoured.” The copula vav before qjæc; serves to introduce the apodosis, and may be explained in this way, that the relative clause appended to “before Jehovah” acquired the power of a protasis on account of its length; so that, strictly speaking, there is an anakolouthon, as if the protasis read thus: “Before Jehovah, as He hath chosen me over Israel, I have humbled myself before Jehovah” (for “before him”). With the words “who chose me before thy father and all his house,” David humbles the pride of the king’s daughter. His playing and dancing referred to the Lord, who had chosen him, and had rejected Saul on account of his pride. He would therefore let himself be still further despised before the Lord, i.e., would bear still greater contempt from men than that which he had just received, and be humbled in his own eyes (vid., Ps 131:1): then would he also with the maidens attain to honour before the Lord. For whoso humbleth himself, him will God exalt (Matt 23:12). `ˆyi[æ is not to be altered into `ˆyi[æ , as in the LXX. This alteration has arisen from a total misconception of the nature of true humility, which is of no worth in its own eyes. The rendering given by De Wette is at variance with both the grammar and the sense (“with the maidens,...with them will I magnify myself”); and so also is that of Thenius (“with them will I be honoured, i.e., indemnify myself for thy foolish contempt!”).
Verse 23. Michael was humbled by God for her pride, and remained childless to the time of her death.
DAVID’S RESOLUTION TO BUILD A TEMPLE.
THE PROMISED PERPETUITY OF HIS THRONE.
To the erection of a sanctuary for the ark upon Mount Zion there is appended an account of David’s desire to build a temple for the Lord. We find this not only in the text before us, but also in the parallel history in Chron 17. When David had acquired rest from his enemies round about, he formed the resolution to build a house for the Lord, and this resolution was sanctioned by the prophet Nathan (vv. 1-3). But the Lord revealed to the prophet, and through him to David, that He had not required the building of a temple from any of the tribes of Israel, and that He would first of all build a house himself for His servant David, and confirm the throne to his seed for ever, and then he should build Him a temple (vv. 4-17). David then gave utterance to his thanksgiving for this glorious promise in a prayer, in which he praised the unmeasurable grace of God, and prayed for the fulfilment of this renewed promised of divine grace (vv. 18-29). f
62 2 SAMUEL. 7:1-3
Verse 1-3. When David was dwelling in his house, i.e., the palace of cedar (2 Sam 5:11), and Jehovah had given him rest from all his enemies round about, he said to Nathan the prophet: “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God dwelleth within the curtains.” h[;yriy] in the singular is used, In Ex 26:2ff., to denote the inner covering, composed of a number of lengths of tapestry sewn together, which was spread over the planks of the tabernacle, and made it into a dwelling, whereas the separate pieces of tapestry are called h[;yriy] in the plural; and hence, in the later writers, h[;yriy] alternates sometimes with lh,ao (Isa 54:2), and at other times with lh,ao (Song of Sol. 1:5; Jer 4:20; 49:29). Consequently h[;yriy] refers here to the tent-cloth or tent formed of pieces of tapestry. “Within (i.e., surrounded by) the tent-cloth:” in the Chronicles we find “under curtains.”
From the words “when the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about,” it is evident that David did not form the resolution to build the temple in the first years of his reign upon Zion, nor immediately after the completion of his palace, but at a later period (see the remarks on Sam 5:11, note). It is true that the giving of rest from all his enemies round about does not definitely presuppose the termination of all the greater wars of David, since it is not affirmed that this rest was a definitive one; but the words cannot possibly be restricted to the two victories over the Philistines (2 Sam 5:17-25), as Hengstenberg supposes, inasmuch as, however important the second may have been, their foes were not even permanently quieted by them, to say nothing of their being entirely subdued. Moreover, in the promise mentioned in v. 9, God distinctly says, “I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies before thee.”
These words also show that at that time David had already fought against all the enemies round about, and humbled them. Now, as all David’s principal wars are grouped together for the first time in ch. 8 and 10, there can be no doubt that the history is not arranged in a strictly chronological order. And the expression “after this” in 2 Sam 8:1 is by no means at variance with this, since this formula does not at all express a strictly chronological sequence. From the words of the prophet, “Go, do all that is in thy heart, for the Lord is with thee,” it is very evident that David had expressed the intention to build a splendid palatial temple. The word Ëlæy; , go (equivalent to “quite right”), is omitted in the Chronicles as superfluous.
Nathan sanctioned the king’s resolution “from his own feelings, and not by divine revelation” (J. H. Michaelis); but he did not “afterwards perceive that the time for carrying out this intention had not yet come,” as Thenius and Bertheau maintain; on the contrary, the Lord God revealed to the prophet that David was not to carry out his intention at all.
2 SAMUEL. 7:4-5
The revelation and promise of God.
Verse 4. “That night,” i.e., the night succeeding the day on which Nathan had talked with the king concerning the building of the temple, the Lord made known His decree to the prophet, with instructions to communicate it to the king. wgwhT;aæ , “Shouldest thou build me a house for me to dwell in?” The question involves a negative reply, and consequently in the Chronicles we find “thou shalt not.”
2 SAMUEL. 7:6-7
The reason assigned for this answer: “I have not dwelt in a house from the day of the bringing up of Israel out of Egypt even to this day, but I was wandering about in a tent and in a dwelling.” “And in a dwelling” (mishcan) is to be taken as explanatory, viz., in a tent which was my dwelling. As a tent is a traveller’s dwelling, so, as long as God’s dwelling was a tent, He himself appeared as if travelling or going from place to place. “In the whole of the time that I walked among all the children of Israel,...have I spoken a word to one of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Wherefore have ye not built me a cedar house?” A “cedar house” is equivalent to a palace built of costly materials. The expression laer;c]yi fb,ve dj;a, (“one of the tribes of Israel”) is a striking one, as the feeding of the nation does not appear to be a duty belonging to the “tribes,” and in the Chronicles we have fpæv; (judges) instead of fb,ve (tribes).
But if fpæv; had been the original expression used in the text, it would be impossible to explain the origin and general acceptance of the word fb,ve .
For this very reason, therefore, we must regard fb,ve as the original word, and understand it as referring to the tribes, which had supplied the nation with judges and leaders before the tie of David, since the feeding, i.e., the government of Israel, which was in the hands of the judges, was transferred to the tribes to which the judges belonged. This view is confirmed by Ps 78:67-68, where the election of David as prince, and of Zion as the site of the sanctuary, is described as the election of the tribe of Judah and the rejection of the tribe of Ephraim. On the other hand, the assumption of Thenius, that fb,ve , “shepherd-staffs,” is used poetically for shepherds, cannot be established on the ground of Lev 27:32 and Mic 7:14. Jehovah gave two reasons why David’s proposal to build Him a temple should not be carried out: (1) He had hitherto lived in a tent in the midst of His people; (2) He had not commanded any former prince or tribe to build a temple.
This did not involve any blame, as though there had been something presumptuous in David’s proposal, or in the fact that he had thought of undertaking such a work without an express command from God, but simply showed that it was not because of any negligence on the part of the former leaders of the people that they had not thought of erecting a temple, and that even now the time for carrying out such a work as that had not yet come.
2 SAMUEL. 7:8-16
After thus declining his proposal, the Lord made known His gracious purpose to David: “Thus saith Jehovah of hosts” (not only Jehovah, as in v. 5, but Jehovah Sebaoth, because He manifests himself in the following revelation as the God of the universe): “I have taken thee from the pasturage (grass-plat), behind the flock, to be prince over my people Israel; and was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and exterminated all thine enemies before thee, and so made thee, `hc;[; (perfect with vav consec.), a great name,...and created a place for my people Israel, and planted them, so that they dwell in their place, and do not tremble any more (before their oppressors); and the sons of wickedness do not oppress them any further, as at the beginning, and from the day when I appointed judges over my people Israel: and I create thee rest from all thine enemies. And Jehovah proclaims to thee, that Jehovah will make thee a house.” The words cy µwOy ˆmi are to be joined to ˆwOvari , “as in the beginning,” i.e., in Egypt, and from the time of the judges; that is to say, during the rule of the judges, when the surrounding nations constantly oppressed and subjugated Israel. The plan usually adopted, of connecting the words with jæWn , does not yield any suitable thought at all, as God had not given David rest from the very beginning of the times of the judges; but the period of the judges was long antecedent to the time of David, and was not a period of rest for the Israelites. Again, jæWn does not resume what is stated in v. 9, and is not to be rendered as a preterite in the sense of “I have procured thee rest,” but as a perfect with vav consec., “and I procure thee rest” from what is now about to come to pass.
And dgæn; is to be taken in the same way: the Lord shows thee, first of all through His promise (which follows), and then through the fact itself, the realization of His word. jæWn refers to the future, as well as the building of David’s house, and therefore not to the rest from all his enemies, which God had already secured for David, but to that which He would still further secure for him, that is to say, to the maintenance and establishment of that rest. The commentary upon this is to be found in Ps 89:22-24. In the Chronicles (v. 10) there is a somewhat different turn given to the last clauses: “and I bend down all thine enemies, and make it (the bendingdown) known to thee (by the fact), and a house will Jehovah build for thee.” The thought is not essentially changed by this; consequently there is no ground for any emendation of the text, which is not even apparently necessary, unless, like Bertheau, we misinterpret the words, and connect [næK; erroneously with the previous clause.
Verse 8-11. The connection between vv. 5-7 and 8-16 has been correctly indicated by Thenius as follows: Thou shalt not build a house for Me; but I, who have from the very beginning glorified myself in thee and my people (vv. 8-11), will build a house for thee; and thy son shall erect a house for me (v. 13). This thought is not merely “a play upon words entirely in the spirit of prophecy,” but contains the deep general truth that God must first of all build a man’s house, before the man can build God’s house, and applies it especially to the kingdom of God in Israel. As long as the quiet and full possession of the land of Canaan, which had been promised by the Lord to the people of God for their inheritance, was disputed by their enemies round about, even the dwelling-place of their God could not assume any other form than that of a wanderer’s tent. The kingdom of God in Israel first acquired its rest and consolation through the efforts of David, when God had made all his foes subject to him and established his throne firmly, i.e., had assured to his descendants the possession of the kingdom for all future time.
And it was this which ushered in the time for the building of a stationary house as a dwelling for the name of the Lord, i.e., for the visible manifestation of the presence of God in the midst of His people. The conquest of the citadel of Zion and the elevation of this fortress into the palace of the king, whom the Lord had given to His people, formed the commencement of the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this commencement received its first pledge of perpetuity from the divine assurance that the throne of David should be established for all future time.
And this the Lord was about to accomplish: He would build David a house, and then his seed should build the house of the Lord. No definite reason is assigned why David himself was not to build the temple. We learn this first of all from David’s last words (1 Chron 28:3), in which he says to the assembled heads of the nation, “God said to me, Thou shalt not build a house for my name, because thou art a man of wars, and hast shed blood.”
Compare with this the similar words of David to Solomon in 1 Chron 22:8, and Solomon’s statement in his message to Hiram, that David had been prevented from building the temple in consequence of his many wars. It was probably not till afterwards that David was informed by Nathan what the true reason was. As Hengstenberg has correctly observed, the fact that David was not permitted to build the temple on account of his own personal unworthiness, did not involve any blame for what he had done; for David stood in a closer relation to the Lord than Solomon did, and the wars which he waged were wars of the Lord (1 Sam 25:28) for the maintenance and defence of the kingdom of God. But inasmuch as these wars were necessary and inevitable, they were practical proofs that David’s kingdom and government were not yet established, and therefore that the time for the building of the temple had not yet come, and the rest of peace was not yet secured. The temple, as the symbolical representation of the kingdom of God, as also to correspond to the nature of that kingdom, and shadow forth the peace of the kingdom of God. For this reason, David, the man of war, was not to build the temple; but that was to be reserved for Solomon, the man of peace, the type of the Prince of Peace (Isa 9:5). Verse 12-13. In vv. 12-16 there follows a more precise definition of the way in which the Lord would build a house for His servant David: “When thy days shall become full, and thou shalt lie with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, who shall come from thy body, and establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I shall establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” µWq , to set up i.e., to promote to royal dignity. ax;y; rv,a is not to be altered into ax;y; rv,a , as Thenius and others maintain. The assumption that Solomon had already been born, is an unfounded one (see the note to 2 Sam 5:11, p. 582); and it by no means follows from the statement in v. 1, to the effect that God had given David rest from all his enemies, that his resolution to build a temple was not formed till the closing years of his reign.
Verse 14-16. “I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me; so that if he go astray, I shall chastise him with rods of men, and with strokes of the children of men (i.e., not ‘with moderate punishment, such as parents are accustomed to inflict,’ as Clericus explains it, but with such punishments as are inflicted upon all men who go astray, and from which even the seed of David is not to be excepted). But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I caused it to depart from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thy house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee; thy throne shall be established for ever.” It is very obvious, from all the separate details of this promise, that it related primarily to Solomon, and had a certain fulfilment in him and his reign. On the death of David, his son Solomon ascended the throne, and God defended his kingdom against the machinations of Adonijah (1 Kings 2:12); so that Solomon was able to say, “The Lord hath fulfilled His word that He spoke; for I have risen up in the stead of my father David,” etc. (1 Kings 8:20).
Solomon built the temple, as the Lord said to David (1 Kings 5:19; 8:15ff.). But in his old age Solomon sinned against the Lord by falling into idolatry; and as a punishment for this, after his death his kingdom was rent from his son, not indeed entirely, as one portion was still preserved to the family for David’s sake (1 Kings 11:9ff.). Thus the Lord punished him with rods of men, but did not withdraw from him His grace. At the same time, however unmistakeable the allusions to Solomon are, the substance of the promise is not fully exhausted in him. The threefold repetition of the expression “for ever,” the establishment of the kingdom and throne of David for ever, points incontrovertibly beyond the time of Solomon, and to the eternal continuance of the seed of David. The word seed denotes the posterity of a person, which may consist either in one son or in several children, or in a long line of successive generations.
The idea of a number of persons living at the same time, is here precluded by the context of the promise, as only one of David’s successors could sit upon the throne at a time. On the other hand, the idea of a number of descendants following one another, is evidently contained in the promise, that God would not withdraw His favour from the seed, even if it went astray, as He had done from Saul, since this implies that even in that case the throne should be transmitted from father to son. There is still more, however, involved in the expression “for ever.” When the promise was given that the throne of the kingdom of David should continue “to eternity,” an eternal duration was also promised to the seed that should occupy this throne, just as in v. 16 the house and kingdom of David are spoken of as existing for ever, side by side. We must not reduce the idea of eternity to the popular notion of a long incalculable period, but must take it in an absolute sense, as the promise is evidently understood in Ps 89:30: “I set his seed for ever, and this throne as the days of heaven.”
No earthly kingdom, and no posterity of any single man, has eternal duration like the heaven and the earth; but the different families of men become extinct, as the different earthly kingdoms perish, and other families and kingdoms take their place. The posterity of David, therefore, could only last for ever by running out in a person who lives for ever, i.e., by culminating in the Messiah, who lives for ever, and of whose kingdom there is no end. The promise consequently refers to the posterity of David, commencing with Solomon and closing with Christ: so that by the “seed” we are not to understand Solomon alone, with the kings who succeeded him, nor Christ alone, to the exclusion of Solomon and the earthly kings of the family of David; nor is the allusion to Solomon and Christ to be regarded as a double allusion to two different objects.
But if this is established-namely, that the promise given to the seed of David that his kingdom should endure for ever only attained its ultimate fulfilment in Christ-we must not restrict the building of the house of God to the erection of Solomon’s temple. “The building of the house of the Lord goes hand in hand with the eternity of the kingdom” (Hengstenberg). As the kingdom endures for ever, so the house built for the dwelling-place of the Lord must also endure for ever, as Solomon said at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8:13): “I have surely built Thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for Thee to abide in for ever.” The everlasting continuance of Solomon’s temple must not be reduced, however, to the simple fact, that even if the temple of Solomon should be destroyed, a new building would be erected in its place by the earthly descendants of Solomon, although this is also implied in the words, and the temple of Zerubbabel is included as the restoration of that of Solomon. For it is not merely in its earthly form, as a building of wood and stone, that the temple is referred to, but also and chiefly in its essential characteristic, as the place of the manifestation and presence of God in the midst of His people.
The earthly form is perishable, the essence eternal. This essence was the dwelling of God in the midst of His people, which did not cease with the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, but culminated in the appearance of Jesus Christ, in whom Jehovah came to His people, and, as God the Word, made human nature His dwelling-place ( eskh>nwsen en hJmi>n , John 1:14) in the glory of the only- begotten Son of the Father; so that Christ could say to the Jews, “Destroy this temple (i.e., the temple of His body), and in three days I will build it up again” (John 2:19). It is with this building up of the temple destroyed by the Jews, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that the complete and essential fulfilment of our promise begins. It is perpetuated with the Christian church in the indwelling of the Father and Son through the Holy Ghost in the hearts of believers (John 14:23; 1 Cor 6:19), by which the church of Jesus Christ is built up a spiritual house of God, composed of living stones (1 Tim 3:15; 1 Peter 2:5; compare 2 Cor 6:16; Heb 3:6); and it will be perfected in the completion of the kingdom of God at the end of time in the new Jerusalem, which shall come down upon the new earth out of heaven from God, as the true tabernacle of God with men (Rev 21:1-3).
As the building of the house of God receives its fulfilment first of all through Christ, so the promise, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son,” is first fully realized in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the heavenly Father (vid., Heb 1:5). In the Old Testament the relation between father and son denotes the deepest intimacy of love; and love is perfected in unity of nature, in the communication to the son of all that the father hath. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand (John 3:35). Sonship therefore includes the government of the world.
This not only applied to Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, but also to the seed of David generally, so far as they truly attained to the relation of children of God. So long as Solomon walked in the ways of the Lord, he ruled over all the kingdoms from the river (Euphrates) to the border of Egypt (1 Kings 5:1); but when his heart turned away from the Lord in his old age, adversaries rose up against him (1 Kings 11:14ff., 23ff.), and after his death the greater part of the kingdom was rent from his son.
The seed of David was chastised for its sins; and as its apostasy continued, it was humbled yet more and more, until the earthly throne of David became extinct. Nevertheless the Lord did not cause His mercy to depart from him. When the house of David had fallen into decay, Jesus Christ was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, to raise up the throne of His father David again, and to reign for ever as King over the house of Jacob (Luke 1:32-33), and to establish the house and kingdom of David for ever.-In v. 16, where the promise returns to David again with the words, “thy house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever,” the expression µynip; (before thee), which the LXX and Syriac have arbitrarily changed into µynip; (before me), should be particularly observed. David, as the tribefather and founder of the line of kings, is regarded either “as seeing all his descendants pass before him in a vision,” as O. v. Gerlach supposes, or as continuing to exist in his descendants.
2 SAMUEL. 7:17
“According to all these words...did Nathan speak unto David,” i.e., he related the whole to David, just as God had addressed it to him in the night. The clause in apposition, “according to all this vision,” merely introduces a more minute definition of the peculiar form of the revelation.
God spoke to Nathan in a vision which he had in the night, i.e., not in a dream, but in a waking condition, and during the night; for ˆwOyZ;ji = ˆwOzj; is constantly distinguished from µwOlj , a revelation in a dream.
2 SAMUEL. 7:18-29
David’s prayer and thanksgiving.
Verse 18. King David came, i.e., went into the sanctuary erected upon Zion, and remained before Jehovah. bvæy; , remained, tarried (as in Gen. 25:55; 29:19, etc.), not “sat;” for the custom of sitting before the Lord in the sanctuary, as the posture assumed in prayer, cannot be deduced from Ex 17:12, where Moses is compelled to sit from simple exhaustion. David’s prayer consists of two parts-thanksgiving for the promise (vv. 18b- 24), and supplication for its fulfilment (vv. 25-29). The thanksgiving consists of a confession of unworthiness of all the great things that the Lord had hitherto done for him, and which He had still further increased by this glorious promise (vv. 18-21), and praise to the Lord that all this had been done in proof of His true Deity, and to glorify His name upon His chosen people Israel. 18b. “Who am I, O Lord Jehovah? and who my house (i.e., my family), that Thou hast brought me hitherto?” These words recall Jacob’s prayer in Gen 32:10, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies,” etc. David acknowledged himself to be unworthy of the great mercy which the Lord had displayed towards him, that he might give the glory to God alone (vid., Pl. 2 Sam 8:5 and 144:3).
Verse 19. “And this is still too little in Thine eyes, O Lord Jehovah, and Thou still speakest with regard to the house of Thy servant for a great while to come.” qwOjr;mel] , lit. that which points to a remote period, i.e., that of the eternal establishment of my house and throne. “And this is the law of man, O Lord Jehovah.” “The law of man” is the law which determines ore regulates the conduct of man. Hence the meaning of these words, which have been very differently interpreted, cannot, with the context immediately preceding it, be any other than the following: Thisnamely, the love and condescension manifested in Thy treatment of Thy servant-is the law which applies to man, or is conformed to the law which men are to observe towards men, i.e., to the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Lev 19:18, compare Mic 6:8). With this interpretation, which is confirmed by the parallel text of the Chronicles (in v. 17), “Thou sawest (i.e., visitedst me, or didst deal with me) according to the manner of man,” that words are expressive of praise of the condescending grace of the Lord. “When God the Lord, in His treatment of poor mortals, follows the rule which He has laid down for the conduct of men one towards another, when He shows himself kind and affectionate, this must fill with adoring amazement those who know themselves and God” (Hengstenberg). Luther is wrong in the rendering which he has adopted: “This is the manner of a man, who is God the Lord;” for “Lord Jehovah” is not an explanatory apposition to “man,” but an address to God, as in the preceding and following clause. Verse 20. “And what more shall David speak to Thee? Thou knowest Thy servant, Lord Jehovah.” Instead of expressing his gratitude still further in many words, David appeals to the omniscience of God, before whom his thankful heart lies open, just as in Ps 40:10 (compare also Ps 17:3).
Verse 21-22. “For Thy word’s sake, and according to Thy heart (and therefore not because I am worthy of such grace), has Thou done all this greatness, to make it known to Thy servant.” The word, for the sake of which God had done such great things for David, must be some former promise on the part of God. Hengstenberg supposes it to refer to the word of the Lord to Samuel, “Rise up and anoint him” (1 Sam 16:12), which is apparently favoured indeed by the parallel in the corresponding text of Chron 17:19, “for Thy servant’s sake,” i.e., because Thou hast chosen Thy servant. But even this variation must contain some special allusion which does not exclude a general interpretation of the expression “for Thy word’s sake,” viz., an allusion to the earlier promises of God, or the Messianic prophecies generally, particularly the one concerning Judah in Jacob’s blessing (Gen 49:10), and the one relating to the ruler out of Jacob in Balaam’s sayings (Num 24:17ff.), which contain the germs of the promise of the everlasting continuance of David’s government. For the fact that David recognised the connection between the promise of God communicated to him by Nathan and Jacob’s prophecy in Gen 49:10, is evident from 1 Chron 28:4, where he refers to his election as king as being the consequence of the election of Judah as ruler. “According to Thine own heart” is equivalent to “according to Thy love and grace; for God is gracious, merciful, and of great kindness and truth” (Ex 34:6, compare Ps 103:8). hl;WdGi does not mean great things, but greatness.
The praise of God commences in v. 22: “wherefore Thou art great, Jehovah God; and there is not (one) like Thee, and no God beside Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.” By the word “wherefore,” i.e., because Thou hast done this, the praise of the singleness of God is set forth as the result of David’s own experience. God is great when He manifests the greatness of His grace to men, and brings them to acknowledge it. And in these great deeds He proves the incomparable nature of His Deity, or that He alone is the true God. (For the fact itself, compare Ex 15:11; Deut 3:24; 4:35.)
Verse 23. “And where is (any) like Thy people, like Israel, a nation upon earth, which God went to redeem as a people for himself, that He might make Him a name, and do great things for you, and terrible things for Thy land before Thy people, which Thou hast redeemed for Thee out of Egypt, (out of the) nations and their gods?” ymi does not really mean where, but who, and is to be connected with the words immediately following, viz., dj;a, ywOG (one nation); but the only way in which the words can be rendered into good English (German in the original: Tr.) is, “where is there any people,” etc. The relative rv,a does not belong to Ëlæy; , “which Elohim went to redeem.” The construing of Elohim with a plural arises from the fact, that in this clause it not only refers to the true God, but also includes the idea of the gods of other nations.
The idea, therefore, is not, “Is there any nation upon earth to which the only true God went?” but, “Is there any nation to which the deity worshipped by it went, as the true God went to Israel to redeem it for His own people?” The rendering given in the Septuagint to Ëlæy; , viz., oodee’geesen, merely arose from a misapprehension of the true sense of the words; and the emendation Ëlæy; , which some propose in consequence, would only distort the sense. The stress laid upon the incomparable character of the things which God had done for Israel, is merely introduced to praise and celebrate the God who did this as the only true God. (For the thought itself, compare the original passage in Deut 4:7,34.) In the clause wOl `hc;[; , “and to do for you,” David addresses the people of Israel with oratorical vivacity. Instead of saying “to do great things to (for) Israel,” he says “to do great things to (for you.” For you forms an antithesis to him, “to make Him a name, and to do great things for you (Israel).” The suggestion made by some, that wOl] is to be taken as a dativ. comm., and referred to Elohim, no more needs a serious refutation than the alteration into wOl] . There have been different opinions, however, as to the object referred to in the suffix attached to xr,a, , and it is difficult to decide between them; for whilst the fact that xr,a, arey; (terrible things to Thy land) is governed by `hc;[; (to do) favours the allusion to Israel, and the sudden transition from the plural to the singular might be accounted for from the deep emotion of the person speaking, the words which follow (“before Thy people”) rather favour the allusion to God, as it does not seem natural to take the suffix in two different senses in the two objects which follow so closely the one upon the other, viz., “for Thy land,” and “before Thy people;” whilst the way is prepared for a transition from speaking of God to speaking to God by the word wOl] (to you).
The words of Deut 10:21 floated before the mind of David at the time, although he has given them a different turn. (On the “terrible things,” see the commentary on Deut 10:21 and Ex 15:11.) The connection of arey; (terrible things) with xr,a, (to Thy land) shows that David had in mind, when speaking of the acts of divine omnipotence which had inspired fear and dread of the majesty of God, not only the miracles of God in Egypt, but also the marvellous extermination of the Canaanites, whereby Israel had been established in the possession of the promised land, and the people of God placed in a condition to found a kingdom. These acts were performed before Israel, before the nation, whom the Lord redeemed to himself out of Egypt. This view is confirmed by the last words, “nations and their gods,” which are in apposition to “from Egypt,” so that the preposition ˆmi should be repeated before ywOG (nations).
The suffix to µyhila’ (literally “and its gods”) is to be regarded as distributive: “the gods of each of these heathen nations.” In the Chronicles (v. 21) the expression is simplified, and explained more clearly by the omission of “to Thy land,” and the insertion of vræG; , “to drive out nations from before Thy people.” It has been erroneously inferred from this, that the text of our book is corrupt, and ought to be emended, or at any rate interpreted according to the Chronicles. But whilst xr,a, is certainly not to be altered into vræG; , it is just as wrong to do as Hengstenberg proposesnamely, to take the thought expressed in vræG; from the preceding `hc;[; by assuming a zeugma; for `hc;[; , to do or make, has nothing in common with driving or clearing away.
Verse 24-26. “And Thou hast established to thyself Thy people Israel to be a people unto Thee for ever: and Thou, Jehovah, hast become a God to them.” The first clause does not refer merely to the liberation of Israel out of Egypt, or to the conquest of Canaan alone, but to all that the Lord had done for the establishment of Israel as the people of His possession, from the time of Moses till His promise of the eternal continuance of the throne of David. Jehovah had thereby become God to the nation of Israel, i.e., had thereby attested and proved himself to be its God. To this praise of the acts of the Lord there is attached in vv. 25ff. the prayer for the fulfilment of His glorious promise. Would Jehovah set up (i.e., carry out) the word which He had spoken to His servant that His name might be great, i.e., be glorified, through its being said, “The Lord of Sabaoth is God over Israel,” and “the house of Thy servant will be firm before Thee.” The prayer is expressed in the form of confident assurance.
Verse 27. David felt himself encouraged to offer this prayer through the revelation which he had received. Because God had promised to build him a house, “therefore Thy servant hath found in his heart to pray this prayer,” i.e., hath found joy in doing so.
Verse 28,29. David then briefly sums up the two parts of his prayer of thanksgiving in the two clauses commencing with `hT;[æ , “and now.”-In v. 28 he sums up the contents of vv. 18b-24 by celebrating the greatness of the Lord and His promise; and in v. 29 the substance of the prayer in vv. 25-27. Ërær; laæy; , may it please Thee to bless laæy; ; see at Deut 1:5). “And from (out of) Thy blessing may the house of Thy servant be blessed for ever.”
DAVID’S WARS, VICTORIES, AND MINISTERS OF STATE.
To the promise of the establishment of this throne there is appended a general enumeration of the wars by which David secured the supremacy of Israel over all his enemies round about. In this survey all the nations are included with which war had ever been waged by David, and which he had conquered and rendered tributary: the Philistines and Moabites, the Syrians of Zobah and Damascus, Toi of Hamath, the Ammonites, Amalekites, and Edomites. It is very evident from this, that the chapter before us not only treats of the wars which David carried on after receiving the divine promise mentioned in ch. 7, but of all the wars of his entire reign. The only one of which we have afterwards a fuller account is the war with the Ammonites and their allies the Syrians (ch. 10 and 11), and this is given on account of its connection with David’s adultery. In the survey before us, the war with the Ammonites is only mentioned quite cursorily in v. 12, in the account of the booty taken from the different nations, which David dedicated to the Lord. With regard to the other wars, so far as the principal purpose was concerned-namely, to record the history of the kingdom of God-it was quite sufficient to give a general statement of the fact that these nations were smitten by David and subjected to his sceptre. But if this chapter contains a survey of all the wars of David with the nations that were hostile to Israel, there can be no doubt that the arrangement of the several events is not strictly regulated by their chronological order, but that homogeneous events are grouped together according to a material point of view. There is a parallel to this chapter in 1 Chron 18.
2 SAMUEL. 8:1
Verse 1. Subjugation of the Philistines.-In the introductory formula, “And it came to pass afterwards,” the expression “afterwards” cannot refer specially to the contents of ch. 7, for reasons also given, but simply serves as a general formula of transition to attach what follows to the account just completed, as a thing that happened afterwards. This is incontestably evident from a comparison of 2 Sam 10:1, where the war with the Ammonites and Syrians, the termination and result of which are given in the present chapter, is attached to what precedes by the same formula, “It came to pass afterwards” (cf. 2 Sam 13:1). “David smote the Philistines and subdued them, and took the bridle of the mother out of the hand of the Philistines,” i.e., wrested the government from them and made them tributary. The figurative expression Metheg-ammah, “bridle of the mother,” i.e., the capital, has been explained by Alb. Schultens (on Job 30:11) from an Arabic idiom, in which giving up one’s bridle to another is equivalent to submitting to him.
Gesenius also gives several proofs of this (Thes. p. 113). Others, for example Ewald, render it arm-bridle; but there is not a single passage to support the rendering “arm” for ammah. The word is a feminine form of µae , mother, and only used in a tropical sense. “Mother” is a term applied to the chief city or capital, both in Arabic and Phoenician (vid., Ges. Thes. p. 112). The same figure is also adopted in Hebrew, where the towns dependent upon the capital are called its daughters (vid., Josh 15:45,47). In 1 Chron 18:1 the figurative expression is dropped for the more literal one: “David took Gath and its daughters out of the hand of the Philistines,” i.e., he wrested Gath and the other towns from the Philistines. The Philistines had really five cities, every one with a prince of its own (Josh 13:3). This was the case even in the time of Samuel (1 Sam 6:16-17). But in the closing years of Samuel, Gath had a king who stood at the head of all the princes of the Philistines (1 Sam 29:2ff., cf. 27:2). Thus Gath became the capital of the land of the Philistines, which held the bridle (or reins) of Philistia in its own hand. The author of the Chronicles has therefore given the correct explanation of the figure. The one suggested by Ewald, Bertheau, and others, cannot be correct-namely, that David wrested from the Philistines the power which they had hitherto exercised over the Israelites. The simple meaning of the passage is, that David wrested from the Philistines the power which the capital had possessed over the towns dependent upon it, i.e., over the whole of the land of Philistia; in other words, he brought the capital (Gath) and the other towns of Philistia into his own power. The reference afterwards made to a king of Gath in the time of Solomon in 1 Kings. 2:39 is by no means at variance with this; for the king alluded to was one of the tributary sovereigns, as we may infer from the fact that Solomon ruled over all the kings on this side of the Euphrates as far as to Gaza (1 Kings 5:1,4).
2 SAMUEL. 8:2
Subjugation of Moab. “He smote Moab (i.e., the Moabites), and measured them with the line, making them lie down upon the ground, and measured two lines (i.e., two parts) to put to death, and one line full to keep alive.” Nothing further is known about either the occasion or the history of this war, with the exception of the cursory notice in 1 Chron 11:22, that Benaiah, one of David’s heroes, smote two sons of the king of Moab, which no doubt took place in the same war. In the earliest period of his flight from Saul, David had met with a hospitable reception from the king of Moab, and had even taken his parents to him for safety (1 Sam 22:3-4). But the Moabites must have very grievously oppressed the Israelites afterwards, that David should have inflicted a severer punishment upon them after their defeat, than upon any other of the nations that he conquered, with the exception of the Ammonites (2 Sam 12:31), upon whom he took vengeance for having most shamefully insulted his ambassadors (2 Sam 10:2ff.). The punishment inflicted, however, was of course restricted to the fighting men who had been taken prisoners by the Israelites. They were ordered to lie down in a row upon the earth; and then the row was measured for the purpose of putting two-thirds to death, and leaving one-third alive. The Moabites were then made “servants” to David (i.e., they became his subjects), “bringing gifts” (i.e., paying tribute).
2 SAMUEL. 8:3-4
Conquest and Subjugation of the King of Zobah, and of the Damascene Syrians.
Verse 3. The situation of Zobah cannot be determined. The view held by the Syrian church historians, and defended by Michaelis, viz., that Zobah was the ancient Nisibis in northern Mesopotamia, has no more foundation to rest upon than that of certain Jewish writers who suppose it to have been Aleppo, the present Haleb. Aleppo is too far north for Zobah, and Nisibis is quite out of the range of the towns and tribes in connection with which the name of Zobah occurs. In 1 Sam 14:47, compared with v. 12 of this chapter, Zobah, or Aram Zobah as it is called in 2 Sam 10:6 and Ps 60:2, is mentioned along with Ammon, Moab, and Edom, as a neighbouring tribe and kingdom to the Israelites; and, according to vv. 3, 5, and 9 of the present chapter, it is to be sought for in the vicinity of Damascus and Hamath towards the Euphrates. These data point to a situation to the north-east of Damascus and south of Hamath, between the Orontes and Euphrates, and in fact extending as far as the latter according to v. 3, whilst, according to 2 Sam 10:16, it even reached beyond it with its vassal-chiefs into Mesopotamia itself.
Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 195) has therefore combined Zobah, which was no doubt the capital, and gave its name to the kingdom, with the Sabe mentioned in Ptol. v. 19-a town in the same latitude as Damascus, and farther east towards the Euphrates. The king of Zobah at the time referred to is called Hadadezer in the text (i.e., whose help is Hadad); but in 2 Sam 10:16-19 and throughout the Chronicles he is called Hadarezer. The first is the original form; for Hadad, the name of the sun-god of the Syrians, is met with in several other instances in Syrian names (vid., Movers, Phönizier).
David smote this king “as he was going to restore his strength at the river (Euphrates).” dy; bWv does not mean to turn his hand, but signifies to return his hand, to stretch it out again over or against any one, in all the passage in which the expression occurs. It is therefore to be taken in a derivative sense in the passage before us, and signifying to restore or reestablish his sway. The expression used in the Chronicles (v. 3), yaadow hatsiyb, has just the same meaning, since establishing or making fast presupposes a previous weakening or dissolution. Hence the subject of the sentence “as he went,” etc., must be Hadadezer and not David; for David could not have extended his power to the Euphrates before the defeat of Hadadezer. The Masoretes have interpolated P’rath (Euphrates) after “the river,” as in the text of the Chronicles. This is correct enough so far as the sense is concerned, but it is by no means necessary, as the nahar (the river k ex) is quite sufficient of itself to indicate the Euphrates.
There is also a war between David and Hadadezer and other kings of Syria mentioned in ch. 10; and the commentators all admit that that war, in which David defeated these kings when they came to the help of the Ammonites, is connected with the war mentioned in the present chapter.
But the connection is generally supposed to be this, that the first of David’s Aramaean wars is given in ch. 8, the second in ch. 10; for no other reason, however, than because ch. 10 stands after ch. 8. This view is decidedly an erroneous one. According to the chapter before us, the war mentioned there terminated in the complete subjugation of the Aramaean kings and kingdoms. Aram became subject to David, paying tribute (v. 6). Now, though the revolt of subjugated nations from their conquerors is by no means a rare thing in history, and therefore it is perfectly conceivable in itself that the Aramaeans should have fallen away from David when he was involved in the war with the Ammonites, and should have gone to the help of the Ammonites, such an assumption is precluded by the fact that there is nothing in ch. 10 about any falling away or revolt of the Aramaeans from David; but, on the contrary, these tribes appear to be still entirely independent of David, and to be hired by the Ammonites to fight against him.
But what is absolutely decisive against this assumption, is the fact that the number of Aramaeans killed in the two wars is precisely the same (compare v. 4 with 2 Sam 10:18): so that it may safely be inferred, not only that the war mentioned in ch. 10, in which the Aramaeans who had come to the help of the Ammonites were smitten by David, was the very same as the Aramaean war mentioned in ch. 8, but of which the result only is given; but also that all the wars which David waged with the Aramaeans, like his war with Edom (vv. 13ff.), arose out of the Ammonitish war (ch. 10), and the fact that the Ammonites enlisted the help of the kings of Aram against David (2 Sam 10:6). We also obtain from ch. 10 an explanation of the expression “as he went to restore his power (Eng. Ver. ‘recover his border’) at the river,” since it is stated there that Hadadezer was defeated by Joab the first time, and that, after sustaining this defeat, he called the Aramaeans on the other side of the Euphrates to his assistance, that he might continue the war against Israel with renewed vigour (2 Sam 10:13,15ff.). The power of Hadadezer had no doubt been crippled by his first defeat; and in order to restore it, he procured auxiliary troops from Mesopotamia with which to attack David, but he was defeated a second time, and obliged to submit to him (2 Sam 10:17-18).
In this second engagement “David took from him (i.e., captured) seventeen hundred horse-soldiers and twenty thousand foot” (v. 4, compare 2 Sam 10:18). This decisive battle took place, according to 1 Chron 18:3, in the neighbourhood of Hamath, i.e., Epiphania on the Orontes (see at Num 13:21, and Gen 10:18), or, according to 2 Sam 10:18 of this book, at Helam,-a difference which may easily be reconciled by the simple assumption that the unknown Helam was somewhere near to Hamath.
Instead of 1700 horse-soldiers, we find in the Chronicles (1, 18:4) chariots and 7000 horsemen. Consequently the word receb has no doubt dropped out after ãl,a, in the text before us, and the numeral denoting a thousand has been confounded with the one used to denote a hundred; for in the plains of Syria seven thousand horsemen would be a much juster proportion to twenty thousand foot than seventeen hundred. (For further remarks, see at 2 Sam 10:18.) “And David lamed all the cavalry,” i.e., he made the war-chariots and cavalry perfectly useless by laming the horses (see at Josh 11:6,9)-”and only left a hundred horses.” The word receb in these clauses signifies the war-horses generally-not merely the carriagehorses, but the riding-horses as well-as the meaning cavalry is placed beyond all doubt by Isa 21:7, and it can hardly be imagined that David would have spared the riding-horses.
2 SAMUEL. 8:5-6
After destroying the main force of Hadadezer, David turned against his ally, against Aram-Damascus, i.e., the Aramaeans, whose capital was Damascus. Dammesek (for which we have Darmesek in the Chronicles according to its Aramaean form), Damascus, a very ancient and still a very important city of Syria, standing upon the Chrysorrhoas (Pharpar), which flows through the centre of it. It is situated in the midst of paradisaical scenery, on the eastern side of the Antilibanus, on the road which unites Western Asia with the interior. David smote 22,000 Syrians of Damascus, placed garrisons in the kingdom, and made it subject and tributary. byxin] are not governors of officers, but military posts, garrisons, as in 1 Sam 10:5; 13:3.
2 SAMUEL. 8:7
Of the booty taken in these wars, David carried the golden shields which he took from the servants, i.e., the governors and vassal princes, of Hadadezer, to Jerusalem. f63 Shelet signifies “a shield,” according to the Targums and Rabbins, and this meaning is applicable to all the passages in which the word occurs; whilst the meaning “equivalent” cannot be sustained either by the rendering panopli>a adopted by Aquila and Symmachus in 2 Kings 11:10, or by the renderings of the Vulgate, viz., arma in loc. and armatura in Song of Sol. 4:4, or by an appeal to the etymology (vid., Gesenius’ Thes. and Dietrich’s Lexicon).
2 SAMUEL. 8:8
And from the cities of Betach and Berothai David took very much brass, with which, according to 1 Chron 18:8, Solomon made the brazen sea, and the brazen columns and vessels of the temple. The LXX have also interpolated this notice into the text. The name Betach is given as Tibhath in the Chronicles; and for Berothai we have Chun. As the towns themselves are unknown, it cannot be decided with certainty which of the forms and names are the correct and original ones. j f1 B, appears to have been written by mistake for jbæF,mi . This supposition is favoured by the rendering of the LXX, ek th>v Meteba>k ; and by that of the Syriac also (viz., Tebach). On the other hand, the occurrence of the name Tebah among the sons of Nahor the Aramaean in Gen 22:24 proves little or nothing, as it is not known that he founded a family which perpetuated his name; nor can anything be inferred from the fact that, according to the more modern maps, there is a town of Tayibeh to the north of Damascus in 35 north lat., as there is very little in common between the names Tayibeh and Tebah. Ewald connects Berothai with the Barathena of Ptol. v. 19 in the neighbourhood of Saba. The connection is a possible one, but it is not sufficiently certain to warrant us in founding any conclusions upon it with regard to the name Chun which occurs in the Chronicles; so that there is no ground whatever for the opinion that it is a corruption of Berothai.
2 SAMUEL. 8:9-10
After the defeat of the king of Zobah and his allies, Toi king of Hamath sought for David’s friendship, sending his son to salute him, and conveying to him at the same time a considerable present of vessels of silver, gold, and brass. The name Toi is written Tou in the Chronicles, according to a different mode of interpretation; and the name of the son is given as Hadoram in the Chronicles, instead of Joram as in the text before us. The former is evidently the true reading, and Joram an error of the pen, as the Israelitish name Joram is not one that we should expect to find among Aramaeans; whilst Hadoram occurs in 1 Chron 1:21 in the midst of Arabic names, and it cannot be shown that the Hadoram or Adoram mentioned in 2 Chron 10:18 and 1 Kings 12:18 was a man of Israelitish descent. The primary object of the mission was to salute David (“to ask him of peace;” cf. Gen 43:27, etc.), and to congratulate him upon his victory (“to bless him because he had fought,” etc.); for Toi had had wars with Hadadezer. “A man of wars” signifies a man who wages wars (cf. 1 Chron 28:3; Isa 42:13). According to 1 Chron 18:3, the territory of the king of Hamath bordered upon that of Hadadezer, and the latter had probably tried to make king Toi submit to him. The secret object of the salutation, however, was no doubt to secure the friendship of this new and powerful neighbour.
2 SAMUEL. 8:11-12
David also sanctified Toi’s presents to the Lord (handed them over to the treasury of the sanctuary), together with the silver and gold which he had sanctified from all the conquered nations, from Aram, Moab, etc. Instead of vdæq; rv,a the text of the Chronicles has ac;n; rv,a , which he took, i.e., took as booty. Both are equally correct; there is simply a somewhat different turn given to the thought. f64 In the enumeration of the conquered nations in v. 12, the text of the Chronicles differs from that of the book before us. In the first place, we find “from Edom” instead of “from Aram;” and secondly, the clause “and of the spoil of Hadadezer, son of Rehob king of Zobah,” is altogether wanting there. The text of the Chronicles is certainly faulty here, as the name of Aram (Syria) could not possibly be omitted. Edom could much better be left out, not “because the conquest of Edom belonged to a later period,” as Movers maintains, but because the conquest of Edom is mentioned for the first time in the subsequent verses. But if we bear in mind that in v. 12 of both texts not only are those tribes enumerated the conquest of which had been already noticed, but all the tribes that David ever defeated and subjugated, even the Ammonites and Amalekites, to the war with whom no allusion whatever is made in the present chapter, we shall see that Edom could not be omitted. Consequently “from Syria” must have dropped out of the text of the Chronicles, and “from Edom” out of the one before us; so that the text in both instances ran originally thus, “from Syria, and from Edom, and from Moab.” For even in the text before us, “from Aram” (Syria) could not well be omitted, notwithstanding the fact that the booty of Hadadezer is specially mentioned at the close of the verse, for the simple reason that David not only made war upon Syria- Zobah (the kingdom of Hadadezer) and subdued it, but also upon Syria- Damascus, which was quite independent of Zobah.
2 SAMUEL. 8:13-15
“And David made (himself) a name, when he returned from smiting (i.e., from the defeat of) Aram, (and smote Edom) in the valley of Salt, eighteen thousand men.” The words enclosed in brackets are wanting in the Masoretic text as it has come down to us, and must have fallen out from a mistake of the copyist, whose eye strayed from ‘et-’araam to ‘et-’edowm; for though the text is not “utterly unintelligible” without these words, since the passage might be rendered “after he had smitten Aram in the valley of Salt eighteen thousand men,” yet this would be decidedly incorrect, as the Aramaeans were not smitten in the valley of Salt, but partly at Medeba (1 Chron 19:7) and Helam (2 Sam 10:17), and partly in their own land, which was very far away from the Salt valley. Moreover, the difficulty presented by the text cannot be removed, as Movers supposes, by changing ‘et- ’araam (Syria) into ‘et-’edowm (Edom), as the expression bWv (“when he returned”) would still be unexplained.
The facts were probably these: Whilst David, or rather Israel, was entangled in the war with the Ammonites and Aramaeans, the Edomites seized upon the opportunity, which appeared to them a very favourable one, to invade the land of Israel, and advanced as far as the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. As soon, therefore, as the Aramaeans were defeated and subjugated, and the Israelitish army had returned from this war, David ordered it to march against the Edomites, and defeated them in the valley of Salt. This valley cannot have been any other than the Ghor adjoining the Salt mountain on the south of the Dead Sea, which really separates the ancient territories of Judah and Edom (Robinson, Pal. ii. 483). There Amaziah also smote the Edomites at a later period (2 Kings 14:7). We gather more concerning this war of David from the text of the Chronicles (v. 12) taken in connection with 1 Kings 11:15-16, and Ps 60:2.
According to the Chronicles, it was Abishai the son of Zeruiah who smote the Edomites. This agrees very well not only with the account in 2 Sam 10:10ff., to the effect that Abishai commanded a company in the war with the Syrians and Ammonites under the generalship of his brother Joab, but also with the heading to Ps 60, in which it is stated that Joab returned after the defeat of Aram, and smote the Edomites in the valley of Salt, twelve thousand men; and with 1 Kings 11:15-16, in which we read that when David was in Edom, Joab, the captain of the host, came up to bury the slain, and smote every male in Edom, and remained six months in Edom with all Israel, till he had cut off every male in Edom. From this casual but yet elaborate notice, we learn that the war with the Edomites was a very obstinate one, and was not terminated all at once. The difference as to the number slain, which is stated to have been 18,000 in the text before us and in the Chronicles, and 12,000 in the heading to Ps 60, may be explained in a very simple manner, on the supposition that the reckonings made were only approximative, and yielded different results; and the fact that David is named as the victor in the verse before us, Joab in Ps 60, and Abishai in the Chronicles, admits of a very easy explanation after what has just been observed. The Chronicles contain the most literal account. Abishai smote the Edomites as commander of the men engaged, Joab as commander-inchief of the whole army, and David as king and supreme governor, of whom the writer of the Chronicles affirms, “The Lord helped David in all his undertakings.” After the defeat of the Edomites, David placed garrisons in the land, and made all Edom subject to himself. 2 SAMUEL 8:15-18. David’s Ministers.
To the account of David’s wars and victories there is appended a list of his official attendants, which is introduced with a general remark as to the spirit of his government. As king over all Israel, David continued to execute right and justice.
2 SAMUEL. 8:16
The chief ministers were the following:-Joab (see at 2 Sam 2:18) was “over the army,” i.e., commander-in-chief. Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud, of whom nothing further is known, was mazcir, chancellor; not merely the national annalist, according to the Septuagint and Vulgate ( epi> tw>n uJpomnhma>twn uJpomnhmato>grafov ; a commentariis), i.e., the recorder of the most important incidents and affairs of the nation, but an officer resembling the magister memoriae of the later Romans, or the waka nuvis of the Persian court, who keeps a record of everything that takes place around the king, furnishes him with an account of all that occurs in the kingdom, places his vise upon all the king’s commands, and keeps a special protocol of all these things (vid., Chardin, Voyages v. p. 258, and Paulsen, Regierung der Morgenländer, pp. 279-80).
2 SAMUEL. 8:17
Zadok the son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar (1 Chr. 5:34; 6:37-38), and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, were cohanim, i.e., officiating high priests; the former at the tabernacle at Gibeon (1 Chron 16:39), the latter probably at the ark of the covenant upon Mount Zion. Instead of Ahimelech, the Chronicles have Abimelech, evidently through a copyist’s error, as the name is written Ahimelech in 1 Chron 24:3,6. But the expression “Ahimelech the son of Abiathar” is apparently a very strange one, as Abiathar was a son of Ahimelech according to 1 Sam 22:20, and in other passages Zadok and Abiathar are mentioned as the two high priests in the time of David (2 Sam 15:24,35; 17:15; 19:12; 20:25). This difference cannot be set aside, as Movers, Thenius, Ewald, and other suppose, by transposing the names, so as to read Abiathar the son of Ahimelech; for such a solution is precluded by the fact that, in 1 Chron 24:3,6,31, Ahimelech is mentioned along with Zadok as head of the priests of the line of Ithamar, and according to v. 6 he was the son of Abiathar. It would therefore be necessary to change the name Ahimelech into Abiathar in this instance also, both in v. 3 and v. 6, and in the latter to transpose the two names.
But there is not the slightest probability in the supposition that the names have been changed in so many passages. We are therefore disposed to adopt the view held by Bertheau and Oehler, viz., that Abiathar the high priest, the son of Ahimelech, had also a son named Ahimelech, as it is by no means a rare occurrence for grandfather and grandson to have the same names (vid., 1 Chr. 5:30-41), and also that this (the younger) Ahimelech performed the duties of high priest in connection with his father, who was still living at the commencement of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings 2:27), and is mentioned in this capacity, along with Zadok, both here and in the book of Chronicles, possibly because Abiathar was ill, or for some other reason that we cannot discover. As Abiathar was thirty or thirty-five years old at the time when his father was put to death by Saul, according to what has already been observed at 1 Sam 14:3, and forty years old at the death of Saul, he was at least forty-eight years old at the time when David removed his residence to Mount Zion, and might have had a son of twenty-five years of age, namely the Ahimelech mentioned here, who could have taken his father’s place in the performance of the functions of high priest when he was prevented by illness or other causes.
The appearance of a son of Abiathar named Jonathan in 2 Sam 15:27; 17:17,20, is no valid argument against this solution of the apparent discrepancy; for, according to these passages, he was still very young, and may therefore have been a younger brother of Ahimelech. The omission of any allusion to Ahimelech in connection with Abiathar’s conspiracy with Adonijah against Solomon (1 Kings 1:42-43), and the reference to his son Jonathan alone, might be explained on the supposition that Ahimelech had already died. But as there is no reference to Jonathan at the time when his father was deposed, no stress is to be laid upon the omission of any reference to Ahimelech. Moreover, when Abiathar was deposed after Solomon had ascended the throne, he must have been about eighty years of age. Seraiah was a scribe. Instead of Seraiah, we have Shavsha in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and Sheva in the parallel passage Sam 20:25. Whether the last name is merely a mistake for Shavsha, occasioned by the dropping of hc, , or an abbreviated form of Shisha and Shavsha, cannot be decided. Shavsha is not a copyist’s error, for in 1 Kings 4:3 the same man is unquestionably mentioned again under the name of Shisha, who is called Shavsha in the Chronicles, Sheva ay;v] ) in the text of 2 Sam 20:25, and here Seraiah. Seraiah also is hardly a copyist’s error, but another form for Shavsha or Shisha. The scribe was a secretary of state; not a military officer, whose duty it was to raise and muster the troops, for the technical expression for mustering the people was not rpæs; , but rqæp] (cf. 2 Sam 24:2,4,9; 1 Chron 21:5-6, etc.).
2 SAMUEL. 8:18
Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, a very brave hero of Kabzeel (see at 2 Sam 23:20ff.), was over the Crethi and Plethi. Instead of ytireK] , which gives no sense, and must be connected in some way with 1 Kings 1:38,44, we must read ytireK] `l[æ according to the parallel passage 2 Sam 20:23, and the corresponding text of the Chronicles. The Crethi and Plethi were the king’s body-guard, swmatofu>lakev (Josephus, Ant. vii. 5, 4). The words are adjectives in form, but with a substantive meaning, and were used to indicate a certain rank, lit. the executioners and runners, like vyliv; (2 Sam 23:8). ytireK] , from træK; , to cut down or exterminate, signifies confessor, because among the Israelites (see at 1 Kings 2:25), as in fact throughout the East generally, the royal halberdiers had to execute the sentence of death upon criminals. ytilep] , from paalat (to fly, or be swift), is related to flæp; , and signifies runners. It is equivalent to xWr , a courier, as one portion of the halberdiers, like the a>ggaroi of the Persians, had to convey the king’s orders to distant places (vid., 2 Chron 30:6). This explanation is confirmed by the fact that the epithet µyxir;j;w] yriK;hæ was afterwards applied to the king’s body-guard (2 Kings 11:4,19), and that yriK;hæ for ytireK] occurs as early as 2 Sam hr;K; , from rWK, fodit, perfodit , is used in the same sense.
And David’s sons were ˆheKo (“confidants”); not priests, domestic priests, court chaplains, or spiritual advisers, as Gesenius, De Wette, and others maintain, but, as the title is explained in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, when the title had become obsolete, “the first at the hand (or side) of the king.” The correctness of this explanation is placed beyond the reach of doubt by 1 Kings 4:5, where the cohen is called, by way of explanation, “the king’s friend.” The title cohen may be explained from the primary signification of the verb ˆhæK; , as shown in the corresponding verb and noun in Arabic (“res alicujus gerere,” and “administrator alieni negotii”). These cohanim, therefore, were the king’s confidential advisers. DAVID’S KINDNESS TOWARDS MEPHIBOSHETH.
When David was exalted to be king over all Israel, he sought to show compassion to the house of the fallen king, and to repay the love which his noble-minded friend Jonathan had once sworn to him before the Lord (1 Sam 20:13ff.; comp. 2 Sam 23:17-18). The account of this forms the conclusion of, or rather an appendix to, the first section of the history of his reign, and was intended to show how David was mindful of the duty of gratitude and loving fidelity, even when he reached the highest point of his regal authority and glory. The date when this occurred was about the middle of David’s reign, as we may see from the fact, that Mephibosheth, who was five years old when Saul died (2 Sam 4:4), had a young son at the time (v. 12).
2 SAMUEL. 9:1-8
Verse 1-4. When David inquired whether there was any one left of the house of Saul to whom he could show favour for Jonathan’s sake ( dwO[Avy, ykih\ : is it so that there is any one? = there is certainly some one left), a servant of Saul named Ziba was summoned, who told the king that there was a son of Jonathan living in the house of Machir at Lodebar, and that he was lame in his feet. vyai `dwO[ sp,a, , “is there no one at all besides?” The l before tyiBæ is a roundabout way of expressing the genitive, as in 1 Sam 16:18, etc., and is obviously not to be altered into tyiBæ , as Thenius proposes. “The kindness of God” is love and kindness shown in God, and for God’s sake (Luke 6:36). Machir the son of Ammiel was a rich man, judging from 2 Sam 17:27, who, after the death of Saul and Jonathan, had received the lame son of the latter into his house. Lodebar rbæd] alo , written rbæd] alo in 2 Sam 17:27, but erroneously divided by the Masoretes into two words in both passages) was a town on the east of Mahanaim, towards Rabbath Amman, probably the same place as Lidbir (Josh 13:26); but it is not further known.
Verse 5-7. David sent for this son of Jonathan (Mephibosheth: cf. 2 Sam 4:4), and not only restored his father’s possessions in land, but took him to his own royal table for the rest of his life. “Fear not,” said David to Mephibosheth, when he came before him with the deepest obeisance, to take away any anxiety lest the king should intend to slay the descendants of the fallen king, according to the custom of eastern usurpers. It is evident from the words, “I will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father,” that the landed property belonging to Saul had either fallen to David as crown lands, or had been taken possession of by distant relations after the death of Saul. “Thou shalt eat bread at my table continually,” i.e., eat at my table all thy life long, or receive thy food from my table.
Verse 8. Mephibosheth expressed his thanks for this manifestation of favour with the deepest obeisance, and a confession of his unworthiness of any such favour. On his comparison of himself to a “dead dog,” see at Sam 24:15.
2 SAMUEL. 9:9-10
David then summoned Ziba the servant of Saul, told him of the restoration of Saul’s possessions to his son Mephibosheth, and ordered him, with his sons and servants, to cultivate the land for the son of his lord. The words, “that thy master’s son may have food to eat,” are not at variance with the next clause, “Mephibosheth shall eat bread alway at my table,” as bread is a general expression, including all the necessaries of life. Although Mephibosheth himself ate daily as a guest at the king’s table, he had to make provision as a royal prince for the maintenance of his own family and servants, as he had children according to v. 12 and 1 Chron 8:34ff. Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants (v. 10), with whom he had probably been living in Gibeah, Saul’s native place, and may perhaps have hitherto farmed Saul’s land.
2 SAMUEL. 9:11-13
Ziba promised to obey the king’s command. The last clause of this verse is a circumstantial clause in form, with which the writer passes over to the conclusion of his account. But the words ˆj;l]vu `l[æ , “at my table,” do not tally with this, as they require that the words should be taken as David’s own. This is precluded, however, not only by the omission of any intimation that David spoke again after Ziba, and repeated what he had said once already, and that without any occasion whatever, but also by the form of the sentence, more especially the participle lkæa; . There is no other course left, therefore, than to regard ˆj;l]vu (my table) as written by mistake for rwiD; ˆj;l]vu : “but Mephibosheth ate at David’s table as one of the king’s sons.” The further notices in vv. 12 and 13 follow this in a very simple manner. tyiBæ bv;wOm lKo , “all the dwelling,” i.e., all the inhabitants of Ziba’s house, namely his sons and servants, were servants of Mephibosheth, i.e., worked for him and cultivated his land, whilst he himself took up his abode at Jerusalem, to eat daily at the king’s table, although he was lamed in both his feet.
III. DAVID’S REIGN IN ITS DECLINE.
In the first half of David’s reign he had strengthened and fortified the kingdom of Israel, both within and without, and exalted the covenant nation into a kingdom of God, before which all its enemies were obliged to bow; but in the second half a series of heavy judgments fell upon him and his house, which cast a deep shadow upon the glory of his reign. David had brought these judgments upon himself by his grievous sin with Bathsheba.
The success of all his undertakings, and the strength of his government, which increased year by year, had made him feel so secure, that in the excitement of undisturbed prosperity, he allowed himself to be carried away by evil lusts, so as to stain his soul not only with adultery, but also with murder, and fell all the deeper because of the height to which his God had exalted him. This took place during the war with the Ammonites and Syrians, when Joab was besieging the capital of the Ammonites, after the defeat and subjugation of the Syrians (ch. 10), and when David had remained behind in Jerusalem (2 Sam 11:1).
For this double sin, the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, the Lord announced as a punishment, that the sword should not depart from David’s house, and that his wives should be openly violated; and notwithstanding the sincere sorrow and repentance of the king, when brought to see his sin, He not only caused the fruit of his sin, the child that was born of Bathsheba, to die (ch. 12), but very soon afterwards allowed the threatened judgments to fall upon his house, inasmuch as Amnon, his first-born son, violated his half-sister Thamar, and was murdered in consequence by her own brother Absalom (ch. 13), whereupon Absalom fled to his father-in-law at Geshur; and when at length the king restored him to favour (ch. 14), he set on foot a rebellion, which nearly cost David his life and throne (ch. 15-17:23). And even after Absalom himself was dead (2 Sam 17:24-19:1), and David had been reinstated in his kingdom (2 Sam 19:2-40), there arose the conspiracy set on foot by the Benjaminite Sheba, which was only stopped by the death of the chief conspirator, in the fortified city of Abel-Beth-Maachah (2 Sam 19:41-20:26).
The period and duration of these divine visitations are not stated; and all that we are able to determine from the different data as to time, given in Sam 13:23,38; 14:28; 15:7, when taken in connection with the supposed ages of the sons of David, is that Amnon’s sin in the case of Thamar did not take place earlier than the twentieth year of David’s reign, and the Absalom’s rebellion broke out seven or eight years later. Consequently the assumption cannot be far from the truth, that the events described in this section occupied the whole time between the twentieth and thirtieth years of David’s reign. We are prevented from placing it earlier, by the fact that Amnon was not born till after David became king over Judah, and therefore was probably about twenty years old when he violated his halfsister Thamar. At the same time it cannot be placed later than this, because Solomon was not born till about two years after David’s adultery; and he must have been eighteen or twenty years old when he ascended the throne on the death of his father, after a reign of forty years and a half, since, according to 1 Kings 14:21, compared with vv. 11 and 42, 43, he had a son a year old, named Rehoboam, at the time when he began to reign.
WAR WITH THE AMMONITES AND SYRIANS.
This war, the occasion and early success of which are described in the present chapter and the parallel passage in 1 Chron 19, was the fiercest struggle, and, so far as the Israelitish kingdom of God was concerned, the most dangerous, that it ever had to sustain during the reign of David. The amount of distress which fell upon Israel in consequence of this war, and still more because the first successful battles with the Syrians of the south were no sooner over than the Edomites invaded the land, and went about plundering and devastating, in the hope of destroying the people of God, is shown very clearly in the two psalms which date from this period (the 44th and 60th), in which a pious Korahite and David himself pour out their lamentations before the Lord on account of the distress of their nation, and pray for His assistance; and not less clearly in Ps 68, in which David foretels the victory of the God of Israel over all the hostile powers of the world.
2 SAMUEL. 10:1-5
Occasion of the war with the Ammonites.
Verse 1. On the expression “it came to pass after this,” see the remarks on 2 Sam 8:1. When Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead, David thought that he would show him the same kindness that Nahash had formerly shown to him. We are not told in what the love shown to David by Nahash consisted. He had most likely rendered him some assistance during the time of his flight from Saul. Nahash was no doubt the king of the Ammonites mentioned in 1 Sam 11:1, whom Saul had smitten at Jabesh. David therefore sent an embassy to Hanun, “to comfort him for his father,” i.e., to show his sympathy with him on the occasion of his father’s death, and at the same time to congratulate him upon his ascent of the throne.
Verse 3. On the arrival of David’s ambassadors, however, the chiefs of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Doth David indeed honour thy father in thine eyes (i.e., dost thou really suppose that David intends to do honour to thy father), because he has sent comforters to thee? Has David not sent his servants to thee with the intention of exploring and spying out the town, and (then) destroying it?” The first question is introduced with ha, because a negative answer is expected; the second with alo , because it requires an affirmative reply. `ry[i is the capital Rabbah, a strongly fortified city (see at 2 Sam 11:1). The suspicion expressed by the chiefs was founded upon national hatred and enmity, which had probably been increased by David’s treatment of Moab, as the subjugation and severe punishment of the Moabites (2 Sam 8:2) had certainly taken place a short time before. King Hanun therefore gave credence to the suspicions expressed as to David’s honourable intentions, and had his ambassadors treated in the most insulting manner.
Verse 4. He had the half of their beard shaved off, and their clothes cut off up to the seat, and in this state he sent them away. “The half of the beard,” i.e., the beard on one side. With the value universally set upon the beard by the Hebrews and other oriental nations, as being a man’s greatest ornament, the cutting off of one-half of it was the greatest insult that could have been offered to the ambassadors, and through them to David their king. The insult was still further increased by cutting off the long dress which covered the body; so that as the ancient Israelites wore no trousers, the lower half of the body was quite exposed. wd,m, , from Wdm; or hw,d]mæ , the long robe reaching down to the feet, from the root dy; = ddæm; , to stretch, spread out, or measure.
Verse 5. When David received information of the insults that had been heaped upon his ambassadors, he sent messengers to meet them, and direct them to remain in Jericho until their beard had grown again, that he might not have to set his eyes upon the insult they had received.
2 SAMUEL. 10:6
When the Ammonites saw that they had made themselves stinking before David, and therefore that David would avenge the insult offered to the people of Israel in the persons of their ambassadors, they looked round for help among the powerful kings of Syria. They hired as auxiliaries (with a thousand talents of silver, i.e., nearly half a million of pounds sterling, according to 1 Chron 19:6) twenty thousand foot from Aram-Beth-Rehob and Aram-Zoba, and one thousand men from the king of Maacah, and twelve thousand troops from the men of Tob. Aram-Beth-Rehob was the Aramaean kingdom, the capital of which was Beth-rehob. This Beth-rehob, which is simply called Rehob in v. 8, is in all probability the city of this name mentioned in Num 13:21 and Judg 18:28, which lay to the south of Hamath, but the exact position of which has not yet been discovered: for the castle of Hunin, in the ruins of which Robinson imagines that he has found Beth-rehob Bibl. Researches, p. 370), is to the south-west of Tell el Kadi, the ancient Laish-Dan, the northern boundary of the Israelitish territory; so that the capital of this Aramaean kingdom would have been within the limits of the land of Israel-a thing which is inconceivable.
Aram-Naharaim is also mentioned in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and for that reason many have identified Beth- Rehob with Rehoboth, on “the river” (Euphrates), mentioned in Gen 36:37. But this association is precluded by the fact, that in all probability the latter place is to be found in Rachabe, which is upon the Euphrates and not more than half a mile from the river (see Ritter, Erdk. xv. p. 128), so that from its situation it can hardly have been the capital of a separate Aramaean kingdom, as the government of the king of Zoba extended, according to v. 16, beyond the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. On Aram-Zoba, see at 2 Sam 8:3; and for Maacah at Deut 3:14. ‘iysh-Towb is not to be taken as one word and rendered as a proper name, Ish-Tob, as it has been by most of the earlier translators; but vyai is a common noun used in a collective sense (as it frequently is in the expression laer;c]yi vyai ), “the men of Tob.” Tob was the district between Syria and Ammonitis, where Jephthah had formerly taken refuge (Judg 11:5).
The corresponding text of the Chronicles (1 Chron 19:6-7) is fuller, and differs in several respects from the text before us. According to the Chronicles, Hanun sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Aram-Naharaim, Aram-maacah, and Zobah. With this the Ammonites hired thirty-two thousand receb (i.e., chariots and horsemen: see at 2 Sam 8:4), and the king of Maacah and his people. They came and encamped before Medeba, the present ruin of Medaba, two hours to the south-east of Heshbon, in the tribe of Reuben (see at Num 21:30, compared with Josh 13:16), and the Ammonites gathered together out of their cities, and went to the war. The Chronicles therefore mention Aram- Naharaim (i.e., Mesopotamia) as hired by the Ammonites instead of Aram- Beth-Rehob, and leave out the men of Tob. The first of these differences is not to be explained, as Bertheau suggests, on the supposition that the author of the Chronicles took Beth-rehob to be the same city as Rehoboth of the river in Gen 36:37, and therefore substituted the well-known “Aram of the two rivers” as an interpretation of the rarer name Beth-rehob, though hardly on good ground.
For this conjecture does not help to explain the omission of “the men of Tob.” It is a much simpler explanation, that the writer of the Chronicles omitted Beth-rehob and Tob as being names that were less known, this being the only place in the Old Testament in which they occur as separate kingdoms, and simply mentioned the kingdoms of Maacah and Zoba, which frequently occur; and that he included “Aram of the two rivers,” and placed it at the head, because the Syrians obtained succour from Mesopotamia after their first defeat. The account in the Chronicles agrees with the one before us, so far as the number of auxiliary troops is concerned. For twenty thousand men of Zoba and twelve thousand of Tob amount to thirty-two thousand, besides the people of the king of Maacah, who sent a thousand men according to the text of Samuel. But according to that of the Chronicles, the auxiliary troops consisted of chariots and horsemen, whereas only foot-soldiers are mentioned in our text, which appears all the more remarkable, because according to 2 Sam 8:4, and 1 Chron 18:4, the king of Zoba fought against David with a considerable force of chariots and horsemen.
It is very evident, therefore, that there are copyists’ errors in both texts; for the troops of the Syrians did not consist of infantry only, nor of chariots and horsemen alone, but of foot-soldiers, cavalry, and war-chariots, as we may see very clearly not only from the passages already quoted in 2 Sam 8:4 and 1 Chron 18:4, but also from the conclusion to the account before us. According to v. 18 of this chapter, when Hadarezer had reinforced his army with auxiliaries from Mesopotamia, after losing the first battle, David smote seven hundred receb and forty thousand parashim of Aram, whilst according to the parallel text (1 Chron 19:18) he smote seven thousand receb and forty thousand foot. Now, apart from the difference between seven thousand and seven hundred in the case of the receb, which is to be interpreted in the same way as a similar difference in 2 Sam 8:4, the Chronicles do not mention any parashim at all in v. 18, but foot-soldiers only, whereas in v. 7 they mention only receb and parashim; and, on the other hand, there are no foot-soldiers given in v. 18 of the text before us, but riders only, whereas in v. 6 there are none but foot-soldiers mentioned, without any riders at all. It is evident that in both engagements the Syrians fought with all three (infantry, cavalry, and chariots), so that in both of them David smote chariots, horsemen, and foot.
2 SAMUEL. 10:7-14
When David heard of these preparations and the advance of the Syrians into the land, he sent Joab and his brave army against the foe. rwOBGi (the mighty men) is in apposition to ab;X;hæAalK; (all the host): the whole army, namely the heroes or mighty men, i.e., the brave troops that were well used to war. It is quite arbitrary on the part of Thenius to supply vav before rwOBGi ; for, as Bertheau has observed, as never find a distinction drawn between the gibborim and the whole army.
Verse 8. On the other hand, the Ammonites came out (from the capital, where they had assembled), and put themselves in battle array before the gate. The Syrians were alone on the field, i.e., they had taken up a separate position on the broad treeless table-land (cf. Josh 13:16) by Medeba. Medeba lay about four geographical miles in a straight line to the southwest of Rabbath-Ammon.
Verse 9-11. When Joab saw that “the front of the war was (directed) against him both before and behind,” he selected a picked body out of the Israelitish army, and posted them (the picked men) against the children of Aram (i.e., the Syrians). The rest of the men he gave to his brother Abishai, and stationed them against the Ammonites. “The front of the battle:” i.e., the face or front of the hostile army, when placed in battle array. Joab had this in front and behind, as the Ammonites had taken their stand before Rabbah at the back of the Israelitish army, and the Syrians by Medeba in their front, so that Joab was attacked both before and behind. This compelled him to divide his army. He chose out, i.e., made a selection.
Instead of laer;c]yi rWjB; (the picked men in Israel) the Chronicles have laer;c]yi rWjB; (the men in Israel), the singular rWjB; being more commonly employed than the plural to denote the men of war. The b] before laer;c]yi is not to be regarded as suspicious, although the early translators have not expressed it, and the Masoretes wanted to expunge it. “The choice of Israel” signifies those who were selected in Israel for the war, i.e., the Israelitish soldiers. Joab himself took up his station opposite to the Syrians with a picked body of men, because they were the stronger force of the two. He then made this arrangement with Abishai (v. 11): “If Aram becomes stronger than I (i.e., overpowers me), come to my help; and if the Ammonites should overpower thee, I will go to help thee.”
Consequently the attack was not to be made upon both the armies of the enemy simultaneously; but Joab proposed to attack the Aramaeans (Syrians) first (cf. v. 13), and Abishai was merely to keep the Ammonites in check, though there was still a possibility that the two bodies of the enemy might make their attack simultaneously.
Verse 12. “Be firm, and let us be firm (strong) for our people, and for the towns of our God: and Jehovah will do what seemeth Him good.” Joab calls the towns of Israel the towns of our God, inasmuch as the God of Israel had given the land to the people of Israel, as being His own property.
Joab and Abishai were about to fight, in order that Jehovah’s possessions might not fall into the hands of the heathen, and become subject to their gods. Verse 13-14. Joab then advanced with his army to battle against Aram, and “they fled before him.”-V. 14. When the Ammonites perceived this, they also fled before Abishai, and drew back into the city (Rabbah); whereupon Joab returned to Jerusalem, probably because as we may infer from 2 Sam 11:1, it was too late in the year for the siege and capture of Rabbah.
2 SAMUEL. 10:15-16
The Aramaeans, however, gathered together again after the first defeat, to continue the war; and Hadarezer, the most powerful of the Aramaean kings, sent messengers to Mesopotamia, and summoned it to war. It is very evident, not only from the words “he sent and brought out Aram, which was beyond the river,” but also from the fact that Shobach, Hadarezer’s general (Shophach according to the Chronicles), was at the head of the Mesopotamian troops, that the Mesopotamian troops who were summoned to help were under the supreme ruler of Hadarezer. This is placed beyond all possible doubt by v. 19, where the kings who had fought with Hadarezer against the Israelites are called his “servants,” or vassals. lyijæ awOB (v. 16) might be translated “and their army came;” but when we compare with this the µl;yje awOB of v. 17, we are compelled to render it as a proper name (as in the Septuagint, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic)-”and they (the men from beyond the Euphrates) came (marched) to Helam”-and to take lyijæ as a contracted form of µl;yje .
The situation of this place has not yet been discovered. Ewald supposes it to be connected with the Syrian town Alamatha upon the Euphrates (Ptol.
Geogr. v. 15); but this is not to be thought of for a moment, if only because it cannot be supposed that the Aramaeans would fall back to the Euphrates, and wait for the Israelites to follow them thither before they gave them battle; and also on account of 2 Sam 8:4 and 1 Chron 18:3, from which it is evident that Helam is to be sought for somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hamath (see p. 608). For µl;yje awOB we find lae awOB, “David came to them” (The Aramaeans), in the Chronicles: so that the author of the Chronicles has omitted the unknown place, unless indeed lae has been written by mistake for µl;yje .
2 SAMUEL. 10:17-18
David went with all Israel (all the Israelitish forces) against the foe, and smote the Aramaeans at Helam, where they had placed themselves in battle array, slaying seven hundred charioteers and forty thousand horsemen, and so smiting (or wounding) the general Shobach that he died there, i.e., that he did not survive the battle (Thenius). With regard to the different account given in the corresponding text of the Chronicles as to the number of the slain, see the remarks on v. 6 (pp. 619f.). It is a fact worthy of notice, that the number of men who fell in the battle (seven hundred receb and forty thousand parashim, according to the text before us; seven thousand receb and forty thousand ragli, according to the Chronicles) agrees quite as well with the number of Aramaeans reported to be taken prisoners or slain, according to 2 Sam 8:4 and 1 Chron 18:4-5 (viz., seventeen hundred parashim or a thousand receb, and seven thousand parashim and twenty thousand ragli of Aram-Zoba, and twenty-two thousand of Aram- Damascus), as could possibly be expected considering the notorious corruption in the numbers as we possess them; so that there is scarcely any doubt that the number of Aramaeans who fell was the same in both accounts (ch. 8 and 10), and that in the chapter before us we have simply a more circumstantial account of the very same war of which the result is given in ch. 8 and 1 Chron 13.
2 SAMUEL. 10:19
“And when all the kings, the vassals of Hadarezer, saw that they were smitten before Israel, they made peace with Israel, and became subject to them; and Aram was afraid to render any further help to the Ammonites.”
It might appear from the first half of this verse, that it was only the vassals of Hadarezer who made peace with Israel, and became subject to it, and that Hadarezer himself did not. But the last clause, “and the Aramaeans were afraid,” etc., shows very clearly that Hadarezer also made peace with the Israelites, and submitted to their rule; so that the expression in the first half of the verse is not a very exact one. SIEGE OF RABBAH. DAVID’S ADULTERY.
2 SAMUEL. 11:1
(cf. 1 Chron 20:1). Siege of Rabbah.
And it came to pass at the return of the year, at the time when the kings marched out, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah: but David remained in Jerusalem.” This verse is connected with 2 Sam 10:14, where it was stated that after Joab had put to flight the Aramaeans who came to the help of the Ammonites, and when the Ammonites also had fallen back before Abishai in consequence of this victory, and retreated into their fortified capital, Joab himself returned to Jerusalem. He remained there during the winter or rainy season, in which it was impossible that war should be carried on. At the return of the year, i.e., at the commencement of spring, with which the new years began in the month Abib (Nisan), the time when kings who were engaged in war were accustomed to open their campaign, David sent Joab his commander-in-chief with the whole of the Israelitish forces to attack the Ammonites once more, for the purpose of chastising them and conquering their capital.
The Chethibh Ël,m, should be changed into Ël,m, , according to the Keri and the text of the Chronicles. The ynæa interpolated is a perfectly superfluous mater lectionis, and probably crept into the text from a simple oversight.
The “servants” of David with Joab were not the men performing military service, or soldiers, (in which case “all Israel” could only signify the people called out to war in extraordinary circumstances), but the king’s military officers, the military commanders; and “all Israel,” the whole of the military forces of Israel. Instead of “the children of Ammon” we find “the country of the children of Ammon,” which explains the meaning more fully. But there was no necessity to insert xr,a, (the land or country), as tjæv; is applied to men in other passages in the sense of “cast to the ground,” or destroy (e.g., 1 Sam 26:15). Rabbah was the capital of Ammonitis (as in Josh 13:25): the fuller name was Rabbath of the children of Ammon. It has been preserved in the ruins which still exist under the ancient name of Rabbat-Ammân, on the Nahr Ammân, i.e., the upper Jabbok (see at Deut 3:11). The last clause, “but David sat (remained) in Jerusalem,” leads on to the account which follows of David’s adultery with Bathsheba (vv. 2-27 and 2 Sam 12:1-25), which took place at that time, and is therefore inserted here, so that the conquest of Rabbah is not related till afterwards (2 Sam 12:26-31).
2 SAMUEL. 11:2-27
David’s Adultery.
David’s deep fall forms a turning-point not only in the inner life of the great king, but also in the history of his reign. Hitherto David had kept free from the grosser sins, and had only exhibited such infirmities and failings as simulation, prevarication, etc., which clung to all the saints of the Old Covenant, and were hardly regarded as sins in the existing stage of religious culture at that time, although God never left them unpunished, but invariably visited them upon His servants with humiliations and chastisements of various kinds. Among the unacknowledged sins which God tolerated because of the hardness of Israel’s heart was polygamy, which encouraged licentiousness and the tendency to sensual excesses, and to which but a weak barrier had been presented by the warning that had been given for the Israelitish kings against taking many wives (Deut 17:17), opposed as such a warning was to the notion so prevalent in the East both in ancient and modern times, that a well-filled harem is essential to the splendour of a princely court. The custom to which this notion gave rise opened a dangerous precipice in David’s way, and led to a most grievous fall, that can only be explained, as O. v. Gerlach has said, from the intoxication consequent upon undisturbed prosperity and power, which grew with every year of his reign, and occasioned a long series of most severe humiliations and divine chastisements that marred the splendour of his reign, notwithstanding the fact that the great sin was followed by deep and sincere repentance.
Verse 2-5. Towards evening David walked upon the roof of his palace, after rising from his couch, i.e., after taking his mid-day rest, and saw from the roof a woman bathing, namely in the uncovered court of a neighbouring house, where there was a spring with a pool of water, such as you still frequently meet with in the East. “The woman was beautiful to look upon.” Her outward charms excited sensual desires. Verse 3. David ordered inquiry to be made about her, and found rmæa; , “he, i.e., the messenger, said;” or indefinitely, “they said”) that she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hethite. alo , nonne, is used, as it frequently is, in the sense of an affirmation, “it is indeed so.” Instead of Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam, we find the name given in the Chronicles (1 Chron 3:5) as Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel. The form bat-shuwa` may be derived from bat-shewa`, in which b is softened into w; for Bathsheba (with beth) is the correct and original form, as we may see from 1 Kings 1:11,15,28. Eliam and Ammiel have the same signification; the difference simply consists in the transposition of the component parts of the name. It is impossible to determine, however, which of the two forms was the original one.
Verse 4. The information brought to him, that the beautiful woman was married, was not enough to stifle the sensual desires which arose in David’s soul. “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin” (James 1:15). David sent for the woman, and lay with her. In the expression “he took her, and she came to him,” there is no intimation whatever that David brought Bathsheba into his palace through craft or violence, but rather that she came at his request without any hesitation, and offered no resistance to his desires. Consequently Bathsheba is not to be regarded as free from blame. The very act of bathing in the uncovered court of a house in the heart of the city, into which it was possible for any one to look down from the roofs of the houses on higher ground, does not say much for her feminine modesty, even if it was not done with an ulterior purpose, as some commentators suppose. Nevertheless in any case the greatest guilt rests upon David, that he, a man upon whom the Lord had bestowed such grace, did not resist the temptation to the lust of the flesh, but sent to fetch the woman. “When she had sanctified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.” Defilement from sexual intercourse rendered unclean till the evening (Lev 15:18). Bathsheba thought it her duty to observe this statute most scrupulously, though she did not shrink from committing the sin of adultery.
Verse 5. When she discovered that she was with child, she sent word to David. This involved an appeal to him to take the necessary steps to avert the evil consequences of the sin, inasmuch as the law required that both adulterer and adulteress should be put to death (Lev 20:10). Verse 6-8. David had Uriah the husband of Bathsheba sent to him by Joab, under whom he was serving in the army before Rabbah, upon some pretext or other, and asked him as soon as he arrived how it fared with Joab and the people (i.e., the army) and the war. This was probably the pretext under which David had had him sent to him. According to 2 Sam 23:39, Uriah was one of the gibborim (“mighty men”) of David, and therefore held some post of command in the army, although there is no historical foundation for the statement made by Josephus, viz., that he was Joab’s armour-bearer or aide-de-camp. The king then said to him, “Go down to thy house (from the palace upon Mount Zion down to the lower city, where Uriah’s house was situated), and wash thy feet;” and when he had gone out of the palace, he sent a royal present after him. The Israelites were accustomed to wash their feet when they returned home from work or from a journey, to take refreshment and rest themselves. Consequently these words contained an intimation that he was to go and refresh himself in his own home. David’s wish was that Uriah should spend a night at home with his wife, that he might afterwards be regarded as the father of the child that had been begotten in adultery. taecm , a present, as in Amos 5:11; Jer 50:4; Est 2:18.
Verse 9. But Uriah had his suspicions aroused. The connection between his wife and David may not have remained altogether a secret, so that it may have reached his ears as soon as he arrived in Jerusalem. “He lay down to sleep before the king’s house with all the servants of his lord (i.e., the retainers of the court), and went not down to his house.” “Before, or at, the door of the king’s house,” i.e., in the court of the palace, or in a building adjoining the king’s palace, where the court servants lived.
Verse 10-12. When this was told to David (the next morning), he said to Uriah, “Didst thou not come from the way (i.e., from a journey)? why didst thou not go down (as men generally do when they return from a journey)?”
Uriah replied (v. 11), “The ark (ark of the covenant), and Israel, and Judah, dwell in the huts, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord encamp in the field; and should I go to my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? By thy life, and by the life of thy soul, I do no such thing!” hK;su bvæy; , to sit or sojourn in huts, is the same practically as being encamped in the field. Uriah meant to say: Whereas the ark, i.e., Jehovah with the ark, and all Israel, were engaged in conflict with the enemies of God and of His kingdom, and therefore encamped in the open country, it did not become a warrior to seek rest and pleasure in his own home. This answer expressed the feelings and the consciousness of duty which ought to animate one who was fighting for the cause of God, in such plain and unmistakeable terms, that it was well adapted to prick the king to the heart. But David’s soul was so beclouded by the wish to keep clear of the consequences of his sin in the eyes of the world, that he did not feel the sting, but simply made a still further attempt to attain his purpose with Uriah. He commanded him to stop in Jerusalem all that day, as he did not intend to send him away till the morrow.
Verse 13. The next day he invited him to his table and made him drunken, with the hope that when in this state he would give up his intention of not going home to his wife. But Uriah lay down again the next night to sleep with the king’s servants, without going down to his house; for, according to the counsel and providence of God, David’s sin was to be brought to lift to his deep humiliation.
Verse 14-15. When the king saw that his plan was frustrated through Uriah’s obstinacy, he resolved upon a fresh and still greater crime. He wrote a letter to Joab, with which he sent Uriah back to the army, and the contents of which were these: “Set ye Uriah opposite to the strongest contest, and then turn away behind him, that he may be slain, and die.” f68 David was so sure that his orders would be executed, that he did not think it necessary to specify any particular crime of which Uriah had been guilty.
Verse 16. The king’s wishes were fully carried out by Joab. “When Joab watched (i.e., blockaded) the city, he stationed Uriah just where he knew that there were brave men” (in the city).
Verse 17. “And the men of the city came out (i.e., made a sally) and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell, and Uriah the Hethite died also.” The literal fulfilment of the king’s command does not warrant us in assuming that Joab suspected how the matter stood, or had heard a rumour concerning it. As a general, who was not accustomed to spare human life, he would be a faithful servant of his lord in this point, in order that his own interests might be served another time.
Verse 18-21. Joab immediately despatched a messenger to the king, to give him a report of the events of the war, and with these instructions: “When thou hast told all the things of the war to the king to the end, in case the anger of the king should be excited `hl;[; , ascend), and he should say to thee, Why did ye advance so near to the city to fight? knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall? Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbosheth (i.e., Gideon, see at Judg 6:32)? did not a woman throw down a millstone from the wall, that he died in Thebez (Judg 9:53)? why went ye so nigh to the wall? then only say, Thy servant Uriah the Hethite has perished.” Joab assumed that David might possibly be angry at what had occurred, or at any rate that he might express his displeasure at the fact that Joab had sacrificed a number of warriors by imprudently approaching close to the wall: he therefore instructed the messenger, if such should be the case, to announce Uriah’s death to the king, for the purpose of mitigating his wrath. The messenger seems to have known that Uriah was in disgrace with the king. At the same time, the words “thy servant Uriah is dead also” might be understood or interpreted as meaning that it was without, or even in opposition to, Joab’s command, that Uriah went so far with his men, and that he was therefore chargeable with his own death and that of the other warriors who had fallen.
Verse 22-24. The messenger brought to David all the information with which Joab had charged him jlæv; with a double accusative, to send or charge a person with anything), but he so far condensed it as to mention Uriah’s death at the same time. “When the men (of Rabbah) became strong against us, and came out to us into the field, and we prevailed against them even to the gate, the archers shot at thy servants down from the wall, so that some of the servants of the king died, and thy servant Uriah the Hethite is dead also.” The ynæa in the forms hr;y; hr;y; instead of hr;y; hr;y; is an Aramaic mode of writing the words.
Verse 25-27. David received with apparent composure the intelligence which he was naturally so anxious to hear, and sent this message back to Joab: “Let not this thing depress thee, for the sword devours thus and thus.
Keep on with the battle against the city, and destroy it.” The construction of ‘al-yeera` with tae obj. is analogous to the combination of a passive verb with tae : “Do not look upon this affair as evil” (disastrous). David then sent the messenger away, saying, “Encourage thou him” (lit. strengthen him, put courage into him), to show his entire confidence in the bravery and stedfastness of Joab and the army, and their ultimate success in the capture of Rabbah.-In v. 26 the account goes back to its starting-point.
When Uriah’s wife heard of her husband’s death, she mourned for her husband. When her mourning was over, David took her home as his wife, after which she bore him a son (the one begotten in adultery). The ordinary mourning of the Israelites lasted seven days (Gen 50:10; 1 Sam 31:13).
Whether widows mourned any longer we do not know. In the case before us Bathsheba would hardly prolong her mourning beyond the ordinary period, and David would certainly not delay taking her as his wife, in order that she might be married to the king as long as possible before the time of childbirth. The account of these two grievous sins on the part of David is then closed with the assurance that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,” which prepares the way for the following chapter.
NATHAN’S REPROOF AND DAVID’S REPENTANCE. CONQUEST OF RABBAH.
The Lord left David almost a whole year in his sin, before sending a prophet to charge the haughty sinner with his misdeeds, and to announce the punishment that would follow. He did this at length through Nathan, but not till after the birth of Bathsheba’s child, that had been begotten in adultery (compare vv. 14, 15 with 2 Sam 11:27). Not only was the fruit of the sin to be first of all brought to light, and the hardened sinner to be deprived of the possibility of either denying or concealing his crimes, but God would first of all break his unbroken heart by the torture of his own conscience, and prepare it to feel the reproaches of His prophet. The reason for this delay on the part of God in the threatening of judgment is set forth very clearly in Ps 32, where David describes most vividly the state of his heart during this period, and the sufferings that he endured as long as he was trying to conceal his crime. And whilst in this Psalm he extols the blessedness of a pardoned sinner, and admonishes all who fear God, on the ground of his own inmost experience after his soul had tasted once more the joy and confidence arising from the full forgiveness of his iniquities; in the fifty-first Psalm, which was composed after Nathan had been to him, he shows clearly enough that the promise of divine forgiveness, which the prophet had given him in consequence of his confession of his guilt, did not take immediate possession of his soul, but simply kept him from despair at first, and gave him strength to attain to a thorough knowledge of the depth of his guilt through prayer and supplication, and to pray for its entire removal, that his heart might be renewed and fortified through the Holy Ghost. But Nathan’s reproof could not possibly have borne this saving fruit, if David had still been living in utter blindness as to the character of his sin at the time when the prophet went to him.
2 SAMUEL. 12:1-14
Nathan’s Reproof.
Vv. 1ff. To ensure the success of his mission, viz., to charge the king with his crimes, Nathan resorted to a parable by which he led on the king to pronounce sentence of death upon himself. The parable is a very simple one, and drawn from life. Two men were living in a certain city: the one was rich, and had many sheep and oxen; the other was poor, and possessed nothing at all but one small lamb which he had bought and nourished hy;j; , lit. kept alive), so that it grew up in his house along with his son, and was treated most tenderly and loved like a daughter. The custom of keeping pet-sheep in the house, as we keep lap-dogs, is still met with among the Arabs (vid., Bochart, Hieroz. i. p. 594). There came a traveller Ël,he , a journey, for a traveller) to the rich man vwOna’ without an article, the express definition being introduced afterwards in connection with the adjective `ryvi[; ; vid., Ewald, §293a, p. 741), and he grudged to take of his own sheep and oxen to prepare (sc., a meal) for the traveller who had come to his house; “and he took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that had come to him.”
Verse 5-6. David was so enraged at this act of violence on the part of the rich man, that in the heat of his anger he pronounced this sentence at once: “As the Lord liveth, the man who did this deserves to die; and the lamb he shall restore fourfold.” The fourfold restoration corresponds to the law in Ex. 21:37. The culprit himself was also to be put to death, because the forcible robbery of a poor man’s pet-lamb was almost as bad as manstealing.
Verse 7-8. The parable was so selected that David could not suspect that it had reference to him and to his son. With all the greater shock therefore did the words of the prophet, “Thou art the man,” come upon the king.
Just as in the parable the sin is traced to its root-namely, insatiable covetousness-so now, in the words of Jehovah which follow, and in which the prophet charges the king directly with his crime, he brings out again in the most unsparing manner this hidden background of all sins, for the purpose of bringing thoroughly home to his heart the greatness of his iniquity, and the condemnation it deserved. “Jehovah the God of Israel hath said, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul, and I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives into thy bosom.” These words refer to the fact that, according to the general custom in the East, when a king died, his successor upon the throne also succeeded to his harem, so that David was at liberty to take his predecessor’s wives; though we cannot infer from this that he actually did so: in fact this is by no means probable, since, according to 1 Sam 14:50, Saul had but one wife, and according to 2 Sam 3:7 only one concubine, whom Abner appropriated to himself. “And gave thee the house of Israel and Judah;” i.e., I handed over the whole nation to thee as king, so that thou couldst have chosen young virgins as wives from all the daughters of Judah and Israel. f[æm] µai , “and if (all this was) too little, I would have added to thee this and that.”
Verse 9. “Why hast thou despised the word of Jehovah, to do evil in His eyes? Thou hast slain Uriah the Hethite with the sword, and taken his wife to be thy wife, and slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.” The last clause does not contain any tautology, but serves to strengthen the thought by defining more sharply the manner in which David destroyed Uriah. græh; , to murder, is stronger than hk;n; ; and the fact that it was by the sword of the Ammonites, the enemies of the people of God, that the deed was done, added to the wickedness.
Verse 10-12. The punishment answers to the sin. There is first of all (v. 10) the punishment for the murder of Uriah: “The sword shall not depart from thy house for ever, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife,” etc. “For ever” must not be toned down to the indefinite idea of a long period, but must be held firmly in its literal signification. the expression “thy house,” however, does not refer to the house of David as continued in his descendants, but simply as existing under David himself until it was broken up by his death. The fulfilment of this threat commenced with the murder of Amnon by Absalom (2 Sam 13:29); it was continued in the death of Absalom the rebel (2 Sam 18:14), and was consummated in the execution of Adonijah (1 Kings 2:24-25).
Verse 11-12. But David had also sinned in committing adultery. It was therefore announced to him by Jehovah, “Behold, I raise up mischief over thee out of thine own house, and will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them to thy neighbour, that he may lie with thy wives before the eyes of this sun (for the fulfilment of this by Absalom, see 2 Sam 16:21-22). “For thou hast done it in secret; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before (in the face of) the sun.” David’s twofold sin was to be followed by a twofold punishment. For his murder he would have to witness the commission of murder in his own family, and for his adultery the violation of his wives, and both of them in an intensified form. As his sin began with adultery, and was consummated in murder, so the law of just retribution was also carried out in the punishment, in the fact that the judgments which fell upon his house commenced with Amnon’s incest, whilst Absalom’s rebellion culminated in the open violation of his father’s concubines, and even Adonijah lost his life, simply because he asked for Abishag the Shunammite, who had lain in David’s bosom to warm and cherish him in his old age (1 Kings 2:23-24).
Verse 13-14. These words went to David’s heart, and removed the ban of hardening which pressed upon it. He confessed to the prophet, “I have sinned against the Lord.” “The words are very few, just as in the case of the publican in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 18:13). But that is a good sign of a thoroughly broken spirit.... There is no excuse, no cloaking, no palliation of the sin. There is no searching for a loophole,...no pretext put forward, no human weakness pleaded. He acknowledges his guilt openly, candidly, and without prevarication” (Berleb. Bible). In response to this candid confession of his sin, Nathan announced to him, “The Lord also hath let thy sin pass by (i.e., forgiven it). Thou wilt not die. Only because by this deed thou hast given the enemies of the Lord occasion to blaspheme, the son that is born unto thee shall die.” xaæn; , inf. abs. Piel, with chirek, because of its similarity in sound to the following perfect (see Ewald, §240, c.). µGæ , with which the apodosis commences, belongs to the ˆBe which follows, and serves to give emphasis to the expression: “Nevertheless the son” (vid., Ges. §155, 2, a.).
David himself had deserved to die as an adulterer and murderer. The Lord remitted the punishment of death, not so much because of his heartfelt repentance, as from His own fatherly grace and compassion, and because of the promise that He had given to David (2 Sam 7:11-12)-a promise which rested upon the assumption that David would not altogether fall away from a state of grace, or commit a mortal sin, but that even in the worst cases he would turn to the Lord again and seek forgiveness. The Lord therefore punished him for this sin with the judgments announced in vv. 10-12, as about to break upon him and his house. But as his sin had given occasion to the enemies of the Lord-i.e., not only to the heathen, but also to the unbelieving among the Israelites themselves-to blaspheme or ridicule his religion and that of all other believers also, the child that was begotten in adultery and had just been born should die; in order, on the one hand, that the father should atone for his adultery in the death of the son, and, on the other hand, that the visible occasion for any further blasphemy should be taken away: so that David was not only to feel the pain of punishment in the death of his son, but was also to discern in it a distinct token of the grace of God.
2 SAMUEL. 12:15-25
David’s Penitential Grief, and the Birth of Solomon.
Verse 15. The last-mentioned punishment was inflicted without delay.
When Nathan had gone home, the Lord smote the child, so that it became very ill.
Verse 16-17. Then David sought God (in prayer) for the boy, and fasted, and went and lay all night upon the earth. awOB, “he came,” not into the sanctuary of the Lord (v. 20 is proof to the contrary), but into his house, or into his chamber, to pour out his heart before God, and bend beneath His chastising hand, and refused the appeal of his most confidential servants, who tried to raise him up, and strengthen him with food. “The elders of his house,” judging from Gen 24:2, were the oldest and most confidential servants, “the most highly honoured of his servants, and those who had the greatest influence with him” (Clericus).
Verse 18. On the seventh day, when the child died, the servants of David were afraid to tell him of its death; for they said (to one another), “Behold, while the child was still living, we spoke to him, and he did not hearken to our voice; how should we say to him, now the child is dead, that he should do harm?” (i.e., do himself an injury in the depth of his anguish.)
Verse 19-20. David saw at once what had happened from their whispering conversation, and asked whether the child was dead. When they answered in the affirmative, he rose up from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; that is to say, he laid aside all the signs of penitential grief and mourning, went into the house of the Lord (the holy tent upon Mount Zion) and worshipped, and then returned to his house, and had food set before him.
Verse 21-22. When his servants expressed their astonishment at all this, David replied, “As long as the boy lived, I fasted and wept: for I thought (said), Perhaps (who knows) the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may remain alive. But now he is dead, why should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” On this O. v. Gerlach has the following admirable remarks: “In the case of a man whose penitence was so earnest and so deep, the prayer for the preservation of his child must have sprung from some other source than excessive love of any created object. His great desire was to avert the stroke, as a sign of the wrath of God, in the hope that he might be able to discern, in the preservation of the child, a proof of divine favour consequent upon the restoration of his fellowship with God. But when the child was dead, he humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and rested satisfied with His grace, without giving himself up to fruitless pain.”
This state of mind is fully explained in Ps 51, though his servants could not comprehend it. The form ychnny is the imperfect Kal, y¦chaaneeniy according to the Chethibh, though the Masoretes have substituted as the Keri ˆnæj; , the perfect with vav consec.
Verse 23-25. V. 23b is paraphrased very correctly by Clericus: “I shall go to the dead, the dead will not come to me.”-V. 24. David then comforted his wife Bathsheba, and lived with her again; and she bare a son, whom he called Solomon, the man of peace (cf. 1 Chron 22:9). David gave the child this name, because he regarded his birth as a pledge that he should now become a partaker again of peace with God, and not from any reference to the fact that the war with the Ammonites was over, and peace prevailed when he was born; although in all probability Solomon was not born till after the capture of Rabbah and the termination of the Ammonitish war.
His birth is mentioned here simply because of its connection with what immediately precedes. The writer adds (in vv. 24, 25), “And Jehovah loved him, and sent by the hand (through the medium) of Nathan the prophet; and he called his son Jedidiah (i.e., beloved of Jehovah), for Jehovah’s sake.” The subject to jlæv; (he sent) cannot be David, because this would not yield any appropriate sense, but must be Jehovah, the subject of the clause immediately preceding. “To send by the hand,” i.e., to make a mission by a person (vid., Ex 4:13, etc.), is equivalent to having a commission performed by a person, or entrusting a person with a commission to another. We learn from what follows, in what the commission with which Jehovah entrusted Nathan consisted: “And he (Nathan, not Jehovah) called his (the boy’s) name Jedidiah.” And if Nathan is the subject to “called,” there is nothing to astonish in the expression “because of the Lord.” The idea is this: Nathan came to David according to Jehovah’s instructions, and gave Solomon the name Jedidiah for Jehovah’s sake, i.e., because Jehovah loved him. The giving of such a name was a practical declaration on the part of Jehovah that He loved Solomon, from which David could and was intended to discern that the Lord had blessed his marriage with Bathsheba. Jedidiah, therefore, was not actually adopted as Solomon’s name.
2 SAMUEL. 12:26-28
Conquest of Rabbah, and Punishment of the Ammonites (comp. 1 Chron 20:1-3).- “Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the king’s city.” hk;Wlm] `ry[i , the capital of the kingdom, is the city with the exception of the acropolis, as v. 27 clearly shows, where the captured city is called “the water-city.” Rabbah was situated, as the ruins of Ammân show, on both banks of the river (Moiet) Ammân (the upper Jabbok), in a valley which is shut in upon the north and south by two bare ranges of hills of moderate height, and is not more than 200 paces in breadth. “The northern height is crowned by the castle, the ancient acropolis, which stands on the north-western side of the city, and commands the whole city” (see Burckhardt, Syria ii. pp. 612ff., and Ritter, Erdkunde xv. pp. 1145ff.).
After taking the water-city, Joab sent messengers to David, to inform him of the result of the siege, and say to him, “Gather the rest of the people together, and besiege the city (i.e., the acropolis, which may have been peculiarly strong), and take it, that I may not take the city (also), and my name be named upon it,” i.e., the glory of the conquest be ascribed to me.
Luther adopts this explanation in his free rendering, “and I have a name from it.”
2 SAMUEL. 12:29
Accordingly David “gathered together all the people,”- i.e., all the men of war who had remained behind in the land; from which we may see that Joab’s besieging army had been considerably weakened during the long siege, and at the capture of the water-city-”and fought against the acropolis, and took it.”
2 SAMUEL. 12:30
He then took their king’s crown (“their king,” viz., the king of the Ammonites) from off his (the king’s) head; so that he had either been taken prisoner or slain at the capture of the city. The weight of the crown was “a talent of gold, and precious stones” (sc., were upon it): as the writer of the Chronicles has correctly explained it by supplying µyrit;a ]. The Hebrew talent (equal to 3000 shekels) was 83 1/2 Dresden pounds. But the strongest man could hardly have borne a crown of this weight upon his head for however short a time; and David could scarcely have placed it upon his own head. We must therefore assume that the account of the weight is not founded upon actual weighing, but simply upon an approximative estimate, which is somewhat too high. David also took a great quantity of booty out of the city.
2 SAMUEL. 12:31
He also had the inhabitants executed, and that with cruel tortures. “He sawed them in pieces with the saw and with iron harrows.” hr;gem] µWc , “he put them into the saw,” does not give any appropriate sense; and there can be no doubt, that instead of µWc we should read rWc (from rWc ): “he cut (sawed) them in pieces.” lz,r]Bæ hr;zeg]mæ , “and with iron cutting tools.” The meaning of the aJp leg twOrz]g]mæ cannot be more precisely determined. The current rendering, “axes or hatchets,” is simply founded upon the circumstance that rzæG; , to cut, is applied in 2 Kings 6:4 to the felling of trees. The reading in the Chronicles, hr;gem] , is evidently a copyist’s error, as we have already had hr;gem] , “with the saw.”
The meaning of the next clause is a disputed point, as the reading itself varies, and the Masoretes read ˆBel]mæ instead of the Chethibh bmlkn, “he made them go through brick-kilns,” i.e., burnt them in brick-kilns, as the LXX and Vulgate render it. On the other hand, Thenius takes the Chethibh under his protection, and adopts Kimchi’s explanation: “he led them through Malchan, i.e., through the place where the Ammonites burned their children in honour of their idol.” Thenius would therefore alter ˆK;l]mæB] into Ël,m, or µKol]MiBæ : “he offered them as sacrifices in their image of Moloch.” But this explanation cannot be even grammatically sustained, to say nothing of the arbitrary character of the alteration proposed; for the technical expression Ël,Molæ VaeB; rybi[‘h, , “to cause to go through the fire for Moloch” (Lev 18:21), is essentially different from Ël,MoBæ rybi[‘h, , to cause to pass through Moloch, an expression that we never meet with.
Moreover, it is impossible to see how burning the Ammonites in the image of Moloch could possibly be “an obvious mode of punishing idolatry,” since the idolatry itself consisted in the fact that the Ammonites burned their children to Moloch. So far as the circumstances themselves are concerned, the cruelties inflicted upon the prisoners are not to be softened down, as Daaz and others propose, by an arbitrary perversion of the words into a mere sentence to hard labour, such as sawing wood, burning bricks, etc. At the same time, the words of the text do not affirm that all the inhabitants of Rabbah were put to death in this cruel manner. µyrit;a\ rv,a `µ[æ (without lKo ) refers no doubt simply to the fighting men that were taken prisoners, or at the most to the male population of the acropolis of Rabbah, who probably consisted of fighting men only.
In doing this, David merely retaliated upon the Ammonites the cruelties with which they had treated their foes; since according to Amos 1:13 they ripped up women who were with child, and according to 1 Sam 11:2 their king Nahash would only make peace with the inhabitants of Jabesh upon the condition that the right eye of every one of them should be put out. It is sufficiently evident from this, that the Ammonites had aimed at the most shameful extermination of the Israelites. “Thus did he unto all the cities of the Ammonites,” i.e., to all the fortified cities that resisted the Israelites.
After the close of this war, David returned to Jerusalem with all the men of war. The war with the Syrians and Ammonites, including as it did the Edomitish war as well, was the fiercest in which David was ever engaged, and was also the last great war of his life. AMNON’S INCEST, AND ABSALOM’
S FRATRICIDE 2 SAMUEL. 13:1-22
The judgments threatened to king David in consequence of his sin with Bathsheba soon began to fall upon him and upon his house, and were brought about by sins and crimes on the part of his own sons, for which David was himself to blame, partly because of his own indulgence and want of discipline, and partly because of the bad example that he had set them.
Having grown up without strict paternal discipline, simply under the care of their different mothers, who were jealous of one another, his sons fancied that they might gratify their own fleshly lusts, and carry out their own ambitious plans; and from this there arose a series of crimes, which nearly cost the king his life and throne. Amnon, David’s eldest son, led the way with his forcible violation of his step-sister Tamar (vv. 1-22). The crime was avenged by her own brother Absalom, who treacherously assassinated Amnon, in consequence of which he was obliged to flee to Geshur and take refuge with his father-in-law (vv. 23-39).
Verse 1-2. Amnon’s Incest.-Vv. 1-14. The following occurrences are assigned in a general manner to the times succeeding the Ammonitish war, by the words “And it came to pass after this;” and as David did not marry Maacah the mother of Absalom and Tamar till after he had been made king at Hebron (see 2 Sam 3:3), they cannot well have taken place before the twentieth year of his reign. Amnon, the eldest son of David by Ahinoam the Jezreelite (2 Sam 3:2), loved Tamar, the beautiful sister of his stepbrother Absalom, so passionately that he became ill in consequence, because he could not get near to her as she was a virgin. Vv. 1 and 2 form one period. rxæy; is a continuation of ˆkeAyrej\aæ yhiy]wæ ; and the words from µwOlv;ybia to dwiD;AˆB, are a circumstantial clause. rxæy; : literally “it became narrow (anxious) to Amnon, even to making himself ill,” i.e., he quite pined away, not “he pretended to be ill” (Luther), for it was not till afterwards that he did this according to Jonadab’s advice (v. 5). hl;j; : to make one’s self ill, here to become ill, in v. 5 to pretend to be ill. The clause aWh hl;WtB] yKi is to be joined to the one which follows: “because she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to him to do anything to her.” The maidenly modesty of Tamar evidently raised an insuperable barrier to the gratification of his lusts.
Verse 3-5. Amnon’s miserable appearance was observed by his cousin Jonadab, a very crafty man, who asked him what was the reason, and then gave him advice as to the way in which he might succeed in gratifying his desires. Shimeah is called Shammah in 1 Sam 16:9.
Verse 4-5. “Why art thou so wasting away lDæ , thin, spare, here equivalent to wasting away, looking miserable), king’s son, from morning to morning?” i.e., day by day. “The morning” is mentioned because sick persons look worst in the morning. The advice given in v. 5-viz., “Lay thee down upon thy bed, and pretend to be ill; and when thy father comes to visit thee, say to him, May my sister Tamar come to me, and give me to eat?” etc.-was very craftily devised, as Amnon’s wretched appearance would favour his pretence that he was ill, and it might be hoped that an affectionate father would gratify him, since even if the wish seemed a strange one, it might easily be accounted for from the marvellous desires of persons who are ill, particularly with regard to food-desires which it is often very difficulty to gratify.
Verse 6-8. Amnon acted upon the advice, and begged his father, when he came to ask him how he was, to allow his sister Tamar to come and bake two heart-cakes for him before his eyes, which she very speedily did. libeeb is a denom. from hb;ybil; , to make or bake heart-cakes. hb;ybil; is a heartstrengthening kind of pastry, a kind of pancake, which could be very quickly made. It is evident from these verses that the king’s children lived in different houses. Probably each of the king’s wives lived with her children in one particular compartment of the palace.
Verse 9-11. “And she took the pan and shook out (what she had prepared) before him. The hap leg trec]mæ signifies a frying-pan or sauce-pan, according to the ancient versions. The etymology is uncertain. But Amnon refused to eat, and, like a whimsical patient, he then ordered all the men that were with him to go out; and when this had been done, he told Tamar to bring the food into the chamber, that he might eat it from her hand; and when she handed him the food, he laid hold of her, and said, “Come, lie with me, my sister!”
Verse 12-13. Tamar attempted to escape by pointing to the wickedness of such a desire: “Pray, do not, my brother, do not humble me; for they do not such things in Israel: do not this folly.” The words recall Gen 34:7, where the expression “folly” (nebalah) is first used to denote a want of chastity. Such a sin was altogether out of keeping with the calling and holiness of Israel (vid., Lev 20:8ff.). “And I, whither should I carry my shame?” i.e., shame and contempt would meet me everywhere. “And thou wouldst be as one of the fools in Israel.” We should both of us reap nothing but shame from it. What Tamar still further said, “Now therefore, I pray thee, speak to the king, for he will not refuse me to thee,” is no doubt at variance with the law which prohibits marriage between step-brothers and sisters (Lev 18:9,11; 20:17); but it by no means proves that the laws of Leviticus were not in existence at the time, nor does it even presuppose that Tamar was ignorant of any such law. She simply said this, as Clericus observes, “that she might escape from his hands by any means in her power, and to avoid inflaming him still more and driving him to sin by precluding all hope of marriage.” f69 We cannot therefore even infer from these words of hers, that she really thought the king could grant a dispensation from the existing hindrances to their marriage.
Verse 14. Amnon would not listen to her, however, but overpowered her, forced her, and lay with her.
Verse 15-22. Amnon had no sooner gratified his animal passion, than his love to the humbled sister turned into hatred, which was even greater than his (previous) love, so that he commanded her to get up and go. This sudden change, which may be fully explained from a psychological point of view, and is frequently exemplified still in actual life, furnishes a striking proof that lust is not love, but simply the gratification of the animal passions.
Verse 16. Tamar replied, “Do not become the cause of this great evil, (which is) greater than another that thou hast done to me, to thrust me away,” i.e., do not add to the great wrong which thou hast done me the still greater one of thrusting me away. This is apparently the only admissible explanation of the difficult expression twOdaoAlaæ , as nothing more is needed than to supply hy;h; . Tamar calls his sending her away a greater evil than the one already done to her, because it would inevitably be supposed that she had been guilty of some shameful conduct herself, that the seduction had come from her; whereas she was perfectly innocent, and had done nothing but what affection towards a sick brother dictated, whilst it was impossible for her to call for help (as prescribed in Deut 22:27), because Amnon had sent the servants away, and Tamar could not in any case expect assistance from them.
Verse 17. Amnon then called the boy who waited upon him, and ordered him to put out this person (the sister he had humbled), and to bolt the door behind her, so that it had the appearance of her having made a shameful proposal to him.
Verse 18. Before stating that this command was obeyed, the writer inserts this remark: “She (Tamar) wore a long dress with sleeves (see Gen 37:3); for in this manner did the virgin daughters of the king dress themselves with mantles.” ly[im] is an accusative belonging to vbæl; , and the meaning is that the king’s daughters, who were virgins, wore long dresses with sleeves as cloaks. The cetoneth passim was not an ordinary under-garment, but was worn over the plain cetoneth or tunic, and took the place of the ordinary meïl without sleeves. Notwithstanding this dress, by which a king’s daughter could at once be recognised, Amnon’s servant treated Tamar like a common woman, and turned her out of the house.
Verse 19. And Tamar took ashes upon her head, rent her sleeve-dress (as a sign of grief and pain at the disgrace inflicted upon her), laid her hand upon her head (as a sign that a grievous trouble had come upon her, that the hand of God was resting as it were upon her: vid., Jer 2:37), and “went going and cried,” i.e., crying aloud as she went along.
Verse 20. Then Absalom said to her, namely when she came home mourning in this manner, “Has Amnon thy brother been with thee?” This was a euphemism for what had taken place (cf. Gen 39:10), as Absalom immediately conjectures. “And now, my sister, be silent; it is thy brother, do not take this thing to heart.” Absalom quieted the sister, because he was determined to take revenge, but wished to conceal his plan of vengeance for the time. So Tamar remained in her brother’s house, “and indeed desolate,” i.e., as one laid waste, with the joy of her life hopelessly destroyed. It cannot be proved that µmev; ever means single or solitary.
Verse 21-22. When David heard “all these things,” he became very wrathful; but Absalom did not speak to Amnon “from good to evil” (i.e., either good or evil, not a single word: Gen 24:50), because he hated him for having humbled his sister. The LXX add to the words “he (David) was very wroth,” the following clause: “He did not trouble the spirit of Amnon his son, because he loved him, for he was his first-born.” This probably gives the true reason why David let such a crime as Amnon’s go unpunished, when the law enjoined that incest should be punished with death (Lev 20:17); at the same time it is nothing but a subjective conjecture of the translators, and does not warrant us in altering the text. The fact that David was contented to be simply angry is probably to be accounted for partly from his own consciousness of guilt, since he himself had been guilty of adultery; but it arose chiefly from his indulgent affection towards his sons, and his consequent want of discipline. This weakness in his character bore very bitter fruit.
2 SAMUEL. 13:23-24
Absalom’s Revenge and Flight.
Absalom postponed his revenge for two full years. He then “kept sheepshearing,” which was celebrated as a joyous festival (see 1 Sam 25:2,8), “at Baal-hazor, near Ephraim,” where he must therefore have had some property. The situation of Baal-hazor cannot be precisely determined. The clause “which (was) beside Ephraim” points to a situation on the border of the tribe-territory of Ephraim (juxta Ephraim, according to the Onom. s.v.
Baalasor); for the Old Testament never mentions any city of that name.
This definition does not exactly tally with v. Raumer’s conjecture (Pal. p. 149), that Baal- Hazor may have been preserved in Tell Asûr ((Rob. Pal. ii. p. 151, iii. p. 79); for this Tell is about five Roman miles to the north-east of Bethel, i.e., within the limits of the tribe of Ephraim. There is greater probability in the suggestion made by Ewald and others, that Baal-hazor is connected with the Hazor of Benjamin (Neh 11:33), though the situation of Hazor has not yet been thoroughly decided; and it is merely a conjecture of Robinson’s that it is to be found in Tell Asûr. The following statement, that “Absalom invited all the king’s sons” (sc., to the feast), somewhat anticipates the course of events: for, according to v. 24, Absalom invited the king himself, together with his courtiers; and it was not till the king declined the invitation for himself, that Absalom restricted his invitation to the royal princes.
2 SAMUEL. 13:25
The king declined the invitation that he might not be burdensome to Absalom. Absalom pressed him indeed, but he would not go, and blessed him, i.e., wished him a pleasant and successful feast (see 1 Sam 25:14).
2 SAMUEL. 13:26-27
Then Absalom said, “And not (i.e., if thou doest not go), may my brother Amnon go with me?” The king would not give his consent to this; whether from suspicion cannot be determined with certainty, as he eventually yielded to Absalom’s entreaties and let Amnon and all the other king’s sons go. From the length of time that had elapsed since Amnon’s crime was committed, without Absalom showing any wish for revenge, David might have felt quite sure that he had nothing more to fear. But this long postponement of revenge, for the purpose of carrying it out with all the more certainty, is quite in the spirit of the East.
2 SAMUEL. 13:29-30
The servants did as he commanded, whereupon the other king’s sons all fled upon their mules.
Verse 30. But whilst they were on the road, the report of what Absalom had done reached the ears of the king, and, as generally happens in such cases, with very great exaggeration: “Absalom hath slain all the king’s sons, and there is not one of them left.”
2 SAMUEL. 13:31
The king rent his clothes with horror at such a deed, and sat down upon the ground, and all his servants (courtiers) stood motionless by, with their clothes rent as well. This is the rendering adopted by Böttcher, as bxæn; has frequently the idea of standing perfectly motionless (e.g., Num 22:23-24; Ex 5:20, etc.).
2 SAMUEL. 13:32-33
Then Jonadab, the same person who had helped Amnon to commit his crime, said, “Let not my lord say (or think) that they have slain all the young men the king’s sons, but Amnon alone is dead; for it was laid upon the mouth of Absalom from the day that he forced his sister Tamar.” The meaning is either “they might see it (the murder of Amnon) by his mouth,” or “they might gather it from what he said.” µWc hy;h; : it was a thing laid down, i.e., determined (vid., Ex 21:13). The subject, viz., the thing itself, or the intended murder of Amnon, may easily be supplied from the context. µai yKi is undoubtedly used in the sense of “no but.” The negation is implied in the thought: Let the king not lay it to heart, that they say all the king’s sons are dead; it is not so, but only Amnon is dead. Jonadab does not seem to speak from mere conjecture; he is much too sure of what he says. He might possibly have heard expressions from Absalom’s lips which made him certain as to how the matter stood. 2 SAMUEL 13:30-33.
Verse 30-33. “And Absalom fled.” This statement follows upon v. 29.
When the king’s sons fled upon their mules, Absalom also took to flight.
Vv. 30-33 are a parenthesis, in which the writer describes at once the impression made upon the king and his court by the report of what Absalom had done. The apparently unsuitable position in which this statement is placed may be fully explained from the fact, that the flight of Absalom preceded the arrival of the rest of the sons at the king’s palace.
The alteration which Böttcher proposes to make in the text, so as to remove this statement altogether on account of its unsuitable position, is proved to be inadmissible by the fact that the account of Absalom’s flight cannot possibly be left out, as reference is made to it again afterwards (vv. 37, 38, “Absalom had fled”). The other alterations proposed by Thenius in the text of vv. 34, 37, 38, are just as arbitrary and out of place, and simply show that this critic was ignorant of the plan adopted by the historian. His plan is the following: To the account of the murder of Amnon, and the consequent flight of the rest of the king’s sons whom Absalom had invited to the feast (v. 29), there is first of all appended a notice of the report which preceded the fugitives and reached the king’s ears in an exaggerated form, together with the impression which it made upon the king, and the rectification of that report by Jonadab (vv. 30-33). Then follows the statement that Absalom fled, also the account of the arrival of the king’s sons (vv. 34-36). After this we have a statement as to the direction in which Absalom fled, the king’s continued mourning, and the length of time that Absalom’s banishment lasted (vv. 37, 38), and finally a remark as to David’s feelings towards Absalom (v. 39).
Jonadab’s assertion, that Amnon only had been slain, was very speedily confirmed (v. 34). The young man, the spy, i.e., the young man who was looking out for the return of those who had been invited to the feast, “lifted up his eyes and saw,” i.e., saw as he looked out into the distance, “much people (a crowd of men) coming from the way behind him along the side of the mountain.” rjæaæ Ër,D, , en th> oJdw> o>pisqen autou> (LXX), per iter devium (Vulg.), is obscure; and rjæaæ , “behind,” is probably to be understood as meaning “to the west:” from the way at the back of the spy, i.e., to the west of his station. The following words, rhæ dxæ , also remain obscure, as the position of the spy is not given, so that the allusion may be to a mountain in the north-west of Jerusalem quite as well as to one on the west. f70 When the spy observed the crowd of men approaching, Jonadab said to the king (v. 35), “Behold, the king’s sons are coming: as thy servant said, so has it come to pass.”
2 SAMUEL. 13:36
Jonadab had hardly said this when the king’s sons arrived and wept aloud, sc., as they related what had occurred; whereupon the king and all his retainers broke out in loud weeping.
2 SAMUEL. 13:37-38
“Only Absalom had fled and gone to Talmai the son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur.” These words form a circumstantial clause, which the writer has inserted as a parenthesis, to define the expression “the king’s sons” more particularly. If we take these words as a parenthesis, there will be no difficulty in explaining the following word “mourned,” as the subject (David) may very easily be supplied from the preceding words “the king,” etc. (v. 36). To the remark that David mourned all his life for his son (Amnon), there is attached, just as simply and quite in accordance with the facts, the more precise information concerning Absalom’s flight, that he remained in Geshur three years. The repetition of the words “Absalom had fled and gone to Geshur” may be accounted for from the general diffuseness of the Hebrew style. Talmai the king of Geshur was the father of Maacah, Absalom’s mother (2 Sam 3:3). The LXX thought it necessary expressly to indicate this by inserting eis gee’n Chamacha’ad (al. gee’n Macha’d).
2 SAMUEL. 13:39
“And it (this) held king David back from going out to Absalom, for he comforted himself concerning Amnon, because he was dead.” In adopting this translation of the difficult clause with which the verse commences, we take hl;K; in the sense of al;K; , as the verbs hl;K; and lk frequently exchange their forms; we also take the third pers. fem. as the neuter impersonal, so that the subject is left indefinite, and is to be gathered from the context. Absalom’s flight to Geshur, and his stay there, were what chiefly prevented David from going out to Absalom. Moreover, David’s grief on account of Amnon’s death gradually diminished as time rolled on. vbaAla, taxe is used in a hostile sense, as in Deut 28:7, to go out and punish him for his wickedness. The yKi before µjæn; might also be rendered “but,” as after a negative clause, as the principal sentence implies a negation: “He did not go out against Absalom, but comforted himself.”
There is not only no grammatical difficulty in the way of this explanation of the verse, but it also suits the context, both before and after.
All the other explanations proposed are either at variance with the rules of the language, or contain an unsuitable thought. The old Jewish interpretation (adopted in the Chaldee version, and also by the Rabbins), viz., David longed (his soul pined) to go out to Absalom (i.e., to see or visit him), is opposed, as Gusset has shown (in his Lex. pp. 731-2), to the conduct of David towards Absalom as described in ch. 14-namely, that after Joab had succeeded by craft in bringing him back to Jerusalem, David would not allow him to come into his presence for two whole years (2 Sam 14:24,28). Luther’s rendering, “and king David left off going out against Absalom,” is not only precluded by the feminine hl;K; , but also by the fact that nothing has been said about any pursuit of Absalom on the part of David. Other attempts at emendations there is no need whatever to refute. ABSALOM’S RETURN, AND RECONCILIATION TO THE KING.
2 SAMUEL. 14:1-20
As David did not repeal the banishment of Absalom, even after he had comforted himself for Amnon’s death, Joab endeavoured to bring him back to Jerusalem by stratagem (vv. 1-20); and when this succeeded, he proceeded to effect his reconciliation to the king (vv. 21-33). He may have been induced to take these steps partly by his personal attachment to Absalom, but the principal reason no doubt was that Absalom had the best prospect of succeeding to the throne, and Joab thought this the best way to secure himself from punishment for the murder which he had committed.
But the issue of events frustrated all such hopes. Absalom did not succeed to the throne, Joab did not escape punishment, and David was severely chastised for his weakness and injustice.
Verse 1-3. When Joab perceived that the king’s heart was against Absalom, he sent for a cunning woman from Tekoah, to work upon the king and change his mind, so that he might grant forgiveness to Absalom.
V. 1 is understood by the majority of commentators, in accordance with the Syriac and Vulgate, as signifying that Joab learned that the king’s heart was inclined towards Absalom, was well disposed towards him again. But this explanation is neither philologically sustained, nor in accordance with the context. ble , written with `l[æ and without any verb, so that hy;h; has to be supplied, only occurs again in Dan 11:28, where the preposition has the meaning “against.” It is no argument against this meaning here, that if David had been ill disposed towards Absalom, there would have been no necessity to state that Joab perceived it; for we cannot see why Joab should only have perceived or noticed David’s friendly feelings, and not his unfriendly feelings as well. If, however, Joab had noticed the re-awakening of David’s good feelings towards Absalom, there would have been no necessity for him to bring the cunning woman from Tekoah to induce him to consent to Absalom’s return. Moreover, David would not in that case have refused to allow Absalom to see his face for two whole years after his return to Jerusalem (v. 24). Tekoah, the home of the prophet Amos, the present Tekua, two hours to the south of Bethlehem (see at Josh 15:59, LXX). The “wise woman” was to put on mourning, as a woman who had been mourning for a long while for some one that was dead lbæa; , to set or show herself mourning), and to go to the king in this attire, and say what Joab had put into her mouth.
Verse 4. The woman did this. All the old translators have given as the rendering of hV;ai rmæa; “the woman came (went) to the king,” as if they had read awOB. This reading is actually found in some thirty Codd. of De Rossi, and is therefore regarded by Thenius and the majority of critics as the original one. But Böttcher has very justly urged, in opposition to this, that rmæa; cannot possibly be an accidental corruption of awOB, and that it is still less likely that such an alteration should have been intentionally made.
But this remark, which is correct enough in itself, cannot sustain the conjecture which Böttcher has founded upon it, namely that two whole lines have dropt out of the Hebrew text, containing the answer which the woman of Tekoah gave to Joab before she went to the king, since there is not one of the ancient versions which contains a single word more than the Masoretic text. Consequently we must regard rmæa; as the original reading, and interpret it as a hysteron-proteron, which arose from the fact that the historian was about to relate at once what the woman said to the king, but thought it desirable to mention her falling down at the feet of the king before giving her actual words, “Help, O king,” which he introduces by repeating the word rmæa; .
Verse 5-7. When the king asked her, “What aileth thee?” the woman described the pretended calamity which had befallen her, saying that she was a widow, and her two sons had quarrelled in the field; and as no one interposed, one of them had killed the other. The whole family had then risen up and demanded that the survivor should be given up, that they might carry out the avenging of blood upon him. Thus they sought to destroy the heir also, and extinguish the only spark that remained to her, so as to leave her husband neither name nor posterity upon the earth. The suffix attached to hk;n; , with the object following (“he smote him, the other,” v. 6), may be explained from the diffuseness of the style of ordinary conversation (see at 1 Sam 21:14). There is no reason whatever for changing the reading into hk;n; , as the suffix ow, though unusual with verbs hl , is not without parallel; not to mention the fact that the plural yaakuw is quite unsuitable. There is also quite as little reason for changing dmæv; into dmæv; , in accordance with the Syriac and Arabic, as Michaelis and Thenius propose, on the ground that “the woman would have described her relatives as diabolically malicious men, if she had put into their mouths such words as these, ‘We will destroy the heir also.’ “It was the woman’s intention to describe the conduct of the relations and their pursuit of blood-revenge in the harshest terms possible, in order that she might obtain help from the king. She begins to speak in her own name at the word hb;K; (“and so they shall quench and”), where she resorts to a figure, for the purpose of appealing to the heart of the king to defend her from the threatened destruction of her family, saying, “And so they shall quench the burning coal which is left.” Lj,G, is used figuratively, like to’ zoo’puron, the burning coal with which one kindles a fresh fire, to denote the last remnant. µWv yTil]Bi : “so as not to set,” i.e., to preserve or leave name and remnant (i.e., posterity) to my husband.
This account differed, no doubt, from the case of Absalom, inasmuch as in his case no murder had taken place in the heat of a quarrel, and no avenger of blood demanded his death; so that the only resemblance was in the fact that there existed an intention to punish a murderer. But it was necessary to disguise the affair in this manner, in order that David might not detect her purpose, but might pronounce a decision out of pity for the poor widow which could be applied to his own conduct towards Absalom.
Verse 8-10. The plan succeeded. The king replied to the woman, “Go home, I will give charge concerning thee,” i.e., I will give the necessary commands that thy son may not be slain by the avenger of blood. This declaration on the part of the king was perfectly just. If the brothers had quarrelled, and one had killed the other in the heat of the quarrel, it was right that he should be defended from the avenger of blood, because it could not be assumed that there was any previous intention to murder. This declaration therefore could not be applied as yet to David’s conduct towards Absalom. But the woman consequently proceeded to say (v. 9), “My lord, O king, let the guilt be upon me and upon my father’s house, and let the king and his throne be guiltless.” aSeKi , the throne, for the government or reign. The meaning of the words is this: but if there should be anything wrong in the fact that this bloodshed is not punished, let the guilt fall upon me and my family. The king replied (v. 10), “Whosoever speaketh to thee, bring him to me; he shall not touch thee any more.” lae does not stand for `l[æ , “against thee;” but the meaning is, whoever speaks to thee any more about this, i.e., demands thy son of thee again.
Verse 11. The crafty woman was not yet satisfied with this, and sought by repeating her petition to induce the king to confirm his promise on oath, that she might bind him the more firmly. She therefore said still further: “I pray thee, let the king remember Jehovah thy God, that the avenger of blood may no more prepare destruction, and that they may not destroy my son.” The Chethib tyBir]hæ is probably a copyist’s error for hb;r; , for which the Masoretes would write hb;r; , the construct state of h/b;r]hæ a form of the inf. abs. which is not commonly used, and which may possibly have been chosen because hb;r; had become altogether an adverb (vid., Ewald, §240, e.). The context requires the inf. constr. hb;r; : that the avenger of blood may not multiply (make much) to destroy, i.e., may not add to the destruction; and har¦biyt is probably only a verbal noun used instead of the infinitive. The king immediately promised on oath that her son should not suffer the least harm.
Verse 12-14. When the woman had accomplished so much, she asked permission to speak one word more; and having obtained it, proceeded to the point she wanted to reach: “And wherefore thinkest thou such things against people of God? And because the king speaketh this word, he is as one inculpating himself, since the king does not let his own rejected one return.” µvea; , “like one who has laden himself with guilt,” is the predicate to the clause wgwrbæd; . These words of the woman were intentionally kept indefinite, rather hinting at what she wished to place before the king, than expressing it distinctly. This is more particularly applicable to the first clause, which needs the words that follow to render it intelligible, as tazO bvæj; is ambiguous; so that Dathe and Thenius are wrong in rendering it, “Why dost thou propose such things towards the people of God?” and understanding it as relating to the protection which the king was willing to extend to her and to her son. bvæj; with `l[æ does not mean to think or reflect “with regard to,” but “against” a person. Ewald is quite correct in referring the word tazO to what follows: such things, i.e., such thoughts as thou hast towards thy son, whose blood-guiltiness thou wilt not forgive. µyhila’ µ[æAl[æ , without the article, is intentionally indefinite, “against people of God,” i.e., against members of the congregation of God. “This word” refers to the decision which the king had pronounced in favour of the widow. bWv yTil]Bi , literally, in not letting him return.
In order to persuade the king to forgive, the crafty woman reminded him (v. 14) of the brevity of human life and of the mercy of God: “For we must die, and (are) as water spilt upon the ground, which is not (cannot be) gathered up, and God does not take a soul away, but thinks thoughts, that He may not thrust from Him one expelled.” Although these thoughts are intentionally expressed quite generally, their special allusion to the case in hand can easily be detected. We must all die, and when dead our life is irrevocably gone. Thou mightest soon experience this in the case of Absalom, if thou shouldst suffer him to continue in exile. God does not act thus; He does not deprive the sinner of life, but is merciful, and does not cast off for ever.
Verse 15. After these allusions to David’s treatment of Absalom, the woman returned again to her own affairs, to make the king believe that nothing but her own distress had led her to speak thus: “And now that I have come to speak this word to the king my lord, was (took place) because the people have put me in fear (sc., by their demand that I should give up my son to the avenger of blood); thy handmaid said (i.e., thought), I will indeed go to the king, perhaps the king will do his handmaid’s word,” i.e., grant her request.
Verse 16. “Yea, the king will hear, to save his handmaid out of the hand of the man that would destroy me and my son from the inheritance of God.” rv,a must be supplied before dmæv; : who is to destroy, i.e., who is seeking to destroy (vid., Gesenius, §132, 3). “The inheritance of God” was the nation of Israel (as in 1 Sam 26:19; cf. Deut 32:9).
Verse 17. “Then thine handmaid thought, may the word of my lord the king be for rest (i.e., tend to give me rest); for as the angel of God (the angel of the covenant, the mediator of the blessings of divine grace to the covenant-nation), so is my lord the king to hear good and evil (i.e., listening to every just complaint on the part of his subjects, and granting help to the oppressed), and Jehovah thy God be with thee!”
Verse 18-19. These words of the woman were so well considered and so crafty, that the king could not fail to see both what she really meant, and also that she had not come with her petition of her own accord. He therefore told her to answer the question without disguise: whether the hand of Joab was with her in all this. She replied, “Truly there is not µai ) anything to the right hand or to the left of all that my lord the king saith,” i.e., the king always hits the right point in everything that he said. “Yea, thy servant Joab, he hath commanded me, and he hath put all these words into thy servant’s mouth.” vai is not a copyist’s error, but a softer form of vye , as in Mic 6:10 (vid., Ewald, §53c, and Olshausen, Gramm. p. 425).
Verse 20. “To turn the appearance of the king (i.e., to disguise the affair in the finest way) Joab hath done this; my lord (i.e., the king), however, is wise, like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all that is (happens) upon earth.” She hoped by these flattering words to gain the king completely over.
2 SAMUEL. 14:21-33
David then promised Joab, that the request which he had presented through the medium of the woman of Tekoah should be fulfilled, and commanded him to fetch Absalom back. The Chethib `hc;[; (v. 21) is the correct reading, and the Keri `hc;[; has arisen from a misunderstanding.
Verse 22. Joab thanked the king for this, and blessed him: “To-day thy servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king, in that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant.” It is pretty evident from this, that Joab had frequently applied to David for Absalom’s return, without any attention being paid to his application. David therefore suspected that Joab had instructed the woman of Tekoah. The Chethib `db,[, is not to be exchanged for the Keri `db,[, .
Verse 23. Joab then went to Geshur (see 2 Sam 13:37), and fetched Absalom back to Jerusalem.
Verse 24. But David could not forgive Absalom altogether. He said to Joab, “Let him turn to his own house, and my face he shall not see.” This half forgiveness was an imprudent measure, and bore very bitter fruit. The further account of Absalom is introduced in vv. 25-27 with a description of his personal appearance and family affairs.
Verse 25. There was no man in all Israel so handsome as Absalom. daom] llæh; , “to much praising,” i.e., so that he was greatly praised. from the sole of the foot even to the crown of his head, there was no fault µWam , bodily blemish) in him.
Verse 26. “When he polled his head, and it took place from year to year that he polled it; for it became heavy upon him (too heavy for him), and so he polled it: they weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight.” A strong growth of hair was a sign of great manly power, and so far a proof of Absalom’s beauty. The statement as to the weight of the hair cut off, viz., two hundred shekels, is in any case a round number, and much too high, although we do not know what the difference between the royal and the sacred shekel really was. According to the sacred reckoning, two hundred shekels would be about six pounds; so that if we were to assume that the royal shekel was about half the other, the number would be still much too high. It is evident, therefore, that there is an error in the text, such as we frequently meet with in the case of numbers, though we have no means of rectifying it, as all the ancient versions contain the same number.
Verse 27. Unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter named Tamar, who was beautiful in figure. Contrary to general usage, the names of the sons are not given, in all probability for no other reason than because they died in infancy. Consequently, as Absalom had no sons, he afterwards erected a pillar to preserve his name (2 Sam 18:18). The daughter’s name is probably given as a proof of Absalom’s great affection for his sister Tamar, whom Amnon had violated. f71 Verse 28-30. After Absalom had sat for two whole years in his house at Jerusalem without seeing the king’s face, he sent to Joab that he might obtain for him the king’s full forgiveness. But as Joab would not come to him, even after he had sent for him twice, Absalom commanded his servants to set fire to one of Joab’s fields which adjoined his own and was then full of barley, for the purpose of compelling him to come, as he foresaw that Joab would not take this destruction of his property quietly, but would come to him to complain. dy; lae , literally “at my hand,” i.e., by the side of my field or property. The Chethib h;ytiyxiwOhw] (“come, I will set it on fire”) is a Hiphil formation, according to verbs wp , for which the Keri has txæy; , the ordinary Hiphil form of txæy; in the second person plural, “go and set it one fire.” Verse 31-33. When Joab came to Absalom’s house in consequence of this, and complained of it, Absalom said to him, “See, I have sent to thee, to say to thee, Come hither, and I will send thee to the king, to say to him, Wherefore have I come from Geshur? it were better for me that I were there still: and now I will see the king’s face; and if there is any iniquity in me, let him put me to death.” This half forgiving was really worse than no forgiveness at all. Absalom might indeed very properly desire to be punished according to the law, if the king could not or might not forgive him; although the manner in which he sought to obtain forgiveness by force manifested an evident spirit of defiance, by which, with the well-known mildness of David’s temper, he hoped to attain his object, and in fact did attain it. For (v. 33) when Joab went to the king, and announced this to him, the king sent for Absalom, and kissed him, as a sign of his restoration to favour. Nothing was said by Absalom about forgiveness; for his falling down before the king when he came into his presence, was nothing more than the ordinary manifestation of reverence with which a subject in the East approaches his king.
ABSALOM’S REBELLION AND DAVID’S FLIGHT.
After this restoration to favour, Absalom soon began to aspire to the throne, setting up a princely court, and endeavouring to turn the hearts of the people towards himself, by addressing in a friendly manner any who came to seek redress from the king in matters in dispute, and by saying things adapted to throw suspicion upon his father’s rule (vv. 1-6). When he had succeeded in this, he asked permission from the king to take a journey to Hebron, under the pretence of wanting to fulfil a vow which he had made during his banishment; and when once there, he soon proceeded with his rebellious intentions (vv. 7-12). As soon as David heard of it, he determined to fly from Jerusalem, and crossed the Kidron with his faithful adherents. Having sent the priests with the ark of the covenant back to the city, he went up to the Mount of Olives, amidst the loud lamentations of the people. Hushai, who came to meet him, he sent to the city, to frustrate the counsel of Ahithophel, who was one of the conspirators, and to send information to him of what was going forward (vv. 13-37). When he reached the top, Ziba, Mephibosheth’s servant, came to meet him with provisions and succour (2 Sam 16:1-4) whilst Shimei, a relation of the house of Saul, followed him with curses and stones (vv. 5-14). With this rebellion the calamities which Nathan had predicted to David on account of his sin with Bathsheba began to burst upon him in all their fulness. The success of the rebellion itself may be accounted for, from the fact that the consciousness of his own fault not only made David weak towards his sons, but produced a want of firmness in his resolutions; whilst the imperfections and defects in the internal administration of the kingdom, when the time of the brilliant victories was past, became more and more perceptible to the people, and furnished occasion for dissatisfaction with his government, which Absalom was skilful enough to bend to his own purposes. During the time that this rebellion was in progress, David poured out his lamentations to the Lord (in Ps 41 and 55) as to the faithlessness of his most confidential councillors, and prayed for the judgment of retribution upon the conduct of this wicked band. After it had broken out, he uttered his longings to return to the sanctuary at Jerusalem, and his firm confidence that he should be delivered out of his distresses and reinstated in his kingdom, first of all in Ps 3 and 63 during his flight in the desert of Judah, and in Ps 61 and 62 during his stay in the land to the east of the Jordan.
2 SAMUEL. 15:1-6
Verse 1-3. Absalom seeks to secure the people’s favour.-V. 1. Soon afterwards (this seems to be the meaning of ˆKe rjæaæ as distinguished from ˆKe rjæaæ ; cf. 2 Sam 3:28) Absalom set up a carriage (i.e., a state-carriage; cf. 1 Sam 8:11) and horses, and fifty men as runners before him, i.e., to run before him when he drove out, and attract the attention of the people by a display of princely pomp, as Adonijah afterwards did (1 Kings 1:5). He then went early in the morning to the side of the road to the gate of the palace, and called out to every one who was about to go to the king “for judgment,” i.e., seek justice in connection with any matter in dispute, and asked him, “Of what city art thou?” and also, as we may see from the reply in v. 3, inquired into his feelings towards the king, and then said, “Thy matters are good and right, but there is no hearer for thee with the king.” [mæv; signifies the judicial officer, who heard complainants and examined into their different causes, for the purpose of laying them before the king for settlement. Of course the king himself could not give a hearing to every complainant, and make a personal investigation of his cause; nor could his judges procure justice for every complainant, however justly they might act, though it is possible that they may not always have performed their duty conscientiously.
Verse 4. Absalom also said, “Oh that I might be judge in the land, and every one who had a cause might come before me; I would procure him justice!” µWc ymi is a wish: “who might (i.e., oh that one might) appoint me judge,” an analogous expression to ˆtæn; ymi (vid., Gesenius, §136, 1, and Ewald, §329, c.). `l[æ placed before awOB for the sake of emphasis, may be explained from the fact that a judge sat, so that the person who stood before him rose above him (comp. Ex 18:13 with Gen 18:8). qyDix]hi , to speak justly, or help to justice.
Verse 5. And when any one came near to him to prostrate himself before him, he took him by the hand and kissed him. It was by conduct of this kind that Agamemnon is said to have secured the command of the Grecian army (Euripid. Iphig. Aul. v. 337ff.).
Verse 6. Thus Absalom stole the heart of the men of Israel. ble bNeGi does not mean to deceive or cheat, like ble bnæG; in the Kal in Gen 31:20, but to steal the heart, i.e., to bring a person over to his side secretly and by stratagem.
2 SAMUEL. 15:7-8
Absalom’s rebellion.
After the lapse of forty (?) years Absalom said to the king, “Pray I will go (i.e., pray allow me to go) and perform a vow in Hebron which I vowed to the Lord during my stay at Geshur” (v. 8). The number forty is altogether unsuitable, as it cannot possibly be understood either as relating to the age of Absalom or to the year of David’s reign: for Absalom was born at Hebron after David had begun to reign, and David only reigned forty years and a half in all, and Absalom’s rebellion certainly did not take place in the last few weeks of his reign. It is quite as inappropriate to assume, as the terminus a quo of the forty years, either the commencement of Saul’s reign, as several of the Rabbins have done, as well as the author of the marginal note in Cod. 380 of De Rossi ( lwav twklml ), or the anointing of David at Bethlehem, as Luther (in the marginal note) and Lightfoot do; for the word “after” evidently refers to some event in the life of Absalom, to which allusion has previously been made, namely, either to the time of his reconciliation with David (2 Sam 14:33), or (what is not so probable) to the period of his return from Geshur to Jerusalem (2 Sam 14:23).
Consequently the reading adopted by the Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate, also by Theodoret and others, viz., “four years,” must certainly be the correct one, and not “forty days,” which we find in Codd. 70 and 96 in Kennicott, since forty days would be far too short a time for maturing the rebellion. It is true, that with the reading [Bær]aæ we should expect, as a rule, the plural hn,v; . At the same time, the numbers from two to ten are sometimes construed with a singular noun (e.g., 2 Kings 22:1; cf. Gesenius, §120, 2).
The pretended vow was, that if Jehovah would bring him back to Jerusalem, he would serve Jehovah. hwO;hy]Ata, dbæ[; , “to do a service to Jehovah,” can only mean to offer a sacrifice, which is the explanation given by Josephus. The Chethib bWv is not the infinitive, but the imperfect Hiphil: si reduxerit, reduxerit me, which is employed in an unusual manner instead of the inf. absol., for the sake of emphasis. The Keri bWv would have to be taken as an adverb “again;” but this is quite unnecessary.
2 SAMUEL. 15:9
The king consented, and Absalom went to Hebron. Absalom had selected this city, probably assigning as the reason that he was born there, but really because his father David had been made king there, and also possibly because there may have been many persons there who had been displeased by the removal of the court to Jerusalem.
2 SAMUEL. 15:10-11
When Absalom went to Hebron, he sent spies into all the tribes of Israel to say, “When ye hear the sound of the trumpet, say, Absalom has become king in Hebron.” We must suppose the sending the spies to have been contemporaneous with the removal of Absalom to Hebron, so that jlæv; is used quite regularly, and there is no reason for translating it as a pluperfect.
The messengers sent out are called “spies,” because they were first of all to ascertain the feelings of the people in the different tribes, and were only to execute their commission in places where they could reckon upon support.
The conspiracy had hitherto been kept very secret, as we may see from the statement in v. 11: “With Absalom there had gone two hundred men out of Jerusalem, invited (to the sacrificial festival), and going in their simplicity, who knew nothing at all of the affair.” ( rb;D;AlK; al : nothing at all.)
2 SAMUEL. 15:12
Moreover, Absalom sent for Ahithophel, David’s councillor, to come from his own town Giloh, when he offered the sacrifices. The unusual construction of tae jlæv; with `ry[i may be explained from the pregnant character of the expression: he sent and bade come, i.e., he summoned Ahithophel out of his city. Giloh, Ahithophel’s home, was upon the mountains of Judah, to the south or south-west of Hebron (see at Josh 15:51). Ahithophel had no doubt been previously initiated into Absalom’s plans, and had probably gone to his native city, merely that he might come to him with the greater ease; since his general place of abode, as king’s councillor, must have been in Jerusalem. “And the conspiracy became strong; for the people multiplied continually with Absalom” (the latter is a circumstantial clause). These words give a condensed summary of the result of the enterprise.
2 SAMUEL. 15:13-14
David’s flight from Jerusalem.
Vv. 13, 14. When this intelligence reached David, “The heart of the men of Israel is after Absalom” rjæaæ hy;h; , as in 2 Sam 2:10, to be attached to a person as king; see at 1 Sam 12:14), he said to his servants that were with him in Jerusalem, “Arise, let us flee, for there will be no escape for us from Absalom! Make speed to depart, lest he overtake us suddenly, and drive the calamity (the judgment threatened in 2 Sam 12:10-11) over us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword.” David was perhaps afraid that Jerusalem might fall into Absalom’s power through treachery, and therefore resolved to fly as speedily as possible, not only in order to prevent a terrible massacre, but also to give his own faithful adherents time to assemble.
2 SAMUEL. 15:15-16
As his servants declared themselves ready to follow him, the king went out of the city with all his family in his train (lit. at his feet, as in Judg 4:10,15, etc.), but left ten concubines behind to keep the palace.
2 SAMUEL. 15:17
When outside the city the king and all the people in his suite (i.e., the royal family and their servants) halted at “the house of the distance.” qj;r]m, is probably a proper name given to a house in the neighbourhood of the city and on the road to Jericho, which was called “the farthest house,” viz., from the city.
2 SAMUEL. 15:18
And all his servants, i.e., his state officers and attendants, went along by his side, and the whole body-guard (the Crethi and Plethi: see at 2 Sam 8:18); and all the Gathites, namely the six hundred men who had come in his train from Gath, went along in front of the king. David directed the fugitives to all into rank, the servants going by his side, and the body-guard and the six hundred old companions in arms, who probably also formed a kind of body-guard, marching in front. The verb `rbæ[; (passed on) cannot be understood as signifying to file past on account of its connection with `alyaadow (beside him, or by his side). The expression Gittim is strange, as we cannot possibly think of actual Gathites or Philistines from Gath. The apposition (the six hundred men, etc.) shows clearly enough that the six hundred old companions in arms are intended, the men who gathered round David on his flight from Saul and emigrated with him to Gath (1 Sam 27:2-3), who afterwards lived with him in Ziklag (1 Sam 27:8; 29:2; 30:1,9), and eventually followed him to Hebron and Jerusalem (2 Sam 2:3; 5:6). In all probability they formed a separate company of well-tried veterans or a kind of body-guard in Jerusalem, and were commonly known as Gathites. f
72 2 SAMUEL. 15:19
A military commander named Ittai, who had emigrated from Gath and come over to David not long before, also accompanied the king from the city. It is evident from 2 Sam 18:2, where Ittai is said to have commanded a third part of the army sent against Absalom, and to have been placed on an equality with Joab and Abishai the most experienced generals, that Ittai was a Philistian general who had entered David’s service. The reason for his going over to David is not known. According to v. 22 of this chapter, Ittai did not come alone, but brought all his family with him (taph: the little ones). The opinion expressed by Thenius, that he had come to Jerusalem as a hostage, is merely founded upon a false interpretation of the last two clauses of the verse before us. David said to Ittai, “Wherefore goest thou also with us? return and stay with the king; for thou art a stranger, and also emigrating to thy place.” There is no irony in the words “stay with the king,” as Thenius and Clericus suppose (viz., “with the man who behaves as if he were king”); nor is there an acknowledgment of Absalom as king, which certainly could never have emanated from David. The words contain nothing more than the simple though: Do you remain with whoever is or shall be king, since there is no necessity for you as a stranger to take sides at all.
This is the explanation given by Seb. Schmidt: “It is not your place to decide this context as to who ought to be king; but you may remain quiet and see whom God shall appoint as king, and whether it be I or Absalom, you can serve the one that God shall choose.” This is the only way in which we can explain the reason assigned for the admonition, viz., “Thou art a stranger,” and not an Israelite. There is some difficulty connected with the following words (rendered in the Eng. version “and also an exile”). In the Septuagint and Vulgate they are rendered kai> oJ>ti metw>khsav su> ek tou> to>pou sou , et egressus es de loco tuo (and thou hast gone out from thine own place); but in adopting this rendering the translators have not only passed over the µGæ (also), but have taken µwOqm; for µwOqm; .
Nevertheless Thenius proposes to bring the text into harmony with these versions for the purpose of bringing out the meaning, “and moreover thou art one carried away from his own home.” But this is decidedly a mistake; for David would never have made a Philistine-who had just before been carried away from his own home, or, as Thenius understands it, who had been brought to Jerusalem as a hostage-the commander of a third of his army. The meaning is rather the following: “And thou hast still no fatherland,” i.e., thou art still wandering about through the earth like an exile from his country: wherever thou findest a place, and art allowed to settle, there only canst thou dwell.
2 SAMUEL. 15:20
“Thy coming is yesterday (from yesterday), and should I disturb thee today to go with us, when I am going just where I go?” i.e., wherever my way may lie (I go I know not whither; Chald.: cf. 1 Sam 23:13). The Chethib ‘anuw`akaa is a copyist’s error. The thought requires the Hiphil [æWn (Keri), as [æWn in the Kal has the intransitive meaning, to totter, sway about, or move hither and thither. “Return and take thy brethren back; grace and truth be with thee.” It is evidently more in accordance with the train of thought to separate `µ[i from the previous clause and connect it with tm,a, dseje , though this is opposed to the accents, than to adopt the adverbial interpretation, “take back thy brethren with thee in grace and truth,” as Maurer proposes. (For the thought itself, see Prov 3:3). The reference is to the grace and truth (faithfulness) of God, which David desired that Ittai should receive upon his way. In the Septuagint and Vulgate the passage is paraphrased thus: “Jehovah show thee grace and truth,” after 2 Sam 2:6; but it by no means follows from this that ËM][i hc,[\yæ hwO;hy] has fallen out of the Hebrew text.
2 SAMUEL. 15:21
But Ittai replied with a solemn oath, “Assuredly at the place where my lord the king shall be (stay), whether for death or life, there will thy servant be.” µai yKi means “only,” as in Gen 40:14, Job. 42:8; here, in a declaration on oath, it is equivalent to assuredly (vid., Ewald, §356, b.). The Chethib is therefore correct, and the erasure of µai in the Keri is a bad emendation.
The yKi in the apodosis is either an emphatic declaration, yea, or like oJ>ti merely introduces a distinct assertion.
2 SAMUEL. 15:22-29
After this assurance of his devotedness, David let Ittai do as he pleased. `rbæ[; Ëlæy; , “go and pass on.” `rbæ[; does not mean to pass by, but to go forward. Thus Ittai and his men and all his family that was with him went forward with the king. By “the little ones” (taph) we are to understand a man’s whole family, as in many other instances (see at Ex 12:37).
Verse 22-23. The king crosses the Kidron, and sends the priests back with the ark to Jerusalem. All the land (as in 1 Sam 14:25) wept aloud when all the people went forward; and the king went over the brook Kidron, and all the people went over in the direction of (lit. in the face of) the way to the desert. The brook Kidron is a winter torrent, i.e., a mountain torrent which only flows during the heavy rains of winter ( cei>marroJv tou> Kedrw>n , John 18:1). It is on the eastern side of Jerusalem, between the city and the Mount of Olives, and derives its name from the appearance of the water when rendered muddy through the melting of the snow (cf. Job 6:16). In summer it is nothing more than a dry channel in the valley of Jehoshaphat (see Robinson, Pal. i. 396, and v. Raumer, Pal. p. 309, note 81). “The wilderness” (midbar) is the northern part of the desert of Judah, through which the road to Jericho and the Jordan lay.
Verse 24. Zadok the priest and all the Levites (who were in Jerusalem) left the city with the fugitive king, bearing the ark of the covenant: “And they set down the ark of God, and Abiathar came up, till all the people had come completely over from the city.” `hl;[; , ane>bh , ascendit (LXX, Vulg.), may probably be accounted for from the fact that Abiathar did not come to join the fugitives till the procession halted at the Mount of Olives; so that `hl;[; , like anabai>nein , merely refers to his actually going up, and `hl;[; affirms that Abiathar joined them until all the people from the city had arrived. The rendering proposed by Michaelis and Böttcher (“he offered sacrifices”) is precluded by the fact that `hl;[; never means to sacrifice when written without `hl;[o , or unless the context points distinctly to sacrifices, as in 2 Sam 24:22; 1 Sam 2:28. The ark of the covenant was put down, because those who went out with the king made a halt, to give the people who were still coming time to join the procession.
Verse 25-26. Then the king said to Zadok, “Take back the ark of God into the city! If I find favour in the eyes of Jehovah, He will bring me back and let me see Him (i.e., himself: the reference is to God) and His dwelling (i.e., the ark of the covenant as the throne of the divine glory in the tent that had been set up for it). But if He thus say, I have not delight in thee; behold, here am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good to Him.” Thus David put his fate in believing confidence into the hand of the Lord, because he felt that it was the Lord who was chastising him for his sons through this rebellion.
Verse 27-28. He also said still further to Zadok, “Thou seer! return into the city in peace.” hT;aæ ha;r; , with ha interrog., does not yield any appropriate sense, as ha cannot stand for alo here, simply because it does not relate to a thing which the person addressed could not deny.
Consequently the word must be pointed thus, ha;r; (with the article), and rendered as a vocative, as it has been by Jerome and Luther. ha;r; , seer, is equivalent to prophet. He applies this epithet to Zadok, as the high priest who received divine revelations by means of the Urim. The meaning is, Thou Zadok art equal to a prophet; therefore thy proper place is in Jerusalem (O. v. Gerlach). Zadok was to stand as it were upon the watch there with Abiathar, and the sons of both to observe the events that occurred, and send him word through their sons into the plain of the Jordan. “Behold, I will tarry by the ferries of the desert, till a word comes from you to show me,” sc., what has taken place, or how the things shape themselves in Jerusalem. Instead of `hr;b][, , the earlier translators as well as the Masoretes adopted the reading `bre[ , “in the steppes of the desert.”
The allusion in this case would be to the steppes of Jericho (2 Kings 25:5).
But Böttcher has very properly defended the Chethib on the strength of Sam 17:16, where the Keri has `bre[ again, though `bre[ is the true reading (cf. 2 Sam 19:19). The “ferries of the desert” are the places where the Jordan could be crossed, the fords of the Jordan (Josh 2:7; Judg 3:28).
Verse 29. Zadok and Abiathar then returned to the city with the ark of God.
2 SAMUEL. 15:30-31
Ahithophel and Hushai.
Verse 30, 31. When David was going by the height of the olive-trees, i.e., the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered, and barefooted, as a sign of grief and mourning (see Est 6:12; Ezek 24:17), and with the people who accompanied him also mourning, he received intelligence that Ahithophel (see at v. 12) was with Absalom, and among the conspirators. dgæn; rwiD; gives no sense; for David cannot be the subject, because the next clause, “and David said,” etc., contains most distinctly an expression of David’s on receiving some information. Thenius would therefore alter dgæn; into the Hophal dgæn; , whilst Ewald (§131, a) would change it into hugiyd, an unusual form of the Hophal, “David was informed,” according to the construction of the Hiphil with the accusative.
But although this construction of the Hiphil is placed beyond all doubt by Job 31:37; 26:4, and Ezek 43:10, the Hiphil is construed as a rule, as the Hophal always is, with l] of the person who receives information.
Consequently rwiD; must be altered into rwiD; , and dgæn; taken as impersonal, “they announced to David.” Upon receipt of this intelligence David prayed to the Lord, that He would “turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness,” make it appear as folly, i.e., frustrate it-a prayer which God answered (vid., 2 Sam 17:1ff.).
2 SAMUEL. 15:32-34
On David’s arrival at the height where people were accustomed to worship, i.e., upon the top of the Mount of Olives, the Archite Hushai came to meet him with his clothes rent and earth upon his head, that is to say, in the deepest mourning (see 1 Sam 4:12). It is evident from the words wgw hw,j\Tæv]yiAwv,a\ that there was a place of worship upon the top of the Mount of Olives, probably a bamah, such as continued to exist in different places throughout the land, even after the building of the temple.
According to v. 37; 2 Sam 16:16, and 1 Chron 27:33, Hushai was h[,re , a friend of David, i.e., one of his privy councillors. yKir]aæ (the Archite), if we may judge from Josh 16:2, was the name of a family whose possessions were upon the southern boundary of the tribe of Ephraim, between Bethel and Ataroth. Hushai was probably a very old man, as David said to him (vv. 33, 34), “If thou goest with me, thou wilt be a burden to me. But if thou returnest to the city and offerest Absalom thy services, thou canst bring for me the counsel of Ahithophel to nought. If thou sayest to Absalom, I will be thy servant, O king; servant of thy father (i.e., as regards this) I was that of old, but now I am thy servant.” The w before ynæa introduces the apodosis both times (vid., Ewald, §348, a.).
2 SAMUEL. 15:35-36
David then commissioned him to communicate to the priests Zadok and Abiathar all that he should hear of the king’s house, and send word to him through their sons.
2 SAMUEL. 15:37
So Hushai went into the city when Absalom came to Jerusalem. The w¦ before the second clause, followed by the imperfect awOB, indicates contemporaneous occurrence (vid., Ewald, §346, b.).
2 SAMUEL. 16:1-4
Ziba’s faithless conduct towards Mephibosheth.
Verse 1. When David had gone a little over the height (of the Mount of Olives: varo points back to 2 Sam 15:32), Mephibosheth’s servant Ziba came to meet him, with a couple of asses saddled, and laden with two hundred loaves, a hundred raisin-cakes, a hundred date or fig-cakes, and a skin of wine. The word qiyts corresponds to the Greek opw>ra , as the LXX have rendered it in Jer 40:10,12, and is used to signify summer fruits, both here and in Amos 8:1 (Symm.). The early translators rendered it lumps of figs in the present passage (pala’thai; cf. Ges. Thes. p. 1209). The Septuagint only has eJkato>n foi>nikev . The latter is certainly the more correct, as the dried lumps of figs or fig-cakes were called hl;beD] (1 Sam 25:18); and even at the present day ripe dates, pressed together in lumps like cakes, are used in journeys through the desert, as a satisfying and refreshing food (vid., Winer, bibl. Realwörterbuch, i. 253).
Verse 2. When the king asked him, “What are these for thee?” i.e., what art thou going to do with them? Ziba replied, “The asses are for the king’s family to ride upon (to ride upon in turn), the bread and summer fruits for the young men (the king’s servants) to eat, and the wine for those that are faint in the desert to drink” (see at 2 Sam 15:23). The Chethib wlhlchm is evidently a copyist’s error for µj,l, .
Verse 3. To the further question put by the king, “Where is thy lord (Mephibosheth)? Ziba replied, “Behold, he sits (is staying) in Jerusalem; for he said, To-day will the house of Israel restore the kingship (government) of my father.” The “kingship of my father,” inasmuch as the throne would have passed to Jonathan if he had outlived Saul. It is obvious enough, apart altogether from 2 Sam 19:25ff., the Ziba was calumniating his master Mephibosheth, in the hope of getting possession of the lands that he was farming for him. A cripple like Mephibosheth, lame in both feet, who had never put in any claim to the throne before, could not possibly have got the idea now that the people of Israel, who had just chosen Absalom as king, would give the throne of Saul to such a cripple as he was. It is true that Ziba’s calumny was very improbable; nevertheless, in the general confusion of affairs, it was not altogether an inconceivable thing that the oppressed party of Saul might avail themselves of this opportunity to make an attempt to restore the power of that house, which many greatly preferred to that of David, under the name of Mephibosheth.
Verse 4. And in the excited state in which David then was, he was weak enough to give credence to Ziba’s words, and to commit the injustice of promising the calumniator all that belonged to Mephibosheth-a promise for which he most politely thanked him. hj;v; , “I bow myself,” equivalent to, I lay myself at thy feet. “May I find favour in the eyes of my lord the king!” i.e., may the king grant me his favour (vid., 1 Sam 1:18).
2 SAMUEL. 16:5-6
Shimei’s cursing.
Verse. 5, 6. When the king had come to Bahurim, on the other side of the Mount of Olives, but not far off (see at 2 Sam 3:16), there came out of that place a man of the family of the house of Saul, i.e., a distant relation of Saul, cursing him; and he pelted David and all his servants with stones, although all the people and all the heroes (the household troops and bodyguard: 2 Sam 15:17-18) were (marking) on the right and left of the king.
The words “all the people,” etc., are a circumstantial clause.
2 SAMUEL. 16:7-8
Shimei cursed thus: “Out, out (away, away), thou man of blood, and worthless man! Jehovah hath repaid thee (now) for all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast become king, and hath given the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son. Behold, now thou art in thy misfortune, for thou art a man of blood.” µD; vyai , a man of drops of blood, i.e., one who has shed blood or committed murder. What Shimei meant by “all the blood of the house of Saul,” which David had shed, and because of which he was a man of blood, it is impossible to determine with certainty. He may possibly have attributed to David the murder of Ishbosheth and Abner, notwithstanding the fact that David was innocent of the death of both (see 2 Sam 3:27ff., and 4, 6ff.). By “in whose stead thou hast reigned,” he meant whose throne thou hast forcibly usurped; and by [ræ hNehi , “it is for this that punishment hat overtaken thee now.”
2 SAMUEL. 16:9-10
Abishai wanted to put an end to this cursing (on the expression “dead dog,” see 2 Sam 9:8). “Let me go,” said he to David, “and take away his head,” i.e., chop off his head. But David replied, “What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah?” Joab probably joined with Abishai. The formula “what to me and you?” signifies that a person did not wish to have anything in common with the feelings and views of another (cf. 1 Kings 17:18; Josh 22:24; and ti> emoi> kai> soi> , John 2:4. For the thing itself, comp. Luke 9:52-56). “If he curses, and if Jehovah hath said to him, Curse David, who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so?” For hy yKi llæq; yKi (Chethib), the Masoretes give us the Keri, hy yKi llæq; hKo , “so let him curse, for Jehovah,” etc. This thought lies at the foundation of the rendering adopted by the LXX, who have inserted, by way of explanation, kai> a>fete auto>n kai> : so let him go, and so may he curse. The Vulgate is just the same: dimittite eum ut maledicat. This interpolation is taken from v. 11, and, like the Keri, is nothing more than a conjecture, which was adopted simply because yKi was taken as a causal particle, and then offence was taken at yKi . But yKi signifies if, quando, in this passage, and the w before the following ymi introduces the apodosis.
2 SAMUEL. 16:11-12
David said still further to Abishai and all his servants: “Behold, my own son seeketh after my life; how much more then the Benjaminite! (who belongs to a hostile race.) Let him curse, for Jehovah hath bidden him.
Perhaps Jehovah will look upon my guilt, and Jehovah will requite me good for the curse which befals me this day.” yniwO[\Bæ (Chethib) has been altered by the Masoretes into `yni[‘ , “upon mine eye,” probably in the sense of “upon my tears;” and ytil;l]qi into hl;l;q -from pure misapprehension. yniwO[\Bæ does not mean “upon my misery,” for `ˆwO[; never has this meaning, but upon the guilt which really belongs to me, in contrast with that with which Shimei charges me; and ytil;l]qi is the curse that has come upon me.
Although David had committed no murder upon the house of Saul, and therefore Shimei’s cursing was nothing but malicious blasphemy, he felt that it came upon him because of his sins, though not for the sin imputed to him. He therefore forbade their putting the blasphemer to death, and said Jehovah had commanded him to curse; regarding the cursing as the consequence of the wrath of God that was bringing him low (comp. the remarks on 1 Sam 26:19). But this consciousness of guilt also excited the assurance that the Lord would look upon his sin. When God looks upon the guilt of a humble sinner, He will also, as a just and merciful God, avert the evil, and change the suffering into a blessing. David founded upon this the hope, that the Lord would repay him with good for the curse with which Shimei was pursuing him now.
2 SAMUEL. 16:13
“So David went with his men on the way, whilst Shimei went on the slope of the hill opposite to him, cursing continually, and pelted with stones over against him, and with earth.” `hM;[u means over against him in both instances. It is not expressly stated that Shimei threw stones and earth at David, but this is implied in the context.
2 SAMUEL. 16:14
The king came with his train, pursued in this manner, to Ayephim, and refreshed himself there. The context requires that Ayephim should be taken as the name of a place. If it were an appellative, signifying weary, there would be no information as to the place to which David came, and to which the word µv; (there) distinctly refers. Bahurim cannot be the place alluded to, for the simple reason that, according to 2 Sam 17:18, the place where David rested was a considerable distance beyond Bahurim, towards the Jordan, as we may see from the fact that it is stated there that the priests’ sons, who were sent to carry information to David of what was occurring in Jerusalem, hid themselves in a well at Bahurim from the officers who were following them, and consequently had to go still further in order to convey the news to David; so that it is out of the question to supply this name from v. 5. It is true that we never meet with the name Ayephim again; but this applies to many other places whose existence is not called in question. f73 ABSALOM’S ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM.
ADVICE OF AHITHOPHEL AND HUSHAI.
2 SAMUEL. 16:15-16
When Absalom and “all the people, the men of Israel,” i.e., the people who had joined him out of all the tribes of Israel (2 Sam 15:10), came to Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him, Hushai the Archite also came and greeted him warmly as king, by exclaiming again and again, “Long live the king!”
2 SAMUEL. 16:17-19
Absalom, apparently astonished at this, said to him, “Is this thy love to thy friend (David)? why wentest thou not with thy friend?” But Hushai replied, “No; but whom Jehovah hath chosen, and this people (i.e., the people who had entered Jerusalem with Absalom), and all the men of Israel (i.e., the whole nation), to him alo for wOl] , Keri) will I belong, and will remain with him. And again, whom should I serve? Is it not before his son? As I have served thy father, so will I be before thee” (i.e., serve thee). With great craftiness, Hushai declared at the very outset that Jehovah had chosen Absalom-at least he could not come to any other conclusion, judging from the results. And under such circumstances he could not have any doubt as to whom it was his duty to serve. As he had formerly served the father, so now he would serve his son Absalom. In this way he succeeded in completely deceiving Absalom, so that he placed unbounded confidence in him.
2 SAMUEL. 16:20
After taking possession of the capital of the kingdom, the next thing to do was to form the resolution to take and keep the throne. Absalom therefore turned to Ahithophel, and said, “Give ye counsel what we are to do.” The plural bhæy; (give ye) may be explained on the supposition that the other persons present were addressed as well as Ahithophel, as being capable of giving advice.
2 SAMUEL. 16:21
Ahithophel gave the following counsel: “Go to thy father’s concubines, whom he hath left behind to keep the house (i.e., lie with them: for lae awOB, compare 2 Sam 3:7, etc.); so will all Israel hear that thou hast made thyself stinking with thy father, and the hands of all those who are with thee will strengthen themselves.” This advice was sagacious enough. Lying with the king’s concubines was an appropriation of the royal harem, and, as such, a complete usurpation of the throne (see at 2 Sam 3:7), which would render any reconciliation between Absalom and his father utterly impossible, and therefore would of necessity instigate the followers of Absalom to maintain his cause with all the greater firmness. This was what Ahithophel hoped to attain through his advice. For unless the breach was too great to be healed, with the affection of David towards his sons, which might in reality be called weakness, it was always a possible thing that he should forgive Absalom; and in that case Ahithophel would be the one to suffer. But under the superintendence of God this advice of Ahithophel was to effect the fulfilment, without any such intention on his part, of the threat held over David in 2 Sam 12:8.
2 SAMUEL. 16:22-23
Absalom had a tent put up on the roof of the king’s palace, that his going in to the concubines might be done publicly in the sight of all Israel. For (as the historian adds in v. 23 by way of explanation) the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was like a divine oracle both with David and with Absalom. The words from `hx;[e to µhe are placed at the commencement absolutely: “and (as for) the counsel of Ahithophel,...as if one inquired the word of God, so was every counsel of Ahithophel.” The Masoretes have supplied vyai laæv; correct so far as the sense is concerned, but it is quite unnecessary, as laæv; may be taken impersonally. µyhila’ rb;d; laæv; is to be explained from the µyhila’ laæv;
2 SAMUEL. 17:1-3
Ahithophel’s advice frustrated by Hushai.
Verse 1-3. Ahithophel said still further to Absalom, “I will choose out twelve thousand men, and arise, and pursue after David this night; and fall upon him when he is exhausted and weak, and fill him with alarm: so shall all the people that are with him flee; and I will smite the king alone (when he is alone), and will bring back all the people to thee.” lyilæ the night following the day of David’s flight and Absalom’s entrance into Jerusalem, as we may see very clearly from v. 16. This advice was powerful army, he might possibly have been defeated. bWv , to bring back, may be explained on the supposition that Ahithophel regarded Absalom as king, and those who had fled with David as rebels, who were to be brought back under Absalom’s sceptre. The following words, wgwlKo bWv , “as the return of the whole (the whole nation) is the man,” i.e., the return of all is dependent upon David, for whom thou liest in wait, are somewhat difficult, though the meaning of Ahithophel is evident enough from what precedes: viz., if he is beaten, they will all come over to thee; “the whole nation will be at peace” µwOlv; is used adverbially). f
74 2 SAMUEL. 17:4-5
Although this advice pleased Absalom and all the elders of Israel (present), Absalom sent for Hushai the Archite to hear his opinion. gam-huw’ serves to strengthen the suffix in hp, (cf. Ewald, §311, a.).
2 SAMUEL. 17:6-9
In answer to Absalom’s inquiry, “Shall we do his word (i.e., follow Ahithophel’s advice) or not?” Hushai said, “The advice is not good that Ahithophel hath given this time;” and then still further explained (v. 8): “Thou knowest thy father and his men, that they are heroes, and of a ferocious disposition (like Judg 18:25), like a bear in the field robbed of her young; and thy father is a man of war, and will not pass the night with the people,” sc., so that it would be possible to come upon him unawares and slay him ˆWl with tae , as in Job 19:4). The idea that ˆWl is to be taken as a Hiphil, in the sense of “and does not let the people lodge for the night” (Böttcher), is quite untenable, since it does not tally with v. 9, “Behold, he is hid now in one of the pits, or one of the places tjæpæ are hiding-places that are strong by nature, µwOqm; are places rendered strong by art); and it comes to pass that he falls upon them at the first: so will men hear it, and say a defeat has taken place among the people that follow Absalom.” lpæn; with b] , as in Josh 11:7, to fall upon a person. The subject to lpæn; is David, but it is not mentioned as being evident enough from the context; so that there is no necessity for the emendation lpæn; , which Thenius proposes. The suffix µyrit;a\ relates to those making the attack, the hosts of Absalom.
Thenius has given the meaning correctly: “The report that David has made an attack will be sufficient to give rise to the belief that our men have sustained a severe defeat.”
2 SAMUEL. 17:10
“And even if he (the hearer, v. 9) be a brave man, who has a lion’s heart (lion-like courage), he will be thrown into despair; for all Israel knows that thy father is a hero, and brave men (are those) who are with him.”
2 SAMUEL. 17:11
“Yea yKi , profecto), I advise: let all Israel be gathered round thee from Dan to Beersheba (see at Judg 20:1), numerous as the sand by the sea; and thou thyself go into the war.” µynip; , thy person, i.e., thou thyself be marching.
The plural Ëlæy; is used because of µynip; . For b] Ëlæy; , to enter into anything, see 1 Kings 19:4; Isa 45:16; 46:2. br;q] , war, the early translators have confounded with br,q, .
2 SAMUEL. 17:12
“And come we to him (if we come upon him) in one of the places where he is found, we let ourselves down upon him, as the dew falls upon the earth; and of him and all the men with him there will not be one left.” Wnj]næ might be a contraction of Wnj]næa , as in Gen 42:11; Ex 16:7-8, etc.: “so we upon him,” equivalent to “so shall we come upon him.” But if this were the meaning, we should expect wyl;[; Wnyih;w] . It is more correct, therefore, to take Wnj]næ as the first pers. perf. of jæWn , as the early translators have done: so do we let ourselves down upon him. (For jæWn as applied to an army encamping, see Isa 7:2,19; and as denoting the swarming of flies and grasshoppers, Isa 7:19 and Ex 10:14.) In Ahithophel’s opinion, it would be possible with a very small army to crush David and his little band, however brave his followers might be, and in fact to annihilate them altogether.
2 SAMUEL. 17:13
“And if he draw back into a city, all Israel lays ropes to that city, and we drag it to the brook, till there is not even a little stone found there.” `adhanachal: inasmuch as fortified cities were generally built upon mountains. rwOrx] signifies a little stone, according to the ancient versions. Hushai speaks in hyperboles of the irresistible power which the whole nation would put forth when summoned together for battle, in order to make his advice appear the more plausible.
2 SAMUEL. 17:14
And he secured his end. Absalom and all Israel thought his advice better than that of Ahithophel; for it was intended to commend itself to Absalom and his supporters. “The counsel appeared safe; at the same time it was full of a certain kind of boasting, which pleased the younger men” (Clericus).
All that Hushai had said about the bravery and heroism of David and his followers, was well founded. The deception lay in the assumption that all the people from Dan to Beersheba would crowd around Absalom as one man; whereas it might easily be foreseen, that after the first excitement of the revolution was over, and great calmness ensued, a large part of the nation and army would gather round David. But such a possibility as this never entered the minds of Absalom and his supporters. It was in this that the divine sentence referred to in v. 14b was seen: “The Lord had commanded (appointed) it, to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, that he might bring the evil (intended) upon Absalom.”
2 SAMUEL. 17:15-16
David is informed of what has occurred.
Hushai communicated without delay to the priests Zadok and Abiathar the advice which had been given to Absalom both by Ahithophel and himself, and requested them to make it known to David as quickly as possible. “Stay not the night,” he said, “by the ferries `bre[ , as in 2 Sam 15:28) of the desert; but rather go over, lest the king and all the people with him be destroyed.” µGæ , “and indeed,” or after a negative clause, “but rather.” Ël,m, [læB; is either “there will be a devouring,” i.e., destruction, to the king, it will fall upon him; of if we supply the subject from the previous clause `rbæ[; `rbæ[; as Böttcher proposes, “that it (the crossing over) may not be swallowed up or cut off from the king.” There is nothing to justify Ewald’s explanation, “it (misfortune) is swallowed by him.” Hushai recommended of course an immediate crossing of the Jordan; because he did not know whether Absalom would really act upon his advice, although he had expressed his approval of it, or whether he might not change his mind and follow Ahithophel’s counsel.
2 SAMUEL. 17:17
“Jonathan and Ahimaaz (the sons of the priests: 2 Sam 15:27) stood at the Rogel spring (the present well of Job or Nehemiah, at the south-east corner of Jerusalem: see at Job 15:7), and the maid-servant (of one of the high priests) went and told them (Hushai’s message), and they went and told it to king David; for they durst not let themselves be seen to come into the city.” They had therefore been staying at the Rogel spring outside the city.
After what had taken place publicly, according to 2 Sam 15:24ff., Absalom could not be in any doubt as to the views of the high priests. Consequently their sons could not come into the city, with the intention of leaving it again directly, to inform David of the occurrences that had taken place there as he had requested (2 Sam 15:28). The clause “and they went and told David” anticipates the course of the affair, according to the general plan adopted by Hebrew historians, of communicating the result at the very outset wherever they possibly could.
2 SAMUEL. 17:18
“And a lad (servant) saw them, and told Absalom.” Absalom had most likely set spies to watch the priests and their sons. But the two sons who had noticed the spy hurried into the house of a man at Bahurim, who had a well (or cistern that was dry at the time) in his court, and went down into the well.
2 SAMUEL. 17:19
And the man’s wife spread a covering Ës;m; , the covering which she had close at hand) over the well (over the opening into the cistern), and scattered groats (riypowt, peeled barley: Prov 27:22) upon it, so that nothing was noticed. The Vulgate explanation is a very good one: “quasi siccans ptisanas” (as if drying peeled barley).
2 SAMUEL. 17:20
When Absalom’s servants came and asked for the priest’s sons, the woman said, They have gone over the little water-brook µyimæ lk;ymi , hap leg), and thus led them wrong, so that they did not find them.
2 SAMUEL. 17:21-22
When they had gone away, the priest’s sons came up out of the well and brought David the news, saying, “Go quickly over the water, for thus hath Ahithophel counselled against you;” whereupon David and all the people with him went hastily over the Jordan. “Till the morning dawn not one was missed who had not gone over.” dj;a, `d[æ , lit. even to one there was not any one missed.
2 SAMUEL. 17:23
It is still further stated in conclusion, that when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not carried out, he saddled his ass and returned to his home, and there set his house in order and hanged himself, because he could foresee that Absalom would lose his cause through not taking his advice, and it would then be all over with himself. Thus was David’s prayer (2 Sam 15:31) fulfilled.
ABSALOM’
S DEFEAT AND DEATH 2 SAMUEL. 17:24
The account of the civil war, which terminated with Absalom’s defeat and death, is introduced in vv. 24-26 with a description of the relative position of the two hostile parties. David had come to Mahanaim, a city probably a fortified one, on the east of the Jordan, not far from the ford of the Jabbok (see at 2 Sam 2:8). Absalom had also gone over the Jordan, “he and all the men with him,” i.e., all the fighting men that he had gathered together according to Hushai’s advice, and encamped in the land of Gilead.
2 SAMUEL. 17:25-26
Absalom had made Amasa captain over his army instead of Joab, who had remained true to David, and had gone with his king to Mahanaim. Amasa was the son of a man named Jithra, yliaer]cæyi , who had gone in to (i.e., had seduced) Abigail, the daughter of Nahash and sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother. He was therefore an illegitimate cousin of Joab. The description given of Jithra as yliaer]cæyi is very striking, since there was no reason whatever why it should be stated that Amasa’s father was an Israelite. The Seventy have therefore given oJ Iezrahli>thv , i.e., sprung from Jezreel, where David’s wife Ahinoam came from (1 Sam 27:3); but they have done so apparently from mere conjecture. The true reading is evidently hayish¦m¦`ee’liy, an Ishmaelite, according to 1 Chron 2:17, where the name is written Jether, a contracted form of Jithra. From the description given of Abigail as a daughter of Nahash and sister of Zeruiah, not of David, some of the earlier commentators have very justly concluded that Abigail and Zeruiah were only step-sisters of David, i.e., daughters of his mother by Nahash and not by Jesse.
2 SAMUEL. 17:27-29
When David came to Mahanaim, some of the wealthier citizens of the land to the east of the Jordan supplied the men who were with him with provisions. This is mentioned as the first sign that the people had not all fallen away from David, but that some of the more distinguished men were still firm in their adherence. Shobi, the son of Nahash or Rabbah, the capital of the Ammonites (see 2 Sam 11:1), was possibly a son of Nahash the deceased king of the Ammonites, and brother of Hanun, who was defeated by David (2 Sam 10:1-2), and one of those to whom David had shown favour and kindness when Rabbah was taken. At the same time, it is also quite possible that Shobi may have been an Israelite, who was merely living in the capital of the Ammonites, which had been incorporated into the kingdom of David, as it is evident from v. 25 that Nahash was not an uncommon name among the Israelites. Machir the son of Ammiel of Lodebar (see at 2 Sam 9:4), and Barsillai of Roglim the Gileadite. Roglim was a town in Gilead, which is only mentioned once again, viz., in 2 Sam 19:32, and of which nothing further is known.
They brought “bedding, basins, earthenware, and wheat, barley, meal, and parched grains, beans, lentils and parched.” The position of the verb, which is not placed between the subject and the object of the sentence, but only at the close of the whole series of objects, is certainly unusual; but this does not warrant any alteration of the text. For if we were to supply a verb before bK;v]mi , as having fallen out of the text, it would be necessary, since vgæn; follows without a copula, to divide the things enumerated into two classes, so as to connect one portion of the objects with vgæn; , which is obviously unnatural. The early translators who interpolate a verb before the objects have therefore also supplied the copula w before vgæn; . There is still less ground for supplying the number 10, as having dropped out before bK;v]mi and ãsæ , as the LXX have done, since none of the translators of the other ancient versions had any such reading. bK;v]mi , couch or bed, is used here for bedding. ãsæ , basins, probably field-kettles.
The repetition of yliq; is very striking; nevertheless the second must not be struck out without further ground as a supposed copyist’s error. As they not only ate parched ears or grains of wheat (see at Lev 2:14), but were also in the habit of drying pulse, pease, and lentils before eating them (vid., Harmar, Beobachtungen, i. pp. 255-6), the second yliq; may be understood as referring to parched pulse. The hap leg rq;B; hp;v; signifies, according to the Chaldee and the Rabbins, cheese of oxen (i.e., of cows), and according to the conjecture of Roediger (Ges. Thes. p. 1462), a peculiar kind of cheese, such as the Aeneze in the province of Nedjid still make, and for which the term safw>q bwo>n retained by the LXX was probably the technical name. Theodotus, on the other hand, has galaqhna> mosca>ria , milch-calves; and the Vulgate pingues vitulos,-both of them renderings which can certainly be sustained from the Arabic usage of speech, and would be more in accordance with the situation of the words, viz., after ˆaox . rmæa; yKi , “for they said (or thought) the people have become hungry and faint and thirty in the desert,” i.e., in their flight to Mahanaim.
2 SAMUEL. 18:1-3
Preparation for war.
Verse 1, 2. David mustered the people that were with him, and placed over them captains of thousands and hundreds, and divided them into three companies, under the generals Joab, Abishai, and Ittai the Gathite, who had given such decided proofs, according to 2 Sam 15:21-22, of his fidelity to David. dyæB] jæLevi , to leave to the hand of a person, i.e., to his power, is used here in the sense of placing under his direction. The people opposed in the most decided manner the wish of the king to go with them to the war, saying (v. 3), “Thou shalt not go out: for if we flee, they will take no heed of us (i.e., attach no importance to this); and if half of us die, they will take no heed of us: for thou art as ten thousand of us (we must evidently read hT;aæ for `hT;[æ , and `hT;[æ has merely got into the text in consequence of `hT;[æ following): and now it is good that thou be ready to give us help from the city” (the Chethib ryzi[]læ , inf. Hiphil for ryzi[\hæl] , is not to be disputed). David was to stay behind in the city with a reserve, that he might be able to come to their relief in case of need.
2 SAMUEL. 18:4-5
The king gave his consent to these proposals, and went to the side of the gate, whilst the people went out by hundreds and thousands; but in the hearing of all he commanded the principal generals, “Mildly for me (i.e., deal gently for my sake) with the boy Absalom.” faæ is not the imperative of faæl; , to cover over, which would not suit the connection, and could not be construed with l¦, but an adverb from faæ , as in Isa 8:6; 1 Kings 21:27; Job 15:11.
2 SAMUEL. 18:6-7
Battle in the wood of Ephraim, and death of Absalom.
When the people, i.e., David’s army, had advanced into the field against Israel (those who followed Absalom), a battle was fought “in the wood of Ephraim,” when Israel was smitten by David’s warriors and sustained a loss of 20,000 men. The question, where the “wood of Ephraim” was situated, is a disputed one. But both the name and the fact that, according to Josh 17:15-16, the tribe-land of Ephraim abounded in forests, favour the idea that it was a wood in the inheritance of Ephraim, on this side of the Jordan; and this is in perfect harmony with the statement in v. 23, that Ahimaaz took the way of the Jordan valley to bring the news of the victory to David, who was staying behind in Mahanaim. Nevertheless the majority of commentators have supposed that the place alluded to was a woody region on the other side of the Jordan, which had received the name of “wood Ephraim” probably after the defeat of the Ephraimites in the time of Jephthah (Judg 12:1-5).
The reasons assigned are, first, that according to 2 Sam 17:26, Absalom had encamped in Gilead, and it is not stated that he had crossed the Jordan again; secondly, that v. 3 (“that thou succour us out of the city”) presupposes that the battle took place in the neighbourhood of Mahanaim (Thenius); and thirdly, that after the victory the army returned to Mahanaim; whereas if the battle had been fought on this side of the Jordan, it would evidently have been much better for it to remain there and occupy Jerusalem (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 237). But neither of these reasons is decisive, and there is no force in the other arguments employed by Thenius.
There was no necessity for an immediate occupation of Jerusalem by David’s victorious army, since all Israel fled to their tents after the fall of Absalom and the defeat of his army (v. 17 and 2 Sam 19:9); that is to say, such of Absalom’s followers as had not fallen in or after the battle, broke up and returned home, and therefore the revolution was at an end.
Consequently there was nothing left for David’s army to do but to return to its king at Mahanaim, and fetch him back to Jerusalem, and reinstate him in his kingdom. The other two reasons might have some force in them, if the history before us contained a complete account of the whole course of the war. But even Ewald admits that it is restricted to a notice of the principal battle, which completely crushed the rebellion. There can be no doubt, however, that this was preceded, if not by other battles, yet by such military operations as accompany every war. This is clearly indicated in v. 6, where it is stated that the army advanced into the field against Israel (v. 6), which evidently refers to such an advance on the part of David’s army as might compel Absalom to draw back from Gilead across the Jordan, until at length a decisive battle was fought, which ended in the complete destruction of his army and his own death.
Ewald observes still further, that “it seems impossible, at any rate so far as the name is concerned, to assume that the wood of Ephraim was on the other side of the Jordan, whilst according to 2 Sam 18:23, the messenger who reported the victory went from the field of battle towards the Jordan valley in order to get to David.” But the way in which Ewald tries to set aside this important point, as bearing upon the conclusion that the battle took place on this side of the Jordan-namely, by adopting this rendering of v. 23, “he ran after the manner of Kikkar, running, and therefore overtook Kushi,”-is far too unnatural to meet with acceptance. Under all these circumstances, therefore, we decide in favour of the assumption that the wood of Ephraim is to be sought for in the tribe-territory of Ephraim.
The nature of the ground contributed a great deal to the utter defeat of Absalom.
2 SAMUEL. 18:8
The conflict extended over the surface of the whole land, i.e., the whole of that region (the Chethib twxpn is not the plural twOxpon] , which would be quite unsuitable, but is most probably a noun, tWxp]næ , signifying bursting asunder, or wild flight; the Keri xWp is a Niphal participle, fem. gen.); “and the wood devoured more of the people than the sword ate on the same day.” The woody region was most likely full of ravines, precipices, and marches, into which the flying foe was pursued, and where so many perished.
2 SAMUEL. 18:9
“And Absalom was lighted upon ar;q; = ar;q; ) by the servants of David, riding upon the mule; and the mule had come under the thick branches of the great terebinth, and his head fastened itself (remained hanging) on the terebinth, so that he was held (hung) between heaven and earth, as the mule under him went away.” The imperfects, awOB, qzæj; , and ˆtæn; , are only a combination of the circumstantial clause bkr vb]aæw] . With regard to the fact itself, it is not clearly stated in the words that Absalom hung only by his hair, but simply that his hair entangled him in the thick branches, and his head was fastened in the terebinth, namely, by being jammed between the strong boughs.
2 SAMUEL. 18:10-11
A man (one of David’s men) saw him in this situation, and told Joab, Joab replied (v. 11), “Behold, thou hast seen it, and wherefore has thou not smitten him there to the ground? and it was for me to give thee ten silverlings and a girdle;” i.e., if thou hadst slain him, it would have been my duty to reward thee.
2 SAMUEL. 18:12-13
But the man replied, “And I...not weighing a thousand shekels in my hand...might not stretch out my hand to the king’s son,” i.e., I could not do it for a reward of a thousand shekels. This is the meaning of the Chethib alo ; the Masoretes, on the other hand, have substituted aWl , which is the reading adopted in most of the ancient versions, and the one preferred by the majority of expositors: “if I weighed...I would not,” etc. But there is no necessity for this alteration, as the Chethib is quite in accordance with the character of the words. “For before our ears the king commanded” (cf. v. 5): ymi rmæv; , “take care whoever (it be) of the boy Absalom.” On this use of ymi , see Ewald, §104, d., a. The Keri wOl] is merely a conjecture, notwithstanding the fact that all the versions follow it, and that one of the Codices in Kennicott has wOl] . “or,” continued the man (v. 13), “should I have acted deceitfully towards his life (i.e., have slain him secretly, which he calls rq,v, , cheating, because it was opposed to the king’s open command): and nothing remains hidden from the king;...thou wouldst have set thyself in opposition to me,” i.e., have risen up against me before the king. The middle clause is a circumstantial one, as the fact that rb;D;Alk;w] is placed first clearly shows; so that it cannot be regarded as introducing the apodosis, which really follows in the clause commencing with hT;aæ .
2 SAMUEL. 18:14-15
Joab replied, “Not so will I wait before thee,” i.e., I will not leave the thing to thee. He then took three staffs in his hand, and thrust them into Absalom’s heart. fb,ve is rendered by the LXX and Vulgate, be>lh , lanceas; and Thenius would adopt µyjil]vi accordingly, as an emendation of the text. But in the earlier Hebrew jlæv, only occurs in poetical writings in the sense of a missile or dart (Job. 33:18; 36:12; Joel 2:8); and it is not till after the captivity that we find it used to denote a weapon generally. There is no necessity, however, for altering the text. Joab caught up in his hurry the first thing that he found, namely pointed staff, and pierced Absalom with them to the heart. This explains the reason for his taking three, whereas one javelin or dart would have been sufficient, and also the fact that Absalom was not slain, notwithstanding their being thrust at his heart. The last clause of the verse belongs to what follows: “Still living (i.e., as he was still alive) in the midst of the terebinth, ten young men, Joab’s armourbearers, surrounded him, and smote him to death.”
2 SAMUEL. 18:16
Immediately afterwards Joab stopped any further pursuit, “for Joab spared the people,” i.e., he wanted to spare them.
2 SAMUEL. 18:17
But Absalom they cast into a great pit in the wood, and threw up over him a very large heap of stones, as an ignominious monument, like those thrown up over Achan (Josh 7:26) and the king of Air (Josh 8:29). This was the end of Absalom and his rebellion. “All Israel (that had crowded round him) had fled, every one to his tent” (i.e., home: see at Deut 16:7).
2 SAMUEL. 18:18
Absalom had erected a monument to himself in the king’s valley during his lifetime; “for he said, I have no son to preserve the remembrance of my name, and he called the monument by his own name; and so it was called hand (memorial) of Absalom unto this day.” The jqæl; before bxæn; is apparently pleonastic; but it belongs to the diffuse and circumstantial character of the antiquated Hebrew diction (as in Num 16:1). tb,X,mæ , a memorial of stone; whether in the form of a column, or an obelisk, or a monolith, cannot be determined (vid., Gen 28:22; 31:52). The king’s valley, which received its name from the event narrated in Gen 14:17, was two stadia from Jerusalem according to Josephus (Ant. vii. 10, 3), and therefore not “close to the Dead Sea,” or in regione transjordanensi (Ges.
Thes. pp. 1045, 1377), or “in the Jordan valley in Ephraim” (Tuch and Winer). It was on the eastern side of Jerusalem, in the Kidron valley; though Absalom’s pillar, which ecclesiastical tradition has transferred thither, a monument about forty feet in height and pointed like a pyramid, is not of early Hebrew, but of Grecian origin. On the words “I have no son,” see at 2 Sam 14:27.
2 SAMUEL. 18:19-20
David is informed of the victory, and of the death of Absalom.
Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, wanted to carry the news to David, that Jehovah had “procured the king justice out of the hand of his enemies” fpæv; with ˆmi is a pregnant expression signifying to procure justice and deliver out of); but Joab, knowing how David would receive the tidings of the death of Absalom, replied, “Thou art no man of good tidings to-day; thou shalt take the news on another day, not on this, even because ( ˆKeAl[æ yKi , see at Gen 18:5) the king’s son is dead.” The Keri ˆKeAl[æ yKi is to be preferred to the Chethib l[æAyKi ; and ˆKe has no doubt been dropt out merely because of ˆBe which follows. The Chethib does not give any suitable sense; for the absence of the article before tWm is decisive against the explanation proposed by Maurer, viz., “for (tidings have to be carried) concerning the king’s son dead.” If tWm were to be construed as an adverb with Ël,m,AˆB, , it would of necessity have the article.
2 SAMUEL. 18:21
Joab therefore entrusted the Cushite with the duty of conveying to David the announcement of what had occurred. It cannot be decided with certainty whether yviWK or Cushi is the proper name of an Israelite, or whether it signifies the “Cushite,” i.e., a descendant of Cush. The form of the name rather favours the latter view, in which case it would suggest the idea of a Moorish slave in the service of Joab.
2 SAMUEL. 18:22-23
As Ahimaaz still expressed a wish to hasten to the king, even after Cushi had been sent, and could not be induced to relinquish his purpose by the repeated expostulations of Joab, the latter at length permitted him to run.
And he ran so fast, that he got before Cushi. hm; hy;h; : let whatever will happen. hK; is the pronoun “to thee,” as in Gen 27:37, and not the imperative of Ëlæy; , “thou mayest go.” The meaning is, “and there is no striking message for thee,” no message that strikes the mark, or affects anything. We must supply “he said” in thought before v. 23. There was the less necessity to write it here (as in 1 Sam 1:20), since it is perfectly obvious from the repetition of hm; hy;h; that it is Ahimaaz who is speaking.
Ahimaaz then ran by the way of the plain, i.e., the way which lies through or across the plain of the Jordan. Now he could not possibly have taken this road, if the battle had been fought in a wood on the eastern side of the Jordan, and he had wanted to hurry from the scene of battle to Mahanaim; for in that case he would have taken a circuitous route two or three times the distance of the straight road, so that it would have been utterly impossible for him to get there before the Cushite, however quickly he might run. This notice therefore furnishes a decisive proof that the battle was fought upon the mountains of Ephraim, in the land to the west of the Jordan, since the straight road thence to Mahanaim would lie through the valley of the Jordan.
2 SAMUEL. 18:24
David was sitting between the two gates of Mahanaim waiting for tidings of the result of the battle. The two gates are the outer and inner gate of the fortified city wall, between which there was a small court, where David was sitting. The watchman then went up to the roof of the gate by the wall, probably the outer gate in the city wall, and as he looked he saw a man running alone.
2 SAMUEL. 18:25-26
When he announced this to the king, he said, “If he (is or comes) alone, there is good news in his mouth,” namely, because several runners would have shown themselves if it had been a flight. As the first messenger came nearer and nearer, the watchman saw another man running, and shouted this into the gate r[ewOv is wrongly pointed for r[ævæ , according to the LXX, Syr., and Vulgate); whereupon the king replied, “This is also a good messenger.”
2 SAMUEL. 18:27
When the watchman saw by the running of the first that it was Ahimaaz, recognising him probably by the swiftness of his running, and announced it to the king, he replied, “He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings,” because Joab would not have selected him to bring any other than good news.
2 SAMUEL. 18:28
Ahimaaz then called out to the king, “Shalom,” i.e., Hail! and fell down before him to greet him reverentially, and said, “Blessed be Jehovah thy God, who hath given up the men that lifted up their hand against my lord the king.”
2 SAMUEL. 18:29
In answer to the king’s inquiry, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?”
Ahimaaz replied, “I saw the great tumult (that arose) when Joab sent off the king’s servant, and thy servant, and know not what” (sc., had occurred). Ahimaaz spoke as if he had been sent off before Absalom’s fate had been decided or could be known. “The king’s servant” is the Cushite, whom Ahimaaz saw just approaching, so that he could point to him. Joab is the subject, which is sometimes written after the object in the case of an infinitive construction (vid., Gesenius, §133, 3 Anm.); and the expression “thy servant” is a conventional one for “me” (viz., Ahimaaz).
2 SAMUEL. 18:30
And the king said, “Turn, and stand here,” that he might hear the further news from the Cushite, who had just arrived.
2 SAMUEL. 18:31
The Cushite said, “Let my lord the king receive good tidings, for Jehovah hath procured thee justice to-day out of the hand of all who have risen up against thee” (cf. v. 19).
2 SAMUEL. 18:32
When asked about the welfare of Absalom, the Cushite replied, “May it happen to the enemies of my lord the king, and all who have risen up against thee for evil (i.e., to do thee harm), as to the young man.” The death of Absalom was indicated clearly enough in these words.
2 SAMUEL. 18:33
The king understood the meaning of the words. He was agitated, and went up to the balcony of the gate (the room above the entrance) and wept, and said, walking about, “My son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Oh that I had died for thee, Absalom, my son, my son!” To understand this passionate utterance of anguish, we must bear in mind not only the excessive tenderness, or rather weakness, of David’s paternal affection towards his son, but also his anger that Joab and his generals should have paid so little regard to his command to deal gently with Absalom. With the king’s excitable temperament, this entirely prevented him from taking a just and correct view of the crime of his rebel son, which merited death, and of the penal justice of God which had been manifested in his destruction.
DAVID REINSTATED IN HIS KINGDOM In his passionate and sinful sorrow on account of Absalom’s death David not only forgot altogether what it was his duty to do, in order to recover the affections of the people, so that Joab was obliged to remind him of this duty which was binding upon him as king (vv. 1-8); but he even allowed himself to be carried away into the most inconsiderate measures (vv. 9-14), and into acts of imprudence and injustice (vv. 16-23, 24-30), which could not contribute to the strengthening of his throne, however much the affection with which he wished to reward the old man Barzillai for his faithful services (vv. 31-40) might show that the king was anxious to promote the welfare of his subjects.
2 SAMUEL. 19:1-8
David’s mourning, and Joab’s reproof.
Verse 1-3. When Joab was told that the king was mourning and weeping for Absalom, he went to him into the house to expostulate with him. V. introduces the continuation of v. 1; vv. 2-4 contain parenthetical sentences, describing the impression made upon the people by the king’s mourning.
Through the king’s deep trouble, the salvation (the victory) upon that day became mourning for all the people who had fought for David, and they went by stealth in to the city awOB bnæG; : they stole to come, came by stealth), “as people steal away who have covered themselves with shame, when they flee in battle.”
Verse 4. But the king had covered his face, and cried aloud, “My son Absalom,” etc.
Verse 5. Then Joab went into the house to the king, and said to him, “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants who have saved thy life, and the life of thy sons and daughters, thy wives and concubines” (covered them with shame, by deceiving their hope that thou wouldest rejoice in the victory).
Verse 6. bhæa; , “to love” (i.e., in that thou lovest) “those who hate thee, and hatest those who love thee; for thou hast given to know to-day (through thy conduct) that chiefs and servants (commanders and soldiers) are nothing (are worth nothing); for I have perceived to-day (or I perceive to-day) that if aWl for aWl ) Absalom were alive, and we had all perished, that it would be right in thine eyes.”
Verse 7. “And now rise up, go out and speak to the heart of thy servants (i.e., speak to them in a friendly manner: Gen 34:3; 50:21, etc.): for I swear by Jehovah, if thou go not out, verily not a man will stay with thee tonight; and this will be worse to thee than all the evil that has come upon thee from thy youth until now.” Joab was certainly not only justified, but bound in David’s own interests, to expostulate with him upon his conduct, and to urge him to speak in a friendly manner to the people who had exposed their lives for him, inasmuch as his present conduct would necessarily stifle the affection of the people towards their king, and might be followed by the most serious results with reference to his throne. At the same time, he did this in so heartless and lordly a manner, that the king could not fail to be deeply hurt by his words.
Verse 8. Nevertheless David was obliged to yield to his representations. “The king rose up, and sat in the gate, and...all the people came before the king,” i.e., the troops marched before the king, who (as we may supply from the context) manifested his good-will in both looks and words. But Israel, i.e., that portion of the people which had followed Absalom, had returned to its tents (i.e., gone home: cf. 2 Sam 18:17). This sentence forms the transition to the account which follows.
2 SAMUEL. 19:9-10
Preliminaries to the return of David to Jerusalem.
As the rebellion was entirely crushed by Absalom’s death, and the dispersion of his followers to their respective homes, there arose a movement among all the tribes in favour of David. “All the people were disputing ˆyDi , casting reproaches at one another) in all the tribes of Israel, saying, The king has saved us out of the hand of our enemies,...and now he is fled out of the land before Absalom. But Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle; and now why do ye keep still, to bring back the king?” This movement arose from the consciousness of having done an injustice to the king, in rising up in support of Absalom.
2 SAMUEL. 19:11-12
When these words of all Israel were reported to David, he sent to the priests Zadok and Abiathar, saying, “Speak to the elders of Judah, why will ye be the last to bring back the king to his palace?...Ye are my brethren, my bones and flesh (i.e., my blood relations): why then,” etc.? The last clause of v. 11, “the speech of all Israel is come to the king, even to his house,” is a circumstantial clause inserted in the midst of David’s words, to explain the appeal to the men of Judah not to be the last. In the LXX, and some Codices of the Vulgate, this sentence occurs twice, viz., at the end of v. 10, and also of v. 11; and Thenius, Ewald, and Böttcher regard the clause at the end of v. 10 as the original one, and the repetition of it at the close of v. 11 as a gloss. But this is certainly a mistake: for if the clause, “and the speech of all Israel came to the king to his house (at Mahanaim),” ought to stand at the close of v. 10, and assigns the reason for David’s sending to Zadok and Abiathar, v. 11 would certainly, or rather necessarily, commence with Ël,m, jlæv; : “The word of all Israel came to the king, and then king David sent,” etc. But instead of this, it commences with jlæv; dwiD; Ël,M,hæw] , “But king David sent.” This construction of the sentence decidedly favour the correctness of the Hebrew text; whereas the text of the Septuagint, apart altogether from the tautological repetition of the whole of the sentence in question, shows obviously enough that it is nothing more than a conjecture, by which the attempt was made to remove the difficulty occasioned by the striking position in which the circumstantial clause occurred.
2 SAMUEL. 19:13
“And say ye to Amasa, Art thou not my bone and flesh? so shall God do to me, and so add, if thou shalt not be prince of the army (chief captain) before me continually in the place of Joab.”
2 SAMUEL. 19:14
Thus he (David) inclined the heart of all the people as of one man, and they sent to the king, saying, “Return thou, with all thy servants.” The result of David’s message to the priests is given summarily here. The subject to hf;n; is David, not Amasa or Zadok. So far as the fact itself is concerned, it was certainly wise of David to send to the members of his own tribe, and appeal to them not to be behind the rest of the tribes in taking part in his restoration to the kingdom, lest it should appear as though the tribe of Judah, to which David himself belonged, was dissatisfied with his victory, since it was in that tribe that the rebellion itself first broke out; and this would inevitably feed the jealousy between Judah and the rest of the tribes.
But it was not only unwise, but unjust, to give to Amasa, the traitorgeneral of the rebels, a promise on oath that he should be commander-inchief in the place of Joab; for even if the promise was only given privately at first, the fact that it had been given could not remain a secret from Joab very long, and would be sure to stir up his ambition, and lead him to the commission of fresh crimes, and in all probability the enmity of this powerful general would become dangerous to the throne of David. For however Joab might have excited David’s anger by slaying Absalom, and by the offensive manner in which he had reproved the king for giving way to his grief, David ought to have suppressed his anger in his existing circumstances, and ought not to have rendered evil for evil, especially as he was not only about to pardon Amasa’s crime, but even to reward him as one of his faithful servants.
2 SAMUEL. 19:15-16
Return of the king; and occurrences at the crossing of the Jordan.
Pardon of Shimei.
When David reached the Jordan on his return, and Judah had come to Gilgal “to meet him, to conduct the king over the Jordan,” i.e., to form an escort at the crossing, Shimei the Benjaminite hastened down from Bahurim (see 2 Sam 16:5ff.) with the men of Judah to meet David.
2 SAMUEL. 19:17-19
There also came along with Shimei a thousand men of Benjamin, and Ziba the servant of the house of Saul, with his fifteen sons and twenty servants (see 2 Sam 9:10); and they went over the Jordan before the king, viz., through a ford, and the ferry-boat had crossed over to carry over the king’s family, and to do whatever seemed good to him, i.e., to be placed at the king’s sole disposal. And Shimei fell down before the king, `rbæ[; , i.e., “when he (David) was about to cross over the Jordan,” not “when Shimei had crossed over the Jordan;” for after what has just been stated, such a remark would be superfluous: moreover, it is very doubtful whether the infinitive with b¦ can express the sense of the pluperfect. Shimei said, “Let not my lord impute to me any crime, and do not remember how thy servant hath sinned.”
2 SAMUEL. 19:20-23
“For thy servant knoweth (i.e., I know) that I have sinned, and behold I have come to-day the first of the whole house of Joseph, to go to meet my lord the king.” By “the whole house of Joseph” we are to understand the rest of the tribes with the exception of Judah, who are called “all Israel” in v. 12. There is no reason for the objection taken by Thenius and Böttcher to the expression ãsewOyAtyBe . This rendering of the LXX ( panto>v Israh>l kai> oi>kou Iwsh>f ) does not prove that laer;c]yiAlK; was the original reading, but only that the translator thought it necessary to explain oi>kou Iwsh>f by adding the gloss panto>v Israh>l ; and the assertion that it was only in the oratorical style of a later period, when the kingdom had been divided, that Joseph became the party name of all that were not included in Judah, is overthrown by 1 Kings 11:28.
The designation of the tribes that opposed Judah by the name of the leading tribe (Joseph: Josh 16:1) was as old as the jealousy between these tribes and Judah, which did not commence with the division of the kingdom, but was simply confirmed thereby into a permanent distinction.
Shimei’s prayer for the forgiveness of his sin was no more a proof of sincere repentance than the reason which he adduced in support of his petition, namely that he was the first of all the house of Joseph to come and meet David. Shimei’s only desire was to secure impunity for himself.
Abishai therefore replied (v. 21), “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this tazO tjæTæ , for this, which he has just said and done), because he hath cursed the anointed of Jehovah?” (vid., 2 Sam 16:5ff.). But David answered (v. 22), “What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah (cf. Sam 16:10), for ye become opponents to me to-day?” ˆf;c; , an opponent, who places obstacles in the way (Num 22:22); here it signifies one who would draw away to evil. “Should any one be put to death in Israel to-day? for do I not know that I am this day king over Israel?” The reason assigned by David here for not punishing the blasphemer as he had deserved, by taking away his life, would have been a very laudable one if the king had really forgiven him. But as David when upon his deathbed charged his successor to punish Shimei for this cursing (1 Kings 2:8-9), the favour shown him here was only a sign of David’s weakness, which was not worthy of imitation, the more especially as the king swore unto him (v. 24) that he should not die.
2 SAMUEL. 19:24-30
David’s conduct towards Mephibosheth admits still less of justification.
Verse 24. Mephibosheth, the son, i.e., grandson, of Saul, had also come down (from Jerusalem to the Jordan) to meet David, and had not “made his feet and his beard,” i.e., had not washed his feet or arranged his beard `hc;[; , as in Deut 21:12), and had not washed his clothes-all of them signs of deep mourning (cf. Ezek 24:17)-since the day that the king had gone (i.e., had fled from Jerusalem) until the day that he came (again) in peace.
Verse 25. “Now when Jerusalem (i.e., the inhabitants of the capital) came to meet the king,” David said to him (i.e., to Mephibosheth, who was with the deputation from the capital which welcomed David at the Jordan), “Why wentest thou not with me, Mephibosheth?” David was justified in putting this question after what Ziba had told him concerning Mephibosheth (2 Sam 16:3).
Verse 26. Mephibosheth replied, “My lord king, my servant hath deceived me: for thy servant thought I will have the ass saddled and go to the king; for thy servant is lame.” If we understand dv;B]j]a, as signifying that Mephibosheth had the ass saddled by a servant, and not that he saddled it with his own hands, the meaning is obvious, and there is no ground whatever for altering the text. chaabash is certainly used in this sense in Gen 22:3, and it is very common for things to be said to be done by a person, even though not done with his own hands. The rendering adopted by the LXX and Vulgate, “Thy servant said to him (the servant), Saddle me the ass,” is not true to the words, though correct so far as the sense is concerned.
Verse 27-30. “And he (Ziba) slandered thy servant to my lord the king.”
Mephibosheth had not merely inferred this from David’s words, and the tone in which they were spoken, but had certainly found it out long ago, since Ziba would not delay very long to put David’s assurance, that all the possessions of Mephibosheth should belong to him, in force against his master, so that Mephibosheth would discover from that how Ziba had slandered him. “And my lord the king is as the angel of God,” i.e., he sees all just as it really is (see at 2 Sam 14:17); “and do what is good in thy sight: for all my father’s house (the whole of my family) were but men of death against my lord the king (i.e., thou mightest have had us all put to death), and thou didst set thy servant among thy companions at table (see Sam 9:7,11); and what right or (what) more have I still to cry (for help) to the king?” The meaning is, “I cannot assert any claims, but will yield to anything you decide concerning me.”
It must have been very evident to David from these words of Mephibosheth, that he had been deceived by Ziba, and that he had formed an unfounded prejudice against Mephibosheth, and committed an act of injustice in handing over his property to Ziba. He therefore replied, in evident displeasure (v. 29), “Why talkest thou still of thine affairs? I have said, thou and Ziba shall divide the field?” to which Mephibosheth answered (v. 30), “He may take the whole, since my lord the king has returned in peace to his own house.” This reply shows very clearly that an injustice had been done to Mephibosheth, even if it is not regarded as an expression of wounded feeling on the part of Mephibosheth because of David’s words, but, according to the view taken by Seb. Schmidt and others, as a vindication of himself, as said not to blame the king for the opinion he had formed, but simply to defend himself.
But this completely overthrows the opinion held by Thenius and O. v.
Gerlach, that David’s words in v. 30 contain nothing more than a revocation of his hasty declaration in 2 Sam 16:4, and a confirmation of his first decision in 2 Sam 9:7-10, and are to be understood as signifying, “Let everything be as I settled it at first; hold the property jointly,” inasmuch as Ziba and his sons had of course obtained their living from the produce of the land. Moreover, the words “thou and Ziba divide the land” are directly at variance with the promise in 2 Sam 9:7, “I will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father,” and the statement in 2 Sam 9:9, “I have given unto thy master’s son all that pertained to Saul, and to all his house.” By the words, “I have said, thou and Ziba divide the land,” David retracted the hasty decree in 2 Sam 16:4, so as to modify to some extent the wrong that he had done to Mephibosheth, but he had not courage enough to retract it altogether. He did not venture to dispute the fact that Mephibosheth had really been calumniated by Ziba, which was placed beyond all doubt by his mourning during the whole period of David’s flight, as described in v. 24.
There is no ground for Winer’s statement, therefore, that “it is impossible now to determine whether Mephibosheth was really innocent or not.”
2 SAMUEL. 19:31-39
Barzillai comes to greet David.
Verse 31. Barzillai the octogenarian “had also come down from Roglim and gone across the Jordan with the king, to escort him over the river.” ˆDer]YæBæAta, is the portion in, or over, the Jordan. tae is the sign of the accusative, “the piece in the Jordan,” and no further. This is the correct explanation as given by Böttcher, after Gesenius and Maurer; and the Keri ˆDer]yæ is a bad emendation.
Verse 32-37. As Barzillai had supplied the king with provisions during his stay in Mahanaim jb;yvi for hb;yviy] , like ha;wOx for hx;wOxy] , and other words of the same kind), because he was very wealthy (lit. great), David would gladly have taken him with him to Jerusalem, to repay him there for his kindness; but Barzillai replied (vv. 34ff.), “How many days are there of the years of my life (i.e., how long shall I have yet to live), that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? I am now eighty years old; can I (still) distinguish good and evil, or will thy servant taste what I eat and drink, or listen again to the voice of the singing men and singing women? and why should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king? Thy servant would go over the Jordan with the king for a short time (i.e., could not remain long with him), and why does the king wish to repay me this favour?” an;Abv;y; : “Let thy servant return, that I may die in my city (my home), at the grave of my parents; and behold thy servant Chimham (i.e., according to the explanation given by Josephus, Barzillai’s son, who had come down with his father, as we may infer from 1 Kings 2:7) may go over with my lord the king; and do to him what seemeth good to thee,” i.e., show him favours at thy pleasure.
Verse 38. David consented to this, and said, “All that thou desirest of me I will do to him.” rjæB; with `l[æ is a pregnant construction, signifying to choose and impose, “choose upon me,” i.e., the thing for me to grant thee.
Verse 39. Thus all the people went over the Jordan; and when the king had crossed over, he kissed Barzillai (to take leave of him: vid., Ruth 1:9); and he (Barzillai) blessed him, and turned to his place (returned home).
Barzillai only escorted the king over the Jordan, and the conversation (vv. 31-38) probably took place as they were crossing.
DISCONTENT IN ISRAEL, AND SHEBA’S REBELLION.
2 SAMUEL. 19:40-43
Quarrel between Israel and Judah about the restoration of the king.
Verse 40. David went across to Gilgal (in the plain of the Jordan: Josh 4:19), and Chimham (Chimhan is a modified form for Chimham: v. 37) had gone over with him, and all the people of Judah had brought the king over (the Keri `rbæ[; is an easier reading than the Chethib `rbæ[; , “and as for the people, they had,” etc.), and also “half the people of Israel,” namely, beside the thousand Benjaminites who came with Shimei (v. 17), other Israelites who dwelt in the neighbourhood.
Verse 41. All the men of Israel, i.e., the representatives of the other tribes of Israel, came to meet the king in Gilgal; and being annoyed at the fact that the men of Judah had anticipated them, they exclaimed, “Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen thee away?” i.e., fetched thee thus secretly without saying a word to us. “All David’s men” were all his faithful adherents who had fled with him from Jerusalem (2 Sam 15:17ff.). Verse 42. The men of Judah replied against `l[æ ) the men of Israel: “The king stands near to us” (inasmuch as he belonged to their tribe), “and wherefore then art thou angry at this matter? Have we eaten from the king (i.e., derived any advantage from our tribe-relationship to him, as the Benjaminites did from Saul, according to 1 Sam 22:7), or received anything for ourselves therefrom?” taCeni is an infinitive abs. Niph. with a feminine termination, borrowed from hl ; literally, “or has taking been taken for us.”
Verse 43. The Israelites were annoyed at this answer, and retorted, “I (Israel) have ten portions in the king, and also more than thou in David; and wherefore hast thou despised me?” They considered that they had ten shares in the king, because they formed ten tribes, in opposition to the one tribe of Judah, as the Levites did not come into consideration in the matter.
Although David was of the tribe of Judah, he was nevertheless king of the whole nation, so that the ten tribes had a larger share than one tribe. llæq; refers to the fact, that Judah took no notice at all of the tribes of Israel when fetching back the king. wgw hy;h;AaOlw] , “and was not my speech the first to fetch back my king?” (On the fact itself, see 2 Sam 19:10-11.) wOl] is an emphatic dat. commodi, and is to be taken in connection with bWv , notwithstanding the accents. “And the speech of the men of Judah became fiercer (more violent) than the speech of the men of Israel.” With these words the historian sums up briefly the further progress of the dispute, for the purpose of appending the account of Sheba’s rebellion, to which it gave rise.
2 SAMUEL. 20:1-22
Sheba’s Rebellion.
Verse 1. There happened to be a worthless man there, named Sheba, a Benjaminite. He blew the trumpet, and said, “We have no part in David, nor inheritance in the son of Jesse. Every man to his tents, O Israel!” “To his tents,” i.e., to his home, as in 2 Sam 19:9, etc.
Verse 2. All the men of Israel responded to this call, and went up (to the mountains) away from David and after Sheba; but the men of Judah adhered to their king from the Jordan to Jerusalem. The construction of qbæD; with ˆmi is a pregnant one: they adhered to and followed him. The expression “from Jordan” does not prove that Sheba’s rebellion broke out at the Jordan itself, and before David’s arrival in Gilgal, but may be accounted for from the fact that the men of Judah had already fetched the king back across the Jordan.
Verse 3. As soon as David returned to his palace at Jerusalem, he brought the ten concubines whom he had left behind, and with whom Absalom had lain, into a place of safety, and took care of them, without going in unto them any more. The masculine suffixes attached to ˆtæn; , lWK, and lae are used, as they frequently are, as being the more general and indefinite, instead of the feminine, which is the more definite form. Thus were they shut up in lifelong widowhood until the day of their death. tWnm;k]aæ is an adverbial accusative, and tWYjæ signifies “condition in life;” literally, in widowhood of life.
Verse 4. David then ordered Amasa to call the men of Judah to pursue Sheba the rebel, and attack him within three days, and then to present himself to him again. This commission was intended as the commencement of the fulfilment of the promise which David had given to Amasa (2 Sam 19:14). It was no doubt his intention to give him the command over the army that marched against Sheba, and after the defeat of the rebel to make him commander-in-chief. But this first step towards the fulfilment of the promise was a very imprudent act, like the promise itself, since Joab, who had been commander of the army for so many years, was grievously offended by it; and moreover, being a well-tried general, he had incomparably more distinction in the tribe of Judah than Amasa, who had taken part in Absalom’s rebellion and even led the rebel army, could possibly have.
Verse 5-6. But when Amasa stayed out beyond the time fixed for the execution of the royal commission (the Chethib rjyyw is the Piel rjeyæy]wæ , whilst the Keri is either the Hiphil rjæy; , or the imperfect Kal of rjæB; = rjæaæ , cf. tocheez, v. 9, and is quite unnecessary), probably because the men of Judah distrusted him, and were not very ready to respond to his summons, David said to Abishai, “Now will Sheba the son of Bichri be more injurious (more dangerous) to us than Absalom. Take thou the servants (soldiers) of thy lord and pursue after him, lest he reach fortified cities, and tear out our eye,” i.e., do us a serious injury. This is the correct explanation given by Böttcher, who refers to Deut 32:10 and Zech 2:12, where the apple of the eye is the figure used to signify the most valuable possession; for the general explanation, “and withdraw from our eye,” cannot be grammatically sustained.
Verse 7. Thus there went after him (Abishai) Joab’s men (the corps commanded by Joab), and the Crethi and Plethi (see at 2 Sam 8:18), out of Jerusalem, to pursue Sheba.
Verse 8. “When they were by the great stone at Gibeon, and Amasa came to meet them (there), Joab was girded with his armour-coat as his clothing, and the girdle of the sword was bound over it upon his loins in its sheath, which came out, and it fell (i.e., the sheath came out of the sword-belt in which it was fastened, and the sword fell to the ground), Joab said to Amasa,” etc. The eighth verse contains only circumstantial clauses, the latter of which (from ba;wOy onwards) are subordinate to the earlier ones, so that rmæa; (v. 9) is attached to the first clause, which describes the meeting between the advancing army and Amasa.
There is something striking, however, in the fact that Joab appears among them, and indeed, as we see from what follows, as the commander of the forces; for according to v. 6, David had commissioned Abishai, Joab’s brother, to pursue Sheba, and even in v. 7 Joab’s men only are mentioned.
This difficulty can hardly be solved in any other manner than by the simple assumption that David had told Abishai to go out with Joab, and that this circumstance is passed over in the brief account in v. 6, in which the principal facts alone are given, and consequently the name of Joab does not occur there. Clericus adopts the following explanation. “Mention,” he says, “has hitherto been made simply of the command given to Abishai, but this included an order to Joab to go as well; and there is nothing to preclude the supposition that Joab’s name was mentioned by the king, although this is not distinctly stated in the brief account before us.” f77 Verse 9-10. Joab asked Amasa how he was, and laid hold of his bear with his right hand to kiss him. And as Amasa took no heed of the sword in Joab’s hand, he smote him with it in the paunch (abdomen), and shed out his bowels upon the ground, “and repeated not (the stroke) to him” (cf. Sam 26:8). Laying hold of the beard to kiss is still customary among Arabs and Turks as a sign of friendly welcome (vid., Arvieux, Merkwürdige Nachrichten, iv. p. 182, and Harmar, Beobachtungen, ii. p. 61). The reason for this assassination was Joab’s jealousy of Amasa. Joab and Abishai then followed Sheba.
Verse 11. One of Joab’s attendants remained standing by him (Amasa), no doubt at Joab’s command, and said to the people who came thither, i.e., to the men of Judah who were collected together by Amasa (vid., v. 4), “He that favoureth Joab, and he that (is) for David, let him (go) after Joab,” i.e., follow him to battle against Sheba.
Verse 12-13. Amasa lay wallowing in blood in the midst of the road; and when the man (the attendant) saw that all the people stood still (by the corpse), he turned (pushed) Amasa from the road to the field, and threw a cloth over him, whereupon they all passed by and went after Joab.
Verse 14. But Joab “went through all the tribes of Israel to Abela, and Beth-maacah, and all Berim.” Abela (v. 15), or Abel (v. 18), has been preserved in the large Christian village of Abil, a place with ruins, and called Abil-el-Kamh on account of its excellent wheat (Kamh), which lies to the north-west of Lake Huleh, upon a Tell on the eastern side of the river Derdâra; not in Ibl-el-Hawa, a place to the north of this, upon the ridge between Merj Ayun and Wady et Teim (vid., Ritter, Erdk. xv. pp. 240, 241; Robinson, Bibl. Researches, pp. 372-3; and v. de Velde, Mem. p. 280). Beth-maacah was quite close to Abela; so that the names of the two places are connected together in v. 15, and afterwards, as Abel-bethmaacah (vid., 1 Kings 15:20, and 2 Kings 15:29), also called Abel-maim in 2 Chron 16:4. Berim is the name of a district which is unknown to us; and even the early translators did not know how to render it. There is nothing, however, either in the pa>ntev en carriJ> is the LXX or the omnes viri electi of the Vulgate, to warrant an alteration of the text. The latter, in fact, rests upon a mere conjecture, which is altogether unsuitable; for the subject to lhæq; cannot be kaal-habeeriym on account of the vav consec., but must be obtained from yis¦raa’eel b¦kaal-shib¦Teey. The Chethib wyqlhw is evidently a slip of the pen for lhæq; .
Verse 15. They besieged him (Sheba) in Abel-beth-maacah, and piled up a rampart against the city, so that it rose up by the town-moat lyje , the moat with the low wall belonging to it); and all the people with Joab destroyed to throw down the wall. Verse 16-18. Then a wise woman of the city desired to speak to Joab, and said (from the wall) to him (v. 18), “They were formerly accustomed to say, ask Abel; and so they brought (a thing) to pass.” These words show that Abel had formerly been celebrated for the wisdom of its inhabitants.
Verse 19. “I am of the peaceable, faithful in Israel: thou seekest to slay a city and mother in Israel; wherefore wilt thou destroy the inheritance of Jehovah?” The construing of ykinOa; with a predicate in the plural may be explained on the simple ground that the woman spoke in the name of the city as well as in its favour, and therefore had the citizens in her mind at the time, as is very evident from the figurative expression µae (mother) for mother-city or capital. f78 The woman gave Joab to understand, in the first place, that he ought to have asked the inhabitants of Abela whether they intended to fight for Sheba before commencing the siege and destruction of the town, according to the law laid down in Deut 20:10ff. with reference to the siege of foreign towns; and secondly, that he ought to have taken into consideration the peaceableness and fidelity of the citizens of Abela, and not to destroy the peace-loving citizens and members of the nation of God.
Verse 20. The woman’s words made an impression upon Joab. He felt the truthfulness of her reproaches, and replied, “Far be it, far be it from me, to swallow up or destroy.” µai , as in the case of oaths: “truly not.”
Verse 21. “It is not so (sc., as thou sayest), but a man of the mountains of Ephraim (which extended into the tribe of Benjamin: see at 1 Sam 1:1), Sheba the son of Bichri, hath lifted up his hand against the king David.
Only give him up, and I will draw away from the city.” The woman promised him this: “Behold, his head shall be thrown out to thee over the wall.”
Verse 22. She then came to all the people (i.e., the citizens of the town) “with her wisdom,” i.e., with the wise counsel which she had given to Joab, and which he had accepted; whereupon the citizens cut off Sheba’s head, and threw it out to Joab. Then Joab had a trumpet blown for a retreat, and the men disbanded, whilst he himself returned to Jerusalem to the king.
2 SAMUEL. 20:23-26
David’s Ministers of State.
The second section of the history of David’s reign closes, like the first (2 Sam 8:16ff.), with a list of the leading ministers of state. The author evidently found the two lists in his sources, and included them both in his work, for the simple reason that they belonged to different periods, as the difference in the names of some of the officers clearly shows, and that they supplemented on another. The list before us belongs to a later period of David’s reign than the one in 2 Sam 8:16-18. In addition to the officebearers mentioned in ch. 8, we find here Adoram over the tribute, and Ira the Kairite a confidential counsellor (cohen: see at 2 Sam 8:18), in the place of the sons of David noticed in ch. 8:18. The others are the same in both lists. The Chethib hkry is to be read hakaariy (cf. 2 Kings 11:4,19), from rWK, perfodit, and is synonymous with ytireK] (see at 2 Sam 8:18).
Adoram is the same person as Adoniram, who is mentioned in 1 Kings 4:6 and 5:28 as overseer over the tributary service in the time of Solomon; as we may see from the fact, that the latter is also called Adoram in 1 Kings 12:18, and Hadoram in 2 Chron 10:18. Hadoram is apparently only a contracted form of the name, and not merely a copyist’s mistake for Adoniram. But when we find that, according to the passage cited, the same man filled this office under three kings, we must bear in mind that he did not enter upon it till the close of David’s reign, as he is not mentioned in Sam 8:16ff., and that his name only occurs in connection with Rehoboam’s ascent of the throne; so that there is no ground for assuming that he filled the office for any length of time under that monarch. smæ does not mean vectigal, i.e., tribute or tributary service, but tributary labourers. The derivation of the word is uncertain, and has been disputed. The appointment of a special prefect over the tributary labourers can hardly have taken place before the closing years of David’s reign, when the king organized the internal administration of the kingdom more firmly than before. On the tributary labourers, see at 1 Kings 5:27. Ira the Jairite is never mentioned again. There is no ground for altering Jairi (the Jairite) into Jithri (the Jithrite), as Thenius proposes, since the rendering given in the Syriac (“from Jathir”) is merely an inference from 2 Sam 23:38; and the assumption upon which this conclusion is founded, viz., that Ira, the hero mentioned in 2 Sam 23:38, is the same person as Ira the royal cohen, is altogether unfounded. IV. CLOSE OF DAVID’S REIGN.
After the suppression of the rebellion headed by Sheba, David spent the remaining years of his reign in establishing the kingdom upon a firmer basis, partly by organizing the army, the administration of justice, and the general government of the realm, and partly by making preparations for the erection of the temple, and enacting rules for the service of the Levites; that he might be able to hand over the government in a firm and satisfactory state to his youthful son Solomon, whom the Lord had appointed as his successor. The account of these regulations and enactments fills up the whole of the last section of the history of David’s reign in the first book of Chronicles. But in the book before us, several other things (1) two divine punishments inflicted upon Israel, with the expiation of the sins that occasioned them (2 Sam 21:1-14, and ch. 24); (2) David’s psalm of praise for deliverance out of the hand of all his enemies (ch. 22), and his last prophetic words (2 Sam 23:1-7); and (3) a few brief notices of victorious acts performed in the wars with the Philistines (2 Sam 21:15-22), and a longer list of David’s heroes (ch. 23:8- 39)-form, as it were, a historical framework for these poetical and prophetic portions.
Of the two divine visitations mentioned, the pestilence occasioned by the numbering of the people (ch. 24) occurred undoubtedly in the closing years of David’s reign; whereas the famine, and the expiation connected with it (2 Sam 21:1-14), happened most probably at an earlier period, and are merely introduced here because no fitting opportunity had presented itself before. The kernel and centre of this last section of the history of David is to be found unquestionably in the psalm of thanksgiving in ch. 22, and the prophetic announcement of an exalted and blessed king. In the psalm of thanksgiving David looks back at the close of his life upon all the mercy and faithfulness which he had experienced throughout his reign, and praises the Lord his God for the whole. In his “last words” he looks forward into the time to come, and on the strength of the promise which he has received, of the eternal duration of the dominion of his house, sees in spirit the just Ruler, who will one day arise from his seed, and take the throne of his kingdom for ever. These two lyrical and prophetic productions of David, the ripest spiritual fruit of his life, form a worthy conclusion to this reign. To this there is appended the list of his heroes, in the form of a supplement (2 Sam 23:8- 39); and finally in ch. 24 the account of the numbering of the people, and the pestilence which fell upon Israel, as a punishment for this fault on the part of David. This account is placed at the close of the books of Samuel, merely because the altar which was built to expiate the wrath of God, together with the sacrifices offered upon it, served to consecrate the site for the temple, which was to be erected after David’s death, in accordance with the divine promise (2 Sam 7:13), by his son and successor Solomon.
THREE YEARS’ FAMINE. HEROIC ACTS PERFORMED IN THE WARS WITH THE PHILISTINES.
2 SAMUEL. 21:1-14
Three Years’ Famine.
A three years’ famine in the land, the occasion of which, as Jehovah declared to the king, was Saul’s crime with regard to the Gibeonites, was expiated by David’s delivering up to the Gibeonites, at their own request, seven of Saul’s descendants, who were then hung by them upon a mountain before Jehovah. This occurrence certainly did not take place in the closing years of David’s reign; on the other hand, it is evident from the remark in v. 7, to the effect that Mephibosheth was spared, that it happened after David had received tidings of Mephibosheth, and had taken him to his own table (ch. 9). This is mentioned here as a practical illustration, on the one hand of the manner in which Jehovah visited upon the house of Saul, even after the death of Saul himself, a crime which had been committed by him; and, on the other hand, of the way in which, even in such a case as this, when David had been obliged to sacrifice the descendants of Saul to expiate the guilt of their father, he showed his tenderness towards him by the honourable burial of their bones. 1-6a. A famine, which lasted for three successive years, induced David to seek the face of Jehovah, i.e., to approach God in prayer and ask the cause of this judgment which had fallen upon the land. The Lord replied, “Because of Saul, and because of the house of blood-guiltiness, because he hath slain the Gibeonites.” The expression “because of the house of bloodguiltiness” is in apposition to “Saul,” and determines the meaning more precisely: “because of Saul, and indeed because of the blood-guiltiness which rests upon his house.” µD; tyiBæ signifies the house upon which blood that had been shed still rested as guilt, like µD; `ry[i in Ezek 22:2; 24:6,9, and µD; vyai in Ps 5:7; 27:9, etc. Nothing further is known about the fact itself. It is simply evident from the words of the Gibeonites in v. 5, that Saul, in his pretended zeal for the children of Israel, had smitten the Gibeonites, i.e., had put them to death. Probably some dissatisfaction with them had furnished Saul with a pretext for exterminating these Amoritish heathen from the midst of the people of God.
Verse 2-3. In consequence of this answer from God, which merely indicated in a general manner the cause of the visitation that had come upon the land, David sent for the Gibeonites to ask them concerning the wrong that had been done them by Saul. But before the historian communicates their answer, he introduces an explanation respecting the Gibeonites, to the effect that they were not Israelites, but remnants of the Amorites, to whom Joshua had promised on oath that their lives should be preserved (vid., Josh 9:3ff.). They are called Hivites in the book of Joshua (Josh 9:7); whereas here they are designated Amorites, according to the more general name which is frequently used as comprehending all the tribes of Canaan (see at Gen 10:16 and 15:16). David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I expiate” (sc., the wrong done you), “that ye may bless the inheritance (i.e., the nation) of Jehovah?”
On the use of the imperative Ërær; to denote the certain consequences, see Ewald, §347.
Verse 4-5. The Gibeonites answered, “I have not to do with silver and gold concerning Saul and his house” (lit. it is not, does not stand, to me at silver and gold with Saul and his house), i.e., I have no money to demand of Saul, require no pecuniary payment as compensation for the blood which he shed among us (vid., Num 35:31). The Chethib wOl] is not to be touched, notwithstanding the wOl] which follows. The use of the singular may be explained on the simple ground that the speaker thought of the Gibeonites as a corporation. “And it does not pertain to us to put any one to death in Israel” (sc., of our own accord). When David inquired still further, “What do you mean, then, that I should do to you?” they replied, “(As for) the man who consumed us, and who thought against us, that we should be destroyed dmæv; without yKi , subordinately to hm;D; , like `hc;[; in the previous verse), so as not to continue in the whole of the territory of Israel, let seven men of his sons be given us, that we may crucify them to Jehovah at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Jehovah.” wgw rv,a vyai is placed at the head absolutely (cf. Gesenius, §145, 2).
On crucifixion as a capital punishment, see at Num 25:4, where it has already been observed that criminals were not impaled or fastened to the cross alive, but were first of all put to death. Consequently the Gibeonites desired that the massacre, which had taken place among them by the command of Saul, should be expiated by the execution of a number of his sons-blood for blood, according to Num 35:31. They asked for the crucifixion for Jehovah, i.e., that the persons executed might be impaled, as a public exhibition of the punishment inflicted, before the face of the Lord (vid., v. 9), as the satisfaction required to expiate His wrath. Seven was a sacred number, denoting the performance of a work of God. This was to take place in Gibeah, the home and capital of Saul, who had brought the wrath of God upon the land through his crime. There is a sacred irony in the epithet applied to Saul, “chosen of the Lord.” If Saul was the chosen of Jehovah, his actions ought to have been in accordance with his divine election. 6b-10. David granted the request, because, according to the law in Num 35:33, blood-guiltiness when resting upon the land could only be expiated by the blood of the criminal; but in delivering up the members of Saul’s house for whom they asked, he spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan and grandson of Saul, for the sake of the bond of friendship which he had formed with Jonathan on oath (1 Sam 18:3; 20:8,16), and gave up to the Gibeonites two sons of Rizpah, a concubine of Saul (vid., v. 11 and 2 Sam 3:7), and five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she had borne to Adriel of Meholah. The name of Michal, which stands in the text, is founded upon an error of memory or a copyist’s mistake; for it was not Michal, but Merab, Saul’s eldest daughter, who was given to Adriel the Meholathite as his wife (1 Sam 18:19). The Gibeonites crucified those who were delivered up to them upon the mountain at Gibeah before Jehovah (see the remarks on v. 6). “Thus fell seven at once.” The Chethib µyitæ[;b]vi , at which the Masoretes took such offence that they wanted to change it into [bæv, , is defended by Böttcher very properly, on the ground that the dual of the numeral denotes what is uniformly repeated as if by pairing; so that here it expresses what was extraordinary in the even tin a more pictorial manner than the Keri: “They fell sevenfold at once,” i.e., seven in the same way. The further remark, “they were slain in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest,” belongs to what follows, for which it prepares the way. The two Keris, µhe for µhe , and hL;jiT] for hL;jiT] , are needless emendations. hL;jiT] is an adverbial accusative (vid., Ges. §118, 2). The harvest began with the barley harvest, about the middle of Nisan, our April.
Verse 10. And Rizpah took sackcloth, i.e., the coarse hairy cloth that was worn as mourning, and spread it out for herself by the rock-not as a tent, as Clericus supposes, still less as a covering over the corpses of those who had been executed, according to the exegetical handbook, but for a bed- ”from the beginning of the harvest till water was poured out upon them (the crucified) from heaven,” i.e., till rain came as a sign that the plague of drought that had rested upon the land was appeased; after which the corpses could be openly taken down from the stakes and buried-a fact which is passed over in the account before us, where only the principal points are given. This is the explanation which Josephus has correctly adopted; but his assumption that the rain fell at once, and before the ordinary early rain, has no foundation in the text of the Bible. “And suffered not the birds of heaven to settle upon the corpses by day, or the wild beasts by night.” Leaving corpses without burial, to be consumed by birds of prey and wild beasts, was regarded as the greatest ignominy that could befal the dead (see at 1 Sam 17:44). According to Deut 21:22-23, persons executed were not to remain hanging through the night upon the stake, but to be buried before evening. This law, however, had no application whatever to the case before us, where the expiation of guilt that rested upon the whole land was concerned. In this instance the expiatory sacrifices were to remain exposed before Jehovah, till the cessation of the plague showed that His wrath had been appeased.
Verse 11-14. When this touching care of Rizpah for the dead was told to David, he took care that the bones of the whole of the fallen royal house should be buried in the burial-place of Saul’s family. He therefore sent for the bones of Saul and Jonathan, which the men of Jabesh had taken away secretly from the wall of Beisan, where the Philistines had fastened the bodies, and which had been buried in Jabesh (1 Sam 31:10ff.), and had the bones of the sons and grandsons of Saul who had been crucified at Gibeah collected together, and interred all these bones at Zela in the land of Benjamin, in the family grave of Kish the father of Saul. bnæG; , to take away secretly. ˆa;v] tyBe bjor] , from the market-place of Bethshan, does not present any contradiction to the statement in 1 Sam 31:10, that the Philistines fastened the body to the wall of Bethshan, as the rechob or market-place in eastern towns is not in the middle of the town, but is an open place against or in front of the gate (cf. 2 Chron 32:6; Neh 8:1,3,16).
This place, as the common meeting-place of the citizens, was the most suitable spot that the Philistines could find for fastening the bodies to the wall. The Chethib hl;T; is the true Hebrew form from hl;T; , whereas the Keri al;T; is a formation resembling the Aramaean (cf. Ewald, §252, a.).
The Keri yTiv]lip] µv; is correct, however, as yTiv]lip] , being a proper name, does not take any article. In hk;n; µwOy the literal meaning of µwOy (day) must not be strictly pressed, but the expression is to be taken in the sense of “at the time of the smiting;” for the hanging up of the bodies did not take place till the day after the battle (1 Sam 31:8ff.).-In v. 14 the account is abridged, and the bones of the crucified persons are not mentioned again. The situation of Zela is unknown (see at Josh 18:28). After this had been carried out in accordance with the king’s command, God suffered himself to be entreated for the land, so that the famine ceased.
2 SAMUEL. 21:15-22
Heroic Acts Performed in the Wars with the Philistines.
The brief accounts contained in these verses of different heroic feats were probably taken from a history of David’s wars drawn up in the form of chronicles, and are introduced here as practical proofs of the gracious deliverance of David out of the hand of all his foes, for which he praises the Lord his God in the psalm of thanksgiving which follows, so that the enumeration of these feats is to be regarded as supplying a historical basis for the psalm.
Verse 15-16. The Philistines had war with Israel again. `dwO[ (again) refers generally to earlier wars with the Philistines, and has probably been taken without alteration from the chronicles employed by our author, where the account which follows was attached to notices of other wars. This may be gathered from the books of the Chronicles, where three of the heroic feats mentioned here are attached to the general survey of David’s wars (vid., Chron 20:4). David was exhausted in this fight, and a Philistian giant thought to slay him; but Abishai came to his help and slew the giant. He was called Yishbo benob (Keri, Yishbi), i.e., not Yishbo at Nob, but Yishbobenob, a proper name, the meaning of which is probably “his dwelling is on the height,” and which may have been given to him because of his inaccessible castle. He was one of the descendants of Raphah, i.e., one of the gigantic race of Rephaim. Raphah was the tribe-father of the Rephaim, an ancient tribe of gigantic stature, of whom only a few families were left even in Moses’ time (vid., Deut 2:11; 3:11,13, and the commentary on Gen 14:5). The weight of his lance, i.e., of the metal point to his lance, was three hundred shekels, or eight pounds, of brass, half as much as the spear of Goliath (1 Sam 17:7); “and he was girded with new armour.” Böttcher has no doubt given the correct explanation of the word vd;j; ; he supposes the feminine to be used in a collective sense, so that the noun (“armour,” yliK] ) could be dispensed with. (For parallels both to the words and facts, vid., Judg 18:11 and Deut 1:41.) rmæa; , he said (sc., to himself), i.e., he thought.
Verse 17. The danger into which the king had been brought in this war, and out of which he had been rescued solely by Abishai’s timely help, induced his attendants to make him swear that he would not go into battle any more in person. wOl [bæv; , administered an oath to him, i.e., fixed him by a promise on oath. hb;K; alo , “and shalt not extinguish the light of Israel.” David had become the light of Israel from the fact that Jehovah was his light (2 Sam 22:29), or, according to the parallel passage in Ps 18:29, that Jehovah had lighted his lamp and enlightened his darkness, i.e., had lifted him out of a state of humiliation and obscurity into one of honour and glory. The light (or lamp) is a figure used to represent the light of life as continually burning, i.e., life in prosperity and honour. David’s regal life and actions were the light which the grace of God had kindled for the benefit of Israel. This light he was not to extinguish, namely by going into the midst of war and so exposing his valuable life to danger.
Verse 18. (compare 1 Chron 20:4). In a second war, Sibbechai and Hushathite slew Saph the Rephaite at Gob. According to 1 Chron 27:11, Sibbechai, one of the gibborim of David (1 Chron 11:29), was the leader of the eighth division of the army (see at 2 Sam 23:27). ytiv;ju is a patronymic from vWj in 1 Chron 4:4. The scene of conflict is called Gob in our text, and Gezer in the Chronicles. As Gob is entirely unknown. Thenius supposes it to be a slip of the pen for Gezer; but this is improbable, for the simple reason that Gob occurs again in v. 19. It may possibly have been a small place somewhere near to Gezer, which some suppose to have stood on the site of el Kubab, on the road from Ramleh to Yalo (see at Josh 10:33). The name Saph is written Sippai in the Chronicles.
Verse 19. (vid., 1 Chron 20:5). In another war with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan the son of Yaare-Orgim of Bethlehem smote Goliath of Gath, whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. In the Chronicles, however, we find it stated that “Elhanan the son of Jair smote Lahmi the brother of Goliath of Gath, whose spear,” etc. The words of our text are so similar to those of the Chronicles, if we only leave out the word græa; , which probably crept in from the next line through oversight on the part of a copyist, that they presuppose the same original text, so that the difference can only have arisen from an error in copying. The majority of the expositors (e.g., Piscator, Clericus, Michaelis, Movers, and Thenius) regard the text of the Chronicles as the true and original one, and the text before us as simply corrupt. But Bertheau and Böttcher maintain the opposite opinion, because it is impossible to see how the reading in 2 Sam. could grow out of that in the Chronicles; whereas the reading in the Chronicles might have arisen through conscious alteration originating in the offence taken by some reader, who recalled the account of the conflict between David and Goliath, at the statement that Elhanan smote a giant named Goliath, and who therefore altered ta ymjlh tyb into ja; µj,l, hT;aæ .
But apart from the question whether there were two Goliaths, one of whom was slain by David and the other by Elhanan, the fact that the conjecture of Bertheau and Böttcher presupposes a deliberate alteration of the text, or rather, to speak more correctly, an intentional falsification of the historical account, is quite sufficient to overthrow it, as not a single example of anything of the kind can be adduced from the whole of the Chronicles. On the other hand, the recollection of David’s celebrated officer Elhanan of Bethlehem (2 Sam 23:24; 1 Chron 11:26) might easily lead to an identification of the Elhanan mentioned here with that officer, and so occasion the alteration of µj,l, hT;aæ into hlchmy byt. This alteration was then followed by that of tyæl]G; ja; into tyæl]G; hT;aæ , and all the more easily from the fact that the description of Lahmi’s spear corresponds word for word with that of Goliath’s spear in 1 Sam 17:7.
Consequently we must regard the reading in the Chronicles as the correct one, and alter our text accordingly; since the assumption that there were two Goliaths is a very improbable one, and there is nothing at all strange in the reference to a brother of Goliath, who was also a powerful giant, and carried a spear like Goliath. Elhanan the son of Jairi is of course a different person from Elhanan the Bethlehemite, the son of Dodo (2 Sam 23:24).
The Chronicles have rW[y; , instead of Jairi (the reading according to the Chethib), and the former is probably the correct way of writing the name.
Verse 20-21. (cf. 1 Chron 20:6-7). In another war at Gath, a Philistian warrior, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, f79 defied Israel, and was slain by Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David (see at 2 Sam 13:3). The Chethib ˆyDimi is probably to be read madiyn, an archaic plural (“a man of measures, or extensions:” de Dieu, etc.); in the Chronicles we find the singular hD;mi instead.
Verse 22. (cf. 1 Chron 20:8). This verse contains a postscript, in which the previous verses are summed up. The accusative t[æBær]aæAta, may be explained from a species of attraction, i.e., from the fact that the historian had hk;n; (v. 21) still in his mind: “As for these four, they were born to Rapha,” i.e., they were descendants of the Rephaite family at Gath, where remnants of the aboriginal Canaanitish tribes of gigantic stature were still to be found, as in other towns of the Philistines (vid., Josh 11:22). “They fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.” “By the hand of David” refers to the fact that David had personally fought with Yishbobenob (v. 16).
DAVID’S PSALM OF THANKSGIVING FOR VICTORY OVER ALL HIS ENEMIES.
In the following psalm of thanksgiving, David praises the Lord as his deliverer out of all dangers during his agitated life and conflicts with his foes (vv. 2-4). In the first half he pictures his marvellous deliverance out of all the troubles which he passed through, especially in the time of Saul’s persecutions, under the image of an extraordinary theophany (vv. 5-20), and unfolds the ground of this deliverance (vv. 21-28). In the second half he proclaims the mighty help of the Lord, and his consequent victories over the foreign enemies of his government (vv. 29-46), and closes with renewed praise of God for all His glorious deeds (vv. 47-51). The psalm is thus arranged in two leading divisions, with an introductory and concluding strophe. But we cannot discover any definite system of strophes in the further arrangement of the principal divisions, as the several groups of thoughts are not rounded off symmetrically.
The contents and form of this song of praise answer to the fact attested by the heading, that it was composed by David in the later years of his reign, when God had rescued him from all his foes, and helped his kingdom to victory over all the neighbouring heathen nations. The genuineness of the psalm is acknowledged to be indisputable by all the modern critics, except J. Olshausen and Hupfeld, who, with hypercritical scepticism, dispute the Davidic origin of the psalm on subjective grounds of aesthetic taste. This psalm is found in the Psalter as Ps 18, though with many divergences in single words and clauses, which do not, however, essentially affect the meaning. Commentators are divided in opinion as to the relation in which the two different forms of the text stand to one another. The idea that the text of 2 Sam. rests upon a careless copy and tradition must decidedly be rejected: for, on the one hand, by far the larger portion of the deviations in our text from that of the Psalter are not to be attributed to carelessness on the part of copyists, but are evidently alterations made with thoughtfulness and deliberation: e.g., the omission of the very first passage (v. 1), “I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength;” the change of rWx lae (my God, my strength, or rock) into rWx µyhila’ (the God of my rock), as “the God of the rock” occurs again in v. 47 of the text before us; or the substitution of ha;r; (He was seen, v. 11) for ha;D; (He did fly), etc.
On the other hand, the original reading has undoubtedly been retained in many passages of our text, whilst simpler and more common forms have been substituted in that of the Psalms; e.g., in v. 5, tw,m; rB;v]mi instead of tw,m; lb,j, ; in v. 8, µyimæv; hd;s;wOm (the foundations of the heavens) for rhæ hd;s;wOm (the foundations of the hills); in v. 12, µymiAtræv]jæ for µyimæAtkæv]j, ; in v. 16, µy; qypia; for µyimæ qypia; ; in v. 28, lypiv]Tæ µymir;Al[æ Ëyn,y[ew] for lpev; µWr `ˆyi[æ ; in v. 33, Ër,D, µymiT; rtæn; for Ër,D, µymiT; ˆtæn; ; and in v. 44, varo rmæv; for varo µWc , and several others. In general, however, the text of the Psalms bears the stamp of poetical originality more than the text before us, and the latter indicates a desire to give greater clearness and simplicity to the poetical style. Consequently neither of the two texts that have come down to us contains the original text of the psalm of David unaltered; but the two recensions have been made quite independently of each other, one for the insertion of the psalm in the Psalter intended for liturgical use, and the other when it was incorporated into the history of David’s reign, which formed the groundwork of our books of Samuel. The first revision may have been made by David himself when he arranged his Psalms for liturgical purposes; but the second was effected by the prophetic historian, whose object it was, when inserting David’s psalm of praise in the history of his reign, not so much to give it with diplomatic literality, as to introduce it in a form that should be easily intelligible and true to the sense.
2 SAMUEL. 22:1
Verse 1. The heading is formed precisely according to the introductory formula of the song of Moses in Deut 31:30, and was no doubt taken from the larger historical work employed by the author of our books. It was probably also adopted from this into the canonical collection of the Psalter, and simply brought into conformity with the headings of the other psalms by the alteration of rwiD; rbæd; (and David said) into rbæd; rv,a rwiD; hwO;hy] `db,[, (“Of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake:” Eng. ver.), and the insertion of jxæn; (“to the chief musician:” Eng. ver.) at the head (see Delitzsch on the Psalms). “In the day,” i.e., at the time, “when Jehovah had delivered him.” Deliverance “out of the hand of Saul” is specially mentioned, not because this was the last, but because it was the greatest and most glorious-a deliverance out of the deepest misery into regal might and glory. The psalm is opened by rmæa; in both texts.
2 SAMUEL. 22:2-4
Vv. 2-4 form the introduction. 2 Jehovah is my rock, my castle, and my deliverer to me 3 My Rock-God, in whom I trust:
My shield and horn of my salvation, my fortress and my refuge, My Saviour; from violence Thou redeemest me. 4 I call upon the praised one, Jehovah, And I am saved from my enemies.
This introduction contains the sum and substance of the whole psalm, inasmuch as David groups the many experiences of divine deliverance in his agitated life into a long series of predicates, in all of which he extols God as his defence, refuge, and deliverer. The heaping up of these predicates is an expression both of liveliest gratitude, and also of hope for the future. The different predicates, however, are not to be taken as in apposition to Jehovah, or as vocatives, but are declarations concerning God, how He had proved himself faithful to the Psalmist in all the calamities of his life, and would assuredly do so still. David calls God dWxm; [læs, (my rock, and my castle) in Ps 31:4 as well (cf. Ps 71:4). The two epithets are borrowed from the natural character of Palestine, where steep and almost inaccessible rocks afford protection to the fugitive, as David had often found at the time when Saul was pursuing him (vid., Sam. 24:23; 22:5).
But whilst David took refuge in rocks, he placed his hopes of safety not in their inaccessible character, but in God the Lord, the eternal spiritual rock, whom he could see in the earthly rock, so that he called Him his true castle. wOl flæp; (my deliverer to me) gives the real explanation of the foregoing figures. The wOl] (to me) is omitted in Ps 18:2, and only serves to strengthen the suffix, “my, yea my deliverer.’ “My Rock-God,” equivalent to, God who is my Rock: this is formed after Deut 32:4, where Moses calls the Lord the Rock of Israel, because of His unchangeable faithfulness; for zur, a rock, is a figure used to represent immoveable firmness. In Ps 18:3 we find rWx lae , “my God” (strong one), “my rock,” two synonyms which are joined together in our text, so as to form one single predicate of God, which is repeated in v. 47.
The predicates which follow, “my horn and my salvation-shield,” describe God as the mighty protector and defender of the righteous. A shield covers against hostile attacks. In this respect God was Abraham’s shield (Gen 15:1), and the helping shield of Israel (Deut 33:29; cf. Ps 3:4; 59:12). He is the “horn of salvation,” according to Luther, because He overcomes enemies, and rescues from foes, and gives salvation. The figure is borrowed from animals, which have their strength and defensive weapons in their horns (see at 1 Sam 2:1). “My fortress:” misgab is a high place, where a person is secure against hostile attacks (see at Ps 9:10). The predicates which follow, viz., my refuge, etc., are not given in Ps 18:3, and are probably only added as a rhythmical completion to the strophe, which was shortened by the omission of the introductory lines, “I love thee heartily, Jehovah” (Ps 18:1).
The last clause, “My Saviour, who redeemest me from violence,” corresponds to ‘echeceh-bow in the first hemistich. In v. 4, David sums up the contents of his psalm of thanksgiving in a general sentence of experience, which may be called the theme of the psalm, for it embraces “the result of the long life which lay behind him, so full of dangers and deliverances.” llæh; , “the praised one,” an epithet applied to God, which occurs several times in the Psalms (Ps 48:2; 96:4; 113:3; 145:3). It is in apposition to Jehovah, and is placed first for the sake of emphasis: “I invoke Jehovah as the praised one.” The imperfects ar;q; and [væy; are used to denote what continually happens. In v. 5 we have the commencement of the account of the deliverances out of great tribulations, which David had experienced at the hand of God. 5 For breakers of death had compassed me, Streams of wickedness terrified me. 6 Cords of hell had girt me about, Snares of death overtook me. 7 In my distress I called Jehovah, And to my God I called; And He heard my voice out of His temple, And my crying came into His ears.
2 SAMUEL. 22:5-7
David had often been in danger of death, most frequently at the time when he was pursued by Saul, but also in Absalom’s conspiracy, and even in several wars (cf. 2 Sam 21:16). All these dangers, out of which the Lord delivered him, and not merely those which originated with Saul, are included in vv. 5, 6. The figure “breakers or waves of death” is analogous to that of the “streams of Belial.” His distress is represented in both of them under the image of violent floods of water. In the psalm we find tw,m; lb,j, , “snares of death,” as in Ps 116:3, death being regarded as a hunger with a net and snare (cf. Ps 91:3): this does not answer to well to the parallel ljænæ , and therefore is not so good, since lwOav] lb,j, follows immediately. l[æYæliB] (Belial), uselessness in a moral sense, or worthlessness. The meaning “mischief,” or injury in a physical sense, which many expositors give to the word in this passage on account of the parallel “death,” cannot be grammatically sustained. Belial was afterwards adopted as a name for the devil (2 Cor 6:15). Streams of wickedness are calamities that proceed from wickedness, or originate with worthless men. qideem, to come to meet with a hostile intention, i.e., to fall upon (vid., Job 30:27). lk;yhe , the temple out of which Jehovah heard him, was the heavenly abode of God, as in Ps 11:4; for, according to vv. 8ff., God came down from heaven to help him. 8 Then the earth swayed and trembled, The foundations of the heavens shook And swayed to and fro, because He was wroth. 9 Smoke ascended in His nose, And fire out of His mouth devoured, Red-hot coals burned out of Him. 10 And He bowed the heavens and came down, And cloudy darkness under His feet.
2 SAMUEL. 22:8-10
Jehovah came down from heaven to save His servant, as He had formerly come down upon Sinai to conclude His covenant with Israel in the midst of terrible natural phenomena, which proclaimed the wrath of the Almighty.
The theophany under which David depicts the deliverance he had experienced, had its type in the miraculous phenomenon which accompanied the descent of God upon Sinai, and which suggested, as in the song of Deborah (Judg 5:4-5), the idea of a terrible storm. It is true that the deliverance of David was not actually attended by any such extraordinary natural phenomena; but the saving hand of God from heaven was so obviously manifested, that the deliverance experienced by him could be poetically described as a miraculous interposition on the part of God.
When the Lord rises up from His heavenly temple to come down upon the earth to judgment, the whole world trembles at the fierceness of His wrath.
Not only does the earth tremble, but the foundations of the heavens shake: the whole universe is moved. In the psalm we have “the foundations of the hills” instead of “the foundations of the heavens,”-a weaker expression, signifying the earth to its deepest foundations. The Hithpael’ v[æG; , lit., to sway itself, expresses the idea of continuous swaying to and fro. wOl hr;j; yKi , “for it (sc., wrath) burned to him,” it flamed up like a fire; cf. Deut 32:22; 29:19. “Smoke,” the forerunner of fire, “ascended in His nose.” The figurative idea is that of snorting or violent breathing, which indicates the rising of wrath. Smoke is followed by fire, which devours out of the mouth, i.e., bursts forth devouring or consuming all that opposes it. The expression is strengthened still further by the parallel: “red-hot coals come out of Him,” i.e., the flame of red-hot coals pours out of Him as out of a glowing furnace (cf. Gen 15:17).
This description is based entirely upon Ex 19:18, where the Lord comes down upon Sinai in smoke and fire. We are not to picture to ourselves flashes of lightning; for all these phenomena are merely the forerunners of the appearance of God in the clouds, which is described in v. 10, “He bowed the heavens” to come down. `xræ[; , which is frequently connected with `ˆn;[; , signifies cloudy darkness, or dark clouds. The substratum of this description is the fact that in a severe storm the heavens seem to sink down upon the earth with their dark clouds. The Lord draws near riding upon black thunder-clouds, “that the wicked may not behold His serene countenance, but only the terrible signs of His fierce wrath and punishment” (J. H. Michaelis). 11 He rode upon a cherub and flew hither, And appeared upon the wings of the wind. 12 He made darkness round about Him as pavilions, Water-gathering, thick clouds. 13 Out of the splendour before Him Burned red-hot coals of fire.
2 SAMUEL. 22:11-12
These three verses are a further expansion of v. 19, and v. 11 of v. 10a.
The cherub is not a personified earthly creature, for cherubim are angels around the throne of God (see at Gen 3:22). The poetical figure “riding upon the cherub” is borrowed from the fact that God was enthroned between the two cherubim upon the lid of the ark of the covenant, and above their outspread wings (Ex 25:20-21). As the idea of His “dwelling between the cherubim” (2 Sam 6:2; 1 Sam 4:4; Ps 80:2) was founded upon this typical manifestation of the gracious presence of God in the Most Holy place, so here David depicts the descent of Jehovah from heaven as “riding upon a cherub,” picturing the cherub as a throne upon which God appears in the clouds of heaven, though without therefore imagining Him as riding upon a sphinx or driving in a chariot-throne. Such notions as these are precluded by the addition of the term `ãW[ , “did fly.”
The “flying” is also suggested by the wings of the cherubim. As the divine “shechinah” was enthroned above the ark of the covenant upon the wings of the cherubim, David in his poetical description represents the cherub and his wings as carrying the throne of God, to express the thought that Jehovah came down from heaven as the judge and saviour of His servants in the splendour of His divine glory, surrounded by cherubim who stand as His highest servants around His throne, just as Moses in his blessing (Deut 33:2) speaks of Jehovah as coming out of myriads of His holy angels. The elementary substratum of this was the wings of the wind, upon which He appeared. In the psalm we have ha;D; , from ha;D; , to soar (Deut 28:39; Jer 48:40), which suggests the idea of flying better than ha;r; (He was seen), though the latter gives the real explanation.
In vv. 12 and 13, the “cloudy darkness under His feet” (v. 10b) is still further expanded, so as to prepare the way for the description of thunder and lightning in vv. 14ff. God in His wrath withdraws His face from man.
He envelopes himself in clouds. The darkness round about him is the black thunder-cloud which forms His hut or tent. The plural succoth is occasioned by the plural bybis; , “His surroundings:” it is used with indefinite generality, and is more probably the original term than hK;su in the psalm. The “darkness” is still further explained in the second clause, µyimæ hr;v]jæ , water-gatherings. chash¦raah (hap leg) signifies, according to the Arabic, a gathering or collection. The expression used in the psalm is µyimæ tkæv]j, , water-darkness, which, if not less appropriate, is at any rate not the original term. qjævæ `b[; , clouds of clouds, i.e., the thickest clouds; a kind of superlative, in which a synonym is used instead of the same noun.
2 SAMUEL. 22:13
The splendour of the divine nature enveloped in clouds breaks through the dark covering in burning coals of fire. The coals of fire which burst forth, i.e., which break out in flame from the dark clouds, are the lightning which shoots forth from the dark storm-clouds in streams of fire. 14 Jehovah thundered from the heavens, And the Most High gave His voice. 15 He sent arrows, and scattered them; Lightning, and discomfited them. 16 Then the beds of the sea became visible; The foundations of the world were uncovered, Through the threatening of Jehovah, By the snorting of the breath of His nostrils.
2 SAMUEL. 22:14-16
God sent lightning as arrows upon the enemies along with violent thunder, and threw them thereby into confusion. µmæh; , to throw into confusion, and thereby to destroy, is the standing expression for the destruction of the foe accomplished by the miraculous interposition of God (vid., Ex 14:24; 23:27; Josh 10:10; Judg 4:15; 1 Sam 7:10). To the thunder there were added stormy wind and earthquake, as an effect of the wrath of God, whereby the foundations of the sea and land were laid bare, i.e., whereby the depth of the abyss and of the hell in the interior of the earth, into which the person to be rescued had fallen, were disclosed. f81 17 He reached out of the height, He laid hold of me; Drew me out of great waters: 18 Saved me from my enemy strong; From my haters, because they were too strong for me. 19 They fell upon me in my day of calamity:
Then Jehovah became my stay, 20 And led me out into a broad place; Delivered me, because He had pleasure in me.
2 SAMUEL. 22:17-20
The Lord stretched His hand from the height into the deep abysses, which had been uncovered through the threatening of the wrath of God, and drew out the sinking man. jlæv; without dy; is used to denote the stretching out of the hand, and in the sense of reaching out to a thing (as in 2 Sam 6:6). bræ µyimæ (great waters) does not refer to the enemy, but to the calamities and dangers (waves of death and streams of Belial, v. 5) into which the enemies of the Psalmist had plunged him. hv;m; , from hv;m; (Ex 2:10), from which the name of Moses was derived, to whom there is probably an allusion made. As Moses was taken out of the waters of the Nile, so David was taken out of great (many) waters. This deliverance is still further depicted in a more literal terms in vv. 18ff. `z[æ byeao , my enemy strong, poetical for my strong enemy, does not refer to one single enemy, namely Saul; but, as the parallel “my haters” shows, is a poetical personification of all his enemies. They were stronger than David, therefore the Lord had to deliver him with an almighty hand. The “day of calamity” in which the enemy fell upon him (qideem: see at v. 6) was the time when David wandered about in the desert helpless and homeless, fleeing from the pursuit of Saul. The Lord was then his support, or a staff on which he could support himself (vid., Ps 23:4), and led him out of the strait into the broad, i.e., into a broad space where he could move freely, because God had pleasure in him, and had chosen him in His grace to be His servant.
This reason for his deliverance is carried out still further in what follows. 21 Jehovah rendered to me according to my righteousness, According to the cleanness of my hands He recompensed me. 22 For I have observed the ways of Jehovah, And have not wickedly departed from my God. 23 For all His rights are before my eyes; And His statutes,-I do not depart from them. 24 And I was innocent towards Him, And kept myself from mine iniquity.
2 SAMUEL. 22:21-24
lmæG; signifies to do to a person good or evil, like the Greek eu> and kakw>v pra>ttein tina> . The righteousness and cleanness of hands, i.e., the innocence, which David attributed to himself, were not perfect righteousness or holiness before God, but the righteousness of his endeavours and deeds as contrasted with the unrighteousness and wickedness of his adversaries and pursuers, and consisted in the fact that he endeavoured earnestly and sincerely to walk in the ways of God and to keep the divine commandments. ˆmi [vær; , to be wicked from, is a pregnant expression, signifying to depart wickedly from God. dg,n, , i.e., as a standard before my eye. In the psalm we find `µ[i µymiT; , innocent in intercourse with the Lord, instead of wOl µymiT; (see Deut 18:13); and for the fact itself, David’s own testimony in 1 Sam 26:23-24, the testimony of God concerning him in 1 Kings 14:8, and the testimony of history in 1 Kings 15:5. `ˆwO[; , from mine iniquity, i.e., from the iniquity which I might have committed. 25 Thus Jehovah repaid me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes. 26 Towards the pious Thou showest thyself pious, Towards the perfectly innocent Thou showest thyself innocent. 27 Towards the genuine Thou showest thyself genuine, And towards the perverse Thou showest thyself crooked. 28 And afflicted people Thou helpest, And Thine eyes are against the haughty; them Thou humblest.
2 SAMUEL. 22:25-28
The motive for deliverance, which was expounded in vv. 21-24, is summed up briefly in v. 25; and then in vv. 26 and 27 it is carried back to the general truth, that the conduct of God towards men is regulated according to the conduct of men towards God. The vav cons. in bWv expresses the logical consequence. rBo is used instead of dy; rBo in v. 21, which is repeated in the psalm simply for the sake of variation. The truth that God treats every man in accordance with his conduct towards Him, is expounded in four parallel clauses, in which the conduct of God is expressed in verbs in the Hithpael, formed from the adjectives used to describe the conduct of men towards God. To the dysij; , the pious or devoted to God, He also shows himself pious; and innocent, blameless, to the µymiT; rwOBGi , the man strong in innocence, who walks in perfect innocence. rræB; , a Niphal participle, from rræB; , he who keeps himself pure, strives after purity of walk. rræB; , an anomalous contraction of rræB;t]Ti (Ps.), analogous to the formation of rræB; for rrb]ni .
The form ltæp; for ltæp; , to show one’s self perverse of crooked, is still more anomalous. God shows himself so towards the perverse, by giving him up to his perverseness (Rom 1:28). This general truth is applied in v. 28 to the congregation of God, in the contrast which it presents of humble and haughty, and is expounded from the conduct of God, as displayed in the history of Israel, towards these two classes of men, into which the nation was divided. In the psalm, therefore, we find hT;aæ yKi , for which the simple w is substituted here, because the verse does not contain any actual reason for what goes before. `yni[; `µ[æ , afflicted people, is used to denote the pious and depressed in the nation; µWr , the high, i.e., the haughty, or godless rich and mighty in the nation. lpev; is to be taken as a relative: whom Thou humblest (see Ewald, §332, b.; and for the thought, Isa 2:11).
In the psalm the unusual mode of expression in the second clause is changed into the more common phrase, “Thou bringest down high, i.e., proud looks” (cf. Prov 6:17; 21:4; 30:13; Ps 131:1, etc.).
2 SAMUEL. 22:29
V. 29 commences the description of the help which David had already received from God in his conflict with the enemies of Israel, and which he would still receive. 29 For Thou art my lamp, O Jehovah!
And Jehovah maketh my darkness bright. 30 For through Thee I run troops, And through my God I leap walls. 31 God-innocent is His way.
The word of Jehovah is refined, A shield is He to all who trust in Him.
The explanatory yKi , with which the new description of the divine mercy commences, refers to the thought implied in v. 28, that David belonged to the “afflicted people,” whom the Lord always helps. As the Lord delivered him out of the danger of death, because He took pleasure in him, so He also gave him power over all his enemies. For He was his lamp, i.e., He had lifted him out of a condition of depression and contempt into one of glory and honour (see at 2 Sam 21:17), and would still further enlighten his darkness, i.e., “would cause the light of His salvation to shine upon him and his tribe in all the darkness of their distress” (Hengstenberg). In the psalm the verse reads thus: “For Thou lightest (makest bright) my lamp (or candle), Jehovah my God enlighteneth my darkness;” the bold figure “Jehovah the lamp of David” being more literally explained. The figure is analogous to the one in Ps 27:1, “The Lord is my light;” whilst the form ryni is a later mode of writing ryni .
2 SAMUEL. 22:30
In the strength of his God he could run hostile troops and leap walls, i.e., overcome every hostile power. xWr , not from xxær; , to smash in pieces, but from xWr , to run; construed with the accusative according to the analogy of verbs of motion.
2 SAMUEL. 22:31
He derives this confidence from the acts of God, and also from His word. lae (God) is written absolutely, like rWx in Deut 32:4. The article points back to bee’lohay. Jehovah is the God lae ), whose way is perfect, without blemish; and His word is refined brass, pure silver (cf. Ps 12:7). He who trusts in Him is safe from all foes. The last two clauses occur again in Agur’s proverbs (Prov 30:5). The thought of the last clause is still further explained in vv. 32ff. 32 For who is God save Jehovah, And who a rock save our God? 33 This God is my strong fortress, And leads the innocent his way. 34 He makes my feet like the hinds, And setteth me upon my high places; 35 He teacheth my hands to fight, And my arms span brazen bows.
2 SAMUEL. 22:32-35
There is no true God who can help, except or by the side of Jehovah (cf.
Deut 32:31; 1 Sam 2:2). rWx , as in v. 2. This God is “my strong fortress:” for this figure, comp. Ps 31:5 and 27:1. lyijæ , strength, might, is construed with zwO[m; , by free subordination: “my fortress, a strong one,” like `oz machaciy (Ps 71:7; cf. Ewald, §291, b.). rtæn; for rWT, from rWf (vid., Ges. §72; Olshausen, Gram. p. 579), in the sense of leading or taking round, as in Prov 12:26. God leads the innocent his way, i.e., He is his leader and guide therein. The Keri Ër,D, rests upon a misunderstanding.
There is an important difference in the reading of this verse in Ps 18, viz., “The God who girdeth me with strength, and makes my way innocent.”
The last clause is certainly an alteration which simplifies the meaning, and so is also the first clause, the thought of which occurs again, word for word, in v. 40a, with the addition of hm;j;l]mi . hl;Y;aæ or tl,Y,aæ , the hind, or female stag, is a figure of speech denoting swiftness in running. “Like the hinds:” a condensed simile for “like the hinds’ feet,” such as we frequently meet with in Hebrew (vid., Ges. §144, Anm.). The reference is to swiftness in pursuit of the foe (vid., 2 Sam 2:18; 1 Chron 12:8). lg,r, , his feet, for lg,r, (my feet) in the psalm, may be accounted for from the fact, that David had spoken of himself in the third person as the innocent one. “My high places” were not the high places of the enemy, that became his by virtue of conquest, but the high places of his own land, which he maintained triumphantly, so that he ruled the land for them.
The expression is formed after Deut 32:13, and is imitated in Hab 3:19. limad is generally construed with a double accusative: here it is written with an accusative and l] , and signifies to instruct for the war. ttæj; , in the psalm nichataah, on account of the feminine [æwOrz] , is not the Niphal of af;j; , to be broken in pieces, but the Piel of tjænæ , to cause to go down, to press down the bow, i.e., to set it. The bow of brass is mentioned as being the strongest: setting such a bow would be a sign of great heroic strength.
The two verses (34 and 35) are simply a particularizing description of the power and might with which the Lord had endowed David to enable him to conquer all his foes. 36 And Thou reachest me the shield of my salvation, And Thy hearing makes me great. 37 Thou makest my steps broad under me, And my ankles have not trembled.
2 SAMUEL. 22:36-37
The Lord bestows the true strength for victory in His salvation. The shield of salvation is the shield which consists of salvation, of the helping grace of the Lord. `hn;[; , for which we find in the psalm `an¦waat¦kaa, thy humility, i.e., God’s condescending grace, does not mean “thy humiliation,” but “thy hearkening,” i.e., that practical hearkening on the part of God, when called upon for help, which was manifested in the fact that God made his steps broad, i.e., provided the walker with a broad space for free motion, removing obstructions and stumbling-blocks out of the way. God had done this for David, so that his ankles had not trembled, i.e., he had not been wanting in the power to take firm and safe steps. In this strength of his God he could destroy all his foes. 38 I will pursue my enemies and destroy them, I will not turn till they are consumed. 39 I will consume them and dash them in pieces, that they may not arise, And may fall under my feet. 40 And Thou girdest me with strength for war, Thou bowest mine adversaries under me. 41 And Thou makest mine enemies turn the back to me; My haters, I root them out.
2 SAMUEL. 22:38-41
The optative form ãdær; serves to make the future signification of ãDor]a, (in the psalm) the more apparent. Consequently it is quite out of the question to take the other verbs as preterites. We are not compelled to do this by the interchange of imperfects c. vav consec. with simple imperfects, as the vav consec. is not used exclusively as expressive of the past. On the contrary, the substance of the whole of the following description shows very clearly that David refers not only to the victories he has already won, but in general to the defeat of all his foes in the past, the present, and the future; for he speaks as distinctly as possible not only of their entire destruction (vv. 38, 39, 43), but also of the fact that God makes him the head of the nations, and distant and foreign nations to him homage.
Consequently he refers not only to his own personal dominion, but also, on the strength of the promise which he had received from God, to the increase of the dominion of the throne of his house, whilst he proclaims in the Spirit the ultimate defeat of all the enemies of the kingdom of God.
This Messianic element in the following description comes out in a way that cannot be mistaken, in the praise of the Lord with which he concludes in vv. 47-51. dmæv; , “I destroy them,” is stronger than gvæn; , “I reach them” (in the psalm).
In v. 39 the words are crowded together, to express the utter destruction of all foes. In the psalm lkæa; is omitted. rzæa; for rzæa; in the psalm is not a poetical Syriasm, and still less a “careless solecism” (Hupfeld), but a simple contraction, such as we meet with in many forms: e.g., ãlæa; for WnpeL]aæm] (Job. 35:11; cf. Ewald, §232, b.). The form ˆtæn; for ˆtæn; (in the psalm) is unusual, and the aphaeresis of the n can only be accounted for from the fact that this much-used word constantly drops its n as a radical sound in the imperfect (see Ewald, §195, c.). The phrase `ãr,[o wOl ˆtæn; is formed after Ex 23:27. “Giving the enemy to a person’s back” means causing them to turn the back, i.e., putting them to flight. 42 They look out, but there is no deliverer; For Jehovah, but He answereth them not. 43 And I rub in pieces as the dust of the earth, Like the mire of the streets I crush them and stamp upon them.
2 SAMUEL. 22:42-43
The cry of the foe for help is not attended to; they are annihilated without quarter. h[;v; , to look out to God for help (with lae and `l[æ ; vid., Isa 17:7-8), is more poetical than W[W]væy] , “they cry” (in the psalm); and xr,a,Arpæ[\Kæ is more simple than jæWrAynep]Al[æ rp;[;K] (in the psalm), “I crush them as dust before the wind,” for the wind does not crush the dust, but carries it away. In the second clause of v. 43, qqæD; is used instead of ‘ariyqeem in the psalm, and strengthened by [qær; . qqæD; , from qqæD; , to make thin, to crush; so that instead of “I pour them out like mire of the streets which is trodden to pieces,” the Psalmist simply says, “I crush and stamp upon them like mire of the streets.” Through the utter destruction of the foe, God establishes the universal dominion to which the throne of David is to attain. 44 And Thou rescuest me out of the strivings of my people, Preservest me to be the head of the heathen.
People that I knew not serve me. 45 The sons of the stranger dissemble to me, Upon hearsay they obey me. 46 The sons of the stranger despair, And tremble out of their castles.
2 SAMUEL. 22:44-46
By “the strivings of my people” the more indefinite expression in the psalm, “strivings of the people,” is explained. The words refer to the domestic conflicts of David, out of which the Lord delivered him, such as the opposition of Ishbosheth and the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba. These deliverances formed the prelude and basis of his dominion over the heathen. Consequently rmæv; (Thou preservest me to be the head of the nations) occurs quite appropriately in the second clause; and µWc , “Thou settest me,” which occurs in the psalm, is a far less pregnant expression. `µ[æ before [dæy; alo is used indefinitely to signify foreign nations. Toi king of Hamath (2 Sam 8:10) was an example, and his subjugation was a prelude of the future subjection of all the heathen to the sceptre of the Son of David, as predicted in Ps 72.
In v. 45 the two clauses of the psalm are very appropriately transposed.
The Hithpael vjæK; , as compared with vjæK; , is the later form. In the primary passage (Deut 33:29) the Niphal is used to signify the dissembling of friendship, or of involuntary homage on the part of the vanquished towards the victor. ˆz,aO [mæv; , “by the hearing of the ear,” i.e., by hearsay, is a simple explanation of ˆz,aO [mæve , at the rumour of the ears (vid., Job 42:5), i.e., at the mere rumour of David’s victories. The foreign nations pine away, i.e., despair of ever being able to resist the victorious power of David. rgæj; , “they gird themselves,” does not yield any appropriate meaning, even if we should take it in the sense of equipping themselves to go out to battle. The word is probably a misspelling of rgæj; , which occurs in the psalm, græj; being a aJp leg in the sense of being terrified, or trembling: they tremble out of their castles, i.e., they come trembling out of their castles (for the thought itself, see Mic 7:17). It is by no means probable that the word chaagar, which is so frequently met with in Hebrew, is used in this one passage in the sense of “to limp,” according to Syriac usage. In conclusion, the Psalmist returns to the praise of the Lord, who had so highly favoured him. 47 Jehovah liveth, and blessed is my rock, And the God of my refuge of salvation is exalted. 48 The God who giveth me vengeance, And bringeth nations under me; 49 Who leadeth me out from mine enemies, And exalteth me above mine adversaries, Delivereth me from the man of violence.
2 SAMUEL. 22:47-49
The formula hwO;hy]Ayjæ does not mean “let Jehovah live,” for the word hy;j; would be used for that (vid., 2 Sam 16:16; 1 Sam 10:24), but is a declaration: “the Lord is living.” The declaration itself is to be taken as praise of God, for “praising God is simply ascribing to Him the glorious perfections which belong to him; we have only to give Him what is His own” (Hengstenberg). The following clauses also contain simply declarations; this is evident from the word µWr , since the optative yaarom would be used to denote a wish. The Lord is living or alive when He manifests His life in acts of omnipotence. In the last clause, the expression rWx (rock) is intensified into [væy, rWx µyhila’ (the God of my refuge, or rock, of salvation), i.e., the God who is my saving rock (cf. v. 3). In the predicates of God in vv. 48, 49, the saving acts depicted by David in vv. 5- 20 and 29-46 are summed up briefly. Instead of dræy; , “He causes to go down under me,” i.e., He subjects to me, we find in the psalm rbæd; , “He drives nations under me,” and flæp; instead of ax;y; ; and lastly, instead of sm;j; vyai in the psalm, we have here sm;j; vyai , as in Ps 140:2. Therefore the praise of the Lord shall be sounded among all nations. 50 Therefore will I praise Thee, O Jehovah, among the nations, And sing praise to Thy name. 51 As He who magnifies the salvation of His king, And showeth grace to His anointed, To David, and his seed for ever. 2 SAMUEL 22:50,51 The grace which the Lord had shown to David was so great, that the praise thereof could not be restricted to the narrow limits of Israel. With the dominion of David over the nations, there spread also the knowledge, and with this the praise, of the Lord who had given him the victory. Paul was therefore perfectly justified in quoting the verse before us (v. 50) in Rom 16:9, along with Deut 32:43 and Ps 117:1, as a proof that the salvation of God was intended for the Gentiles also. The king whose salvation the Lord had magnified, was not David as an individual, but David and his seed for ever-that is to say, the royal family of David which culminated in Christ.
David could thus sing praises upon the ground of the promise which he had received (2 Sam 7:12-16), and which is repeated almost verbatim in the last clause of v. 51. The Chethib mgdyl is the Hiphil participle ldæG; , according to Ps. 18:51; and the Keri lwODg]mi , “tower of the fulness of salvation,” is a singular conjecture.
DAVID’S LAST WORDS.
2 SAMUEL. 23:1-7
The psalm of thanksgiving, in which David praised the Lord for all the deliverances and benefits that he had experienced throughout the whole of his life, is followed by the prophetic will and testament of the great king, unfolding the importance of his rule in relation to the sacred history of the future. And whilst the psalm may be regarded (ch. 22) as a great hallelujah, with which David passed away from the stage of life, these “last words” contain the divine seal of all that he has sung and prophesied in several psalms concerning the eternal dominion of his seed, on the strength of the divine promise which he received through the prophet Nathan, that his throne should be established for ever (ch. 7). These words are not merely a lyrical expansion of that promise, but a prophetic declaration uttered by David at the close of his life and by divine inspiration, concerning the true King of the kingdom of God. “The aged monarch, who was not generally endowed with the gift of prophecy, was moved by the Spirit of God at the close of his life, and beheld a just Ruler in the fear of God, under whose reign blessing and salvation sprang up for the righteous, and all the wicked were overcome. The pledge of this was the eternal covenant which God had concluded with him” (Tholuck: die Propheten and ihre Weissagungen, p. 166). The heading “these are the last words of David” serves to attach it to the preceding psalm of thanksgiving. 1 Divine saying of David the son of Jesse, Divine saying of the man, the highly exalted, Of the anointed of the God of Jacob, And of the lovely one in the songs of praise of Israel. 2 The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through me, And His word is upon my tongue.
Verse 1-2. This introduction to the prophetic announcement rests, both as to form and substance, upon the last sayings of Balaam concerning the future history of Israel (Num 24:3,15). This not only shows to what extent David had occupied himself with the utterances of the earlier men of God concerning Israel’s future; but indicates, at the same time, that his own prophetic utterance was intended to be a further expansion of Balaam’s prophecy concerning the Star out of Jacob and the Sceptre out of Israel.
Like Balaam, he calls his prophecy a naa’um, i.e., a divine saying or oracle, as a revelation which he had received directly from God (see at Num 24:3).
But the recipient of this revelation was not, like Balaam the son of Beor, a man with closed eye, whose eyes had been opened by a vision of the Almighty, but “the man who was raised up on high” `l[æ , adverbially “above,” is, strictly speaking, a substantive, “height,” used in an adverbial sense, as in Hos 11:7, and probably also 2 Sam 7:16), i.e., whom God had lifted up out of humiliation to be the ruler of His people, yea, even to be the head of the nations (2 Sam 22:44).
Luther’s rendering, “who is assured of the Messiah of the God of Jacob,” is based upon the Vulgate, “cui constitutum est de Christo Dei Jacob,” and cannot be grammatically sustained. David was exalted on the one hand as “the anointed of the God of Jacob,” i.e., as the one whom the God of Israel had anointed king over His people, and on the other hand as “the lovely one in Israel’s songs of praise,” i.e., the man whom God had enabled to sing lovely songs of praise in celebration of His grace and glory. rymiz; = hr;m]zi does not mean a song generally, but a song of praise in honour of God (see at Ex 15:2), like rwOmz]mi in the headings to the psalms. As David on the one hand had firmly established the kingdom of God in an earthly and political respect as the anointed of Jehovah, i.e., as king, so had he on the other, as the composer of Israel’s songs of praise, promoted the spiritual edification of that kingdom. The idea of µaun] is explained in v. 2.
The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through him; his words are the inspiration of God. The preterite rbæd; relates to the divine inspiration which preceded the utterance of the divine saying. b¦ rbæd; , literally to speak into a person, as in Hos 1:2. The saying itself commences with v. 3. 3 The God of Israel saith, The Rock of Israel speaketh to me:
A Ruler over men, just, A Ruler in the fear of God. 4 And as light of the morning, when the sun rises, As morning without clouds:
From shining out of rain (springeth) green out of the earth. 5 For is not my house thus with God?
For He hath made me an everlasting covenant, Provided with all, and attested; For all my salvation and all good pleasure, Should He then not cause it to grow?
Verse 3. As the prophets generally preface their saying with “thus saith the Lord,” so David commences his prophetic saying with “the God of Israel saith,” for the purpose of describing it most emphatically as the word of God. He designates God “the God” and “The Rock” (as in 2 Sam 22:3) of Israel, to indicate that the contents of his prophecy relate to the salvation of the people of Israel, and are guaranteed by the unchangeableness of God. The saying which follows bears the impress of a divine oracle even in its enigmatical brevity. The verbs are wanting in the different sentences of vv. 3b and 4. “A ruler over men,” sc., “will arise,” or there will be. µd;a; does not mean “among men,” but “over men;” for b¦ is to be taken as with the verb lvæm; , as denoting the object ruled over (cf. Gen 3:16; 4:7, etc.). µd;a; does not mean certain men, but the human race, humanity. This ruler is “just” in the fullest sense of the word, as in the passages founded upon this, viz., Jer 23:5; Zech 9:9, and Ps 72:2. The justice of the ruler is founded in his “fear of God.” µyhila’ ha;r]yi is governed freely by lvæm; . (On the fact itself, see Isa 11:2-3.) The meaning is, “A ruler over the human race will arise, a just ruler, and will exercise his dominion in the spirit of the fear of God.” Verse 4. V. 4 describes the blessing that will proceed from this ruler. The idea that v. 4 should be connected with v. 3b so as to form one period, in the sense of “when one rules justly over men (as I do), it is as when a morning becomes clear,” must be rejected, for the simple reason that it overlooks Nathan’s promise (ch. 7) altogether, and weakens the force of the saying so solemnly introduced as the word of God. The ruler over men whom David sees in spirit, is not any one who rules righteously over men; nor is the seed of David to be regarded as a collective expression indicating a merely ideal personality, but, according to the Chaldee rendering, the Messiah himself, the righteous Shoot whom the Lord would raise up to David (Jer 23:5), and who would execute righteousness and judgment upon earth (Jer 33:15). V. 4 is to be taken by itself as containing an independent thought, and the connection between it and v. 3 must be gathered from the words themselves: the appearance (the rise) of this Ruler will be “as light of the morning, when the sun rises.” At the same time, the Messiah is not to be regarded as the subject to rq,Bo rwOa (the light of the morning), as though the ruler over men were compared with the morning light; but the subject compared to the morning light is intentionally left indefinite, according to the view adopted by Luther in his exposition, “In the time of the Messiah it will be like the light of the morning.”
We are precluded from regarding the Messiah as the subject, by the fact that the comparison is instituted not with the sun, but with the morning dawn at the rising of the sun, whose vivifying effects upon nature are described in the second clause of the verse. The words vm,v, jræz; are to be taken relatively, as a more distinct definition of the morning light. The clause which follows, “morning without clouds,” is parallel to the foregoing, and describes more fully the nature of the morning. The light of the rising sun on a cloudless morning is an image of the coming salvation.
The rising sun awakens the germs of life in the bosom of nature, which had been slumbering through the darkness of the night. “The state of things before the coming of the ruler resembles the darkness of the night” (Hengstenberg). The verb is also wanting in the second hemistich. “From the shining from rain (is, comes) fresh green out of the earth.” HgænO signifies the brightness of the rising sun; but, so far as the actual meaning is concerned, it relates to the salvation which attends the coming of the righteous ruler. r f1 m; is either subordinate to HgænO, or co-ordinate with it. In the former case, we should have to render the passage, “from the shining of the sun which proceeds out of rain,” or “from the shining after rain;” and the allusion would be to a cloudless morning, when the shining of the sun after a night’s rain stimulates the growth of the plants. In the latter case, we should have to render it “from the shining (and) from the rain;” and the reference would be to a cloudless morning, on which the vegetation springs up from the ground through sunshine followed by rain. Grammatically considered, the first view (? the second) is the easier of the two; nevertheless we regard the other (? the first) as the only admissible one, inasmuch as rain is not to be expected when the sun has risen with a cloudless sky. The rays of the sun, as it rises after a night of rain, strengthen the fresh green of the plants. The rain is therefore a figurative representation of blessing generally (cf. Isa 44:3), and the green grass which springs up from the earth after the rain is an image of the blessings of the Messianic salvation (Isa 44:4; 45:8).
In Ps 72:6, Solomon takes these words of David as the basis of his comparison of the effects resulting from the government of the true Prince of peace to the coming down of the rain upon the mown grass.
Verse 5. In v. 5, the prophecy concerning the coming of the just ruler is sustained by being raced back to the original promise in ch. 7, in which David had received a pledge of this. The first and last clauses of this verse can only be made to yield a meaning in harmony with the context, by being taken interrogatively: “for is not my house so with God?” The question is only indicated by the tone alo yKi = alo yKi : 2 Sam 19:23), as is frequently the case, even before clauses commencing with alo (e.g., Hos 11:5; Mal 2:15: cf. Ewald, §324, a.). ˆkeAalo (not so) is explained by the following clause, though the yKi which follows is not to be taken in the sense of “that.” Each of the two clauses contains a distinct thought. That of the first is, “Does not my house stand in such a relation to God, that the righteous ruler will spring from it?”
This is then explained in the second: “for He hath made an everlasting covenant with me.” David calls the promise in 2 Sam 7:12ff., that God would establish his kingdom to his seed for ever, a covenant, because it involved a reciprocal relation-namely, that Jehovah would first of all found for David a permanent house, and then that the seed of David was to build the house of the Lord. This covenant is lKo `Ëræ[; , “equipped (or provided) with all” that could help to establish it. This relates more especially to the fact that all eventualities were foreseen, even the falling away of the bearers of the covenant of God, so that such an event as this would not annul the covenant (2 Sam 7:14-15). rmæv; , “and preserved,” i.e., established by the assurance that even in that case the Lord would not withdraw His grace. David could found upon this the certainty, that God would cause all the salvation to spring forth which had been pledged to his house in the promise referred to. y[iv]yiAlK; , “all my salvation,” i.e., all the salvation promised to me and to my house. kaal-cheepets, not “all my desire,” but “all the good pleasure” of God, i.e., all the saving counsel of God expressed in that covenant. The yKi before alo is an energetic repetition of the yKi which introduces the explanatory thought, in the sense of a firm assurance: “for all my salvation and all good pleasure, yea, should He not cause it to spring forth?” 6 But the worthless, as rejected thorns are they all; For men do not take them in the hand. 7 And the man who touches them Provides himself with iron and spear-shaft, And they are utterly burned with fire where they dwell.
Verse 6-7. The development of salvation under the ruler in righteousness and the fear of God is accompanied by judgment upon the ungodly. The abstract l[æYæliB] , worthlessness, is stronger than l[æYæliB] vyai , the worthless man, and depicts the godless as personified worthlessness. ddæn; , in the Keri ddæn; , the Hophal of dWn or ddæn; , literally “scared” or hunted away. This epithet does not apply to the thorns, so well as to the ungodly who are compared to thorns. The reference is to thorns that men root out, not to those which they avoid on account of their prickles. lKo , an antiquated form for lKo (see Ewald, §247, d.). To root them out, or clean the ground of them, men do not lay hold of them with the bare hand; but “whoever would touch them equips himself alem; , sc., dy; , to ‘fill the hand’ with anything: 2 Kings 9:24) with iron, i.e., with iron weapons, and spearshaft” (vid., 1 Sam 17:7). This expression also relates to the godless rather than to the thorns. They are consumed bashebet, “at the dwelling,” i.e., as Kimchi explains, at the place of their dwelling, the place where they grow.
For bashebet cannot mean “on the spot” in the sense of without delay. The burning of the thorns takes place at the final judgment upon the ungodly (Matt 13:30).
DAVID’S HEROES.
2 SAMUEL. 23:8-39
The following list of David’s heroes we also find in 1 Chron 11:10-47, and expanded at the end by sixteen names (vv. 41-47), and attached in v. 10 to the account of the conquest of the fortress of Zion by the introduction of a special heading. According to this heading, the heroes named assisted David greatly in his kingdom, along with all Israel, to make him king, from which it is evident that the chronicler intended by this heading to justify his appending the list to the account of the election of David as king over all the tribes of Israel (1 Chron 11:1), and of the conquest of Zion, which followed immediately afterwards. In every other respect the two lists agree with one another, except that there are a considerable number of errors of the text, more especially in the names, which are frequently corrupt in both texts, to that the true reading cannot be determined with certainty.
The heroes enumerated are divided into three classes. The first class consists of three, viz., Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah, of whom certain brave deeds are related, by which they reached the first rank among David’s heroes (vv. 8-12). They were followed by Abishai and Benaiah, who were in the second class, and who had also distinguished themselves above the rest by their brave deeds, though they did not come up to the first three (vv. 18-23). The others all belonged to the third class, which consisted of thirty-two men, of whom no particular heroic deeds are mentioned (vv. 24-39). Twelve of these, viz., the five belonging to the first two classes and seven of the third, were appointed by David commanders of the twelve detachments into which he divided the army, each detachment to serve for one month in the year (1 Chron 27). These heroes, among whom we do not find Joab the commander-in-chief of the whole of the forces, were the king’s aides-de-camp, and are called in this respect vyliv; (v. 8), though the term µyviwOlv] (the thirty, vv. 13, 23, 24) was also a very customary one, as their number amounted to thirty in a round sum.
It is possible that at first they may have numbered exactly thirty; for, from the very nature of the case, we may be sure than in the many wars in which David was engaged, other heroes must have arisen at different times, who would be received into the corps already formed. This will explain the addition of sixteen names in the Chronicles, whether the chronicler made us of a different list from that employed by the author of the books before us, and one belonging to a later age, or whether the author of our books merely restricted himself to a description of the corps in its earlier condition.
Verse 8-12. Heroes of the first class.-The short heading to our text, with which the list in the Chronicles also beings (1 Chron 11:11), simply gives the name of these heroes. But instead of “the names of the mighty men,” we have in the Chronicles “the number of the mighty men.” This variation is all the more striking, from the fact that in the Chronicles the total number is not given at the close of the list as it is in our text. At the same time, it can hardly be a copyist’s error for rj;b]mi (selection), as Bertheau supposes, but must be attributable to the fact that, according to vv. 13, 23, and 24, these heroes constituted a corps which was named from the number of which it originally consisted. The first, Jashobeam, is called “the chief of the thirty” in the Chronicles. Instead of µ[;b]v;y; (Jashobeam), the reading in the Chronicles, we have here bashebet ysheb (Joshebbasshebeth), unquestionably a spurious reading, which probably arose, according to Kennicott’s conjecture, from the circumstance that the last two letters of yshb`m were written in one MS under bashebet in the line above (v. 7), and a copyist took bvæy; from that line by mistake for `µ[æ .
The correctness of the reading Jashobeam is established by 1 Chron 27:2.
The word ynimoK]j]Tæ is also faulty, and should be corrected, according to the Chronicles, into yniwOmk]jæAˆB, (Ben-hachmoni); for the statement that Jashobeam was a son (or descendant) of the family of Hachmon (1 Chron 27:32) can easily be reconciled with that in 1 Chron 27:2, to the effect that he was a son of Zabdiel. Instead of µyviwOlv] varo (head of the thirty), the reading in the Chronicles, we have here vyliv; varo (head of the three).
Bertheau would alter our text in accordance with the Chronicles, whilst Thenius proposes to bring the text of the Chronicles into accordance with ours. But although the many unquestionable corruptions in the verse before us may appear to favour Bertheau’s assumption, we cannot regard either of the emendations as necessary, or even warrantable. The proposed alteration of vyliv; is decidedly precluded by the recurrence of vyliv; varo in v. 18, and the alteration of µyviwOlv] in the Chronicles by the repeated allusion to the µyviwOlv] , not only in vv. 15, 42; 2 Sam 12:4, and ch. 27:6 of the Chronicles, but also in vv. 13, 23, and 24 of the chapter before us. The explanation given of vyliv; and vyliv; , as signifying chariot-warriors, is decidedly erroneous; for the singular vyliv; is used in all the passages in which the word occurs to signify the royal aide-de-camp (2 Kings 7:2,17,19; 9:25; 15:25), and the plural vyliv; the royal body-guard, not only in 2 Kings 1:25, but even in 1 Kings 9:22, and Ex 14:7; 15:4, from which the meaning chariot-warriors has been derived.
Consequently vyliv; varo is the head of the king’s aides-de-camp, and the interchange of vyliv; with the µyviwOlv] of the Chronicles may be explained on the simple ground that David’s thirty heroes formed his whole body of adjutants. The singular vyliv; is to be explained in the same manner as ytireK] (see at 2 Sam 8:18). Luther expresses the following opinion in his marginal gloss with regard to the words which follow ( wOnx][,h; wOnydi[\ aWh ): “We believe the text to have been corrupted by a writer, probably from some book in an unknown character and bad writing, so that orer should be substituted for adino, and ha-eznib for eth hanitho:” that is to say, the reading in the Chronicles, “he swung his spear,” should be adopted (cf. v. 18). This supposition is certainly to be preferred to the attempt made by Gesenius (Lex.) and v.
Dietrich (s. v. `ˆydi[; ) to find some sense in the words by assuming the existence of a verb ˆDe[i and a noun `ˆx,[e , a spear, since these words do not occur anywhere else in Hebrew; and in order to obtain any appropriate sense, it is still necessary to resort to alterations of the text. “He swung his spear over eight hundred slain at once.” This is not to be understood as signifying that he killed eight hundred men at one blow, but that in a battle he threw his spear again and again at the foe, until eight hundred men had been slain. The Chronicles give three hundred instead of eight hundred; and as that number occurs again in v. 18, in the case of Abishai, it probably found its way from that verse into this in the book of Chronicles.
Verse 9-10. “After him (i.e., next to him in rank) was Eleazar the son of Dodai the Ahohite, among the three heroes with David when they defied the Philistines, who had assembled there, and the Israelites drew near.” The Chethib ddy is to be read ydæwOD, Dodai, according to 1 Chron 27:4, and the form wOdwOD (Dodo) in the parallel text (1 Chron 11:12) is only a variation in the form of the name. Instead of yjijoa\AˆB, (the son of Ahohi) we find yjiwOja (the Ahohite) in the Chronicles; but the ˆBe must not be struck out on that account as spurious, for “the son of an Ahohite” is the same as “the Ahohite.” For rwOBGi vwOkv; we must read rwOBGi vwOkv; , according to the Keri and the Chronicles. vwOkv; is not to be altered, since the numerals are sometimes attached to substantives in the absolute state (see Ges. §120, 1). “The three heroes” are Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah (v. 11), who reached the first rank, according to v. 19, among the heroes of David.
Instead of yTiv]lip] ãræj; (when they defied the Philistines), we find in the Chronicles w¦hap¦lish¦tiym damiym bapac, “at Pas-dammim,” i.e., most probably Ephes-dammim (1 Sam 17:1), where the Philistines were encamped when Goliath defied the Israelites. Thenius, Bertheau, and Böttcher therefore propose to alter our text so as to make it correspond to that of the Chronicles, and adduce as the reason the fact that in other passages ãræj; is construed with the accusative, and that µv; , which follows, presupposes the previous mention of the place referred to.
But the reasons are neither of them decisive. ãræj; is not construed with the accusative alone, but also with l] (2 Chron 32:17), so that the construction with b is quite a possible one, and is not at variance with the idea of the word. µv; again may also be understood as referring to the place, not named, where the Philistines fought with the Israelites. The omission of rv,a before ãsæa; is more difficult to explain; and yTiv]lip] , which we find in the Chronicles, has probably dropped out after yTiv]lip] . The reading in the Chronicles µyMiDe spæBe sp,a, ) is probably only a more exact description of the locality, which is but obscurely indicated in our text by yTiv]lip] ãræj; ; for these words affirm that the battle took place where the Israelites had once been defied by the Philistines (1 Sam 17:10), and where they repaid them for this defiance in a subsequent conflict.
The Philistines are at any rate to be regarded as the subject to ãsæa; , and these words are a circumstantial clause: the Philistines had assembled together there to battle, and the Israelites had advanced to the attack. The heroic act of Eleazar is introduced with “he arose.” He arose and smote the Philistines till his hand was weary and clave to his sword, i.e., was so cramped as to be stiffened to the sword. Through this Jehovah wrought a great salvation for Israel on that day, “and the people (the soldiers) turned after him only to plunder,” sc., because he had put the enemy to flight by himself. rjæaæ bWv does not mean to turn back from flight after him, but is the opposite of rjæaæ bWv , to turn away from a person (1 Sam 15:11, etc.), so that it signifies “to turn to a person and follow behind him.” Three lines have dropped out from the parallel text of the Chronicles, in consequence of the eye of a copyist having wandered from ãsæa; yTiv]lip] in v. 9 to yTiv]lip] ãsæa; in v. 11.
Verse 11-12. The third leading hero was Shammah, the son of Age the Hararite yrir;h is probably contracted from yrir;h , v. 33). He also made himself renowned by a great victory over the Philistines. The enemy had gathered together yjæ , “as a troop,” or in a crowd. This meaning of yjæ (here and v. 13, and possibly also in Ps 68:11) is thoroughly established by the Arabic (see Ges. Thes. p. 470). But it seems to have fallen into disuse afterwards, and in the Chronicles it is explained in v. 13 by hm;j;l]mi , and in v. 15 by hn,jmæ . “On a portion of a field of lentils there,” sc., where the Philistines had gathered together, the people (of Israel) were smitten. Then Shammah stationed himself in the midst of the field, and lxæn; , “wrested it,” from the foe, and smote the Philistines. Instead of `vd;[; , lentils, we find in the Chronicles hr;[oc] , barley, a very inconsiderable difference.
Verse 13-15. To this deed there is appended a similar heroic feat performed by three of the thirty heroes whose names are not given. The Chethib vLevi is evidently a slip of the pen for vwOkv; (Keri and Chronicles).
The thirty chiefs are the heroes named afterwards (see above at p. 698). As vwOkv; has no article either in our text or the Chronicles, the three intended are not the three already mentioned (Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah), but three others out of the number mentioned in vv. 24ff. These three came to David in the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam (see at 1 Sam 22:1), when a troop of the Philistines was encamped in the valley of Rephaim, and David was on the mountain fortress, and a Philistian post was then in Bethlehem. And David longed for water, and said, “Oh that one would bring me water to drink out of the well of Bethlehem at the gate!” The encampment of the Philistines in the valley of Rephaim, and the position of David on the mountain fortress dWxm; ), render it probable that the feat mentioned here took place in the war with the Philistines described in Sam 5:17ff.
Robinson could not discover any well in Bethlehem, “especially none ‘by the gate,’ except one connected with the aqueduct on the south” (Palestine, vol. ii. p. 158). r[ævæ need not be understood, however, as signifying that the well was in or under the gate; but the well referred to may have been at the gate outside the city. The well to which tradition has given the name of “David’s well” (cisterna David), is about a quarter of an hour’s walk to the north-east of Bethlehem, and, according to Robinson’s description, is “merely a deep and wide cistern or cavern now dry, with three or four narrow openings cut in the rock.” But Ritter (Erdk. xvi. p. 286) describes it as “deep with clear cool water, into which there are three openings from above, which Tobler speaks of as bored;” and again as a cistern “built with peculiar beauty, from seventeen to twenty-one feet deep, whilst a house close by is pointed out to pilgrims as Jesse’s house.”
Verse 16-17. The three heroes then broke through the camp of the Philistines at Bethlehem, i.e., the outpost that occupied the space before the gate, fetched water out of the well, and brought it to David. He would not drink it, however, but poured it out upon the ground to the Lord, as a drink-offering for Jehovah. “He poured it out upon the earth, rendering Him thanks for the return of the three brave men” (Clericus). And he said, “Far be it from me, O Jehovah, to do this! The blood of the men who went with their lives (i.e., at the risk of their lives),” sc., should I drink it? The verb ht;v; is wanting in our text, but is not to be inserted according to the Chronicles as though it had fallen out; the sentence is rather to be regarded as an aposiopesis. hwO;hy] after wOl hl;ylij; is a vocative, and is not to be altered into meeyhaaowh, according to the mee’locheey of the Chronicles.
The fact that the vocative does not occur in other passages after wOl hl;ylij; proves nothing. It is equivalent to the oath hwO;hy] yjæ (1 Sam 14:45). The chronicler has endeavoured to simplify David’s exclamation by completing the sentence. vp,n, , “for the price of their souls,” i.e., at the risk of their lives. The water drawn and fetched at the risk of their lives is compared to the soul itself, and the soul is in the blood (Lev 17:11).
Drinking this water, therefore, would be nothing else than drinking their blood. Verse 18-19. Heroes of the second class.- Abishai, Joab’s brother (see Sam 26:6), was also chief of the body-guard, like Jashobeam (v. 8: the Chethib vyliv; is correct; see at v. 8). He swung his spear over three hundred slain. “He had a name among the three,” i.e., the three principal heroes, Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah. The following words, minhash ¦loshaah, make no sense. vwOkv; is an error in writing for µyviwOlv] , as v. 23 shows in both the texts (v. 25 of the Chronicles): an error the origin of which may easily be explained from the word vwOkv; , which stands immediately before. “He was certainly honoured before the thirty (heroes of David), and became their chief, but he did not come to the three,” i.e., he was not equal to Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah. yKi has the force of an energetic assurance: “Is it so that,” i.e., it is certainly so (as in 2 Sam 9:1; Gen 27:36; 29:15).
Verse 20-23. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, “Jehoiada the priest” according to 1 Chron 27:5, possibly the one who was “prince for Aaron,” i.e., of the family of Aaron, according to 1 Chron 12:27, was captain of the Crethi and Plethi according to 2 Sam 8:18 and 20:23. He was the son of a brave man, rich in deeds yjæ is evidently an error for lyijæ in the Chronicles), of Kabzeel in the south of Judah (Josh 15:21). “He smote the two Ariels of Moab.”
The Arabs and Persians call every remarkably brave man Ariel, or lion of God (vid., Bochart, Hieroz. ii. pp. 7, 63). They were therefore two celebrated Moabitish heroes. The supposition that they were sons of the king of the Moabites is merely founded upon the conjecture of Thenius and Bertheau, that the word ˆBe (sons of) has dropped out before Ariel. “He also slew the lion in the well on the day of the snow,” i.e., a lion which had been driven into the neighbourhood of human habitations by a heavy fall of snow, and had taken refuge in a cistern.
The Chethib yria and raeB] are the earlier forms for the Keris substituted by the Masoretes yria and rwOB, and consequently are not to be altered. He also slew an Egyptian of distinguished size. According to the Keri we should read ha,r]mæ vyai (instead of ha,r]mæ rv,a ), “a man of appearance,” i.e., a distinguished man, or a man of great size, a’ndra orato’n (LXX); in the Chronicles it is simplified as hD;mi vyai , a man of measure, i.e., of great height. This man was armed with a spear or javelin, whereas Benaiah was only armed with a stick; nevertheless the latter smote him, took away his spear, and slew him with his own weapon. According to the Chronicles the Egyptian was five cubits high, and his spear like a weaver’s beam. Through these feats Benaiah acquired a name among the three, though he did not equal them (vv. 22, 23, as in vv. 18, 19); and David made him a member of his privy council (see at 1 Sam 22:14).
Verse 24-25. Heroes of the third class.-V. 24. “Asahel, the brother of Joab, among the thirty,” i.e., belonging to them. This definition also applies to the following names; we therefore find at the head of the list in the Chronicles, lyijæ rwOBGi , “and brave heroes (were).” The names which follow are for the most part not further known. Elhanan, the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, is a different man from the Bethlehemite of that name mentioned in 2 Sam 21:19. Shammah the Harodite also must not be confounded with the Shammahs mentioned in vv. 11 and 33. In the Chronicles we find Shammoth, a different form of the name; whilst hah¦rowriy is an error in writing for ydiroj , i.e., sprung from Harod (Judg 7:1). This man is called Shamhut in 1 Chron 27:8; he was the leader of the fifth division of David’s army. Elika or Harod is omitted in the Chronicles; it was probably dropped out in consequence of the homoioteleuton ydiroj .
Verse 26. Helez the Paltite; i.e., sprung from Beth-pelet in the south of Judah (Judg. 15:27). He was chief of the seventh division of the army (compare 1 Chron 27:10 with 1 Chron 11:27, though in both passages yfil]pæ is misspelt ynilop]hæ ). Ira the son of Ikkesh of Tekoah in the desert of Judah (2 Sam 14:2), chief of the sixth division of the army (1 Chron 27:9).
Verse 27. Abiezer of Anathoth (Anata) in Benjamin (see at Josh 18:24), chief of the ninth division of the army (1 Chron 27:12). Mebunnai is a mistake in spelling for Sibbechai the Hushathite (compare 2 Sam 21:18 and 1 Chron 11:29). According to 1 Chron 27:11, he was chief of the eighth division of the army.
Verse 28. Zalmon the Ahohite, i.e., sprung from the Benjaminite family of Ahoah, is not further known. Instead of Zalmon we find Ilai in the Chronicles (v. 29); but which of the two names is the correct one it is impossible to decide. Maharai of Netophah: according to Ezra 2:22 and Neh 7:26, Netophah was a place in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, but it has not yet been discovered, as Beit Nattif, which might be thought of, is too far from Bethlehem (vid., Rob. Pal. ii. p. 344, and Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, pp. 117-8). According to 1 Chron 27:13, Maharai belonged to the Judahite family of Serah, and was chief of the tenth division of the army.
Verse 29. Cheleb, more correctly Cheled (1 Chron 11:30; or Cheldai, Chron 27:15), also of Netophah, was chief of the twelfth division of the army. Ittai (Ithai in the Chronicles), the son of Ribai of Gibeah of Benjamin, must be distinguished from Ittai the Gathite (2 Sam 15:19). Like all that follow, with the exception of Uriah, he is not further known.
Verse 30. Benaiah of Phir’aton in the tribe of Ephraim, a place which has been preserved in the village of Fer’ata, to the south-west of Nablus (see at Judg 12:13). Hiddai (wrongly spelt Hudai in the Chronicles), out of the valleys of Gaash, in the tribe of Ephraim by the mountain of Gaash, the situation of which has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 24:30).
Verse 31. Abi-Albon (written incorrectly Abiel in the Chronicles) the Arbathite, i.e., from the place called Beth-haarabah or Arabah (Josh 15:61 and 18:18,22) in the desert of Judah, on the site of the present Kasr Hajla (see at Josh 15:6). Azmaveth of Bahurim: see at 2 Sam 16:5.
Verse 32-33. Eliahba of Shaalbon or Shaalbin, which may possibly have been preserved in the present Selbit (see at Josh 19:42). The next two names, ˆt;n;wOhy] ˆvey; ˆBe and yrir;h hM;væ (Bneyashen Jehonathan and Shammah the Hararite), are written thus in the Chronicles (v. 34), yrir;h\hæ agev;AˆB, ˆt;n;wOy yniwOzGihæ µveh; yneB] : “Bnehashem the Gizonite, Jonathan the son of Sage the Hararite,” The text of the Chronicles is evidently the more correct of the two, as Bne Jashen Jehonathan does not make any sense.
The only question is whether the form µveh; ˆBe is correct, or whether ˆBe has not arisen merely through a misspelling. As the name does not occur again, all that can be said is that Bne hashem must at any rate be written as one word, and therefore should be pointed differently. The place mentioned, Gizon, is unknown. hM;væ for ben-shaagee’ probably arose from v. 11. Ahiam the son of Sharar or Sacar (Chron.) the Ararite (in the Chronicles the Hararite).
Verse 34. The names in 34a, Eliphelet ben-Ahasbai ben-Hammaacathi, read thus in the Chronicles (vv. 35, 36): Eliphal ben-Ur; Hepher hammecerathi. We see from this that in ben-Ahasbai ben two names have been fused together; for the text as it lies before us is rendered suspicious partly by the fact that the names of both father and grandfather are given, which does not occur in connection with any other name in the whole list, and partly by the circumstance that ˆBe cannot properly be written with ytik;[mæ , which is a Gentile noun. Consequently the following is probably the correct way of restoring the text, ytik;[\Mæhæ rp,je rWaAˆB, fl,p,ylia’ , Eliphelet (a name which frequently occurs) the son of Ur; Hepher the Maachathite, i.e., of Maacah in the north-east of Gilead (see at 2 Sam 10:6 and Deut 3:14). Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, the clever but treacherous counsellor of David (see at 2 Sam 15:12). This name is quite corrupt in the Chronicles.
Verse 35. Hezro the Carmelite, i.e., of Carmel in the mountains of Judah (1 Sam 25:2). Paarai the Arbite, i.e., of Arab, also in the mountains of Judah (Josh 15:52). In the Chronicles we find Naarai ben-Ezbi: the latter is evidently an error in writing for ha-Arbi; but it is impossible to decide which of the two forms, Paarai and Naarai, is the correct one.
Verse 36. Jigal the son of Nathan of Zoba (see at 2 Sam 8:3): in the Chronicles, Joel the brother of Nathan. Bani the Gadite: in the Chronicles we have Mibhar the son of Hagri. In all probability the names inf the Chronicles are corrupt in this instance also.
Verse 37. Zelek the Ammonite, Nacharai the Beerothite (of Beeroth: see at 2 Sam 4:2), the armour-bearer of Joab. Instead of ac;n; , the Keri and the Chronicles have ac;n; : the latter reading is favoured by the circumstance, that if more than one of the persons named had been Joab’s armourbearers, their names would most probably have been linked together by a copulative vav.
Verse 38. Ira and Gareb, both of them Jithrites, i.e., sprung from a family in Kirjath-jearim (1 Chron 2:53). Ira is of course a different man from the cohen of that name (2 Sam 20:26).
Verse 39. Uriah the Hittite is well known from 2 Sam 11:3. “Thirty and seven in all.” This number is correct, as there were three in the first class (vv. 8-12), two in the second (vv. 18-23), and thirty-two in the third (vv. 24-39), since v. 34 contains three names according to the amended text. NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE, AND PESTILENCE For the purpose of ascertaining the number of the people, and their fitness for war, David ordered Joab, his commander-in-chief, to take a census of Israel and Judah. Joab dissuaded him from such a step; but inasmuch as the king paid no attention to his dissuasion, he carried out the command with the help of the military captains (vv. 1-9). David very speedily saw, however, that he had sinned; whereupon the prophet Gad went to him by the command of Jehovah to announce the coming punishment, and give him the choice of three different judgments which he placed before him (vv. 10-13). As David chose rather to fall into the hand of the Lord than into the hand of men, God sent a pestilence, which carried off seventy thousand men in one day throughout the whole land, and had reached Jerusalem, when the Lord stopped the destroying angel in consequence of the penitential prayer of David (vv. 14-17), and sent Gad to the king to direct him to build an altar to the Lord on the spot where the destroying angel had appeared to him (v. 18). Accordingly David bought the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, built an altar upon it, and sacrificed burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, after which the plague was stayed (vv. 19-25).
This occurrence, which is introduced in the parallel history in 1 Chron between David’s wars and his arrangements for a more complete organization of the affairs of the nation, belongs undoubtedly to the closing years of David’s reign. The mere taking of a census, as a measure that would facilitate the general organization of the kingdom, could not in itself be a sinful act, by which David brought guilt upon himself, or upon the nation, before God. Nevertheless it is not only represented in v. 1 as a manifestation of the wrath of God against Israel, but in v. 3 Joab seeks to dissuade the king from it as being a wrong thing; and in v. 10 David himself admits that it was a grievous sin against God, and as a sin it is punished by the Lord (vv. 12ff.). In what, then, did David’s sin consist?
Certainly not in the fact that, when taking the census, “he neglected to demand the atonement money, which was to be raised, according to Ex 30:12ff., from all who were numbered, because the numbering of the people was regarded in itself as an undertaking by which the anger of God might easily be excited,” as Josephus and Bertheau maintain; for the Mosaic instructions concerning the atonement money had reference to the incorporation of the people into the army of Jehovah (see at Ex 30:13-14), and therefore did not come into consideration at all in connection with the census appointed by David as a purely political measure.
Nor can we imagine that David’s sin consisted merely in the fact that he “entered upon the whole affair from pride and vain boasting,” or that “he commanded the census from vanity, inasmuch as he wanted to have it distinctly set before his own eyes how strong and mighty he was” (Buddeus, Hengstenberg, and others); for although pride and vanity had something to do with it, as the words of Joab especially seem to indicate, David was far too great a man to allow us to attribute to him a childish delight in the mere number of souls in his kingdom. The census had certainly a higher purpose than this. It is very evident from 1 Chron 27:23- 24, where it is mentioned again that it was connected with the military organization of the people, and probably was to be the completion of it.
David wanted to know the number of his subjects, not that he might be able to boast of their multitude, nor that he might be able to impose all kinds of taxes upon every town and village according to their houses and inhabitants, as Ewald maintains; but that he might be fully acquainted with its defensive power, though we can neither attribute to him the definite purpose “of transforming the theocratic sacred state into a conquering world-state” (Kurtz), nor assume that through this numbering the whole nation was to be enrolled for military service, and that thirst for conquest was the motive for the undertaking.
The true kernel of David’s sin was to be found, no doubt, in self-exaltation, inasmuch as he sought for the strength and glory of his kingdom in the number of the people and their readiness for war. This sin was punished. “Because David was about to boast proudly and to glory in the number of his people, God determined to punish him by reducing their number either by famine, war, or pestilence” (Seb. Schmidt). At the same time, the people themselves had sinned grievously against God and their king, through the two rebellions headed by Absalom and Sheba.
2 SAMUEL. 24:1-9
Verse 1-9. “Again the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel; and He moved David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah.” ãsæy; points back to the manifestation of the wrath of God, which Israel had experienced in the three years’ famine (ch. 21). Just as that plague had burst upon the land on account of the guilt which rested upon the people, so the kindling of the wrath of God against Israel a second time also presupposes guilt on the part of the nation; and as this is not expressly pointed out, we may seek for it generally in the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba against the divinely established government of David. The subject to “moved” is Jehovah, and the words “against them” point back to Israel.
Jehovah instigated David against Israel to the performance of an act which brought down a severe judgment upon the nation. With regard to the idea that God instigates to sin, see the remarks on 1 Sam 26:19. In the parallel text of the Chronicles, Satan is mentioned as the tempter to evil, through whom Jehovah had David to number the people.
Verse 2. David entrusted the task to his commander-in-chief Joab. tae rv,a , “who was with him:” the meaning is, “when he was with him” (David). We are not warranted in attempting any emendations of the text, either by the expression tae rv,a , or by the reading in the Chronicles, µ[;h; yrec;Ala,w] (“and to the rulers of the people”); for whilst the latter reading may easily be seen to be a simplification founded upon v. 4, it is impossible to show how wOTai rv,a\ lyijæhæArcæ , which is supported by all the ancient versions (with the sole exception of the Arabic), could have originated in µ[;h; yrec;Ala,w] . “Go now through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba (see at Judg 20:1), and muster the people.” rqæp] , to muster or number, as in Num 1:44ff. The change from the singular fWv to the plural rqæp] may be explained very simply, from the fact that, as a matter of course, Joab was not expected to take the census by himself, but with the help of several assistants.
Verse 3. Joab discountenanced the thing: “Jehovah thy God add to the nation, as it is, a hundredfold as many, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?” The w before ãsewOy stands at the commencement, when what is said contains a sequel to something that has gone before (vid., Ges. §255, 1, a.). The thought to which Joab’s words are appended as a sequel, is implied in what David said, “that I may know the number of the people;” and if expressed fully, his words would read somewhat as follows: “If thou hast delight in the greatness of the number of the people, may Jehovah,” etc. Joab evidently saw through the king’s intention, and perceived that the numbering of the people could not be of any essential advantage to David’s government, and might produce dissatisfaction among the people, and therefore endeavoured to dissuade the king from his purpose. µhe µhe , “as they (the Israelites) just are,” i.e., in this connection, “just as many as there are of them.” From a grammatical point of view, µhe is to be taken as the object to ãsewOy , as in the parallel passages, Deut 1:11; 2 Sam 12:8. Not only did he desire that God would multiply the nation a hundredfold, but that He would do it during the lifetime of David, so that his eyes might be delighted with the immense numbers.
Verse 4-5. But as the king’s word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army, they (Joab and the other captains) went out to number Israel. yachanuw, they encamped, i.e., they fixed their headquarters in the open field, because great crowds assembled together. This is only mentioned here in connection with the place where the numbering commenced; but it is to be understood as applying to the other places as well (Thenius). In order to distinguish Aroer from the place of the same name in the Arnon, in the tribe of Reuben (Josh 12:2; Num 32:34, etc.), it is defined more precisely as “the town in the brook-valley of Gad,” i.e., Aroer of Gad before Rabbah (Josh 13:25; Judg 11:33), in the Wady Nahr Ammân, to the north-east of Ammân (see at Josh 13:25). w¦’el-ya`¦zeer (and to Jazer): this is a second place of encampment, and the preposition lae is to be explained on the supposition that awOB (they came), which follows, was already in the writer’s thoughts. Jazer is probably to be found in the ruins of es Szir, at the source of the Nahr Szir (see at Num 21:32).
Verse 6. “And they came to Gilead,” i.e., the mountainous district on the two sides of the Jabbok (see at Deut 3:10). The words which follow, viz., “into the land yvid]j; µyTij]Tæ ” are quite obscure, and were unintelligible even to the earlier translators. The Septuagint has gh>n Eqaw>n Adasai> , or gh>n Qabasw>n (also gh>n cettiei>m ) hJ> estin Adasai> . Symmachus has th>n katwte>ran oJdo>n ; Jonathan yvid]j;l] am;wOrd; a[;r]aæl] (“into the southland Chodshi”); and the Vulgate in terram inferiorem. The singular form µyTij]Tæ , and the fact that we never read of a land called Chodshi, render the conjecture a very probable one that the text is corrupt. But it is no longer possible to discover the correct reading. Ewald imagines that we should read Hermon instead of the unintelligible Chodshi; but this is not very probable. Böttcher supposes yTij]Tæ to be a mistake in writing for µy; tjæTæ , “below the lake,” namely the lake of Gennesareth, which might have been called Chodshi (the new-moon-like), since it had very much the appearance of a crescent when seen from the northern heights. This is ingenious, but incredible. The order of the places named points to the eastern side of the sea of Galilee; for they went thence to Dan-jaan, i.e., the Dan in northern Peraea, mentioned in Gen 14:14, to the south-west of Damascus, at that time probably the extreme north-eastern boundary of the kingdom of David, in the direction towards Syria (see at Gen 14:14): “and round to Sidon,” the extreme north-western boundary of the kingdom.
Verse 7. Thence southwards to the fortress of Zor, i.e., Tyre (see at Josh 19:29), and “into all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites,” i.e., the towns in the tribes of Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar, or the (subsequent) province of Galilee, in which the Canaanites had not been exterminated by the Israelites, but had only been made tributary.
Verse 8-9. When they had traversed the whole land, they came back to Jerusalem, at the end of nine months and twenty days, and handed over to the king the number of the people mustered: viz., 800,000 men of Israel fit for military service, drawing the sword, and 500,000 men of Judah.
According to the Chronicles (v. 5), there were 1,100,000 Israelites and 470,000 Judaeans. The numbers are not given by thousands, and therefore are only approximative statements in round numbers; and the difference in the two texts arose chiefly from the fact, that the statements were merely founded upon oral tradition, since, according to 1 Chron 27:4, the result of the census was not inserted in the annals of the kingdom. There is no ground, however, for regarding the numbers as exaggerated, if we only bear in mind that the entire population of a land amounts to about four times the number of those who are fit for military service, and therefore 1,300,000, or even a million and a half, would only represent a total population of five or six millions-a number which could undoubtedly have been sustained in Palestine, according to thoroughly reliable testimony as to its unusual fertility (see the discussion of this subject at Num 1-4, Pentateuch, pp. 651-57).
Still less can we adduce as a proof of exaggeration the fact, that according to 1 Chron 27:1-15, David had only an army of 288,000; for it is a wellknown fact, that in all lands the army, or number of men in actual service, is, as a rule, much smaller than the total number of those who are capable of bearing arms. According to 1 Chron 21:6, the tribes of Levi and Benjamin were not numbered, because, as the chronicler adds, giving his own subjective view, “the word of the king was an abomination to Joab,” or, as it is affirmed in 1 Chron 27:4, according to the objective facts, “because the numbering was not completed.” It is evident from this, that in consequence of Joab’s repugnance to the numbering of the people, he had not hurried with the fulfilment of the kings’ command; so that when David saw his own error, he revoked the command before the census was complete, and so the tribe of Benjamin was not numbered at all, the tribe of Levi being of course eo ipso exempt from a census that was taken for the sake of ascertaining the number of men who were capable of bearing arms.
2 SAMUEL. 24:10-18
David’s heart, i.e., his conscience, smote him, after he had numbered the people, or had given orders for the census to be taken. Having now come to a knowledge of his sin, he prayed to the Lord for forgiveness, because he had acted foolishly. The sin consisted chiefly in the self-exaltation which had led to this step (see the introductory remarks).
Verse 11-13. When he rose up in the morning, after he had calmly reflected upon the matter during the night upon his bed, and had been brought to see the folly of his determination, the prophet Gad came to him by the command of God, pointed out to him his fault, and foretold the punishment that would come from God. “Shall seven years of famine come upon thy land, or three months of flight before thine oppressors that they may pursue thee, or shall there be three days of pestilence in thy land? Now mark and see what answer I shall bring to Him that sendeth me.” These three verses form one period, in which dG; awOB (v. 134) answers as the consequent to wgwrwiD; µWq in v. 11, and the words from hwO;hy] rb;d; (v. 11b) to ËL;Ahc,[‘a,w] (v. 12) form a circumstantial clause inserted between. wgwhwO;hy] rb;d; : “and the word of the Lord had taken place (gone forth) to Gad, David’s seer, saying, Go...thus saith Jehovah, I lay upon thee three (things or evils); choose thee one of them that I may do it to thee.”
Instead of `l[æ l f1 n; , to lay upon, we find hf;n; in the Chronicles, “to turn upon thee.” The three things are mentioned first of all in connection with the execution of Gad’s commission to the king. Instead of seven years of famine, we find three years in the Chronicles; the Septuagint has also the number three in the passage before us, and apparently it is more in harmony with the connection, viz., three evils to choose from, and each lasting through three divisions of time. But this agreement favours the seven rather than the three, which is open to the suspicion of being intentionally made to conform to the rest. sWn is an infinitive: “thy fleeing,” for that thou fliest before thine enemies. In the Chronicles the last two evils are described more fully, but the thought is not altered in consequence.
Verse 14. David replied, “I am in great trouble. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of men.”
Thus David chose the third judgment, since pestilence comes directly from God. On the other hand, in flight from the enemy, he would have fallen into the hands of men. It is not easy to see, however, how far this could apply to famine; probably inasmuch as it tends more or less to create dependence upon those who are still in possession of the means of life.
Verse 15. God then gave (sent) a pestilence into (upon) Israel, “from the morning till the time of the assembly;” and there died of the people in the whole land (from Dan to Beersheba) seventy thousand men. “From the morning:” on which Gad had foretold the punishment. The meaning of d[ewOm t[eAd[æw] is doubtful. The rendering “to the time appointed,” i.e., “till the expiration of the three days,” in support of which the Vulgate (ad tempus constitutum) is wrongly appealed to, is precluded not only by the circumstance that, according to v. 16, the plague was stayed earlier because God repented Him of the evil, so that it did not last so long as was at first appointed, but also by the grammatical difficulty that d[ewOm `t[e has no article, and can only be rendered “for an (not for the) appointed time.”
We meet with two different explanations in the ancient versions: one in the Septuagint, eJ>wv oJ>rav ari>stou , “till the hour of breakfast,” i.e., till the sixth hour of the day, which is the rendering also adopted by the Syriac and Arabic as well as by Kimchi and several of the Rabbins; the other in the Chaldee (Jonathan), “from the time at which the sacrifice is commonly slain until it is consumed.”
Accordingly Bochart explains d[ewOm tae as signifying “the time at which the people came together for evening prayers, about the ninth hour of the day, i.e., the third hour in the afternoon” (vid., Acts 3:1). The same view also lies at the foundation of the Vulgate rendering, according to the express statement of Jerome (traditt. Hebr. in 2 libr. Regum): “He calls that the time appointed, in which the evening sacrifice was offered.” It is true that this meaning of d[ewOm cannot be established by precisely analogous passages, but it may be very easily deduced from the frequent employment of the word to denote the meetings and festivals connected with the worship of God, when it generally stands without an article, as for example in the perfectly analogous d[ewOm µwOy (Hos 9:5; Lam 2:7,22); whereas it is always written with the article when it is sued in the general sense of a fixed time, and some definite period is referred to. f83 We must therefore decide in favour of the latter. But if the pestilence did not last a whole day, the number of persons carried off by it (70,000 men) exceeded very considerably the number destroyed by the most violent pestilential epidemics on record, although they have not unfrequently swept off hundreds of thousands in a very brief space of time. But the pestilence burst upon the people in this instance with supernatural strength and violence, that it might be seen at once to be a direct judgment from God.
Verse 16. The general statement as to the divine judgment and its terrible effects is followed by a more minute description of the judgment itself, and the arrest of the plague. “When the destroying angel (‘the angel’ is defined immediately afterwards as ‘the angel that destroyed the people’) stretched out his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, Jehovah repented of the evil (for this expression, see Ex 32:14; Jer 26:13,19, etc.; and for the repentance of God, the remarks on Gen 6:6), and He commanded the angel, Enough! stay now thine hand.” This implies that the progress of the pestilence was stayed before Jerusalem, and therefore that Jerusalem itself was spared. “And the angel of Jehovah was at the threshing-floor of Aravnah the Jebusite.” These words affirm most distinctly that the destroying angel was visible. According to v. 17, David saw him there. The visible appearance of the angel was to exclude every thought of a natural land plague.
The appearance of the angel is described more minutely in the Chronicles:
David saw him standing by the threshing-floor of Aravnah between heaven and earth with a drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem.
The drawn sword was a symbolical representation of the purpose of his coming (see at Num 22:23 and Josh 5:13). The threshing-floor of Aravnah was situated, like all other threshing-floors, outside the city, and upon an eminence, or, according to the more precise statement which follows, to the north-east of Zion, upon Mount Moriah (see at v. 25). According to the Chethib of v. 16, the name of the owner of the floor was hn;w]ræa , of v. 18 hn;w]ræa , and of v. 20 (twice) hn;w]ræa . This last form also occurs in vv. 22, 23, and 24, and has been substituted by the Masoretes as the Keri in vv. 16 and 18. In the Chronicles, on the other hand, the name is always written ˆn;r]a; (Ornan), and hence in the Septuagint we find A’rna in both texts. “The form hn;w]ræa (Aravnah) has not a Hebrew stamp, whereas Orna and Ornan are true Hebrew formations. But for this very reason Aravnah appears to be derived from an ancient tradition” (Bertheau).
Verse 17. When David saw the angel, he prayed to the Lord (he and the elders being clothed in mourning costume: Chron.): “Behold, I have sinned, and I have acted perversely; but these, the flock, what have they done? Let Thy hand come upon me and my house.” The meaning is: I the shepherd of Thy people have sinned and transgressed, but the nation is innocent; i.e., not indeed free from every kind of blame, but only from the sin which God was punishing by the pestilence. It belongs to the very nature of truly penitential prayer, that the person praying takes all the blame upon himself, acknowledges before God that he alone is deserving of punishment, and does not dwell upon the complicity of others for the sake of palliating his own sin in the sight of God. We must not infer, therefore, from this confession on the part of David, that the people, whilst innocent themselves, had had to atone only for an act of transgression on the part of their king.
Verse 18. David’s prayer was heard. The prophet Gad came and said to him by command of Jehovah, “Go up, and erect an altar to the Lord upon the floor of Aravnah the Jebusite.” This is all that is communicated here of the word of Jehovah which Gad was to convey to the king; the rest is given afterwards, as is frequently the case, in the course of the subsequent account of the fulfilment of the divine command (v. 21). David was to build the altar and offer burnt-offerings and supplicatory-offerings upon it, to appease the wrath of Jehovah. The plague would then be averted from Israel.
2 SAMUEL. 24:19-25
David went up to Aravnah according to the command of God.
Verse 20-21. When Aravnah saw the king coming up to him with his servants ãqæv; , “he looked out,” viz., from the enclosure of the threshingfloor), he came out, bowed low even to the earth, and asked the king what was the occasion of his coming; whereupon David replied, “To buy the floor from thee, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be turned away from the people.”
Verse 22-23. Aravnah replied, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him: behold (i.e., there thou hast) the ox for the burnt-offering, and the threshing-machine, and the harness of the ox for wood” (i.e., for fuel). rq;B; , the pair of oxen yoked together in front of the threshing-machine. rq;B; yliK] , the wooden yokes. “All this giveth Aravnah, O king, to the king.” Ël,m, is a vocative, and is simply omitted by the LXX, Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, because the translators regarded it as a nominative, which is quite unsuitable, as Aravnah was not a king. When Thenius, on the other hand, objects to this, for the purpose of throwing suspicion upon the passage, that the sentence is thus stamped as part of Aravnah’s address to the king, and that in that case the words that follow, “and Aravnah said,” would be altogether superfluous; the former remark is correct enough, for the words “all this giveth Aravnah...to the king” must form part of what Aravnah said, inasmuch as the remark, “all this gave Aravnah to the king,” if taken as the historian’s own words, would be in most glaring contradiction to what follows, where the king is said to have bought the floor and the oxen from Aravnah. And the words that follow (“and Aravnah said”) are not superfluous on that account, but simply indicate that Aravnah did not proceed to say the rest in the same breath, but added it after a short pause, as a word which did not directly bear upon the question put by the king. rmæa; (and he said) is often repeated, where the same person continues speaking (see for example 2 Sam 15:4,25,27). “Jehovah thy God accept thee graciously,” i.e., fulfil the request thou presentest to Him with sacrifice and prayer.
Verse 24. The king did not accept the offer, however, but said, “No; but I will buy it of thee at a price, and will not offer burnt-offerings to the Lord my God without paying for them.” Thus David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. Instead of this, the Chronicles give “shekels of gold, in weight six hundred.” This difference cannot be reconciled by assuming that David paid his fifty shekels in gold coin, which would have been worth as much as six hundred shekels of silver, since gold was worth twelve times as much as silver. For there is nothing about gold shekels in our text; and the words of the Chronicles cannot be interpreted as meaning that the shekels of gold were worth six hundred shekels of silver. No other course is left, therefore, than to assume that the number must be corrupt in one of the texts. Apparently the statement in the Chronicles is the more correct of the two: for if we consider that Abraham paid four hundred shekels of silver for the site of a family burial-place, at a time when the land was very thinly populated, and therefore land must certainly have been much cheaper than it was in David’s time, the small sum of fifty shekels of silver (about £6) appears much too low a price; and David would certainly pay at least fifty shekels of gold. But we are not warranted in any case in speaking of the statement in the Chronicles, as Thenius does, as “intentionally exaggerated.” This style of criticism, which carries two kinds of weights and measure in its bag, explaining the high numbers in the books of Samuel and Kings as corruptions of the text, and those in the Chronicles as intentional exaggerations on the part of the chronicler, is sufficiently dealt with by the remark of Bertheau, that “this (i.e., the charge of exaggeration) could only be sustained if it were perfectly certain that the chronicler had our present text of the books of Samuel before him at the time.”
Verse 25. After acquiring the threshing-floor by purchase, David built an altar to the Lord there, and offered burnt-offerings and supplicatoryofferings (shelamim: as in Judg 20:26; 21:4; 1 Sam 13:9) upon it to the Lord. “So Jehovah was entreated, and the plague was turned away from Israel.”
This remark brings to a close not only the account of this particular occurrence, but also the book itself; whereas in the Chronicles it is still further stated that Jehovah answered David with fire from heaven, which fell upon the burnt-offering; and that after his prayer had been answered thus, David not only continued to offer sacrifice upon the floor of Aravnah, but also fixed upon it as the site for the temple which was afterwards to be built (1 Chron 21:27; 22:1); and to this there is appended, in 2 Sam 22:2ff., an account of the preparations which David made for the building of the temple. It is not affirmed in the Chronicles, however, that David fixed upon this place as the site for the future temple in consequence of a revelation from God, but simply that he did this, because he saw that the Lord had answered him there, and because he could not go to Gibeon, where the tabernacle was standing, to seek the Lord there, on account of the sword of the angel, i.e., on account of the pestilence. The command of God build an altar upon the threshing-floor of Aravnah, and offer expiatory sacrifices upon it, when connected with His answering his prayer by turning away the plague, could not fail to be taken as a distinct intimation to David, that the site of this altar was the place where the Lord would henceforth make known His gracious presence to His people; and this hint was quite sufficient to determine the site for the temple which is son Solomon was to build. THE BOOKS OF KINGS INTRODUCTION CONTENTS, AND CHARACTER, ORIGIN AND SOURCES, OF THE BOOKS OF THE KINGS.
The books of the Kings, which were but one book originally like the books of Samuel, and which like the latter, were divided into two books by the Alexandrian translators (see the Introduction to the books of Samuel), contain, in accordance with their name (mlkym), the history of the Israelitish theocracy under the kings, from the accession of Solomon to the extinction of the monarchy on the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldaeans and the people were carried away into exile in Babylon. they embrace a period of 455 years, from 1015 to 560 B.C., that is to say, to the reign of the Babylonian king Evil-merodach. And as every kingdom culminates in its king, and the government of the kings determines the fate of the kingdom, the contents of the books before us, which are named after the kings of Israel, consist for the most part of a history of those kings; inasmuch as, whilst on the one hand the reigns of the several kings form the historical and chronological framework for the description of the historical development of the people and kingdom, on the other hand the leading phases which the monarchy assumed furnish the basis of the three periods, into which the history of this epoch and the contents of our books are divided.
The first period (1015-975 B.C.) embraces the forty years of Solomon’s reign over the undivided kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel, when the Israelitish kingdom of God stood at the summit of its earthly power and glory; though towards the end of this period it began to decline inasmuch as the rebellion of Solomon against the Lord in the closing years of his reign prepared the way for the rebellion of the ten tribes against the house of David.-The second period commences with the division of the one kingdom into the two kingdoms, Israel (or the ten tribes) and Judah, and stretches over the whole period during which these two kingdoms existed side by side, terminating with the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes by the Assyrians, i.e., from 975 to 722 B.C.-The third period embraces the still remaining years of the continuance of the kingdom of Judah, until its eventual dissolution by the Chaldaeans and the carrying away of the people into exile in Babylon, viz., from 722 to 560 B.C.
The first part of our books (1 Kings 1-11) therefore contains a description of the reign of Solomon, (a) in its commencement, viz., his ascent of the throne and the consolidation of his power (ch. 1 and 2); (b) in the gradual development of the strength and glory of his government, by his marriage, his sacrifice and prayer at Gibeon, his judicial wisdom, and his court (3:1-5:14)-also by the building of the temple and royal palace and the dedication of the temple (5:15-9:9), by the erection of his other edifices and the introduction of navigation and commerce (9:10-28), by the spreading abroad of the fame of his wisdom, and by the increase of his wealth (ch. 10); and (c) in its eventual decline in consequence of the sin into which the aged monarch fell through his polygamy and idolatry (ch. 11).
The second part opens with an account of the falling away of the ten tribes from the royal family of David, and relates in a synchronistic narrative the history of the two kingdoms in the three stages of their development: viz., (a) the early enmity between the two, from Jeroboam to Omri of Israel (1 Kings 12:1-16:28); (b) the establishment of friendship and intermarriage between the two royal houses under Ahab and his sons, down to the destruction of the two kings Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah by Jehu (16:29-2 Kings 10); (c) the renewal of hostilities between the two kingdoms, from Jehu’s ascent of the throne in Israel and Athaliah’s usurpation of the throne in Judah to the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign in Judah (11-17). And, lastly, the third part contains the history of the kingdom of Judah from Hezekiah to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans, and carries it down to the thirtyseventh year of the imprisonment of king Jehoiachin in exile (ch. 18- 25). Now, although the history of the kings, or the account of both the duration and character of their reigns, and also of their various enterprises, so far as they promoted or hindered the progress of the kingdom of God, forms the principal substance of these books, they do not consist of a mere chronicle of the deeds and fortunes of the several kings, but describe at the same time the ministry of the prophets in the two kingdoms, and that to some extent in so elaborate a manner, that whilst some have discovered in this a peculiarly “prophetico-didactic purpose” (Hävernick, De Wette, etc.), others regard it as an endeavour “to set forth the history of the Israelitish and Jewish kings in its relation to the demands, the doings, the proclamations, and the predictions of the prophets, from Solomon to the Babylonian exile” (Kern).
But however unmistakeable the prophetico-didactic character may be, which the books of Kings have in common with the whole of the historical writings of the Old Testament, a closer investigation of their character will show that there is no ground for the assertion that there is any propheticodidactic purpose in the mode in which the history is written. For the account of the ministry of the prophets is introduced into the history of the kings as the spiritual leaven which pervaded the Israelitish monarchy from the beginning to the end, and stamped upon its development the character of the theocracy or divine rule in Israel. Jehovah, as the invisible but yet real King of the covenant nation, had created the peculiar instruments of His Spirit in the prophets who maintained His law and right before the kings, standing by their side to advise and direct, or to warn and punish, and, wherever it was necessary, proving their utterances to be words of God by signs and wonders which they did before the people.
Thus the Lord directed the prophet Samuel to anoint Saul and David princes over His people, and the prophet Nathan to communicate to David the promise of the everlasting endurance of his throne (2 Sam 7). But when at a later period David sinned (2 Sam 11 and 24), it was the prophets Nathan and Gad who threatened him with punishment from God, and on his confession of sin and repentance announced the forgiveness and favour of God (2 Sam 12:1-15; 24:11-19). Through the medium of the prophet Nathan, Solomon was also appointed the successor of David upon the throne (2 Sam 12:25), and not only anointed king, but installed in defiance of the machinations of Adonijah (1 Kings 1). But since the monarchy was transmitted from Solomon in a direct line through his descendants by virtue of the divine promise in 2 Sam 7, it is only in connection with important enterprises, or when the kingdom is involved in difficulties, that we find the prophets coming forward in after times to help or advise those kings who walked in the ways of the Lord; whereas under the idolatrous and godless rulers they offer, in the power of God, such energetic resistance to idolatry and to everything evil and ungodly, that princes and people are compelled to bow before them and succumb to their divine words.
In this way the prophets accompanied the monarchy in all its course from Solomon to the Captivity as guardians of the rights of the God-King, and as interpreters of His counsel and will. Under Solomon, indeed, there was apparently a long period,during which prophecy fell into the background; since the Lord Himself not only appeared to this king in a dream at Gibeon shortly after he ascended the throne, but also appeared to him a second time after the dedication of the temple, and promised him the fulfilment of his prayers, and the glorification and eternal continuance of his kingdom, on condition of his faithful observance of the divine commands (1 Kings 3:5ff., 9:1ff.). But towards the end of his reign it rose up again in all the more threatening attitude, against the king who was then disposed to fall away from Jehovah. It was no doubt a prophet who announced to him the separation of ten parts of his kingdom (1 Kings 11:11ff.)-possibly the same Ahijah who promised Jeroboam the government over ten tribes (11:29ff.).
But after the division of the kingdom, when Jeroboam proceeded, in order to fortify his throne, to make the political division into a religious one, and to this end exalted the image-worship into the state religion, the prophets continued to denounce this apostasy and proclaim to the sinful kings the destruction of their dynasties. And when at a still later period Ahab the son of Omri, and his wife Jezebel, endeavoured to make the Phoenician worship of Baal and Asherah into the national religion in Israel, Elijah the Tishbite, “the prophet as fire, whose words burned as a torch” (Ecclus. 48:1), came forward with the irresistible power of God and maintained a victorious conflict against the prophets and servants of Baal, warding off the utter apostasy of the nation by uniting the prophets into societies, in which the worship of God was maintained, and the godly in Israel were supplied with a substitute for that legal worship in the temple which was enjoyed by the godly in Judah. And in the kingdom of Judah also where were never wanting prophets to announce the judgments of the Lord to idolatrous kings, and to afford a vigorous support to the pious and Godfearing rulers in their endeavours to promote the religious life of the nation, and to exalt the public worship of God in the temple. But since the kingdom of Judah possessed the true sanctuary, with the legal worship and an influential body of priests and Levites; and since, moreover, the monarchy of the house of David was firmly established by divine promises resting upon that house, and among the kings who sat upon the throne, from Rehoboam onwards, there were many godly rulers who were distinguished for their lofty virtues as governors; the labours of the prophets did not assume the same prominent importance here as they did in the kingdom of the ten bribes, where they had to fight against idolatry from the beginning to the end.
This explains the fact that the ministry of the prophets assumes so prominent a position in the books of the Kings, whereas the history of the kings appears sometimes to fall into the background in comparison.
Nevertheless the historical development of the monarchy, or, to express it more correctly, of the kingdom of God under the kings, forms the true subject-matter of our books. It was not a prophetico-didactic purpose, but the prophetico-historical point of view, which prevailed throughout the whole work, and determined the reception as well as the treatment of the historical materials. The progressive development of the kingdom was predicted and described by the Lord Himself in the promise communicated to David by the prophet Nathan: “And when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name; and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his Father, and he shall be my son, that if he go astray, I may chasten him with man’s rod, and with stripes of the children of men; but my mercy will not depart from him, as I caused it to depart from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thy house and thy kingdom shall be for ever before thee, thy throne will be established for ever” (2 Sam 7:12-16).
This thoroughly glorious promise forms the red thread which runs through the history of the kings from Solomon to the Babylonian captivity, and constitutes the leading idea in the record of this history in our books. The author’s intention is to show in the history of the kings how the Lord fulfilled this gracious word, how He first of all chastised the seed of David for its transgressions, and then cast it off, though not for ever. To this end he shows in the history of Solomon, how, notwithstanding the usurpation of the throne attempted by Adonijah, Solomon received the whole of his father’s kingdom, as the seed of David promised by the Lord, and established his power; how the Lord at the very beginning of his reign renewed to him at Gibeon the promise made to his father on the condition of his faithful observance of His law, and in answer to his prayer gave him not only a wise and understanding heart, but also riches and honour, so that his equal was not to be found among all the kings of the earth (1 Kings 1:1-5:14); how Solomon then carried out the work of building the temple, entrusted to him by his father according to the will of the Lord; and how, after it was finished, the Lord again assured him of the fulfilment of that promise (1 Kings 5:15-9:9); and, lastly, how Solomon, having attained to the highest earthly glory, through the completion of the rest of his buildings, through the great renown of his wisdom, which had reached to nations afar off, and through his great riches, acquired partly by marine commerce and trade, and partly from tributes and presents, forgot his God, who had bestowed this glory upon him, and in his old age was led astray into unfaithfulness towards the Lord through his numerous foreign wives, and had at last to listen to this sentence from God: “Because thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and give it to thy servant: notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father’s said; but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit I will not rend away all thy kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen” (1 Kings 9:10-11:13).
Thus, because God had promised to the seed of David the eternal possession of the throne (2 Sam 7:12ff.), one portion of the kingdom was to be left to the son of Solomon, with the chosen city of Jerusalem, and his servant (Jeroboam, 1 Kings 11:26-40) was only to obtain dominion over ten tribes. The historical realization of this prophecy is shown in the history of the two divided kingdoms.
In the synchronistic account of these kingdoms, according to the principle already adopted in the book of Genesis, of disposing of the subordinate lines of the patriarchs before proceeding with the main line (see Comm. on Pent. p. 21), the reigns of the kings of Israel are described before those of the contemporaneous kings of Judah, and to some extent in a more elaborate manner. The reason of this, however, is, that the history of the kingdom of Israel, in which one dynasty overthrew another, whilst all the rulers walked in the sin of Jeroboam, and Ahab even added the worship of Baal to that sin, supplied the author with more materials for the execution of his plan than that of the kingdom of Judah, which had a much quieter development under the rule of the house of David, and of which, therefore, there was less to relate.
Apart from this, all the events of the kingdom of Judah which are of any importance in relation to the progress of the kingdom of God, are just as elaborately described as those connected with the kingdom of Israel; and the author does equal justice to both kingdoms, showing how the Lord manifested Himself equally to both, and bore with them with divine longsuffering and grace. But the proof of this necessarily assumed different forms, according to the different attitudes which they assumed towards the Lord. Jeroboam, the founder of the kingdom of Israel, when told that he would be king over the ten tribes, had received the promise that Jehovah would be with him, and build him a lasting house as He built for David, and give Israel to him, on condition that he would walk in the ways of God (1 Kings 11:37-38).
This implied that his descendants would rule over Israel (of the ten tribes) so long as this kingdom should stand; for it was not to last for ever, but the separation would come to an end, and therefore he is not promised the everlasting continuance of his kingdom (see at 1 Kings 11:38). But Jeroboam did not fulfil this condition, nor did any of the rulers of Israel who succeeded him. Nevertheless the Lord had patience with the kings and tribes who were unfaithful to His law, and not only warned them continually by His prophets, and chastised them by threats of punishment and by the fulfilment of those threats upon the kings and all the people, but repeatedly manifested His favour towards them for the sake of His covenant with Abraham (2 Kings 13:23), to lead them to repentance-until the time of grace had expired, when the sinful kingdom fell and the ten tribes were carried away to Media and Assyria.-In the kingdom of David, on the contrary, the succession to the throne was promised to the house of David for all time: therefore, although the Lord caused those who were rebellious to be chastised by hostile nations, yet, for His servant David’s sake, He left a light shining to the royal house, since He did not punish the kings who were addicted to idolatry with the extermination of their family (1 Kings 15:4; 2 Kings 8:19); and even when the wicked Athaliah destroyed all the royal seed, He caused Joash, the infant son of Ahaziah, to be saved and raised to the throne of his fathers (2 Kings 11).
Consequently this kingdom was able to survive that of the ten tribes for an entire period, just because it possessed a firm political basis in the uninterrupted succession of the Davidic house, as it also possessed a spiritual basis of no less firmness in the temple which the Lord had sanctified as the place where His name was revealed. After it had been brought to the verge of destruction by the godless Ahaz, it received in Hezekiah a king who did what was right in the eyes of Jehovah, as his father David had done, and in the severe oppression which he suffered at the hands of the powerful army of the proud Sennacherib, took refuge in the Lord, who protected and saved Jerusalem, “for His own and His servant David’s sake,” at the prayer of the pious king of Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:34; 20:6).
But when at length, throughout the long reign of Manasseh the idolater, apostasy and moral corruption prevailed to such an extent in Judah also, that even the pious Josiah, with the reformation of religion which he carried out with the greatest zeal, could only put down the outward worship of idols, and was unable to effect any thorough conversion of the people to the Lord their God, and the Lord as the Holy One of Israel was obliged to declare His purpose of rejecting Judah from before His face on account of the sins of Manasseh, and to cause that purpose to be executed by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 23:26-27; 24:3-4); Jehoiachin was led away captive to Babylon, and under Zedekiah the kingdom was destroyed with the burning of Jerusalem and the temple. Yet the Lord did not suffer the light to be altogether extinguished to His servant David; but when Jehoiachin had pined in captivity at Babylon for thirty-seven years, expiating his own and his fathers’ sins, he was liberated from his captivity by Nebuchadnezzar’s son, and raised to honour once more (2 Kings 25:27-30).-The account of this joyful change in the condition of Jehoiachin, with which the books of the Kings close, forms so essential a part of their author’s plan, that without this information the true conclusion to his work would be altogether wanting. For this event shed upon the dark night of the captivity the first ray of a better future, which was to dawn upon the seed of David, and with it upon the whole nation in its eventual redemption from Babylon, and was also a pledge of the certain fulfilment of the promise that the Lord would not for ever withdraw His favour from the seed of David. f84 Thus the books of the Kings bring down the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God, according to the divine plan of the kingdom indicated in 2 Sam 7, from the close of David’s reign to the captivity; and the fact that in 1 Kings 1:1 they are formally attached to the books of Samuel is an indication that they are a continuation of those books. Nevertheless there is no doubt that they formed from the very first a separate work, the independence and internal unity of which are apparent from the uniformity of the treatment of the history as well as from the unity of the language.
From beginning to end the author quotes from his original sources, for the most part with certain standing formulas; in all important events he gives the chronology carefully (1 Kings 6:1,37-38; 7:1; 9:10; 11:42; 14:20- 21,25; 15:1-2,9-10, etc.); he judges the conduct of the kings throughout according to the standard of the law of Moses (1 Kings 2:3; 3:14; 2 Kings 10:31; 11:12; 14:6; 17:37; 18:6; 21:8; 22:8ff., 23:3,21, etc.); and he nearly always employs the same expressions when describing the commencement, the character, and the close of each reign, as well as the death and burial of the kings (compare 1 Kings 11:43; 14:20,31; 15:8,24; 22:51; 2 Kings 8:24; 13:9; 14:29; and for the characteristics of the several kings of Judah, Kings 15:3,11; 22:43; 2 Kings 12:3; 14:3; 15:3, etc.; and for those of the kings of Israel, 1 Kings 14:8; 15:26,34; 16:19,26,30; 22:53; 2 Kings 3:2-3; 10:29,31; 13:2,11, etc.).
And so, again, the language of the books remains uniform in every part of the work, if we except certain variations occasioned by the differences in the sources employed; since we find throughout isolated expressions and forms of a later date, and words traceable to the Assyrian and Chaldaean epoch, such as rKo for rm,jo in 1 Kings 5:2,25; ynidoyxi in 1 Kings 11:33; raatsiyn in 2 Kings 11:13; hn;ydim] in 1 Kings 20:14-15,17,19; lb;q; in Kings 15:10; lyijæ rcæ in 1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 25:23,26; Eabaachiym rab in 2 Kings 25:8; pechaah in 1 Kings 10:15; 20:24; 2 Kings 18:24; and many others, which do not occur in the earlier historical books.-The books of the Kings are essentially distinguished from the books of Samuel through these characteristic peculiarities; but not so much through the quotations which are so prominent in the historical narrative, for these are common to all the historical books of the Old Testament, and are only more conspicuous in these books, especially in the history of the kings of the two kingdoms, because in the case of all the kings, even of those in relation to whom there was nothing to record of any importance to the kingdom of God except the length and general characteristics of their reign, there are notices of the writings which contain further information concerning their reigns.-The unity of authorship is therefore generally admitted, since, as De Wette himself acknowledges, “you cannot anywhere clearly detect the interpolation or combination of different accounts.” The direct and indirect contradictions, however, which Thenius imagines that he has discovered, prove to be utterly fallacious on a closer inspection of the passages cited as proofs, and could only have been obtained through misinterpretations occasioned by erroneous assumptions. (See, on the other hand, my Lehrbuch der Einleitung in das A. T. p. 184ff.)
All that can be determined with certainty in relation to the origin of the books of Kings is, that they were composed in the second half of the Babylonian captivity, and before its close, since they bring the history down to that time, and yet contain no allusion to the deliverance of the people out of Babylon. The author was a prophet living in the Babylonian exile, though not the prophet Jeremiah, as the earlier theologians down to Hävernick have assumed from the notice in the Talmud (Baba bathra, f. 15, 1): Jeremias scripsit librum suum et librum Regum et Threnos. For even apart from the fact that Jeremiah ended his days in Egypt, he could hardly have survived the last event recorded in our books, namely, the liberation of Jehoiachin from prison, and his exaltation to royal honours by Evilmerodach.
For inasmuch as this event occurred sixty-six years after his call to be a prophet, in the thirteenth year of Josiah, he would have been eightysix years old in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin had been carried away into exile, even if he had commenced his prophetic career when only a young man of twenty years of age.
Now, even if he had reached this great age, he would surely not have composed our books at a later period still. Moreover, all that has been adduced in support of this is seen to be inconclusive on closer inspection.
The similarity in the linguistic character of our books and that of the writings of Jeremiah, the sombre view of history which is common to the two, the preference apparent in both for phrases taken from the Pentateuch, and the allusions to earlier prophecies-all these peculiarities may be explained, so far as they really exist, partly from the fact that they were written in the same age, since all the writers of the time of the captivity and afterwards cling very closely to the Pentateuch and frequently refer to the law of Moses, and partly also from the circumstance that, whilst Jeremiah was well acquainted with the original sources of our books, viz., the annals of the kingdom of Judah, the author of our books was also well acquainted with the prophecies of Jeremiah. But the relation between 2 Kings 24:18ff. and Jer is not of such a nature, that these two accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the remnant of the people could have emanated from the hand of Jeremiah; on the contrary, a closer inspection clearly shows that they are extracts from a more elaborate description of this catastrophe (see at 2 Kings 24:18ff.).
As sources from which the author has obtained his accounts, there are mentioned, for the history of Solomon, a hmolv] rb;d; rp,se , or book of the acts (affairs) of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41); for the history of the kings of Judah, hd;Why] Ël,m, µwOy rb;d; rp,se , book of the daily occurrences of the kings of Judah (1 Kings 14:29; 15:7,23; 22:46; 2 Kings 8:23; 12:20, etc.); and for that of the kings of Israel, laer;c]yi Ël,m, µwOy rb;d; rp,se , book of the daily occurrences of the kings of Israel (1 Kings 14:19; 15:31; 16:5,14,20,27; 22:39; 2 Kings 1:18).
These are quoted as writings in which more is written concerning the life, the deeds, and the particular undertakings, buildings and so forth, of the several kings. The two last-named works were evidently general annals of the kingdoms: not, indeed, the national archives of the two kingdoms, or official records made by the maz¦kiyriym of the reigns and acts of the kings, as Jahn, Movers, Stähelin, and others suppose; but annals composed by prophets, and compiled partly from the public year-books of the kingdom or the national archives, and partly from prophetic monographs and collections of prophecies, which reached in the kingdom of Israel down to the time of Pekah (2 Kings 15:31), and in that of Judah to the time of Jehoiakim (2 Kings 24:5).
Moreover, they were not written successively by different prophets, who followed one another, and so carried on the work in uninterrupted succession from the rise of the two kingdoms to the death of the two kings mentioned; but they had been worked out into a “Book of the history of the times of the Kings” for each of the two kingdoms, a short time before the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, by collecting together the most important things that had been written both concerning the reigns of the several kings by annalists and other historians who were contemporaneous with the events, and also concerning the labours of the prophets, which were deeply interwoven with the course of public affairs, whether composed by themselves or by their contemporaries.
And in this finished form they lay before the author of our work. This view of the annals of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel follows unquestionably from the agreement which exists between our books of the Kings and the second book of the Chronicles, in the accounts common to both, and which can only be explained from the fact that they were drawn from one and the same source. But in the Chronicles there are different writings of individual prophets quoted, beside the day-books of the kings of Judah and Israel; and it is expressly stated in relation to some of them that they were received into the annals of the kings (compare 2 Chron 20:34 and 32:32, and the Introduction to the books of the Chronicles). Moreover, there are no historical traces of public annalists to be found in the kingdom of the ten tribes, and their existence is by no means probable, on account of the constant change of dynasties.
The fact, however, that the frequently recurring formula “to this day” (1 Kings 9:13; 10:12; 2 Kings 2:22; 10:27; 14:7; 16:6; 17:23,34,41; 20:17; 21:15) never refers to the time of the captivity, except in the passages enclosed in brackets, but always to the time of the existing kingdom of Judah, and that it cannot therefore have emanated from the author of our books of the Kings, but can only have been taken from the sources employed, is a proof that these annals of the kingdom were composed towards the close of the kingdom of Judah; and this is placed beyond all doubt, by the fact that this formula is also found in many passages of the books of the Chronicles (compare 1 Kings 8:8 with 2 Chron 5:9; 1 Kings 9:21 with 2 Chron 8:8; 1 Kings 12:19 with 2 Chron 10:19; and 2 Kings 8:22 with 2 Chron 21:10).-In a similar manner to this must we explain the origin of the hmolv] rb;d; rp,se , since three prophetic writings are quoted in 1 Chron 29:29 in connection with Solomon’s reign, and their account agrees in all essential points with the account in the books of the Kings.
Nevertheless this “history of Solomon” never formed a component part of the annals of the two kingdoms, and was certainly written much earlier.- The assumption that there were other sources still, is not only sustained by no historical evidence, but has no certain support in the character or contents of the writings before us.
If the annals quoted were works composed by prophets, the elaborate accounts of the working of the prophets Elijah and Elisha might also have been included in them.-Again, in the constant allusion to these annals we have a sure pledge of the historical fidelity of the accounts that have been taken from them. If in his work the author followed writings which were composed by prophets, and also referred his readers to these writings, which were known and accessible to his contemporaries, for further information, he must have been conscious of the faithful and conscientious employment of them. And this natural conclusion is in harmony with the contents of our books.
The life and actions of the kings are judged with unfettered candour and impartiality, according to the standard of the law of God; and there is no more concealment of the idolatry to which the highly renowned Solomon was led astray by his foreign wives, than of that which was right in the eyes of God, when performed by the kings of the ten tribes, which had fallen away from the house of David. Even in the case of the greatest prophet of all, namely Elijah, the weakness of his faith in being afraid of the vain threats of the wicked Jezebel is related just as openly as his courageous resistance, in the strength of the Lord, to Ahab and the prophets of Baal.- Compare my Einleitung in das Alte Test. §56-60, where adverse views are examined and the commentaries are also noticed.
I. HISTORY OF SOLOMON’S REIGN.
David had not only established the monarchy upon a firm basis, but had also exalted the Old Testament kingdom of God to such a height of power, that all the kingdoms round about wee obliged to bow before it. This kingdom was transmitted by divine appointment to his son Solomon, in whose reign Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the seashore, and dwelt in security, every man under his vine and under his figtree (1 Kings 4:20; 5:5). The history of this reign commences with the account of the manner in which Solomon had received the kingdom from his father, and had established his own rule by the fulfilment of his last will and by strict righteousness (ch. 1 and 2). Then follows in ch. 3-10 the description of the glory of his kingdom, how the Lord, in answer to his prayer at Gibeon, not only gave him an understanding heart to judge his people, but also wisdom, riches, and honour, so that his equal was not to be found among the kings of the earth; and through his wise rule, more especially through the erection of the house of Jehovah and of a splendid royal palace, he developed the glory of the kingdom of God to such an extent that his fame penetrated to remote nations.
The conclusion, in ch. 11, consists of the account of Solomon’s sin in his old age, viz., his falling into idolatry, whereby he brought about the decay of the kingdom, which manifested itself during the closing years of his reign in the rising up of opponents, and at his death in the falling away of ten tribes from his son Rehoboam. But notwithstanding this speedy decay, the glory of Solomon’s kingdom is elaborately depicted on account of the typical significance which it possessed in relation to the kingdom of God.
Just as, for example, the successful wars of David with all the enemies of Israel were a prelude to the eventual victory of the kingdom of God over all the kingdoms of this world; so was the peaceful rule of Solomon to shadow forth the glory and blessedness which awaited the people of God, after a period of strife and conflict, under the rule of Shiloh the Prince of peace, whom Jacob saw in spirit, and who would increase government and peace without end upon the throne of David and in his kingdom (Isa 9:5-6; Ps 72:1).
ANOINTING AND ACCESSION OF SOLOMON.
The attempt of Adonijah to seize upon the throne when David’s strength was failing (vv. 1-10), induced the aged king, as soon as it was announced to him by Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan, to order Solomon to be anointed king, and to have the anointing carried out (vv. 11-40); whereupon Adonijah fled to the altar, and received pardon from Solomon on condition that he would keep himself quiet (vv. 41-53).
1 KINGS. 1:1-2
Verse 1-2. When king David had become so old that they could no longer warm him by covering him with clothes, his servants advised him to increase his vitality by lying with a young and robust virgin, and selected the beautiful Abishag of Shunem to perform this service. This circumstance, which is a trivial one in itself, is only mentioned on account of what follows-first, because it shows that David had become too weak from age, and too destitute of energy, to be able to carry on the government any longer; and, secondly, because Adonijah the pretender afterwards forfeited his life through asking for Abishag in marriage.-The opening of our book, Ël,m, (and the King), may be explained from the fact that the account which follows has been taken from a writing containing the earlier history of David, and that the author of these books retained the Vav cop. which he found there, for the purpose of showing at the outset that his work was a continuation of the books of Samuel. µwOy awOB ˆqez; as in Josh 13:1; 23:1; Gen 24:1, etc. “They covered him with clothes, and he did not get warm.” It follows from this that the king was bedridden, or at least that when lying down he could no longer be kept warm with bedclothes. dg,B, does not mean clothes to wear here, but large cloths, which were used as bed-clothes, as in 1 Sam 19:13 and Num 4:6ff. µjæy; is used impersonally, and derived from µmæj; , cf.
Ewald, §193, b., and 138, b. As David was then in his seventieth year, this decrepitude was not the natural result of extreme old age, but the consequence of a sickly constitution, arising out of the hardships which he had endured in his agitated and restless life. The proposal of his servants, to restore the vital warmth which he had lost by bringing a virgin to lie with him, is recommended as an experiment by Galen (Method. medic. viii. 7). And it has been an acknowledged fact with physicians of all ages, that departing vitality may be preserved and strengthened by communicating the vital warmth of strong and youthful persons (compare Trusen, Sitten Gebräuche u. Krankheiten der Hebräer, p. 257ff.). The singular suffix in ˆwOda; is to be explained on the ground that one person spoke. hl;WtB] hr;[næ , a maid who is a virgin. µynip; `rmæ[; , to stand before a person as servant = to serve (cf. Deut 1:38 with Ex 24:13). ˆkæs; , an attendant or nurse, from ˆkæs; = ˆkæv; , to live with a person, then to be helpful or useful to him. With the words “that she may lie in thy bosom,” the passage passes, as is frequently the case, from the third person to a direct address.
1 KINGS. 1:3-4
They then looked about for a beautiful girl for this purpose, and found Abishag of Shunem, the present Sulem or Solam, at the south-eastern foot of the Duhy of Little Hermon (see at Josh 19:18), who became the king’s nurse and waited upon him. The further remark, “and the king knew her not,” is not introduced either to indicate the impotence of David or to show that she did not become David’s concubine, but simply to explain how it was that it could possibly occur to Adonijah (1 Kings 2:17) to ask for her as his wife. Moreover, the whole affair is to be judged according to the circumstances of the times, when there was nothing offensive in polygamy.
1 KINGS. 1:5-10
Adonijah seized the opportunity of David’s decrepitude to make himself king. Although he was David’s fourth son (2 Sam 3:4), yet after the death of Ammon and Absalom he was probably the eldest, as Chileab, David’s second son, had most likely died when a child, since he is never mentioned again. Adonijah therefore thought that he had a claim to the throne (cf. Kings 2:15), and wanted to secure it before his father’s death. But in Israel, Jehovah, the God-King of His people, had reserved to Himself the choice of the earthly king (Deut 17:15), and this right He exercised not only in the case of Saul and David, but in that of Solomon also. When He gave to David the promise that his seed should rule for ever (2 Sam 7:12-16), He did not ensure the establishment of the throne to any one of his existing sons, but to him that would come out of his loins (i.e., to Solomon, who was not yet born); and after his birth He designated him through the prophet Nathan as the beloved of Jehovah (2 Sam 12:24-25). David discerned from this that the Lord had chosen Solomon to be his successor, and he gave to Bathsheba a promise on oath that Solomon should sit upon the throne (vv. 13 and 30). This promise was also acknowledged in the presence of Nathan (vv. 11ff.), and certainly came to Adonijah’s ears.
Adonijah said, “I will be king,” and procured chariots and horsemen and fifty runners, as Absalom had done before (2 Sam 15:1). bk,r, , in a collective sense, does not mean fighting or war chariots, but state carriages, like hb;K;r]m, in 2 Sam 15:1; and vr;p; are neither riding nor carriage horses, but riders to form an escort whenever he drove out.
Verse 6. “And (= for) his father had never troubled him in his life µwOy , a diebus ejus, i.e., his whole life long), saying, “Why hast thou done this?”
Such weak oversight on the part of his father encouraged him to make the present attempt. Moreover, he “was very beautiful,” like Absalom (see at Sam 14:25), and born after Absalom, so that after his death he appeared to have the nearest claim to the throne. The subject to dlæy; is left indefinite, because it is implied in the idea of the verb itself: “she bare,” i.e., his mother, as in Num 26:59 (vid., Ewald, §294, b.). There was no reason for mentioning the mother expressly by name, as there was nothing depending upon the name here, and it had already been given in v. 5.
Verse 7. He conferred (for the expression, compare 2 Sam 3:17) with Joab and Abiathar the priest, who supported him. p rjæaæ `rzæ[; , to lend a helping hand to a person, i.e., to support him by either actually joining him or taking his part. Joab joined the pretender, because he had fallen out with David for a considerable time (cf. 1 Kings 2:5-6), and hoped to secure his influence with the new king if he helped him to obtain possession of the throne. But what induced Abiathar the high priest (see at 2 Sam 8:17) to join in conspiracy with Adonijah, we do not know. Possibly jealousy of Zadok, and the fear that under Solomon he might be thrown still more into the shade. For although Zadok was only high priest at the tabernacle at Gibeon, he appears to have taken the lead; as we may infer from the fact that he is always mentioned before Abiathar (cf. 2 Sam 8:17; 20:25, and 15:24ff.). For we cannot imagine that Joab and Abiathar had supported Adonijah as having right on his side (Thenius), for the simple reason that Joab did not trouble himself about right, and for his own part shrank from no crime, when he thought that he had lost favour with the king.
Verse 8. If Adonijah had powerful supporters in Joab the commander-inchief and the high priest Abiathar, the rest of the leading officers of state, viz., Zadok the high priest (see at 2 Sam 8:17), Benaiah, captain of the king’s body-guard (see at 2 Sam 8:18 and 23:20-21), the prophet Nathan, Shimei (probably the son of Elah mentioned in 1 Kings 4:18), and Rei (unknown), and the Gibborim of David (see at 2 Sam 23:8ff.), were not with him.
Verse 9-10. Adonijah commenced his usurpation, like Absalom (2 Sam 15:2), with a solemn sacrificial meal, at which he was proclaimed king, “at the stone of Zocheleth by the side of the fountain of Rogel,” i.e., the spy’s fountain, or, according to the Chaldee and Syriac, the fuller’s fountain, the present fountain of Job or Nehemiah, below the junction of the valley of Hinnom with the valley of Jehoshaphat (see at 2 Sam 7:17 and Josh 15:7).
E. G. Schultz (Jerusalem, eine Vorlesung, p. 79) supposes the stone or rock of Zocheleth to be “the steep, rocky corner of the southern slope of the valley of Hinnom, which casts so deep a shade.” “The neighbourhood (Wady el Rubâb) is still a place of recreation for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” To this festal meal Adonijah invited all his brethren except Solomon, and “all the men of Judah, the king’s servants,” i.e., all the Judaeans who were in the king’s service, i.e., were serving at court as being members of his own tribe, with the exception of Nathan the prophet, Benaiah, and the Gibborim. The fact that Solomon and the others mentioned were not included in the invitation, showed very clearly that Adonijah was informed of Solomon’s election as successor to the throne, and was also aware of the feelings of Nathan and Benaiah.
1 KINGS. 1:11-31
Adonijah’s attempt was frustrated by the vigilance of the prophet Nathan.
Verse 11-13. Nathan informed Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba (see at Sam 11:3), that Adonijah was making himself king Ëlæm; yKi , that he had become as good as king: Thenius), and advised her, in order to save her life and that of her son Solomon flæm; , and save = so that thou mayest save; cf.
Ewald, §347, a.), to go to the king and remind him of his promise on oath, that her son Solomon should be king after him, and to inquire why Adonijah had become king. If Adonijah had really got possession of the throne, he would probably have put Solomon and his mother out of the way, according to the barbarous custom of the East, as his political opponents.
Verse 14. While she was still talking to the king, he (Nathan) would come in after her and confirm her words. rb;d; alem; , to make a word full, i.e., not to supply what is wanting, but to make full, like plhrou>n , either to fill by accomplishing, or (as in this case) to confirm it by similar assertion.
Verse 15-21. Bathsheba followed this advice, and went to the king into the inner chamber rd,j, ), since the very aged king, who was waited upon by Abishag, could not leave his room træv; for tt,r,v;m] ; cf. Ewald, §188, b., p. 490), and, bowing low before him, communicated to him what Adonijah had taken in hand in opposition to his will and without his knowledge. The second `hT;[æ is not to be altered into hT;aæ , inasmuch as it is supported by the oldest codices and the Masora, although about two hundred codd. contain the latter reading.
The repetition of `hT;[æ (“And now, behold, Adonijah has become king; and now, my lord king, thou knowest it not”) may be explained from the energy with which Bathsheba speaks. “And Solomon thy servant he hath not invited” (v. 19). Bathsheba added this, not because she felt herself injured, but as a sign of Adonijah’s feelings towards Solomon, which showed that he had reason to fear the worst if Adonijah should succeed in his usurpation of the throne. In v. 20, again, many codd. have `hT;[æ in the place of hT;aæ ; and Thenius, after his usual fashion, pronounces the former the “only correct” reading, because it is apparently a better one. But here also the appearance is deceptive. The antithesis to what Adonijah has already done is brought out quite suitably by hT;aæ : Adonijah has made himself king, etc.; but thou my lord king must decide in the matter. “The eyes of all Israel are turned towards thee, to tell them who (whether Adonijah or Solomon) is to sit upon the throne after thee.” “The decision of this question is in thy hand, for the people have not yet attached themselves to Adonijah, but are looking to thee, to see what thou wilt do; and they will follow thy judgment, if thou only hastenest to make Solomon king.”-Seb. Schmidt. To secure this decision, Bathsheba refers again, in v. 21, to the fate which would await both herself and her son Solomon after the death of the king. They would be aF;jæ , i.e., guilty of a capital crime. “We should be punished as though guilty of high treason” (Clericus).
Verse 22-27. While Bathsheba was still speaking, Nathan came. When he was announced to the king, Bathsheba retired, just as afterwards Nathan went away when the king had Bathsheba called in again (cf. v. 28 with v. 32). This was done, not to avoid the appearance of a mutual arrangement (Cler., Then., etc.), but for reasons of propriety, inasmuch as, in audiences granted by the king to his wife or one of his counsellors, no third person ought to be present unless the king required his attendance. Nathan confirmed Bathsheba’s statement, commencing thus: “My lord king, thou hast really said, Adonijah shall be king after me...? for he has gone down to-day, and has prepared a feast,...and they are eating and drinking before him, and saying, Long live king Adonijah!” And he then closed by asking, “Has this taken place on the part of my lord the king, and thou hast not shown thy servants (Nathan, Zadok, Benaiah, and Solomon) who is to sit upon the throne of my lord the king after him?” The indirect question introduced with µai is not merely an expression of modesty, but also of doubt, whether what had occurred had emanated from the king and he had not shown it to his servants.
Verse 28-30. The king then sent for Bathsheba again, and gave her this promise on oath: “As truly as Jehovah liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all distress (as in 2 Sam 4:9), yea, as I swore to thee by Jehovah, the God of Israel, saying, Solomon thy son shall be king after me,...yea, so shall I do this day.” The first and third yKi serve to give emphasis to the assertion, like imo, yea (cf. Ewald, §330, b.). The second merely serves as an introduction to the words. Verse 31. Bathsheba then left the king with the deepest prostration and the utterance of a blessing, as an expression of her inmost gratitude. The benedictory formula, “May the king live for ever,” was only used by the Israelites on occasions of special importance; whereas the Babylonians and ancient Persians constantly addressed their kings in this way (cf. Dan 2:4; 3:9; 5:10; 6:22; Neh 2:3. Aeliani var. hist. i. 32, and Curtius de gestis Alex. vi. 5).
1 KINGS. 1:32-33
David then sent for Zadok, Nathan, and Benaiah, and directed them to fetch the servants of their lord ˆwOda; , a pluralis majestatis, referring to David alone), and to conduct Solomon to Gihon riding upon the royal mule, and there to anoint him and solemnly proclaim him king. The servants of your lord ˆwOda; `db,[, ) are the Crethi and Plethi, and not the Gibborim also (Thenius), as v. 38 clearly shows, where we find that these alone went down with him to Gihon as the royal body-guard. liy ‘asher `alhapir ¦daah, upon the mule which belongs to me, i.e., upon my (the king’s) mule. When the king let any one ride upon the animal on which he generally rode himself, this was a sign that he was his successor upon the throne. Among the ancient Persians riding upon the king’s horse was a public honour, which the king conferred upon persons of great merit in the eyes of all the people (cf. Est 6:8-9). hD,r]pi , the female mule, which in Kahira is still preferred to the male for riding (see Rosenmüller, bibl. Althk. iv. 2, p. 56).
Gihon ˆwOjyGi ) was the name given, according to 2 Chron 32:30 and 33:14, to a spring on the western side of Zion, which supplied two basins or pools, viz., the upper watercourse of Gihon (2 Chron 32:30) or upper pool (2 Kings 18:17; Isa 7:3; 36:2), and the lower pool (Isa 22:9). The upper Gihon still exists as a large reservoir built up with hewn stones, though somewhat fallen to decay, which is called by the monks Gihon, by the natives Birket el Mamilla, about 700 yards W.N.W. from the Joppa gate, in the basin which opens into the valley of Hinnom. The lower pool is probably the present Birket es Sultan, on the south-western side of Zion (see Robinson, Palestine, i. p. 485ff., 512ff., and Biblical Researches, p. 142ff.). The valley between the two was certainly the place where Solomon was anointed, as it is not stated that this took place at the fountain of Gihon. And even the expression ˆwOjyGi `l[æ tae dræy; (take him down to Gihon) agrees with this. For is you go from Zion to Gihon towards the west, you first of all have to descend a slope, and then ascend by a gradual rise; and this slope was probably a more considerable one in ancient times (Rob. Pal. i. p. 514, note). f
86 1 KINGS. 1:34
The blowing of the trumpet and the cry “Long live the king” (cf. 1 Sam 10:24) were to serve as a solemn proclamation after the anointing had taken place.
1 KINGS. 1:35
After the anointing they were to conduct Solomon up to Zion again; Solomon was then to ascend the throne, as David was about to appoint him prince over Israel and Judah in his own stead. Both the anointing and the appointment of Solomon as prince over the whole of the covenant nation were necessary, because the succession to the throne had been rendered doubtful through Adonijah’s attempt, and the aged king was still alive. In cases where there was no question, and the son followed the father after his death, the unanimous opinion of the Rabbins is, that there was no anointing at all. Israel and Judah are mentioned, because David had been the first to unite all the tribes under his sceptre, and after the death of Solomon Israel fell away from the house of David.
1 KINGS. 1:36-37
Benaiah responded to the utterance of the royal will with the confirmatory “Amen, thus saith Jehovah the God of my lord the king;” i.e., may the word of the king become a word of Jehovah his God, who fulfils what He promises (Ps 33:9); and added the pious wish, “May Jehovah be with Solomon, as He was with David, and glorify his throne above the throne of David,”-a wish which was not merely “flattery of his paternal vanity” (Thenius), but which had in view the prosperity of the monarchy, and was also fulfilled by God (cf. 1 Kings 3:11ff.).
1 KINGS. 1:38-39
The anointing of Solomon was carried out immediately, as the king had commanded. On the Crethi and Plethi see at 2 Sam 8:18. “The oil-horn out of the tent” (i.e., a vessel made of horn and containing oil) was no doubt one which held the holy anointing oil, with which the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary were anointed (see Ex 30:22ff.). The tent lh,ao ), however, is not the tabernacle at Gibeon, but the tent set up by David for the ark of the covenant upon Mount Zion (2 Sam 6:17). For even though Zadok was appointed high priest at the tabernacle at Gibeon, and Abiathar, who held with Adonijah, at the ark of the covenant, the two high priests were not so unfriendly towards one another, that Zadok could not have obtained admission to the ark of the covenant in Abiathar’s absence to fetch away the anointing oil.
1 KINGS. 1:40
All the people, i.e., the crowd which was present at the anointing, went up after him, i.e., accompanied Solomon to the citadel of Zion, with flutes and loud acclamation, so that the earth nearly burst with their shouting. [qæB; , “to burst in pieces” (as in 2 Chron 25:12), is a hyperbolical expression for quaking.
1 KINGS. 1:41-42
The noise of this shouting reached the ears of Adonijah and his guests, when the feast was just drawing to a close. The music, therefore, and the joyful acclamations of the people must have been heard as far off as the fountain of Rogel. When Joab observed the sound of the trumpet, knowing what these tones must signify, he asked “wherefore the sound of the city in an uproar” (i.e., what does it mean)? At that moment Jonathan the son of Abiathar arrived (see 2 Sam 15:27; 17:17ff.). Adonijah called out to him: “Come, for thou art a brave man and bringest good tidings;’ suppressing all anxiety with these words, as he knew his father’s will with regard to the succession to the throne, and the powerful and influential friends of Solomon (see vv. 5, 19, 26).
1 KINGS. 1:43-48
Jonathan replied: lb;a , “yea but,” corresponding to the Latin imo vero, an expression of assurance with a slight doubt, and then related that Solomon had been anointed king by David’s command, and the city was in a joyous state of excitement in consequence µWh as in Ruth 1:19), and that he had even ascended the throne, that the servants of the king had blessed David for it, and that David himself had worshipped and praised Jehovah the God of Israel that he had lived to see his son ascend the throne. The repetition of µGæ three times (vv. 46-48) gives emphasis to the words, since every new point which is introduced with µGæ raises the thing higher and higher towards absolute certainty. The fact related in v. 47 refers to the words of Benaiah in vv. 36 and 37. The Chethib µyhila’ is the correct reading, and the Keri µyhila’ an unnecessary emendation. The prayer to God, with thanksgiving for the favour granted to him, was offered by David after the return of his anointed son Solomon to the royal palace; so that it ought strictly to have been mentioned after v. 40. The worship of grey-headed David upon the bed recalls to mind the worship of the patriarch Jacob after making known his last will (Gen 47:31).
1 KINGS. 1:49-50
The news spread terror. All the guests of Adonijah fled, every man his way.
Adonijah himself sought refuge from Solomon at the horns of the altar.
The altar was regarded from time immemorial and among all nations as a place of refuge for criminals deserving of death; but, according to Ex 21:14, in Israel it was only allowed to afford protection in cases of unintentional slaying, and for these special cities of refuge were afterwards provided (Num 35). In the horns of the altar, as symbols of power and strength, there was concentrated the true significance of the altar as a divine place, from which there emanated both life and health (see at Ex 27:19). By grasping the horns of the altar the culprit placed himself under the protection of the saving and helping grace of God, which wipes away sin, and thereby abolishes punishment (see Bähr, Symbolik des Mos. Cult. i. p. 474). The question to what altar Adonijah fled, whether to the altar at the ark of the covenant in Zion, or to the one at the tabernacle at Gibeon, or to the one built by David on the threshing-floor of Araunah, cannot be determined with certainty. It was probably to the first of these, however, as nothing is said about a flight to Gibeon, and with regard to the altar of Araunah it is not certain that it was provided with horns like the altars of the two sanctuaries.
1 KINGS. 1:51-52
When this was reported to Solomon, together with the prayer of Adonijah that the king would swear to him that he would not put him to death with the sword µai before tWm , a particle used in an oath), he promised him conditional impunity: “If he shall be brave ( lyihæAˆB, , vir probus), none of his hair shall fall to the earth,” equivalent to not a hair of his head shall be injured (cf. 1 Sam 14:45); “but if evil be found in him,” i.e., if he render himself guilty of a fresh crime, “he shall die.”
1 KINGS. 1:53
He then had him fetched down from the altar ( dyriwOh , inasmuch as the altar stood upon an eminence); and when he fell down before the king, i.e., did homage to him as king, he gave him his life and freedom in the words, “Go to thy house.” The expression tyiBæ Ëlæy; does not imply his banishment from the court (compare 1 Kings 2:13 and 2 Sam 14:24). Solomon did not wish to commence his own ascent of the throne by infliction of punishment, and therefore presented the usurper with his life on the condition that he kept himself quiet.
DAVID’S LAST INSTRUCTIONS AND DEATH.
SOLOMON ASCENDS THE THRONE AND FORTIFIES HIS GOVERNMENT.
1 KINGS. 2:1-11
The anointing of Solomon as king, which was effected by David’s command (ch. 1), is only briefly mentioned in 1 Chron 23:1 in the words, “When David was old and full of days, he made his son Solomon king over Israel;” which serve as an introduction to the account of the arrangements made by David during the closing days of his life. After these arrangements have been described, there follow in 1 Chron 28 and 29 his last instructions and his death. The aged king gathered together the tribe-princes and the rest of the dignitaries and superior officers to a diet at Jerusalem, and having introduced Solomon to them as the successor chosen by God, exhorted them to keep the commandments of God, and urged upon Solomon and the whole assembly the building of the temple, gave his son the model of the temple and all the materials which he had collected towards its erection, called upon the great men of the kingdom to contribute to this work, which they willingly agreed to, and closed this last act of his reign with praise and thanksgiving to God and a great sacrificial festival, at which the assembled states of the realm made Solomon king a second time, and anointed him prince in the presence of Jehovah (1 Chron 29:22).-A repetition of the anointing of the new king at the instigation of the states of the realm, accompanied by their solemn homage, had also taken place in the case of both Saul (2 Sam 11) and David (2 Sam 2:4 and 5:3), and appears to have been an essential requirement to secure the general recognition of the king on the part of the nation, at any rate in those cases in which the succession to the throne was not undisputed.
In order, therefore, to preclude any rebellion after his death, David summoned this national assembly again after Solomon’s first anointing and ascent of the throne, that the representatives of the whole nation might pay the requisite homage to king Solomon, who had been installed as his successor according to the will of God.-To this national assembly, which is only reported in the Chronicles, there are appended the last instructions which David gave, according to vv. 1-9 of our chapter, to his successor Solomon immediately before his death. Just as in the Chronicles, according to the peculiar plan of that work, there is no detailed description of the installation of David on the throne; so here the author of our books has omitted the account of this national diet, and the homage paid by the estates of the realm to the new king, as not being required by the purpose of his work, and has communicated the last personal admonitions and instructions of the dying king David instead. f87 Verse 1-3. When David saw that his life was drawing to a close, he first of all admonished his son Solomon to be valiant in the observance of the commandments of God. “I go the way of all the world” (as in Josh 23:14), i.e., the way of death; “be strong and be a man,”-not “bear my departure bravely,” as Thenius supposes, but prove thyself brave (cf. 1 Sam 4:9) to keep the commandments of the Lord. Just as in 1 Sam 4:9 the object in which the bravery is to show itself is appended simply by the copula Vâv; so is it here also with wgwrmæv; . The phrase yy tr,m,v]miAta, rmæv; , to keep the keeping of Jehovah, which so frequently occurs in the Thorah, i.e., to observe or obey whatever is to be observed in relation to Jehovah (cf. Gen 26:5; Lev 8:35; 18:30, etc.), always receives its more precise definition from the context, and is used here, as in Gen 26:5, to denote obedience to the law of God in all its extent, or, according to the first definition, to walk in the ways of Jehovah. This is afterwards more fully expanded in the expression wgwhQ;ju rmæv; , to keep the ordinances, commandments, rights, and testimonies of Jehovah. These four words were applied to the different precepts of the law, the first three of which are connected together in Gen 26:5; Deut 5:28; 8:11, and served to individualize the rich and manifold substance of the demands of the Lord to His people as laid down in the Thorah. lkæc; ˆ[æmæ , that thou mayest act wisely and execute well, as in Deut 29:8; Josh 1:7.
Verse 4-5. Solomon would then experience still further this blessing of walking in the ways of the Lord, since the Lord would fulfil to him His promise of the everlasting possession of the throne. wgwµWq ˆ[æmæ is grammatically subordinate to lkæc; ˆ[æmæ in v. 3. The word which Jehovah has spoken concerning David `l[æ rbæd; ) is the promise in 2 Sam 7:12ff., the substance of which is quoted here by David with a negative turn, wgwtræK; alo , and with express allusion to the condition on which God would assuredly fulfil His promise, viz., if the descendants of David preserve their ways, to walk before the Lord in truth. tm,a, is more precisely defined by lKo . For the fact itself see Deut 5:5; 11:13,18. The formula wgwtræK; alo is formed after 1 Sam 2:33 (compare also 2 Sam 3:29 and Josh 9:23). “There shall not be cut off to thee a man from upon the throne of Israel,” i.e., there shall never be wanting to thee a descendant to take the throne; in other words, the sovereignty shall always remain in thy family. This promise, which reads thus in 2 Sam 7:16, “Thy house and thy kingdom shall be continual for ever before thee, and thy throne stand fast for ever,” and which was confirmed to Solomon by the Lord Himself after his prayer at the consecration of the temple (1 Kings 8:25; 9:5), is not to be understood as implying that no king of the Davidic house would be thrust away from the throne, but simply affirms that the posterity of David was not to be cut off, so as to leave no offshoot which could take possession of the throne. Its ultimate fulfilment it received in Christ (see at 2 Sam 7:12ff.). The second rmæa; in v. 4 is not to be erased as suspicious, as being merely a repetition of the first in consequence of the long conditional clause, even though it is wanting in the Vulgate, the Arabic, and a Hebrew codex.
After a general admonition David communicated to his successor a few more special instructions; viz., first of all (vv. 5, 6), to punish Joab for his wickedness. “What Joab did to me:”-of this David mentions only the two principal crimes of Joab, by which he had already twice deserved death, namely, his killing the two generals. Abner (2 Sam 3:27) and Amasa the son of Jether (2 Sam 20:10). The name rt,y, is written ar;t]yi in 2 Sam 17:25. Joab had murdered both of them out of jealousy in a treacherous and malicious manner; and thereby he had not only grievously displeased David and bidden defiance to his royal authority, but by the murder of Abner had exposed the king to the suspicion in the eyes of the people of having instigated the crime (see at 2 Sam 3:28,37). m’ µD; µWc “and he made war-blood in peace,” i.e., he shed in the time of peace blood that ought only to flow in war µWc in the sense of making, as in Deut 14:1; Ex 10:2, etc.), “and brought war-blood upon his girdle which was about his loins, and upon his shoes under his feet,” sc. in the time of peace.
This was the crime therefore: that Joab had murdered the two generals in a time of peace, as one ought only to slay his opponent in time of war. Girdle and shoes, the principal features in oriental attire when a man is preparing himself for any business, were covered with blood, since Joab, while saluting them, had treacherously stabbed both of them with the sword.
David ought to have punished these two crimes; but when Abner was murdered, he felt himself too weak to visit a man like Joab with the punishment he deserved, as he had only just been anointed king, and consequently he did nothing more than invoke divine retribution upon his head (2 Sam 3:29). And when Amasa was slain, the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba had crippled the power of David too much, for him to visit the deed with the punishment that was due. But as king of the nation of God, it was not right for him to allow such crimes to pass unpunished: he therefore transferred the punishment, for which he had wanted the requisite power, to his son and successor.
Verse 6. “Do according to thy wisdom (“mark the proper opportunity of punishing him”-Seb. Schmidt), and let not his grey hair go down into hell (the region of the dead) in peace (i.e., punished).” The punishment of so powerful a man as Joab the commander-in-chief was, required great wisdom, to avoid occasioning a rebellion in the army, which was devoted to him.
Verse 7. If the demands of justice required that Joab should be punished, the duty of gratitude was no less holy to the dying king. And Solomon was to show this to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and make them companions of his table; because Barzillai had supplied David with provisions on his flight from Absalom (2 Sam 17:27ff., 19:32ff.). ˆj;l]vu lkæa; hy;h; , “let them be among those eating of thy table;” i.e., not, “let them draw their food from the royal table,”-for there was no particular distinction in this, as all the royal attendants at the court received their food from the royal kitchen, as an equivalent for the pay that was owing-but, “let them join in the meals at the royal table.” The fact that in 2 Sam 9:10- 11,13, we have ˆj;l]vuAl[æ lkæa; to express this, makes no material difference. According to 2 Sam 19:38, Barzillai had, it is true, allowed only one son to follow the king to his court. “For so they drew near to me,” i.e., they showed the kindness to me of supplying me with food; compare Sam 17:27, where Barzillai alone is named, though, as he was a man of eighty years old, he was certainly supported by his sons.
Verse 8-9. On the other hand, Shimei the Benjamite had shown great hostility to David (cf. 2 Sam 16:5-8). He had cursed him with a vehement curse as he fled from Absalom xræm; , vehement, violent, not ill, heillos, from the primary meaning to be sick or ill, as Thenius supposes, since it cannot be shown that xræm; has any such meaning); and when David returned to Jerusalem and Shimei fell at his feet, he had promised to spare his life, because he did not want to mar the joy at his reinstatement in his kingdom by an act of punishment (2 Sam 19:19-24), and therefore had personally forgiven him. But the insult which Shimei had offered in his person to the anointed of the Lord, as king and representative of the rights of God, he could not forgive. The instruction given to his successor ( WhQenæT]Alaæ , let him not be guiltless) did not spring from personal revenge, but was the duty of the king as judge and administrator of the divine right. f88 It follows from the expression `µ[i , with thee, i.e., in thy neighbourhood, that Shimei was living at that time in Jerusalem (cf. v. 36). Verse 10-11. After these instructions David died, and was buried in the city of David, i.e., upon Mount Zion, where the sepulchre of David still existed in the time of Christ (Acts 2:29). f89 On the length of his reign see 2 Sam. 5:5.
1 KINGS. 2:12-46
Accession of Solomon and Establishment of his Government.
Verse 12 is a heading embracing the substance of what follows, and is more fully expanded in 1 Chron 29:23-25. Solomon established his monarchy first of all by punishing the rebels, Adonijah (vv. 13-25) and his adherents (vv. 26-35), and by carrying out the final instructions of his father (vv. 36-46). 1 KINGS 2:13-18. Adonijah forfeits his life.
Adonijah came to Bathsheba with the request that she would apply to king Solomon to give him Abishag of Shunem as his wife. Bathsheba asked him, “Is peace thy coming?” i.e., comest thou with a peaceable intention? (as in 1 Sam 16:4), because after what had occurred (1 Kings 1:5ff.) she suspected an evil intention. He introduced his petition with these words: “Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had set its face upon me that I should be king, then the kingdom turned about and became my brother’s; for it became his from the Lord.” The throne was his, not because he had usurped it, but because it belonged to him as the eldest son at that time, according to the right of primogeniture. Moreover it might have been the case that many of the people wished him to be king, and the fact that he had found adherents in Joab, Abiathar, and others, confirms this; but his assertion, that all Israel had set its eyes upon him as the future king, went beyond the bounds of truth. At the same time, he knew how to cover over the dangerous sentiment implied in his words in a very skilful manner by adding the further remark, that the transfer of the kingdom to his brother had come from Jehovah; so that Bathsheba did not detect the artifice, and promised to fulfil his request (vv. 16ff.) to intercede with king Solomon for Abishag to be given him to wife. ‘et-paanay ‘al-taashibiy, “do not turn back my face,” i.e., do not refuse my request. Verse 19. When Bathsheba came to Solomon, he received her with the reverence due to the queen-mother: “he rose up to meet her” (a pregnant expression for “he rose up and went to meet her”), made a low bow, then sat upon his throne again, and bade her sit upon a throne at his right hand.
The seat at the right hand of the king was the place of honour among the Israelites (cf. Ps 110:1), also with the ancient Arabian kings (cf. Eichhorn, Monumenta Antiq. Hist. Arab. p. 220), as well as among the Greeks and Romans.
Verse 20-22. To her request, “Let Abishag of Shunem be given to Adonijah thy brother for a wife” tae ˆtæn; , cf. Ges. §§143, 1, a.), which she regarded in her womanly simplicity as a very small one ˆf;q; ), he replied with indignation, detecting at once the intrigues of Adonijah: “And why dost thou ask Abishag of Shunem for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom, for he is my elder brother; and indeed for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.” The repetition of wOl] in wOl] (v. 22), for the purpose of linking on another clause, answers entirely to the emotional character of the words. “For him, and for Abiathar and Joab:” Solomon said this, because these two men of high rank had supported Adonijah’s rebellion and wished to rule under his name. There is no ground for any such alterations of the text as Thenius proposes.-Although Abishag had been only David’s nurse, in the eyes of the people she passed as his concubine; and among the Israelites, just as with the ancient Persians (Herod. iii. 68), taking possession of the harem of a deceased king was equivalent to an establishment of the claim to the throne (see at 2 Sam 12:8 and 3:7-8). According to 2 Sam 16:21, this cannot have been unknown even to Bathsheba; but as Adonijah’s wily words had disarmed all suspicion, she may not have thought of this, or may perhaps have thought that Abishag was not to be reckoned as one of David’s concubines, because David had not known her (1 Kings 1:4).
Verse 23-24. Solomon thereupon solemnly swore (the formula of an oath, and the yKi introducing the oath, as in 1 Sam 14:44, etc.), “Adonijah has spoken this word against his own life.” vp,n, , at the cost of his life, as in Sam 23:17, i.e., at the hazard of his life, or to his destruction. V. 24. “And now, as truly as Jehovah liveth, who hath established me and set me on the throne of my father David, and hath made me a house, as He said (verbatim, 2 Sam 7:11): yea, to-day shall Adonijah be put to death.”
Jehovah established Solomon, or founded him firmly, by raising him to the throne in spite of Adonijah’s usurpation. In wywshybyny the central y has got into the text through a copyist’s error. tyiBæ wOl `hc;[; , i.e., He has bestowed upon me a family or posterity. Solomon had already one son, viz., Rehoboam, about a year old (compare 1 Kings 11:42 with 1 Kings 14:21 and 2 Chron 12:13). f90 Verse 25. Solomon had this sentence immediately executed upon Adonijah by Benaiah, the chief of the body-guard, according to the oriental custom of both ancient and modern times. The king was perfectly just in doing this.
For since Adonijah, even after his first attempt to seize upon the throne had been forgiven by Solomon, endeavoured to secure his end by fresh machinations, duty to God, who had exalted Solomon to the throne, demanded that the rebel should be punished with all the severity of the law, without regard to blood-relationship. Deposition of Abiathar.
Verse 26. The conduct of Solomon towards the high priest Abiathar is a proof how free his actions were from personal revenge or too great severity. Abiathar had also forfeited his life through the part he took in Adonijah’s conspiracy; but Solomon simply sent him to Anathoth (i.e., Anata; see at Josh 18:24), to his own fields, i.e., to his property there, telling him, “Thou art indeed a man of death,” i.e., thou hast deserved to die, “but I will not put thee to death to-day, because thou hast borne the ark of Jehovah,” namely, both on the occasion of its solemn conveyance to Jerusalem (1 Chron 15:11ff.) and also on David’s flight from Absalom (2 Sam 15:24,29), that is to say, because of his high-priestly dignity, and because thou didst endure all that my father endured, i.e., thou didst share all his afflictions and sufferings, both in the period of Saul’s persecution (1 Sam 22:20ff., 23:8ff.), and during the rebellion of Absalom (2 Sam 15:24ff.). aWh µwOy (to-day) puts a limit upon the pardon, because Solomon could not foresee whether Abiathar would always keep quiet, and not forfeit his life again by fresh crimes. f91 Verse 27. The banishment of Abiathar to his own private possession involved his deposition from the priesthood. And, as the historian adds, thus was the word of the Lord concerning the house of Eli fulfilled (1 Sam 2:30-33). alem; corresponds to the New Testament iJ>na plhrwqh> . For further remarks on this prophecy and its fulfilment, see at 1 Sam 2:30ff. f92 Thus was the high-priesthood of the house of Eli extinguished, and henceforth this dignity passed through Zadok into the sole possession of the line of Eleazar.
Verse 28-33. Execution of Joab.-When the report (of the execution of Adonijah and the deposition of Abiathar) came to Joab, he fled to the tent of Jehovah (not to the tabernacle, but to the holy tent upon Zion) to seek protection at the altar (see at 1 Kings 1:50). The words hf;n; ba;wOy yKi are introduced as a parenthesis to explain Joab’s flight: “for Joab had leaned after Adonijah,” i.e., taken his side rjæaæ hf;n; , as in Ex 23:2; Judg 9:3), “but not after Absalom.” f93 There is no foundation in the biblical text for the conjecture, that Joab had given Adonijah the advice to ask for Abishag as his wife, just as Ahithophel had given similar advice to Absalom (2 Sam 16:21). For not only is there no intimation of anything of the kind, but Solomon punished Joab solely because of his crimes in the case of Abner and Amasa. Moreover, Abiathar was also deposed, without having any fresh machinations in favour of Adonijah laid to his charge. The punishment of Adonijah and Abiathar was quite sufficient to warn Joab of his approaching fate, and lead him to seek to save his life by fleeing to the altar. It is true that, according to Ex 21:13- 14, the altar could afford no protection to a man who had committed two murders. But he probably thought no more of these crimes, which had been committed a long time before, but simply of his participation in Adonijah’s usurpation; and he might very well hope that religious awe would keep Solomon from putting him to death in a holy place for such a crime as that.
And it is very evident that this hope was not altogether a visionary one, from the fact that, according to v. 30, when Joab refused to leave the altar at the summons addressed to him in the name of the king, Benaiah did not give him the death-blow at once, but informed Solomon of the fact and received his further commands. Solomon, however, did not arrest the course of justice, but ordered him to be put to death there and afterwards buried. The burial of the persons executed was a matter of course, as, according to Deut 21:23, even a person who had been hanged was to be buried before sunset. When, therefore, Solomon gives special orders for the burial of Joab, the meaning is that Benaiah is to provide for the burial with distinct reference to the services which Joab had rendered to his father. “And take away the blood, which Joab shed without cause, from me and my father’s house.” So long as Joab remained unpunished for the double murder, the blood-guiltiness rested upon the king and his house, on whom the duty of punishment devolved (cf. Num 35:30-31; Deut 19:13). µN;ji µD; , blood without cause, i.e., blood shed in innocence.
On the connection of the adverb with the substantive, at which Thenius takes offence, comp. Ges. §151, 1, and Ewald, §287, d.-For V. 32, compare v. 5. The words of Solomon in v. 33a point back to the curse which David uttered upon Joab and his descendants after the murder of Abner (2 Sam 3:28-29). “But to David, and his seed, and his house, and his throne, let there be salvation for ever from Jehovah.” This wish sprang from a conviction, based upon 2 Sam 7:14, that the Lord would not fulfil His promise to David unless his successors upon the throne exercised right and justice according to the command of the Lord.
Verse 34. Benaiah went up `hl;[; ), inasmuch as the altar by the ark of the covenant stood higher up Mount Zion than Solomon’s house. Joab was buried “in his house” (i.e., in the tomb prepared in his house, either in the court or in the garden: cf. 1 Sam 25:1), “in the desert,” probably the wilderness of Judah, as Joab’s mother was a step-sister of David, and therefore probably dwelt in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem.
Verse 35. Solomon appointed Benaiah commander-in-chief in the place of Joab, and put Zadok in Abiathar’s place (cf. 1 Kings 1:8-9).
Verse 36-37. Punishment of Shimei.-Solomon thereupon ordered Shimei to come, probably from Bahurim, where his home was (2 Sam 16:5), and commanded him to build himself a house in Jerusalem to dwell in, and not to leave the city “any whither” ˆa; ˆa; ), threatening him with death if ever he should cross the brook Kidron. The valley of Kidron is mentioned as the eastern boundary of the city with an allusion to the fact, that Bahurim was to the east of Jerusalem towards the desert.
Verse 38. Shimei vowed obedience, and that on oath, as is supplementarily observed in v. 42, though it has been arbitrarily interpolated by the LXX here; and he kept his word a considerable time.
Verse 39-40. But after the lapse of three years, when two slaves fled to Gath to king Achish, with whom David had also sought and found refuge (1 Sam 27:2, compare 1 Kings 21:11ff.), he started for Gath as soon as he knew this, and fetched them back. Verse 41-43. When this was reported to Solomon, he sent for Shimei and charged him with the breach of his command: “Did I not swear to thee by Jehovah, and testify to thee, etc.? Why hast thou not kept the oath of Jehovah (the oath sworn by Jehovah)...?”
Verse 44. He then reminded him of the evil which he had done to his father: “Thou knowest all the evil, which thy heart knoweth (i.e., which thy conscience must tell thee); and now Jehovah returns the evil upon thy head,” namely, by decreeing the punishment of death, which he deserved for blaspheming the anointed of the Lord (2 Sam 16:9).
Verse 45. “And king Solomon will be blessed, and the throne of David be established before Jehovah for ever,” namely, because the king does justice (compare the remark on v. 33).
Verse 46. Solomon then ordered him to be executed by Benaiah. This punishment was also just. As Solomon had put Shimei’s life in his own hand by imposing upon him confinement in Jerusalem, and Shimei had promised on oath to obey the king’s command, the breach of his oath was a crime for which he had no excuse. There is no force at all in the excuses which some commentators adduce in his favour, founded upon the money which his salves had cost him, and the wish to recover possession of them, which was a right one in itself. If Shimei had wished to remain faithful to his oath, he might have informed the king of the flight of his slaves, have entreated the king that they might be brought back, and have awaited the king’s decision; but he had no right thus lightly to break the promise given on oath. By the breach of his oath he had forfeited his life. And this is the first thing with which Solomon charges him, without his being able to offer any excuse; and it is not till afterwards that he adduces as a second fact in confirmation of the justice of his procedure, the wickedness that he practised towards his father.-The last clause, “and the kingdom was established by dy; ) Solomon,” is attached to the following chapter in the Cod. Al. of the LXX (in the Cod. Vat. it is wanting, or rather its place is supplied by a long interpolation), in the Vulgate, and in the Syriac; and indeed rightly so, as Thenius has shown, not merely because of the qræ in Kings 3:2, but also because of its form as a circumstantial clause, to which the following account (1 Kings 3:1ff.) is appended. SOLOMON’S MARRIAGE; WORSHIP AND SACRIFICE AT GIBEON; AND WISE JUDICIAL SENTENCE.
1 KINGS. 3:1-3
The establishment of the government in the hands of Solomon having been noticed in ch. 2, the history of his reign commences with an account of his marriage to an Egyptian princess, and with a remark concerning the state of the kingdom at the beginning of his reign (vv. 1-3). There then follows a description of the solemn sacrifice and prayer at Gibeon, by which Solomon sought to give a religious consecration to his government, and to secure the assistance of the Lord and His blessing upon it, and obtained the fulfilment of his desire (vv. 4-15). And then, as a practical proof of the spirit of his government, we have the sentence through which he displayed the wisdom of his judicial decisions in the sight of all the people (vv. 16- 28).
Verse 1-3. Solomon’s marriage and the religious state of the kingdom.-V. 1. When Solomon had well secured his possession of the throne (1 Kings 2:46), he entered into alliance with Pharaoh, by taking his daughter as his wife. This Pharaoh of Egypt is supposed by Winer, Ewald, and others to have been Psusennes, the last king of the twenty-first (Tanitic) dynasty, who reigned thirty-five years; since the first king of the twenty-second (Bubastic) dynasty, Sesonchis or Sheshonk, was certainly the Shishak who conquered Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign (1 Kings 14:25-26). The alliance by marriage with the royal family of Egypt presupposes that Egypt was desirous of cultivating friendly relations with the kingdom of Israel, which had grown into a power to be dreaded; although, as we know nothing more of the history of Egypt at that time than the mere names of the kings (as given by Manetho), it is impossible to determine what may have been the more precise grounds which led the reigning king of Egypt to seek the friendship of Israel. There is, at any rate, greater probability in this supposition than in that of Thenius, who conjectures that Solomon contracted this marriage because he saw the necessity of entering into a closer relationship with this powerful neighbour, who had a perfectly free access to Palestine. The conclusion of this marriage took place in the first year of Solomon’s reign, though probably not at the very beginning of the reign, but not till after his buildings had been begun, as we may infer from the expression tBæ hl;K; `d[æ (until he had made an end of building).
Moreover, Solomon had already married Naamah the Ammonitess before ascending the throne, and had had a son by her (compare 1 Kings 14:21 with 11:42-43).-Marriage with an Egyptian princess was not a transgression of the law, as it was only marriages with Canaanitish women that were expressly prohibited (Ex 34:16; Deut 7:3), whereas it was allowable to marry even foreign women taken in war (Deut 21:10ff.). At the same time, it was only when the foreign wives renounced idolatry and confessed their faith in Jehovah, that such marriages were in accordance with the spirit of the law. And we may assume that this was the case even with Pharaoh’s daughter; because Solomon adhered so faithfully to the Lord during the first years of his reign, that he would not have tolerated any idolatry in his neighbourhood, and we cannot find any trace of Egyptian idolatry in Israel in the time of Solomon, and, lastly, the daughter of Pharaoh is expressly distinguished in 1 Kings 11:1 from the foreign wives who tempted Solomon to idolatry in his old age.
The assertion of Seb. Schmidt and Thenius to the contrary rests upon a false interpretation of 1 Kings 11:1.- “And he brought her into the city of David, till he had finished the building of his palace,” etc. Into the city of David: i.e., not into the palace in which his father had dwelt, as Thenius arbitrarily interprets it in opposition to 2 Chron 8:11, but into a house in the city of David or Jerusalem, from which he brought her up into the house appointed for her after the building of his own palace was finished (1 Kings 9:24). The building of the house of Jehovah is mentioned as well, because the sacred tent for the ark of the covenant was set up in the palace of David until the temple was finished, and the temple was not consecrated till after the completion of the building of the palace (see at 1 Kings 8:1).
By the building of “the wall of Jerusalem” we are to understand a stronger fortification, and possibly also the extension of the city wall (see at 1 Kings 11:27).
Verse 2. “Only the people sacrificed upon high places, because there was not yet a house built for the name of Jehovah until those days.” The limiting qræ , only, by which this general account of the existing condition of the religious worship is appended to what precedes, may be accounted for from the antithesis to the strengthening of the kingdom by Solomon mentioned in 1 Kings 2:46. The train of thought is the following: It is true that Solomon’s authority was firmly established by the punishment of the rebels, so that he was able to ally himself by marriage with the king of Egypt; but just as he was obliged to bring his Egyptian wife into the city of David, because the building of his palace as not yet finished, so the people, and (according to v. 3) even Solomon himself, were only able to sacrifice to the Lord at that time upon altars on the high places, because the temple was not yet built. The participle jbæz; denotes the continuation of this religious condition (see Ewald, §168, c.). The hm;B; , or high places, were places of sacrifice and prayer, which were built upon eminences of hills, because men thought they were nearer the Deity there, and which consisted in some cases probably of an altar only, though as a rule there was an altar with a sanctuary built by the side hm;B; tyiBæ , 1 Kings 13:32; 2 Kings 17:29,32; 23:19), so that hm;B; frequently stands for hm;B; tyiBæ (e.g., Kings 11:7; 14:23; 2 Kings 21:3; 23:8), and the hm;B; is also distinguished from the jæBez]mi (2 Kings 23:15; 2 Chron 14:2).
These high places were consecrated to the worship of Jehovah, and essentially different from the high places of the Canaanites which were consecrated to Baal. Nevertheless sacrificing upon these high places was opposed to the law, according to which the place which the Lord Himself had chosen for the revelation of His name was the only place where sacrifices were to be offered (Lev 17:3ff.); and therefore it is excused here on the ground that no house (temple) had yet been built to the name of the Lord.
Verse 3. Even Solomon, although he loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, i.e., according to 1 Kings 2:3, in the commandments of the Lord as they are written in the law of Moses, sacrificed and burnt incense upon high places. Before the building of the temple, more especially since the tabernacle had lost its significance as the central place of the gracious presence of God among His people, through the removal of the ark of the covenant, the worship of the high places was unavoidable; although even afterwards it still continued as a forbidden cultus, and could not be thoroughly exterminated even by the most righteous kings (1 Kings 22:24; 2 Kings 12:4; 14:4; 15:4,35).
1 KINGS. 3:4-15
Solomon’s Sacrifice and Dream at Gibeon (cf. 2 Chron 1:1-13). To implore the divine blessing upon his reign, Solomon offered to the Lord at Gibeon a great sacrifice-a thousand burntofferings; and, according to 2 Chron 1:2, the representatives of the whole nation took part in this sacrificial festival. At that time the great or principal bamah was at Gibeon (the present el Jib; see at Josh 9:3), namely, the Mosaic tabernacle (2 Chron 1:3), which is called hm;B; , because the ark of the covenant, with which Jehovah had bound up His gracious presence, was not there now. “Upon that altar,” i.e., upon the altar of the great bamah at Gibeon, the brazen altar of burnt-offering in the tabernacle (2 Chron 1:6).
Verse 5-8. The one thing wanting in the place of sacrifice at Gibeon, viz., the ark of the covenant with the gracious presence of Jehovah, was supplied by the Lord in the case of this sacrifice by a direct revelation in a dream, which Solomon received in the night following the sacrifice. There is a connection between the question which God addressed to Solomon in the dream, “What shall I give thee?” and the object of the sacrifice, viz., to seek the help of God for his reign. Solomon commences his prayer in v. with an acknowledgment of the great favour which the Lord had shown to his father David, and had continued till now by raising his son to his throne hz, µwOy , as it is this day: cf. 1 Sam 22:8; Deut 8:18, etc.); and then, in vv. 7-9, in the consciousness of his incapacity for the right administration of government over so numerous a people, he asks the Lord for an obedient heart and for wisdom to rule His people. `hT;[æ introduces the petition, the reasons assigned for which are, (1) his youth and inexperience, and (2) the greatness or multitude of the nation to be governed. I am, says he, ˆf;q; r[ænæ , i.e., an inexperienced youth (Solomon was only about twenty years old): “I know not to go out and in,” i.e., how to behave myself as king, or govern the people (for awOB ax;y; compare the note on Num 27:17). At v. 8 he describes the magnitude of the nation in words which recall to mind the divine promises in Gen 13:16 and 32:13, to indicate how gloriously the Lord has fulfilled the promises which He made to the patriarchs. Verse 9. ˆtæn; , therefore give. The prayer (commencing with `hT;[æ in v. 7) is appended in the form of an apodosis to the circumstantial clauses wgwykinOa; and wgw`db,[, , which contain the grounds of the petition. [mæv; ble , a hearing heart, i.e., a heart giving heed to the law and right of God, “to judge Thy people, (namely) to distinguish between good and evil (i.e., right and wrong).” “For who could judge this Thy numerous people,” sc. unless Thou gavest him intelligence? dbeK; , heavy in multitude: in the Chronicles this is explained by lwOdG; .
Verse 10-12. This prayer pleased God well. “Because thou hast asked this, and hast not asked for thyself long life, nor riches, nor the life (i.e., the destruction) of thy foes,” all of them good things, which the world seeks to obtain as the greatest prize, “but intelligence to hear judgment (i.e., to foster it, inasmuch as the administration of justice rests upon a conscientious hearing of the parties), behold I have done according to thy word” (i.e., fulfilled thy request: the perfect is used, inasmuch as the hearkening has already begun; for hNehi in this connection compare Ewald, §307, e.), “and given thee a wise and understanding heart.” The words which follow, “so that there has been none like thee before thee,” etc., are not to be restricted to the kings of Israel, as Clericus supposes, but are to be understood quite universally as applying to all mankind (cf. 1 Kings 5:9-11).
Verse 13-14. In addition to this, according to the promise that to him who seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness all other things shall be added (Matt 6:33), God will also give him the earthly blessings, for which he has not asked, and that in great abundance, viz., riches and honour such as no king of the earth has had before him; and if he adhere faithfully to God’s commandments, long life also Ëræa; , in this case I have lengthened). This last promise was not fulfilled, because Solomon did not observe the condition (cf. 1 Kings 11:42).
Verse 15. Then Solomon awoke, and behold it was a dream; i.e., a dream produced by God, a revelation by dream, or a divine appearance in a dream. µwOlj as in Num 12:6.-Solomon thanked the Lord again for this promise after his return to Jerusalem, by offering burnt-offerings and thank-offerings before the ark of the covenant, i.e., upon the altar at the tent erected for the ark upon Zion, and prepared a meal for all his servants (viz., his court-servants), i.e., a sacrificial meal of the µl,v, .-This sacrificial festival upon Zion is omitted in the Chronicles, as well as the following account in vv. 16-28; not, however, because in the chronicler’s opinion no sacrifices had any legal validity but such as were offered upon the altar of the Mosaic tabernacle, as Thenius fancies, though without observing the account in 1 Chron 21:26ff., which overthrows this assertion, but because this sacrificial festival had no essential significance in relation to Solomon’s reign.
1 KINGS. 3:16-26
Solomon’s Judicial Wisdom.
As a proof that the Lord had bestowed upon Solomon unusual judicial wisdom, there is appended a decision of his in a very difficult case, in which Solomon had shown extraordinary intelligence. Two harlots living together in one house had each given birth to a child, and one of them had “overlaid” her child in the night while asleep `l[æ bkæv; rv,a , because she had lain upon it), and had then placed her dead child in the other one’s bosom and taken her living child away. When the other woman looked the next morning at the child lying in her bosom, she saw that it was not her own but the other woman’s child, whereas the latter maintained the opposite. As they eventually referred the matter in dispute to the king, and each one declared that the living child was her own, the king ordered a sword to be brought, and the living child to be cut in two, and a half given to each. Then the mother of the living child, “because her bowels yearned upon her son,” i.e., her maternal love was excited, cried out, “Give her (the other) the living child, but do not slay it;” whereas the latter said, “It shall be neither mine nor thine, cut it in pieces.”
1 KINGS. 3:27
Solomon saw from this which was the mother of the living child, and handed it over to her. f
95 1 KINGS. 3:28
This judicial decision convinced all the people that Solomon was endowed with divine wisdom for the administration of justice. SOLOMON’S MINISTERS OF STATE. HIS REGAL SPLENDOUR AND WISDOM.
Ch. 4 contains a list of the chief ministers of state (vv. 2-6), and of the twelve officers placed over the land (vv. 7-20), which is inserted here to give an idea of the might and glory of the kingdom of Israel under Solomon’s reign. So far as the contents are concerned, this list belongs to the middle portion of the reign of Solomon, as we may see from the fact that two of the officers named had daughters of Solomon for their wives (vv. 11, 15), whom they could not possibly have married till the later years of Solomon’s life.
1 KINGS. 4:1-6
The Chief Ministers of State.
The list is introduced in v. 1 by the general remark, that “king Solomon was king over all Israel.”
Verse 2. The first of the rcæ , princes, i.e., chief ministers of state or dignitaries, mentioned here is not the commander-in-chief, as under the warlike reign of David (2 Sam 8:16; 20:23), but, in accordance with the peaceful rule of Solomon, the administrator of the kingdom (or prime minister): “Azariah the son of Zadok was ˆheKo ,” i.e., not the priest, but the administrator of the kingdom, the representative of the king before the people; like ˆheKo in v. 5, where this word is interpreted by Ël,m, h[,re , with this difference, however, arising from the article before ˆheKo , that Azariah was the Kohen par excellence, that is to say, held the first place among the confidential counsellors of the king, so that his dignity was such as befitted the office of an administrator of the kingdom. Compare the explanation of ˆheKo at 2 Sam 8:18. The view of the Vulgate, Luther, and others, which has been revived by Thenius, namely, that ˆheKo is to be connected as a genitive with ben-tsaadowq in opposition to the accents, “Azariah the son of Zadok the priest,” is incorrect, and does not even yield any sense, since the connection of these words with the following Elichoreph, etc., is precluded by the absence of the copula Vav, which would be indispensable if Azariah had held the same office as the two brothers Elichoreph and Achijah. f96 Moreover, Azariah the son of Zadok cannot be a grandson of Zadok the high priest, i.e., a son of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok, as many infer from Chr. 5:34-35 (6:8-9); for, apart from the fact that Zadok’s grandson can hardly have been old enough at the time for Solomon to invest him with the chief dignity in the kingdom, which would surely be conferred upon none but men of mature years, we can see no reason why the Azariah mentioned here should not be called the son of Ahimaaz. If the Zadok referred to here was the high priest of that name, Azariah can only have been a brother of Ahimaaz. And there is no real difficulty in the way, since the name Azariah occurs three times in the line of high priests (1 Chr. 5:36,39), and therefore was by no means rare.
Verse 3. Elichoreph and Achijah, sons of Shisha, who had held the same office under David, were secretaries of state rpæs; : see at 2 Sam 8:17 and 20:25, where the different names av;yvi = ay;v] and hy;r;c] are also discussed).-Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the chancellor, as he had already been in the time of David (2 Sam 8:17 and 20:24). The rendering of Thenius, “whilst Jehoshaphat was chancellor,” is grammatically impossible.
Verse 4. On Benaiah, compare 1 Kings 2:35 and the Commentary on Sam 23:20. On Zadok and Abiathar, see at 2 Sam 8:17. It appears strange that Abiathar should be named as priest, i.e., as high priest, along with Zadok, since Solomon had deposed him from the priestly office (1 Kings 2:27,35), and we cannot imagine any subsequent pardon. The only possible explanation is that proposed by Theodoret, namely, that Solomon had only deprived him of the arch> , i.e., of the priest’s office, but not of the iJerwsu>nh or priestly dignity, because this was hereditary. f97 Verse 5. Azariah the son of Nathan was over the bxæn; , i.e., the twelve officers named in vv. 7ff. Zabud the son of Nathan was ˆheKo (not the son of “Nathan the priest,” as Luther and many others render it). ˆheKo is explained by the epithet appended, Ël,m, h[,re : privy councillor, i.e., confidential adviser of the king. Nathan is not the prophet of that name, as Thenius supposes, but the son of David mentioned in 2 Sam 5:14. Azariah and Zabud were therefore nephews of Solomon.
Verse 6. Ahishar was tyiBæ `l[æ , over the palace, i.e., governor of the palace, or minister of the king’s household (compare 1 Kings 16:9; 2 Kings 18:18, and Isa 22:15), an office met with for the first time under Solomon.
Adoniram, probably the same person as Adoram in 2 Sam 20:24, was chief overseer of the tributary service. He was so in the time of David also.
1 KINGS. 4:7-19
Solomon’s Official Persons and Their Districts.
Solomon had (appointed) twelve bxæn; over all Israel, who provided lWK) for the king and his house, i.e., supplied provisions for the necessities of the court. These prefects are not to be regarded as “chamberlains,” or administrators of the royal domains (Michaelis and Ewald), for these are mentioned in 1 Chron 27:25ff. under a different title. They are “general receivers of taxes,” or “chief tax-collectors,” as Rosenmüller expresses it, who levied the king’s duties or taxes, which consisted in the East, as they still do to the present time, for the most part of natural productions, or the produce of the land, and not of money payments as in the West, and delivered them at the royal kitchen (Rosenmüller, A. und N. Morgenland, iii. p. 166). It cannot be inferred from the explanation given by Josephus, hJgemo>nev kai> strathgoi> , that they exercised a kind of government, as Thenius supposes, since this explanation is nothing but a subjective conjecture. “One month in the year was it every one’s duty dj;a, `l[æ hy;h; ) to provide.”
The districts assigned to the twelve prefects coincide only partially with the territories of the tribes, because the land was probably divided among them according to its greater or smaller productiveness. Moreover, the order in which the districts are enumerated is not a geographical one, but probably follows the order in which the different prefects had to send the natural productions month by month for the maintenance of the king’s court. The description begins with Ephraim in v. 8, then passes over in v. 9 to the territory of Dan to the west of it, in v. 10 to the territory of Judah and Simeon on the south, in vv. 11 and 12 to the territory of Manasseh on this side from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, then in vv. 13 and 14 to the territory of Manasseh on the other side of the Jordan, thence back again in vv. 15 and 16 to the northern parts of the land on this side, viz., the territories of Naphtali and Asher, and thence farther south to Issachar in v. 17, and Benjamin in v. 18, closing at last in v. 19 with Gilead. Verse 8. In the names of the prefects we are struck with the fact, that in the case of five of them the names given are not their own but their fathers’ names. It is very improbable that the proper names should have dropped out five times (as Clericus, Michaelis, and others suppose); and consequently there is simply the assumption left, that the persons in question bore their fathers’ names with Ben prefixed as their own proper names: Benhur, Bendeker, etc., after the analogy of Benchanan in 1 Chron 4:20 and others, although such a proper name as Ben-Abinadab (v. 11) appears very strange. Benhur was stationed on the mountains of Ephraim.
These mountains, here only the mountainous district of the tribe of Ephraim, were among the most fruitful portions of Palestine (see at Josh 17:14-15).
Verse 9. Bendeker was in Makaz, a city only mentioned here, the situation of which is unknown, but which is at any rate to be sought for in the tribe of Dan, to which the other cities of this district belong. Shaalbim has probably been preserved in the present Selbit, to the north-west of Yâlo (see at Josh 19:42). Bethshemesh, the present Ain-Shems (see at Josh 15:10). Elon ˆwOlyae ), which is distinguished from Ajalon (Josh 19:42 and 43) by the epithet Bethchanan, and belonged to the tribe of Dan, has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 19:43). The LXX have arbitrarily interpolated eJ>wv before Bethchanan, and Thenius naturally takes this under his protection, and consequently traces Bethchanan in the village of Beit Hunûn (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 371), but without considering that eJ>wv yields no reasonable sense unless preceded by ˆmi , ek (from; cf. v. 12).
Verse 10. Benhesed was in Arubboth, which does not occur again, so that its situation, even if it should be identical with Arab in Josh 15:52, as Böttcher conjectures, can only be approximatively inferred from the localities which follow. To him wOl] ), i.e., to his district, belonged Sochoh and all the land of Hepher. From Sochoh we may see that Benhesed’s district was in the tribe of Judah. Of the two Sochohs in Judah, that still exist under the name of Shuweikeh, it is impossible to determine with certainty which is intended here, whether the one upon the mountains (Josh 15:48) or the one in the plain (Josh 15:35). The fact that it is associated with the land of Hepher rather favours the latter. The land of Hepher, which must not be confounded with the city of Gath-hepher in the tribe of Zebulun (Josh 19:13; 2 Kings 14:25), but was the territory of one of the Canaanitish kings who were defeated by Joshua, was probably situated in the plain (see at Josh 12:17).
Verse 11. Ben-Abinadab had the whole of the high range of Dor rwOD hp;n; , Josh 12:23), i.e., the strip of coast on the Mediterranean Sea below the promontory of Carmel, where the city of Dor, which has been preserved in the village of Tantura or Tortura, nine miles to the north of Caesarea, was situated (see at Josh 11:2). Whether this district embraced the fruitful plain of Sharon is not so clearly made out as Thenius supposes. bd;n;ybiaAˆB, stands at the head absolutely, without any grammatical connection with kaal-naapat: “Abinadab: the whole of the high range of Dor,” etc. The person named was probably a son of David’s eldest brother but one (1 Sam 16:8; 17:13), and therefore Solomon’s cousin; and he had married Solomon’s daughter.
Verse 12. Baana the son of Ahilud was most likely a brother of Jehoshaphat the chancellor (v. 3). This district embraced the cities on the southern edge of the plain of Jezreel, and extended to the Jordan. Taanach and Megiddo, which have been preserved in the villages of Taanuk and Lejun, were situated on the south-western border of this plain, and belonged to the Manassites (see at Josh 12:21; 17:11). “And all Bethshean,” in other words, the whole of the district of Bethshean, i.e., Beisan, at the eastern end of the valley of Jezreel, where it opens into the Jordan valley (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 740ff.), “which (district was situated) by the side of Zarthan below Jezreel, from (the town of) Bethshean (see at Josh 17:11) to Abel-Mecholah, on the other side of Jokmeam.” Zarthan, also called Zereda (compare 1 Kings 7:46 with 2 Chron 4:17), has probably been preserved, so far as the name is concerned, in Kurn Sartabeh, in the neighbourhood of which the old city probably stood, about five miles to the south of Beisan, at a point where the Jordan valley contracts (see at Josh 3:16).
The expression “below Jezreel” refers to “all Bethshean,” and may be explained from the elevated situation of Jezreel, the present Zerîn (see at Josh 19:18). According to Rob. iii. p. 163, this is “comparatively high, and commands a wide and noble view, extending down the broad low valley on the east of Beisan and to the mountains of Ajlun beyond the Jordan.” The following words, “from Bethshean to Abel-Mecholah,” give a more precise definition of the boundary. The LXX have erroneously inserted kai> before ˆa;v] tyBe , and Thenius and Böttcher defend it on the strength of their erroneous interpretations of the preceding statements. Abel-Mecholah was in the Jordan valley, according to the Onomast., ten Roman miles to the south of Beisan (see at Judg 7:22). The last clause is not quite intelligible to us, as the situation of the Levitical city Jokmeam (1 Chron 6:53, or Kibzaim, a different place from the Jokneam on Carmel, Josh 12:22; 21:34) has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 21:22). According to this, Baanah’s district in the Jordan valley did not extend so far as Kurn Sartabeh, but simply to the neighbourhood of Zarthan, and embraced the whole of the tribe-territory of Manasseh on this side of the Jordan.
Verse 13. Bengeber was in Ramoth of Gilead in the tribe of Gad (Josh 20:8), probably on the site of the modern Szalt (see at Deut 4:43). “To him belonged the Havvoth Jair (Jair’s-lives) in Gilead, to him the region of Argob in Bashan, sixty great cities with walls and brazen bolts.” If we look at this passage alone, the region of Argob in Bashan appears to be distinct from the Havvoth Jair in Gilead. But if we compare it with Num 32:40-41; Deut 3:4-5, and 13, 14, and Josh 13:30, it is evident from these passages that the Jair’s-lives are identical with the sixty large and fortified cities of the region of Argob. For, according to Deut 3:4, these sixty fortified cities, with high walls, gates, and bars, were all fortified cities of the kingdom of Og of Bashan, which the Israelites conquered under Moses, and to which, according to Num 32:41, Jair the Manassite, who had conquered them, gave the name of Havvoth Jair. Hence it is stated in Josh 13:30, that the sixty Jair-towns were situated in Bashan. Consequently the ra lb,j, wOl in our verse is to be taken as a more precise definition of wgwryaiy; hW;jæ ttæK; , or a clearer description of the district superintended by Bengeber, so that Gilead is used, as is frequently the case, in the broader sense of Peraea.
Compare with this the Commentary on Deut 3:4 and 13, 14, where the names bGOr]aæ and hW;jæ are explained, and the imaginary discrepancy between the sixty Jair’s-towns in the passages cited, and the twenty-three and thirty cities of Jair in 1 Chron 2:22 and Judg 10:4, is discussed and solved. And when Thenius objects to this explanation on the ground that the villages of Jair cannot be identical with the sixty fortified cities, because villages of nomads and strongly fortified cities could not be one and the same, this objection falls to the ground with the untenable interpretation of hW;jæ as applying to nomad villages.
Verse 14. Ahinadab the son of Iddo received as his district Mahanaim, a fortified and probably also a very important city to the north of the Jabbok, on the border of the tribe of Gad, which may perhaps have been preserved in the ruin of Mahneh (see at Josh 13:26 and Gen 32:3). µyinjmæ , to Mahanaim (cf. Ewald, §216, a., note), with h local, probably referring to the fact that Ahinadab was sent away to Mahanaim.
Verse 15. Ahimaaz, possibly Zadok’s son (2 Sam 15:27; 17:17ff.), in Naphtali. This does not denote generally “the most northern portion of the land, say from the northern end of the lake of Gennesaret into Coele- Syria,” as Thenius supposes; for the tribe- territory of Asher, which had a prefect of its own, was not situated to the south-west of Naphtali, but ran along the west of Naphtali to the northern boundary of Canaan (see at Josh 19:24-31). He also (like Ben-Abinadab, v. 11) had a daughter of Solomon, Basmath, as his wife.
Verse 16. Baanah the son of Hushai, probably the faithful friend and wise counsellor of David (2 Sam 15:32ff., 1 Kings 17:5ff.), was in Asher and twOl[;B] , a name quite unknown. If b forms part of the word (Baaloth, according to the LXX, Vulg., Syr., and Arab.), we must take it as a district, since the preposition b would necessarily have been repeated if a district (Asher) had been connected with a town (Baaloth). In any case, it is not the city of Baaloth in the Negeb of Judah (Josh 15:24) that is intended.
Verse 17. Jehoshaphat the son of Paruach, in Issachar; i.e., over the whole of the territory of that tribe in the plain of Jezreel, with the exception of the cities of Taanach, Megiddo, and Bethshean, which were in the southern portion of it, and were allotted to the Manassites, and, according to v. 12, were put under the care of Baanah; and not merely in the northern part of Issachar, “with the exception of the plain of Jezreel,” as Thenius erroneously maintains. Zebulun may possibly have also formed part of his district, if not entirely, yet in its southern portion, provided that the northern portion was assigned to Ahimaaz in Naphtali, since Zebulun had no prefect of its own.
Verse 18. Shimei the son of Elah, possibly the one mentioned in 1 Kings 1:8, in Benjamin.
Verse 19. Geber the son of Uri, in the land of Gilead, i.e., as the apposition “the land of Sihon...and of Og...” clearly shows, the whole of the Israelitish land on the east of the Jordan, as in Deut 34:1; Judg 20:1, etc., with the simple exception of the districts placed under Bengeber and Ahinadab (vv. 13 and 14). dj;a, byxin] , “one president was it who (was) in the land (of Gilead).” byxin] cannot signify a military post or a garrison here, as in Sam 10:5; 13:3, etc., but is equivalent to bxæn; , the president (v. 7). The meaning is, that notwithstanding the great extent of this district, it had only one prefect.
1 KINGS. 4:20
In v. 20 the account of Solomon’s officers is closed by a general remark as to the prosperous condition of the whole nation; though we miss the copula Vav at the commencement. The words, “Judah and Israel were numerous as the sand by the sea,” indicate that the promise given to the patriarchs (Gen 22:17, cf. 32:13) had been fulfilled. To this there is appended in 1 Kings 5:1 the remark concerning the extent of Solomon’s sway, which prepares the way for what follows, and shows how the other portion of the promise, “thy seed will possess the gates of its enemies,” had been fulfilled.-The first fourteen verses of ch. 5 are therefore connected by the LXX, Vulg., Luther, and others with ch. 4. It is not till 1 Kings 5:15 that a new section begins.
1 KINGS. 4:21-28
Solomon’s Regal Splendour. “Solomon was ruler over all the kingdoms from the river (Euphrates) onwards, over the land of the Philistines to the border of Egypt, who brought presents and were subject to Solomon his whole life long.” Most of the commentators supply `d[æ before yTiv]lip] xr,a, (even to the land of the Philistines) after the parallel passage 2 Chron 9:26, so that the following lWbG] `d[æ would give a more precise definition of the terminus ad quem. But it is by no means probable that `d[æ , which appears to be indispensable, should have dropped out through the oversight of a copyist, and it is not absolutely necessary to supply it, inasmuch as b] may be repeated in thought before p xr,a, from the preceding clause. The participle vgæn; is construed ad sensum with hk;l;m]mæ . Bringing presents is equivalent to paying tribute, as in 2 Sam 8:2, etc. Verse 22-23. The splendour of the court, the consumption in the royal kitchen (vv. 22-25), and the well-filled stables (vv. 26-28), were such as befitted the ruler of so large a kingdom.
Verse 22-23. The daily consumption of µj,l, (food or provisions) amounted to thirty cors of fine meal tl,so = hF;ji tl,so , fine sifted meal, Ex 29:2; for tl,so see also Lev 2:2), and sixty cors of jmæq, , ordinary meal, ten fattened oxen, twenty pasture oxen, which were brought directly from the pasture and slaughtered, and a hundred sheep, beside different kinds of game. rKo , koro>v , the later name for rm,jo , the largest dry and also liquid (1 Kings 5:11), measure of capacity, contained ten ephahs or baths, i.e., according to the calculation made by Thenius, 15,300 cubic inches (Dresden) = about 1 7/8 scheffel; so that ninety cors would amount to 171 scheffel, from which 28,000 lbs. of bread could be baked (Theol. Stud. und Krit. 1846, pp. 132, 133). And “if we reckon 2 lbs. of bread to each person, there would be 14,000 persons in Solomon’s court,” The consumption of flesh would be quite in proportion to that of bread; for ten fattened oxen, twenty oxen from the pasture, and a hundred sheep, yield more than 21,000 lbs. of meat, that is to say, a pound and a half for each person, “assuming, according to the statements of those who are acquainted with the matter, that the edible meat of a fat ox amounts to lbs., that of an ox from the pasture to 400 lbs., and that of a sheep to lbs.” (Thenius ut sup.). This daily consumption of Solomon’s court will not appear too great, if, on the one hand, we compare it with the quantity consumed at other oriental courts both of ancient and modern times, and if, on the other hand, we bear in mind that not only the numerous attendants upon the king and his harem, but also the royal adjutants and the large number of officers employed about the court, were supplied from the king’s table, and that their families had also to be fed, inasmuch as the wages in oriental courts are all paid in kind. In addition to this, game was also supplied to the king’s table: viz., lY;aæ stags, ybix] gazelles, rWmj]yæ fallow-deer, and rBur]Bæ sbæa; “fattened fowl.” The meaning of rBur]Bæ is doubtful. The earlier translators render it birds or fowl. Kimchi adopts the rendering “capons;” Tanch. Hieroz. “geese,” so called from their pure rræB; ) white feathers; and both Gesenius and Dietrich (Lex.) decide in favour of the latter. The word must denote some special kind of fowl, since edible birds in general were called rwOPxi (Neh 5:18). Verse 24, 25. Solomon was able to appropriate all this to his court, because yKi ) he had dominion, etc.;...and (v. 25) Israel and Judah enjoyed the blessings of peace during the whole of his reign. rh;N;hæ rb,[eAlk;B] , “over all the other side of the river (Euphrates),” i.e., not the land on the east, but that on the west of the river. This usage of speech is to be explained from the fact that the author of our books, who was living in exile on the other side of the Euphrates, describes the extent of Solomon’s kingdom taking that as his starting-point. Solomon’s power only extended to the Euphrates, from Tiphsach in the north-east to Gaza in the southwest. jsæp]Ti (crossing, from jsæp; ) is Thapsacus, a large and wealthy city on the western bank of the Euphrates, at which the armies of the younger Cyrus and Alexander crossed the river (Xen. Anab. i. 4; Arrian, Exped.
Alex. iii. 7). Gaza, the southernmost city of the Philistines, the present Guzzeh; see at Josh 13:3. The rh;n; `rb,[e Ël,m, are the kings of Syria who were subjugated by David (2 Sam 8:6 and 10:19), and of the Philistines (2 Sam 8:1). “And he had peace on all sides round about.” This statement does not “most decidedly contradict 1 Kings 11:23ff.,” as Thenius maintains; for it cannot be proved that according to this passage the revolt of Damascus had taken place before Solomon’s reign (Ewald and others; see at 1 Kings 11:23ff.).
Verse 25. “Judah and Israel sat in safety, every one under his vine and his fig-tree.” This expresses the undisturbed enjoyment of the costly productions of the land (2 Kings 18:31), and is therefore used by the prophets as a figure denoting the happiness of the Messianic age (Mic 4:4; Zech 3:10). “From Dan to Beersheba,” as in Judg 20:1, etc.
Verse 26. This verse is not to be regarded “as a parenthesis according to the intention of the editor,” but gives a further proof of the peace and prosperity which the kingdom and people enjoyed under Solomon.
Solomon had a strong force of war chariots and cavalry, that he might be able to suppress every attempt on the part of the tributary kings of Syria and Philistia to revolt and disturb the peace. “Solomon had 4000 racks of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 riding horses,” which were kept partly in Jerusalem and partly in cities specially built for the purpose (1 Kings 9:19; 10:26; 2 Chron 1:14; 9:25). µy[iB;r]aæ (40) is an old copyist’s error for [Bær]aæ (4), which we find in the parallel passage 2 Chron 9:25, and as we may also infer from 1 Kings 10:26 and 2 Chron 1:14, since according to these passages Solomon had 1400 bk,r, or war chariots. For 4000 horses are a very suitable number for 1400 chariots, though not 40,000, since two draught horses were required for every war chariot, and one horse may have been kept as a reserve. hw;r]au does not mean a team (Ges.), but a rack or box in a stable, from hr;a; , carpere. According to Vegetius, i. 56, in Bochart (Hieroz. i. p. 112, ed. Ros.), even in ancient times every horse had it own crib in the stable just as it has now. Böttcher (n. ex. Krit. Aehrenl. ii. p. 27) is wrong in supposing that there were several horses, say at least ten, to one rack. bK;r]m, is used collectively for “chariots.”
Verse 27-28. “And” = a still further proof of the blessings of peace-”those prefects (vv. 7ff.) provided for king Solomon, and all who came to the king’s table, i.e., who were fed from the royal table, every one his month (see at v. 7), so that nothing was wanting (v. 28), and conveyed the barley (the ordinary food of cattle in Palestine and the southern lands, where oats are not cultivated) and the straw for the horses and coursers to the place where it ought to be. To µv; hy;h; rv,a the LXX, Vulg., and others supply Ël,m, as the subject: wherever the king might stay. This is certainly more in harmony with the imperfect hy;h; than it would be to supply vk,r, , as Bochart and others propose; still it is hardly correct. For in that case vk,r, sWs could only be understood as referring to the chariot horses and riding horses, which Solomon kept for the necessities of his court, and not to the whole of the cavalry; since we cannot possibly assume that even if Solomon changed his residence according to the season and to suit his pleasure, or on political grounds, as Thenius supposes, though this cannot by any means be inferred from 1 Kings 9:18 and 19, he took 16,000 horses about with him.
But this limitation of the clause is evidently at variance with the context, since µysiWSlæ vk,r,l;w] too plainly refer back to v. 6. Moreover, “if the king were intended, he would certainly have been mentioned by name, as so many other subjects and objects have come between.” For these reasons we agree with Böttcher in taking hy;h; indefinitely: “where it (barley and straw) was wanted, according to the distribution of the horses.” vk,r, probably denotes a very superior kind of horse, like the German Renner (a courser or race-horse). fp;v]mi vyai , every one according to his right, i.e., whatever was appointed for him as right.
1 KINGS. 4:29-34
Solomon’s Wisdom.
Verse 29. According to His promise in 1 Kings 3:12, God gave Solomon wisdom and very much insight and ble bjæro , “breadth of heart,” i.e., a comprehensive understanding, as sand by the sea-shore-a proverbial expression for an innumerable multitude, or great abundance (cf. 1 Kings 4:20; Gen 41:49; Josh 11:4, etc.). hm;k]j; signifies rather practical wisdom, ability to decide what is the judicious and useful course to pursue; ˆWbT; , rather keenness of understanding to arrive at the correct solution of difficult and complicated problems; ble bjæro , mental capacity to embrace the most diverse departments of knowledge.
Verse 30. His wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the East, and all the wisdom of the Egyptians. µd,q, ˆBe (sons of the East) are generally the Arabian tribes dwelling in the east of Canaan, who spread as far as to the Euphrates (cf. Judg 6:3,33; 7:12; 8:10; Job 1:3; Isa 11:14, etc.). Hence we find µd,q, xr,a, used in Gen 25:6 to denote Arabia in the widest sense, on the east and south-east of Palestine; whereas in Gen 29:1 µd,q, ˆBe xr,a, signifies the land beyond the Euphrates, viz., Mesopotamia, and in Num 23:7, µd,q, rr;h , the mountains of Mesopotamia.
Consequently by “the sons of the East” we are to understand here primarily the Arabians, who were celebrated for their gnomic wisdom, more especially the Sabaeans (see at ch. 10), including the Idumaeans, particularly the Temanites (Jer 49:7; Obad 8); but also, as lKo requires, the Chaldaeans, who were celebrated both for their astronomy and astrology. “All the wisdom of the Egyptians,” because the wisdom of the Egyptians, which was so greatly renowned as almost to have become proverbial (cf.
Isa 19:11; 31:2, and Acts 7:22; Joseph. Ant. viii. 2, 5; Herod. ii. 160), extended over the most diverse branches of knowledge, such as geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and astrology (Diod. Sic. i. 73 and 81), and as their skill in the preparation of ointments from vegetable and animal sources, and their extensive acquaintance with medicine, clearly prove, embraced natural science as well, in which Solomon, according to v. 33, was very learned.
Verse 31. “He was wiser than all men (of his time), than Ethan the Ezrachite and Heman, Chalcol and Darda, the sons of Machol.” These four persons are most probably the same as the “sons of Zerach” (Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara) mentioned in 1 Chron 2:6, since the names perfectly agree, with the exception of [ræD; for [Dær]Dæ , where the difference is no doubt attributable to a copyist’s error; although, as the name does not occur again, it cannot be decided whether Dara or Darda is the correct form. Heman and Ethan are also called Ezrachites ( yjir;z]a,h; ) in Ps 88:1 and 89:1; and yjir;z]a, is another form of yjir]zæ , the name of the family of Zerach the son of Judah (Num 26:13,20), lengthened by ynæa prosthet. But they were both Levites-Heman a Korahite of the line of Kohath and a grandson of Samuel (1 Chron 6:18-19), and Ethan a Merarite (1 Chron 6:29-32; 15:17) and the president of the Levitical vocal choirs in the time of David (1 Chron 15:19); and Heman was also “the king’s seer in the words of God” (1 Chron 25:5).
Their Levitical descent is not at variance with the epithet Ezrachite. For as the Levite in Judg 17:7 is spoken of as belonging to the family of Judah, because he dwelt in Bethlehem of Judah, and as Samuel’s father, Elkanah the Levite, is called an Ephraimite in 1 Sam 1:1, because in his civil capacity he was incorporated into the tribe of Ephraim, so Heman and Ethan are called Ezrachites because they were incorporated into the Judaean family of Zerach. It by no means follows from 1 Chron 2:6 that they were lineal descendants of Zerach. The whole character of the genealogical fragment contained in 1 Chron 2:6ff. shows very clearly that it does not give the lineal posterity of Zerach with genealogical exactness, but that certain persons and households of that family who had gained historical renown are grouped together without any more precise account of their lineal descent. Calcol and Darda (or Dara) are never met with again. It is no doubt to these two that the expression lwOjm; ˆBe refers, though it cannot be determined whether lwOjm; is a proper name or an appellative noun. In support of the appellative meaning, “sons of the dance,” in the sense of sacras choreas ducendi periti, Hiller (in the Onomast. p. 872) appeals to Eccl 12:4, “daughters of song.”-”And his name was,” i.e., he was celebrated, “among all the nations round about” (cf. 1 Kings 10:1,23-24).
Verse 32. “He spoke three thousand proverbs, and there were a thousand and five of his songs.” Of these proverbs we possess a comparatively small portion in the book of Proverbs, probably a selection of the best of his proverbs; but of the songs, besides the Song of Songs, we have only two psalms, viz., Ps 72 and 127, which have his name, and justly bear it.
Verse 33. “And he spoke of trees, from the cedar on Lebanon to the hyssop which grows upon the wall.” The cedar and hyssop are placed in antithesis, the former as the largest and most glorious of trees, the latter as the smallest and most insignificant of plants, to embrace the whole of the vegetable kingdom. Thenius maintains that by bwOzae we are not to understand the true hyssop, nor the Wohlgemuth or Dosten ( ori>ganon ), according to the ordinary view (see at Ex 12:22), because they are neither of them such small plants as we should expect in an antithesis to the cedar, but “one of the wall-mosses growing in tufts, more especially the orthotrichum saxatile (Oken), which forms a miniature hyssop with its lancet-shaped leaves, and from its extreme minuteness furnishes a perfect antithesis to the cedar.” There is much to favour this view, since we can easily imagine that the Hebrews may have reckoned a moss, which resembled the hyssop in its leaves, as being itself a species of hyssop.- “And of beasts and birds, of creeping things and fishes;” the four principal classes into which the Hebrews divided the animal kingdom. Speaking of plants and animals presupposes observations and researches in natural science, or botanical and zoological studies.
Verse 34. The widespread fame of his wisdom brought many strangers to Jerusalem, and all the more because of its rarity at that time, especially among princes. The coming of the queen of Sheba to Jerusalem (ch. 10) furnishes a historical proof of this. f100 PREPARATIONS FOR BUILDING THE TEMPLE.
Immediately after the consolidation of his kingdom, Solomon commenced the preparations for the building of a temple, first of all by entering into negotiations with king Hiram of Tyre, to procure from him not only the building materials requisite, viz., cedars, cypresses, and hewn stones, but also a skilled workman for the artistic work of the temple (vv. 1-12); and, secondly, by causing the number of workmen required for this great work to be raised out of his own kingdom, and sending them to Lebanon to prepare the materials for the building in connection with the Tyrian builders (vv. 13-18).-We have a parallel passage to this in 2 Chron 2, which agrees with the account before us in all the leading points, but differs in many of the details, omitting several things which were not essential to the main fact, and communicating others which are passed over in our account, e.g., Solomon’s request that a Tyrian workman might be sent. This shows that the two accounts are extracts from a common and more elaborate source, the historical materials being worked up in a free and independent manner according to the particular plan adopted by each of the two authors. (For further remarks on the mutual relation of the two narratives, see my apologetischer Versuch über die Bücher der Chronik, pp. 216ff.)
1 KINGS. 5:1-12
Solomon’s negotiations with Hiram of Tyre.
Verse 1. When king Hiram of Tyre heard that Solomon had been anointed king in the place of David, he sent his servants, i.e., an embassage, to Solomon, to congratulate him (as the Syriac correctly explains) on his ascent of the throne, because he had been a friend of David the whole time ( µymiY;hæAlK; , i.e., as long as both of them David and Hiram were kings).
On Hiram and the length of his reign, see the remarks on 2 Sam 5:11. This is passed over in the Chronicles as having no essential bearing upon the building of the temple.
Verse 2-3. Solomon thereupon communicated to Hiram, by means of an embassy, his intention to carry out the building of the temple which his father projected, and asked him for building wood from Lebanon for the purpose. From the words, “Thou knowest that my father David could not build,” etc., it is evident that David had not only been busily occupied for a long time with the plan for building a temple, but that he had already commenced negotiations with Hiram on the matter; and with this 1 Chron 22:4 agrees. “To the name of Jehovah:” this expression is based upon Deut 12:5 and 11: “the place which the Lord shall choose to put His name there, or that His name may dwell there.” The name of Jehovah is the manifestation of the divine nature in a visible sign as a real pledge of His presence (see at 1 Kings 12:5), and not merely numen Jovae quatenus ab hominibus cognoscitur, colitur, celebratur (Winer, Thenius). Hence in Sam 7, to which Solomon refers, tyiBæ wOl hn;B; (vv. 5 and 7) alternates with µve tyiBæ hn;B; (v. 13). On the obstacle which prevented it, “because of the war, with which they (the enemies) had surrounded me,” see at 2 Sam 7:9ff. On the construction, bbæs; with a double accusative, compare the very similar passage, Ps 109:3, which fully establishes the rendering we have given, so that there is no necessity to assume that hm;j;l]mi , war, stands for enemies (Ewald, §317, b.).
Verse 4. “And now Jehovah my God has given me rest roundabout,” such as David never enjoyed for a permanency (cf. 2 Sam 7:1). “No adversary is there.” This is not at variance with 1 Kings 11:14, for Hadad’s enterprise belonged to a later period (see the comm. on that passage). “And no evil occurrence:” such as the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba, the pestilence at the numbering of the people, and other events which took place in David’s reign.
Verse 5. “Behold, I intend to build.” rmæa; followed by an infinitive, as in Ex 2:14; 2 Sam 21:16. “As Jehovah spake to David;” viz., 2 Sam 7:12 and 13.
Verse 6-7. “And now command that they fell me cedars from Lebanon.”
We may see from v. 8 that Solomon had also asked for cypresses; and according to the parallel passage 2 Chron 2:6ff., he had asked for a skilful artist, which is passed over here, so that it is only in 1 Kings 7:13-14 that we find a supplementary notice that Hiram had sent one. It is evident from this request, that that portion of Lebanon on which the cedars suitable for building wood grew, belonged to the kingdom of Hiram. The cedar forest, which has been celebrated from very ancient times, was situated at least two days’ journey to the north of Beirut, near the northernmost and loftiest summits of the range, by the village of Bjerreh, to the north of the road which leads to Baalbek and not far to the east of the convent of Canobin, the seat of the patriarch of the Maronites, although Seetzen, the American missionaries, and Professor Ehrenberg found cedars and cedar groves in other places on northern Lebanon (see Rob. Pal. iii. 440, 441, and Bibl.
Res. pp. 588ff.). The northern frontier of Canaan did not reach as far as Bjerreh (see at Num 34:8-9). “My servants shall be with thy servants,” i.e., shall help them in the felling of the wood (see at vv. 28, 29). “And the wages of thy servants will I give to thee altogether as thou sayest” (see at vv. 25, 26). “For thou knowest that no one among us is skilful in felling trees like the Sidonians.” This refers to the knowledge of the most suitable trees, of the right time for felling, and of the proper treatment of the wood.
The expression Sidonians stands for Phoenicians generally, since Sidon was formerly more powerful than Tyre, and that portion of Lebanon which produced the cedars belonged to the district of Sidon. The inhabitants of Sidon were celebrated from time immemorial as skilful builders, and well versed in mechanical arts (compare Rob. Pal. iii. 421ff., and Movers, Phoenizier, ii. 1, pp. 86ff.).
Hiram rejoiced exceedingly at this proposal on the part of Solomon, and praised Jehovah for having given David so wise a son as his successor (v. 21). It must have been a matter of great importance to the king of Tyre to remain on good terms with Israel, because the land of Israel was a granary for the Phoenicians, and friendship with such a neighbour would necessarily tend greatly to promote the interests of the Phoenician commerce. The praise of Jehovah on the part of Hiram does not presuppose a full recognition of Jehovah as the only true God, but simply that Hiram regarded the God of Israel as being as real a God as his own deities. Hiram expresses a fuller acknowledgment of Jehovah in 2 Chron 2:11, where he calls Jehovah the Creator of heaven and earth; which may be explained, however, from Hiram’s entering into the religious notions of the Israelites, and does not necessarily involve his own personal belief in the true deity of Jehovah.
Verse 8-11. Hiram then sent to Solomon, and promised in writing bt;K; , Chron 2:10) to comply with his wishes. lae jlæv; rv,a tae , “that which thou hast sent to me,” i.e., hast asked of me by messenger. vwOrB] are not firs, but cypresses. “My servants shall bring down (the trees) from Lebanon to the sea, and I will make them into rafts (i.e., bind them into rafts and have them floated) upon the sea to the place which thou shalt send (word) to me, and will take them (the rafts) to pieces there, and thou wilt take (i.e., fetch them thence).” The Chronicles give Yafo, i.e., Joppa, Jaffa, the nearest harbour to Jerusalem on the Mediterranean Sea, as the landingplace (see at Josh 19:46). “And thou wilt do all my desire to give bread for my house,” i.e., provisions to supply the wants of the king’s court. “The rk;c; mentioned in v. 6 was also to be paid” (Thenius). This is quite correct; but Thenius is wrong when he proceeds still further to assert, that the chronicler erroneously supposed this to refer to the servants of Hiram who were employed in working the wood. There is not a word of this kind in the Chronicles; but simply Solomon’s promise to Hiram (v. 9): “with regard to the hewers (the fellers of the trees), I give thy servants wheat 20,000 cors, and barley 20,000 cors, and wine 20,000 baths, and oil 20,000 baths.” This is omitted in our account, in which the wages promised in v. to the Sidonian fellers of wood are not more minutely defined. On the other hand, the payment for the wood delivered by Solomon to Hiram, which is not mentioned in the Chronicles, is stated here in v. 11. “Solomon gave Hiram 20,000 cors of wheat as food tl,Komæ , a contraction of tl,koamæ , from lkæa; ; cf. Ewald, §79, b.) for his house (the maintenance of his royal court), and 20 cors of beaten oil; this gave Solomon to Hiram year by year,” probably as long as the delivery of the wood or the erection of Solomon’s buildings lasted.
These two accounts are so clear, that Jac. Capp., Gramt., Mov., Thenius, and Bertheau, who have been led by critical prejudices to confound them with one another, and therefore to attempt to emend the one from the other, are left quite alone. For the circumstance that the quantity of wheat, which Solomon supplied to Hiram for his court, was just the same as that which he gave to the Sidonian workmen, does not warrant our identifying the two accounts. The fellers of the trees also received barley, wine, and oil in considerable quantities; whereas the only other thing which Hiram received for his court was oil, and that not common oil, but the finest olive oil, namely 20 cors of tytiK; ˆm,v, , i.e., beaten oil, the finest kind of oil, which was obtained from the olives when not quite ripe by pounding them in mortars, and which had not only a whiter colour, but also a purer flavour than the common oil obtained by pressing from the ripe olives (cf. Celsii Hierobot. ii. pp. 349f., and Bähr, Symbolik, i. p. 419). Twenty cors were 200 baths, i.e., according to the calculations of Thenius, about ten casks (1 cask = 6 pails; 1 pail = 72 cans). If we bear in mind that this was the finest kind of oil, we cannot speak of disproportion to the quantity of wheat delivered. Thenius reckons that 20,000 cors of wheat were about 38,250 Dresden scheffeln (? sacks).
Verse 12. The remark that “the Lord gave Solomon wisdom” refers not merely to the treaty which Solomon made with Hiram, through which he obtained materials and skilled workmen for the erection of the house of God (Thenius), but also to the wise use which he made of the capacities of his own subjects for this work. For this verse not only brings to a close the section relating to Solomon’s negotiations with Hiram, but it also forms an introduction to the following verses, in which the intimation given by Solomon in v. 6, concerning the labourers who were to fell wood upon Lebanon in company with Hiram’s men, is more minutely defined.
1 KINGS. 5:13-14
The tributary labourers out of Israel.
Solomon raised a tribute smæ , tribute-labourers, as in 1 Kings 4:6) out of all Israel, i.e., out of the whole nation (not “out of the whole territory of Israel,” as Ewald supposes), 30,000 men, and sent them up to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in rotation; one month they were on Lebanon (doing tribute work), two months at home (looking after the cultivation of their own ground). `hl;[; , from `hl;[; , does not mean in tabulas referre, in support of which appeal is made to 1 Chron 27:24, though on insufficient ground, but ascendere fecit, corresponding to the German ausheben (to raise). He raised them out of the nation, to send the up Lebanon (cf. Kings 9:25). These 30,000 Israelitish labourers must be distinguished from the remnants of the Canaanites who were made into tribute-slaves (v. and 1 Kings 9:20).
The latter are called `dbæ[; smæ , tribute-slaves, in 1 Kings 9:21 as in Josh 16:10. That the Israelites were not to render the service of bondsmen is evident from the fact, that they only rendered tribute for four months of the year, and were at home for eight months; and the use of the epithet smæ is not at variance with this. For even if this word is applied elsewhere to the Canaanitish bondsmen (e.g., Josh 17:13; Judg 1:28,30, and 2 Chron 8:8), a distinction is decidedly made in our account of Solomon between smæ and `dbæ[; smæ , inasmuch as in 1 Kings 9:22, after the Canaanitish bondsmen have been mentioned, it is expressly stated that “of Israel Solomon made no one a slave” `db,[, ). The 30,000 Israelitish tribute-servants are “to be thought of as free Israelites, who simply performed the less severe work of felling trees in fellowship with and under the direction of the subjects of Hiram (see at v. 6), according to the command of the king, and probably not even that without remuneration” (Thenius). For Adoniram see at Kings 4:6.
1 KINGS. 5:15
And Solomon had 70,000 bearers of burdens and 80,000 hewers of stone on the mountains (of Lebanon). bxæj; is understood by the older translators as referring simply to hewers of stone. This is favoured both by the context, since v. 18 speaks of stone-mason’s work, and also by the usage of the language, inasmuch as bxæj; is mostly applied to the quarrying and cutting of stones (Deut 6:11; Isa 5:2; Prov 9:1; 2 Kings 12:13), and only occurs in Isa 10:15 in connection with the cutting of wood. The hewing and preparing of the wood were amply provided for by 30,000 Israelites.
That the 150,000 bearers of burdens and hewers of stone were not taken from the Israelites, is evident from the fact that they are distinguished from the latter, or at all events are not described as Israelites. We obtain certainty on this point from the parallel passages, 1 Kings 9:20-21; 2 Chron 2:16-17, and 2 Chron 8:1-9, according to which Solomon pressed the Canaanites who were left in the land to this bond-service.
1 KINGS. 5:16
“Beside dBæ ), i.e., without reckoning, the princes, Solomon’s officers, who were over the work (i.e., the chiefs appointed by Solomon as overlookers of the work), 3300, who ruled over the people who laboured at the work.” bxæn; rcæ , as Thenius correctly observes, cannot be the chief of the overlookers, i.e., the head inspectors, as there is no allusion made to subordinate inspectors, and the number given is much too large for head inspectors. bxæn; , which is governed by rcæ in the construct state, is to be taken as defining the substantive: principes qui praefecti erant (Vatabl.; cf.
Ewald, §287, a.). Moreover, at the close of the account of the whole of Solomon’s buildings (1 Kings 9:23), 550 more bxæn; rcæ are mentioned as presiding over the people who did the work.
The accounts in the Chronicles differ from these in a very peculiar manner, the number of overseers being given in 2 Chron 2:17 and 3600, and in Chron 8:10 as 250. Now, however natural it may be, with the multiplicity of errors occurring in numerical statements, to assume that these differences have arisen from copyists’ errors through the confounding together of numerical letters resembling one another, this explanation is overthrown as an improbable one, by the fact that the sum-total of the overseers is the same in both accounts (3300 + 550 = 3850 in the books of Kings, and 3600 + 250 = 3850 in the Chronicles); and we must therefore follow J. H. Michaelis, an explain the differences as resulting from a different method of classification, namely, from the fact that in the Chronicles. the Canaanitish overseers are distinguished from the Israelitish (viz., 3600 Canaanites and 250 Israelites), whereas in the books of Kings the inferiores et superiores praefecti are distinguished. Consequently Solomon had 3300 inferior overseers and 550 superior (or superintendents), of whom 250 were selected from the Israelites and from the Canaanites. In 2 Chron 2:16-17, it is expressly stated that the 3600 were taken from the rGe , i.e., the Canaanites who were left in the land of Israel. And it is equally certain that the number given in 1 Kings 9:23 and 2 Chron 8:10 (550 and 250) simply comprises the superintendents over the whole body of builders, notwithstanding the fact that in both passages (1 Kings 5:16 and 1 Kings 9:23) the same epithet bxæn; rcæ is used. If, then, the number of overseers is given in 1 Kings 9:23 and 550, i.e., 300 more than in the parallel passage of the Chronicles, there can hardly be any doubt that the number 550 includes the 300, in which the number given in our chapter falls short of that in the Chronicles, and that in the 3300 of our chapter the superintendents of Canaanitish descent are not included. f
101 1 KINGS. 5:17
And the king had large, costly stones broken, “to lay the foundation of the house with hewn stones.” rq;y; does not mean heavy (Thenius), for this would be a perfectly superfluous remark, inasmuch as large stones are always heavy, but costly, valuable stones, qui multa pecunia constabant (Cler.); compare 1 Kings 10:2, where the word stands for precious stones. dsæy; , i.e., to lay the foundation for the temple, by which we are to understand not merely the foundation for the temple-house, but the magnificent substructions for the whole of the temple area, even though the strong walls which surrounded the temple mountain, and which Josephus describes in his Antiquities, viii. 3, 9, and xv. 11, 3, and in his de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1, may not have been all completed by Solomon, but may have been a work of centuries. For further remarks on this subject, see at 1 Kings 6:38. tyziG; ˆb,a, are squared stones, according to 1 Kings 7:10, of ten and eight cubits.
1 KINGS. 5:18
With v. 18 the account of the preparations for the building of the temple, which were the object of Solomon’s negotiations with Hiram, is brought to a close. “Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders, even the Giblites, hewed and prepared the wood and the stones for the building of the house.” The object to lsæp; is not the square stones mentioned before, but the trees (beams) and stones mentioned after ˆWK. ylib]Gi is to be taken as explanatory, “even the Giblites,” giving a more precise definition of “Hiram’s builders.” The Giblites are the inhabitants of the town of Gebal, called Byblos by the Greeks, to the north of Beirut (see at Josh 13:5), which was the nearest to the celebrated cedar forest of the larger Phoenician towns. According to Ezek 27:9, the Giblites (Byblians) were experienced in the art of shipbuilding, and therefore were probably skilful builders generally, and as such the most suitable of Hiram’s subjects to superintend the working of the wood and stone for Solomon’s buildings.
For it was in the very nature of the case that the number of the Phoenician builders was only a small one, and that they were merely the foremen; and this may also be inferred from the large number of his own subjects whom Solomon appointed to the work. f102 CH. 6. BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE.
The account of the building of the temple commences with a statement of the date of the building (v. 1); and this is followed by a description of the plan and size of the temple-house (vv. 2-10), to which there is also appended the divine promise made to Solomon during the erection of the building (vv. 11-13). After this we have a further account of the internal fittings and decorations of the sanctuary (vv. 14-36), and in 1 Kings 7:1-12 a description of the royal palace which was built after the temple; and, finally, a description of the pillars of the court which were executed in metal by the Tyrian artist, and of the different vessels of the temple (1 Kings 7:13-51). f103 We have a parallel to this in 2 Chron 3 and 4, though here the description is differently arranged. In the Chronicles the external building of the temple-house is not separated from the internal decoration and furnishing; but after the period of erection and the size of the temple-house have been given in 1 Kings 3:1-3, there follows a description, a. of the court (v. 4); b. of the Holy Place with its internal decorations (vv. 5-7); c. of the most Holy Place, with special reference to its size and decorations, also of the colossal cherubim placed therein and the curtain in front of it, which is not mentioned in our account (vv. 8-14); d. of the brazen pillars in front of the court (vv. 15-17); e. of the altar of burnt-offering (1 Kings 4:1), which is passed over in the account before us; f. of the brazen sea (vv. 2-5); g. of the brazen lavers, the golden candlesticks, the tables of shewbread, and the golden basons (vv. 6-8); and h. of the courts (v. 9). The account is then closed with a summary enumeration of the different vessels of the temple (vv. 10-22), which agrees almost word for word with 1 Kings 7:40-50.
1 KINGS. 6:1-10
The Outside of the Building.
Vesre 1. The building of the temple, a fixed and splendid house of Jehovah as the dwelling-place of His name in the midst of His people, formed an important epoch so far as the Old Testament kingdom of God was concerned, inasmuch as, according to the declaration of God made through the prophet Nathan, an end would thereby be put to the provisional condition of the people of Israel in the land of Canaan, since the temple was to become a substantial pledge of the permanent possession of the inheritance promised by the Lord. The importance of this epoch is indicated by the fact, that the time when the temple was built is defined not merely in relation to the year of Solomon’s reign, but also in relation to the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. “In the 480th year after the exodus of the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, in the second month of the year, Solomon built the house of the Lord.” The correctness of the number 480, as contrasted with the 440th year of the LXX and the different statements made by Josephus, is now pretty generally admitted; and we have already proved at Judg 3:7 that it agrees with the duration of the period of the Judges when rightly estimated. f104 The name of the month Ziv, brilliancy, splendour, probably so called from the splendour of the flowers, is explained by the clause, “that is, the second month,” because the months had no fixed names before the captivity, and received different names after the captivity. The second month was called Jyar after the captivity.-The place where the temple was built is not given in our account, as having been sufficiently well known; though it is given in the parallel text, 2 Chron 3:1, namely, “Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David” at the time of the pestilence, and where David had built an altar of burnt-offering by divine command (see at 2 Sam 24:25).
Verse 2-4. Plan and dimensions of the temple-house.-The measure of the temple-house and its several subdivisions are all given in the clear, i.e., as the spaces were seen. The house, i.e., the main building of the temple (lit., as for the house, or shell of the building), its length was sixty cubits, its breadth twenty cubits, and its height thirty cubits, and that, according to 2 Chron 3:3, “after the earlier measure,” i.e., after the old Mosaic or sacred cubit, which was a hand-breadth longer, according to Ezek 40:5 and 43:13, than the civil cubit of the time of the captivity. The Mosaic cubit, according to the investigations of Thenius, was 214,512 Parisian lines long, i.e., 1/2 Dresden inches, or 18 1/2 Rhenish inches (see at Gen 6:10).
Verse 3. The porch (lit., hall) in the face of ( ynep]Al[æ , i.e., before) the Holy Place of the house was twenty cubits long, before ( ynep]Al[æ ) the breadth of the house, i.e., it was just the same breadth as the house. The longer line, which ran parallel to the breadth of the house, is called here Ër,ao , the length, though from our point of view we should call it the width. And ten cubits was its breadth, i.e., its depth in front of the house. The height of the court is not given in our text; but in 2 Chron 3:4 it is said to have been cubits. This is certainly an error, although Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 300) still joins with Stieglitz (Baukunst, p. 126, and Beitrr. zur Gesch. der Bauk. i. p. 70) in defending its correctness. For an erection of such a height as this could not possibly have been designated as µl;Wa (a hall or porch), but would have been called lD;g]mi , a tower. But even a tower of 120 cubits in height in front of a temple which was only thirty cubits high, would have shown a greater disproportion than our loftiest church towers; and such a funnel-like erection with a base of only ten cubits in breadth or depth would hardly have possessed sufficient stability.
We cannot certainly think of an intentional exaggeration of the height in the Chronicles, since the other measures agree with the account before us; but the assumption that there has been a corruption of the text is rendered natural enough by many other errors in the numerical statements. This still leaves it undecided whether the true height was twenty or thirty cubits; for whereas the Syriac, Arabic, and LXX (Cod. Al.) have twenty cubits, the height of thirty cubits is favoured partly by the omission of any statement of the height from our text, which is much easier to explain if the porch was of the same height as the temple-house than if the heights were different, and partly by the circumstance that the side building had an external height of twenty cubits, and therefore the porch would not have stood out with any especial prominence if its elevation had been just the same.
Verse 4. After the account of the proportionate spaces in the templehouse, the windows through which it received light and air are mentioned. µ f1 a; ãquv; ˆwOLjæ does not mean fenestrae intus latae, foris angustae (Chald., Ar., Rabb., Luther, and others), but windows with closed beams, i.e., windows the lattice-work of which could not be opened and closed at pleasure, as in ordinary dwelling-houses (2 Kings 13:17; Dan 6:11). For ãquv; signifies beams overlaid in 1 Kings 7:4, and ãq,v, beams in ch. 7:5.
The opening of the windows was probably narrower without than within, as in the older Egyptian buildings, as the walls were very strong; and in that case such windows would more thoroughly answer their purpose, viz., to admit light and air, and let out the smoke, so that the interpretation given by the Chaldee is most likely founded upon an ancient tradition, and is in accordance with the fact, though not with the words. It is a disputed point among the commentators where the windows were placed: whether merely in the front over the porch, provided, that is to say, that this was ten cubits lower than the temple-house, or on the side walls above the side stories, which were at the most about twenty cubits high, in which case the Most Holy Place, which was only twenty cubits high, remained quite dark, according to 1 Kings 8:12. We regard the latter view as the correct one, inasmuch as the objections to it rest upon assumptions which can be proved to be false. The side building.
Verse 5. “He built against the wall of the house an outwork round about (i.e., against the two longer sides and against the hinder wall, and not against the front also, where the porch was built), against the walls of the house round about, against the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, and he made side chambers round about.” [æWxy; written constantly [æWxy; in the Keri) signifies literally stratum, here the lower building or outwork erected against the rooms mentioned. The word is gen. comm., but so construed that the masculine is used in a collective sense to denote the whole of the outworks, consisting as they did of three stories, whereas the feminine is used for one single story of the building (v. 6). On this use of the masculine and feminine genders to distinguish the whole mass and the individual parts, which is very common in Arabic, though it is rare in Hebrew, in which the distinction is generally expressed by a peculiar feminine form. as for example ynæa a fleet, and hY;nia’ a single ship, compare Ewald, Lehrbuch der hebr. Spr. §175, d., and 176, a., and gramm. crit. ling, arab. i. §295. twOryqiAta does not mean cum parietibus (Seb. Schmidt and J. H.
Michaelis), but tae is a sign of the accusative, “as for the walls,” and introduces the more precise definition. [l;xe signifies, both here and in Ezek 41:6ff., side chambers or side stories, from [læx; , to incline to one side, hence to limp, i.e., to lean constantly to one side.
From this there were derived for [l;xe the meanings side, side piece or side wall, e.g., of the ark, Ex 25:12,14, etc., of the dwelling, Ex 26:20,26, etc., of the altar, Ex. 27:7,30, etc., the side wall or slope of a mountain,2 Sam 16:13, the side portion of the human body, i.e., the rib, Gen 2:21-22, the sides or leaves of a door in v. 34 of the present chapter, and when used of buildings, the side pieces or portions built out which lean against the main building; and lastly, the idea of a piece which shows a large side, i.e., a broad plank (1 Kings 6:15-16). The meaning planks or beams, as it were ribs or rib-work, is unfounded.
Verse 6. The (internal) breadth of the lower side story was five cubits, that of the middle one six, and that of the third seven cubits; “for he (they) had made shortenings (i.e., rebates) against the house round about on the outside, that (there might be) no insertion into the walls of the (temple-) house.” The meaning is that rebates were attached against the temple wall, at the point where the lower beams of the different side stories were to be placed, so that the heads of these beams rested upon the rebates and were not inserted in the actual wall of the temple-house. These rebates are called very descriptively h[;r;g]mi , deductions or contractions of the thickness of the wall. We may assume that there were four such rebates: three for the three floors of the side stories, and one for the roof. It still remains doubtful, however, whether these rebates were merely laid along the temple wall, or along the outer wall of the side building as well, so as to ensure symmetry and make each of the two walls half a cubit thinner or weaker at every rebate. The former is the more probable. And accordingly the temple wall was one cubit weaker at each rebate, that is to say, in four places. If, therefore, it still remained two cubits thick at the top, it must have been six cubits thick below. This extraordinary thickness, however, would be quite in keeping with the remains of buildings of great antiquity, the walls of which have generally a colossal thickness, and also with the size of the square stones of which the wall was constructed, as described in 1 Kings 7:10.
Verse 7-8. contains a circumstantial clause, inserted as an explanation of v. 6: “The house, (namely) when building, was built of perfectly finished stones of the quarry, and hammer and axe; no kind of instrument whatever was heard at the house when it was building.” [S;mæ µlev; ˆb,a, (on the construction see Ges. §114, 1, Erl., and Ewald, §339, b.) does not mean stones quite unhewn, which God had so caused to grow that they did not require to be hewn (Theodoret); for although µlev; ˆb,a, is used in Deut 27:6 (compare with Ex 20:25) to signify uninjured, i.e., unhewn stones, yet this meaning is precluded here by the context (cf. 5:32). µlev; signifies finished here, that is to say, stones which were so perfectly tooled and prepared when first broken in the quarry, that when the temple walls were built no iron instruments were required to prepare them any further. ˆz,r]Gæ , an axe, here a stone-mason’s cutting tool corresponding to the axe.-In v. the description of the side building is continued. “A door jtæp, , a opening for the entrance) to the middle side chamber (of the lower story) was on the right side (the southern side) of the house, and a winding staircase led up into the middle (room of the middle story) and out of the middle into the third rooms,” i.e., the rooms of the third story.
This is the rendering according to the Masoretic text; and the only thing that appears strange is the use of ˆwOkyTi first of all for the middle room of the lower story and then for the middle story; and the conjecture is a very natural one, that the first ˆwOkyTi may have been an error of the pen for ˆwOTj]Tæ , in which case [l;xe does not signify the side room, but is used in a collective sense for the row of side rooms in one story, as in Ezek 41:5,9,11. That this door was made from the outside, i.e., in the outer wall of the side building, and did not lead into the side rooms “from the interior of the Holy Place,” would hardly need a remark, if Böttcher (Proben alttestl. Schrifterkl. p. 339) and Schnaase (Gesch. der bildenden Künste, Bd. 1) had not really supported this view, which is so thoroughly irreconcilable with the dignity of the sanctuary. f106 The only question is, whether it was made in the middle of the right side or in the front by the side of the porch. If the Masoretic text is correct, there is no doubt about the former. But if we read ˆwOTj]Tæ , the text leaves the question undecided. The winding staircase was not constructed in the outer wall itself, because this was not thick enough for the purpose, and the text states pretty clearly that it led from the lower story into the middle one, and thence still higher, so that it was in the centre of the building. Verse 9, 10. In vv. 9 and 10 the description of the exterior of the temple building is brought to a close. “So he built the house, and finished it, and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar.” ˆpæs; is not to be understood as relating to the internal panelling of the temple-house, for this is spoken of first in the section which follows (v. 15), but to the roofing; ˆpæs; means to conceal (Deut 33:21) and cover in all the other passages, even in Hag 1:4 and Jer 22:14, where ˆpæs; is generally, though incorrectly, translated “panelled.” As a verb signifying clothing, it is construed with the accusative. bGe does not mean boards, but beams, though not “an arched covering” (Thenius), because beams cut in the form of an arch would have been too weak in the middle, nor yet rafters (Böttcher), because the roofs of oriental buildings are flat. µyzir;a\B; trodic] , “rows, i.e., tablets (consisting) of cedars,” i.e., cedar tablets, which were inserted in rows between the beams. This cedar-work was certainly provided with a strong covering to protect the roof and the building itself against rain; and at the sides it had no doubt a parapet, as in the case of dwelling-houses (Deut 22:8).
Verse 10. “And he built the outbuildings to the whole house (i.e., all round the temple-house, with the exception of the front: see v. 5); five cubits was its height,” i.e., the height of each story, the suffix in hm;wOq being made to agree with [æWxY;hæ through an inaccuracy which has arisen from condensation, although, as in v. 5, it denotes the whole of the side buildings, which consisted of three stories. The height given must also be understood as referring to the height within. Consequently the side buildings had an internal height of 3 × 5 cubits, and reckoning the floorings and the roof of the whole building an external height of 18 or 20 cubits; so that the temple-house, which was thirty cubits high within and about thirtytwo without, rose about twelve or fourteen cubits above the side building, and there was plenty of room for the windows in the side walls. wgw zjæa; : “and it (the side building) held to the house with cedar beams.”
The meaning is, that the building was fastened to the house by the joists of the cedar beams belonging to the different stories, which rested upon rebates of the temple wall, so that it was firmly attached to the templehouse, without any injurious insertions into the sanctuary itself. This is apparently the only explanation, that can be grammatically sustained, of words that have received such different interpretations. For the translation given by Thenius, which coincides with this-viz., “he fastened it (each separate story of the building) to the temple-house with cedar wood, namely, with the cedar beams which formed the flooring and roofing of the three stores,”-is exposed to this grammatical objection, that the suffix is wanting in zjæa; , and that zjæa; is never followed by tae in the sense of with.
All the other explanations are unsuitable. zjæa; signifies neither “he covered the house” (Chald., Vulg., Luther), nor “he overlaid the house;” moreover, the roofing of the house has been already mentioned in v. 9, and there is no trace to be found of any overlaying or covering of the outside with cedar wood.
If, therefore, we reckon the thickness of the temple wall at six cubits, and that of the outer wall of the side building and the front wall of the porch at three cubits each, the whole building would be ninety-three cubits long (externally) and forty-eight cubits broad. The height of the temple-house was about thirty-two cubits externally, and that of the side stories from eighteen to twenty cubits, without the socle upon which the whole building rested. This is not mentioned indeed, as being a subordinate matter, but would certainly not be omitted. f107 The number of rooms in the side buildings is not given, but may be set down at thirty in each story, if their length corresponded to their breadth in the lower story. These rooms had of course windows, although they are not mentioned in the account, but each one would have only a small window sufficient to give it the requisite light. And as to the number of the temple windows also, we can simply make conjectures. We can hardly assume that there were more than six on each side, and there were probably none at the back.
1 KINGS. 6:11-13
Promise of God during the Building of the Temple.
In what way this promise was communicated to Solomon is not more precisely stated. But the expression “And the word of Jehovah came” seems to point to a prophetic medium. And this is in harmony with 1 Kings 9:2, according to which Jehovah only revealed Himself to Solomon twice by an actual appearance. Verse 12-13. wgw tyiBæ is placed at the head absolutely: “As for the house which thou art building hn;B; , a participle), if thou walkest in my statutes,...I will set up my word, which I spake to thy father David.” The reference is to the promise in 2 Sam 7:12ff. of the everlasting establishment of this throne. God would fulfil this for Solomon if he would walk in the commandments of the Lord, as his father had already urged upon him when he handed over the kingdom (1 Kings 2:3). The promise in v. 13, “I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel,” does not contain a second promise added to the one given in 2 Sam 7:12ff., but simply a special application of it to the building of the temple which had already been commenced. The eternal establishment of the throne of David involved the dwelling of God among His people, or rather is founded upon it. This dwelling of God is now to receive a new and lasting realization. The temple is to be a pledge that the Lord will maintain for His people His covenant of grace and His gracious presence. In this respect the promised, “I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and not forsake my people Israel,” is a confirmation of the word which Jehovah had spoken to David, although, so far as the actual words are concerned, it is more closely connected with Lev 26:11, when the highest blessing attendant upon the faithful observance of the commandments of God is summed up in the promise, “I will make my abode among you, and my soul will not despise you.”
1 KINGS. 6:14-35
The Internal Arrangements of the Temple-House.
Verse 14 (cf. v. 9) resumes the description of the building of the temple, which had been interrupted by the divine promise just communicated.
Verse 15. “He built (i.e., so far as the sense is concerned, he covered) the walls of the house within with boards of cedar; from the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling he overlaid it with wood within, and overlaid the floor with cypress boards.” The expression ˆPusi ryqi , “walls of the ceiling,” is very striking here, and renders it probable that ryqi is only a copyist’s error for twOrwOq , “beams of the ceiling.” The whole of the inside of the house was covered with wood, so that nothing was to be seen of the stone wall (v. 18). On the other hand, the biblical text knows nothing of any covering of the outer walls also with wood, as many have assumed. Verse 16-18. “And he built µyric][,Ata, , the twenty cubits (i.e., the space of twenty cubits), of the hindermost side of the house with boards of cedar,” from the floor to the beams (of the roof). twOryQihæAd[æ is to be explained from ˆPusi ryqi `d[æ in v. 15. “And built them for it (the wOl] pointing back to tyiBæ ) into the hinder room, into the Most Holy.” rybiD] is more precisely defined by the apposition vd,qo vd,qo , and therefore denotes the Most Holy Place. But there is a doubt as to its derivation and true meaning. Aquila and Symmachus render it crhmatisth>rion , Jerome laleetee’rion, or in the Vulg. oraculum, so that they derive it from rbæd; , to speak; and Hengstenberg adopts this derivation in Ps 28:2: rybiD] , lit., that which is spoken, then the place where the speaking takes place.
Most of the more recent commentators, on the other hand, follow the example of C. B. Michaelis and J. Simonis, and render it, after the Arabic, the hinder portion or back room, which is favoured by the antithesis ynæP]li lk;yhe , the front sanctuary (v. 17). The words of the text, moreover, are not to be understood as referring to a cedar wall in front of the Most Holy Place which rose to the height of twenty cubits, but to all four walls of the Most Holy Place, so that the wall which divided the hinder room from the Holy Place is not expressly mentioned, simply because it is self-evident.
The words also imply that the whole of the hinder space of the house to the length of twenty cubits was cut off for the Most Holy Place, and therefore the party wall must also have filled the whole height of the house, which was as much as thirty cubits, and reached, as is expressly stated, from the floor to the roof.
There remained therefore forty cubits of the house (in length) for ynæP]li lk;yhe , the front palace, i.e., the Holy Place of the temple (v. 17). ynæP]li , anterior, formed from µynip; (cf. Ewald, §164, a.).-In v. 18 there is inserted in a circumstantial clause the statement as to the internal decoration of both rooms; and the further description of the Most Holy Place is given in vv. 19ff. “And cedar wood was (placed) against the house inside, sculpture of gourds (colocynthides) and open buds.” t[ælæq]mi is in apposition to zr,a, , containing a more minute description of the nature of the covering of cedar. t[ælæq]mi signifies sculpture, half-raised work (basso relievo); not, however, “that kind of bas- relief in which the figures, instead of rising above the surface on which they are wrought, are simply separated from it by the chiselling out of their outlines, and their being then rounded off according to these outlines” (Thenius).
For although the expression t[ælæq]mi jæWTpi (v. 29) appears to favour this, yet “merely engraved work” does not harmonize with the decorations of the brazen stands in 1 Kings 7:31, which are also called t[ælæq]mi . [qæp, are figures resembling the h[;Qupæ , or wild gourds (2 Kings 4:39), i.e., oval ornaments, probably running in straight rows along the walls. xyxi rWfp; are open flower-buds; not hangings or garlands of flowers (Thenius), for this meaning cannot be derived from r f1 p; in the sense of loosening or setting free, so as to signify flowers loosened or set free (= garlands), which would be a marvellous expression! The objection that, “according to Num. 17:23, flowers not yet opened, i.e., flower-buds, were not xyxi , but µyjir;p] ,” rests upon a false interpretation of the passage referred to.
Verse 19. “And (= namely) he prepared a hinder room in the house within, to place the ark of the covenant of Jehovah there.” ˆtæn; , as 1 Kings 17:14 shows, is not a future (ut reponeres), but the infinitive ˆtæn; with a repeated syllable ˆtæn; (see Ewald, §238, c.).
Verse 20. “And the interior of the hinder room was twenty cubits the length, twenty cubits the breadth, and twenty cubits its height.” The word µynip; I agree with Kimchi in regarding as the construct state of the noun µynip; , which occurs again in v. 29 in the sense of the inner part or interior, as is evident from the antithesis ˆwOxyji (on the outside). “And he overlaid it with fine gold.” rgæs; bh;z; (= dwOgs] in Job 28:15) unquestionably signifies fine or costly gold, although the derivation of this meaning is still questionable; viz., whether it is derived from rgæs; in the sense of to shut up, i.e., gold shut up or carefully preserved, after the analogy of µt,K, ; or is used in the sense of taking out or selecting, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold condensed or unadulterated (Fürst and Delitzsch on Job 28:15).
The Most Holy Place had therefore the form of a perfect cube in the temple as well as in the tabernacle, only on an enlarged scale. Now, as the internal elevation of the house, i.e., of the whole of the temple-house, the hinder portion of which formed the Most Holy Place, was thirty cubits, there was a space of about ten cubits in height above the Most Holy Place and below the roof of the temple-house for the upper rooms mentioned in 2 Chron 3:9, on the nature and purpose of which nothing is said in the two accounts. “And he overlaid (clothed) the altar with cedar wood.”
There is something very striking in the allusion to the altar in this passage, since the verse itself treats simply of the Most Holy Place; and still more striking is the expression rwbiD] rv,a jæBez]mi , “the altar belonging to the Debir,” in v. 22, since there was no altar in the Most Holy Place. We cannot remove the strangeness of these sentences by such alterations as Thenius and Böttcher propose, because the alterations suggested are much too complicated to appear admissible. The allusion to the altar in both these verses is rather to be explained from the statements in the Pentateuch as to the position of the altar of incense; viz., Ex 30:6, “Thou shalt place it before the curtain, which is above the ark of the testimony before the capporeth over the testimony;” and Ex 40:5, “before the ark of the testimony;” whereby this altar, although actually standing “before the inner curtain,” i.e., in the Holy Place, according to Ex 40:26, was placed in a closer relation to the Most Holy Place than the other two things which were in the Holy Place. The clothing of the altar with cedar presupposes that it had a heart of stone; and the omission of the article before jæBez]mi may be explained on the ground that it is mentioned here for the first time, just as in v. 16, where rybiD] was first mentioned, it had no article.
Verse 21-22. To the gilding of the Most Holy Place, and the allusion to the altar of incense, which in a certain sense belonged to it, there is now appended in v. 21 the gilding of the Holy Place. “Solomon overlaid the house from within with fine gold.” hm;ynip] tyiBæ cannot be the party wall between the Holy Place and the Most Holy, as I formerly supposed, but is the Holy Place as distinguished from the Most Holy. The following words wgw `rbæ[; are very obscure. If we rendered them, “he caused to pass over in (with) golden chains before the hinder room,” we could only think of an ornament consisting of golden chains, which ran along the wall in front of the hinder room and above the folding doors. But this would be very singularly expressed. We must therefore take `rbæ[; , as Gesenius, de Wette, and many of the earlier commentators do, according to the Chaldaean usage in the sense of bolting or fastening: “he bolted (fastened) with golden chains before the hinder room;” and must assume with Merz and others that the doors into the Most Holy Place (except on the day of atonement) were closed and fastened with golden chains, which were stretched across the whole breadth of the door and stood out against the wall. f109 The following expression, bh;z; hp;x; , “and he overlaid it with gold,” can only refer to the altar mentioned in the previous verse, the gilding of which has not yet been noticed, however surprising the separation of these words from v. 20 may be.-In v. 22 what has already been stated with regard to the gilding is repeated once more in a comprehensive manner, which brings this subject to a close. The whole house ( tyiBæhæAlK; ) is the Holy Place and the Most Holy, but not the porch or hall, as this is expressly distinguished from the house. jæBez]mi , the whole altar, not merely a portion of it. The large cherub-figures in the Most Holy Place.
Verse 23. He made (caused to be made) in the hinder room two cherubs of olive wood, i.e., wood of the oleaster or wild olive-tree, which is very firm and durable, and, according to 2 Chron 3:10, [æxu[]xæ hc,[mæ , i.e., according to the Vulgate, opus statuarium, a peculiar kind of sculpture, which cannot be more precisely defined, as the meaning of [æWx is uncertain. “Ten cubits was the height of it” (i.e., of the one and of the other). The figures had a human form, like the golden cherubs upon the ark of the covenant, and stood upright upon their feet (2 Chron 3:13), with extended wings of five cubits in length, so that one wing of the one reached to one wing of the other in the centre of the room, and the other wing of each reached to the opposite wall, and consequently the four extended wings filled the entire breadth of the Most Holy Place ( a breadth of twenty cubits), and the two cherubs stood opposite to one another and ten cubits apart.
The wings were evidently fastened to the back and placed close to one another upon the shoulder-blades, so that the small space between their starting-points is not taken into consideration in the calculation of their length. The figures were completely overlaid with gold. The ark of the covenant was placed between these cherubs, and under the wings which pointed towards one another. As they were made like those upon the ark, they had evidently the same meaning, and simply served to strengthen the idea which was symbolized in the cherub, and which we have expounded in the Commentary on Ex 25:20ff. Only their faces were not turned towards one another and bent down towards the ark, as in the case of the golden cherubim of the ark; but, according to 2 Chron 3:13, they were turned tyiBæ , towards the house, i.e., the Holy Place, so as to allow of the extension of the wings along the full length of the Most Holy Place. Ornaments of the walls; the floors and doors.
Verse 29. All the walls of the house (the Holy Place and the Most Holy) round about bsæme , adverb) he made engraved work (carving) of cherubs, palms, and open flowers from within to the outside (i.e., in the Most Holy as well as in the Holy Place). ˆmi = ˆmi ; and µynip; as in v. 20. This completes the account of the nature of the covering of wood. In addition to the oval figures and open flowers (v. 18), there were also figures of cherubim and palm-trees carved in the wooden panels. Nothing is said as to the distribution of these figures. But a comparison with Ezek 41:18 shows at any rate so much, that the palm-trees alternated with the cherubs, so that there was always one cherub standing between two palm-trees. The gourdshaped figures and the open flowers probably formed the upper and lower setting of the rows of palms and cherubs, the flowers hanging in the form of garlands above the palms and cherubs, and the rows of gourds arranged in bars constituting the boundary lines both above and blow. It is a disputed question whether there was only one row of palms and cherubs running round the walls, or whether there were two, or possibly even three.
There is more probability in the second or third of these assumptions than in the first, inasmuch as on the walls of the Egyptian temples there were often three or four rows of mythological characters in relief arranged one above another (compare my work on the Temple, pp. 70ff.).
Verse 30. The floor of the house he overlaid with gold within and without, i.e., in the Most Holy Place and in the Holy Place also.
Verse 31, 32. He made the entrance to the back room, doors (i.e., consisting of doors; cf. Ewald, §284, a., b) of olive wood, which moved, according to 1 Kings 7:50, on golden hinges. wgw lyiaæ , “the projection of the door-posts was fifth” hz;Wzm] is construed freely as an explanatory apposition to lyiaæ , to which it is really subordinate; cf. Ewald, §290, e.).
These obscure words, which have been interpreted in very different ways (see Ges. Thes. pp. 43f.), can hardly have any other meaning than this: the projecting framework of the doors occupied the fifth part of the breadth of the wall. For the explanation given by Böttcher and Thenius, “the entrance framework with posts of fifth strength,” has no real support in Ezek 41:3. To justify the rendering given to yviymij (fifth strength), lyiaæ is supplied, though not in the sense of projection, but in the thoroughly unwarranted sense of strength or thickness of the wall; and in addition to this, a wall two cubits thick is postulated between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, in direct contradiction to v. 16. The further evidence, which Thenius finds in 1 Kings 8:8, in support of this explanation, has been already rejected by Böttcher as unsustained. It would indeed be extremely strange for the thickness of the door-posts which formed the setting of the entrance to be given, whereas nothing is said about the size of the doors. According to our explanation, “a fifth of the breadth of the wall,” the entrance was four cubits broad including the projecting door-posts, and each of the two wings of the folding doors about a cubit and a half broad, if we reckon the projecting framework on either side at half a cubit in breadth.
Verse 32. “And two doors (i.e., folding doors, sc. he made; µyinæv] is also governed by `hc;[; in v. 31) of olive wood, and carved upon them carved work,” etc., as upon the walls (v. 29), “and overlaid them with gold, spreading the gold upon the cherubs and palms” dr,y, , hiphil of rdær; ), i.e., he spread gold-leaf upon them, so that, as Rashi observes, all the figures, the elevations and depressions of the carved work, were impressed upon the coating of gold-leaf, and were thus plainly seen. Thenius infers from this explanatory clause, that the gilding upon the walls and doors was most probably confined to the figures engraved, and did not extend over the whole of the walls and doors, because, if the doors had been entirely overlaid with gold, the gilding of the carved work upon them would have followed as a matter of course. But this inference is a very doubtful one.
For if it followed as a matter of course from the gilding of the entire doors that the carved work upon them was overlaid with gold, it would by no means follow that the overlaying was such as to leave the carved work visible or prominent, which this clause affirms. Moreover, a partial gilding of the walls would not coincide with the expression kaal-habayit `ad-tom in v. 22, since these words, which are used with emphasis, evidently affirm more than “that such (partial) gilding was carried out everywhere throughout the temple proper.” The doors in front of the Most Holy Place did not render the curtain mentioned in 2 Chron 3:14 unnecessary, as many suppose. This curtain may very well have been suspended within the doors; so that even when the doors were opened outwards on the entrance of the high priest, the curtain formed a second covering, which prevented the priests who were ministering in the Holy Place and court from looking in. f110 Verse 33-34. “And thus he made upon the door of the Holy Place posts of olive wood from a fourth (of the wall),” i.e., a framework which occupied a fourth of the breadth of the wall, or was five cubits broad (see at v. 31), “and two doors of cypress wood, two leaves each door turning,” i.e., each of the folding doors consisting of two leaves, each of which was made to turn by itself, so that it could be opened and shut alone (without the other; [læq, is probably only a copyist’s error for [l;xe ). Cypress wood was chosen for the folding doors of the Holy Place, and not olive wood, as in the case of the Most Holy Place, probably because it is lighter in weight, and therefore less likely to sink. It is questionable here what idea we are to form of the division of each folding door into two leaves, each of which turned by itself: whether we are to think of each wing as divided lengthwise into two narrow leaves, or as divided half way up, so that the lower half could be opened without the upper.
I agree with Merz in thinking the latter the more probable assumption; for the objection made by Thenius, on the ground that doors of this kind are only seen in the houses of the peasantry, is an idle assertion which cannot be proved. In a doorway of five cubits in breadth, after reckoning the doorposts the width of the two wings could not be more than two cubits each. And if such a door had been divided into two halves, each half would have been only one cubit wide, so that when open it would not have furnished the requisite room for one man conveniently to pass through. On the other hand, we may assume that a folding door of four cubits in breadth, if made in just proportions, would be eight cubits high. And a door of such a height might easily be divided into two halves, so that only the lower half (of two cubits in breadth and about four in height) was opened for the daily entrance of the priests into the Holy Place. These doors probably opened outwards, like those in front of the Most Holy Place.
Verse 35. Carving and gilding: as upon the doors before the hinder room.
The gold was levelled or smoothed over that which had been engraved, i.e., it was beaten out thin and laid upon the carving in such a manner that the gold plate fitted closely to the figures. Gilding was generally effected in ancient times by the laying on of gold plate, which was fastened with tacks (compare 2 Chron 3:9).
1 KINGS. 6:36
The courts. “He built the inner court three rows of hewn stones and one row of hewn cedar beams.” The epithet inner court applied to the “court of the priests” (2 Chron 4:9) presupposes an outer one, which is also mentioned in Chron 4:9, and called “the great court.” The inner one is called the upper (higher) court in Jer 36:10, from which it follows that it was situated on a higher level than the outer one, which surrounded it on all sides. It was enclosed by a low wall, consisting of three rows of hewn stones, or square stones, laid one upon another, and a row of hewn cedar beams, which were either laid horizontally upon the stones, after the analogy of the panelling of the temple walls on the inside, or placed upright so as to form a palisading, in order that the people might be able to see through into the court of the priests. According to 2 Chron 4:9, the outer court had gates lined with brass, so that it was also surrounded with a high wall.
Around it there were chambers and cells (2 Kings 23:11; Jer 35:4; 36:10) for the priests and Levites, the plans for which had already been made by David (1 Chron 28:12). The principal gate was the east gate (Ezek 11:1).
Other gates are mentioned in 2 Kings 11:6; 2 Chr. 23:5, Jer. 20:2 2 Kings 12:10; 2 Chr. 24:8. The size of these courts is not given. At the same time, following the analogy of the tabernacle, and with the reduplication of the rooms of the tabernacle which is adopted in other cases in the temple, we may set down the length of the court of the priests from east to west at cubits, and the breadth from south to north at 100 cubits; so that in front of the temple-building on the east there was a space of 100 cubits in length and breadth, or 10,000 square cubits, left free for the altar of burnt-offering and the other vessels, in other words, for the sacrificial worship. The outer or great court will therefore, no doubt, have been at least twice as large, namely, 400 cubits long and 200 cubits broad, i.e., in all, 80,000 square cubits; so that the front space before the court of the priests (on the eastern side) was 150 cubits long from east to west, and 200 cubits broad from south to north, and 50 cubits in breadth or depth still remained for the other three sides. 1 KINGS 6:37,38 The time consumed in building.
The foundation was laid in the fourth year in the month Ziv (see v. 1), and it was finished in the eleventh year in the month Bul, i.e., the eighth month, so that it was built in seven years, or, more precisely, seven years and a half, “according to all its matters and all its due.” lWB for lWby] signifies proventus; lWB jræy, is therefore the fruit month, the month of tree fruits.
The name probably originated with the Phoenicians, with whom the fruit ripened later; and it is said to be found upon the great Sidonian inscription (compare Dietrich on Ges. Lex. s. v.). For the other explanations see Ges.
Thes. p. 560. In comparison with other large buildings of antiquity, and also of modern times, the work was executed in a very short time. But we must bear in mind that the building was not a very large one, notwithstanding all its splendour; that an unusually large number of workmen were employed upon it; and that the preparation of the materials, more especially the hewing of the stones, took place at Lebanon, and for the most part preceded the laying of the foundation of the temple, so that this is not to be included in the seven years and a half.
Moreover, the period mentioned probably refers to the building of the temple-house and court of the priests only, and to the general arrangement of the outer court, and does not include the completion of the underground works which were necessary to prepare the space required for them, and of which only a portion may have been carried out by Solomon. f112 The importance of the temple is clearly expressed in 1 Kings 8:13,27; 9:3; 2 Chron 6:2, and other passages. It was to be a house built as the dwellingplace for Jehovah, a place for His seat for ever; not indeed in any such sense as that the house could contain God within its space, when the heavens of heavens cannot contain Him (1 Kings 8:27), but a house where the name of Jehovah is or dwells (ch. 8:16ff.; 2 Chron 6:5; cf. 2 Sam 7:13, etc.), i.e., where God manifests His presence in a real manner to His people, and shows Himself to them as the covenant God, so that Israel may there worship Him and receive an answer to its prayers. The temple had therefore the same purpose as the tabernacle, whose place it took, and which it resembled in its fundamental form, its proportions, divisions, and furniture. As the glory of the Lord entered into the tabernacle in the cloud, so did it into the temple also at its dedication, to sanctify it as the place of the gracious presence of God (1 Kings 8:10; 2 Chron 5:14).
The temple thereby became not only a visible pledge of the lasting duration of the covenant, by virtue of which God would dwell among His people, but also a copy of the kingdom of God, which received at its erection an embodiment answering to its existing condition at the time. As the tabernacle, with its resemblance to a nomad’s tent, answered to the time when Israel had not yet found rest in the promised land of the Lord; so was the temple, regarded as an immoveable house, a pledge that Israel had not acquired its lasting inheritance in Canaan, and that the kingdom of God on earth had obtained a firm foundation in the midst of it.-This relation between the temple and the tabernacle will serve to explain all the points of difference which present themselves between these two sanctuaries, notwithstanding their agreement in fundamental forms and in all essential particulars. As a house or palace of Jehovah, the temple was not only built of solid and costly materials, with massive walls of square stones, and with floors, ceilings, walls, and doors of cedar, cypress, and olive woods-these almost imperishable kinds of wood-but was also provided with a hall like the palaces of earthly kings, and with side buildings in three stories in which to keep the utensils requisite for a magnificent ceremonial, though care was taken that there adjoining and side buildings were not attached directly to the main building so as to violate the indestructibility and perfectness of the house of God, but merely helped to exalt it and elevate its dignity.
And the increased size of the inner rooms, whilst the significant forms and measures of the tabernacle were preserved, was also essentially connected with this. Whereas the length and breadth of the dwelling were doubled, and the height of the whole house tripled, the form of a cube was still retained for the Most Holy Place as the stamp of the perfected kingdom of God (see Comm. on Pent. p. 441), and the space was fixed at twenty cubits in length, breadth, and height. On the other hand, in the case of the Holy Place the sameness of height and breadth were sacrificed to the harmonious proportions of the house or palace, as points of inferior importance; and the measurements were thirty cubits in height, twenty cubits in breadth, and forty cubits in length; so that ten as the number of perfectness was preserved as the standard even here. And in order to exhibit still further the perfectness and glory of the house of God, the walls were not constructed of ordinary quarry-stone, but of large square stones prepared at the quarry, and the walls were panelled within with costly wood after the manner of the palaces of Hither Asia, the panelling being filled with carved work and overlaid with gold plate.
And whereas the overlaying of the whole of the interior with gold shadowed forth the glory of the house as the residence of the heavenly King, the idea of this house of God was still more distinctly expressed in the carved work of the walls. In the tabernacle the walls were decorated with tapestries in costly colours and interwoven figures of cherubim; but in the temple they were ornamented with carved work of figures of cherubim, palms, and opening flowers. To the figures of cherubim, as representations of the heavenly spirits which surround the Lord of glory and set forth the psychical life at its highest stage, there are thus added flowers, and still more particularly palms, those “princes of the vegetable kingdom,” which, with their fine majestic growth, and their large, fresh, evergreen leaves, unite within themselves the whole of the fulness and glory of the vegetable life; to set forth the sanctuary (probably with special reference to Canaan as the land of palms, and with an allusion to the glory of the King of peace, inasmuch as the palm is not only the sign of Palestine, but also the symbol of peace) “as a place that was ever verdant, abiding in all the freshness of strength, and enfolding within itself the fulness of life,” and thereby to make it a scene of health and life, of peace and joy, a “paradise of God,” where the righteous who are planted there flourish, and blossom, and bear fruit to old age (Ps 92:13). And this idea of the house, as an immoveable dwelling-place of God, is in perfect harmony with the setting up of two colossal cherubim in the Most Holy Place, which filled the whole space with their outspread wings, and overshadowed the ark of the covenant, to show that the ark of the covenant with its small golden cherubim upon the Capporeth, which had journeyed with the people through the desert to Canaan, was henceforth to have there a permanent and unchangeable abode. SOLOMON’S PALACE AND THE FURNITURE OF THE TEMPLE.
1 KINGS. 7:1-12
Erection of the royal palace.
V. 1 is closely connected in form with 1 Kings 6:38, and contains a summary account of the building, which is more minutely described in vv. 2-12. “And Solomon built his house (his palace) in thirteen years, and finished (in that time) all his house.” The thirteen years are to be reckoned after the completion of the temple in seven years, so that the two buildings were executed in twenty years (1 Kings 9:10). The expression kaalbeeytow is used, because the palace consisted of several buildings connected together; namely, (1) the house of the forest of Lebanon (vv. 2-5); (2) the pillar-hall with the porch (v. 6); (3) the throne-room and judgment-hall (v. 7); (4) the king’s dwelling-house and the house of Pharaoh’s daughter (v. 8).
That all these buildings were only different portions of the one royal palace, and the house of the forest of Lebanon was not a summer residence of Solomon erected on Lebanon itself, as many of the earlier commentators supposed, is indisputably evident, not only from the first verse when correctly interpreted, but also and still more clearly from the fact that when the buildings of Solomon are spoken of afterwards (see 1 Kings 9:1,10,15, and 10:12), we only read of the house of Jehovah and the house of the king, that is to say, of the temple and one palace. The description of the several portions of this palace is so very brief, that it is impossible to form a distinct idea of its character. The different divisions are given in vv. 1-8 in their natural order, commencing at the back and terminating with the front (v. 8), and there then follows in vv. 9-12 the description of the stones that were used.
Verse 2-5. The house of the forest of Lebanon.-This building-so named because it was built, so to speak, of a forest of cedar pillars-is called in the Arabic the “house of his arms,” because, according to 1 Kings 10:17, it also served as a keeping-place for arms:” it is hardly to be regarded, however, as simply an arsenal, but was probably intended for other purposes also. He built it “a hundred cubits its length, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height, on four rows of cedar pillars, and hewn cedar beams (were) over the pillars.” As the building was not merely a hall of pillars, but, according to v. 3, had side-rooms [l;xe , cf. 1 Kings 6:5) above the pillars, the construction of it can hardly be represented in any other way than this, that the rooms were built upon four rows of pillars, which ran round all four sides of the building, which was 100 cubits long and fifty cubits broad in the inside, and thus surrounded the inner courtyard on all sides. Of course the building could not rest merely upon pillars, but was surrounded on the outside with a strong wall of hewn square stones (v. 9), so that the hewn beams which were laid upon the pillars had their outer ends built into the wall, and were supported by it, so as to give to the whole building the requisite strength. f113 Verse 3-4. “And roofing in (of) cedar was above the over the side-rooms upon the pillars, five and forty; fifteen the row.” ˆpæs; is to be understood of the roofing, as in 1 Kings 6:15 (compare ˆPusi , ch. 6:15). The numbers “forty-five and fifteen the row” cannot refer to `dWM[æ , but must refer, as Thenius assumes, to [l;xe as the main idea, which is more precisely defined by `dWM[æ `l[æ . If we took it as referring to the pillars, as I myself have formerly done, we should have to assume that there were only galleries or pillar-halls above the lower rows of pillars, which is at variance with [l;xe .
There were forty-five side-rooms, therefore, built upon the lower rows of pillars, in rangers of fifteen each. This could only be done by the ranges of rooms being built, not side by side, but one over the other, in other words, by the forty-five side-rooms forming three stories, as in the side buildings of the temple, so that each story had a “row” of fifteen side-rooms round it.
This view receives support from v. 4: “and beam-layers ãquv; , beams, as in 1 Kings 6:4) were three rows, and outlook against outlook three times;” i.e., the rows of side-rooms were built one over the other by means of layers of beams, so that the rooms had windows opposite to one another three times; that is to say, the windows looking out upon the court were so arranged in the three stories that those on the one side were vis à vis to those on the opposite side of the building. The expression in v. 5, hz,j’m,Ala, hz;j’m, lWm , “window over against window,” compels us to take hz,j’m,Ala, in the sense of “opposite to the window” lae , versus), and not, as Thenius proposes, “outlook against outlook,” according to which lae is supposed to indicate that the windows were only separated from one another by slender piers. hz;j’m, , which only occurs here, is different from ˆwOLjæ , the ordinary window, and probably denotes a large opening affording a wide outlook.
Verse 5. “And all the doorways and mouldings were square of beams” ãq,v, is an accusative of free subordination, denoting the material or the mode of execution; cf. Ewald, §284, a., b). “Square with a straight upper beam” (Thenius) cannot be the correct rendering of ãq,v, [bær; . Thenius proposes to read tzOj,m,hæz] for hz;Wzm] , after the reading aiJ cw>rai of the Seventy, who have also rendered hz;j’m, in v. 4 by cw>ra , a broad space. It may be pleaded in support of this, that [bær; is less applicable to the doorposts or mouldings than to the doorways and outlooks (windows), inasmuch as, if the doorways were square, the square form of the moulding or framework would follow as a matter of course. jtæp, are both the doors, through which the different rooms were connected with one another, and also those through which the building and its stories were reached, of course by stairs, probably winding staircases, as in the side stories of the temple. The stairs were placed, no doubt, at the front of the building. The height given is thirty cubits, corresponding to that of the whole building (v. 2). If we reckon the height of the lower pillars at eight cubits, there were twenty-two cubits left for the stories; and assuming that the roofing of each was one cubit in thickness, there remained eighteen cubits in all for the rooms of the three stories; and this, if equally distributed, would give an internal height of six cubits for each story, or if arranged on a graduated scale, which would probably be more appropriate, a height of seven, six, and five cubits respectively.
Verse 6. “And he made the pillar-hall, fifty cubits its length, and thirty cubits its breadth, and a hall in front of them, and pillars and a threshold in front of them.” With regard to the situation of this hall in relation to the other parts of the building, which is not precisely defined, we may infer, from the fact that it is mentioned between the house of the forest of Lebanon and the throne and judgment halls, that it stood between these two. The length of this building (fifty cubits) corresponds to the breadth of the house of the forest of Lebanon; so that, according to the analogy of the temple-hall (1 Kings 6:3), we might picture to ourselves the length given here as running parallel to the breadth of the house of the forest of Lebanon, and might therefore assume that the pillar-hall was fifty cubits broad and thirty cubits deep. But the statement that there was a hall in front of the pillar-hall is irreconcilable with this assumption. We must therefore understand the length in the natural way, as signifying the measurement from back to front, and regard the pillar-hall as a portico fifty cubits long and thirty cubits broad, in front of which there was also a porch as an entrance. µh,ynep]Al[æ , in front of them, i.e., in front of the pillars which formed this portico. The last words, “and pillars and threshold in front of them,” refer to the porch. This had also pillars, probably on both sides of the doorway, which carried the roof; and in front of them was `b[; , i.e., according to the Chaldee aj;p]qus] , the moulding or framework of the threshold, a threshold-like entrance, with steps.
Verse 7. “And the throne-hall, where he judged, the judgment-hall, he made and (indeed) covered with cedar, from floor to floor.” The thronehall and the judgment-hall are therefore one and the same hall, which was both a court of judgment and an audience-chamber, and in which, no doubt, there stood and splendid throne described in 1 Kings 10:18-20. But it is distinguished from the pillar-hall by the repetition of `hc;[; . It probably followed immediately upon this, but was clearly distinguished from it by the fact that it was covered with cedar [qær]qæ `d[æ [qær]qæ . These words are very obscure. The rendering given by Thenius, “panelled from the floor to the beams of the roof,” is open to these objections: (1) that ˆpæs; generally does not mean to panel, but simply to cover, and that zr,a, ˆpæs; is particular cannot possibly be taken in a different sense here from that which it bears in v. 3, where it denotes the roofing of the rooms built above the portico of pillars; and (2) that the alteration of the second [qrqh into twOrwOQhæ has no critical warrant in the rendering of the Syriac, a fundamento ad coelum ejus usque, or in that of the Vulgate, a pavimento usque ad summitatem, whereas the LXX and Chald. both read [qær]qæ `d[æ . But even if we were to read twOrwOQhæ , this would not of itself signify the roof beams, inasmuch as in Kings 6:16 ryqi or haqowrowt receives its more precise definition from the expression ˆPusi ryqi ( twOrwOq ) in v. 15. The words in question cannot have any other meaning than this: “from the one floor to the other,” i.e., either from the floor of the throne-hall to the floor of the pillar-hall (described in v. 6), or more probably from the lower floor to the upper, inasmuch as there were rooms built over the throne-room, just as in the case of the house of the forest of Lebanon; for [qær]qæ may denote not only the lower floor, but also the floor of upper rooms, which served at the same time as the ceiling of the lower rooms. So much, at any rate, may be gathered from these words, with all their obscurity, that the throne-hall was not an open pillar-hall, but was only open in front, and was shut in by solid walls on the other three sides.
Verse 8. After (behind) the throne and judgment hall then followed the king’s own palace, the principal entrance to which was probably through the throne-hall, so that the king really delivered judgment and granted audiences in the gate of his palace. “His house, where he dwelt, in the other court inwards from the (throne) hall was like this work,” i.e., was built like the throne-hall; “and a (dwelling) house he made for the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Solomon had taken, like this hall.” The construction of the dwelling-places of the king and queen cannot be ascertained from these words, because the hall with which its style is compared is not more minutely described. All that can be clearly inferred from the words, “in the other court inside the hall,” is, that the abode of the king and his Egyptian wife had a court of its own, and when looked at from the entrance, formed the hinder court of the whole palace. The house of Pharaoh’s daughter was probably distinct from the dwelling-place of the king, so that the palace of the women formed a building by itself, most likely behind the dwellinghouse of the king, since the women in the East generally occupy the inner portion of the house. The statement that the dwelling-place of the king and queen formed a court by itself within the complex of the palace, warrants the further inference, that the rest of the buildings (the house of the forest of Lebanon, the pillar-hall, and the throne-hall) were united together in one first or front court.
Verse 9-12. “All these (viz., the whole of the buildings described in vv. 2- 8) were costly stones, after the measure of that which is hewn, sawn with the saw within and without (i.e., on the inner and outer side of the halls and buildings), and from the foundation to the corbels, and from without to the great court,” jpæfe , the corbels, upon which the beams of the roof rest. The LXX renders it eJ>wv tw>n geisw>n . Thenius understands by this the battlements which protected the flat roofs, and therefore interprets jpæfe as signifying the stone border of the roof of the palace. But gei>sov , or gei>ssov gei>sson , merely signifies the projection of the roof, and, generally speaking, every projection in a building resembling a roof, but not the battlement-like protection or border of the flat roof, which is called hq,[mæ in Deut 22:8. xWj , the outside in distinction from the great court, can only be the outer court; and as lwOdG; rxej; is no doubt identical with rjeaæ rxej; (v. 8), and therefore refers to the court surrounding the king’s dwelling-house, xWj is to be understood as relating to the court-yard or fore-court surrounding the front halls.
Verse 10-11. “And the foundation was laid with costly, large stones of ten and eight cubits (sc., in length, and of corresponding breadth and thickness). And above (the foundation, and therefore the visible walls, were) costly stones, after the measure of that which is hewn, and cedars.”
Verse 12. And (as for) the great court, there were found it three rows (i.e., it was formed of three rows) of hewn stones and a row of hewn cedar beams, as in the inner court of the house of Jehovah (see at 1 Kings 6:36) and the hall of the house. rxej; signifies “and so with the court,” Vav serving as a comparison, as in Prov. 25:30,20, and frequently in Proverbs (see Dietrich in Ges. Lex. x.v. w, and Ewald, §340, b.), so that there is no necessity for the un-Hebraic conjecture of Thenius, k¦lachatsar. tyiBæ µl;Wa in all probability refers not to the temple-hall, but to the pillar-hall of the palace, the surrounding wall of which was of the same nature as the wall of the great, i.e., the other or hinder, court. f
114 1 KINGS. 7:13-14
The Metallic Vessels of the Temple (compare 2 Chron 2:13-14, and 3:15-5:1).
To make these vessels king Hiram had sent to Solomon, at his request (2 Chron 2:6), a workman named Hiram of Tyre. V. 13 contains a supplementary remark, in which jlæv; must be rendered in the pluperfect (compare the remarks on Gen 2:19). King Solomon had sent and fetched Hiram from Tyre. This artisan bore the same name as the king, µr;yji or µr;yji (v. 40), in 2 Chron 2:13 µr;Wj (Huram), with the epithet ba; , i.e., my father, ba; being a title of honour equivalent to master or counsellor, as in Gen 45:8. He was the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was yrixo vyai , i.e., a Tyrian by birth. According to 2 Chron 2:13, his mother was “of the daughters of Dan,” i.e., of the tribe of Dan. Both statements may easily be united thus: she was a Danite by birth, and married into the tribe of Naphtali. When her husband died, she was married again as the widow of a Naphtalite, and became the wife of a Tyrian, to whom she bore a son, Hiram. This explanation is also adopted by Bertheau (on the Chronicles); and the conjecture of Lundius, Thenius, and others, that the mother was an Israelitish widow of the city of Dan in the tribe of Naphtali, which was quite close to Tyre, is less in harmony with the expression “of the daughters of Dan.” tv,jn] vrejo , “a brass-worker,” refers to aWh (he), i.e., Hiram, and not to his father (Thenius).
The skill of Hiram is described in almost the same terms as that of Bezaleel in Ex 31:3ff., with this exception, that Bezaleel’s skill is attributed to his being filled with the Spirit of God, i.e., is described rather as a supernatural gift, whereas in the case of Hiram the more indefinite expression, “he was filled with wisdom, etc.,” is used, representing it rather as a natural endowment. In the account given here, Hiram is merely described as a worker in brass, because he is only mentioned at the commencement of the section which treats of the preparation of the brazen vessels of the temple.
According to 2 Chron 2:14, he was able to work in gold, silver, brass, iron, stone, wood, purple, etc. There is nothing improbable in this extension of his skill to wood and to the art of weaving. Bezaleel also combined in himself all these talents. Of course Hiram was merely a foreman or leader of these different branches of art; and he certainly did not come alone, but brought several assistants with him, who carried out the different works under his superintendence.-The enumeration of them commences with the pillars of the temple-hall.
1 KINGS. 7:15-22
The brazen pillars of the porch (compare 2 Chron 3:15-17).-He formed the two brazen pillars, which were erected, according to 2 Chron 3:15, “before the (temple) house, i.e., in front of the hall of the temple. One was eighteen cubits high, and a thread of twelve cubits surrounded (spanned) the other pillar.” The statement of the height of the one pillar and that of the circumference of the other is to be understood as an abbreviated expression, signifying that the height and thickness mentioned applied to the one as well as to the other, or that they were alike in height and circumference. According to the Chronicles, they were thirty-five cubits long; which many expositors understand as signifying that the length of the two together was thirty-five cubits, so that each one was only 17 1/2 cubits long, for which the full number 18 is substituted in our text. But this mode of reconciling the discrepancy is very improbable, and is hardly in harmony with the words of the Chronicles. The number 35 evidently arose from confounding the numeral letters ych = 18 with wOl] = 35. The correctness of the number 18 is confirmed by 2 Kings 25:17 and Jer 52:21. The pillars were hollow, the brass being four finger-breadths in thickness (Jer 52:21); and they were cast in the Jordan valley (v. 46).
Verse 16. “And he made two capitals tr,t,ko ), to set them on the heads of the pillars, cast in brass, five cubits the height of the one and of the other capital.” If, on the other hand, in 2 Kings 25:17 the height of the capital is said to have been three cubits, this discrepancy cannot be explained on the supposition that the capitals had been reduced two cubits in the course of time; but the statement rests, like the parallel passage in Jer 52:22, upon an error of the text, i.e., upon the substitution of g (3) for h (5).
Verse 17. “Plait (i.e., ornaments of plait), plait-work and cords (twist, resembling) chain-work, were on the capitals, which were upon the heads of the pillars, seven on the one capital and seven on the other capital.”
Consequently this decoration consisted of seven twists arranged as festoons, which were hung round the capitals of the pillars.
Verse 18. “And he made pomegranates, and indeed two rows round about the one twist, to cover the capitals which were upon the head of the pillars; and so he did with the other capital.” In the Masoretic text the words `dWM[æ and ˆwOMri are confused together, and we must read, as some of the Codd. do, in the first clause µyniMor;h;Ata, for µydiWM[h;Ata, , and in the middle clause µydiWM[h; varoAl[ for µyniMor;h; varoAl[ . This is not only required by the sense, but sustained by a comparison with v. 19. The relation between the two rows of pomegranates and the plaited work is indeed not precisely defined; but it is generally and correctly assumed, that one row ran round the pillars below the plaited work and the other above, so that the plaited work, which was formed of seven cords plaited together in the form of festoons, was enclosed above and below by the rows of pomegranates.
If we compare with this the further statements in vv. 41 and 42, 2 Chron 3:16 and 4:12-13, and Jer 52:23, tr,t,ko is there more precisely designated tr,t,ko hL;Gu , “bowls of the capitals,” from which it is evident that the lower portion of the capitals, to which the braided work was fastened, was rounded in the form of a pitcher or caldron. the number of the pomegranates on the two festoons is given at 400, so that there were on each capital, and consequently each row contained 100 (2 Chron 3:16); and according to Jer. (l.c.) there were 96 jæWr , “windwards,” and in all on the braided work round about. jæWr , “windwards,” can hardly be taken in any other sense than this: in the direction of the wine, i.e., facing the four quarters of the heavens. This meaning is indisputably sustained by the use of the word jæWr , to denote the quarters of the heavens, in statements of the aspect of buildings (Ezek 42:16-18), whereas there is no foundation whatever for such meanings as “airwards = uncovered” (Böttcher, Thenius), or hanging freely (Ewald). f115 Verse 19-20. In vv. 19 and 20 a second decoration of the capitals of the pillars is mentioned, from which we may see that the rounding with the chain-like plaited work and the pomegranates enclosing it did not cover the capital to the very top, but only the lower portion of it. The decoration of the upper part is described in v. 19: “And capitals, which were upon the top of the pillars, were (or, Hiram made) lily-work after the manner of the hall, four cubits.” The lily-work occupied, according to v. 20, the upper portion of the capitals, which is here called tr,t,ko , as a crown set upon the lower portion. It was lily-work, i.e., sculpture in the form of flowering lilies. The words hM;aæ [Bær]aæ µl;Wa are obscure. According to Böttcher and Thenius, µl;Wa is intended to indicate the position of the pillars within the hall, so that their capitals sustained the lintel of the doorway.
But even if µl;Wa were rendered, within the hall, as it is by Böttcher, it is impossible to see how this meaning could be obtained from the words “capitals upon the head of the pillars lily-work within the hall.” In that case we must at least have “the pillars within the hall;” and µl;Wa would be connected with `dWM[æ , instead of being separated from it by ˆvæWv hc,[mæ .
Even if we were to introduce a stop after ˆvæWv and take µl;Wa by itself, the expression “in (or at) the hall” would not in itself indicate the position of the pillars in the doorway, to say nothing of the fact that it is only in v. 21 that anything is said concerning the position of the pillars. Again, the measurement “four cubits” cannot be understood, as it is by Thenius, as denoting the diameter of the capitals of the pillars; it must rather indicate the measure of the lily-work, that is to say, it affirms that there were four cubits of lily-work on the capitals, which were five cubits high-in other words, the lily-work covered the four upper cubits of the capitals; from which it still further follows, that the plaited work which formed the decoration of the lower portion of the capitals was only one cubit broad or high. Consequently µl;Wa cannot be understood in any other sense than “in the manner of or according to the hall,” and can only express the thought, that there was lily-work on the capitals of the pillars as there was on the hall. For the vindication of this use of b] see Ges. Lex. by Dietrich, s.v. b. f116 There is no valid objection to the inference to which this leads, namely, that on the frontispiece of the temple-hall there was a decoration of lily-work.
For since the construction of the hall is not more minutely described, we cannot expect a description of its decorations.-In v. 20 a more precise account is given of the position in which the crowns consisting of lily-work were placed on the capitals of this columns, so that this verse is to be regarded as an explanation of v. 19: namely, capitals upon the pillars (did he make) also above near the belly, which was on the other side of the plait-work.” ˆf,B, , the belly, i.e., the belly-shaped rounding, can only be the rounding of the lower portion of the capitals, which is called hL;auG] in vv. 41, 42. Hence hk;b;c] `rb,[e (Keri), “on the other side of the plaited work,” can only mean behind or under the plait, since we cannot suppose that there was a belly-shaped rounding above the caldron-shaped rounding which was covered with plaited work, and between this and the lily-work.
The belly-shaped rounding, above or upon which the plaited work lay round about, might, when looked at from without, be described as being on the other side of it, i.e., behind it. In the second half of the verse: “and the pomegranates two hundred in rows round about on the second capital,” the number of the pomegranates placed upon the capitals, which was omitted in v. 18, is introduced in a supplementary form. f117 Verse 21. “And he set up the pillars at the hall of the Holy Place, and set up the right pillar, and called its name Jachin, and...the left...Boaz.” Instead of lk;yhe µl;Wa we have in 2 Chron 3:15 tyiBæ µynip; , and in v. 17 lk;yheh\ ynep]Al[æ , “before the house,” “before the Holy Place.” This unquestionably implies that the two brazen pillars stood unconnected in front of the hall, on the right and left sides of it, and not within the hall as supporters of the roof. Nevertheless many have decided in favour of the latter view. But of the four arguments used by Thenius in proof that this was the position of the pillars, there is no force whatever in the first, which is founded upon Amos 9:1, unless we assume, as Merz and others do, that the words of the prophet, “Smite the capital, that the thresholds may shake, and break them (the capitals of the pillars), that they may fall upon the head of all,” refer to the temple at Jerusalem, and not, as Thenius and others suppose, to the temple erected at Bethel for the calf-worship.
For even if the temple at Bethel had really had a portal supported by pillars, it would by no means follow that the pillars Jachin and Boaz in Solomon’s temple supported the roof of the hall, as it is nowhere stated that the temple of Jeroboam at Bethel was an exact copy of that of Solomon. And even with the only correct interpretation, in which the words of Amos are made to refer to the temple at Jerusalem, the argument founded upon them in support of the position of the pillars as bearers of the hall rests upon the false idea, that the ã[is; , which are shaken by the smiting of the capital, are the beams lying upon the top of the pillars, or the superliminaria of the hall.
It is impossible to prove that ãsæ has any such meaning. The beam over the entrance, or upon the doorposts, is called ãwOqv]mæ in Ex 12:7,22-23, whereas ãsæ denotes the threshold, i.e., the lower part of the framework of the door, as is evident from Judg 19:27.
The words of the prophet are not to be interpreted architecturally, but to be taken in a rhetorical sense; “so that by the blow, which strikes the capital, and causes the thresholds to tremble, such a blow is intended as shakes the temple in all its joints” (Baur on Amos 9:1). rTop]Kæ , a kind of ornament at the top of the pillars, and ãsæ , the thresholds, are opposed to one another, to express the thought that the building is to be shaken and destroyed a summo usque ad imum, a capite ad calcem” (Hengstenberg, Chrisol. i. p. 366 transl.). The other arguments derived from Ezek 40:48 and 49, and from Josephus, Ant. viii. 3, 4, prove nothing at all. From the words of Josephus, tou’toon too’n kio’noon to’n me’n he’teron kata’ tee’n dexia’n e’steese tou’ propulai’ou parasta’da...to’n de’ he’teron k.t.l, it would only follow “that the pillars (according to the view of Josephus) must have stood in the doorway,” if it were the case that parasta’s had no other meaning than doorpost, and propu’laion could be understood as referring to the temple-hall generally.
But this is conclusively disproved by the fact that Josephus always calls the temple-hall pro>naon (l.c., and viii. 3, 2 and 3), so that propu>laion can only denote the fore-court, and parasta’s a pillar standing by itself.
Consequently Josephus regarded the pillars Jachin and Boaz as propylaea erected in front of the hall. We must therefore adhere to the view expressed by Bähr (d. Tempel, p. 35ff.), that these pillars did not support the roof of the temple-hall, but were set up in front of the hall on either side of the entrance. In addition to the words of the text, this conclusion is sustained (1) by the circumstance that the two pillars are not mentioned in connection with the building of the temple and the hall, but are referred to for the first time here in the enumeration of the sacred vessels of the court that were made of brass. “If the pillars had formed an essential part of the construction and had been supporters of the hall, they would certainly have been mentioned in the description of the building, and not have been placed among the articles of furniture” (Schnaase); and moreover they would not have been made of metal like the rest of the vessels, but would have been constructed of the same building materials as the hall and the house, namely, of stone or wood (Bähr). And to this we may add (2) the monumental character of the pillars, which is evident from the names given to them. No architectural portion of the building received a special name. f118 Jachin ˆWK): “he establishes,” stabiliet templum (Simonis Onom. p. 430); and Boaz z[æBo ), ex `z[æ µyrit;a in illo, sc. Domino, robur (Sim. p. 460).
Kimchi has correctly interpreted the first name thus: “Let this temple stand for ever;” and the second, “Solomon desired that God would give it strength and endurance.” The pillars were symbols of the stability and strength, which not only the temple as an outward building, but the kingdom of God in Israel as embodied in the temple, received from the Lord, who had chosen the temple to be His dwelling-place in the midst of His people. f119 Verse 22. In v. 22 it is stated again that there was lily-work upon the head of the pillars-a repetition which may be explained from the significance of this emblem of the capitals of the pillars; and then the words, “So was the work of the capitals finished,” bring the account of this ornament of the temple to a close.
1 KINGS. 7:23-26
The brazen sea (cf. 2 Chron 4:2-5).- “He made the molten sea-a water-basin called µy; (mare) on account of its size-ten cubits from the one upper rim to the other,” i.e., in diameter measured from the upper rim to the one opposite to it, “rounded all round, and five cubits its (external) height, and a line of thirty cubits encircled it round about,” i.e., it was thirty cubits in circumference. The Chethib hwq is to be read hw,q; here and in Zech 1:16 and Jer 31:39, for which the Keri has yqæ in all these passages. hw,q; or yqæ means a line for measuring, which is expressed in v. 15 by fWj . The relation of the diameter to the circumference is expressed in whole numbers which come very near to the mathematical proportions. The more exact proportions would be as 7 to 22, or 113 to 355.
Verse 24. Any colocynths (gourds) ran round it under its brim, ten to the cubit, surrounding the sea in two rows; the colocynths “cast in its casting,” i.e., cast at the same time as the vessel itself. Instead of [qæp, , gourds (see at 1 Kings 6:18), we find rq;B; tWmD] , figures of oxen, in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and in the last clause merely rq;B; , an evident error of the pen, µyrq being substituted by mistake for µy[qp , and afterwards interpreted µyrqb twmd . The assumption by which the early expositors removed the discrepancy, namely, that they were casts of bullocks’ heads, is not to be thought of, for the simple reason that bqrym signifies oxen and not the heads of oxen. How far apart the two rows of gourd-like ornaments were, it is impossible to decide. Their size may be estimated, from the fact that there were ten within the space of a cubit, at a little over two inches in diameter.
Verse 25-26. This vessel stood (rested) upon twelve brazen oxen, three turning to the north, three to the west, three to the south, and three to the east, “and the sea above upon them, and all their backs (turned) inwards;” i.e., they were so placed that three of their heads were directed towards each quarter of the heavens. The size of the oxen is not given; but we must assume that it was in proportion to the size and height of the sea, and therefore about five cubits in height up to the back. These figures stood, no doubt, upon a metal plate, which gave them a fixed and immoveable position (see the engraving in my bibl. Archäol. Taf. iii. fig. 1).
Verse 25-26. “And its thickness (i.e., the thickness of the metal) was a handbreadth” = four finger-breadths, as in the case of the brazen pillars (see at v. 15), “and its upper rim like work of a goblet (or of a goblet-rim, i.e., bent outwards), lily-blossom,” i.e., ornamented with lily-flowers. It held 2000 baths; according to the Chronicles, 3000 baths. The latter statement has arisen from the confusion of g (3) with b (2); since, according to the calculation of Thenius, the capacity of the vessel, from the dimensions given, could not exceed 2000 baths. This vessel, which took the place of the laver in the tabernacle, was provided for the priests to wash themselves (2 Chron 4:6), that is to say, that a supply of water might be kept in readiness to enable the priests to wash their hands and feet when they approached the altar to officiate, or were about to enter the Holy Place (Ex 30:18ff.). There were no doubt taps by which the water required for this purpose was drawn off from the sea. f120 The artistic form of the vessel corresponded to its sacred purpose. The rim of the basin, which rose upwards in the form of a lily, was intended to point to the holiness and loveliness of that life which issued from the sanctuary. The twelve oxen, on which it rested, pointed to the twelve tribes of Israel as a priestly nation, which cleansed itself here in the persons of its priests, to appear clean and holy before the Lord. Just as the number twelve unquestionably suggests the allusion to the twelve tribes of the covenant nation, so, in the choice of oxen or bullocks as supporters of the basin, it is impossible to overlook the significance of this selection of the first and highest of the sacrificial animals to represent the priestly service, especially if we compare the position of the lions on Solomon’s throne (1 Kings 10:20).
1 KINGS. 7:27-39
The Brazen Stands and Their Basins. f121 He made ten stands of brass, each four cubits long, four cubits broad, and three cubits high. hn;wOkm] , stands or stools (Luther), is the name given to these vessels from their purpose, viz., to serve as supports to the basins which were used for washing the flesh of the sacrifices. They were square chests cast in brass, of the dimensions given. Verse 28-29. Their work (their construction) was the following: they had tr,G,s]mi , lit., surroundings, i.e., panels of flat sides, and that between bl;v; , commissurae, i.e., frames or borders, which enclosed the sides, and were connected together at the angles; and upon the panels within the borders (there were figures of) lions, oxen, and cherubim. The statement in Josephus, that each centre was divided into three compartments, has nothing to support it in the biblical text, nor is it at all probable in itself, inasmuch as a division of this kind would have rendered the figures placed upon them insignificantly small. “And upon the borders was a base above.” ˆKe is a noun, and has been rendered correctly by the Chaldee at;n]kæ , basis.
The meaning is, above, over the borders, there was a pedestal for the basin upon the chest, which is more fully described in v. 31.
To take ˆKe as an adverb does not give a suitable sense. For if we adopt the rendering, and upon the corner borders (or ledges) likewise above (De Wette and Ewald)-i.e., there were also figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim upon the corner borders-it is impossible to tell what the meaning of l[æmæ can be, to say nothing of the fact that on the corner borders there could hardly be room for such figures as these. This last argument also tells against the rendering adopted by Thenius: “and upon the corner borders, above as well as below the lions and oxen, (there were) wreaths;” in which, moreover, it is impossible to attach any supportable meaning to the ˆKe .
When, on the other hand, Thenius objects to our view that the pedestal in question is spoken of for the first time in v. 31, and that the expression “above the corner borders (ledges)” would be extremely unsuitable, since the pedestal in question was above the whole stand; the former remark is not quite correct, for v. 31 merely contains a more minute description of the character of the pedestal, and the latter is answered by the fact that the pedestal derived its strength from the corner borders or ledges. “And below the lions and oxen were wreaths, pendant work.” hy;lo , here and at v. 36, is to be explained from yYiwile in Prov 1:9 and 4:9, and signifies twists or wreaths. dr;wOm hc,[mæ is not “work of sinking,” i.e., sunken work (Thenius), which never can be the meaning of dr;wOm , but pendant work, festoons, by which, however, we cannot understand festoons hanging freely, or floating in the air.
Verse 30. “Every stool had four brazen wheels and brazen axles, and the four feet thereof had shoulder-pieces; below the basin were the shoulder- pieces cast, beyond each one (were) wreaths.” The meaning is that the square chests stood upon axles with wheels of brass, after the style of ordinary carriage wheels (v. 33), so that they could be driven or easily moved from one place to another; and that they did not rest directly upon the axles, but stood upon four feet, which were fastened upon the axles.
This raised the chest above the rim of the wheels, so that not only were the sides of the chest which were ornamented with figures left uncovered, but, according to v. 32, the wheels stood below the panels, and not, as in ordinary carriages, at the side of the chest. With regard to the connection between the axles and the wheels, Gesenius (Thes. p. 972) and Thenius suppose that the axles were fastened to the wheels, as in the Roman plaustra and at the present day in Italy, so as to turn with them; and Thenius argues in support of this, that wOl] is to be connected not only with what immediately precedes, but also with yner]sæ tv,hn] .
But this latter is unfounded; and the idea is altogether irreconcilable with the fact that the wheels had naves ( µyqiVuji , v. 33), from which we must infer that they revolved upon the axles. The words wOl ãteK; µ[æpæ [Bær]aæ are ambiguous. They may either be rendered, “and its four feet had shoulder-pieces,” or, as Thenius supposes, “and its four feet served as shoulder-pieces.” twOpteK] means stepping feet, feet bent out as if for stepping (Ex 25:12). The suffix attached to wytm[p refers to hn;wOkm] , the masculine being often used indefinitely instead of the feminine, as in wOl] in v. 28. Thenius compares these feet to the aJmaxo>podev of the Greeks, and imagines that they were divided below, like fork-shaped upright contrivances, in which, as in forks, the wheels turned with the axles, so that the axle-peg, which projected outwards, had a special apparatus, instead of the usual pin, in the form of a stirrup-like and on the lower side handshaped holder dy; ), which was fastened to the lower rim of the hn;wOkm] , and descended perpendicularly so as to cover the foot, and the general arrangement of the wheels themselves received greater strength in consequence.
These feet, which were divided in the shape of forks, are supposed to be called ãteK; (shoulders), because they were not attached underneath at the edge of the stand, but being cast with the corner rims passed down in the inner angles, so that their uppermost portion was under the basin, and the lowest portion was under the stand, which we are to picture to ourselves as without a bottom, and projecting as a split foot, held the wheel, and so formed its shoulder-pieces. But we cannot regard this representation as either in accordance with the text, or as really correct. Even if wOl ãteK; could in any case be grammatically rendered, “they served them (the wheels and axles) as shoulders,” although it would be a very questionable course to take wOl] in a different sense here from that which it bears in the perfectly similar construction in v. 28, the feet which carried the stand could not possibly be called the shoulders of the wheels and their axles, since they did not carry the wheels, but the hn;wOkm] .
Moreover, this idea is irreconcilable with the following words: “below the basin were the shoulder-pieces cast.” If, for example, as Thenius assumes, the mechonah head a cover which was arched like a dome, and had a neck in the centre into which the basin was inserted by its lower rim, the shoulder-pieces, supposing that they were cast upon the inner borders of the chest, would not be below the basin, but simply below the corners of the lid of the chest, so that they would stand in no direct relation whatever to the basin. We must therefore give the preference to the rendering, which is grammatically the most natural one, “and its feet had shoulder-pieces,” and understand the words as signifying that from the feet, which descended of course from the four corner borders of the chest down to the axles, there ascended shoulder-pieces, which ran along the outside of the chest and reached to the lower part of the basin which was upon the lid of the chest, and as shoulders either supported or helped to support it. According to v. 34, these shoulder-pieces were so cast upon the four corners of the chest, that they sprang out of it as it were. hy;lo vyai `rb,[e , opposite to each one were wreaths. Where these festoons were attached, the various senses in which `rb,[e is used prevent our deciding with certainty. At any rate, we must reject the alternation proposed by Thenius, of hy;lo into dj;a, , for the simple reason that dj;a, vyai in the sense of “one to the other” would not be Hebraic.
Verse 31-34. In v. 31 we have a description of the upper portion of the mechonah, which formed the pedestal for the basin, and therewith an explanation of rwOYKi tjæTæ . “And the mouth of it (the basin) was within the crown and upwards with a cubit, and the mouth of it (the crown) was rounded, stand-work, a cubit and a half (wide), and on its mouth also there was engraved work, and its panels were square, not round.” To understand this verse, we must observe that, according to v. 35, the mechonah chest was provided at the top with a dome-shaped covering, in the centre of which there was an elevation resembling the capital of a pillar tr,t,ko , the crown), supporting the basin, which was inserted into it by its lower rim.
The suffix in hp, (its mouth) is supposed by Thenius to refer to the mechonah chest, and he questions the allusion to the basin, on the ground that this was so flat that a mouth-like opening could not possibly be spoken of, and the basins were never within the mechonah. But however correct these two remarks may be in themselves, they by no means demonstrate the necessity of taking hp, as referring to the mechonah chest.
For hp, (the mouth) is not necessarily to be understood as denoting a mouth-like opening to the basin; but just as varo hp, in Ex 28:32 signifies the opening of the clothes for the head, i.e., for putting the head through when putting on the clothes, so may hp, (its mouth) be the opening or mouth for the basin, i.e., the opening into which the basin fitted and was emptied, the water in the basin being let off into the mechonah chest through the head-shaped neck by means of a tap or plug. The mouth was really the lower or contracted portion of the shell-shaped basin, which was about a cubit in height within the neck and upwards, that is to say, in all, inasmuch as it went partly into the neck and rose in part above it. The hp, (the mouth thereof) which follows is the (upper) opening of the crown-like neck of the lid of the mechonah. This was rounded, ma`aseeh-keen, standwork, i.e., according to De Wette’s correct paraphrase, formed after the style of the foot of a pillar, a cubit and a half in diameter. “And also upon the mouth of it (the mechonah) was carved work.” The µGæ (also) refers to the fact that the sides of the mechonah were already ornamented with carving. tr,G,s]mi , the panels of the crown-like neck tr,t,ko ) and its mouth hp, ) were square, like the panels of the sides of the mechonah chest. The fact that panels are spoken of in connection with this neck, may be explained on the assumption that with its height of one cubit and its circumference of almost five cubits (which follows from its having a diameter of a cubit and a half) it had stronger borders of brass to strengthen its bearing power, while between them it consisted of thinner plates, which are called fillings or panels.-In vv. 32, 33, the wheels are more minutely described. Every stool had four wheels under the panels, i.e., not against the sides of the chest, but under them, and dy; , hands or holders of the wheels, i.e., special contrivances for fastening the wheels to the axles, probably larger and more artistically worked than the linch-pins of ordinary carriages.
These dy; were only required when the wheels turned upon the axles, and not when they were fastened to them. The height of the wheel was a cubit and a half, i.e., not half the height, but the whole. For with a half height of a cubit and a half the wheels would have been three cubits in diameter; and as the chest was only four cubits long, the hinder wheels and front wheels would almost have touched one another. The work (construction) of the wheels resembled that of (ordinary) carriage wheels; but everything about them (holders, felloes, spokes, and naves) was cast in brass.-In v. 34 the description passes to the upper portion of the mechonah. “And he made four shoulder-pieces at the four corners of one (i.e., of every) stand; out of the stand were its shoulder-pieces.” ãteK; are the shoulder-pieces already mentioned in v. 30, which were attached to the feet below, or which terminated in feet. They were fastened to the corners in such a way that they seemed to come out of them; and they rose above the corners with a slight inclination (curve) towards the middle of the neck or capital, till they came under the outer rim of the basin which rested upon the capital of the lid of the chest, so as to support the basin, which turned considerably outwards at the top.
Verse 35-36. “And on the upper part of the stand (the mechonah chest) half a cubit high was rounded all round, and on the upper part were its holders, and its panels out of it. hn;wOkm] varo is the upper portion of the square chest. This was not flat, but rounded, i.e., arched, so that the arching rose half a cubit high above the height of the sides. This arched covering (or lid) had dy; , holders, and panels, which were therefore upon the upper part of the hn;wOkm] . The holders we take to be strong broad borders of brass, which gave the lid the necessary firmness; and the fillings or panels are the thinner plates of brass between them. They were both ˆmi , “out of it,” out of the upper part of the mechonah, i.e., cast along with it.
With regard to the decoration of it, v. 36 states that “he cut out (engraved) upon the plates of its holders, and upon its panels, cherubim, lions, and palms, according to the empty space of every one, and wreaths all round.”
We cannot determine anything further with regard to the distribution of these figures. Verse 37-38. “Thus he made the ten stools of one kind of casting, measure, and form, and also ten brazen basins rwOYKi ), each holding forty baths, and each basin four cubits.” In a round vessel this can only be understood of the diameter, not of the height or depth, as the basins were set upon `l[æ ) the stands. `al-ham¦kownaah ‘echaad kiyowr is dependent upon `hc;[; : he made ten basins,...one basin upon a stand for the ten stands, i.e., one basin for each stand. If then the basins were a cubit in diameter at the top, and therefore their size corresponded almost exactly to the length and breadth of the stand, whilst the crown-like neck, into which they were inserted, was only a cubit and a half in diameter (v. 31), their shape must have resembled that of widespreading shells. And the form thus given to them required the shoulder-pieces described in vv. 30 and 34 as supports beneath the outer rim of the basins, to prevent their upsetting when the carriage was wheeled about. f122 Verse 39. And he put the stands five on the right side of the house and five on the left; and the (brazen) sea he put upon the right side eastwards, opposite to the south. The right side is the south side, and the left the north side. Consequently the stands were not placed on the right and left, i.e., on each side of the altar of burnt-offering, but on each side of the house, i.e., of the temple-hall; while the brazen sea stood farther forward between the hall and the altar, only more towards the south, i.e., to the south-east of the hall and the south-west of the altar of burnt-offering. The basins upon the stands were for washing (according to 2 Chron 4:6), namely, “the work of the burnt-offering,” that is to say, for cleansing the flesh and fat, which were to be consumed upon the altar of burnt-offering. By means of the stands on wheels they could not only easily bring the water required near to the priests who were engaged in preparing the sacrifices, but could also let down the dirty water into the chest of the stand by means of a special contrivance introduced for the purpose, and afterwards take it away.
As the introduction of carriages for the basins arose from the necessities of the altar-service, so the preparation of ten such stands, and the size of the basins, was occasioned by the greater extension of the sacrificial worship, in which it often happened that a considerable number of sacrifices had to be made ready for the altar at the same time. The artistic work of these stands and their decoration with figures were intended to show that these vessels were set apart for the service of the sanctuary. The emblems are to some extent the same as those on the walls of the sanctuary, viz., cherubim, palms, and flowers, which had therefore naturally the same meaning here as they had there; the only difference being that they were executed there in gold, whereas here they were in brass, to correspond to the character of the court. Moreover, there were also figures of lions and oxen, pointing no doubt to the royal and priestly characters, which were combined, according to Ex 19:6, in the nation worshipping the Lord in this place.
1 KINGS. 7:40-51
Summary enumeration of the other vessels of the temple.
In v. 40 the brazen vessels of the court are given. In vv. 41-47 the several portions of the brazen pillars, the stands and basins, the brazen sea and the smaller vessels of brass, are mentioned once more, together with notices of the nature, casting, and quantity of the metal used for making them. An din vv. 48-50 we have the golden vessels of the Holy Place. This section agrees almost word for word with 2 Chron 4:11-5:1, where, moreover, not only is the arrangement observed in the previous description of the templebuilding a different one, but the making of the brazen altar of burntoffering, of the golden candlesticks, and of the table of shew-bread, and the arrangement of the great court (2 Chron 4:7-9) are also described, to which there is no allusion whatever in the account before us; so that these notices in the Chronicles fill up an actual gap in the description of the building of the temple which is given here. 40a. The smaller brazen vessels.-Hiram made the pots, shovels, and bowls. rwOYKi is a slip of the pen for rysi , pots, as we may see by comparing it with v. 45 and the parallel passages 2 Chron 4:11 and 2 Kings 25:14. The pots were used for carrying away the ashes; [y; , the shovels, for clearing the ashes from the altar; qr;z]mi were the bowls used for catching the blood, when the sacrificial animals were slaughtered: compare Ex 27:3 and Num 4:14, where forks and fire-basins or coal-pans are also mentioned. 40b. V. 40b introduces the recapitulation of all the vessels made by Hiram. hwO;hy] tyiBæ , in the house of the Lord (cf. Ewald, §300, b.); in 2 Chron 4:11 more clearly, yy tyiBæ ; we find it also in v. 45, for which we have in 2 Chron 4:16 hwO;hy] tyiBæ , for the house of Jehovah. The several objects enumerated in vv. 41-45 are accusatives governed by `hc;[; . Verse 41-42. the brazen pillars with the several portions of their capitals; see at vv. 15-22. The inappropriate expression µydiMu[æh; ynep]Al[æ (upon the face of the pillars) in v. 42 is probably a mistake for [h ynev]Al[æ , “upon the two pillars,” for it could not properly be said of the capitals that they were upon the surface of the pillars.
Verse 43-45. The ten stands and their basins: see at vv. 27-37; v. 44, the brazen sea: vid., vv. 23-26; lastly, v. 45, the pots, etc., as at v. 40. The Chethîb lh,ao is a mistake for hL,ae (Keri). f123 mr;mom] tv,hn] , of polished brass-accusative of the material governed by `hc;[; .
Verse 46. “In the Jordan valley he cast them-in thickened earth between Succoth and Zarthan,” where the ground, according to Burckhardt, Syr. ii. p. 593, is marly throughout. hm;d;a hb,[mæ , “by thickening of the earth,” the forms being made in the ground by stamping together the clayey soil.
Succoth was on the other side of the Jordan-not, however, at the ford near Bethsean (Thenius), but on the south side of the Jabbok (see at Judg 8:5 and Gen 33:17). Zarthan or Zereda was in the Jordan valley on this side, probably at Kurn Sartabeh (see at Judg 7:22 and Josh 3:16). The castingplace must have been on this side of the Jordan, as the (eastern) bank on the other side has scarcely any level ground at all. The circumstance that a place on the other side is mentioned in connection with one on this side, may be explained from the fact that the two places were obliquely opposite to one another, and in the valley on this side there was no large place in the neighbourhood above Zarthan which could be appropriately introduced to define the site of the casting-place.
Verse 47. Solomon left all these vessels of excessive number unweighed. jnæy; does not mean he laid them down (= set them up: Movers), but he let them lie, i.e., unweighed, as the additional clause, “the weight of the brass was not ascertained,” clearly shows. This large quantity of brass, according to 1 Chron 18:8, David had taken from the cities of Hadadezer, adding also the brass presented to him by Toi.
Verse 48-49. The golden vessels of the Holy Place (cf. 2 Chron 4:19-22).
The vessels enumerated here are divided, by the repetition of rgæs; bh;z; in vv. 49 and 50, into two classes, which were made of fine gold; and to this a third class is added in v. 50b which was made of gold of inferior purity. As rgæs; bh;z; is governed in both instances by `hc;[; as an accusative of the material, the bh;z; (gold) attached to the separate vessels must be taken as an adjective. “Solomon made all the vessels in the house of Jehovah (i.e., had them made): the golden altar, and the golden table on which was the shew-bread, and the candlesticks...of costly gold rgæs; : see at 1 Kings 6:20). The house of Jehovah is indeed here, as in v. 40, the temple with its courts, and not merely the Holy Place, or the temple-house in the stricter sense; but it by no means follows from this that kaal-hakeeliym, “all the vessels,” includes both the brazen vessels already enumerated and also the golden vessels mentioned afterwards.
A decisive objection to our taking the lKo (all) as referring to those already enumerated as well as those which follow, is to be found in the circumstance that the sentence commencing with `hc;[; is only concluded with rgæs; bh;z; in v. 49. It is evident from this that kaal-hakeeliym is particularized in the several vessels enumerated from jæBez]mi tae onwards.
These vessels no doubt belonged to the Holy Place or temple-house only; though this is not involved in the expression “the house of Jehovah,” but is apparent from the context, or from the fact that all the vessels of the court have already been enumerated in vv. 40-46, and were made of brass, whereas the golden vessels follow here. That there were intended for the Holy Place is assumed as well known from the analogy of the tabernacle. hwO;hy] tyiBæ rv,a merely affirms that the vessels mentioned afterwards belonged to the house of God, and were not prepared for the palace of Solomon or any other earthly purpose.
We cannot infer from the expression “Solomon made” that the golden vessels were not made by Hiram the artist, as the brazen ones were (Thenius). Solomon is simply named as the builder of the temple, and the introduction of his name was primarily occasioned by v. 47. The “golden altar” is the altar of incense in the Holy Place, which is called golden because it was overlaid with gold-plate; for, according to 1 Kings 6:20, its sides were covered with cedar wood, after the analogy of the golden altar in the tabernacle (Ex 30:1-5). “And the table, upon which the shew-bread, of gold.” bh;z; belongs to ˆj;l]vu , to which it stands in free subjection (vid., Ewald, §287, h), signifying “the golden table.” Instead of ˆj;l]vu we have ˆj;l]vu in 2 Chron 4:19 (the tables), because there it has already been stated in v. 8 that ten tables were made, and put in the Holy Place. In our account that verse is omitted; and hence there is only a notice of the table upon which the loaves of shew-bread generally lay, just as in 2 Chron 29:18, in which the chronicler does not contradict himself, as Thenius fancies. The number ten, moreover, is required and proved to be correct in the case of the tables, by the occurrence of the same number in connection with the candlesticks. In no single passage of the Old Testament is it stated that there was only one table of shew-bread in the Holy Place of Solomon’s temple. f124 The tables were certainly made of wood, like the Mosaic table of shewbread, probably of cedar wood, and only overlaid with gold (see at Ex 25:23-30). “And the candlesticks, five on the right and five on the left, before the back-room.” These were also made in imitation of the Mosaic candlestick (see Ex 25:31ff.), and were probably placed not near to the party wall in a straight line to the right and left of the door leading into the Most Holy Place, but along the two longer sides of the Holy Place; and the same with the tables, except that they stood nearer to the side walls with the candlesticks in front of them, so that the whole space might be lighted more brilliantly. The altar of burnt-offering, on the contrary, stood in front of and very near to the entrance into the Most Holy Place (see at 1 Kings 6:20).
In the following clause (vv. 49b and 50a) the ornaments of the candlesticks are mentioned first, and then the rest of the smaller golden vessels are enumerated. jræp, , the flower-work, with which the candlesticks were ornamented (see Ex 25:33). The word is evidently used collectively here, so that the µy[iybiN] mentioned along with them in the book of Exodus (l.c.) are included. ryni , the lamps, which were placed upon the shaft and arms of the candlestick (Ex 25:37). jq;l]m, , the snuffers (Ex 25:38). ãsæ , basins in Ex 12:22, here probably deep dishes (Schalen). hr;M]zæm] , knives. qr;z]mi , bowls (Schalen) or cans with spouts for the wine for the libations; according to 2 Chron 4:8, there were a hundred of these made. ãKæ , small flat vessels, probably for carrying the incense to the altar. hT;j]mæ , extinguishers; see at Ex 25:38.
Verse 50-51. The tpo were also of gold, possibly of inferior quality. These were either the hinges of the doors, or more probably the sockets, in which the pegs of the doors turned. They were provided for the doors of the inner temple, viz., the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. We must supply Vâv before tl,D, .
All the vessels mentioned in vv. 48 and 49 belonged to the Holy Place of the temple, and were the same as those in the tabernacle; so that the remarks made in the Comm. on Ex 25:30 and 39, and 30:1-10, as to their purpose and signification, apply to them as well. Only the number of the tables and candlesticks was ten times greater. If a multiplication of the number of these two vessels appeared appropriate on account of the increases in the size of the room, the number was fixed at ten, to express the idea of completeness by that number. No new vessel was made for the Most Holy Place, because the Mosaic ark of the covenant was placed therein (1 Kings 8:4: compare the remarks on this at Ex 25:10-22).-The account of the vessels of the temple is brought to a close in v. 51: “So was ended all the work that king Solomon made in the house of the Lord; and Solomon brought all that was consecrated by his father, (namely) the silver and the gold (which were not wrought), and the vessels he placed in the treasuries of the house of Jehovah.” As so much gold and brass had already been expended upon the building, it might appear strange that Solomon should not have used up all the treasures collected by his father, but should still be able to bring a large portion of it into the treasuries of the temple.
But according to 1 Chron 22:14,16, and 29:2ff., David had collected together an almost incalculable amount of gold, silver, and brass, and had also added his own private treasure and the freewill offerings of the leading men of the nation (1 Chron 29:7-9). Solomon was also able to devote to the building of the temple a considerable portion of his own very large revenues (cf. 1 Kings 10:14), so that a respectable remnant might still be left of the treasure of the sanctuary, which was not first established by David, but had been commenced by Samuel and Saul, and in which David’s generals, Joab and others, had deposited a portion of the gold and silver that they had taken as booty (1 Chron 26:20-28). For it is evident that not a little had found its way into this treasure through the successful wars of David, from the fact that golden shields were taken from the generals of Hadadezer, and that these were consecrated to the Lord along with the silver, golden, and brazen vessels offered as gifts of homage by king Toi of Hamath, in addition to the gold and silver which David had consecrated from the defeated Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, Philistines, and Amalekites (2 Sam 8:7,11-12; 1 Chron 18:7,10-11). f125 DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE.
1 KINGS. 8:1-21
This solemn transaction consisted of three parts, and the chapter arranges itself in three sections accordingly: viz., (a) the conveyance of the ark and the tabernacle, together with its vessels, into the temple, with the words spoken by Solomon on the occasion (vv. 1-21); (b) Solomon’s dedicatory prayer (vv. 22-53); (c) the blessing of the congregation, and the offering of sacrifice and observance of a feast (vv. 54-66).
The parallel account to this in 2 Chron 5:2-7:10, in addition to certain minor alterations of words and constructions, introduced for the most part merely for the sake of elucidation, contains here and there, and more especially towards the end, a few deviations of greater extent, partly omissions and partly additions. But in other respects it agrees almost word for word with our account.
With regard to the time of the dedication, it is merely stated in v. 2 that the heads of the nation assembled at Jerusalem to this feast in the seventh month. The year in which this took place is not given. But as the building of the temple was finished, according to 1 Kings 6:38, in the eighth month of the eleventh year of Solomon’s reign, the dedication which followed in the seventh month cannot have taken place in the same year as the completion of the building. Ewald’s opinion, that Solomon dedicated the building a month before it was finished, is not only extremely improbable in itself, but is directly at variance with 1 Kings 7:51. If we add to this, that according to ch. 9:1-10 it was not till after the lapse of twenty years, during which he had built the two houses, the temple, and his palace, that the Lord appeared to Solomon at the dedication of the temple and promised to answer his prayer, we must decide in favour of the view held by Thenius, that the dedication of the temple did not take place till twenty years after the building of it was begun, or thirteen years after it was finished, and when Solomon had also completed the building of the palace, which occupied thirteen years, as the LXX have indicated at the commencement of 1 Kings 8:1 by the interpolation of the words, kai> ege>neto oJv sunete>lese Salwmw>n tou> oikodomh>sai to>n oi>kon Kuri>ou kai> to>n oi>kon autou> meta> ei>kosi e>th . f126 Verse 1-21. The First Act of the solemnities consisted (1) in the removal of the ark of the covenant into the Most Holy Place of the temple (vv. 1-11); and (2) in the words with which Solomon celebrated the entrance of the Lord into the new temple (vv. 12-21).
Verse 1-11. Removal of the ark of the covenant into the temple.-This solemn transaction was founded entirely upon the solemnities with which the ark was conveyed in the time of David from the house of Obed-edom into the holy tent upon Zion (2 Sam 6:12ff.; 1 Chron 15:2ff.). Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the princes of the fathers’ houses ba; aycin; , contracted from ba; tyiBæ aycin; ) of the Israelites, as representatives of the whole congregation, to himself at Jerusalem, to bring the ark of the covenant out of the city of David, i.e., from Mount Zion (see the Comm. on 2 Sam 6:16-17), into the temple which he had built upon Moriah. (On the use of the contracted form of the imperfect lhæq; after za; , see Ewald, §233, b.)
Verse 2. Accordingly “all the men of Israel (i.e., the heads of the tribes and families mentioned in v. 1) assembled together to the king in the month Ethanim, i.e., the seventh month, at the feast.” Gesenius explains the name µynit;yae (in 55 codd. µynit;yae ) as meaning “month of the flowing brooks,” after ˆt;yae in Prov 13:15; Böttcher, on the other hand, supposes it to denote the equinox. But apart from other grounds, the plural by no means favours this. Nor does the seventh month answer to the period between the middle of our September and the middle of October, as is supposed by Thenius, who founds upon this supposition the explanation already rejected by Böttcher, viz., “month of gifts;” but it corresponds to the period between the new moon of October and the new moon of November, during which the rainy season commences in Palestine (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 96ff.), so that this month may very well have received its name from the constant flowing of the brooks. The explanation, “that is the seventh month,” is added, however (here as in 1 Kings 6:1,38), not because the arrangement of the months was a different one before the captivity (Thenius), but because different names came into use for the months during the captivity. gjæ is construed with the article: “because the feast intended was one that was well known, and had already been kept for a long time (viz., the feast of tabernacles).” The article overthrows the explanation given by Thenius, who supposes that the reference is to the festivities connected with the dedication of the temple itself.
Verse 3-4. After the arrival of all the elders (i.e., of the representatives of the nation, more particularly described in v. 1), the priests carried the ark and brought it up (sc., into the temple), with the tabernacle and all the holy vessels in it. The expression tae `hl;[; , which follows, introduces as a supplementary notice, according to the general diffuseness of the early Hebrew style of narrative, the more precise statement that the priests and Levites brought up these sacred vessels. d[ewOm lh,ao is not the tent erected for the ark of the covenant upon Zion, which can be proved to have been never so designated, and which is expressly distinguished from the former in 2 Chron 1:4 as compared with v. 3, but is the Mosaic tabernacle at Gibeon in front of which Solomon had offered sacrifice (1 Kings 3:4). The tabernacle with the vessels in it, to which, however, the ark of the covenant, that had long been separated from it, did not belong, was probably preserved as a sacred relic in the rooms above the Most Holy Place. The ark of the covenant was carried by priests on all solemn occasions, according to the spirit of the law, which enjoined, in Num 3:31 and 4:5ff., that the ark of the covenant and the rest of the sacred vessels should be carried by the Levites, after the priests had carefully wrapped them up; and the Levites were prohibited from directly touching them, on pain of death. When, therefore, the ark of the covenant was carried in solemn procession, as in the case before us, probably uncovered, this could only be done by the priests, more especially as the Levites were not allowed to enter the Most Holy Place. Consequently, by the statement in v. 3b, that the priests and Levites carried them tae ), viz., the objects mentioned before, we are to understand that the ark of the covenant was carried into the temple by the priests, and the tabernacle with its vessels by the Levites. f127 Verse 5. “And king Solomon and the whole congregation, that had gathered round him, were with him before the ark sacrificing sheep and oxen in innumerable multitude.” This took place while the ark of the covenant was carried up, no doubt when it was brought into the court of the temple, and was set down there for a time either within or in front of the hall. Then was this magnificent sacrifice “offered” there “in front of the ark” ˆwOra; µynip; ).
Verse 6-7. After this sacrificing was ended, the priests carried the ark to its place, into the back-room of the house, into the Most Holy under the wings of the cherubim (already described in 1 Kings 6:23ff.). The latter statement is explained in v. 7. “For the cherubim were spreading out wings towards the place of the ark, and so covered (lit., threw a shade) over the ark and over its poles from above.” If the outspread wings of the great cherubic figures threw a shade not only over the ark of the covenant, but also over its poles, the ark was probably so placed that the poles ran from north to south, and not from east to west, as they are sketched in my Archäologie.
Verse 8. “And the poles were long, and there were seen their heads (i.e., they were so long that their heads were seen) from the Holy Place before the hinder room; but on the outside (outside the Holy Place, say in the porch) they were not seen.” Ëræa; cannot be rendered: they had lengthened the poles, from which Kimchi and others have inferred that they had made new and longer carrying-poles, since the form of the tense in this connection cannot be the pluperfect, and in that case, moreover the object would be indicated by tae as in 1 Kings 3:14; but Ëyria’h, is used intransitively, “to be long,” lit., to show length, as in Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16, etc. The remark to the effect that the poles were visible, indicates that the precept of the law in Ex 25:15, according to which the poles were to be left in the ark, was observed in Solomon’s temple also. Any one could convince himself of this, for the poles were there “to this day.” The author of our books has retained this chronological allusion as he found it in his original sources; for when he composed his work, the temple was no longer standing. It is impossible, however, to ascertain from this statement how the heads of the poles could be seen in the Holy Place-whether from the fact that they reached the curtain and formed elevations therein, if the poles ran from front to back; or whether, if, as is more probable, they ran from south to north, the front heads were to be seen, simply when the curtain was drawn back. f128 Verse 9. “There was nothing in the ark but the two tables of stone, which Moses had put there at Horeb, when Jehovah concluded the covenant with Israel.” The intention of this remark is also simply to show that the law, which enjoined that the ark should merely preserve the stone tables of the covenant (Ex 25:16; 40:20), had not been departed from in the lapse of time. rv,a before træK; is not a pronoun, but a conjunction: when, from the time that, as in Deut 11:6, etc. træK; without tyriB] , signifying the conclusion of a covenant, as in 1 Sam 20:16; 22:8, etc. Horeb, the general name for the place where the law was given, instead of the more definite name Sinai, as in Deuteronomy (see the Comm. on Ex 19:1-2). f129 Verse 10-11. At the dedication of the tabernacle the glory of Jehovah in the cloud filled the sanctuary, so that Moses could not enter (Ex 40:34-35); and so was it now. When the priests came out of the sanctuary, after putting the ark of the covenant in its place, the cloud filled the house of Jehovah, so that the priests could not stand to minister. The signification of this fact was the same on both occasions. The cloud, as the visible symbol of the gracious presence of God, filled the temple, as a sign that Jehovah the covenant-God had entered into it, and had chosen it as the scene of His gracious manifestation in Israel. By the inability of the priests to stand, we are not to understand that the cloud drove them away; for it was not till the priests had come out that it filled the temple. It simply means that they could not remain in the Holy Place to perform service, say to offer an incense-offering upon the altar to consecrate it, just as sacrifices were offered upon the altar of burnt-offering after the dedicatory prayer (vv. 62, 63). f130 The glory of the Lord, which is like a consuming fire (Ex 24:17; Deut 4:24; 9:3), before which unholy man cannot stand, manifested itself in the cloud.
This marvellous manifestation of the glory of God took place only at the dedication; after that the cloud was only visible in the Most Holy Place on the great day of atonement, when the high priest entered it.-The Chronicles contain a long account at this place of the playing and singing of the Levites at these solemnities (vid., 2 Chron 5:12-14).
Verse 12-15. Solomon extols this marvellous proof of the favour of the Lord.-V. 12. Then spake Solomon, “Jehovah hath spoken to dwell in the darkness.” “Solomon saw that the temple was filled with a cloud, and remembered that God had been pleased to appear in a cloud in the tent of Moses also. Hence he assuredly believed that God was in this cloud also, and that, as formerly He had filled the tabernacle, so He would now fill the temple and dwell therein” (Seb. Schmidt). wgwhwO;hy] rmæa; , which Thenius still renders incorrectly, “the Lord intends to dwell in the darkness,” refers, as Rashi, C. a Lap., and others have seen, to the utterances of God in the Pentateuch concerning the manifestation of His gracious presence among His people, not merely to Lev 16:2 (I will appear in the cloud), but also to Ex 19:9, where the Lord said to Moses, “I come to thee `ˆn;[; `b[; ,” and still more to Ex 20:21 and Deut 4:11; 5:19, according to which God came down upon Sinai `xræ[; . Solomon took the word `xræ[; from these passages.
That he meant by this the black, dark cloud which filled the temple, is perfectly obvious from the combination `xræ[; `ˆn;[; in Deut 5:19 and 4:11. f131 Solomon saw this word of Jehovah realized in the filling of the temple with the cloud, and learned therefrom that the Lord would dwell in this temple.
Hence, being firmly convinced of the presence of Jehovah in the cloud which filled the sanctuary, he adds in v. 13: “I have built Thee a house to dwell in, a place for Thy seat for ever.” We are not to understand `µl;wO[ as signifying that Solomon believed that the temple built by him would stand for ever; but it is to be explained partly from the contrast to the previous abode of God in the tabernacle, which from the very nature of the case could only be a temporary one, inasmuch as a tent, such as the tabernacle was, is not only a moveable and provisional dwelling, but also a very perishable one, and partly from the promise given to David in 2 Sam 7:14- 16, that the Lord would establish the throne of his kingdom for his seed for ever. This promise involved the eternal duration of the gracious connection between God and Israel, which was embodied in the dwelling of God in the temple. This connection, from its very nature, was an eternal one; even if the earthly form, from which Solomon at that moment abstracted himself, was temporal and perishable.-Solomon had spoken these words with his face turned to the Most Holy Place. He then (v. 14) turned his face to the congregation, which was standing in the court, and blessed it. The word “blessed” Ërær; ) denotes the wish for a blessing with which the king greeted the assembled congregation, and introduced the praise of God which follows.-In vv. 15-21 he praises the Lord for having now fulfilled with His hand what He spake with His mouth to his father David (2 Sam 7).
Verse 16. The promise of God, to choose Jerusalem as the place for the temple and David as prince, is taken freely from 2 Sam 7:7-8. In 2 Chron 6:6, before “I chose David,” we find “and I chose Jerusalem, that my name might be there;” so that the affirmation answers more precisely to the preceding negation, whereas in the account before us this middle term is omitted.
Verse 17-19. David’s intention to build the temple, and the answer of God that his son was to execute this work, are so far copied from 2 Sam 7:2,12- 13, that God approves the intention of David as such. bwOf , “Thou didst well that it was in thy mind.”
Verse 20-21. “And Jehovah has set up His word.” wgwµWq supplies the explanation of dy; alem; (hath fulfilled with his hand) in v. 15. God had caused Solomon to take possession of the throne of David; and Solomon had built the temple and prepared a place there for the ark of the covenant.
The ark is thereby declared to be the kernel and star of the temple, because it was the throne of the glory of God.
1 KINGS. 8:22-53
Second Act of the feast of dedication: Solomon’s dedicatory prayer (cf. Chron 6:12-42).-V. 22. “Then Solomon stood before the altar of Jehovah in front of all the assembly of Israel, and stretched out his hands towards heaven.” It is evident from v. 54 that Solomon uttered the prayer which follows upon his knees. The Chronicles contain the same account as we have here, with this addition, that it is said to have taken place on a “scaffold,” or kind of pulpit rwOYKi ) specially erected for the purpose. f132 The altar, to the front of which Solomon went, was the altar of burntoffering in the court, where the congregation was gathered together. The expression dn,n, cy lhæq]AlK; favours the idea that Solomon offered the prayer upon his knees with his face turned towards the congregation, and not with his back to the people and his face turned towards the temple, as Thenius supposes.-The substance of the prayer is closely connected with the prayer of Moses, especially with the blessings and curses therein (vid., Lev 26 and Deut 28). Commencing with the praise of God, who “keepeth covenant and truth” towards His servants, and has thus far performed to His servant David the promise that He gave him (vv. 23, 24), Solomon entreats the Lord still further to fulfil this promise of His (vv. 25, 26), and to keep His eyes constantly open over the temple, to hearken to the prayers of His people, and to avert the curse threatened against sinners from all who shall call upon Him in this temple (vv. 27-53). Verse 23-24. By granting the blessing promised to His people, the Lord has hitherto proved Himself to be the true and only God in heaven and on earth, who keepeth covenant and mercy with those who walk before Him with all their heart. This acknowledgment provides the requisite confidence for offering the prayer which is sure of an answer (Matt 21:22; Mark 11:24; James 1:6). For la ËwOmK;Aˆyae , compare Ex 15:11 with Deut 4:39; 2 Sam 7:22; 22:32; Ps 86:8. “Who keepeth covenant and mercy,” verbatim the same as in Deut 7:9. The promise given to His servant David (2 Sam 7), the fulfilment of which the commencement now lay before their eyes (cf. vv. 20, 21), was an emanation from the covenant faithfulness of God. “As it is this day,” as in 1 Kings 3:6.
Verse 25. The expression “and now” `hT;[æ ) introduces the prayer for the further fulfilment of the promise, never to allow a successor upon the throne to be wanting to David, in the same conditional form in which David had uttered the hope in 1 Kings 2:4, and in which the Lord had renewed the promise to Solomon during the building of the temple (1 Kings 6:12-13). In aSeKiAl[æ bvey ynæp;L]mi , instead of aSeKi `l[æ in 1 Kings 2:4, the divine rejection is more distinctly indicated.
Verse 26-28. V. 26 is not merely a repetition of the prayer in v. 25, as Thenius supposes, but forms the introduction to the prayers which follow for the hearing of all the prayer presented before the Lord in the temple.
The words, “let Thy words be verified, which Thou spakest unto Thy servant David,” contain something more than a prayer for the continual preservation of the descendants of David upon the throne, for the fulfilment of which Solomon prayed in v. 25. They refer to the whole of the promise in 2 Sam 7:12-16. The plural rb;d; (Chethîb) points back to µyrib;D]hæAlK; in 2 Sam 7:17, and is not to be altered into the singular after the Keri. The singular ˆmæa; is used as it frequently is with the subject in the plural, when the verb precedes (cf. Ewald. §316, a., 1). Solomon has here in mind one particular point in the promise, viz., that God would not withdraw His mercy from the seed of David, even when it sinned. This is evident from what follows, where he mentions simply cases of transgression, and prays that they may be forgiven.
Verse 26-28. are closely connected in this sense: keep Thy words that were spoken to David; for although this temple cannot hold Thine infinite divine nature, I know that Thou wilt have respect to the prayer of Thy servant, to keep Thine eyes open over this temple, to hear every prayer which Thy people shall bring before Thee therein. hn;p; in v. 28 continues the optative an; ˆmæa; in v. 26; and v. 27 contains an intermediate thought, with which Solomon meets certain contracted ideas of the gracious presence of God in the temple. yKi (v. 27) signifies neither but, nevertheless, atque (Böttcher), nor “as” (Thenius, Bertheau); and the assertion that v. 27 is the commencement of a new section is overthrown by the inadmissible rendering of hn;p; , “but Thou turnest Thyself” (Thenius).-With the words, “Should God really dwell upon the earth! behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens (i.e., the heavens in their widest extent, cf. Deut 10:14) cannot contain Thee, to say nothing yKi ãaæ ; cf. Ewald, §§354, c.) of this house which I have built,” in which the infinitude of God and His exaltation above the world are expressed as clearly and forcibly as possible, Solomon does not intend to guard against the delusion that God really dwells in temples (J. D. Mich.), but simply to meet the erroneous idea that He dwells in the temple as men dwell in a house, namely, shut up within it, and not also outside and above it-a delusion which sometimes forced its way into the unspiritual nation but which was always attacked by the prophets (cf. Mic 3:11; Jer 7:4, etc.).
For it is evident that Solomon did combine with his clear perception of the infinite exaltation of God a firm belief in His real presence in the temple, and did not do homage to the abstract idealism of the rationalists, not merely from his declaration in vv. 12ff. that he had built this temple as a dwelling-place for God, but also from the substance of all the following prayers, and primarily from the general prayer in vv. 28 and 29, that God would take this temple under His special protection, and hearken to every prayer directed towards it. The distinction between hL;piT] , hN;jiT] , and hN;ri is the following: hL;piT] denotes prayer in general, praise, supplication, and thanksgiving; hN;jiT] , supplication or entreaty, prayer for help and mercy; and hN;ri , jubilation, prayer as the joyous utterance of praise and thanksgiving.
Verse 29-32. “That Thine eyes may be open upon this house night and day.” tyiBæhæAla, , speciali quadam providentia in hanc domum directi (Mich.). The following clause, “upon the place of which Thou hast said, My name shall be there” (namely, 2 Sam 7:13, implicite), contains within itself the ground upon which the prayer rests. Because the name of God will be in the temple, i.e., because God will manifest His gracious presence there, He will also keep His eyes open upon it, so as to hear the prayer of Solomon directed towards it. hz, µwOqm; lae (toward this place): because Solomon also was prayer in the court towards the temple.-In v. 30, “and hear the supplication of Thy servant and of Thy people Israel,” he begins by asking that those prayers may be heard which the king and people shall henceforth bring before God in the temple. [mæv; corresponds to hn;p; in v. 28, and is more precisely defined by the following [mæv; hT;aæ (as for these prayers), Thou wilt hear them up to the place of Thine abode, to heaven. lae [mæv; is a pregnant expression: to hear the prayer, which ascends to heaven. In the Chronicles we find throughout the explanatory ˆmi . The last words, “hear and forgive,” must be left in their general form, and not limited by anything to be supplied. Nothing but forgiveness of sin can remove the curse by which transgression is followed.
This general prayer is then particularized from v. 31 onwards by the introduction of seven special petitions for an answer in the different cases in which, in future, prayers may be offered to God in the temple. The first prayer (vv. 31, 32) has reference to the oaths sworn in the temple, the sanctity of which God is asked to protect. “If a man sin against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him, to cause him to swear, and he come (and) swear before the altar in this house, then wilt Thou hear,” etc. rv,a tae does not mean either “granted that” (Thenius) or “just when” (Ewald, §533, a.), although µai is used in the Chronicles, and we might render it freely “when;” but tae is simply an accusative particle, serving to introduce the following clause, in the sense of “as for,” or “with regard to (such a case as) that a man sins” (vid., Ewald, §277, a.). hl;a; awOB cannot be taken as anything but an asyndeton. For if hl;a; were a substantive, it would have the article hl;a; ) provided it were the subject, and the verb would be written awOB; and if it were the object, we should have hl;a;B; , as in Neh 10:30 (cf. Ezek 17:13).
The prayer refers to the cases mentioned in Ex 22:6-12 and Lev. 5:21-24, when property entrusted to any one had been lost or injured, or when a thing had been found and the finding was denied, or when an act of fraud had been committed; in which cases the law required not only compensation with the addition of a fifth of its value, but also a trespassoffering as an expiation of the sin committed by taking a false oath. But as this punishment could only be inflicted when the guilty person afterwards confessed his guilt, many false oaths might have been sworn in the cases in question and have remained unpunished, so far as men were concerned.
Solomon therefore prays that the Lord will hear every such oath that shall have been sworn before the altar, and work `hc;[; ), i.e., actively interpose, and judge His servants, to punish the guilty and justify the innocent. The construction µyimæv; [mæv; (vv. 32, 34, 36, etc.) can be explained more simply from the adverbial use of the accusative (Ewald, §300, b.), than from µyimæv; lae in v. 30. varo Ër,D, ˆtæn; , to give (bring) his way upon his head, i.e., to cause the merited punishment to fall upon him (cf. Ezek 9:10; 11:21, etc.). [v]r; [vær; and qydixæ qdæx; recall Deut 25:2. For hq;d;x] wOl ˆtæn; compare 2 Sam 22:21,25.-The following cases are all taken from Lev 26 and Deut 28.
Verse 33-34. The second petition- “If Thy people Israel are smitten by the enemy, because they have sinned against Thee, and they turn to Thee and confess Thy name,...then hear...and bring them back into the land,”-refers to the threatenings in Lev 26:17 and Deut 28:25, where the nation is threatened with defeat and subjugation on the part of enemies, who shall invade the land, in which case prisoners of war are carried away into foreign lands, but the mass of the people remain in the land, so that they who are beaten can pray to the Lord in the temple, that He will forgive them their sin, save them out of the power of the enemy, and bring back the captives and fugitives into their fatherland.
Verse 35-36. The third prayer refers to the remission of the punishment of drought threatened against the land, when the heaven is shut up, according to Lev 26:19; Deut 11:17; 28:23. `hn;[; yKi , because Thou humblest them (LXX, Vulg.); not “that Thou hearest them” (Chald. and others). hr;y; yKi , because Thou teachest them the good way. These words correspond to µn[t yk , and contain a motive for forgiveness. Because God teaches His people and seeks by means of chastisements to bring them back to the good way when they fail to keep His commandments, He must forgive when they recognise the punishment as a divine chastisement and come to Him with penitential prayer.
Verse 37-40. The fourth prayer relates to the removal of other landplagues: famine (Lev 26:19-20, and 26; Deut 28:23); pestilence (Lev 26:25); blight and mildew in the corn (Deut 28:22); locusts lysij; , devourer, is connected with hb;r; without a copula-in the Chronicles by Vâv,-to depict the plague of locusts more vividly before their eyes after Deut 28:38); oppression by enemies in their own land; lastly, plagues and diseases of all kinds, such as are threatened against the rebellious in Lev 26:16 and Deut 28:59-61. rxæy; is not the imperfect Kal of rWx (Ges., Dietr., Fürst, Olsh. Gramm. p. 524), but the imperfect Hiphil of heetsar in Deut 28:52, as in Neh 9:27; and the difficult expression r[ævæ xr,a, is probably to be altered into sh’ xr,a, , whilst r[ævæ is either to be taken as a second object to rxæy; , as Luther supposes, or as in apposition to xr,a, , in the land (in) his gates, as Bertheau assumes.
The assertion of Thenius, that all the versions except the Vulgate are founded upon the reading `ry[i dj;a, , is incorrect. hy;h; yKi is omitted after hl;j\mæAlK; , since Solomon dropped the construction with which he commenced, and therefore briefly summed up all the prayers, addressed to God under the various chastisements here named, in the expression hN;jiT]AlK; hL;piT]AlK; , which is placed absolutely at the opening of v. 38. wgw [dæy; rv,a , “when they perceive each one the stroke of his heart,” i.e., not dolor animi quem quisque sentit (Vatab., C. a Lap.), but the plague regarded as a blow falling upon the heart, in other words, as a chastisement inflicted upon him by God. In all these cases may God hear his prayer, and do and give to every one according to his way. [dæy; rv,a , “as Thou knowest his heart,” i.e., as is profitable for every one according to the state of his heart of his disposition. God can do this, because He knows the hearts of all men (cf. Jer 17:10). The purpose assigned for all this hearing of prayer (v. 40), viz., “that they may fear Thee,” etc., is the same as in Deut 4:10.
Verse 41-43. The fifth prayer has reference to the hearing of the prayers of foreigners, who shall pray in the temple. Solomon assumes as certain that foreigners will come and worship before Jehovah in His temple; even Moses himself had allowed the foreigners living among the Israelites to offer sacrifice at the temple (Num 15:14ff.), and the great name and the arm of the Lord, that had manifested itself in deeds of omnipotence, had become known in the times of Moses to the surrounding nations (Ex 15:14; 18:1; Josh 5:1), and the report of this had reached Balaam even in Mesopotamia (see the Comm. on Num 22). yrik]n; lae does not mean “as for the foreigners” (Thenius), for lae is never used in this sense; but it is to be connected with [mæv; in v. 43, as lae [mæv; frequently occurs (Bertheau).
Verse 42. is a parenthesis inserted in explanation of µve ˆ[æmæ : “for they will hear,” etc. The strong hand and the outstretched arm are connected together as a standing expression for the wondrous manifestations of the divine omnipotence in the guidance of Israel, as in Deut 4:34; 5:15, etc.
With llæp; awOB the xr,a, awOB in v. 41 is resumed, and the main thought continued.
Verse 43. The reason for the hearing of the prayers of foreigners is “that all nations may know Thy name to fear Thee,” etc., as in Deut 28:10. An examination of this original passage, from which wgw `l[æ ar;q; µve yKi is taken and transferred to the temple, shows that the common explanations of this phrase, viz., “that this house is called after Thy name,” or “that Thy name is invoked over this temple (at its dedication),” are erroneous. The name of the Lord is always used in the Scriptures to denote the working of God among His people or in His kingdom (see at 2 Sam 6:2). The naming of this name over the nation, the temple, etc., presupposes the working of God within it, and denotes the confession and acknowledgment of that working. This is obvious from such passages as Jer 14:9, where the expression “Thy name is called over us” is only a further explanation of the word “Thou art in the midst of us;” and from Isa 63:19, where “we are they over whom Thou hast not ruled from eternity” is equivalent to “over whom Thy name has not been called.” The name of Jehovah will be named over the temple, when Jehovah manifests His gracious presence within it in such a manner, that the nations who pray towards it experience the working of the living God within His sanctuary. It is in this sense that it is stated in 2 Sam 6:2 that the name of Jehovah is named above the ark of the covenant (see the Comm. in loc.).-There are no cases on record of the worship of foreigners in connection with Solomon’s temple, though there are in connection with the temple built after the captivity (vid., Josephus, Ant. xi. 8, 5, that of Alexander the Great; xii. 2, 5ff., that of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus; and 2 Macc. 3:2, 3, that of Seleucus).
Verse 44-45. Finally, in vv. 44-50 Solomon also asks, that when prayers are directed towards the temple by those who are far away both from Jerusalem and the temple, they may be heard. The sixth case, in vv. 44 and 45, is, if Israel should be engaged in war with an enemy by the appointment of God; and the seventh, in vv. 46-50, is, if it should be carried away by enemies on account of its sins. f133 By the expression in v. 44, “in the way which Thou sendest them,” the war is described as one undertaken by the direction of God, whether wages against an enemy who has invaded the land, or outside the land of Canaan for the chastisement of the heathen dwelling around them. “And shall pray wgw `ry[i Ër,D, :” i.e., in the direction towards the chosen city and the temple, namely, in faith in the actual presence of the covenant God in the temple. hwO;hy] lae , “to Jehovah,” instead of “to Thee,” is probably introduced for the sake of greater clearness. fp;v]mi `hc;[; , and secure them justice (cf. Deut 10:18; Ps 9:5, etc.).
Verse 46-49. In the seventh prayer, viz., if Israel should be given up to its enemies on account of its sins and carried away into the land of the enemy, Solomon had the threat in Lev 26:33 and 44 in his eye, though he does not confine his prayer to the exile of the whole nation foretold in that passage and in Deut 28:45ff., 64ff., and 30:1-5, but extends it to every case of transportation to an enemy’s land. ble lae bWv , “and they take it to heart,” compare Deut 4:39, and without the object, Deut 30:1; not “they feel remorse,” as Thenius supposes, because the Hiphil cannot have this reflective signification (Böttcher). The confession of sin in v. 47, [vær; `hw;[; af;j; , was adopted by the Jews when in captivity as the most exhaustive expression of their deep consciousness of guilt (Dan 9:5; Ps 106:6). af;j; , to slip, labi, depicts sin as a wandering from right; `hw;[; , to act perversely, as a conscious perversion of justice; and [vær; as a passionate rebellion against God (cf. Isa 57:20).
Verse 50-53. µjæræ ˆtæn; : literally, “and make (place) them for compassion before their captors, that they may have compassion upon them,” i.e., cause them to meet with compassion from their enemies, who have carried them away.-In vv. 51-53 Solomon closes with general reasons, which should secure the hearing of his prayer on the part of God. Bertheau follows the earlier commentators in admitting that these reasons refer not merely to the last petitions, but to all the preceding ones. f134 The plea “for they are Thy people,” etc. (v. 51), is taken from Deut 4:10; and that in v. 53, “Thou didst separate them,” etc., is taken from Lev 20:24,26, compared with Ex 19:5. wgw `ˆyi[æ hy;h; , “that Thine eyes may be opened,” follows upon [mæv; (“then hear Thou”) in v. 49; just as v. 29 at the commencement of the prayer follows upon hn;p; in v. 28. The recurrence of the same expression shows that the prayer is drawing to a close, and is rounded off by a return to the thought with which it opened. “As Thou spakest by Moses” points back to Ex 19:5.-In 2 Chron 6:40-42 the conclusion of the prayer is somewhat altered, and closes with the appeal to the Lord to cause salvation and grace to go forth from the temple over His people.
1 KINGS. 8:54-55
Concluding Act of the dedication of the temple.
Vv. 54-61. Blessing the congregation.-After the conclusion of the prayer, Solomon rose up from his knees and blessed all the assembled congregation. cræp; ãKæ is a circumstantial clause, which must be connected with the previous words and rendered thus: “from lying upon his knees with his hands spread out towards heaven.” “And he stood,” i.e., he came from the altar and stood nearer to the assembled congregation. The blessing begins with praise to the Lord for the fulfilment of His promises (v. 16), and consists in the petition that the Lord will always fulfil his (Solomon’s) prayers, and grant His people the promised salvation. f
135 1 KINGS. 8:56-58
The praise of Jehovah rests, so far as the first part is concerned, upon the promise in Deut 12:9-10, and upon its fulfilment in Josh 21:44-45 and 23:14; and the second part is founded upon Lev 26:3-13 and Deut 28:1-14, where the “good word, which the Lord spake by Moses,” is more precisely described as the blessing which the Lord had promised to His people and had hitherto bestowed upon them. He had already given Israel rest by means of Joshua when the land of Canaan was taken; but since many parts of the land still remained in the hands of the Canaanites, this rest was only fully secured to them by David’s victories over all their enemies. This glorious fulfilment warranted the hope that the Lord would also fulfil in the future what He had promised His servant David (2 Sam 7:10), if the people themselves would only faithfully adhere to their God. Solomon therefore sums up all his wishes for the good of the kingdom in vv. 57-61 in the words, “May Jehovah our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us nor forsake us, to incline our heart to Himself, that we may walk in all His ways,” etc.-that the evil words predicted by Moses in Lev 26:14ff., Deut 28:15, may not fall upon us. For v. 57 compare Deut 31:6,8, and Josh 1:5. v f1 n; laæ corresponds to hp;r; laæ in these passages. In the Pentateuch v f1 n; is used but once of men who forsake the Lord, viz., Deut 32:15; in other cases it is only used in the general sense of casting away, letting alone, and other similar meanings. It is first used of God, in the sense of forsaking His people, in Ps 27:9 in connection with `bzæ[; ; and it frequently occurs afterwards in Jeremiah.
1 KINGS. 8:59-60
May these my words, which I have prayed (vv. 25-43), be near to Jehovah our God day and night, that He may secure the right of His servant (the king) and of His people, as every day demands. µwOy µwOy rb;d; , as in Ex 5:13; 16:4.-For v. 60 compare v. 43.
1 KINGS. 8:61
Let your heart be yy `µ[i µlev; , wholly, undividedly devoted to the Lord (cf. 1 Kings 11:4; 15:3,14, etc.).
1 KINGS. 8:62-64
Sacrifices and feast.
Vv. 62, 63. The dedicatory prayer was followed by a magnificent sacrifice offered by the king and all Israel. The thank-offering µl,v, jbæz, ) consisted, in accordance with the magnitude of the manifestation of divine grace, of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. This enormous number of sacrificial animals, in which J. D. Michaelis found serious difficulties, Thenius endeavours to set aside as too large, by calculating that as these sacrifices were offered in seven days, reckoning the sacrificial day at twelve full hours, there must have been about five oxen and about twenty-five sheep slaughtered and offered in sacrifice every minute for the king alone. This calculation would be conclusive, if there were any foundation for the three assumptions upon which it rests: namely, (1) that the number of sacrifices mentioned was offered for the king alone; (2) that the slaughtering and preparation of the sacrificial animals could only be performed by the priests and Levites; and (3) that the whole of the flesh of these sacrificial animals was to be consumed upon the altar.
But these three assumptions are all erroneous. There is nothing in the account about their being “for the king alone.” For it is obvious that the words “and Solomon offered a sacrifice” are not to be understood as signifying that the king had these sacrifices offered for himself alone, but that the words refer to the sacrifices offered by the king and all Israel for the consecration of the temple, from the simple fact that in v. 62 “Solomon and all Israel” are expressly mentioned as offering sacrifice, and that after the statement of the number of the sacrifices we find these words in v. 63: “so the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of Jehovah.”
Moreover it is very evident from the law in Lev 1 and 3 that at the offering of sacrifice the slaughtering, flaying, and preparation of the sacrificial animals were performed by any Israelite, and that it was only the sprinkling of the blood against the altar and the burning of the sacrificial portions upon the altar which were the exclusive province of the priests.
In order to form a correct idea of the enormous number of sacrifices which could be slaughtered on any one day we will refer again to the notice in Josephus (Bell. Jud. vi. 9, 3) already mentioned in the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 683 (translation), that in the reign of the emperor Nero the procurator Cestius directed the priests to count the number of the paschal lambs, and that they counted 250,000, which were slaughtered for the passover between the ninth and eleventh hours of the day, and of which the blood was sprinkled upon the altar. If then it was possible at that time to slaughter more than 250,000 lambs in three hours of the afternoon, and to sprinkle the blood upon the altar, there can have been no difficulty in slaughtering and sacrificing 3000 oxen and 18,000 sheep at the dedication of the temple on each of the seven days of the festival. As all Israel from Hamath to the brook of Egypt came to Jerusalem to this festival, we shall not be above the mark if we estimate the number of the heads of houses present at 100,000.
And with very little trouble they could have slaughtered 3000 oxen and 18,000 sheep a day and prepared them for sacrificing. How many priests took an active part in this, we do not indeed know, in fact we have no information as to the number of the priests in Solomon’s time; but we know that in the time of David the number of Levites qualified for service, reckoning from their thirtieth year, was 38,000, so that we may certainly assume that there were two or three thousand priests. Now if only the half of these Levites and priests had come to Jerusalem to the dedication of the temple, they alone could have slaughtered 3000 oxen and 18,000 sheep every day. And would not a thousand priests have been sufficient to sprinkle the blood of so many animals upon the altar and to turn the fat between the morning and evening sacrifice? If we divided these sacrifices among a thousand priests, each one would only have had to attend to the sprinkling of the blood and burning of the fat of three oxen and eighteen sheep each day.-But the brazen altar of burnt-offering might not have been large enough for the burning of so many sacrifices, notwithstanding the fact that only the fat portions of the thank-offerings were consumed, and they did not require much room; since the morning and evening burnt-offerings were added daily, and as festal offerings they would certainly not consist of a lamb only, but at least of one bullock, and they were burned whole, although the altar of burnt-offering with a surface of 144 square yards (see my bibl. Archäol. i. p. 127) would hold a very large quantity of sacrificial flesh at once.
In v. 64, however, it is expressly stated that Solomon sanctified the middle of the court, which was before the house of Jehovah, to burn the burntoffering and meat- offering and the fat portions of the thank-offerings there, because the brazen altar was too small to hold these sacrifices. “The middle of the court” rxej; Ëw,T; ) is the whole of the inner portion of the court of the priests, which was in front of the temple-house and formed the centre of the court surrounding the temple. Of course we have not to imagine that the sacrifices were offered upon the stone pavement of the court, but must assume that there were auxiliary altars erected in the inner court around the brazen altar. By the burnt-offering and the meat-offering (belonging to it: hl;wO[h;Ata, hj;n]MihæAta,w] ) we are not to understand certain burnt-offerings, which were offered for a definite number of thankofferings, as Thenius supposes. The singular and the definite article are both at variance with this. The reference is rather to the (well-known) daily morning and evening burnt-offerings with their meat-offering, and in this case, no doubt, to such a festal sacrifice as is prescribed in Num 28 for the great yearly feasts.
1 KINGS. 8:65-66
Thus Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the neighbourhood of Hamath to the brook of Egypt, i.e., from the whole land in its fullest extent from north to south. “The district of Hamath,” i.e., Epiphania on the Orontes, is mentioned as the northern boundary (cf. Num 34:8; 13:21; Josh 13:5, etc.); and “the brook of Egypt” µyiræx]mi ljænæ ), Rhinocorura, as the southern boundary (cf. Num 34:8; Josh 15:4). “The feast” gjæ ), which Solomon held with the people “seven days and seven days, fourteen days,” is not the feast of the dedication, but, as in v. 2, the feast of tabernacles, which fell in the seventh month; and the meaning of the verse is, that on that occasion the feast of the seventh month was kept for fourteen days, namely, seven days as the feast of the dedication, and seven days as the feast of tabernacles.
We are obliged to take the words in this way, partly on account of the evident reference to gjæ (at the feast) in v. 2 in the expression ‘et-hechaag (the feast) in this verse, and partly on account of the statement which follows in v. 66, “and on the eighth day he sent the people away.” The “eight day” is not the first day of the feast of tabernacles (Thenius); but the eighth day, as the conclusion of the feast of tabernacles, `hr;x;[ (Lev 23:36). The correctness of this view is placed beyond all doubt by the context in the Chronicles, which states more clearly that, “Solomon kept the feast seven days, and all Israel with him...and they kept `hr;x;[ (the closing feast) on the eight day; for they kept the dedication of the altar seven days and the feast seven days; and on the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people away.” The feast of tabernacles lasted seven days, from the 15th to the 21st, with a closing festival on the eighth day, i.e., the 22nd of the month (Lev 23:33-39).
This festival was preceded by the dedication of the temple from the 8th to the 14th of the month. The statement in v. 66, “on the eighth day he sent the people away,” if we take the words in their strict sense, is at variance with the statement in the Chronicles, “on the 23rd day,” since the eighth day of the feast of tabernacles was the 22nd day of the month; but it may easily be accounted for from want of precision in a well-known matter.
Solomon sent the people away on the eighth day, i.e., on the afternoon or evening of the atzereth of the feast of tabernacles, so that on the morning of the next day, i.e., on the 23rd of the month, the people took their journey home, “joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord had shown to His servant David and to the people.” David is mentioned, because the completion of the building of the temple was the fulfilment of the divine promise given to him. “Tents,” for houses, as in 2 Sam 10:1; Judg 7:8, and other passages.
THE ANSWER TO SOLOMON’S PRAYER. The Means Employed for the Erection of His Buildings.
1 KINGS. 9:1-2
The Answer of the Lord to Solomon’s Dedicatory Prayer (cf. 2 Chron 7:11-22).-Vv. 1, 2. When Solomon had finished the building of the temple, and of his palace, and of all that he had a desire to build, the Lord appeared to him the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon, i.e., by night in a dream (see 1 Kings 3:5), to promise him that his prayer should be answered. For the point of time, see at 1 Kings 8:1. kaalcheesheq, all Solomon’s desire or pleasures, is paraphrased thus in the Chronicles: leeb `al kaal-habaa’, “all that came into his mind,” and, in accordance with the context, is very properly restricted to these two principal buildings by the clause, “in the house of Jehovah and in his own house.”
1 KINGS. 9:3
The divine promise to Solomon, that his prayer should be answered, is closely connected with the substance of the prayer; but in our account we have only a brief summary, whereas in the Chronicles it is given more elaborately (vid., 2 Chron 7:12-16). “I have sanctified this house which thou hast built, to put my name there.” For the expression, see Deut 12:11.
The sanctifying consisted in the fact, that Jehovah put His name in the temple; i.e., that by filling the temple with the cloud which visibly displayed His presence, He consecrated it as the scene of the manifestation of His grace. To Solomon’s prayer, “May Thine eyes stand open over this house” (1 Kings 8:29), the Lord replies, giving always more than we ask, “My eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually.”
1 KINGS. 9:4-9
Vv. 4 and 5 contain the special answer to 1 Kings 8:25 and 26.-Vv. 6-9 refer to the prayer for the turning away of the curse, to which the Lord replies: If ye and your children turn away from me, and do not keep my commandments, but worship other gods, this house will not protect you from the curses threatened in the law, but they will be fulfilled in all their terrible force upon you and upon this temple. This threat follows the Pentateuch exactly in the words in which it is expressed; v. 7 being founded upon Deut 28:37,45, and 63, and the curse pronounced upon Israel in Deut 29:23-26 being transferred to the temple in vv. 8 and 9.- paanay mee`al shileeach, to dismiss, i.e., to reject from before my face. “This house will be ˆwOyl][, ,” i.e., will stand high, or through its rejection will be a lofty example for all that pass by. The temple stood upon a high mountain, so that its ruins could not fail to attract the attention of all who went past. The expression ˆwOyl][, is selected with an implied allusion to Deut 26:19 and 28:1. God there promises to make Israel ˆwOyl][, , high, exalted above all nations. This blessing will be turned into a curse. The temple, which was high and widely renowned, shall continue to be high, but in the opposite sense, as an example of the rejection of Israel from the presence of God. f
136 1 KINGS. 9:10-28
The Means by which the Buildings were Erected.-In order that all which still remained to be said concerning Solomon’s buildings might be grouped together, different notices are introduced here, namely, as to his relation to Hiram, the erection of several fortresses, and the tributary labour, and also as to his maritime expeditions; and these heterogeneous materials are so arranged as to indicate the resources which enabled Solomon to erect so many and such magnificent buildings. These resources were: (1) his connection with king Hiram, who furnished him with building materials (vv. 10-14); (2) the tributary labour which he raised in his kingdom (vv. 15-25); (3) the maritime expedition to Ophir, which brought him great wealth (vv. 26-28). But these notices are very condensed, and, as a comparison with the parallel account in 2 Chron 8 shows, are simply incomplete extracts from a more elaborate history. In the account of the tributary labour, the enumeration of the cities finished and fortified (vv. 15-19) is interpolated; and the information concerning the support which was rendered to Solomon in the erection of his buildings by Hiram (vv. 11-14), is merely supplementary to the account already given in v. 5. Vv. 24 and 25 point still more clearly to an earlier account, since they would be otherwise unintelligible.-In 2 Chron 8 the arrangement is a simpler one: the buildings are first of all enumerated in vv. 1-6, and the account of the tributary labour follows in vv. 7-11.
Verse 10-14. The notices concerning Solomon’s connection with Hiram are very imperfect; for v. 14 does not furnish a conclusion either in form or substance. The notice in 2 Chron 8; 1:1-2:18 is still shorter, but it supplies an important addition to the account before us.
Vv. 10 and 11 form one period. ˆtæn; za; (then he gave) in v. 11 introduces the apodosis to qm hy;h; (and it came to pass, etc.) in v. 10; and v. contains a circumstantial clause inserted as a parenthesis. Hiram had supported Solomon according to his desire with cedar wood and cypress wood, and with gold; and Solomon gave him in return, after his buildings were completed, twenty cities in the land of Galil. But these cities did not please Hiram. When he went out to see them, he said, “What kind of cities are these hm; in a contemptuous sense) which thou hast given me, my brother?” ja; as in 1 Kings 20:32,1 Macc. 10:18; 11:30, 2 Macc. 11:22, as a conventional expression used by princes in their intercourse with one another. “And he called the land Cabul unto this day;” i.e., it retained this name even to later times.
The land of Galil is a part of the country which was afterwards known as Galilaea, namely, the northern portion of it, as is evident from the fact that in Josh 20:7; 21:32, Kedes in the mountains of Naphtali, to the north-west of Lake Huleh, is distinguished from the kadesh in southern Palestine by the epithet bagaaliyl. It is still more evident from 2 Kings 15:29 and Isa. 8:23 and Galil embraced the northern part of the tribe of Naphtali; whilst the expression used by Isaiah, ywOG lyliG; , also shows that this district was for the most part inhabited by heathen (i.e., non-Israelites). The twenty cities in Galil, which Solomon gave to Hiram, certainly belonged therefore to the cities of the Canaanites mentioned in 2 Sam 24:7; that is to say, they were cities occupied chiefly by a heathen population, and in all probability they were in a very bad condition.
Consequently they did not please Hiram, and he gave to the district the contemptuous name of the land of Cabul. Of the various interpretations given to the word Cabul (see Ges. Thes. p. 656), the one proposed by Hiller (Onomast. p. 435), and adopted by Reland, Ges., Maurer, and others, viz., that it is a contraction of lWbK; , sicut id quod evanuit tanquam nihil, has the most to support it, since this is the meaning required by the context. At the same time it is possible, and even probable, that it had originally a different signification, and is derived from kaabal = chaabal in the sense of to pawn, as Gesenius and Dietrich suppose. This is favoured by the occurrence of the name Cabul in Josh 19:27, where it is probably derivable from kaabal, to fetter, and signifies literally a fortress or castle; but in this instance it has no connection with the land of Cabul, since it is still preserved in the village of Cabul to the south-east of Acre (see the Comm. on Josh. l.c.). The “land of Cabul” would therefore mean the pawned land; and in the mouths of the people this would be twisted into “good for nothing.” In this case ar;q; would have to be taken impersonally: “they called;” and the notice respecting this name would be simply an explanation of the way in which the people interpreted it. Hiram, however, did not retain this district, but gave it back to Solomon, who then completed the cities (2 Chron 8:2). f137 The only way in which we can give to v. 14 a meaning in harmony with the context, is by taking it as a supplementary explanation of µr;yji in v. 11, and so rendering jlæv; as a pluperfect, as in 1 Kings 7:13: “Hiram had sent the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold.” If we reckon the value of gold as being ten times the worth of silver, a hundred and twenty talents of gold would be 3,141,600 thalers (about £471,240: Tr.). This is no doubt to be regarded as a loan, which Solomon obtained from Hiram to enable him to complete his buildings. Although David may have collected together the requisite amount of precious metals for the building of the temple, and Solomon had also very considerable yearly revenues, derived partly from tribute paid by subjugated nations and partly from trade, his buildings were so extensive, inasmuch as he erected a large number of cities beside the temple and his splendid palace (vv. 15-19), that his revenues might not suffice for the completion of these costly works; and therefore, since he would not apply the consecrated treasures of the temple to the erection of cities and palaces, he might find himself compelled to procure a loan from the wealthy king Hiram, which he probably intended to cover by ceding to him twenty cities on the border of the Phoenician territory. But as these cities did not please the king of Tyre and he gave them back to Solomon, the latter will no doubt have repaid the amount borrowed during the last twenty years of his reign.
Verse 15-23. Solomon’s tribute service, and the building of the cities. (Cf. 2 Chron 8:3-10.) The other means by which Solomon made it possible to erect so many buildings, was by compelling the remnants of the Canaanitish population that were still in the land to perform tributary labour. smæ rb;d; hz, , “this is the case with regard to the tribute.” For smæ `hl;[; compare Kin 5:27. To the announcement of the object which Solomon had in view in raising tributary labourers, namely, to build, etc., there is immediately appended a list of all the buildings completed by him (vv. 15-19); and it is not till v. 20 that we have more precise details concerning the tribute itself.
Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities enumerated, are for the most part not new buildings, but simply fortifications, or the completion of buildings already in existence. David had already built the castle of Millo and the wall of Jerusalem (2 Sam 5:9); so that Solomon’s building was in both cases merely fortifying more strongly. On Millo see the fuller remarks at 2 Sam 5:9; and on the building of the wall, those at 1 Kings 3:1 and 11:27. As Solomon thereby closed the breach of the city of David according to 1 Kings 11:27, he probably extended the city wall so as to enclose the temple mountain; and he may possibly have also surrounded the lower city with a wall, since David had only built a fortification round about the upper city upon Zion (see at 2 Sam 5:9).-Hazor: an old royal city of the Canaanites above Lake Huleh, which has not yet been discovered (see at Josh 11:1). Megiddo, i.e., Lejun (see at 1 Kings 4:12). Gezer: also an old Canaanitish royal city, which stood close to the Philistian frontier, probably on the site of the present village of el Kubab (see at Josh. 10;33).
Verse 16. This city had been taken and burned down by the king of Egypt; its Canaanitish inhabitants had been put to death; and the city itself had been given as a marriage portion to his daughter who was married to Solomon. Nothing is known concerning the occasion and object of Pharaoh’s warlike expedition against this city. The conjecture of Thenius, that the Canaanitish inhabitants of Gezer had drawn upon themselves the vengeance of Pharaoh, mentioned here, through a piratical raid upon the Egyptian coast, is open to this objection, that according to all accounts concerning its situation, Gezer was not situated near the sea-coast, but very far inland.
Verse 17. This city Solomon built: i.e., he not only rebuilt it, but also fortified it. He did the same also to Lower Bethhoron, i.e., Beit-Ur Tachta, on the western slope of the mountains, four hours’ journey from Gibeon.
According to 2 Chron 8:5, Solomon also fortified Upper Bethhoron, which was separated by a deep wady from Lower Bethhoron, that lay to the west (see Comm. on Josh 10:10 and 16:3). The two Bethhorons and Gezer were very important places for the protection of the mountainous country of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Judah against hostile invasions from the Philistian plain. The situation of Megiddo on the southern edge of the plain of Jezreel, through which the high road from the western coast to the Jordan ran, was equally important; and so also was Hazor as a border fortress against Syria in the northern part of the land.
Verse 18. Solomon also built, i.e., fortified, Baalath and Tadmor in the desert. According to Josh 19:44, Baalath was a city of Dan, and therefore, as Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 1) justly observes, was not far from Gezer; and consequently is not to be identified with either Baalgad or Baalbek in Coele-syria (Iken, ich. Rosenm.; cf. Robinson, Bibl. Res. p. 519). rm;T; (Chethîb) is either to be read rm;T; , or according to Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 344) tamor, palm, a palm-city. The Keri requires rmod]Tæ (Tadmor, after Chron 8:4), a pronunciation which may possibly have simply arisen from Aramaean expansion, but which is still the name for the city current among the Arabs even in the present day (Arabic tadmur, locus palmarum ferax).
The Greeks and Romans called it Palmyra. It was situated in what is certainly now a very desolate oasis of the Syrian desert, on the caravan road between Damascus and the Euphrates-according to modern accounts, not more than seventeen hours’ journey from that river; and there are still magnificent ruins which attest the former glory of this wealthy and, under queen Zenobia, very powerful city (cf. Ritter, Erdk. xvii. 2, p. 1486ff., and E. Osiander in Herzog’s Cycl.).
The correctness of this explanation of the name is placed beyond all doubt by the words “in the wilderness;” and consequently even Movers has given up his former opinion, viz., that it was the city of Thamar in southern Judah (Ezek 47:19; 48:28), which Thenius has since adopted, and has decided in favour of Palmyra, without being led astray by the attempt of Hitzig to explain the name from the Sanscrit (vid., Deutsche morgld. Ztschr. viii. p. 222ff.). The expression xr,a, appears superfluous, as all the cities named before were situated in the land or kingdom of Solomon, and Tadmor is sufficiently defined by rB;d]mi (in the desert). The text is evidently faulty, and either the name of the land, namely Hamath (according to 2 Chron 8:4), has dropped out, or xr,a, is to be taken in connection with what follows (according to the Cod. Al. of the LXX), and the cop. w before kaal-`aareey ‘eet must be erased and inserted before xr,a, (“and in the land of all the magazine-cities”).
Verse 19-21. The “magazine-cities” hn;K]s]mi `ry[i ) were fortified cities, in which the produce of the land was collected, partly for provisioning the army, and partly for the support of the rural population in times of distress (2 Chron 17:12; 32:28), similar to those which Pharaoh had built in the land of Goshen (Ex 1:11). If they were situated on the great commercial roads, they may also have served for storing provisions for the necessities of travellers and their beasts of burden. The cities for the war-chariots bk,r, ) and cavalry vr;p; ) were probably in part identical with the magazinecities, and situated in different parts of the kingdom. There were no doubt some of these upon Lebanon, as we may on the one hand infer from the general importance of the northern frontier to the security of the whole kingdom, and still more from the fact that Solomon had an opponent at Damascus in the person of Rezin (1 Kings 11:24), who could easily stir up rebellion in the northern provinces, which had only just been incorporated by David into the kingdom; and as we may on the other hand clearly gather from 2 Chron 16:4, according to which there were magazine-cities in the land of Naphtali. Finally, the words “and what Solomon had a desire to build” embrace all the rest of his buildings, which it would have occupied too much space to enumerate singly.
That the words qv,je tae are not to be so pressed as to be made to denote simply “the buildings undertaking for pure pleasure,” like the works mentioned in Eccl 2:4ff., as Thenius and Bertheau suppose, is evident from a comparison of v. 1, where all Solomon’s buildings except the temple and palace, and therefore the fortifications as well as others, are included in the expression “all his desire.”-Fuller particulars concerning the tributary workmen are given in v. 20ff. The Canaanitish population that was left in the land were made use of for this purpose-namely, the descendants of the Canaanites who had not been entirely exterminated by the Israelites. “Their children,” etc., supplies a more precise definition of the expression “all the people,” etc., in v. 20. (For the fact itself, see the commentary on 1 Kin 5:27-28.)
Verse 22-23. Solomon did not make Israelites into tributary slaves; but they were warriors, ministers, and civil and military officers. `db,[, are the king’s servants; rcæ , the heads of the military and civil service; vyliv; , royal adjutants (see at 2 Sam 23:8); vr;p; bk,r, rcæ , captains over the royal warchariots and cavalry.-For v. 23 compare 1 Kin 5:30.
Verse 24,25. Vv. 24 and 25 contain two notices, with which the account of Solomon’s buildings is brought to a close. Both verses point back to Kings 3:1-4 (viz., v. 24 to ch. 3:1, and v. 25 to 1 Kings 3:2-4), and show how the incongruities which existed at the commencement of Solomon’s reign were removed by his buildings. When Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, he brought her into the city of David (1 Kings 3:1), until he should have finished his palace and built her a house of her own within it.
After this building was completed, he had her brought up from the city of David into it. `hl;[; , came up, inasmuch as the palace stood upon the loftier summit of Zion. Ëaæ is to be connected with za; which follows, in the sense of only or just as: as soon as Pharaoh’s daughter had gone up into the house built for her, Solomon built Millo. f138 Verse 25. After the building of the temple, the practice of sacrificing upon the altars of the high places could be brought to an end (1 Kings 3:2).
Solomon now offered burnt-offerings and thank-offerings three times a year upon the altar which he had built to the Lord, i.e., upon the altar of burnt-offering in the temple, or as 2 Chron 8; 12 adds by way of explanation, “before the porch.” “Three times in the year:” i.e., at the three great yearly feasts-passover, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles (2 Chron 8:13). The words which follow, tae r f1 q; , “and indeed burning (the sacrifice) at the (altar) which was before Jehovah,” cannot be taken as parallel to the preceding clause, and understood as referring to the incense, which was offered along with the bleeding sacrifices, because r f1 q; is not a preterite, but an inf. absol., which shows that this clause merely serves as an explanation of the preceding one, in the sense of, “namely, burning the sacrifices at the altar which was before Jehovah.” r f1 q; is the technical expression here for the burning of the portions of the sacrificial flesh upon the altar, as in Ex 29:18; Lev 1:9, etc.
On the use of rv,a after tae , which Thenius and Böttcher could not understand, and on which they built up all kinds of conjectures, see Ewald, §333, a., note.- hyiBæhæAta, µLæviw] , “and made the house complete,” i.e., he put the temple into a state of completion by offering the yearly sacrifices there from that time forward, or, as Böttcher explains it, gave it thereby its full worth as a house of God and place of worship. µlæv; is to be taken grammatically as a continuation of the inf. abs. r f1 q; .
Verse 26-28. He sends ships to Ophir.-Solomon built a fleet ynæa is collective, ships or fleet; the nom. unitatis is hY;nia’ ) at Eziongeber, near Eloth, on the coast of the Red Sea ( ãWsAµyæ see at Ex 10:19), in the land of Edom; and Hiram sent in the fleet “shipmen that had knowledge of the sea” along with Solomon’s servants to Ophir, whence they brought to king Solomon 420 talents of gold. Eziongeber, a harbour at the north-eastern end of the Elanitic Gulf, was probably the “large and beautiful town of Asziun” mentioned by Makrizi (see at Num 33:35), and situated on the great bay of Wady Emrag (see Rüppell, Reisen in Nubien, pp. 252-3).
Eloth (lit., trees, a grove, probably so named from the large palm-grove in the neighbourhood), or Elath (Deut 2:8; 2 Kings 14:22: see at Gen 14:6), the Aila and Aelana of the Greeks and Romans, Arab. Aileh, was situated at the northern point of the (Elanitic) gulf, which took its name from the town; and in the time of the Fathers it was an important commercial town.
It was not far from the small modern fortress of Akaba, where heaps of rubbish still show the spot on which it formerly stood (compare Rüppell, Nub. p. 248, with plates 6 and 7, and Robinson, Pal. i. p. 251ff.).-The corresponding text, 2 Chron 8:17-18, differs in many respects from the account before us. The statement in the Chronicles, that Solomon went to Eziongeber and Elath, is but a very unimportant deviation; for the building of the fleet makes it a very probable thing in itself that Solomon should have visited on that account the two towns on the Elanitic Gulf, which were very near to one another, to make the requisite arrangements upon the spot for this important undertaking. There is apparently a far greater deviation in v. 27, where, in the place of the statement that Hiram sent baa’aaniy, in the (or a) fleet, his servants as sailors who had knowledge of the sea, the chronicler affirms that Hiram sent by his servants ships and men who had knowledge of the sea. For the only way in which Hiram could send ships to Eziongeber was either by land or (as Ritter, Erdk. xiv. p. 365, supposes) out of the Persian Gulf, supposing that the Tyrians had a fleet upon that sea at so early a date as this. The statement in the Chronicles receives an apparent confirmation from 1 Kings 10:22, “The king had a Tarshish fleet upon the sea with the fleet of Hiram,” if indeed this passage also refers to the trade with Ophir, as is generally supposed; for then these words affirm that Hiram sent ships of his own to Ophir along with those of Solomon. We do not think it probable, however that the words “Hiram sent ships by his own men” are to be so pressed as to be taken to mean that he had whole ships, or ships taken to pieces, conveyed to Eziongeber either from Tyre or out of the Mediterranean Sea, although many cases might be cited from antiquity in support of this view. f139 In all probability the words affirm nothing more than that Hiram supplied the ships for this voyage, that is to say, that he had them built at Eziongeber by his own men, and the requisite materials conveyed thither, so far as they were not to be obtained upon the spot. At any rate, Solomon was obliged to call the Tyrians to his help for the building of the ships, since the Israelites, who had hitherto carried in no maritime trade at all, were altogether inexperienced in shipbuilding. Moreover, the country round Eziongeber would hardly furnish wood adapted for the purpose, as there are only palms to be found there, whose spongy wood, however useful it may be for the inside of houses, cannot be applied to the building of ships. But if Hiram had ships built for Solomon by his own men and sent him sailors who were accustomed to the sea, he would certainly have some of his own ships engaged in this maritime trade; and this explains the statement in 1 Kings 10:22.
The destination of the fleet was Ophir, whence the ships brought 420 or (according to the Chronicles) 450 talents of gold. The difference between 420 and 450 may be accounted for from the substitution of the numeral letter n (50) for k (20). The sum mentioned amounted to eleven or twelve million dollars (from £1,600,000 to £1,800,000-Tr.), and the question arises, whether this is to be taken as the result of one voyage, or as the entire profits resulting from the expeditions to Ophir. The words admit of either interpretation, although they are more favourable to the latter than to the former, inasmuch as there is no allusion whatever to the fact that they brought this amount all at once or on every voyage. (See also at 1 Kings 10:14 and 22.) The question as to the situation of Ophir has given rise to great dispute, and hitherto no certain conclusion has been arrived at; in fact, it is possible that there are no longer any means of deciding it. Some have endeavoured to prove that it was in southern Arabia, others that it was on the eastern coast of Africa, and others again that it was in Hither India. f140 The decision is dependent upon a previous question, whether 1 Kings 10:22, “The king had a Tarshish fleet upon the sea with the fleet of Hiram; once in three years came the Tarshish fleet, bringing gold, silver,” etc., also applies to the voyage to Ophir. The expression “Tarshish fleet;” the word µy; (“on the sea”), which naturally suggests that sea to which the Israelites applied the special epithet µy; , namely the Mediterranean; and lastly, the difference in the cargoes-the ships from Ophir bringing gold and algummim wood (v. 28 and 1 Kings 10:11), and the Tarshish fleet bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks (1 Kings 10:22)-appear to favour the conclusion that the Tarshish fleet did not sail to Ophir, but upon the Mediterranean Sea to Tarshish, i.e., Tartessus in Spain; to which we may add the fact that vyvir]Tæ ynæa is reproduced in 2 Chron 9:21 by vyvir]Tæ twOkl]ho twOYnia\ , “ships going to Tarshish.” Nevertheless, however plausible these arguments may appear, after a renewed investigation of the subject I cannot regard them as having decisive weight: for (1) the expression “Tarshish fleet” is used in 1 Kings 22:49 in connection with ships that were intended to go to Ophir; (2) µy; (upon the sea) might receive its more precise definition from what precedes; and (3) the difference in the cargoes reduces itself to this, that in addition to the gold, which was the chief production of Ophir, there are a few other articles of trade mentioned, so that the account in 1 Kings 10:22 is more complete than that in ch. 9:28 and 10:11.
The statement concerning the Tarshish fleet in 1 Kings 10:22 contains a passing remark, like that in 1 Kings 10:11, from which we must infer that both passages treat in the same manner simply of the voyage to Ophir, and therefore that the term “Tarshish ships,” like our Indiamen (Indienfahrer), was applied to ships intended for long voyages. If, in addition to the ships sailing to Ophir, Solomon had also had a fleet upon the Mediterranean Sea which sailed with the Phoenicians to Tartessus, this would certainly have been mentioned here (1 Kings 9:27-28) at the same time as the Ophir voyage. On all these grounds we can come to no other conclusion than that the expression in 2 Chron 9:21, “ships going to Tarshish,” is simply a mistaken exposition of the term “Tarshish fleet,”-a mistake which may easily be explained from the fact, that at the time when the Chronicles were written, the voyages not only of the Israelites but also of the Tyrians both to Ophir and Tarshish had long since ceased, and even the geographical situation of these places was then unknown to the Jews (see my Introduction to the Old Test. p. 442, ed. 2).
The name Ophir occurs first of all in Gen 10:29 among the tribes of Southern Arabia, that were descended from Joktan, between Seba and Havilah, i.e., the Sabaeans and Chaulotaeans. Hence it appears most natural to look for the gold-land of Ophir in Southern Arabia. But as there is still a possibility that the Joktanide tribe of Ophir, or one branch of it, may subsequently have emigrated either to the eastern coast of Africa or even to Hither India, and therefore that the Solomonian Ophir may have been an Arabian colony outside Arabia, the situation of this gold country cannot be determined without further evidence from Gen 10:29 alone; but before arriving at an actual decision, we must first of all examine the arguments that may be adduced in support of each of the three countries named. Sofala in Eastern Africa, in the Mozambique Channel, has nothing in common with the name Ophir, but is the Arabic sufâlah (Heb. hl;pev] ), i.e., lowland or sea-coast; and the old Portuguese accounts of the gold mines in the district of Fura there, as well as the pretended walls of the queen of Saba, have far too little evidence to support them, to have any bearing upon the question before us.
The supposed connection between the name Ophir and the city of Soupa>ra mentioned by Ptolemaeus, or Ou>ppara by Periplus (Geogr. min. i. p. 30), in the neighbourhood of Goa, or the shepherd tribe of Abhira, cannot be sustained. Doupa’ra or Sufâra (Edrisi) answers to the Sanscrit Supaara, i.e., beautiful coast (cf. Lassen, Ind. Alterthk. i. p. 107); and Au’ppara in Periplus is not doubt simply a false reading for Soupa>ra , which has nothing in common with rypiwOa . And the shepherd tribe of Abhira can hardly come into consideration, because the country which they inhabited, to the south-east of the mouths of the Indus, has no gold.-Again, the hypothesis that India is intended derives just as little support from the circumstance that, with the exception of Gen 10:29, the LXX have always rendered rypiwOa either Swfira> or Soufi>r , which is, according to the Coptic lexicographers, the name used by the Copts for India, and that Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 4), who used the Old Test. in the Alexandrian version, has given India as the explanation of Ophir, as it does from this supposed resemblance in the names. For, according to the geographical ideas of the Alexandrians and later Greeks, India reached to Ethiopia, and Ethiopia to India, as Letronne has conclusively proved (see his Memoire sur une mission arienne, etc., in Mem. de l’Instit. Acad. des Inscript. et Bell. Lettres, t. x. p. 220ff.).
Greater stress has been laid upon the duration of the voyages to Ophirnamely, that the Tarshish fleet came once in three years, according to Kings 10:22, and brought gold, etc. But even Lassen, who follows Heeren, observes quite truly, that “this expression need not be understood as signifying that three whole years intervened between the departure and return, but simply that the fleet returned once in the course of three years.”
Moreover, the stay in Ophir is to be reckoned in as part of the time occupied in the voyage; and that this is not to be estimated as a short one, is evident from the fact that, according to Homer, Odyss. xv. 454ff., a Phoenician merchantman lay for a whole year at one of the Cyclades before he had disposed of his wares of every description, in return for their articles of commerce, and filled his roomy vessel. If we add to this the slowness of the voyage-considering that just as at the present day the Arabian coasters go but very slowly from port to port, so the combined fleet of Hiram and Solomon would not be able to proceed with any greater rapidity, inasmuch as the Tyrians were not better acquainted with the dangerous Arabian Sea than the modern Arabians are, and that the necessary provisions for a long voyage, especially the water for drinking, could not be taken on board all at once, but would have to be taken in at the different landing-places, and that on these occasions some trade would be done-we can easily understand how a voyage from Eziongeber to the strait of Bab el Mandeb and the return might occupy more than a year, so that the time occupied in the voyage as given here cannot furnish any decisive proof that the fleet sailed beyond Southern Arabia to the East Indies.
And lastly, the same remarks apply to the goods brought from Ophir, which many regard as decisive evidence in favour of India. The principal article for which Ophir became so celebrated, viz., the gold, is not found either in Sufâra near Goa, or in the land of Abhira. Even if India be much richer in gold than was formerly supposed (cf. Lassen, ii. p. 592), the rich gold country lies to the north of Cashmir (see Lassen, ii. pp. 603-4).
Moreover, not only is it impossible to conceive what goods the Phoenicians can have offered to the Indian merchants for their gold and the other articles named, since large sums of gold were sent to India every year in the Roman times to pay for the costly wares that were imported thence (see Roscher, pp. 53, 54); but it is still less possible to comprehend how the shepherd tribe of Abhira could have come into possession of so much gold as the Ophir fleet brought home.
The conjecture of Ritter (Erdk. xiv. p. 399) and Lassen (ii. p. 592), that this tribe had come to the coast not very long before from some country of their own where gold abounded, and that as an uncultivated shepherd tribe they attached but very little value to the gold, so that they parted with it to the Phoenicians for their purple cloths, their works in brass and glass, and for other things, has far too little probability to appear at all admissible. If the Abhira did not know the value of the gold, they would not have brought it in such quantities out of their original home into these new settlements. We should therefore be obliged to assume that they were a trading people, and this would be at variance with all the known accounts concerning this tribe.-As a rule, the gold treasures of Hither Asia were principally obtained from Arabia in the most ancient times. If we leave Havilah (Gen 2:11) out of the account, because its position cannot be determined with certainty, the only other place specially referred to in the Old Testament besides Ophir as being celebrated as a gold country is Saba, in the south-western portion of Yemen. The Sabaeans bring gold, precious stones, and incense (Isa 60:6; Ezek 27:22); and the queen of Saba presented Solomon with 120 talents of gold, with perfumes and with precious stones (1 Kings 10:10).
This agrees with the accounts of the classical writers, who describe Arabia as very rich in gold (cf. Strabo, xvi. 777f. and 784; Diod. Sic. ii. 50, iii. 44; also Bochart, Phaleg, l. ii. c. 27). These testimonies, which we have already given in part at Ex 38:31, are far too distinct to be set aside by the remark that there is no gold to be found in Arabia at the present time. For whilst, on the one hand, the wealth of Arabia in gold may be exhausted, just as Spain no longer yields any silver, on the other hand we know far too little of the interior of Southern Arabia to be able distinctly to maintain that there is no gold in existence there.-Silver, the other metal brought from Ophir, was also found in the land of the Nabataeans, according to Strabo, xvi. p. 784, although the wealth of the ancient world in silver was chiefly derived from Tarshish or Tartessus in Spain (cf. Movers, Phöniz. ii. 3, p. 36ff., where the different places are enumerated in which silver was found).-That precious stones were to be found in Arabia is evident from the passages cited above concerning the Sabaeans.-On the other hand, however, it has been supposed that the remaining articles of Ophir could only have been brought from the East Indies.
According to 1 Kings 10:12, the Ophir ships brought a large quantity of µyGimul]aæ `x[e (almuggim wood: 2 Chron 2:7, µyMigul]aæ ). According to Kimchi (on 2 Chron 2:7), the gWml]aæ or µWgl]aæ is arbor rubri coloris, dicta lingua arabica albakam (Arabic ...), vulgo brasilica. This tree, according to Abulfadl (Celsius, Hierob. i. p. 176), is a native of India and Ethiopia; and it is still a question in dispute, whether we are to understand by this the Pterocarpus Santal., from which the true sandal-wood comes, and which is said to grow only in the East Indies on Malabar and Java, or the Caesalpinia Sappan L., a tree which grows in the East Indies, more especially in Ceylon, and also in different parts of Africa, the red wood of which is used in Europe chiefly for dyeing. Moreover the true explanation of the Hebrew name is still undiscovered. The derivation of it from the Sanscrit Valgu, i.e., pulcher (Lassen and Ritter), has been set aside by Gesenius as inappropriate, and mocha, mochâta, which is said to signify sandal-wood in Sanscrit, has been suggested instead.
But no evidence has been adduced in its favour, nor is the word to be found in Wilson’s Sanscrit Lexicon. If, however, this derivation were correct, laæ would be the Arabic article, and the introduction of this article in connection with the word mocha would be a proof that the sandal-wood, together with its name, came to the Hebrews through merchants who spoke Arabic.-The other articles from Ophir mentioned in 1 Kings 10:22 are µyBehæn]v, , odo>ntev elefa>ntinoi (LXX), dentes elephantorum or ebur (Vulg.), d¦piyl sheen, elephants’ teeth (Targ.). But however certain the meaning of the word may thus appear, the justification of this meaning is quite as uncertain. In other cases ivory is designated by the simple term ˆve (1 Kings 10:18; 22:39; Ps 45:9; Amos 3:15, etc.), whereas Ezekiel (Ezek 27:15) calls the whole tusk ˆve ˆr,q, , horns of the tooth. habiym is said to signify elephants here; and according to Benary it is contracted from µyBiaih; , the Sanscrit word ibha, elephant; according to Ewald, from µyBil]hæ , from the Sanscrit Kalabha; and according to Hitzig, from µybih;n] = µybih;l, , Libyi; or else µyBehæn]v, is a false reading for ˆbho ˆve , ivory and ebony, according to Ezek 27:15 (see Ges. Thes. p. 1453).
Of these four derivations the first two are decidedly wrong: the first, because ibha as a name for the elephant only occurs, according to Weber, in the later Indian writings, and is never used in the earlier writings in this sense (vid., Roediger, Addenda ad Ges. thes. p. 115); the second, because Kalabha does not signify the elephant, but catulum elephanti, before it possesses any teeth available for ivory. The third is a fancy which its originator himself has since given up and the fourth a conjecture, which is not raised to a probability even by the attempt of Böttcher to show that µyBihæ is a case of backward assimilation from µynib]hæ , because the asyndeton µyBihæ ˆve between two couples connected by w is without any analogy, and the passages adduced by Böttcher, viz., Deut 29:22; Josh 15:54ff., and Even Ezek 27:33, are to be taken in quite a different way.- The rendering of ãwOq by apes, and the connection of the name not only with the Sanscrit and Malabar kapi, but also with the Greek kh>pov and kh>bov , also kei>bov , are much surer; but, on the other hand, the assumption that the Greeks, like the Semitic nations, received the word from the Indians along with the animals, is very improbable: for kh>pov in Greek does not denote the ape ( pi>qhkov ) generally, but simply a species of long-tailed apes, the native land of which, according to the testimony of ancient writers, was Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian apes are hardly likely to have sprung from India.-And lastly, even in the case of yKiTu , according to the ancient versions peacocks, the derivation from the Malabaric or Tamul tôgai or tôghai (cf. Roediger in Ges. Thes. p. 1502) is not placed beyond the reach of doubt.
If, in conclusion, we look through all the articles of commerce that were brought to Jerusalem from the Ophir voyages, apart from the gold and silver, which were not to be found in the land of Abhira, the ivory and ebony (supposing that we ought to read ˆbho ˆve for µyBehæn]v, ) furnish no evidence in support of India, inasmuch as both of them could have been brought from Ethiopia, as even Lassen admits (ii. pp. 554). And even if the words Almuggim, Kophim, and Tucchijim really came from India along with the objects to which they belonged, it would by no means follow with certainty from this alone that Ophir was situated in India.-For since, for example, there are indisputable traces of very early commercial intercourse between India and Hither Asia and Africa, especially Southern Arabia and Ethiopia, reaching far beyond the time of Solomon, the seamen of Hiram and Solomon may have obtained these articles either in Arabia or on the Ethiopian coast.
For even if the statements of Herodotus and Strabo, to the effect that the Phoenicians emigrated from the islands of the Erythraean Sea, Tylos (or Tyros?) and Arados, to the Phoenician coast, do not prove that the Phoenicians had already extended their commercial enterprise as far as India even before the twelfth century, as Lassen (ii. 597 and 584-5) supposes; if the Tyrians and Aradians, who were related to them by tribe, still continued to dwell upon the islands of the Persian Gulf, from which they could much more easily find the way to India by sea-since the historical character of these statement has been disputed by Movers (Phönizier, ii. 1, p. 38ff.) on very weighty grounds; yet it is evident that there was a very early intercourse between East India and Africa, reaching far beyond all historical testimony, from the following well-established facts: that the Egyptians made use of indigo in the dyeing of their stuffs, and this could only have been brought to them from India; that muslins,which were likewise of Indian origin, are found among the material sin which the mummies are enveloped; and that in the graves of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who ceased to reign in the year 1476 B.C., there have been discovered vases of Chinese porcelain (cf. Lassen, ii. p. 596).
And the intercourse between the southern coast of Arabia and Hither India may have been quite as old, if not older; so that Indian productions may have been brought to Hither Asia by the Sabaeans long before the time of Solomon (vid., Lassen, ii. pp. 593-4, and Movers, Phöniz. ii. 3, pp. 247, 256). But the commercial intercourse between Arabia and the opposite coast of Ethiopia, by which African productions reached the trading inhabitants of Arabia, was unquestionably still older than the trade with India. If we weigh well all these points, there is no valid ground for looking outside Arabia for the situation of the Solomonian Ophir. But we shall no doubt be obliged to give up the hope of determining with any greater precision that particular part of the coast of Arabia in which Ophir was situated, inasmuch as hitherto neither the name Ophir nor the existence of gold-fields in Arabia has been established by modern accounts, and moreover the interior of the great Arabian peninsula is still for the most part a terra incognita. f143 THE QUEEN OF SABA. SOLOMON’S WEALTH AND SPLENDOUR.
1 KINGS. 10:1-13
Visit of the Queen of Saba (cf. 2 Chron 9:1-12). When the fame of Solomon’s great wisdom came to the ears of the queen of Saba, probably through the Ophir voyages, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem, to convince herself of the truth of the report which had reached her, by putting it to the test by means of enigmas. ab;v] , Daba’, is not Ethiopia or Meroë, as Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 5), who confounds ab;v] with ab;s] , and the Abyssinian Christians suppose (vid., Ludolfi hist. Aeth. ii. 3), but the kingdom of the Sabaeans, who were celebrated for their trade in incense, gold, and precious stones, and who dwelt in Arabia Felix, with the capital Saba, or the Maria>ba of the Greeks. This queen, who is called Balkis in the Arabian legend (cf. Koran, Sur. 27, and Pococke, Specim. hist. Arab. p. 60), heard the fame of Solomon hwO;hy] µve ; i.e., not “at the naming of the name of Jehovah” (Böttcher), nor “in respect of the glory of the Lord, with regard to that which Solomon had instituted for the glory of the Lord” (Thenius); nor even “serving to the glorification of God” (de Wette and Maurer); but literally, “belonging to the name of the Lord:” in other words, the fame which Solomon had acquired through the name of the Lord, or through the fact that the Lord had so glorified Himself in him (Ewald and Dietrich in Ges. Lex. s.v. l] ). “She came to try him with riddles,” i.e., to put his wisdom to the test by carrying on a conversation with him in riddles. The love of the Arabs for riddles, and their superiority in this jeu d’esprit, is sufficiently well known from the immense extent to which the Arabic literature abounds in Mashals. We have only to think of the large collections of proverbs made by Ali ben Abi Taleb and Meidani, or the Makamen of Hariri, which have been made accessible to all by F. Rückert’s masterly translation into German, and which are distinguished by an amazing fulness of word-play and riddles. hd;yji , a riddle, is a pointed saying which merely hints at the deeper truth and leaves it to be guessed. Verse 2-3. As the queen of a wealthy country, she came with a very large retinue. lyijæ does not mean a military force or an armed escort (Thenius), but riches, property; namely, her numerous retinue of men `db,[, , v. 13), and camels laden with valuable treasures. The words lm;G; are an explanatory circumstantial clause, both here and also in the Chronicles, where the cop. Vav stands before lm;G; (cf. Ewald, §341, a., b.). “And spake to Solomon all that she had upon her heart,” i.e., in this connection, whatever riddles she had it in her mind to lay before him; “and Solomon told her all her sayings,” i.e., was able to solve all her riddles. There is no ground for thinking of sayings of a religious nature, as the earlier commentators supposed, but simply of sayings the meaning of which was concealed, and the understanding of which indicated very deep wisdom.
Verse 4-5. She saw tyiBæ , i.e., Solomon’s palace, not the temple, and “the food of his table,” i.e., both the great variety of food that was placed upon the king’s table (1 Kings 5:2-3), and also the costly furniture of the table (v. 21), and “the seat of his retainers and the standing of his servants,” i.e., the places in the palace assigned to the ministers and servants of the king, which were contrived with wisdom and arranged in a splendid manner. `db,[, are the chief officers of the king, viz., ministers, counsellors, and aides de camp; træv; , the court servants; bv;wOm , the rooms of the courtiers in attendance; dm;[mæ , the standing-place, i.e., the rooms of the inferior servants, “and their clothing,” which they received from the king; and hq,v]mæ , not his cup-bearers (LXX, Vulg.), but as in Gen 40:21, the drink, i.e., probably the whole of the drinking arrangements; `hl;[o , and his ascent, by which he was accustomed to go into the house of Jehovah. `hl;[o does not mean burnt-offering here, as the older translators have rendered it, but ascent, as in Ezek 40:26, and as the Chronicles have correctly explained it by `aliyaatow. For burnt- offering is not to be thought of in this connection, because the queen had nothing to see or to be astonished at in the presentation of such an offering. `hl;[o is most likely “the king’s outer entrance” into the temple, mentioned in 2 Kings 16:18; and the passage before us would lead us to suppose that this was a work of art, or an artistic arrangement. wgw hy;h; alo , “and there was no more spirit in her:” she was beside herself with amazement, as in Josh 5:1; 2:11. Verse 6-9. She then said with astonishment to Solomon, that of what her eyes now saw she had not heard the half, through the report which had reached her of his affairs and of his wisdom, and which had hitherto appeared incredible to her; and not only congratulated his servants, who stood continually near him and could hear his wisdom, but also praised Jehovah his God, that out of His eternal love to His people Israel He had given them a king to do justice and righteousness. The earlier theologians inferred from this praising of Jehovah, which involved faith in the true God, when taken in connection with Matt 12:42, that this queen had been converted to the true God, and conversed with Solomon on religious matters. But, as we have already observed at 1 Kin 5:21, an acknowledgment of Jehovah as the God of Israel was reconcilable with polytheism. And the fact that nothing is said about her offering sacrifice in the temple, shows that the conversion of the queen is not to be thought of here.
Verse 10. She thereupon presented to Solomon a hundred and twenty talents of gold (more than three million thalers nearly half a million sterling- Tr.), and a very large quantity of spices and precious stones. The µc,B, probably included the genuine balsam of Arabia, even if µc,B, was not the specific name of the genuine balsam. “There never more came so much of such spices of Jerusalem.” Instead of bbær; awOB alo we find in the Chronicles, v. 9, simply hy;h; alo , “there was nothing like this balsam,” which conveys the same meaning though expressed more indefinitely, since aWh µc,B, points back to the preceding words, “balsam (spices) in great quantity.” f144 Verse 11-12. The allusion to these costly presents leads the historian to introduce the remark here, that the Ophir fleet also brought, in addition to gold, a large quantity of Algummim wood (see at 1 Kings 9:28) and precious stones. Of this wood Solomon had d[;s]mi or hL;sim] made for the temple and palace. d[;s]mi , from d[æs; , signifies a support, and hL;sim] may be a later form for culam, a flight of steps or a staircase, so that we should have to think of steps with bannisters. This explanation is at any rate a safer one than that of “divans” (Thenius), which would have been quite out of place in the temple, or “narrow pannelled stripes on the floor” (Bertheau), which cannot in the smallest degree be deduced from d[;s]mi , or “support = moveables, viz., tables, benches, footstools, boxes, and drawers” (Böttcher), which neither harmonizes with the temple, where there was no such furniture, nor with the hL;sim] of the Chronicles. “And guitars and harps for the singers,” probably for the temple singers. rwONKi and lb,n, are string instruments; the former resembling our guitar 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.
Verse 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 might and his wealth, which he was obliged to give as a king, according to the Oriental custom. In the Chronicles (v. 12) we find “beside that which she had brought awOB) 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.
1 KINGS. 10:14-15
Solomon’s Wealth and the Use He Made of It (cf. 2 Chron 9:13-21).-V. 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. dj;a, hn,v; 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. vv. 28, 29) or from the royal domains (1 Chron 27:26-31), or received in the form of presents from foreign princes, who either visited him like the queen of Saba or sent ambassadors to him (vv. 23, 24), excepting the duties and tribute from conquered kings, which are specially mentioned in v. 15. ht’ vwOna’ dBæ , beside what came in hmolv] awOB) from the travelling traders and the commerce of the merchants, and from all the kings, etc. rWT vyai (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 lkær; the wholesale dealers.
This explanation of µWr cannot be rendered doubtful by the objection that rWf only occurs elsewhere in connection with the wandering about of spies; for lkær; signified originally to go about, spy out, or retail scandal, and after that to trade, and go about as a tradesman. `br,[, Ël,m, are not kings of the auxiliary and allied nations (Chald., Ges.), but kings of the mixed population, and according to Jer 25:24, more especially of the population of Arabia Deserta rB;d]mi ˆkæv; ), which bordered upon Palestine; for `br,[, is a mixed crowd of all kinds of men, who either attach themselves to a nation (Ex 12:38), or live in the midst of it as foreigners (Neh 13:3), hence a number of mercenaries (Jer 50:37). In 2 Chron 9:14, `br,[, is therefore correctly explained by the term `br;[ , 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 of Solomon. xr,a, hj;p, , the governors of the land, are probably the officers named in 1 Kings 4:7-19.
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. hj;p, is a foreign word, which first found its way into the Hebrew language after the times of the Assyrians, and sprang from the Sanscrit paksha, 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 Monatsnamen, p. 195).
1 KINGS. 10:16-17
Solomon had 500 ornamental shields made, 200 larger ones ˆxe , scuta, targets), and 300 smaller ˆgem; , 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 bibl. Archäol. ii. pp. 296ff.). fjv bh;z; 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 fjæv; , 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 17 1/2 lbs., so that the value of the gold upon a target would be more than 5000 thalers (£750), supposing that the Mosaic shekel is meant. But this is rendered doubtful by the fact that the gold upon the small shields is estimated at three minae. If, for example, the three minae are equal to three hundred shekels, according to 2 Chron 9:16, as is generally assumed, a hundred shekels are reckoned as one mina; and as the mina only contained fifty Mosaic shekels, according to Ezek 45:12, the reference must be to shekels after the king’s weight (2 Sam 14:26), which were only half the sacred shekels (see my bibl. Archäol. ii. p. 135).
Consequently the gold plate upon one target was not quite 9 lbs., and that upon a shield not quite 4 1/2 lbs. These shields were intended for the bodyguard to carry on state occasions (1 Kings 14:27-28; 2 Chron 12:10), and were kept in the house of the forest of Lebanon (1 Kings 7:2).
1 KINGS. 10:18-20
Solomon had a great throne of ivory made, and had it overlaid with fine gold. kicee’-sheen 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. zzæp; , a hophal participle of zzæp; : aurum depuratum, hence = dwOhf; in 2 Chron 9:17. 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, and dy; , arms, i.e., arms on both sides of the seat fb,ve µwOqm; ), 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 yria (v. 20) we find yria in v. 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 i-ym is an unusual one with this word; and even where natural lions are spoken of, we always find yria in other passages (cf. Judg 14:5; 2 Sam 1:23; 2 Kings 17:25; Song of Sol. 4:8, 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 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., Rosenmüller, A. u. N. Morgenland, iii. pp. 176ff.).
1 KINGS. 10:21-22
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 rgæs; : see at 1 Kings 6:20). Silver was counted as nothing, because the Tarshish fleet arrived once in three years, bringing gold, silver, etc. (see at 1 Kings 9:28).
1 KINGS. 10:23-29
In vv. 23-29 everything that had to be stated concerning the wealth, wisdom, and revenue of Solomon is summed up as conclusion (cf. 2 Chron 9:22-28 and 1:14-17).
Verse 23-25. Vv. 23 and 24 point back to 1 Kings 5:9-14. ldæG; : Solomon became greater, not was greater, on account of the Vâv consec. xr,a;h;AlK; , all the world, corresponds to µyMi[æh;AlK; in 1 Kings 5:14. The foreigners out of all lands, who came on account of his wisdom, brought Solomon presents: gold and silver vessels, clothes hm;l]cæ , court dresses, which are still customary presents in the East), qv,n, , armour, spices, horses and mules.
Verse 26-27. V. 26 is simply a repetition of 1 Kings 5:6) compare also ch. 9:19); and v. 27 is merely a further extension of v. 21. The words of v. 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. fq;v; , 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 9:9, on which Theodoret observes, tou>twn ( sukami>nwn ) hJ Palaisti>nh peplh>rwtai ). According to 1 Chron 27:28, the sycamore forests in the lowland of Judah were royal domains.
Verse 28,29. (cf. 2 Chron 1:16-17). “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 hw,q]mæ must be connected with rjæs; in opposition to the accents, and the second must be pointed hw,q]mæ . This is the rendering adopted by Gesenius in his Thesaurus and Lexicon (ed. Dietr. s. v. hw,q]mæ ). The meaning company or troop may certainly be justified from Gen 1:10; Ex 7:19, and Lev 11:36, 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 sWs (horses) after the second hw,q]mæ . 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 hwqm as the name of a place, ex Ekoue> , or rather ek Koue’, de Coa. f146 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 Joa (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.
Verse 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.” hb;K;r]m, , like bk,r, in 2 Sam 8:4; 10:18, and Ezek 39:20, denotes a chariot with the team of horses belonging to it, possibly three horses (see at 1 Kings 5:6), not quadriga (Clericus and others), or two draught horses and two as a reserve (Thenius). For 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 quite 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 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. dy; cannot be adduced as evidence to the contrary; for linguists require no proof that this cannot mean “auf ihre Hand,” as Thenius assumes. Böttcher’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 kings of the hF;ji , the Hittites in the wider sense (= Canaanites, as in Josh 1:4; 2 Kings 7:6; Ezek 16:3), 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.
SOLOMON’S POLYGAMY AND IDOLATRY. HIS OPPONENTS, AND HIS DEATH.
1 KINGS. 11:1-13
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 (1 Kings 9:25), but consisted simply in the fact that his heart was no longer thoroughly devoted to the Lord (1 Kings 11:4), and that he inclined towards the idols of his foreign wives and built them altars (vv. 5-8); that is to say, it consisted merely in a syncretic mixture of Jehovah-worship and idolatry, by which the worship which should be paid solely and exclusively to the true God was not only injured, but was even turned into idolatry itself, Jehovah the only true God being placed on a level with the worthless gods of the heathen.-Love to foreign wives no doubt presupposed an inclination to foreign customs; it was not, however, idolatry in itself, but was still reconcilable with that sincere worship of Jehovah which is attributed to Solomon in the earlier years of his reign.
At the same time it was a rock on which living faith and true adherence to the Lord might at last suffer shipwreck. And we may even infer from the repeated warnings of God (1 Kings 3:14; 6:12; 9:4), 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 endangering 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. Solomon’s Love of Many Wives and Idolatry.
Verse 1-2 . “Solomon loved many foreign wives, and that along with the daughter of Pharaoh.” p tBæAta,w] , standing as it does between r yrik]n; hV;ai and ybia;wOm , cannot mean “and especially the daughter of P.,” as Thenius follows the earlier commentators in supposing, but must mean, as in v. 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 1 Kings 3:1). All that is blamed is that, in opposition to the command in Deut 17:17, 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 7:1-3; Ex 34:16); 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 v. 2, just as in Ezra 9:2ff., 1 Kings 10:3; Neh 13:23; not from a rigour surpassing the law, but in accordance with the spirit of the law, namely, because the reason appended to the law, ne in idololatriam a superstitiosis mulieribus pellicerentur (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 23:4,8- 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 µyrit;a ... Waobt;Aaol are connected in form with Josh 23:12, but, like the latter, they really rest upon Ex 34:16 and Deut 7:1-3. In the last clause µyrit;a is used with peculiar emphasis: Solomon clave to these nations, of which God had said such things, to love, i.e., to enter into the relation of love or into the marriage relation, with them. qbæD; is used of the attachment of a man to his wife (Gen 2:4) and also to Jehovah (Deut 4:4; 10:20, etc.).
Verse 3-8. Vv. 3-8 carry out still further what has been already stated. In v. 3 the taking of many wives is first explained. He had seven hundred hr;c; hV;ai , 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. 6:8 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. These women “inclined his heart,” i.e., determined the inclination of his heart.
Verse 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. µlev; , integer, i.e., entirely devoted to the Lord (cf. 1 Kings 8:61), like the heart of David his father, who had indeed grievously sinned, but had not fallen into idolatry.
Verse 5-7. He walked after the Ashtaroth, etc. According to v. 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. `tr,Tov][æ , Astarte, was the chief female deity of all the Canaanitish tribes; her worship was also transplanted from Tyre to Carthage, where it flourished greatly.
She was a moon-goddess, whom the Greeks and Romans called sometimes Aphrodite, sometimes Urania, Selhnai>h , Coelestis, and Juno (see the Comm. on Judg 2:13). µK;l]mæ , which is called Ël,mo (without the article) in v. 7, and Ël,m, in Jer 49:1,3, and Amos 1:15, the abomination of the Ammonites, must not be confounded with the Molech ( Ël,Mohæ , 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 18:21), since they had both of them their separate places of worship in Jerusalem (cf. 2 Kings 23:10, 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 v. 7; for Chemosh is also described as a god of the Ammonites in Judg 11:24, whereas everywhere else he is called the god of the Moabites (Num 21:29; Amos 1:15, 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 21:29). The enumeration of the different idols is incomplete; Chemosh being omitted in v. 5, and Astarte, to whom Solomon also built an altar in Jerusalem, according to 2 Kings 23:13, in v. 7. Still this incompleteness does not warrant our filling up the supposed gaps by emendations of the text. wgw [ræ `hc;[; , as in Judg 2:11; 3:7, etc. yy rjæaæ alem; , a pregnant expression for yy ja tk,l,l; aLemi , as in Num 14:24; 32:11-12, etc.-These places of sacrifice hm;B; , see at 1 Kings 3:2) Solomon built upon the mountain in front, i.e., to the east, of Jerusalem, and, according to the more precise account in 2 Kings 23:13, 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 tjæv; rhæ in 2 Kings 23:13, or Mons Scandali, Mount of Offence (vid., Rob. Pal. i. 565 and 566).
Verse 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 23:13, were sufficient for all the deities of the foreign wives. For the Hittites and Edomites do not appear to have had any deities of their own that were peculiar to themselves. The Hittites no doubt worshipped Astarte in common with the Sidonians, and the Edomites probably worshipped Milcom. In the whole of the Old Testament the only place in which gods of the Edomite are mentioned is in 2 Chron 25:20, and there no names are given. Of course we must except Pharaoh’s daughter, according to v. 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. f148 Burning incense r f1 q; ) is mentioned before sacrificing jbæz; ), because vegetable offerings took precedence of animal sacrifices in the natureworship of Hither Asia (vid., Bähr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 237ff.).
Verse 9-13. Through this apostasy from the Lord his God, who had appeared to him twice (1 Kings 3:5ff. and 9:2ff.) and had warned him against idolatry hw;x; is a continuation of the participle ha;r; ), 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 (v. 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 (dei’knusi tee’n a’metron agatho’teeta-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 for David and Jerusalem, but in order that the promise made to David (2 Sam 7), and the choice of Jerusalem as the place where His name should be revealed which was connected with that promise, might stand immoveably as an act of grace, which no sin of men could overturn (vid., v. 36). For dj;a, fb,ve see the Comm. on vv. 31, 32.
1 KINGS. 11:14-40
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 Rezon took place even before the commencement of Solomon’s idolatry, but it is brought by hwO;hy] µWq (v. 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.
Verse 14-22. The first adversary was Hadad the Edomite, a man of royal birth. The name ddæh ddæa in v. 17, according to an interchange of h and ynæa which is by no means rare) was also borne by a prae-Mosaic king of Edom (Gen 36:35), 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 36:31ff.). aWh before µdoa’ stands in the place of the relative rv,a : “of royal seed he = who was of the royal seed in Edom” (cf. Ewald, §332, a.).
Verse 15-17. When David had to do with the Edomites,...Hadad fled. tae hy;h; is analogous to `µ[i hy;h; , to have to do with any one, though in a hostile sense, as in the phrase to go to war with tae ) a person, whereas `µ[i hy;h; generally means to be upon the side of any one. The correctness of the reading hy;h; is confirmed by all the ancient versions, which have simply paraphrased the meaning in different ways. For Böttcher has already shown that the LXX did not read hk;b;c] , as Thenius supposes. The words from twOl[;B] to the end of v. 16 form explanatory circumstantial clauses. On the circumstance itself, compare 2 Sam 8:13-14, 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 8:13), but those who had been slain on the invasion of the land by the Edomites, and still remained unburied.
After their burial Joab defeated the Edomites in the valley of Salt, and remained six months in Edom till he had cut off every male. “All Israel” is the whole of the Israelitish army. “Every male” is of course only the men capable of bearing arms, who fell into the hands of the Israelites; for “Hadad and others fled, and the whole of the Idumaean race was not extinct” (Clericus). Then Hadad fled, while yet a little boy, with some of his father’s Edomitish servants, to go to Egypt, going first of all to Midian and thence to Paran. The country of Midian cannot be more precisely defined, inasmuch as we meet with 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 2:15), and sometimes on the east of the Moabitish territory (see at Num 22:4 and Judg 6:1). 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 10:12), 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.
Verse 18-20. From Paran they took men with them as guides through the desert. Thus Hadad came to Egypt, where Pharaoh received him hospitably, and gave them a house and maintenance µj,l, ), and also assigned him land xr,a, ) 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, Genubath. 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 Rosellini and Wilkinson (Ges. Thes. p. 1500), Tachpenes was also the name of a female deity of Egypt. The wife of Pharaoh is called hr;ybiG] , 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 21:8) and other ancient nations (vid., Dougtaei Analecta ss. i. 22f.), was carried out by the queen in the palace, because the boy was to be thereby adopted among the royal children, to be brought up with them.
Verse 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, “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 10:32 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 vv. 14 and 25, he rose up as an adversary of Solomon. f149 Verse 23-25. A second adversary of Solomon was Rezon, the son of Eliadah (for the name see at 1 Kings 15:18), who had fled from his lord Hadadezer, king of Zobah, and who became the captain of a warlike troop dWdG] ), when David smote them tae ), i.e., the troops of his lord (2 Sam 8:3-4). Rezon probably fled from his lord for some reason which is not assigned, 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.” ddæh rv,a is an abbreviated expression, to which `hc;[; 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 consisted. f150 Rezon, 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. f151 Verse 26-28. Attempted rebellion of Jeroboam the Ephraimite.-Hadad and Rezon are simply described as adversaries ˆf;c; ) 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. b] dy; µWr is synonymous with b] dy; ac;n; in 2 Sam 18:28; 20:21. 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 ytir;p]a, , as in 1 Sam 1:1; Judg 12:5) of Zereda, i.e., Zarthan, in the Jordan valley (see 1 Kings 7:46), son of a widow, and `db,[, , 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. rv,a rb;d; hz, , this is how it stands with, as in Josh 5:4.
Solomon built Millo (1 Kings 9:15), and closed the rent (the defile?) in the city of David. xr,p, , ruptura, cannot be a rent or breach in the wall of the city of David, inasmuch as hm;wOj is not added, and since the fortification of the city by David (2 Sam 5:9) no 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 Tyropoeon, 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. iii. p. 330). Compare xr;p]mi , a gap in the coast, a bay. On the occasion of this building, Jeroboam proved himself a lyijæ rwOBGi , 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 wgwrb;d; hz, in v. 27. According to 1 Kings 12:4, 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.
Verse 29-36. 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. aWh `t[e : 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 vv. 29-39 forms part of the explanation of Ël,m, dy; µWr which commences with v. 27b, so that aWh `t[e hy;h; is closely connected with tae rqæp] in v. 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 Ër,D, ), with a new upper garment wrapped 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 hm;l]cæ 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. Archäol. ii. pp. 36, 37). By the tearing of the new garment into twelve pieces, of which Jeroboam was to take ten for himself, the prophetic announcement was symbolized in a very emphatic manner. This symbolical action made the promise a completed fact. “As the garment as 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” (O. 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 (vv. 31, 32, 35, 36, as in v. 13). The nation consisted of twelve tribes, and Ahijah had 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 1 Kings 12:20, “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 80), C. a Lap., Mich., and others suppose, but, according to the distinct statement in Kings 12:20, “the tribe of Judah only.”
Nevertheless Benjamin belonged to Judah; for, according to 1 Kings 12:21, Rehoboam 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 11:3 and Judah and Benjamin are reckoned as belonging to the kingdom of Rehoboam. 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 Rehoboam 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 Rehoboam 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 19:1-9, 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 Chron 15:9 and 34:6 that an emigration of the whole tribe had taken place (see also at 1 Kings 12:17). On the other hand, whilst the northern border of the tribe of Benjamin, with the cities of Bethel, Ramah, and Jericho, fell to the kingdom of Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:29; 15:17,21; 16:34), 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 11:10; 28:18), in which Judah obtained compensation for the cities of Benjamin of which it had been deprived. f152 Consequently there only remained nine tribes for the northern kingdom.
For wgw`db,[, ˆ[æmæ see at v. 13. For v. 33 compare vv. 4-8. The plurals `bzæ[; , Wwj\Tæv]yi , and Ëlæy; 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. ynidoyxi , with a Chaldaic ending (see Ges. §87, 1, a.). In vv. 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., vv. 12 and 13). tyvi aycin; yKi , “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 Kings 15:4; 2 Kings 8:19; 2 Chron 21:7, is to be explained from 2 Sam 21:17, 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. Verse 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 1 Kings 3:14; 6:12; 9:4, 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 7:16). In the case of Jeroboam, however, there is no allusion to a lasting duration of the hk;l;m]mæ (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. tazO ˆ[æmæ , for this, i.e., because of the apostasy already mentioned; “only not all the days,” i.e., not for ever. wa’`aneh 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 (1 Kings 15:28ff.).
Verse 40. V. 40 is a continuation of Ël,m, dy; µWr in v. 26; for vv. 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 v. 29 is closely connected with v. 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 as 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 every pretext for rebellion. Moreover the prophet’s announcement, even without this restriction, gave him no right to seize with his own hand and by means of rebellion upon that throne which God intended to 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 1 Kings 14:25.
1 KINGS. 11:41-43
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. 273ff.), 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. II. HISTORY OF THE KINGDOMS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FORMER. 1 Kings 12-2 Kings 17. 1. FROM THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM TO THE ASCENT OF THE THRONE BY AHAB IN THE 38TH YEAR OF ASA This epoch embraces only fifty-seven years, which are filled up in the kingdom of Judah by the reigns of three kings, and in the kingdom of Israel by six rulers from four different houses, Jeroboam’s sin of rebellion against the ordinance and commandment of God having produced repeated rebellions, so that one dynasty was ever rising up to overthrow and exterminate another.-Commencing with the secession of the ten tribes from Rehoboam, we have first of all an account of the founding of the kingdom of Israel (ch. 12), and of the predictions of the prophets concerning the introduction of the calf-worship (ch. 13) and the rejection of Jeroboam and his house by God (1 Kings 14:1-20); and after this the most important facts connected with the reigns of Rehoboam, Abijam, and Asa are given (1 Kings 14:21-15:24); and, finally, a brief history of the kingdom of Israel from the ascent of the throne by Nadab to the death of Omri (1 Kings 15:25-16:28).
SECESSION OF THE TEN TRIBES FROM THE HOUSE OF DAVID, AND FOUNDING OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.
1 KINGS. 12:1-24
Verse 1-24. 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 8:1ff.; 2 Sam 2:9; 19:42ff.), issued, on the death of Solomon, in the division of the kingdom; ten tribes, headed by Ephraim, refusing to do homage to Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, and choosing Jeroboam the Ephraimite as their king. Now, although the secession of the ten tribes from the royal house of David had been ordained by God as a punishment for Solomon’s idolatry, and not only had Solomon been threatened with this punishment, but the sovereignty over ten tribes had been promised to Jeroboam by the prophet Ahijah, whilst the secession itself was occasioned by Rehoboam’s imprudence; yet it was essentially a rebellion against the Lord and His anointed, a conspiracy on the part of these tribes against Judah and its king Rehoboam. For apart from the fact that the tribes had no right to choose at their pleasure a different king from the one who was the lawful heir to the throne of David, the very circumstance that the tribes who were discontented with Solomon’s government did not come to Jerusalem to do homage to Rehoboam, but chose Sichem as the place of meeting, and had also sent for Jeroboam out of Egypt, showed clearly enough that it was their intention to sever themselves from the royal house of David; so that the harsh reply given by Rehoboam to their petition that the service imposed upon them might be lightened, furnished them with the desired opportunity for carrying out the secession upon which they had already resolved, and for which Jeroboam was the suitable man.
And we have already shown at 1 Kings 11:40 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 (vv. 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 (vv. 25-33).
Verse 1-24. Secession of the Ten Tribes (cf., 2 Chron 10:1-11:4).-Vv. 1-4.
Rehoboam went to Shechem, because all Israel had come thither to make him king. “All Israel,” according to what follows (cf., vv. 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 12:38, where Ëlæm; alternates with Ël,m, Ëvæm; , (2 Sam 2:4; 5:3), was an old traditional right in Israel, and the tribes had exercised it not only in the case of Saul and David (1 Sam 11:15; 2 Sam 2:4; 5:3), but in that of Solomon also (1 Chron 29:22). The ten tribes of Israel made use of this right on Rehoboam’s ascent of the throne; but instead of coming to Jerusalem, the residence of the king and capital of the kingdom, as they ought to have done, and doing homage there to the legitimate successor of Solomon, they had gone to Sichem, the present Nabulus (see at Gen 12:6 and 33:18), the place where the ancient national gatherings were held in the tribe of Ephraim (Josh 24:1), and where Abimelech the son of Gideon had offered himself as king in the time of the Judges (Judg 9:1ff.). 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 Nebat to come from Egypt, whither he had fled from Solomon (1 Kings 11:40), 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 Rehoboam (v. 4). f153 Verse 2-3. The construction of vv. 2 and 3 is a complicated one, since it is only in awOB in v. 3 that the apodosis occurs to the protasis wgw[mæv; hy;h; , and several circumstantial clauses intervene. “And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard, sc., that Solomon was dead and Rehoboam 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 10:2 the construction is very much simplified, and is rendered clearer by the alteration of µyiræx]mi ha;r; bvæy; , “and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt,” into µyiræx]mi ha;r; bWv , “that Jeroboam returned from Egypt.” f154 Verse 4. The persons assembled desired that the burdens which Solomon had laid upon them should be lightened, in which case they would serve Rehoboam, i.e., would yield obedience to him as their king. ba; `hd;bo[ llæq; , “make light away from the service of thy father,” 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.
Verse 5-6. In order that the request of the tribes might be maturely weighed, Rehoboam 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.
Verse 7. These counsellors said (the singular rbæd; is 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.”
Verse 8-14. But Rehoboam 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 stronger than my father’s loins.” ˆf,qo , from ˆf,qo , littleness, i.e., the little finger (for the form, see Ewald, §255, b.)-a figurative expression in the sense of, I possess much greater might than my father. “And now, my father laid a heavy yoke upon you, and I will still further add to your yoke (lay still more upon you): my father chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scorpions.” `br;q][æ , scorpiones, are whips with barbed points like the point of a scorpion’s sting. f155 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 vv. 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 `db,[, 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.
Verse 15. “And the king hearkened not to the people (to their request for their burdens to be reduced), for it was hwO;hy] `µ[i hB;si , a turning from the Lord, that He might establish His word” (1 Kings 11:31ff.), i.e., by a divine decree, that Rehoboam contributed to the fulfilment of the counsel of God through his own folly, and brought about the accomplishment of the sentence pronounced upon Solomon.
Verse 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, O 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 20:1), give expression to the deep-rooted 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.
Verse 17. But the sons of Israel, who dwelt in the cities of Judah, over these Rehoboam became king. These “sons of Israel” are members of the ten tribes who had settled in Judah in the course of ages (cf., v. 23); and the Simeonites especially are included, since they were obliged to remain in the kingdom of Judah from the very situation of their tribe-territory, 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 19:1).
The verse cannot possibly mean that “the tribe of Judah declared in favour of their countryman Rehoboam as king” (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 399). Verse 18. In order to appease the agitated tribes and commence negotiations with them, Rehoboam sent Adoram, the superintendent of the tribute, to them (see at 1 Kings 4:6). Rehoboam 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 Rehoboam himself was obliged to summon up all his strength xmæa; ) to escape a similar fate by a speedy flight to his chariot.
Verse 19. Thus Israel fell away from the house of David “unto this day” (for this formula, see p. 10).
Verse 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 1 Kings 11:32). V. 20 commences in the same manner as v. 2, to indicate that it closes the account commenced in v. 2.
Verse 21-24. But after the return of Rehoboam 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 Judaha number which does not appear too large according to 2 Sam 24:9. But the prophet Shemaiah, a prophet who is not mentioned again, received instructions from God to forbid the king to go to war with their brethren the Israelites, “for this thing was from the Lord.” hz, rb;d; , “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 v. 15. The king and the people hearkened to this word. Ëlæy; bWv , “they turned to go,” i.e., they gave up the intended expedition and returned home. In 2 Chron 11:4 we have the explanatory phrase Ëlæy; bWv .
1 KINGS. 12:25-33
Founding of the Kingdom of Israel.
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. baanaach, 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 9:49), and the tower of Pnuel had been destroyed by Gideon (Judg 8:17). Sichem, a place well known from the time of Abraham downwards (Gen 12:6), was situated upon the mountains of Ephraim, between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and still exists under the name of Nabulus or Nablûs, 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 1 Kings 14:17). Pnuel was situated, according to Gen 32:31, 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 32:22ff. and Judg 8:8ff., 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.
Verse 26-27. 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.
Verse 28-29. 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. bh;z; `lg,[e 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 32:4). 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 32:4, with which he studiously endeavoured to recommend his new form of worship to the people: “Behold, this is thy God, O Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” mee`alowt rab-laakem, it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem; not “let your going suffice,” because ˆmi is not to be taken in a partitive sense here, as it is in Ex 9:28 and Ezek 44:6.
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., was not a worship of Egyptian idols, from which it is constantly distinguished in our books as well as in Hosea and Amos, but that Jehovah was worshipped under the image of the calves or young oxen; the choice of the places in which the golden calves 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 18:13 and 22), the present Beitin, had already been consecrated as a divine seat by the vision of Jehovah which the patriarch Jacob received there in a dream (Gen 28:11,19), and Jacob gave it the name of Bethel, house of God, and afterwards built an altar there to the Lord (Gen 35:7).
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 18:26ff.), 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.
Verse 30-31. 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 20:4), but had not even left the choice of the place of worship to the people themselves (Deut 12:5ff.). “And the people went before the one to Dan.” The expression “to Dan” can only be suitably explained by connecting it with `µ[æ : 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. dj;a, is neither the golden calf at Dan nor (as I formerly thought) that at Bethel, but is to be interpreted according to the preceding dj;a,j;Ata,w] dj;a,h;Ata, : 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 v. 31) made a house of high places, hm;B; tyiBæ (see at 1 Kings 3:2), 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 b beeyt may be accounted for from the antithesis to hwO;hy] tyiBæ , 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 Shechinah, 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.” `µ[æ hx;q; , i.e., 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 hx;q; see Gen 19:4 and Ezek 33:2, 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 17:10ff.) rejoiced that he had obtained a Levite to act as priest for his imageworship, 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 Chron 11:13-14, were obliged to leave their district towns and possessions and emigrate into the kingdom of Judah.
Verse 32-33. Jeroboam also transferred to the eighth month the feast which ought to have been kept in the seventh month (the feast of tabernacles, Lev 23:34ff.). The pretext for this arbitrary alteration of the law, which repeatedly describes the seventh month as the month appointed by the Lord (Lev 23:34,39, 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. Archäol. 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 23:16; Lev 23:39; Deut 16:13) 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 possible, although Jeroboam retained the day of the month, the fifteenth, for the sake of the weak who took offence at his innovations.
For we may see very clearly that many beside the Levites were very discontented with these illegal institutions, from the notice in 2 Chron 11:16, that out of all the tribes those who were devoted to the Lord from the heart went to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the God of the fathers there. “And he sacrificed upon the altar.” This clause is connected with the preceding one, in the sense of: he instituted the feast and offered sacrifices thereat. In v. 32b (from `hc;[; ˆKe onwards) and v. 33, what has already been related concerning Jeroboam’s religious institutions is brought to a close by a comprehensive repetition of the leading points. “Thus did he in Bethel, (namely) to offer sacrifice to the calves; and there he appointed the priests of the high places which he had made, and offered sacrifice upon the altar which he had made at Bethel, on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, which he himself had devised, and so made a feast for the children of Israel and sacrificed upon the altar to turn.” dBæ signifies seorsum, by himself alone, i.e., in this connection, i.q. “from his own heart.”
The Keri ble is therefore a correct explanation as to the fact; but it is a needless correction from Neh 6:8. The last clause, `hl;[; , leads on to what follows, and it would be more correct to take it in connection with 1 Kings 13:1 and render it thus: and when he was offering sacrifice upon the altar to burn, behold there came a man of God, etc. Thenius has rendered `hl;[; incorrectly, and he stood at the altar. This thought would have been expressed by hm’ `l[æ `rmæ[; , as in 1 Kings 13:1. By r f1 q; we are not to understand the burning or offering of incense, but the burning of the sacrificial portions of the flesh upon the altar, as in Lev 1:9,13,17, etc. TESTIMONY OF GOD AGAINST THE CALFWORSHIP OF JEROBOAM.
1 KINGS. 13:1-10
A prophet out of Judah announces to Jeroboam the eventual overthrow of the idolatrous worship, and attests his divine mission by miraculous signs upon the altar at Bethel and the hardened king (vv. 1-10); but on the way back he allows himself to be enticed by an old prophet out of Bethel to go into his house, contrary to the express command of the Lord, and while sitting at table with him has to hear from his mouth the divine threat, that on account of his transgression of the command of God he will not come into the sepulchre of his fathers. This threat was fulfilled on his way home; and the marvellous fulfilment made so deep an impression upon the old prophet, that he confirmed the testimony which he had given concerning the worship at the high places (vv. 11-32). These marvellous occurrences not only teach how Jeroboam brought about the overthrow of his dynasty by his thorough hardening against the word of God (vv. 33, 34), but they also show how false prophecy rose up from the very beginning in the kingdom of Israel and set itself against the true prophets of the Lord, and how it gained a victory, which merely displayed its own impotence, however, and foreshadowed its eventual and certain overthrow.
Verse 1-2. Prophecy against the idolatrous worship at Bethel.-Vv. 1, 2.
Whilst Jeroboam was still occupied in sacrificing by the altar at Bethel, there came a prophet µyhila’ vyai ) out of Judah “in the word of Jehovah” to Bethel, and pronounced upon the altar its eventual destruction. hwO;hy] rb;d; does not mean “at the word of Jehovah” here, as it frequently does, but “in the word of Jehovah,” as vv. 9 and 17 more especially show; so that the word of Jehovah is regarded as a power which comes upon the prophet and drives him to utter the divine revelation which he has received.
It is the same in 1 Kings 20:35. r f1 q; is to be taken as in 1 Kings 12:33.- ”Behold a son will be born to the house of David, named Josiah; he will offer upon thee (O altar) the priests of the high places, who burn incense (i.e., kindle sacrifices) upon thee, and men’s bones will they burn upon thee.” According to 2 Kings 23:15-20, this prophecy was literally fulfilled. The older theologians found in this an evident proof of the divine inspiration of the prophets; modern theology, on the other hand, which denies the supernatural inspiration of prophecy in accordance with its rationalistic or naturalistic principles, supplies that this prophecy was not more precisely defined till after the event, and adduces in support of this the apparently just argument, that the prediction of particular historical events is without analogy, and generally that the introduction either of particular persons by name or of definite numbers is opposed to the very essence of prophecy, and turns prediction into soothsaying. The distinction between soothsaying and prediction, however, is not that the latter merely utters general ideas concerning the future, whilst the former announces special occurrences beforehand: but soothsaying is the foretelling of all kinds of accidental things; prophecy, on the contrary, the foretelling of the progressive development of the kingdom of God, not merely in general, but in its several details, according to the circumstances and necessities of each particular age, and that in such a manner that the several concrete details of the prophecy rest upon the general idea of the revelation of salvation, and are thereby entirely removed from the sphere of the accidental.
It is true that perfectly concrete predictions of particular events, with the introduction of names and statement of times, are much more rare than the predictions of the progressive development of the kingdom of God according to its general features; but they are not altogether wanting, and we meet with them in every case where it was of importance to set before an ungodly generation in the most impressive manner the truth of the divine threatenings of promises. The allusion to Coresh in Isa 44:28; 45:1, is analogous to the announcement before us. But in both cases the names are closely connected with the destination of the persons in the prophecy, and are simply a concrete description of what God will accomplish through these men. Hence the name hY;viaOy occurs primarily according to its appellative meaning alone, viz., “he whom Jehovah supports,” from hv,q; , to support, and expresses this thought: there will be born a son to the house of David, whom Jehovah will support of establish, so that he shall execute judgment upon the priests of the high places at Bethel. This prophecy was then afterwards so fulfilled by the special arrangement of God, that the king who executed this judgment bore the name of Joshiyahu as his proper name. And so also vr,wOK was originally an appellative in the sense of sun. The judgment which the prophet pronounced upon the altar was founded upon the jus talionis. On the very same altar on which the priests offer sacrifice to the `lg,[e shall they themselves be offered, and the altar shall be defiled for ever by the burning of men’s bones upon it. µd;a; `µx,[, , “men’s bones,” does not stand for “their (the priests’) bones,” but is simply an epithet used to designate human corpses, which defile the place where they lie (2 Kings 23:16).
Verse 3. In confirmation of his word the prophet added a miracle tpewOm , te>rav , portentum, see at Ex 4:21): “this is the sign that the Lord hath spoken (through me): behold the altar will be rent in pieces, and the ashes upon it will be poured out.” ˆv,D, is the ashes of the fat of the sacrificial animals. The pouring out of the sacrificial ashes in consequence of the breaking upon of the altar was a penal sign, which indicated, along with the destruction of the altar, the desecration of the sacrificial service performed upon it.
Verse 4. The king, enraged at this announcement, stretched out his hand against the prophet with the words, “seize him”-and his hand dried up, so that he was not able to draw it back again. vbey; , to dry up, i.e., toe become rigid in consequence of a miraculous withdrawal of the vital energy. Thus Jeroboam experienced in the limbs of his own body the severity of the threatened judgment of God.
Verse 5-6. The penal miracle announced in the word of Jehovah, i.e., in the strength of the Lord, also took effect immediately upon the altar; and the defiant king was now obliged to entreat the man of God, saying, “Soften, I pray, the face of the Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may return to me,” i.e., that I may be able to draw it back again, to move it once more. And this also took place at once at the intercession of the prophet. yy ynep]Ata, hL;ji , lit., to stroke the face of God, i.e., to render it soft by intercession (see at Ex 32:11).
Verse 7. As Jeroboam could do nothing by force against the prophet, he endeavoured to gain him over to his side by friendliness, that at least he might render his threat harmless in the eyes of the people. For this purpose, and not to do him honour or to make him some acknowledgment for the restoration of his hand, he invited him to his house, to strengthen himself with food d[æs; as in Gen 18:5; Judg 9:5; for the form caa`aadaah, see Ewald, §41, c.) and receive from him a present.
Verse 8-10. But this design was also frustrated, and the rejection of his worship on the part of God was still more strongly declared. “If thou gavest me,” the man of God replied, “the half of thy house, I shall not go in with thee, nor eat bread and drink water in this place; for thus hath Jehovah commanded me,” etc. The subject, Jehovah, is easily supplied to hw;x; from the context (vid., Ewald, §294, b.). God had forbidden the prophet to eat and drink “to manifest His detestation of idolatry, and to show by that fact that the Bethelites were so detestable, and as it were excommunicated by God, that He wished none of the faithful to join with them in eating and drinking” (C. a Lap.). He was not to return by the way by which he came, that no one might look out for him, and force him to a delay which was irreconcilable with his commission, or “lest by chance being brought back by Jeroboam, he should do anything to please him which was unworthy of a prophet, or from which it might be inferred that idolaters might hope for some favour from the Deity” (Budd.).
1 KINGS. 13:11-19
Seduction of the man of God by an old prophet, and his consequent punishment.
The man of God had resisted the invitations of Jeroboam, and set out by a different road to return to Judah. An old prophet at Bethel heard from his sons what had taken place (the singular ˆBe awOB as compared with the plural rpæs; may be explained on the supposition that first of all one son related the matter to his father, and that then the other sons supported the account given by the first); had his ass saddled; hurried after him, and found him sitting under the terebinth (the tree well known from that event); invited him to come into his house and eat with him; and when the latter appealed to the divine prohibition, said to him (v. 18), “I am a prophet also as thou art, and an angel has said to me in the word of the Lord: Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat and drink,” and lied to him wOl vjæK; without a copula, because it is inserted as it were parenthetically, simply as an explanation)-then he went back with him, and ate and drank in his house.
1 KINGS. 13:20-22
As they were sitting at table the word of the Lord came to the old prophet, so that he cried out to the man of God from Judah: “Because thou hast been rebellious against the command of the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment,...thou wilt not come to the grave of thy fathers,” i.e., thou wilt meet with a violent death by the way. This utterance was soon fulfilled.
1 KINGS. 13:23-25
After he had eaten he saddled the ass for him, i.e., for the prophet whom he had fetched back, and the latter (the prophet from Judah) departed upon it.
On the road a lion met him and slew him; “and his corpse was cast in the road, but the ass stood by it, and the lion stood by the corpse.” The lion, contrary to its nature, had neither consumed the prophet whom it had slain, nor torn in pieces and devoured the ass upon which he rode, but had remained standing by the corpse and by the ass, that the slaying of the prophet might not be regarded as a misfortune that had befallen him by accident, but that the hand of the Lord might be manifest therein, so that passers-by saw this marvel and related it in Bethel.
1 KINGS. 13:26
When the old prophet at Bethel heard of this, he said, “It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the word of the Lord; the Lord hath delivered him to the lion, so that it hath torn him rbæv; , frangere, confringere, used of a lion which tears its prey in pieces) and slain him according to the word of the Lord, which He spake to him.”
1 KINGS. 13:27-32
He thereupon had his ass saddled, and went and found the corpse and the ass standing by it, without the lion having eaten the corpse or torn the ass in pieces; and he lifted the corpse upon his ass, and brought it into his own city, and laid the corpse in his grave with the customary lamentation: ja; ywOh , alas, my brother! (cf., Jer 22:18), and then gave this command to his sons: “When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried, let my bones rest beside his bones; for the word which he proclaimed in the word of Jehovah upon the altar at Bethel and upon all the houses of the high places in the cities of Samaria will take place” (i.e., will be fulfilled).
The expression “cities of Samaria” belongs to the author of these books, and is used proleptically of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which did not receive this name till after the building of the city of Samaria as the capital of the kingdom and the residence of the kings of Israel (1 Kings 16:24).
There is a prophetic element in the words “upon all the houses of the high places,” etc., inasmuch as the only other erection at that time beside the one at Bethel was a temple of the high places at Dan. But after such a beginning the multiplication of them might be foreseen with certainty, even without any higher illumination.
The conduct of the old prophet at Bethel appears so strange, that Josephus and the Chald., and most of the Rabbins and of the earlier commentators both Catholic and Protestant, have regarded him as a false prophet, who tried to lay a trap for the prophet from Judah, in order to counteract the effect of his prophecy upon the king and the people. But this assumption cannot be reconciled with either the divine revelation which came to him at the table, announcing to the Judaean prophet the punishment of his transgression of the commandment of God, and was so speedily fulfilled (vv. 20-24); or with the honour which he paid to the dead man after this punishment had fallen upon him, by burying him in his own grave; and still less with his confirmation of his declaration concerning the altar at Bethel (vv. 29-32). We must therefore follow Ephr. Syr., Theodor., Hengstenberg, and others, and regard the old prophet as a true prophet, who with good intentions, and not “under the influence of human envy” (Thenius), but impelled by the desire to enter into a closer relation to the man of God from Judah and to strengthen himself through his prophetic gifts, urged him to enter his house.
The fact that he made use of sinful means in order to make more sure of securing the end desired, namely, of the false pretence that he had been directed by an angel to do this, may be explained, as Hengstenberg suggests (Dissert. vol. ii. p. 149), on the ground that when Jeroboam introduced his innovations, he had sinned by keeping silence, and that the appearance of the Judaean prophet had brought him to a consciousness of this sin, so that he had been seized with shame on account of his fall, and was anxious to restore himself to honour in his own eyes and those of others by intercourse with this witness to the truth. But however little the lie itself can be excused or justified, we must not attribute to him alone the consequences by which the lie was followed in the case of the Judaean prophet. For whilst he chose reprehensible means of accomplishing what appeared to be a good end, namely, to raise himself again by intercourse with a true prophet, and had no wish to injure the other in any way, the Judaean prophet allowed himself to be seduced to a transgression of the clear and definite prohibition of God simply by the sensual desire for bodily invigoration by meat and drink, and had failed to consider that the divine revelation which he had received could not be repealed by a pretended revelation from an angel, because the word of God does not contradict itself.
He was therefore obliged to listen to a true revelation from God from the moth of the man whose pretended revelation from an angel he had too carelessly believed, namely, to the announcement of punishment for his disobedience towards the commandment of God, which punishment he immediately afterwards endured, “for the destruction of the flesh, but for the preservation of the spirit: 1 Cor 15:5” (Berleb. Bible). That the punishment fell upon him alone and not upon the old prophet of Bethel also, and that for apparently a smaller crime, may be accounted for “not so much from the fact that the old prophet had lied with a good intention (this might hold good of the other also), as from the fact that it was needful to deal strictly with the man who had just received a great and holy commission from the Lord” (O. v. Gerlach). It is true that no bodily punishment fell upon the old prophet, but this punishment he received instead, that with his lie he was put to shame, and that his conscience must have accused him of having occasioned the death of the man of God from Judah. He was thereby to be cured of his weakness, that he might give honour to the truth of the testimony of God. “Thus did the wondrous providence of God know how to direct all things most gloriously, so that the bodily destruction of the one contributed to the spiritual and eternal preservation of the soul of the other” (Berleb. Bible).-Concerning the design of these marvellous events, H. Witsius has the following remarks in his Miscell. ss. i. p. 118 (ed. nov. 1736): “So many wondrous events all occurring in one result caused the prophecy against the altar at Bethel to be preserved in the mouths and memories of all, and the mission of this prophet to become far more illustrious. Thus, although the falsehood of the old man of Bethel brought disgrace upon himself, it injured no one but the man of God whose credulity was too great; and, under the overruling providence of God, it contributed in the most signal manner to the confirmation and publication of the truth.” f156 The heaping up of the marvellous corresponded to the great object of the mission of the man of God out of Judah, through which the Lord would enter an energetic protest against the idolatrous worship of Jeroboam at its first introduction, to guard those who feared God in Israel, of whom there were not a few (2 Chron 11:16; 2 Kings 18:3; 19:18), from falling away from Him by joining in the worship of the calves, and to take away every excuse from the ungodly who participated therein. 1 KINGS 13:33,34 But this did not lead Jeroboam to conversion. He turned not from his evil way, but continued to make high priests from the mass of the people. `hc;[; bWv , “he returned and made,” i.e., he made again or continued to make.
For the fact itself compare 1 Kings 12:31. “Whoever had pleasure xpej; , cf., Ges. §109), he filled his hand, that he might become a priest of the high places.” ‘ wOdy;Ata, aLemi ’, to fill the hand, is the technical expression for investing with the priesthood, according to the rite prescribed for the consecration of the priests, namely, to place sacrificial gifts in the hands of the persons to be consecrated (see at Lev 7:37 and 8:25ff.). The plural hm;B; ˆheKo is used with indefinite generality: that he might be ranked among the priests of high places.
Verse 34. “And it became in (with) this thing the sin of the house of Jeroboam, and the destroying and cutting off from the earth;” that is to say, this obstinate persistence in ungodly conduct was the guilt which had as its natural consequence the destroying of his house from the face of the earth. hz, rb;d; is not a mistake for hz, rb;d; , but b¦ is used, as in 1 Chron 9:33; 7:23, to express the idea of being and persisting in a thing (for this use of b] compare Ewald, §295, f.). REIGN AND DEATH OF JEROBOAM AND REHOBOAM.
1 KINGS. 14:1-20
Reign of Jeroboam.
Ahijah’s prophecy against Jeroboam and the kingdom of Israel.-As Jeroboam did not desist from his idolatry notwithstanding the threatened punishment, the Lord visited him with the illness of his son, and directed the prophet Ahijah, to whom his wife had gone to ask counsel concerning the result of the illness, to predict to him not only the cutting off of his house and the death of his sick son, but also the thrusting away of Israel out of the land of its fathers beyond the Euphrates, and in confirmation of this threat caused the sick son to die when the returning mother crossed the threshold of her house again.
Verse 1-3. When his son fell sick, Jeroboam said to his wife: Disguise thyself, that thou mayest not be known as the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh to the prophet Ahijah, who told me that I should be king over this people; he will tell thee how it will fare with the boy. hN,Tæv]hi , from hn,v; , to alter one’s self, i.e., to disguise one’s self. She was to go to Shiloh disguised, so as not to be recognised, to deceive the old prophet, because otherwise Jeroboam did not promise himself any favourable answer, as he had contemptuously neglected Ahijah’s admonition (1 Kings 11:38-39).
But he turned to this prophet because he had spoken concerning him Ël,m, , to be king, i.e., that he would become king, over this people. Ël,m, stands for Ël,m, hy;h; , with which the infinitive esse can be omitted (vid., Ewald, §336, b.). As this prophecy, which was so favourable to Jeroboam, had come to pass (1 Kings 11:29-30), he hoped that he might also obtain from Ahijah a divine revelation concerning the result of his son’s illness, provided that he did not know who it was who came to seek counsel concerning her sick son. To complete the deception, she was to take with her as a present for the prophet (cf., 1 Sam 9:8) “ten loaves and crumbs” and a jar with honey, i.e., a trifling gift such as a simple citizen’s wife might take. According to the early versions and the context, a kind of plain cake, kolluri’da (LXX), crustulam (Vulg.). It is different in Josh 9:5. Verse 4-5. Ahijah could no longer see, because his eyes were blinded with age. `ˆyi[æ µWq as in 1 Sam 4:15, an expression applied to the black cataract, amaurosis. It was therefore all the less possible for him to recognise in a natural manner the woman who was coming to him. But before her arrival the Lord had not only revealed to him her coming and her object, but had also told him what he was to say to her if she should disguise herself when she came. hz, hzO; see at Judg 18:4, wgwawOB hy;h; , “let it be if she comes and disguises herself;” i.e., if when she comes she should disguise herself.
Verse 6. When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet entering the door (the participle awOB, according to the number and gender, refers to the hV;ai implied in lg,r, , vid., Ewald, §317, c.), he addressed her by her name, charged her with her disguise of herself, and told her that he was entrusted with a hard saying to her. hv,q; (cf., 1 Kings 12:13) is equivalent to hv,q; tWzj; ; for the construction, compare Ewald, §284, c.
Verse 7-11. The saying was as follows: “Therefore, because thou hast exalted thyself from the people, and I have made thee prince over my people Israel (cf., 1 Kings 11:31),...but thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments...(cf., 1 Kings 11:34), and hast done worse than all who were before thee (judices nimirum et duces Israelis- Cler.), and hast gone and hast made thyself other gods (contrary to the express command in Ex 20:2-3),...and hast cast me behind thy back: therefore I bring misfortune upon the house of Jeroboam,” etc. The expression, to cast God behind the back, which only occurs here and in Ezek 23:35, denotes the most scornful contempt of God, the strict opposite of “keeping God before the eyes and in the heart.” ryqi ˆtæv; , every male person; see at 1 Sam 25:22. A synonymous expression is `bzæ[; `rx;[; , the fettered (i.e., probably the married) and the free (or single); see at Deut 32:36. “In Israel,” i.e., in the kingdom of the ten tribes. The threat is strengthened by the clause in v. 10, “and I will sweep out after the house of Jeroboam, as one sweepeth out dung, even to the end,” which expresses shameful and utter extermination; and this threat is still further strengthened in v. 11 by the threat added from Deut 28:26, that of those cut off not one is to come to the grave, but their bodies are to be devoured by the dogs and birds of prey-the worst disgrace that could befall the dead.
Instead of wild beasts (Deut 28:26) the dogs are mentioned here, because in the East they wander out in the streets without owners, and are so wild and ravenous that they even devour corpses (vid., Harmar, Beobachtungen, i. p. 198). µ[;b]r;y; with l] of relationship, equivalent to of those related to Jeroboam. It is the same in v. 13.
Verse 12-13. After this announcement of the judgment upon the house of Jeroboam, Ahijah gave the wife information concerning her sick son. He would die as soon as she entered the city, and of all the male members of the house of Jeroboam he only would receive the honour of a proper burial, because in him there was some good thing towards Jehovah found.
Ewald (§247, b.) regards the form awOB as standing for awOB, and refers the suffix to the following word `ry[i (vid., Ewald, §309, c.). But as this use of the suffix would be very harsh, the question arises whether awOB is not to be regarded as a feminine form of the infinitive, after the analogy of h[;De in Ex 2:4 and dlæy; in 2 Kings 19:3, etc. From the fulfilment of this declaration in vv. 17 and 18 Jeroboam was to learn that the threatened destruction of his royal house would also be just as certainly fulfilled. The sick son appears to have been the heir-presumptive to the throne. This may be inferred partly from the lamentation of all Israel at his death (v. 18), and partly from what follows here in the next verse. hwO;hy]Ala, means in his relation to Jehovah.
Verse 14. “Jehovah will raise Himself up a king over Israel, who will cut off the house of Jeroboam this day; but what (sc., do I say)? even now,” sc., has He raised him up. This appears to be the simplest explanation of the last words of the verse, of which very various interpretations have been given. hz, is placed before µwOy , to give it the stronger emphasis, as in Ex 32:1 (compare Josh 9:12-13, and Ewald, §293, b.; and for `hT;[æ µGæ compare Delitzsch on Job, i. p. 290, transl.).
Verse 15-18. But in order that not only Jeroboam, but also the people who had joined in his idolatry, might perceive the severity of the divine judgment, Ahijah also announced to the nation its banishment into exile beyond the Euphrates. “Jehovah will smite Israel, as the reed shakes in the water,” is an abbreviated phrase for: Jehovah will smite Israel in such a manner that it will sway to and fro like a reed in the water moved by a strong wind, which has not a sufficiently firm hold to resist the violence of the storm. “And will thrust them out of the good land,” etc., as Moses threatened the transgressors of the law (Deut 29:27), “and scatter them beyond the river (Euphrates),” i.e., banish them among the heathen, from whom God brought out and chose their forefather (Josh 24:3), “because they have made themselves Ashera-idols, to provoke Jehovah.” ‘asheeriym is used for idols generally, among which the golden calves are reckoned. ˆtæn; , that He may deliver up Israel, on account of the idolatrous forms of worship introduced by Jeroboam. For the fulfilment see 2 Kings 15:29; 17:23, and 18:11.-In vv. 17 and 18 the exact fulfilment of Ahijah’s announcement concerning the death of Jeroboam’s sick son is described.
According to v. 17, Jeroboam was then residing at Thirza, whereas he had at first resided at Shechem (1 Kings 12:25). Thirza is probably the present Talluza, on the north of Shechem (see at Josh 12:24).
Verse 19-20. End of Jeroboam’s reign. Of the wars, which were described in the annals of the kings (see p. 10), the war with Abijam of Judah is the only one of which we have any account (2 Chron 13:2ff.). See also the Comm. on v. 30. He was followed on the throne by his son Nadab.
1 KINGS. 14:21-31
Reign of Rehoboam in Judah (compare 2 Chron 11:5-12:16).-V. 21.
Rehoboam, who ascended the throne at the age of forty-one, was born a year before the accession of Solomon (see at 1 Kings 2:24). In the description of Jerusalem as the city chosen by the Lord (cf., ch. 11:36) there is implied not so much an indirect condemnation of the falling away of the ten tribes, as the striking contrast to the idolatry of Rehoboam referred to in vv. 23ff. The name of his mother is mentioned (here and in v. 31), not because she seduced the king to idolatry (Ephr. Syr.), but generally on account of the great influence which the queen-mother appears to have had both upon the king personally and upon his government, as we may infer from the fact that the mother’s name is given in the case of every king of Judah (vid., 1 Kings 15:2,13; 22:42, etc.).
Verse 22-24. The general characteristics of Rehoboam’s reign are supplied and more minutely defined in the account in the Chronicles. According to Chron 11:5-12:1, he appears to have been brought to reflection by the announcement of the prophet, that the falling away of the ten tribes had come from the Lord as a punishment for Solomon’s idolatry (1 Kings 12:23-24; 2 Chron 11:2-4); and in the first years of his reign to have followed the law of God with earnestness, and to have been occupied in the establishment of his government partly by the fortification of different cities (2 Chron 11:5-12), and partly by setting in order his domestic affairs, placing his numerous sons, who were born of his many wives and concubines, in the fortified cities of the land, and thus providing for them, and naming Abijam as his successor (2 Chron 11:18-22); while his kingdom was still further strengthened by the priests, Levites, and pious Israelites who emigrated to Judah and Jerusalem from the ten tribes (2 Chron 11:13-17). But this good beginning only lasted three years (2 Chron 11:17). When he thought that he had sufficiently fortified his kingdom, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel (i.e., all the covenant nation) with him (2 Chron 12:1). “Judah did that which was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; they provoked Him to jealousy more than all that their fathers (sc., under the Judges) had done with their sins.” an;q; , to provoke to jealousy (Num 5:14), is to be explained, when it refers to God, from the fact that the relation in which God stood to His people was regarded under the figure of a marriage, in which Jehovah appears as the husband of the nation, who is angry at the unfaithfulness of his wife, i.e., at the idolatry of the nation. Compare the remarks on aN;qæ lae in the Comm. on Ex 20:5.
Verse 23. They also (the Judaeans as well as the Israelites) built themselves bamoth, altars of high places (see at 1 Kings 3:3), monuments and Asheraidols. hb;Xemæ are not actual images of gods, but stones set up as memorials (Gen 31:13; 35:20; Ex 24:4), more especially stone monuments set up in commemoration of a divine revelation (Gen 28:18,22; 35:14). Like the bamoth, in connection with which they generally occur, they were originally dedicated to Jehovah; but even under the law they were forbidden, partly as places of divine worship of human invention which easily degenerated into idolatry, but chiefly because the Canaanites had erected such monuments to Baal by the side of his altars (Ex 23:24; 34:13; Deut 7:5, etc.), whereby the worship of Jehovah was unconsciously identified with the worship of Baal, even when the mazzeboth were not at first erected to the Canaanitish Baal. As the hb;Xemæ of the Canaanites were dedicated to Baal, so were the ‘asheeriym to Astarte, the female naturedeity of those tribes. hr;vea , however, does not mean a grove (see the Comm. on Deut 16:21), but an idol of the Canaanitish nature-goddess, generally most likely a lofty wooden pillar, though sometimes perhaps a straight trunk of a tree, the branches and crown of which were lopped off, and which was planted upon heights and in other places by the side of the altars of Baal. The name hr;vea was transferred from the idol to the goddess of nature (1 Kings 15:13; 18:19; 2 Kings 21:7, etc.), and was used of the image or column of the Phoenician Astarte (1 Kings 16:33; 2 Kings 13:6; 17:16, etc.), just as hr;vea in Judg 3:7 alternates with `twOrT;v][æ in Judg 2:13. These idols the Israelites (? Judaeans-Tr.) appear to have also associated with the worship of Jehovah; for the external worship of Jehovah was still maintained in the temple, and was performed by Rehoboam himself with princely pomp (v. 28). “On every high hill,” etc.; see at Deut 12:2.
Verse 24. “There were also prostitutes in the land.” vdeq; is used collectively as a generic name, including both male and female hierodylae, and is exchanged for the plural in 1 Kings 15:12. The male vdeq; had emasculated themselves in religious frenzy in honour of the Canaanitish goddess of nature, and were called Galli by the Romans. They were Canaanites, who had found their way into the land of Judah when idolatry gained the upper hand (as indicated by µGæ ). “They appear here as strangers among the Israelites, and are those notorious Cinaedi more especially of the imperial age of Rome who travelled about in all directions, begging for the Syrian goddess, and even in the time of Augustine went about asking for alms in the streets of Carthage as a remnant of the Phoenician worship (de civ. Dei, vii. 26).”-Movers, p. 679. On the female twOvdeq] see the Comm. on Gen 38:21 and Deut 23:18.
This sinking into heathen abominations was soon followed by the punishment, that Judah was given up to the power of the heathen.
Verse 25-27. King Shishak of Egypt invaded the land with a powerful army, conquered all the fortified cities, penetrated to Jerusalem, and would probably have put an end to the kingdom of Judah, if God had not had compassion upon him, and saved him from destruction, in consequence of the humiliation of the king and of the chiefs of the nation, caused by the admonition of the prophet Shemaiah, so that after the conquest of Jerusalem Shishak contented himself with withdrawing, taking with him the treasures of the temple and of the royal palace. Compare the fuller account of this expedition in 2 Chron 12:2-9. Shishak qvæyvi ) was the first king of the twenty-second (or Bubastitic) dynasty, called Sesonchis in Jul. Afric., Sesonchosis in Eusebius, and upon the monuments on which Champollion first deciphered his name, Sheshonk or Sheshenk. Shishak has celebrated his expedition against Judah by a bas-relief on the outer wall of the pillarhall erected by him in the first palace at Karnak, in which more than 130 figures are led in cords by Ammon and the goddess Muth with their hands bound upon their backs. The lower portion of the figures of this long row of prisoners is covered by escutcheons, the border of which being provided with battlements, shows that the prisoners are symbols of conquered cities.
About a hundred of these escutcheons are still legible, and in the names upon them a large number of the names of cities in the kingdom of Judah have been deciphered with tolerable certainty. f157 Shishak was probably bent chiefly upon the conquest and plundering of the cities. But from Jerusalem, beside other treasures of the temple and palace, he also carried off the golden shields that had been made by Solomon (1 Kings 10:16), in the place of which Rehoboam had copper ones made for his body-guard. The guard, xWr , runners, are still further described as Ël,m, tyiBæ jtæp, rmæv; , “who kept the door of the king’s house,” i.e., supplied the sentinels for the gate of the royal palace.
Verse 28. Whenever the king went into the house of Jehovah, the runners carried these shields; from which we may see that the king was accustomed to go to the temple with solemn pomp. These shields were not kept in the state-house of the forest of Lebanon (1 Kings 10:17) as the golden shields were, but in the guard-chamber aT; ; see at Ezek 40:7) of the runners.
Verse 29-30. Further particulars are given in 2 Chron 11 and concerning the rest of the acts of Rehoboam. “There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam the whole time (of their reign).” As nothing is said about any open war between them, and the prophet Shemaiah prohibited the attack which Rehoboam was about to make upon the tribes who had fallen away (1 Kings 11:23ff.), hm;j;l]mi can only denote the hostile feelings and attitude of the two rulers towards one another.
Verse 31. Death and burial of Rehoboam: as in the case of Solomon (1 Kings 11:43). The name of the queen-mother has already been given in v. 21, and the repetition of it here may be explained on the supposition that in the original sources employed by the author of our books it stood in this position. The son and successor of Rehoboam upon the throne is called Abijam µY;ba ) in the account before us; whereas in the Chronicles he is always called Abijah hY;bia , 2 Chron 12:16; 13:1, etc., or Why;bia\ , 2 Chron 13:21). µY;ba , i.e., father of the sea, is unquestionably the older form of the name, which was reduced to hY;bia , and then identified with the formation from ba; and Hy; = aWh (from hwO;hy] ).
REIGNS OF THE TWO KINGS ABIJAM AND ASA OF JUDAH.
1 KINGS. 15:1-2
Reign of Abijam (cf., 2 Chron 13). Abijam reigned three years, and his mother’s name was Maacah, daughter (i.e., grand-daughter) of Absalom. We have the same in 2 Chron 11:20-21; but in 2 Chron 13:2 she is called Michajahu, daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. If µwOlv;ybia was without doubt Absalom, the well-known son of David, as we may infer from the fact that this name does not occur again in the Old Testament in connection with any other person, since Absalom had only one daughter, viz., Thamar (2 Sam 14:27), who was fifty years old when Solomon died, Maacah must have been a daughter of this Thamar, who had married Uriel of Gibeah, and therefore a granddaughter of Absalom. This is sustained by Josephus (Ant. viii. 10, 1). The form of the name Why;k;ymi is probably an error in copying for hk;[mæ , as the name is also written in 2 Chron 11:20 and 21, and not a different name, which Maacah assumed as queen, as Caspari supposes (Micha, p. 3, note 4).
1 KINGS. 15:3-5
Abijam walked as king in the footsteps of his father. Although he made presents to the temple (v. 15), his heart was not µlev; , wholly or undividedly given to the Lord, like the heart of David (cf., 1 Kings 11:4); but yKi , after a previous negative) for David’s sake Jehovah had left him a light in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him and to let Jerusalem stand, because rv,a ) David had done right in the eyes of God, etc., i.e., so that it was only for David’s sake that Jehovah did not reject him, and allowed the throne to pass to his son. For the fact itself compare 1 Kings 11:13 and 36; and for the words, “except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite,” see 2 Sam and 12.
1 KINGS. 15:6-8
“And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all his life;” i.e., the state of hostility which had already existed between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continued “all the days of his life,” or so long as Abijam lived and reigned. If we take wyy:jæ ymey]AliK; in this manner (not µh,ymey]AlK; , v. 16), the statement loses the strangeness which it has at first sight, and harmonizes very well with that in v. 7, that there was also war between Abijam and Jeroboam. Under Abijam it assumed the form of a serious war, in which Jeroboam sustained a great defeat (see 2 Chron 13:3-20).-The other notices concerning Abijam in vv. 7 and 8 are the same as in the case of Rehoboam in 1 Kings 14:29 and 31.
1 KINGS. 15:9-24
Reign of Asa (cf., 2 Chron 14-16). As Asa ascended the throne in the twentieth year of the reign of Jeroboam, his father Abijam, who began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam (v. 1), can only have reigned two years and a few months, and not three full years.
Verse 10. Asa reigned forty-one years. “The name of his mother was Maacah, the daughter of Absalom.” This notice, which agrees verbatim with v. 2, cannot mean that Abijam had his own mother for a wife; though Thenius finds this meaning in the passage, and then proceeds to build up conjectures concerning emendations of the text. We must rather explain it, as Ephr. Syr., the Rabbins, and others have done, as signifying that Maacah, the mother of Abijam, continued during Asa’s reign to retain the post of queen-mother or hr;ybiG] , i.e., sultana valide, till Asa deposed her on account of her idolatry (v. 13), probably because Asa’s own mother had died at an early age.
Verse 11-14. As ruler Asa walked in the ways of his pious ancestor David: he banished the male prostitutes out of the land, abolished all the abominations of idolatry, which his fathers (Abijam and Rehoboam) had introduced, deposed his grandmother Maacah from the rank of a queen, because she had made herself an idol for the Ashera, and had the idol hewn in pieces and burned in the valley of the Kidron. lWLGi is a contemptuous epithet applied to idols (Lev 26:30); it does not mean stercorei, however, as the Rabbins affirm, but logs, from llæG; , to roll, or masses of stone, after the Chaldee lg;G] (Ezra 5:8; 6:4), generally connected with xWQvi . It is so in Deut 29:16. tx,l,p]mi , formido, from xlæp; , terrere, timere, hence an idol as an object of fear, and not pudendum, a shameful image, as Movers (Phöniz. i. p. 571), who follows the Rabbins, explains it, understanding thereby a Phallus as a symbol of the generative and fructifying power of nature.
With regard to the character of this idol, nothing further can be determined than that it was of wood, and possibly a wooden column like the ‘asheeriym (see at 1 Kings 14:23). “But the high places departed not,” i.e., were not abolished. By the hm;B; we are not to understand, according to v. 12, altars of high places dedicated to idols, but unlawful altars to Jehovah.
It is so in the other passages in which this formula recurs (1 Kings 22:24; Kings 12:4; 14:4; 15:4; and the parallel passages 2 Chron 15:17; 20:33).
The apparent discrepancy between the last-mentioned passages and Chron 14:2,4, and 17:6, may be solved very simply on the supposition that the kings (Asa and Jehoshaphat) did indeed abolish the altars on the high places, but did not carry their reforms in the nation thoroughly out; and not by distinguishing between the bamoth dedicated to Jehovah and those dedicated to idols, as Thenius, Bertheau, and Caspari, with many of the earlier commentators, suppose.
For although 2 Chron 14:2 is very favourable to this solution, since both hm;B; and rk;Nehæ twOjB]z]mi are mentioned there, it does not accord with Chron 17:6, where hm;B; cannot be merely idolatrous altars dedicated to the Canaanitish Baal, but unquestionably refer to the unlawful altars of Jehovah, or at any rate include them. Moreover, the next clause in the passage before us, “nevertheless Asa’s heart was wholly given to the Lord,” shows that the expression rWs alo does not mean that the king allowed the unlawful Jehovah-bamoth to remain, but simply that, notwithstanding his fidelity to Jehovah, the bamoth did not depart, so that he was unable to carry the abolition of them thoroughly out.
Verse 15. He brought the sacred offerings of his father and his own sacred offerings into the house of Jehovah; probably the booty, in silver, gold, and vessels, which his father Abijam had gathered in the war with Jeroboam (2 Chron 13:16-17), and he himself on the conquest of the Cushites (2 Chron 14:12-13). The Keri vdæq; is a bad emendation of the correct reading in the Chethîb vdæq; , i.e., wv;dq] ( wyv;dq] ); for hwO;hy] tyiBæ is an accusative, and is to be connected with awOB.
Verse 16-17. The state of hostility between Judah and Israel continued during the reign of Asa; and Baasha the king of Israel advanced, etc. These statements are completed and elucidated by the Chronicles. After the great victory obtained by Abijam over Jeroboam, the kingdom of Judah enjoyed rest for ten years (2 Chr. 13:23). Asa employed this time in exterminating idolatry, fortifying different cities, and equipping his army (2 Chron 14:1- 7). Then the Cushite Zerah invaded the land of Judah with an innumerable army (in the eleventh year of Asa), but was totally defeated by the help of the Lord (2 Chron 14:8-14); whereupon Asa, encouraged by the prophet Azariah, the son of Oded, proceeded with fresh zeal to the extermination of such traces of idolatry as still remained in the kingdom, then renewed the altar of burnt-offering in front of the temple-hall, and in the fifteenth year of his reign held, with the whole nation, a great festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing to the Lord at Jerusalem (2 Chron 15:1-15).
The next year, the sixteenth of his reign and the thirty-sixth from the division of the kingdom (2 Chron 16:1), Baasha commenced hostilities, by advancing against Judah, taking possession of Ramah, the present er Râm (see at Josh 18:25), which was only two hours and a quarter from Jerusalem, and fortifying it. The occupation of Ramah is not expressly mentioned indeed, but it is implied in hd;Why] `l[æ `hl;[; , which affirms the hostile invasion of Judah. For Ramah, from its very situation in the heart of the tribe of Benjamin and the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem, can neither have been a border city nor have belonged to the kingdom of Israel.
The intention of Baasha, therefore, in fortifying Ramah cannot have been merely to restrain his own subjects from passing over into the kingdom of Judah, but was evidently to cut off from the kingdom of Judah all free communication with the north. wgwˆtæn; yTil]Bi , “that they might not give one going out or one coming in to Asa;” i.e., to cut off from the others all connection with Asa, and at the same time to cut off from those with Asa all connection with this side. The main road from Jerusalem to the north passed by Ramah, so that by shutting up this road the line of communication of the kingdom of Judah was of necessity greatly disturbed.
Moreover, the fortification of Ramah by Baasha presupposes the reconquest of the cities which Abijam had taken from the kingdom of Israel (2 Chron 13:19), and which, according to 2 Chron 13:19, were still in the possession of Asa.
Verse 18-19. In order to avert the danger with which his kingdom was threatened, Asa endeavoured to induce the Syrian king, Benhadad of Damascus, to break the treaty which he had concluded with Baasha and to become his ally, by sending him such treasures as were left in the temple and palace. f158 rtæy; may be explained from the face that the temple and palace treasures had been plundered by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:26); and therefore what Asa had replaced in the temple treasury (v. 15), and had collected together for his palace, was only a remnant in comparison with the former state of these treasures.
The name ddæhAˆB, , i.e., son of Hadad, the sun-god (according to Macrobius, i. 23; cf., Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 196), was borne by three kings of Damascus: the one here named, his son in the time of Ahab (1 Kings 20:1,34), and the son of Hazael (2 Kings 13:24). The first was a son of Tabrimmon and grandson of Hezyon. According to v. 19, his father Tabrimmon (good is Rimmon; see at 2 Kings 5:18) had also been king, and was the contemporary of Abijam. But that his grandfather Hezyon was also king, and the same person as the Rezon mentioned in 1 Kings 11:23, cannot be shown to be even probable, since there is no ground for the assumption that Hezyon also bore the name Rezon, and is called by the latter name here and by the former in 1 Kings 11:23.
Verse 20. Benhadad consented to Asa’s request, and directed his captains to advance into the kingdom of Israel: they took several cities in the north of the land, whereby Baasha was compelled to give up fortifying Ramah and withdraw to Thirza. Ijon `ˆwOY[ ) is to be sought for in all probability in Tell Dibbin, on the eastern border of Merj Ayun; and in Ajun, although Ajun is written with Aleph, the name Ijon is probably preserved, since the situation of this Tell seems thoroughly adapted for a fortress on the northern border of Israel (vid., Robinson, Bibl. Res. p. 375, and Van de Velde, Mem. p. 322). Dan is the present Tell el Kadi; see at Josh 19:47.
Abel-Beth-Maachah, the present Abil el Kamh, to the north-west of Lake Huleh (see at 2 Sam 20:14). “All Chinneroth” is the district of Chinnereth, the tract of land on the western shore of the Lake of Gennesareth (see at Josh 19:35). n’ kaal-’erets `al, together with all the land of Naphtali (for this meaning of `l[æ compare the Comm. on Gen 32:12). The cities named were the principal fortresses of the land of Naphtali, with which the whole of the country round was also smitten, i.e., laid waste.
Verse 21. bvæy; , and remained at Thirza, his place of residence (see at Kings 14:17).
Verse 22. Asa thereupon summoned all Judah yqin; ˆyiaæ , nemine immuni, i.e., excepto, no one being free (cf., Ewald, §286, a.), and had the stones and the wood carried away from Ramah, and Geba and Mizpah in Benjamin built, i.e., fortified, with them. Geba must not be confounded with Gibeah of Benjamin or Saul, but is the present Jeba, three-quarters of an hour to the north-east of Ramah (see at Josh 18:24). Mizpah, the present Nebi Samwil, about three-quarters of a geographical mile to the south-west of Ramah (see at Josh 18:26).
Verse 23-24. Of the other acts of Asa, the building of cities refers to the building of fortifications mentioned in 2 Chron 14:5-6. The disease in his feet in the time of his old age commenced, according to 2 Chron 16:12, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign; and he sought help from the physicians, but not from the Lord; from which we may see, that the longer he lived the more he turned his heart away from the Lord (compare 2 Chron 16:10).
REIGNS OF THE KINGS OF ISRAEL, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, and Omri.
1 KINGS. 15:25-32
The Reign of Nadab lasted not quite two years, as he ascended the throne in the second year of Asa, and was slain in his third year.
Verse 26-31. He walked in the ways of his father (Jeroboam) and in his sin, i.e., in the calf-worship introduced by Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:28). When Nadab in the second year of his reign besieged Gibbethon, which the Philistines and occupied, Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house, I the family or tribe, of Issachar, conspired against him and slew him, and after he became king exterminated the whole house of Jeroboam, without leaving a single soul, whereby the prediction of the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings 14:10ff.) was fulfilled. Gibbethon, which was allotted to the Danites (Josh 19:44), has not yet been discovered. It probably stood close to the Philistian border, and was taken by the Philistines, from whom the Israelites attempted to wrest it by siege under both Nadab and Baasha (1 Kings 16:16), though apparently without success. al hm;v;n]AlK; ryaiv]hi as in Josh 11:14 (see the Comm. on Deut 20:16).
Verse 32. V. 32 is simply a repetition of v. 16; and the remark concerning Baasha’s attitude towards Asa of Judah immediately after his entrance upon the government precedes the account of his reign, for the purpose of indicating at the very outset, that the overthrow of the dynasty of Jeroboam and the rise of a new dynasty did not alter the hostile relation between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah.
1 KINGS. 15:33-34
The Reign of Baasha is described very briefly according to its duration (two years) and its spirit, namely, the attitude of Baasha towards the Lord (v. 34); there then follow in 1 Kings 16:1-4 the words of the prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani (2 Chron 16:7), concerning the extermination of the family of Baasha; and lastly, in vv. 5-7, his death is related with the standing allusion to the annals of the kings. The words of Jehu concerning Baasha (1 Kings 16:1-4) coincide exactly mutatis mutandis with the words of Ahijah concerning Jeroboam. f159 The expression “exalted thee out of the dust,” instead of “from among the people” (1 Kings 14:7), leads to the conjecture that Baasha had risen to be king from a very low position. hr;WbG] (his might) in v. 5 refers, as in the case of Asa (1 Kings 15:23), less to brave warlike deeds, than generally to the manifestation of strength and energy in his government.
1 KINGS. 16:7
V. 7 adds a supplementary remark concerning the words of Jehu (vv. 2ff.), not to preclude an excuse that might be made, in which case µGæ would have to be taken in the sense of nevertheless, or notwithstanding (Ewald, §354, a.), but to guard against a misinterpretation by adding a new feature, or rather to preclude an erroneous inference that might be drawn from the words, “I (Jehovah) have made thee prince” (v. 2), as through Baasha had exterminated Nadab and his house by divine command (Thenius). µGæ simply means “and also,” and is not to be connected specially with aWhye dy; , but to be taken as belonging to the whole sentence: “also the word of Jehovah had come to Baasha through Jehu,...not only because of the evil, etc., but also `l[æ ) because he had slain him (Jeroboam).” With regard to this last reason, we must call to mind the remark made at 1 Kings 11:39, viz., that the prediction of the prophet to Baasha gave him no right to put himself forward arbitrarily as the fulfiller of the prophecy. The very fact that Baasha continued Jeroboam’s sin and caused the illegal worship to be perpetuated, showed clearly enough that in exterminating the family of Jeroboam he did not act under divine direction, but simply pursued his own selfish ends.
1 KINGS. 16:8-14
The Reign of Elah.
As Baasha reigned from the third to the twenty-sixth year of Asa, i.e., not quite twenty-four years, but only twenty-three years and a few months, so his son Elah reigned from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-seventh year of Asa, i.e., not quite two years.
Verse 9-11. Zimri, the commander of the half of his war-chariots, conspired against him, and not only slew him, when he was intoxicated rwOKvi ht;v; ) at a drinking bout in the house of Arza, the prefect of his palace, but after ascending the throne exterminated the whole family of Baasha to the very last man. The prefect of the palace was no doubt a party to the conspiracy, and had probably arranged the drinking bout in his house for the purpose of carrying it out. “He did not leave him ryqi ˆtæv; (see at Kings 14:10), either his avengers laæG; , blood-relations, who might have avenged his death) or his friends.” These words simply serve to explain ryqi ˆtæv; , and show that this phrase is to be understood as relating to males only.
Verse 12-14. “According to the word of the Lord;” see at vv. 1ff. twaOFjælK; la, , with regard to all, i.e., on account of all the sins (compare v. 7, where `l[æ is used). lb,h, , through their nothingnesses, i.e., their idols, by which the golden calves are meant.
1 KINGS. 16:15-18
The Reign of Zimri lasted only seven days. As soon as the people of war `µ[æ ), who were besieging Gibbethon (see at 1 Kings 15:27), heard of his conspiracy, his usurpation of the throne, and his murderous deeds, they proclaimed Omri king in the camp of the military commanders, and he at once, with all Israel, i.e., all the army, raised the siege of Gibbethon, to lay siege to Thirza. Now when Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the castle of the royal palace and burned the king’s house over his own head, as Sardanapalus did, according to Justin (Hist. i. 3). ˆwOmr]aæ does not mean harem (Ewald), but the high castle (from ar;q; , to be high); here and in 2 Kings 15:25, the citadel of the royal palace, which consisted of several buildings.
1 KINGS. 16:19-20
V. 19 is connected with tWm in v. 18: “and so died for his sins,” i.e., as a punishment for them.
1 KINGS. 16:21-22
But Omri did not come into possession of an undisputed sovereignty immediately upon the death of Zimri. The nation divided itself into two halves; one half was behind Tibni, the son of Ginath (i.e., declared in favour of Tibni), to make him king, the other adhered to Omri.
Nevertheless Omri’s gained the upper hand over the party of Tibni, and the latter died, whereupon Omri became king after four years, as we may see from a comparison of vv. 15, 16 with v. 23. The “people of Israel” (v. 21) are probably the fighting people, so that the succession to the throne was decided by the military. rjæaæ hy;h; as in 2 Sam 2:10. qzæj; , with an accusative instead of with `l[æ , in the sense of to overpower, as in Jer 20:7.
According to Josephus (Ant. viii. 12, 5), Tibni was slain by his opponent; but this is not contained in the words; on the contrary, all that is implied in the connection of tWm with wgwqzæj; is that he met with his death in the decisive engagement in which the opposing party triumphed.
1 KINGS. 16:23-28
The Reign of Omri.-V. 23. Omri reigned twelve years, i.e., if we compare vv. 15 and 23 with v. 29, reckoning from his rebellion against Zimri; so that he only possessed the sole government for eight years (or, more exactly, seven years and a few months), viz., from the 31st to the 38th years of Asa, and the conflict with Tibni for the possession of the throne lasted about four years. “At Thirza he reigned six years,” i.e., during the four years of the conflict with Tibni, and after his death two years more.
Verse 24. As soon as he had obtained undisputed possession of the throne, he purchased the hill Shomron (Samaria) from Shemer (Semer) for two talents of silver, about 5200 thalers (£780-Tr.), built houses upon it, and named the town which he built after the former owner of the hill ˆwOrm]vo , rendered by the LXX Demhrw>n here, but everywhere else Sama>reia (Samaria), after the Chaldee form ˆyiræm]v] (Ezra 4:10,17). This city he made his seat (Residenz, place of residence, or capital), in which he resided for the last six years of his reign, and where he was buried after his death (v. 28). Samaria continued to be the capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes from that time forward, and the residence of all succeeding kings of Israel until the destruction of this kingdom after its conquest by Salmanasar (2 Kings 18:9-10). The city was two hours and a half to the north-west of Sichem, upon a mountain or hill in a mountain-hollow (Bergkessel, lit., mountain-caldron) or basin of about two hours in diameter, surrounded on all sides by still higher mountains. “The mountains and valleys round about are still for the most part arable, and are alive with numerous villages and diligent cultivation.” The mountain itself upon which Samaria stood is still cultivated to the very top, and about the middle of the slope is surrounded by a narrow terrace of level ground resembling a girdle. And even higher up there are marks of smaller terraces, where streets of the ancient city may possibly have run.
After the captivity Samaria was retaken and demolished by John Hyrcanus, and lay in ruins till Gabinius the Roman governor rebuilt it (Joseph. Ant. xiii. 19, 2, 3, and iv. 5, 3). Herod the Great afterwards decorated it in a marvellous manner, built a temple there to the emperor Augustus, and named the city after him Sebasth> , i.e., Augusta, from which arose the present name Sebuste or Sebustieh, borne by a village which is still standing on the ancient site: “a pitiable hamlet consisting of a few squalid houses, inhabited by a band of plunderers, notorious as thieves even among their lawless fellow-countrymen” (V. de Velde, i. p. 378).-But by the side of this there are magnificent ruins of an ancient Johannite church, with the reputed grave of John the Baptist and remains of limestone columns at the foot of the mountain (cf., Robinson, Pal. iii. p. 136ff.; Van de Velde, Syria and Pal. i. p. 374ff.; and C. v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 159, 160).
Verse 25-28. Omri also walked in the ways of Jeroboam, and acted worse than his predecessors upon the throne.-For vv. 26 and 27, compare vv. and 14. 2. FROM AHAB’S ASCENT OF THE THRONE TO THE DEATH OF JORAM OF ISRAEL AND AHAZIAH OF JUDAH. 16:29-2 Kings 10:27. In this epoch, which embraces only thirty-four years, the history of the kings of Judah falls so far into the background behind the history of the kingdom of Israel, that it seems to form merely an appendix to it; and the history of the monarchy is so controlled by the description of the labours of the prophets, that it seems to be entirely absorbed in them.
These phenomena have their foundation in the development of the two kingdoms during this period. Through the alliance and affinity of Jehoshaphat with the idolatrous Ahab, the kingdom of Judah not only lost the greatest part of the blessing which the long and righteous reign of this pious king had brought, but it became so entangled in the political and religious confusion of the kingdom of Israel in consequence of the participation of Jehoshaphat in the wars between Israel and the Syrians, and other foes, and the inclination of Joram and Ahaziah to the worship of Baal, that its further development during this period was almost entirely dependent upon the history of Israel. In the latter kingdom the prophets maintained a fierce conflict with the idolatry introduced by Ahab and Jezebel, in which the worship of Baal did indeed eventually succumb, but the pure lawful worship of Jehovah did not attain to full supremacy, so that this great spiritual conflict was no more followed by a permanent blessing to the kingdom as such, than the single victories of Ahab and Joram over the Syrians by outward peace and rest from its oppressors.
To guard against the spreading apostasy of the people from the living God through the exaltation of the worship of Baal into the ruling national religion in Israel, the Lord raised up the most powerful of all the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, with his fiery zeal, who worked so mightily upon the formation of the spiritual life of the covenant nation and the fate of the kingdom, not only in his own person in the reigns of Ahab and Ahaziah (ch. 17-2 Kings 2), but indirectly in the person of his successor Elisha under Joram (2 Kings 3-9), and also under the succeeding kings of Israel, that the labours of these prophets and their disciples form the central and culminating point of the Old Testament kingdom of God during the period in question.
THE REIGN OF AHAB OF ISRAEL.
The ascent of the throne of Israel by Ahab (v. 29) formed a turning-point for the worse, though, as a comparison of v. 30 with v. 25 clearly shows, the way had already been prepared by his father Omri.
1 KINGS. 16:30-32
Whereas the former kings of Israel had only perpetuated the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the calf-worship. or worship of Jehovah under the image of an ox, which he had introduced, Ahab was not satisfied with this. Ëlæy; llæq; hy;h; , “it came to pass, was it too little?” i.e., because it was too little (cf. Ewald, §362, a.) to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took as his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal the king of the Sidonians, and served Baal, and worshipped him. Ëlæy; before `dbæ[; , “he went and served,” is a pictorial description of what took place, to give greater prominence to the new turn of affairs. l[æBæt]a, (i.e., with Baal) is the Eithoo’balos l[æBæ tae or Iqo>balov : Jos. Ant. viii. 13, 1) mentioned by Menander in Josephus, c.
Ap. i. 18, who was king of Tyre and Sidon, and priest of Astarte, and who usurped the throne after the murder of his brother, king Pheles, and reigned thirty-two years.
Jezebel lb,z,yai , i.e., probably without cohabitation, cf. Gen 30:20, = untouched, chaste; not a contraction of ‘abiyzebel, as Ewald, §§273, b., supposes) was therefore, as tyrant and murderess of the prophets, a worthy daughter of her father, the idolatrous priest and regicide. Baal (always l[æBæ with the article, the Baal, i.e., Lord kat> exoch>n ) was the principal male deity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and generally of the western Asiatics, called by the Babylonians lBe = l[eB] (Isa 46:1), Bh>lov , and as the sun-god was worshipped as the supporter and first principle of psychical life and of the generative and reproductive power of nature (see at Judg 2:13). Ahab erected an altar to this deity l[æBæ tyiBæ , in the house (temple) of Baal, which he had built at Samaria. The worship of Baal had its principal seat in Tyre, where Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, had built for it a splendid temple and placed a golden pillar (chrusou’n ki’ona) therein, according to Dius and Menander, in Joseph.
Ant. viii. 5, 3, and c. Ap. i. 18. Ahab also erected a similar pillar hb;Xemæ ) to Baal in his temple at Samaria (vid., 2 Kings 3:2; 10:27). For statues of images of Baal are not met with in the earlier times; and the l[æBæ are not statues of Baal, but different modifications of that deity. It was only in the later temple of Baal or Hercules at Tyre that there was, as Cicero observes (Verr. iv. 43), ex aere simulacrum ipsius Herculis, quo non facile quidquam dixerim me vidisse pulcrius.
1 KINGS. 16:33
“And Ahab made hr;vea\h;Ata, , i.e., the Asherah belonging to the temple of Baal” (see at Judg 6:25 and Ex 34:13), an idol of Astarte (see at 1 Kings 14:23).
1 KINGS. 16:34
In his time Hiël the Bethelite laæv; tyiBæ ; compare Ges. § 111. 1 with § 86, 2. 5) built Jericho: “he laid the foundation of it with Abiram his first-born, and set up its gates with Segub his youngest, according to the word of Jehovah,” etc. (for the explanation see the Comm. on Josh 6:26). The restoration of this city as a fortification, upon which Joshua had pronounced the curse, is mentioned as a proof how far ungodliness had progressed in Israel; whilst the fulfilment of the curse upon the builder shows how the Lord will not allow the word of His servants to be transgressed with impunity. Jericho, on the border of the tribe of Ephraim (Josh 16:7), which was allotted to the Benjaminites (Josh 18:21), had come into the possession of the kingdom of Israel on the falling away of the ten tribes from the royal house of David, and formed a border city of that kingdom, through the fortification of which Ahab hoped to secure to himself the passage across the Jordan. FIRST APPEARANCE OF ELIJAH.
The prophet Elijah predicts to Ahab, as a punishment for his idolatry the coming of a drought and famine. During their continuance he is miraculously preserved by God, first of all at the brook Cherith, and then at the house of a widow at Zarephath (vv. 1-16), whose deceased son he calls to life again (vv. 17-24).
1 KINGS. 17:1
Verse 1. Elijah the Tishbite is introduced without the formula “The word of the Lord came to...,” with which the appearance of the prophets is generally announced, proclaiming to king Ahab in the name of the Lord the punitive miracle of a drought that will last for years. This abrupt appearance of Elijah cannot be satisfactorily explained from the fact that we have not the real commencement of his history here; it is rather a part of the character of this mightiest of all the prophets, and indicates that in him the divine power of the Spirit appeared as it were personified, and his life and acts were the direct effluence of the higher power by which he was impelled. His origin is also uncertain. The epithet yBiv]Ti is generally derived from a place called Tishbeh, since, according to Tobit 1:2, there existed in Upper Galilee a EiJ>sbh ek dexiw>n Kudi>wv , “on the right, i.e., to the south of Kydios,” probably Kedesh in the tribe of Naphtali, from which the elder Tobias was carried away captive, although this description of the place is omitted in the Hebrew version of the book of Tobit issued by Fagius and Münster, and in the Vulgate. And to this we must adhere, and as no other Thisbe occurs, must accept this Galilean town as the birthplace of Elijah; in which case the expression “of the settlers of Gilead” indicates that Elijah did not live in his birthplace, but dwelt as a foreigner in Gilead. For bv;wOT in itself by no means denotes a non-Israelite, but, like rGe , simply one who lived away from his home and tribe relations in the territory of a different tribe, without having been enrolled as a member of it, as is clearly shown by Lev 25:40, and still more clearly by Judg 17:7, where a Levite who was born in Bethlehem is described as rWG in the tribe of Ephraim. f160 The expression “as truly as Jehovah the God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand (i.e., whom I serve; see at 1 Kings 1:2), there shall not fall dew and rain these years, except at my word,” was a special application of the threats of the law in Deut 11:16-17; 28:23-24, and Lev 26:19, to the idolatrous kingdom. hL,ae hn,v; , “these (ensuing) years,” does not fix any definite terminus. In rb;d; hp, there is involved an emphatic antithesis to others, and more especially to the prophets of Baal. “When I shall say this by divine authority and might, let others prate and lie as they may please” (Berleb. Bibel). Elijah thereby describes himself as one into whose power the God of Israel has given up the idolatrous king and his people. In James 5:17-18, this act of Elijah is ascribed to the power of his prayers, since Elijah “was also a man such as we are,” inasmuch as the prophets received their power to work solely through faith and intercourse with God in prayer, and faith gives power to remove mountains.
1 KINGS. 17:2-6
After the announcement of this judgment, Elijah had to hide himself, by the command of God, until the period of punishment came to an end, not so much that he might be safe from the wrath and pursuit of Ahab and Jezebel, as to preclude all earnest entreaties to remove the punishment. “For inasmuch as the prophet had said that the rain would come at his word, how would they have urged him to order it to come!” (Seb. Schm.)
He was to turn µd,q, , eastward, i.e., from Samaria, where he had no doubt proclaimed the divine judgment to Ahab, to the Jordan, and to hide himself at the brook Cherith, which is in front of the Jordan. The brook Cherith was in any case a brook emptying itself into the Jordan; but whether upon the eastern or the western side of that river, the ambiguity of ynep]Al[æ , which means both “to the east of” (Gen 25:18) and also “in the face of,” i.e., before or towards (Gen 16:12; 18:16), it is impossible to determine with certainty.
That it must signify “to the east of the Jordan” here, does not follow from µd,q, with anything like the certainty that Thenius supposes. An ancient tradition places the Cherith on this side of the Jordan, and identifies it with the spring Phasaelis, which takes its rise in the slope of the mountains into the Jordan valley above the city of Phasaelis, and empties itself into the Jordan (cf. Ges. thes. p. 719, and V. de Velde, Reise, ii. pp. 273-4); whereas Eusebius, in the Onom. s.v. Chorat (Chorra’), places it on the other side of the Jordan, and Thenius thinks of the apparently deep Wady Rajib or Ajlun. All that can be affirmed with certainty is, that neither the brook Kanah (Josh 16:8; 17:9), which flows into the Mediterranean, nor the Wady Kelt near Jericho, which Robinson (Pal. ii. p. 288) suggests, can possibly come into consideration: the latter for the simple reason, that the locality in the neighbourhood of Jericho was unsuitable for a hiding-place.
Elijah was to drink of this brook, and the ravens by divine command were to provide him with bread and meat, which they brought him, according to v. 6, both morning and evening. It is now generally admitted that `bre[o does not mean either Arabs or Orebites (the inhabitants of an imaginary city named Oreb), but ravens. Through this miracle, which unbelievers reject, because they do not acknowledge a living God, by whom, as the Creator and Lord of all creatures, even the voracious ravens are made subservient to His plans of salvation, Elijah was not only cut off from intercourse with men, who might have betrayed his place of abode to the king, but was mightily strengthened himself, through the confidence inspired in the almighty assistance of his God, for his approaching contests with the worshippers of idols, and for the privations and sufferings which awaited him in the fulfilment of his vocation.
1 KINGS. 17:7-9
After some time this brook dried up for want of rain. Then the Lord directed His servant to go to the Sidonian Zarephath, and to live with a widow whom He had commanded to provide for him. µwOy xqe does not mean post annum, for µwOy merely derives this meaning in certain passages from the context (cf. Lev 25:29; 1 Sam 27:7; Judg 17:10); whereas in this instance the context does not point to the space of a year, but to a longer period of indefinite duration, all that we know being that, according to Kings 18:1, the sojourn of Elijah at Cherith and Zarephath lasted at least two years. Zarephath ( Sare>pta , LXX) was situated on the Mediterranean Sea between Tyre and Sidon, where a miserable Mohammedan village with ruins and a promontory, Surafend, still preserve the name of the former town (Rob. iii. p. 413ff., and V. de Velde, Syria and Palestine, i. pp. 101-3, transl.).
1 KINGS. 17:10-12
When Elijah arrived at the city gate, he met a widow engaged in gathering wood. To discover whether it was to her that the Lord had sent him, he asked her for something to drink and for a morsel of bread to eat; whereupon she assured him, with an oath by Jehovah, that she had nothing baked gwO[m; = `hG;[u , egkrufi’as, a cake baked in hot ashes), but only a handful of meal in the dKæ (a pail or small vessel in which meal was kept) and a little oil in the pitcher, and that she was just gathering wood to dress this remnant for herself and her son, that they might eat it, and then die.
From this statement of the widow it is evident, on the one hand, that the drought and famine had spread across the Phoenician frontier, as indeed Menander of Ephesus attests; on the other hand, the widow showed by the oath, “as Jehovah thy God liveth,” that she was a worshipper of the true God, who spoke of Jehovah as his God, because she recognised the prophet as an Israelite.
1 KINGS. 17:13-16
In order, however, to determine with indisputable certainty whether this believing Gentile was the protectress assigned him by the Lord, Elijah comforted her, and at the same time desired her first of all to bake him a little cake µv; , i.e., of the last of the meal in the Kad and of the oil in the pitcher, and then to bake for herself and her son, adding this promise:
Jehovah the God of Israel will not let the meal in the Kad and the oil in the pitcher fail, till He sends rain upon the earth again. And the widow did according to his word. She gave up the certain for the uncertain, because she trusted the word of the Lord, and received the reward of her believing confidence in the fact that during the whole time of the drought she suffered from no want of either meal or oil. This act of the pious Gentile woman, who had welcomed with a simple heart the knowledge of the true God that had reached her from Israel, must have been the source of strong consolation to Elijah in the hour of conflict, when his faith was trembling because of the multitude of idolaters in Israel. If the Lord Himself had raised up true worshipers of His name among the Gentiles, his work in Israel could not be put to shame.
The believing widow, however, received from the prophet not only a material blessing, but a spiritual blessing also. For, as Christ tells His unbelieving contemporaries to their shame (Luke 4:25-26), Elijah was not sent to this widow in order that he might be safely hidden at her house, although this object was better attained thereby than by his remaining longer in Israel; but because of her faith, namely, to strengthen and to increase it, he was sent to her, and not to one of the many widows in Israel, many of whom would also have received the prophet if they had been rescued by him from the pressure of the famine. And the miraculous increase of the meal and oil did not merely subserve the purpose of keeping the prophet and the widow alive; but the relief of her bodily need was also meant to be a preparatory means of quieting her spiritual need as well. On the Chethîb ˆtæn; , see at 1 Kings 6:19. In v. 15 the Keri aWh aWh is an unnecessary emendation of the Chethîb aWh aWh ; the feminine form lkæa; is occasioned primarily by the preceding verbs, and may be taken as an indefinite neuter: “and there ate he and she.” The offence which Thenius has taken at µwOy (days) has no foundation, if we do not understand the sentence as referring merely to their eating once of the bread just baked, but take it generally as signifying that in consequence of their acting according to the word of Jehovah, they (Elijah, the widow, and her family) ate for days, i.e., until God sent rain again (v. 14).
1 KINGS. 17:17-24
The widow’s deceased son raised to life again.
Verse 17. After these events, when Elijah had taken up his abode in the upper room of her house, her son fell sick, so that he breathed out his life. wgwrv,a `d[æ , literally till no breath remained in him. That these words do not signify merely a death-like torpor, but an actual decease, is evident from what follows, where Elijah himself treats the boy as dead, and the Lord, in answer to his prayer, restores him to life again.
Verse 18. The pious woman discerned in this death a punishment from God for her sin, and supposed that it had been drawn towards her by the presence of the man of God, so that she said to Elijah, “What have we to do with one another ( Ël;w; yLiAhmæ ; cf. Judg 11:12; 2 Sam 16:10), thou man of God? Hast thou come to me to bring my sin to remembrance (with God), and to kill my son?” In this half-heathenish belief there spoke at the same time a mind susceptible to divine truth and conscious of its sin, to which the Lord could not refuse His aid. Like the blindness in the case of the man born blind mentioned in John 9, the death of this widow’s son was not sent as a punishment for particular sins, but was intended as a medium for the manifestation of the works of God in her (John 9:3), in order that she might learn that the Lord was not merely the God of the Jews, but the God of the Gentiles also (Rom 3:29). Verse 19-20. Elijah told her to carry the dead child up to the chamber in which he lived and lay it upon his bed, and then cried to the Lord, “Jehovah, my God! hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, to slay her son?” These words, in which the word also refers to the other calamities occasioned by the drought, contain no reproach of God, but are expressive of the heartiest compassion for the suffering of his benefactress and the deepest lamentation, which, springing from living faith, pours out the whole heart before God in the hour of distress, that I may appeal to Him the more powerfully for His aid. The meaning is, “Thou, O Lord my God, according to Thy grace and righteousness, canst not possibly leave the son of this widow in death.”
Such confident belief carries within itself the certainty of being heard. The prophet therefore proceeds at once to action, to restore the boy to life.
Verse 21. He stretched himself ddæm; ) three times upon him, not to ascertain whether there was still any life left in him, as Paul did in Acts 20:10, nor to warm the body of the child and set its blood in circulation, as Elisha did with a dead child (2 Kings 4:34)-for the action of Elisha is described in a different manner, and the youth mentioned in Acts 20:10 was only apparently dead-but to bring down the vivifying power of God upon the dead body, and thereby support his own word and prayer. f162 He then cried to the Lord, “Jehovah, my God, I pray Thee let the soul of this boy return within it.” wOBir]qiAl[æ , inasmuch as the soul as the vital principle springs from above.
Verse 22-23. The Lord heard this prayer: the boy came to life again; whereupon Elijah gave him back to his mother.
Verse 24. Through this miracle, in which Elijah showed himself as the forerunner of Him who raiseth all the dead to life, the pious Gentile woman was mightily strengthened in her faith in the God of Israel. She now not only recognised Elijah as a man of God, as in v. 18, but perceived that the word of Jehovah in his mouth was truth, by which she confessed implicite her faith in the God of Israel as the true God. ELIJAH’S MEETING WITH AHAB, AND VICTORY OVER THE PROPHETS OF BAAL.
1 KINGS. 18:1-19
As the judgment of drought and famine did not bring king Ahab to his senses and lead him to turn from his ungodly ways, but only filled him with exasperation towards the prophet who had announced to him the coming judgment; there was no other course left than to lay before the people with mighty and convincing force the proof that Jehovah was the only true God, and to execute judgment upon the priests of Baal as the seducers of the nation.
Verse 1-6. Elijah’s meeting with Ahab.-Vv. 1 and 2a. In the third year of his sojourn at Zarephath the word of the Lord came to Elijah to show himself to Ahab; since God was about to send rain upon the land again.
The time given, “the third year,” is not to be reckoned, as the Rabbins, Clericus, Thenius, and others assume, from the commencement of the drought, but from the event last mentioned, namely, the sojourn of Elijah at Zarephath. This view merits the preference as the simplest and most natural one, and is shown to be the oldest by Luke 4:25 and James 5:17, where Christ and James both say, that in the time of Ahab it did not rain for three years and six months. And this length of time can only be obtained by allowing more than two years for Elijah’s stay at Zarephath.-From v. 2b to v. 6 we have parenthetical remarks introduced, to explain the circumstances which led to Elijah’s meeting with Ahab. The verbs ar;q; , hy;h; , rmæa; , and qlæj; (vv. 3, 4, 5, 6) carry on the circumstantial clauses: “and the famine was...” (v. 2b), and “Obadiah feared...” (v. 3b), and are therefore to be expressed by the pluperfect.
When the famine had become very severe in Samaria (the capital), Ahab, with Obadiah the governor of his castle tyiBæ `l[æ rv,a , see at 1 Kings 4:6), who was a God-fearing man, and on the persecution of the prophets of Jehovah by Jezebel had hidden a hundred prophets in caves and supplied them with food, had arranged for an expedition through the whole land to seek for hay for his horses and mules. And for this purpose they had divided the land between them, so that the one explored one district and the other another. We see from v. 4 that Jezebel had resolved upon exterminating the worship of Jehovah, and sought to carry out this intention by destroying the prophets of the true God. The hundred prophets whom Obadiah concealed were probably for the most part pupils (“sons”) of the prophets. vyai µyVimij must signify, according to the context and also according to v. 13, “fifty each,” so that µyVimij must have fallen out through a copyist’s error. ˆmi træK; alo , that we may not be obliged to kill (a portion) of the cattle ˆmi partitive). The Keri hm;heB] is no doubt actually correct, but it is not absolutely necessary, as the Chethîb hm;heB] ˆmi may be taken as an indefinite phrase: “any head of cattle.”
Verse 7-8. Elijah met Obadiah on this expedition, and told him to announce his coming to the king.
Verse 9-11. Obadiah was afraid that the execution of this command might cost him his life, inasmuch as Ahab had sent in search of Elijah “to every kingdom and every nation,”-a hyperbole suggested by inward excitement and fear. ˆyiaæ rmæa; is to be connected with what follows in spite of the accents: “and if they said he is not here, he took an oath,” etc.
Verse 12-14. “And if it comes to pass (that) I go away from thee, and the Spirit of Jehovah carries thee away whither I know not, and I come to tell Ahab (sc., that thou art here) and he findeth thee not, he will slay me, and thy servant feareth the Lord from his youth,” etc.; i.e., since I as a Godfearing man and a protector of the prophets cannot boast of any special favour from Ahab. rW[n; , from my youth up: “thy servant” being equivalent to “I myself.” From the fear expressed by Obadiah that the Spirit of Jehovah might suddenly carry the prophet to some unknown place, Seb.
Schmidt and others have inferred that in the earlier history of Elijah there had occurred some cases of this kind of sudden transportation, though they have not been handed down; but the anxiety expressed by Obadiah might very well have sprung from the fact, that after Elijah had announced the coming drought to Ahab, he disappeared, and, notwithstanding all the inquiries instituted by the king, was nowhere to be found. And since he was not carried off miraculously then (compare the Ëlæy; and Ëlæy; , “get thee hence” and “he went,” in 1 Kings 17:3,5), there is all the less ground for imagining cases of this kind in the intermediate time, when he was hidden from his enemies. The subsequent translation of Elijah to heaven (2 Kings 2:11-12), and the miraculous carrying away of Philip from the chamberlain of Mauritania (Acts 8:39), do not warrant any such assumption; and still less the passage which Clericus quotes from Ezekiel (Ezek 3:12,14), because the carrying of Ezekiel through the air, which is mentioned here, only happened in vision and not in external reality. If Obadiah had known of any actual occurrence of this kind, he would certainly have stated it more clearly as a more striking vindication of his fear.
Verse 15-19. But when Elijah assured him with an oath ab;x; hwO;hy] , see at 1 Sam 1:3) that he would show himself to Ahab that day, Obadiah went to announce it to the king; whereupon Ahab went to meet the prophet, and sought to overawe him with the imperious words, “Art thou here, thou troubler of Israel.” `rkæ[; , see at Gen 34:30). But Elijah threw back this charge: “It is not I who have brought Israel into trouble, but thou and thy family, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and thou goest after Baalim.” He then called upon the king to gather together all Israel to him upon Carmel, together with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who ate of Jezebel’s table, i.e., who were maintained by the queen. CARMEL, a mountain ridge “with many peaks, intersected by hundreds of larger and smaller ravines,” which stands out as a promontory running in a north-westerly direction into the Mediterranean (see at Josh 19:26), and some of the loftiest peaks of which rise to the height of 1800 feet above the level of the sea, when seen from the northern or outer side shows only “bald, monotonous rocky ridges, scantily covered with short and thorny bushes;” but in the interior it still preserves its ancient glory, which has procured for it the name of “fruit-field,” the valleys being covered with the most beautiful flowers of every description, and the heights adorned with myrtles, laurels, oaks, and firs (cf. V. de Velde, R. i. p. 292ff.). At the north-western extremity of the mountain there is a celebrated Carmelite monastery, dedicated to Elijah, whom tradition represents as having lived in a grotto under the monastery; but we are certainly not to look there for the scene of the contest with the priests of Baal described in the verses which follow.
The scene of Elijah’s sacrifice is rather to be sought for on one of the south-eastern heights of Carmel; and Van de Velde (i. p. 320ff.) has pointed it out with great probability in the ruins of el Mohraka, i.e., “the burned place,” “a rocky level space of no great circumference, and covered with old gnarled trees with a dense entangled undergrowth of bushes.” For “one can scarcely imagine a spot better adapted for the thousands of Israel to have stood drawn up on than the gentle slopes. The rock shoots up in an almost perpendicular wall of more than 200 feet in height on the side of the vale of Esdraelon. On this side, therefore, there was no room for the gazing multitude; but, on the other hand, this wall made it visible over the whole plain, and from all the surrounding heights, so that even those left behind, who had not ascended Carmel, would still have been able to witness at no great distance the fire from heaven that descended upon the altar.”-”There is not a more conspicuous spot on all Carmel than the abrupt rocky height of el Mohraka, shooting up so suddenly on the east.”
Moreover, the soil was thoroughly adapted for the erection of the altar described in vv. 31 and 32: “it shows a rocky surface, with a sufficiency of large fragments of rock lying all around, and, besides, well fitted for the rapid digging of a trench.” There is also water in the neighbourhood, as is assumed in v. 34. “Nowhere does the Kishon run so close to Mount Carmel as just beneath el Mohraka,” which is “1635 feet above the sea, and perhaps 1000 feet above the Kishon. This height can be gone up and down in the short time allowed by the Scripture (vv. 40-44).” But it was possible to find water even nearer than this, to pour upon the burnt-offering in the manner described in vv. 34, 35. Close by the steep rocky wall of the height, just where you can descend to the Kishon through a steep ravine, you find, “250 feet it might be beneath the altar plateau, a vaulted and very abundant fountain built in the form of a tank, with a few steps leading down into it, just as one finds elsewhere in the old wells or springs of the Jewish times.”- ”From such a fountain alone could Elijah have procured so much water at that time. And as for the distance between this spring and the supposed site of the altar, it was every way possible for men to go thrice thither and back again to obtain the necessary supply.” Lastly, el Mohraka is so situated, that the circumstances mentioned in vv. 42-44 also perfectly coincide (Van de Velde, pp. 322-325).
1 KINGS. 18:20-46
Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal.
Ahab sent through all Israel and gathered the prophets (of Baal) together upon Mount Carmel. According to vv. 21, 22, and 39, a number of the people (“all the people”) had also come with them. On the other hand, not only is there no further reference in what follows to the 400 prophets of Asherah (cf. vv. 25 and 40), but in v. 22 it is very obvious that the presence of the 450 prophets of Baal alone is supposed. We must therefore assume that the Asherah prophets, foreboding nothing good, had found a way of evading the command of Ahab and securing the protection of Jezebel. f163 King Ahab also appeared upon Carmel (cf. v. 41), as he had no idea of Elijah’s intention, which was by no means “to prove to the king that he (Ahab) and not Elijah had brought Israel into trouble” (Vat., Seb. Schm.), but to put before the eyes of the whole nation a convincing practical proof of the sole deity of Jehovah and of the nothingness of the Baals, that were regarded as gods, and by slaying the priests of Baal to give a death-blow to idolatry in Israel.
Verse 21. Elijah addressed the assembled people as follows: “How long do ye limp upon both sides? Is Jehovah God, then go after Him; but if Baal be God, then go after him”-and the people answered him not a word. They wanted to combine the worship of Jehovah and Baal, and not to assume a hostile attitude towards Jehovah by the worship of Baal; and were therefore obliged to keep silence under this charge of infatuated halving, since they knew very well from the law itself that Jehovah demanded worship with a whole and undivided heart (Deut 6:4-5). This dividing of the heart between Jehovah and Baal Elijah called limping ã[is; µyinæv] `l[æ , “upon the two parties (of Jehovah and Baal).” For ã[is; the meaning “divided opinions, parties,” is well established by the use of cee`apiym in Ps 119:113; and the rendering of the LXX ignu’ai, the hollow of the knee, is only a paraphrase of the sense and not an interpretation of the word.
Verse 22-25. As the people adhered to their undecided double-mindedness, Elijah proposed to let the Deity Himself decide who was the true God, Jehovah or Baal. The prophets of Baal were to offer a sacrifice to Baal, and he (Elijah) would offer one to Jehovah. And the true God should make Himself known by kindling the burnt-offering presented to Him with fire from heaven, and in this way answering the invocation of His name. This proposal was based upon the account in Lev 9. As Jehovah had there manifested Himself as the God of Israel by causing fire to fall from heaven upon the first sacrifice presented in front of the tabernacle and to consume it, Elijah hoped that in like manner Jehovah would even now reveal Himself as the living God. And the form of decision thus proposed would necessarily appear all the fairer, because Elijah, the prophet of Jehovah, stood alone in opposition to a whole crowd of Baal’s prophets, numbering no less than 450 men. And for that very reason the latter could not draw back, without publicly renouncing their pretensions, whether they believed that Baal would really do what was desired, or hoped that they might be able to escape, through some accident or stratagem, from the difficult situation that had been prepared for them, or fancied that the God of Elijah would no more furnish the proof of His deity that was desired of Him than Baal would. In order, however, to cut off every subterfuge in the event of their attempt proving a failure, Elijah not only yielded the precedence to them on the occasion of this sacrifice, but gave them the choice of the two oxen brought to be offered; which made the fairness of his proposal so much the more conspicuous to every one, that the people willingly gave their consent.
Verse 26-29. The prophets of Baal then proceeded to the performance of the duty required. They prepared Wc[yæ ) the sacrifice, and called solemnly upon Baal from morning to noon: “O Baal, hear us,” limping round the altar; “but there was no voice, and no one to hear (to answer), and no attention.” jæSepi is a contemptuous epithet applied to the pantomimic sacrificial dance performed by these priests round about the altar, `hc;[; rv,a (“which one had made”) Verse 27-29. As no answer had been received before noon, Elijah cried out to them in derision: “Call to him with a loud voice, for he is God (sc., according to your opinion), for he is meditating, or has gone aside (siy, secessio), or is on the journey Ër,D, , on the way); perhaps he is sleeping, that he may wake up.” The ridicule lies more especially in the aWh µyhila’ yKi (for he is a god), when contrasted with the enumeration of the different possibilities which may have occasioned their obtaining no answer, and is heightened by the earnest and threefold repetition of the yKi . With regard to these possibilities we may quote the words of Clericus: “Although these things when spoken of God are the most absurd things possible, yet idolaters could believe such things, as we may see from Homer.” The priests of Baal did actually begin therefore to cry louder than before, and scratched themselves with swords and lances, till the blood poured out, “according to their custom” fp;v]mi ).
Movers describes this as follows (Phönizier, i. pp. 682, 683), from statements made by ancient authors concerning the processions of the strolling bands of the Syrian goddess: “A discordant howling opens the scene. They then rush wildly about in perfect confusion, with their heads bowed down to the ground, but always revolving in circles, so that the loosened hair drags through the mire; they then begin to bite their arms, and end with cutting themselves with the two-edged swords which they are in the habit of carrying. A new scene then opens. One of them, who surpasses all the rest in frenzy, begins to prophesy with signs and groans; he openly accuses himself of the sins which he has committed, and which he is now about to punish by chastising the flesh, takes the knotted scourge, which the Galli generally carry, lashes his back, and then cuts himself with swords till the blood trickles down from his mangled body.”
The climax of the Bacchantic dance in the case of the priests of Baal also was the prophesying ab;n; ), and it was for this reason, probably, that they were called prophets aybin; ). This did not begin till noon, and lasted till about the time of the evening sacrifice `hl;[; `d[æ , not hl;[mæ `d[æ , v. 29). hj;n]mi hl;[mæ , “the laying on (offering) of the meat-offering,” refers to the daily evening sacrifice, which consisted of a burnt-offering and a meatoffering (Ex 29:38ff.; Num 28:3-8), and was then offered, according to the Rabbinical observance (see at Ex 12:6), in the closing hours of the afternoon, as is evident from the circumstances which are described in vv. 40ff. as having taken place on the same day and subsequently to Elijah’s offering, which was presented at the time of the evening sacrifice (v. 36).
Verse 30-39. Elijah’s sacrifice.-As no answer came from Baal, Elijah began to prepare for his own sacrifice. V. 30. He made the people come nearer, that he might have both eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses present at his sacrifice, and restored the altar of Jehovah which was broken down.
Consequently, there was already an altar of Jehovah upon Carmel, which either dated from the times anterior to the building of the temple, when altars of Jehovah were erected in different places throughout the land (see at 1 Kings 3:2), or, what is more probable, had been built by pious worshippers belonging to the ten tribes since the division of the kingdom (Hengstenberg, Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 183, trans.), and judging from 1 Kings 19:10, had been destroyed during the reign of Ahab, when the worship of Baal gained the upper hand.
Verse 31-35. Elijah took twelve stones, “according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come (Gen 32:29; 35:10), Israel shall be thy name,” and built these stones into an altar.
The twelve stones were a practical declaration on the part of the prophet that the division of the nation into two kingdoms was at variance with the divine calling of Israel, inasmuch as according to the will of God the twelve tribes were to form one people of Jehovah, and to have a common sacrificial altar; whilst the allusion to the fact that Jehovah had given to the forefather of the nation the name of Israel, directs attention to the wrong which the seceding ten tribes had done in claiming the name of Israel for themselves, whereas it really belonged to the whole nation. hwO;hy] µve (in the name of Jehovah) belongs to hn;B; (built), and signifies by the authority and for the glory of Jehovah. “And made a trench as the space of two seahs of seed (i.e., so large that you could sow two seahs of seed upon the ground which it covered) round about the altar.” The trench must therefore have been of considerable breadth and depth, although it is impossible to determine the exact dimensions, as the kind of seed-corn is not defined. He then arranged the sacrifice upon the altar, and had four Kad (pails) of water poured three times in succession upon the burnt-offering which was laid upon the pieces of wood, so that the water flowed round about the altar, and then had the trench filled with water. f166 Elijah adopted this course for the purpose of precluding all suspicion of even the possibility of fraud in connection with the miraculous burning of the sacrifice. For idolaters had carried their deceptions to such a length, that they would set fire to the wood of the sacrifices from hollow spaces concealed beneath the altars, in order to make the credulous people believe that the sacrifice had been miraculously set on fire by the deity. Ephraem Syrus and Joh. Chrysostom both affirm this; the latter in his Oratio in Petrum Apost. et Eliam proph. t. ii. p. 737, ed. Montf., the genuineness of which, however, is sometimes called in question.
Verse 36-37. After these preparations at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah drew near and prayed: “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (this name is used with deliberate purpose instead of Jacob: see at v. 31), let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and I am Thy servant, and do all these things through Thy word. Hear me, Jehovah, hear me, that this people may know that Thou Jehovah art God, and turnest back their hearts!” (i.e., back from idols to Thyself.) This clearly expresses not only the object of the miracle which follows, but that of miracles universally.
The perfects `hc;[; and bbæs; are used to denote not only what has already occurred, but what will still take place and is as certain as if it had taken place already. `hc;[; refers not merely to the predicted drought and to what Elijah has just been doing (Thenius), but to the miracle which was immediately about to be performed; and bbæs; to the conversion of the people to the Lord their God, for which Elijah’s coming had already prepared the way, and which was still further advanced by the following miracle.
Verse 38-39. Then fire of Jehovah fell and consumed the burnt-offering and the pieces of wood, etc. hwO;hy] cae , the fire proceeding from Jehovah, was not a natural flash of lightning, which could not produce any such effect, but miraculous fire falling from heaven, as in 1 Chron 21:26; Chron 7:1) see at Lev 9:24), the supernatural origin of which was manifested in the fact, that it not only consumed the sacrifice with the pile of wood upon the altar, but also burned up (in calcem redegit-Cler.) the stones of the altar and the earth that was thrown up to form the trench, and licked up the water in the trench. Through this miracle Jehovah not only accredited Elijah as His servant and prophet, but proved Himself to be the living God, whom Israel was to serve; so that all the people who were present fell down upon their faces in worship, as they had done once before, viz., at the consecration of the altar in Lev 9:24, and confessed “Jehovah is God:” µyhila’ , the true or real God.
Verse 40-46. Elijah availed himself of this enthusiasm of the people for the Lord, to deal a fatal blow at the prophets of Baal, who turned away the people from the living God. He commanded the people to seize them, and had them slain at the brook Kishon, and that not so much from revenge, i.e., because it was at their instigation that queen Jezebel had murdered the prophets of the true God (v. 13), as to carry out the fundamental law of the Old Testament kingdom of God, which prohibited idolatry on pain of death, and commanded that false prophets should be destroyed (Deut 17:2- 3; 13:13ff.). f167 Verse 41. Elijah then called upon the king, who had eaten nothing from morning till evening in his eagerness to see the result of the contest between the prophet and the priests of Baal, to come up from the brook Kishon to the place of sacrifice upon Carmel, where his wants were provided for, and to partake of meat and drink, for he (Elijah) could already hear the noise of a fall of rain. lwOq is without a verb, as is often the case (e.g., Isa 13:4; 52:8, etc.); literally, it is the sound, the noise. After the occasion of the curse of drought, which had fallen upon the land, had been removed by the destruction of the idolatrous priest, the curse itself could also be removed. “But this was not to take place without the prophet’s saying it, and by means of this gift proving himself afresh to be the representative of God” (O. v. Gerlach).
Verse 42-43. While the king was refreshing himself with food and drink, Elijah went up to the top of Carmel to pray that the Lord would complete His work by fulfilling His promise (v. 1) in sending rain; and continued in prayer till the visible commencement of the fulfilment of his prayer was announced by his servant, who, after looking out upon the sea seven times, saw at last a small cloud ascend from the sea about the size of a man’s hand. f168 The peculiar attitude assumed by Elijah when praying (James 5:18), viz., bowing down even to the earth rhæG; ) and putting his face between his knees, probably the attitude of deep absorption in God, was witnessed by Shaw and Chardin in the case of certain dervishes (vid., Harmar, Beobachtungen, iii. pp. 373-4).
Verse 44. As soon as the small cloud ascended from the sea, Elijah sent his servant to tell the king to set off home, that he might not be stopped by the rain. dræy; , go down, sc. from Carmel to his chariot, which was standing at the foot of the mountain. f169 Verse 45. Before any provision had been made for it ( hKOAd[æw] hKoAd[æ : hither and thither, i.e., while the hand is being moved to and fro, “very speedily;” cf. Ewald, §105, b.) the heaven turned black with clouds and wind, i.e., with storm-clouds (Thenius), and there came a great fall of rain, while Ahab drove along the road to Jezreel. It was quite possible for the king to reach Jezreel the same evening from that point, namely, from the foot of Carmel below el Mohraka: but only thence, for every half-hour farther west would have taken him too far from his capital for it to be possible to accomplish the distance before the rain overtook him (V. de Velde, i. p. 326). Jezreel, the present Zerin (see at Josh 19:18), was probably the summer residence of Ahab (see at Josh 21:1). The distance from el Mohraka thither is hardly 2 3/4 German geographical miles (? Engl. miles-Tr.) in a straight line.
Verse 46. When Ahab drove off, the hand of the Lord came upon Elijah, so that he ran before Ahab as far as Jezreel-not so much for the purpose of bringing the king to his residence unhurt (Seb. Schm.), as to give him a proof of his humility, and thus deepen the impression already made upon his heart, and fortify him all the more against the strong temptations of his wife, who abused his weakness to support the cause of ungodliness. This act of Elijah, whom Ahab had hitherto only known as a stern, imperious, and powerful prophet, by which he now showed himself to be his faithful subject and servant, was admirably adapted to touch the heart of the king, and produce the conviction that it was not from any personal dislike to him, but only in the service of the Lord, that the prophet was angry at his idolatry, and that he was not trying to effect his ruin, but rather his conversion and the salvation of his soul. hwO;hy] dy; , the hand (i.e., the power) of the Lord, denotes the supernatural strength with which the Lord endowed him, to accomplish superhuman feats. This formula is generally applied to the divine inspiration by which the prophets were prepared for their prophesying (cf. 2 Kings 3:15; Ezek 1:3; 3:15, etc.).
ELIJAH’S FLIGHT INTO THE DESERT, THE REVELATION OF GOD AT HOREB, AND ELISHA’S CALL TO BE A PROPHET.
1 KINGS. 19:1-8
The hope of completing his victory over the idolaters and overthrowing the worship of Baal, even in the capital of the kingdom, with which Elijah may have hastened to Jezreel, was frustrated by the malice of the queen, who was so far from discerning any revelation of the almighty God in the account given her by Ahab of what had occurred on Carmel, and bending before His mighty hand, that, on the contrary, she was so full of wrath at the slaying of the prophets of Baal as to send to the prophet Elijah to threaten him with death. This apparent failure of his ministry was the occasion of a severe inward conflict, in which Elijah was brought to a state of despondency and fled from the land. The Lord allowed His servant to pass through this conflict, that he might not exalt himself, but, being mindful of his own impotence, might rest content with the grace of his God, whose strength is mighty in the weak (2 Cor 12:8-9), and who would refine and strengthen him for the further fulfilment of his calling. Verse 1-2. Elijah’s flight into the desert and guidance to Horeb.-Vv. 1, 2.
When “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and all, how he had slain all the prophets (of Baal),” she sent a messenger to Elijah in her impotent wrath, with a threat, which she confirmed by an oath (see at 1 Kings 2:23), that in the morning she would have him slain like the prophets whom he had put to death. The early commentators detected in this threat the impotentia muliebris iracundiae, and saw that all that Jezebel wanted was to get rid of the man who was so distressing and dangerous to her, because she felt herself unable to put him to death, partly on account of the people, who were enthusiastic in his favour, and partly on account of the king himself, upon whom the affair at Carmel had not remained without its salutary effect.
Verse 3-4. But when Elijah saw ha;r; ), sc. how things stood, or the audacity of Jezebel, from which the failure of his work was evident, he rose up and went to Beersheba in Judah, i.e., Bir-seba on the southern frontier of Canaan (see at Gen 21:31). The expression hd;Why] rv,a , “which to Judah,” i.e., which belonged to the kingdom of Judah, for Beersheba was really allotted to the tribe of Simeon (Josh 19:2), is appended not merely as a geographical indication that Elijah went outside the land, but to show that he meant to leave the kingdom of Israel, the scene of his previous labours, just as Jeremiah in a similar internal conflict gave utterance to the wish that he could leave his people, if he had but a lodging-place in the wilderness (Jer 9:2). ha;r; is not to be altered into arey; , et timuit, after the LXX and Vulg., notwithstanding the fact that some Codd. have this reading, which only rests upon an erroneous conjecture. For it is obvious that Elijah did not flee from any fear of the vain threat of Jezebel, from the fact that he did not merely withdrawn into the kingdom of Judah, where he would have been safe under Jehoshaphat from all the persecutions of Jezebel, but went to Beersheba, and thence onwards into the desert there to pour out before the Lord God his weariness of life (v. 4). wOvp]næAla, Ël,ye , he went upon his soul, or his life, i.e., not to save his life (as I once thought, with many other commentators), for his wish to die (v. 4) is opposed to this; but to care for his soul in the manner indicated in v. 4, i.e., to commit his soul or his life to the Lord his God in the solitude of the desert, and see what He would determine concerning him. f170 He left his servant in Beersheba, while he himself went a day’s journey farther into the desert (Paran), not merely because he was so filled with weariness of life in his dark oppression, that he thought he should have no further need of his servant, and therefore left him behind in Beersheba, but that he might pour out his heart before God alone in the desert and yield himself up to His guidance.
For however unquestionably his lamentation in v. 4, for example, expresses a weariness of life, this merely indicates the feeling which had taken possession of his soul after a day’s journey in the barren desert. And even there he lays his wish to die before God in prayer; so that this feeling is merely to be regarded as one result of the spiritual conflict, which is bodily exhaustion had now raised to a height that it cannot have reached when he was in Beersheba. If, therefore, he did not start with the intention of making a pilgrimage to Horeb, he had certainly gone into the desert for the purpose of seeing whether the Lord would manifest His mercy to him, as He had formerly done to His people under Moses, or whether He would withdraw His hand entirely from him. After a day’s journey he sat down under a µt,r, (construed here as a feminine, in v. 5 as a masculine), a species of broom (genista Retem in Forskâl), which is the finest and most striking shrub of the Arabian desert, growing constantly in the beds of streams and in the valleys, where places of encampment are frequently selected for the sake of the shelter which they afford by night from the wind and by day from the sun (Rob. Pal. i. 299). laæv; : and wished that his soul might die (a kind of accusative with infinitive; see Ewald, §336, b.), and said, `hT;[æ bræ , “Enough now; take, Lord, my soul, for I am not better than my fathers;” i.e., I have worked and endured enough, and deserve no longer life than my fathers. From this it appears that Elijah was already of a great age.
Verse 5-6. In this disturbed state of mind he lay down and slept under a broom-tree. Then the Lord came with His power to the help of the despairing man. “An angel touched him (wakened him out of his sleep), and said to him: Arise, eat.” And behold he saw at his head ãx,r `hG;[u , a bread cake baked over red-hot stones, a savoury article of food which is still a great favourite with the Bedouins (see at Gen 18:6; 19:3), and a pitcher of water, and ate and drank, and lay down again. Verse 7. But the angel wakened him a second time, and called upon him to eat with these words: “for the way is too far for thee” Ër,D, ˆmi bræ , iter est majus quam pro viribus tuis-Vat.).
Verse 8. “Then he arose, ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to the mount of God at Horeb.” As the angel did not tell him whither he was to go, and Elijah wandered to Horeb in consequence of this strengthening, it appears to have been his intention from the very beginning to go into the desert, and see whether the Lord would still further acknowledge him and his work; so that in the support and strength imparted by the angel he saw an indication that he was to follow the footsteps of the divine grace still farther into the desert, and make a pilgrimage to Horeb, with the hope that there perhaps the Lord would reveal to him His counsel concerning the further guidance of the people of His covenant, as He had formerly done to His servant Moses, and give him the necessary instruction for the continuance of his prophetic service. Horeb is called the mount of God here, as it was proleptically in Ex 3:1, as the place where the Lord confirmed the covenant, already made with the patriarchs, to their descendants, and adopted the tribes of Israel as His people and made them into a kingdom of God. The distance from Beersheba to Horeb is about 200 miles.
Consequently Elijah would not have required forty days to travel there, if the intention of God had been nothing more than to cause him to reach the mountain, or “to help him on his say” (Thenius). But in the strength of the food provided by the angel Elijah was not only to perform the journey to Horeb, but to wander in the desert for forty days and forty nights, i.e., forty whole days, as Moses had formerly wandered with all Israel for forty years; that he might know that the Lord was still the same God who had nourished and sustained His whole nation in the desert with manna from heaven for forty years. And just as the forty years’ sojourn in the desert had been to Moses a time for the trial of faith and for exercise in humility and meekness (Num 12:3), so was the strength of Elijah’s faith to be tried by the forty days’ wandering in the same desert, and to be purified from all carnal zeal for the further fulfilment of His calling, in accordance with the divine will. What follows shows very clearly that this was the object of the divine guidance of Elijah (cf. Hengstenberg, Diss. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. 171, 172).
1 KINGS. 19:9-18
Appearance of God at Horeb.
V. 9. When Elijah arrived at Horeb, he went into the cave (the definite article in hr;[;m] , with the obvious connection between the appearance of God, which follows here, and that described in Ex 33:12ff., points back to the cleft in the rock, rWxhæ træq]ni ) in which Moses had stood while the glory of Jehovah passed by (see at Ex 33:22), and there he passed the night. And behold the word of the Lord came to him (in the night): “What doest thou here, Elijah?” This question did not involve a reproof, as though Elijah had nothing to do there, but was simply intended to lead him to give utterance to the thoughts and feelings of his heart.
Verse 10. Elijah answered: “I have striven zealously for Jehovah the God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, destroyed Thine altars, and killed Thy prophets with the sword; and I only am left, and they seek my life.” In these words there was not only the greatest despair expressed as to the existing condition of things, but also a carnal zeal which would gladly have called down the immediate vengeance of the Almighty upon all idolaters. The complaint contained, on the one hand, the tacit reproof that God had looked on quietly for so long a time at the conduct of the ungodly, and had suffered things to come to such an extremity, that he, His prophet, was the only one left of all the true worshippers of God, and, on the other hand, the indirect appeal that He would interpose at last with His penal judgments. Because Elijah had not seen the expected salutary fruits of his zeal for the Lord, he thought that all was lost, and in his gloomy state of mind overlooked what he had seen a short time before with his own eyes, that even in the neighbourhood of the king himself there lived a pious and faithful worshipper of Jehovah, viz., Obadiah, who had concealed a hundred prophets from the revenge of Jezebel, and that the whole of the people assembled upon Carmel had given glory to the Lord, and at his command had seized the prophets of Baal and put them to death, and therefore that the true worshippers of the Lord could not all have vanished out of Israel. hwO;hy] an;q; an;q; recalls to mind the zeal of Phinehas (Num 25:11ff.), which put an end to the whoredom of the sons of Israel with the daughters of Moab. But whereas Phinehas received the promise of an everlasting priesthood for his zeal, Elijah had seen so little fruit from his zeal against the worshippers of Baal, that they actually sought his life. jæBez]mi are altars, which pious Israelites in the kingdom of the ten tribes had built in different places for the worship of Jehovah (see at 1 Kings 18:30).
Verse 11-12. The Lord replied to the prophet’s complaint first of all by the manifestation of His control of the phenomena of nature (vv. 11-13), and then by a verbal explanation of His design (vv. 15-18).
In this divine revelation men have recognised from the very earliest times a repetition of the appearance of God which was granted to Moses upon Sinai. As God, in token of His grace, granted the prayer of Moses that he might see His glory, after he had striven zealously for the honour of the Lord when the people rebelled by worshipping the golden calf; so did He also display His glory upon Horeb to Elijah as a second Moses for the purpose of strengthening his faith, with this simple difference, that He made all His goodness pass by Moses, and declared His name in the words, “Jehovah, a gracious and merciful God,” etc. (Ex 34:6-7), whereas He caused Elijah first of all to behold the operation of His grace in certain phenomena of nature, and then afterwards made known to him His will with regard to Israel and to the work of His prophets. This difference in the form of the revelation, while the substance and design were essentially the same, may be explained from the difference not only in the historical circumstances, but also in the state of mind of the two servants to whom He manifested His glory.
In the case of Moses it was burning love for the welfare of his people which impelled him to offer the prayer that the Lord would let him see His glory, as a sign that He would not forsake His people; and this prayer was granted him, so far as a man is ever able to see the glory of God, to strengthen him for the further discharge of the duties of his office. Hidden in the cleft of the rock and shielded by the hand of God, he saw the Lord pass by him, and heard Him utter in words His inmost being. Elijah, on the other hand, in his zeal for the honour of God, which was not quite free from human passion, had been led by the want of any visible fruit from his own labour to overlook the work of the Lord in the midst of His people; so that he had fled into the desert and wished to be released from this world by death, and had not been brought out of his despair by the strengthening with meat and drink which he had received from the angel, and which enabled him to travel for forty days to the mount of God without suffering from want, a fact which was intended to remind him of the ancient God of the fathers, to whose omnipotence and goodness there is no end; so that it was in a most gloomy state of mind that he reached Horeb at last.
And now the Lord designed not only to manifest His glory as the love in which grace and righteousness are united, but also to show him that his zeal for the honour of the Lord was not in harmony with the love and grace and long-suffering of God. “The design of the vision was to show to the fiery zeal of the prophet, who wanted to reform everything by means of the tempest, the gentle way which God pursues, and to proclaim the longsuffering and mildness of His nature, as the voice had already done to Moses on that very spot; hence the beautiful change in the divine appearance” (Herder, Geist der hebr. Poesie, 1788, ii. p. 52).
Verse 11-12. After God had commanded him to come out of the cave and stand upon the mountain (that part of the mountain which was in front of the cave) before Him, “behold Jehovah went by (the participle `rbæ[; is used to give a more vivid representation of the scene); and a great and strong tempest, rending mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, before Jehovah-it was not in the tempest that Jehovah was; and after the tempest an earthquake-it was not in the earthquake that Jehovah was; and after the earthquake fire-it was not in the fire that Jehovah was; and after the fire a still, gentle rustling.” qDæ hm;m;D] lwOq , literally the tone of a gentle blowing.
On the change of gender in qz;j; lwOdG; jæWr , see Ewald, §174, e.-Tempest, earthquake, and fire, which are even more terrible in the awful solitude of the Horeb mountains than in an inhabited land, are signs of the coming of the Lord to judgment (cf. Ps 18:8ff.). It was in the midst of such terrible phenomena that the Lord had once come down upon Sinai, to inspire the people who were assembled at the foot of the mountain with a salutary dread of His terrible majesty, of the fiery zeal of His wrath and love, which consumes whatever opposes it (see at Ex 19:16ff.). but now the lord was not in these terrible phenomena; to signify to the prophet that He did not work in His earthly kingdom with the destroying zeal of wrath, or with the pitiless severity of judgment. It was in a soft, gentle rustling that He revealed Himself to him.
Verse 13-17. When Elijah heard this, he covered up his face in his cloak tr,D,aæ ; see at 2 Kings 1:8) and went out to the entrance to the cave. And behold he heard the question a second time, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” and answered with a repetition of his complain (see vv. 9 and 10).- While the appearance of God, not in the tempest, the earthquake, and the fire, but in a gentle rustling, revealed the Lord to him as a merciful and gracious God, long-suffering, and of great goodness and truth (Ex 34:6), the answer to his complaint showed him that He did not leave guilt unpunished (Ex 34:7), since the Lord gave him the following command, vv. 15ff.: “Go back in thy way to the desert of Damascus, and anoint Hazael king over Aram (see 2 Kings 8:12-13), and Jehu the son of Nimshi king over Israel (see 2 Kings 9:2), and Elisha the son of Shaphat prophet in thy stead” (see v. 19); and then added this promise, which must have quieted his zeal, that was praiseworthy in the feelings from which it sprang, although it had assumed too passionate a form, and have given him courage to continue his prophetic work: “And it will come to pass, that however escapeth the sword of Hazael, him will Jehu slay, and whoever escapeth the sword of Jehu, him will Elisha slay.”
Verse 18. But in order that he might learn, to his shame, that the cause of the Lord in Israel appeared much more desperate to his eye, which was clouded by his own dissatisfaction, than it really was in the eye of the God who knows His own by number and by name, the Lord added: “I have seven thousand left in Israel, all knees that have not bent before Baal, and every mouth that hath not kissed him.” qc,M,Dæ rB;d]mi , into the desert of Damascus (with the He loc. with the construct state as in Deut 4:41; Josh 12:1, etc.; cf. Ewald, §216, b.), i.e., the desert lying to the south and east of the city of Damascus, which is situated on the river Barady; not per desertum in Damascum (Vulg., Luth., etc.); for although Elijah would necessarily pass through the Arabian desert to go from Horeb to Damascus, it was superfluous to tell him that he was to go that way, as there was no other road.
The words “return by thy way...and anoint Hazael,” etc., are not to be understood as signifying that Elijah was to go at once to Damascus and anoint Hazael there, but simply that he was to do this at a time which the Spirit would more precisely indicate. According to what follows, all that Elijah accomplished immediately was to call Elisha to be his successor; whereas the other two commissions were fulfilled by Elisha after Elijah’s ascension to heaven (2 Kings 8 and 9). The opinion that Elijah also anointed Hazael and Jehu immediately, but that this anointing was kept secret, and was repeated by Elisha when the time for their public appearance arrived, has not only very little probability in itself, but is directly precluded by the account of the anointing of Jehu in 2 Kings 9. The anointing of Hazael and Jehu is mentioned first, because God had chosen these two kings to be the chief instruments of His judgments upon the royal family and people for their idolatry.
It was only in the case of Jehu that a real anointing took place (2 Kings 9:6); Hazael was merely told by Elisha that he would be king (2 Kings 8:13), and Elisha was simply called by Elijah to the prophetic office by having the cloak of the latter thrown upon him. Moreover, the Messianic passage, Isa 61:1, is the only one in which there is any allusion to the anointing of a prophet. Consequently jvæm; must be taken figuratively here as in Judg 9:8, as denoting divine consecration to the regal and prophetic offices. And so, again, the statement that Elisha would slay those who escaped the sword of Jehu is not to be understood literally. Elisha slew by the word of the Lord, which brought judgments upon the ungodly, as we see from 2 Kings 2:24 (cf. Jer 1:10; 18:7). The “seven thousand,” who had not bowed the knee before Baal, are a round number for the eklogh> of the godly, whom the Lord had preserved for Himself in the sinful kingdom, which was really very large in itself, however small it might be in comparison with the whole nation. The number seven is the stamp of the works of God, so that seven thousand is the number of the “remnant according to the election of grace” (Rom 11:5), which had then been preserved by God. Kissing Baal was the most usual form in which this idol was worshipped, and consisted not merely in throwing kisses with the hand (cf. Job 31:27, and Plin. h. n. 28, 8), but also in kissing the images of Baal, probably on the feet (cf. Cicero in Verr. 4, 43).
1 KINGS. 19:19-21
Call of Elisha to be a prophet.
Verse 19. As he went thence (viz., away from Horeb), Elijah found Elisha the son of Shaphat at Abel-meholah, in the Jordan valley (see at Judg 7:22), occupied in ploughing; “twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he himself with the twelfth” (a very wealthy man therefore), and threw his cloak to him as he passed by. The prophet’s cloak was sign of the prophet’s vocation so that throwing it to him was a symbol of the call to the prophetic office.
Verse 20. Elisha understanding the sign, left the oxen standing, ran after Elijah, and said to him, “Let me kiss my father and my mother,” i.e., take leave of my parents, and when I will follow thee. For the form hq;v’a’ see Ewald, §228, b. As he has ploughed his earthly field with his twelve pair of oxen, he was not to plough the spiritual field of the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 9:62). Elijah answered, “Go, return, for what have I done to thee?” bWv Ëlæy; belong together, as in v. 15; so that Elijah thereby gave him permission to return to his father and mother. yKi signifies for, not yet (Thenius); for there is no antithesis here, according to which yKi might serve for a more emphatic assurance (Ewald, §330, b.). The words “what have I done to thee?” can only mean, I have not wanted to put any constraint upon thee, but leave it to thy free will to decide in favour of the prophetic calling.
Verse 21. Then Elisha returned, took the pair of oxen with which he had been ploughing, sacrificed, i.e., slaughtered them jbæz, used figuratively), boiled the flesh with the plough, gave a farewell meal to the people (of his place of abode), i.e., his friends and acquaintance, and then followed Elijah as his servant, i.e., his assistant. The suffix in lvæB; refers to rq;B; dm,,x, , and is more precisely defined by the apposition rc;B; , “namely, the flesh of the oxen.”
AHAB’S DOUBLE VICTORY OVER BENHADAD OF SYRIA.
1 KINGS. 20:1-22
Even if the impression which the miracle upon Carmel had made upon Ahab, who was weak rather than malevolent, remained without any lasting fruit, the Lord did very quickly manifest His mercy towards him, by sending a prophet with a promise of victory when the Syrians invaded his kingdom, and by giving the Syrians into his power. This victory was a fruit of the seven thousand who had not bent their knee before Baal. Elijah was also to learn from this that the Lord of Sabaoth had not yet departed from the rebellious kingdom. The First Victory.
Verse 1. Benhadad, the son of that Benhadad who had conquered several cities of Galilee in the reign of Baasha (1 Kings 15:20), came up with a great army-there were thirty-two kings with him, with horses and chariotsand besieged Samaria. The thirty-two kings with him tae ) were vassals of Benhadad, rulers of different cities and the territory belonging to them, just as in Joshua’s time almost every city of Canaan had its king; they were therefore bound to follow the army of Benhadad with their troops.
Verse 2-7. During the siege Benhadad sent messengers into the city to Ahab with this demand: “Thy silver and thy gold are mine, and the best of thy wives and thy sons are mine;” and Ahab answered with pusillanimity: “According to thy word, my lord king, I and all that is mine are thine.”
Benhadad was made still more audacious by this submissiveness, and sent messengers the second time with the following notice (v. 6): “Yea, if I send my servants to thee to-morrow at this time, and they search thy house and thy servants’ houses, all that is the pleasure of thine eyes they will put into their hands and take.” µai yKi does not mean “only = certainly” here (Ewald, §356, b.), for there is neither a negative clause nor an oath, but µai signifies if and yKi introduces the statement, as in v. 5; so that it is only in the repetition of the yKi that the emphasis lies, which can be expressed by yea. The words of Ahab in v. 9 show unquestionably that Benhadad demanded more the second time than the first. The words of the first demand, “Thy silver and thy gold,” etc., were ambiguous. According to v. 5, Benhadad meant that Ahab should give him all this; and Ahab had probably understood him as meaning that he was to give him what he required, in order to purchase peace; but Benhadad had, no doubt, from the very first required an unconditional surrender at discretion. He expresses this very clearly in the second demand, since he announces to Ahab the plunder of his palace and also of the palaces of his nobles. Ëyn,y[e dmæj]mæAlK; , all thy costly treasures. It was from this second demand that Ahab first perceived what Benhadad’s intention had been; he therefore laid the matter before the elders of the land, i.e., the king’s counsellors, v. 7: “Mark and see that this man seeketh evil,” i.e., that he is aiming at our ruin, since he is not contented with the first demand, which I did not refuse him.
Verse 8-9. The elders and all the people, i.e., the citizens of Samaria. advised that his demand should not be granted. hb,ato alow] [mæv]TiAlaæ , “hearken not (to him), and thou wilt not be willing” alo is stronger than laæ ; yet compare Ewald, §350, a.); whereupon Ahab sent the messengers away with this answer, that he would submit to the first demand, but that the second he could not grant.
Verse 10. Benhadad then attempted to overawe the weak-minded Ahab by strong threats, sending fresh messengers to threaten him with the destruction of the city, and confirming it by a solemn oath: “The gods do so to me-if the dust of Samaria should suffice for the hollow hands of all the people that are in my train.” The meaning of this threat was probably that he would reduce the city to ashes, so that scarcely a handful of dust should be left; for his army was so powerful and numerous, that the rubbish of the city would not suffice for every one to fill his hand.
Verse 11. Ahab answered this loud boasting with the proverb: “Let not him that girdeth himself boast as he that looseneth the girdle,” equivalent to the Latin, ne triumphum canas ante victoriam.
Verse 12. After this reply of Ahab, Benhadad gave command to attack the city, while he was drinking with his kings in the booths. twOKsu are booths made of branches, twigs, and shrubs, such as are still erected in the East for kings and generals in the place of tents (vid., Rosenmüller, A. u. N.
Morgenl. iii. pp. 198-9). µWc : take your places against the city, sc. to storm it (for µWc in the sense of arranging the army for battle, see 1 Sam 11:11 and Job 1:17); not oikodomh>sate ca>raka (LXX), or place the siege train.
Verse 13-14. While the Syrians were preparing for the attack, a prophet came to Ahab and told him that Jehovah would deliver this great multitude (of the enemy) into his hand that day, “that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah,” and that through the retainers of the governors of the provinces hn;ydim] rcæ , who had fled to Samaria), i.e., by a small and weak host. In the appearance of the prophet in Samaria mentioned here and in vv. 28 and 35ff. there is no such irreconcilable contradiction to 1 Kings 18:4,22, and 19:10, as Thenius maintains; it simply shows that the persecution of the prophets by Jezebel had somewhat abated, and therefore Elijah’s labour had not remained without fruit. mh rsæa; ymi , who shall open the battle? rsæa; answers to the German anfädeln (to string, unite; Eng. join battle- Tr.); cf. 2 Chron 13:3.
Verse 15-16. Ahab then mustered his fighting men: there were servants of the provincial governors; and the rest of the people, all the children of Israel, i.e., the whole of the Israelitish fighting men that were in Samaria lyijæ , v. 19), amounted to 7000 men. And at noon, when Benhadad and his thirty-two auxiliary kings were intoxicated at a carousal in the booths rwOKvi ht;v; as in 1 Kings 16:9), he ordered his men to advance, with the servants of the provincial governors taking the lead. The 7000 men are not to be regarded as the 7000 mentioned in 1 Kings 19:18, who had not bowed their knee before Baal, as Rashi supposes, although the sameness in the numbers is apparently not accidental; but in both cases the number of the covenant people existing in Israel is indicated, though in 1 Kings 19:18 and 7000 constitute the eklogh> of the true Israel, whereas in the verse before us they are merely the fighting men whom the Lord had left to Ahab for the defence of his kingdom.
Verse 17-18. When Benhadad was informed of the advance of these fighting men, in his drunken arrogance he ordered them to be taken alive, whether they came with peaceable or hostile intent.
Verse 19-21. But they-the servants of the governors at the head, and the rest of the army behind-smote every one his man, so that the Aramaeans fled, and Benhadad, pursued by the Israelites, escaped on a horse with some of the cavalry. vr;p; is in apposition to ddæhAˆB, , “he escaped, and horsemen,” sc. escaped with him, i.e., some of the horsemen of his retinue, whilst the king of Israel, going out of the city, smote horses and chariots of the enemy, who were not prepared for this sally of the besieged, and completely defeated them.
Verse 22. After this victory the prophet came to Ahab again, warning him to be upon his guard, for at the turn of the year, i.e., the next spring (see at 2 Sam 11:1), the Syrian king would make war upon him once more.
1 KINGS. 20:23-25
The Second Victory.
Verse 23, 24. The servants (ministers) of Benhadad persuaded their lord to enter upon a fresh campaign, attributing the defeat they had sustained to two causes, which could be set aside, viz., to the supposed nature of the gods of Israel, and to the position occupied by the vassal-kings in the army.
The gods of Israel were mountain gods: when fighting with them upon the mountains, the Syrians had had to fight against and succumb to the power of these gods, whereas on the plain they would conquer, because the power of these gods did not reach so far. This notion concerning the God of Israel the Syrians drew, according to their ethnical religious ideas, from the fact that the sacred places of this God-not only the temple at Jerusalem upon Moriah, but also the altars of the high places-were erected upon mountains; since heathenism really had its mountain deities, i.e., believed in gods who lived upon mountains and protected and conducted all that took place upon them (cf. Dougtaei Analect. ss. i. 178, 179; Deyling, Observv. ss. iii. pp. 97ff.; Winer, bibl. R. W. i. p. 154), and in Syrophoenicia even mountains themselves had divine honours paid to them (vid., Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 667ff.). The servants of Benhadad were at any rate so far right, that they attributed their defeat to the assistance which God had given to His people Israel; and were only wrong in regarding the God of Israel as a local deity, whose power did not extend beyond the mountains.
They also advised their lord (v. 24) to remove the kings in his army from their position, and appoint governors in their stead hj;p, , see 1 Kings 10:15). The vassal-kings had most likely not shown the desired selfsacrifice for the cause of their superior in the war. And, lastly (v. 25), they advised the king to raise his army to its former strength, and then carry on the war in the plain. “Number thyself an army, like the army which has fallen from thee.” tae , “from with thee,” rendered correctly de tuis in the Vulgate, at least so far as the sense is concerned (for the form see Ewald, §264, b.). But these prudently-devised measures were to be of no avail to the Syrians; for they were to learn that the God of Israel was not a limited mountain-god.
1 KINGS. 20:26
With the new year (see v. 22) Benhadad advanced to Aphek again to fight against Israel. Aphek is neither the city of that name in the tribe of Asher (Josh 19:30 and 13:4), nor that on the mountains of Judah (Josh 15:53), but the city in the plain of Jezreel not far from Endor (1 Sam 29:1 compared with 28:4); since Benhadad had resolved that this time he would fight against Israel in the plain.
1 KINGS. 20:27
The Israelites, mustered and provided for lWK: supplied with ammunition and provisions), marched to meet them, and encamped before them “like two little separate flocks of goats” (i.e., severed from the great herd of cattle). They had probably encamped upon slopes of the mountains by the plain of Jezreel, where they looked like two miserable flocks of goats in contrast with the Syrians who filled the land.
1 KINGS. 20:28
Then the man of God (the prophet mentioned in vv. 13 and 22) came again to Ahab with the word of God: “Because the Syrians have said Jehovah is a mountain-God and not a God of the valleys, I will give this great multitude into thy hand, that ye may know that I am Jehovah.”
1 KINGS. 20:29-30
After seven days the battle was fought. The Israelites smote the Syrians, a hundred thousand men in one day; and when the rest fled to Aphek, into the city, the wall fell upon twenty-seven thousand men, hi’na de’ kakei’noi kai’ ohu’toi ma’thoosin hoos theee’latos hee pleegee’ (Theodoret). The flying Syrians had probably some of them climbed the wall of the city to offer resistance to the Israelites in pursuit, and some of them sought to defend themselves by taking shelter behind it. And during the conflict, through the special interposition of God, the wall fell and buried the Syrians who were there. The cause of the fall is not given. Thenius assumes that it was undermined, in order to remove all idea of any miraculous working of the omnipotence of God. Benhadad himself fled into the city “room to room,” i.e., from one room to another (cf. 1 Kings 22:25; Chron 18:24).
1 KINGS. 20:31-32
In this extremity his servants made the proposal to him, that trusting in the generosity of the kings of Israel, they should go and entreat Ahab to show favour to him. They clothed themselves in mourning apparel, and put ropes on their necks, as a sign of absolute surrender, and went to Ahab, praying for the life of their king. And Ahab felt so flattered by the fact that his powerful opponent was obliged to come and entreat his favour in this humble manner, that he gave him his life, without considering how a similar act on the part of Saul had been blamed by the Lord (1 Sam 15:9ff.). “Is he still alive? He is my brother!” was his answer to Benhadad’s servants.
1 KINGS. 20:33
And they laid hold of these words of Ahab as a good omen vjæn; ), and hastened and bade him explain (i.e., bade him quickly explain); ˆmi , whether (it had been uttered) from himself, i.e., whether he had said it with all his heart (Maurer), and said, “Benhadad is thy brother.” The aJp leg xlæj; , related to xlæj; , exuere, signifies abstrahere, nudare, then figuratively, aliquid facere nude, i.e., sine praetextu, or aliquid nude, i.e., sine fuco atque ambagibus testari, confirmare (cf. Fürst, Concord. p. 398); then in the Talmud, to give an explanation (vid., Ges. thes. p. 476). This is perfectly applicable here, so that there is no necessity to alter the text, even if we thereby obtained a better meaning than Thenius with his explanation, “they tore it out of him,” which he takes to be equivalent to “they laid hold of him by his word” (!!). Ahab thereupon ordered Benhadad to come and get up into his chariot.
1 KINGS. 20:34
Benhadad, in order to keep Ahab in this favourable mood, promised to give him back at once the cities which his father had taken away from Ahab’s father, and said, “Thou mayest make thyself roads in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria.” There is no account of any war between Omri and Benhadad I; it is simply stated in 1 Kings 15:20 that Benhadad I had taken away several cities in Galilee from the Israelites during the reign of Baasha. This cannot be the war intended here, however, not indeed because of the expression ba; tae , since ba; might certainly be taken in a broader sense as referring to Baasha as an ancestor of Ahab, but chiefly on account of the statement that Benhadad had made himself roads in Samaria. This points to a war between Omri and Benhadad, after the building of Samaria into the capital of the kingdom, of which no account has been preserved. wOl xWj µWc , “to make himself roads,” cannot be understood as referring either to fortifications and military posts, or to roads for cattle and free pasturage in the Syrian kingdom, since Samaria and Damascus were cities; not can it signify the establishment of customhouses, but only the clearing of portions of the city for the purpose of trade and free intercourse (Cler., Ges. etc.), or for the establishment of bazaars, which would occupy a whole street (Böttcher, Thenius; see also Movers, Phönizier, ii. 3, p. 135).- “And I,” said Ahab, “will let thee go upon a covenant” (a treaty on oath), and then made a covenant with him, giving him both life and liberty.
Before ynia’ we must supply in thought ba;j]aæ rmæa; . This thoroughly impolitic proceeding on the part of Ahab arose not merely from a natural and inconsiderate generosity and credulity of mind (G. L. Bauer, Thenius), but from an unprincipled weakness, vanity, and blindness. To let a cruel and faithless foe go unpunished, was not only the greatest harshness to his own subjects, but open opposition to God, who had announced to him the victory, and delivered the enemy of His people into his hand. f171 Even if Ahab had no express command from God to put Benhadad to death, as Saul had in 1 Sam 15:3, it was his duty to punish this bitter foe of Israel with death, if only to secure quiet for his own subjects; as it was certainly to be foreseen that Benhadad would not keep the treaty which had been wrung from him by force, as was indeed very speedily proved (see 1 Kings 22:1).
1 KINGS. 20:35-36
The verdict of God upon Ahab’s conduct towards Benhadad.
Verse 35, 36. A disciple of the prophets received instructions from God, to announce to the king that God would punish him for letting Benhadad go, and to do this, as Nathan had formerly done in the case of David (2 Sam 12:1ff.), by means of a symbolical action, whereby the king was led to pronounce sentence upon himself. The disciples of the prophets said to his companion, “in the word of Jehovah,” i.e., by virtue of a revelation from God (see at 1 Kings 13:2), “Smite me;” and when the friend refused to smite him, he announced to him that because of this disobedience to the voice of the Lord, after his departure from him a lion would meet him and smite him, i.e., would kill him; a threat which was immediately fulfilled.
This occurrence shows with how severe a punishment all opposition to the commandments of God to the prophets was followed, as a warning for others; just as in the similar occurrence in 1 Kings 13:24.
1 KINGS. 20:37
The disciple of the prophets then asked another to smite him, and he smote him, “smiting and wounding,” i.e., so that he not only smote, but also wounded him (vid., Ewald, §280, a.). He wished to be smitten and wounded, not to disguise himself, or that he might be able to appeal loudly to the king for help to obtain his rights, as though he had suffered some wrong (Ewald), nor merely to assume the deceptive appearance of a warrior returning from the battle (Thenius), but to show to Ahab symbolically what he had to expect from Benhadad whom he had released (C. a Lap., Calm., etc.).
1 KINGS. 20:38
With these wounds he placed himself in the king’s path, and disguised himself cpæj; as in 1 Sam 28:8) by a bandage over his eyes. rpea does not mean ashes (Syr., Vulg., Luth., etc.), but corresponds to the Chaldee ar;p;[]mæ , head-band, telamw>n (LXX).
1 KINGS. 20:39-40
When the king passed by, he cried out to him and related the following fictitious tale: He had gone to the war, and a man had come aside to him rWs as in Ex 3:3; Judg 14:8, etc.), and had given a man (a prisoner) into his care with this command, that he was to watch him, and if he should be missing he was to answer for his life with his own life, or to pay a talent of silver (as a punishment). The rest may be easily imagined, namely the request to be saved from this punishment. Ahab answered (v. 40), fp;v]mi ˆKe , “thus thy sentence, thou hast decided,” i.e., thou hast pronounced thine own sentence, and must endure the punishment stated.
1 KINGS. 20:41-42
Then the disciple of the prophets drew the bandage quickly from his eyes, so that the king recognised him as a prophet, and announced to him the word of the Lord: “Because thou hast let go out of thy hand the man of my ban (i.e., Benhadad, who has fallen under my ban), thy life shall stand for his life, and thy people for his people,” i.e., the destruction to which Benhadad was devoted will fall upon thee and thy people. The expression ‘iysh-cher¦miy (man of my ban) showed Ahab clearly enough what ought to have been done with Benhadad. A person on whom the ban was pronounced was to be put to death (Lev 27:29).
1 KINGS. 20:43
The king therefore went home, and returned sullen rsæ , from rræs; ) and morose to Samaria.
THE MURDER AND ROBBERY OF NABOTH.
1 KINGS. 21:1-15
After these events Ahab was seized with such a desire for a vineyard which was situated near his palace at Jezreel, that when Naboth, the owner of the vineyard, refused to part with his paternal inheritance, he became thoroughly dejected, until his wife Jezebel paved the way for the forcible seizure of the desired possession by the shameful execution of Naboth (vv. 1-15). But when Ahab was preparing to take possession of the vineyard, Elijah came to meet him with the announcement, that both he and his wife would be visited by the Lord with a bloody death for this murder and robbery, and that his idolatry would be punished with the extermination of all his house (vv. 16-26). Ahab was so affected by this, that he humbled himself before God; whereupon the Lord told Elijah, that the threatened judgment should not burst upon his house till after Ahab’s death (vv. 27- 29).
Verse 1-2. Ahab wanted to obtain possession of the vineyard of Naboth, which was in Jezreel rv,a refers to µr,K, ), near the palace of the king, either in exchange for another vineyard or for money, that he might make a vegetable garden of it. From the fact that Ahab is called the king of Samaria we may infer that Jezreel, the present Zerin (see at Josh 19:18), was only a summer residence of the king.
Verse 3. Naboth refused to part with the vineyard, because it was the inheritance of his fathers, that is to say, on religious grounds (meeyhaaowh liy chaaliylaah), because the sale of a paternal inheritance was forbidden in the law (Lev 25:23-28; Num 36:7ff.). He was therefore not merely at liberty as a personal right to refuse the king’s proposal, but bound by the commandment of God.
Verse 4. Instead of respecting this tender feeling of shrinking from the transgression of the law and desisting from his coveting, Ahab went home, i.e., to Samaria (cf. v. 8), sullen and morose ã[ez; rsæ as in 1 Kings 20:43), lay down upon his bed, turned his face (viz., to the wall; cf. 2 Kings 20:2)- ”after the manner of sorrowful persons, who shrink from and refuse all conversation, and even the sight of others” (Seb. Schmidt)-and did not eat.
This childish mode of giving expression to his displeasure at Naboth’s refusal to comply with his wish, shows very clearly that Ahab was a man sold under sin (v. 20), who only wanted the requisite energy to display the wickedness of his heart in vigorous action.
Verse 5-7. When Jezebel learned the cause of Ahab’s ill-humour, she said to him, “Thou, dost thou now exercise royal authority over Israel.” hT;aæ is placed first for the sake of emphasis, and the sentence is to be taken as an ironical question, as it has been by the LXX. “I (if thou hast not courage enough to act) will procure thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”
Verse 8-10. The shameless woman then wrote a letter in the name of Ahab, sealed it below with the royal seal, which probably bore the king’s signature and was stamped upon the writing instead of signing the name, as is done at the present day among Arabs, Turks, and Persians (vid., Paulsen, Reg. der Morgenl. p. 295ff.), to give it the character of a royal command (cf. Est 8:13; Dan 6:17), and sent this letter (the Chethîb rp,se is correct, and the Keri has arisen from a misunderstanding) to the elders and nobles of his town (i.e., the members of the magistracy, Deut 16:18), who lived near Naboth, and therefore had an opportunity to watch his mode of life, and appeared to be the most suitable persons to institute the charge that was to be brought against him. The letter ran thus: “Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth at the head of the people, and set two worthless men opposite to him, that they may give evidence against him: Thou hast blasphemed God and king; and lead him out and stone him, that he may die.”
Jezebel ordered the fasting for a sign, as though some public crime or heavy load of guilt rested upon the city, for which it was necessary that it should humble itself before God (1 Sam 7:6). The intention was, that at the very outset the appearance of justice should be given to the legal process about to be instituted in the eyes of all the citizens, and the stamp of veracity impressed upon the crime of which Naboth was to be accused. `µ[æ bvæy; , “seat him at the head of the people,” i.e., bring him to the court of justice as a defendant before all the people. The expression may be explained from the fact, that a sitting of the elders was appointed for judicial business, in which Naboth and the witnesses who were to accuse him of blasphemy took part seated. To preserve the appearance of justice, two witnesses were appointed, according to the law in Deut 17:6-7; 19:15; Num 35:30; but worthless men, as at the trial of Jesus (Matt 26:60). µyhila’ Ërær; , to bless God, i.e., to bid Him farewell, to dismiss Him, as in Job 2:9, equivalent to blaspheming God. God and king are mentioned together, like God and prince in Ex 22:27, to make it possible to accuse Naboth of transgressing this law, and to put him to death as a blasphemer of God, according to Deut 13:11 and 17:5, where the punishment of stoning is awarded to idolatry as a practical denial of God. Blaspheming the king is not to be taken as a second crime to be added to the blasphemy of God; but blaspheming the king, as the visible representative of God, was eo ipso also blaspheming God.
Verse 11-13. The elders of Jezreel executed this command without delay; a striking proof both of deep moral corruption and of slavish fear of the tyranny of the ruthless queen.
Verse 14-15. When the report of Naboth’s execution was brought to her, she called upon Ahab to take possession of his vineyard vræy; = vræD; , Deut 2:24). As Naboth’s sons were put to death at the same time, according to Kings 9:26, the king was able to confiscate his property; not, indeed, on any rule laid down in the Mosaic law, but according to a principle involved in the very idea of high treason. Since, for example, in the case of blasphemy the property of the criminal was forfeited to the Lord as cherem (Deut 13:16), the property of traitors was regarded as forfeited to the king.
1 KINGS. 21:16-19
But when Ahab went down to Jezreel to take possession of the vineyard of Naboth, Elijah came to meet him by the command of God, with the word of the Lord, “Hast thou murdered and also taken possession?” The question served to sharpen his conscience, since Ahab was obliged to admit the fact. ˆwOrm]vo rv,a means “who lives at Samaria,” for when Elijah came to meet him, Ahab was in Jezreel, Elijah then said to him still further: “Thus saith the Lord: In the place where the dogs have licked the blood of Naboth, will they also lick thine, yea, thy blood.” hT;aæ µGæ serves as an emphatic repetition of the suffix (cf. Ges. §121, 3). This threat was only so far fulfilled upon Ahab, from the compassion of God, and in consequence of his humbling himself under the divine judgment (vv. 27-29), that dogs licked his blood at Samaria when the carriage was washed in which he had died (1 Kings 22:38); but it was literally fulfilled in the case of his son Joram, whose corpse was cast into Naboth’s piece of ground (2 Kings 9:25-26).
1 KINGS. 21:20-24
Ahab answered, “Hast thou found me (met with me), O mine enemy?” (not, hast thou ever found me thine enemy?-Vulg., Luth.) i.e., dost thou come to meet me again, mine enemy? He calls Elijah his enemy, to take the sting from the prophet’s threat as an utterance caused by personal enmity.
But Elijah fearlessly replied, “I have found (thee), because thou sellest thyself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.” He then announced to him, in vv. 21, 22, the extermination of his house, and to Jezebel, as the principal sinner, the most ignominious end (v. 23). [ræ `hc;[; rkæm; to sell one’s self to do evil, i.e., to give one’s self to evil so as to have no will of one’s own, to make one’s self the slave of evil (cf. v. 25, 2 Kings 17:17). The consequence of this is pepra’sthai hupo’ tee’n hamarti’an (Rom 7:14), sin exercising unlimited power over the man who gives himself up to it as a slave. For vv. 21, 22, see 1 Kings 14:10-11; 15:29-30; 16:3,12-13. The threat concerning Jezebel (v. 23) was literally fulfilled, according to Kings 9:30ff. lyje , written defectively for lyje , as in 2 Sam 20:15, is properly the open space by the town-wall, pomoerium. Instead of lyijæ we have ql,je in the repetition of this threat in 2 Kings 9:10,36-37, and consequently Thenius and others propose to alter the lyje here. But there is no necessity for this, as ql,je , on the portion, i.e., the town-land, of Jezreel (not, in the field at Jezreel), is only a more general epithet denoting the locality, and lyje is proved to be the original word by the LXX.
1 KINGS. 21:25-26
Vv. 25 and 26 contain a reflection on the part of the historian concerning Ahab’s ungodly conduct, whereby he brought such an ignominious end upon himself and his house. wgw hy;h; alo qræ , “only there has not been (one) like Ahab,” i.e., there was no one else like Ahab, “who sold himself,” etc. tWs for heeceeytaah, from tWs , to entice, to seduce or lead astray (cf. Ewald, §114, a., and Ges. §72, Anm. 6). b[;Tæ , and he acted abominably.
Amorites: for Canaanites, as in Gen 15:16, etc.
1 KINGS. 21:27-29
This terrible threat made such an impression upon Ahab, that he felt deep remorse, and for a time at least was sincerely penitent. Rending the clothes, putting on the mourning garment of hair qcæ ), and fasting, are frequently mentioned as external signs of humiliation before God or of deep mourning on account of sin. faæ Ëlæh; , he walked about lightly (slowly), like one in deep trouble. This repentance was neither hypocritical, nor purely external; but it was sincere even if it was not lasting and produced no real conversion. For the Lord Himself acknowledge it to be humiliation before Him (v. 29), and said to Elijah, that because of it He would not bring the threatened calamity upon Ahab’s house in his own lifetime, but only in the days of his son. ba; for awOB, as in v. 21.
WAR OF AHAB AND JEHOSHAPHAT AGAINST THE SYRIANS, AND DEATH OF AHAB. Reigns of Jehoshaphat of Judah and Ahaziah of Israel.
1 KINGS. 22:1-40
Allied Campaign of Ahab and Jehoshaphat against the Syrians at Ramoth, and Death of Ahab (compare 2 Chron 18:2-34).
Verse 1. “And they rested three years; there was no war between Aram and Israel,” bvæy; here is to keep quiet, to undertake nothing, as in Judg 5:17, etc. The subject to bvæy; is Aram and Israel mentioned in the second clause. The length of time given here points back to the end of the war described in ch. 20.
Verse 2-4. In the third year (not necessarily “towards the end of it,” as Thenius supposes, for Jehoshaphat’s visit preceded the renewal of the war) Jehoshaphat visited the king of Israel, with whom he had already formed a marriage alliance by marrying his son to Ahab’s daughter (2 Chron 18:1; Kings 8:18). Ahab then said to his servants that the king of Syria had kept the city of Ramoth in Gilead (probably situated on the site of the present Szalt: see at Deut 4:43), which he ought to have given up, according to the conditions of the peace in 1 Kings 20:34, and asked Jehoshaphat whether he would go with him to the war against Ramoth, which the latter promised to do. “I as thou, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses;” i.e., I am at thy service with the whole of my military power. In the place of the last words we have therefore in the Chronicles hm;j;l]mi `µ[i , “I am with thee in the war,” i.e., I will assist thee in the war.
Verse 5-7. But as Jehoshaphat wished also to inquire the word of the Lord concerning the war, Ahab gathered together about 400 prophets, who all predicted as out of one mouth a prosperous result to the campaign. These 400 prophets are neither the 400 prophets of Asherah who had not appeared upon Carmel when Elijah was there (1 Kings 18:19-20), nor prophets of Baal, as some of the earlier commentators supposed, since Ahab could not inquire of them hwO;hy] rbæD]Ata, . On the other hand, they were not “true prophets of Jehovah and disciples of the prophets” (Cler., Then.), but prophets of Jehovah worshipped under the image of an ox, who practised prophesying as a trade without any call from God, and even if they were not in the pay of the idolatrous kings of Israel, were at any rate in their service. For Jehoshaphat did not recognise them as genuine prophets of Jehovah, but inquired whether there was not such a prophet still in existence (v. 7), that they might inquire the will of the Lord of him tae ).
Verse 8. Ahab then named to him one, but one whom he hated, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but only evil, namely, Micah the son of Jimlah. Josephus and the Rabbins suppose him to have been the prophet, whose name is not given, who had condemned Ahab in the previous war for setting Benhadad at liberty (1 Kings 20:35ff.). But there is no foundation for this, and it is mere conjecture. At any rate, Ahab had already come to know Micah as a prophet of evil, and, as is evident from v. 26, had had him imprisoned on account of an unwelcome prophecy. Ahab’s dislike to this prophet had its root in the belief, which was connected with heathen notions of prophecy and conjuring, that the prophets stood in such a relation to the Deity that the latter necessarily fulfilled their will; a belief which had arisen from the fact that the predictions of true prophets always came to pass (see at Num 22:6 and 17). Verse 9. By Jehoshaphat’s desire, Ahab nevertheless sent a chamberlain syris; ; see at 1 Sam 8:15 and Gen 37:36) to fetch Micah rhæm; , bring quickly).
Verse 10-12. In the meantime the prophets of the calves continued to prophesy success before the two kings, who sat upon thrones “clothed in robes,” i.e., in royal attire, upon a floor in front of the gate of Samaria. ˆr,GO, a threshing-floor, i.e., a levelled place in the open air. In order to give greater effect to their announcement, one of them, named Zedekiyah the son of Cnaanah, made himself iron horns, probably iron spikes held upon the head (Thenius), and said, “With these wilt thou thrust down Aram even to destruction.” This symbolical action was an embodiment of the figure used by Moses in the blessing of Joseph (Deut 33:17): “Buffalo horns are his (Joseph’s) horns, with them he thrusts down nations” (vid., Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. p. 131), and was intended to transfer to Ahab in the case before them that splendid promise which applied to the tribe of Ephraim. But the pseudo-prophet overlooked the fact that the fulfilment of the whole of the blessing of Moses was dependent upon fidelity to the Lord. All the rest of the prophets adopted the same tone, saying, “Go to Ramoth, and prosper,” i.e., and thou wilt prosper. (On this use of two imperatives see Ges. §130, 2).
Verse 13-14. The messenger who fetched Micah tried on the way to persuade him to prophesy success to the king as the other prophets had done; but Micah replied with a solemn oath, that he would only speak what Jehovah said to him.
Verse 15-17. Micah’s prophecy concerning the war, and his testimony against the lying prophets.-Vv. 15, 16. When Micah had come into the presence of the king, he replied to his question, “Shall we go against Ramoth?” etc., in just the same words as the pseudo-prophets, to show the king how he would speak if he were merely guided by personal considerations, as the others were. From the verbal agreement in his reply, and probably also from the tone in which he spoke, Ahab perceived that his words were ironical, and adjured him to speak only truth in the name of Jehovah. Micah then told him what he had seen in the spirit (v. 17): “I saw all Israel scatter itself upon the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd;” and then added the word of the Lord: “These have no master; let them return every one to his house in peace.” That is to say, Ahab would fall in the war against Ramoth in Gilead, and his army scatter itself without a leader upon the mountains of Gilead, and then every one would return home, without being pursued and slain by the enemy. Whilst Zedekiyah attempted to give greater emphasis to his prophecy by symbolically transferring to Ahab’s enterprise the success predicted by Moses, Micah, on the other hand, showed to the king out of the law that would really take place in the intended war, namely, that very state of things which Moses before his departure sought to avert from Israel, by the prayer that the Lord would set a man over the congregation to lead them out and in, that the congregation might not become as sheep that have no shepherd (Num 27:16-17).
Verse 18. But although Ahab had asked for a true word of the Lord, yet he endeavoured to attribute the unfavourable prophecy to Micah’s persona enmity, saying to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell thee that he prophesies nothing good concerning me, but only evil (misfortune)?”
Verse 19-25. Micah was not led astray, however, by this, but disclosed to him by a further revelation the hidden ground of the false prophecy of his 400 prophets. wgw [mæv; ˆKe , “therefore, sc. because thou thinkest so, hear the word of Jehovah: I saw the Lord sit upon His throne, and all the army of heaven stand around him `l[æ `rmæ[; as in Gen 18:8, etc.) on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, Who will persuade Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth in Gilead? and one spake so, the other so; and the spirit came forth (from the ranks of the rest), stood before Jehovah, and said, I will persuade him...I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And He (Jehovah) said, Persuade, and thou wilt also be able; go forth and do so. And now Jehovah has put a lying spirit into the mouth of all his prophets; but Jehovah (Himself) has spoken evil (through me) concerning thee.”
The vision described by Micah was not merely a subjective drapery introduced by the prophet, but a simple communication of the real inward vision by which the fact had been revealed to him, that the prophecy of those 400 prophets was inspired by a lying spirit. The spirit jæWr ) which inspired these prophets as a lying spirit is neither Satan, nor any evil spirit whatever, but, as the definite article and the whole of the context show, the personified spirit of prophecy, which is only so far a pneu>ma aka>qarton th>v pla>nhv (Zech 13:2; 1 John 4:6) and under the influence of Satan as it works as rq,v, jæWr in accordance with the will of God. For even the predictions of the false prophets, as we may see from the passage before us, and also from Zech 13:2 and the scriptural teaching in other passages concerning the spiritual principle of evil, were not mere inventions of human reason and fancy; but the false prophets as well as the true were governed by a supernatural spiritual principle, and, according to divine appointment, were under the influence of the evil spirit in the service of falsehood, just as the true prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit in the service of the Lord. The manner in which the supernatural influence of the lying spirit upon the false prophets is brought out in Micah’s vision is, that the spirit of prophecy (hnbw’h rwch) offers itself to deceive Ahab as rq,v, jæWr in the false prophets.
Jehovah sends this spirit, inasmuch as the deception of Ahab has been inflicted upon him as a judgment of God for his unbelief. But there is no statement here to the effect that this lying spirit proceeded from Satan, because the object of the prophet was simply to bring out the working of God in the deception practised upon Ahab by his prophets.-The words of Jehovah, “Persuade Ahab, thou wilt be able,” and “Jehovah has put a lying spirit,” etc., are not to be understood as merely expressing the permission of God, as the fathers and the earlier theologians suppose. According to the Scriptures, God does work evil, but without therefore willing it and bringing forth sin. The prophet’s view is founded upon this thought:
Jehovah has ordained that Ahab, being led astray by a prediction of his prophets inspired by the spirit of lies, shall enter upon the war, that he may find therein the punishment of his ungodliness. As he would not listen to the word of the Lord in the mouth of His true servants, God had given him up ( pare>dwken , Rom 1:24,26,28) in his unbelief to the working of the spirits of lying. But that this did not destroy the freedom of the human will is evident from the expression ht;p; , “thou canst persuade him,” and still more clearly from lkoy; µGæ , “thou wilt also be able,” since they both presuppose the possibility of resistance to temptation on the part of man.
Zedekiah was so enraged at this unveiling of the spirit of lying by which the pseudo-prophets were impelled, that he smote Micah upon the cheek, and said (v. 24): “Where did the Spirit of Jehovah depart from me, to speak to thee?” To ‘eey-zeh the Chronicles add as an explanation, Ër,D, : “by what way had he gone from me?” (cf. 2 Kings 3:8, and Ewald, §326, a.)
Zedekiah was conscious that he had not invented his prophecy himself, and therefore it was that he rose up with such audacity against Micah; but he only proved that it was not the Spirit of God which inspired him. If he had been inspired by the Spirit of the Lord, he would not have thought it necessary to try and give effect to his words by rude force, but he would have left the defence of his cause quietly to the Lord, as Micah did, who calmly replied to the zealot thus (v. 25): “Thou wilt see it (that the Spirit of Jehovah had departed from thee) on the day when thou shalt go from chamber to chamber to hide thyself” hb;j; for hb;j; , see Ges. §75, Anm. 21). This was probably fulfilled at the close of the war, when Jezebel or the friends of Ahab made the pseudo-prophets suffer for the calamitous result; although there is nothing said about this in our history, which confines itself to the main facts.
Verse 26-27. But Ahab had Micah taken back to Amon the commander of the city, and to Joash the king’s son, with the command to put him in prison and to feed him with bread and water of affliction, till he came safe back µwOlv; ) from the war. From the expression bWv , “lead him back,” it evidently follows that Micah had been fetched from the commander of the city, who had no doubt kept him in custody, as the city-prison was probably in his house. The opposite cannot be inferred from the words “put him into the prison;” for this command, when taken in connection with what follows, simply enjoins a more severe imprisonment.
Verse 28. In his consciousness of the divine truth of his announcement, Micah left the king with these words: “If thou come back safe, Jehovah has not spoken by me. Hear it, all ye nations.” `µ[æ does not mean people, for it is only in the antique language of the Pentateuch that the word has this meaning, but nations; and Micah thereby invokes not only the persons present as witnesses of the truth of his words, but the nations generally, Israel and the surrounding nations, who were to discern the truth of his word from the events which would follow (see at Mic 1:2).
Verse 29-40. The issue of the war, and death of Ahab.-V. 29. Ahab, disregarding Micah’s prophecy, went on with the expedition, and was even joined by Jehoshaphat, of whom we should have thought that, after what had occurred, he at any rate would have drawn back. He was probably deterred by false shame, however, from retracting the unconditional promise of help which he had given to Ahab, merely in consequence of a prophetic utterance, which Ahab had brought against his own person from Micah’s subjective dislike. But Jehoshaphat narrowly escaped paying the penalty for it with his life (v. 32), and on his fortunate return to Jerusalem had to listen to a severe reproof from the prophet Jehu in consequence (2 Chron 19:2).
Verse 30-31. And even Ahab could not throw off a certain fear of the fulfilment of Micah’s prophecy. He therefore resolved to go to the battle in disguise, that he might not be recognised by the enemy. awOB cpæj; (“disguise myself and go into the battle,” i.e., I will go into the battle in disguise): an infin. absol.,-a broken but strong form of expression, which is frequently used for the imperative, but very rarely for the first person of the voluntative (cf. Ewald, §328, c.), and which is probably employed here to express the anxiety that impelled Ahab to take so much trouble to ensure his own safety. (Luther has missed the meaning in his version; in the Chronicles, on the contrary, it is correctly given.) vbæl; hT;aæ , “but do thou put on thy clothes.” These words are not to be taken as a command, but simply in this sense: “thou mayest (canst) put on thy (royal) dress, since there is no necessity for thee to take any such precautions as I have to take.”
There is no ground for detecting any cunning, vafrities, on the part of Ahab in these words, as some of the older commentators have done, as though he wished thereby to divert the predicted evil from himself to Jehoshaphat. but we may see very clearly that Ahab had good reason to be anxious about his life, from the command of the Syrian king to the captains of his war-chariots (v. 31) to fight chiefly against the king of Israel. We cannot infer from this, however, that Ahab was aware of the command. The measure adopted by him may be sufficiently accounted for from his fear of the fulfilment of Micah’s evil prophecy, to which there may possibly have been added some personal offence that had been given on his part to the Syrian king in connection with the negotiations concerning the surrender of Ramoth, which had no doubt preceded the war. The thirty-two commanders of the war-chariots and cavalry are, no doubt, the commanders who had taken the place of the thirty-two kings (1 Kings 21:24). “Fight not against small and great, but against the king of Israel only,” i.e., endeavour above all others to fight against the king of Israel and to slay him.
Verse 32-33. And when the leaders of the war-chariots saw Jehoshaphat in the battle in his royal clothes, they took him for the king of Israel (Ahab), and pressed upon him. Then Jehoshaphat cried out; and from this they perceived that he was not the king of Israel, and turned away from him. wgw Ëaæ rmæa; µhe , “and they thought, it is only (i.e., no other than) the king of Israel.” `l[æ rWs , “they bent upon him.” Instead of this we have in the Chronicles `l[æ bbæs; , “they surrounded him,” and Thenius proposes to alter our text to this; but there is no necessity for doing so, as rWs also occurs in a similar sense and connection in 1 Kings 20:39. How far Jehoshaphat was saved by his crying out, is not precisely stated. He probably cried out to his followers to come to his aid, from which the Syrians discovered that he was not the king of Israel, whom they were in search of. The chronicler adds (1 Kings 2:18,31): “and the Lord helped him and turned them off from him;” thus believingly tracing the rescue of the king to its higher causality, though without our having any right to infer from this that Jehoshaphat cried aloud to God for help, which is not implied in the words of the Chronicles.
Verse 34. But notwithstanding the precaution he had taken, Ahab did not escape the judgment of God. “A man drew his bow in his simplicity” µTo as in 2 Sam 15:11), i.e., without trying to hit any particular man, “and shot the king of Israel between the skirts and the coat of mail.” qb,D, are “joints by which the iron thorax was attached to the hanging skirt, which covered the abdomen” (Cler.). The true coat of mail covered only the breast, to somewhere about the last rib; and below this it had an appendage (skirts) consisting of moveable joints. Between this appendage and the true coat of mail there was a groove through which the arrow passed, and, entering the abdomen, inflicted upon the king a mortal would; so that he said to his charioteer: dy; Ëpæh; , verte manus tuas, i.e., turn round (cf. 2 Kings 9:23).
The Chethîb dy; (plural) is the only correct reading, since the driver held the reins in both his hands. hl;j; yKi : for I am wounded.
Verse 35. “And the conflict ascended,” i.e., became more violent. The use of the verb `hl;[; in this sense may be accounted for on the supposition that it is founded upon the figure of a rising stream, which becomes more and more impetuous the higher it rises (vid., Isa 8:7). “And the king was stationed (i.e., remained or kept himself in an upright posture) upon the chariot before the Syrians,” that he might not dishearten his soldiers, “and died in the evening, and poured the blood of the wounds in the middle hollow qyje ) of the chariot.” Verse 36-37. Towards sunset the cry went through the army hn,jmæ , the army drawn up in battle array), “Every one into his city and into his land!”- In v. 37 the historian shows how the word of the Lord was fulfilled in the case of Ahab. “Thus the king died and came to Samaria:” equivalent to, thus the king reached Samaria dead; and he was buried there.
Verse 38. When they washed the chariot at the pool of Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, while the harlots were bathing (in the pool). xjær; twOnzO is a circumstantial clause, and xjær; means to bathe, as in Ex 2:5. This explanation, which is sustained by the grammar and is the only tenable one, disposes of the several arbitrary interpretations of these words, together with the emendations of the text of which Thenius is so fond. In this way was the word of the Lord through Elijah (1 Kings 21:19) and the unknown prophet (ch. 20:42) fulfilled; also the prediction of Micah (v. 17). Ahab had paid the penalty with his own life for sparing the life of Benhadad (1 Kings 20:42), and his blood was licked up by the dogs (1 Kings 21:19). The fact that the dogs licked up the blood and the harlots were bathing in the pool, when the chariot that was stained with the blood of Ahab was being washed, is mentioned as a sign of the ignominious contempt which was heaped upon him at his death.
Verse 39-40. Close of Ahab’s history. We have no further account of his buildings. “The ivory palace,” i.e., the palace inlaid with ivory, he had probably built in his capital Samaria (cf. Amos 3:15).
1 KINGS. 22:41-50
Reign of Jehoshaphat of Judah.
The account of this in the books before us is a very condensed one. Beside the two campaigns in which he joined with Ahab and Joram of Israel against the Syrians and Moabites, and which are described in the history of the kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 22:1-35 and 2 Kings 3), we have simply a short notice of his attempt to restore the trade with Ophir, and a general statement of the spirit of his reign; whereas we learn from the extract preserved in the Chronicles from the annals of the kings, that he also carried on a victorious war against the Edomites and Ammonites (2 Chron 20), and did a great deal to promote the spread of the knowledge of the law among his people, and to carry out the restoration of a better administration of justice, and to improve the condition of the army (2 Chron 16 and 19).
Verse 41-42. Vv. 41-44, which give the age of Jehoshaphat when he ascended the throne, and the duration and character of his reign, are also found with slight deviations in 2 Chron 20:31-33, in the closing summary of the history of his reign.
Verse 43. “He walked entirely in the way of his father Asa and departed not from it, to do what was well-pleasing to the Lord,” whereas Asa’s heart had become more estranged from the Lord in the last years of his reign (see 1 Kings 15:18ff.).-On the worship of the high places (v. 43), see at 1 Kings 15:14.
Verse 44. He maintained peace with the king of Israel, i.e., with every one of the Israelitish kings who were contemporaneous with him, viz., Ahab, Ahaziah, and Joram, whereas hitherto the two kingdoms had assumed an attitude of hostility towards each other. Even if this friendly bearing towards Israel was laudable in itself, Jehoshaphat went beyond the bounds of what was allowable, since he formed a marriage alliance with the house of Ahab, by letting his son Joram marry a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (2 Chron 18:1).
Verse 45-46. The brave deeds ( hr;WbG]hæ ) which he performed include both his efforts to strengthen his kingdom, partly by raising fortifications and organizing the military force, and partly by instructing the people in the law and improving the administration of justice (2 Chron 17:7-19 and 19:4-11), and also the wars which he waged, viz., the expeditions already mentioned.-For v. 46 see 1 Kings 15:12.
Verse 47. “There was (then) no (real) king in Edom; a vicegerent was king,” i.e., governed the country. This remark is introduced here merely on account of what follows, namely, to show how it was that Jehoshaphat was able to attempt to restore the maritime trade with Ophir. If we observe this connection between the verse before us and what follows, we cannot infer from it, as Ewald does (Gesch. iii. pp. 464 and 474ff.), that the Edomites with Egyptian help had forced from Rehoboam both their liberty and also their right to have a king of their own blood, and had remained in this situation till Jehoshaphat completely subjugated them again. (See the remarks on 1 Kings 11:21-22.) All that can be gathered from 2 Chron is, that the Edomites, in league with the Ammonites and other desert tribes, made an incursion into Judah, and therefore tried to throw off the supremacy of Judah, but did not succeed in their attempt.
Verse 48-50. The brief notice concerning Jehoshaphat’s attempt to build Tarshish ships (for the word, see pp. 105f) for the voyage to Ophir is expanded in 2 Chron 20:36-37, where we learn that Jehoshaphat had allied himself with Ahaziah of Israel for this purpose, and that the prophet Eliezer predicted the destruction of his ships on account of this alliance. When the ships had been broken in pieces in Eziongeber, no doubt by a storm, Ahaziah made this fresh proposal to him: “Let my people sail with thy people;” but Jehoshaphat would not. Ahaziah evidently wanted to persuade Jehoshaphat to make another attempt, after the destruction of the ships which were first built; but Jehoshaphat did not agree to it any more, because it was impossible for him, after the fulfilment of Eliezer’s prediction, to expect a more favourable result. Thus the two accounts can be harmonized in a very simple manner, with the exception of the words “to go to Tarshish,” which we find in the Chronicles in the place of “to go to Ophir,” the reading in our text, and which sprang from an erroneous interpretation of the expression “ships of Tarshish” (see above, pp. 105f).
The Chethîb `rc,[, is an error of the pen for `hc;[; (Keri); but rbæv; (Chethîb) is not to be altered into rbæv; , since the construction of a singular verb with the subject following in the plural is by no means rare (vid., Ewald, §317, a.). On Eziongeber and Ophir, see at 1 Kings 9:26 and 28.
1 KINGS. 22:51-53
Reign of Ahaziah of Israel.
Verse 51. For the datum “in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat,” see at Kings 1:17.
Verse 52, 53. Ahaziah walked in the way of his father and his mother, who had introduced the worship of Baal into the kingdom, and in the way of Jeroboam, who had set up the calves (cf. 1 Kings 16:30-33).-In v. 53 it is again expressly added, that he adored and worshipped Baal, as in 1 Kings 16:31.-With this general description of his character not only is the chapter brought to a close, but the first book of Kings also-very unsuitably, however, since the further account of Ahaziah’s reign and of his death is given in ch. 1 of the following book. It would have been incomparably more suitable to commence a fresh chapter with v. 52, and indeed to commence the second book there also. 2 KINGS AHAZIAH’S ILLNESS. HIS DEATH ANNOUNCED BY ELIJAH.
After the Moabites had rebelled against Israel, Ahaziah became sick in consequence of a fall through a grating in his upper room, and sent messengers to Ekron to consult the idol Baalzebub concerning the result of his illness. By the command of God, however, Elijah met the messengers on the road, and told them that the king would die (vv. 1-8). When Ahaziah sent soldiers to fetch Elijah, the messengers were miraculously slain on two successive occasions, and it was only his humiliation before the prophet which saved the third captain and his host from sharing a similar fate; whereupon Elijah went with him to the king, and repeated the threat already announced on account of his idolatry, which was very soon fulfilled (vv. 9-18).
2 KINGS. 1:1-8
Verse 1-8. After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel (v. 1).
The Moabites, who had been subjugated by David (2 Sam 8:2), had remained tributary to the kingdom of the ten tribes after the division of the kingdom. but when Israel was defeated by the Syrians at Ramoth in the time of Ahab, they took advantage of this defeat and the weakening of the Israelitish power in the country to the east of the Jordan to shake off the yoke of the Israelites, and very soon afterwards attempted an invasion of the kingdom of Judah, in alliance with the Edomite and other tribes of the desert, which terminated, however, in a great defeat, though it contributed to the maintenance of their independence. For further remarks, see at Kings 3:4ff.
Verse 2. Ahaziah could not do anything to subjugate the Moabites any further, since he was very soon afterwards taken grievously ill. He fell through the grating in his upper room at Samaria. hk;b;c] , the grating, is either a window furnished with a shutter of lattice-work, or a door of lattice-work in the upper room of the palace, but hardly a grating in the floor of the Aliyah for the purpose of letting light into the lower rooms, as the Rabbins supposed. On account of this misfortune, Ahaziah resorted to the Ekronitish Baalzebub to obtain an oracle concerning the result of his illness. bWbz]Al[æBæ , i.e., Fly-Baal, was not merely the “averter of swarms of insects,” like the Ceu’s apomui’os mui’agros of Elis (Ges., Winer, Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 175), since “the Fly-God cannot have received his name as the enemy of flies, like lucus a non lucendo,” but was Eui’a theo’s (LXX, Joseph.), i.e., God represented as a fly, as a fly-idol, to which the name Myiodes, gnat-like, in Plin. h. n. xxix. 6, clearly points, and as a god of the sun and of summer must have stood in a similar relation to the flies to that of the oracle-god Apollo, who both sent diseases and took them away (vid., J. G. Müller, Art. Beelzebub in Herzog’s Cycl. i. p. 768, and Stark, Gaza, pp. 260, 261). The latter observes that “these (the flies), which are governed in their coming and going by all the conditions of the weather, are apparently endowed with prophetic power themselves.” This explains the fact that a special power of prophecy was attributed to this god. f173 Ekron, now Akir, the most northerly of the five Philistine capitals (see at Josh 13:3).
Verse 3-4. But the angel of the Lord, the mediator of the revelations made by the invisible God to the covenant nation (see Comm. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. pp. 185-191, transl.), had spoken to Elijah to go and meet the king’s messengers, who were going to inquire of Baalzebub, and to ask them whether it was from the want of a God in Israel ˆyiaæ yliB] as in Ex 14:11; see Ewald, §323, a.) that they turned to Baalzebub, and to announce to them the word of Jehovah, that Ahaziah would not rise up from his bed again, but would die. “And Elijah went,” sc. to carry out the divine commission.
Verse 5-8. The messengers did not recognise Elijah, but yet they turned back and reported the occurrence to the king, who knew at once, from the description they gave of the habitus of the man in reply to his question, that it was Elijah the Tishbite. vyai fp;v]mi hm; : “what was the manner of the man?” fp;v]mi is used here to denote the peculiarity of a person, that which in a certain sense constitutes the vital law and right of the individual personality; figura et habitus (Vulg.). The servants described the prophet according to his outward appearance, which in a man of character is a reflection of his inner man, as r[;ce l[æBæ vyai , vir pilosus, hirsutus. This does not mean a man with a luxuriant growth of hair, but refers to the hairy dress, i.e., the garment made of sheep-skin or goat-skin or coarse camelhair, which was wrapped round his body; the tr,D,aæ (2 Kings 2:8; 1 Kings 19:13), or r[;ce tr,D,aæ (Zech 13:4, cf. Matt 3:4; Heb 11:37), which was worn by the prophets, not as mere ascetics, but as preachers of repentance, the rough garment denoting the severity of the divine judgments upon the effeminate nation, which revelled in luxuriance and worldly lust. And this was also in keeping with “the leather girdle,” `rwO[ rwOzae , zw>nh dermati>nh (Matt 3:4), whereas the ordinary girdle was of cotton or linen, and often very costly.
2 KINGS. 1:9-10
After having executed the divine command, Elijah returned to the summit of the mountain, on which he dwelt. Most of the commentators suppose it to have been one of the peaks of Carmel, from 2 Kings 2:25 and 1 Kings 18:42, which is no doubt very probable, though it cannot be raised into certainty. Elijah’s place of abode was known to the king; he therefore sent a captain with fifty men to fetch the prophet. To the demand of the captain, “Man of God, the king has said, Come down,” Elijah replied, “And if I am a man of God, let fire fall from heaven and consume thee and thy fifty.” (The expression µai , and if, shows that Elijah’s words followed immediately upon those of the captain.) This judicial miracle was immediately fulfilled.
2 KINGS. 1:11-12
The same fate befell a second captain, whom the king sent after the death of the first. He was more insolent than the first, “both because he was not brought to his senses by hearing of his punishment, and because he increased his impudence by adding make haste hr;hem] ).”-C. a Lap. For rbæd; `hn;[; the LXX (Cod. Alex.) have kai> ane>bh kai> ela>lhse , so that they read `hl;[; . The correctness of this reading, according to which `hn;[; would be an error of the pen, is favoured not only by `hl;[; in vv. 9 and 13, but also by rbæd; which follows; for, as a general rule, `hn;[; would be followed by rmæa; . The repetition of this judicial miracle was meant to show in the most striking manner not only the authority which rightfully belonged to the prophet, but also the help and protection which the Lord gave to His servants. At the same time, the question as to the “morality of the miracle,” about which some have had grave doubts, is not set at rest by the remark of Thenius, that “the soldiers who were sent come into consideration here purely as instruments of a will acting in opposition to Jehovah.” The third captain also carried out he ungodly command of the king, and he was not slain (vv. 13ff.). The first two must therefore have been guilty of some crime, which they and their people had to expiate with their death. This crime did not consist merely in their addressing him as “man of God,” for the third addressed Elijah in the same way (v. 13), but in their saying “Man of God, come down.” This summons to the prophet, to allow himself to be led as a prisoner before the king, involved a contempt not only of the prophetic office in the person of Elijah, but also of the Lord, who had accredited him by miracles as His servant. The two captains who were first sent not only did what they were bound to do as servants of the king, but participated in the ungodly disposition of their lord (sumbai’nontes too’ skopoo’ tou’ pepomfo’tos-Theodoret); they attacked the Lord with reckless daring in the person of the prophet, and the second captain, with his “Come down quickly,” did it even more strongly than the first. This sin was punished, and that not by the prophet, but by the Lord Himself, who fulfilled the word of His servant. f174 What Elijah here did was an act of holy zeal for the honour of the Lord, in the spirit of the old covenant, under which God destroyed the insolent despisers of His name with fire and sword, to manifest the energy of His holy majesty by the side of the dead idols of the heathen. But this act cannot be transferred to the times of the new covenant, as is clearly shown in Luke 9:54-55, where Christ does not blame Elijah for what he did, but admonishes His disciples, who overlooked the difference between the economy of the law and that of the gospel, and in their carnal zeal wanted to imitate what Elijah had done in divine zeal for the honour of the Lord, which had been injured in his own person.
2 KINGS. 1:13-14
The king, disregarding the punishing hand of the Lord, which, even if it might possibly have been overlooked in the calamity that befell the captain who was first sent and his company, could not be misunderstood when a similar fate befell the second captain with his fifty men, sent a third company, in his defiant obduracy, to fetch the prophet. yviyliv] after µyVimij is apparently an error of the pen for yviyliv] , as the following word yviyliv] shows.) But the third captain was better than his king, and wiser than his two predecessors. He obeyed the command of the king so far as to go to the prophet; but instead of haughtily summoning him to follow him, he bent his knee before the man of God, and prayed that his own life and the lives of his soldiers might be spared.
2 KINGS. 1:15-16
Then Elijah followed him to the king µynip; , before him, i.e., before the king, not before the captain; and tae for tae , see Ewald, §264, b.), having been directed to do so by the angel of the Lord, and repeated to him the word of the Lord, which he had also conveyed to him through his messengers (see vv. 4 and 6). 2 KINGS 1:17,18 When Ahaziah died, according to the word of the Lord through Elijah, as he had no son, he was followed upon the throne by his brother Joram, “in the second year of Joram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.” This statement is at variance both with that in 2 Kings 3:1, to the effect that Joram began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, and with that in 1 Kings 22:52, viz., that Ahaziah ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of the reign of Jehoshaphat, which lasted twenty-five years, and also with the statement in 2 Kings 8:16, that Joram of Judah became king over Judah in the fifth year of Joram of Israel. If, for example, Ahaziah of Israel died after a reign of not quite two years, at the most a year and a half, in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat; as Jehoshaphat himself reigned twentyfive years, he cannot have died till the seventh year of Joram of Israel, and his son Joram followed him upon the throne.
The last of these discrepancies may be solved very simply, from the fact that, according to 2 Kings 8:16, Jehoshaphat was still king when his son Joram began to reign so that Jehoshaphat abdicated in favour of his son about two years before his death. And the first discrepancy (that between Kings 1:17 and ch. 3:1) is removed by Usher (Annales M. ad a.m. and 3112), Lightfoot, and others, after the example of the Seder Olam, by the assumption of the co-regency. According to this, when Jehoshaphat went with Ahab to Ramoth in Gilead to war against the Syrians, in the eighteenth year of his reign, which runs parallel to the twenty-second year of the reign of Ahab, he appointed his son Joram to the co-regency, and transferred to him the administration of the kingdom. It is from this coregency that the statement in 2 Kings 1:17 is dated, to the effect that Joram of Israel became king in the second year of Joram of Judah. This second year of the co-regency of Joram corresponds to the eighteenth year of the reign of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 3:1). And in the fifth year of his co-regency Jehoshaphat gave up the reins of government entirely to him. It is from this point in time, i.e., from the twenty-third year of Jehoshaphat, that we are to reckon the eight years of the reign of Joram (of Judah), so that he only reigned six years more after his father’s death. f175 We have no information as to the reason which induced Jehoshaphat to abdicate in favour of his son two years before his death; for there is very little probability in the conjecture of Lightfoot (Opp. i. p. 85), that Jehoshaphat did this when he commenced the war with the Moabites in alliance with Joram of Israel, for the simple reason that the Moabites revolted after the death of Ahab, and Joram made preparations for attacking them immediately after their rebellion (2 Kings 3:5-7), so that he must have commenced this expedition before the fifth year of his reign.
ELIJAH’S ASCENSION TO HEAVEN. ELISHA’S FIRST MIRACLES.
2 KINGS. 2:1-2
Elijah’s Ascension to Heaven.
Journey from Gilgal to the other side of the Jordan.
Verse 1, 2. When the time arrived that Jehovah was about to take up His servant Elijah in a tempest to heaven, Elijah went with his attendant Elisha from Gilgal down to Bethel. r[æsæ , in the tempest or storm, i.e., in a tempestuous storm, which was frequently the herald of the divine selfrevelations in the terrestrial world (vid., Job 38:1; 40:6; Ezek 1:4; Zech 9:14). µyimæv; is the accusative of direction. Gilgal and Bethel (Beitin, see at 1 Kings 12:29) were seats of schools of the prophets, which Elijah had founded in the kingdom of the ten tribes. It is now generally admitted that Gilgal, from which they went down to Bethel, cannot be the place of that name which was situated in the Jordan valley to the east of Jericho, but must be the Gilgal upon the mountains, the elevated Jiljilia to the southwest of Silo (Seilun, see at Josh 8:35). On the way Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here, I pray, for the Lord has sent me to Bethel;” but Elisha declared with a solemn oath that he would not leave him. The Lord had revealed to both that the seal of divine attestation was to be impressed upon the work of Elijah by his being miraculously taken up into heaven, to strengthen the faith not of Elisha only, but also of the disciples of the prophets and of all the godly in Israel; but the revelation had been made to them separately, so that Elijah had no suspicion that Elisha had also been informed as to his being taken away. He wanted, therefore, to get rid of his servant, not “to test his love and attachment” (Vatabl.), but from humility (C. a Lap. and others), because he did not wish to have any one present to witness his glorification without being well assured that it was in accordance with the will of God.
2 KINGS. 2:3
In Bethel the disciples of the prophets came to meet Elisha, and said to him, “Knowest thou that Jehovah will take thy master from over thy head to-day?” varo `l[æ jqæl; expresses in a pictorial manner the taking away of Elijah from his side by raising him to heaven, like epai’rein and uJpolamba>nein in Acts 1:9-10. Elisha replied, “I know it, be silent,” because he knew Elijah’s feeling. The Lord had therefore revealed to the disciples of the prophets the taking away of Elijah, to strengthen their faith.
2 KINGS. 2:4-7
In Bethel, and again in Jericho, to which they both proceeded from Bethel, Elijah repeated the appeal to Elisha to stay there, but always in vain. The taking away of Elijah had also been revealed to the disciples of the prophets at Jericho. Thus they both came to the Jordan, whilst fifty disciples of the prophets from Jericho followed them at a distance, to be eye-witnesses of the miraculous translation of their master. The course which Elijah took before his departure from this earth, viz., from Gilgal past Bethel and Jericho, was not merely occasioned by the fact that he was obliged to touch at these places on the way to the Jordan, but had evidently also the same higher purpose, for which his ascension to heaven had been revealed both to Elisha and to the disciples of the prophets at Bethel and Jericho. Elijah himself said that the Lord had sent him to Bethel, to Jericho, to the Jordan (vv. 2, 4, 6).
He therefore took this way from an impulse received from the Spirit of God, that he might visit the schools of the prophets, which he had founded, once more before his departure, and strengthen and fortify the disciples of the prophets in the consecration of their lives to the service of the Lord, though without in the least surmising that they had been informed by the Spirit of the Lord of his approaching departure from this life. But as his ascension to heaven took place not so much for his own sake, as because of those associates in his office who were left behind, God had revealed it to so many, that they might be even more firmly established in their calling by the miraculous glorification of their master than by his words, his teaching, and his admonitions, so that they might carry it on without fear or trembling, even if their great master should no longer stand by their side with the might of his spiritual power to instruct, advise, or defend. Btu above all, Elisha, whom the Lord had appointed as his successor (1 Kings 19:16), was to be prepared for carrying on his work by the last journey of his master. He did not leave his side therefore, and resolved, certainly also from an inward impulse of the Spirit of God, to be an eye-witness of his glorification, that he might receive the spiritual inheritance of the first-born from his departing spiritual father.
2 KINGS. 2:8
When they reached the Jordan, Elijah took his prophet’s cloak, rolled it up µlæG; , hap leg convolvit), and smote the water with it; whereupon the water divided hither and thither, so that they both passed through on dry ground.
The cloak, that outward sign of the prophet’s office, became the vehicle of the Spirit’s power which works unseen, and with which the prophet was inspired. The miracle itself is analogous to the miraculous dividing of the Red Sea by the stretching out of Moses’ rod (Ex 14:16,21); but at the same time it is very peculiar, and quite in accordance with the prophetic character of Elijah, Moses, the leader of the people, performed his miracles with his shepherd’s crook, Elijah the prophet divided the river with his prophet’s mantle.
2 KINGS. 2:9-10
After crossing the Jordan, Elijah allowed his servant and companion to make one more request before he was taken away, in the full confidence that the Lord would fulfil it in answer to his prayer; and Elisha asked, “Let b¦ruwchakaa piy-sh¦nayim, dipla> en pneu>mati> sou , i.e., a double portion in (of) thy spirit be granted to me.” This request has been misunderstood by many translators, from Ephraem Syrus down to Köster and F. W.
Krummacher, who have supposed that Elisha wished to have a double measure of Elijah’s spirit (“that thy spirit may be twofold in me:” Luther after the Vulgate, “ut fiat in me duplex spiritus tuus”); and some have taken it as referring to the fact that Elisha performed many more miracles and much greater ones than Elijah (Cler., Pfeiffer, dub. vex. p. 442), others to the gift of prophecy and miracles (Köster, die Proph. p. 82), whilst others, like Krummacher, have understood by it that the spirit of Elisha, as an evangelical spirit, was twice as great as the legal spirit of Elijah. But there is no such meaning implied in the words, nor can it be inferred from the answer of Elijah; whilst it is impossible to show that there was any such measure of the Spirit in the life and works of Elisha in comparison with the spirit of Elisha, although his request was fulfilled.
The request of Elisha is evidently based upon Deut 21:17, where B] µyinæv]AyPi denotes the double portion which the first-born received in (of) the father’s inheritance, as R. Levi b. Gers., Seb. Münst., Vatabl., Grot., and others have perceived, and as Hengstenberg (Beitrr. ii. p. 133f.) in our days has once more proved. Elisha, resting his foot upon this law, requested of Elijah as a first-born son the double portion of his spirit for his inheritance. Elisha looked upon himself as the first-born son of Elijah in relation to the other “sons of the prophets,” inasmuch as Elijah by the command of God had called him to be his successor and to carry on his work. The answer of Elijah agrees with this: “Thou hast asked a hard thing,” he said, because the granting of this request was not in his power, but in the power of God. He therefore made its fulfilment dependent upon a condition, which did not rest with himself, but was under the control of God: “if thou shalt see me taken from thee jqæl; , partic. Pual with the m dropped, see Ges. §52, Anm. b; Ewald, §169, d.), let it be so to thee; but if not, it will not be so.”
From his own personal inclination Elijah did not wish to have Elisha, who was so closely related to him, as an eye-witness of his translation from the earth; but from his persistent refusal to leave him he could already see that he would not be able to send him away. He therefore left the matter to the Lord, and made the guidance of God the sign for Elisha whether the Lord would fulfil his request or not. Moreover, the request itself even on the part of the petitioner presupposes a certain dependence, and for this reason Elisha could not possibly desire that the double measure of Elijah’s spirit should be bestowed upon him. A dying man cannot leave to his heir more than he has himself. And, lastly, even the ministry of Elisha, when compared with that of Elijah, has all the appearance of being subordinate to it. He lives and labours merely as the continuer of the work already begun by Elijah, both outwardly in relation to the worshippers of idols, and inwardly in relation to the disciples of the prophets. Elisha performs the anointing of Jehu and Hazael, with which Elijah was charged, and thereby prepares the way for the realization of that destruction of Ahab’s house which Elijah predicted to the king; and he merely receives and fosters those schools of the prophets which Elijah had already founded. And again, it is not Elisha but Elijah who appears as the Coryphaeus of prophecy along with Moses, the representative of the law, upon the mount of transfiguration (Matt 17:3).-It is only a thoroughly external mode of observation that can discover in the fact that Elisha performed a greater number of miracles than Elijah, a proof that the spirit of Elijah rested doubly upon him.
2 KINGS. 2:11-13
Elijah’s ascension.
Verse 11. While they were walking on and talking to each other, “behold (there suddenly appeared) a fiery chariot and fiery horses, and separated the two (by driving between them), and Elijah went up in the tempest to heaven.” As God had formerly taken Enoch away, so that he did not taste of death (see at Gen 5:24), so did He also suddenly take Elijah away from Elisha, and carry him to heaven without dying. It was r[æsæ , “in the tempest,” that he was taken away. The storm was accompanied by a fiery phenomenon, which appeared to the eyes of Elisha as a chariot of fire with horses of fire, in which Elijah rode to heaven. The tempest was an earthly substratum for the theophany, the fiery chariots and fiery horses the symbolical form in which the translation of his master to heaven presented itself to the eye of Elisha, who was left behind. f176 The ascension of Elijah has been compared to the death of Moses. “As God Himself buried Moses, and his grave has not been found to this day, so did He fetch Elias to heaven in a still more glorious manner in a fiery chariot with fiery horses, so that fifty men, who searched for him, did not find him on the earth” (Ziegler). This parallel has a real foundation in the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Christ on the mountain of transfiguration, only we must not overlook the difference in the departure from this life of these two witnesses of God. For Moses died and was to die in the wilderness because of his sin (Deut 32:49ff.), and was only buried by the hand of the Lord, so that no one has seen his grave, not so much for the purpose of concealing it from men as to withdraw his body from corruption, and preserve and glorify it for the eternal life (see the Comm. on Deut 34:5-6). Elijah did not die, but was received into heaven by being “changed” (1 Cor 15:51-52; 1 Thess 4:15ff.). This difference is in perfect harmony with the character and position of these two men in the earthly kingdom of God. Moses the lawgiver departed from the earthly life by the way of the law, which worketh death as the wages of sin (Rom 6:23; 7:13); Elijah the prophet, who was appointed to admonish for future times ( oJ katagrafei>v en elegmoi>v eiv kairou>v ), to pacify the wrath before the judgment, to turn the heart of the father to the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob (Ecclus. 48:10), was taken to heaven as the forerunner of Christ (Mal. 3:23-24; Matt. 11:10-11) without tasting of death, to predict the ascension of our Lord, and to set it forth in Old Testament mode; for as a servant, as the servant of the law, who with his fiery zeal preached both by word and deed the fire of the wrath of divine justice to the rebellious generation of his own time, Elijah was carried by the Lord to heaven in a fiery storm, the symbol of the judicial righteousness of God. “As he was an unparalleled champion for the honour of the Lord, a fiery war-chariot was the symbol of his triumphal procession into heaven” (O. v. Gerlach). But Christ, as the Son, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth, after having taken away from death its sting and from hell its victory, by His resurrection from the grave (1 Cor 15:55), returned to the Father in the power of His eternal deity, and ascended to heaven in His glorified body before the eyes of His disciples as the victor over death and hell, until a cloud received Him and concealed His figure from their sight (Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9). f177 Verse 12. When Elisha saw his master carried thus miraculously away, he exclaimed, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and horsemen thereof!” and as he saw him no more, he took hold of his clothes and rent them in two pieces, i.e., from the top to the bottom, as a proof of the greatness of his sorrow at his being taken away. He called Elijah ba; , “my father,” as his spiritual father, who had begotten him as his son through the word of God. “Chariot (war-chariot) and horsemen of Israel,” on which the Israelitish kings based the might and security of their kingdom, are a symbolical representation of the strong defence which Elijah had been through his ministry to the kingdom of Israel (cf. 2 Kings 13:14).
Verse 13. He then took up Elijah’s prophet’s mantle, which had fallen from him when he was snatched away, and returned to the Jordan. The prophet’s mantle of the master fell to Elisha the disciple, as a pledge to himself that his request was fulfilled, and as a visible sign to others that he was his divinely appointed successor, and that the spirit of Elijah rested upon him (v. 15).
2 KINGS. 2:14-15
Return of Elisha to Jericho and Bethel, and his First Miracles.
Verse 14, 15. Having returned to the banks of the Jordan, Elisha smote the water with Elijah’s mantle, saying, “Where is Jehovah the God of Elijah, yea He?” and the water divided hither and thither, so that he was able to go through. aWhApaæ , which the LXX did not understand, and have simply reproduced in Greek characters, affw> , is an emphatic apposition, “yea He,” such as we find after suffixes, e.g., Prov 22:19; and ãaæ is only a strengthened µGæ , which is more usual when emphatic prominence is given to the suffix (vid., Ges. §121, 3). The Masoretic accentuation, which separates it from the preceding words, rests upon a false interpretation.
There is no need either for the alteration proposed by Ewald, §362, a., of ãaæ into Ëaæ , “he had scarcely smitten the water,” especially as not a single analogous example can be adduced of the use of aWh Ëaæ followed by a Vav consec.; or for the conjecture that the original reading in the text was wOpae (Houb., Böttch., Then.), “where is now the God of Elijah?” which derives no critical support from the affoo’ of the LXX, and is quite at variance with Hebrew usage, since wOpae generally stands immediately after hYeaæ , when it serves to strengthen the interrogation (vid., Judg 9:38; Job 17:15; Isa 19:12; Hos 13:10). This miracle was intended partly to confirm Elisha’s conviction that his petition had been fulfilled, and partly to accredit him in the eyes of the disciples of the prophets and the people generally as the divinely appointed successor of Elijah. All the disciples of the prophets from Jericho saw also from this that the spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha, and came to meet him to do homage to him as being now their spiritual father and lord.
2 KINGS. 2:16-22
But the disciples of the prophets at Jericho were so unable to realize the fact of Elijah’s translation, although it had been previously revealed to them, that they begged permission of Elisha to send out fifty brave men to seek for Elijah. pen-n¦saa’ow: whether the Spirit of the Lord has not taken him and cast him upon one of the mountains, or into one of the valleys. ˆpe with the perfect is used “where there is fear of a fact, which as is conjectured almost with certainty has already happened,” like mh> in the sense of “whether not” (vid., Ewald, §337, b.). hwO;hy] jæWr is not a wind sent by Jehovah (Ges.), but the Spirit of Jehovah, as in 1 Kings 18:12. The Chethîb geey’owt is the regular formation from ay]Gæ or ay]Gæ (Zech 14:4); the Keri with the transposition of ynæa and y, the later form: ay]Gæ , Ezek 7:16; 31:12, etc.
The belief expressed by the disciples of the prophets, that Elijah might have been miraculously carried away, was a popular belief, according to 1 Kings 18:12, which the disciples of the prophets were probably led to share, more especially in the present case, by the fact that they could not imagine a translation to heaven as a possible thing, and with the indefiniteness of the expression varo `l[æ jqæl; could only understand the divine revelation which they had received as referring to removal by death. So that even if Elisha told them how miraculously Elijah had been taken from him, which he no doubt did, they might still believe that by the appearance in the storm the Lord had taken away His servant from this life, that is to say, had received his soul into heaven, and had left his earthly tabernacle somewhere on the earth, for which they would like to go in search, that they might pay the last honours to their departed master. Elisha yielded to their continued urgency and granted their request; whereupon fifty men sought for three days for Elijah’s body, and after three days’ vain search returned to Jericho. `ad-bosh, to being ashamed, i.e., till he was ashamed to refuse their request any longer (see at Judg 3:25). The two following miracles of Elisha (vv. 19-25) were also intended to accredit him in the eyes of the people as a man endowed with the Spirit and power of God, as Elijah had been. Vv. 19-22. Elisha makes the water at Jericho wholesome.-During his stay at Jericho (v. 18) the people of the city complained, that whilst the situation of the place was good in other respects, the water was bad and the land produced miscarriages. xr,a, , the land, i.e., the soil, on account of the badness of the water; not “the inhabitants, both man and beast” (Thenius). Elisha then told them to bring a new dish with salt, and poured the salt into the spring with these words: “Thus saith the Lord, I have made this water sound; there will not more be death and miscarriage thence” µv; ). m¦shaleket is a substantive here (vid., Ewald, 160, e.). µyimæ ax;wOm is no doubt the present spring Ain es Sultân, the only spring near to Jericho, the waters of which spread over the plain of Jericho, thirty-five minutes’ distance from the present village and castle, taking its rise in a group of elevations not far from the foot of the mount Quarantana (Kuruntul); a large and beautiful spring, the water of which is neither cold nor warm, and has an agreeable and sweet (according to Steph. Schultz, “somewhat salt”) taste.
It was formerly enclosed by a kind of reservoir or semicircular wall of hewn stones, from which the water was conducted in different directions to the plain (vid., Rob. Pal. ii. p. 283ff.). With regard to the miracle, a spring which supplied the whole of the city and district with water could not be so greatly improved by pouring in a dish of salt, that the water lost its injurious qualities for ever, even if salt does possess the power of depriving bad water of its unpleasant taste and injurious effects. The use of these natural means does not remove the miracle. Salt, according to its power of preserving from corruption and decomposition, is a symbol of incorruptibility and of the power of life which destroys death (see Bähr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 325, 326). As such it formed the earthly substratum for the spiritual power of the divine word, through which the spring was made for ever sound. A new dish was taken for the purpose, not ob munditiem (Seb. Schm.), but as a symbol of the renewing power of the word of God.- But if this miracle was adapted to show to the people the beneficent character of the prophet’s ministry, the following occurrence was intended to prove to the despisers of God that the Lord does not allow His servants to be ridiculed with impunity.
2 KINGS. 2:23-25
The judgment of God upon the loose fellows at Bethel. Elisha proceeded from Jericho to Bethel, the chief seat of the idolatrous calf-worship, where there was also a school of the prophets (v. 3). On the way thither there came small boys out of the city to meet him, who ridiculed him by calling out, “Come up, bald-head, come,” etc. jæreqe , bald-head (with a bald place at the back of the head), was used as a term of scorn (cf. Isa 3:17,24); but hardly from a suspicion of leprosy (Winer, Thenius). It was rather as a natural defect, for Elisha, who lived for fifty years after this (2 Kings 13:14), could not have been bald from age at that time.
Verse 24. The prophet then turned round and cursed the scoffers in the name of the Lord, and there came two bears out of the wood, and tore forty-two boys of them in pieces. The supposed “immorality of cursing,” which Thenius still adduces as a disproof of the historical truth of this miracle, even if it were established, would not affect Elisha only, but would fall back upon the Lord God, who executed the curse of His servant in such a manner upon these worthless boys. And there is no need, in order to justify the judicial miracle, to assume that there was a preconcerted plan which had been devised by the chief rulers of the city out of enmity to the prophet of the Lord, so that the children had merely been put forward (O. v. Gerlach). All that is necessary is to admit that the worthless spirit which prevailed in Bethel was openly manifested in the ridicule of the children, and that these boys knew Elisha, and in his person insulted the prophet of the Lord. If this was the case, then Elisha cursed the boys for the purpose of avenging the honour of the Lord, which had been injured in his person; and the Lord caused this curse to be fulfilled, to punish in the children the sins of the parents, and to inspire the whole city with a salutary dread of His holy majesty. f178 Verse 25. Elisha went from Bethel to Carmel (see at 1 Kings 18:19), probably to strengthen himself in solitude for the continuation of his master’s work. He returned thence to Samaria, where, according to Kings 6:32, he possessed a house. JORAM OF ISRAEL, AND THE EXPEDITION AGAINST MOAB WHICH HE UNDERTOOK IN COMPANY WITH JEHOSHAPHAT.
2 KINGS. 3:1-3
Reign of Joram of Israel.
For the chronological statement in v. 1, see at 2 Kings 1:17. Joram or Jehoram was not so ungodly as his father Ahab and his Mother Jezebel. He had the statue or pillar of Baal, which his father had erected in Samaria, removed; and it was only to the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the calf-worship, that he adhered. Joram therefore wished to abolish the worship of Baal and elevate the worship of Jehovah, under the image of the calf (ox), into the region of his kingdom once more. For the singular suffix ˆmi see Ewald, §317, a. He did not succeed, however, in exterminating the worship of Baal. It not only continued in Samaria, but appears to have been carried on again in the most shameless manner (cf. 2 Kings 10:18ff.); at which we cannot be surprised, since his mother Jezebel, that fanatical worshipper of Baal, was living throughout the whole of his reign (2 Kings 9:30).
2 KINGS. 3:4-27
War of Joram, in Alliance with Jehoshaphat, against the Moabites.
Verse 4, 5. The occasion of this war was the rebellion of the Moabites, i.e., the refusal to pay tribute to Israel since the death of Ahab. Mesha the (vassal-) king of Moab was a possessor of flocks, and paid to the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams; not merely at the commencement of each new reign (Cler.), but as a yearly tribute bWv , to bring again = to bring repeatedly, as in Num 18:9, etc.). This yearly tribute could not be exorbitant for the land of the Moabites, which abounded in good pasture, and was specially adapted for the rearing of flocks. The payment of tribute in natural objects and in the produce of the land was very customary in ancient times, and is still usual among the tribes of Asia. f179 rqenO signifies both a shepherd (Amos 1:1) and also a possessor of flocks. In Arabic it is properly the possessor of a superior kind of sheep and goats (vid., Boch. Hieroz. i. p. 483f. ed. Ros.). rm,x, may either be taken as a second object to bWv , or be connected with lyiaæ as an accusative of looser government (Ewald, §287, h.). In the first case the tribute would consist of the wool (the fleeces) of 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams; in the second, of 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams. In support of the latter we may quote Isa 16:1, where lambs are mentioned as tribute.
Verse 5-7. The statement concerning the rebellion of the Moabites, which has already been mentioned in 2 Kings 1:1, is repeated here, because it furnished the occasion for the expedition about to be described. Ahaziah had been unable to do anything during his short reign to renew the subjugation of Moab; Joram was therefore anxious to overtake what had been neglected immediately after his ascent of the throne. He went to Samaria aWh µwOy , at that time, namely, when he renewed his demand for the tribute and it was refused (Thenius), and mustered all Israel, i.e., raised an army out of the whole kingdom, and asked Jehoshaphat to join in the war, which he willingly promised to do (as in 1 Kings 22:4), notwithstanding the fact that he had been blamed by prophets for his alliance with Ahab and Ahaziah (2 Chron 19:2 and 20:37). He probably wished to chastise the Moabites still further on this occasion for their invasion of Judah (2 Chron 20), and to do his part by bringing them once more under the yoke of Israel, to put it out of their power to make fresh incursions into Judah.
Verse 8. In reply to Joram’s question, “By which way shall we advance (against Moab)?” Jehoshaphat decided in favour of “the way through the desert of Edom.” There were two ways by which it was possible to enter the land of the Moabites; namely, either by going above the Dead Sea, and crossing the Jordan and the boundary river Arnon, and so entering it from the north, or by going round the southern point of the Dead Sea, and advancing through the northern portion of the mountains of Edom, and thus entering it from the south. The latter way was the longer of the two, and the one attended with the greatest difficulties and dangers, because the army would have to cross mountains which were very difficult to ascend.
Nevertheless Jehoshaphat decided in its favour, partly because, if they took the northern route, they would have the Syrians at Ramoth in Gilead to fear, partly also because the Moabites, from their very confidence in the inaccessibility of their southern boundary, would hardly expect any attack from that side, and might therefore, if assailed at that point, be taken off their guard and easily defeated, and probably also from a regard to the king of Edom, whom they could induce to join them with his troops if they took that route, not so much perhaps for the purpose of strengthening their own army as to make sure of his forces, namely, that he would not make a fresh attempt at rebellion by a second invasion of the kingdom of Judah while Jehoshaphat was taking the field against the Moabites.
Verse 9-12. But however cleverly this plan may have been contrived, when the united army had been marching round for seven days and was passing through the deep rocky valley of the Ahsy, which divided the territories of Edom and Moab, it was in the greatest danger of perishing from want of water for men and cattle, as the river which flows through this valley, and in which they probably hoped to find a sufficient supply of water, since according to Robinson (Pal. ii. pp. 476 and 488) it is a stream which never fails, was at that time perfectly dry.
In this distress the hearts of the two kings were manifested.-Vv. 10-12.
Joram cried out in his despair: “Woe, that Jehovah has called these three kings, to give them into the hand of Moab!” yKi , that, serves to give emphasis to the assurance; see Ewald, §330, b.) Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, had confidence in the Lord, and inquired whether there was no prophet there, through whom they could seek counsel of the Lord (as in Kings 22:7); whereupon one of the servants of the Israelitish king answered that Elisha was there, who had poured water upon the hands of Elijah, i.e., had been with him daily as his servant, and therefore could probably obtain and give a revelation from god. Elisha may perhaps have come to the neighbourhood of the army at the instigation of the Spirit of God, because the distress of the kings was to be one means in the hand of the Lord, not only of distinguishing the prophet in the eyes of Joram, but also of pointing Joram to the Lord as the only true God. The three kings, humbled by the calamity, went in person to Elisha, instead of sending for him.
Verse 13-14. In order still further to humble the king of Israel, who was already bowed down by the trouble, and to produce some salutary fruit of repentance in his heart, Elisha addressed him in these words: “What have I to do with thee? Go to the (Baal-) prophets of thy father and thy mother!
Let them help thee.” When Joram replied to this in a supplicatory tone: `l[æ , no, pray (as in Ruth 1:13), i.e., speak not in this refusing way, for the Lord has brought these three kings-not me alone, but Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom also-into this trouble; Elisha said to him with a solemn oath (cf. 1 Kings 17:1): “If I did not regard Jehoshaphat, I should not look at thee and have respect to thee,” i.e., I should not deign to look at thee, much less to help thee.
Verse 15-17. He then sent for a minstrel, to collect his mind from the impressions of the outer world by the soft tones of the instrument, and by subduing the self-life and life in the external world to become absorbed in the intuition of divine things. On this influence of music upon the state of the mind, see the remark on 1 Sam 16:16, and Passavant’s Untersuchungen über den Lebens-magnetismus, p. 207 (ed. 2).-As the minstrel was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon him hy;h; according to the later usage for hy;h; , as in 1 Sam 17:48, etc.; compare Ewald, §345, b., and hwO;hy] dy; as in 1 Kings 18:46), so that he said in the name of the Lord: “Make this valley full of trenches `v[; , inf. abs. for the imperative; for bGe bGe see Ges. §108, 4); for thus saith the Lord, ye will see neither wind nor rain, and this valley will be filled with water, that ye may be able to drink, and your flocks and your cattle.” bGe are trenches for collecting water (vid., Jer 14:3), which would suddenly flow down through the brook-valley. This large quantity of water came on the (following) morning “by the way of Edom” (v. 20), a heavy fall of rain or violent storm having taken place, as is evident from the context, in the eastern mountains of Edom, at a great distance from the Israelitish camp, the water of which filled the brook-valley, i.e., the Wady el Kurahy and el Ahsy (see at v. 9) at once, without the Israelites observing anything either of the wind, which always precedes rain in the East (Harmar, Beobb. i. pp. 51, 52), or of the rain itself. hn,q]mi are the flocks intended for slaughtering, hm;heB] the beasts of burden.
Verse 18-19. Elisha continued: “and this is too little for Jehovah (the comparative force of llæq; is implied in the context, especially in the alternating combination of the two clauses, which is indicated by w] ... w] , see Ewald, §360, c.): He will also give Moab into your hand, and ye will smite all the fortified and choice cities, fell all the good trees (fruit-trees), stop up all the springs of water, and spoil all the good fields with stones.” rx;b]mi and rwOjb]mi are intended to produce a play upon words, through the resemblance in their sound and meaning (Ewald, §160, c.). In the announcement of the devastation of the land there is an allusion to Deut 20:19-20, according to which the Israelites were ordered to spare the fruittrees when Canaan was taken. These instructions were not to apply to Moab, because the Moabites themselves as the arch-foes of Israel would not act in any other way with the land of Israel if they should gain the victory. baik]hi , to add pain, is a poetical expression for spoiling a field or rendering it infertile through the heaping up of stones.
Verse 20-23. The water came in the morning at the time of the morning sacrifice (see 1 Kings 18:36), to indicate that the Lord was once more restoring His favour to the people on account of the sacrifice presented to Him in His temple.
The help of God, which preserved the Israelitish army from destruction, also prepared destruction for the Moabites. Vv. 21-23. On hearing the report of the march of the allied kings, Moab had raised all the men that were capable of bearing arms, and stationed them on the frontier. In the morning, when the sun had risen above the water, the Moabites saw the water opposite to them like blood, and said: “That is blood: the (allied) kings have destroyed themselves and smitten one another; and now to the spoil, Moab!” Coming with this expectation to the Israelitish camp, they were received by the allies, who were ready for battle, and put to flight.
The divine help consisted, therefore, not in a miracle which surpassed the laws of nature, but simply in the fact that the Lord God, as He had predicted through His prophet, caused the forces of nature ordained by Him to work in the predetermined manner.
As the sudden supply of an abundance of water was caused in a natural way by a heavy fall of rain, so the illusion, which was so fatal to the Moabites, is also to be explained in the natural manner indicated in the text.
From the reddish earth of the freshly dug trenches the water collected in them had acquired a reddish colour, which was considerably intensified by the rays of the rising sun, so that when seen from a distance it resembled blood. The Moabites, however, were the less likely to entertain the thought of an optical delusion, from the fact that with their accurate acquaintance with the country they knew very well that there was no water in the wady at that time, and they had neither seen nor heard anything of the rain which had fallen at a great distance off in the Edomitish mountains. The thought was therefore a natural one, that the water was blood, and that the cause of the blood could only have been that their enemies had massacred one another, more especially as the jealousy between Israel and Judah was not unknown to them, and they could have no doubt that Edom had only come with them as a forced ally after the unsuccessful attempt at rebellion which it had made a short time before; and, lastly, they cannot quite have forgotten their own last expedition against Judah in alliance with the Edomites and Ammonites, which had completely failed, because the men composing their own army had destroyed one another. But if they came into collision with the allied army of the Israelites under such a delusion as this, the battle could only end in defeat and in a general flight so far as they were concerned.
Verse 24-25. The Israelites followed the fugitives into their own land and laid it waste, as Elisha had prophesied (v. 25 compared with v. 19). The Chethîb wybw-baah is to be read µyrit;a\ awOB (for awOB as in 1 Kings 12:12): and (Israel) came into the land and smote Moab. The Keri hk;n; is a bad emendation. hk;n; is either the infinitive construct used instead of the infin. absolute (Ewald, §351, c.), or an unusual form of the inf. absol. (Ewald, §240, b.). `ad-hish¦’iyr, till one (= so that one only) left its stones in Kir-chareseth. On the infinitive form raæv; see at Josh 8:22. The suffix in ˆBe probably points forward to the following noun (Ewald, §309, c.). The city called chareset qiyr here and Isa 16:7, and cr,j, ryqi in Isa 16:11 and Jer 48:31,36, i.e., probably city of potsherds, is called elsewhere ba;wOm ryqi , the citadel of Moab (Isa 15:1), as the principal fortress of the land (in the Chaldee Vers. d¦mow’aab k¦rakaa’), and still exists under the name of Kerak, with a strong castle build by the Crusaders, upon a lofty and steep chalk rock, surrounded by a deep and narrow valley, which runs westward under the name of Wady Kerak and falls into the Dead Sea (vid., Burckhardt, Syr. pp. 643ff., C. v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 271, 272). This fortress the allied kings besieged. “The slingers surrounded and smote it,” i.e., bombarded it.
Verse 26. When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too strong for him, he attempted to fight a way through the besiegers with 700 men with drawn swords [qæB; , lit., to split them) to the king of Edom, i.e., on the side which was held by this king, from whom he probably hoped that he should meet with the weakest resistance.
Verse 27. But when this attempt failed, in his desperation he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice upon the wall, i.e., in the sight of the besiegers, not to the God of Israel (Joseph. Ephr. Syr., etc.), but to his own god Camos (see at 1 Kings 11:7), to procure help from him by appeasing his wrath; just as the heathen constantly sought to appease the wrath of their gods by human sacrifices on the occasion of great calamities (vid., Euseb. praepar. ev. iv. 16, and E. v. Lasaulx, die Sühnopfer der Griechen und Römer, pp. 8ff.).-”And there was (came) great wrath upon Israel, and they departed from him (the king of Moab) and returned into their land.” As `l[æ ãx,q, hy;h; is used of the divine wrath or judgment, which a man brings upon himself by sinning, in every other case in which the phrase occurs, we cannot understand it here as signifying the “human indignation,” or ill-will, which broke out among the besieged (Budd., Schulz, and others). The meaning is: this act of abomination, to which the king of the Moabites had been impelled by the extremity of his distress, brought a severe judgment from God upon Israel.
The besiegers, that is to say, felt the wrath of God, which they had brought upon themselves by occasioning human sacrifice, which is strictly forbidden in the law (Lev 18:21; 20:3), either inwardly in their conscience or in some outwardly visible signs, so that they gave up the further prosecution of the siege and the conquest of the city, without having attained the object of the expedition, namely, to renew the subjugation of Moab under the power of Israel.
ELISHA WORKS SEVERAL MIRACLES.
2 KINGS. 4:1-7
From ch. 4 through 2 Kings 8:6 there follows a series of miracles on the part of Elisha, which both proved this prophet to be the continuer of the work which Elijah had begun, of converting Israel from the service of Baal to the service of the living God, and also manifested the beneficent fruits of the zeal of Elijah for the honour of the Lord of Sabaoth in the midst of the idolatrous generation of his time, partly in the view which we obtain from several of these accounts of the continuance and prosperity of the schools of the prophets, and partly in the attitude of Elisha towards the godly in the land as well as towards Joram the king, the son of the idolatrous Ahab, and in the extension of his fame beyond the limits of Israel. (See the remarks on the labours of both prophets at pp. 161ff., and those on the schools of the prophets at 1 Sam 19:24.)-All the miracles described in this section belong to the reign of Joram king of Israel. They are not all related, however, in chronological order, but the chronology is frequently disregarded for the purpose of groping together events which are homogeneous in their nature. This is evident, not only from the fact that (a) several of these accounts are attached quite loosely to one another without any particle to indicate sequence (vid., 2 Kings 4:1,38,42; 5:1; 6:8, and 8:1), and (b) we have first of all those miracles which were performed for the good of the scholars of the prophets and of particular private persons (ch. 4-6:7), and then such works of the prophet as bore more upon the political circumstances of the nation, and of the king as the leader of the nation (2 Kings 6:8-7:20), but also from the circumstance that in the case of some of these facts you cannot fail to perceive that their position is regulated by their substantial relation to what precedes or what follows, without any regard to the time at which they occurred. Thus, for example, the occurrence described in Kings 8:1-6, which should undoubtedly stand before ch. 5 so far as the chronology is concerned, is placed at the end of the miracles which Elisha wrought for king Joram, simply because it exhibits in the clearest manner the salutary fruit of what he had done.
And so, again, the account of Naaman the leper is placed in ch. 5, although its proper position would be after 2 Kings 6:7, because it closes the series of miracles performed for and upon private persons, and the miracle was wrought upon a foreigner, so that the fame of the prophet had already penetrated into a foreign country; whereas in order of time it should either stand between vv. 23 and 24 of the sixth chapter (because the incursions of the flying parties of Syrians, to which 2 Kings 6:8-23 refers, had already taken place), or not till after the close of ch. 7. On the other hand, the partial separation of the miracles performed for the schools of the prophets (2 Kings 4:1-7,38-44, and ch. 6:1-7) can only be explained on chronological grounds; and this is favoured by the circumstance that the events inserted between are attached by a Vav consec., which does indicate the order of sequence (2 Kings 5:8ff. and 6:1ff.). Regarded as a whole, however, the section 2 Kings 4:1-8:6, which was no doubt taken from a prophetical monograph and inserted into the annals of the kings, is in its true chronological place, since the account in ch. 3 belongs to the earlier period of the history, and the events narrated from 2 Kings 8:7 onwards to the later period. The Widow’s Cruse of Oil.
A poor widow of the scholars of the prophets complained to Elisha of her distress, namely, that a creditor was about to take her two sons as servants (slaves). The Mosaic law gave a creditor the right to claim the person and children of a debtor who was unable to pay, and they were obliged to serve him as slaves till the year of jubilee, when they were once more set free (Lev 25:39-40). When the prophet learned, on inquiry that she had nothing in her house but a small flask of oil ËwOsa; , from ËWs , means an anointing flask, a small vessel for the oil necessary for anointing the body), he told her to beg of all her neighbours empty vessels, not a few (‘al-tam¦`iyTiy, make not few, sc. to beg), and then to shut herself in with her sons, and to pour from her flask of oil into all these vessels till they were full, and then to sell this oil and pay her debt with the money, and use the rest for the maintenance of herself and her children.
She was to close the house-door, that she might not be disturbed in her occupation by other people, and also generally to avoid all needless observation while the miracle was being performed. [sæn; alem; , let that which is filled be put on one side, namely by the sons, who handed her the vessels, according to vv. 5 and 6, so that she was able to pour without intermission. The form mytsqt is a participle Piel, and is quite appropriate as an emphatic form; the Keri mowtseqet (Hiphil) is an unnecessary alteration, especially as the Hiphil of qxæy; is hitsiyq. ˆm,v, `rmæ[; , then the oil stood, i.e., it ceased to flow. The asyndeton ˆBe hT;aæ is very harsh, and the Vav copul. has probably dropped out. With the alteration proposed by L. de Dieu, viz., of hT;aæ into tae , “live with thy sons,” the verb hy;j; would necessarily stand first (Thenius).
2 KINGS. 4:8-37
The Shunammite and her Son.
Verse 8. When Elisha was going one day (lit., the day, i.e., at that time, then) to Shunem (Solam, at the south-western foot of the Lesser Hermon; see at 1 Kings 1:3), a wealthy woman lwOdG; as in 1 Sam 25:2, etc.) constrained him to eat at her house; whereupon, as often as he passed by that place in his subsequent journeys from Carmel to Jezreel and back, he was accustomed to call upon her rWs as in Gen 19:2).
Verse 9-10. The woman then asked her husband to build a small upper chamber for this holy man of God, and to furnish it with the necessary articles of furniture (viz., bed, table, seat, and lamp), that he might always turn in at their house. ryqiAtyæli[\ is either a walled upper chamber, i.e., one built with brick and not with wooden walls (Cler., Then.), or an upper chamber built upon the wall of the house (Ges.).
Verse 11-13. After some time, when Elisha had spent the night in the chamber provided for him, he wanted to make some acknowledgment to his hostess for the love which she had shown him, and told his servant Gehazi to call her, and say to her: “Thou hast taken all this care for us, what shall I do to thee? Hast thou (anything) to say to the king or the chief captain?” i.e., hast thou any wish that I could convey to them, and intercede for thee? There is something striking here in the fact that Elisha did not address the woman himself, as she was standing before him, but told her servant to announce to her his willingness to make some return for what she had done. This was, probably, simply from a regard to the great awe which she had of the “holy man of God” (v. 9), and to inspire her with courage to give expression to the wishes of her heart. f181 She answered: “I dwell among my people,” i.e., not, I merely belong to the people (Thenius), but, I live quietly and peaceably among my countrymen, so that I have no need for any intercession with the king and great men of the kingdom. Apragmosu>nh cai>rw kai> eirhnikw>v dia>gw kai> pro>v tina amfisbh>thsin ou>k ane>comai (Theodoret).
Verse 14-16. When Elisha conversed with Gehazi still further on the matter, the latter said: “But she has no son, and her husband is old.” Elisha then had her called again, and told her when she had entered the door: “At this time a year hence yjæ `t[e , lit., at the time when it revives again; see at Gen 18:10) thou wilt embrace a son.” The same favour was to be granted to the Shunammite as that which Sarah had received in her old age, that she might learn that the God of Abraham still ruled in and for Israel. She replied: “No, my lord, thou man of God,” ‘al-t¦kazeeb, I do not excite in thy servant any deceptive hopes.
Verse 17. But however incredible this promise might appear to her, as it had formerly done to Sarah (Gen 18:12-13), it was fulfilled at the appointed time (cf. Gen 21:2).
Verse 18-20. But even the faith of the pious woman was soon to be put to the test, and to be confirmed by a still more glorious revelation of the omnipotence of the Lord, who works through the medium of His prophets.
When the child presented to her by God had grown up into a lad, he complained one day to the reapers of the field of a violent headache, saying to his father, “My head, my head!” He was then taken home to his mother, and died at noon upon her knees, no doubt from inflammation of the brain produced by a sunstroke.
Verse 21-23. The mother took the dead child at once up to the chamber built for Elisha, laid it upon the bed of the man of God, and shut the door behind her; she then asked her husband, without telling him of the death of the boy, to send a young man with a she-ass, that she might ride as quickly as possible to the man of God; and when her husband asked her, “Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day, since it is neither new moon nor Sabbath?” she replied, shalom; i.e., either “it is all well,” or “never mind.” For this word, which is used in reply to a question after one’s health (see v. 26), is apparently also used, as Clericus has correctly observed, when the object is to avoid giving a definite answer to any one, and yet at the same time to satisfy him.
Verse 24, 25. She then rode without stopping, upon the animal driven by the young man, to Elisha at mount Carmel. yliArx;[\TiAlaæ bKor]li , literally, do not hinder me from riding.
Verse 25-27. When the prophet saw her dg,n, (from the opposite), that is to say, saw her coming in the distance, and recognised her as the Shunammite, he sent Gehazi to meet her, to ask her about her own health and that of her husband and child. She answered, shalom, i.e., well, that she might not be detained by any further discussion, and came to the prophet and embraced his feet, to pray for the help of the “holy man of God.” Gehazi wanted to thrust her away, “because it seemed to him an immodest importunity to wish to urge the prophet in such a way as this, and as it were to compel him” (Seb. Schm.); but the prophet said, “Let her alone, for her soul is troubled, and Jehovah has hidden it from me and has not told me.” f183 Verse 28. The pious woman then uttered this complaint to the prophet: “Did I ask a son of the Lord? Did I not say, Do not deceive me?” What had happened to her she did not say-a fact which may easily be explained on psychological grounds from her deep sorrow-but Elisha could not fail to discover it from what she said.
Verse 29. He therefore directed his servant Gehazi: “Gird thy loins and take thy staff in thy hand and go: if thou meet any one, thou wilt not salute him; and if any one salute thee, thou wilt not answer him; and lay my staff upon the face of the boy.” The object of this command neither to salute nor to return salutations by the way, was not merely to ensure the greatest haste (Thenius and many others), inasmuch as the people of the East lose a great deal of time in prolonged salutations (Niebuhr, Beschr. v. Arab. p. 48), but the prophet wished thereby to preclude at the very outset the possibility of attributing the failure of Gehazi’s attempt to awaken the child to any external or accidental circumstance of this kind. For since it is inconceivable that the prophet should have adopted a wrong method, that is to say, should have sent Gehazi with the hope that he would restore the dead boy to life, his only intention in sending the servant must have been to give to the Shunammite and her family, and possibly also to Gehazi himself, a practical proof that the power to work miracles was not connected in any magical way with his person or his staff, but that miracles as works of divine omnipotence could only be wrought through faith and prayer; not indeed with the secondary intention of showing that he alone could work miracles, and so of increasing his own importance (Köster), but to purify the faith of the godly from erroneous ideas, and elevate them from superstitious reliance upon his own human person to true reliance upon the Lord God.
Verse 30. The mother of the boy does not appear, indeed, to have anticipated any result from the measures adopted by Elisha; for she swears most solemnly that she will not leave him. But the question arises, whether this urging of the prophet to come himself and help arose from doubt as to the result of Gehazi’s mission, or whether it was not rather an involuntary utterance of her excessive grief, and of the warmest wish of her maternal heart to see her beloved child recalled to life. We may probably infer the latter from the fulfilment of her request by Elisha.
Verse 31. Gehazi did as he was commanded, but the dead child did not come to life again; the prophet’s staff worked no miracle. “There was no sound and no attention,” i.e., the dead one gave no sign of life. This is the meaning of bv,q, ˆyiaæ lwOq ˆyiaæ both here and 1 Kings 18:29, where it is used of dead idols. The attempt of Gehazi to awaken the child was unsuccessful, not propter fidem ipsi a muliere non adhibitam (Seb. Schm.), nor because of the vainglory of Gehazi himself, but simply to promote in the godly of Israel true faith in the Lord.
Verse 32-35. Elisha then entered the house, where the boy was lying dead upon his bed, and shut the door behind them both (i.e., himself and the dead child), and prayed to the Lord. He then lay down upon the boy, so that his mouth, his eyes, and his hands lay upon the mouth, eyes, and hands of the child, bowing down over him rhæG; ; see at 1 Kings 18:42); and the flesh (the body) of the child became warm. He then turned round, i.e., turned away from the boy, went once up and down in the room, and bowed himself over him again; whereupon the boy sneezed seven times, and then opened his eyes. This raising of the dead boy to life does indeed resemble the raising of the dead by Elijah (1 Kings 17:20ff.); but it differs so obviously in the manner in which it was effected, that we may see at once from this that Elisha did not possess the double measure of the spirit of Elijah. It is true that Elijah stretched himself three times upon the dead child, but at his prayer the dead returned immediately to life, whereas in the case of Elisha the restoration to life was a gradual thing. f185 And they both differ essentially from the raising of the dead by Christ, who recalled the dead to life by one word of His omnipotence (Mark 5:39-42; Luke 7:13-15; John 11:43-44), a sign that He was the only-begotten Son of God, to whom the Father gave to have life in Himself, even as the Father has life in Himself (John 5:25ff.), in whose name the Apostle Peter also was able through prayer to recall the dead Tabitha to life, whereas Elisha and Elijah had only to prophesy by word and deed of the future revelation of the glory of God.
Verse 36-37. After the restoration of the boy to life, Elisha had his mother called and gave her back her son, for which she fell at his feet with thanksgiving.
2 KINGS. 4:38-41
Elisha Makes Uneatable Food Wholesome.
Verse 38. When Elisha had returned to Gilgal, the seat of a school of the prophets (see at 2 Kings 2:1), i.e., had come thither once more on his yearly circuit, during the famine which prevailed in the land (see at 2 Kings 8:1), and the prophets’ scholars sat before him (the teacher and master), he directed his servant (i.e., probably not Gehazi, but the pupil who waited upon him) to put the large pot to the fire and boil a dish for the pupils of the prophets. tpæv; answers to the German beisetzen, which is used for placing a vessel upon the fire (cf. Ezek 24:3). Verse 39. One (of these pupils) then went to the field to gather vegetables hr;wOa , olera: for the different explanations of this word see Celsii Hierobot. i. 459ff., and Ges. Thes. p. 56), and found hd,c; ˆp,G, , i.e., not wild vines, but wild creepers (Luther), field-creepers resembling vines; and having gathered his lap full of wild cucumbers, took them home and cut them into the vegetable pot. because they did not know them. h[;Qupæ is rendered in the ancient versions colocynths (LXX polupee’ agri’a, i.e., according to Suid., Colocynthis), whereas Gesenius (Thes. p. 1122), Winer, and others, follow Celsius (l.c. i. 393ff.), have decided in favour of wild cucumbers, a fruit resembling an acorn, or, according to Oken, a green fleshy fruit of almost a finger’s length and an inch thick, which crack with a loud noise, when quite ripe, and very gentle pressure, spirting out both juice and seeds, and have a very bitter taste. The reason for this decision is, that the peculiarity mentioned answers to the [qæp; , to split, in Syr. and Chald. to crack. Nevertheless the rendering given by the old translators is apparently the more correct of the two; for the colocynths also belong to the genus of the cucumbers, creep upon the ground, and are a round yellow fruit of the size of a large orange, and moreover are extremely bitter, producing colic, and affecting the nerves. The form of this fruit is far more suitable for oval architectural ornaments [qæp, , 1 Kings 6:18; 7:24) than that of the wild cucumber.
Verse 40. The extremely bitter flavour of the fruit so alarmed the pupils of the prophets when they began to eat of the dish, that they cried out, “Death in the pot,” and therefore thought the fruit was poison. If eaten in any large quantity, colocynths might really produce death: vid., Dioscorid. iv. (178).
Verse 41. Elisha then had some meal brought and poured it into the pot, after which the people were able to eat of the dish, and there was no longer anything injurious in the pot. jqæl; , then take, uw denoting sequence in thought (vid., Ewald, §348, a.). The meal might somewhat modify the bitterness and injurious qualities of the vegetable, but could not take them entirely away; the author of the Exegetical Handbook therefore endeavours to get rid of the miracle, by observing that Elisha may have added something else. The meal, the most wholesome food of man, was only the earthly substratum for the working of the Spirit, which proceeded from Elisha, and made the noxious food perfectly wholesome.
2 KINGS. 4:42-44
Feeding of a Hundred Pupils of the Prophets with Twenty Barley Loaves.
A man of Baal-Shalisha (a place in the land of Shalisha, the country to the west of Gilgal, Jiljilia; see at 1 Sam 9:4) brought the prophet as first-fruits twenty barley loaves and lm,r]Kæ = lm,r]Kæ cr,G, , i.e., roasted ears of corn (see the Comm. on Lev 2:14), in his sack ( ˆwOlq]xi , hap leg, sack or pocket). Elisha ordered this present to be given to the people, i.e., to the pupils of the prophets who dwelt in one common home, for them to eat; and when his servant made this objection: “How shall I set this (this little) before a hundred men?” he repeated his command, “Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus hath the Lord spoken: They will eat and leave” rtæy; lkæa; , infin. absol.; see Ewald, §328, a.); which actually was the case.
That twenty barley loaves and a portion of roasted grains of corn were not a sufficient quantity to satisfy a hundred men, is evident from the fact that one man was able to carry the whole of this gift in a sack, and still more so from the remark of the servant, which shows that there was no proportion between the whole of this quantity and the food required by a hundred persons. In this respect the food, which was so blessed by the word of the Lord that a hundred men were satisfied by so small a quantity and left some over, forms a type of the miraculous feeding of the people by Christ (Matt 14:16ff., 2 Kings 15:36-37; John 6:11-12); though there was this distinction between them, that the prophet Elisha did not produce the miraculous increase of the food, but merely predicted it. The object, therefore, in communicating this account is not to relate another miracle of Elisha, but to show how the Lord cared for His servants, and assigned to them that which had been appropriated in the law to the Levitical priests, who were to receive, according to Deut 18:4-5, and Num 18:13, the firstfruits of corn, new wine, and oil. This account therefore furnishes fresh evidence that the godly men in Israel did not regard the worship introduced by Jeroboam (his state-church) as legitimate worship, but sought and found in the schools of the prophets a substitute for the lawful worship of God (vid., Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. S. 136f.). CURING OF THE LEPROSY OF NAAMAN THE SYRIAN, AND PUNISHMENT OF GEHAZI.
2 KINGS. 5:1-19
Curing of Naaman from Leprosy.
Verse 1. Naaman, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian king, who was a very great man before his lord, i.e., who held a high place in the service of his king and was greatly distinguished µynip; ac;n; , cf. Isa 3:3; 9:14), because God had given the Syrians salvation (victory) through him, was as a warrior afflicted with leprosy. The w has not dropped out before [ræx; , nor has the copula been omitted for the purpose of sharpening the antithesis (Thenius), for the appeal to Ewald, §354, a., proves nothing, since the passages quoted there are of a totally different kind; but lyijæ rwOBGi is a second predicate: the man was as a brave warrior leprous. There is an allusion here to the difference between the Syrians and the Israelites in their views of leprosy. Whereas in Israel lepers were excluded from human society (see at Lev 13 and 14), in Syria a man afflicted with leprosy could hold a very high state-office in the closest association with the king.
Verse 2-3. And in Naaman’s house before his wife, i.e., in her service, there was an Israelitish maiden, whom the Syrians had carried off in a marauding expedition dWdG] ax;y; : they had gone out in (as) marauding bands). She said to her mistress: “O that my lord were before the prophet at Samaria! (where Elisha had a house, 2 Kings 6:32), he would free him from his leprosy.” t[æræx; ãsæa; , to receive (again) from leprosy, in the sense of “to heal,” may be explained from Num 12:14-15, where ãsæa; is applied to the reception of Miriam into the camp again, from which she had been excluded on account of her leprosy.
Verse 4-5. When Naaman related this to his lord (the king), he told him to go to Samaria furnished with a letter to the king of Israel; and he took with him rich presents as compensation for the cure he was to receive, viz., ten talents of silver, about 25,000 thalers (£3750-Tr.); 600 shekels (= two talents) of gold, about 50,000 thalers (£7500); and ten changes of clothes, a present still highly valued in the East (see the Comm. on Gen 45:22).
This very large present was quite in keeping with Naaman’s position, and was not too great for the object in view, namely, his deliverance from a malady which would be certainly, even if slowly, fatal.
Verse 6-7. When the king of Israel (Joram) received the letter of the Syrian king on Naaman’s arrival, and read therein that he was to cure Naaman of his leprosy `hT;[æ , and now-showing in the letter the transition to the main point, which is the only thing communicated here; cf. Ewald, §353, b.), he rent his clothes in alarm, and exclaimed, “Am I God, to be able to kill and make alive?” i.e., am I omnipotent like God? (cf. Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6); “for he sends to me to cure a man of his leprosy.” The words of the letter ãsæa; , “so cure him,” were certainly not so insolent in their meaning as Joram supposed, but simply meant: have him cured, as thou hast a wonderworking prophet; the Syrian king imagining, according to his heathen notions of priests and goëtes, that Joram could do what he liked with his prophets and their miraculous powers. There was no ground, therefore, for the suspicion which Joram expressed: “for only observe and see, that he seeks occasion against me.” hn;a; to seek occasion, sc. for a quarrel (cf.
Judg 14:4).
Verse 8. When Elisha heard of this, he reproved the king for his unbelieving alarm, and told him to send the man to him, “that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”
Verse 9-12. When Naaman stopped with his horses and chariot before the house of Elisha, the prophet sent a messenger out to him to say, “Go and wash thyself seven times in the Jordan, and thy flesh will return to thee, i.e., become sound, and thou wilt be clean.” bWv , return, inasmuch as the flesh had been changed through the leprosy into festering matter and putrefaction. The reason why Elisha did not go out to Naaman himself, is not to be sought for in the legal prohibition of intercourse with lepers, as Ephraem Syrus and many others suppose, nor in his fear of the leper, as Thenius thinks, nor even in the wish to magnify the miracle in the eyes of Naaman, as C. a Lapide imagines, but simply in Naaman’s state of mind.
This is evident from his exclamation concerning the way in which he was treated. Enraged at his treatment, he said to his servant (vv. 11, 12): “I thought, he will come out to me and stand and call upon the name of Jehovah his God, and go with his hand over the place (i.e., move his hand to and fro over the diseased places), and take away the leprosy.” [ræx; , the leprous = the disease of leprosy, the scabs and ulcers of leprosy. “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? (for the combination of bwOf with rh;n; , see Ewald, §174f.) Should I not bathe in them, and become clean?” With these words he turned back, going away in a rage. Naaman had been greatly strengthened in the pride, which is innate in every natural man, by the exalted position which he held in the state, and in which every one bowed before him, and served him in the most reverential manner, with the exception of his lord the king; and he was therefore to receive a salutary lesson of humiliation, and at the same time was also to learn that he owed his cure not to any magic touch from the prophet, but solely to the power of God working through him.-Of the two rivers of Damascus, Abana or Amana (the reading of the Keri with the interchange of the labials b and m, see Song of Sol. 4:8) is no doubt the present Barada or Barady (Arab. brdâ, i.e., the cold river), the Chrysorrhoas (Strabo, xvi. p. 755; Plin. h. n. 18 or 16), which rises in the table-land to the south of Zebedany, and flows through this city itself, and then dividing into two arms, enters two small lakes about 4 3/4 hours to the east of the city.
The Pharpar is probably the only other independent river of any importance in the district of Damascus, namely, the Avaj, which arises from the union of several brooks around Sa’sa’, and flows through the plain to the south of Damascus into the lake Heijâny (see Rob. Bibl. Researches, p. 444). The water of the Barada is beautiful, clear and transparent (Rob.), whereas the water of the Jordan is turbid, “of a clayey colour” (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 256); and therefore Naaman might very naturally think that his own native rivers were better than the Jordan.
Verse 13. His servants then addressed him in a friendly manner, and said, “My father, if the prophet had said to thee a great thing (i.e., a thing difficult to carry out), shouldst thou not have done it? how much more then, since he has said to thee, Wash, and thou wilt be clean?” ba; , my father, is a confidential expression arising from childlike piety, as in 2 Kings 6:21 and 1 Sam 24:12; and the etymological jugglery which traces ba; from awOB = ywil; = aWl (Ewald, Gr. §358, Anm.), or from µai (Thenius), is quite superfluous (see Delitzsch on Job, vol. ii. p. 265, lwOdG; rb;d; is a conditional clause without µai (see Ewald, §357, b.), and the object is placed first for the sake of emphasis (according to Ewald, §309, a.). yKi ãaæ , how much more (see Ewald, §354, c.), sc. shouldst thou do what is required, since he has ordered thee so small and easy a thing.
Verse 14. Naaman then went down (from Samaria to the Jordan) and dipped in Jordan seven times, and his flesh became sound bWv as in v. 10) like the flesh of a little boy. Seven times, to show that the healing was a work of God, for seven is the stamp of the works of God.
Verse 15-16. After the cure had been effected, he returned with all his train to the man of God with this acknowledgment: “Behold, I have found that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” and with the request that he would accept a blessing (a present, hk;r;B] , as in Gen 33:11; 1 Sam 25:27, etc.) from him, which the prophet, however, stedfastly refused, notwithstanding all his urging, that he might avoid all appearance of selfishness, by which the false prophets were actuated.
Verse 17-18. Then Naaman said: alo , “and not” = and if not, kai> ei mh> (LXX; not “and O,” according to Ewald, §358, b., Anm.), “let there be given to thy servant (= to me) two mules’ burden of earth (on the construction see Ewald, §287, h.), for thy servant will no more make (offer) burnt-offerings and slain-offerings to any other gods than Jehovah.
May Jehovah forgive thy servant in this thing, when my lord (the king of Syria) goeth into the house of Rimmon, to fall down (worship) there, and he supports himself upon my hand, that I fall down (with him) in the house of Rimmon; if I (thus) fall down in the house of Rimmon, may,” etc. It is very evident from Naaman’s explanation, “for thy servant,” etc., that he wanted to take a load of earth with him out of the land of Israel, that he might be able to offer sacrifice upon it to the God of Israel, because he was still a slave to the polytheistic superstition, that no god could be worshipped in a proper and acceptable manner except in his own land, or upon an altar built of the earth of his own land.
And because Naaman’s knowledge of God was still adulterated with superstition, he was not yet prepared to make an unreserved confession before men of his faith in Jehovah as the only true God, but hoped that Jehovah would forgive him if he still continued to join outwardly in the worship of idols, so far as his official duty required. Rimmon (i.e., the pomegranate) is here, and probably also in the local name Hadad-rimmon (Zech 12:11), the name of the supreme deity of the Damascene Syrians, and probably only a contracted form of Hadad-rimmon, since Hadad was the supreme deity or sun-god of the Syrians (see at 2 Sam 8:3), signifying the sun-god with the modification expressed by Rimmon, which has been differently interpreted according to the supposed derivation of the word.
Some derive the name from µmær; = µWr , as the supreme god of heaven, like the Eliou>n of Sanchun. (Cler., Seld., Ges. thes. p. 1292); others from ˆwOMri , a pomegranate, as a faecundantis, since the pomegranate with its abundance of seeds is used in the symbolism of both Oriental and Greek mythology along with the Phallus as a symbol of the generative power (vid., Bähr, Symbolik, ii. pp. 122, 123), and is also found upon Assyrian monuments (vid., Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, p. 343); others again, with less probability, from µWr , jaculari, as the sun-god who vivifies and fertilizes the earth with his rays, like the hekeebo’los Apo’lloon; and others from µmær; = Arab. rmm, computruit, as the dying winter sun (according to Movers and Hitzig; see Leyrer in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia).-The words “and he supports himself upon my hand” are not to be understood literally, but are a general expressly denoting the service which Naaman had to render as the aide-de-camp to his king (cf. 2 Kings 7:2,17). For the Chaldaic form hj;v; , see Ewald, §156, a.-In the repetition of the words “if I fall down in the temple of Rimmon,” etc., he expresses the urgency of his wish.
Verse 19. Elisha answered, “Go in peace,” wishing the departing Syrian the peace of God upon the road, without thereby either approving or disapproving the religious conviction which he had expressed. For as Naaman had not asked permission to go with his king into the temple of Rimmon, but had simply said, might Jehovah forgive him or be indulgent with him in this matter, Elisha could do nothing more, without a special command from God, than commend the heathen, who had been brought to belief in the God of Israel as the true God by the miraculous cure of his leprosy, to the further guidance of the Lord and of His grace. f
187 2 KINGS. 5:20-22
Punishment of Gehazi.
When Naaman had gone a stretch of the way xr,a, hr;b]Ki , v. 19; see at Gen 35:16), there arose in Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the desire for a portion of the presents of the Syrian which his master had refused (‘im kiy yy’ chay, as truly as Jehovah liveth, assuredly I run after him; µai yKi as in Sam 25:34). He therefore hastened after him; and as Naaman no sooner saw Gehazi running after him than he sprang quickly down from his chariot in reverential gratitude to the prophet lpæn; as in Gen 24:64), he asked in the name of Elisha for a talent of silver and two changes of raiment, professedly for two poor pupils of the prophets, who had come to the prophet from Mount Ephraim.
2 KINGS. 5:23
But Naaman forced him to accept two talents jqæl; laæy; , be pleased to take; and rK;Ki , with the dual ending, ne pereat indicium numeri-Winer) in two purses, and two changes of raiment, and out of politeness had these presents carried by two of his servants before Gehazi.
2 KINGS. 5:24
When Gehazi came to the hill `lp,[o , the well-known hill before the city) he took the presents from the bearers, and dismissing the men, laid them up in the house. b] rqæp] , to bring into safe custody.
2 KINGS. 5:25-26
But when he entered his master’s presence again, he asked him, “Whence (comest thou), Gehazi?” and on his returning the lying answer that he had not been anywhere, charged him with all that he had done. Ëlæy; ble alo , “had not my heart gone, when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee?” This is the simplest and the only correct interpretation of these difficult words, which have been explained in very different ways.
Theodoret ( ouci> hJ kardi>a mou h> meta> sou> ) and the Vulgate (nonne cor meum in praesenti erat, quando, etc.) have already given the same explanation, and so far as the sense is concerned it agrees with that adopted by Thenius: was I not (in spirit) away (from here) and present (there)? Ëlæy; stands in a distinct relation to the Ëlæy; alo of Gehazi.-wgw’ `t[e : “is it time to take silver, and clothes, and olive-trees, and vineyards, and sheep and oxen, and servants and maidens?” i.e., is this the time, when so many hypocrites pretend to be prophets from selfishness and avarice, and bring the prophetic office into contempt with unbelievers, for a servant of the true God to take money and goods from a non-Israelite for that which God has done through him, that he may acquire property and luxury for himself?
2 KINGS. 5:27
“And let the leprosy of Naaman cleave to thee and to thy seed for ever.”
This punishment took effect immediately. Gehazi went out from Elisha covered with leprosy as if with snow (cf. ex. 2 Kings 4:6; Num 12:10). It was not too harsh a punishment that the leprosy taken from Naaman on account of his faith in the living God, should pass to Gehazi on account of his departure from the true God. For it was not his avarice only that was to be punished, but the abuse of the prophet’s name for the purpose of carrying out his selfish purpose, and his misrepresentation of the prophet. f187 THE FLOATING IRON. THE SYRIANS SMITTEN WITH BLINDNESS.
2 KINGS. 6:1-4
Elisha Causes an Iron Axe to Float.
The following account gives us an insight into the straitened life of the pupils of the prophets. Vv. 1-4. As the common dwelling-place had become too small for them, they resolved, with Elisha’s consent, to build a new house, and went, accompanied by the prophet, to the woody bank of the Jordan to fell the wood that was required for the building. The place where the common abode had become too small is not given, but most of the commentators suppose it to have been Gilgal, chiefly from the erroneous assumption that the Gilgal mentioned in 2 Kings 2:1 was in the Jordan valley to the east of Jericho. Thenius only cites in support of this the reference in µynip; bvæy; (dwell with thee) to 2 Kings 4:38; but this decides nothing, as the pupils of the prophets sat before Elisha, or gathered together around their master in a common home, not merely in Gilgal, but also in Bethel and Jericho. We might rather think of Jericho, since Bethel and Gilgal (Jiljilia) were so far distant from the Jordan, that there is very little probability that a removal of the meeting-place to the Jordan, such as is indicated by maaqowm shaam na`aseh-laanuw, would ever have been thought of from either of these localities.
2 KINGS. 6:5
In the felling of the beams, the iron, i.e., the axe, of one of the pupils of the prophets fell into the water, at which he exclaimed with lamentation: “Alas, my lord (i.e., Elisha), and it was begged!” The sorrowful exclamation implied a petition for help. µwOqm; µv; WnL;Ahv,[\næ : “and as for the iron, it fell into the water;” so that even here tae does not stand before the nominative, but serves to place the noun in subjection to the clause (cf.
Ewald, §277, a.). lWav; does not mean borrowed, but begged. The meaning to borrow is attributed to laæv; from a misinterpretation of particular passages (see the Comm. on Ex 3:22). The prophets’ pupil had begged the axe, because from his poverty he was unable to buy one, and hence the loss was so painful to him.
2 KINGS. 6:6-7
When he showed Elisha, in answer to his inquiry, the place where it had fallen, the latter cut off a stick and threw it thither (into the water) and made the iron flow, i.e., float ãWx from ãWx , to flow, as in Deut 11:4); whereupon the prophets’ pupil picked the axe out of the water with his hand. The object of the miracle was similar to that of the stater in the fish’s mouth (Matt 17:27), or of the miraculous feeding, namely, to show how the Lord could relieve earthly want through the medium of His prophet.
The natural interpretation of the miracle, which is repeated by Thenius, namely, that “Elisha struck the eye of the axe with the long stick which he thrust into the river, so that the iron was lifted by the wood,” needs no refutation, since the raising of an iron axe by a long stick, so as to make it float in the water, is impossible according to the laws of gravitation.
2 KINGS. 6:8-10
Elisha’s Action in the War with the Syrians.
Vv. 8-10. In a war which the Syrians carried on against the Israelitish king Joram (not Jehoahaz, as Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 557, erroneously supposes), by sending flying parties into the land of Israel (cf. v. 23), Elisha repeatedly informed king Joram of the place where the Syrians had determined to encamp, and thereby frustrated the plans of the enemy. hn;jTæ ... µwOqm]Ala, : “at the place of so and so shall my camp be.” ynimol]aæ ynilop] as in 1 Sam 21:3 (see at Ruth 4:1). tachanowt, the encamping or the place of encampment (cf. Ewald, §161, a.), is quite appropriate, so that there is no need either for the alteration into Wab]j’Te , “ye shall hide yourselves” (Then.), or into Wtjon]Tæ , with the meaning which is arbitrarily postulated, “ye shall place an ambush” (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 558), or for the much simpler alteration into wOl j f1 B; , “pitch the camp for me” (Böttcher).
The singular suffix in hn;jTæ refers to the king as leader of the war: “my camp” = the camp of my army. “Beware of passing over `rbæ[; ) this place,” i.e., of leaving it unoccupied, “for there have the Syrians determined to make their invasion.” tjæn; , from tjen; , going down, with dagesh euphon., whereas Ewald (§187, b.) is of opinion that tjæn; , instead of being an intrans. part. Kal, might rather be a part. Niph. of ttæj; , which would not yield, however, any suitable meaning. Thenius renders `rbæ[; , “to pass by this place,” which would be grammatically admissible, but is connected with his conjecture concerning hn;jTæ , and irreconcilable with v. 10. When the king of Israel, according to v. 10, sent to the place indicated on account of Elisha’s information, he can only have sent troops to occupy it; so that when the Syrians arrived they found Israelitish troops there, and were unable to attack the place. There is nothing in the text about the Syrians bursting forth from their ambush. rhæz; means to enlighten, instruct, but not to warn. nish¦mar-shaam, “he took care there,” i.e., he occupied the place with troops, to defend it against the Syrians, so that they were unable to do anything, “not once and not twice,” i.e., several times.
2 KINGS. 6:11
The king of the Syrians was enraged at this, and said to his servants, “Do ye not show me who of our men (leans) to the king of Israel?” i.e., takes his part. lv, = wOl rv,a , probably according to an Aramaean dialect: see Ewald, §181, b., though he pronounces the reading incorrect, and would read lKo , but without any ground and quite unsuitably, as the king would thereby reckon himself among the traitors.
2 KINGS. 6:12-14
Then one of the servants answered, “No, my lord king,” i.e., it is not we who disclose thy plans to the king of Israel, “but Elisha the prophet tells him what thou sayest in thy bed-chamber;” whereupon the king of Syria inquired where the prophet lived, and sent a powerful army to Dothan, with horses and chariots, to take him prisoner there. Dothan (see Gen 37:17), which according to the Onom. was twelve Roman miles to the north of Samaria, has been preserved under its old name in a Tell covered with ruins to the south-west of Jenin, on the caravan-road from Gilead to Egypt (see Rob. Bibl. Res. p. 158, and V. de Velde, Journey, i. pp. 273, 274).
2 KINGS. 6:15-17
When Elisha’s servant went out the next morning and saw the army, which had surrounded the town in the night, he said to the prophet, “Alas, my lord, how shall we do?” But Elisha quieted him, saying, “Fear not, for those with us are more than those with them.” He then prayed that the Lord might open his servant’s eyes, whereupon he saw the mountain upon which Dothan stood full of fiery horses and chariots round about Elisha.
Opening the eyes was translation into the ecstatic state of clairvoyance, in which an insight into the invisible spirit-world was granted him. The fiery horses and chariots were symbols of the protecting powers of Heaven, which surrounded the prophet. The fiery form indicated the superterrestrial origin of this host. Fire, as the most ethereal of all earthly elements, was the most appropriate substratum for making the spirit-world visible. The sight was based upon Jacob’s vision (Gen 32:2), in which he saw a double army of angels encamped around him, at the time when he was threatened with danger from Esau.
2 KINGS. 6:18-20
When the enemy came down to Elisha, he prayed to the Lord that He would smite them with blindness; and when this took place according to his word, he said to them, This is not the way and this is not the city; follow me, and I will lead you to the man whom ye are seeking; and led them to Samaria, which was about four hours’ distance from Dothan, where their eyes were opened at Elisha’s prayer, so that they saw where they had been led. lae dræy; cannot be understood as referring to Elisha and his servant, who went down to the Syrian army, as J. H. Mich., Budd., F. v. Meyer, and Thenius, who wants to alter lae into lae , suppose, but must refer to the Syrians, who went down to the prophet, as is evident from what followed. For the assumption that the Syrians had stationed themselves below and round the mountain on which Dothan stood, and therefore would have had to come up to Elisha, need not occasion an unnatural interpretation of the words. It is true that Dothan stands upon an isolated hill in the midst of the plain; but on the eastern side it is enclosed by a ranger of hills, which project into the plain (see V. de Velde, R. i. p. 273).
The Syrians who had been sent against Elisha had posted themselves on this range of hills, and thence they came down towards the town of Dothan, which stood on the hill, whilst Elisha went out of the town to meet them. It is true that Elisha’s going out is not expressly mentioned, but in v. 19 it is clearly presupposed. rwen]sæ is mental blindness here, as in the similar case mentioned in Gen 19:11, that is to say, a state of blindness in which, though a man has eyes that can see, he does not see correctly. Elisha’s untruthful statement, “this is not the way,” etc., is to be judged in the same manner as every other ruse de guerre, by which the enemy is deceived.
2 KINGS. 6:21-23
Elisha forbade king Joram to slay the enemy that he had brought to him, because he had not taken them prisoners in war, and recommended him to treat them hospitably and then let them return to their lord. The object of the miracle would have been frustrated if the Syrians had been slain. For the intention was to show the Syrians that they had to do with a prophet of the true God, against whom no human power could be of any avail, that they might learn to fear the almighty God. Even when regarded from a political point of view, the prophet’s advice was more likely to ensure peace than the king’s proposal, as the result of v. 23 clearly shows. The Syrians did not venture any more to invade the land of Israel with flying parties, from fear of the obvious protection of Israel by its God; though this did not preclude a regular war, like that related in the following account. For ba; see the Comm. on 2 Kings 5:13. wgwhb;v; rv,a : “art thou accustomed to slay that which thou hast taken captive with sword and bow?” i.e., since thou dost not even slay those whom thou hast made prisoners in open battle, how wouldst thou venture to put these to death? hr;Ke wOl hr;K; , he prepared them a meal. hr;K; is a denom. from hr;Ke , a meal, so called from the union of several persons, like coena from koinh> (vid., Dietr. on Ges. Lex. s. v. krh).
2 KINGS. 7:1-2
To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
Elisha announced to him the word of the Lord: “At the (this) time tomorrow a seah of wheaten flour tl,so , see at 1 Kings 5:2) will be worth a shekel, and two seahs of barley a shekel in the gate, i.e., in the market, at Samaria.” A seah, or a third of an ephah = a Dresden peck (Metze), for a shekel was still a high price; but in comparison with the prices given in Kings 6:25 as those obtained for the most worthless kinds of food, it was incredibly cheap. The king’s aide-de-camp vyliv; : see at 2 Sam 23:8; ˆ[æv; Ël,m, rv,a , an error in writing for av;n; Ël,m, rv,a , cf. v. 17, and for the explanation 2 Kings 5:18) therefore replied with mockery at this prophecy: “Behold (i.e., granted that) the Lord made windows in heaven, will this indeed be?” i.e., such cheapness take place. (For the construction, see Ewald, §357, b.) The ridicule lay more especially in the “windows in heaven,” in which there is an allusion to Gen 7:11, sc. to rain down a flood of flour and corn. Elisha answered seriously: “Behold, thou wilt see it with thine eyes, but not eat thereof” (see vv. 17ff.). The fulfilment of these words of Elisha was brought about by the event narrated in vv. 3ff.
2 KINGS. 7:3-7
“Four men were before the gate as lepers,” or at the gateway, separated from human society, according to the law in Lev 13:46; Num 5:3, probably in a building erected for the purpose (cf. 2 Kings 15:5), just as at the present day the lepers at Jerusalem have their huts by the side of the Zion gate (vid., Strauss, Sinai u. Golgatha, p. 205, and Tobler, Denkblätter aus Jerus. p. 411ff.). These men being on the point of starvation, resolved to invade the camp of the Syrians, and carried out this resolution ãv,n, , in the evening twilight, not the morning twilight (Seb. Schm., Cler., etc.), on account of v. 12, where the king is said to have received the news of the flight of the Syrians during the night. Coming to “the end of the Syrian camp,” i.e., to the outskirts of it on the city side, they found no one there.
For (vv. 6, 7) “the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots and horses, a noise of a great army,” so that, believing the king of Israel to have hired the kings of the Hittites and Egyptians to fall upon them, they fled from the camp in the twilight µv;pp]næAla, , with regard to their life, i.e., to save their life only, leaving behind them their tents, horses, and asses, and the camp as it was.-The miracle, by which God delivered Samaria from the famine or from surrendering to the foe, consisted in an oral delusion, namely, in the fact that the besiegers thought they heard the march of hostile armies from the north and south, and were seized with such panic terror that they fled in the greatest haste, leaving behind them their baggage, and their beasts of draught and burden.
It is impossible to decide whether the noise which they heard had any objective reality, say a miraculous buzzing in the air, or whether it was merely a deception of the senses produced in their ears by God; and this is a matter of no importance, since in either case it was produced miraculously by God. The kings of the Hittites are kings of northern Canaan, upon Lebanon and towards Phoenicia; tjæn; in the broader sense for Canaanites, as in 1 Kings 10:29. The plural, “kings of the Egyptians,” is probably only occasioned by the parallel expression “kings of the Hittites,” and is not to be pressed.
2 KINGS. 7:8-11
When these lepers (these, pointing back to vv. 3ff.) came into the camp which the Syrians had left, they first of all satisfied their own hunger with the provisions which they found in the tents, and then took different valuables and concealed them. But their consciences were soon aroused, so that they said: We are not doing right; this day is a day of joyful tidings: if we are silent and wait till the morning light, guilt will overtake us; “for it is the duty of citizens to make known things relating to public safety” (Grotius). They then resolved to announce the joyful event in the king’s palace, and reported it to the watchman at the city gate. `ry[i r[ewOv stands as a generic term in a collective sense for the persons who watched at the gate; hence the following plural wOl] , and in v. 11 r[ewOv . “And the gatekeepers cried out (what they had heard) and reported it in the king’s palace.”
2 KINGS. 7:12-15
The king imagined that the unexpected departure of the Syrians was only a ruse, namely, that they had left the camp and hidden themselves in the field, to entice the besieged out of the fortress, and then fall upon them and press into the city. hd,c; according to later usage for hd,c; (vid., Ewald, §244, a).
In order to make sure of the correctness or incorrectness of this conjecture, one of the king’s servants (counsellors) gave this advice: “Let them take (the Vav before jqæl; as in 2 Kings 4:41) five of the horses left in the city, that we may send and see how the matter stands.” The words, “Behold they (the five horses) are as the whole multitude of Israel that are left in it (the city); behold they are as the whole multitude of Israel that are gone,” have this meaning: The five horsemen (for horses stand for horsemen, as it is self-evident that it was men on horseback and not the horses themselves that were to be sent out as spies) can but share the fate of the rest of the people of Samaria, whether they return unhurt to meet death by starvation with the people that still remain, or fall into the hands of the enemy and are put to death, in which case they will only suffer the lot of those who have already perished.
Five horses is an approximative small number, and is therefore not at variance with the following statement, that two pair of horses were sent out with chariots and men. The Chethîb ˆwOmh; is not to be altered, since there are other instances in which the first noun is written with the article, though in the construct state (vid., Ewald, §290, e.); and the Keri is only conformed to the following ˆwOmj\Alk;K] . Vv. 14b and 15. They then sent out two chariots with horses, who pursued the flying enemy to the Jordan, and found the whole of the road full of traces of the hurried flight, consisting of clothes and vessels that had been thrown away. The Chethîb µz;p]j;heB] is the only correct reading, since it is only in the Niphal that zpæj; has the meaning to fly in great haste (cf. 1 Sam 23:26; Ps 48:6; 104:7).
2 KINGS. 7:16-20
When the returning messengers reported this, the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians, and this was followed by the consequent cheapness of provisions predicted by Elisha. As the people streamed out, the unbelieving aide-de-camp, whom the king had ordered to take the oversight at the gate rqæp] , to deliver the oversight) for the purpose of preserving order in the crowding of the starving multitude, was trodden down by the people, so that he died, whereby this prediction of Elisha was fulfilled. The exact fulfilment of this prediction appeared so memorable to the historian, that he repeats this prophecy in vv. 18-20 along with the event which occasioned it, and refers again to its fulfilment. ELISHA HELPS THE SHUNAMMITE TO HER PROPERTY THROUGH THE HONOUR IN WHICH HE WAS HELD; AND PREDICTS TO HAZAEL HIS POSSESSION OF THE THRONE. REIGNS OF JORAM AND AHAZIAH, KINGS OF JUDAH.
2 KINGS. 8:1-2
Elisha’s Influence Helps the Shunammite to the Possession of her House and Field.
Vv. 1 and 2. By the advice of Elisha, the woman whose son the prophet had restored to life (2 Kings 4:33) had gone with her family into the land of the Philistines during a seven years’ famine, and had remained there seven years. The two verses are rendered by most commentators in the pluperfect, and that with perfect correctness, for they are circumstantial clauses, and µWq is merely a continuation of rbæd; , the two together preparing the way for, and introducing the following event. The object is not to relate a prophecy of Elisha of the seven years’ famine, but what afterwards occurred, namely, how king Joram was induced by the account of Elisha’s miraculous works to have the property of the Shunammite restored to her upon her application. The seven years’ famine occurred in the middle of Joram’s reign, and the event related here took place before the curing of Naaman the Syrian (ch. 5), as is evident from the fact that Gehazi talked with the king (v. 4), and therefore had not yet been punished with leprosy. But it cannot have originally stood between 2 Kings 4:37 and 4:38, as Thenius supposes, because the incidents related in 2 Kings 4:38-44 belong to the time of this famine (cf. ch. 4:38), and therefore precede the occurrence mentioned here. By the words, “the Lord called the famine, and it came seven years” (sc., lasting that time), the famine is described as a divine judgment for the idolatry of the nation.
2 KINGS. 8:3
When the woman returned to her home at the end of the seven years, she went to the king to cry, i.e., to invoke his help, with regard to her house and her field, of which, as is evident from the context, another had taken possession during her absence.
2 KINGS. 8:4
And just at that time the king was asking Gehazi to relate to him the great things that Elisha had done; and among these he was giving an account of the restoration of the Shunammite’s son to life.
2 KINGS. 8:5-6
While he was relating this, the woman herself came into invoke the help of the king to recover her property, and was pointed out to the king by Gehazi as the very woman of whom he was speaking, which caused the king to be so interested in her favour, that after hearing her complaint he sent a chamberlain with her (saris as in 1 Kings 22:9), with instructions to procure for her not only the whole of her property, but the produce of the land during her absence.-For `bzæ[; without mappiq, see Ewald, §247, d.
2 KINGS. 8:7-9
Elisha Predicts to Hazael at Damascus the Possession of the Throne.
Vv. 7ff. Elisha then came to Damascus at the instigation of the Spirit of God, to carry out the commission which Elijah had received at Horeb with regard to Hazael (1 Kings 19:15). Benhadad king of Syria was sick at that time, and when Elisha’s arrival was announced to him, sent Hazael with a considerable present to the man of God, to inquire of Jehovah through him concerning his illness. The form of the name laez;j (here and v. 15) is etymologically correct; but afterwards it is always written without h md bWfAlk;w] (“and that all kinds of good of Damascus”) follows with a more precise description of the minchah-”a burden of forty camels.” The present consisted of produce or wares of the rich commercial city of Damascus, and was no doubt very considerable; at the same time, it was not so large that forty camels were required to carry it. The affair must be judged according to the Oriental custom, of making a grand display with the sending of presents, and employing as many men or beasts of burden as possible to carry them, every one carrying only a single article (cf. Harmar, Beobb. ii. p. 29, iii. p. 43, and Rosenmüller, A. u. N. Morgenl. iii. p. 17).
2 KINGS. 8:10
According to the Chethîb hy;j; alo , Elisha’s answer was, “Thou wilt not live, and (for) Jehovah has shown me that he will die;” according to the Keri hy;j; wOl] , “tell him: Thou wilt live, but Jehovah,” etc. Most of the commentators follow the ancient versions, and the Masoretes, who reckon our alo among the fifteen passages of the O.T. in which it stands for the pronoun wOl] (vid., Hilleri Arcan. Keri, p. 62f.), and some of the codices, and decide in favour of the Keri. (1) because the conjecture that wOl] was altered into alo in order that Elisha might not be made to utter an untruth, is a very natural one; and (2) on account of the extreme rarity with which a negative stands before the inf. abs. with the finite verb following. But there is not much force in either argument.
The rarity of the position of alo before the inf. abs. followed by a finite verb, in connection with the omission of the pronoun wOl] after rmæa; , might be the very reason why alo was taken as a pronoun; and the confirmation of this opinion might be found in the fact that Hazael brought back this answer to the king: “Thou wilt live” (v. 14). The reading in the text alo (non) is favoured by the circumstance that it is the more difficult of the two, partly because of the unusual position of the negative, and partly because of the contradiction to v. 14. But the alo is found in the same position in other passages (Gen 3:4; Ps 49:8, and Amos 9:8), where the emphasis lies upon the negation; and the contradiction to v. 14 may be explained very simply, from the fact that Hazael did not tell his king the truth, because he wanted to put him to death and usurp the throne. We therefore prefer the reading in the text, since it is not in harmony with the character of the prophets to utter an untruth; and the explanation, “thou wilt not die of thine illness, but come to a violent death,” puts into the words a meaning which they do not possess. For even if Benhadad did not die of his illness, he did not recover from it.
2 KINGS. 8:11
Elisha then fixed Hazael for a long time with his eye, and wept. wgw`rmæ[; literally, he made his face stand fast, and directed it (upon Hazael) to shaming. vBAd[æ as in Judg 3:25; not in a shameless manner (Thenius), but till Hazael was embarrassed by it.
2 KINGS. 8:12
When Hazael asked him the cause of his weeping, Elisha replied: “I know the evil which thou wilt do to the sons of Israel: their fortresses wilt thou set on fire cae jlæv; , see at Judg 1:8), their youths wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children to pieces, and cut asunder their women with child” [qæB; , split, cut open the womb). This cruel conduct towards Israel which is here predicted of Hazael, was only a special elaboration of the brief statement made by the Lord to Elijah concerning Hazael (1 Kings 19:17). The fulfilment of this prediction is indicated generally in 2 Kings 10:32-33, and 13:3ff.; and we may infer with certainty from Hos 10:14 and 14:1, that Hazael really practised the cruelties mentioned.
2 KINGS. 8:13-15
But when Hazael replied in feigned humility, What is thy servant, the dog (i.e., so base a fellow: for bl,K, see at 1 Sam 24:15), that he should do such great things? Elisha said to him, “Jehovah has shown thee to me as king over Aram;” whereupon Hazael returned to his lord, brought him the pretended answer of Elisha that he would live (recover), and the next day suffocated him with a cloth dipped in water. rBek]mæ , from rbæK; , to plait or twist, literally, anything twisted; not, however, a net for gnats or flies (Joseph., J. D. Mich., etc.), but a twisted thick cloth, which when dipped in water became so thick, that when it was spread over the face of the sick man it was sufficient to suffocate him.
2 KINGS. 8:16-17
Reign of Joram of Judah (cf. 2 Chron 21:2-20).-Joram became king in the fifth year of Joram of Israel, while Jehoshaphat his father was (still) king, the latter handing over the government to him two years before his death (see at 2 Kings 1:17), and reigned eight years, namely, two years to the death of Jehoshaphat and six years afterwards. f188 The Chethîb hn,v; hn,mov] is not to be altered, since the rule that the numbers two to ten take the noun in the plural is not without exception (cf. Ewald, §287, i.).
2 KINGS. 8:18-19
Joram had married a daughter of Ahab, namely Athaliah (v. 26), and walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, transplanting the worship of Baal into his kingdom. Immediately after the death of Jehoshaphat he murdered his brothers, apparently with no other object than to obtain possession of the treasures which his father had left them (2 Chron 21:2-4). This wickedness of Joram would have been followed by the destruction of Judah, had not the Lord preserved a shoot to the royal house for David’s sake. For ryni wOl ˆtæn; see 1 Kings 11:36. The following word ˆBe serves as an explanation of ryni wOl] , “a light with regard to his sons,” i.e., by the fact that he kept sons (descendants) upon the throne.
2 KINGS. 8:20-22
Nevertheless the divine chastisement was not omitted. The ungodliness of Joram was punished partly by the revolt of the Edomites and of the city of Libnah from his rule, and partly by a horrible sickness of which he died (2 Chron 21:12-15). Edom, which had hitherto had only a vicegerent with the title of king (see 2 Kings 3:9 and 1 Kings 22:48), threw off the authority of Judah, and appointed its own king, under whom it acquired independence, as the attempt of Joram to bring it back again under his control completely failed. The account of this attempt in v. 21 and 2 Chron 21:9 is very obscure. “Joram went over to Zair, and all his chariots of war with him; and it came to pass that he rose up by night and smote the Edomites round about, and indeed the captains of the war-chariots, and the people fled (i.e., the Judaean men of war, not the Edomites) to their tents.” It is evident from this, that Joram had advanced to Zair in Idumaea; but there he appears to have been surrounded and shut in, so that in the night he fought his way through, and had reason to be glad that he had escaped utter destruction, since his army fled to their homes. ry[ix; is an unknown place in Idumaea, which Movers, Hitzig, and Ewald take to be Zoar, but without considering that Zoar was in the land of Moab, not in Edom. The Chronicles have instead rcæ `µ[i , “with his captains,” from a mere conjecture; whilst Thenius regards ts`yrh as altered by mistake from ry[ice (“to Seir”), which is very improbable in the case of so well-known a name as ry[ice . bbæs; is a later mode of writing for bbæs; , probably occasioned by the frequently occurring word bybis; . “To this day,” i.e., to the time when the original sources of our books were composed. For the Edomites were subjugated again by Amaziah and Uzziah (2 Kings 14:7 and 22), though under Ahaz they made incursions into Judah again (2 Chron 28:17).-At that time Libnah also revolted. This was a royal city of the early Canaanites, and at a later period it was still a considerable fortress (2 Kings 19:8). It is probably to be sought for in the ruins of Arak el Menshiyeh, two hours to the west of Beit-Jibrin (see the Comm. on Josh 10:29). This city probably revolted from Judah on the occurrence of an invasion of the land by the Philistines, when the sons of Joram were carried off, with the exception of the youngest, Jehoahaz (Ahaziah: 2 Chron 21:16-17).
2 KINGS. 8:23-24
According to 2 Chron 21:18ff., Joram died of a terrible disease, in which his bowels fell out, and was buried in the city of David, though not in the family sepulchre of the kings. f
189 2 KINGS. 8:25-26
pReign of Ahaziah of Judah (cf. 2 Chron 22:1-6). Ahaziah, the youngest son of Joram, ascended the throne in the twenty-second year of his age. The statement in 2 Chron 22:2, that he was forty-two years old when he became king, rests upon a copyist’s error, namely, a confusion of k twenty with m forty. Now, since his father became king at the age of thirty-two, and reigned eight years, Ahaziah must have been born in the nineteenth year of his age.
Consequently it may appear strange that Ahaziah had brothers still older than himself (2 Chron 21:17); but as early marriages are common in the East, and the royal princes had generally concubines along with their wife of the first rank, as is expressly stated of Joram in 2 Chron 21:17, he might have had some sons in his nineteenth year. His mother was called Athaliah, and was a daughter of the idolatrous Jezebel. In v. 26 and 2 Chron 22:2 she is called the daughter, i.e., grand-daughter, of Omri; for, according to v. 18, she was a daughter of Ahab. Omri, the grand-father, is mentioned in v. 26 as the founder of the dynasty which brought so much trouble upon Israel and Judah through its idolatry.
2 KINGS. 8:27
Ahaziah, like his father, reigned in the spirit of Ahab, because he allowed his mother to act as his adviser (2 Chron 22:3-4). 2 KINGS 8:28,29 Ahaziah went with Joram of Israel, his mother’s brother, to the war with the Syrians at Ramoth. The contest for this city, which had already cost Ahab his life (1 Kings), was to furnish the occasion, according to the overruling providence of God, for the extermination of the whole of Omri’s family. Being wounded in the battle with the Syrians, Joram king of Israel returned to Jezreel to be healed of his wounds. His nephew Ahaziah visited him there, and there he met with his death at the same time as Joram at the hands of Jehu, who had conspired against Joram (see 2 Kings 9:14ff. and 2 Chron 22:7-9). Whether the war with Hazael at Ramoth was for the recapture of this city, which had been taken by the Syrians, or simply for holding it against the Syrians, it is impossible to determine. All that we can gather from 2 Kings 9:14 is, that at that time Ramoth was in the possession of the Israelites, whether it had come into their possession again after the disgraceful rout of the Syrians before Samaria (ch. 7), or whether, perhaps, it was not recovered till this war. For yMiræa without the article see Ewald, §277, c.
Verse 29. hm;r; = d[;l]Gi tmor;B] , v. 28; see at 1 Kings 22:4. JEHU ANOINTED KING. HIS CONSPIRACY AGAINST JORAM. Joram, Ahaziah, and Jezebel Slain.
2 KINGS. 9:1-10
Anointing of Jehu by Command of Elisha.
While the Israelitish army was at Ramoth, Elisha executed the last of the commissions which Elijah had received at Horeb (1 Kings 19:16), by sending a pupil of the prophets into the camp to anoint Jehu the commander-in-chief of the army as king, and to announce to him, in the name of Jehovah, that he would be king over Israel; and to charge him to exterminate the house of Ahab.
Verse 1-3. Vv. 1-3 contain the instructions which Elisha gave to the pupil of the prophets. ˆm,v, ËPæ as in 1 Sam 10:1. aWhye µv; ha;r; , look round there for Jehu. wgwµWq , let him (bid him) rise up from the midst of his brethren, i.e., of his comrades in arms. rd,j, rd,j, : the true meaning is, “into the innermost chamber” (see at 1 Kings 20:30). V. 3 contains only the leading points of the commission to Jehu, the full particulars are communicated in the account of the fulfilment in vv. 6ff. “And flee, and thou shalt not wait.” Elisha gave him this command, not to protect him from danger on the part of the secret adherents of Ahab (Theodoret, Cler.), but to prevent all further discussions, or “that he might not mix himself up with other affairs” (Seb. Schmidt).
Verse 4. “And the young man, the servant of the prophet, went.” The second r[ænæ has the article in the construct state, contrary to the rule (vid., Ges. §110, 2, b.).
Verse 5-7. After the communication of the fact that he had a word to Jehu, the latter rose up and went with him into the house, i.e., into the interior of the house, in the court of which the captains were sitting together. There the pupil of the prophets poured oil upon Jehu’s head, and announced to him that Jehovah had anointed him king for Israel, and that he was to smite, i.e., exterminate, the house of Ahab, to avenge upon it the blood of the prophets (vid., 1 Kings 18:4; 19:10). Verse 8-10. Vv. 8-10 are simply a repetition of the threat in 1 Kings 21:21-23. For yz’ ql,je , see at 1 Kings 21:23.
2 KINGS. 9:11-15
Jehu’s Conspiracy against Joram.
Verse 11. When Jehu came out again to his comrades in arms, after the departure of the pupil of the prophets, they inquired µwOlv; , i.e., “is it all well? why did this madman come to thee?” not because they were afraid that he might have done him some injury (Ewald), or that he might have brought some evil tidings (Thenius), but simply because they conjectured that he had brought some important news. They called the prophet [gæv; , a madman, in derision, with reference to the ecstatic utterances of the prophets when in a state of holy inspiration. Jehu answered evasively, “Ye know the man and his muttering,” i.e., ye know that he is mad and says nothing rational. jæyci includes both meditating and speaking.
Verse 12. They were not contented with this answer, however, but said rq,v, , i.e., thou dost not speak truth. Jehu thereupon informed them that he had anointed him king over Israel in the name of Jehovah.
Verse 13. After hearing this, they took quickly every man his garment, laid it under hi upon the steps, blew the trumpet, and proclaimed him king. The clothes, which consisted simply of a large piece of cloth for wrapping round the body (see at 1 Kings 11:29), they spread out in the place of carpets upon the steps, which served as a throne, to do homage to Jehu.
For these signs of homage compare Matt 21:7 and Wetstein, N. Test. ad h. l. The difficult words twOl[\Mæhæ µr,G,Ala, , as to the meaning of which the early translators have done nothing but guess, can hardly be rendered in any other way than that proposed by Kimchi (lib. rad.), super ipsosmet gradus, upon the steps themselves = upon the bare steps; µr,G, being taken according to Chaldee usage like the Hebrew `µx,[, in the sense of substantia rei, whereas the rendering given by Lud. de Dieu, after the Arabic jarm, sectio-super aliquem e gradibus, is without analogy in Hebrew usage (vid., L. de Dieu ad h. l., and Ges. Thes. p. 303). f190 The meaning is, that without looking for a suitable place on which to erect a throne, they laid their clothes upon the bare steps, or the staircase of the house in which they were assembled, and set him thereon to proclaim him king.
Verse 14-15. Thus Jehu conspired against Joram, who (as is related again in the circumstantial clause which follows from hy;h; µr;wOy to µr;a Ël,m, ; cf. 2 Kings 8:28-29) had been keeping guard at Ramoth in Gilead, i.e., had defended this city against the attacks of Hazael, and had returned to Jezreel to be healed of the wounds which he had received; and said, “If it is your wish vp,n, ), let no fugitive go from the city, to announce it in Jezreel (viz., what had taken place, the conspiracy or the proclamation of Jehu as king).”
It is evident from this, that the Israelites were in possession of the city of Ramoth, and were defending it against the attacks of the Syrians, so that rmæv; in v. 14 cannot be understood as relating to the siege of Ramoth. The Chethîb dgæn; for dgæn; is not to be altered according to the Keri, as there are many examples to be found of syncope in cases of this kind (vid., Olshausen, Lehrb. d. Hebr. Spr. p. 140).
2 KINGS. 9:16-29
Slaying of the Two Kings, Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah.
Verse 16. Jehu drove without delay to Jezreel, where Joram was lying sick, and Ahaziah had come upon a visit to him.
Verse 17-21. As the horsemen, who were sent to meet him on the announcement of the watchman upon the tower at Jezreel that a troop was approaching, joined the followers of Jehu, and eventually the watchman, looking down from the tower, thought that he could discover the driving of Jehu in the approaching troop, Joram and Ahaziah mounted their chariots to drive and meet him, and came upon him by the portion of the ground of Naboth the Jezreelite. The second h[;p]vi in v. 17 is a rarer form of the absolute state (see Ges. §80, 2, Anm. 2, and Ewald, §173, d.).- µwOlv;l]W ËL]Ahm : “what hast thou to do with peace?” i.e., to trouble thyself about it. yræj\aæaLA, Bso : “turn behind me,” sc. to follow me. mk gh;n]mi : “the driving is like the driving of Jehu; for he drives like a madman.” ˆwO[G;vi , in insania, i.e., in actual fact in praecipitatione (Vatabl.). “The portion of Naboth” is the vineyard of Naboth mentioned in 1 Kings 21, which formed only one portion of the gardens of the king’s palace. Verse 22. To Joram’s inquiry, “Is it peace, Jehu?” the latter replied, “What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her many witchcrafts continue?” The notion of continuance is implied in `d[æ (see Ewald, §217, e.); ˆWnz; is spiritual whoredom, i.e., idolatry. ãv,K, , incantationes magicae, then witchcrafts generally, which were usually associated with idolatry (cf. Deut 18:10ff.).
Verse 23. Joram detecting the conspiracy from this reply, turned round ( wyd;y; Ëpoj\yæ as in 1 Kings 22:34) and fled, calling out to Ahaziah hm;r]mi , “deceit,” i.e., we are deceived, in actual fact betrayed.
Verse 24. But Jehu seized the bow tv,q, dy; alem; , lit., filled his hand with the bow), and shot Joram “between his arms,” i.e., in his back between the shoulders in an oblique direction, so that the arrow came out at his heart, and Joram sank down in his chariot.
Verse 25-26. Jehu then commanded his aide-de-camp vyliv; , see at 2 Sam 23:8) Bidkar to cast the slain man into the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, and said, “For remember how we, I and thou, both rode (or drove) behind his father Ahab, and Jehovah pronounced this threat upon him.” hT;aæ ynæa are accusatives, written with a looser connection for tae tae , as the apposition bkær; shows: literally, think of me and thee, the riders. The olden translators were misled by ynæa , and therefore transposed rkæz; into the first person, and Thenius naturally follows them. dm,,x, bkær; , riding in pairs. This is the rendering adopted by most of the commentators, although it might be taken, as it is by Kimchi and Bochart, as signifying the two persons who are carried in the same chariot. aC;mæ , a burden, then a prophetic utterance of a threatening nature (see the Comm. on Nah 1:1).
For the connection of the clauses wgw hwO;hywæ , see Ewald, §338, a. In v. Jehu quotes the word of God concerning Ahab in 1 Kings 21:19 so far as the substance is concerned, to show that he is merely the agent employed in executing it. “Truly ( alAµai , a particle used in an oath) the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons have I seen yesterday, saith the Lord, and upon this field will I requite him.” The slaying of the sons of Naboth is not expressly mentioned in 1 Kings 21:13, “because it was so usual a thing, that the historian might leave it out as a matter of course” (J. D. Mich., Ewald). It necessarily followed, however, from the fact that Naboth’s field was confiscated (see at 1 Kings 21:14). Verse 27-29. When Ahaziah saw this, he fled by the way to the gardenhouse, but was smitten, i.e., mortally wounded, by Jehu at the height of Gur near Jibleam, so that as he was flying still farther to Megiddo he died, and was carried as a corpse by his servants to Jerusalem, and buried there.
After hk;n; , “and him also, smite him,” we must supply hk;n; , “and they smote him,” which has probably only dropped out through a copyist’s error. The way by which Ahaziah fled, and the place where he was mortally wounded, cannot be exactly determined, as the situation of the localities named has not yet been ascertained. The “garden-house” ˆGæ tyiBæ ) cannot have formed a portion of the royal gardens, but must have stood at some distance from the city of Jezreel, as Ahaziah went away by the road thither, and was not wounded till he reached the height of Gur near Jibleam. rWgAhle[\mæ , the ascent or eminence of Gur, is defined by Jibleam. Now, as Ahaziah fled from Jezreel to Megiddo past Jibleam, Thenius thinks that Jibleam must have been situated between Jezreel and Megiddo. But between Jezreel and Megiddo there is only the plain of Jezreel or Esdrelom, in which we cannot suppose that there was any such eminence as that of Gur. Moreover Jibleam or Bileam (1 Chron 6:55, see at Josh 17:11) was probably to the south of Jenin, where the old name µ[;l]Bi has been preserved in the well of Arab. ..., Belameh, near Beled Sheik Manssûr, which is half an hour’s journey off.
And it is quite possible to bring this situation of Jibleam into harmony with the account before us. For instance, it is a priori probable that Ahaziah would take the road to Samaria when he fled from Jezreel, not only because his father’s brothers were there (2 Kings 10:13), but also because it was the most direct road to Jerusalem; and he might easily be pursued by Jehu and his company to the height of Gur near Jibleam before they overtook him, since the distance from Jezreel (Zerîn) to Jenin is only two hours and a half (Rob. Pal. iii. p. 828), and the height of Gur might very well be an eminence which he would pass on the road to Jibleam. But the wounded king may afterwards have altered the direction of his flight for the purpose of escaping to Megiddo, probably because he thought that he should be in greater safety there than he would be in Samaria. f191 In v. 29 we are told once more in which year of Joram’s reign Ahaziah became king. The discrepancy between “the eleventh year” here and “the twelfth year” in 2 Kings 8:25 may be most simply explained, on the supposition that there was a difference in the way of reckoning the commencement of the years of Joram’s reign.
2 KINGS. 9:30-31
Death of Jezebel.
Verse 30. When Jehu came to Jezreel and Jezebel heard of it, “she put her eyes into lead polish (i.e., painted them with it), and beautified her head and placed herself at the window.” ËWp is a very favourite eye-paint with Oriental women even to the present day. It is prepared from antimony ore (Arab. khl, Cohol or Stibium of the Arabs), which when pounded yields a black powder with a metallic brilliancy, which was laid upon the eyebrows and eyelashes either in a dry state as a black powder, or moistened generally with oil and made into an ointment, which is applied with a fine smooth eye-pencil of the thickness of an ordinary goose-quill, made either of wood, metal, or ivory. The way to use it was to hold the central portion of the pencil horizontally between the eyelids, and then draw it out between them, twisting it round all the while, so that the edges of the eyelids were blackened all round; and the object was to heighten the splendour of the dark southern eye, and give it, so to speak, a more deeply glowing fire, and to impart a youthful appearance to the whole of the eyelashes even in extreme old age. Rosellini found jars with eye-paint of this kind in the early Egyptian graves (vid., Hille, über den Gebrauch u. die Zusammensetzung der oriental. Augenschminke: Deutsch. morg. Ztsch. v. p. 236ff.).-Jezebel did this that she might present an imposing appearance to Jehu and die as a queen; not to allure him by her charms (Ewald, after Ephr. Syr.). For (v. 31) when Jehu entered the palace gate, she cried out to him, “Is it peace, thou Zimri, murderer of his lord?” She addressed Jehu as Zimri the murderer of the king, to point to the fate which Jehu would bring upon himself by the murder of the king, as Zimri had already done (vid., Kings 16:10-18).
2 KINGS. 9:32-33
But Jehu did not deign to answer the worthless woman; he simply looked up to the window and inquired: “Who is (holds) with me? who?” Then two, three chamberlains looked out (of the side windows), and by Jehu’s command threw the proud queen out of the window, so that some of her blood spirted upon the wall and the horses (of Jehu), and Jehu trampled her down, driving over her with his horses and chariot.
2 KINGS. 9:34
Jehu thereupon entered the palace, ate and drank, and then said to his men: “Look for this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king’s daughter.” rræa; , the woman smitten by the curse of God.
2 KINGS. 9:35-37
But when they went to bury her, they found nothing but her skull, the two feet, and the two hollow hands. The rest had been eaten by the dogs and dragged away. When this was reported to Jehu, he said: “This is the word of the Lord, which He spake by His servant Elijah,” etc. (1 Kings 21:23), i.e., this has been done in fulfilment of the word of the Lord. V. 37 is also to be regarded as a continuation of the prophecy of Elijah quoted by Jehu (and not as a closing remark of the historian, as Luther supposes), although what Jehu says here does not occur verbatim in 1 Kings 21:23, but Jehu has simply expanded rather freely the meaning of that prophecy. w¦haayaat (Chethîb) is the older form of the 3rd pers. fem. Kal, which is only retained here and there (vid., Ewald, §194, a.). rv,a is a conjunction (see Ewald, §337, a.): “that men may not be able to say, This is Jezebel,” i.e., that they may no more be able to recognise Jezebel.
EXTERMINATION OF THE OTHER SONS OF AHAB, OR THE BRETHREN OF AHAZIAH OF JUDAH, AND OF THE PROPHETS OF BAAL.
2 KINGS. 10:1-3
Extermination of the Seventy Sons of Ahab in Samaria.
As Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria ˆBe in the wider sense, viz., sons, including grandsons see at v. 13, as is evident from the fact that ˆmæa; , foster-fathers, are mentioned, whereas Ahab had been dead fourteen years, and therefore his youngest sons could not have had foster-fathers any longer), Jehu sent a letter to the elders of the city and to the foster-fathers of the princes, to the effect that they were to place one of the sons of their lord upon the throne. There is something very strange in the words ˆqez; la[er]z]yi rcæ , “to the princes of Jezreel, the old men,” partly on account of the name Jezreel, and partly on account of the combination of ˆqez; with rcæ . If we compare v. 5, it is evident that ˆqez; cannot be the adjective to zy rcæ , but denotes the elders of the city, so that the preposition lae has dropped out before µynqzh . la[er]z]yi rcæ , the princes or principal men of Jezreel, might certainly be the chief court-officials of the royal house of Ahab, since Ahab frequently resided in Jezreel. But against this supposition there is not only the circumstance that we cannot discover any reason why the court-officials living in Samaria should be called princes of Jezreel, but also v. 5, where, instead of the princes of Jezreel, the governor of the city and the governor of the castle are mentioned.
Consequently there is an error of the text in la[er]z]yi , which ought to read lae `ry[i , though it is older than the ancient versions, since the Chaldee has the reading la[er]z]yi , and no doubt the Alexandrian translator read the same, as the Septuagint has sometimes th>v po>lewv , like the Vulgate, and sometimes Samarei>av , both unquestionably from mere conjecture. The “princes of the city” are, according to v. 5, the prefect of the palace and the captain of the city; the ˆqez; , “elders,” the magistrates of Samaria; and ba;j]aæ ˆmæa; , the foster-fathers and tutors appointed by Ahab for his sons and grandsons. ba;j]aæ is governed freely by ˆmæa; . In v. 2 the words from tae to hanesheq form an explanatory circumstantial clause: “since the sons of your lord are with you, and with you the war-chariots and horses, and a fortified city and arms,” i.e., since you have everything in your hands-the royal princes and also the power to make one of them king. It is perfectly evident from the words, “the sons of your lord,” i.e., of king Joram, that the seventy sons of Ahab included grandsons also. This challenge of Jehu was only a ruse, by which he hoped to discover the feelings of the leading men of the capital of the kingdom, because he could not venture, without being well assured of them, to proceed to Samaria to exterminate the remaining members of the royal family of Ahab who were living there. `l[æ µjæl; , to fight concerning, i.e., for a person, as in Judg 9:17.
2 KINGS. 10:4-5
This ruse had the desired result. The recipients of the letter were in great fear, and said, Two kings could not stand before him, how shall we? and sent messengers to announce their submission, and to say that they were willing to carry out his commands, and had no desire to appoint a king.
2 KINGS. 10:6-7
Jehu then wrote them a second letter, to say that if they would hearken to his voice, they were to send to him on the morrow at this time, to Jezreel, the heads of the sons of their lord; which they willingly did, slaying the seventy men, and sending him their heads in baskets. d ˆBe vyai varo , “the heads of the men of sons of your lord,” i.e., of the male descendants of Ahab, in which vyai may be explained from the fact that µk,yneda\AyneB] has the meaning “royal princes” (see the similar case in Judg 19:22). In order to bring out still more clearly the magnitude of Jehu’s demand, the number of the victims required is repeated in the circumstantial clause, “and there were seventy men of the king’s sons with tae ) the great men of the city, who had brought them up.”
2 KINGS. 10:8-10
When the heads were brought, Jehu had them piled up in two heaps before the city-gate, and spoke the next morning to the assembled people in front of them: “Ye are righteous. Behold I have conspired against my lord, and have slain him, but who has slain all these?” Jehu did not tell the people that the king’s sons had been slain by his command, but spake as if this had been done without his interfering by a higher decree, that he might thereby justify his conspiracy in the eyes of the people, and make them believe what he says still further in v. 10: “See then that of the word of the Lord nothing falls to the ground (i.e., remains unfulfilled) which Jehovah has spoken concerning the house of Ahab; and Jehovah has done what He spake through His servant Elijah.”
2 KINGS. 10:11
The effect of these words was, that the people looked quietly on when he proceeded to slay all the rest of the house of Ahab, i.e., all the more distant relatives in Jezreel, and “all his great men,” i.e., the superior officers of the fallen dynasty, and “all his acquaintances,” i.e., friends and adherents, and “all his priests,” probably court priest, such as the heathen kings had; not secular counsellors or nearest servants (Thenius), a meaning which kohaniym never has, not even in 2 Sam 8:18 and 1 Kings 4:5.
2 KINGS. 10:12-14
Extermination of the Brothers of Ahaziah of Judah and of the Other Members of Ahab’s Dynasty.
Vv. 12ff. Jehu then set out to Samaria; and on the way, at the bindinghouse of the shepherds, he met with the brethren of Ahaziah, who were about to visit their royal relations, and when he learned who they were, had them all seized, viz., forty-two men, and put to death at the cistern of the binding-house. Ëlæy; awOB, “he came and went,” appears pleonastic; the words are not to be transposed, however, as Böttcher and Thenius propose after the Syriac, but Ëlæy; is added, because Jehu did not go at once to Samaria, but did what follows on the way. By transposing the words, the slaying of the relations of Ahaziah would be transferred to Samaria, in contradiction to vv. 15ff.-The words from wgw tyiBæ aWh onwards, and from aWhye to hd;Why] Ël,m, , are two circumstantial clauses, in which the subject aWhye is added in the second clause for the sake of greater clearness: “when he was at the binding-house of the shepherds on the road, and Jehu (there) met with the brethren of Ahaziah, he said....” h[;r; dq,[e tyBe (Baithaka’th, LXX) is explained by Rashi, after the Chaldee ay;[ær; tvæynik] tybe , as signifying locus conventus pastorum, the meeting-place of the shepherds; and Gesenius adopts the same view.
But the rest of the earlier translators for the most part adopt the rendering, locus ligationis pastorum, from `dqæ[; , to bind, and think of a house ubi pastores ligabant oves quando eas tondebant. In any case it was a house, or perhaps more correctly a place, where the shepherds were in the habit of meeting, and that on the road from Jezreel to Samaria; according to Eusebius on the Onom. s.v. Baiqaka>q , a place fifteen Roman miles from Legio (Lejun, Megiddo), in the great plain of Jezreel: a statement which may be correct with the exception of the small number of miles, but which does not apply to the present village of Beit Kad to the east of Jenin (Rob.
Pal. iii. p. 157), with which, according to Thenius, it exactly coincides. hy;z]jæa ja; , for which we have j ja; ˆBe , Ahaziah’s brothers’ sons, in 2 Chron 22:8, were not the actual brothers of Ahaziah, since they had been carried off by the Arabians and put to death before he ascended the throne (2 Chron 21:17), but partly step- brothers, i.e., sons of Joram by his concubines, and partly Ahaziah’s nephews and cousins. µwOlv; , ad salutandum, i.e., to inquire how they were, or to visit the sons of the king (Joram) and of the queen-mother, i.e., Jezebel, therefore Joram’s brothers.
In v. 1 they are both included among the “sons” of Ahab.
2 KINGS. 10:15-17
As Jehu proceeded on his way, he met with Jehonadab the son of Rechab, and having saluted him, inquired, “Is they heart true as my heart towards thy heart?” and on his replying vye , “it is (honourable or true),” he bade him come up into the chariot, saying vye , “if it is (so), give me thy hand;” whereupon he said still further, “Come with me and see my zeal for Jehovah,” and then drove with him to Samaria, and there exterminated all that remained of Ahab’s family. Jehonadab the son of Rechab was the tribe-father of the Rechabites (Jer 35:6). The rule which the latter laid down for his sons and descendants for all time, was to lead a simple nomad life, namely, to dwell in tents, follow no agricultural pursuits, and abstain from wine; which rule they observed so sacredly, that the prophet Jeremiah held them up as models before his own contemporaries, who broke the law of God in the most shameless manner, and was able to announce to the Rechabites that they would be exempted from the Chaldaean judgment for their faithful observance of their father’s precept (Jer 35). Rechab, from whom the descendants of Jehonadab derived their tribe-name, was the son of Hammath, and belonged to the tribe of the Kenites (1 Chron 2:55), to which Hobab the father-in-law of Moses also belonged (Num 10:29); so that the Rechabites were probably descendants of Hobab, since the Kenites the sons of Hobab had gone with the Israelites from the Arabian desert to Canaan, and had there carried on their nomad life (Judg 1:16; 4:11; 1 Sam 15:6; see Witsii Miscell. ss. ii. p. 223ff.). This Jehonadab was therefore a man distinguished for the strictness of his life, and Jehu appears to have received him in this friendly manner on account of the great distinction in which he was held, not only in his own tribe, but also in Israel generally, that he might exalt himself in the eyes of the people through his friendship. f192 In Ëb]b;l]Ata, vyej\ , “is with regard to thy heart honourable or upright?” tae is used to subordinate the noun to the clause, in the sense of quoad (see Ewald, §277, a.). µyria;v]NihæAlK; , “all that remained to Ahab,” i.e., all the remaining members of Ahab’s house.
2 KINGS. 10:18-20
Extermination of the Prophets and Priests of Baal and of the Baal-Worship.
Vv. 28ff. Under the pretence of wishing to serve Baal even more than Ahab had done, Jehu appointed a great sacrificial festival for this idol, and had all the worshippers of Baal throughout all the land summoned to attend it; he then placed eighty of his guards around the temple of Baal in which they were assembled, and after the sacrifice was offered, had the priests and worshippers of Baal cut down by them with the sword. Objectively considered, the slaying of the worshippers of Baal was in accordance with the law, and, according to the theocratical principle, was perfectly right; but the subjective motives which impelled Jehu, apart from the artifice, were thoroughly selfish, as Seb. Schmidt has correctly observed. For since the priests and prophets of Baal throughout the Israelitish kingdom were bound up with the dynasty of Ahab, with all their interests and with their whole existence, they might be very dangerous to Jehu, if on any political grounds he should happen not to promote their objects, whereas by their extermination he might hope to draw to his side the whole of the very numerous supporters of the Jehovah-worship, which had formerly been legally established in Israel, and thereby establish his throne more firmly.
The very fact that Jehu allowed the calf-worship to continue, is a proof that he simply used religion as the means of securing his own ends (v. 29). `hr;x;[ vdæq; (v. 20), “sanctify a festal assembly,” i.e., proclaim in the land a festal assembly for Baal (compare Isa 1:13; and for `hr;x;[ = `hr;x;[ , see at Lev 23:36). ar;q; , and they proclaimed, sc. the festal meeting.
2 KINGS. 10:21
The temple of Baal was filled hp, hp, , “from one edge (end) to the other.” hp, in this sense is not to be derived from ha;pe , a corner (Cler., Ges.), but signifies mouth, or the upper rim of a vessel. Metaphora sumta a vasibus humore aliquo plenis: Vatabl.
2 KINGS. 10:22
hj;T;l]M,hæAl[æ rv,a\ is the keeper of the wardrobe (Arab. praefectus vestium), for the hap leg hj;T;l]m, signifies vestiarium (Ges. Thes. p. 764).
The reference is not to the wardrobe of the king’s palace, out of which Jehu had every one who took part in the feast supplied with a festal dress or new caftan (Deres., Then., etc.), but the wardrobe of the temple of Baal, since the priests of Baal had their own sacred dresses like the priests of almost all religions (as Silius has expressly shown in his Ital. iii. 24-27, of the priests of the Gadetanic Hercules). These dresses were only worn at the time of worship, and were kept in a wardrobe in the temple.
2 KINGS. 10:23-24
Jehu then came with Jehonadab to the temple, and commanded the worshippers of Baal to be carefully examined, that there might not be one of the worshippers of Jehovah with (among) them. When the priests of Baal were preparing to offer sacrifice, Jehu had eighty men of his guards stationed before the temple, and laid this injunction upon them: “Whoever lets one of the men escape whom I bring into your hands (we must read flæm; instead of flæm; ), his life shall answer for his (the escaped man’s) life. vp,n, tjæTæ vp,n, , as in 1 Kings 20:39.
2 KINGS. 10:25
hl;K; : when he (the sacrificing priest, not Jehu) had finished the burntoffering (the singular suffix ow may also be taken as indefinite, when one had finished, vid., Ewald, §294, b.), Jehu commanded the runners and aides-de-camp: Come and smite them (the worshippers of Baal), without one coming out (escaping); whereupon they smote them with the edge of the sword, i.e., slew them unsparingly. Ëlæv; : and the runners and aides-decamp threw (those who had been slain) away, and went into the citadel of the temple of Baal. beeyt-haba`al `iyr cannot be the city of the temple of Baal, i.e., that part of the city in which the temple of Baal stood, for the runners were already in the court of the temple of Baal; but it is no doubt the temple-citadel, the true temple-house `ry[i from `rW[ , locus circumseptus)-templum Baalis magnifice exstructum instar arcis alicujus (Seb. Schm.).
2 KINGS. 10:26
They then fetched the columns hb;Xemæ ) out of the temple and burned them (the suffix in ãræc; refers to the plural hb;Xemæ taken as an abstract noun, as in 2 Kings 3:3; cf. Ewald, §317, a.). They then broke in pieces the l[æBæ hb;Xemæ , column of Baal, i.e., the real image of Baal, probably a conical stone dedicated to Baal, whereas the hb;Xemæ , which were burned, were wooden columns as pa’redroi or su’mboomoi of Baal (see Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 674).
2 KINGS. 10:27
Lastly, they destroyed the temple itself and made it l¦macharaa’owt, privies, for which the Masoretes have substituted the euphemistic mowtsaa’owt, sinks, as a mark of the greatest insult, many examples of which are to be met with among Oriental tribes (vid., Ezra 6:11; Dan 2:5, and Haevernick in loc.).-Thus Jehu exterminated Baal from Israel. This remark in v. forms the introduction to the history of Jehu’s reign, with which the last epoch in the history of the ten tribes begins.
FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REIGNS OF JEHU IN ISRAEL, AND ATHALIAH IN JUDAH, TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.
In the 161 years which this epoch embraces, from B.C. 883 to 722, the fate of the kingdom of Israel was accomplished. The first hundred years, which comprised the reigns of Jehu and his descendants, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and Jeroboam II, were the last day of grace for the rebellious ten tribes, at the expiration of which the judgment began to burst upon them. As the anointing of Jehu by Elisha was performed by the command of God, so also was the religious reform, which Jehu vigorously commenced with the extermination of the Baal-worship, a fruit of the labours of the prophets Elijah and Elisha within the sinful kingdom; but this reform stood still halfway, since Jehu merely restored the idolatrous Jehovah-worship introduced by Jeroboam, and neither he himself nor his successors desisted from that sin. In order, therefore, if possible, to complete the work begun by His prophets of converting Israel to its God, the Lord now began to visit the rebellious tribes with severe chastisements, giving them up into the power of the Syrians, who under Hazael not only conquered the whole of the land to the east of the Jordan, but almost annihilated the military force of the Israelites (2 Kings 10:32-33; 13:3,7).
This chastisement did not remain without fruit. Jehoahaz prayed to the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon the oppressed for the sake of His covenant with the patriarchs, and sent them deliverers in Joash, who recovered the conquered land from the Syrians after the death of Hazael, and in Jeroboam, who even restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom (2 Kings 13:4-5, and 23ff., 14:25-26). But with this renewal of external strength, luxuriance and debauchery, partiality in judgment and oppression of the poor began to prevail, as we may see from the prophecies of Hosea and Amos (Amos 5:10ff., 2 Kings 6:1-6; Hos 6:7ff.); and in addition to the Jehovah-worship, which was performed in an idolatrous manner (Hos 8:13; 9:4-5), the worship of Baal was carried on most vigorously (Hos 2:13,15; 10:1-2), so that the people made pilgrimages to Bethel, Gilgal, and even to Beersheba in the south of the kingdom of Judah (Hos 4:15; Amos 4:4; 5:5; 8:14), and on account of the worship thus zealously performed, relied in carnal security upon the protection of God, and scoffed at the judgments of the Lord which were threatened by the prophets (Amos 5:14,18).
This internal corruption increased with the death of Jeroboam, till all civil order was dissolved. Anarchy, conflicts for the possession of the throne, and repeated regicides, broke up the kingdom and made it ripe for the judgment of destruction, which was gradually accomplished by the Assyrians, whom one party in the reign of Menahem had called to their help, under Pul, Tiglath-pileser, and Shalmanasar.-The kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, was purified from the destructive consequence of the alliance with the dynasty of Ahab through the overthrow by the high priest Jehoiada of the godless Athaliah, who had murdered the royal children after the death of Ahaziah and seized upon the government, and, with the renewal of the covenant and the extermination of the worship of Baal under the young king whom Jehoiada had trained, was brought back to the theocratic path; and notwithstanding the fact that in the closing years of Joash and Amaziah idolatry found admission again, was preserved in that path, in which it increased in strength and stability, so that not only were the wounds quickly healed which the war with Israel, occasioned by Amaziah’s pride, had inflicted upon it through the conquest and plunder of Jerusalem (2 Kings 14:8ff.), but during the sixty-eight years comprised in the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, the people rose to a state of great prosperity and wealth through the pursuit of agriculture and trade, and a thoughtful development of the resources of the land, and the kingdom acquired great external power through the humiliation of the Philistines and the subjugation of the Edomites once more (2 Chron 26).
At the same time, neither of these kings was able entirely to suppress the illegal worship of the high places, although the temple-worship was regularly sustained according to the law; and with the increase of wealth and power, not only did luxuriance and pride set in, but also idolatry and an inclination to heathen ways (Isa 2:5-8 and 16ff., 2 Kings 5:18ff.); so that even in the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham Isaiah predicted the day of the Lord’s judgment, which was to fall upon everything lofty and proud (Isa 2- 4). This prophecy began to be fulfilled, so far as its first beginnings were concerned, even in the time of Ahaz. Under this weak and idolatrous ruler idolatry gained the upper hand, and the worship of Jehovah was suppressed; and this open apostasy from the Lord was followed by immediate punishment. The allied kings of Israel and Syria forced their way victoriously into Judah, and even stood before the gates of Jerusalem, with the intention of destroying the kingdom of Judah, when Ahaz, despising the help of the Lord, which was offered him by the prophet Isaiah, purchased the assistance of Tiglath-pileser the king of Assyria with silver and gold, and was thereby delivered from his foes. But this made him dependent upon the Assyrians, who would have conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed it, as they had already destroyed the kingdom of Israel, had not the Lord hearkened to the prayer of the pious king and miraculously routed the powerful army of Sennacherib before the walls of Jerusalem.
REIGN OF JEHU OF ISRAEL.
2 KINGS. 10:28-29
Verse 28-29. Jehu exterminated the worship of Baal from Israel; but the sins of Jeroboam, the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, that is to say, the idolatrous worship of Jehovah, he allowed to remain. “The golden calves, etc.:” this is a supplementary and explanatory apposition to “the sins of Jeroboam.”
2 KINGS. 10:30-31
Jehu is promised the possession of the throne to the fourth generation of his sons for having exterminated the godless royal house of Ahab (vid., Kings 15:12). The divine sentence, “because thou hast acted well to do right in mine eyes. (because thou) hast done as it was in my heart to the house of Ahab,” refers to the deed as such, and not to the subjective motives by which Jehu had been actuated. For it is obvious that it had not sprung from pure zeal for the honour of the Lord, from the limitation added in v. 31: “but Jehu did not take heed to walk in the law of Jehovah with all his heart, and did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam.”
2 KINGS. 10:32-33
Therefore (this link of connection follows from the actual fact, though it is not distinctly mentioned in the text) Hazael had now to inflict chastisement upon faithless Israel. In Jehu’s days Jehovah began “to cut off in Israel,” i.e., to rend away certain portions from the kingdom. “Hazael smote them (the Israelites) on the whole of the border of Israel,” i.e., of the kingdom, “from Jordan to the sun-rising (i.e., on the eastern side of the Jordan), the whole of the land of Gilead (kaal-’erets ‘eet is dependent upon hk;n; which must be supplied from hk;n; ), namely, the territory of the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and Half-Manasseh, from Aroer on the brook Arnon (now Araayr, a ruin on the northern border of the Mojeb (Arnon) valley; see at Num 32:34), the southern border of the Israelitish land to the east of the Jordan (Deut 2:36; 3:12), both Gilead and Bashan,” the two countries into which Gilead in the broader sense was divided (see at Deut 3:8-17).-These conquests took place during the twenty-eight years’ reign of Jehu, since Hazael began to reign before Jehu, viz., while Joram was king, and had already fought successfully against the Israelites at Ramoth in Joram’s reign (2 Kings 8:28-29), but not in the later part of Jehu’s reign, as Thenius supposes.
2 KINGS. 10:34-36
Conclusion of the history of Jehu’s reign. The length of his reign is not given till the end in this instance (v. 36), contrary to the usual custom in our books, because his ascent of the throne is not expressly mentioned in what precedes; but the general character of his reign is given in immediate connection with the account of his anointing and of the extermination of Ahab’s dynasty.
TYRANNY AND OVERTHROW OF ATHALIAH, AND CORONATION OF JOASH.
2 KINGS. 11:1-3
The Government of Athaliah (cf. 2 Chron 22:10-12). After the death of Ahaziah of Judah, his mother Athaliah, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (see at 2 Kings 8:18 and 26), seized upon the government, by putting to death all the king’s descendants with the exception of Joash, a son of Ahaziah of only a year old, who had been secretly carried off from the midst of the royal children, who were put to death, by Jehosheba, his father’s sister, the wife of the high priest Jehoiada, and was first of all hidden with his nurse in the bed-chamber, and afterwards kept concealed from Athaliah for six years in the high priest’s house. The w before ha;r; is no doubt original, the subject, Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah, being placed at the head absolutely, and a circumstantial clause introduced with ht;a\r;w] : “Athaliah, when she saw that, etc., rose up.” hk;l;f]Mæhæ [ræz,lK; , all the royal seed, i.e., all the sons and relations of Ahaziah, who could put in any claim to succeed to the throne.
At the same time there were hardly any other direct descendants of the royal family in existence beside the sons of Ahaziah, since the elder brothers of Ahaziah had been carried away by the Arabs and put to death, and the rest of the closer blood-relations of the male sex had been slain by Jehu (see at 2 Kings 10:13).-Jehosheba [bæv,wOhy] , in the Chronicles t[æb]væwOhy] ), the wife of the high priest Jehoiada (2 Chron 22:11), was a daughter of king Joram and a sister of Ahaziah, but she was most likely not a daughter of Athaliah, as this worshipper of Baal would hardly have allowed her own daughter to marry the high priest, but had been born to Joram by a wife of the second rank. µytiwOmm] (Chethib), generally a substantive, mortes (Jer 16:4; Ezek 28:8), here an adjective: slain or set apart for death. The Keri tWm is the participle Hophal, as in 2 Chron 22:11. mh rd,j, is to be taken in connection with bnæG; : she stole him (took him away secretly) from the rest of the king’s sons, who were about to be put to death, into the chamber of the beds, i.e., not the children’s bedroom, but a room in the palace where the beds (mattresses and counterpanes) were kept, for which in the East there is a special room that is not used as a dwelling-room (see Chardin in Harm. Beobb. iii. p. 357).
This was the place in which at first it was easiest to conceal the child and its nurse. rtæs; , “they (Jehosheba and the nurse) concealed him,” is not to be altered into rtæs; after the Chronicles, as Thenius maintains. The masculine is used in the place of the feminine, as is frequently the case.
Afterwards he was concealed with her (with Jehosheba) in the house of Jehovah, i.e., in the home of the high-priest in one of the buildings of the court of the temple.
2 KINGS. 11:4-20
Dethronement of Athaliah and Coronation of Joash (compare the account in 2 Chron 23, which is more elaborate in several points). f193 Verse 4. In the seventh year of Athaliah’s reign, Jehoiada sent for the captains of the king’s body-guard to come to him into the temple, and concluded a covenant with them, making them swear and showing them the king’s son, namely, to dethrone the tyrant Athaliah and set the king’s son upon the throne. twOya;M]hæ yrec; , centuriones, military commanders of the executioners and runners, i.e., of the royal body-guard. The Chethîb twOya;m] may be explained from the fact that ha;me is abridged from ma’ayaah (vid., Ewald, §267, d.). On µyxir;w] yriK; = ytilep]hæw] ytireK]hæ (1 Kings 1:38) see the Comm. on 2 Sam 8:18; and on l] as a periphrasis of the genitive, see Ewald, §292, a. In 2 Chron 23:1-3 the chronicler not only gives the names of these captains, but relates still more minutely that they went about in the land and summoned the Levites and heads of families in Israel to Jerusalem, probably under the pretext of a festal celebration; whereupon Jehoiada concluded a covenant with the persons assembled, to ensure their assistance in the execution of his plan.
Verse 5-8. Jehoiada then communicated to those initiated into the plan the necessary instructions for carrying it out, assigning them the places which they were to occupy. “The third part of you that come on the Sabbath (i.e., mount guard) shall keep the guard of the king’s house rmæv; is a corruption of rmæv; ), and the third part shall be at the gate Sur, and the third part at the gate behind the runners, and (ye) shall keep guard over the house for defence; and the two parts of you, (namely) all who depart on the Sabbath, shall keep the guard of the house of Jehovah for the king; and ye shall surround the king round about, every one with his weapons in his hand; and whoever presses into the ranks shall be slain, and shall be with the king when he goes out and in,” i.e., in all his steps. The words tB;væ awOB and tB;væ ax;y; , “those coming and those going out on the Sabbath,” denote the divisions of the watch, those who performed duty on the Sabbath and those who were relieved on the Sabbath; not the military guard at the palace however, but the temple-guard, which consisted of Levites. For David had divided the priests and Levites into classes, every one of which had to perform service for a week and was relieved on the Sabbath: compare Chron 23-26 with Josephus (Ant. vii. 14, 7), who expressly says that every one of the twenty-four classes of priests had to attend to the worship of God “for eight days, from Sabbath to Sabbath,” also with Luke 1:5.
On the other hand, we do not know that there was any similar division and obligation to serve in connection with the royal body-guard or with the army. The current opinion, that by those who come on the Sabbath and those who go out on the Sabbath we are to understand the king’s halberdiers or the guard of the palace, is therefore proved to be unfounded and untenable. And if there could be any doubt on the matter, it would be removed by vv. 7 and 10. According to v. 7, two parts of those who went away (were relieved) on the Sabbath were to undertake the guarding of the house of Jehovah about the king, i.e., to keep guard over that room in the temple where the king then was. Could Jehoiada have used the royal bodyguard, that was being relieved from guarding the palace, for such a purpose as this? Who can imagine that this is a credible thing? According to v. 10, Jehoiada gave to the captains over a hundred the weapons of king David, which were in the house of Jehovah. Did the palace-guard then return without weapons?
In 2 Chron 23:4, “those coming on the Sabbath” are correctly described as the priests and Levites coming on the Sabbath, i.e., the priests and Levites who entered upon their week’s duty at the temple on the Sabbath.
According to this explanation of the words, which is the only one that can be grammatically sustained, the facts were as follows: “When Jehoiada had initiated the captains of the royal halberdiers, and with their help the heads of families of the people generally, into his plan of raising the youthful Joash to the throne and dethroning Athaliah, he determined to carry out the affair chiefly with the help of the priests and Levites who entered upon their duty in the temple on the Sabbath, and of those who left or were relived at the same time, and entrusted the command over these men to the captains of the royal halberdiers, that they might occupy the approaches to the temple with the priests and Levites under their command, so as to prevent the approach of any military from the king’s palace and protect the youthful king. These captains had come to the temple without weapons, to avoid attracting attention. Jehoiada therefore gave them the weapons of king David that were kept in the temple.
With regard to the distribution of the different posts, the fact that twothirds are spoken of first of all in vv. 5, 6, and then two parts in v. 7, occasions no difficulty. For the two-thirds mentioned in vv. 5, 6 were those who came on the Sabbath, whereas the “two divisions” dy; µyinæv] ) referred to in v. 7 were all who went away on the Sabbath. Consequently the priests and Levites, who came on the Sabbath and entered upon the week’s service, were divided into three sections; and those who should have been relieved, but were detained, into two. Probably the number of those who came this time to perform service at the temple was much larger than usual, as the priests were initiated into Jehoiada’s secret; so that it was possible to make three divisions of those who arrived, whereas those who were about to depart could only be formed into two. The three divisions of those who were entering upon duty are also distinctly mentioned in the Chronicles; whereas, instead of the two divisions of those who were relieved, “all the people” are spoken of.
The description of the different posts which were assigned to these several companies causes some difficulty. In general, so much is clearly indicated in vv. 7 and 8, that the two divisions of those who were relieved on the Sabbath were to keep guard over the young king in the house of Jehovah, and therefore to remain in the inner spaces of the temple-court for his protection; whereas the three divisions of those who were entering upon duty were charged with the occupation of the external approaches to the temple. One-third was to “keep watch over the king’s house,” i.e., to observe whatever had to be observed in relation to the king’s palace; not to occupy the king’s palace, or to keep guard in the citadel at the palace gate (Thenius), but to keep watch towards the royal palace, i.e., to post themselves so that no one could force a way into the temple, with which the indefinite Ël,m, tyiBæ in the Chronicles harmonizes, if we only translate it “against (at) the king’s house.”
The idea that the palace was guarded is precluded not only by v. 13, according to which Athaliah came out of the palace to the people to the house of Jehovah, which she would not have been able to do if the palace had been guarded, but also by the circumstance that, according to v. 19, the chief men were in the temple with the whole of the (assembled) people, and did not go out of the house of Jehovah into the king’s house till after the anointing of Joash and the death of Athaliah. The other third was to station itself at the gate Sur rWs ), or, according to the Chronicles, Yesod dwOsy] ), foundation-gate. There is no doubt as to the identity of the gate Sur and the gate Yesod; only we cannot decide whether one of these names has simply sprung from a copyist’s error, or whether the gate had two different names. The name dwOsy] r[ævæ , foundation-gate, suggests a gate in the outer court of the temple, at the hollow of either the Tyropoeon or the Kedron; for the context precludes our thinking of a palace gate.
The third division was to be posted “at the gate behind the runners;” or, as it is stated in v. 19, “at the gate of the runners.” It is very evident from v. 19 that this gate led from the temple-court to the royal palace upon Zion, and was therefore on the western side of the court of the temple. This also follows from v. 4 of the Chronicles, according to which this division was to act as “doorkeepers of the thresholds” ãsæ r[ewOv ), i.e., to keep guard at the gate of the thresholds. For we may safely infer, from a comparison with 1 Chron 9:19, that ãsæ were the thresholds of the ascent to the temple. The last clause, “and shall keep guard over the house for defence,” refers to all three divisions, and serves to define with greater precision the object for which they were stationed there. jS;mæ is not a proper name (LXX, Luther, and others), but an appellative in the sense of defence or resistance, from naacach, depellere. The meaning is, that they were to guard the house, to keep off the people, and not to let any of the party of Athaliah force a way into the temple.-In v. 7, hs’ ax;y; lKo is an explanatory apposition to µyrit;a\ dy; µyinæv] , “and the two parts in (of) you,” namely, all who go out on the Sabbath, i.e., are relieved from duty.
Their task, to observe the watch of the house of Jehovah with regard to the king, is more precisely defined in v. 8 as signifying, that they were to surround the king with weapons in their hands, and slay every one who attempted to force a way into their ranks. awOB ax;y; , i.e., in all his undertakings, or in all his steps; awOB ax;y; being applied to the actions and pursuits of a man, as in Deut 28:6; 31:2, etc. (see the Comm. on Num 27:17). Thenius has explained this incorrectly: “in his going out of the temple and entering into the palace.”
Verse 9-11. The execution of these plans. The high priest gave the captains “the spears and shields fl,v, : see at 2 Sam 8:7) which (belonged) to king David, that were in the house of Jehovah,” i.e., the weapons which David had presented to the sanctuary as dedicatory offerings. Instead of tyinj we ought probably to read hachaniytot (cf. Mic 4:3; Isa 2:4), after the hachaniytiym of the Chronicles, since the collective force of chaniyt is very improbable in prose, and a t might easily drop out through a copyist’s error. Jehoiada gave the captains weapons from the temple, because, as has been already observed, they had come unarmed, and not, as Thenius imagines, to provide them with old and sacred weapons instead of their ordinary ones. In v. 11 the position of all the divisions is given in a comprehensive manner, for the purpose of appending the further course of the affair, namely, the coronation of the king. “Thus the halberdiers stood, every one with his weapons in his hand, from the right wing of the house to the left wing, towards the altar (of burntoffering) and the (temple-) house, round about the king,” i.e., to cover the king on all sides. For it is evident that we are not to understand bybis; Ël,M,hæAl[æ as signifying the encircling of the king, from the statement in v. 12, according to which Jehoiada did not bring out the king’s son till after the men had taken up their positions. The use of xWr , to signify the captains with the armed priests and Levites put under their command for this purpose, is an uncommon one, but it may be explained from the fact that xWr had retained the general meaning of royal halberdiers; and the priests and Levites under the command of the captains of the royal bodyguard by this very act discharged the duty of the royal body-guard itself.
The chronicler has used the indefinite expression µ[;h;AlK; , the whole of the people assembled in the temple-court.
Verse 12. After the approaches to the temple had all been occupied in this manner, Jehoiada brought out the king’s son from his home in the temple; or, he brought him forth, set the crown upon him, and handed him the testimony, i.e., the book of the law, as the rule of his life and action as king, according to the precept in Deut 17:18-19. tWd[eh;Ata,w] is connected with ˆTeyi rz,NehæAta, wyl;[; , because `l[æ ˆtæn; has the general meaning “delivered to him, handed him,” and does not specially affirm the putting on of the crown. Ëlæm; , they made him king. The subject is the persons present, through, as a matter of course, the anointing was performed by Jehoiada and the priests, as the Chronicles expressly affirm.
Clapping the hands was a sign of joyful acclamation, like the cry, “Long live the king” (cf. 1 Kings 1:39).
Verse 13-14. Death of Athaliah.-Vv. 13, 14. As soon as Athaliah heard the loud rejoicing of the people, she came to the people into the temple, and when she saw the youthful king in his standing-place surrounded by the princes, the trumpeters, and the whole of the people, rejoicing and blowing the trumpets, she rent her clothes with horror, and cried out, Conspiracy, conspiracy! `µ[æ xWr does not mean the people running together, but the original reading in the text was probably `µ[æ xWr , the people and the halberdiers, and the Vav dropped out through an oversight of the copyist.
By xWr we are to understand the captains of the halberdiers with the armed Levites, as in v. 11; and `µ[æ is the people who had assembled besides (cf. v. 19). In the Chronicles Ël,m, llæh; xWr is in apposition to `µ[æ : the noise of the people, the halberdiers, and those who praised the king.
The `dWM[æ , upon which the king stood, was not a pillar, but an elevated standing-place (suggestus) for the king at the eastern gate of the inner court awObm; , 2 Chron 23:13 compared with Ezek 46:2), when he visited the temple on festive occasions (cf. EXT 2 Kings 23:3), and it was most probably identical with the brazen scaffold rwOYKi ) mentioned in 2 Chron 6:13, which would serve to explain fp;v]mi , “according to the right” (Angl.
V. “as the manner was”). rcæ are not merely the captains mentioned in vv. 4, 9, and 10, but these together with the rest of the assembled heads of the nation ba; varo , 2 Chron 13:2). hr;x]xoj , the trumpets, the trumpeters.
The reference is to the Levitical musicians mentioned in 1 Chron 13:8; 15:24, etc.; for they are distinguished from wgw µ[;h;AlK; , “all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing the trumpets,” i.e., not all the military men of the land who were present in Jerusalem (Thenius), but the mass of the people present in the temple (Bertheau). Verse 15. Jehoiada then commanded the captains lyijæ rqæp] , those placed over the army, i.e., the armed men of the Levites, to lead out Athaliah between the ranks, and to slay every one who followed her, i.e., who took her part tWm , inf. abs. instead of imperative); for, as is added supplementarily in explanation of this command, the priest had (previously) said: “Let her not be slain in the house of Jehovah.” The temple was not to be defiled with the blood of the usurper and murderess.
Verse 16. Thus they made way for her on both sides, or, according to the correct explanation given by the Chaldee, dy; wOl µWc , they formed lines (Spalier, fences) and escorted her back, and she came by the way of the horses’ entrance into the palace, and was there put to death. sWs awObm; is explained in the Chronicles by sWs r[ævæ awObm; , entrance of the horse-gate.
The entrance for the horses, i.e., the way which led to the royal mews, is not to be identified with the horse-gate mentioned in Neh 3:28; for this was a gate in the city wall, whereas the road from the temple to the royal mews, which were no doubt near the palace, was inside the wall.
Verse 17-18. Renewal of the covenant, extermination of the worship of Baal, and entrance of the king into the palace.-V. 17. After Jehoash was crowned and Athaliah put to death, Jehoiada concluded the covenant (1) between Jehovah on the one hand and the king and people on the other, and (2) between the king and the people. The former was simply a renewal of the covenant which the Lord had made with Israel through Moses (Ex 24), whereby the king and the people bound themselves hwO;hy] `µ[æ hy;h; , i.e., to live as the people of the Lord, or to keep His law (cf. Deut 4:20; 27:9-10), and was based upon the “testimony” handed to the king. This covenant naturally led to the covenant between the king and the people, whereby the king bound himself to rule his people according to the law of the Lord, and the people vowed that they would be obedient and subject to the king as the ruler appointed by the Lord (cf. 2 Sam 5:3).
The renewal of the covenant with the Lord was necessary, because under the former kings the people had fallen away from the Lord and served Baal. The immediate consequence of the renewal of the covenant, therefore, was the extermination of the worship of Baal, which is mentioned at once in v. 18, although its proper place in order of time is after v. 18. All the people ( xr,a;h; µ[æAlK; , as in v. 14) went to the temple of Baal, threw down his altars, broke his images (the columns of Baal and Astarte) rightly, i.e., completely b f1 y; as in Deut 9:21), and slew the priest Mattan, probably the chief priest of Baal, before his altars. That the temple of Baal stood within the limits of the sanctuary, i.e., of the temple of Jehovah (Thenius), cannot be shown to be probable either from 2 Chron 24:7 or from the last clause of this verse. (For 2 Chron 24:7 see the fuller remarks on 2 Kings 12:5.) The words “and the priest set overseers over the house of Jehovah” do not affirm that Jehoiada created the office of overseer over the temple for the purpose of guarding against a fresh desecration of the temple by idolatry (Thenius), but simply that he appointed overseers over the temple, namely, priests and Levites entrusted with the duty of watching over the performance of worship according to the precepts of the law, as is more minutely described in vv. 18 and 19.
2 KINGS. 11:19-21
And he took the captains, and they brought the king down out of the house of Jehovah, etc. The word jqæl; is not to be pressed, but simply affirms that Jehoiada entrusted the persons named with the duty of conducting the king into his palace. Beside the captains over a hundred (see at v. 4) there are mentioned xWr yriK; , i.e., the royal halberdiers (the body-guard), who had passed over to the new king immediately after the fall of Athaliah and now followed their captains, and xr,a;h; µ[æAlK; , all the rest of the people assembled. Instead of the halberdiers there are mentioned in the Chronicles `µ[æ lvæm; ryDiaæ , the nobles and lords in the nation-a completion implied in the facts themselves, since Jehoiada had drawn the heads of the nation into his plan, and on the other hand the express allusion to the body-guard might be omitted as of inferior importance.
We cannot infer from dræy; that the bridge between Moriah and Zion was not yet in existence, as Thenius supposes, but simply that the bridge was lower than the temple-courts. Instead of xWr r[ævæ , the gate of the runners (i.e., of the halberdiers), we find in the Chronicles ˆwOyl][, r[ævæ , the upper gate, which appears to have been a gate of the temple, according to Kings 15:35 and 2 Chron 27:3. The statement that they came by the way of the runners’ gate into the house of the king is not at variance with this, for it may be understood as meaning that it was by the halberdiers’ gate of the temple that the entry into the palace was carried out.-In v. 20 this account is concluded with the general remark that all the people rejoiced, sc. at the coronation of Joash, and the city was quiet, when they slew Athaliah with the sword. This is the way, so far as the sense is concerned, in which the last two clauses are to be connected.
REIGN OF KING JOASH OF JUDAH, AND REPAIRING OF THE TEMPLE.
2 KINGS. 12:1-4
All that is recorded of the forty years’ reign of Joash, in addition to the general characteristics of the reign (vv. 1-4), is the repairing of the temple which was effected by him (vv. 5-17), and the purchased retreat of the Syrians from their invasion of Judah (vv. 18 and 19), and finally his violent death in consequence of a conspiracy formed against him, of which we have only a brief notice in vv. 20-22. The parallel account in 2 Chron supplies several additions to this: viz., concerning the wives of Joash, the distribution of the Levites at the repairing of the temple, the death of Jehoiada, and the seduction of Joash to idolatry by the chief men of Judah, and the stoning of the prophet Zechariah, who condemned this rebellion-all of which can easily be fitted into our account.
Verse 1-4. Reign of Joash.-V. 1 (1, 2). His age on ascending the throne, viz., seven years (cf. 2 Kings 11:4).-Commencement and length of his reign. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba.
Verse 2. Joash did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord wgw rv,a\ wym;y;AlK; , “all his days that,” etc., i.e., during the whole period of his life that Jehoiada instructed him (for rv,a after substantives indicating time, place, and mode, see Ewald, §331, c., 3; and for the use of the suffix attached to the noun defined by wgw rv,a , compare 2 Kings 13:14); not “all his life long, because Jehoiada had instructed him,” although the Athnach under µwOy favours this view. For Jehoiada had not instructed him before he began to reign, but he instructed him after he had been raised to the throne at the age of seven years, that is to say, so long as Jehoiada himself lived.
The [d;y;wO;hy] ymey]AlK; of the Chronicles is therefore a correct explanation. But after Jehoiada’s death, Joash yielded to the petitions of the princes of Judah that he would assent to their worshipping idols, and at length went so far as to stone the son of his benefactor, the prophet Zechariah, on account of his candid reproof of this apostasy (2 Chron 24:17-22).
Verse 3. But the worship on the high places was not entirely suppressed, notwithstanding the fact that Jehoiada instructed him (on this standing formula see the Comm. on 1 Kings 15:14).
2 KINGS. 12:4-5
Repairing of the temple (cf. 2 Chron 24:5-14).-Vv. 4, 5. That the temple, which had fallen into ruins, might be restored, Joash ordered the priests to collect all the money of the consecrated gifts, that was generally brought into the house of the Lord, and to effect therewith all the repairs that were needed in the temple.
The general expression vd,qo ãs,K, , money of the holy gifts, i.e., money derived from holy gifts, is more specifically defined by wgw `rbæ[; ãs,K, , according to which it consisted of three kinds of payments to the temple: viz., (1) `rbæ[; ãs,K, , i.e., money of persons mustered (or numbered in the census); `rbæ[; is an abbreviated expression for rbewO[h; µydiqup]hæ , “he who passes over to those who are numbered” (Ex 30:13), as it has been correctly interpreted by the Chald., Rashi, Abarb., and others; whereas the explanation “money that passes” (Luther), or current coin, which Thenius still defends, yields not suitable sense, since it is impossible to see why only current coin should be accepted, and not silver in bars of vessels, inasmuch as Moses had accepted gold, silver, copper, and other objects of value in natura, for the building of the tabernacle (Ex 24:2-3; 35:5; 36:5-6).
The brevity of the expression may be explained from the fact, that `rbæ[; ãs,K, had become a technical term on the ground of the passage in the law already cited. The objection raised by Thenius, that the explanation adopted would be without any parallel, would, if it could be sustained, also apply to his own explanation “current money,” in which `rbæ[; is also taken as an abbreviation of rheSolæ rbe[O in Gen 23:16. There is still less ground for the other objection, that if `rbæ[; ãs,K, denoted one kind of templerevenue, lKo or vyai would necessarily have been used. (2) vyai , “every kind of souls’ valuation money;” vyai is more precisely defined by `Ër,[e , and the position in which it stands before ãs,K, resembles the tr,B, in Gen 15:10-literally, soul money of each one’s valuation.
Thenius is wrong in his interpretation, “every kind of money of the souls according to their valuation,” to which he appends the erroneous remark, that vyai is also used in Zech 10:1 and Joel 2:7 in connection with inanimate objects as equivalent to lKo . vyai , every kind of valuation, because both in the redemption of the male first-born (Num 18:15-16) and also in the case of persons under a vow a payment had to be made according to the valuation of the priest. (3) “All the money that cometh into any one’s mind to bring into the house of the Lord,” i.e., all the money which was offered as a free-will offering to the sanctuary. This money the priests were to take to themselves, every one from his acquaintance, and therewith repair all the dilapidations that were to be found in the temple. In the Chronicles the different kinds of money to be collected for this purpose are not specified; but the whole is embraced under the general expression “the taxes of Moses the servant of God, and of the congregation of Israel, to the tent of the testimony,” which included not only the contribution of half a shekel for the building of the temple, which is prescribed in Ex 30:12ff., but also the other two taxes mentioned in this account. f194 Again, according to v. 7 of the Chronicles, Joash gave the following reason for his command: “For Athaliah, the wicked woman, and her sons have demolished the house of God, and all the dedicated gifts of the house of Jehovah have they used for the Baals.” We are not told in what the violent treatment of demolition xræp ) of the temple by Athaliah had her sons consisted. The circumstance that considerable repairs even of the stonework of the temple were required in the time of Joash, about 130 or 140 years after it was built, is quite conceivable without any intentional demolition. And in no case can we infer from these words, as Thenius has done, that Athaliah or her sons had erected a temple of Baal within the limits of the sanctuary. The application of all the dedicatory offerings of the house of Jehovah to the Baals, involves nothing more than that the gifts which were absolutely necessary for the preservation of the temple and temple-service were withdrawn from the sanctuary of Jehovah and applied to the worship of Baal, and therefore that the decay of the sanctuary would necessarily follow upon the neglect of the worship.
2 KINGS. 12:6-9
But when the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash arrived, and the dilapidations had not been repaired, the king laid the matter before the high priest Jehoiada and the priests, and directed them not to take the money any more from their acquaintance, but to give it for the dilapidations of the temple; “and the priests consented to take no money, and not to repair the dilapidations of the house,” i.e., not to take charge of the repairs. We may see from this consent how the command of the king is to be understood.
Hitherto the priests had collected the money to pay for the repairing of the temple; but inasmuch as they had not executed the repairs, the king took away from them both the collection of the money and the obligation to repair the temple. The reason for the failure of the first measure is not mentioned in our text, and can only be inferred from the new arrangement made by the king (v. 9): “Jehoiada took a chest-of course by the command of the king, as is expressly mentioned in 2 Chron 24:8-bored a hole in the door (the lid) thereof, and placed it by the side of the altar (of burntoffering) on the right by the entrance of every one into the house of Jehovah, that the priests keeping the threshold might put thither (i.e., into the chest) all the money that was brought into the house of Jehovah.”
2 KINGS. 12:10
“And when they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s writer and the high priest came, and bound up and reckoned the money that was found in the house of Jehovah.” rWx , to bind up the money in bags (cf. 2 Kings 5:23). The binding is mentioned before the reckoning, because the pieces of money were not counted singly, but packed at once into bags, which were then weighed for the purpose of estimating the amount received.
2 KINGS. 12:11-14
“They gave the money weighed into the hands of those who did the work, who were placed over the house of Jehovah,” i.e., the appointed overlookers of the work; “and they paid it (as it was required) to the carpenters and builders, who worked at the house, and to the masons and hewers of stone, and for the purchase of wood and hewn stones, to repair the dilapidations of the house, and for all that might be spent ax;y; , i.e., be given out) for the house for repairing it.” It is quite clear from this, that the assertion of J. D. Michaelis, De Wette, and others, that the priests had embezzled the money collected, is perfectly imaginary. For if the king had cherished any such suspicion against the priests, he would not have asked for their consent to an alteration of the first arrangement or to the new measure; and still less would he have commanded that the priests who kept the door should put the money into the chest, for this would have been no safeguard against embezzlement.
For if the door-keepers wished to embezzle, all that they would need to do would be to put only a part of the money into the chest. The simple reason and occasion for giving up the first arrangement and introducing the new arrangement with the chest, was that the first measure had proved to be insufficient fore the accomplishment of the purpose expected by the king.
For inasmuch as the king had not assigned any definite amount for the repairing of the temple, but had left it to the priests to pay for the cost of the repairs out of the money that was to be collected, one portion of which at least came to themselves, according to the law, for their own maintenance and to provide for the expenses of worship, it might easily happen, without the least embezzlement on the part of the priests, that the money collected was paid out again for the immediate necessities of worship and their own maintenance, and that nothing remained to pay for the building expenses.
For this reason the king himself now undertook the execution of the requisite repairs. The reason why the chest was provided for the money to be collected was, first of all, that the money to be collected for the building might be separated from the rest of the money that came in and was intended for the priests; and secondly, that the contributions to be gathered for the building might be increased, since it might be expected that the people would give more if the collections were made for the express purpose of restoring the temple, than if only the legal and free-will offerings were simply given to the priests, without any one knowing how much would be applied to the building.-And because the king had taken the building into his own hand, as often as the chest was full he sent his secretary to reckon the money along with the high priest, and hand it over to the superintendents of the building. If we compare with this the account in the Chronicles, it helps to confirm the view which we have obtained from an unprejudiced examination of the text as to the affair in question. According to v. 5 of the Chronicles, Joash had commanded the priests and Levites to accelerate the repairs; “but the Levites did not hurry.” This may be understood as signifying that they were dilatory both in the collection of the money and in the devotion of a portion of their revenues to the repairing of the temple. But that the king took the matter in hand himself, not so much because of the dilatoriness or negligence of the priests as because his first measure, regarded as an expedient, did not answer the purpose, is evident from the fact that, according to the Chronicles, he did not content himself with placing the chest at the entrance, but had a proclamation made at the same time in Judah and Jerusalem, to offer the tax of Moses for the repair of the temple (v. 9)-evidently with no other intention than to procure more liberal contributions.
For, according to v. 10, all the chief men and all the people rejoiced thereat, and cast their gifts into the chest, i.e., they offered their gifts with joy for the purpose that had been proclaimed.-The other points of difference between the Chronicles and our text are unimportant. For instance, that they placed the chest “at the gate of the house of Jehovah on the outside.” The huwtsaah merely defines the expression in our text, yy tyBe vyaiAawObB] ˆymiy;B] , “to the right at the entrance into the temple,” more minutely, by showing that the ark was not placed on the inner side of the entrance into the court of the priests, but against the outer wall of it.
This is not at variance with jæBez]mi lx,ae in v. 10; for even apart from the account in the Chronicles, and according to our own text, this cannot be understood as signifying that the ark had been placed in the middle of the court, as Thenius explains in opposition to wgw vyaiAawObB] , but can only mean at the entrance which was on the right side of the altar, i.e., at the southern entrance into the inner court.
Again, the further variation, that according to the Chronicles (v. 11), when the chest was full, an officer of the high priest came with the scribe (not the high priest himself), furnishes simply a more exact definition of our account, in which the high priest is named; just as, according to v. 10, the high priest took the chest and bored a hole in the lid, which no intelligent commentator would understand as signifying that the high priest did it with his own hand. But there is a real difference between vv. 14 and 15 of our text and v. 14 of the Chronicles, though the solution of this suggests itself at once on a closer inspection of the words. According to our account, there were no golden or silver vessels, basons, knives, bowls, etc., made with the money that was brought in, but it was given for the repairing of the house. In the Chronicles, on the contrary, it is stated that “when they had finished the repairs, they brought the remnant of the money to the king and Jehoiada, and he (the king) used it for vessels for the house of the Lord, for vessels of the service,” etc. But if we take proper notice of k¦kalowtaam here, there is no ground for saying that there is any contradiction, since the words of our text affirm nothing more than that none of the money that came in was applied to the making of vessels of worship so long as the repairing of the building went on. What took place afterwards is not stated in our account, which is limited to the main fact; this we learn from the Chronicles.
2 KINGS. 12:15
No return was required of the inspectors as to the money handed over to them, because they were convinced of their honesty.
2 KINGS. 12:16
The money obtained from trespass-offerings and sin-offerings was not brought into the house of Jehovah, i.e., was not applied to the repairing of the temple, but was left for the priests. In the case of the trespass-offering compensation had to be made for the earthly debt according to the valuation of the priest, with the addition of a fifth in money; and this was assigned to the priests not only in the case of a l[æmæ committed against Jehovah, but also when a neighbour had been injured in his property, if he had died in the meantime (see at Lev 5:16 and Num 5:9). On the other hand, in the case of the sin-offerings the priests received no money according to the law. Most of the commentators therefore assume, that those who lived at a distance had sent money to the priests, that they might offer sin-offerings with it, and what money as over they had retained for themselves. But there is not the slightest trace of any such custom, which is quite at variance with the idea of the sin-offering. It may probably have become a customary thing in the course of time, for those who presented these offerings to compensate the officiating priest for his trouble by a freewill gift.
2 KINGS. 12:17-18
The brief account of Hazael’s campaign against Jerusalem is completed by 2 Chron 24:23-24. Hazael had gone down along the coast after defeating Israel (see 2 Kings 13:3), for the purpose of making war upon Judah also, and had taken Gath, which Rehoboam had fortified (2 Chron 11:8). He then set his face, i.e., determined, to advance to Jerusalem; and Joash took the temple treasures, etc. According to the Chronicles, he sent an army against Judah and Jerusalem, which destroyed all the princes of the nation and sent much booty to the king to Damascus, as the small army of the Syrians had smitten the very large army of Judah. To protect Jerusalem, after this defeat, from being taken by the Syrians, Joash sent all the treasures of the temple and palace to Hazael, and so purchased the withdrawal of the Syrians. In this way the two brief accounts of the war may be both reconciled and explained; whereas the opinion, still repeated by Thenius, that the two passages treat of different wars, has no tenable ground to rest upon.
The Philistian city of Gath (see the Comm. on Josh 13:3) appears to have belonged at that time to the kingdom of Judah, so that the Gathites were not among the Philistines who made an incursion into Judah in the reign of Joram along with the Arabian tribes of the south (2 Chron 21:16). And it is impossible to determine when Gath was wrested from the Syrians again; probably in the time of Joash the son of Jehoahaz of Israel, as he recovered from the Syrians all the cities which they had taken from the Israelites under Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:25), and even smote Amaziah the king of Judaea at Bethshemesh and took him prisoner (2 Kings 14:13; 2 Chron 25:21ff.). “All the consecrated things, which Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah had consecrated, and his own consecrated things,” i.e., what he (Joash) himself had consecrated. The existence of such temple treasures is not at variance either with the previous account of the repairing of the temple, for Joash would not use the consecrated offerings for the restoration of the temple, as the current revenue of the temple was sufficient for the purpose, or with 2 Chron 24:7, where it is stated that Athaliah and her sons had applied all the hwO;hy] tyiBæ vd,qo to the Baals (see at 2 Kings 12:5, p. 261); for even if we are to understand by the sons of Athaliah not bastard sons (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 582), but the brethren of Joram whom the Philistines and Arabians had carried off, Ahaziah and Joram, although they both of them served Baal, may, from political considerations, have now and then made consecrated gifts to the temple, if only in a passing fit of religious fear.
2 KINGS. 12:19-21
Conspiracy against Joash.
Not long after the departure of the Syrians, who had left Joash, according to 2 Chron 24:25, with many wounds, his servants formed a conspiracy against him and slew him upon his bed in the house Millo, which goeth down to Silla. This description of the locality is perfectly obscure for us.
The conjecture that awOLmi tyBe was the house in the castle of Millo which is so frequently mentioned (see at 1 Kings 9:15 and 2 Sam 5:9), is precluded by the fact that this castle is always called hamilo’ (with the article). aL;si is regarded by many as an abbreviation of hL;sim] , “which goes down by the road;” and Thenius supposes that the reference is to the road which ran diagonally through the city from the Joppa gate to the Haram-area, corresponding to the present David’s road. Others regard aL;si as the proper name of a place in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. It is impossible to get any certain meaning out of it, unless we alter the text according to arbitrary assumptions, as Thenius has done.
The conspirators were Jozachar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, according to v. 21; but according to the Chronicles (v. 26), they were Zabad the son of Shimeath the Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith the Moabitess. The identity of the first names is perfectly obvious. db;z; is a copyist’s error for rk;z; , and this is the contracted form of rk;z;wOy . The difference in the second: son of Shomer according to our text, and son of the Shimrith according to the Chronicles, has probably also arisen from a slip of the pen, since rmæv; might easily be occasioned by the dropping out of the t from the defectively written rmæv; , although it is also possible that Shomer may be the name of the grandfather. Joash was buried with his father sin the city of David; but according to v. 25 of the Chronicles he was not buried in the graves of the kings. The two statements are not irreconcilable; and there may be good historical ground for the account in the Chronicles, as Bertheau acknowledges with perfect justice, in spite of the suspicion which has been cast upon it by Thenius. REIGNS OF JEHOAHAZ AND JOASH, KINGS OF ISRAEL. Death of Elisha.
2 KINGS. 13:1-9
Reign of Jehoahaz.
Jehu was followed by Jehoahaz his son, “in the twenty-third year of Joash of Judah.” This synchronistic statement is not only at variance with v. 10, but cannot be very well reconciled with 2 Kings 12:1. If Jehoahaz began to reign in the twenty-third year of Joash king of Judah, and reigned seventeen years, his son cannot have followed him after his death in the thirty-seventh year of Joash of Judah, as is stated in v. 10, for there are only fourteen years and possibly a few months between the twenty-third and thirty-seventh years of Joash; and even if he ascended the throne at the commencement of the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash and died at the end of the thirty-seventh, they could only be reckoned as fifteen and not as seventeen years. Moreover, according to 2 Kings 12:1, Joash of Judah began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and therefore Athaliah, who ascended the throne at the same time as Jehu, reigned fully six years.
If, therefore, the first year of Joash of Judah coincides with the seventh year of Jehu, the twenty-eighth year of Jehu must correspond to the twenty-second year of Joash of Judah; and in this year of Joash not only did Jehu die, but his son Jehoahaz ascended the throne. Consequently we must substitute the twenty-second year of Joash, or perhaps, still more correctly, the twenty-first year (Josephus), for the twenty-third. f195 If Jehu died in the earliest months of the twenty-eighth year of his reign, so that he only reigned twenty-seven years and one or two months, his death and his son’s ascent of the throne might fall even in the closing months of the twenty-first year of the reign of Joash of Judah. And from the twentyfirst to the thirty-seventh year of Joash, Jehoahaz may have reigned sixteen years and a few months, and his reign be described as lasting seventeen years.
Verse 2-3. As Jehoahaz trod in the footsteps of his forefathers and continued the sin of Jeroboam (the worship of the calves), the Lord punished Israel during his reign even more than in that of his predecessor. The longer and the more obstinately the sin was continued, the more severe did the punishment become. He gave them (the Israelites) into the power of the Syrian king Hazael and his son Benhadad kaal-hayaamiym, “the whole time,” sc. of the reign of Jehoahaz (vid., v. 22); not of the reigns of Hazael and Benhadad, as Thenius supposes in direct opposition to vv. and 25. According to v. 7, the Syrians so far destroyed the Israelitish army, that only fifty horsemen, ten war- chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers were left.
Verse 4-5. In this oppression Jehoahaz prayed to the Lord ( yy µynip; hl;j; as in 1 Kings 13:6); and the Lord heard this prayer, because He saw their oppression at the hands of the Syrians, and gave Israel a saviour, so that they came out from the power of the Syrians and dwelt in their booths again, as before, i.e., were able to live peaceably again in their houses, without being driven off and led away by the foe. The saviour, [væy; , was neither an angel, nor the prophet Elisha, nor quidam e ducibus Joasi, as some of the earlier commentators supposed, nor a victory obtained by Jehoahaz over the Syrians, nor merely Jeroboam (Thenius); but the Lord gave them the saviour in the two successors of Jehoahaz, in the kings Jehoash and Jeroboam, the former of whom wrested from the Syrians all the cities that had been conquered by them under his father (v. 25), while the latter restored the ancient boundaries of Israel (2 Kings 14:25).
According to vv. 22-25, the oppression by the Syrians lasted as long as Jehoahaz lived; but after his death the Lord had compassion upon Israel, and after the death of Hazael, when his son Benhadad had become king, Jehoash recovered from Benhadad all the Israelitish cities that had been taken by the Syrians. It is obvious from this, that the oppression which Benhadad the son of Hazael inflicted upon Israel, according to v. 3, falls within the period of his father’s reign, so that it was not as king, but as commander-in-chief under his father, that he oppressed Israel, and therefore he is not even called king in v. 3.
Verse 6. “Only they departed not,” etc., is inserted as a parenthesis and must be expressed thus: “although they departed not from the sin of Jeroboam.”
Verse 7. “For yKi ) he had not left,” etc., furnishes the ground for v. 5: God gave them a saviour,...although they did not desist from the sin of Jeroboam,...for Israel had been brought to the last extremity; He (Jehovah) had left to Jehoahaz people `µ[æ , people of war), only fifty horsemen, etc.
For af;j; instead of af;j; (v. 6), see at 1 Kings 21:21. The suffix µyrit;a in v. 6 refers to ha;F;jæ , just as that in ˆmi in v. 2 (see at 2 Kings 3:3). “And even the Asherah was (still) standing at Samaria,” probably from the time of Ahab downwards (1 Kings 16:33), since Jehu is not said to have destroyed it (2 Kings 10:26ff.). wgw µWc “and had made them like dust for trampling upon,”-an expression denoting utter destruction.
Verse 8-9. Close of the reign of Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz had probably shown his might in the war with the Syrians, although he had been overcome.
2 KINGS. 13:10-13
Reign of Jehoash or Joash of Israel.
On the commencement of his reign see at v. 1. He also walked in the sins of Jeroboam (compare v. 11 with vv. 2 and 6). The war with Amaziah referred to in v. 12 is related in the history of this king in 2 Kings 14:8-14; and the close of the reign of Joash is also recorded there (vv. 15 and 16) with the standing formula. And even here it ought not to be introduced till the end of the chapter, instead of in vv. 12 and 13, inasmuch as the verses which follow relate several things belonging to the reign of Joash. But as they are connected with the termination of Elisha’s life, it was quite admissible to wind up the reign of Joash with v. 13.
2 KINGS. 13:14-21
Illness and Death of the Prophet Elisha.
Verse 14. When Elisha was taken ill with the sickness of which he was to die, king Joash visited him and wept over his face, i.e., bending over the sick man as he lay, and exclaimed, “My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and horsemen thereof!” just as Elisha had mourned over the departure of Elijah (2 Kings 2:12). This lamentation of the king at the approaching death of the prophet shows that Joash knew how to value his labours. And on account of this faith which was manifested in his recognition of the prophet’s worth, the Lord gave the king another gracious assurance through the dying Elisha, which was confirmed by means of a symbolical action. Verse 15-18. “Take-said Elisha to Joash-bow and arrows,...and let thy hand pass over the bow” bkær; ), i.e., stretch the bow. He then placed his hands upon the king’s hands, as a sign that the power which was to be given to the bow-shot came from the Lord through the mediation of the prophet. He then directed him to open the window towards the east and shoot, adding as he shot off the arrow: “An arrow of salvation from the Lord, and an arrow of salvation against the Syrians; and thou wilt smite the Syrians at Aphek (see at 1 Kings 20:26) to destruction.” The arrow that was shot off was to be a symbol of the help of the Lord against the Syrians to their destruction. This promise the king was then to appropriate to himself through an act of his own. Elisha therefore directed him (v. 18) to “take the arrows;” and when he had taken them, said: xr,a, hk;n; , “strike to the earth,” i.e., shoot the arrows to the ground, not “smite the earth with the bundle of arrows” (Thenius), which neither agrees with the shooting of the first arrow, nor admits of a grammatical vindication; for hk;n; , when used of an arrow, signifies to shoot and to strike with the arrow shot off, i.e., to wound or to kill (cf. 2 Kings 9:24; 1 Kings 22:34). The shooting of the arrows to the earth was intended to symbolize the overthrow of the Syrians. “And the king shot three times, and then stood (still),” i.e., left off shooting.
Verse 19. Elisha was angry at this, and said: “Thou shouldst shoot five or six times, thou wouldst then have smitten the Syrians to destruction; but now thou wilt smite them three times.” hk;n; : it was to shoot, i.e., thou shouldst shoot; compare Ewald, §237, c.; and for hk;n; za; , then hadst thou smitten, vid., Ewald, §358, a. As the king was told that the arrow shot off signified a victory over the Syrians, he ought to have shot off all the arrows, to secure a complete victory over them. When, therefore, he left off after shooting only three times, this was a sign that he was wanting in the proper zeal for obtaining the divine promise, i.e., in true faith in the omnipotence of God to fulfil His promise. f196 Elisha was angry at this weakness of the king’s faith, and told him that by leaving off so soon he had deprived himself of a perfect victory over the Syrians.
Verse 20-21. Elisha then died at a great age. As he had been called by Elijah to be a prophet in the reign of Ahab and did not die till that of Joash, and forty-one years elapsed between the year that Ahab died and the commencement of the reign of Joash, he must have held his prophetical office for at least fifty years, and have attained the age of eighty. “And they buried him must as marauding bands of Moabites entered the land. And it came to pass, that at the burial of a man they saw the marauding bands coming, and placed the dead man in the greatest haste in the grave of Elisha,” for the purpose of escaping from the enemy. But when the (dead) man touched the bones of Elisha, he came to life again, and rose up upon his feet. wgw ba;wOm dWdG] is a circumstantial clause. The difficult expression hn,v; awOB, “a year had come,” can only have the meaning given by the LXX and Chald.: “when a year had come,” and evidently indicates that the burial of Elisha occurred at the time when the yearly returning bands of Moabitish marauders invaded the land.
Ewald (Krit. Gramm. p. 528) would therefore read awOB, a coming of the year, in which case the words would be grammatically subordinate to the main clause. Luther renders it “the same year,” in ipso anno, after the Vulgate and Syriac, as if the reading had been hn,v; µyrit;a . µhe , they, the people who had just buried a man. Ëlæv; , not threw, but placed hastily. [gæn; Ëlæy; : and the man went and touched. Ëlæy; serves as a pictorial delineation of the thought, that as soon as the dead man touched the bones of Elisha he came to life. Ëlæy; is not only applied to the motion of inanimate objects, but also to the gradual progress of any transaction. The conjecture of Thenius and Hitzig, Ëlæh; , “and they went away,” is quite unsuitable. The earlier Israelites did not bury their dead in coffins, but wrapped them in linen cloths and laid them in tombs hewn out of the rock.
The tomb was then covered with a stone, which could easily be removed.
The dead man, who was placed thus hurriedly in the tomb which had been opened, might therefore easily come into contact with the bones of Elisha.
The design of this miracle of the restoration of the dead man to life was not to show how even in the grave Elisha surpassed his master Elijah in miraculous power (Ephr. Syr. and others), but to impress the seal of divine attestation upon the prophecy of the dying prophet concerning the victory of Joash over the Syrians (Wisd. 48:13, 14), since the Lord thereby bore witness that He was not the God of the dead, but of the living, and that His spirit was raised above death and corruptibility.-The opinion that the dead man was restored to life again in a natural manner, through the violent shaking occasioned by the fall, or through the coolness of the tomb, needs no refutation.
2 KINGS. 13:22-25
The prophecy which Elisha uttered before his death is here followed immediately by the account of its fulfilment, and to this end the oppression of the Israelites by Hazael is mentioned once more, together with that turn of affairs which took place through the compassion of God after the death of Hazael and in the reign of his son Benhadad. xjæl; is a pluperfect: “Hazael had oppressed” (for the fact itself compare vv. 4 and 7). For the sake of the covenant made with the patriarchs the Lord turned again to the Israelites, and would not destroy them, and did not cast them away from His face `hT;[æ `d[æ (“till now”), as was the case afterwards, but delivered them from the threatening destruction through the death of Hazael. For in the reign of his son and successor Benhadad, Joash the son of Jehoahaz took from him again bWv is to be connected with jqæl; ) the cities which he (Hazael) had taken from Jehoahaz in the war. These cities which Hazael had wrested from Jehoahaz were on this side of the Jordan, for Hazael had conquered all Gilead in the time of Jehu (2 Kings 10:32-33). Joash recovered the former from Benhadad, whilst his son Jeroboam reconquered Gilead also (see at 2 Kings 14:25).
REIGNS OF AMAZIAH OF JUDAH, AND JEROBOAM II OF ISRAEL.
2 KINGS. 14:1-22
Reign of Amaziah of Judah (cf. 2 Chron 25).-Vv. 1-7. Length and spirit of his reign, and his victory over the Edomites.
Verse 1. Amaziah began to reign in the second year of Joash of Israel.
Now as Joash of Israel ascended the throne, according to 2 Kings 13:10, in the thirty-seventh year of Joash of Judah, the latter cannot have reigned thirty-nine full years, which might be reckoned as forty (2 Kings 12:1), according to the principle mentioned at p. 130f. of reckoning the current years as complete years, if the commencement of his reign took place a month or two before Nisan, and his death occurred a month or two after, without its being necessary to assume a regency.
Verse 2-4. Amaziah reigned twenty-nine years in the same theocratical spirit as his father Joash, only not like his ancestor David, i.e., according to the correct explanation in 2 Chron 25:2, not with µlev; bb;le (see at Kings 11:4), since Amaziah, like his father Joash (see at 2 Kings 12:3), fell into idolatry in the closing years of his reign (cf. 2 Chron 25:14ff.).-Only the high places were not taken away, etc.
Verse 5-6. After establishing his own government, he punished the murderers of his father with death; but, according to the law in Deut 24:16, he did not slay their children also, as was commonly the custom in the East in ancient times, and may very frequently have been done in Israel as well.
The Chethîb tWm is correct, and the Keri tWm is an unnecessary alteration made after Deuteronomy.
Verse 7. The brief account of the defeat of the Edomites in the Salt Valley and of the taking of the city of Sela is completed by 2 Chron 25:6-16.
According to the latter, Amaziah sought to strengthen his own considerable army by the addition of 100,000 Israelitish mercenaries; but at the exhortation of a prophet he sent the hired Israelites away again, at which they were so enraged, that on their way home they plundered several of the cities of Judah and put many men to death. The Edomites had revolted from Judah in the reign of Joram (2 Kings 8:20ff.); Amaziah now sought to re-establish his rule over them, in which he was so far successful, that he completely defeated them, slaying 10,000 in the battle and then taking their capital, so that his successor Uzziah was also able to incorporate the Edomitish port of Elath in his own kingdom once more (v. 22). On the Salt Valley (geey-hamelach for geey’-hamelach in the Chronicles), a marshy salt plain in the south of the Dead Sea, see at 2 Sam 8:13.
According to v. 12 of the Chronicles, in addition to the 10,000 who were slain in battle, 10,000 Edomites were taken prisoners and cast headlong alive from the top of a rock. [læs, (the rock) with the article, because the epithet is founded upon the peculiar nature of the city, was probably the capital of the Edomites, called by the Greeks hJ Pe>tra , and bore this name from its situation and the mode in which it was built, since it was erected in a valley surrounded by rocks, and that in such a manner that the houses were partly hewn in the natural rock. Of this commercial city, which was still flourishing in the first centuries of the Christian era, splendid ruins have been preserved in a valley on the eastern side of the ghor which runs down to the Elanitic Gulf, about two days’ journey from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, on the east of Mount Hor, to which the Crusaders gave the name of vallis Moysi, and which the Arabs still call Wady Musa (see Robinson, Pal. ii. pp. 512ff., and for the history of this city, pp. 574ff., and Ritter’s Erdkunde, xiv. pp. 1103ff.).
Verse 8-14. War with Joash of Israel.-V. 8. Amaziah then sent a challenge to the Israelitish king Joash to go to war with him. The outward reason for this was no doubt the hostile acts that had been performed by the Israelitish troops, which had been hired for the war with Edom and then sent back again (2 Chron 25:13). But the inward ground was the pride which had crept upon Amaziah in consequence of his victory over the Edomites, and had so far carried him away, that he not only forgot the Lord his God, to whom he was indebted for this victory, and brought to Jerusalem the gods of the Edomites which he had taken in the war and worshipped them, and silenced with threats the prophet who condemned this idolatry (2 Chron 25:14ff.), but in his proud reliance upon his own power challenged the Israelitish king to war.
Verse 9-10. Jehoash (Joash) answered his insolent challenge, “Come, we will see one another face to face,” i.e., measure swords with one another in war, with a similar fable to that with which Jotham had once instructed his fellow-citizens (Judg 9:8ff.). “The thorn-bush on Lebanon asked the cedar on Lebanon for its daughter as a wife for his son, and beasts of the field went by and trampled down the thorn-bush.” This fable is, of course, not to be interpreted literally, as though Amaziah were the thorn-bush, and Jehoash the cedar, and the wild beasts the warriors; but the thorn-bush putting itself upon an equality with the cedar is a figurative representation of a proud man overrating his strength, and the desire expressed to the cedar of a wish surpassing the bounds of one’s condition; so that Thenius is not warranted in inferring from this that Amaziah had in his mind the subjugation of Israel to Judah again. The trampling down of the thorn-bush by a wild beast is only meant to set forth the sudden overthrow and destruction which may come unexpectedly upon the proud man in the midst of his daring plans. V. 10 contains the application of the parable. The victory over Edom has made thee high-minded. ble ac;n; : thy heart has lifted thee up, equivalent to, thou hast become high-minded. dbæK; , “be honoured,” i.e., be content with the fame thou hast acquired at Edom, “and stay at home.” Wherefore shouldst thou meddle with misfortune? hr,N;t]ji , to engage in conflict or war. Misfortune is thought of as an enemy, with whom he wanted to fight.
Verse 11-12. But Amaziah paid not attention to this warning. A battle was fought at Beth-shemesh (Ain-Shems, on the border of Judah and Dan, see at Josh 15:10); Judah was smitten by Israel, so that every one fled to his home.
Verse 13-14. Jehoash took king Amaziah prisoner, and then came to Jerusalem, and had four hundred cubits of the wall broken down at the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, and then returned to Samaria with the treasures of the palace and temple, and with hostages. the Chethîb awOB is to be pointed awOB, the vowel ow being placed after ynæa , as in several other cases (see Ewald, §18, b.). There is no ground for altering awOB after the Chronicles (Thenius), although the reading in the Chronicles elucidates the thought. For if Jehoash took Amaziah prisoner at Beth-shemesh and then came to Jerusalem, he no doubt brought his prisoner with him, for Amaziah remained king and reigned for fifteen years after the death of Jehoash (v. 17). The Ephraim gate, which is generally supposed to be the same as the gate of Benjamin (Jer 37:13; 38:7; Zech 14:10; compare Neh 8:16; 12:39), stood in the middle of the north wall of Jerusalem, through which the road to Benjamin and Ephraim ran; and the corner gate was at the north-western corner of the same wall, as we may see from Jer 31:38 and Zech 14:10. If, then, Jehoash had four hundred cubits of the wall thrown down at the gate Ephraim to the corner gate, the distance between the two gates was not more than four hundred cubits, which applies to the northern wall of Zion, but not to the second wall, which defended the lower city towards the north, and must have been longer, and which, according to 2 Chron 32:5, was probably built for the first time by Hezekiah (vid., Krafft, Topographie v. Jerus. pp. 117ff.). Jehoash destroyed this portion of the Zion wall, that the city might be left defenceless, as Jerusalem could be most easily taken on the level northern side. f197 The treasures of the temple and palace, which Jehoash took away, cannot, according to 2 Kings 12:19, have been very considerable. hb;ru[Tæ ˆBe , sons of the citizenships, i.e., hostages (obsides, Vulg.). He took hostages in return for the release of Amaziah, as pledges that he would keep the peace.
Verse 15-17. The repetition of the notice concerning the end of the reign of Joash, together with the formula from 2 Kings 13:12 and 13, may probably be explained from the fact, that in the annals of the kings of Israel it stood after the account of the war between Jehoash and Amaziah. This may be inferred from the circumstance that the name of Joash is spelt invariably va;wOhy] here, whereas in the closing notices in 2 Kings 13:12 and 13 we have the later form va;wOy , the one which was no doubt adopted by the author of our books. But he might be induced to give these notices once more as he found them in his original sources, from the statement in v. 17, that Amaziah outlived Jehoash fifteen years, seeing therein a manifestation of the grace of God, who would not destroy Amaziah notwithstanding his pride, but delivered him, through the death of his victor, from further injuries at his hands. As Amaziah ascended the throne in the second year of the sixteen years’ reign of Jehoash, and before his war with Israel made war upon the Edomites and overcame them, the war with Israel can only fall in the closing years of Jehoash, and this king cannot very long have survived his triumph over the king of Judah.
Verse 18-19. Conspiracy against Amaziah.-V. 19. Amaziah, like his father Joash, did not die a natural death. They made a conspiracy against him at Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish, whither murderers were sent after him, who slew him there. The earlier commentators sought for the cause of this conspiracy in the unfortunate result of the war with Jehoash; but this conjecture is at variance with the circumstance that the conspiracy did not break out till fifteen years or more after that event. It is true that in Chron 25:27 we read “from the time that Amaziah departed from the Lord, they formed a conspiracy against him;” but even this statement cannot be understood in any other way than that Amaziah’s apostasy gave occasion for discontent, which eventually led to a conspiracy. For his apostasy began with the introduction of Edomitish deities into Jerusalem after the defeat of the Edomites, and therefore before the war with Jehoash, in the first part of his reign, whereas the conspiracy cannot possibly have lasted fifteen years or more before it came to a head. Lachish, in the lowlands of Judah, has probably been preserved in the ruins of Um Lakis (see at Josh 10:3). Verse 20. “They lifted him upon the horses,” i.e., upon the hearse to which the king’s horses had been harnessed, and brought him to Jerusalem, where he was buried with his fathers, i.e., in the royal tomb.
Verse 21. All the people of Judah, i.e., the whole nation, not the whole of the men of war (Thenius), thereupon made his son Azariah (Uzziah) king, who was only sixteen years old. `hy;r]zæ[ or `hy;r]zæ[ is the name given to this king here and 2 Kings 15:1,6,8,17,23, and 27, and 1 Chron 3:12; whereas in 2 Kings 15:13,30,32,34; 2 Chron 26:1,3,11, etc., and also Isa 1:1; 6:1; Hos 1:1; Amos 1:1, and Zech 14:5, he is called `hY;Zi[u or `hY;Zi[u (Uzziah).
This variation in the name is too constant to be attributable to a copyist’s error. Even the conjecture that Azariah adopted the name Uzziah as king, or that it was given to him by the soldiers after a successful campaign (Thenius), does not explain the use of the two names in our historical books. We must rather assume that the two names, which are related in meaning, were used promiscuously. `hy;r]zæ[ signifies “in Jehovah is help;” `hY;Zi[u , “whose strength is Jehovah.” This is favoured by the circumstance adduced by Bertheau, that among the descendants of Kohath we also find an Uzziah who bears the name Azariah (1 Chron 6:9 and 21), and similarly among the descendants of Heman an Uzziel with the name Azarel (1 Chron 25:4 and 18).
Verse 22. Immediately after his ascent of the throne, Uzziah built, i.e., fortified, Elath, the Idumaean port (see at 1 Kings 9:26), and restored it to Judah again. It is evident from this that Uzziah completed the renewed subjugation of Edom which his father had begun. The position in which this notice stands, immediately after his ascent of the throne and before the account of the duration and character of his reign, may be explained in all probability from the importance of the work itself, which not only distinguished the commencement of his reign, but also gave evident of its power.
2 KINGS. 14:23-24
Reign of Jeroboam II of Israel.
Verse 23. The statement that Jeroboam the son of Joash (Jehoash) ascended the throne in the fifteenth year of Amaziah, agrees with v. 17, according to which Amaziah outlived Jehoash fifteen years, since Amaziah reigned twenty-nine years. On the other hand, the forty-one years’ duration of his reign does not agree with the statement in 2 Kings 15:8, that his son Zachariah did not become king till the thirty-eighth year of Azariah (Uzziah); and therefore Thenius proposes to alter the number 41 into 51, Ewald into 53. For further remarks, see 2 Kings 15:8. Jeroboam also adhered firmly to the image-worship of his ancestors, but he raised his kingdom again to great power.
2 KINGS. 14:25
He brought back bWv ), i.e., restored, the boundary of Israel from towards Hamath in the north, to the point to which the kingdom extended in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 8:65), to the sea of the Arabah (the present Ghor), i.e., to the Dead Sea (compare Deut 3:17, and 4:49, from which this designation of the southern border of the kingdom of the ten tribes arose), “according to the word of the Lord, which He had spoken through the prophet Jonah,” who had probably used this designation of the southern boundary, which was borrowed from the Pentateuch, in the announcement which he made. The extent of the kingdom of Israel in the reign of Jeroboam is defined in the same manner in Amos 6:14, but instead of `bre[ µy; the `bre[ ljænæ is mentioned, i.e., in all probability the Wady el Ashy, which formed the boundary between Moab and Edom; from which we may see that Jeroboam had also subjugated the Moabites to his kingdom, which is not only rendered probable by 2 Kings 3:6ff., but is also implied in the words that he restored the former boundary of the kingdom of Israel-On the prophet Jonah, the son of Amittai, see the Comm. on Jonah 1:1. Gath-hepher, in the tribe of Zebulun, is the present village of Meshed, to the north of Nazareth (see at Josh 19:13).
2 KINGS. 14:26-27
The higher ground for this strengthening of Israel in the time of Jeroboam was to be found in the compassion of God. The Lord saw the great oppression and helpless condition of Israel, and had not yet pronounced the decree of rejection. He therefore sent help through Jeroboam. daom] hr,wOm without the article, and governed by ac;n; ynæa (see Ewald, §293, a.), signifies very bitter, hr;m; having taken the meaning of rræm; . This is the explanation adopted in all the ancient versions, and also by Dietrich in Ges.
Lex. wgw `rx;[; sp,a, , verbatim from Deut 32:36, to show that the kingdom of Israel had been brought to the utmost extremity of distress predicted there by Moses, and it was necessary that the Lord should interpose with His help, if His people were not utterly to perish. rbæd; alo : He had not yet spoken, i.e., had not yet uttered the decree of rejection through the mouth of a prophet. To blot out the name under the heavens is an abbreviated expression for: among the nations who dwelt under the heavens. 2 KINGS 14:28,29 Of the rest of the history of Jeroboam we have nothing more than an intimation that he brought back Damascus and Hamath of Judah to Israel, i.e., subjugated it again to the kingdom of Israel. hd;Why] is a periphrastic form for the genitive, as proper names do not admit of any form of the construct state, and in this case the simple genitive would not have answered so well to the fact. For the meaning is: “whatever in the two kingdoms of Damascus and Hamath had formerly belonged to Judah in the times of David and Solomon.” By Damascus and Hamath we are not to understand the cities, but the kingdoms; for not only did the city of Hamath never belong to the kingdom of Israel, but it was situated outside the boundaries laid down by Moses for Israel (see at Num 34:8). It cannot, therefore, have been re-conquered bWv ) by Jeroboam. It was different with the city of Damascus, which David had conquered and even Solomon had not permanently lost (see at 1 Kings 11:24). Consequently in the case of Damascus the capital is included in the kingdom.
Verse 29. As Jeroboam reigned forty-one years, his death occurred in the twenty-seventh year of Uzziah. If, then, his son did not begin to reign till the thirty-eight year of Uzziah, as is stated in 2 Kings 15:8, he cannot have come to the throne immediately after his father’s death (see at ch. 15:8). CH. 15. REIGNS OF AZARIAH OF JUDAH, ZACHARIAH, SHALLUM, MENAHEM, PEKAHIAH, AND PEKAH OF ISRAEL, AND JOTHAM OF JUDAH.
2 KINGS. 15:1-7
Reign of Azariah (Uzziah) or Judah (cf. 2 Chron 26).-The statement that “in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam Azariah began to reign” is at variance with 2 Kings 14:2,16-17, and 23. If, for example, Azariah ascended the throne in the fifteenth year of Joash of Israel, and with his twenty-nine years’ reign outlived Joash fifteen years (2 Kings 14:2,17); if, moreover, Jeroboam followed his father Joash in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (2 Kings 14:23), and Amaziah died in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam; Azariah (Uzziah) must have become king in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, since, according to 2 Kings 14:21, the people made him king after the murder of his father, which precludes the supposition of an interregnum. Consequently the datum “in the twentyseventh year” can only have crept into the text through the confounding of the numerals Ew (15) with kz (27), and we must therefore read “in the fifteenth year.”
Verse 2-6. Beside the general characteristics of Uzziah’s fifty-two years’ reign, which are given in the standing formula, not a single special act is mentioned, although, according to 2 Chron 26, he raised his kingdom to great earthly power and prosperity; probably for no other reason than because his enterprises had exerted no permanent influence upon the development of the kingdom of Judah, but all the useful fruits of his reign were destroyed again by the ungodly Ahaz. Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Amaziah had done. For as the latter was unfaithful to the Lord in the closing years of his reign, so did Uzziah seek God only so long as Zechariah, who was experienced in divine visions, remained alive, and God gave success to his enterprises, so that during this time he carried on successful wars against the Philistines and Arabians, fortified the walls of Jerusalem with strong towers, built watch-towers in the desert, and constructed cisterns for the protection and supply of his numerous flocks, promoted agriculture and vine-growing, and organized a numerous and well- furnished army (2 Chron 26:5-15).
But the great power to which he thereby attained produced such haughtiness, that he wanted to make himself high priest in his kingdom after the manner of the heathen kings, and usurping the sacred functions, which belonged according to the law to the Levitical priests alone, to offer incense in the temple, for which he was punished with leprosy upon the spot (v. 5 compared with 2 Chron 26:16ff.). The king’s leprosy is described in our account also as a punishment from God. yy [Nænæy]wæ : Jehovah smote him, and he became leprous. This presupposes an act of guilt, and confirms the fuller account of this guilt given in the Chronicles, which Thenius, following the example of De Wette and Winer, could only call in question on the erroneous assumption “that the powerful king wanted to restore the regal high-priesthood exercised by David and Solomon” Oehler (Herzog’s Cycl.) has already shown that such an opinion is perfectly “groundless,” since it is nowhere stated that David and Solomon performed with their own hands the functions assigned in the law to the priests in connection with the offering of sacrifice, as the co-operation of the priests is not precluded in connection with the sacrifices presented by these kings (2 Sam 6:17, and 1 Kings 3:4, etc.).-Uzziah being afflicted with leprosy, was obliged to live in a separate house, and appoint his son Jotham as president of the royal house to judge the people, i.e., to conduct the administration of the kingdom.-The time when this event occurred is not stated either in our account or in the Chronicles. But this punishment from God cannot have fallen upon him before the last ten years of his fifty-two years’ reign, because his son, who was only twenty-five years old when his father died (v. 33, and 2 Chron 27:1), undertook the administration of the affairs of the kingdom at once, and therefore must have been at least fifteen years old. tWvp]j; tyiBæ is taken by Winer, Gesenius, and others, after the example of Iken, to signify nosocomium, an infirmary or lazar-house, in accordance with the verb Arab. xfš, fecit, II debilis, imbecillis fuit. But this meaning cannot be traced in Hebrew, where yvip]j; is used in no other sense than free, set at liberty, manumissus. Consequently the rendering adopted by Aquila is correct, oi>kov eleuqeri>av ; and the explanation given by Kimchi of this epithet is, that the persons who lived there were those who were sent away from human society, or perhaps more correctly, those who were released from the world and its privileges and duties, or cut off from intercourse with God and man. Verse 7. When Uzziah died, he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, but because he died of leprosy, not in the royal family tomb, but, as the Chronicles (v. 23) add to complete the account, “in the burial-field of the kings;” so that he was probably buried in the earth according to our mode. His son Jotham did not become king till after Uzziah’s death, as he had not been regent, but only the administrator of the affairs of the kingdom during his father’s leprosy.
2 KINGS. 15:8-12
Reign of Zachariah of Israel.
Verse 8. “In the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, Zachariah the son of Jeroboam became king over Israel six months.” As Jeroboam died in the twenty-seventh year of Uzziah, according to our remarks on 2 Kings 14:29, there is an interregnum of eleven years between his death and the ascent of the throne by his son, as almost all the chronologists since the time of Usher have assumed. It is true that this interregnum may be set aside by assuming that Jeroboam reigned fifty-one or fifty-three years instead of forty-one, without the synchronism being altered in consequence. but as it is not very probable that the numeral letters bnO or ng should be confounded with m’, and as the conflict for the possession of the throne, which we meet with after the very brief reign of Zachariah, when taken in connection with various allusions in the prophecies of Hosea, rather favours the idea that the anarchy broke out immediately after the death of Jeroboam, we regard the assumption of an interregnum as resting on a better foundation than the removal of the chronological discrepancy by an alteration of the text.
Verse 9-12. Zechariah also persevered in the sin of his fathers in connection with the calf-worship therefore the word of the Lord pronounced upon Jehu (2 Kings 10:30) was fulfilled in him.-Shallum the son of Jabesh formed a conspiracy and put him to death qaabaal-`am, before people, i.e., openly before the eyes of all. f198 As Israel would not suffer itself to be brought to repentance and to return to the Lord, its God and King, by the manifestations of divine grace in the times of Joash and Jeroboam, any more than by the severe judgments that preceded them, and the earnest admonitions of the prophets Hosea and Amos; the judgment of rejection could not fail eventually to burst forth upon the nation, which so basely despised the grace, long-suffering, and covenant- faithfulness of God. We therefore see the kingdom hasten with rapid steps towards its destruction after the death of Jeroboam. In the sixty-two years between the death of Jeroboam and the conquest of Samaria by Shalmaneser anarchy prevailed twice, in all for the space of twenty years, and six kings followed one another, only one of whom, viz., Menahem, died a natural death, so as to be succeeded by his son upon the throne. The other five were dethroned and murdered by rebels, so that, as Witsius has truly said, with the murder of Zachariah not only was the declaration of Hosea (Hos 1:4) fulfilled, “I visit the blood-guiltiness of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu,” but also the parallel utterance, “and I destroy the kingdom of the house of Israel,” since the monarchy in Israel really ceased with Zachariah. “For the successors of Zachariah were not so much kings as robbers and tyrants, unworthy of the august name of kings, who lost with ignominy the tyranny which they had wickedly acquired, and as wickedly exercised.”-Witsius, Dekaful. p. 320.
2 KINGS. 15:13-16
Reign of Shallum.
Shallum reigned only a full month ( µymiy;Ajræy, , as in Deut 21:13; see at Gen 29:14). Menahem the son of Gadi then made war upon him from Tirzah; and by him he was smitten and slain. Menahem must have been a general or the commander-in-chief, as Josephus affirms. As soon as he became king he smote Tiphsach- i.e., Thapsacus on the Euphrates, which has long since entirely disappeared, probably to be sought for in the neighbourhood of the present Rakka, by the ford of el Hamman, the northeastern border city of the Israelitish kingdom in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 5:4), which came into the possession of the kingdom of Israel again when the ancient boundaries were restored by Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:25 and 28), but which had probably revolted again during the anarchy which arose after the death of Jeroboam-”and all that were therein, and the territory thereof, from Tirzah; because they opened not (to him), therefore he smote it, and had them that were with child ripped up.” hx;r]Ti does not mean that Menahem laid the land or district waste from Tirzah to Tiphsach, but is to be taken in connection with hk;n; in this sense: he smote Tiphsach proceeding from Tirzah, etc. The position of this notice, namely, immediately after the account of the usurpation of the throne by Menahem and before the history of his reign, is analogous to that concerning Elath in the case of Uzziah (2 Kings 14:22), and, like the latter, is to be accounted for from the fact that the expedition of Menahem against Tiphsach formed the commencement of his reign, and, as we may infer from v. 19, became very eventful not only for his own reign, but also for the kingdom of Israel generally. The reason why he proceeded from Tirzah against Tiphsach, was no doubt that it was in Tirzah, the present Tallusa, which was only three hours to the east of Samaria (see at 1 Kings 14:17), that the army of which Menahem was commander was posted, so that he had probably gone to Samaria with only a small body of men to overthrow Shallum, the murderer of Zachariah and usurper of the throne, and to make himself king.
It is possible that the army commanded by Menahem had already been collected in Tirzah to march against the city of Tiphsach, which had revolted from Israel when Shallum seized upon the throne by the murder of Zachariah; so that after Menahem had removed the usurper, he carried out at once the campaign already resolved upon, and having taken Tiphsach, punished it most cruelly for its revolt. On the cruel custom of ripping up the women with child, i.e., of cutting open their wombs, see 2 Kings 8:12; Amos 1:13, and Hos 14:1. Tiphsach, Thapsacus, appears to have been a strong fortress; and from its situation on the western bank of the Euphrates, at the termination of the great trade-road from Egypt, Phoenicia, and Syria to Mesopotamia and the kingdoms of Inner Asia (Movers, Phöniz. ii. 2, pp. 164, 165; and Ritter, Erdkunde, x. pp. 1114- 15), the possession of it was of great importance to the kingdom of Israel. f
199 2 KINGS. 15:17-18
Reign of Menahem.
Menahem’s reign lasted ten full years (see at v. 23), and resembled that of his predecessors in its attitude towards God. In v. 18, the expression kaalyaamaayw (all his days) is a very strange one, inasmuch as no such definition of time occurs in connection with the usual formula, either in this chapter (cf. vv. 24 and 28) or elsewhere (cf. 2 Kings 3:3; 10:31; 13:2,11, etc.). The LXX have instead of this, en tai>v hJme>raiv autou> (in his days).
If we compare v. 29, awOB jqæp, µwOy (in the days of Pekah came, etc.), awOB µwOy might possibly be regarded as the original reading, from which a copyist’s error aB; wym;y;AlK; arose, after which wyM;y;AlK; was connected with the preceding clause.
2 KINGS. 15:19
In the time of Menahem, Pul king of Assyria invaded the land, and Menahem gave him 1000 talents of silver-more than two and a half millions of thalers (£375,000)-”that his hands might be with him, to confirm the kingdom in his hand.” These words are understood by the majority of commentators from the time of Ephraem Syrus, when taken in connection with Hos 5:13, as signifying that Menahem invited Pul, that he might establish his government with his assistance. But the words of Hosea, “Ephraim goes to the Assyrian,” sc. to seek for help (2 Kings 5:13, cf. 7:11 and 8:9), are far too general to be taken as referring specially to Menahem; and the assumption that Menahem invited Pul into the land is opposed by the words in the verse before us, “Pul came over the land.” Even the further statement that Menahem gave to Pul 1000 talents of silver when he came into the land, that he might help him to establish his government, presupposes at the most that a party opposed to Menahem had invited the Assyrians, to overthrow the usurper. At any rate, we may imagine, in perfect harmony with the words of our account, that Pul marched against Israel of his own accord, possibly induced to do so by Menahem’s expedition against Thapsacus, and that his coming was simply turned to account as a good opportunity for disputing Menahem’s possession of the throne he had usurped, so that Menahem, by paying the tribute mentioned, persuaded the Assyrian to withdraw, that he might deprive the opposing party of the Assyrian support, and thereby establish his own rule.
2 KINGS. 15:20-22
To collect the requisite amount, Menahem imposed upon all persons of property a tax of fifty shekels each. ax;y; with `l[æ , he caused to arise, i.e., made a collection. ax;y; in a causative sense, from ax;y; , to arise, to be paid (2 Kings 12:13). lyijæ rwOBGi : not warriors, but men of property, as in Ruth. 2 Kings 2:1; 1 Sam 9:1. dj;a, vwOna’ , for the individual. Pul was the first king of Assyria who invaded the kingdom of Israel and prepared the way for the conquest of this kingdom by his successors, and for the extension of the Assyrian power as far as Egypt. According to the thorough investigation made by Marc. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. Assurs u. Babels, pp. 128ff.), Pul, whose name has not yet been discovered upon the Assyrian monuments, was the last king of Nineveh of the family of the Derketades, who still ruled over Babylon according to Berosus, and the last king but one of this dynasty. f
200 2 KINGS. 15:23-26
Reign of Pekahiah.
Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign “in the fiftieth year of Uzziah.” As Menahem had begun to reign in the thirty-ninth year of Uzziah and reigned ten years, he must have died in the forty-ninth year of Uzziah; and therefore, if his son did not become king till the fiftieth year, some months must have elapsed between the death of Menahem and Pekahiah’s ascent of the throne, probably cause, in the existing disorganization of the kingdom, the possession of the throne by the latter was opposed. Pekahiah reigned in the spirit of his predecessors, but only for two years, as his aidede- camp vwOkv; , see at 2 Sam 23:8) Pekah conspired against him and slew him in the citadel ˆwOmr]aæ , see at 1 Kings 16:8) of the king’s palace, with Argob and Aryeh. Argob and Aryeh were not fellow-conspirators of Pekah, who helped to slay the king, but principes Pekachijae, as Seb.
Schmidt expresses it, probably aides-de-camp of Pekahiah, who were slain by the conspirators when defending their king. We must take the words in this sense on account of what follows: wgw µyVimij `µ[i , “and with him (Pekah) were fifty men of the Gileadites” (i.e., they helped him). The Gileadites probably belonged to the king’s body-guard, and were under the command of the aides-de-camp of Pekah.
2 KINGS. 15:27-29
Reign of Pekah.
Pekah the son of Remaliah reigned twenty years. During his reign the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser came, and after conquering the fortified cities round Lake Merom took possession of Gilead and Galilee, namely the whole land of Naphtali, and led the inhabitants captive to Assyria. Tiglathpileser ( rs,a,l]pi tlæg]Ti or rs,l,p] tlæg]Ti , 2 Kings 16:7; rs,an,l]pi or rs,n,l]pi tgæl]Ti , 1 Chron 5:26, and 2 Chron 28:20; Qeglaqfalasa>r or Qalgaqfellasa>r , LXX; written Tiglat-palatsira or Tiglat-palatsar on the Assyrian monuments, and interpreted by Gesenius and others “ruler of the Tigris,” although the reading of the name upon the monuments is still uncertain, and the explanation given a very uncertain one, since Tiglat or Tilgat is hardly identical with Diglath = Tigris, but is probably a name of the goddess Derketo, Atergatis), was, according to M. v. Niebuhr (pp. 156, 157), the last king of the Derketade dynasty, who, when the Medes and Babylonians threw off the Assyrian supremacy after the death of Pul, attempted to restore and extend the ancient dominion. f202 His expedition against Israel falls, according to v. 29 and 2 Kings 16:9, in the closing years of Pekah, when Ahaz had come to the throne in Judah.
The enumeration of his conquests in the kingdom of Israel commences with the most important cities, probably the leading fortifications. Then follow the districts of which he took possession, and the inhabitants of which he led into captivity. The cities mentioned are Ijon, probably the present Ayun on the north-eastern edge of the Merj Ayun; Abel-bethmaacah, the present Abil el Kamh, on the north-west of Lake Huleh (see at 1 Kings 15:20); Janoach, which must not be confounded with the Janocha mentioned in Josh 16:6-7, on the border of Ephraim and Manasseh, but is to be sought for in Galilee or the tribe-territory of Naphtali, and has not yet been discovered; Kedesh, on the mountains to the west of Lake Huleh, which has been preserved as an insignificant village under the ancient name (see at Josh 12:22); Hazor, in the same region, but not yet traced with certainty (see at Josh 11:1). Gilead is the whole of the land to the east of the Jordan, the territory of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half-Manasseh (1 Chron 5:26), which had only been wrested from the Syrians again a short time before by Jeroboam II, and restored to Israel (2 Kings 14:25, compared with ch. 20:33). lyliG; (the feminine form of hagaaliyl, see Ewald, §173, h.) is more precisely defined by the apposition “all the land of Naphtali” (see at 1 Kings 9:11).-In the place of rWVaæ , “to the land of Assyria,” the different regions to which the captives were transported are given in 1 Chron 5:26. For further remarks on this point see at 2 Kings 17:6.
2 KINGS. 15:30-31
Pekah met with his death in a conspiracy organized by Hosea the son of Elah, who made himself king “in the twentieth year of Jotham.” There is something very strange in this chronological datum, as Jotham only reigned sixteen years (v. 33), and Ahaz began to reign in the seventeenth year of Pekah (2 Kings 16:1); so that Pekah’s death would fall in the fourth year of Ahaz. The reason for this striking statement can only be found, as Usher has shown (Chronol. sacr. p. 80), in the fact that nothing has yet been said about Jotham’s successor Ahaz, because the reign of Jotham himself is not mentioned till vv. 32ff. f
203 2 KINGS. 15:32-36
Reign of Jotham of Judah (cf. 2 Chron 27).-V. 32. “In the second year of Pekah Jotham began to reign.” This agrees with the statement in v. 27, that Pekah became king in the last year of Uzziah, supposing that it occurred at the commencement of the year. Jotham’s sixteen years therefore came to a close in the seventeenth year of Pekah’s reign (2 Kings 16:1). His reign was like that of his father Uzziah (compare vv. 34, 35 with vv. 3, 4), except, as is added in Chr. v. 2, that he did not force himself into the temple of the Lord, as Uzziah had done (2 Chr. 16:16). All that is mentioned of his enterprises in the account before us is that he built the upper gate of the house of Jehovah, that is to say, that he restored it, or perhaps added to its beauty.
The upper gate, according to Ezek 9:2 compared with 2 Kings 8:3,5,14 and 16, is the gate at the north side of the inner or upper court, where all the sacrifices were slaughtered, according to Ezek 40:38-43. We also find from 2 Chron 27:3ff. that he built against the wall of Ophel, and several cities in the mountains of Judah, and castles and towers in the forests, and subdued the Ammonites, so that they paid him tribute for three years.
Jotham carried on with great vigour, therefore, the work which his father had began, to increase the material prosperity of his subjects.
2 KINGS. 15:37-38
In those days the Lord began to send against Judah Rezin, etc. It is evident from the position of this verse at the close of the account of Jotham, that the incursions of the allied Syrians and Israelites into Judah under the command of Rezin and Pekah commenced in the closing years of Jotham, so that these foes appeared before Jerusalem at the very beginning of the reign of Ahaz.-It is true that the Syrians had been subjugated by Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:28); but in the anarchical condition of the Israelitish kingdom after his death, they had no doubt recovered their independence. They must also have been overcome by the Assyrians under Pul, for he could never have marched against Israel without having first of all conquered Syria. But as the power of the Assyrians was greatly weakened for a time by the falling away of the Medes and Babylonians, the Syrians had taken advantage of this weakness to refuse the payment of tribute to Assyria, and had formed an alliance with Pekah of Israel to conquer Judah, and thereby to strengthen their power so as to be able to offer a successful resistance to any attack from the side of the Euphrates.-But as 2 Kings 16:6ff. and ch. 17 show, it was otherwise decreed in the counsels of the Lord.
REIGN OF KING AHAZ OF JUDAH.
With the reign of Ahaz a most eventful change took place in the development of the kingdom of Judah. Under the vigorous reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, by whom the earthly prosperity of the kingdom had been studiously advanced, there had been, as we may see from the prophecies of Isaiah, chs. 2-6, which date from this time, a prevalence of luxury and self-security, of unrighteousness and forgetfulness of God, among the upper classes, in consequence of the increase of their wealth.
Under Ahaz these sins grew into open apostasy from the Lord; for this weak and unprincipled ruler trod in the steps of the kings of Israel, and introduced image-worship and idolatrous practices of every kind, and at length went so far in his ungodliness as to shut up the doors of the porch of the temple and suspend the temple-worship prescribed by the law altogether. The punishment followed this apostasy without delay.
The allied Syrians and Israelites completely defeated the Judaeans, slew more than a hundred thousand men and led away a much larger number of prisoners, and then advanced to Jerusalem to put an end to the kingdom of Judah by the conquest of the capital. In this distress, instead of seeking help from the Lord, who promised him deliverance through the prophet Isaiah, Ahaz sought help from Tiglat-pileser the king of Assyria, who came and delivered him from the oppression of Rezin and Pekah by the conquest of Damascus, Galilee, and the Israelitish land to the east of the Jordan, but who then oppressed him himself, so that Ahaz was obliged to purchase the friendship of this conqueror by sending him all the treasures of the temple and palace.-In the chapter before us we have first of all the general characteristics of the idolatry of Ahaz (vv. 2-4), then a summary account of his oppression by Rezin and Pekah, and his seeking help from the king of Assyria (vv. 5-9), and lastly a description of the erection of a heathen altar in the court of the temple on the site of the brazen altar of burnt-offering, and of other acts of demolition performed upon the older sacred objects in the temple-court (vv. 10-18). The parallel account in 2 Chron 28 supplies many additions to the facts recorded here.
2 KINGS. 16:1-4
Verse 1-2. On the time mentioned, “in the seventeenth year of Pekah Ahaz became king” see at 2 Kings 15:32. The datum “twenty years old” is a striking one, even if we compare with it ch. 18:2. As Ahaz reigned only sixteen years, and at his death his son Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five years (2 Kings 18:2), Ahaz must have begotten him in the eleventh year of his age. It is true that in southern lands this is neither impossible nor unknown, but in the case of the kings of Judah it would be without analogy. The reading found in the LXX, Syr., and Arab. at Chron 28:1, and also in certain codd., viz., five and twenty instead of twenty, may therefore be a preferable one. According to this, Hezekiah, like Ahaz, was born in his father’s sixteenth year.
Verse 3-4. “Ahaz walked in the way of the kings of Israel,” to which there is added by way of explanation in 2 Chron 28:2, “and also made molten images to the Baals.” This refers, primarily, simply to the worship of Jehovah under the image of a calf, which they had invented; for this was the way in which all the kings of Israel walked. At the same time, in Kings 8:18 the same formula is so used of Joram king of Judah as to include the worship of Baal by the dynasty of Ahab. Consequently in the verse before us also the way of the kings of Israel includes the worship of Baal, which is especially mentioned in the Chronicles.-”He even made his son pass through the fire,” i.e., offered him in sacrifice to Moloch in the valley of Benhinnom (see at 2 Kings 23:10), after the abominations of the nations, whom Jehovah had cast out before Israel. Instead of ˆBe we have the plural ˆBe in 2 Chron 28:3, and in v. 16 rWVaæ Ël,m, , kings of Asshur, instead of rWVaæ Ël,m, , although only one, viz., Tiglath-pileser, is spoken of. This repeated use of the plural shows very plainly that it is to be understood rhetorically, as expressing the thought in the most general manner, since the number was of less importance than the fact. f205 So far as the fact is concerned, we have here the first instance of an actual Moloch-sacrifice among the Israelites, i.e., of one performed by slaying and burning. For although the phrase cae `rbæ[; or Ël,mo does not in itself denote the slaying and burning of the children as Moloch-sacrifices, but primarily affirms nothing more than the simple passing through fire, a kind of februation or baptism of fire (see at Lev 18:21); such passages as Ezek 16:21 and Jer 7:31, where sacrificing in the valley of Benhinnom is called slaying and burning the children, show most distinctly that in the verse before us cae `rbæ[; is to be taken as signifying actual sacrificing, i.e., the burning of the children slain in sacrifice to Moloch, and, as the emphatic µGæ indicates, that this kind of idolatrous worship, which had never been heard of before in Judah and Israel, was introduced by Ahaz. f206 In the Chronicles, therefore `rbæ[; is correctly explained by r[æB; , “he burned;” though we cannot infer from this that `rbæ[; is always a mere conjecture for `rbæ[; , as Geiger does (Urschrift u. Uebers, der Bibel, p. 305). The offering of his son for Moloch took place, in all probability, during the severe oppression of Ahaz by the Syrians, and was intended to appease the wrath of the gods, as was done by the king of the Moabites in similar circumstances (2 Kings 3:27).-In v. 4 the idolatry is described in the standing formulae as sacrificing upon high places and hills, etc., as in Kings 14:23. The temple-worship prescribed by the law could easily be continued along with this idolatry, since polytheism did not exclude the worship of Jehovah. It was not till the closing years of his reign that Ahaz went so far as to close the temple-hall, and thereby suspend the templeworship (2 Chron 28:24); in any case it was not till after the alterations described in vv. 11ff. as having been made in the temple.
2 KINGS. 16:5-6
Of the war which the allied Syrians and Israelites waged upon Ahaz, only the principal fact is mentioned in v. 5, namely, that the enemy marched to Jerusalem to war, but were not able to make war upon the city, i.e., to conquer it; and in v. 6 we have a brief notice of the capture of the port of Elath by the Syrians. We find v. 5 again, with very trifling alterations, in Isa 7:1 at the head of the prophecy, in which the prophet promises the king the help of God and predicts that the plans of his enemies will fail. According to this, the allied kings intended to take Judah, to dethrone Ahaz, and to install a vassal king, viz., the son of Tabeel. We learn still more concerning this war, which had already begun, according to 2 Kings 15:37, in the closing years of Jotham, from 2 Chron 28:5-15; namely, that the two kings inflicted great defeats upon Ahaz, and carried off many prisoners and a large amount of booty, but that the Israelites set their prisoners at liberty again, by the direction of the prophet Oded, and after feeding and clothing them, sent them back to their brethren. It is now generally admitted that these statements are not at variance with our account (as Ges., Winer, and others maintain), but can be easily reconciled with it, and simply serve to complete it. f207 The only questions in dispute are, whether the two accounts refer to two different campaigns, or merely to two different events in the same campaign, and whether the battles to which the Chronicles allude are to be placed before or after the siege of Jerusalem mentioned in our text. The first question cannot be absolutely decided, since there are no decisive arguments to be found in favour of either the one supposition or the other; and even “the one strong argument” which Caspari finds in Isa 7:6 against the idea of two campaigns is not conclusive. For if the design which the prophet there attributes to the allied kings, “we will make a breach in Judah,” i.e., storm his fortresses and his passes and conquer them, does obviously presuppose, that at the time when the enemy spake or thought in this manner, Judah was still standing uninjured and unconquered, and therefore the battles mentioned in 2 Chron 28:5-6 cannot yet have been fought; it by no means follows from the connection between Isa 7:6 and v. 1 (of the same chapter) that v. 6 refers to plans which the enemy had only just formed at the time when Isaiah spoke (2 Kings 7:4ff.). On the contrary, Isaiah is simply describing the plans which the enemy devised and pursued, and which they had no doubt formed from the very commencement of the war, and now that they were marching against Jerusalem, hoped to attain by the conquest of the capital.
All that we can assume as certain is, that the war lasted longer than a year, since the invasion of Judah by these foes had already commenced before the death of Jotham, and that the greater battles (2 Chron 28:5-6) were not fought till the time of Ahaz, and it was not till his reign that the enemy advanced to the siege of Jerusalem.-With regard to the second question, it cannot be at all doubtful that the battles mentioned preceded the advance of the enemy to the front of Jerusalem, and therefore our account merely mentions the last and principal event of the war, and that the enemy was compelled to retreat from Jerusalem by the fact that the king of Assyria, Tiglath-pileser, whom Ahaz had called to his help, marched against Syria and compelled Rezin to hurry back to the defence of his kingdom.-It is more difficult to arrange in the account of the capture of Elath by the Syrians (v. 6) among the events of this war.
The expression aWh `t[e merely assigns it in a perfectly general manner to the period of the war. The supposition of Thenius, that it did not take place till after the siege of Jerusalem had been relinquished, and that Rezin, after the failure of his attempt to take Jerusalem, that he might not have come altogether in vain, marched away from Jerusalem round the southern point of the Dead Sea and conquered Elath, is impossible, because he would never have left his own kingdom in such a defenceless state to the advancing Assyrians. We must therefore place the taking of Elath by Rezin before his march against Jerusalem, though we still leave it undecided how Rezin conducted the war against Ahaz: whether by advancing along the country to the east of the Jordan, defeating the Judaeans there (2 Chron 28:5), and then pressing forward to Elath and conquering that city, while Pekah made a simultaneous incursion into Judah from the north and smote Ahaz, so that it was not till after the conquest of Elath that Rezin entered the land from the south, and there joined Pekah for a common attack upon Jerusalem, as Caspari supposes; or whether by advancing into Judah along with Pekah at the very outset, and after he had defeated the army of Ahaz in a great battle, sending a detachment of his own army to Idumaea, to wrest that land from Judah and conquer Elath, while he marched with the rest of his forces in combination with Pekah against Jerusalem. “Rezin brought Elath to Aram and drove the Jews out of Elath, and Aramaeans came to Elath and dwelt therein to this day.” bWv does not mean “to lead back” here, but literally to turn, to bring to a person; for Elath had never belonged to Aram before this, but was an Edomitish city, so that even if we were to read µdoa’ for µr;a , bWv could not mean to bring back. But there is no ground whatever for altering µr;a into µwOda,l, (Cler., Mich., Ew., Then., and others), whereas the form ‘rm is at variance with such an alteration through the assumption of an exchange of r and d , because µdoa’ is never written defective µdoa’ except in Ezek 25:14. There are also no sufficient reasons for altering µymiwOra\wæ into ymidoa’ (Keri); µymiwOra\ is merely a Syriac form for yMiræa with the dull Syriac u-sound, several examples of which form occur in this very chapter-e.g., µWq for µWq v. 7, qc,M,Dæ for qc,M,Dæ v. 10, and twOlyae for twOlyae v. 6-whereas µdoa’ , with additions, is only written plene twice in the ancient books, and that in the Chronicles, where the scriptio plena is generally preferred (2 Chron 25:14 and 28:17), but is always written defective (‘dmym).
Moreover the statement that “‘dwmym (Edomites, not the Edomites) came thither,” etc., would be very inappropriate, since Edomites certainly lived in this Idumaean city in perfect security, even while it was under Judaean government. And there would be no sense in the expression “the Edomites dwelt there to this day,” since the Edomites remained in their own land to the time of the captivity. All this is applicable to Aramaeans alone. As soon as Rezin had conquered this important seaport town, it was a very natural thing to establish an Aramaean colony there, which obtained possession of the trade of the town, and remained there till the time when the annals of the kings were composed (for it is to this that the expression hazeh `adhayowm refers), even after the kingdom of Rezin had long been destroyed by the Assyrians, since Elath and the Aramaeans settled there were not affected by that blow. f208 As soon as the Edomites had been released by Rezin from the control of Judah, to which they had been brought back by Amaziah and Uzziah (2 Kings 14:7,22), they began plundering Judah again (2 Chron 28:17); and even the Philistines took possession of several cities in the lowland, to avenge themselves for the humiliation they had sustained at the hand of Uzziah (2 Chron 28:18).
2 KINGS. 16:7-8
In this distress Ahaz turned to Tiglath-pileser, without regarding either the word of Isaiah in 2 Kings 7:4ff., which promised salvation, or the prophet’s warning against an alliance with Assyria, and by sending the gold and silver which were found in the treasures of the temple and palace, purchased his assistance against Rezin and Pekah. Whether this occurred immediately after the invasion of the land by the allied kings, or not till after they had defeated the Judaean army and advanced against Jerusalem, it is impossible to discover either from this verse or from 2 Chron 28:16; but probably it was after the first great victory gained by the foe, with which Isa 7 and agree.-On µWq for µWq see Ewald, §151, b.
2 KINGS. 16:9
Tiglath-pileser then marched against Damascus, took the city, slew Rezin, and led the inhabitants away to Kir, as Amos had prophesied (Amos 1:3-5). ryqi , Kir, from which, according to Amos 9:7, the Aramaeans had emigrated to Syria, is no doubt a district by the river Kur (Cu’ros Ku’rrhos), which taking its rise in Armenia, unites with the Araxes and flows into the Caspian Sea, although from the length of the river Kur it is impossible to define precisely the locality in which they were placed; and the statement of Josephus (Ant. ix. 13, 3), that the Damascenes were transported eiv th>n a>nw Mhdi>an , is somewhat indefinite, and moreover has hardly been derived from early historical sources (see M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, p. 158). Nothing is said here concerning Tiglath-pileser’s invasion of the kingdom of Israel, because this has already been mentioned at 2 Kings 15:29 in the history of Pekah.
2 KINGS. 16:10-13
Ahaz paid Tiglath-pileser a visit in Damascus, “to present to him his thanks and congratulations, and possibly also to prevent a visit from Tiglathpileser to himself, which would not have been very welcome” (Thenius).
The form qc,M,Dæ is neither to be altered into qc,M,Dæ nor regarded as a copyist’s error for qc,M,Dæ , as we have several words in this chapter that are formed with dull Syriac u-sound. The visit of Ahaz to Damascus is simply mentioned on account of what follows, namely, that Ahaz saw an altar there, which pleased him so much that he sent a picture and model of it “according to all the workmanship thereof,” i.e., its style of architecture, to Urijah the priest (see Isa 8:2), and had an altar made like it for the temple, upon which, on his return to Jerusalem, he ordered all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and drink-offerings to be presented. The allusion here is to the offerings which he commanded to be presented for his prosperous return to Jerusalem.
2 KINGS. 16:14
Soon after this Ahaz went still further, and had “the copper altar before Jehovah,” i.e., the altar of burnt-offering in the midst of the court before the entrance into the Holy Place, removed “from the front of the (temple-) house, from (the spot) between the altar (the new one built by Urijah) and the house of Jehovah (i.e., the temple-house(, and placed at the north side of the altar.” bræq; does not mean removit, caused to be taken away, but admovit, and is properly to be connected with mh Ër,y,Al[æ , notwithstanding the fact that tae ˆtæn; is inserted between for the sake of greater clearness, as Maurer has already pointed out. f209 On the use of the article with jæBez]mi in the construct state, see Ewald, §290, d.
2 KINGS. 16:15-16
He also commanded that the daily morning and evening sacrifice, and the special offerings of the king and the people, should be presented upon the new altar, and thereby put a stop to the use of the Solomonian altar, “about which he would consider.” The Chethîb WhWexæy]wæ is not to be altered; the pron. suff. stands before the noun, as is frequently the case in the more diffuse popular speech. The new altar is called “the great altar,” probably because it was somewhat larger than that of Solomon. r f1 q; : used for the burning of the sacrifices. `br,[, hj;n]mi is not merely the meat-offering offered in the evening, but the whole of the evening sacrifice, consisting of a burnt-offering and a meat-offering, as in 1 Kings 18:29,36. rQebæl] yLiAhy,j]yi , the brazen altar “will be to me for deliberation,” i.e., I will reflect upon it, and then make further arrangements.
On biqeer in this sense see Prov 20:25. In the opinion of Ahaz, the altar which had been built after the model of that of Damascus was not to be an idolatrous altar, but an altar of Jehovah. The reason for this arbitrary removal of the altar of Solomon, which had been sanctified by the Lord Himself at the dedication of the temple by fire from heaven, was, in all probability, chiefly that the Damascene altar pleased Ahaz better; and the innovation was a sin against Jehovah, inasmuch as God Himself had prescribed the form for His sanctuary (cf. Ex 25:40; 26:30; 1 Chron 28:19), so that any altar planned by man and built according to a heathen model was practically the same as an idolatrous altar.-The account of this altar is omitted from the Chronicles; but in v. 23 we have this statement instead: “Ahaz offered sacrifice to the gods of Damascus, who smote him, saying, The gods of the kings of Aram helped them; I will sacrifice to them that they may help me: and they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.”
Thenius and Bertheau find in this account an alteration of our account of the copying of the Damascene altar introduced by the chronicler as favouring his design, namely, to give as glaring a description as possible of the ungodliness of Ahaz. But they are mistaken.
For even if the notice in the Chronicles had really sprung from this alone, the chronicler would have been able from the standpoint of the Mosaic law to designate the offering of sacrifice upon the altar built after the model of an idolatrous Syrian altar as sacrificing to these gods. But it is a question whether the chronicler had in his mind merely the sacrifices offered upon that altar in the temple-court, and not rather sacrifices which Ahaz offered upon some bamah to the gods of Syria, when he was defeated and oppressed by the Syrians, for the purpose of procuring their assistance. As Ahaz offered his son in sacrifice to Moloch according to v. 3, he might just as well have offered sacrifice to the gods of the Syrians. 2 KINGS 16:17,18 Ahaz also laid his hand upon the other costly vessels of the court of the temple. He broke off the panels of the Solomonian stands, which were ornamented with artistic carving, and removed the basins from the stands, and took the brazen sea from the brazen oxen upon which they stood, and placed it upon a stone pavement. The w] before ryKihæAta, can only have crept into the text through a copyist’s error, and the singular must be taken distributively: he removed from them (the stands) every single basin. ˆBe tp,x,r]mæ (without the article) is not the stone pavement of the court of the temple, but a pedestal made of stones ( ba>siv liqi>nh , LXX) for the brazen sea. The reason why, or the object with which Ahaz mutilated these sacred vessels, is not given. The opinion expressed by Ewald, Thenius, and others, that Ahaz made a present to Tiglath-pileser with the artistically wrought panels of the stands, the basins, and the oxen of the brazen sea, is not only improbable in itself, since you would naturally suppose that if Ahaz had wished to make a “valuable and very welcome present” to the Assyrian king, he would have chosen some perfect stands with their basins for this purpose, and not merely the panels and basins; but it has not the smallest support in the biblical text-on the contrary, it has the context against it.
For, in the first place, if the objects named had been sent to Tiglath-pileser, this would certainly have been mentioned, as well as the sending of the temple and palace treasures. And, again, the mutilation of these vessels is placed between the erection of the new altar which was constructed after the Damascene model, and other measures which Ahaz adopted as a protection against the king of Assyria (v. 18). Now if Ahaz, on his return from visiting Tiglath-pileser at Damascus, had thought it necessary to send another valuable present to that king in order to secure his permanent friendship, he would hardly have adopted the measures described in the next verse.
Verse 18. “The covered Sabbath-stand, which they had built in the house (temple), and the outer entrance of the king he turned (i.e., removed) into the house of Jehovah before the king of Assyria.” tB;Væhæ Ësæyme (Keri Ës;yme , from Ëkæs; , to cover) is no doubt a covered place, stand or hall in the court of the temple, to be used by the king whenever he visited the temple with his retinue on the Sabbath or on feast-days; and “the outer entrance of the king” is probably the special ascent into the temple for the king mentioned in 1 Kings 10:5. In what the removal of it consisted it is impossible to determine, from the want of information as to its original character. According to Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 621) and Thenius, hwO;hy] tyiBæ bbæs; means, “he altered (these places), i.e., he robbed them of their ornaments, in the house of Jehovah.” This is quite arbitrary.
For even if hwO;hy] tyiBæ could mean “in the house of Jehovah” in this connection, bbæs; does not mean to disfigure, and still less “to deprive of ornaments.” In 2 Kings 23:34 and 24:17 it signifies to alter the name, not to disfigure it. Again, rWVaæ Ël,m, µynip; , “for fear of the king of Assyria,” cannot mean, in this connection, “to make presents to the king of Assyria.”
And with this explanation, which is grammatically impossible, the inference drawn from it, namely, that Ahaz sent the ornaments of the king’s stand and king’s ascent to the king of Assyria along with the vessels mentioned in v. 17, also falls to the ground. If the alterations which Ahaz made in the stands and the brazen sea had any close connection with his relation to Tiglath-pileser, which cannot be proved, Ahaz must have been impelled by fear to make them, not that he might send them as presents to him, but that he might hide them from him if he came to Jerusalem, to which 2 Chron 28:20-21 seems to refer.
It is also perfectly conceivable, as Züllich (Die Cherubimwagen, p. 56) conjectures, that Ahaz merely broke off the panels from the stands and removed the oxen from the brazen sea, that he might use these artistic works to decorate some other place, possibly his palace.-Whether these artistic works were restored or not at the time of Hezekiah’s reformation or in that of Josiah, we have no accounts to show. All that can be gathered from 2 Kings 25:13-14; Jer 52:17, and 27:19, is, that the stands and the brazen sea were still in existence in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and that on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans they were broken in pieces and carried away to Babylonia as brass. The brazen oxen are also specially mentioned in Jer 52:20, which is not the case in the parallel passage 2 Kings 25:13; though this does not warrant the conclusion that they were no longer in existence at that time. 2 KINGS 16:19,20 Conclusion of the reign of Ahaz. According to 2 Chron 28:27, he was buried in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.
REIGN OF HOSHEA AND DESTRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL. The People Carried Away to Assyria and Media.
Transportation of the Heathen Colonists to Samaria.
2 KINGS. 17:1-2
Reign of Hoshea King of Israel.
Verse 1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz began Hoshea to reign. As Hoshea conspired against Pekah, according to 2 Kings 15:30, in the fourth year of Ahaz, and after murdering him made himself king, whereas according to the verse before us it was not till the twelfth year of Ahaz that he really became king, his possession of the throne must have been contested for eight years. The earlier commentators and almost all the chronologists have therefore justly assumed that there was en eight years’ anarchy between the death of Pekah and the commencement of Hoshea’s reign. This assumption merits the preference above all the attempts made to remove the discrepancy by alterations of the text, since there is nothing at all surprising in the existence of anarchy at a time when the kingdom was in a state of the greatest inward disturbance and decay. Hoshea reigned nine years, and “did that which was evil in the eyes of Jehovah, though not like the kings of Israel before him” (v. 2).
We are not told in what Hoshea was better than his predecessors, nor can it be determined with any certainty, although the assumption that he allowed his subjects to visit the temple at Jerusalem is a very probable one, inasmuch as, according to 2 Chron 30:10ff., Hezekiah invited to the feast of the Passover, held at Jerusalem, the Israelites from Ephraim and Manasseh as far as to Zebulun, and some individuals from these tribes accepted his invitation. But although Hoshea was better than his predecessors, the judgment of destruction burst upon the sinful kingdom and people in his reign, because he had not truly turned to the Lord; a fact which has been frequently repeated in the history of the world, namely, that the last rulers of a decaying kingdom have not been so bad as their forefathers. “God is accustomed to defer the punishment of the elders in the greatness of His long-suffering, to see whether their descendants will come to repentance; but if this be not the case, although they may not be so bad, the anger of God proceeds at length to visit iniquity (cf. Ex 20:5).”
Seb. Schmidt.
2 KINGS. 17:3
“Against him came up Salmanasar king of Assyria, and Hoshea became subject to him and rendered him tribute” hj;n]mi , as in 1 Kings 5:1). rs,a,n]mæl]væ , Dalamanassa’r (LXX), Salmanasar, according to the more recent researches respecting Assyria, is not only the same person as the Shalman mentioned in Hos 10:14, but the same as the Sargon of Isa 20:1, whose name is spelt Sargina upon the monuments, and who is described in the inscriptions on his palace at Khorsabad as ruler over many subjugated lands, among which Samirina (Samaria?) also occurs (vid., Brandis üb. d.
Gewinn, pp. 48ff. and 53; M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Ass. pp. 129, 130; and M.
Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. i. pp. 687ff.). The occasion of this expedition of Salmanasar appears to have been simply the endeavour to continue the conquests of his predecessor Tiglath-pileser. There is no ground whatever for Maurer’s assumption, that he had been asked to come to the help of a rival of Hoshea; and the opinion that he came because Hoshea had refused the tribute which had been paid to Assyria from the time of Menahem downwards, is at variance with the fact that in 2 Kings 15:29 Tiglathpileser is simply said to have taken a portion of the territory of Israel; but there is no allusion to any payment of tribute or feudal obligation on the part of Pekah. Salmanasar was the first to make king Hoshea subject and tributary. This took place at the commencement of Hoshea’s reign, as is evident from the fact that Hoshea paid the tribute for several years, and in the sixth year of his reign refused any further payment.
2 KINGS. 17:4-5
The king of Assyria found a conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to So the king of Egypt, and did not pay the tribute to the king of Assyria, as year by year. The Egyptian king awOs , So, possibly to be pronounced ceeweh, Seveh, is no doubt one of the two Shebeks of the twenty-fifth dynasty, belonging to the Ethiopian tribe; but whether he was the second king of this dynasty, Såbåtåkå (Brugsch, hist. d’Egypte, i. p. 244), the Sevechus of Manetho, who is said to have ascended the throne, according to Wilkinson, in the year 728, as Vitringa (Isa. ii. p. 318), Gesenius, Ewald, and others suppose, or the first king of this Ethiopian dynasty, Sabako the father of Sevechus, which is the opinion of Usher and Marsham, whom M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. pp. 458ff. and 463) and M.
Duncker (i. p. 693) have followed in recent times, cannot possibly be decided in the present state of Egyptological research. f210 As soon as Salmanasar received intelligence of the conduct of Hoshea, which is called rv,q, , conspiracy, as being rebellion against his acknowledged superior, he had him arrested and put into prison in chains, and then overran the whole land, advanced against Samaria and besieged that city for three years, and captured it in the ninth year of Hoshea. These words are not to be understood as signifying that Hoshea had been taken prisoner before the siege of Samaria and thrown into prison, because in that case it is impossible to see how Salmanasar could have obtained possession of his person. f211 We must rather assume, as many commentators have done, from R. Levi ben Gersom down to Maurer and Thenius, that it was not till the conquest of his capital Samaria that Hoshea fell into the hands of the Assyrians and was cast into a prison; so that the explanation to be given to the introduction of this circumstance before the siege and conquest of Samaria must be, that the historian first of all related the eventual result of Hoshea’s rebellion against Salmanasar so far as Hoshea himself was concerned, and then proceeded to describe in greater detail the course of the affair in relation to his kingdom and capital. This does not necessitate our giving to the word `rx;[; the meaning “he assigned him a limit” (Thenius); but we may adhere to the meaning which has been philologically established, namely, arrest or incarcerate (Jer 33:1; 36:5, etc.). `hl;[; may be given thus: “he overran, that is to say, the entire land.” The three years of the siege of Samaria were not full years, for, according to 2 Kings 18:9-10, it began in the seventh year of Hoshea, and the city was taken in the ninth year, although it is also given there as three years.
2 KINGS. 17:6
The ninth year of Hoshea corresponds to the sixth year of Hezekiah and the year 722 or 721 B.C., in which the kingdom of the ten tribes was destroyed. 6b. The Israelites carried into exile.-After the taking of Samaria, Salmanasar led Israel into captivity to Assyria, and assigned to those who were led away dwelling-places in Chalach and on the Chabor, or the river Gozan, and in cities of Media. According to these clear words of the text, the places to which the ten tribes were banished are not to be sought for in Mesopotamia, but in provinces of Assyria and Media. chalach is neither the city of kelach built by Nimrod (Gen 10:11), nor the Cholwan of Abulfeda and the Syriac writers, a city five days’ journey to the north of Bagdad, from which the district bordering on the Zagrus probably received the name of Kalwni>tiv or Kalwni>tiv , but the province Kalachnh> of Strabo (xi. 8, 4; 14, 12, and xvi. 1, 1), called Kalakinh> by Ptolemaeus (vi. 1), on the eastern side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh on the border of Armenia. rwObj; is not the rb;K] in Upper Mesopotamia (Ezek 1:3; 3:15, etc.), which flows into the Euphrates near Kirkesion (Carchemish), and is called Chebar (kbr) or Chabur (kbwr) by the Syriac writers, Chabûr (xâbûr) by Abulfeda and Edrisi, Chaboo’ras by Ptolemaeus, Abo’rrhas (Aboras) by Strabo and others, as Michaelis, Gesenius, Winer, and even Ritter assume; for the epithet “river of Gozan” is not decisive in favour of this, since Gozan is not necessarily to be identified with the district of Gauzanitis, now Kaushan, situated between the rivers of Chaboras and Saokoras, and mentioned in Ptol. v. 18, 4, inasmuch as Strabo (xvi. 1, 1, p. 736) also mentions a province called Chazeenee’ above Nineveh towards Armenia, between Calachene and Adiabene. Here in northern Assyria we also find both a mountain called Chaboo’ras, according to Ptol. vi. 1, on the boundary of Assyria and Media, and the river Chabor, called by Yakut in the Moshtarik l-hsnîh (Khabur Chasaniae), to distinguish it from the Mesopotamian Chaboras or Chebar. According to Marasz. i. pp. 333f., and Yakut, Mosht. p. 150, this Khabur springs from the mountains of the land of Zauzan, zawzan, i.e., of the land between the mountains of Armenia, Adserbeidjan, Diarbekr, and Mosul (Marasz. i. p. 522), and is frequently mentioned in Assemani as a tributary of the Tigris. It still bears the ancient name Khabûr, taking its rise in the neighbourhood of the upper Zab near Amadîjeh, and emptying itself into the Tigris a few hours below Jezirah (cf. Wichelhaus, pp. 471, 472; Asah. Grant, Die Nestorianer, v. Preiswerk, pp. 110ff.; and Ritter, Erdk. ix. pp. 716 and 1030). This is the river that we are to understand by chaabowr.
It is a question in dispute, whether the following words ˆz;wOG rh;n; are in apposition to rwObj; : “by the Chabor the river of Gozan,” or are to be taken by themselves as indicating a peculiar district “by the river Gozan.” Now, however the absence of the prep. b] , and even of the copula w , on the one hand, and the words of Yakut, “Khabur, a river of Chasania,” on the other, may seem to favour the former view, we must decide in favour of the latter, for the simple reason that in 1 Chron 5:26 ˆz;wOG rh;n; is separated from chaabowr by hr;j; . The absence of the preposition b or of the copula w before g rh;n; in the passage before us may be accounted for from the assumption that the first two names, in Chalah and on the Khabur, are more closely connected, and also the two which follow, “on the river Gozan and in the cities of Media.” The river Gozan or of Gozan is therefore distinct from chaabowr (Khabur), and to be sought for in the district in which Gauzani’a, the city of Media mentioned by Ptol. (vi. 2), was situated. In all probability it is the river which is called Kisil (the red) Ozan at the present day, the Mardos of the Greeks, which takes its rise to the south-east of the Lake Urumiah and flows into the Caspian Sea, and which is supposed to have formed the northern boundary of Media. f212 The last locality mentioned agrees with this, viz., “and in the cities of Media,” in which Thenius proposes to read rhæ , mountains, after the LXX, instead of `ry[i , cities, though without the least necessity.
2 KINGS. 17:7-23
The causes which occasioned this catastrophe.
To the account of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, and of the transportation of its inhabitants into exile in Assyria, the prophetic historian appends a review of the causes which led to this termination of the greater portion of the covenant-nation, and finds them in the obstinate apostasy of Israel from the Lord its God, and in its incorrigible adherence to idolatry.
Verse 7. yKi hy;h; , “and it came to pass when” (not because, or that): compare Gen 6:1; 26:8; 27:1; 44:24; Ex 1:21; Judg 1:28; 6:7, etc. The apodosis does not follow till v. 18, as vv. 7-17 simply contain a further explanation of Israel’s sin. To show the magnitude of the sin, the writer recalls to mind the great benefit conferred in the redemption from Egypt, whereby the Lord had laid His people under strong obligation to adhere faithfully to Him. The words refer to the first commandment (Ex 20:2-3; Deut 5:6-7). It is from this that the “fearing of other gods” is taken, whereas h[or]pæ dy; tjæTæ recall Ex 18:10.
Verse 8. The apostasy of Israel manifested itself in two directions: 1. in their walking in the statutes of the nations who were cut off from before them, instead of in the statutes of Jehovah, as God had commanded (cf.
Lev 18:4-5, and 26, 20:22-23, etc.; and for the formula wgw vræy; rv,a ywOG, which occurs repeatedly in our books-e.g., 2 Kings 16:3; 21:2, and 1 Kings 14:24 and 21:26-compare Deut 11:23 and 18:12); and 2. in their walking in the statutes which the kings of Israel had made, i.e., the worship of the calves. `hc;[; rv,a : it is evident from the parallel passage, v. 19b, that the subject here stands before the relative.
Verse 9. rb;d; ap;j; : “they covered words which were not right concerning Jehovah their God,” i.e., they sought to conceal the true nature of Jehovah their God,” i.e., they sought to conceal the true nature of Jehovah by arbitrary perversions of the word of God. This is the explanation correctly given by Hengstenberg (Dissert. vol. i. p. 210, transl.); whereas the interpretation proposed by Thenius, “they trifled with things which were not right against Jehovah,” is as much at variance with the usage of the language as that of Gesenius (thes. p. 5050, perfide egerunt res...in Jehovam, since apiji with `l[æ simply means to cover over a thing (cf. Isa 4:5). This covering of words over Jehovah showed itself in the fact that they built hm;B; (altars on high places), and by worshipping God in ways of their own invention concealed the nature of the revealed God, and made Jehovah like the idols. “In all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city.” rxæn; lD;g]mi is a tower built for the protection of the flocks in the steppes (2 Chron 26:10), and is mentioned here as the smallest and most solitary place of human abode in antithesis to the large and fortified city. Such bamoth were the houses of high places and altars built for the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, beside which no others are mentioned by name in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which restricts itself to the principal facts, although there certainly must have been others.
Verse 10. They set up for themselves monuments and asherim on every high hill, etc.-a practice condemned in 1 Kings 14:16,23, as early as the time of Jeroboam. In this description of their idolatry, the historian, however, had in his mind not only the ten tribes, but also Judah, as is evident from v. 13, “Jehovah testified against Israel and Judah through His prophets,” and also from v. 19.
Verse 11. “And burned incense there upon all the high places, like the nations which Jehovah drove out before them.” hl,G, , lit., to lead into exile, is applied here to the expulsion and destruction of the Canaanites, with special reference to the banishment of the Israelites.
Verse 12. They served the clods, i.e., worshipped clods or masses of stone as gods lWLGi , see at 1 Kings 15:12), notwithstanding the command of God in Ex 20:3ff., 2 Kings 23:13; Lev 26:1, etc.
Verse 13-14. And the Lord was not satisfied with the prohibitions of the law, but bore witness against the idolatry and image-worship of Israel and Judah through all His prophets, who exhorted them to turn from their evil way and obey His commandments. But it was all in vain; they were stiffnecked like their fathers. Judah is mentioned as well as Israel, although the historian is simply describing the causes of Israel’s rejection to indicate beforehand that Judah was already preparing the same fate for itself, as is still more plainly expressed in vv. 19, 20; not, as Thenius supposes, because he is speaking here of that which took place before the division of the kingdom. The Chethîb hz,joAlk; waybnAlK; is not to be read hz,jOAlK; wa;ybin]AlK; (Houbig., Then., Ew. §156, e.), but after the LXX hz,joAlK; wa;ybin]AlK; , “through all His prophets, every seer,” so that hz,joAlK; is in apposition to wa;ybin]AlK; , and serves to bring out the meaning with greater force, so as to express the idea, “prophets of every kind, that the Lord had sent.” This reading is more rhetorical than the other, and is recommended by the fact that in what follows the copula w is omitted before hQ;ju also on rhetorical grounds. wgwjlæv; rv,a : “and according to what I demanded of you through my servants the prophets.” To the law of Moses there was added the divine warning through the prophets. µp;r][;Ata, Wvq]yæ has sprung from Deut 10:16. The stiff-necked fathers are the Israelites in the time of Moses.
Verse 15. “They followed vanity and became vain:” verbatim as in Jer 2:5.
A description of the worthlessness of their whole life and aim with regard to the most important thing, namely, their relation to God. Whatever man sets before him as the object of his life apart from God is lb,h, (cf. Deut 32:21) and idolatry, and leads to worthlessness, to spiritual and moral corruption (Rom 1:21). “And (walked) after the nations who surrounded them,” i.e., the heathen living near them. The concluding words of the verse have the ring of Lev 18:3.
Verse 16-17. The climax of their apostasy: “They made themselves molten images, two (golden) calves” (1 Kings 12:28), which are called hk;Semæ after Ex 32:4,8, and Deut 9:12,16, “and Asherah,” i.e., idols of Astarte (for the fact, see 1 Kings 16:33), “and worshipped all the host of heaven (sun, moon, and stars), and served Baal”-in the time of Ahab and his family (1 Kings 16:32). The worshipping of all the host of heaven is not specially mentioned in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, but occurs first of all in Judah in the time of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:3). The fact that the host of heaven is mentioned between Asherah and Baal shows that the historian refers to the Baal and Astarte worship, and has borrowed the expression from Deut 4:19 and 17:3, to show the character of this worship, since both Baal and Astarte were deities of a sidereal nature. The first half of v. rests upon Deut 18:10, where the worship of Moloch is forbidden along with soothsaying and augury. There is no allusion to this worship in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, although it certainly existed in the time of Ahab. The second half of v. 17 also refers to the conduct of Ahab (see at 1 Kings 21:20). Verse 18-19. This conduct excited the anger of God, so that He removed them from His face, and only left the tribe (i.e., the kingdom) of Judah (see above, p. 179), although Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord and walked in the statutes of Israel, and therefore had deserved rejection. V. 19 contains a parenthesis occasioned by wgw fb,ve qræ (v. 18b). The statutes of Israel in which Judah walked are not merely the worship of Baal under the Ahab dynasty, so as to refer only to Joram, Ahaziah, and Ahaz (according to 2 Kings 8:18,27, and 16:3), but also the worship on the high places and worship of idols, which were practised under many of the kings of Judah.
Verse 20. saæm; is a continuation of hwO;hy] ãNeaæt]yiwæ in v. 18, but so that what follows also refers to the parenthesis in v. 19. “Then the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel,” not merely the ten tribes, but all the nation, and humbled them till He thrust them from His face. saæm; differs from µynip; Ëlæv; . The latter denotes driving into exile; the former, simply that kind of rejection which consisted in chastisement and deliverance into the hand of plunderers, that is to say, penal judgments by which the Lord sought to lead Israel and Judah to turn to Him and to His commandments, and to preserve them from being driven among the heathen. hs;v; dy; ˆtæn; as in Judg 2:14.
Verse 21. wgw[ræq; yKi : “for He (Jehovah) rent Israel from the house of David.” This view is apparently more correct than that Israel rent the kingdom from the house of David, not only because it presupposes too harsh an ellipsis to supply hk;l;m]MæjæAta, , but also because we never meet with the thought that Israel rent the kingdom from the house of David, and in 1 Kings 11:31 it is simply stated that Jehovah rent the kingdom from Solomon; and to this our verse refers, whilst the following words wgwËlæm; recall 1 Kings 12:20. The yKi is explanatory: the Lord delivered up His people to the plunderers, for He rent Israel from the house of David as a punishment for the idolatry of Solomon, and the Israelites made Jeroboam king, who turned Israel away from Jehovah, etc. The Chethîb adyw is to be read aDeyæwæ , the Hiphil of ad;n; = hd;n; , “he caused to depart away from the Lord.” The Keri jdæn; , Hiphil of naadach, he drove away, turned from the Lord (cf. Deut 13:11), is not unusual, but it is an unnecessary gloss. Verse 22-23. The sons of Israel (the ten tribes) walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, till the Lord removed them from His face, thrust them out of the land of the Lord, as He had threatened them through all His prophets, namely, from the time of Jeroboam onwards (compare 1 Kings 14:15-16, and also Hos 1:6; 9:16; Amos 3:11-12; 5:27; Isa 28:1 etc.). The banishment to Assyria (see v. 6) lasted “unto this day,” i.e., till the time when our books were written. f
213 2 KINGS. 17:24-41
The Samaritans and Their Worship.
After the transportation of the Israelites, the king of Assyria brought colonists from different provinces of his kingdom into the cities of Samaria.
The king of Assyria is not Salmanasar, for it is evident from v. 25 that a considerable period intervened between the carrying away of the Israelites and the sending of colonists into the depopulated land. It is true that Salmanasar only is mentioned in what precedes, but the section vv. 24-41 is not so closely connected with the first portion of the chapter, that the same king of Assyria must necessarily be spoken of in both. According to Ezra 4:2, it was Esarhaddon who removed the heathen settlers to Samaria.
It is true that the attempt has been made to reconcile this with the assumption that the king of Assyria mentioned in our verse is Salmanasar, by the conjecture that one portion of these colonists was settled there by Salmanasar, another by Esarhaddon; and it has also been assumed that in this expedition Esarhaddon carried away the last remnant of the ten tribes, namely, all who had fled into the mountains and inaccessible corners of the land, and to some extent also in Judaea, during Salmanasar’s invasion, and had then collected together in the land again after the Assyrians had withdrawn.
But there is not the smallest intimation anywhere of a second transplantation of heathen colonists to Samaria, any more than of a second removal of the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind in the land after the time of Salmanasar. The prediction in Isa 7:8, that in sixty-five years more Ephraim was to be destroyed, so that it would be no longer a people, even if it referred to the transplantation of the heathen colonists to Samaria by Esarhaddon, as Usher, Hengstenberg, and others suppose, would by no means necessitate the carrying away of the last remnant of the Israelites by this king, but simply the occupation of the land by heathen settlers, with whom the last remains of the Ephraimites intermingled, so that Ephraim ceased to be a people. As long as the land of Israel was merely laid waste and deprived of the greater portion of its Israelitish population, there always remained the possibility that the exiles might one day return to their native land and once more form one people with those who were left behind, and so long might Israel be still regarded as a nation; just as the Judaeans, when in exile in Babylon, did not cease to be a people, because they looked forward with certain hope to a return to their fatherland after a banishment of seventy years.
But after heathen colonists had been transplanted into the land, with whom the remainder of the Israelites who were left in the land became fused, so that there arose a mixed Samaritan people of a predominantly heathen character, it was impossible to speak any longer of a people of Ephraim in the land of Israel. This transplantation of colonists out of Babel, Cutha, etc., into the cities of Samaria might therefore be regarded as the point of time at which the nation of Ephraim was entirely dissolved, without any removal of the last remnant of the Israelites having taken place. We must indeed assume this if the ten tribes were deported to the very last man, and the Samaritans were in their origin a purely heathen people without any admixture of Israelitish blood, as Hengstenberg assumes and has endeavoured to prove. But the very opposite of this is unmistakeably apparent from 2 Chron 34:6,9, according to which there were not a few Israelites left in the depopulated land in the time of Josiah. (Compare Kalkar, Die Samaritaner ein Mischvolk, in Pelt’s theol. Mitarbeiten, iii. 3, pp. 24ff.).-We therefore regard Esarhaddon as the Assyrian king who brought the colonists to Samaria. The object to awOB may be supplied from the context, more especially from bvæy; , which follows.
He brought inhabitants from Babel, i.e., from the country, not the city of Babylon, from Cuthah, etc. The situation of Cuthah or Cuth (v. 30) cannot be determined with certainty. M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. p. 166) follows Josephus, who speaks of the Cuthaeans in Ant. ix. 14, 3, and x. 9, 7, as a people dwelling in Persia and Media, and identifies them with the Kossaeans, Kissians, Khushiya, Chuzi, who lived to the north-east of Susa, in the north-eastern portion of the present Khusistan; whereas Gesenius (thes. p. 674), Rosenmüller (bibl. Althk. 1, 2, p. 29), and J. D. Michaelis (Supplem. ad Lex. hebr. p. 1255) have decided in favour of the Cutha (Arabic kûthâ or kûtha) in the Babylonian Irak, in the neighbourhood of the Nahr Malca, in support of which the fact may also be adduced, that, according to a communication from Spiegel (in the Auslande, 1864, No. 46, p. 1089), Cutha, a town not mentioned elsewhere, was situated by the wall in the north-east of Babylon, probably on the spot where the hill Ohaimir with its ruins stands. The greater number of colonists appear to have come from Cutha, because the Samaritans are called µyytwk by the Rabbins. aW;[æ , Avva, is almost always, and probably with correctness, regarded as being the same place as the `hW;[i (Ivvah) mentioned in 2 Kings 18:34 and 19:13, as the conjecture naturally suggests itself to every one that the Avvaeans removed to Samaria by Esarhaddon were inhabitants of the kingdom of Avva destroyed by the Assyrian king, and the form `hW;[i is probably simply connected with the appellative explanation given to the word by the Masoretes. As Ivvâh is placed by the side of Henah in 2 Kings 18:34 and 19:13, Avva can hardly by any other than the country of Hebeh, situated on the Euphrates between Anah and the Chabur (M. v. Niebuhr, p. 167). Hamath is Epiphania on the Orontes: see at 1 Kings 8:65 and Num 13:21. Sepharvaim is no doubt the Sippara ( Dipfa>ra ) of Ptolem. (v. 18, 7), the southernmost city of Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, above the Nahr Malca, the Ahliou>poliv en Sippa>roisin or Dipparhnw>n po’lis, which Berosus and Abydenus mention (in Euseb. Praepar, evang. ix. and 41, and Chronic. Armen. i. pp. 33, 36, 49, 55) as belonging to the time of the ˆwOrm]vo : this is the first time in which the name is evidently applied to the kingdom of Samaria.
Verse 25-29. In the earliest period of their settlement in the cities of Samaria the new settlers were visited by lions, which may have multiplied greatly during the time that the land was lying waste. The settlers regarded this as a punishment from Jehovah, i.e., from the deity of the land, whom they did not worship, and therefore asked the king of Assyria for a priest to teach them the right, i.e., the proper, worship of God of the land; whereupon the king sent them one of the priests who had been carried away, and he took up his abode in Bethel, and instructed the people in the worship of Jehovah. The author of our books also looked upon the lions as sent by Jehovah as a punishment, according to Lev 26:22, because the new settlers did not fear Him. yria : the lions which had taken up their abode there. µv; bvæy; Ëlæy; : that they (the priest with his companions) went away and dwelt there. There is no need therefore to alter the plural into the singular.
The priest sent by the Assyrian king was of course an Israelitish priest of the calves, for he was one of those who had been carried away and settled in Bethel, the chief seat of Jeroboam’s image-worship, and he also taught the colonists to fear or worship Jehovah after the manner of the land. This explains the state of divine worship in the land as described in vv. 29ff. “Every separate nation ywOG ywOG: see Ewald, §313, a.) made itself its own gods, and set them up in the houses of the high places hm;B; tyiBæ : see at Kings 12:31, and for the singular tyiBæ , Ewald, §270, c.) which the Samaritans yniromvo , not the colonists sent thither by Esarhaddon, but the former inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel, who are so called from the capital Samaria) had made (built); every nation in the cities where they dwelt.”
Verse 30. The people of Babel made themselves tBæ twOKsu , daughters’ booths. Selden (de Diis Syr. ii. 7), Münter (Relig. der Babyl. pp. 74, 75), and others understand by these the temples consecrated to Mylitta or Astarte, the kama>rai , or covered little carriages, or tents for prostitution (Herod. i. 199); but Beyer (Addit. ad Seld. p. 297) has very properly objected to this, that according to the context the reference is to idols or objects of idolatrous worship, which were set up in the hm;B; tyiBæ . It is more natural to suppose that small tent-temples are meant, which were set up as idols in the houses of the high places along with the images which they contained, since according to 2 Kings 23:7 women wove tyiBæ , little temples, for the Asherah, and Ezekiel speaks of patch-work Bamoth, i.e., of small temples made of cloth.
It is possible, however, that there is more truth than is generally supposed in the view held by the Rabbins, that tBæ twOKsu signifies an image of the “hen,” or rather the constellation of “the clucking-hen” (Gluckhenne), the Pleiades-simulacrum gallinae coelestis in signo Tauri nidulantis, as a symbolum Veneris coelestis, as the other idols are all connected with animal symbolism. In any case the explanation given by Movers, involucra seu secreta mulierum, female lingams, which were handed by the hierodulae to their paramours instead of the Mylitta-money (Phöniz. i. p. 596), is to be rejected, because it is at variance with the usage of speech and the context, and because the existence of female lingams has first of all to be proved. For the different views, see Ges. thes. p. 952, and Leyrer in Herzog’s Cycl.-The Cuthaeans made themselves as a god, lGær]ne , Nergal, i.e., according to Winer, Gesenius, Stuhr, and others, the planet Mars, which the Zabians call nerîg, Nerig, as the god of war (Codex Nasar, i. 212, 224), the Arabs mrrîx, Mirrig; whereas older commentators identified Nergal with the sun-god Bel, deriving the name from ryni , light, and lGæ , a fountain = fountain of light (Selden, ii. 8, and Beyer, Add. pp. 301ff.). But these views are both of them very uncertain.
According to the Rabbins (Rashi, R. Salomo, Kimchi), Nergal was represented as a cock. This statement, which is ridiculed by Gesenius, Winer, and Thenius, is proved to be correct by the Assyrian monuments, which contain a number of animal deities, and among them the cock standing upon an altar, and also upon a gem a priest praying in front of a cock (see Layard’s Nineveh). The pugnacious cock is found generally in the ancient ethnical religions in frequent connection with the gods of war (cf. J. G. Müller in Herzog’s Cycl.). am;yviaæ , Ashima, the god of the people of Hamath, was worshipped, according to rabbinical statements, under the figure of a bald he-goat (see Selden, ii. 9). The suggested combination of the name with the Phoenician deity Esmun, the Persian Asuman, and the Zendic açmano, i.e., heaven, is very uncertain.
Verse 31. Of the idols of the Avvaeans, according to rabbinical accounts in Selden, l.c., Nibchaz had the form of a dog zjæb]ni , latrator, from jbæn; ), and Tartak that of an ass. Gesenius regards Tartak as a demon of the lower regions, because in Pehlwi tar-thakh signifies deep darkness or hero of darkness, and Nibchaz as an evil demon, the zabn of the Zabians, whom Norberg in his Onomast. cod. Nasar. p. 100, describes as horrendus rex infernalis: posito ipsius throno ad telluris, i.e., lucis et caliginis confinium, sed imo acherontis fundo pedibus substrato, according to Codex Adami, ii. 50, lin. 12.-With regard to the gods of the Sepharvites, Adrammelech and Anammelech, it is evident from the offering of children in sacrifice to them that they were related to Moloch. The name µr;doa which occurs as a personal name in 2 Kings 19:37 and Isa 37:38, has been explained either from the Semitic ‘dr as meaning “glorious king,” or from the Persian dr, ‘zr, in which case it means “fire-king,” and is supposed to refer to the sun (see Ges. on Isaiah, ii. p. 347). `Ël,M,næ[ is supposed to be Hyde (de relig. vett. Persarum, p. 131) to be the group of stars called Cepheus, which goes by the name of “the shepherd and flock” and “the herd-stars” in the Oriental astrognosis, and in this case µn[ might answer to the Arabic g’nm = ˆaox .
Movers, on the other hand (Phöniz. i. pp. 410, 411), regards them as two names of the same deity, a double-shaped Moloch, and reads the Chethîb µyrps hla as the singular ywir]pæs] lae , the god of Sepharvaim. This double god, according to his explanation, was a sun-being, because Sepharvaim, of which he was poliou>cov , is designated by Berosus as a city of the sun. This may be correct; but there is something very precarious in the further assumption, that “Adar-Melech is to be regarded as the sun’s fire, and indeed, since Adar is Mars, that he is so far to be thought of as a destructive being,” and that Anammelech is a contraction of Ëlm ˆy[ `ˆyi[æ , oculus Molechi, signifying the ever-watchful eye of Saturn; according to which Adrammelech is to be regarded as the solar Mars, Anammelech as the solar Saturn. The explanations given by Hitzig (on Isa. p. 437) and Benfey (die Monatsnamen, pp. 187, 188) are extremely doubtful.
Verse 32. In addition to these idols, Jehovah also was worshipped in temples of the high places, according to the instructions of the Israelitish priest sent by the king of Assyria. arey; hy;h; : “and they were (also) worshipping Jehovah, and made themselves priests of the mass of the people” hx;q; as in 1 Kings 12:31). wOl `hc;[; hy;h; : “and they (the priests) were preparing them (sacrifices) in the houses of the high places.”
Verse 33. Verse 33 sums up by way of conclusion the description of the various kinds of worship.
Verse 34-39. This mixed cultus, composed of the worship of idols and the worship of Jehovah, they retained till the time when the books of the Kings were written. “Unto this day they do after the former customs.” ˆwOvari fp;v]mi can only be the religious usages and ordinances which were introduced at the settlement of the new inhabitants, and which are described in vv. 28-33. The prophetic historian observes still further, that “they fear not Jehovah, and do not according to their statutes and their rights, nor according to the law and commandment which the Lord had laid down for the sons of Jacob, to whom He gave the name of Israel” (see Kings 18:31), i.e., according to the Mosaic law. hQ;ju and fp;v]mi “their statutes and their right,” stands in antithesis to hw;x]mi hr;wOT which Jehovah gave to the children of Israel. If, then, the clause, “they do not according to their statutes and their right,” is not to contain a glaring contradiction to the previous assertion, “unto this day they do after their first (former) rights,” we must understand by uwmish¦paaTaam chuqotaam the statutes and the right of the ten tribes, i.e., the worship of Jehovah under the symbols of the calves, and must explain the inexactness of the expression “their statutes and their right” from the fact that the historian was thinking of the Israelites who had been left behind in the land, or of the remnant of the Israelitish population that had become mixed up with the heathen settlers (2 Kings 23:19-20; 2 Chron 34:6,9,33).
The meaning of the verse is therefore evidently the following: The inhabitants of Samaria retain to this day the cultus composed of the worship of idols and of Jehovah under the form of an image, and do not worship Jehovah either after the manner of the ten tribes or according to the precepts of the Mosaic law. Their worship is an amalgamation of the Jehovah image-worship and of heathen idolatry (cf. v. 41).-To indicate the character of this worship still more clearly, and hold it up as a complete breach of the covenant and as utter apostasy from Jehovah, the historian describes still more fully, in vv. 35-39, how earnestly and emphatically the people of Israel had been prohibited from worshipping other gods, and urged to worship Jehovah alone, who had redeemed Israel out of Egypt and exalted it into His own nation. For v. 35 compare Ex 20:5; for v. 36, the exposition of v. 7, also Ex 32:11; 6:6; 20:23; Deut 4:34; 5:15, etc. In v. 37 the committal of the thorah to writing is presupposed. For v. 39, see Deut 13:5; 23:15, etc.
Verse 40-41. They did not hearken, however (the subject is, of course, the ten tribes), but they (the descendants of the Israelites who remained in the land) do after their former manner. ˆwOvari fp;v]mi is their manner of worshipping God, which was a mixture of idolatry and of the imageworship of Jehovah, as in v. 34.-In v. 41 this is repeated once more, and the whole of these reflections are brought to a close with the additional statement, that their children and grandchildren do the same to this day.-In the period following the Babylonian captivity the Samaritans relinquished actual idolatry, and by the adoption of the Mosaic book of the law were converted to monotheism. For the later history of the Samaritans, of whom a small handful have been preserved to the present day in the ancient Sichem, the present Nablus, see Theod. Guil. Joh. Juynboll, commentarii in historiam gentis Samaritanae, Lugd. Bat. 1846, 4, and H. Petermann, Samaria and the Samaritans, in Herzog’s Cycl.
III. HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE TEN TRIBES TO THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.
At the time when the kingdom of the ten tribes was destroyed, Judah found itself in a state of dependence upon the imperial power of Assyria, into which it had been brought by the ungodly policy of Ahaz. But three years before the expedition of Salmanasar against Samaria, the pious Hezekiah had ascended the throne of his ancestor David in Jerusalem, and had set on foot with strength and zeal the healing of Judah’s wounds, by exterminating idolatry and by restoring the legal worship of Jehovah. As Hezekiah was devoted to the Lord his God with undivided heart and trusted firmly in Him, the Lord also acknowledged him and his undertakings. When Sennacherib had overrun Judah with a powerful army after the revolt of Hezekiah, and had summoned the capital to surrender, the Lord heard the prayer of His faithful servant Hezekiah and saved Judah and Jerusalem from the threatening destruction by the miraculous destruction of the forces of the proud Sennacherib (ch. 18 and 19), whereby the power of Assyria was so weakened that Judah had no longer much more to fear from it, although it did chastise Manasseh (2 Chron 33:11ff.). Nevertheless this deliverance, through and in the time of Hezekiah, was merely a postponement of the judgment with which Judah had been threatened by the prophets (Isaiah and Micah), of the destruction of the kingdom and the banishment of its inhabitants.
Apostasy from the living God and moral corruption had struck such deep and firm roots in the nation, that the idolatry, outwardly suppressed by Hezekiah, broke out again openly immediately after his death; and that in a still stronger degree, since his son and successor Manasseh not only restored all the abominations of idolatry which his father had rooted out, but even built altars to idols in the courts of the temple of Jehovah, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one end to the other (ch. 21), and thereby filled up the measure of sins, so that the Lord had to announce through His prophets to the godless king and people His decree to destroy Jerusalem and cast out the remaining portion of the people of His inheritance among the heathen, and to show the severity of His judgments in the fact that Manasseh was led away captive by the officers of the Assyrian king. And even though Manasseh himself renounced all gross idolatry and restored the legal worship in the temple after his release and return to Jerusalem, as the result of this chastisement, this alteration in the king’s mind exerted no lasting influence upon the people generally, and was completely neutralized by his successor Amon, who did not walk in the way of Jehovah, but merely worshipped his father’s idols.
In this state of things even the God-fearing Josiah, with all the stringency with which he exterminated idolatry, more especially after the discovery of the book of the law, was unable to effect any true change of heart or sincere conversion of the people to their God, and could only wipe out the outward signs and traces of idolatry, and establish the external supremacy of the worship of Jehovah. The people, with their carnal security, imagined that they had done quite enough for God by restoring the outward and legal form of worship, and that they were now quite sure of the divine protection; and did not hearken to the voice of the prophets, who predicted the speedy coming of the judgments of God. Josiah had warded off the bursting forth of these judgments for thirty years, through his humiliation before God and the reforms which he introduced; but towards the end of his reign the Lord began to put away Judah from before His face for the sake of Manasseh’s sins, and to reject the city which He had chosen that His name might dwell there (ch. 22-23:27).
Necho king of Egypt advanced to extend his sway to the Euphrates and overthrow the Assyrian empire. Josiah marched to meet him, for the purpose of preventing the extension of his power into Syria. A battle was fought at Megiddo, the Judaean army was defeated, Josiah fell in the battle, and with him the last hope of the sinking state (2 Kings 23:29-30; 2 Chron 35:23-24). In Jerusalem Jehoahaz was made king by the people; but after a reign of three months he was taken prisoner by Necho at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and led away to Egypt, where he died. Eliakim, the elder son of Josiah, was appointed by Necho as Egyptian vassal-king in Jerusalem, under the name of Jehoiakim. He was devoted to idolatry, and through his love of show (Jer 22:13ff.) still further ruined the kingdom, which was already exhausted by the tribute to be paid to Egypt. In the fourth year of his reign Pharaoh-Necho succumbed at Carchemish to the Chaldaean power, which was rising under Nebuchadnezzar upon the ruins of the Assyrian kingdom.
At the same time Jeremiah proclaimed to the incorrigible nation that the Lord of Sabaoth would deliver Judah with all the surrounding nations into the hand of His servant Nebuchadnezzar, that the land of Judah would be laid waste and the people serve the king of Babylon seventy years (Jer 25).
Nebuchadnezzar appeared in Judah immediately afterwards to follow up his victory over Necho, took Jerusalem, made Jehoiakim his subject, and carried away Daniel, with many of the leading young men, to Babylon (2 Kings 24:1). But after some years Jehoiakim revolted; whereupon Nebuchadnezzar sent fresh troops against Jerusalem to besiege the city, and after defeating Jehoiachin, who had in the meantime followed his father upon the throne, led away into captivity to Babylon, along with the kernel of the nation, nobles, warriors, craftsmen, and smiths, and set upon the throne Mattaniah, the only remaining son of Josiah, under the name of Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:2-17). But when he also formed an alliance with Pharaoh-Hophra in the ninth year of his reign, and revolted from the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar advanced immediately with all his forces, besieged Jerusalem, and having taken the city and destroyed it, put an end to the kingdom of Judah by slaying Zedekiah and his sons, and carrying away all the people that were left, with the exception of a very small remnant of cultivators of the soil (2 Kings 24:18-25:26), a hundred and thirty-four years after the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes.
Ch. 18. Reign of King Hezekiah. Sennacherib Invades Judah and Threatens Jerusalem.
2 KINGS. 18:1-8
Length and character of Hezekiah’s reign.f214 Verse 1, 2. In the third year of Hoshea of Israel, Hezekiah became king over Judah, when he was twenty-five years old. According to vv. 9 and 10, the fourth and sixth years of Hezekiah corresponded to the seventh and ninth of Hoshea; consequently his first year apparently ran parallel to the fourth of Hoshea, so that Josephus (Ant. ix. 13, 1) represents him as having ascended the throne in the fourth year of Hoshea’s reign. But there is no necessity for this alteration. If we assume that the commencement of his reign took place towards the close of the third year of Hoshea, the fourth and sixth years of his reign coincided for the most part with the sixth and ninth years of Hoshea’s reign. The name hY;qiz]ji or hY;qiz]ji (vv. 9, 13, etc.) is given in its complete form hY;qiz]ji , “whom Jehovah strengthens,” in 2 Chr. 29ff. and Isa 1:1; and hY;qiz]ji in Hos 1:1 and Mic 1:1. On his age when he ascended the throne, see the Comm. on 2 Kings 16:2. The name of his mother, baæ , is a strongly contracted form of hY;bia (2 Chron 29:1).
Verse 3-4. As ruler Hezekiah walked in the footsteps of his ancestor David. He removed the high places and the other objects of idolatrous worship, trusted in Jehovah, and adhered firmly to Him without wavering; therefore the Lord made all his undertakings prosper. hm;B; , hb;Xemæ , and hr;vea (see at 1 Kings 14:23) embrace all the objects of idolatrous worship, which had been introduced into Jerusalem and Judah in the reigns of the former kings, and more especially in that of Ahaz. The singular hr;vea is used in a collective sense = hr;vea (2 Chron 31:1). The only other idol that is specially mentioned is the brazen serpent which Moses made in the wilderness (Num 21:8-9), and which the people with their leaning to idolatry had turned in the course of time into an object of idolatrous worship. The words, “to this day were the children of Israel burning incense to it,” do not mean that this took place without interruption from the time of Moses down to that of Hezekiah, but simply, that it occurred at intervals, and that the idolatry carried on with this idol lasted till the time of Hezekiah, namely, till this king broke in pieces the brazen serpent, because of the idolatry that was associated with it. For further remarks on the meaning of this symbol, see the Comm. on Num 21:8-9. The people called ar;q; , one called) this serpent ˆT;v]jun] , i.e., a brazen thing. This epithet does not involve anything contemptuous, as the earlier commentators supposed, nor the idea of “Brass-god” (Ewald).
Verse 5. The verdict, “after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah,” refers to Hezekiah’s confidence in God j f1 B; ), in which he had no equal, whereas in the case of Josiah his conscientious adherence to the Mosaic law is extolled in the same words (2 Kings 23:25); so that there is no ground for saying that there is a contradiction between our verse and Kings 23:25 (Thenius).
Verse 6. yyBæ qBæd]yi : he adhered faithfully to Jehovah qbæD; as in 1 Kings 11:2), and departed not from Him, i.e., he never gave himself up to idolatry. Verse 7. The Lord therefore gave him success in all his undertakings lkæc; , see at 1 Kings 2:3), and even in his rebellion against the king of Assyria, whom he no longer served, i.e., to whom he paid no more tribute. It was through Ahaz that Judah had been brought into dependence upon Assyria; and Hezekiah released himself from this, by refusing to pay any more tribute, probably after the departure of Salmanasar from Palestine, and possibly not till after the death of that king. Sennacherib therefore made war upon Hezekiah to subjugate Judah to himself again (see vv. 13ff.).
Verse 8. Hezekiah smote the Philistines to Gaza, and their territory from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city, i.e., all the towns from the least to the greatest (see at 2 Kings 17:9). He thus chastised these enemies for their invasion of Judah in the time of Ahaz, wrested from them the cities which they had taken at that time (2 Chron 28:18), and laid waste all their country to Gaza, i.e., Ghuzzeh, the most southerly of the chief cities of Philistia (see at Josh 13:3). This probably took place after the defeat of Sennacherib (cf. 2 Chron 32:22-23).
2 KINGS. 18:9-12
In vv. 9-12 the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes by Salmanasar, which has already been related according to the annals of the kingdom of Israel in 2 Kings 17:3-6, is related once more according to the annals of the kingdom of Judah, in which this catastrophe is also introduced as an event that was memorable in relation to all the covenant-nation.
2 KINGS. 18:13-37
Sennacherib invades Judah and threatens Jerusalem. f215 Sennacherib, byrijen]sæ (Sancheeriibh), Dennachri>m (LXX), Denach>ribov (Joseph.), Danaca>ribov (Herodot.), whose name has not yet been deciphered with certainty upon the Assyrian monuments or clearly explained (see J. Brandis uber den histor. Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der assyr. Inschriften, pp. 103ff., and M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, p. 37), was the successor of Salmanasar (Sargina according to the monuments).
He is called basileu>v Arabi>wn te kai> Assuri>wn by Herodotus (ii. 141), and reigned, according to Berosus, eighteen years. He took all the fortified cities in Judah cpæT; , with the masculine suffix instead of the feminine: cf. Ewald, §184, c.). The lKo , all, is not to be pressed; for, beside the strongly fortified capital Jerusalem, he had not yet taken the fortified cities of Lachish and Libnah (v. 17 and 2 Kings 19:8) at the time, when, according to vv. 14ff., he sent a division of his army against Jerusalem, and summoned Hezekiah to surrender that city. According to Herodotus (l.c.), the real object of his campaign was Egypt, which is also apparent from Kings 19:24, and is confirmed by Isa 10:24; for which reason Tirhaka marched against him (2 Kings 19:8; cf. M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 171, 172).
Verse 14-16. On the report of Sennacherib’s approach, Hezekiah made provision at once for the safety of Jerusalem. He had the city fortified more strongly, and the fountain of the upper Gihon and the brook near the city stopped up (see at v. 17), to cut off the supply of water from the besiegers, as is stated in 2 Chron 32:2-8, and confirmed by Isa 22:8-11. In the meantime Sennacherib had pressed forward to Lachish, i.e., Um Lakis, in the plain of Judah, on the south-west of Jerusalem, seven hours to the west of Eleutheropolis on the road to Egypt (see at Josh 10:3); so that Hezekiah, having doubts as to the possibility of a successful resistance, sent ambassadors to negotiate with him, and promised to pay him as much tribute as he might demand if he would withdraw. The confession “I have sinned” is not to be pressed, inasmuch as it was forced from Hezekiah by the pressure of distress.
Since Asshur had made Judah tributary by faithless conduct on the part of Tiglath-pileser towards Ahaz, there was nothing really wrong in the shaking off of this yoke by the refusal to pay any further tribute. But Hezekiah certainly did wrong, when, after taking the first step, he was alarmed at the disastrous consequences, and sought to purchase once more the peace which he himself had broken, by a fresh submission and renewal of the payment of tribute. This false step on the part of the pious king, which arose from a temporary weakness of faith, was nevertheless turned into a blessing through the pride of Sennacherib and the covenantfaithfulness of the Lord towards him and his kingdom. Sennacherib demanded the enormous sum of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold (more than two and a half million thalers, or £375,000); and Hezekiah not only gave him all the gold and silver found in the treasures of the temple and palace, but had the gold plates with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple (2 Chron 29:3) removed, to send them to the king of Assyria. hn;m]ao , lit., the supports, i.e., the posts, of the doors. These negotiations with Sennacherib on the part of Hezekiah are passed over both in the book of Isaiah and also in the Chronicles, because they had no further influence upon the future progress of the war.
Verse 17. For though Sennacherib did indeed take the money, he did not depart, as he had no doubt promised, but, emboldened still further by this submissiveness, sent a detachment of his army against Jerusalem, and summoned Hezekiah to surrender the capital. “He sent Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh.” Rabshakeh only is mentioned in Isaiah, as the chief speaker in the negotiations which follow, although in Isa 37:6 and allusion is evidently made to the other two. Tartan had no doubt the chief command, since he is not only mentioned first here, but conducted the siege of Ashdod, according to Isa 20:1. The three names are probably only official names, or titles of the offices held by the persons mentioned. For syris;Abræ means princeps eunuchorum, and hqev;b]ræ chief cup-bearer. ˆT;r]Tæ is explained by Hitzig on Isa 20:1 as derived from the Persian târtan, “high person or vertex of the body,” and in Jer 39:3 as “body-guard;” but this is hardly correct, as the other two titles are Semitic. These generals took up their station with their army “at the conduit of the upper pool, which ran by the road of the fuller’s field,” i.e., the conduit which flowed from the upper pool-according to 2 Chron 32:30, the basin of the upper Gihon (Birket el Mamilla)-into the lower pool (Birket es Sultân: see at Kings 1:33).
According to Isa 7:3, this conduit was in existence as early as the time of Ahaz. The “end” of it is probably the locality in which the conduit began at the upper pool or Gihon, or where it first issued from it. This conduit which led from the upper Gihon into the lower, and which is called in Chron 32:30 “the outflow of the upper Gihon,” Hezekiah stopped up, and conducted the water downwards, i.e., the underground, towards the west into the city of David; that is to say, he conducted the water of the upper Gihon, which had previously flowed along the western side of the city outside the wall into the lower Gihon and so away down the valley of Benhinnom, into the city itself by means of a subterranean channel, that he might retain this water for the use of the city in the event of a siege of Jerusalem, and keep it from the besiegers.
This water was probably collected in the cistern hk;reB] ) which Hezekiah made, i.e., order to be constructed (2 Kings 20:20), or the reservoir “between the two walls for the waters of the old pool,” mentioned in Isa 22:11, i.e., most probably the reservoir still existing at some distance to the east of the Joppa gate on the western side of the road which leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the so-called “pool of Hezekiah,” which the natives call Birket el Hamman, “Bathing-pool,” because it supplies a bath in the neighbourhood, or B. el Batrak, “Patriarch’s pool” (see Robinson, Pal. i. p. 487, and Fresh Researches into the Topography of Jerusalem, pp. 111ff.), since this is still fed by a conduit from the Mamilla pool (see E. G.
Schultz, Jerusalem, p. 31, and Tobler, Denkblätter, pp. 44ff.). f217 Verse 18. Hezekiah considered it beneath his dignity to negotiate personally with the generals of Sennacherib. He sent three of his leading ministers out to the front of the city: Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, the captain of the castle, who had only received the appointment to this office a short time before in Shebna’s place (Isa 22:20-21); Shebna, who was still secretary of state rpæs; : see at 2 Sam 8:17); and Joach the son of Asaph, the chancellor rkæz; : see at 2 Sam 8:16).
Rabshakeh made a speech to these three (vv. 19-25), in which he tried to show that Hezekiah’s confidence that he would be able to resist the might of the king of Assyria was perfectly vain, since neither Egypt (v. 21), nor his God (v. 22), nor his forces (v. 23), would be able to defend him.
Verse 19. “The great king:” the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian kings all assumed this title (cf. Ezek 26:7; Dan 2:37), because kings of conquered lands were subject to them as vassals (see at Isa 10:8). “What is this confidence that thou cherishest?” i.e., how vain or worthless is this confidence!
Verse 20. “Thou sayest...it is only a lip-word...: counsel and might for battle;” i.e., if thou speakest of counsel and might for battle, that is only hp;c; rb;d; , a word that merely comes from the lips, not from the heart, the seat of the understanding, i.e., a foolish and inconsiderate saying (cf. Prov 14:23; Job rmæa; is to be preferred to the rmæa; of Isaiah as the more original of the two. `hT;[æ , now, sc. we will see on whom thou didst rely, when thou didst rebel against me.
Verse 21. On Egypt? “that broken reed, which runs into the hand of any one who would lean upon it (thinking it whole), and pierces it through.”
This figure, which is repeated in Ezek 29:6-7, is so far suitably chosen, that the Nile, representing Egypt, is rich in reeds. What Rabshakeh says of Egypt here, Isaiah had already earnestly impressed upon his people (Isa 30:3-5), to warn them against trusting in the support of Egypt, from which one party in the nation expected help against Assyria.
Verse 22. Hezekiah (and Judah) had a stronger ground of confidence in Jehovah his God. Even this Rabshakeh tried to shake, availing himself very skilfully, from his heathen point of view, of the reform which Hezekiah had made in the worship, and representing the abolition of the altars on the high places as an infringement upon the reverence that ought to be shown to God. “And if ye say, We trust in Jehovah our God, (I say:) is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar (in the temple) in Jerusalem?” Instead of rmæa; yKi , according to which Rabshakeh turned to the deputies, we have in Isa 7:7 rmæa; yKi , according to which the words are addressed to Hezekiah, as in v. 20. rmæa; is preferred by Thenius, Knobel, and others, because in what follows Hezekiah is addressed in the third person. but the very circumstance that rmæa; is apparently more suitable favours the originality of rmæa; , according to which the king is still addressed in the person of his ambassadors, and Rabshakeh only speaks directly to the ambassadors when this argument is answered. The attack upon the confidence which the Judaeans placed in their God commences with aWh µwOlv; . The opinion of Thenius, that the second clause of the verse is a continuation of the words supposed to be spoken by the Judaeans who trusted in God, and that the apodosis does not follow till v. 23, is quite a mistake. The ambassadors of Hezekiah could not regard the high places and idolatrous altars that had been abolished as altars of Jehovah; and the apodosis could not commence with `hT;[æ .
Verse 23-24. Still less could Hezekiah rely upon his military resources. an; `bræ[; : enter, I pray thee, (into contest) with my lord, and I will give thee 2000 horses, if thou canst set the horsemen upon them. The meaning, of course, is not that Hezekiah could not raise 2000 soldiers in all, but that he could not produce so many men who were able to fight as horsemen. “How then wilt thou turn back a single one of the smallest lieutenants of my lord?” lp ynep]Ata, byvihe , to repulse a person’s face, means generally to turn away a person with his petition (1 Kings 2:16-17), here to repulse an assailant. dj;a, hj;p, is one pasha; although dj;a, , which is grammatically subordinate to hj;p, , is in the construct state, that the genitives which follow may be connected (for this subordination of dj;a, see Ewald, §286, a.). hj;p, (see at 1 Kings 10:15), lit., under-vicegerent, i.e., administrator of a province under a satrap, in military states also a subordinate officer. j f1 B; : and so (with thy military force so small) thou trustest in Egypt wgw bk,r,l; , so far as war-chariots and horsemen are concerned.
Verse 25. After Rabshakeh had thus, as he imagined, taken away every ground of confidence from Hezekiah, he added still further, that the Assyrian king himself had also not come without Jehovah, but had been summoned by Him to effect the destruction of Judah. It is possible that some report may have reached his ears of the predictions of the prophets, who had represented the Assyrian invasion as a judgment from the Lord, and these he used for his own purposes. Instead of hz, µwOqm; `l[æ , against this place, i.e., Jerusalem, we have tazO xr,a, `l[æ in Isaiah-a reading which owes its origin simply to the endeavour to bring the two clauses into exact conformity to one another.
Verse 26-37. It was very conceivable that Rabshakeh’s boasting might make an impression upon the people; the ambassadors of Hezekiah therefore interrupted him with the request that he would speak to them in Aramaean, as they understood that language, and not in Jewish, on account of the people who were standing upon the wall. tymir;a was the language spoken in Syria, Babylonia, and probably also in the province of Assyria, and may possibly have been Rabshakeh’s mother-tongue, even if the court language of the Assyrian kings was an Aryan dialect. With the close affinity between the Aramaean and the Hebrew, the latter could not be unknown to Rabshakeh, so that he made use of it, just as the Aramaean language was intelligible to the ministers of Hezekiah, whereas the people in Jerusalem understood only tydiWhy] , Jewish, i.e., the Hebrew language spoken in the kingdom of Judah. It is evident from the last clause of the verse that the negotiations were carried on in the neighbourhood of the city wall of Jerusalem.
Verse 27. But Rabshakeh rejected this proposal with the scornful remark, that his commission was not to speak to Hezekiah and his ambassadors only, but rather to the people upon the wall. The variation of the preposition `l[æ and lae in ˆwOda; `l[æ , to thy lord (Hezekiah), and lae , to thee (Eliakim as chief speaker), is avoided in the text of Isaiah. `l[æ is frequently used for lae , in the later usage of the language, in the sense of to or at. In the words “who sit upon the wall to eat their dung and drink their urine,” Rabshakeh points to the horrors which a siege of Jerusalem would entail upon the inhabitants. For chryhm = µyniwOyAyrej , excrementa sua, and ˆyivæ , urinas suas, the Masoretes have substituted the euphemisms tsow’aataam, going forth, and lg,r, µyimæ , water of their feet.
Verse 28-30. `rmæ[; : not, he stood up, raised himself (Ges.), or came forward (Then.), but he stationed himself, assumed an attitude calculated for effect, and spoke to the people with a loud voice in the Jewish language, telling them to listen to the king of Assyria and not to be led astray by Hezekiah, i.e., to be persuaded to defend the city any longer, since neither Hezekiah nor Jehovah could defend them from the might of Sennacherib. ayViyæAlaæ : let not Hezekiah deceive you, sc. by pretending to be able to defend or save Jerusalem. In dy; , “out of his (the Assyrian’s) hand,” the speaker ceases to speak in the name of his king. On the construction of the passive ˆtæn; with ‘ ry[ih;Ata, , see Ewald, §277, d., although in the instance before us he proposes to expunge the tae after Isa 36:15.
Verse 31-32. “Make peace with me and come out to me (sc., out of your walls, i.e., surrender to me), and ye shall eat every one his vine,...till I come and bring you into a land like your own land...” hk;r;B] is used here to signify peace as the concentration of weal and blessing. The imperative lkæa; expresses the consequence of what goes before (vid., Ewald, §347, b.). To eat his vine and fig-tree and to drink the water of his well is a figure denoting the quiet and undisturbed enjoyment of the fruits of his own possession (cf. 1 Kings 5:5). Even in the event of their yielding, the Assyrian would transport the Jewish people into another land, according to the standing custom of Asiatic conquerors in ancient times (for proofs see Hengstenberg, De rebus Tyriis, pp. 51, 52). To make the people contented with this thought, the boaster promised that the king of Assyria would carry them into a land which was quite as fruitful and glorious as the land of Canaan. The description of it as a land with corn and new wine, etc., recalls the picture of the land of Canaan in Deut 8:8 and 33:28. rh;x]yi tyizæ is the olive-tree which yields good oil, in distinction from the wild olive- tree. wgw hy;j; : and ye shall live and not die, i.e., no harm shall befall you from me (Thenius). This passage is abridged in Isa 36:17.
Verse 33-34. Even Jehovah could not deliver them any more than Hezekiah. As a proof of this, Rabshakeh enumerated a number of cities and lands which the king of Assyria had conquered, without their gods’ being able to offer any resistance to his power. “Where are the gods of Hamath, etc., that they might have delivered Samaria out of my hand?” Instead of lxæn; yKi we have xh yKi and that they might have, which loosens the connection somewhat more between this clause and the preceding one, and makes it more independent. “Where are they?” is equivalent to they are gone, have perished (cf. 2 Kings 19:18); and “that they might have delivered” is equivalent to they have not delivered. The subject to lxæn; yKi is ywOG µyhila’ , which includes the God of Samaria. Sennacherib regards himself as being as it were one with his predecessors, as the representative of the might of Assyria, so that he attributes to himself the conquests of cities and lands which his ancestors had made.
The cities and lands enumerated in v. 34 have been mentioned already in Kings 17:24 as conquered territories, from which colonists had been transplanted to Samaria, with the exception of Arpad and Hena. dP;r]aæ , which is also mentioned in 2 Kings 19:13; Isa 10:9; 36:19; 37:13, and Jer 49:23, in connection with Hamath, was certainly situated in the neighbourhood of that city, and still exists, so far as the name is concerned, in the large village of rfâd, Arfâd (mentioned by Maraszid, i. 47), in northern Syria in the district of Azâz, which was seven hours to the north of Haleb, according to Abulf. Tab. Syr. ed. Köhler, p. 23, and Niebuhr, Reise, ii. p. 414 (see Roediger, Addenda ad Ges. thes. p. 112). [næhe , Hena, which is also combined with ‘Ivvah in 2 Kings 19:13 and Isa 37:13, is probably the city of ânt Ana, on the Euphrates, mentioned by Abulf., and `hW;[i is most likely the same as `auwaa’ in 2 Kings 17:24. The names `hW;[i [næhe are omitted from the text of Isaiah in consequence of the abridgment of Rabshakeh’s address.
Verse 35. V. 35 contains the conclusion drawn from the facts already adduced: “which of all the gods of the lands are they who have delivered their land out of my hand, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?” i.e., as not one of the gods of the lands named have been able to rescue his land from Assyria, Jehovah also will not be able to defend Jerusalem.
Verse 36,37. The people were quite silent at this address (“the people,” `µ[æ , to whom Rabshakeh had wished to address himself); for Hezekiah had forbidden them to make any answer, not only to prevent Rabshakeh from saying anything further, but that the ambassadors of Sennacherib might be left in complete uncertainty as to the impression made by their words. The deputies of Hezekiah returned to the king with their clothes rent as a sign of grief at the words of the Assyrian, by which not only Hezekiah, but still more Jehovah, had been blasphemed, and reported what they had heard.
JERUSALEM DELIVERED. DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSYRIAN ARMY AND DEATH OF SENNACHERIB.
2 KINGS. 19:1-2
When Hezekiah had heard from his counsellors the report of Rabshakeh’s words, he rent his clothes with horror at his daring mockery of the living God (v. 4), put on mourning clothes as a sign of the trouble of his soul and went into the temple, and at the same time sent Eliakim and Shebna with the oldest of the priests in mourning costume to the prophet Isaiah, to entreat him to intercede with the Lord in these desperate circumstances. f218 The order of the words: Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, is unusual (cf. 2 Kings 14:25; 20:1; 1 Kings 16:7, etc.), and is therefore altered in Isaiah into Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet.
2 KINGS. 19:3
“A day of distress, and of chastisement, and of rejection is this day.” hj;kewOT: the divine chastisement. hx;a;n] : contemptuous treatment, or rejection of the people on the part of God (compare xaæn; , Deut 32:19; Jer 14:21; Lam 2:6). “For children have come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.” A figure denoting extreme danger, the most desperate circumstances. If the woman in travail has not strength to bring forth the child which has come to the mouth of the womb, both the life of the child and that of the mother are exposed to the greatest danger; and this was the condition of the people here (see the similar figure in Hos 13:13). For dlæy; instead of dlæy; , see Ges. §69, 2 Anm.
2 KINGS. 19:4
Perhaps Jehovah thy God will hear the blasphemies of the living God on the part of Rabshakeh. [mæv; : hear, equivalent to observes, take notice of, and in this case punish. yjæ µyhila’ : the living God, in contrast to the gods of the heathen, who are only lifeless idols (cf. 1 Sam 17:26,36). jkæy; is not to be taken in connection with ãræj; , as if it stood for jkæy; , “and to scold with words” (Luth., Ges., etc.), but is a perf. rel. or a progressive perfect (Ewald, §234, a.), and the continuation of [mæv; : “and will chastise (punish, sc. him) for the words which He has heard.” tp’ ac;n; “therefore lift up prayer (to heaven) for the (still) existing remnant, sc. of the people of God;” nearly all Judah having come into the power of Sennacherib since the carrying away of the ten tribes.
2 KINGS. 19:5-7
Isaiah replied with this comforting promise: Hezekiah was not to be afraid of the blasphemous words of the Assyrian king; the Lord would frighten him with a report, so that he would return to his own land, and there would He cause him to fall by the sword. ‘‘ Ël,m, r[ænæ , the servants or young men of the Assyrian king, is a derogatory epithet applied to the officials of Assyria. “Behold, I put a spirit into him, so that he shall hear a report and return into his own land.” h[;Wmv] does not refer to the report of the destruction of his army (v. 35), as Thenius supposes, for Sennacherib did not hear of this through the medium of an army, but was with the army himself at the time when it was smitten by the angel of the Lord; it refers to the report mentioned in v. 9. For even if he made one last attempt to secure the surrender of Jerusalem immediately upon hearing this report, yet after the failure of this attempt to shake the firmness of Hezekiah his courage must have failed him, and the thought of return must have suggested itself, so that this was only accelerated by the blow which fell upon the army.
For, as O. v. Gerlach has correctly observed, “the destruction of the army would hardly have produced any decisive effect without the approach of Tirhakah, since the great power of the Assyrian king, especially in relation to the small kingdom of Judah, was not broken thereby. But at the prayer of the king the Lord added this miracle to the other, which His providence had already brought to pass.-For the fulfilment of the prophecy of Sennacherib’s death, see v. 37.
2 KINGS. 19:8-13
In the meantime Rabshakeh had returned to his king at Libnah (see at Kings 8:22), to which he had gone from Lachish, probably after having taken that fortress.
Verse 9. There Sennacherib heard that Tirhakah was advancing to make war against him. Tirhakah, Eharaka’ (LXX), king of Cush, is the Earako’s of Manetho, the successor of Sevechus (Shebek II), the third king of the twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) dynasty, described by Strabo (xv. 687), who calls him Ha>rkwn , as a great conqueror. His name is spelt Tåhålqa or Tåharqo upon the monuments, and on the Pylon of the great temple at Medinet-Abu he is represented in the form of a king, cutting down enemies of conquered lands (Egypt, Syria, and Tepopå, an unknown land) before the god Ammon (see Brugsch, hist. d’Egypte, i. pp. 244, 245). f219 On hearing the report of the advance of Tirhakah, Sennacherib sent ambassadors again to Hezekiah with a letter (v. 14), in which he summoned him once more to give up his confidence in his God, and his assurance that Jerusalem would not be delivered into the hands of the king of Assyria, since the gods of no other nation had been able to save their lands and cities from the kings of Assyria who had preceded him. The letter contained nothing more, therefore, than a repetition of the arguments already adduced by Rabshakeh (2 Kings 18:19ff.), though a larger number of the lands conquered by the Assyrians are given, for the purpose of strengthening the impression intended to be made upon Hezekiah of the irresistible character of the Assyrian arms.-To offer a successful resistance to Tirhakah and overcome him, Sennacherib wanted above all things a firm footing in Judah; and for this the possession of Jerusalem was of the greatest importance, since it would both cover his back and secure his retreat.
Fortifications like Lachish and Libnah could be quickly taken by a violent assault. But it was very different with Jerusalem. Salmanasar had stood before Samaria for three years before he was able to conquer it; and Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem for two years before the city was starved out and it was possible to take it (2 Kings 25:1ff.). But as Tirhakah was approaching, Sennacherib had no time now for so tedious a siege. He therefore endeavoured to induce Hezekiah to surrender the city quietly by a boastful description of his own power. Instead of jlæv; bWv (v. 9), we have in Isaiah jlæv; [mæv; , “when he heard this he sent,” which is probably the more original, and indicates that when Sennacherib received the intelligence he sent at once (Drechsler).
Verse 10-11. av;n; laæ : “let not thy God deceive thee,” i.e., do not allow yourself to be deceived by your confidence in your God. rmæa; , to say, i.e., to think or believe, that Jerusalem will not be given, etc. To shatter this confidence, Sennacherib reminds him of the deeds of the Assyrian kings. µræj; , to ban them, i.e., by smiting them with the ban. The verb µræj; is chosen with emphasis, to express the unsparing destruction. lxæn; hT;aæ : and thou shouldst be saved?-a question implying a strong negative.
Verse 12-13. “Have the gods of the nations delivered them?” tae is not a pronoun used in anticipation of the object, which follows in wgw ˆz;wOG (Thenius), but refers to twOxr;a\h;AlK; in v. 11, a specification of which is given in the following enumeration. Gozan may be the province of Gauzanitis in Mesopotamia, but it may just as well be the country of Gauzania on the other side of the Tigris (see at 2 Kings 17:6). The combination with Haran does not force us to the first assumption, since the list is not a geographical but a historical one.-Haran (Charan), i.e., the Carrae of the Greeks and Romans, where Abraham’s father Terah died, a place in northern Mesopotamia (see at Gen 11:31), is probably not merely the city here, but the country in which the city stood.-Rezeph ãx,r ), the Arabic rutsâfat, a very widespread name, since Jakut gives nine cities of this name in his Geographical Lexicon, is probably the most celebrated of the cities of that name, the Rusapha of Syria, called Cheesa’fa in Ptol. v. 15, in Palmyrene, on the road from Racca to Emesa, a day’s journey from the Euphrates (cf. Ges. Thes. p. 1308).- “The sons of Eden, which (were in Telassar,” were evidently a tribe whose chief settlement was in Telassar.
By `ˆd,[, we might understand the ˆd,[,AtyBe of Amos 1:5, a city in a pleasant region of Syria, called Para>deisov by Ptol. (v. 15), since there is still a village called Ehden in that locality (cf. Burckhardt, Syr. p. 66, and v.
Schubert, Reise, iii. p. 366), if we could only discover Telassar in the neighbourhood, and if the village of Ehden could be identified with Para>deisov and the Eden of the Bible, as is done even by Gesenius on Burckhardt, p. 492, and Thes. p. 195; but this Ehden is spelt ‘hdn in Arabic, and is not to be associated with `ˆd,[, (see Rob. Bibl. Res. pp. 586, 587). Moreover the Thelseae near Damascus (in the Itin. Ant. p. 196, ed.
Wess.) is too unlike Telassar to come into consideration.
There is more to be said in favour of the identification of our `ˆd,[, with the Assyrian Eden, which is mentioned in Ezek 27:23 along with Haran and Calneh as an important place for trade, although its position cannot be more certainly defined; and neither the comparison with the tract of land called (Syr.) ma’aaden, Maadon, which Assemani (Biblioth. or. ii. p. 224) places in Mesopotamia, towards the Tigris, in the present province of Diarbekr (Ges., Win.), nor the conjecture of Knobel that the tribe-name Eden may very probably have been preserved in the large but very dilapidated village of Adana or Adna, some distance to the north of Bagdad (Ker Porter, Journey, ii. p. 355, and Ritter, Erdk. ix. p. 493), can be established as even a probability. rCæalæT] , Telassar, is also quite unknown. The name applies very well to Thelser on the eastern side of the Tigris (Tab. Peut. xi. e), where even the later Targums on Gen 10:12 have placed it, interpreting Nimrod’s Resen by rsæl]tæ rs;a;l]jæ , though Knobel opposes this on the ground that a place in Assyria proper is unsuitable in such a passage as this, where the Assyrian feats of war outside Assyria itself are enumerated.
Movers (Phöniz. ii. 3, p. 251) conjectures that the place referred to is Thelassar in Terodon, a leading emporium for Arabian wares on the Persian Gulf, and supposes that Terodon has sprung from Teledon with the Persian pronunciation of the lTe , which is very frequent in the names of Mesopotamian cities. This conjecture is at any rate a more natural one than that of Knobel on Isa 37:12, that the place mentioned in Assemani (Bib. or. iii. 2, p. 870), (Arabic) tl b-tsrtsr, Tel on the Szarszar, to the west of the present Bagdad, is intended.-With regard to the places named in v. 13, see at 2 Kings 18:34.
2 KINGS. 19:14-19
Hezekiah’s prayer.
Verse 14. Hezekiah took the letter, read it, went into the temple and spread it out before Jehovah, to lay open its contents before God. The contents of the letter are given in vv. 10-13 in the form of the message which the ambassadors delivered to Hezekiah from their king, because the ambassadors communicated to Hezekiah by word of mouth the essential contents of the writing which they conveyed, and simply handed him the letter as a confirmation of their words. rp,se , like litterae, means a letter; hence the singular suffix attached to cræp; , whereas in the case of ar;q; , which stands nearer, the suffix follows the number of the noun to which it refers. The spreading out of the letter before God was an embodiment of the wish, which sprang from a child-like and believing trust, that the Lord would notice and punish that defiance of the living God which it contained.
What Hezekiah meant by this action he expressed in the following prayer.
Verse 15. In opposition to the delusion of the Assyrians, he describes Jehovah, the God of Israel, as the only God of all the kingdoms of the earth, since He was the Creator of heaven and earth. bWrK] bvæy; (see at Sam 4:4 and Ex 25:22) indicates the covenant-relation into which Jehovah, the almighty Creator and Ruler of the whole world, had entered towards Israel. As the covenant God who was enthroned above the cherubim the Lord was bound to help His people, if they turned to Him with faith in the time of their distress and entreated His assistance; and as the only God of all the world He had the power to help. In Isaiah, ab;x; , which is very rare in historical prose, but very common in prophetical addresses, is added to the name hwO;hy] , and thus Jehovah at the very outset is addressed as the God of the universe. On the meaning of ab;x; , see at 1 Sam 1:3. On µyhila’ aWh hT;aæ , see 2 Sam 7:28 and 1 Kings 18:39.
Verse 16. The accumulation of the words, “bow down Thine ear, Jehovah, and hear; open, Jehovah, Thine eyes and see, and hear the words,” etc., indicates the earnestness and importunity of the prayer. The plural `ˆyi[æ by the side of the singular ˆz,aO is the correct reading, since the expression “to incline the ear” is constantly met with (Ps 17:6; 31:3; 45:11, etc.); and even in the plural, “incline ye your ear” (Ps 78:1; Isa 55:3), and on the other hand “to open the eyes” (Job. 27:19; Prov 20:13; Zech 12:4; Dan 9:18), because a man always opens both eyes to see anything, whereas he turns one ear to a person speaking. The `ˆyi[æ of Isaiah is also plural, though written defectively, as the Masora has already observed. The suffix in jlæv; , which is wanting in Isaiah, belongs to rv,a , and refers with this to rb;d; in the sense of speech: the speech which Sennacherib had made in his letter.
Verse 17-19. After the challenge, to observe the blasphemies of Sennacherib, Hezekiah mentions the fact that the Assyrians have really devastated all lands, and therefore that it is not without ground that they boast of their mighty power; but he finds the explanation of this in the impotence and nothingness of the gods of the heathen. µn;m]a; , truly, indeed-the kings of Asshur have devastated the nations and their land.
Instead of this we find in Isaiah: “they have devastated all lands and their (own) land”-which is evidently the more difficult and also the more original reading, and has been altered in our account, because the thought that the Assyrians had devastated their own land by making war upon other lands, that is to say, had depopulated it and thereby laid it waste, was not easy to understand. “And have cast their gods into the fire, for they are not gods, but works of human hands, wood and stone, and have thus destroyed them.” Hezekiah does not mention this as a sign of the recklessness of the Assyrians (Knobel), but, because Sennacherib had boasted that the gods of no nation had been able to resist him (vv. 12, 13), to put this fact in the right light, and attach thereto the prayer that Jehovah, by granting deliverance, would make known to all the kingdoms of the earth that He alone was God. Instead of ˆtæn; we have in Isaiah ˆtæn; , the inf. absol.; in this connection the more difficult and more genuine reading. This also applies to the omission of µyhila’ (v. 19b) in Isa 37:20, since the use of Jehovah as a predicate, “that Thou alone art Jehovah,” is very rare, and has therefore been misunderstood even by Gesenius. By the introduction of Elohim, the thought “that Thou Jehovah art God alone” is simplified.
2 KINGS. 19:20-34
That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. The divine promise.
Verse 20, 21. When Hezekiah had prayed, the prophet Isaiah received a divine revelation with regard to the hearing of this prayer, which he sent, i.e., caused to be handed over, to the king. [mæv; (v. 21) is omitted in Isaiah, so that wgw llæp; rv,a is to be taken in the sense of “with regard to that which thou hast prayed to me,” whilst [mæv; (I have heard) elucidates the thought and simplifies the construction. The word of the Lord announced to the king, (1) the shameful retreat of Sennacherib as a just retribution for his mockery of the living God (vv. 21-28; Isa 37:22-29); (2) the confirmation of this assurance through the indication of a sign by which Hezekiah was to recognise the deliverance of Jerusalem (vv. 29-31; Isa 37:30-32), and through the distinct promise, that the Assyrian would neither come into the city nor besiege it, because the Lord was sheltering it (vv. 32-34; Isa 37:33-35). In the first part the words are addressed with poetic vivacity directly to Sennacherib, and scourge his haughty boastings by pointing to the ridicule and scorn which would follow him on his departure from the land.
Verse 21. “The virgin daughter Zion despises thee, the daughter Jerusalem shakes the head behind thee.” By daughter Zion, daughter Jerusalem, we are not to understand the inhabitants of Zion, or of Jerusalem, as though tBæ stood for ˆBe or ˆBe (Ges., Hitzig, and others); but the city itself with its inhabitants is pictorially personified as a daughter and virgin, and the construct state bat-tsiyown is to be taken, like tr;p] rh;n; , as in apposition: “daughter Zion,” not daughter of Zion (vid., Ges. §116, 5; Ewald, §287, e.). Even in the case of hl;WtB] the construct state expresses simply the relation of apposition. Zion is called a “virgin” as being an inviolable city to the Assyrians, i.e., one which they cannot conquer. Shaking the head is a gesture denoting derision and pleasure at another’s misfortune (cf. Ps 22:8; 109:25, etc.). “Behind thee,” i.e., after thee as thou goest away, is placed first as a pictorial feature for the sake of emphasis.
Verse 22-23. This derision falls upon the Assyrian, for having blasphemed the Lord God by his foolish boasting about his irresistible power. “Whom hast thou despised and blasphemed, and against whom hast thou lifted up the voice? and thou liftest up thine eyes against the Holy One of Israel.”
Lifting up the voice refers to the tone of threatening assumption, in which Rabshakeh and Sennacherib had spoken. Lifting up the eyes on high, i.e., to the heavens, signifies simply looking up to the sky (cf. Isa 40:26), not “directing proud looks against God” (Ges.). Still less is µwOrm; to be taken adverbially in the sense of haughtily, as Thenius and Knobel suppose. The bad sense of proud arrogance lies in the words which follow, “against the Holy One of Israel,” or in the case of Isaiah, where lae stands for `l[æ , in the context, viz., the parallelism of the members.
God is called the Holy One of Israel as He who manifests His holiness in and upon Israel. This title of the Deity is one of the peculiarities of Isaiah’s range of thought, although it originated with Asaph (Ps 78:41; see at Isa 1:4). This insult to the holy God consisted in the fact that Sennacherib had said through his servants (vv. 23, 24): “With my chariots upon chariots I have ascended the height of the mountains, the uttermost part of Lebanon, so that I felled the tallness of its cedars, the choice of its cypresses, and came to the shelter of its border, to the forest of its orchard. I have dug and drunk strange water, so that I dried up all the rivers of Egypt with the sole of my feet.” The words put into the mouth of the Assyrian are expressive of the feeling which underlay all his blasphemies (Drechsler).
The two verses are kept quite uniform, the second hemistich in both cases expressing the result of the first, that is to say, what the Assyrian intended still further to perform after having accomplished what is stated in the first hemistich.
When he has ascended the heights of Lebanon, he devastates the glorious trees of the mountain. Consequently in v. 24 the drying up of the Nile of Egypt is to be taken as the result of the digging of wells in the parched desert; in other words, it is to be interpreted as descriptive of the devastation of Egypt, whose whole fertility depended upon its being watered by the Nile and its canals. We cannot therefore take these verses exactly as Drechsler does; that is to say, we cannot assume that the Assyrian is speaking in the first hemistichs of both verses of what he (not necessarily Sennacherib himself, but one of his predecessors) has actually performed. For even if the ascent of the uttermost heights of Lebanon had been performed by one of the kings of Assyria, there is no historical evidence whatever that Sennacherib or one of his predecessors had already forced his way into Egypt. The words are therefore to be understood in a figurative sense, as an individualizing picture of the conquests which the Assyrians had already accomplished, and those which they were still intending to effect; and this assumption does not necessarily exhibit Sennacherib “as a mere braggart, who boastfully heaps up in ridiculous hyperbole an enumeration of the things which he means to perform” (Drechsler). For if the Assyrian had not ascended with the whole multitude of his warchariots to the loftiest summits of Lebanon, to feel its cedars and its cypresses, Lebanon had set no bounds to his plans of conquest, so that Sennacherib might very well represent his forcing his way into Canaan as an ascent of the lofty peaks of this mountain range. Lebanon is mentioned, partly as a range of mountains that was quite inaccessible to war-chariots, and partly as the northern defence of the land of Canaan, through the conquest of which one made himself lord of the land. And so far as Lebanon is used synecdochically for the land of which it formed the defence, the hewing down of its cedars and cypresses, those glorious witnesses of the creation of God, denotes the devastation of the whole land, with all its glorious works of nature and of human hands. The chief strength of the early Asiatic conquerors consisted in the multitude of their war-chariots: they are therefore brought into consideration simply as signs of vast military resources; the fact that they could only be used on level ground being therefore disregarded.
The Chethîb bk,r, yKik]ri , “my chariots upon chariots,” is used poetically for an innumerable multitude of chariots, as ybæwOG bwOG for an innumerable host of locusts (Nah 3:17), and is more original than the Keri bk,r, bro , the multitude of my chariots, which simply follows Isaiah. The “height of the mountains” is more precisely defined by the emphatic ˆwOnb;l] hk;rey] , the uttermost sides, i.e., the loftiest heights, of Lebanon, just as rwOB hk;rey] in Isa 14:15 and Ezek 32:23 are the uttermost depths of Sheol. zr,a, hm;wOq , his tallest cedars. vwOrB] rwOjb]mi , his most select or finest cypresses. xqe ˆwOlm; , for which Isaiah has the more usual xqe µwOrm; , “the height of his end,” is the loftiest point of Lebanon on which a man can rest, not a lodging built on the highest point of Lebanon (Cler., Vitr., Ros.). lm,r]Kæ r[æyæ , the forest of his orchard, i.e., the forest resembling an orchard. The reference is to the celebrated cedar-forest between the loftiest peaks of Lebanon at the village of Bjerreh (see at 1 Kings 5:20).
Verse 24. V. 24 refers to the intended conquest of Egypt. Just as Lebanon could not stop the expeditions of the Assyrians, or keep them back from the conquest of the land of Canaan, so the desert of et Tih, which separated Egypt from Asia, notwithstanding its want of water (cf. Herod. iii. 5; Rob. Pal. i. p. 262), was no hindrance to him, which could prevent his forcing his way through it and laying Egypt waste. The digging of water is, of course, not merely “a reopening of the wells that had been choked with rubbish, and the cisterns that had been covered up before the approaching enemy” (Thenius), but the digging of wells in the waterless desert. rWz µyimæ , strange water, is not merely water belonging to others, but water not belonging to this soil (Drechsler), i.e., water supplied by a region which had none at other times. By the perfects the thing is represented as already done, as exposed to no doubt whatever; we must bear in mind, however, that the desert of et Tih is not expressly named, but the expression is couched in such general terms, that we may also assume that it includes what the Assyrian had really effected in his expeditions through similar regions. The drying up of the rivers with the soles of the feet is a hyperbolical expression denoting the omnipotence with which the Assyrian rules over the earth. Just as he digs water in the desert where no water is to be had, so does he annihilate it where mighty rivers exist. f220 raoy] are the arms and canals of the Yeor, i.e., of the Nile. rwOxm; , a rhetorical epithet for Egypt, used not only here, but also in Isa 19:6 and Mic 7:12.
Verse 25. To this foolish boasting the prophet opposes the divine purpose which had been formed long ago, and according to which the Assyrian, without knowing it or being willing to acknowledge it, had acted simply as the instrument of the Lord, who had given him the power to destroy, but who would soon restrain his ranting against Him, the true God.
Verse 25. “Hast thou not heard? Long ago have I done this, from the days of olden time have I formed it! Now have I brought it to pass, that fortified cities should be to be destroyed into waste heaps.” V. 26. “And their inhabitants, short of hand, were dismayed and put to shame; they were herb of the field and green of the turf, grass of the roofs and blighted corn before the stalk.” V.27. “And thy sitting and thy going out and thy coming I know, and thy raging against me.” V. 28. “Because of thy raging against me and thy safety, which rise up into my ears, I put my ring into thy nose, and my bridle into thy lips, and bring thee back by the way by which thou hast come.” The words are still addressed to the Assyrian, of whom the Lord inquires whether he does not know that the destructive deeds performed by him had been determined very long before. “Hast thou not heart?” namely, what follows, what the Lord had long ago made known through His prophets in Judah (cf. Isa. 7:7-9; 16:17-20; 8:1-4 and 7, etc.). qwOjr; , from distant time have I done it, etc., refers to the divine ordering and governing of the events of the universe, which God has purposed and established from the very beginning of time.
The pronoun tae , and the suffixes attached to rxæy; and awOB, do not refer with vague generality to the substance of vv. 23 and 24, i.e., to the boastings of the Assyrians quoted there (Drechsler), but to ha;v; Ëlæh , i.e., to the conquests and devastations which the Assyrian had really effected.
The w] before hytrxy introduces the apodosis, as is frequently the case after a preceding definition of time (cf. Ges. §155, a). ha;v; Ëlæh , “that it may be to destroy” ha;v; , a contraction of ha;v; , Keri and Isaiah, from ha;v; ; see Ewald, §73, c., and 245, b.), i.e., that it shall be destroyedaccording to a turn which is very common in Isaiah, like r[æB; hy;h; , it is to burn = it shall be burned (cf. Isa 5:5; 6:13; 44:15, and Ewald, §237, c.).
The rendering given by Ges., Knob., Then., and others, “that thou mayest be for destruction,” is at variance with this usage.
Verse 26-28. V. 26 is closely connected, so far as the sense is concerned, with the last clause of v. 25, but in form it is only loosely attached: “and their inhabitants were,” instead of “that their inhabitants might be.” dy; rxeq; , of short hand, i.e., without power to offer a successful resistance (cf.
Num 11:23, and Isa 50:2; 59:1).-They were herbage of the field, etc., just as perishable as the herbage, grass, etc., which quickly fade away (cf. Ps 37:2; 90:5-6; Isa 40:6). The grass of the roofs fades still more quickly, because it cannot strike deep roots (cf. Ps 129:6). Blighted corn before the stalk, i.e., corn which is blighted and withered up, before it shoots up into a stalk. In Isaiah we have hm;dev] instead of hp;dev] , with a change of the labials, probably for the purpose of preserving an assonance with µWq , which must not therefore be altered into hm;dev] .
The thought in the two verses is this: The Assyrian does not owe his victories and conquests to his irresistible might, but purely to the fact that God had long ago resolved to deliver the nations into his hands, so that it was possible to overcome them without their being able to offer any resistance. This the Assyrian had not perceived, but in his daring pride had exalted himself above the living God. This conduct of his the Lord was well acquainted with, and He would humble him for it. Sitting and going out and coming denote all the actions of a man, like sitting down and rising up in Ps 139:2. Instead of rising up, we generally find going out and coming in (cf. Deut 28:6 and Ps 121:8). zgær; , thy raging, commotio furibunda, quae ex ira nascitur superbiae mixta (Vitr.). We must repeat ˆ[æyæ before ˆg;avæ ; and ˆz,aO `hl;[; is to be taken in a relative sense: on account of thy self-security, which has come to my ears. ˆg;avæ is the security of the ungodly which springs from the feeling of great superiority in power. The figurative words, “I put my ring into thy nose,” are taken from the custom of restraining wild animals, such as lions (Ezek 19:4) and other wild beasts (Ezek 29:4 and Isa 30:28), in this manner. For “the bridle in the lips” of ungovernable horses, see Ps 32:9. To lead a person back by the way by which he had come, i.e., to lead him back disappointed, without having reached the goal that he set before him.
Verse 29. To confirm what he had said, the prophet gave to Hezekiah a sign (vv. 29ff.): “Eat this year what groweth in the fallow, and in the second year what groweth wild, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof.” That the words are not addressed to the king of Assyria as in v. 28, but to Hezekiah, is evident from their contents. This sudden change in the person addressed may be explained from the fact that from v. 29 the words contain a perfectly fresh train of thought. For twOah; ËL]Ahz, see Ex 3:12; 1 Sam 2:34 and 14:10; also Jer 44:29. In all these passages twOa , shmei>on , is not a (supernatural) wonder, a tpewOm as in 1 Kings 13:3, but consists simply in the prediction of natural events, which serve as credentials to a prediction, whereas in Isa 7:14 and 38:7 a miracle is given as an twOa .
The inf. abs. lkæa; is not used for the pret. (Ges., Then., and others), but for the imperf. or fut.: “one will eat.” hn,v; , the (present) year. jæypis; signifies the corn which springs up and grows from the grains that have been shaken out the previous year (Lev 25:5,11). syjiv; (in Isa. syjiv; ) is explained by Abulw. as signifying the corn which springs up again from the roots of what has been sown. The etymology of the word is uncertain, so that it is impossible to decide which of the two forms is the original one.
For the fact itself compare the evidence adduced in the Comm. on Lev 25:7, that in Palestine and other lands two or three harvests can be reaped from one sowing.-The signs mentioned do not enable us to determine with certainty how long the Assyrians were in the land. All that can be clearly gathered from the words, “in this and the following year will they live upon that which has sprung up without any sowing,” is that for two years, i.e., in two successive autumns, the fields could not be cultivated because the enemy had occupied the land and laid it waste.
But whether the occupation lasted two years, or only a year and a little over, depends upon the time of the year at which the Assyrians entered the land. If the invasion of Judah took place in autumn, shortly before the time for sowing, and the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian forces occurred a year after about the same time, the sowing of two successive years would be prevented, and the population of Judah would be compelled to live for two years upon what had sprung up without sowing. Consequently both the prophecy of Isaiah and the fulfilment recorded in vv. 35, 36 would fall in the autumn, when the Assyrians had ruled for a whole year in the land; so that the prophet was able to say: in this year and in the second (i.e., the next) will they eat after-growth and wild growth; inasmuch as when he said this, the first year had not quite expired. Even if the overthrow of the Assyrians took place immediately afterwards (cf. v. 35), with the extent to which they had carried out the desolation of the land, many of the inhabitants having been slain or taken prisoners, and many others having been put to flight, it would be utterly impossible in the same year to cultivate the fields and sow them, and the people would be obliged to live in the second or following year upon what had grown wild, until the harvest of the second year, when the land could be properly cultivated, or rather till the third year, when it could be reaped again. f221 Verse 30-34. The sign is followed in vv. 30, 31 by the distinct promise of the deliverance of Judah and Jerusalem, for which Isaiah uses the sign itself as a type. “And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah will again strike roots downwards and bear fruit upwards; for from Jerusalem will go forth a remnant, and that which is escaped from Mount Zion; the zeal of Jehovah will do this.” vr,v, ãsæy; , to add roots, i.e., to strike fresh roots. The meaning is, that Judah will not succumb to this judgment. The remnant of the nation that has escaped from destruction by the Assyrians will once more grow and flourish vigorously; for from Jerusalem will a rescued remnant go forth. hf;ylep] denotes those who have escaped destruction by the judgment (cf. Isa 4:2; 10:20, etc.). The deliverance was attached to Jerusalem or to Mount Zion, not so much because the power of the Assyrians was to be destroyed before the gates of Jerusalem, as because of the greater importance which Jerusalem and Mount Zion, as the centre of the kingdom of God, the seat of the God-King, possessed in relation to the covenant-nation, so that, according to Isa 2:3, it was thence that the Messianic salvation was also to proceed.
This deliverance is traced to the zeal of the Lord on behalf of His people and against His foes (see at Ex 20:5), like the coming of the Messiah in Isa 9:6 to establish an everlasting kingdom of peace and righteousness. The deliverance of Judah out of the power of Asshur was a prelude and type of the deliverance of the people of God by the Messiah out of the power of all that was ungodly. The ab;x; of Isaiah is omitted after hwO;hy] , just as in v. 15; though here it is supplied by the Masora as Keri.-In vv. 32-34 Isaiah concludes by announcing that Sennacherib will not come to Jerusalem, nor even shoot at the city and besiege it, but will return disappointed, because the Lord will defend and save the city for the sake of His promise. The result of the whole prophecy is introduced with ˆKe : therefore, because this is how the matter stands, viz., as explained in what precedes. Ël,m,Ala, , with regard to the king, as in v. 20. ˆgem; µdæq; alo , “he will not attack it with a shield,” i.e., will not advance with shields to make an attack upon it. qideem with a double accusative, as in Ps 21:4.
It only occurs here in a hostile sense: to come against, as in Ps 18:19, i.e., to advance against a city, to storm it. The four clauses of the verse stand in a graduated relation to one another: not to take, not even to shoot at and attack, yea, not even to besiege the city, will he come. In v. 33a we have v. 28b taken up again, and v. 32a is repeated in v. 33b for the purpose of strengthening the promise. Instead of µyrit;a\ awOB we have in Isaiah µyrit;a\ awOB: “by which he has come.” The perfect is actually more exact, and the imperfect may be explained from the fact that Sennacherib was at that very time advancing against Jerusalem. In v. 34 we have lae ˆnæG; instead of the `l[æ ˆnæG; of Isaiah: `l[æ is more correct than lae . “For my sake,” as Hezekiah had prayed in v. 19; and “for my servant David’s sake,” because Jehovah, as the unchangeably true One, must fulfil the promise which He gave to David (sees at 1 Kings 11:13).
2 KINGS. 19:35-37
The fulfilment of the divine promise.
V. 35. “It came to pass in that night, that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the army of the Assyrian 185,000 men; and when they (those that were left, including the king) rose up in the morning, behold there were they all (i.e., all who had perished) dead corpses,” i.e., they had died in their sleep. tWm is added to strengthen rg,p, : lifeless corpses. aWh lyilæ is in all probability the night following the day on which Isaiah had foretold to Hezekiah the deliverance of Jerusalem. Where the Assyrian army was posted at the time when this terrible stroke fell upon it is not stated, since the account is restricted to the principal fact. One portion of it was probably still before Jerusalem; the remainder were either in front of Libnah (v. 8), or marching against Jerusalem. From the fact that Sennacherib’s second embassy (vv. 9ff.) was not accompanied by a body of troops, it by no means follows that the large army which had come with the first embassy (2 Kings 18:17) had withdrawn again, or had even removed to Libnah on the return of Rabshakeh to his king (2 Kings 19:8).
The very opposite may be inferred with much greater justice from 2 Kings 19:32. And the smiting of 185,000 men by an angel of the Lord by no means presupposes that the whole of Sennacherib’s army was concentrated at one spot. The blow could certainly fall upon the Assyrians wherever they were standing or were encamped. The “angel of the Lord” is the same angel that smote as tjæv; the first-born of Egypt (Ex 12:23, compared with vv. 12 and 13), and inflicted the pestilence upon Israel after the numbering of the people by David (2 Sam 24:15-16). The last passage renders the conjecture a very probable one, that the slaying of the Assyrians was also effected by a terrible pestilence. But the number of the persons slain- 185,000 in a single night-so immensely surpasses the effects even of the most terrible plagues, that this fact cannot be interpreted naturally; and the deniers of miracle have therefore felt obliged to do violence to the text, and to pronounce either the statement that it was “the same night” or the number of the slain a mythical exaggeration. f222 Verse 36. This divine judgment compelled Sennacherib to retreat without delay, and to return to Nineveh, as Isaiah, 28 and 32, had predicted. The heaping up of the verbs: “he decamped, departed, and returned,” expresses the hurry of the march home. hwen]yni bvæy; , “he sat, i.e., remained, in Nineveh,” implies not merely that Sennacherib lived for some time after his return, but also that he did not undertake any fresh expedition against Judah. On Nineveh see at Gen 10:11.
Verse 37. V. 37 contains an account of Sennacherib’s death. When he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer slew him, and fled into the land of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon became king in his stead. With regard to Ërosin] , Nisroch, all that seems to be firmly established is that he was an eagle-deity, and represented by the eagle- or vulture-headed human figure with wings, which is frequently depicted upon the Assyrian monuments, “not only in colossal proportions upon the walls and watching the portals of the rooms, but also constantly in the groups upon the embroidered robes. When it is introduced in this way, we see it constantly fighting with other mythical animals, such as human-headed oxen or lions; and in these conflicts it always appears to be victorious,” from which we may infer that it was a type of the supreme deity (see Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains). The eagle was worshipped as a god by the Arabs (Pococke, Specim. pp. 94, 199), was regarded as sacred to Melkarth by the Phoenicians (Nonnus, Dionys. xl. 495, 528), and, according to a statement of Philo. Bybl. (in Euseb. Praepar. evang. i. 10), that Zoroaster taught that the supreme deity was represented with an eagle’s head, it was also a symbol of Ormuzd among the Persians; consequently Movers (Phöniz. i. pp. 68, 506, 507) regards Nisroch as the supreme deity of the Assyrians. It is not improbable that it was also connected with the constellation of the eagle (see Ideler, Ursprung der Sternnamen, p. 416).
On the other hand, the current interpretation of the name from rv,n, rvæn] , Chald.; nsr, Arab.), eagle, vulture, with the Persian adjective termination ok or ach, is very doubtful, not merely on account of the c in Ërosin] , but chiefly because this name does not occur in Assyrian, but simply Asar, Assar, and Asarak as the name of a deity which is met with in many Assyrian proper names. The last is also adopted by the LXX, who (ed.
Aldin. Compl.) have rendered Ërsn by Asara>c in Isaiah, and Esora>c (cod. Vatic.) in 2 Kings, by the side of which the various readings Hsera>c in our text (cod. Vat.) and Gasara’ch in Isaiah are evidently secondary readings emended from the Hebrew, since Josephus (Ant. x. 1, 5) has the form Araskh>v , which is merely somewhat “Graecized.” The meaning of these names is still in obscurity, even if there should be some foundation for the assumption that Assar belongs to the same root as the name of the people and land, Asshur. The connection between the form Nisroch and Asarak is also still obscure.
Compare the collection which J. G. Müller has made of the different conjectures concerning this deity in the Art. Nisroch in Herzog’s Cycl.- Adrammelech, according to 2 Kings 17:31, was the name of a deity of Sepharvaim, which was here borne by the king’s son. rx,a,r]væ , Sharezer, is said to mean “prince of fire,” and was probably also borrowed from a deity. ˆBe (Isa.) is wanting in our text, but is supplied by the Masora in the Keri. The “land of Ararat” was a portion of the high land of Armenia; according to Moses v. Chorene, the central portion of it with the mountains of the same name (see at Gen 8:4). The slaying of Sennacherib is also confirmed by Alex. Polyhistor, or rather Berosus (in Euseb. Chr.
Armen. i. p. 43), who simply names, however, a son Ardumusanus as having committed the murder, and merely mentions a second Asordanius as viceroy of Babylon. f223 The identity of the latter with Esarhaddon is beyond all doubt. The name ˆwODjæArsæae , Esar-cha-don, consisting of two parts with the guttural inserted, the usual termination in Assyrian and Babylonian, Assar-ach, is spelt Asorda>n in the LXX, Dacherdono’s in Tobit-probably formed from Aser-ch-donosor by a transposition of the letters-by Josephus Assaraco>ddav , by Berosus (in the armen. Euseb.) Asordanes, by Abyden. ibid. Axerdis, in the Canon Ptol. Asara>dinov , and lastly in Ezra 4:10 mutilated into rPænæs]a; , Osnappar (Chald.), and in the LXX Assenafa>r ; upon the Assyrian monuments, according to Oppert, Assurakh- iddin (cf. M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Ass. p. 38). The length of his reign is uncertain. The statements of Berosus, that he was first of all viceroy of Babylon, and then for eight years king of Assyria, and that of the Canon Ptol., that he reigned for thirteen years in Babylon, are decidedly incorrect.
Brandis (Rerum Assyr. tempora emend. p. 41) conjectures that he reigned twenty-eight years, but in his work Ueber den histor. Gewinn, pp. 73, 74, he suggests seventeen years. M. v. Niebuhr (ut sup. p. 77), on the other hand, reckons his reign at twenty-four years. HEZEKIAH’S ILLNESS AND RECOVERY.
MERODACH BALADAN’S EMBASSY. Death of Hezekiah.
2 KINGS. 20:1-11
Hezekiah’s Illness and Recovery.
Compare the parallel account in Isa 38 with Hezekiah’s psalm of thanksgiving for his recovery (vv. 9-20 of Isaiah).
Verse 1-2. “In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death.” By the expression “in those days” the illness of Hezekiah is merely assigned in a general manner to the same time as the events previously described. That it did not occur after the departure of the Assyrians, but at the commencement of the invasion of Sennacherib, i.e., in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, is evident from v. 6, namely, both from the fact that in answer to his prayer fifteen years more of life were promised him, and that he nevertheless reigned only twenty-nine years (2 Kings 18:2), and also from the fact that God promised to deliver him out of the hand of the Assyrians and to defend Jerusalem. The widespread notion that his sickness was an attack of plague, and was connected with the pestilence which had broken out in the Assyrian camp, is thereby deprived of its chief support, apart from the fact that the epithet ˆyjiv] (v. 7), which is applied to the sickness, does not indicate pestilence. Isaiah then called upon him to set his house in order. tyiBæ hw;x; : set thy house in order, lit., command or order with regard to thy house, not declare thy (last) will to thy family (Ges., Knob.), for hw;x; is construed with the accus. pers. in the sense of commanding anything, whereas here l] is synonymous with lae (2 Sam 17:23). “For thou wilt die and not live;” i.e., thy sickness is to death, namely, without the miraculous help of God. Sickness to death in the very prime of life (Hezekiah was then in the fortieth year of his age) appeared to the godly men of the Old Testament a sign of divine displeasure. Hezekiah was therefore greatly agitated by this announcement, and sought for consolation and help in prayer. He turned his face to the wall, sc. of the room, not of the temple (Chald.), i.e., away from those who were standing round, to be able to pray more collectedly. Verse 3. In his prayer he appealed to his walking before the Lord in truth and with a thoroughly devoted heart, and to his acting in a manner that was well-pleasing to God, in perfect accordance with the legal standpoint of the Old Testament, which demanded of the godly righteousness of life according to the law. This did not imply by any means a self-righteous trust in his own virtue; for walking before God with a thoroughly devoted heart was impossible without faith. “And Hezekiah wept violently,” not merely at the fact that he was to die without having an heir to the throne, since Manasseh was not born till three years afterwards (Joseph., Ephr. Syr., etc.), but also because he was to die in the very midst of his life, since God had promised long life to the righteous.
Verse 4-6. This prayer of the godly king was answered immediately. Isaiah had not gone out of the midst of the city, when the word of the Lord came to him to return to the king, and tell him that the Lord would cure him in three days and add fifteen years to his life, and that He would also deliver him from the power of the Assyrians and defend Jerusalem. ˆwOkyTi `ry[i , the middle city, i.e., the central portion of the city, namely, the Zion city, in which the royal citadel stood. The Keri ht’ rxej; , the central court, not of the temple, but of the royal citadel, which is adopted in all the ancient versions, is nothing more than an interpretation of the `ry[i as denoting the royal castle, after the analogy of 2 Kings 10:25. The distinct assurance added to the promise “I will heal thee,” viz., “on the third day thou wilt go into the house of the Lord,” was intended as a pledge to the king of the promised cure. The announcement that God would add fifteen years to his life is not put into the prophet’s mouth ex eventu (Knobel and others); for the opinion that distinct statements as to time are at variance with the nature of prophecy is merely based upon an a priori denial of the supernatural character of prophecy. The words, “and I will deliver thee out of the hand of the Assyrians,” imply most distinctly that the Assyrian had only occupied the land and threatened Jerusalem, and had not yet withdrawn. The explanation given by Vitringa and others, that the words contain simply a promise of deliverance out of the hand of the oppressor for the next fifteen years, puts a meaning into them which they do not contain, as is clearly shown by Isa 37:20, where this thought is expressed in a totally different manner. wgw ry[ih;Al[æ ytiwONgæw] : as in 2 Kings 19:34, where the prophet repeated this divine promise in consequence of the attempt of Sennacherib to get Jerusalem into his power. Verse 7-8. Isaiah ordered a lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and Hezekiah recovered hy;j; : he revived again). It is of course assumed as selfevident, that Isaiah returned to the king in consequence of a divine revelation, and communicated to him the word of the Lord which he had received. ˆaeT] hl;beD] is a mass consisting of compressed figs, which the ancients were in the habit of applying, according to many testimonies (see Celsii Hierob. ii. p. 373), in the case of plague-boils and abscesses of other kinds, because the fig diaforei> sklhri>av (Dioscor.) and ulcera aperit (Plin.), and which is still used for softening ulcers. ˆyjiv] , an abscess, is never used in connection with plague or plague-boils, but only to denote the abscesses caused by leprosy (Job 2:7-8), and other abscesses of an inflammatory kind (Ex 9:9ff.). In the case of Hezekiah it is probably a carbuncle that is intended.
After the allusion to the cure and recovery of Hezekiah, we have an account in vv. 8ff. of the sign by which Isaiah confirmed the promise given to the king of the prolongation of his life. In the order of time the contents of v. 7 follow v. 11, since the prophet in all probability first of all disclosed the divine promise to the king, and then gave him the sign, and after that appointed the remedy and had it applied. At the same time, it is also quite possible that he first of all directed the lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and then made known to him the divine promise, and guaranteed it by the sign. In this case hy;j; merely anticipates the order of events. The sign which Isaiah gave to the king, at his request, consisted in the miraculous movement of the shadow backward upon the sundial of Ahaz.
Verse 9-10. lxe Ëlæy; : “the shadow is gone ten degrees, if it should go back ten degrees?” The rendering, visne umbram solarii decem gradibus progredi an...regredi, which Maurer still gives after the Vulgate, vis an ut ascendat...an ut revertatur, cannot be grammatically reconciled with the perfect Ëlæy; , and is merely a conjecture founded upon the answer of Hezekiah. f225 According to this answer, “it is easy for the shadow to decline (i.e., to go farther down) ten degrees; no (sc., that shall not be a sign to me), but if the shadow turn ten degrees backwards,” Isaiah seems to have given the king a choice as to the sign, namely, whether the shadow should go ten degrees forward or backward. But this does not necessarily follow from the words quoted. Hezekiah may have understood the prophet’s words wgw lxe Ëlæy; hypothetically: “has the shadow gone (advanced) ten degrees, whether it should,” etc.; and may have replied, the advance of the shadow would not be a sure sign to him, but only its going back.
Verse 11. Isaiah then prayed to the Lord, and the Lord “turned back the shadow (caused it to go back) upon the sun-dial, where it had gone down, on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward.” zj;a; hl;[mæ cannot be understood, as it has been by the LXX, Joseph., Syr., as referring to a flight of steps at the palace of Ahaz, which was so arranged that the shadow of an object standing near indicated the hours, but is no doubt a gnomon, a sun-dial which Ahaz may have received from Babylonia, where sun-dials were discovered (Herod. ii. 109). Nothing further can be inferred from the words with regard to its construction, since the ancients had different kinds of sun-dials (cf. Martini Abhandlung von den Sonnenuhren der Alten, Lpz. 1777). The word hl;[mæ steps in the literal sense, is transferred to the scala, which the shadow had to traverse both up and down upon the disk of the sun-dial, and is used both to denote the separate degrees of this scala, and also for the sum-total of these scala, i.e., for the sun-dial itself, without there being any necessity to assume that it was an obelisk-like pillar erected upon an elevated place with steps running round it (Knobel), or a long portable scale of twice ten steps with a gnomon (Gumpach, Alttestl. Studien, pp. 181ff.). All that follows from the descent of the shadow is that the dial of the gnomon was placed in a vertical direction; and the fact that the shadow went ten degrees down or backward, simply presupposes that the gnomon had at least twenty degrees, and therefore that the degrees indicated smaller portions of time than hours.
If, then, it is stated in v. 8b of Isaiah that the sun went back ten degrees, whereas the going back of the shadow had been previously mentioned in agreement with our text, it is self-evident that the sun stands for the shining of the sun which was visible upon the dial-plate, and which made the shadow recede. We are not, of course, to suppose that the sun in the sky and the shadow on the sun-dial went back at the same time, as Knobel assumes. So far as the miracle is concerned, the words of the text do not require that we should assume that the sun receded, or the rotation of the earth was reversed, as Eph. Syr. and others supposed, but simply affirm that there was a miraculous movement backward of the shadow upon the dial, which might be accounted for from a miraculous refraction of the rays of the sun, effected by God at the prophet’s prayer, of which slight analoga are met with in the ordinary course of nature. f226 This miraculous sign was selected as a significant one in itself, to confirm the promise of a fresh extension of life which had been given to Hezekiah by the grace of God in opposition to the natural course of things. The retrograde movement of the shadow upon the sun-dial indicated that Hezekiah’s life, which had already arrived at its close by natural means, was to be put back by a miracle of divine omnipotence, so that it might continue for another series of years.
2 KINGS. 20:12-19
The Babylonian embassy, and Hezekiah’s imprudence (cf. Isa 39).-V. 12. “At that time Berodach Baladan, king of Babel, sent a letter and a present to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah was sick.” By aWh `t[e the arrival of these ambassadors is merely assigned in the most general manner to the period following Hezekiah’s recovery. But from the object of their mission, it is evident that they did not arrive in Jerusalem till after the overthrow and departure of Sennacherib, and therefore at least half a year after Hezekiah’s recovery. The ostensible reason given is, that Berodach Baladan had heard of Hezekiah’s illness, and therefore sent to congratulate him on his recovery; but in 2 Chron 32:31 the further reason is mentioned, that he wished to inquire concerning the miracle upon the sun-dial. But, as Josephus has shown, the true object, no doubt, was to make sure of Hezekiah’s friendship in anticipation of his intended revolt from the Assyrian rule. Berodach Baladan, for Merodach Baladan (Isa.), with the labial changed, is the same person as the Marodach Baladan who reigned in Babylon for six months, according to Alex.
Polyhistor, or rather Berosus (Euseb. Chr. armen. i. pp. 42, 43), and was slain by Elibus, and also the same as the Mardokempad who reigned, according to the Can. Ptol., from 26 to 38 aer. Nab., i.e., from 721 to B.C. The first part of the name, Ëd;rom] , occurs in Jer 50:2 in connection with Bel as the name of a Babylonian idol; and the whole name is found on a cylinder (in the British Museum) which contains the first expeditions of Sennacherib against Babylon and Media, and upon the inscriptions at Khorsabad spelt either Merodak-pal-dsana (according to Brandis, Ueber der Gewinn, pp. 44 and 53) or Marduk bal iddin (according to Oppert). f227 Instead of [mæv; yKi we have [mæv; in Isaiah, which is not so clear, though it is probably more original; whereas the clause in Isaiah, qzæj; hl;j; yKi , “that he had been sick and had become strengthened, i.e., well again,” is simply an elucidation of the hY;qiz]ji hl;j; yKi of our text, in which the recovery is implied in the pluperfect “had been sick.”
Verse 13. In v. 13 [mæv; is apparently a copyist’s error for jmæc; of Isaiah, which many of the codd. and ancient versions have even in our text. At the same time, the construction of [mæv; with `l[æ is also found in 2 Kings `l[æ , concerning them, i.e., the ambassadors who had brought the letter and the present. In his delight at the honour paid to him by this embassy, Hezekiah showed the ambassadors all his treasure-house, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the costly oil, and all his arsenal, etc. The literal meaning of tkon] tyiBæ is probably spice-house (Aquila, Symm., Vulg.), tkon] being a contraction of takn] in Gen 37:25, whereas the derivation suggested from the Arabic kayyata, farsit, implevit locum, is much more wide of the mark. The house received its name from the spices for the storing of which it was really intended, although it was also used for the storing of silver and gold. bwOf ˆm,v, is not fine olive oil, but, according to the Rabbins and Movers (Phöniz. iii. p. 227), the valuable balsam oil which was obtained in the royal gardens; for olive oil, which was obtained in all Judaea, was not stored in the treasure-chambers along with gold, silver, and perfumes, but in special storehouses (1 Chron 27:28). wOTl]væm]m,Alk;B] , in all his dominion, i.e., in all the district which he was able to govern or control.-The existence of such treasures, of which, according to v. 17, the ancestors of Hezekiah had collected a very large store, at so short a period after the departure of the Assyrians, is not at variance with 2 Kings 18:15-16, according to which Hezekiah had sent to Sennacherib all the silver in his treasuries, and even the gold plate upon the temple doors.
For, in the first place, it is not stated that there was much silver and gold in the treasure-house, but the silver and gold are simply mentioned along with the spices; and, secondly, Hezekiah may have kept back from Sennacherib many a valuable piece of silver or gold, and have taken off the gold plate from the temple doors, to show the ambassadors of Sennacherib, who came to receive the money demanded as compensation, that he was not in a condition to give anything more. Moreover a great deal may have flowed into the treasuries since the payment of that tribute, partly from the presents which Hezekiah received from many quarters after the overthrow of Sennacherib (2 Chron 32:23), and partly from the booty that had been collected in the camp of the Assyrians after their hurried departure. And again, the treasures which the ancestors of Hezekiah had collected (v. 17) may not have consisted of gold and silver exactly, but of different jewels and objects of art, which could not be applied to the payment of the tribute demanded by Sennacherib. And, lastly, “we must not overlook the fact, that it answered the purpose of the reporter to crowd together as much as possible, in order to show how anxious Hezekiah was to bring out and exhibit everything whatever that could contribute to the folly” (Drechsler).
Hezekiah evidently wanted to show all his glory, because the arrival of the Babylonian ambassadors had flattered his vanity.
Verse 14-17. Isaiah therefore announced to him the word of the Lord, that all his treasures would one day be carried to Babel, and some even of his sons would serve as chamberlains in the palace of the king of Babel. The sin of vanity was to be punished by the carrying away of that of which his heart was proud. Isaiah did not go to Hezekiah by his own impulse, but by the direction of God. His inquiries: “What have these men said, and whence do they come to thee?” were simply intended to lead the king to give expression to the thoughts of his heart. In the answer, “From a distant land have they come, from Babel,” his vanity at the great honour that had been paid him comes clearly to light.
Verse 18. The words, “of thy sons, which shall proceed from thee, which thou shalt beget,” do not necessarily refer to the actual sons, but only to lineal descendants. The Chethîb jqæl; , “will one take,” is to be preferred to the jqæl; of Isaiah and the Keri, as being the more difficult reading. syris; , chamberlains, courtiers, not necessarily eunuchs, as in 1 Sam 8:15, etc.-For the fulfilment of this threat see Dan 1:2ff.
Verse 19. The first part of Hezekiah’s reply, “Good is the word of Jehovah, which thou hast spoken,” is an expression of submission to the will of the Lord, like Eli’s answer in 1 Sam 3:18 (cf. 1 Kings 2:38,42); f228 the second part, which the repetition of rmæa; shows to have been spoken after a pause, and which was not addressed directly to Isaiah, “Is it not so (i.e., is it not purely goodness), if there are to be peace and truth in my days (during my life)?” is a candid acknowledgment of the grace and truth of the Lord. µwOlv; is used, as is frequently the case, in the sense of a lively affirmation. Instead of µai µwOlv; we have in Isaiah yKi , “for there will be peace and truth,” by which this clause is attached more clearly to the first declaration as a reason for it: the word of the Lord is good, for the Lord proves His goodness and truth in the fact, that He will not inflict the merited punishment in my lifetime. “Peace and truth” are connected as in Jer 33:6. tm,a, does not mean continuance (Ges.), security (Knobel), but fides, faithfulness-not human faithfulness, however, which preserves peace, and observes a tacit treaty (Hitzig), but the faithfulness of God, which preserves the promised grace to the humble. 2 KINGS 20:20,21 Close of Hezekiah’s reign.
On the basin ( jk;reB] ) and the aqueduct constructed by him, see at 2 Kings 18:17.
REIGNS OF MANASSEH AND AMON.
2 KINGS. 21:1-18
Reign of Manasseh (cf. 2 Chron 33:1-20).-V. 1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, so that he was not born till after Hezekiah’s dangerous illness (2 Kings 20:1ff.).
Verse 2. Having begun to reign at this early age, he did not choose his father’s ways, but set up the idolatry of his father Ahab again, since the godless party in the nation, at whose head chiefs, priests, and (false) prophets stood, and who would not hearken to the law of the Lord, and in the time of Hezekiah had sought help against Assyria not from Jehovah, but from the Egyptians (Isa 28:7,14ff., 30:9ff.), had obtained control of the young an inexperienced king, and had persuaded him to introduce idolatry again. On v. 2 cf. 2 Kings 8:18 and 16:3.
Verse 3-5. hn;B; bWv , “he built again” the high places, which Hezekiah had destroyed (2 Kings 18:4), erected altars for Baal and an Asherah, like Ahab of Israel (1 Kings 16:32-33). hr;vea is the image of Asherah mentioned in v. 7, whereas in the Chronicles the thought is generalized by the plurals µyli[;B]læ and twOrvea\h; . To these two kinds of idolatry, the idolatrous bamoth and the (true) Baal- and Asherah-worship, Manasseh added as a third kind the worship of all the host of heaven, which had not occurred among the Israelites before the Assyrian era, and was probably of Assyrian or Chaldaean origin. This worship differed from the Syrophoenician starworship, in which sun and moon were worshipped under the names of Baal and Astarte as the bearers of the male and female powers of nature, and was pure star-worship, based upon the idea of the unchangeableness of the stars in contradistinction to the perishableness of everything earthly, according to which the stars were worshipped not merely as the originators of all rise and decay in nature, but also as the leaders and regulators of sublunary things (see Movers, Phöniz. i. pp. 65 and 161).
This star-worship was a later development of the primary star-worship of Ssabism, in which the stars were worshipped without any image, in the open air or upon the housetops, by simple contemplation, the oldest and comparatively the purest form of deification of nature, to which the earlier Arabians and the worshippers of the sun among the Ssabians (Zabians) were addicted (cf. Delitzsch on Job 31:26-27), and which is mentioned and forbidden in Deut 4:19 and 17:3. In this later form the sun had sacred chariots and horses as among the Persians (2 Kings 23:11), and incense was offered to the stars, with the face turned towards the east, upon altars which were built either upon housetops, as in the case of the Nabataeans (Strabo, xvi. 784), or within the limits of the temple in the two courts (cf.
Ezek 8:16, also 2 Kings 21:5; 23:12, and 2 Chron 33:5; Jer 19:13; Zeph 1:5). This burning of incense took place not merely to the sun and moon, but also to the signs of the zodiac and to all the host of heaven, i.e., to all the stars (2 Kings 23:5); by which we are no doubt to understand that the sun, moon, planets and other stars, were worshipped in conjunction with the zodiac, and with this were connected astrology, augury, and the casting of nativities, as in the case of the later so-called Chaldaeans. f230 This star-worship is more minutely described in vv. 4 and 5. The two verses are closely connected. The jæBez]mi hn;B; of v. 4 is resumed in mzb’ hn;B; in v. 5, and the yy’ tyiBæ of v. 4 is more minutely defined in the yy tyiBæ rxej; µyinæv] of. v. 5. “In the two courts:” not merely in the outer court, but even in the court of the priests, which was set apart for the worship of Jehovah. Verse 6. He also offered his son in sacrifice to Moloch, like Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3), in the valley of Benhinnom (Chr. cf. 2 Kings 23:10), and practised soothsaying and witchcraft of every kind. On vjæn; `ˆnæ[; see Deut 18:10 and Lev 19:26, bwOa `hc;[; , he made, i.e., appointed, put into office, a “necromancer and wise people” (cf. Lev 19:31 and Deut 18:11).
Verse 7. Yea, he even placed the image of Asherah in the temple, i.e., in the Holy Place. In the description of his idolatry, which advances gradatim, this is introduced as the very worst crime. According to the express declaration of the Lord to David (2 Sam 7:13) and Solomon (1 Kings 9:3 compared with 2 Kings 8:16), the temple was to serve as the dwellingplace of His name.
Verse 8. The word of the Lord, “I will no more make the foot of Israel to move out of the land which I gave to their fathers,” refers to the promise in 2 Sam 7:10: “I will appoint my people a place, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and be stirred up no more,” which had been fulfilled by the building of the temple as the seat of the name of the Lord, in the manner indicated in pp. 85ff. The lasting fulfilment of this promise, however, was made to rest upon the condition of Israel’s faithful adherence to the commandments of God (cf. 1 Kings 9:6ff.).
Verse 9. This condition was not observed by the Israelites; Manasseh seduced them, so that they did more evil than the Canaanites, whom Jehovah had destroyed before them.
Verse 10-12. The Lord therefore announced through the prophets, to the rebellious and idolatrous nation, the destruction of Jerusalem and the deliverance of Judah into the hands of its enemies; but, as is added in Chron 33:10, they paid no heed to them. The prophets who foretold this terrible judgment are not named. According to 2 Chron 33:18, their utterances were entered in the annals of the kings. Habakkuk was probably one of them, since he (Hab 1:5) predicted the Chaldaean judgment as a fact which excited astonishment and appeared incredible. The Amorites are mentioned in v. 11 instar omnium as the supporters of the Canaanitish ungodliness, as in 1 Kings 21:26, etc.-The phrase, “that whosoever heareth it, both his ears may tingle,” denotes such a judgment as has never been heard of before, and excites alarm and horror (cf. 1 Sam 3:11 and Jer 19:3). The Keri [mæv; is a correction, to bring the pronom. suff. into conformity with the noun [ræ so far as the gender is concerned, whereas in the Chethîb wy[;m]vo the masculine suffix is used in the place of the feminine, as is frequently the case.
Verse 13. “I stretch over Jerusalem the measure of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab.” The measure yqæ ) and the plummet tl,q,v]mi , lit., a level) were applied to what was being built (Zech 1:16), and also to what was being made level with the ground, i.e., completely thrown down (Amos 7:7). From this sprang the figurative expressions, measure of desolation and plummet of devastation (Isa 34:11).-The measure of Samaria therefore denotes the measure which was applied to the destruction of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab denotes the extermination of the royal house of Ahab. The meaning is: I shall destroy Jerusalem as I have destroyed Samaria, and exterminate its inhabitants like the house of Ahab. In the second hemistich the same thing is expressed, if possible, still more strongly: “I wipe away Jerusalem as one wipes the dish, and (having) wiped (it), turns it upon its upper side µynip; ).”
The wiping of a dish that has been used, and the turning over of the dish wiped, so as not to leave a single drop in it, are a figurative representation of the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the utter extermination of its inhabitants.
Verse 14-15. With the destruction of Jerusalem the Lord forsakes the people of His possession, and give it up to its enemies for a prey and spoil. hl;jnæ tyriaev] : Judah is called the remnant of the people of God’s inheritance with a reference to the rejection and leading away of the ten tribes, which have already taken place. On uwm¦shicaah baz see Isa 42:22; Jer 30:16.
To this announcement of the judgment there is appended in 2 Chron 33:11ff. the statement, that Jehovah caused Manasseh the king to be taken prisoner by the generals of the king of Assyria and led away to Babylon in chains; and that when he humbled himself before God there, and made supplication to Him, He brought him back to Jerusalem and placed him upon his throne again; whereupon Manasseh fortified the walls of Jerusalem still further, placed garrisons in the fortified cities, removed the idol from the temple, abolished from the city the idolatrous altars erected in Jerusalem and upon the temple-mountain, restored the altar of Jehovah, and commanded the people to offer sacrifice upon it.-This incident is omitted in our book, because the conversion of Manasseh was not followed by any lasting results so far as the kingdom was concerned; the abolition of outward idolatry in Jerusalem did not lead to the conversion of the people, and after the death of Manasseh even the idolatrous abominations that had been abolished were restored by Amon. f231 Verse 16. Manasseh also sinned grievously by shedding innocent blood till Jerusalem was quite filled with it. hp, hp, , from one edge to the other, see at 2 Kings 10:21. This statement has been paraphrased by Josephus thus (Ant. x. 3, 1): Manasseh slew pa>ntav oJmw>v tou>v dikai>ouv tou>v en toi>v EJbrai>oiv , and did not spare even the prophets, with the additional clause, which exaggerates the thing: kai> tou>twn de> tinav kaq> hJme>ran ape>sfaxe oJ>ste aiJ>mati reJi>sqai ta> IJeroso>luma . f232 Verse 17-18. Manasseh was buried “in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzza.” “His house” cannot be the royal palace built by Solomon, because the garden is also called the garden of Uzza, evidently from the name of its former possessor. “His house” must therefore have been a summer palace belonging to Manasseh, the situation of which, however, it is impossible to determine more precisely. The arguments adduced by Thenius in support of the view that it was situated upon Ophel, opposite to Zion, are perfectly untenable. Robinson (Pal. i. p. 394) conjectures that the garden of Uzza was upon Zion. The name `uuwaa’ `z[o ) occurs again in Sam 6:8; 1 Chron 8:7; Ezra 2:49, and Neh 7:51.
2 KINGS. 21:19-22
Reign of Amon (cf. 2 Chron 33:21-25).-Amon reigned only two years, and that in the spirit of his father, that is to say, worshipping all his idols. The city of Jotbah, from which his mother sprang, was, according to Jerome (in the Onom. s. v. Jethaba), urbs antiqua Judaeae; but it is not further known.
2 KINGS. 21:23-25
His servants conspired against him and slew him in his palace; whereupon the people of the land, i.e., the population of Judah xr,a, `µ[æ = hd;Why] `µ[æ , 2 Chron 26:1), put the conspirators to death and made Josiah the son of Amon king, when he was only eight years old.
2 KINGS. 21:26
Amon was buried “in his grave in the garden of Uzza,” i.e., in the grave which he had had made in the garden of Uzza by the side of his father’s grave. He had probably resided in this palace of his father. rbæq; , one buried him.
REIGN OF KING JOSIAH.
After a brief account of the length and spirit of the reign of the pious Josiah (vv. 1 and 2), we have a closely connected narrative, in v. 3-23:24, of what he did for the restoration of idolatry; and the whole of the reform effected by him is placed in the eighteenth year of his reign, because it was in this year that the book of the law was discovered, through which the reformation of worship was carried to completion. It is evident that it was the historian’s intention to combine together everything that Josiah did to this end, so as to form one grand picture, from the circumstance that he has not merely placed the chronological datum, “it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah,” at the beginning, but has repeated it at the close (2 Kings 23:23). If we run over the several facts which are brought before us in this section-the repairing of the temple (2 Kings 22:3-7); the discovery of the book of the law; the reading of the book to the king; the inquiry made of the prophetess Huldah, and her prophecy (vv. 8-20); the reading of the law to the assembled people in the temple, with the renewal of the covenant (2 Kings 23:1-3); the eradication of idolatry not only from Jerusalem and Judah, but from Bethel also, and all the cities of Samaria (vv. 4-20); and, lastly, the passover (vv. 21-23)-there is hardly any need to remark, that all this cannot have taken place in the one eighteenth year of his reign, even if, with Usher (Annales ad a.m. 3381), we were to place the solemn passover at the close of the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, which is hardly suitable, and by no means follows from the circumstance that the chronological datum, “in the eighteenth year,” stands at the commencement of the complete account of the reform of worship introduced by that king.
For we may clearly infer that the several details of this account are not arranged chronologically, but according to the subject-matter, and that the historian has embraced the efforts of Josiah to restore the legal worship of Jehovah, which spread over several years, under the one point of view of a discovery of the law, and therefore within the eighteenth year of his reign, from the fact that he introduces the account of the repairing of the temple (2 Kings 22:3-7) in a period by itself, and makes it subordinate to the account of the discovery of the book of the law, and indeed only mentions it in a general manner, because it led to the finding of the book of the law.
It is true that the other facts are attached to one another in the narrative by Vav consec.; but, on a closer inspection of the several details, there cannot be any doubt whatever that the intention is not to arrange them in their chronological order.
The repairing of the temple must have commenced before the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, inasmuch as in that year, in which the incident occurred which led to the discovery of the book of the law (2 Kings 22:3-7), not only were the builders occupied with the repairs of the temple, but money had been brought by all the people to the house of God to carry on this work, and had been collected by the Levites who kept the door.
Moreover, from the very nature of the case, we cannot conceive of the restoration of the temple, that had fallen to decay, without the removal of the idolatrous abominations found in the temple. And the assumption is an equally inconceivable one, that all the people entered into covenant with the Lord (2 Kings 23:3), before any commencement had been made towards the abolition of the prevailing idolatry, or that the pious king had the book of the law read in the temple and entered into covenant with the Lord, so long as the Ashera was standing in the temple, and the idolatrous altars erected by Manasseh in the courts, together with the horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.
If the conclusion of a covenant in consequence of the public reading of the book of the law was to be an act in accordance with the law, the public memorials of idolatry must be destroyed at all events in the neighbourhood of the temple. And is it likely that the king, who had been so deeply moved by the curses of the law, would have undertaken so solemn a transaction in sight of the idolatrous altars and other abominations of idolatry in the house of Jehovah, and not rather have seen that this would be only a daring insult to Jehovah? These reasons are quite sufficient to prove that the extermination of idolatry had commenced before the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, and had simply been carried out with greater zeal throughout the whole kingdom after the discovery of the book of the law. This view of our account is simply confirmed by a comparison with the parallel history in 2 Chron 34 and 35. According to 2 Chron 34:3ff., Josiah began to seek the God of his father David in the eighth year of his reign, when he was still a youth, that is to say, not more than sixteen years old, and in the twelfth year of his reign began to purify Judah and Jerusalem from idolatry; and, according to vv. 8ff., in the eighteenth year of his reign, at the purification of the land and temple, and the renovation of the temple, the book of the law was found by the high priest, and handed over to the king and read before him (vv. 8-28), after which the renewal of the covenant took place, and all the abominations of idolatry that still remained in the land were swept away (vv. 29-33), and, lastly, a solemn passover was celebrated, of which we have an elaborate account in 2 Kin 35:1-19.
Consequently the account given in the Chronicles is, on the whole, arranged with greater chronological precision, although even there, after the commencement of the extermination of idolatry has been mentioned, we have a brief and comprehensive statement of all that Josiah did to accomplish that results; so that after the renewal of the covenant (2 Kin 34:33) we have nothing more than a passing allusion, by way of summary, to the complete abolition of the abominations of idolatry throughout the whole land.
2 KINGS. 22:1-2
Length and spirit of Josiah’s reign.
Josiah (for the name, see at 1 Kings 13:2), like Hezekiah, trode once more in the footsteps of his pious forefather David, adhering with the greatest constancy to the law of the Lord. He reigned thirty-one years. As a child he had probably received a pious training from his mother; and when he had ascended the throne, after the early death of his godless father, he was under the guidance of pious men who were faithfully devoted to the law of the Lord, and who turned his heart to the God of their fathers, as was the case with Joash in 2 Kings 12:3, although there is no allusion to guardianship. His mother Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah, was of Boscath, a city in the plain of Judah, of which nothing further is known (see at Josh 15:39). The description of his character, “he turned not aside to the right hand and to the left,” sc. from that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, is based upon Deut 5:29; 17:11,20, and 28:14, and expresses an unwavering adherence to the law of the Lord.
2 KINGS. 22:3-7
Repairing of the temple, and discovery of the book of the law (cf. 2 Chron 34:8-18).-When Josiah sent Shaphan the secretary of state rpæs; , see at Sam 8:17) into the temple, in the eighteenth year of his reign, with instructions to Hilkiah the high priest to pay to the builders the money which had been collected from the people for repairing the temple by the Levites who kept the door, Hilkiah said to Shaphan, “I have found the book of the law.” Vv. 3-8 form a long period. The apodosis to wgwhy;h; , “it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah-the king had sent Shaphan,” etc., does not follow till v. 8: “that Hilkiah said,” etc. The principal fact which the historian wished to relate, was the discovery of the book of the law; and the repairing of the temple is simply mentioned because it was when Shaphan was sent to Hilkiah about the payment of the money to the builders that the high priest informed the king’s secretary of state of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple, and handed it over to him to take to the king. Ël,m, jlæv; , in v. 3, forms the commencement to the minor clauses inserted within the principal clause, and subordinate to it: “the king had sent Shaphan,” etc.
According to 2 Chron 34:8, the king had deputed not only Shaphan the state- secretary, but also Maaseiah the governor of the city and Joach the chancellor, because the repairing of the temple was not a private affair of the king and the high priest, but concerned the city generally, and indeed the whole kingdom. In vv. 4, 5 there follows the charge given by the king to Shaphan: “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may make up the money,...and hand it over to the workmen appointed over the house of Jehovah,” etc. µmæT; , from µmæT; , Hiphil, signifies to finish or set right, i.e., not pay out (Ges., Dietr.), but make it up for the purpose of paying out, namely, collect it from the door-keepers, count it, and bind it up in bags (see 2 Kings 12:11). µmæT; is therefore quite appropriate here, and there is no alteration of the text required. The door-keepers had probably put the money in a chest placed at the entrance, as was the case at the repairing of the temple in the time of Joash (2 Kings 12:10).
In v. 5 the Keri ˆtæn; is a bad alteration of the Chethîb hn,t]yi , “and give (it) into the hand,” which is perfectly correct. hk;al;m] `hc;[; might denote both the masters and the workmen (builders), and is therefore defined more precisely first of all by yy tyiBæ rqæp] , “who had the oversight at the house of Jehovah,” i.e., the masters or inspectors of the building, and secondly by yy tyiBæ rv,a , who were (occupied) at the house of Jehovah, whilst in the Chronicles it is explained by y awOB `hc;[; rv,a . The Keri yy tyiBæ is an alteration after v. 9, whereas the combination tyiBæ rqæp] is justified by the construction of rqæp] c. acc. pers. and b rei in Jer 40:5. The masters are the subject to ˆtæn; ; they were to pay the money as it was wanted, either to the workmen, or for the purchase of materials for repairing the dilapidations, as is more precisely defined in v. 6. Compare 2 Kings 12:12-13; and for v. 7 compare 2 Kings 12:16. The names of the masters or inspectors are given in 2 Chron 34:12.-The execution of the king’s command is not specially mentioned, that the parenthesis may not be spun out any further.
2 KINGS. 22:8
Hilkiah the high priest (cf. 1 Chr. 5:39) said, “I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.” hr;wOT rp,se , the book of the law (not a lawbook or a roll of laws), cannot mean anything else, either grammatically or historically, than the Mosaic book of the law (the Pentateuch), which is so designated, as is generally admitted, in the Chronicles, and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. f233 The finding of the book of the law in the temple presupposes that the copy deposited there had come to light. But it by no means follows from this, that before its discovery there were no copies in the hands of the priests and prophets. The book of the law that was found was simply the temple copy, deposited, according to Deut 31:26, by the side of the ark of the covenant, which had been lost under the idolatrous kings Manasseh and Amon, and came to light again now that the temple was being repaired. We cannot learn, either from the account before us, or from the words of the Chronicles (2 Kin 34:14), “when they were taking out the money brought into the house of Jehovah, Hilkiah found the book of the law of the Lord,” in what part of the temple it had hitherto lain; and this is of no importance so far as the principal object of the history is concerned. Even the words of the Chronicles simply point out the occasion on which the book was discovered, and do not affirm that it had been lying in one of the treasurechambers of the temple, as Josephus says. The expression ar;q; does not imply that Shaphan read the whole book through immediately.
2 KINGS. 22:9-10
The reading of the book of the law to the king, and the inquiry made of the prophetess Huldah concerning it.-Vv. 9, 10. When Shaphan informed the king of the execution of his command, he also told him that Hilkiah had given him a book, and read it to the king. rb;d; bWv , to bring an answer, to give a report as to a commission that has been received. Ëtæn; , they poured out the money, i.e., out of the chest in which it was collected, into bags. ar;q; , “he read it to the king,” is simplified in the Chronicles (v. 18) by µyrit;a ar;q; , “he read therein.” That wharqy does not signify that the whole was read, is evident from a comparison of 2 Kings 23:2, where the reading of the whole is expressed by s yreb]DiAlK; . Which passages or sections Shaphan read by himself (v. 8), and which he read to the king, it is impossible to determine exactly.
To the king he most likely read, among other things, the threats and curses of the law against those who transgressed it (Deut 28), and possibly also Lev 26, because the reading made such an impression upon him, that in his anguish of soul he rent his clothes. Nor is it possible to decide anything with certainty, as to whether the king had hitherto been altogether unacquainted with the book of the law, and had merely a traditional knowledge of the law itself, or whether he had already had a copy of the law, but had not yet read it through, or had not read it with proper attention, which accounted for the passages that were read to him now making so deep and alarming an impression upon him. It is a well-known experience, that even books which have been read may, under peculiar circumstances, produce an impression such as has not been made before.
But in all probability Josiah had not had in his possession any copy of the law, or even read it till now; although the thorough acquaintance with the law, which all the prophets display, places the existence of the Pentateuch in prophetical circles beyond the reach of doubt.
2 KINGS. 22:11-12
In his alarm at the words of the book of the law that had been read to him, Josiah rent his clothes, and sent a deputation to the prophetess Huldah, to make inquiry of Jehovah through her concerning the things which he had heard from the law. The deputation consisted of the high priest Hilkiah, Ahikam the supporter of Jeremiah (Jer 26:24) and the father of Gedaliah the governor (2 Kings 25:22; Jer 39:14, etc.), Achbor the son of Michaiah, Shaphan the state-secretary (v. 3), and Asahiah the servant (i.e., an officer) of the king.
2 KINGS. 22:13
From the commission, “Inquire ye of Jehovah for me and for the people and for all Judah (i.e., the whole kingdom) concerning the words of this book of the law that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord which has been kindled against us, because our fathers have not heard...,” we may infer that the curses of the law upon the despisers of the commandments of God in Lev 26; Deut 28:1, and other passages, had been read to the king. yyAta, vræD; means to inquire the will of the Lord, what He has determined concerning the king, his people, and the kingdom. `l[æ [mæv; signifies here to hearken to anything, to observe it, for which lae is used elsewhere. `l[æ btæK; , to prescribe for performance. `l[æ , “prescribed for us,” is quite appropriate, since the law was not only given to the fathers to obey, but also to the existing generation-a fact which Thenius has overlooked with his conjecture `l[æ . To render the king’s alarm and his fear of severe judgments from God intelligible, there is no need for the farfetched and extremely precarious hypothesis, that just at that time the Scythians had invaded and devastated the land.
2 KINGS. 22:14
Nothing further is known of the prophetess Huldah than what is mentioned here. All that we can infer from the fact that the king sent to her is, that she was highly distinguished on account of her prophetical gifts, and that none of the prophets of renown, such as Jeremiah and Zephaniah, were at that time in Jerusalem. Her father Shallum was keeper of the clothes, i.e., superintendent over either the priests’ dresses that were kept in the temple (according to the Rabbins and Wits. de proph. in his Miscell. ss. i. p. 356, ed. 3), or the king’s wardrobe. The names of his ancestors hw;q]Ti and sjær]jæ are written thæq]wOT and hr;s]jæ in the Chronicles. Huldah lived at Jerusalem hn,v]mi , “in the second part” or district of the city, i.e., in the lower city, upon the hill A>kra (Rob. Pal. i. p. 391), which is called hn,v]mi in Zeph 1:10, and hn,v]mi `ry[i in Neh 11:9, and a>llh po>liv in Joseph.
Ant. xv. 11, 5.
2 KINGS. 22:15-19
The reply of Huldah the prophetess.
Huldah confirmed the fear expressed by Josiah, that the wrath of the Lord was kindled against Jerusalem and its inhabitants on account of their idolatry, and proclaimed first of all (vv. 16, 17), that the Lord would bring upon Jerusalem and its inhabitants all the punishments with which the rebellious and idolaters are threatened in the book of the law; and secondly (vv. 18-20), to the king himself, that on account of his sincere repentance and humiliation in the sight of God, he would not live to see the predicted calamities, but would be gathered to his fathers in peace. The first part of her announcement applies “to the man who has sent you to me” (v. 15), the second “to the king of Judah, who has sent to inquire of the Lord” (v. 18). “The man” who had sent to her was indeed also the king; but Huldah intentionally made use of the general expression “the man,” etc., to indicate that the word announced to him applied not merely to the king, but to every one who would hearken to the word, whereas the second portion of her reply had reference to the king alone. hz, µwOqm; , in vv. 16, 19, and 20, is Jerusalem as the capital of the kingdom.
In v. 16, yreb]DiAlK; rp,Sehæ is an explanatory apposition to [ræ . V. 17. “With all the work of their hands,” i.e., with the idols which they have made for themselves (cf. 1 Kings 16:7). The last clause in v. 18, “the words which thou hast heard,” is not to be connected with the preceding one, “thus saith the Lord,” and `l[æ or l] to be supplied; but it belongs to the following sentence, and is placed at the head absolutely: as for the words, which thou hast heart-because thy heart has become soft, i.e., in despair at the punishment with which the sinners are threatened (cf. Deut 20:3; Isa 7:4), and thou hast humbled thyself, when thou didst hear, etc.; therefore, behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, etc. hM;væ hy;h; , “that they (the city and inhabitants) may become a desolation and curse.” These words, which are often used by the prophets, but which are not found connected like this except in Jer 44:22, rest upon Lev 26 and Deut 28, and show that these passages had been read to the king out of the book of the law.
2 KINGS. 22:20
To gather to his fathers means merely to let him die, and is generally applied to a peaceful death upon a sick-bed, like the synonymous phrase, to lie with one’s fathers; but it is also applied to a violent death by being slain in battle (1 Kings 22:40 and 34), so that there is no difficulty in reconciling this comforting assurance with the slaying of Josiah in battle (2 Kings 23:29). µwOlv; , in peace, i.e., without living to witness the devastation of Jerusalem, as is evident from the words, “thine eyes will not see,” etc.
2 KINGS. 23:1-30
Instead of resting content with the fact that he was promised deliverance from the approaching judgment, Josiah did everything that was in his power to lead the whole nation to true conversion to the Lord, and thereby avert as far as possible the threatened curse of rejection, since the Lord in His word had promised forgiveness and mercy to the penitent. He therefore gathered together the elders of the nation, and went with them, with the priests and prophets and the assembled people, into the temple, and there had the book of the law read to those who were assembled, and concluded a covenant with the Lord, into which the people also entered. After this he had all the remnants of idolatry eradicated, not only in Jerusalem and Judah, but also in Bethel and the other cities of Samaria, and directed the people to strengthen themselves in their covenant fidelity towards the Lord by the celebration of a solemn passover.
Verse 1-2. Reading of the law in the temple, and renewal of the covenant (cf. 2 Chron 34:29-32). Beside the priests, Josiah also gathered together the prophets, including perhaps Jeremiah and Zedekiah, that he might carry out the solemn conclusion of the covenant with their co-operation, and, as is evident from Jer 1-11, that they might then undertake the task, by their impressive preaching in Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, of making the people conscious of the earnestness of the covenant duties which they had so recently undertaken (see Oehler in Herzog’s Cycl.). Instead of the prophets, the Levites are mentioned in the Chronicles, probably only because the Levites are mentioned along with the priests in other cases of a similar kind. ar;q; , he read, i.e., had it read; for the duty of reading the law in the temple devolved upon the priests as the keepers of the law (Deut 31:9ff.).
Verse 3. The king stood `dWM[æ `l[æ , as in 2 Kings 11:14. For wgw træK; see 2 Kings 11:17. Ëlæy; , i.e., he bound himself solemnly to walk after the Lord, that is to say, in his walk to follow the Lord and keep His commandments (see at 1 Kings `rmæ[; , all the people entered into the covenant (Luther and others); not perstitit, stood firm, continued in the covenant (Maurer, Ges.), which would be at variance with Jer 11:9-10; 25:3ff., and other utterances of the prophets.
Verse 4-20. The eradication of idolatry. According to 2 Chron 34:3-7, this had already begun, and was simply continued and carried to completion after the renewal of the covenant.
Verse 4-14. In Jerusalem and Judah. V. 4. The king commanded the high priest and the other priests, and the Levites who kept the door, to remove from the temple everything that had been made for Baal and Asherah, and to burn it in the valley of Kidron. hn,v]mi ˆheKo , sacerdotes secundi ordinis (Vulg., Luth., etc.), are the common priests as distinguished from lwOdG; ˆheKo , the high priest. The Rabbins are wrong in their explanation vicarii summi sacerdotis, according to which Thenius would alter the text and read ˆheKo for ˆheKo . ãsæ rmæv; , the keepers of the threshold, are the Levites whose duty it was to watch the temple, as in 2 Kings 22:4 (cf. 1 Chron 23:5). kaal-hakeeliym (alles Zeug, Luth.), i.e., all the apparatus, consisting of altars, idols, and other things, that had been provided for the worship of Baal and Astarte. Josiah had these things burned, according to the law in Deut 7:25, and that outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron valley.
The ˆwOrd]qi hm;dev] (fields of Kidron) are probably to be sought for to the north-east of Jerusalem, where the Kidron valley is broader than between the city and the Mount of Olives, and spreads out into a basin of considerable size, which is now cultivated and contains plantations of olive and other fruit-trees (Rob. Pal. i. p. 405). “And he had their dust carried to Bethel,” i.e., the ashes of the wooden objects which were burned, and the dust of those of stone and metal which were ground to powder, to defile the idolatrous place of worship at Bethel as the chief seat of idolatry and false worship.
Verse 5. “He abolished the high priests.” rm;K; are also mentioned in Hos 10:5 and Zech 1:4: they were not idolatrous priests or prophets of Baal, but priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer incense upon the altars of the high places; for they are distinguished from the idolatrous priests, or those who burnt incense to Baal, the sun, etc. In Hos 10:5 the priests appointed in connection with the golden calf at Bethel are called kmrym; and in Zeph 1:4 the kmrym are not exclusively idolatrous priests, but such as did service sometimes for Jehovah, who had been degraded into a Baal, and sometimes to actual idols. Now as kohaniym who burnt incense upon high places are also mentioned in v. 8, we must understand by the kmrym non-Levitical priests, and by the khnym in v. 8 Levitical priests who were devoted to the worship on the high places. The primary signification of komer is disputed. In Syriac the word signifies the priest, in Hebrew spurious priests, probably from rmæK] in the sense of to bring together, or complete, as the performers of sacrifice, like he’rdoon, the sacrificer (Dietr.); whereas the connection suggested by Hitzig (on Zeph.) with (Arabic) kfr, to be unbelieving, in the opposite sense of the religious, is very far-fetched, and does not answer either to the Hebrew or the Syriac use of the word. f235 The singular r f1 q; is striking, inasmuch as if the imperf. c. Vav rel. were a continuation of ˆtæn; , we should expect the plural, “and who had burnt incense,” as it is given in the Chaldee. The LXX, Vulg., and Syr. have rendered r f1 q; , from which r f1 q; has probably arisen by a mistake in copying. In the following clause, “and those who had burnt incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon,” etc., Baal is mentioned as the deity worshipped in the sun, the moon, and the stars (see at 2 Kings 21:3). hl;Z;mæ , synonymous with mizaarowt in Job 38:32, does not mean the twenty-eight naxatra, or Indian stations of the moon, f236 Verse 6. The image of Asherah hr;vea = ah ls,p, , 2 Kings 21:3,7), which Manasseh placed in the temple and then removed after his return from Babylon (2 Chron 33:15), but which Amon had replaced, Josiah ordered to be burned and ground to powder in the valley of Kidron, and the dust to be thrown upon the graves of the common people. qqæD; , from qqæD; , to make fine, to crush, refers to the metal covering of the image (see at Ex 32:10).
Asa had already had an idol burned in the Kidron valley (1 Kings 15:13), and Hezekiah had ordered the idolatrous abominations to be taken out of the city and carried thither (2 Chron 29:16); so that the valley had already been defiled. There was a burial-place there for `µ[æ ˆBe , i.e., the common people (cf. Jer 26:23), who had no graves of their own, just as at the present day the burial-ground of the Jews there lies to the north of Kefr Silwân. Josiah ordered the ashes to be cast upon these graves, probably in order to defile them as the graves of idolaters. Verse 7. vdeq; tyiBæ , the houses (places of abode) of the paramours (for hqdsym see at 1 Kings 14:24), were probably only tents or huts, which were erected in the court of the temple for the paramours to dwell in, and in which there were also women who wove tent-temples tyiBæ ) for Asherah (see at 2 Kings 17:30). f236 Verse 8. All the (Levitical) priests he sent for from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem, and defiled the altars of the high places, upon which they had offered incense, from Geba to Beersheba, i.e., throughout the whole kingdom. Geba, the present Jeba, about three hours to the north of Jerusalem (see at Josh 18:24), was the northern frontier of the kingdom of Judah, and Beersheba (Bir-seba: see the Comm. on Gen 21:31) the southern frontier of Canaan. It is evident from v. 9 that kohaniym are Levitical priests. He ordered them to come to Jerusalem, that they might not carry on illegal worship any longer in the cities of Judah. He then commanded that the unlawful high places should be defiled throughout the whole land, for the purpose of suppressing this worship altogether. He also destroyed “the altars of the high places at the gates, (both that) which was at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, (and also that) which was at the left of every one (entering) by the city gate.” The two clauses beginning with rv,a contain a more precise description of r[ævæ hm;B; . The gate of Joshua the governor of the city is not mentioned anywhere else, but it was probably near to his home, i.e., near the citadel of the city; but whether it was the future gate of Gennath, as Thenius supposes, or some other, it is impossible to determine. This also applies to the opinion that `ry[i r[ævæ is the valley gate or Joppa gate (Thenius) as being the gate of greatest traffic; for the traffic through the northern or Ephraim gate was certainly not less. ‘iysh `al-s¦m’owl, at the left of every one, sc. going into the city.
Verse 9. “Only the priests of the high places did not sacrifice,...but ate unleavened bread in the midst of their brethren.” The Ëaæ is connected with v. 8: Josiah did not allow the priests, whom he had brought out of the cities of Judah to Jerusalem, to offer sacrifice upon the altar of Jehovah in the temple, i.e., to perform the sacrificial service of the law, though he did allow them “to eat that which was unleavened,” i.e., to eat of the sacred altar-gifts intended for the priests (Lev 6:9-10 and 22); only they were not allowed to consume this at a holy place, but simply in the midst of their brethren, i.e., at home in the family. They were thus placed on a par with the priests who were rendered incapable of service on account of a bodily defect (Lev 21:17-22).
Verse 10. He also defiled the place of sacrifice in the valley of Benhinnom, for the purpose of exterminating the worship of Moloch. Moloch’s place of sacrifice is called tp,To , as an object of abhorrence, or one to be spat at tp,To : Job 17:6), from tuwp, to spit, or spit out (cf. Roediger in Ges. thes. p. 1497, where the other explanations are exploded). f237 On the valley Bne or Ben-hinnom, at the south side of Mount Zion, see at Josh 15:8.
Verse 11. He cleared away the horses dedicated to the sun, and burned up the chariots of the sun. As the horses were only cleared away tbæv; ), whereas the chariots were burned, we have not to think of images of horses (Selden, de Diis Syr. ii. 8), but of living horses, which were given to the sun, i.e., kept for the worship of the sun. Horses were regarded as sacred to the sun by many nations, viz., the Armenians, Persians, Massagetae, Ethiopians, and Greeks, and were sacrificed to it (for proofs see Bochart, Hieroz. i. lib. ii. c. 10); and there is no doubt that the Israelites received this worship first of all from Upper Asia, along with the actual sun-worship, possibly through the Assyrians. “The kings of Judah” are Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon. These horses were hardly kept to be offered to the sun in sacrifice (Bochart and others), but, as we must infer from the “chariots of the sun,” were used for processions in connection with the worship of the sun, probably, according to the unanimous opinion of the Rabbins, to drive and meet the rising sun.
The definition yy tyiBæ awOB, “from the coming into the house of Jehovah,” i.e., near the entrance into the temple, is dependent upon ˆtæn; , “they had given (placed) the horses of the sun near the temple entrance,” tKæv]liAla, , “in the cell of Nethanmelech.” lae does not mean at the cell, i.e., in the stable by the cell (Thenius), because the ellipsis is too harsh, and the cells built in the court of the temple were intended not merely as dwelling-places for the priests and persons engaged in the service, but also as a depôt for the provisions and vessels belonging to the temple (Neh 10:38ff.; 1 Chron 9:26). One of these depôts was arranged and used as a stable for the sacred horses. This cell, which derived its name from Nethanmelech, a chamberlain syris; ), of whom nothing further is known, possibly the builder or founder of it, was rB;r]pæ , in the Pharvars. rB;r]pæ , the plural of par¦waar, is no doubt identical with rB;r]pæ in 1 Chron 26:18. This was the name given to a building at the western or hinder side of the outer templecourt by the gate Shalleket at the ascending road, i.e., the road which led up from the city standing in the west into the court of the temple (1 Chron 26:16 and 18). The meaning of the word prwr is uncertain. Gesenius (thes. p. 1123) explains it by porticus, after the Persian frwâr, summer-house, an open kiosk. Böttcher (Proben, p. 347), on the other hand, supposes it to be “a separate spot resembling a suburb,” because in the Talmud prwryn signifies suburbia, loca urbi vicinia.
Verse 12. The altars built upon the roof of the aliyah of Ahaz were dedicated to the host of heaven (Zeph 1:5; Jer 19:13; 32:29), and certainly built by Ahaz; and inasmuch as Hezekiah had undoubtedly removed them when he reformed the worship, they had been restored by Manasseh and Amon, so that by “the kings of Judah” we are to understand these three kings as in v. 11. We are unable to determine where the `hY;li[ , the upper chamber, of Ahaz really was. But since the things spoken of both before and afterwards are the objects of idolatry found in the temple, this aliyah was probably also an upper room of one of the buildings in the court of the temple (Thenius), possibly at the gate, which Ahaz had built when he removed the outer entrance of the king into the temple (2 Kings 16:18), since, according to Jer 35:4, the buildings at the gate had upper stories.
The altars built by Manasseh in the two courts of the temple (see 2 Kings 21:5) Josiah destroyed, mishaam wiyaaraats, “and crushed them to powder from thence,” and cast their dust into the Kidron valley. yaarots, not from xWr , to run, but from xxær; , to pound or crush to pieces. The alteration proposed by Thenius into wayaarets, he caused to run and threw = he had them removed with all speed, is not only arbitrary, but unsuitable, because it is impossible to see why Josiah should merely have hurried the clearing away of the dust of these altars, whereas xxær; , to pound or grind to powder, was not superfluous after xtæn; , to destroy, but really necessary, if the dust was to be thrown into the Kidron. xWr is substantially equivalent to qqæD; in v. 6.
Verse 13-14. The places of sacrifice built by Solomon upon the southern height of the Mount of Olives (see at 1 Kings 11:7) Josiah defiled, reducing to ruins the monuments, cutting down the Asherah idols, and filling their places with human bones, which polluted a place, according to Num 19:16.
V. 14 gives a more precise definition of amef; in v. 13 in the form of a simple addition (with Vav cop.). har-hamash¦chiyt, mountain of destruction (not unctionis = hj;v]mi , Rashi and Cler.), is the southern peak of the Mount of Olives, called in the tradition of the Church mons offensionis or scandali (see at 1 Kings 11:7). For hb;Xemæ and ‘asheeriym see at 1 Kings 14:23. µwOqm; are the places where the Mazzeboth and Asherim stood by the altars that were dedicated to Baal and Astarte, so that by defiling them the altar-places were also defiled.
Verse 15-20. Extermination of idolatry in Bethel and the cities of Samaria.- In order to suppress idolatry as far as possible, Josiah did not rest satisfied with the extermination of it in his own kingdom Judah, but also destroyed the temples of the high places and altars and idols in the land of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, slew all the priests of the high places that were there, and burned their bones upon the high places destroyed, in order to defile the ground. The warrant for this is not to be found, as Hess supposes, in the fact that Josiah, as vassal of the king of Assyria, had a certain limited power over these districts, and may have looked upon them as being in a certain sense his own territory, a power which the Assyrians may have allowed him the more readily, because they were sure of his fidelity in relation to Egypt. For we cannot infer that Josiah was a vassal of the Assyrians from the imprisonment and release of Manasseh by the king of Assyria, nor is there any historical evidence whatever to prove it.
The only reason that can have induced Josiah to do this, must have been that after the dissolution of the kingdom of the ten tribes he regarded himself as the king of the whole of the covenant-nation, and availed himself of the approaching or existing dissolution of the Assyrian empire to secure the friendship of the Israelites who were left behind in the kingdom of the ten tribes, to reconcile them to his government, and to win them over to his attempt to reform; and there is no necessity whatever to assume, as Thenius does, that he asked permission to do so of the newly arisen ruler Nabopolassar. For against this assumption may be adduced not only the improbability that Nabopolassar would give him any such permission, but still more the circumstance that at a still earlier period, even before Nabopolassar became king of Babylon, Josiah had had taxes collected of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel for the repairing of the temple (2 Chron 34:9), from which we may see that the Israelites who were left behind in the land were favourably disposed towards his reforms, and were inclined to attach themselves in religious matters to Judah (just as, indeed, even the Samaritans were willing after the captivity to take part in the building of the temple, Ezra 4:2ff.), which the Assyrians at that time were no longer in a condition to prevent.
Verse 15. “Also the altar at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam had made-this altar also and the high place he destroyed.” It is grammatically impossible to take hm;B; as an accusative of place (Thenius); it is in apposition to jæBez]mi , serving to define it more precisely: the altar at Bethel, namely the high place; for which we have afterwards the altar and the high place. By the appositional hm;B; the altar at Bethel is described as an illegal place of worship. “He burned the hm;B; ,” i.e., the buildings of this sanctuary, ground to powder everything that was made of stone or metal, i.e., both the altar and the idol there. This is implied in what follows: “and burned Asherah,” i.e., a wooden idol of Astarte found there, according to which there would no doubt be also an idol of Baal, a hb;Xemæ of stone. The golden calf, which had formerly been set up at Bethel, may, as Hos 10:5-6 seems to imply, have been removed by the Assyrians, and, after the settlement of heathen colonists in the land, have been supplanted by idols of Baal and Astarte (cf. 2 Kings 17:29).
Verse 16-18. In order to desecrate this idolatrous site for all time, Josiah had human bones taken out of the graves that were to be found upon the mountain, and burned upon the altar, whereby the prophecy uttered in the reign of Jeroboam by the prophet who came out of Judah concerning this idolatrous place of worship was fulfilled; but he spared the tomb of that prophet himself (cf. 1 Kings 13:26-32). The mountain upon which Josiah saw the graves was a mountain at Bethel, which was visible from the bamah destroyed. ˆWyxi , a sepulchral monument, probably a stone erected upon the grave. flæm; : “so they rescued (from burning) his bones (the bones of the prophet who had come from Judah), together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria,” i.e., of the old prophet who sprang from the kingdom of the ten tribes and had come to Bethel (1 Kings 13:11). ˆwOrm]vo awOB in antithesis to hd;Why] awOB denotes simply descent from the land of Samaria. f238 Verse 19-20. All the houses of the high places that were in the (other) cities of Samaria Josiah also destroyed in the same way as that at Bethel, and offered up the priests of the high places upon the altars, i.e., slew them upon the altars on which they had offered sacrifice, and burned men’s bones upon them (the altars) to defile them. The severity of the procedure towards these priests of the high places, as contrasted with the manner in which the priests of the high places in Judah were treated (vv. 8 and 9), may be explained partly from the fact that the Israelitish priests of the high places were not Levitical priests, but chiefly from the fact that they were really idolatrous priests.
Verse 21-23. The passover is very briefly noticed in our account, and is described as such an one as had not taken place since the days of the judges. V. 21 simply mentions the appointment of this festival on the part of the king, and the execution of the king’s command has to be supplied.
V. 22 contains a remark concerning the character of the passover. In Chron 35:1-19 we have a very elaborate description of it. What distinguished this passover above every other was, (1) that “all the nation,” not merely Judah and Benjamin, but also the remnant of the ten tribes, took part in it, or, as it is expressed in 2 Chron 35:18, “all Judah and Israel;” (2) that it was kept in strict accordance with the precepts of the Mosaic book of the law, whereas in the passover instituted by Hezekiah there were necessarily many points of deviation from the precepts of the law, more especially in the fact that the feast had to be transferred from the first month, which was the legal time, to the second month, because the priests had not yet purified themselves in sufficient numbers and the people had not yet gathered together at Jerusalem, and also that even then a number of the people had inevitably been allowed to eat the passover without the previous purification required by the law (2 Chron 30:2-3,17-20). This is implied in the words, “for there was not holden such a passover since the days of the judges and all the kings of Israel and Judah.” That this remark does not preclude the holding of earlier passovers, as Thenius follows De Wette in supposing, without taking any notice of the refutations of this opinion, was correctly maintained by the earlier commentators. Thus Clericus observes: “I should have supposed that what the sacred writer meant to say was, that during the times of the kings no passover had ever been kept so strictly by every one, according to all the Mosaic laws. Before this, even under the pious kings, they seem to have followed custom rather than the very words of the law; and since this was the case, many things were necessarily changed and neglected.” Instead of “since the days of the judges who judged Israel,” we find in 2 Chron 35:18, “since the days of Samuel the prophet,” who is well known to have closed the period of the judges.
Verse 24-25. Conclusion of Josiah’s reign.-V. 24. As Josiah had the passover kept in perfect accordance with the precepts of the law, so did he also exterminate the necromancers, the teraphim and all the abominations of idolatry, throughout all Judah and Jerusalem, to set up the words of the law in the book of the law that had been found, i.e., to carry them out and bring them into force. For bwOa and yni[oD]yi see at 2 Kings 21:6. µypir;T] , penates, domestic gods, which were worshipped as the authors of earthly prosperity and as oracular deities (see at Gen 31:19). lWLGi and xWQvi , connected together, as in Deut 29:16, as a contemptuous description of idols in general.-In v. 25 the account of the efforts made by Josiah to restore the true worship of Jehovah closes with a general verdict concerning his true piety. See the remarks on this point at 2 Kings 18:5. He turned to Jehovah with all his heart, etc.: there is an evident allusion here to Deut 6:5. Compare with this the sentence of the prophet Jeremiah concerning his reign (Jer 22:15-16).
Verse 26. Nevertheless the Lord turned not from the great fierceness of His wrath, wherewith He had burned against Judah on account of all the provocations “with which Manasseh had provoked Him.” With this sentence, in which bWv alo Ëaæ forms an unmistakeable word-play upon yy’ lae bWv rv,a , the historian introduces the account not merely of the end of Josiah’s reign, but also of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah.
Manasseh is mentioned here and at 2 Kings 24:3 and Jer 15:4 as the person who, by his idolatry and his unrighteousness, with which he provoked God to anger, had brought upon Judah and Jerusalem the unavoidable judgment of rejection. It is true that Josiah had exterminated outward and gross idolatry throughout the land by his sincere conversion to the Lord, and by his zeal for the restoration of the lawful worship of Jehovah, and had persuaded the people to enter into covenant with its God once more; but a thorough conversion of the people to the Lord he had not been able to effect. For, as Clericus has correctly observed, “although the king was most religious, and the people obeyed him through fear, yet for all that the mind of the people was not changed, as is evident enough from the reproaches of Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and other prophets, who prophesied about that time and a little after.” With regard to this point compare especially the first ten chapters of Jeremiah, which contain a resume of his labours in the reign of Josiah, and bear witness to the deep inward apostasy of the people from the Lord, not only before and during Josiah’s reform of worship, but also afterwards. As the Holy One of Israel, therefore, God could not forgive any more, but was obliged to bring upon the people and kingdom, after the death of Josiah, the judgment already foretold to Manasseh himself (2 Kings 21:12ff.).
Verse 27-28. The Lord said: I will also put away Judah (in the same manner as Israel: cf. 2 Kings 17:20,23) from my face, etc. rmæa; expresses the divine decree, which was announced to the people by the prophets, especially Jeremiah and Zephaniah.
Verse 29, 30. compare 2 Chron 35:20-24. The predicted catastrophe was brought to pass by the expedition of Necho the king of Egypt against Assyria. “In his days (i.e., towards the end of Josiah’s reign) Pharaoh Necho the king of Egypt went up against the king of Asshur to the river Euphrates.” Necho (n¦koh or wOkn] , 2 Chron 35:20; Jer 46:2; called Gechaoo’ by Josephus, Manetho in Jul. Afric., and Euseb., after the LXX; and Gekoo’s by Herod. ii. 158, 159, iv. 42, and Diod. Sic. i. 33; according to Brugsch, hist. d’Eg. i. p. 252, Nekåou) was, according to Man., the sixth king of the twenty-sixth (Saitic) dynasty, the second Pharaoh of that name, the son of Psammetichus I and grandson of Necho I; and, according to Herodotus, he was celebrated for a canal which he proposed to have cut in order to connect the Nile with the Red Sea, as well as for the circumnavigation of Africa (compare Brugsch, l.c., according to whom he reigned from 611 to 595 B.C.). Whether “the king of Asshur” against whom Necho marched was the last ruler of the Assyrian empire, Asardanpal (Sardanapal), Saracus according to the monuments (see Brandis, Ueber den Gewinn, p. 55; M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 110ff. and 192), or the existing ruler of the Assyrian empire which had already fallen, Nabopolassar the king of Babylon, who put an end to the Assyrian monarchy in alliance with the Medes by the conquest and destruction of Nineveh, and founded the Chaldaean or Babylonian empire, it is impossible to determine, because the year in which Nineveh was taken cannot be exactly decided, and all that is certain is that Nineveh had fallen before the battle of Carchemish in the year 606 B.C. Compare M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 109ff. and 203, 204.-King Josiah went against the Egyptian, and “he (Necho) slew him at Megiddo when he saw him,” i.e., caught sight of him. This extremely brief notice of the death of Josiah is explained thus in the Chronicles: that Necho sent ambassadors to Josiah, when he was taking the field against him, with an appeal that he would not fight against him, because his only intention was to make war upon Asshur, but that Josiah did not allow himself to be diverted from his purpose, and fought a battle with Necho in the valley of Megiddo, in which he was mortally wounded by the archers. What induced Josiah to oppose with force of arms the advance of the Egyptian to the Euphrates, notwithstanding the assurance of Necho that he had no wish to fight against Judah, is neither to be sought for in the fact that Josiah was dependent upon Babylon, which is at variance with history, nor in the fact that the kingdom of Judah had taken possession of all the territory of the ancient inheritance of Israel, and Josiah was endeavouring to restore all the ancient glory of the house of David over the surrounding nations (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 707), but solely in Josiah’s conviction that Judah could not remain neutral in the war which had broken out between Egypt and Babylon, and in the hope that by attacking Necho, and frustrating his expedition to the Euphrates, he might be able to avert great distress from his own land and kingdom. f239 This battle is also mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 159); but he calls the place where it was fought Ea’gdolon, i.e., neither Migdol, which was twelve Roman miles to the south of Pelusium (Forbiger, Hdb. d. alten Geogr. ii. p. 695), nor the perfectly apocryphal Magdala or Migdal Zebaiah mentioned by the Talmudists (Reland, Pal. p. 898, 899), as Movers supposes. We might rather think with Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 708) of the present Mejdel, to the south-east of Acca, at a northern source of the Kishon, and regard this as the place where the Egyptian camp was pitched, whereas Israel stood to the east of it, at the place still called Rummane, at Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo, as Ewald assumes (Gesch. iii. p. 708). But even this combination is overthrown by the face that Rummane, which lies to the east of el Mejdel at the distance of a mile and three-quarters (geogr.), on the southern edge of the plain of Buttauf, cannot possibly be the Hadad- Rimmon mentioned in Zech 12:11, where king Josiah died after he had been wounded in the battle.
For since Megiddo is identical with the Roman Legio, the present Lejun, as Robinson has proved (see at Josh 12:21), and as is generally admitted even by C. v. Raumer (Pal. p. 447, note, ed. 4), Hadad-Rimmon must be the same as the village of Rümmuni (Rummane), which is three-quarters of an hour to the south of Lejun, where the Scottish missionaries in the year 1839 found many ancient wells and other traces of Israelitish times (V. de Velde, R. i. p. 267; Memoir, pp. 333, 334). But this Rummane is four geographical miles distant from el Mejdel, and Mediggo three and a half, so that the battle fought at Megiddo cannot take its name from el Mejdel, which is more than three miles off. The Magdolon of Herodotus can only arise from some confusion between it and Megiddo, which was a very easy thing with the Greek pronunciation Eageddw> , without there being any necessity to assume that Herodotus was thinking of the Egyptian Migdol, which is called Magdolo in the Itin. Ant. p. 171 (cf. Brugsch, Geogr.
Inschriften altägypt. Denkmäler, i. pp. 261, 262). If, then, Josiah went to Megiddo in the plain of Esdrelom to meet the king of Egypt, and fell in with him there, there can be no doubt that Necho came by sea to Palestine and landed at Acco, as des Vignoles (Chronol. ii. p. 427) assumed. f240 For if the Egyptian army had marched by land through the plain of Philistia, Josiah would certainly have gone thither to meet it, and not have allowed it to advance into the plain of Megiddo without fighting a battle.
Verse 30. The brief statement, “his servants carried him dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem,” is given with more minuteness in the Chronicles: his servants took him, the severely wounded king, by his own command, from his chariot to his second chariot, and drove him to Jerusalem, and he died and was buried, etc. Where he died the Chronicles do not affirm; the occurrence of tWm after the words “they brought him to Jerusalem,” does not prove that he did not die till he reached Jerusalem. If we compare Zech 12:11, where the prophet draws a parallel between the lamentation at the death of the Messiah and the lamentation of Hadad- Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo, as the deepest lamentation of the people in the olden time, with the account given in 2 Chron 35:25 of the lamentation of the whole nation at the death of Josiah, there can hardly be any doubt that Josiah died on the way to Jerusalem at Hadad-Rimmon, the present Rummane, to the south of Lejun (see above), and was taken to Jerusalem dead.-He was followed on the throne by his younger son Jehoahaz, whom the people xr,a, `µ[æ , as in 2 Kings 21:24) anointed king, passing over the elder, Eliakim, probably because they regarded him as the more able man. REIGNS OF THE KINGS JEHOAHAZ, JEHOIAKIM, AND JEHOIACHIN.
2 KINGS. 23:31-32
Reign of Jehoahaz (cf. 2 Chron 36:1-4).-Jehoahaz, called significantly by Jeremiah (Jer 22:11) Shallum, i.e., “to whom it is requited,” reigned only three months, and did evil in the eyes of the Lord as all his fathers had done. The people (or the popular party), who had preferred him to his elder brother, had apparently set great hopes upon him, as we may judge from Jer 22:10-12, and seem to have expected that his strength and energy would serve to avert the danger which threatened the kingdom on the part of Necho. Ezekiel (Ezek 19:3) compares him to a young lion which learned to catch the prey and devoured men, but, as soon as the nations heard of him, was taken in their pit and led by nose-rings to Egypt, and thus attributes to him the character of a tyrant disposed to acts of violence; and Josephus accordingly (Ant. x. 5, 2) describes him as asebee’s kai’ miaro’s to’n tro’pon.
2 KINGS. 23:33
“Pharaoh Necho put him in fetters rsæa; ) at Riblah in the land of Hamath, when he had become king at Jerusalem.” In 2 Chron 36:3 we have, instead of this, “the king of Egypt deposed him ( Whreysiyi ) at Jerusalem.” The Masoretes have substituted as Keri Ëlæm; , “away from being king,” or “that he might be no longer king,” in the place of ËlM]mi , and Thenius and Bertheau prefer the former, because the LXX have tou> mh> basileu>ein not in our text only, but in the Chronicles also; but they ought not to have appealed to the Chronicles, inasmuch as the LXX have not rendered the Hebrew text there, but have simply repeated the words from the text of the book of Kings. The Keri is nothing more than an emendation explaining the sense, which the LXX have also followed. The two texts are not contradictory, but simply complete each other: for, as Clericus has correctly observed, “Jehoahaz would of course be removed from Jerusalem before he was cast into chains; and there was nothing to prevent his being dethroned at Jerusalem before he was taken to Riblah.” We are not told in what way Necho succeeded in getting Jehoahaz into his power, so as to put him in chains at Riblah. The assumption of J. D.
Michaelis and others, that his elder brother Eliakim, being dissatisfied with the choice of Jehoahaz as king, had recourse to Necho at Riblah, in the hope of getting possession of his father’s kingdom through his instrumentality, is precluded by the face that Jehoahaz would certainly not have been so foolish as to appear before the enemy of his country at a mere summons from Pharaoh, who was at Riblah, and allow him to depose him, when he was perfectly safe in Jerusalem, where the will of the people had raised him to the throne. If Necho wanted to interfere with the internal affairs of the kingdom of Judah, it would never have done for him to proceed beyond Palestine to Syria after the victory at Megiddo, without having first deposed Jehoahaz, who had been raised to the throne at Jerusalem without any regard to his will. The course of events was therefore probably the following: After the victory at Megiddo, Necho intended to continue his march to the Euphrates; but on hearing that Jehoahaz had ascended the throne, and possibly also in consequence of complaints which Eliakim had made to him on that account, he ordered a division of his army to march against Jerusalem, and while the main army was marching slowly to Riblah, he had Jerusalem taken, king Jehoahaz dethroned, the land laid under tribute, Eliakim appointed king as his vassal, and the deposed Jehoahaz brought to his headquarters at Riblah, then put into chains and transported to Egypt; so that the statement in 2 Chron 36:3, “he deposed him at Jerusalem,” is to be taken quite literally, even if Necho did not come to Jerusalem in propriâ personâ, but simply effected this through the medium of one of his generals. f241 Riblah has been preserved in the miserable village of Rible, from ten to twelve hours to the S.S.W. of Hums (Emesa) by the river el Ahsy (Orontes), in a large fruitful plain of the northern portion of the Bekaa, which was very well adapted to serve as the camping ground of Necho’s army as well as of that of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:6,20-21), not only because it furnished the most abundant supply of food and fodder, but also on account of its situation on the great caravan-road from Palestine by Damascus, Emesa, and Hamath to Thapsacus and Carchemish on the Euphrates (cf. Rob. Bibl. Res. pp. 542-546 and 641).
In the payment imposed upon the land by Necho, one talent of gold (c. 25,000 thalers: £3750) does not seem to bear any correct proportion to 100 talents of silver (c. 250,000 thalers, or £37,500), and consequently the LXX have 100 talents of gold, the Syr. and Arab. 10 talents; and Thenius supposes this to have been the original reading, and explains the reading in the text from the dropping out of a y (= 10), though without reflecting that as a rule the number 10 would require the plural rK;Ki .
2 KINGS. 23:34-35
From the words “Necho made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of his father Josiah,” it follows that the king of Egypt did not acknowledge the reign of Jehoahaz, because he had been installed by the people without his consent. “And changed his name into Jehoiakim.” The alteration of the name was a sign of dependence. In ancient times princes were accustomed to give new names to the persons whom they took into their service, and masters to give new names to their slaves (cf. Gen 41:45; Ezra 5:14; Dan 1:7, and Hävernick on the last passage).-But while these names were generally borrowed from heathen deities, Eliakim, and at a later period Mattaniah (2 Kings 24:17), received genuine Israelitish names, Jehoiakim, i.e., “Jehovah will set up,” and Zidkiyahu, i.e., “righteousness of Jehovah;” from which we may infer that Necho and Nebuchadnezzar did not treat the vassal kings installed by them exactly as their slaves, but allowed them to choose the new names for themselves, and simply confirmed them as a sign of their supremacy.
Eliakim altered his name into Jehoiakim, i.e., El (God) into Jehovah, to set the allusion to the establishment of the kingdom, which is implied in the name, in a still more definite relation to Jehovah the covenant God, who had promised to establish the seed of David (2 Sam 7:14), possibly with an intentional opposition to the humiliation with which the royal house of David was threatened by Jeremiah and other prophets.-”But Jehoahaz he had taken jqæl; , like jqæl; in 2 Kings 24:12), and he came to Egypt and died there”-when, we are not told.-In v. 35, even before the account of Jehoiakim’s reign, we have fuller particulars respecting the payment of the tribute which Necho imposed upon the land (v. 33), because it was the condition on which he was appointed king.-”The gold and silver Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh; yet Ëaæ = but in order to raise it) he valued `Ëræ[; as in Lev 27:8) the land, to give the money according to Pharaoh’s command; of every one according to his valuation, he exacted the silver and gold of the population of the land, to give it to Pharaoh Necho.” cgæn; , to exact tribute, is construed with a double accusative, and vyai wOKr][,K] placed first for the sake of emphasis, as an explanatory apposition to xr,a;h; µ[æAta, .
2 KINGS. 23:36-37
Reign of Jehoiakim (cf. 2 Chron 36:5-8).-Jehoiakim reigned eleven years in the spirit of his ungodly forefathers (compare v. 37 with v. 32). Jeremiah represents him (2 Kings 22:13ff.) as a bad prince, who enriched himself by the unjust oppression of his people, “whose eyes and heart were directed upon nothing but upon gain, and upon innocent blood to shed it, and upon oppression and violence to do them” (compare 2 Kings 24:4 and Jer 26:22- 23). Josephus therefore describes him as th>n fu>sin a>dikov kai> kakou>rgov kai> mh>te pro>v Qeo>n oJ>siov mh>te pro>v anqrw>pouv epieikh>v (Ant. x. 5, 2). The town of Rumah, from which his mother sprang, is not mentioned anywhere else, but it has been supposed to be identical with Aruma in the neighbourhood of Shechem (Judg 9:41).
2 KINGS. 24:1
“In his days Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babel, came up; and Jehoiakim became subject to him three years, then he revolted from him again.” rXæan,d]kæWbn] , Nebuchadnezzar, or rXæan,d]kæWbn] , Nebuchadrezzar (Jer 21:2,7; 22:25, etc.), Naboucodono>sor (LXX), Naboucodono>sorov (Beros. in Jos. c. Ap. i. 20, 21), Nabokodro>sorov (Strabo, xv. 1, 6), upon the Persian arrow-headed inscriptions at Bisutun Nabhukudracara (according to Oppert, composed of the name of God, Nabhu (Nebo), the Arabic kadr, power, and zar or sar, prince), and in still other forms (for the different forms of the name see M. v. Niebuhr’s Gesch. pp. 41, 42). He was the son of Nabopolassar, the founder of the Chaldaean monarchy, and reigned, according to Berosus (Jos. l.c.), Alex. Polyh. (Eusebii Chr. arm. i. pp. 44, 45), and the Canon of Ptol., forty-three years, from 605 to B.C. With regard to his first campaign against Jerusalem, it is stated in Chron 36:6, that “against him (Jehoiakim) came up Nebuchadnezzar, and bound him with brass chains, to carry him ( wOkyliwOhl] ) to Babylon;” and in Dan 1:1-2, that “in the year three of the reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem and besieged it; and the Lord gave Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into his hand, and a portion of the holy vessels, and he brought them (the vessels) into the land of Shinar, into the house of his god,” etc.
Bertheau (on Chr.) admits that all three passages relate to Nebuchadnezzar’s first expedition against Jehoiakim and the first taking of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon, and rejects the alteration of wOkyliwOhl] , “to lead him to Babylon” (Chr.), into aph>gagen auto>n (LXX), for which Thenius decides in his prejudice in favour of the LXX. He has also correctly observed, that the chronicler intentionally selected the infinitive with l, because he did not intend to speak of the actual transportation of Jehoiakim to Babylon. The words of our text, “Jehoiakim became servant `db,[, ) to him,” i.e., subject to him, simply affirm that he became tributary, not that he was led away. And in the book of Daniel also there is nothing about the leading away of Jehoiakim to Babylon. Whilst, therefore, the three accounts agree in the main with one another, and supply one another’s deficiencies, so that we learn that Jehoiakim was taken prisoner at the capture of Jerusalem and put in chains to be led away, but that, inasmuch as he submitted to Nebuchadnezzar and vowed fidelity, he was not taken away, but left upon the throne as vassal of the king of Babylon; the statement in the book of Daniel concerning the time when this event occurred, which is neither contained in our account nor in the Chronicles, presents a difficulty when compared with Jer 25 and 46:2, and different attempts, some of them very constrained, have been made to remove it.
According to Jer 46:2, Nebuchadnezzar smote Necho the king of Egypt at Carchemish, on the Euphrates, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. This year is not only called the first year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jer 25:1, but is represented by the prophet as the turning-point of the kingdom of Judah by the announcement that the Lord would bring His servant Nebuchadnezzar upon Judah and its inhabitants, and also upon all the nations dwelling round about, that he would devastate Judah, and that these nations would serve the king of Babylon seventy years (Jer 25:9-11). Consequently not only the defeat of Necho at Carchemish, but also the coming of Nebuchadnezzar to Judah, fell in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and not in the third. To remove this discrepancy, some have proposed that the time mentioned, “in the fourth year of Jehoiakim” (Jer 46:2), should be understood as relating, not to the year of the battle at Carchemish, but to the time of the prophecy of Jeremiah against Egypt contained in ch. 46, and that Jer 25 should also be explained as follows, that in this chapter the prophet is not announcing the first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, but is proclaiming a year after this the destruction of Jerusalem and the devastation of the whole land, or a total judgment upon Jerusalem and the rest of the nations mentioned there (M. v. Nieb. Gesch. pp. 86, 87, 371). But this explanation is founded upon the erroneous assumption, that Jer 46:3-12 does not contain a prediction of the catastrophe awaiting Egypt, but a picture of what has already taken place there; and it is only in a very forced manner that it can be brought into harmony with the contents of Jer 25. f242 We must rather take “the year three of the reign of Jehoiakim” (Dan 1:1) as the extreme terminus a quo of Nebuchadnezzar’s coming, i.e., must understand the statement thus: that in the year referred to Nebuchadnezzar commenced the expedition against Judah, and smote Necho at Carchemish at the commencement of the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer 46:2), and then, following up this victory, took Jerusalem in the same year, and made Jehoiakim tributary, and at the same time carried off to Babylon a portion of the sacred vessels, and some young men of royal blood as hostages, one of whom was Daniel (2 Chron 36:7; Dan 1:2ff.). The fast mentioned in Jer 36:9, which took place in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, cannot be adduced in disproof of this; for extraordinary fast-days were not only appointed for the purpose of averting great threatening dangers, but also after severe calamities which had fallen upon the land or people, to expiate His wrath by humiliation before God, and to invoke the divine compassion to remove the judgment that had fallen upon them.
The objection, that the godless king would hardly have thought of renewing the remembrance of a divine judgment by a day of repentance and prayer, but would rather have desired to avoid everything that could make the people despair, falls to the ground, with the erroneous assumption upon which it is founded, that by the fast-day Jehoiakim simply intended to renew the remembrance of the judgment which had burst upon Jerusalem, whereas he rather desired by outward humiliation before God to secure the help of God to enable him to throw off the Chaldaean yoke, and arouse in the people a religious enthusiasm for war against their oppressors.-Further information concerning this first expedition of Nebuchadnezzar is supplied by the account of Berosus, which Josephus (Ant. x. 11, and c. Ap. i. 19) has preserved from the third book of his Chaldaean history, namely, that when Nabopolassar received intelligence of the revolt of the satrap whom he had placed over Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia, because he was no longer able on account of age to bear the hardships of war, he placed a portion of his army in the hands of his youthful son Nebuchadnezzar and sent him against the satrap.
Nebuchadnezzar defeated him in battle, and established his power over that country again. In the meantime Nabopolassar fell sick and died in Babylon; and as soon as the tidings reached Nebuchadnezzar, he hastened through the desert to Babylon with a small number of attendants, and directed his army to follow slowly after regulating the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country, and to bring with it the prisoners from the Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Egyptian tribes, and with the heavily-armed troops. So much, at any rate, is evident from this account, after deducting the motive assigned for the war, which is given from a Chaldaean point of view, and may be taken as a historical fact, that even before his father’s death Nebuchadnezzar had not only smitten the Egyptians, but had also conquered Judah and penetrated to the borders of Egypt. And there is no discrepancy between the statement of Berosus, that Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king, and the fact that in the biblical books he is called king proleptically, because he marched against Judah with kingly authority.
2 KINGS. 24:2-7
To punish Jehoiakim’s rebellion, Jehovah sent hosts of Chaldaeans, Aramaeans, Moabites, and Ammonites against him and against Judah to destroy it dbæa; ). Nebuchadnezzar was probably too much occupied with other matters relating to his kingdom, during the earliest years of his reign after his father’s death, to be able to proceed at once against Jehoiakim and punish him for his revolt. f243 He may also have thought it a matter of too little importance for him to go himself, as there was not much reason to be afraid of Egypt since its first defeat (cf. M. v. Niebuhr, p. 375). He therefore merely sent such troops against him as were in the neighbourhood of Judah at the time. The tribes mentioned along with the Chaldaeans were probably all subject to Nebuchadnezzar, so that they attacked Judah at his command in combination with the Chaldaean tribes left upon the frontier. How much they effected is not distinctly stated; but it is evident that they were not able to take Jerusalem, from the fact that after the death of Jehoiakim his son was able to ascend the throne (v. 6).-The sending of these troops is ascribed to Jehovah, who, as the supreme controller of the fate of the covenant-nation, punished Jehoiakim for his rebellion. For, after the Lord had given Judah into the hands of the Chaldaeans as a punishment for its apostasy from Him, all revolt from them was rebellion against the Lord. “According to the word of Jehovah, which He spake by His servants the prophets,” viz., Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and others.
Verse 3-5. yy ypiAl[æ Ëaæ : “only according to the mouth (command) of Jehovah did this take place against Judah,” i.e., for no other reason than because the Lord had determined to put away Judah from before His face because of Manasseh’s sins (cf. 2 Kings 21:12-16, and 23:27). “And Jehovah would not forgive,” even if the greatest intercessors, Moses and Samuel, had come before Him (Jer 15:1ff.), because the measure of the sins was full, so that God was obliged to punish according to His holy righteousness. We must repeat b] from the preceding words before yqin; µD; .
Verse 6-7. “Jehoiakim lay down to (fell asleep with) his fathers, and Jehoiachin his son became king in his stead.” That this statement is not in contradiction to the prophecies of Jer 22:19: “Jehoiakim shall be buried like an ass, carried away and cast out far away from the gates of Jerusalem,” and 36:30: “no son of his shall sit upon the throne of David, and his body shall lie exposed to the heat by day and to the cold by night,” is now generally admitted, as it has already been by J. D. Michaelis and Winer. But the solution proposed by Michaelis, Winer, and M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. p. 376) is not sufficient, namely, that at the conquest of Jerusalem, which took place three months after the death of Jehoiakim, his bones were taken out of the grave, either by the victors out of revenge for his rebellion, or by the fury of the people, and cast out before the city gate; for Jeremiah expressly predicts that he shall have no funeral and no burial whatever.
We must therefore assume that he was slain in a battle fought with the troops sent against him, and was not buried at all; an assumption which is not at variance with the words, “he laid himself down to his fathers,”’ since this formula does not necessarily indicate a peaceful death by sickness, but is also applied to king Ahab, who was slain in battle (1 Kings 22:40, cf. Kings 22:20). f244 And even though his son Jehoiachin ascended the throne after his father’s death and maintained his position for three months against the Chaldaeans, until at length he fell into their hands and was carried away alive to Babylon, the prophet might very truly describe this short reign as not sitting upon the throne of David (cf. Graf on Jer 22:19).-To the death of Jehoiakim there is appended the notice in v. 7, that the king of Egypt did not go out of his own land any more, because the king of Babylon had taken away everything that had belonged to the king of Egypt, from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. The purpose of this notice is to indicate, on the one hand, what attitude Necho, whose march to the Euphrates was previously mentioned, had assumed on the conquest of Judah by the Chaldaeans, and on the other hand, that under these circumstances a successful resistance to the Chaldaeans on the part of Judah was not for a moment to be thought of.
2 KINGS. 24:8-9
(cf. 2 Chron 36:9 and 10). Jehoiachin, ˆykiy;wOhy] or ˆykiy;wOy (Ezek 1:2), i.e., he whom Jehovah fortifies, called hy;n]k;y] in 1 Chron 3:16-17, and Jer 27:20; 28:4, etc., and Why;n]K; in Jer 22:24,28; 37:1, probably according to the popular twisting and contraction of the name Jehoiachin, was eighteen years old when he ascended the throne (the eight years of the Chronicles are a slip of the pen), and reigned three months, or, according to the more precise statement of the Chronicles, three months and ten days, in the spirit of his father. Ezekiel (Ezek 19:5-7) describes him not only as a young lion, who learned to prey and devoured men, like Jehoahaz, but also affirms of him that he knew their (the deceased men’s) widows, i.e., ravished them, and destroyed their cities-that is to say, he did not confine his deeds of violence to individuals, but extended them to all that was left behind by those whom he had murdered, viz., to their families and possessions; and nothing is affirmed in Jer 22:24 and 28 respecting his character at variance with this. His mother Nehushta was a daughter of Elnathan, a ruler of the people, or prince, from Jerusalem (Jer 26:22; 36:12,25).
2 KINGS. 24:10
“At that time,” i.e., when Jehoiachin had come to the throne, or, according to 2 Chron 36:10, “at the turn of the year,” i.e., in the spring (see at Kings 20:22), the servants (generals) of Nebuchadnezzar marched against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. The Keri `hl;[; is substantially correct, but is an unnecessary alteration of the Chethîb `hl;[; , since the verb when it precedes the subject is not unfrequently used in the singular, though before a plural subject (cf. Ewald, §316, a.). The ab;n; `db,[, are different from the dWdG] of v. 2. As the troops sent against Jehoiakim had not been able to conquer Judah, especially Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar sent his generals with an army against Jerusalem, to besiege the city and take it.
2 KINGS. 24:11
During the siege he came himself to punish Jehoiakim’s revolt in the person of his successor.
2 KINGS. 24:12
Then Jehoiachin went out to the king of Babylon to yield himself up to him, because he perceived the impossibility of holding the city any longer against the besiegers, and probably hoped to secure the favour of Nebuchadnezzar, and perhaps to retain the throne as his vassal by a voluntary submission. Nebuchadnezzar, however, did not show favour any more, as he had done to Jehoiakim at the first taking of Jerusalem, but treated Jehoiachin as a rebel, made him prisoner, and led him away to Babylon, along with his mother, his wives (v. 15), his princes and his chamberlains, as Jeremiah had prophesied (2 Kin 22:24ff.), in the eighth year of his (Nebuchadnezzar’s) reign. The reference to the king’s mother in vv. 12 and 15 is not to be explained on the ground that she still acted as guardian over the king, who was not yet of age (J. D. Mich.), but from the influential position which she occupied in the kingdom as hr;ybiG] (Jer 29:2: see at 1 Kings 14:21). The eighth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar is reckoned from the time when his father had transferred to him the chief command over the army to make war upon Necho, according to which his first year coincides with the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer 25:1). As Nebuchadnezzar acted as king, so far as the Jews were concerned, from that time forward, although he conducted the war by command of his father, this is always reckoned as the point of time at which his reign commenced, both in our books and also in Jeremiah (cf. 2 Kings 25:8; Jer 32:1). According to this calculation, his reign lasted forty-four years, viz., the eight years of Jehoiakim and the thirty-six years of Jehoiachin’s imprisonment, as is evident from 2 Kings 25:27.
2 KINGS. 24:13
Nebuchadnezzar thereupon, that is to say, when he had forced his way into the city, plundered the treasures of the temple and palace, and broke the gold off the vessels which Solomon had made in the temple of Jehovah. xxæq; , to cut off, break off, as in 2 Kings 16:17, i.e., to bear off the gold plates. Nebuchadnezzar had already taken a portion of the golden vessels of the temple away with him at the first taking of Jerusalem in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and had placed them in the temple of his god at Babylon (2 Chron 36:7; Dan 1:2). They were no doubt the smaller vessels of solid gold-basins, scoops, goblets, knives, tongs, etc.-which Cyrus delivered up again to the Jews on their return to their native land (Ezra 1:7ff.). This time he took the gold off the larger vessels, which were simply plated with that metal, such as the altar of burnt-offering, the table of shew-bread and ark of the covenant, and carried it away as booty, so that on the third conquest of Jerusalem, in the time of Zedekiah, beside a few gold and silver basins and scoops (2 Kings 25:15) there were only the large brazen vessels of the court remaining (ch. 25:13-17; Jer 27:18ff.). The words, “as Jehovah had spoken,” refer to 2 Kings 20:17 and Isa 39:6, and to the sayings of other prophets, such as Jer 15:13; 17:3, etc.
2 KINGS. 24:14-16
Beside these treasures, he carried away captive to Babylon the cream of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, not only the most affluent, but, as is evident from Jer 24, the best portion in a moral respect. In v. 14 the number of those who were carried off is simply given in a general form, according to its sum-total, as 10,000; and then in vv. 15 and 16 the details are more minutely specified. “All Jerusalem” is the whole of the population of Jerusalem, which is first of all divided into two leading classes, and then more precisely defined by the clause, “nothing was left except the common people,” and reduced to the cream of the citizens. The king, queen-mother, and king’s wives being passed over and mentioned for the first time in the special list in v. 15, there are noticed here kaal-hasaariym and lyijæ rwOBGi lKo , who form the first of the leading classes.
By the rcæ are meant, according to v. 15, the syris; , chamberlains, i.e., the officials of the king’s court in general, and by xr,a, aleWl (“the mighty of the land”) all the heads of the tribes and families of the nation that were found in Jerusalem; and under the last the priests and prophets, who were also carried away according to Jer 29:1, with Ezekiel among them (Ezek 1:1), are included as the spiritual heads of the people. The lyijæ rwOBGi are called lyijæ vyai in v. 16; their number was 7000. The persons intended are not warriors, but men of property, as in 2 Kings 15:20. The second class of those who ere carried away consisted of kaal-hechaaraash, all the workers in stone, metal, and wood, that is to say, masons, smiths, and carpenters; and rGes]mæ , the locksmiths, including probably not actual locksmiths only, but makers of weapons also.
There is no need for any serious refutation of the marvellous explanation given of rGes]mæ by Hitzig (on Jer 24:1), who derives it from smæ and rGe , and supposes it to be an epithet applied to the remnant of the Canaanites, who had been made into tributary labourers, although it has been adopted by Thenius and Graf, who make them into artisans of the foreign socagers. xr,a;h;Aµ[æ tLæDæ = xr,a;h;AtLæHæ (2 Kings 25:12), the poor people of the land, i.e., the lower portion of the population of Jerusalem, from whom Nebuchadnezzar did not fear any rebellion, because they possessed nothing (Jer 39:10), i.e., neither property (money nor other possessions), nor strength and ability to organize a revolt. The antithesis to these formed by the hm;j;l]mi `hc;[; rwOBGi , the strong or powerful men, who were in a condition to originate and carry on a war; for this category includes all who were carried away, not merely the thousand workmen, but also the seven thousand lyijæ vyai , and the king’s officers and the chiefs of the nation, whose number amounted to two thousand, since the total number of the exiles was then thousand. There is no special allusion to warriors or military, because in the struggle for the rescue of the capital and the kingdom from destruction every man who could bear arms performed military service, so that the distinction between warriors and non-warriors was swept away, and the actual warriors are swallowed up in the ten thousand. Babel is the country of Babylonia, or rather the Babylonian empire.
2 KINGS. 24:17
Over the lower classes of the people who had been left behind Nebuchadnezzar placed the paternal uncle of the king, who had been led away, viz., Mattaniah, and made him king under the name of Zedekiah. He was the youngest son of Josiah (Jer 1:3; 37:1); was only ten years old when his father died, and twenty-one years old when he ascended the throne; and as the uncle of Jehoiachin, who being only a youth of eighteen could not have a son capable of reigning, had the first claim to the throne. Instead of dwOD, his uncle, we have in 2 Chron 36:10 ja; , his brother, i.e., his nearest relation. On the change in the name see at 2 Kings 23:34. The name hY;qid]xi , i.e., he who has Jehovah’s righteousness, was probably chosen by Mattaniah in the hope that through him or in his reign the Lord would create the righteousness promised to His people.
REIGN OF ZEDEKIAH, DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH, AND FATE OF THE PEOPLE LEFT BEHIND, AND OF KING JEHOIACHIN.
F245 2 KINGS. 24:18-19
Length and spirit of Zedekiah’s reign (cf. Jer 52:1-3, and 2 Chron 36:11-13).-Zedekiah’s mother Hamital, daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah, was also the mother of Jehoahaz (2 Kings 23:31); consequently he was his own brother and the half-brother of Jehoiakim, whose mother was named Zebidah (2 Kings 23:36). His reign lasted eleven years, and in its attitude towards the Lord exactly resembled that of his brother Jehoiakim, except that Zedekiah does not appear to have possessed so much energy for that which was evil. According to Jer 38:5 and 24ff., he was weak in character, and completely governed by the great men of his kingdom, having no power or courage whatever to offer resistance. but, like them, he did not hearken to the words of the Lord through Jeremiah (Jer 37:2), or, as it is expressed in 2 Chron 36:12, “he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spake to him out of the mouth of the Lord.”
2 KINGS. 24:20
“For because of the wrath of the Lord it happened concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” The subject to hy;h; is to be taken from what precedes, viz., Zedekiah’s doing evil, or that such a God-resisting man as Zedekiah became king. “Not that it was of God that Zedekiah was wicked, but that Zedekiah, a man (if we believe Brentius, in loc.) simple, dependent upon counsellors, yet at the same time despising the word of God and impenitent (2 Chron 36:12-13), became king, so as to be the cause of Jerusalem’s destruction” (Seb. Schm.). On wgw Ëlæv; `d[æ cf. v. 3, and 2 Kings 17:18,23. “And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babel,” who, according to Chron 36:13, had made him swear by God, to whom he was bound by oath to render fealty. This breach of covenant and frivolous violation of his oath Ezekiel also condemns in sharp words (Ezek 17:13ff.), as a grievous sin against the Lord. Zedekiah also appears from the very first to have had no intention of keeping the oath of fealty which he took to the king of Babel with very great uprightness.
For only a short time after he was installed as king he despatched an embassy to Babel (Jer 29:3), which, judging from the contents of the letter to the exiles that Jeremiah gave to the ambassadors to take with them, can hardly have been sent with any other object that to obtain from the king of Babel the return of those who had been carried away. Then in the fourth year of his reign he himself made a journey to Babel (Jer. 41:59), evidently to investigate the circumstances upon the spot, and to ensure the king of Babel of his fidelity. And in the fifth month of the same year, probably after his return from Babel, ambassadors of the Moabites, Ammonites, Tyrians, and Sidonians came to Jerusalem to make an alliance with him for throwing off the Chaldaean yoke (Jer 27:3). Zedekiah also had recourse to Egypt, where the enterprising Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) had ascended the throne; and then, in spite of the warnings of Jeremiah, trusting to the help of Egypt, revolted from the king of Babel, probably at a time when Nebuchadnezzar (according to the combinations of M. v. Nieb., which are open to question however) was engaged in a war with Media.
2 KINGS. 25:1-7
Siege and conquest of Jerusalem; Zedekiah taken prisoner and led away to Babel (cf. Jer 52:4-11 and 39:1-7).-V. 1. In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar marched with all his forces against Jerusalem and commenced the siege (cf. Jer 39:1), after he had taken all the rest of the fortified cities of the land, with the exception of Lachish and Azekah, which were besieged at the same time as Jerusalem (Jer 34:7). On the very same day the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem was revealed to the prophet Ezekiel in his exile (Ezek 24:1). “And they built against it (the city) siege-towers round about.” qyeD; , which only occurs here and in Jeremiah (Jer 52:4) and Ezekiel (Ezek 4:2; 17:17; 21:27; 26:8), does not mean either a line of circumvallation (J. D. Mich., Hitzig), or the outermost enclosure constructed of palisades (Thenius, whose assertion that qyeD; is always mentioned as the first work of the besiegers is refuted by Ezek 17:17 and 21:27), but a watch, and that in a collective sense: watch-towers or siegetowers (cf. Ges. thes. p. 330, and Hävernick on Ezek 4:2).
Verse 2. “And the city was besieged till the eleventh year of king Zedekiah,” in which the northern wall of the city was broken through on the ninth day of the fourth month (v. 3). That Jerusalem could sustain a siege of this duration, namely eighteen months, shows what the strength of the fortifications must have been. Moreover the siege was interrupted for a short time, when the approach of the Egyptian king Hophra compelled the Chaldaeans to march to meet him and drive him back, which they appear to have succeeded in doing without a battle (cf. Jer 37:5ff., Ezek 17:7).
Verse 3-4. Trusting partly to the help of the Egyptians and partly to the strength of Jerusalem, Zedekiah paid no attention to the repeated entreaties of Jeremiah, that he would save himself with his capital and people from the destruction which was otherwise inevitable, by submitting, to the Chaldaeans (cf. Jer. 21:37 and 38), but allowed things to reach their worst, until the famine became so intense, that inhuman horrors were perpetrated (cf. Lam 2:20-21; 4:9-10), and eventually a breach was made in the city wall on the ninth day of the fourth month. The statement of the month is omitted in our text, where the words y[iybir] vd,jo (Jer 52:6, cf. 39:2) have fallen out before [væTe (v. 3, commencement) through the oversight of a copyist. The overwhelming extent of the famine is mentioned, not “because the people were thereby rendered quite unfit to offer any further resistance” (Seb. Schm.), but as a proof of the truth of the prophetic announcements (Lev 26:29; Deut 28:53-57; Jer 15:2; 27:13; Ezek 4:16- 17). xr,a, `µ[æ are the common people in Jerusalem, or the citizens of the capital.
From the more minute account of the entrance of the enemy into the city in Jer 39:3-5 we learn that the Chaldaeans made a breach in the northern or outer wall of the lower city, i.e., the second wall, built by Hezekiah and Manasseh (2 Chron 32:5; 33:14), and forced their way into the lower city hn,v]mi , 22:14), so that their generals took their stand at the gate of the centre, which was in the wall that separated the lower city from the upper city upon Zion, and formed the passage from the one to the other. When Zedekiah saw them here, he fled by night with the soldiers out of the city, through the gate between the two walls at or above the king’s garden, on the road to the plain of the Jordan, while the Chaldaeans were round about the city. In v. 4 a faulty text has come down to us. In the clause hm;j;l]Mihæ yven]aæAlk;w] the verb jræB; is omitted, if not even more, namely `ry[i ˆmi ax;y; jræB; , “fled and went out of the city.”
And if we compare Jer 39:4, it is evident that before mh yven]aæAlk;w] still more has dropped out, not merely Ël,m, , which must have stood in the text, since according to v. 5 the king was among the fugitives; but most probably the whole clause hd;Why] Ël,m, hY;qid]xi ha;r; rv,a hy;h; , since the words mh yven]aæAlk;w] have no real connection with what precedes, and cannot form a circumstantial clause so far as the sense is concerned. The “gate between the two walls, which (was) at or over `l[æ ) the king’s garden,” was a gate at the mouth of the Tyropoeon, that is to say, at the south-eastern corner of the city of Zion; for, according to Neh 3:15, the king’s garden was at the pool of Siloah, i.e., at the mouth of the Tyropoeon (see Rob. Pal. ii. 142). By this defile, therefore, the approach to the city was barred by a double wall, the inner one running from Zion to the Ophel, whilst the outer one, at some distance off, connected the Zion wall with the outer surrounding wall of the Ophel, and most probably enclosed the king’s garden. The subject to Ëlæy; is Ël,m, , which has dropped out before mh yven]aæAlk;w] . `bre[ is the lowland valley on both sides of the Jordan (see at Deut 1:1).
Verse 5. As the Chaldaeans were encamped around the city, the flight was immediately discovered. The Chaldaean army pursued him, and overtook him in the steppes of Jericho, whilst his own army was dispersed, all of which Ezekiel had foreseen in the Spirit (Ezek 12:3ff.). wOjyriy] `bre[ are that portion of the plain of the Jordan which formed the country round Jericho (see at Josh 4:13).
Verse 6. Zedekiah having been seized by the Chaldaeans, was taken to the king of Babel in the Chaldaean headquarters at Riblah (see at 2 Kings 23:33), and was there put upon his trial. According to v. 1, Nebuchadnezzar had commenced the siege of Jerusalem in person; but afterwards, possibly not till after the Egyptians who came to relieve the besieged city had been repulsed, he transferred the continuance of the siege, which was a prolonged one, to his generals, and retired to Riblah, to conduct the operations of the whole campaign from thence lpAta, fp;v]mi rB,Di , to conduct judicial proceedings with any one, i.e., to hear and judge him. For this Jeremiah constantly uses the plural fp;v]mi , not only in Jer 52:9 and 39:5, but also in ch. 1:16 and 4:12.
Verse 7. The punishment pronounced upon Zedekiah was the merited reward of the breach of his oath, and his hardening himself against the counsel of the Lord which was announced to him by Jeremiah during the siege, that he should save not only his own life, but also Jerusalem from destruction, by a voluntary submission to the Chaldaeans, whereas by obstinate resistance he would bring an ignominious destruction upon himself, his family, the city, and the whole people (Jer 38:17ff., 32:5; 34:3ff.). His sons, who, though not mentioned in v. 4, had fled with him and had been taken, and (according to Jer 52:10 and 39:6) all the nobles (princes) of Judah, sc. those who had fled with the king, were slain before his eyes. He himself was then blinded, and led away to Babel, chained with double chains of brass, and kept a prisoner there till his death (Jer 52:11); so that, as Ezekiel (Ezek 12:13) had prophesied, he came to Babel, but did not see the land, and died there. Blinding by pricking out the eyes was a common punishment for princes among the Babylonians and Persians (cf.
Herod. vii. 18, and Brisson, de region Pers. princip. p. 589). tv,jn] , double brazen chains, are brazen fetters for the hands and feet. Samson was treated in the same manner by the Philistines (Judg 16:21).
2 KINGS. 25:8-21
Destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
The people carried away to Babel (cf. Jer 52:12-27, and 39:8-10).-In this section we have first a general account of the destruction of the temple and city (vv. 8-10), and of the carrying away of the people (vv. 11 and 12), and then a more particular description of what was done with the metal vessels of the temple (vv. 13-17), and how the spiritual and secular leaders of the people who had been taken prisoners were treated (vv. 18-21).
Verse 8-10. The destruction of Jerusalem, by the burning of the temple, of the king’s palace, and of all the larger buildings, and by throwing down the walls, was effected by Nebuzaradan, the chief of the body-guard of Nebuchadnezzar, on the seventh day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of the seventh day we have the tenth in Jer 52:12. This difference might be reconciled, as proposed by earlier commentators, on the assumption that the burning of the city lasted several days, commencing on the seventh and ending on the tenth. But since there are similar differences met with afterwards (vv. 17 and 19) in the statement of numbers, which can only be accounted for from the substitution of similar numeral letters, we must assume that there is a change of this kind here. Which of the two dates is the correct one it is impossible to determine.
The circumstance that the later Jews kept the ninth as a fast-day cannot be regarded as decisive evidence in favour of the date given in Jeremiah, as Thenius supposes; for in Zech 7:3 and 8:19 the fasting of the fifth month is mentioned, but no day is given; and though in the Talmudic times the ninth day of the month began to be kept as a fast-day, this was not merely in remembrance of the Chaldaean destruction of Jerusalem, but of the Roman also, and of three other calamities which had befallen the nation (see the statement of the Gemara on this subject in Lightfoot, Opp. ii. p. 139, ed.
Leusden, and in Köhler on Zech 7:3), from which we see that the Gemarists in the most unhistorical manner grouped together different calamitous events in one single day. The nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar corresponds to the eleventh of Zedekiah (see at 2 Kings 24:12). Nebuzaradan is not mentioned in Jer 39:3 among the Chaldaean generals who forced their way into the city, so that he must have been ordered to Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar after the taking of the city and the condemnation of Zedekiah, to carry out the destruction of the city, the carrying away of the people, and the appointment of a deputy-governor over those who were left behind in the land.
This explains in a very simple manner how a month could intervene between their forcing their way into the city, at all events into the lower city, and the burning of it to the ground, without there being any necessity to assume, with Thenius, that the city of Zion held out for a month, which is by no means probable, for the simple reason that the fighting men had fled with Zedekiah and had been scattered in their flight. µytiB; f1 Abræ = jB; rcæ in Gen 37:36; 39:1, was with the Babylonians, as with the Egyptians, the chief of the king’s body-guard, whose duty it was to execute the sentences of death (see at Gen 37:36). jB; answers to the ytireK]hæ of the Israelites (2 Sam 8:18, etc.). In Jer 52:12 we have Ël,m, µynip; `rmæ[; instead of Ël,m, `db,[, , without the rv,a , which is rarely omitted in prose, and µlæv;Wry] instead of µlæv;Wry] : he came into Jerusalem, not he forced a way into the real Jerusalem (Thenius). The meaning is not altered by these two variations.
Verse 9-10. By the words, “every great house,” ry yTeB;AlK; tae is more minutely defined: not all the houses to the very last, but simply all the large houses he burned to the very last, together with the temple and the royal palaces. The victors used one portion of the dwelling-houses for their stay in Jerusalem. He then had all the walls of the city destroyed. In Jeremiah lKo is omitted before hm;wOj , as not being required for the sense; and also the tae before jB; bræ , which is indispensable to the sense, and has fallen out through a copyist’s oversight.
Verse 11-12. The rest of the people he led away, both those who had been left behind in the city and the deserters who had gone over to the Chaldaeans, and the remnant of the multitude. ˆwOmh; rt,y, , for which we have ˆwOma; rt,y, in Jer 52:15, has been interpreted in various ways. As ˆwOma; signifies an artist or artificer in Prov 8:30, and `µ[æ rt,y, has just preceded it, we might be disposed to give the preference to the reading ˆwOma; , as Hitzig and Graf have done, and understand by it the remnant of the artisans, who were called rGes]mæ vr;j; in 2 Kings 24:14,16. But this view is precluded by Jer 39:9, where we find raæv; `µ[æ rt,y, instead of ˆwOma; rt,y, or ˆwOmh;j, yi .
These words cannot be set aside by the arbitrary assumption that they crept into the text through a copyist’s error; for the assertion that they contain a purposeless repetition is a piece of dogmatical criticism, inasmuch as there is a distinction drawn in Jer 39:9 between `ry[i raæv; `µ[æ rt,y, and raæv; `µ[æ rt,y, . Consequently ˆwOma; is simply another form for ˆwOmh; ( h and ynæa being interchanged) in the sense of a mass of people, and we have simply the choice left between two interpretations. Either `ry[i raæv; `µ[æ rt,y, means the fighting people left in the city, as distinguished from the deserters who had fled to the Chaldaeans, and ˆwOma; = ˆwOmh; rt,y, in Jer 52:15, or raæv; `µ[æ rt,y, in Jer 39:9, the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; or µ[;h; rt,y, ry[iB; µyria;v]Nihæ is the people left in Jerusalem (warriors and non-warriors), and ˆwOmh; rt,y, the rest of the population of the land outside Jerusalem. The latter is probably the preferable view, not only because full justice is thereby done to `ry[i in the first clause, but also because it is evident from the exception mentioned in v. 12 that the deportation was not confined to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but extended to the population of the whole land.
The “poor people,” whom he allowed to remain in the land as vine-dressers and husbandmen, were the common people, or people without property, not merely in Jerusalem, but throughout the whole land. xr,a, hL;Dæ = xrr,a;h;Aµ[æ tLæDæ (2 Kings 24:14). Instead of hL;Dæ we have in Jeremiah midalowt: the plural used in an abstract sense, “the poverty,” i.e., the lower people, “the poor who had nothing” (Jer 39:10). Instead of the Chethîb µybig;l] from bWG, secuit, aravit, the Keri has bWG from bgæy; , in the same sense, after Jer 52:16.
Verse 13-17. The brazen vessels of the temple were broken in pieces, and the brass, and smaller vessels of brass, silver, and gold, were carried away.
Compare Jer 52:17-23, where several other points are mentioned that have been passed over in the account before us. The pillars of brass (see 1 Kings 7:15ff.), the stands (see 1 Kings 7:27ff.), and the brazen sea (1 Kings 7:23ff.), were broken in pieces, because it would have been difficult to carry these colossal things away without breaking them up. On the smaller vessels used in the worship (v. 14) see 1 Kings 7:40. In Jer 52:18 qr;z]mi are also mentioned. V. 15 is abridged still more in contrast with Jer 52:19, and only hT;j]mæ and qr;z]mi are mentioned, whereas in Jeremiah six different things are enumerated beside the candlesticks. bh;z; rv,a , “what was of gold, gold, what was of silver, silver, the captain of the guard took away,” is a comprehensive description of the objects carried away.
To this there is appended a remark in v. 16 concerning the quantity of the brass of the large vessels, which was so great that it could not be weighed; and in v. 17 a supplementary notice respecting the artistic work of the two pillars of brass. wgw `dWM[æ is placed at the head absolutely: as for the pillars, etc., the brass of all these vessels was not to be weighed. In Jer 52:20, along with the brazen sea, the twelve brazen oxen under it are mentioned; and in the description of the pillars of brass (vv. 21ff.) there are several points alluded to which are omitted in our books, not only here, but also in 1 Kings 7:16ff. For the fact itself see the explanation given at pp. 70-74. The omission of the twelve oxen in so condensed an account as that contained in our text does not warrant the inference that these words in Jeremiah are a spurious addition made by a later copyist, since the assumption that Ahaz sent the brazen oxen to king Tiglath-pileser cannot be proved from 2 Kings 16:17 (see p. 289). Instead of hM;aæ vwOkv; we must read hM;aæ vyai , five cubits, according to Jer 52:22 and 1 Kings 7:16. The hk;b;C[]hæAl[æ at the end of the verse is very striking, since it stands quite alone, and when connected with wgw hL,ae does not appear to yield any appropriate sense, as the second pillar was like the first not merely with regard to the trellis-work, but in its form and size throughout. At the same time, it is possible that the historian intended to give especial prominence to the similarity of the two pillars with reference to this one point alone.
Verse 18-21. (cf. Jer 52:24-27). The principal officers of the temple and city, and sixty men of the population of the land, who were taken at the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuzaradan sent to his king at Riblah, where they were put to death. Seraiah, the high priest, is the grandfather or greatgrandfather of Ezra the scribe (Ezra 7:1; 1 Chr. 5:40). Zephaniah, a priest of the second rank hn,v]mi ˆheKo ; in Jer. hn,v]mi ˆheKo : see at 2 Kings 23:4), is probably the same person as the son of Maaseiah, who took a prominent place among the priests, according to Jer 21:1; 29:25ff., and 37:3. The “three keepers of the threshold” are probably the three superintendents of the Levites, whose duty it was to keep guard over the temple, and therefore were among the principal officers of the sanctuary.
Verse 19-21. From the city, i.e., from the civil authorities of the city, Nebuzaradan took a king’s chamberlain syris; ), who was commander of the men of war. Instead of dyqip, aWh rv,a we find in Jer 52:25 p’ hy;h; rv,a , who had been commander, with an allusion to the fact that his official function had terminated when the city was conquered. “And five (according to Jeremiah seven) men of those who saw the king’s face,” i.e., who belonged to the king’s immediate circle, de intimis consiliariis regis, and “the scribe of the commander-in-chief, who raised the people of the land for military service,” or who enrolled them. Although rpæs; has the article, which is omitted in Jeremiah, the following words ab;x; rcæ are governed by it, or connected with it in the construct state (Ewald, §290 d.). ab;x; rcæ is the commander-in-chief of the whole of the military forces, and wgwab;x; a more precise definition of rpæs; , and not of ab;x; rcæ , which needed no such definition. “And sixty men of the land-population who were found in the city.” They were probably some of the prominent men of the rural districts, or they may have taken a leading part in the defence of the city, and therefore were executed in Riblah, and not merely deported with the rest of the people.-The account of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah closes with hd;Why] hl,G, in v. 21, “thus was Judah carried away out of its own land;” and in vv. 22-26 there follows merely a brief notice of those who had been left behind in the land, in the place of which we find in Jer. 52:28-40 a detailed account of the number of those who were carried away.
2 KINGS. 25:22-26
Installation of Gedaliah the governor.
His assassination, and the flight of the people to Egypt.-Much fuller accounts have been handed down to us in Jer 40-44 of the events which are but briefly indicated here.
Verse 22-23. Over the remnant of the people left in the land Nebuchadnezzar placed Gedaliah as governor of the land, who took up his abode in Mizpah. Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, who had interested himself on behalf of the prophet Jeremiah and saved his life (Jer 26:24), and the grandson of Shaphan, a man of whom nothing more is known (see at Kings 22:12), had his home in Jerusalem, and, as we may infer from his attitude towards Jeremiah, had probably secured the confidence of the Chaldaeans at the siege and conquest of Jerusalem by his upright conduct, and by what he did to induce the people to submit to the judgment inflicted by God; so that Nebuchadnezzar entrusted him with the oversight of those who were left behind in the land-men, women, children, poor people, and even a few princesses and court-officials, whom they had not thought it necessary or worth while to carry away (Jer 40:7; 41:10,16), i.e., he made him governor of the conquered land.
Mizpah is the present Nebi Samwil, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem (see at Josh 18:26).-On hearing of Gedaliah’s appointment as governor, there came to him “all the captains of the several divisions of the army and their men,” i.e., those portions of the army which had been scattered at the flight of the king (v. 5), and which had escaped from the Chaldaeans, and, as it is expressed in Jer 40:7, had dispersed themselves “in the field,” i.e., about the land. Instead of vyai we have in Jer 40:7 the clearer expression vyai , “and their men,” whilst vyai in our text receives its more precise definition from the previous word lyijæ . Of the military commanders the following are mentioned by name: Ishmael, etc. (the w] before la[em;v]yi , is explic., “and indeed Ishmael”). Ishmael, son of Mattaniah and grandson of Elishama, probably of the king’s secretary mentioned in Jer 36:12 and 20, of royal blood.
Nothing further is known about the other names. We simply learn from Jer 40:13ff. that Johanan had warned Gedaliah against the treachery of Ishmael, and that when Gedaliah was slain by Ishmael, having disregarded the warning, he put himself at the head of the people and marched with them to Egypt, notwithstanding the dissuasions of Jeremiah (Jer 41:15ff.).
Instead of “Johanan the son of Kareah,” we have in Jer 40:8 “Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah;” but it is uncertain whether ˆt;n;wOyw] has crept into the text of Jeremiah from the previous ˆn;j;wOhr] merely through a mistake, and this mistake has brought with it the alteration of ˆBe into ˆBe (Ewald), or whether ˆt;n;wOyw] has dropped out of our text through an oversight, and this omission has occasioned the alteration of ˆBe into ˆBe (Thenius, Graf, etc.). The former supposition is favoured by the circumstance that in Jer 40:13; 41:11,16, Johanan the son of Kareah alone is mentioned. In Jer 40:8 `ypæwO[ ˆBe (Chethîb ypy[ ) stands before ytip;fon] , according to which it was not Seraiah who sprang from Netophah, but Ophai whose sons were military commanders. He was called Netophathite because he sprang from Netopha in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem (Neh 7:26; Ezra 2:22), the identity of which with Beit Nettif is by no means probable (see at 2 Sam 23:28). The name Why;n]zæa\yæ is written Why;n]zæy] in Jeremiah; he was the son of the Maachathite, i.e., his father sprang from the Syrian district of Maacah in the neighbourhood of the Hermon (see at Deut 3:14).
Verse 24. As these men were afraid of the vengeance of the Chaldaeans because they had fought against them, Gedaliah assured them on oath that they had nothing to fear from them if they would dwell peaceably in the land, be submissive to the king of Babel, and cultivate the land (cf. Jer 40:9 and 10). “Servants of the Chaldees” are Chaldaean officials who were subordinate to the governor Gedaliah. Verse 25. In the seventh month, i.e., hardly two months after the destruction of Jerusalem, came Ishmael with ten men to Gedaliah at Mizpah, and murdered him together with the Jews and Chaldaeans, whom he had with him as soldiers to do his bidding and for his protection. This occurred, according to Jer 41:1ff., when Gedaliah had received them hospitably and had invited them to eat with him. Ishmael was instigated to commit this murder by the Ammonitish king Baalis, and Gedaliah had previously been made acquainted with the intended crime and put upon his guard by Johanan, but had put no faith in the information (Jer 40:13-16).
Verse 26. After Ishmael had performed this deed, and had also treacherously murdered a number of men, who had come to the temple with a sacrifice from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, he took the Jews who were at Mizpah prisoners, with some kings’ daughters among them, intending to take them over to the Ammonites; but as soon as his deed became known, he was pursued by Johanan and the rest of the military chiefs and was overtaken at Gibeon, whereupon those who had been led away by him went over to Johanan, so that he was only able to make his escape with eight men and get away to the Ammonites (Jer 41:4-15).
Johanan then went with the rest of the military commanders and the people whom he had brought back into the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, with the intention of fleeing to Egypt for fear of the Chaldaeans. There they did indeed have recourse to the prophet Jeremiah, to inquire of him the word of the Lord; but they did not allow themselves to be diverted from their intention by the word of the Lord which he announced to them, that if they remained in the land they need not fear anything from the king of Babel, but if they went to Egypt they should all perish there with sword, hunger, and pestilence, or by the prediction that the Lord would also deliver Pharaoh Hophra into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 42). They went to Egypt notwithstanding, taking the prophet himself with them, and settled in different cities of Egypt, where they gave themselves up to idolatry, and did not suffer themselves to be drawn away from it even by the severe judgments which the prophet Jeremiah predicted as sure to fall upon them (Jer 43 and 44). In the verse before us we have simply a brief allusion to the eventual result of the whole affair. “Because they were afraid of the Chaldaeans,” namely, that they might possibly take vengeance upon them for the murder of the governor.
2 KINGS. 25:27-30
Jehoiachin delivered from prison, and exalted to royal honours (cf. Jer. 42:31-34).-In the thirty-seventh year after his deportation Jehoiachin was taken out of prison by Evil-merodach when he came to the throne. Ëlæm; hn,v; , in the year of his becoming king, probably immediately after he had ascended the throne, for it was no doubt an act of grace at the commencement of his reign. varoAta, ac;n; , to lift up a persons’ head, i.e., to release him from prison and exalt him to civil honours and dignities (cf.
Gen 40:13). On the coincidence of the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s imprisonment and the commencement of the reign of Evil-merodach see the remarks at 2 Kings 24:12. Instead of the 27th day of the month, the 25th is given in Jeremiah, again through the substitution of similar numeral letters (see at v. 8). Evil-merodach: Ëdærom] lywia’ , Eu>ial Marw>dac or Euialmarwde>k (LXX); Illoarw>damov , possibly a copyist’s error for Ilmarw>dakov , in the Can. Ptol., and in other forms also: see M. v. Nieb.
Gesch. Ass. p. 42, and Ges. thes. p. 41; compounded from the name of the Babylonian god Merodach (see at 2 Kings 20:12) and the prefix Evil, which has not yet been explained with certainty. He reigned two years, according to Berosus in Jos. c. Ap. i. 20, and the Can Ptol.; and according to the verdict of Berosus, prosta>v tw>n pragma>twn ano>mwv kai> aselgw>v ; and was murdered by his brother-in-law Neriglissor. The statement in Jos. Ant. x. 11, 2, to the effect that he reigned eighteen years, and that of Alex. Polyh. in Euseb. Chr. arm. i. p. 45, that he reigned twelve years, are evidently false.
Verse 28. “He spake kindly to him (cf. Jer 12:6), and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babel.” This is not to be understood literally, as signifying that he assigned him a loftier throne than the other kings (Hitzig, Thenius), but figuratively: loco honestiore eum habuit (Ros.). The “kings with him” were dethroned kings, who were kept at the court like Jehoiachin to add to its splendour, just as Cyrus kept the conquered Croesus by his side (Herod. i. 88).
Verse 29,30. “And he (Jehoiachin) changed his prison garments,” i.e., took them off and put other regal clothing on (cf. Gen 41:42). “And ate continually before him all his life,” i.e., ate at the king’s table (cf. 2 Sam 9:7). Moreover a daily ration of food was supplied to him by the king for the maintenance of his retainers, who formed his little court. The ymey]AlK; wyy;jæ of v. 30, upon which Thenius throws suspicion without any reason, refers to Jehoiachin like that in v. 29; for the historian intended to show how Jehoiachin had fared from the day of his elevation to the end of his life. At the same time, we cannot infer from this with any certainty that Jehoiachin died before Evil- merodach; for the favour shown to him might be continued by Evil-merodach’s successor. We cannot make any safe conjecture as to the motives which induced Evil-merodach to pardon Jehoiachin and confer this distinction upon him. The higher ground of this joyful termination of his imprisonment lay in the gracious decree of God, that the seed of David, though severely chastised for its apostasy from the Lord, should not be utterly rejected (2 Sam 7:14-15). At the same time, this event was also intended as a comforting sign to the whole of the captive people, that the Lord would one day put an end to their banishment, if they would acknowledge that it was a well-merited punishment for this sins that they had been driven away from before His face, and would turn again to the Lord their God with all their heart. FOOTNOTES The argument lately adduced by Valentiner in favour of the difference between these two names, viz., that “examples are not wanting of a person being described according to his original descent, although his dwelling-place had been already changed,” and the instance which he cites, viz., Judg 19:16, show that he has overlooked the fact, that in the very passage which he quotes the temporary dwelling-place is actually mentioned along with the native town. In the case before us, on the contrary Ramathaim-zophim is designated, by the use of the expression “from his city,” in v. 3, as the place where Elkanah lived, and where “his house” (v. 19) was still standing.) For the different views which have been held upon this point, see the article “Ramah,” by Pressel, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia.) The fuller and more exact name, however, appears to have been still retained, and the use of it to have been revived after the captivity, in the Ramaqe>m of 1 Macc. 11:34, for which the Codd. have Raqamei>n and Ramaqai>m , and Josephus Ramatha> , and in the Arimathaea of the gospel history (Matt 27:57). “For the opinion that this Ramathaim is a different place from the city of Samuel, and is to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Lydda, which Robinson advocates (Pal. iii. p. 41ff.), is a hasty conclusion, drawn from the association of Ramathaim with Lydda in 1 Macc. 11:34-the very same conclusion which led the author of the Onomasticon to transfer the city of Samuel to the neighbourhood of Lydda” (Grimm on 1 Macc. 11:34).) This name of God was therefore held up before the people of the Lord even in their war-songs and paeans of victory, but still more by the prophets, as a banner under which Israel was to fight and to conquer the world. Ezekiel is the only prophet who does not use it, simply because he follows the Pentateuch so strictly in his style. And it is not met with in the book of Job, just because the theocratic constitution of the Israelitish nation is never referred to in the problem of that book.) The LXX add to ta’s eucha’s autou’ the clause kai> pa>sav ta>v deka>tav th>v gh>v autou> (“and all the tithes of his land”). This addition is just as arbitrary as the alteration of the singular rd,n, into the plural ta>v euca>v autou> . The translator overlooked the special reference of the word rd,n, to the child desired by Elkanah, and imagined-probably with Deut 12:26-27 in his mind, where vows are ordered to be paid at the sanctuary in connection with slain offerings and sacrificial mealsthat when Elkanah made his annual journey to the tabernacle he would discharge all his obligations to God, and consequently would pay his tithes. The genuineness of this additional clause cannot be sustained by an appeal to Josephus (Ant. v. 10, 3), who also has deka>tav te e>feron , for Josephus wrote his work upon the basis of the Alexandrian version. This statement of Josephus is only worthy of notice, inasmuch as it proves the incorrectness of the conjecture of Thenius, that the allusion to the tithes was intentionally dropped out of the Hebrew text by copyists, who regarded Samuel’s Levitical descent as clearly established by 1 Chron 6:7-13 and 19-21. For Josephus (l. c. §2) expressly describes Elkanah as a Levite, and takes no offence at the offering of tithes attributed to him in the Septuagint, simply because he was well acquainted with the law, and knew that the Levites had to pay to the priests a tenth of the tithes that they received from the other tribes, as a heave-offering of Jehovah (Num 18:26ff.; cf. Neh 10:38).
Consequently the presentation of tithe on the part of Elkanah, if it were really well founded in the biblical text, would not furnish any argument against his Levitical descent.) The interpretation of vwOkv; rpæ by en mo>scw trieti>zonti (LXX), upon which Thenius would found an alteration of the text, is proved to be both arbitrary and wrong by the fact that the translators themselves afterwards mention the qusi>a , which Elkanah brought year by year, and the mo>scov , and consequently represent him as offering at least two animals, in direct opposition to the mo>schw trieti>zonti . This discrepancy cannot be removed by the assertion that in v. 24 the sacrificial animal intended for the dedication of the boy is the only one mentioned; and the presentation of the regular festal sacrifice is taken for granted, for an ephah of meal would not be the proper quantity to be offered in connection with a single ox, since, according to the law in Num 15:8-9, only three-tenths of an ephah of meal were required when an ox was presented as a burnt-offering or slain offering. The presentation of an ephah of meal presupposes the offering of three oxen, and therefore shows that in v. 24 the materials are mentioned for all the sacrifices that Elkanah was about to offer.) Theodoret, qu. vii. in 1 Reg. Aukou>h hJ pro>rreJesiv kuri>wv me>n aJrmo>ttei tw> swqJri Cristw> Kata> de> iJstori>an tow> Sadou>k oJ>v ek tou> Elea>zar kata>gwn to> ge>nov th>n arcierwsu>nhn dia> tou> Solomw>nov ede>xato . Augustine says (De civit. Dei xvii. 5, 2): “Although Samuel was not of a different tribe from the one which had been appointed by the Lord to serve at the altar, he was not of the sons of Aaron, whose descendants had been set apart as priests; and thus the change is shadowed forth, which was afterwards to be introduced through Jesus Christ.” And again, §3: “What follows (v. 35) refers to that priest, whose figure was borne by Samuel when succeeding to Eli.” So again in the Berleburger Bible, to the words, “I will raise me up a faithful priest,” this note is added: “Zadok, of the family of Phinehas and Eleazar, whom king Solomon, as the anointed of God, appointed high priest by his ordinance, setting aside the house of Eli (1 Kings 2:35; 1 Chron 29:22). At the same time, just as in the person of Solomon the Spirit of prophecy pointed to the true Solomon and Anointed One, so in this priest did He also point to Jesus Christ the great High Priest.” The Masoretes have taken lk;yhe in this sense, and therefore have placed the Athnach under bkæv; , to separate bkæv; laeWmv] from yy’ lk;yhe , and thus to guard against the conclusion, which might be drawn from this view of lk;yhe that Samuel slept in the holy place.) “It is just the same now, when we take merely a historical Christ outside us for our Redeemer. He must prove His help chiefly internally by His Holy Spirit, to redeem us out of the hand of the Philistines; though externally He must not be thrown into the shade, as accomplishing our justification. If we had not Christ, we could never stand. For there is no help in heaven and on earth beside Him. But if we have Him in no other way than merely without us and under us, if we only preach about Him, teach, hear, read, talk, discuss, and dispute about Him, take His name into our mouth, but will not let Him work and show His power in us, He will no more help us than the ark helped the Israelites.”-Berleburger Bible.) At the close of vv. 3 and 6 the Septuagint contains some comprehensive additions; viz., at the close of v. 3: Cai> ebaru>nqh cei>r Kuri>ou epi> tou>v Azwti>ouv kai> ebasa>nizen autou>v kai> epa>tazen autou>v eiv ta>v eJ>drav autw>n th>n A>zwton kai> ta> oJ>ria auth>v ; and at the end of v. 4: Cai> me>son th>v cw>rav auth>v anefu>hsan mu>ev kai> ege>neto su>gcusiv qana>tou mega>lh en th> po>lei . This last clause we also find in the Vulgate, expressed as follows: Et eballiverunt villae et agri in medio regionis illius, et nati sunt mures, et facta est confusio mortis magnae in civitate. Ewald’s decision with regard to these clauses (Gesch. ii. p. 541) is, that they are not wanted at 1 Sam 5:3,6, but that they are all the more necessary at Sam 6:1; whereas at ch. 5:3,6, they would rather injure the sense.
Thenius admits that the clause appended to v. 3 is nothing more than a second translation of our sixth verse, which has been interpolated by a copyist of the Greek in the wrong place; whereas that of v. 6 contains the original though somewhat corrupt text, according to which the Hebrew text should be emended. But an impartial examination would show very clearly, that all these additions are nothing more than paraphrases founded upon the context. The last part of the addition to v. 6 is taken verbatim from v. 11, whilst the first part is a conjecture based upon 1 Sam 6:4-5. Jerome, if indeed the addition in our text of the Vulgate really originated with him, and was not transferred into his version from the Itala, did not venture to suppress the clause interpolated in the Alexandrian version. This is very evident from the words confusio mortis magnae, which are a literal rendering of su>gcusiv qana>tou mega>lh ; whereas in v. 11, Jerome has given to tw,m; hm;Whm] , which the LXX rendered su>gcusiv qana>tou , the much more accurate rendering pavor mortis. Moreover, neither the Syriac nor Targum Jonath. has this clause; so that long before the time of Jerome, the Hebrew text existed in the form in which the Masoretes have handed it down to us.) Thus, after a shipwreck, any who escaped presented a tablet to Isis, or Neptune, with the representation of a shipwreck upon it; gladiators offered their weapons, and emancipated slaves their fetters. In some of the nations of antiquity even representations of the private parts, in which a cure had been obtained from the deity, were hung up in the temples in honour of the gods (see Schol. ad Aristoph. Acharn. 243, and other proofs in Winer’s Real-wörterbuch, ii. p. 255). Theodoret says, concerning the Christians of the fourth century (Therapeutik.
Disp. viii.): Ao>ti de> tugca>nousin w>nper aitou>sin oiJ pistw>v epagge>llontev anafando>n marturei> ta> tou>twn anaqh>mata th>n iatrei>an dhlou>nta oiJ me>n ga>r ofqalmw>n oiJ de> podw>n a>lloi de> ceirw>n prosfe>rousin ektupw>mata kai> oiJ me>n ek crusou> oiJ de> ex uJlhv argu>rou pepoih>me>na De>cetai ga>r oJ tou>twn Despo>thv kai> ta> smikra> te kai> eu>wna th> tou> prosfe>rontov duna>mei to> dw>ron metrw>n Dhloi> de> tau>ta prokei>mena tw>n paqhma>twn th>n lu>sin hJv anete>qh mnhmei>a para> tw>n arti>wn gegenhme>nwn . And at Rome they still hang up a picture of the danger, from which deliverance had been obtained after a vow, in the church of the saint invoked in the danger.) There is no force at all in the proofs which Thenius has adduced of a gap between vv. 2 and 3. It by no means follows, that because the Philistines had brought back the ark, their rule over the Israelites had ceased, so as to make the words “he will deliver you,” etc., incomprehensible. Moreover, the appearance of Samuel as judge does not presuppose that his assumption of this office must necessarily have been mentioned before. As a general rule, there was no such formal assumption of the office, and this would be least of all the case with Samuel, who had been recognised as an accredited prophet of Jehovah (1 Sam 3:19ff.). And lastly, the reference to idols, and to their being put away in consequence of Samuel’s appeal, is intelligible enough, without any express account of their falling into idolatry, if we bear in mind, on the one hand, the constant inclination of the people to serve other gods, and if we observe, on the other hand, that Samuel called upon the people to turn to the Lord with all their heart and serve Him alone, which not only does not preclude, but actually implies, the outward continuance of the worship of Jehovah.) Calvin has correctly pointed out how much would have been warrantable under the circumstances: “They might, indeed, have reminded Samuel of his old age, which rendered him less able to attend to the duties of his office, and also of the avarice of his sons and the corruptness of the judges; or they might have complained that his sons did not walk in his footsteps, and have asked that God would choose suitable men to govern them, and thus have left the whole thing to His will. And if they had done this, there can be no doubt that they would have received a gracious and suitable answer. But they did not think of calling upon God; they demanded that a king should be given them, and brought forward the customs and institutions of other nations.” There is no tenable ground for the assumption of Thenius and others, that this account was derived from a different source from ch. 8, 1 Sam 10:17-27, and 11ff.; for the assertion that 1 Sam 10:17-27 connects itself in the most natural way with ch. 8 is neither well-founded nor correct. In the first place, it was certainly more natural that Samuel, who was to place a king over the nation according to the appointment of God, should be made acquainted with the man whom God had appointed, before the people elected him by lot. And secondly, Saul’s behaviour in hiding himself when the lots were cast (1 Sam 10:21ff.), can only be explained on the supposition that Samuel had already informed him that he was the appointed king; whereas, if this had not been the case, it would be altogether incomprehensible.) For gG;hæ l[æ lWav;Aµ[i rBedæy]wæ the LXX have kai> die>strwsan tw> Saou>l epi> tw> dw>mati kai> ekoimh>qh , “they prepared Saul a bed upon the house, and he slept,” from which Clericus conjectured that these translators had read lwavl wdbryw ( WdB]r\ywæ or WdB]r]Yiwæ ); and Ewald and Thenius propose to alter the Hebrew text in this way. But although wgw’ µkæv; (v. 26) no doubt presupposes that Saul had slept in Samuel’s house, and in fact upon the roof, the remark of Thenius, “that the private conversation upon the roof (v. 25) comes too early, as Saul did not yet know, and was not to learn till the following day, what was about to take place,” does not supply any valid objection to the correctness of the Masoretic text, or any argument in favour of the Septuagint rendering or interpretation, since it rests upon an altogether unfounded and erroneous assumption, viz., that Samuel had talked with Saul about his call to the throne. Moreover, “the strangeness” of the statement in v. 26, “they rose up early,” and then “when the morning dawned, Samuel called,” etc., cannot possibly throw any suspicion upon the integrity of the Hebrew text, as this “strangeness” vanishes when we take wgw `hl;[; hy;h; as a more precise definition of µkæv; . The Septuagint translators evidently held the same opinion as their modern defenders. They took offence at Samuel’s private conversation with Saul, because he did not make known to him the word of God concerning his call to the throne till the next morning; and, on the other hand, as their rising the next morning is mentioned in v. 26, they felt the absence of any allusion to their sleeping, and consequently not only interpreted dbry by a conjectural emendation as standing for dbry , because dbær]mæ dbær; is used in Prov 7:16 to signify the spreading of mats or carpets for a bed, but also identified µkæv; with bkæv; , and rendered it ekoimh>qh . At the same time, they did not reflect that the preparation of the bed and their sleeping during the night were both of them matters of course, and there was consequently no necessity to mention them; whereas Samuel’s talking with Saul upon the roof was a matter of importance in relation to the whole affair, and one which could not be passed over in silence. Moreover, the correctness of the Hebrew text is confirmed by all the other ancient versions. Not only do the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic follow the Masoretic text, but Jerome does the same in the rendering adopted by him, “Et locutus est cum Saule in solario. Cumque mane surrexissent;” though the words “stravitque Saul in solario et dormivit” have been interpolated probably from the Itala into the text of the Vulgate which has come down to us.) The LXX and Vulgate have expanded the second half of this verse by a considerable addition, which reads as follows in the LXX: ouci> ke>crike> se ku>riov eiv a>rconta epi> to>n lao>n autou> epi> Israh>l kai> su> a>rxeiv en law> kuri>ou kai> su> sw>seiv auto>n ek ceiro>v ecqrw>n autou> kuklo>qen kai> tou>to soi to> shmei>on oJti e>crise> se ku>riov epi> klhronomi>an autou> eiv a>rconta . And in the Vulgate: Ecce, unxit te Dominus super haereditatem suam in principem, et liberabis populum suum de manibus inimicorum ejus, qui in circuitu ejus sunt. Et hoc tibi signum, quia unxit te Deus in principem . A comparison of these two texts will show that the LXX interpolated their addition between µwOlv; and yKi , as the last clause, oJ>ti e>crise> se ku>riov epi> klhronomi>an autou> eiv a>rconta , is a verbal translation of dygin;l] wOtl;j\næAl[æ hwO;hy] Ëj\v;m] yKi . In the Vulgate, on the other hand, the first clause, ecce unxit-in principem, corresponds word for word with the Hebrew text, from which we may see that Jerome translated our present Hebrew text; and the addition, et liberabis, etc., was interpolated into the Vulgate from the Itala. The text of the Septuagint is nothing more than a gloss formed from 1 Sam 9:16-17, which the translator thought necessary, partly because he could not clearly see the force of yKi µwOlv; , but more especially because he could not explain the fact that Samuel speaks to Saul of signs, without having announced them to him as such. But the author of the gloss has overlooked the fact that Samuel does not give Saul a shmei>on , but three shmei>a , and describes the object of them in v. 7 as being the following, namely, that Saul would learn when they took place what he had to do, for Jehovah was with him, and not that they would prove that the Lord had anointed him to be captain.) As the account of Saul’s meeting with Samuel, in ch. 9, when properly understood, is not at variance with the tradition concerning the situation of Rachel’s tomb, and the passage before us neither requires us on the one had to understand the Ephratah of Gen 35:19 and 48:7 as a different place from Bethlehem, and erase “that is Bethlehem” from both passages as a gloss that has crept into the text, and then invent an Ephratah in the neighbourhood of Bethel between Benjamin and Ephraim, as Thenius does, nor warrants us on the other hand in transferring Rachel’s tomb to the neighbourhood of Bethel, in opposition to the ordinary tradition, as Kurtz proposes; so the words of Jer 31:15, “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children,” etc., furnish no evident that Rachel’s tomb was at Ramah (i.e., er Râm). “For here (in the cycle of prophecy concerning the restoration of all Israel, Jer 30-33) Rachel’s weeping is occasioned by the fact of the exiles of Benjamin having assembled together in Ramah (Jer 40:1), without there being any reason why Rachel’s tomb should be sought for in the neighbourhood of this Ramah” (Delitzsch on Gen 35:20).) Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 29) supposes Zelzah to be unsuitable to the context, if taken as the name of a place, and therefore follows the aJllome>nouv mega>la of the LXX, and renders the word “in great haste;” but he has neither given any reason why the name of a place is unsuitable here, nor considered that the Septuagint rendering is merely conjectural, and has nothing further to support it than the fact that the translators rendered jlæx; efh>lato , “he sprang upon him,” in v. 6 and 1 Sam 11:6, and took jxlx to be an emphatic form of jlx .) The opinion expressed by Ewald and Thenius, that Deborah’s mourning oak (Gen 35:8) is intended, and that Tabor is either a different form of Deborah, or that Tabor should be altered into Deborah, has no foundation to rest upon; for the fact that the oak referred to stood below (i.e., to the south of) Bethel, and the three men whom Saul was to meet at the terebinth of Tabor were going to Bethel, by no means establishes the identity of the two, as their going up to Bethel does not prove that they were already in the neighbourhood of Bethel. Moreover, the Deborah oak was on the north of Gibeah, whereas Saul met the three men between Rachel’s tomb and Gibeah, i.e., to the south of Gibeah.) The difficulty in question has been solved on the whole quite correctly by Brentius. “It is not to be supposed,” he says, “that Samuel was directing Saul to go at once to Gilgal as soon as he should go away from him, and wait there for seven days; but that he was to do this after he had been chosen king by public lot, and having conquered the Ammonites and been confirmed in the kingdom, was about to prepare to make war upon the Philistines, on whose account chiefly it was that he had been called to the kingdom. For the Lord had already spoken thus to Samuel concerning Saul: ‘He will save my people from the hands of the Philistines, because I have looked upon my people.’ This is the meaning therefore of Samuel’s command: Thou hast been called to the kingdom chiefly for this purpose, that thou mayest deliver Israel from the tyranny of the Philistines. When therefore thou shalt enter upon this work, go down into Gilgal and wait there seven days, until I shall come to thee: for thou shalt then offer a holocaust, though not before I come to thee, and I will show thee what must be done in order that our enemies the Philistines may be conquered. The account of this is given below in ch. 13, where we learn that Saul violated this command.”) Thenius follows De Wette, and adduces the incompatibility of ch. 8 and 1 Sam 10:17-27 with ch. 9:1-10,16, as a proof that in vv. 17-27 we have a different account of the manner in which Saul became king from that given in 1 Sam 9:1-10,16, and one which continues the account in 1 Sam 8:22. “It is thoroughly inconceivable,” he says, “that Samuel should have first of all anointed Saul king by the instigation of God, and then have caused the lot to be cast, as it were, for the sake of further confirmation; for in that case either the prophet would have tempted God, or he would have made Him chargeable before the nation with an unworthy act of jugglery.” Such an argument as this could only be used by critics who deny not only the inspiration of the prophets, but all influence on the part of the living God upon the free action of men, and cannot therefore render the truth of the biblical history at all doubtful. Even Ewald sees no discrepancy here, and observes in his history (Gesch. iii. p. 32): “If we bear in mind the ordinary use made of the sacred lot at that time, we shall find that there is nothing but the simple truth in the whole course of the narrative. The secret meeting of the seer with Saul was not sufficient to secure a complete and satisfactory recognition of him as king; it was also necessary that the Spirit of Jehovah should single him out publicly in a solemn assembly of the nation, and point him out as the man of Jehovah.”) It is true the Septuagint introduces the words kai> prosa>gousi th>n fulh>n Mattari> eiv a>ndrav before dkæl; , and this clause is also found in a very recent Hebrew MS (viz., 451 in Kennicott’s dissert. gener. p. 491). But it is very evident that these words did not form an integral part of the original text, as Thenius supposes, but were nothing more than an interpolation of the Sept. translators, from the simple fact that they do not fill up the supposed gap at all completely, but only in a very partial and in fact a very mistaken manner; for the family of Matri could not come to the lot eiv a>ndrav (man by man), but only kat> oi>kouv (by households: Josh 7:14). Before the household (beth-aboth, father’s house) of Saul could be taken, it was necessary that the rb,G, ( a>ndrev ), i.e., the different heads of households, should be brought; and it was not till then that Kish, or his son Saul, could be singled out as the appointed of the Lord. Neither the author of the gloss in the LXX, nor the modern defender of the gloss, has thought of this.) The time of this campaign is not mentioned in the Hebrew text. But it is very evident from 1 Sam 12:12, where the Israelites are said to have desired a king, when they saw that Nahash had come against them, that Nahash had invaded Gilead before the election of Saul as king. The Septuagint, however, renders the words vræj; hy;h; (1 Sam 10:27) by kai> egenh>qh oJv meta> mh>na , and therefore the translators must have read vd,jomeK] , which Ewald and Thenius would adopt as an emendation of the Hebrew text. But all the other ancient versions give the Masoretic text, viz., not only the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, but even Jerome, who renders it ille vero dissimulabat se audire. It is true that in our present Vulgate text these words are followed by et factum est quasi post mensem; but this addition has no doubt crept in from the Itala. With the general character of the Septuagint, the rendering of vræj; by oJv meta> mh>na is no conclusive proof that the word in their Hebrew Codex was vd,jomeK] ; it simply shows that this was the interpretation which they gave to kmchrys. And Josephus (vi. 5, 1), who is also appealed to, simply establishes the fact that oJv meta> mh>na stood in the Sept. version of his day, since he made use of this version and not of the original text. Moreover, we cannot say with Ewald, that this was the last place in which the time could be overlooked; for it is perfectly evident that Nahash commenced the siege of Jabesh shortly after the election of Saul at Mizpeh, as we may infer from the verb `hl;[; , when taken in connection with the fact implied in 1 Sam 12:12, that he had commenced the war with the Israelites before this. And lastly, it is much more probable that the LXX changed vyrjmk into vdjmk , than that the Hebrew readers of the Old Testament should have altered vdjmk into vyrjmk, without defining the time more precisely by dj;a, , or some other number.) “Not only signifying that the public rejoicing should not be interrupted, but reminding them of the clemency of God, and urging that since Jehovah had shown such clemency upon that day, that He had overlooked their sins, and given them a glorious victory, it was only right that they should follow His example, and forgive their neighbours’ sins without bloodshed.”-Seb. Schmidt.) The connection of vv. 8-11 of this chapter with 1 Sam 10:8 is adduced in support of the hypothesis that ch. 13 forms a direct continuation of the account that was broken off in 1 Sam 10:16. This connection must be admitted; but it by no means follows that in the source from which the books before us were derived, ch. 13 was directly attached to Sam 8:16, and that Samuel intended to introduce Saul publicly as king here in Gilgal immediately before the attack upon the Philistines, to consecrate him by the solemn presentation of sacrifices, and to connect with this the religious consecration of the approaching campaign. For there is not a word about any such intention in the chapter before us or in 1 Sam 10:8, nor even the slightest hint at it. Thenius has founded this view of his upon his erroneous interpretation of dræy; in 1 Sam 10:8 as an imperative, as if Samuel intended to command Saul to go to Gilgal immediately after the occurrence of the signs mentioned in 1 Sam 10:2ff.: a view which is at variance with the instructions given to him, to do what his hand should find after the occurrence of those signs (see p. 431). To this we may also add the following objections: How is it conceivable that Saul, who concealed his anointing even from his own family after his return from Samuel to Gibeah (1 Sam 10:16), should have immediately after chosen 3000 men of Israel to begin the war against the Philistines? How did Saul attain to any such distinction, that at his summons all Israel gathered round him as their king, even before he had been publicly proclaimed king in the presence of the people, and before he had secured the confidence of the people by any kingly heroic deed? The fact of his having met with a band of prophets, and even prophesied in his native town of Gibeah after his departure from Samuel, and that this had become a proverb, is by no means enough to explain the enterprises described in 1 Sam 8:1-7, which so absolutely demand the incidents that occurred in the meantime as recorded in Sam 10:17-12:25 even to make them intelligible, that any writing in which 1 Sam 13:2ff. following directly upon ch. 10:16 would necessarily be regarded as utterly faulty. This fact, which I have already adduced in my examination of the hypothesis defended by Thenius in my Introduction to the Old Testament (p. 168), retains its force undiminished, even though, after a renewed investigation of the question, I have given up the supposed connection between 1 Sam 10:8 and the proclamation mentioned in ch. 11:14ff., which I defended there. The traditional account that Saul reigned forty years (Acts 13:24, and Josephus, Ant. vi. 14, 9) is supposed to have arisen, according to the conjecture of Thenius (on 2 Sam 2:10), from the fact that his son Ishbosheth was forty years old when he began to reign, and the notion that as he is not mentioned among the sons of Saul in 1 Sam 14:49, he must have been born after the commencement of Saul’s own reign.
This conjecture is certainly a probable one; but it is much more natural to assume that as David and Solomon reigned forty years, it arose from the desire to make Saul’s reign equal to theirs. Consequently there is no ground whatever for altering the text according to the confused rendering of the LXX, en Machma’s ex enanti>av Baiqwrw>n kata> no>tou , for the purpose of substituting for the correct statement in the text a description which would be geographically wrong, viz., to the south-east of Beth-horon, since Michmash was neither to the south nor to the south-east, but to the east of Beth-horon. From this arrangement of the history, according to which the only two points that are minutely described in connection with the war with the Philistines are those which bring out the attitude of the king, whom the nation had desired to deliver it from its foes, towards Jehovah, and the way in which Jehovah acted towards His people, whilst all the rest is passed over, we may explain the absence of any closer connection between v. 15 and v. 16, and not from a gap in the text. The LXX, however, adopted the latter supposition, and according to the usual fashion filled up the gap by expanding v. 15 in the following thoughtless manner: kai> ane>sth Samouh>l kai> aph>lqen ek Galga>lwn kai> to> kata>leimma tou> laou> ane>bh opi>sw Saou>l eiv apa>nthsin opi>sw tou> laou> tou> polemistou> autw>n paragenome>nwn ek Galga>lwn eiv Gabaa> Beniami>n kai> epeske>yato Saou>l k . t . l For there is no sense in eiv apa>nthsin opi>sw , and the whole thought, that the people who were left went up after Saul to meet the people of war, is unintelligible, since it is not stated whence the people of war had come, who are said to have met with those who had remained behind with Saul, and to have gone up with him from Gilgal to Gibeah. If, however, we overlook this, and assume that when Saul returned from Gilgal to Gibeah a further number of fighting men came to him from different parts of the land, how does this assumption agree with the account which follows, viz., that when Saul mustered the people he found only six hundred men-a statement which is repeated again in 1 Sam 14:2? The discrepancy remains even if we adopt Ewald’s conjecture (Gesch. iii. 43), that eiv apa>nthsin is a false rendering of br;q] , “to the conflict.” Moreover, even with the Alexandrian filling up, no natural connection is secured between vv. 15 and 16, unless we identify Geba of Benjamin with Gibeah, as the Septuagint and its latest defenders have done, and not only change the participle bvæy; (v. 16) into the aorist eka>qisan , but interpolate kai> e>klaion after “at Geba of Benjamin;” whereas the statement of the text “at Geba in Benjamin” is proved to be correct by the simple fact that Jonathan could only attempt or carry out the heroic deed recorded in ch. 14 from Geba and not from Gibeah; and the alteration of the participle into the aorist is just as arbitrary as the interpolation of kai> e>klaion . From all this it follows that the Septuagint version has not preserved the original reading, as Ewald and Thenius suppose, but contains nothing more than a mistaken attempt to restore the missing link. It is true the Vulgate contains the same filling up as the Septuagint, but with one alteration, which upsets the assertion made by Thenius, that the repetition of the expression lG;l]Gi ˆmi , ek Galga>lwn , caused the reading contained in the Septuagint to be dropped out of the Hebrew text. For the text of the Vulgate runs as follows: Surrexit autem Samuêl et ascendit de Galgalis in Gabaa Benjamin. Et reliqui populi ascenderunt post Saul obviam populo, qui expugnabant eos venientes de Galgala in Gabaa in colle Benjamin. Et recensuit Saul, etc. Jerome has therefore rendered the first two clauses of v. 15 in perfect accordance with the Hebrew text; and the addition which follows is nothing more than a gloss that has found its way into his translation from the Itala, and in which de Galgala in colle Benjamin is still retained, whereas Jerome himself rendered lG;l]Gi ˆmi de Galgalis. V. 21 runs very differently in the LXX, namely, kai> h>n oJ trughto>v eJ>toimov tou> qeri>zein ta> de> skeu>h h>n trei>v si>kloi eiv to>n odo>nta kai> th> axi>nh kai> tw> drepa>nw uJto>stasiv h>n hJ auth> ; and Thenius and Böttcher propose an emendation of the Hebrew text accordingly, so as to obtain the following meaning: “And the sharpening of the edges in the case of the spades and ploughshares was done at three shekels a tooth (i.e., three shekels each), and for the axe and sickle it was the same” (Thenius); or, “and the same for the sickles, and for the axes, and for setting the prong” (Böttcher). But here also it is easy enough to discover that the LXX had not another text before them that was different from the Masoretic text, but merely confounded hptsyr with hbtsyr, trughto>v , and took ˆwOvL]qi vwOkv; , which was unintelligible to them, e conjectura for ˆVehæ qv vlv] , altogether regardless of the sense or nonsense of their own translation.
The latest supporters of this senseless rendering, however, have neither undertaken to prove the possibility of translating odo>nta odou>v ), “each single piece” (i.e., each), or inquired into the value of money at that time, so as to see whether three shekels would be an unexampled charge for the sharpening of an axe or sickle. In the Alex. version, vv. 41 and 42 are lengthened out with long paraphrases upon the course pursued in casting the lots: kai> ei>pe Saou>l Ku>rie oJ qeo>v Israh>l ti> oJ>ti ouk apekri>qhv tw> dou>lw sou sh>meron ; ei> en emoi> h> en Iwna>qan tw> uiJw> mou hJ adiki>a ; ku>rie oJ qeo>v Israh>l do>v dh>louv kai> ea>n ta>de ei>ph do>v dh> tw> law> sou Israh>l do>v dh> oJsio>thta kai> klhrou>tai Iwna>qan kai> Saou>l kai> oJ lao>v exh>lqe . V. 42: Kai> ei>pe Saou>l ba>llete ana> me>son emou> kai> ana> me>son Iwna>qan tou> uiJou> mou oJ>n a>n kataklhrw>shtai Ku>riov apoqane>tw Kai> ei>pen oJ lao>v pro>v Saou>l ouk e>sti to> rhJ>ma tou>to Kai> katekra>thse Saou>l tou> laou> kai> ba>llousin ana> me>son autou> kai> ana> me>son Iwna>qan tou> uiJou> autou> kai> kataklhrou>tai Iwna>qan . One portion of these additions is also found in the text of our present Vulgate, and reads as follows: Et dixit Saul ad Dominum Deum Israel: Domine Deus Israel, da indicium! quid est quod non responderis servo tuo hodie? Si in me aut in Jonathan filio meo est iniquitas, da ostensionem; aut si haec iniquitas est in populo tuo, da sanctitatem. Et deprehensus est Jonathas et Saul, populus autem exivit. The beginning and end of this verse, as well as v. 42, agree here most accurately with the Hebrew text. But the words from quid est quod to da sanctitatem are interpolated, so that µymiT; bhæy; are translated twice; first in the words da indicium, and then in the interpolation da ostensionem. This repetition of the same words, and that in different renderings, when taken in connection with the agreement of the Vulgate with the Hebrew text at the beginning and end of the verse, shows clearly enough, that the interpolated clauses did not originate with Jerome, but are simply inserted in his translation from the Itala. The additions of the LXX, in which ta>de ei>ph is evidently only a distortion of hJ adiki>a , are regarded by Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 48) and Thenius as an original portion of the text which has dropped out from the Masoretic text. They therefore infer, that instead of µymiT; we ought to read µymiTu (Thummim), and that we have here the full formula used in connection with the use of the Urim and Thummim, from which it may be seen, that this mode of divine revelation consisted simply in a sacred lot, or in the use of two dice, the one of which was fixed upon at the outset as meaning no, and the other as meaning yes. So much at any rate is indisputable, that the Septuagint translator took µymiT; in the sense of thummim, and so assumed that Saul had the guilty person discovered by resorting to the Urim and Thummim. But this assumption is also decidedly erroneous, together with all the inferences based upon it. For, in the first place, the verbs lpæn; and dkæl; can be proved to be never used throughout the whole of the Old Testament to signify the use of the Urim and Thummim, and to be nothing more than technical expressions used to denote the casting of a simple lot (see the passages cited above in the text). Moreover, such passages as 1 Sam 10:22, and 2:5,23, show most unmistakeably that the divine oracle of the Urim and Thummim did not consist merely in a sacred lot with yes and no, but that God gave such answers through it as could never have been given through the lots. The Septuagint expansions of the text are nothing more, therefore, than a subjective and really erroneous interpretation on the part of the translators, which arose simply from the mistaken idea that µymiT; was thummim, and which is therefore utterly worthless. “Many grave thoughts seem to have presented themselves at once to Samuel and disturbed his mind, when he reflected upon the dishonour which might be heaped upon the name of God, and the occasion which the rejection and deposition of Saul would furnish to wicked men for blaspheming God. For Saul had been anointed by the ministry of Samuel, and he had been chosen by God himself from all the people, and called by Him to the throne. If, therefore, he was nevertheless deposed, it seemed likely that so much would be detracted from the authority of Samuel and the confidence of the people in his teaching, and, moreover, that the worship of God would be overturned, and the greatest disturbance ensue; in fact, that universal confusion would burst upon the nation. These were probably the grounds upon which Samuel’s great indignation rested.”-Calvin. According to Pliny (h. n. vii. 16), the giant Pusio and the giantess Secundilla, who lived in the time of Augustus, were ten feet three inches (Roman) in height; and a Jew is mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xviii. 4, 5), who was seven cubits in height, i.e., ten Parisian feet, or if the cubits are Roman, nine and a half. According to Thenius, the cuirass of Augustus the Strong, which has been preserved in the historical museum at Dresden, weighted fifty-five pounds; and from that he infers, that the weight given as that of Goliath’s coat of mail is by no means too great. Ewald, on the other hand, seems to have no idea of the nature of the Hebrew eights, or of the bodily strength of a man, since he gives 5000 lbs. of brass as the weight of Goliath’s coat of mail (Gesch. iii. p. 90), and merely observes that the pounds were of course much smaller than ours. But the shekel did not even weight so much as our full ounce. With such statements as these you may easily turn the historical character of the scriptural narrative into incredible myths; but they cannot lay any claim to the name of science. On account of these repetitions and certain apparent differences, the LXX (Cod. Vat.) have omitted the section from v. 12 to v. 31, and also that from v. 55 to 1 Sam 18:5; and on the ground of this omission, Houbigant, Kennicott, Michaelis, Eichhorn, Dathe, Bertheau, and many others, have pronounced both these sections later interpolations; whereas the more recent critics, such as De Wette, Thenius, Ewald, Bleek, Stähelin, and others, reject the hypothesis that they are interpolations, and infer from the supposed discrepancies that ch. and 18 were written by some one who was ignorant of the facts mentioned in ch. 16, and was altogether a different person from the author of this chapter. According to 1 Sam 16:21ff., they say, David was Saul’s armour-bearer already, and his family connections were well known to the king, whereas, according to 1 Sam 17:15, David was absent just at the time when he ought as armour-bearer to have been in attendance upon Saul; whilst in 1 Sam 17:33 he is represented as a shepherd boy who was unaccustomed to handle weapons, and as being an unauthorized spectator of the war, and, what is still more striking, even his lineage is represented in vv. 55ff. as unknown both to Abner and the king. Moreover, in v. 12 the writer introduces a notice concerning David with which the reader must be already well acquainted from 1 Sam 16:5ff., and which is therefore, to say the least, superfluous; and in v. 54 Jerusalem is mentioned in a manner which does not quite harmonize with the history, whilst the account of the manner in which he disposed of Goliath’s armour is apparently at variance with 1 Sam 21:9. But the notion, that the sections in question are interpolations that have crept into the text, cannot be sustained on the mere authority of the Septuagint version; since the arbitrary manner in which the translators of this version made omissions or additions at pleasure is obvious to any one. Again, the assertion that these sections cannot well be reconciled with ch. 16, and emanated from an author who was unacquainted with the history in ch. 16, is overthrown by the unquestionable reference to ch. 16 which we find in v. 12, “David the son of that Ephratite,”-where Jerome has correctly paraphrased hz, , de quo supra dictum est,-and also by the remark in v. 15, that David went backwards and forwards from Saul to feed his father’s sheep in Bethlehem. Neither of these can be pronounced interpolations of the compiler, unless the fact can be established that the supposed discrepancies are really well founded. But it by no means follows, that because Saul loved David on account of the beneficial effect which is playing upon the harp produced upon his mind, and appointed him his armour-bearer, therefore David had really to carry the king’s armour in time of war. The appointment of armour-bearer was nothing more than conferring upon him the title of aide-de-camp, from which it cannot be inferred that David had already become well known to the king through the performance of warlike deeds. If Joab, the commander-in-chief, had ten armour-bearers (2 Sam 18:15, compare 1 Sam 23:37), king Saul would certainly have other armour-bearers besides David, and such as were well used to war. Moreover, it is not stated anywhere in ch. that Saul took David at the very outset into his regular and permanent service, but, according to v. 22, he merely asked his father Jesse that David might stand before him, i.e., might serve him; and there is no contradiction in the supposition, that when his melancholy left him for a time, he sent David back to his father to Bethlehem, so that on the breaking out of the war with the Philistines he was living at home and keeping sheep, whilst his three eldest brothers had gone to the war.
The circumstance, however, that when David went to fight with Goliath, Saul asked Abner his captain, “Whose son is this youth?” and Abner could give no explanation to the king, so that after the defeat of Goliath, Saul himself asked David, “Whose son art thou?” (vv. 55-58), can hardly be comprehended, if all that Saul wanted to ascertain was the name of David’s father. For even if Abner had not troubled himself about the lineage of Saul’s harpist, Saul himself could not well have forgotten that David was a son of the Bethlehemite Jesse. But there was much more implied in Saul’s question. It was not the name of David’s father alone that he wanted to discover, but what kind of man the father of a youth who possessed the courage to accomplish so marvellous a heroic deed really was; and the question was put not merely in order that he might grant him an exemption of his house from taxes as the reward promised for the conquest of Goliath (v. 25), but also in all probability that he might attach such a man to his court, since he inferred from the courage and bravery of the son the existence of similar qualities in the father. It is true that David merely replied, “The son of thy servant Jesse of Bethlehem;” but it is very evident from the expression in 1 Sam 18:1, “when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,” that Saul conversed with him still further about his family affairs, since the very words imply a lengthened conversation. The other difficulties are very trivial, and will be answered in connection with the exposition of the passages in question. The common solutions of this apparent discrepancy, such as that Saul pretended not to know David, or that his question is to be explained on the supposition that his disease affected his memory, have but little probability in them, although Karkar still adheres to them. The section vv. 6-14 is supposed by Thenius and others to have been taken by the compiler from a different source from the previous one, and not to have been written by the same author: (1) because the same thing is mentioned in vv. 13, 14, as in v. 5, though in a somewhat altered form, and vv. 10, 11 occur again in 1 Sam 19:9-10, with a few different words, and in a more appropriate connection; (2) because the contents of v. 9, and the word tr;j’m; in v. 10, are most directly opposed to vv. 2 and 5. On these grounds, no doubt, the LXX have not only omitted the beginning of v. 6 from their version, but also vv. 9-11.
But the supposed discrepancy between vv. 9 and 10 and vv. 2 and 5- viz., that Saul could not have kept David by his side from attachment to him, or have placed him over his men of war after several prosperous expeditions, as is stated in vv. 2 and 5, if he had looked upon him with jealous eyes from the very first day, or if his jealousy had broken out on the second day in the way described in vv. 10, 11-is founded upon two erroneous assumptions; viz., () that the facts contained in vv. 1-5 were contemporaneous with those in vv. 6-14; and (2) that everything contained in these two sections is to be regarded as strictly chronological. But the fact recorded in v. 2, namely, that Saul took David to himself, and did not allow him to go back to his father’s house any more, occurred unquestionably some time earlier than those mentioned in vv. 6ff. with their consequences. Saul took David to himself immediately after the defeat of Goliath, and before the war had been brought to an end. But the celebration of the victory, in which the paean of the women excited jealousy in Saul’s mind, did not take place till the return of the people and of the king at the close of the war. How long the war lasted we do not know; but from the fact that the Israelites pursued the flying Philistines to Gath and Ekron, and then plundered the camp of the Philistines after that (1 Sam 17:52-53), it certainly follows that some days, if not weeks, must have elapsed between David’s victory over Goliath and the celebration of the triumph, after the expulsion of the Philistines from the land. Thus far the events described in the two sections are arranged in their chronological order; but for all the rest the facts are arranged antithetically, according to their peculiar character, whilst the consequences, which reached further than the facts that gave rise to them, and were to some extent contemporaneous, are appended immediately to the facts themselves. Thus David’s going out whithersoever Saul sent him (v. 5) may indeed have commenced during the pursuit of the flying Philistines; but it reached far beyond this war, and continued even while Saul was looking upon him with jealous eyes.
V. 5 contains a general remark, with which the historian brings to a close one side of the relation between David and Saul, which grew out of David’s victory. He then proceeds in v. 6 to give the other side, and rounds off this paragraph also (vv. 14-16) with a general remark, the substance of which resembles, in the main, the substance of v. 5. At the same time it implies some progress, inasmuch as the delight of the people at the acts performed by David (v. 5) grew into love to David itself. This same progress is also apparent in v. 13 (“Saul made him captain over a thousand”), as compared with v. 5 (“Saul set him over the men of war”). Whether the elevation of David into a captain over a thousand was a higher promotion than his appointment over the men of war, or the latter expression is to be taken as simply a more general or indefinite term, denoting his promotion to the rank of commander-inchief, is a point which can hardly be determined with certainty. Vv. 17-19 are omitted from the Septuagint version; but they are so, no doubt, only because Saul’s first promise was without result so far as David was concerned.
FT38 Compare Jerome (Epist. iv. ad Rustic. Monach. c. 7): “The sons of the prophets, whom we call the monks of the Old Testament, built themselves cells near the streams of the Jordan, and, forsaking the crowded cities, lived in meal and wild herbs.” Compare with this his Epist. xiii. ad Paulin, c. 5. Thus the Rabbins regarded them as vr;d]mi tyiBæ ; and the earlier theologians as colleges, in which, as Vitringa expresses it, “philosophers, or if you please theologians, and candidates or students of theology, assembled for the purpose of devoting themselves assiduously to the study of divinity under the guidance of some one who was well skilled as a teacher;” whilst others regarded them as schools for the training of teachers for the people, and leaders in the worship of God. The English Deists-Morgan for example-regarded them as seats of scientific learning, in which the study of history, rhetoric, poetry, natural science, and moral philosophy was carried on. According to Ewald and Thenius, this chapter was not written by the author of the previous one, but was borrowed from an earlier source, and v. 1 was inserted by the compiler to connect the two together. But the principal reason for this conjecture-namely, that David could never have thought of sitting at the royal table again after what had taken place, and that Saul would still less have expected him to come-is overthrown by the simple suggestion, that all that Saul had hitherto attempted against David, according to 1 Sam 19:8ff., had been done in fits of insanity (cf. 1 Sam 19:9ff.), which had passed away again; so that it formed no criterion by which to judge of Saul’s actual feelings towards David when he was in a state of mental sanity. In our English version it does; but in the Hebrew, which is followed here, it forms the opening verse of ch. 21. In the exposition of the following chapter it has been thought better to follow the numbering of the verses in our version rather than that of the original, although the latter is conformed to the Hebrew.-Tr. When Mark (Mark 2:26) assigns this action to the days of Abiathar the high priest, the statement rests upon an error of memory, in which Ahimelech is confounded with Abiathar. The Septuagint translators have rendered these words ne>mwn ta>v hJmio>nouv , “feeding the mules of Saul;” and accordingly in 1 Sam 22:9 also they have changed Saul’s servants into mules, in accordance with which Thenius makes Doeg the upper herdsman of Saul. But it is very evident that the text of the LXX is nothing more than a subjective interpretation of the expression before us, and does not presuppose any other text, from the simple fact that all the other ancient versions are founded upon the Hebrew text both here and in 1 Sam 22:9, including even the Vulgate (potentissimus pastorum); and the clause contained in some of the MSS of the Vulgate (his pascebat mulas Saul) is nothing more than a gloss that has crept in from the Itala; and this is still more obvious in 1 Sam 22:9, where bxæn; aWh is applicable enough to `db,[, , but is altogether unsuitable in connection with yder]pi , since bxæn; is no more applied in Hebrew to herdsmen or keepers of animals, than we should think of speaking of presidents of asses, horses, etc. Moreover, it is not till the reign of David that we read of mules being used as riding animals by royal princes (2 Sam 13:29; 18:9); and they are mentioned for the first time as beasts of burden, along with asses, camels, and oxen, in 1 Chron 12:40, where they are said to have been employed by the northern tribes to carry provisions to Hebron to the festival held at the recognition of David as king. Before David’s time the sons of princes rode upon asses (vid., Judg 10:4; 12:14). This removes the objection raised by modern critics to the historical credibility of the narrative before us, namely, that David would certainly not have taken refuge at once with the Philistines, but would only have gone to them in the utmost extremity (Thenius). It is impossible to see how the words “he fled that day for fear of Saul” (v. 11) are to prove that this section originally stood in a different connection, and are only arbitrarily inserted here (Thenius). Unless we tear away the words in the most arbitrary manner from the foregoing word jræB; , they not only appear quite suitable, but even necessary, since David’s journey to Abimelech was not a flight, or at all events it is not described as a flight in the text; and David’s flight from Saul really began with his departure from Nob. Still less can the legendary origin of this account be inferred from the fact that some years afterwards David really did take refuge with Achish in the Philistian country (ch. 27 and 29), or the conjecture sustained that this is only a distorted legend of that occurrence. For if the later sojourn of David with Achish be a historical fact, that popular legend could not possibly have assumed a form so utterly different as the account before us, to say nothing of the fact that this occurrence has a firm historical support in Ps 34:1. “She founds her argument upon their meeting, which was so marvellously seasonable, that it might be easily and truly gathered from this fact that it had taken place through the providence of God; i.e., And now, because I meet thee so seasonably, do thou piously acknowledge with me the providence of God, which has so arranged all this, that innocent blood might not by change be shed by thee.”-Seb.
Schmidt. Seb. Schmidt has justly observed, that “she reminds David of the promise of God. Not that she prophesies, but that she has gathered it from the general promises of the word of God. The promise referred to is, that whoever does good to his enemies, and takes no vengeance upon them, God himself will avenge him upon his enemies; according to the saying, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And this is what Abigail says: And now thine enemies shall be as Nabal.” Thus Luther says (in his work upon the abuses of the Mass, 1522): “The raising of Samuel by a soothsayer or witch, in 1 Sam 28:11-12, was certainly merely a spectre of the devil; not only because the Scriptures state that it was effected by a woman who was full of devils (for who could believe that the souls of believers, who are in the hand of God, Ecclus. 3:1, and in the bosom of Abraham, Luke 16:32, were under the power of the devil, and of simple men?), but also because it was evidently in opposition to the command of God that Saul and the woman inquired of the dead. The Holy Ghost cannot do anything against this himself, nor can He help those who act in opposition to it.” Calvin also regards the apparition as only a spectre (Hom. 100 in Sam.): “It is certain,” he says, “that it was not really Samuel, for God would never have allowed His prophets to be subjected to such diabolical conjuring. For here is a sorceress calling up the dead from the grave. Does any one imagine that God wished His prophet to be exposed to such ignominy; as if the devil had power over the bodies and souls of the saints which are in His keeping? The souls of the saints are said to rest and live in God, waiting for their happy resurrection.
Besides, are we to believe that Samuel took his cloak with him into the grave? For all these reasons, it appears evident that the apparition was nothing more than a spectre, and that the senses of the woman herself were so deceived, that she thought she saw Samuel, whereas it really was not he.” The earlier orthodox theologians also disputed the reality of the appearance of the departed Samuel on just the same grounds; e.g., Seb. Schmidt (Comm.); Aug. Pfeiffer; Sal. Deyling; and Buddeus, Hist. Eccl. V. t. ii. p. 243, and many more. Delitzsch (bibl Psychol. pp. 427ff.) has very properly rejected, not only the opinion that Samuel and Moses were raised up from the dead for the purpose of a transient appearance, and then died again, but also the idea that they appeared in their material bodies, a notion upon which Calvin rests his argument against the reality of the appearance of Samuel. But when he gives it as his opinion, that the angels who appeared in human form assumed this form by virtue of their own power, inasmuch as they can make themselves visible to whomsoever they please, and infers till further from this, “that the outward form in which Samuel and Moses appeared (which corresponded to their form when on this side the grave) was the immaterial production of their spiritual and psychical nature,” he overlooks the fact, that not only Samuel, but the angels also, in the cases referred to, appeared in men’s clothing, which cannot possibly be regarded as a production of their spiritual and psychical nature. The earthly dress is not indispensable to a man’s existence. Adam and Eve had no clothing before the Fall, and there will be no material clothing in the kingdom of glory; for the “fine linen, pure and white,” with which the bride adorns herself for the marriage supper of the Lamb, is “the righteousness of saints” (Rev 19:8). The LXX have adopted the rendering kai> etrauma>tisan eiv ta> uJpoco>ndria , they wounded him in the abdomen, whilst the Vulgate rendering is vulneratus est vehementer a sagittariis. In 1 Chron 10:3 the Sept. rendering is kai> epo>nesen apo> tw>n to>xwn , and that of the Vulgate et vulneraverunt jaculis. The translators have therefore derived lWj from llæj; = hl;j; , and then given a free rendering to the other words. But this rendering is overthrown by the word daom] , very, vehemently, to say nothing of the fact that the verb llæj; or hl;j; cannot be proved to be ever used in the sense of wounding. If Saul had been so severely wounded that he could not kill himself, and therefore asked his armour-bearer to slay him, as Thenius supposes, he would not have had the strength to pierce himself with his sword when the armour-bearer refused. The further conjecture of Thenius, that the Hebrew text should be read thus, in accordance with the LXX, µyrirOM]hæ la, lj,Y;wæ , “he was wounded in the region of the gall,” is opposed by the circumstance that uJpoco>ndria is not the gall or region of the gall, but what is under the co>ndrov , or breast cartilage, viz., the abdomen and bowels. “Thy mouth hath testified against thee, and out of it thou art judged (Luke 19:22), whether thou hast done it or not. If thou hast done it, thou receivest the just reward of thy deeds. If thou hast not done it, then throw the blame upon thine own lying testimony, and be content with the wages of a wicked flatterer; for, according to thine own confession, thou art the murderer of a king, and that is quite enough to betray thine evil heart. David could see plainly enough that the man was no murderer: he would show by his example that flatterers who boast of such sins as these should get no hearing from their superiors.”- Berleb. Bible In the Septuagint we find EaJsiri> or EaJsou>r , an equally mistaken form. The Chaldee has “over the tribe of Asher,” which is also unsuitable, unless we include the whole of the northern portion of Canaan, including the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. But there is no proof that the name Asher was ever extended to the territory of the three northern tribes. We should be rather disposed to agree with Bachienne, who supposes it to refer to the city of Asher (Josh 17:7) and its territory, as this city was in the south-east of Jezreel, and Abner may possibly have conquered this district for Ishbosheth with Gilead as a base, before he ventured to dispute the government of Israel with the Philistines, if only we could discover any reason why the inhabitants (“the Ashurites”) should be mentioned instead of the city Asher, or if it were at all likely that one city should be introduced in the midst of a number of large districts. The Syriac and Vulgate have Geshuri, and therefore seem to have read or conjectured yriWvG] ; and Thenius decides in favour of this, understanding the name Geshur to refer to the most northerly portion of the land on both sides of the Jordan, from Mount Hermon to the Lake of Gennesareth (as in Deut 3:14; Josh 12:5; 13:13; 1 Chron 2:23). But no such usage of speech can be deduced from any of these passages, as Geshuri is used there to denote the land of the Geshurites, on the north-east of Bashan, which had a king of its own in the time of David (see at 2 Sam 3:3), and which Abner would certainly never have thought of conquering. From the fact that in vv. 10, 11, Ishbosheth’s ascending the throne is mentioned before that of David, and is also accompanied with a statement of his age, whereas the age of David is not given till 2 Sam 5:4-5, when he became king over all Israel, Ewald draws the erroneous conclusion that the earlier (?) historian regarded Ishbosheth as the true king, and David as a pretender. But the very opposite of this is stated as distinctly as possible in vv. 4ff.) compared with v. 8). The fact that Ishbosheth is mentioned before David in v. 10 may be explained simply enough from the custom so constantly observed in the book of Genesis, of mentioning subordinate lines or subordinate persons first, and stating whatever seemed worth recording with regard to them, in order that the ground might be perfectly clear for relating the history of the principal characters without any interruption. The LXX thought it desirable to explain the possibility of Rechab and Baanah getting into the king’s house, and therefore paraphrased the sixth verse as follows: kai> idou> hJ qurwro>v tou> oi>kou eka>qaire purou>v kai> enu>staxe kai> eka>qeude kai> RhJca>b kai> Baana> oiJ a>delfoi die>laqon (“and behold the doorkeeper of the house was cleaning wheat, and nodded and slept. And Rahab and Baana the brothers escaped, or went in secretly”). The first part of this paraphrase has been retained in the Vulgate, in the interpolation between vv. 5 and 6: et ostiaria domus purgans triticum obdormivit; whether it was copied by Jerome from the Itala, or was afterwards introduced as a gloss into his translation. It is very evident that this clause in the Vulgate is only a gloss, from the fact that, in all the rest of v. 6, Jerome has closely followed the Masoretic text, and that none of the other ancient translators found anything about a doorkeeper in his text. When Thenius, therefore, attempts to prove the “evident corruption of the Masoretic text,” by appealing to the “nonsense (Unsinn) of relating the murder of Ishbosheth and the flight of the murderers twice over, and in two successive verses (see v. 7),” he is altogether wrong in speaking of the repetition as “nonsense” whereas it is simply tautology, and has measured the peculiarities of Hebrew historians by the standard adopted by our own. J. P. F. Königsfeldt has given the true explanation when he says: “The Hebrews often repeat in this way, for the purpose of adding something fresh, as for example, in this instance, their carrying off the head.” Comp. with this 2 Sam 3:22-23, where the arrival of Joab is mentioned twice, viz., in two successive verses; or Sam 5:1-3, where the assembling of the tribes of Israel at Hebron is also referred to a second time-a repetition at which Thenius himself has taken no offence-and many other passages of the same kind. : The earliest translators have only resorted to guesses. The Seventy, with their aJpte>sqw en paraxifi>di , have combined rWNxi with ˆxi , which they render now and then ma>caira or rhomfai’a. This is also done by the Syriac and Arabic. The Chaldee paraphrases in this manner: “who begins to subjugate the citadel.” Jerome, who probably followed the Rabbins, has et tetigisset domatum fistulas (and touched the water-pipes); and Luther, “und erlanget die Dachrinnen” (like the English version, “whosoever getteth up to the gutter:” Tr.). Hitzig’s notion, that zinnor signifies ear (“whosoever boxes the ears of the blind and lame”) needs no refutation; nor does that of Fr. Böttcher, who proposes to follow the Alexandrian rendering, and refer zinnor to a “sword of honour or marshal’s staff,” which David promised to the victor. This is also inserted in the passage before us by the translators of the English version: “he shall be chief and captain.”-Tr. : The statements of Menander of Ephesus in Josephus (c. Ap. i. 18), that after the death of Abibal his son Hirom (Ei’roomos) succeeded him in the government, and reigned thirty-four years, and died at the age of fifty-three, are at variance with the biblical history. For, according to these statements, as Hiram was still reigning “at the end of twenty years” (according to 1 Kings 9:10-11), when Solomon had built his palaces and the house of the Lord, i.e., twenty-four years after Solomon began to reign, he cannot have ascended the throne before the sixty-first year of David’s life, and the thirty-first of his reign. But in that case the erection of David’s palace would fall somewhere within the last eight years of his life. And to this we have to add the repeated statements made by Josephus (l.c. and Ant. viii. 3, 1), to the effect that Solomon commenced the building of the temple in Hiram’s twelfth year, or after he had reigned eleven years; so that Hiram could only have begun to reign seven years before the death of David (in the sixtythird year of his life), and the erection of the palace by David must have fallen later still, and his determination to build the temple, which he did not form till he had taken possession of his house of cedar, i.e., the newly erected palace (2 Sam 7:2), would fall in the very last years of his life, but a very short time before his death.
As this seems hardly credible, it has been assumed by some that Hiram’s father, Abibal, also bore the name of Hiram, or that Hiram is confounded with Abibal in the account before us (Thenius), or that Abibal’s father was named Hiram, and it was he who formed the alliance with David (Ewald, Gesch. iv. 287). But all these assumptions are overthrown by the fact that the identity of the Hiram who was Solomon’s friend with the contemporary and friend of David is expressly affirmed not only in 2 Chron 2:2 (as Ewald supposes), but also in 1 Kings 5:15. For whilst Solomon writes to Hiram in 2 Chron 2:3, “as thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him an house to dwell therein,” it is also stated 1 Kings 5:1 that “Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was a lover of David all days (all his life).”
Movers (Phönizier ii. 1, p. 147ff.) has therefore attempted to remove the discrepancy between the statements made in Josephus and the biblical account of Hiram’s friendship with David and Solomon, by assuming that in the narrative contained in the books of Samuel we have a topical and not a chronological arrangement, and that according to this arrangement the conquest of Jerusalem by David is followed immediately by the building of the city and palace, and this again by the removal of the holy ark to Jerusalem, and lastly by David’s resolution to build a temple, which really belonged to the close of his reign, and indeed, according to 2 Sam 7:2, to the period directly following the completion of the cedar palace. There is a certain amount of truth at the foundation of this, but it does not remove the discrepancy; for even if David’s resolution to build a temple did not fall within the earlier years of his reign at Jerusalem, as some have inferred from the position in which it stands in the account given in this book, it cannot be pushed forward to the very last years of his life and reign.
This is decidedly precluded by the fact, that in the promise given to David by God, his son and successor upon the throne is spoken of in such terms as to necessitate the conclusion that he was not yet born. This difficulty cannot be removed by the solution suggested by Movers (p. 149), “that the historian necessarily adhered to the topical arrangement which he had adopted for this section, because he had not said anything yet about Solomon and his mother Bathsheba:” for the expression “which shall proceed out of thy bowels” (2 Sam 7:12) is not the only one of the kind; but in 1 Chron 22:9, David says to his son Solomon, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, A son shall be born to thee- Solomon-he shall build an house for my name;” from which it is very obvious, that Solomon was not born at the time when David determined to build the temple and received this promise from God in consequence of his intention.
To this we have also to add 2 Sam 11:2, where David sees Bathsheba, who gave birth to Solomon a few years later, from the roof of his palace. Now, even though the palace is simply called “the king’s house” in this passage, and not the “house of cedar,” as in 2 Sam 7:2, and therefore the house intended might possibly be the house in which David lived before the house of cedar was built, this is a very improbable supposition, and there cannot be much doubt that the “king’s house” is the palace (2 Sam 5:11; 7:1) which he had erected for himself. Lastly, not only is there not the slightest intimation in the whole of the account given in ch. 7 that David was an old man when he resolved to build the temple, but, on the contrary, the impression which it makes throughout is, that it was the culminating point of his reign, and that he was at an age when he might hope not only to commence this magnificent building, but in all human probability to live to complete it.
The only other solution left, is the assumption that there are errors in the chronological date of Josephus, and that Hiram lived longer than Menander affirms. The assertion that Solomon commenced the erection of the temple in the eleventh or twelfth year of Hiram’s reign was not derived by Josephus from Phoenician sources; for the fragments which he gives from the works of Menander and Dius in the Antiquities (viii. 5, 3) and c. Apion (i. 17, 18), contain nothing at all about the building of the temple (vid., Movers, p. 141), but he has made it as the result of certain chronological combinations of his own, just as in Ant. viii. 3, 1, he calculates the year of the building of the temple in relation both to the exodus and also to the departure of Abraham out of Haran, but miscalculates, inasmuch as he places it in the 592nd year after the exodus instead of the 480th, and the 1020th year from Abraham’s emigration to Canaan instead of the 1125th.
And in the present instance his calculation of the exact position of the same event in relation to Hiram’s reign was no doubt taken from Menander; but even in this the numbers may be faulty, since the statements respecting Balezorus and Myttonus in the very same extract from Menander, as to the length of the reigns of the succeeding kings of Tyre, can be proved to be erroneous, and have been corrected by Movers from Eusebius and Syncellus; and, moreover, the seven years of Hiram’s successor, Baleazar, do not tally with Eusebius and Syncellus, who both give seventeen years. Thus the proof which Movers adduces from the synchronism of the Tyrian chronology with the biblical, the Egyptian, and the Assyrian, to establish the correctness of Menander’s statements concerning Hiram’s reign, is rendered very uncertain, to say nothing of the fact that Movers has only succeeded in bringing out the synchronism with the biblical chronology by a very arbitrary and demonstrably false calculation of the years that the kings of Judah and Israel reigned. Through the express statement that David inquired of Jehovah (viz., by the Urim) in both these conflicts with the Philistines (vv. 19 and 23), Diestel’s assertion, that after the death of Saul we do not read any more about the use of the holy lot, is completely overthrown, as well as the conclusion which he draws from it, namely, that “David probably employed it for the purpose of giving a certain definiteness to his command over his followers, over whom he had naturally but little authority (1 Sam 22:2?), rather than because he looked upon it himself with any peculiar reverence.” This is the marginal reading in the English version, though the text has “he burned them.”-Tr. There is no force in the objection brought by Bertheau against this view, viz., that “it is a priori improbable that the Philistines who were fighting against David and his forces, whose base of operations was Jerusalem, should have taken possession of the whole line from Gibeon to Gezer,” as the improbability is by no means apparent, and has not been pointed out by Bertheau, whilst the assumption that Jerusalem was David’s base of operations has no foundation whatever. Moreover, Bertheau’s opinion, that Geba was the same as Gibeah in the tribe of Judah (Josh 15:57), is decidedly erroneous: for this Gibeah is not to be identified with the present village of Jeba on the south side of the Wady Musurr, half-way between Shocoh and Jerusalem, but was situated towards the desert of Judah (see at Josh 15:57); and besides, it is impossible to see how the Philistines, who had invaded the plain of Rephaim, could have been beaten from this Gibeah as far as to Gezer. If it were possible to discover the situation of Gath-rimmon, the home of Obed-edom (see at v. 10), we might probably decide the question whether Obed-edom was still living in the town where he was born or not. But according to the Onom., Kirjath-jearim was ten miles from Jerusalem, and Gath-rimmon twelve, that is to say, farther off. Now, if these statements are correct, Obed-edom’s house cannot have been in Gath-rimmon. There is no discrepancy, therefore, between the two different accounts; but the one supplements the other in a manner perfectly in harmony with the whole affair-at the outset, a sacrifice consisting of one ox and one fatted calf; and at the close, one of seven oxen and seven rams.
Consequently there is no reason for altering the text of the verse before us, as Thenius proposes, according to the senseless rendering of the LXX, kai> h>san met> autou> ai>rontev th>n kibwto>n eJpta> coroi> kai> qu>ma mo>scov kai> a>rnev (“with David there were bearers of the ark, seven choirs, and sacrifices of a calf and lambs”), which has also found its way into the Vulgate, though Jerome has rendered our Hebrew text faithfully afterwards (i.e., after the gloss, which was probably taken from the Itala, and inserted in his translation). With regard to the historical authenticity of this promise, Tholuck observes, in his Prophets and their Prophecies (pp. 165-6), that “it can be proved, with all the evidence which is ever to be obtained in support of historical testimony, that David actually received a prophetic promise that his family should sit upon the throne for ever, and consequently an intimation of a royal descendant whose government should be eternal. Anything like a merely subjective promise arising from human combinations is precluded here by the fact that Nathan, acting according to the best of his knowledge, gave his consent to David’s plan of building a temple; and that it was not till afterwards, when he had been instructed by a divine vision, that he did the very opposite, and assured him on the contrary that God would build him a house.” Thenius also affirms that “there is no reason for assuming, as De Wette has done, that Nathan’s prophecies were not composed till after the time of Solomon;” that “their historical credibility is attested by Ps 89 (vv. 4, 5, 20-38, and especially v. 20), Ps 132:11-12, and Isa 55:3; and that, properly interpreted, they are also Messianic.” The principal evidence of this is to be found in the prophetic utterance of David in ch. 23, where, as is generally admitted, he takes a retrospective glance at the promise, and thereby attests the historical credibility of Nathan’s prophecy (Thenius, p. 245).
Nevertheless, Gust. Baur maintains that “a closer comparison of this more elaborate and simple description (ch. 7) with the brief and altogether unexampled last words of David, more especially with Sam 23:5, can hardly leave the slightest doubt, that the relation in which the chapter before us stands to these words, is that of a later expansion to an authentic prophetic utterance of the king himself.” For example, the distinct allusion to the birth of Solomon, and the building of the temple, which was to be completed by him, is said to have evidently sprung from a later development of the original promise after the time of Solomon, on account of the incongruity apparent in Nathan’s prediction between the ideal picture of the Israelitish monarchy and the definite allusion to Solomon’s building of the temple.
But there is no such “incongruity” in Nathan’s prediction; it is only to be found in the naturalistic assumptions of Baur himself, that the utterances of the prophets contained nothing more than subjective and ideal hopes of the future, and not supernatural predictions.
This also applies to Diestel’s opinion, that the section vv. 4-16 does not harmonize with the substance of David’s glorious prayer in vv. 18-29, nor the latter again with itself, because the advice given him to relinquish the idea of building the temple is not supported by any reasons that answer either to the character of David or to his peculiar circumstances, with which the allusion to his son would have been in perfect keeping; but the prophet’s dissuasion merely alludes to the fact that Jehovah did not stand in need of a stately house at all, and had never given utterance to any such desire. On account of this “obvious” fact, Diestel regards it as credible that the original dissuasion came from God, because it was founded upon an earlier view, but that the promise of the son of David which followed proceeded from Nathan, who no doubt looked with more favourable eyes upon the building of the temple. This discrepancy is also arbitrarily foisted upon the text.
There is not a syllable about any “original dissuasion” in all that Nathan says; for he simply tells the king that Jehovah had hitherto dwelt in a tent, and had not asked any of the tribes of Israel to build a stately temple, but not that Jehovah did not need a stately house at all.)
Of the different exegetical treatises upon this passage, see Christ. Aug.
Crusii Hypomnemata, ii. 190-219, and Hengstenberg’s Christol. i. 123ff. The LXX has this additional clause: “And Shishak the king of Egypt took them away, when he went up against Jerusalem in the days of Rehoboam the son of Solomon,” which is neither to be found in the Chronicles nor in any other ancient version, and is merely an inference drawn by the Greek translator, or by some copyists of the LXX, from Kings 14:25-28, taken in connection with the fact that the application of the brass is given in 1 Chron 18:8. But, in the first place, the author of this gloss has overlooked the fact that the golden shields of Rehoboam which Shishak carried away, were not those captured by David, but those which Solomon had had made, according to 1 Kings 10:16, for the retainers of his palace; and in the second place, he has not observed that, according to v. 11 of this chapter, and also of the Chronicles, David dedicated to the Lord all the gold and silver that he had taken, i.e., put it in the treasury of the sanctuary to be reserved for the future temple, and that at the end of his reign he handed over to his son and successor Solomon all the gold, silver, iron, and brass that he had collected for the purpose, to be applied to the building of the temple (1 Chron 22:14ff., 29:2ff.). Consequently the clause in question, which Thenius would adopt from the LXX into our own text, is nothing more than the production of a presumptuous Alexandrian, whose error lies upon the very surface, so that the question of its genuineness cannot for a moment be entertained. Bertheau erroneously maintains that ac;n; rv,a , which he took, is at variance with 2 Sam 8:7, as, according to this passage, the golden shields of Hadadezer did not become the property of the Lord. But there is not a word to that effect in 2 Sam 8:7. On the contrary, his taking the shields to Jerusalem implies, rather than precludes, the intention to devote them to the purposes of the sanctuary. Michaelis adduces a case in point from the Seven Years’ War. After the battle of Lissa, eight or twelve thousand men were reported to have been taken prisoners; but when they were all counted, including those who fell into the hands of the conquerors on the second, third, and fourth days of the flight, the number amounted to 22,000. Gesenius (Thes. s. vv.) and Thenius (on 1 Kings 1:38) both adopt this explanation; but the majority of the modern theologians decide in favour of Lakemacher’s opinion, to which Ewald has given currency, viz., that the Crethi or Cari are Cretes or Carians, and the Pelethi Philistines (vid., Ewald, Krit. Gramm. p. 297, and Gesch. des Volkes Israel, pp. 330ff.; Bertheau, zur Geschichte Israel, p. 197; Movers, Phönizier i. p. 19). This view is chiefly founded upon the fact that the Philistines are called C’rethi in 1 Sam 30:14, and C’rethim in Zeph 2:5 and Ezek 25:16. But in both the passages from the prophets the name is used with special reference to the meaning of the word træK; , viz., to exterminate, cut off, as Jerome has shown in the case of Ezekiel by adopting the rendering interficiam interfectores (I will slay the slayers) for ‘et-k¦reetiym hik¦ratiy.
The same play upon the words takes place in Zephaniah, upon which Strauss has correctly observed: “Zephaniah shows that this violence of theirs had not been forgotten, calling the Philistines Crethim for that very reason, ut sit nomen et omen.” Besides, in both these passages the true name Philistines stands by the side as well, so that the prophets might have used the name Crethim (slayers, exterminators) without thinking at all of 1 Sam 30:14. In this passage it is true the name Crethi is applied to a branch of the Philistine people that had settled on the south-west of Philistia, and not to the Philistines generally. The idea that the name of a portion of the royal body-guard was derived from the Cretans is precluded, first of all, by the fact of its combination with ytilep] (the Pelethites); for it is a totally groundless assumption that this name signifies the Philistines, and is a corruption of yTiv]lip] .
There are no such contractions as these to be found in the Semitic languages, as Gesenius observes in his Thesaurus (l.c.), “quis hujusmodi contractionem in linguis Semiticis ferat?” Secondly, it is also precluded by the strangeness of such a combination of two synonymous names to denote the royal body-guard. “Who could believe it possible that two synonymous epithets should be joined together in this manner, which would be equivalent to saying Englishmen and Britons?” (Ges.
Thes. p. 1107). Thirdly, it is opposed to the title afterwards given to the body-guard, µyxir;j;w] yriK;hæ (2 Kings 11:4,19), in which the Cari correspond to the Crethi, as in 2 Sam 20:23, and ha-razim to the Pelethi; so that the term pelethi can no more signify a particular tribe than the term razim can. Moreover, there are other grave objections to this interpretation. In the first place, the hypothesis that the Philistines were emigrants from Crete is merely founded upon the very indefinite statements of Tacitus (Hist. v. 3, 2), “Judaeos Creta insula profugos novissima Libyae insedisse memorant,” and that of Steph. Byz. (s. v.
Gaza> ), to the effect that the city of Gaza was once called Minoa, from Minos a king of Crete-statements which, according to the correct estimate of Strauss (l.c.), “have all so evidently the marks of fables that they hardly merit discussion,” at all events when opposed to the historical testimony of the Old Testament (Deut 2:23; Amos 9:7), to the effect that the Philistines sprang from Caphtor. And secondly, “it is a priori altogether improbable, that a man with so patriotic a heart, and so devoted to the worship of the one God, should have surrounded himself with a foreign and heathen body-guard” (Thenius).
This argument cannot be invalidated by the remark “that it is well known that at all times kings and princes have preferred to commit the protection of their persons to foreign mercenaries, having, as they thought, all the surer pledge of their devotedness in the fact that they did not spring from the nation, and were dependent upon the ruler alone” (Hitzig). For, in the first place, the expression “at all times” is one that must be very greatly modified; and secondly, this was only done by kings who did not feel safe in the presence of their own people, which was not the case with David. And the Philistines, those arch-foes of Israel, would have been the last nation that David would have gone to for the purpose of selecting his own body-guard. It is true that he himself had met with a hospitable reception in the land of the Philistines; but it must be borne in mind that it was not as king of Israel that he found refuge there, but as an outlaw flying from Saul the king of Israel, and even then the chiefs of the Philistines would not trust him (1 Sam 29:3ff.). And when Hitzig appeals still further to the fact, that according to 2 Sam 18:2, David handed over the command of a third of his army to a foreigner who had recently entered his service, having emigrated from Gath with a company of his fellow-countrymen (2 Sam 15:19-20,22), and who had displayed the greatest attachment to the person of David (v. 21), it is hardly necessary to observe that the fact of David’s welcoming a brave soldier into his army, when he had come over to Israel, and placing him over a division of the army, after he had proved his fidelity so decidedly as Ittai had at the time of Absalom’s rebellion, is no proof that he chose his body-guard from the Philistines.
Nor can 2 Sam 15:18 be adduced in support of this, as the notion that, according to that passage, David had 600 Gathites in his service as body-guard, is simply founded upon a misinterpretation of the passage mentioned. “Cutting off a persons’ beard is regarded by the Arabs as an indignity quite equal to flogging and branding among ourselves. Many would rather die than have their beard shaved off” (Arvieux, Sitten der Beduinen-araber). Niebuhr relates a similar occurrence as having taken place in modern times. In the years 1764, a pretender to the Persian throne, named Kerim Khan, sent ambassadors to Mir Mahenna, the prince of Bendervigk, on the Persian Gulf, to demand tribute from him; but he in return cut off the ambassadors’ beards. Kerim Khan was so enraged at this, that he went the next year with a large army to make war upon this prince, and took the city, and almost the whole of his territory, to avenge the insult. “We may see from this how deep a soul may fall when it turns away from God, and from the guidance of His grace. This David, who in the days of his persecution would not even resort to means that were really plausible in order to defend himself, was now not ashamed to resort to the greatest crimes in order to cover his sin. O God! how great is our strength when we lay firm hold of Thee! And how weak we become as soon as we turn away from Thee! The greatest saints would be ready for the worst of deeds, if Thou shouldst but leave them for a single moment without Thy protection. Whoever reflects upon this, will give up all thought of self-security and spiritual pride.”-Berleburg Bible. Josephus adopts this explanation: “This she said, as desirous to avoid her brother’s violent passion at present” (Ant. viii. 8, 1). The LXX have very comprehensive additions here: first of all, after ek pleura>v tou> o>rouv , they have the more precise definition en th> kataba>sei , and then the further clause, “and the spy came and announced to the king,” A’ndras eoo’raka ek tee’s hodou’ tee’s ooroonee’n (?) ek me>rouv tou> oJ>rouv , partly to indicate more particularly the way by which the king’s sons came, and partly to fill up a supposed gap in the account. But they did not consider that the statement in v. 35, “and Jonadab said to the king, Behold, the king’s sons are coming,” does not square with these additions; for if the spy had already informed the king that his sons were coming, there was no necessity for Jonadab to do it again. This alone is sufficient to show that the additions made by the LXX are nothing but worthless glosses, introduced according to subjective conjectures and giving no foundation for alterations of the text. The LXX have this additional clause, kai> gi>netai gunh> RoJbaa>m uiJw> Salwmw>n kai> ti>ktei autw> to>n Abia> (and she became the wife of Rehoboam the son of Solomon, and bore him a son named Abia).
Although this is quite at variance with 1 Kings 15:2, where it is stated that the wife of Rehoboam and mother of Abia (Abijam) was named Maacah, the clause had been adopted by Thenius, who regards it as original, though for reasons which Böttcher has shown to be worthless. The Septuagint also has pa>ntev oiJ Geqai>oi , and has generally rendered the Masoretic text correctly. But wyd;b;[\AlK; has been translated incorrectly, or at all events in a manner likely to mislead, viz., pa>ntev oiJ pai>dev autou> . But in the Septuagint text, as it has come down to us, another paraphrase has been interpolated into the literal translation, which Thenius would adopt as an emendation of the Hebrew text, notwithstanding the fact that the critical corruptness of the Alexandrian text must be obvious to every one. The meaning of the word, wearied or weariness, does not warrant any conjectures, even though they should be more felicitous than that of Böttcher, who proposes to alter Ayephim into Ephraim, and assumes that there was a place of this name near Mahanaim, though without reflecting that the place where David rested was on this side of the Jordan, and somewhere near to Gilgal or Jericho (2 Sam 17:16ff. and 22). Consequently no conjectures are needed as to the rendering of the words in the LXX, viz., kaqw>v (al. oJ>n tro>pon ) epistre>rei hJ nu>mfh pro>v to>n a>ndra auth>v plh>n yuch>n andro>v eJno>v su> zhtei>v , such as Ewald, Thenius, and Böttcher have attempted. For it is very obvious that hJ nu>mfh pro>v to>n a>ndra auth>v owes its origin simply to a false reading of vyai lKo as vyai lkæa; , and that plh>n yuch>n andro>v eJno>v has been interpolated by way of explanation from nothing but conjecture. No other of the ancient versions contains the slightest trace of a different reading from that given in the text. According to Burckhardt’s account (Die Beduinen, p. 48), “after they have taken the butter from the butter-milk, they beat the latter again till it coagulates, and then dry it till it is quite hard. It is then rubbed to pieces, and in the spring every family stores up two or three lasts of it, which they eat mixed with butter.” Dathe and Thenius propose to alter µlæv;Wry] into µlæv;Wry] (from Jerusalem), from a simple misunderstanding of the true meaning of the words; for, as Böttcher has observed, the latter (from Jerusalem) would be quite superfluous, as it is already contained in the previous dræy; . But Böttcher’s emendation of awOB into awOB, because Jerusalem or the population of Jerusalem is a feminine notion, is equally unnecessary, since towns and lands are frequently construed as masculines when the inhabitants are intended (vid., Ewald, §318, a.). On the other hand, the rendering adopted by the LXX, and by Luther, Michaelis, and Maurer, in which µlæv;Wry] is taken as an accusative in the sense of “when Mephibosheth came to Jerusalem to meet the king,” is altogether wrong, and has been very properly given up by modern expositors, inasmuch as it is at variance not only with the word dræy; , but also with 2 Sam 16:3 and 9:13, where Mephibosheth is said to have lived in Jerusalem. This difficulty cannot be removed by emendations of the text, inasmuch as all the early translators, with the exception of the Syriac, had our Hebrew text before them. Thenius does indeed propose to alter Abishai into Joab in v. 6, after the example of Josephus and the Syriac; but, as Böttcher observes, if Joab had originally formed part of the text, it could not have been altered into Abishai either accidentally or intentionally, and the Syriac translators and Josephus have inserted Joab merely from conjecture, because they inferred from what follows that Joab’s name ought to be found here. But whilst this is perfectly true, there is no ground for Böttcher’s own conjecture, that in the original text v. 6 read as follows: “Then David said to Joab, Behold, the three days are gone: shall we wait for Amasa?” and through the copyist’s carelessness a whole line was left out. For this conjecture has no tenable support in the senseless reading of the Cod. Vat., pro’s Amessai’ for Abisai’. The correctness of the text is not to be called in question, as Thenius and Böttcher suppose, for the simple reason that all the older translators have followed the Hebrew text, including even the LXX with their egw> eimi eirhnika> tw>n sthrigma>twn en Israh>l ; whereas the words ha’ e’thento ohi pistoi’ tou’ Israee’l, which some of the MSS contain at the close of v. 18 after ei’ exe’lipon, and upon which Thenius and Böttcher have founded their conjectures, are evidently a gloss or paraphrase of µmæT; ˆKe , and of so little value on critical grounds, that Tischendorf did not even think the reading worth mentioning in his edition of the Septuagint. Men with six fingers and six toes have been met with elsewhere. Pliny (h. nat. xi. 43) speaks of certain sedigiti (six-fingered) Romans. This peculiarity is even hereditary in some families. Other examples are collected by Trusen (Sitten, Gebräuche, und Krankheiten der alten Hebräer, pp. 198-9, ed. 2) and Friedreich (zur Bible, i. 298-9). Even Hitzig observes (die Psalmen, i. p. 95): “There is no ground whatever for calling in question the Davidic authorship of the psalm, and therefore the statement made in the heading; and, in fact, there is all the more reason for adhering to it, because it is attested twice. The recurrence of the psalm as one of Davidic origin in 2 Sam 22 is of some weight, since not the slightest suspicion attaches to any of the other songs of sayings attributed to David in the second book of Samuel (e.g., 3:33-34; 5:8; 7:18-29; 23:1-7). Moreover, the psalm is evidently ancient, and suited to the classical period of the language and its poetry. V. 31 is quoted as early as Prov 30:5, and v. 34 in Hab 3:19.
The psalm was also regarded as Davidic at a very early period, as the ‘diaskeuast’ of the second book of Samuel met with the heading, which attributes the psalm to David. No doubt this opinion might be founded upon v. 51; and with perfect justice if it were: for if the psalm was not composed by David, it must have been composed in his name and spirit; and who could have been this contemporaneous and equal poet?”
Again, after quoting several thoroughly Davidic signs, he says at p. 96: “It is very obvious with how little justice the words of v. 51, relating to 2 Sam 7:12-16,26,29, have been pronounced spurious. Besides, the psalm can no more have concluded with lmshychw (v. 51) than with v. 50; and if David refers to himself by name at the commencement in Sam 23:1, and in the middle in 2 Sam 7:20, why should he not do the same at the close?” In vv. 13-16 the text of the Psalms deviates greatly and in many instances from that before us. In v. 13 we find vae ylej\gæw] dr;B; Wrb][; wyb;[; instead of cae Lj,G, r[æB; ; and after v. 14 vae ylej\gæw] dr;B; is repeated in the psalm. In v. 15 we have bræ qr;B; for qr;B; , and in v. µyimæ qypia; for µy; qypia; . The other deviations are inconsiderable. So far as the repetition of vae ylej\gæw] dr;B; at the end of v. 14 is concerned, it is not only superfluous, but unsuitable, because the lightning following the thunder is described in v. 15, and the words repeated are probably nothing more than a gloss that has crept by an oversight into the text. The µyimæ qypia; in v. 16 is an obvious softening down of the µy; qypia; of the text before us. In the other deviations, however, the text of the Psalms is evidently the more original of the two; the abridgment of the second clause of v. 13 is evidently a simplification of the figurative description in the psalm, and bræ qr;B; in the 15th verse of the psalm is more poetical and a stronger expression than the mere qr;B; of our text. This explanation, which we find in Gesenius (Thes. and Lex.) and Bertheau, rests upon no other authority than the testimony of Origen, to the effect that an obscure writer gives this interpretation of trista>thv , the rendering of vyliv; , an authority which is completely overthrown by the writer of the gloss in Octateuch. (Schleussner, Lex. in LXX t. v. p. 338), who gives this explanation of trista>tav : tou>v para> cei>ra tou> basile>wv aristera>n tri>thv moi>rav a>rcontav .
Suidas and Hesychius give the same explanation (s. v. trista>tai ).
Jerome also observes (ad Ezek 23): “It is the name of the second rank next to the king.” The objections brought against this have no force in them, viz., that, according to this view, the section must have been written a long time after the captivity (Clericus and Thenius), and that “the perfectly general expression ‘the time of meeting’ could not stand for the time of the afternoon or evening meeting” (Thenius): for the former rests upon the assumption that the daily sacrifice was introduced after the captivity-an assumption quite at variance with the historical facts; and the latter is overthrown by the simple remark, that the indefinite expression derived its more precise meaning from the legal appointment of the morning and evening sacrifice as times of meeting for the worship of God, inasmuch as the evening meeting was the only one that could be placed in contrast with the morning. Stähelin makes the following remark in his Einleitung (p. 122): “The books of the Kings form an antithesis to the history of David. As the latter shows how obedience to God and to the utterances of His prophets is rewarded, and how, even when Jehovah is obliged to punish, He makes known His grace again in answer to repentance; so do the books of the Kings, which relate the overthrow of both the Hebrew states, teach, through the history of these two kingdoms, how glorious promises are thrown back and dynasties fall in consequence of the conduct of individual men (compare 1 Kings 11:38 with 14:10, and still more with 2 Kings 21:10ff. and 23:27). The sins of one man like Manasseh are sufficient to neutralize all the promises that have been given to the house of David.” There is no need to refute this erroneous statement, since it only rests upon a misinterpretation of 2 Kings 21:10ff., and completely misses the idea which runs through both books of the Kings; and, moreover, there is no contradiction between the manifestation of divine mercy towards penitent sinners and the punishment of men according to their deeds. Kimchi says: “Plures scribae errant in hoc verbo, scribentes hT;aæ cum Aleph, quia sensui hoc conformius est; sed constat nobis ex correctis MSS et masora, scribendum esse ht[w cum Ain.” Hence both Norzi and Bruns have taken ht[w under their protection. Compare de Rossi, variae lectt. ad h. l. The conjecture of Thenius, that ˆwOjyGi should be altered into ˆwO[b]Gi , is hardly worth mentioning; for, apart from the fact that all the ancient versions confirm the correctness of ˆwOjyGi , the objections which Thenius brings against it amount to mere conjectures or groundless assumptions, such as that Zadok took the oil-horn out of the tabernacle at Gibeon, which is not stated in v. 39. Moreover, Gibeon was a three hours’ journey from Jerusalem, so that it would have been absolutely impossible for the anointing, which was not commanded by David till after Adonijah’s feast had commenced, to be finished so quickly that the procession could return to Jerusalem before it was ended, as is distinctly recorded in v. 41. To refute the assertion of De Wette, Gramberg, and Thenius, that this account of the Chronicles arises from a free mode of dealing with the history, and an intention to suppress everything that did not contribute to the honour of David and his house-an assertion which can only be attributed to their completely overlooking, not to say studiously ignoring, the different plans of the two works (the books of Kings on the one hand, and those of Chronicles on the other)-it will be sufficient to quote the unprejudiced and thoughtful decision of Bertheau, who says, in his Comm. on 1 Chron 23:1: “These few words (1 Chron 23:1) give in a condensed form the substance of the account in 1 Kings 1, which is intimately bound up with the account of the family affairs of David in the books of Samuel and Kings, and therefore, according to the whole plan of our historical work, would have been out of place in the Chronicles.” “Shimei is and remains rather a proof of David’s magnanimity than of vengeance. It was not a little thing to tolerate the miscreant in his immediate neighborhood for his whole life long (not even banishment being thought of). And if under the following reign also he had been allowed to end his days in peace (which had never been promised him), this would have been a kindness which would have furnished an example of unpunished crimes that might easily have been abused.”
This is the verdict of J. J. Hess in his Geschichte Davids, ii. p. 221. The situation of the tombs of the kings of Judah upon Zion, Thenius has attempted to trace minutely in a separate article in Illgen’s Zeitschrift für die histor. Theol. 1844, i. p. 1ff., and more especially to show that the entrance to these tombs must have been on the eastern slope of Mount Zion, which falls into the valley of Tyropoeon, and obliquely opposite to the spring of Siloah. This is in harmony with the statement of Theodoret (quaest. 6 in iii. Reg.), to the effect that Josephus says, to> de> mnh>ma ( th>v tafh>v ) para> th>n Siloa>m ei>nai antroeide>v e>con to> sch>ma kai> th>n basilikh>n dhlou>n polute>leian ; although this statement does not occur in any passage of his works as they have come down to us. When Thenius denies this, and maintains that Rehoboam cannot have been 41 years old when he began to reign, referring to his discussion at 1 Kings 14:21, he answers himself, inasmuch as at ch. 14:21 he demonstrates the fallacy of the objections which Cappellus has raised against the correctness of the reading “41 years.” There is no meaning in the objection of Thenius, that Abiathar did not carry the ark himself, since this was not the duty of the high priest. For, in the first place, it is questionable whether Abiathar did not lend a helping hand at the removal of the ark during Absalom’s conspiracy.
And, secondly, the duty binding upon the high priest, to superintend and conduct the removal of the ark, might very well be called carrying the ark. The conjecture, that for ˆwOra; we should read dwOpae , founders on the preterite ac;n; ; for Abiathar had not only worn the ephod once before, but he wore it till the very hour in which Solomon deposed him from his office. Nothing is related concerning the subsequent fate of Abiathar, since the death of a high priest who had been deprived of his office was a matter of no importance to the history of the kingdom of God. At any rate, he would not survive his deposition very long, as he was certainly eighty years old already (see Comm. on Sam. p. 267).-The inference which Ewald (Gesch. iii. pp. 269, 270) draws from 1 Sam 2:31-36 as to the manner of his death, namely, that he fell by the sword, is one of the numerous fictions founded upon naturalistic assumptions with which this scholar has ornamented the biblical history. Instead of µwOlv;ybia the LXX (Cod. Vat.), Vulgate, Syr., and Arab. have adopted the reading hmolv] , and both Thenius and Ewald propose to alter the text accordingly. But whatever plausibility this reading may have, especially if we alter the preterite hf;n; into the participle hf;n; after the h>n keklikw>v of the LXX, as Thenius does, it has no other foundation than an arbitrary rendering of the LXX, who thought, but quite erroneously, that the allusion to Absalom was inapplicable here.
For rjæaæ hf;n; , to take a person’s side, would suit very well in the case of Adonijah and Absalom, but not in that of Solomon, whose claim to the throne was not a party affair, but had been previously determined by God. The opinion of Böttcher and Thenius, that hm;B; signifies a “sacred coppice,” is only based upon untenable etymological combinations, and cannot be proved. And Ewald’s view is equally unfounded, viz., that “high places were an old Canaanaean species of sanctuary, which at that time had become common in Israel also, and consisted of a tall stone of a conical shape, as the symbol of the Holy One, and of the real high place, viz., an altar, a sacred tree or grove, or even an image of the one God as well” (Gesch. iii. p. 390). For, on the one hand, it cannot be shown that the tall stone of a conical shape existed even in the case of the Canaanitish bamoth, and, on the other hand, it is impossible to adduce a shadow of a proof that the Israelitish bamoth, which were dedicated to Jehovah, were constructed precisely after the pattern of the Baal’s-bamoth of the Canaanites. Grotius observes on this: “The agchi’noia of Solomon was shown by this to be very great. There is a certain similarity in the account of Ariopharnis, king of the Thracians, who, when three persons claimed to be the sons of the king of the Cimmerii, decided that he was the son who would not obey the command to cast javelins at his father’s corpse. The account is given by Diodorus Siculus.” The objection by which Thenius tries to set aside this argument, which has been already advanced by Houbigant, viz., that “if the first (Azariah) was not also a state scribe, the copula would be inserted, as it is everywhere else from v. 4 onwards when a new office is mentioned,” proves nothing at all, because the copula is also omitted in v. 3, where the new office of rkæz; is introduced. He>n arch>n afei>lato ou> th>v iJerwsu>nhv egu>mnwsen th>n ga>r th>v iJerwsu>nhv axi>an ouk ek ceirotoni>av all> ek gonikh>v ei>con diadoch>v .-Theodoret. The scheffel is about an English sack (vid., Flügel’s Dict.).-Tr. According to Athen. Deipnos. iv. 10, the kings of Persia required a thousand oxen a day; and according to Tavernier, in Rosenmüller’s A. u. N. Morgenland, iii. pp. 166, 167, five hundred sheep and lambs were slaughtered daily for the Sultan’s court. Greatly as the fame of Solomon’s wisdom is extolled in these verses, it was far outdone in subsequent times. Even Josephus has considerably adorned the biblical accounts in his Antiqq. viii. 2, 5. He makes Solomon the author not only of 1005 bibli>a peri> wdw>n kai> melw>n , and 300 bi>blouv parabolw>n kai> eiko>nwn , but also of magical books with marvellous contents. Compare the extracts from Eupolemus in Eusebii praep. Ev. ix. 31ff., the remnants of Solomon’s apocryphal writings in Fabricii Cod. apocr. V. T. i. pp. 914ff. and 1014f., the collection of the Talmudical Sagas in Othonis Lex. rabb. philol. pp. 668f., and G. Weil, bibl. Legenden der Mussulmänner, pp. 225-279. According to the Koran (Sure xxvii. vv. 17ff.), Solomon understood the languages not only of men and demons, but also of birds and ants. The Turkish literature contains a “Book of Solomon,” Suleimanname, consisting of seventy volumes, from which v. Hammer (Rosenöl, i. p. 147ff.) has given extracts. Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 292) assumes that “by the 550 (1 Kings 9:23) we are to understand the actual superintendents, whereas the 3300 (1 Kings 5:30) include inferior inspectors as well; and of the superintendents, 300 were taken from the Canaanaeans, so that only 250 (2 Chron 8:10) were native Hebrews;” though he pronounces the number 3600 (2 Chron 2:17) erroneous. Bertheau, on the other hand, in his notes in 2 Chron 8:10, has rather complicated than elucidated the relation in which the two accounts stand to one another. Without any satisfactory ground Thenius has taken offence at the word ylib]Gi , and on the strength of the critically unattested kai> e>balon autou>v of the LXX and the paraphrastic aJrmo>santav kai> sundh>santav of Josephus, which is only introduced to fill in the picture, has altered it into µWlyBig]Yæwæ , “they bordered them (the stones).” This he explains as relating to the “bevelling” of the stones, upon the erroneous assumption that the grooving of the stones in the old walls encircling the temple area, which Robinson (Pal. i. 423) was the first to notice and describe, “occurs nowhere else in precisely the same form;” whereas Robinson found them in the ancient remains of the foundations of walls in different places throughout the land, not only in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, viz., at Bethany, but also at Carmel on the mountains of Judah, at Hebron, Semua (Esthemoa), Beit Nusib (Nezib), on Tabor, and especially in the north, in the old remains of the walls of the fortification es Shukif, Hunîn, Banias, Tyrus, Jebail (Byblus), Baalbek, on the island of Ruwad (the ancient Aradus), and in different temples on Lebanon (see Rob. Pal. ii. 101, 198, 434, 627; iii. 12, 213, 214; and Bibl. Researches, p. 229).
Böttcher (n. ex. Krit. Aehrenl. ii. p. 32) has therefore properly rejected this conjecture as “ill-founded,” though only to put in its place another which is altogether unfounded, namely, that before ylib]Gi the word hatsoriym (“the Tyrians”) has dropped out. For this has nothing further in its favour than the most improbable assumption, that king Hiram gathered together the subjects of his whole kingdom to take part in Solomon’s buildings.-The addition of tri>a e>th , which is added by the LXX at the end of the verse, does not warrant the assumption of Thenius and Böttcher, that hn,v; vwOkv; has dropped out of the text. For it is obvious that the LXX have merely made their addition e conjectura, and indeed have concluded that, as the foundation for the temple was laid in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, the preliminary work must have occupied the first three years of his reign. Of the special works on the subject of the temple, see my pamphlet, Der Tempel Salomo’s, eine archäologische Untersuchung (Dorp. 1839); and Carl Chr. W. F. Bähr, Der Salomonische Tempel mit Berücksichtigung seines Verhältnisses zur heil. Architectur überhaupt (Karlsr. 1848). In both of these there are critical notices of the earlier investigations and monographs on this subject, which have now simply a historical interest. See also the short description of the temple in my Bibl. Archäologie, i. §23ff., with sketches of the temple building and the principal vessels on Plates 2 and 3, and the most recent notice by H.
Merz in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia (Art. Temple). In opposition to the hypothesis of Böttcher, which has been repeated by Bertheau, viz., that the number 480 merely rests upon the computation of 12 × 40 years, or twelve generations of forty years each, Thenius himself has observed with perfect justice, that “where both the year and the month of the reign of the king in question are given, the principal number will certainly rest upon something more than mere computation; and if this had not been the case, the person making such a computation, if only for the purpose of obtaining the appearance of an exact statement, would have made a particular calculation of the years of Solomon’s reign, and would have added them to the round number obtained, and written ‘in the year 484.’
Moreover, the introduction to our chapter has something annalistic in its tone; and at this early period it would be undoubtedly well known, and in a case like the present a careful calculation would be made, how long a time had elapsed since the most memorable period of the Israelitish nation had passed by.” Compare with this Ed. Preuss (Die Zeitrechnung der LXX, p. 74ff.), who has endeavoured with much greater probability to show that the alteration made by the LXX into 440 rests upon nothing more than a genealogical combination. In the Strasburg cathedral and that at Freiburg in Breisgau the proportion between the height of the tower and that of the church, together with the roof, is about 3 1/4 to 1; it is only in the cathedral at Rouen that the proportion would have been almost 4 to 1 if it had been carried out to the very top. At the same time, in making this comparison it must be borne in mind that these Gothic towers taper off into slender points, whereas in the case of Solomon’s temple we must assume that if the porch was carried up to the height supposed, it finished in a flat truncated tower; and it is this which would chiefly occasion the disproportion. The perfectly groundless assumption of Thenius, that the outer building had most probably an inner door as well, which connected it with the temple, does just as much violence to the decorum of the Holy Place. Thenius, on the other hand, reckons the length of the whole building at a hundred cubits and its breadth at fifty-two, because, on the unfounded assumption that the temple in Ezekiel’s vision was simply a copy of Solomon’s temple, he sets down the thickness of the temple wall in front and along the two sides at six cubits, and that of the hinder wall at seven. Moreover, he not only reckons the internal length of the house at sixty-two cubits, in opposition to the statement in the text, that the length of the house (which was divided into the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies) was sixty cubits; but in opposition to v. 16, according to which the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies were separated by boards of cedar, he assumes that there was a wall of two cubits in thickness between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, according to Ezek 41:3; and, lastly, for no other reason than the wish to get the round number 100, he takes for granted that the hinder wall of the temple was a cubit thicker than that on the other sides. This upper room does not presuppose, however, that the party wall, which follows as a matter of course from v. 16, was not merely a cedar wall, but a wall two cubits thick. The supposed difficulty of setting up a cedar wall thirty cubits high is not so great as to necessitate assumptions opposed to the text. For we cannot possibly see why it could not have been made secure “without injuring the temple wall.”
The wood panelling must have been nailed firmly to the wall without injuring the wall itself; and therefore this could be done just as well in the case of the cedar beams or boards of the party wall. The conjecture of Thenius, that ‘et-hapaaroket (the curtain) has dropped out of the text and should be restored (“he carried the curtain across with golden chains”), is very properly described by Merz as “certainly untenable,” since, apart from the fact that not one of the older versions contains the missing words, chains would have impeded the moving of the curtain. It is true that, according to 2 Chron 3:14, there was a curtain before the Most Holy Place; but as it is not mentioned so early as this even in the Chronicles, this would not be its proper position in the account before us, but it would be most suitably mentioned either in connection with or after the reference to the doors of the Most Holy Place in vv. 31 and 32. H. Merz (Herzog’s Cycl.) now admits this, whereas he formerly agreed with Ewald and others in denying the existence of the curtain in Solomon’s temple, and regarded the curtain (veil) in Matt 27:51-52 as an arbitrary addition made by Herod out of his princely caprice, thus overlooking the deep symbolical meaning which the veil or curtain possessed. According to Pliny (H. N. 36, c. 14), all Asia was building at the celebrated temple of Diana at Ephesus for 220 years. The account given by Josephus of these substructures does not show very clearly how much originated with Solomon, and how much belongs to the following centuries. At the close of his description of Solomon’s temple (Ant. viii. 3, 9), he states that, in order to obtain the same level for the e>xwqen iJero>n , i.e., the outer court of the temple, as that of the nao>v , he had large valleys filled up, into which it was difficult to look down on account of their depth, by raising the ground to the height of 400 cubits, so as to make them level with the top of the mountain; and in the de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1, after describing the templemountain as a mighty hill, the summit of which hardly sufficed for the temple-house and altar when the building was commenced, because it sloped off on all sides, he adds: “Solomon therefore caused a wall to be raised on the eastern side, and had a porch built upon the ground that was heaped up, and on the other sides the temple ( nao>v ) was naked ( gumno>v ).”
But in the description of the temple of Herod (Ant. xv. 11, 3) he says: “The temple was surrounded by enormous porticos ( stoai> ), which rested upon a large wall, and were the largest work of which men have ever heard. It was a steep rocky hill, rising gradually towards the eastern part of the city up to the highest point. This hill Solomon surrounded with a wall by very great works up to the very apex, and walled it round, commencing at the root, which is surrounded by a deep ravine, with stones which were fastened together with lead,...and continuing to the top, so that the size and height of the building, which was completed as a square, were immense,” etc. The flat obtained in this manner is then described by Josephus as a peri>bolov of four stadia in circumference, namely, one stadium on each side. Now, although it was the outer court of the temple of Herod (the court of the Gentiles) which first had this circumference (see my bibl. Archäol. i. pp. 143, 144), and Josephus, de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1, relates that subsequently ( toi>v eJxh>v aiw>sin ) the levelling of the hill was carried out to even a greater extent, as the people still continued to heap up earth, it is quite conceivable that Solomon may have planned the area of the temple with this circumference.
And this conjecture acquires great probability from the fact that, according to the researches of Robinson (Pal. i. pp. 420ff.; Recent Investigations concerning the Topography of Jerusalem, pp. 68ff.; and Later Biblical Researches, pp. 173ff.), there are layers of enormous square stones in the lowest part of the south-western and south-eastern corners of the present Haram wall, the dimensions of which, apart from the fact that they are hewn with grooved edges, point to an early Israelitish origin, so that they might very well be relics of the Solomonian substructures of the temple-hill. There is also a remnant of the arch of a bridge of the same construction on the southern portion of the western wall of the Haram, which points to a bridge that led across from Moriah to Zion, and “appears to remove all the objections to the identity of this part of the enclosure of the mosque with that of the ancient temple” (Rob. Pal. i. p. 426). “Here then,” adds Robinson (Pal. i. pp. 427, 428), “we have indisputable remains of Jewish antiquity, consisting of an important portion of the western wall of the ancient temple area. They are probably to be referred to a period long antecedent to the days of Herod; for the labours of this splendour-loving tyrant appear to have been confined to the body of the temple and the porticos around the court. The magnitude of the stones also, and the workmanship, as compared with other remaining monuments of Herod, seem to point to an earlier origin. In the accounts we have of the destruction of the temple by the Chaldaeans, and its rebuilding by Zerubbabel under Darius, no mention is made of these exterior walls. The former temple was destroyed by fire, which would not affect these foundations; nor is it probable that a feeble colony of returning exiles could have accomplished works like these. There seems, therefore, little room for hesitation in referring them back to the days of Solomon, or rather of his successors, who, according to Josephus, built up here immense walls, ‘immoveable for all time.’“ But however probable this assumption may be, the successors of Solomon cannot come into consideration at all, since Josephus says nothing of the kind, and the biblical accounts are not favourable to this conjecture. With the division of the kingdom after the death of Solomon the might of the kings of Judah was broken; and the accounts of the new court which Jehoshaphat built, i.e., of the restoration of the inner court (2 Chron 20:5), and of the repairs of the temple by Joash (2 Kings 12:5ff.; 2 Chron 24:4ff.) and Josiah (2 Kings 22:5ff.; 2 Chron 34:8ff.), do not produce the impression that the walls so costly or so large could have been built at that time. The statement of Josephus (l.c. de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1) concerning the gradual extension of the levelled hill, has reference to the enlargement of the temple area towards the north, inasmuch as he adds to the words already quoted: “and cutting through the north wall, they took in as much as was afterwards occupied by the circumference of the whole temple.”-If, therefore, the remains of the ancient wall which have been mentioned, with their stones of grooved edges, are of early Israelitish origin, we must trace them to Solomon; and this is favoured still further by the fact, that when Solomon had a magnificent palace built for himself opposite to the temple (see 1 Kings 7:1-12), he would assuredly connect the temple-mountain with Zion by a bridge.-Even J. Berggren (Bibel u.
Josephus über Jerus. u. d. heil. Grab.) thinks it probable that “the socalled remains of an arch in the western Haram wall may be, as Robinson at first indicated, a relic of that ancient and marvellous xystus bridge, with which the Davidic steps on the two steep sides of the valley of the Tyropoeum, constructed for the purpose of going from Moriah to Zion or from Zion to Moriah, were connected.” Thenius therefore supposes that “the lower part of the armoury formed a peristyle, a fourfold row of pillars running round inside its walls and enclosing a courtyard, so that the Vulgate alone gives the true sense, quatuor deambulacra inter columnas cedrinas;” and he points to the court of the palace of Luxor, which has a double row of pillars round it. The number of pillars is not given in the text, but Thenius in his drawing of this building sets it down at 400, which would certainly present a forest-like aspect to any one entering the building.
Nevertheless we cannot regard this assumption as correct, because the pillars,which we cannot suppose to have been less than a cubit in thickness, would have been so close to one another that the four rows of pillars could not have formed four deambulacra. As the whole building was only fifty cubits broad, and this breadth included the inner courtyard, we cannot suppose that the sides of the building were more than ten cubits deep, which would leave a breadth of thirty cubits for the court.
If then four pillars, each of a cubit in thickness, stood side by side or one behind the other in a space of ten cubits in depth, the distance between the pillars would be only a cubit and a half, that is to say, would be only just enough for one man and no more to walk conveniently through. And what could have been the object of crowding pillars together in this way, so as to render the entire space almost useless? It is on this ground, probably that Hermann Weiss assumes that each side of the oblong building, which was half as broad as it was long, was supported by one row, and therefore all the sides together by four rows of cedar pillars, and the beams of the same material which rested upon them. But this view is hardly a correct one; for it not only does not do justice to the words of the text, “four rows of pillars,” but it is insufficient in itself, for the simple reason that one row of pillars on each side would not have afforded the requisite strength and stability to the three stories built upon them, even if we should not suppose the rooms in these stories to be very broad, since the further three rows of pillars, which Weiss assumes in addition, according to v. 3, as the actual supporters of the upper building, have no foundation in the text.
The words “four rows of cedar pillars” do not absolutely require the assumption that there were four rows side by side or one behind the other on every side of the building; for the assertion that rWf does not denote a row in the sense of a straight line, but generally signifies a row surrounding and enclosing a space, is refuted by Ex 28:17, where we read of the four rWf of precious stones upon the breastplate of the high priest.-Is it not likely that the truth lies midway between these two views, and that the following is the view most in accordance with the actual fact, namely, that there were four rows of pillars running along the full length of the building, but that they were distributed on the two sides, so that there were only two rows on each side? In this case a person entering from the front would see four rows of pillars running the whole length of the building. In any case the rows of pillars would of necessity be broken in front by the entrance itself.
The utter uncertainty as to the number and position of the four rows of pillars is sufficient in itself to render it quite impossible to draw any plan of the building that could in the slightest degree answer to the reality. Moreover, there is no allusion at all in the description given in the text to either entrance or exit, or to staircases and other things, and the other buildings are still more scantily described, so that nothing certain can be determined with regard to their relative position or their probable connection with one another. For this reason, after studying the matter again and again, I have been obliged to relinquish the intention to illustrate the description in the text by drawings. The situation of this palace in Jerusalem is not defined. Ewald supposes (Gesch. iii. p. 317) that it was probably built on the southern continuation of the temple-mountain, commonly called Ophel, i.e., Hill.
But “nothing more is needed to convince us that it cannot have stood upon Ophel, than a single glance at any geographical outline of Ophel on one of the best of the modern maps, and a recollection of the fact that, according to Neh 3:26,31, it was upon Ophel, where the king’s palace is said to have stood, that the temple-socagers and shopkeepers had their places of abode after the captivity” (Thenius). The view held by earlier travellers and pilgrims to Zion, and defended by Berggren (p. 109ff.), namely, that the ancient Solomonian and Asmonaean palaces stood upon Moriah on the western side of the temple, is equally untenable. For the xystus, above which, according to Josephus, Bell.
Jud. ii. 16, 3, the Asmonaean palace stood, was connected with the temple by a bridge, and therefore did not stand upon Moriah, but upon Zion or the a>nw po>liv , since this bridge, according to Josephus, Bell.
Jud. vi. 6, 2, connected the temple with the upper city.
Moreover, it clearly follows from the passages of Josephus already noticed (pp. 61f.), in which he refers to the substructures of the temple area, that the temple occupied the whole of Moriah towards the west, and extended as far as the valley of the Tyropoeon, and consequently there was no room for a palace on that side. When Josephus affirms, therefore (Ant. viii. 5, 2), that Solomon’s palace stood opposite to the temple ( a>ntikruv e>cwn nao>n ), it can only have been built on the north-east side of Zion, as most of the modern writers assume (see W.
Krafft, Topographie Jerus. p. 114ff., and Berggr. p. 110). This is sustained not only by the probability that the Asmonaeans would hardly build their palace anywhere else than on the spot where the palace of the kings of Judah built by Solomon stood, but also by the account of the elevation of Joash to the throng in 2 Kings 11 and 2 Chron 23, from which it is perfectly obvious that the royal palace stood upon Zion opposite to the temple. It is hardly necessary to observe, that the expression jæWr ãaæv; , to gasp for air, in Jer 2:24; 14:6, does not warrant our giving to jæWr the meaning open or uncovered, as Böttcher supposes. But when Thenius follows Böttcher (Proben, p. 335) in adducing in support of this the fact “that the tangent, which is drawn to any circle divided into a hundred parts, covers exactly four of these parts,” the fact rests upon a simple error, inasmuch as any drawing will show that a tangent only touches one point of a circle divided into a hundred parts. And the remark of Böttcher, “If you describe on the outside of a circle of twelve cubits in circumference a hundred small circles of twelvehundredths of a cubit in diameter, a tangent drawn thereupon will cover to the eye exactly four small circles, although mathematically it touches only one of them in one point,” is not correct according to any measurement. For if the tangent touches one of these smaller circles with mathematical exactness, to the eye there will be covered either three or five half circles, or even seven, but never four. This is the way in which the earlier translators appear to have understood it: e.g., LXX e>rgon kri>nou kata> to> aula>m tessa>rwn phcw>n (“lily-work according to the hall four cubits”); Vulg. Capitella... quasi opere lilii fabricata erant in porticu quatuor cubitorum; Chald. fyqil; at;n]væwOv dbæwO[ ˆyMiaæ [bær]aæ aM;læWab] (opus liliaceum collectum in porticu quatuor cubitorum); Syr. opus liliaceum idem fecit in porticu quatuor cubitis. These readings appear to be based upon the view supported by Rashi µl;Wa for µl;Wa ): lily-work as it was in the hall. Hermann Weiss (Kostümkunde, i. p. 367) agrees in the main with the idea worked out in the text; but he assumes, on the ground of monumental views, that the decoration was of a much simpler kind, and one by no means out of harmony with the well-known monumental remains of the East. In his opinion, the pillars consisted of “a shaft nineteen cubits in height, surrounded at the top, exactly after the fashion of the ornamentation of the Egyptian pillars, with seven bands decorated like plaited work, which unitedly covered a cubit, in addition to which there was the lily-work of five cubits in height, i.e., a slender capital rising up in the form of the calyx of a lily, ornamented with pomegranates.” Our reasons for dissenting from this opinion are given in the exposition of the different verses. Stieglitz (Gesch. der Baukunst, p. 127) aptly observes in relation to this: “The architect cannot subscribe to Meyer’s view (that the pillars were supporters of the hall), since it was only through their independent position that the pillars received the solemn character intended to be given to them, and by their dignity subserved the end designed, of exalting the whole building and calling attention to the real purpose of the whole.” There is no necessity to refute the fanciful notion of Ewald, that these pillars, “when they were erected and consecrated, were certainly named after men who were held in estimation at that time, probably after the younger sons of Solomon,” and that of Thenius, that ˆ[OB; ˆykiy; , “He (the Lord) establishes with strength,” was engraved upon them as an inscription. For the different conjectures on this subject, see Lundius, jud.
Heiligthümer, p. 356. Thenius supposes that there was also a provision for filling the vessel, since the height of it would have rendered it a work of great labour and time to fill it by hand, and that there was probably a pipe hidden behind the figures of the oxen, since, according to Aristeas, histor. LXX Interp., Oxon. 1692, p. 32 (also Eusebii praep. evang. ix. 38), there were openings concealed at the foot of the altar, out of which water was allowed to run at certain seasons for the requisite cleansing of the pavement of the court from the blood of the sacrifices; and there is still a fountain just in the neighbourhood of the spot on which, according to v. 39, the brazen sea must have stood (see Schultz’s plan); and in the time of the Crusaders there was a large basin, covered by a dome supported by columns (see Robinson, Pal. i. 446). But even if the later temple was supplied with the water required by means of artificial water-pipes, the Solomonian origin of these arrangements or designs is by no means raised even to the rank of probability. The description which follows will be more easily understood by comparing with it the sketch given in my biblische Archäologie, Taf. iii. fig. 4. The description which Ewald has given of these stands in his Geschichte, iii. pp. 311, 312, and still more elaborately in an article in the Göttingen Gelehrten Nachr. 1859, pp. 131-146, is not only obscure, but almost entirely erroneous, since he proposes in the most arbitrary way to make several alterations in the biblical text, on the assumption that the Solomonian stands were constructed just like the small bronze four-wheeled kettle-carriages (hardly a foot in size) which have been discovered in Mecklenburg, Steyermark, and other places of Europe. See on this subject G. C. F. Lisch, “über die ehernen Wagenbecken der Bronzezeit,” in the Jahrbb. des Vereinsf. Mecklenb.
Geschichte, ix. pp. 373, 374, where a sketch of a small carriage of this kind is given After hL,aeh; µyliKehæAlK; taew] the LXX have the interpolation, kai> oiJ stu>loi tessara>konta kai> oktw> tou> oi>kou tou> basile>wv kai> tou> oi>kou Kuri>ou , which is proved to be apocryphal by the marvellous combination of the king’s house and the house of God, though it is nevertheless regarded by Thenius as genuine, and as an interesting notice respecting certain pillars in the enclosure of the inner court of the temple, and in the king’s palace! Nothing can be learned from 2 Chron 29:18 concerning the number of the vessels in the Holy Place. If we were to conclude from this passage that there were no more vessels in the Holy Place than are mentioned there, we should also have to assume, if we would not fall into a most unscientific inconsistency, that there was neither a candlestick nor a golden altar of incense in the Holy Place. The correct meaning of this passage may be gathered from the words of King Abiam in 2 Chron 13:11: “We lay the shew-bread upon the pure table, and light the golden candlestick every evening;” from which it is obvious that here and there only the table and the candlestick are mentioned, because usually only one table had shew-bread upon it, and only one candlestick was lighted. The amazing extent to which this booty may possibly have reached, may be inferred from the accounts we have concerning the quantity of the precious metals in Syria in the Macedonian age. In the gaza regia of Damascus, Alexander found 2600 talents of gold and 600 talents of uncoined silver (Curt. iii. 13, 16, cf. Arrian, ii. 11, 10). In the temple of Jupiter at Antioch there was a statue of this god of solid silver fifteen cubits high (Justin, xxxix. 2, 5. 6); and in the temple at Hierapolis there was also a golden statue (Lucian, de Dea Syr. §31). According to Appian (Parth. 28, ed. Schweigh.), this temple was so full of wealth, that Crassus spent several days weighing the vessels of silver and gold.
And from the unanimous testimony of the ancients, the treasures of the palaces and temples of Asia in the earlier times were greater still. Of the many accounts which Bähr (Symbolik, i. p. 258ff.) and Movers (Phönizier, ii. 3, p. 40ff.) have collected together on this subject, we will mention only a few here, the credibility of which cannot be disputed. According to Varro (in Plin. 33:15), Cyrus had taken 34,000 pounds of gold as booty after the conquest of Asia, beside the gold wrought into vessels and ornaments, and 500,000 talents of silver. In Susa, Alexander took 40,000, or, according to other accounts, 50,000, talents from the royal treasury; or, as it is still more definitely stated, 40,000 talents of uncoined gold and silver, and 9000 talents of coined dariks. Alexander had these brought to Ecbatana, where he accumulated 180,000 talents. Antigonus afterwards found in Susa 15,000 talents more in vessels and wrought gold and silver. In Persepolis, Alexander took 120,000 talents, and in Pasargada talents. For the proofs, see Movers, pp. 42, 43. From the whole character of the Alexandrian version, there can be no doubt that these words have been transferred by the LXX from 1 Kings 9:1, and have not dropped out of the Hebrew text, as Thenius supposes. Instead of ˆheKo in v. 3, we have yYiwile in 2 Chron 5:4; and instead of yYiwile ˆheKo in v. 4, we have yYiwile ˆheKo , “the Levitical priests.” These variations are to be attributed to inexactness in expression. For it is obvious that Thenius is wrong in his notion that the chronicler mentioned the Levites instead of the priests, from the simple fact that he states in v. 7 that “the priests carried the ark,” etc., in exact agreement with our account. The proof which Thenius has endeavoured to give by means of a drawing of the correctness of the latter view, is founded upon untenable assumptions (see Böttcher, Aehrenl. ii. p. 69). It by no means follows from the expression rybid] ynep]Al[æ that the heads of the poles were visible as far off as the door of the Holy Place, but simply that they could be seen in the Holy Place, though not outside. The statement in Heb 9:4, to the effect that the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod that budded were also to be found in the ark, which is at variance with this verse, and which the earlier commentators endeavoured to bring into harmony with it by forced methods of different kinds, simply rests upon an erroneous interpretation of `tWd[e µynip; in Ex 16:33-34, and Num. 17:25, which had become traditional among the Jews; since this merely affirms that the objects mentioned had been deposited in front of the testimony, i.e., in front of the ark which contained the testimony, and not within it, as the Jews supposed.-Still less are De Wette and others warranted in deducing from this verse an argument against the existence of the Mosaic book of the law in the time of Solomon, inasmuch as, according to the precept in Deut 31:26, the book of the law was not to be kept in the ark, but by the side of it, or near it. Bertheau’s opinion (on 2 Chron 5:14), that the priests could not remain in the hall and in front of it on account of the cloud, namely, “the cloud of smoke, which, ascending from the sacrifices burned upon the altar of burnt-offering, concealed the glory of the Lord,” is decidedly erroneous. For the cloud which hindered the priest from performing the service was, according to the distinct words of the text, the cloud which filled the house; and the explanatory clause, “for the glory of the Lord filled the house of Jehovah,” indicates in the most unmistakeable terms that it was the vehicle of the glory of God, and therefore was no a cloud of smoke formed by the burning sacrifices, but the cloud in which God manifested His invisible being to His people-the very same cloud in which Jehovah was to appear above the Capporeth, when the high priest entered the Most Holy Place on the day of atonement, so that he was commanded not to enter it at all times, and, when he entered, to cover the Capporeth with the cloud of the burning incense (Lev 16:2,13). Thenius, however, has built up all kinds of untenable conjectures as to alterations of the text, upon the erroneous assumption that `ˆn;[; means the light and radiant cloud, and cannot be synonymous with `xræ[; .
Böttcher adopts the same opinion, without taking any notice of the striking remarks of Bertheau on 2 Chron 5:14. Böttcher is right in his assertion, that the opinion expressed by Thenius and Cappellus, that this passage in the Chronicles has been dropped out of our text through a copyist’s oversight, is a very improbable one; although the reasons he assigns are for the most part untenable. The omission may be explained in a very simple manner, from the fact that the introduction of this circumstance had no bearing upon the design or contents of the dedicatory prayer. Bertheau (on Chron.) has already proved that there is no force in the arguments by which Thenius attempts to show, on doctrinal grounds, that vv. 44-51 are an interpolated addition. As he correctly observes, “it is, on the contrary, quite in harmony with the original plan, that the two cases are also anticipated, in which the prayers of Israelites who are at a distance from the seat of the sanctuary are directed towards the temple, since it is perfectly appropriate that the prayers of the Israelites at the place of the sanctuary are mentioned first, then the prayers of foreigners at the same place, and lastly the prayers of Israelites, who, because they are not in Jerusalem, are obliged to content themselves with turning their faces towards the temple. We might also point to the fact that it is probably intentional that exactly seven cases are enumerated, inasmuch as in enumerations of this kind, which are not restricted by the nature of the case to any definite measure, such a number as seven easily furnishes an outward limit,”-or more correctly: because seven as a sacred or covenant number was more appropriate than any other to embrace all prayers addressed to God. Seb. Schmidt has already given the following explanation: “These things which I have asked for myself and for my people do Thou, O Lord, because it is for Thy people that I have prayed, and I am their king: therefore hear Thou the prayers of Thy servant and Thy people.
For in v. 52 he makes mention of his own case and of the cases of all the rest, in which they would call upon the Lord. This blessing is omitted from the Chronicles, because it is simply a recapitulation of the longer prayer; but instead of it we have a statement, in 2 Chron 7:1-4, to the effect that fire fell from heaven and consumed the burnt-offering upon the altar. This statement, which even Movers regards as a traditional, i.e., a legendary addition, according to his erroneous view of the sources of the Chronicles, is confirmed by the similar miracle which occurred at the dedication of the temple. It is omitted, like so many other things in the account before us, because all that was essential in this occurrence was contained implicite in the filling of the temple with the glory of the Lord. Just as at the consecration of the Mosaic sanctuary the Lord did not merely manifest His gracious presence through the cloud which filled the tent, but also kindled the first sacrifice with fire from heaven (Lev 9:24), to sanctify the altar as the legitimate place of sacrifice; so also at the temple the miraculous kindling of the first sacrifice with fire from heaven was the immediate and even necessary consequence of the filling of the temple with the cloud, in which the presence of Jehovah was embodied. The conjecture of Böttcher, Thenius, and Bertheau, that ˆwOyl][, should be altered into `y[æ , has no support in Mic 3:12; Jer 26:18, and Ps 79:1, and has all the ancient versions against it; for they all contain the Masoretic text, either in a verbal translation (LXX), or in a paraphrase, as for example the Chaldee, “the house that was high shall be destroyed;” the Syriac and Arabic, “this house will be destroyed;” and the Vulgate, domus haec erit in exemplum.-In 2 Chron 7:21 the thought is somewhat varied by the alteration of hy;h; into hy;h; rv,a .
For it would never enter the mind of any sober critic to attribute this variation to a misinterpretation of our text. Still less can it be an unsuccessful attempt to explain or rectify our text, as Böttcher imagines, since the assertion of this critic, that ˆwOyl][, is only used to signify an exalted position, and never the exaltation of dignity or worth, is proved to be erroneous by Deut 26:19 and 28:1. This simple method of reconciling the account before us with the apparently discrepant notice in the Chronicles, concerning which even Movers (die biblische Chronik, p. 159) observes, that the chronicler interpolated it from a second (?) source, is so natural, that it is difficult to conceive how Bertheau can object to it; since he admits that the accounts in the books of Kings and Chronicles are incomplete extracts from common and more elaborate sources. Nothing certain can be gathered from this notice as to the situation of this castle. The remark made by Thenius, to the effect that it must have joined that portion of the palace in which the harem was, rests upon the assumption that Millo was evidently intended to shelter the harem-an assumption which cannot be raised into a probability, to say nothing of a certainty. The building of Millo immediately after the entrance of Pharaoh’s daughter into the house erected for her, may have arisen from the fact that David (? Solomon-Tr.) could not undertake the fortification of Jerusalem by means of this castle till after his own palace was finished, because he had not the requisite labour at command for carrying on all these buildings at the same time. Thus, for example, according to Arriani exped. Alex. l. v. p. 329, and vii. p. 485 (ed. Blanc), Alexander the Great had ships transported from Phoenicia to the Euphrates, and out of the Indus into the Hydaspes, the ships being taken to pieces for the land transport ( etmh>qhsan ), and the pieces ( tmh>mata ) afterwards joined together again. Plutarch relates (vita Anton. p. 948, ed. Frkf. 1620) that Cleopatra would have had her whole fleet carried across the isthmus which separates Egypt from the Red Sea, and have escaped by that means, had not the Arabs prevented the execution of her plan by burning the first ships that were drawn up on the land. According to Thucydides, bell. Pelop. iv. 8, the Peloponnesians conveyed sixty ships which lay at Corcyra across the Leucadian isthmus. Compare also Polyaeni strateg. v. 2, 6, and Ammian. Marcell. xxiv. 7, and from the middle ages the account of Makrizi in Burckhardt’s Reisen in Syrien, p. 331. Compare the thorough examination of the different views concerning Ophir in C. Ritter’s Erdk. xiv. pp. 348-431, with the briefer collection made by Gesenius in his Thes. p. 141f. and in the Allgem. Encyclop. der Wissenschaft u. Künste, 3 Sect. Bd. 4, p. 201ff., and by Pressel, art. “Ophir,” in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia.-We need not dwell upon the different opinions held by the earlier writers. But among modern authors, Niebuhr, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, and Seetzen decide in favour of Arabia; Quatremère (Memoire sur le pays d’Ophir in Mem. de l’Instit. roy. 1845, t. xv. P. ii. p. 350ff.) and Movers, who takes Ophir to be the name of an emporium on the eastern coast of Africa, in favour of Sofala; while Chr. Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, i. p. 537ff., ii. p. 552ff.) and C. Ritter are the principal supporters of India. On the other hand, Albr. Roscher (Ptolemäus und die Handelsstrassen in Central-Africa, Gotha 1857, p. 57ff.) has attempted to connect together all these views by assuming that the seamen of Hiram and Solomon fetched the gold of Western Africa from the island of Dahlak in the Red Sea, and having taken it to India to exchange, returned at the end of a three years’ voyage enriched with gold and the productions of India. It is no proof to the contrary, that, according to the testimony of ancient writer, as collected by Movers (Phöniz. ii. 3, p. 190ff.), the Phoenicians sailed almost as rapidly as the modern merchant ships; for this evident simply applies to the voyages on the Mediterranean Sea with which they were familiar, and to the period when the Phoenician navigation had reached its fullest development, so that it has no bearing upon the time of Solomon and a voyage upon the Arabian Sea, with which the Phoenicians were hitherto quite unacquainted.-Again, the calculation made by Lassen (ii. pp. 590-1), according to which a voyage from Eziongeber to the mouth of the Indus could have been accomplished in a hundred days, is founded upon the assumption that the Phoenicians were already acquainted with the monsoon and knew what was the best time for the navigation of the Red Sea-an assumption which can neither be proved nor shown to be probable. Compare Aristoteles, hist. animal. ii. 8: e>sti de> oJ me>n kh>bov pi>qhkov e>cwn oura>n . Strabo, xvii. p. 812: e>sti de> oJ kh>pov to> me>n pro>swpon eoikw>v Satu>rw t> a>lla de> kuno>v kai> a>rktou metaxu> genna>tai d> en Aiqiopi>a . Plinius, h. n. viii. 19 (28): Iidem (the games of Pompey the Great) ostenderunt ex Aethiopia quas vocant kh>pouv , quarum pedes posteriores pedibus humanis et cruribus, priores manibus fuere similes. Solinus Polyh. says the same (Bochart, Hieroz. i. lib. iii. c. 31). If the notice of Eupolemus contained in a fragment in Eusebius (praepar. ev. ix. 30), to the effect that David (a mistake for Solomon) sent miners to the island of Aurfee’ (for which Gesenius conjectures that we should read Aufrh> or Aufh>r ) in the Red Sea, which was rich in gold mines, and that they brought gold thence to Judaea, could be proved to be historical through any earlier testimony, Ophir would have been an island of the Erythraean Sea, either Dahlak inside Bab el Mandeb, or Diu Zokatara (the Sanscrit Dwipa Sukhatara, i.e., the happy island) by the present Cape Guardafui. But this notice is evidently simply a conjecture founded upon the Old Testament, having no historical value. 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 (Opobalsamum), which was afterwards cultivated in gardens at Jericho and Engedi, was first of all brought to Palestine (cf. Movers, Phönizier, ii. 3, p. 226ff.). Instead of rjæaæ aSeKi `lgO[; varo we have in the Chronicles zjæa; aSeKi bh;z; vb,K, , “and a footstool in gold fastened to the throne” (the plural zjæa; refers to the footstool and the steps). Now, however easily µyZjam may have been written by mistake for wyrjam bhz vbk cannot have grown out of lwg[ var by any such mistake. The quidpro- quo of the LXX for `lgO[; varo , protomai> mo>scwn , in which `lgO[; is certainly confounded with `lg,[e , does not warrant the conjecture of Thenius, that the Chronicler found `lg,[e in his original and substituted cb,K, (lamb), whereupon cb,K, (lamb) was changed by another hand into vb,K, footstep, and varo was dropped altogether. That Koue> or Kwe> is the earliest reading of the LXX, and not the ek Qekoue> 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), Kw>d plhsi>on Aigu>ptou ; for which Jerome has Coa, quae est juxta Aegyptum, after the Vulgate Nevertheless these numbers, especially that of the wives who were raised to the rank of princesses, appear sufficiently large to suggest the possibility of an error in the numeral letters, although Oriental rulers carried this custom to a very great length, as for example Darius Codomannus, of whom it is related that he took with him 360 pellices on his expedition against Alexander (see Curtius, iii. 3, 24; Athen.
Deipnos. iii. 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 (Phöniz. 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 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 Böttcher (N. exeg. Aehrenl. ii. p. 95) to be utterly untenable. The LXX have supplied what is missing e conjectura: kai> ane>streyen A>der ( i . e ., AJdad ) eiv th>n gh>n autou> auJth> hJ kaki>a hJ>n epoi>hsen A>der kai> ebaruqu>mhsen Israh>l kai> ebasi>leusen en gh> Edw>m . 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 mountain-land 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 22:48, according to which Edom had no king even in the time of Jehoshaphat, but only a vicegerent, and also with 2 Kings 8:20, 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 22:48, 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 this history does indeed mention a revolt of the Edomites from Judah (2 Chron 20; see at 1 Kings 22:48), 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 (vv. 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 Böttcher. For example, the LXX have connected together the two accounts respecting the adversaries Hadad and Rezon who rose up against Solomon (v. 14 and v. 23), which are separated in the Hebrew text, and have interpolated what is sated concerning Rezon in vv. and 24 after haa’adomiy in v. 14, and consequently have been obliged to alter wgwˆf;c; hy;h; in v. 25 into kai> h>san Sata>n , 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 v. 25, namely the words from h[;r;h;Ata,w] onwards, they have not given till the close of v. 22 (LXX); and in order to connect this with what precedes, they have interpolated the words kai> ane>streyen A>der eiv th>n gh>n autou> . 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 (vv. 14 and 23), but more especially by the fact that in v. 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 h[;r;h;Ata,w] and took tae for tazO, auJ>th hJ kaki>a .
With this reading xWq which follows was necessarily understood as referring to Hadad; and as Hadad was an Edomite, Ëlm]Yiwæ µr;a\Al[æ had to be altered into ebasi>leusen en gh> Edw>m . 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 v. 3 of the Hebrew text and interpolated into v. 1, that, as Thenius observes, “the true state of the case can only be overlooked from superficiality of observation or from preconceived opinion.”) 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. Compare Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 276. It is true that more could be inferred from 2 Chron 8:3, if the conquest of the city of Hamath by Solomon were really recorded in that passage, as Bertheau supposes.
But although `l[æ qzæj; 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 `l[æ qzæj; and built Tadmor,” etc., since all that `lyh ychzq 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. On the other hand, the fact that in Ps 80:2 Benjamin is placed between Ephraim and Manasseh is no proof that it belonged to the kingdom of Israel; for 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 Benjamin. For in Ps 80:2 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 cannot be inferred from 2 Chron 15:9 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. “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.) 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 1 Kings 11:43, partly in ch. 12 between vv. 24 and 25, and in an abbreviated form once more after 1 Kings 13:34, 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 1 Kings 11:26: “Solomon having appointed Jeroboam superintendent of the tributary labour in Ephraim, for the purpose of keeping in check the Sichemites, who were probably pre-eminently inclined to rebel, directed him to make a fortress, which already existed upon Mount Gerizim under the name of Millo, into a strong prison ( hr;yrix] ), from which the whole district of Gerizim, the table-land, received the name of the land of Zerirah, and probably made him governor of it and invested him with great power.
When holding this post, Jeroboam rebelled against Solomon, but was obliged to flee. Having now returned from Egypt, he 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. 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 (1 Kings 11:26), 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 wkodo>mhse tw> Salwmw>n th>n en o>rei Efrai>m do not give any more precise historical information concerning the building of the Millo mentioned in 1 Kings 11:27, since this verse is repeated immediately afterwards in the following form: ou>tov wkodo>mhse th>n a>kran en tai>v a>rsesin oi>kou Efrai>m ou>tov sune>kleise th>n po>lin Dabi>d -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 gunh> po>rnh . The name of the city Darira’ is simply the Greek form of the Hebrew hr;rex] , which the LXX have erroneously adopted in the place of hd;rex] , as the reading in 1 Kings 11:26. But in the additional clauses in question in the Alexandrian version, Darira’ is made into the residence of king Jeroboam and confounded with Thirza; what took place at Thirza according to 1 Kings 14:17 (of the Hebrew text) being transferred to Sarira, and the following account being introduced, viz., that Jeroboam’s wife went ek Sarira’ 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. The Rabbins give this explanation: virgae spinis instructae. 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, ˆynig]r]mæ , Syr. maarganaa’, i.e., the Greek ma’ragna, a whip. See the various explanations in Bochart, Hieroz. iii. p. 554f. ed. Ros. Compare with this the remark of Theodoret in his quaest. 43 in 3 libr.
Reb.: “In my opinion this punishment served to confirm the declaration concerning the altar. For it was not possible for the statement of such a man to be concealed: and this was sufficient to fill with terror those who heard it; for if partaking of food contrary to the command of God, and that not of his own accord, but under a deception, brought such retribution upon a righteous man, to what punishments would they be exposed who had forsaken the God who made them, and worshipped the likenesses of irrational creatures?” Compare Max Duncker, Gesch. des Alterthums, Bd. i. p. 909, ed. 3, and for the different copies of this bas-relief in the more recent works upon Egypt, Reutschi in Herzog’s Cycl. (art. Rehoboam). The latest attempts at deciphering are those by Brugsch, Geogr. Inschriften in den ägypt. Denkmältern, ii. p. 56ff., and O. Blau, Sisaqs Zug gegen Juda aus dem Denkmale bei Karnak erläutert, in the Deutsch. morgenl.
Ztschr. xv. p. 233ff. Champollion’s interpretation of one of these escutcheons, in his Precis du système hierogl. p. 204, viz., Juda hammalek, “the king of Judah,” has been rejected by Lepsius and Brugsch as philologically inadmissible. Brugsch writes the name thus:
Judh malk or Joud-hamalok, and identifies Judh with Jehudijeh, which Robinson (Pal. iii. p. 45) supposes to be the ancient Jehud (Josh 19:45). This Jehud in the tribe of Dan, Blau (p. 238) therefore also finds in the name; and it will not mislead any one that this city is reckoned as belonging to the tribe of Dan, since in the very same chapter (Josh 19:42) Ajalon is assigned to Dan, though it was nevertheless a fortress of Rehoboam (2 Chron 11:10). But Blau has not given any explanation of the addition malk or malok, whereas Gust.
Roesch takes it to be Ël,m, , and supposes it to mean “Jehud of the king, namely, of Rehoboam or of Judah, on account of its being situated in Dan, which belonged to the northern kingdom.” But this is certainly incorrect. For where could the Egyptians have obtained this exact knowledge of the relation in which the tribes of the nation of Israel stood to one another? Asa had sought help from the Lord and obtained it, when the powerful army of the Cushites invaded the land; but when an invasion of the Israelites took place, he sought help from the Syrians. This alteration in his conduct may probably be explained in part from the fact, that notwithstanding the victory, his army had been considerably weakened by the battle which he fought with the Cushites (2 Chron 14:9), although this by no means justified his want of confidence in the power of the Lord, and still less his harsh and unjust treatment of the prophet Hanani, whom he caused to be put in the house of the stocks on account of his condemnation of the confidence which he placed in the Syrians instead of Jehovah (2 Chron 16:7-10). “There was something very strange in the perversity and stolidity of the kings of Israel, that when they saw that the families of preceding kings were evidently overthrown by the command of God on account of the worship of the calves, and they themselves had overturned them, they nevertheless worshipped the same calves, and placed them before the people for them to worship, that they might not return to the temple and to Asa, king of Jerusalem; though prophets denounced it and threatened their destruction. Truly the devil and the ambition of reigning blinded them and deprived them of their senses. Hence it came to pass, through the just judgment of God, that they all were executioners of one another in turn: Baasha was the executioner of the sons of Jeroboam; Zambri was the executioner of the sons of Baasha; and the executioner of Zambri was Omri.”-C. a Lapide. The supposition of Seb. Schmidt, with which I formerly agreed, namely, that Elijah was a foreigner, a Gentile by birth, after further examination I can no longer uphold, though not from the à priori objection raised against it by Kurtz (in Herzog’s Cycl.), namely, that it would show a complete misapprehension of the significance of Israel in relation to sacred history and the history of the world, and that neither at this nor any other time in the Old Testament history could a prophet for Israel be called from among the Gentiles-an assertion of which it would be difficult to find any proof-but because we are not forced to this conclusion by either yBiv]Ti or d[;l]Gi bv;wOT. For even if the Thisbeh in Tob. 1:2 should not be Elijah’s birthplace, it would not follow that there was no other place named Thisbeh in existence. How many places in Canaan are there that are never mentioned in the Old Testament!
And such cases as that described in Judg 7:7, where the Levite is said to have left his birthplace and to have lived in another tribe as a foreigner or settler, may not have been of rare occurrence, since the Mosaic law itself refers to it in Lev 25:41.-Again, the LXX were unable to explain d[;l]Gi bv;wOT, and have paraphrased these words in an arbitrary manner by oJ ek Qesbw>n th>v Galaa>d , from which Thenius and Ewald conjecture that there was a Thisbeh in Gilead, and that it was probably the Tisieh (tîsîh) mentioned by Robinson (Pal. iii. 153) to the south of Busra = Bostra. The five arguments by which Kurtz has attempted to establish the probability of this conjecture are very weak.
For (1) the defective writing bv;wOT by no means proves that the word which is written plene bv;wOT) in every other case must necessarily have been so written in the stat. constr. plur.; and this is the only passage in the whole of the Old Testament in which it occurs in the stat. constr. plur.;-(2) the precise description of the place given in Tobit 1:2 does not at all lead “to the assumption that the Galilean Thisbeh was not the only place of that name,” but may be fully explained from the fact that Thisbeh was a small and insignificant place, the situation of which is defined by a reference to a larger town and one better known;-(3) there is no doubt that “Gilead very frequently denotes the whole of the country to the east of the Jordan,” but this does not in the least degree prove that there was a Thisbeh in the country to the east of the Jordan;- (4) “that the distinction and difference between a birthplace and a place of abode are improbable in themselves, and not to be expected in this connection,” is a perfectly unfounded assumption, and has first of all to be proved;-(5) the Tisieh mentioned by Robinson cannot be taken into consideration, for the simple reason that the assumption of a copyist’s error, the confusion of (Arabic) b with y (Tîsieh instead of Thisbeh), founders on the long i of the first syllable in Tîsieh; moreover the Arabic t corresponds to the Hebrew f and not to t . Josephus gives this statement from his Phoenician history: abroci>a te ep> autou> (sc., Bqoba>lou ) ege>neto apo> tou> UJperberetai>ou mhno>v eJ>wv tou> ercome>nou e>touv UJperberetai>ou (Ant. viii. 13, 2).
Hyperberetaeus answers to Tishri of the Hebrews; cf. Benfey and Stern, die Monatsnamen, p. “This was done, that the prophet’s body might be the instrument of the miracle, just as in other cases of miracle there was an imposition of the hand.”-Seb. Schmidt. It is true that in v. 22 the LXX have this clause, kai> oiJ profh>tai tou> a>lsouv (i.e., hr;vea ) tetrako>sioi , which Thenius regards as an original portion of the text, though without observing the character of the LXX. If the Asherah prophets had also been present, Elijah would not only have commanded the prophets of Baal to be seized and slain (v. 40), but the Asherah prophets also. From the principle a potiori fit, etc., it may be possible to explain the omission of the Asherah prophets in v. 25, but not in v. 40. The following is the description which Herodian (hist. v. 3), among others, gives of Heliogabalus when dancing as chief priest of the Emesinian sun-god: Aierougou>nta dh> tou>ton peri> te toi>v bwmoi>v coreu>onta no>mw Barba>rwn uJpo> te auloi>v kai> su>rigxi pantodapw>n te orga>nwn h>cw .) i.e., about two Dresden pecks (Metzen).-Thenius. Thenius throws suspicion upon the historical character of this account, on the ground that “the author evidently forgot the terrible drought, by which the numerous sources of the Carmel and the Nachal Kishon must have been dried up;” but Van de Velde has already answered this objection, which has been raised by others also, and has completely overthrown it by pointing out the covered well of el Mohraka, in relation to which he makes the following remark: “In such springs the water remains always cool, under the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand that there might have been found here that superabundance of water which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar” (vol. i. p. 325, trans.). But the drying up of the Kishon is a mere conjecture, which cannot be historically proved. It was necessary that idolatry and temptation to the worship of idols should be punished with death, as a practical denial of Jehovah the true God and Lord of His chosen people, if the object of the divine institutions was to be secured. By putting the priests of Baal to death, therefore, Elijah only did what the law required; and inasmuch as the ordinary administrators of justice did not fulfil their obligations, he did this as an extraordinary messenger of God, whom the Lord had accredited as His prophet before all the people by the miraculous answer given to his prayer.-To infer from this act of Elijah the right to institute a bloody persecution of heretics, would not only indicate a complete oversight of the difference between heathen idolaters and Christian heretics, but the same reprehensible confounding of the evangelical standpoint of the New Testament with the legal standpoint of the Old, which Christ condemned in His own disciples in Luke 9:55-56. V. de Velde has shown how admirably these circumstances (vv. 43 and 44) also apply to the situation of el Mohraka: “on its west and northwest side the view of the sea is quite intercepted by an adjacent height.
That height may be ascended, however, in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea obtained from the top” (i. p. 326). After three years’ drought all herbage must have disappeared from the plain of Jezreel, and the loose clay composing its soil must have been changed into a deep layer of dust. Had time been allowed for the rain to convert that dust into a bed of mud, the chariot-wheels might have stuck fast in it.” V. de Velde, i. pp. 326-7. G. Menken (christl. Homil. üb. den Proph. Elias, p. 231) has given the following admirable explanation of npsw ‘l so far as the sense is concerned: “For conscience sake, from conviction, out of obligation, not from fear. After all his former experience, and from the entire relation in which Elijah stood to God, it was impossible that he should be afraid, and not be firmly convinced that the God who had shut up heaven at his word, who had supplied him with bread and flesh for a whole year in the desert through the medium of ravens, who had supported him miraculously for years in a foreign land through the medium of a poor widow, who had concealed and rescued him for three years and a half from the search of the king, who had accredited and honoured him in the sight of all the people as His servant, who had given an immediate answer to his prayer for rain, could also defend him in this extremity, and rescue him from this danger, if such should be His will.” Clericus is correct in the explanation which he has given: “Although, therefore, this act of Ahab had all the appearance of clemency, it was not an act of true clemency, which ought not to be shown towards violent aggressors, who if released will do much more injury than before, as Benhadad really did. God had given the victory to Ahab, and delivered the guilty king into his hands, that he might inflict punishment upon him, not that he might treat him kindly. And Ahab, who had allowed so many prophets to be slain by his wife Jezebel, had no great clemency at other times.” Just as Agamemnon says to Calchas in Il. iv. 106: ma>nti kakw>n ou> pw>pote> moi to> krh>goun ei>pav k . t . l The later Jews altered the name Beelzebub into Bhlzebou>l , i.e., probably lord of the (heavenly) dwelling, as a name given to the a>rcwn tw>n daimoni>wn (Matt 10:25, etc.); and the later Rabbins finally, by changing lWbz] l[æBæ into lb,z,yai l[æBæ , made a fly-god into a dunggod, to express in the most intense form their abomination of idolatry (see Lightfoot, Horae hebr. et talm. in Matt. 12:24, and my Bibl.
Archäol. i. pp. 440, 441). AiJ tou> profh>tou kathgorou>ntev kata> tou> Qeou> tou> profh>tou kinou>si ta>v glw>ttav , as Theodoret very aptly observes. Wolff indeed boldly declares that “the co-regency of Joram is a pure fiction, and the biblical historians do not furnish the slightest warrant for any such supposition” (see p. 628 of the treatise mentioned at p. 187); but he cannot think of any other way of reconciling the differences than by making several alterations in the text, and inventing a co-regency in the case of the Israelitish king Ahaziah. The synchronism of the reigns of the Israelitish kings necessarily requires the solution adopted in the text. For if Joram of Israel, who began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat and reigned twelve years (2 Kings 3:1), was slain at the same time as Ahaziah of Judah (2 Kings 9:24-27), and Ahaziah of Judah reigned about one year and his predecessor Joram about eight years, so that the two together certainly reigned fully eight years; Joram of Judah must have ascended the throne four years after Joram of Israel, i.e., in the twenty-third year of Jehoshaphat, which runs parallel to the fifty year of Joram of Israel.
Consequently the twenty-five years of Jehoshaphat are to be reduced to twenty-three in reckoning the sum-total of the years embraced by the period of the kings.
It is true that there is no analogy for this combination of the years of the reigns of two kings, since the other reductions of which different chronologists are fond are perfectly arbitrary, and the case before us stands quite alone; but this exception to the rule is indicated clearly enough in the statement in 2 Kings 8:16, that Joram began to reign while Jehoshaphat was (still) king. When, however, Thenius objects to this mode of reconciling the differences, which even Winer adopts in the third edition of his bibl. Real-Wörterbuch, i. p. 539, on the ground that the reign of Joram is dated most precisely in 1 Kings 22:51 and Chron 21:1,5,20, from the death of Jehoshaphat, and that an actual coregency, viz., that of Jotham, is expressly mentioned in 2 Kings 15:5, which does not render it at all necessary to carry the years of his reign into those of his father’s, this appeal to the case of Jotham cannot prove anything, for the simple reason that the biblical text knows nothing of any co-regency of Jotham and Uzziah, but simply states that when Uzziah was smitten with leprosy, his son Jotham judged the people of the land, but that he did not become king till after his father’s death (2 Kings 15:5,7; 2 Chron 26:21,23).
It is indeed stated in 1 Kings 22:51 and 2 Chron 26:1,5,20, that Jehoshaphat died and his son Joram became king, which may be understood as meaning that he did not become king till after the death of Jehoshaphat; but there is no necessity to understand it so, and therefore it can be very easily reconciled with the more precise statement in 2 Kings 8:16, that Joram ascended the throne during the reign of Jehoshaphat, whereas the assertion of Thenius, that the circumstantial clause hd;Why] Ël,m, fp;v;wOhy] in 2 Kings 8:16 is a gloss, is not critically established by the absence of these words from the LXX, Syr., and Arabic, and to expunge them from the text is nothing but an act of critical violence. All further questions, e.g., concerning the nature of the fiery chariot, the place to which Elijah was carried, the day of his ascension, which C. a Lap., according to the Romish martyrology, assigns to the 20th of July in the 19th year of Jehoshaphat, and others of the same kind, which have been discussed by the earlier commentators, are to be set down as useless trifles, which go beyond the bounds of our thought and comprehension. The actual truth of this miraculous departure of the prophet is strongly confirmed by the appearance of Elijah, as recorded in Matt 17:3-4 and Luke 9:30, upon which the seal of attestation is impressed by the ascension of our Lord. His ascension was in harmony with the great mission with which he, the mightiest of all the prophets, was entrusted in that development of the divine plan of salvation which continued through the centuries in the interval between Moses and Christ.- Whoever is unable to do justice to the spirit and nature of the divine revelation of mercy, will be unable to comprehend this miracle also.
This was the case with Josephus, and even with Ephraem the Syrian father. Josephus, for example (Ant. ix. 2, 2), saying nothing about the miracle, and simply states that Hli>av ex anqrw>pwn hfani>sqh kai> oudei>v e>gnw me>criv th>v sh>meron autou> th>n teleuth>n , and adds that it is written of Elijah and Enoch in the sacred books, oJ>ti gego>nasin afanei>v qa>naton de> autw>n oudei>v oi>den .
Ephraem, the Christian father, passes over the last clause of v. 11, “so Elijah went up in the whirlwind to heaven,” in his exposition of our chapter, and paraphrases the rest of the words thus: “There came suddenly from on high a fire-storm, and in the midst of the flame the form of a chariot and of horses, and separated them from one another; one of the two it left on the earth, the other, namely Elijah, it carried up on high (Syr. ‘alî la-merawmaa’); but whither the wind (or Spirit? Syr. rôhaa’) took him, or in what place it left him, the Scriptures have not told us. They say, however, that some years afterwards an alarming letter from him, full of threats, was delivered to king Joram of Judah.”
Following the lead of such predecessors as these, J. D. Michaelis, who boasts so much of his orthodoxy, informed the “unlearned” (in the Anmerkungen to his Bibel-übersetzung) that Elijah did not go to heaven, but was simply carried away from Palestine, and lived at least twelve years more, that he might be bale to write a letter to king Joram (2 Chron 21:12), for “men do not receive letters from people in heaven.”
This incident has been frequently adduced since then as a disproof of the ascension of Elijah. but there is not a word in the Chronicles about any letter ( µyrps , rp,se , or trga , which would be the Hebrew for a letter); all that is said is that a writing ( bjkm ) from the prophet Elijah was brought to Joram, in which he was threatened with severe punishments on account of his apostasy. Now such a writing as this might very well have been written by Elijah before his ascension, and handed to Elisha to be sent by him to king Joram at the proper time.
Even Bertheau admits that, according to the chronological data of the Old Testament, Elijah might have been still living in the reign of Joram of Judah; and it is a priori probable that he both spoke of Joram’s sin and threatened him with punishment. It is impossible to fix the year of Elijah’s ascension. Neither the fact that it is mentioned after the death of Ahaziah of Israel, which he himself had personally foretold to that ungodly king, nor the circumstance that in the war which Jehoshaphat and Joram of Israel waged with the Moabites the prophet Elisha was consulted (ch. 3), warrants the conclusion that Elijah was taken from the earth in the interval between these two events. It is very obvious from 2 Kings 3:11, that the two kings applied to Elisha simply because he was in the neighbourhood, and not because Elijah was no longer alive. Augustine, or the author of the Sermo 204 de Tempore (or Sermo de Elisaeo in t. v. of the Opp. August., ed. J. P. Migne, p. 1826), which is attributed to him, gives a similar explanation. “The insolent boys,” he says, “are to be supposed to have done this at the instigation of their parents; for they would not have called out if it had displeased their parents.” And with regard to the object of the judicial punishment, he says it was inflicted “that the elders might receive a lesson through the smiting of the little ones, and the death of the sons might be a lesson to the parents; and that they might learn to fear the prophet, whom they would not love, notwithstanding the wonders which he performed.” Pecunia ipsa a pecore appellabatur. Etiam nunc in tabulis Censoriis pascua dicuntur omnia, ex quibus populus reditus habet, quia diu hoc solum vectigal fuit. Mulctatio quoque nonnisi ovium boumque impendio dicebatur.-Plinii h. nat. xviii. 3.) The usual route from southern Judaea to the land of the Moabites, which even the Crusaders and more recent travellers took, runs round the Dead Sea up to the mouth of the Wady ed Deraah or Kerak, and then up this wady to Kerak (vid., Rob. ii. p. 231). The allied kings did not take this route however, but went through the Wady el Kurahy or es-Safieh, which opens into the southern end of the Dead Sea, and which is called the Wady el Ahsy farther up in the mountains, by Seetzen (R. ii. pp. 355, 356) erroneously the Wady el Hössa (Rob. ii. p. 488), a ravine through which Burckhardt passed with the greatest difficulty (Syrien, ii. p. 673). That they advanced by this route is a necessary inference from the fact, that when they first suffered from want of water they were on the border of the Moabitish territory, of which this very wady forms the boundary (v. 21; see Burckh. p. 674, and Rob. Pal. ii. p. 555), and the water came flowing from Edom (v. 20). Neither of these circumstances is applicable to the Wady el Kerak.-Still less can we assume, with O. v. Gerlach, that they chose the route through the Arabah that they might approach Moab from the south, as the Israelites under Moses had done. For it would have been impossible for them to reach the border of Moab by this circuitous route. And why should they go so far round, with the way through Edom open to them?) The conjecture that Elisha would not speak to her directly for the sake of maintaining his dignity, or that the historian looked upon such conversation with women as unbecoming in a teacher of the law (Thenius), is already proved to be untenable by vv. 15, 16, where Elisha does speak to her directly. From these words, Theod., Kimchi, C. a Lap., Vatabl., and others have drawn the correct conclusion, that the pious in Israel were accustomed to meet together at the prophets’ houses for worship and edification, on those days which were appointed in the law (Lev 23:3; Num 28:11ff.) for the worship of God; and from this Hertz and Hengstenberg have still further inferred, that in the kingdom of the ten tribes not only were the Sabbath and new moons kept, as is evident from Amos 8:5 also, but the prophets supplied the pious in that kingdom with a substitute for the missing Levitical priesthood. All that we can infer from these last words with regard to the nature of prophecy, is that the donum propheticum did not involve a supernatural revelation of every event. Or, as C. a Lap. supposes: “that Gehazi might avoid all distraction of either eyes or ears, and prepare himself entirely by prayers for the accomplishment of so great a miracle.” Theodoret explains it in a similar manner: “He knew that he was vainglorious and fond of praise, and that he would be sure to tell the reason of his journey to those who should meet him by the way. And vainglory is a hindrance to thaumaturgy.” The raising of the dead by Elijah and Elisha, especially by the latter, has been explained by many persons as being merely a revivification by magnetic manipulations or by the force of animal magnetism (even Passavant and Ennemoser adopt this view). But no dead person was ever raised to life by animal magnetism; and the assumption that the two boys were only apparently dead is at variance with the distinct words of the text, in addition to which, both Elisha and Elijah accomplished the miracle through their prayer, as is stated as clearly as possible both here (v. 33) and also at 1 Kings 17:21-22. Most of the earlier theologians found in Elisha’s words a direct approval of the religious conviction expressed by Naaman and his attitude towards idolatry; and since they could not admit that a prophet would have permitted a heathen alone to participate in idolatrous ceremonies, endeavoured to get rid of the consequence resulting from it, viz., licitam ergo esse Christianis sumfw>nhsin pistou> meta> apistou> , seu symbolizationem et communicationem cum ceremonia idololatrica, either by appealing to the use of hish¦tachaowt and to the distinction between incurvatio regis voluntaria et religiosa (real worship) and incurvatio servilis et coacta Naemani, quae erat politica et civilis (mere prostration from civil connivance), or by the ungrammatical explanation that Naaman merely spoke of what he had already done, not of what he would do in future (vid., Pfeiffer, Dub. vex. p. 445ff., and J. Meyer, ad Seder Olam, p. 904ff., Budd., and others).-Both are unsatisfactory. The dreaded consequence falls of itself if we only distinguish between the times of the old covenant and those of the new. Under the old covenant the time had not yet come in which the heathen, who came to the knowledge of the true deity of the God of Israel, could be required to break off from all their heathen ways, unless they would formally enter into fellowship with the covenant nation. “This was not the punishment of his immoderate doorodoki’as (receiving of gifts) merely, but most of all of his lying. For he who seeks to deceive the prophet in relation to the things which belong to his office, is said to lie to the Holy Ghost, whose instruments the prophets are” (vid., Acts 5:3).-Grotius. The words hd;Why] Ël,m, fp;v;wOhy] have been improperly omitted by the Arabic and Syriac, and by Luther, Dathe, and De Wette from their translations; whilst Schulz, Maurer, Thenius, and others pronounce it a gloss. The genuineness of the words is attested by the LXX (the Edit.
Complut. being alone in omitting them) and by the Chaldee: and the rejection of them is just as arbitrary as the interpolation of tWm , which is proposed by Kimchi and Ewald (“when Jehoshaphat was dead”).
Compare J. Meyer, annotatt. ad Seder Olam, p. 916f. “The building of Carthage, Dido, her husband Sichaeus, her brother Pygmalion king of Tyre (scelere ante alios immanior omnes), all coincide with the reign of Joram. This synchronism of the history of Tyre is not without significance here. The Tyrian, Israelitish, and Judaean histories are closely connected at this time. Jezebel, a Tyrian princess, was Ahab’s wife, and again her daughter Athaliah was the wife of Joram, and after his death the murderess of the heirs of the kingdom, and sole occupant of the throne. Tyre, through these marriages, introduced its own spirit and great calamity into both the Israelitish kingdoms.”-J. D. Michaelis on v. 24. The objection raised by Thenius, that it is only in combination with personal pronouns that the Chaldaic µdæg] signifies self either in the Chaldee or Samaritan versions, is proved to be unfounded by µr,g,l] in Job 1:3 (Targ.). Still less can the actual circumstances be adduced as an objection, since there is no evidence to support the assertion that there was no staircase in front of the house. The perfectly un-Hebraic conjecture µl,x,Ala, twOl[\Mæhæ , “as a figure (or representation) of the necessary ascent” (Thenius), has not the smallest support in the Vulgate rendering, ad similitudinem tribunalis. In 2 Chron 22:8-9, the account of the slaying of Ahaziah and his brethren (2 Kings 10:12ff.) is condensed into one brief statement, and then afterwards it is stated with regard to Ahaziah, that “Jehu sought him, and they seized him when he was hiding in Samaria, and brought him to Jehu and slew him, “from which it appears that Ahaziah escaped to Samaria. From the brevity of these accounts it is impossible to reconcile the discrepancy with perfect certainty. On the one hand, our account, which is only limited to the main fact, does not preclude the possibility that Ahaziah really escaped to Samaria, and was there overtaken by Jehu’s followers, and then brought back to Jehu, and wounded upon the height of Gur near Jibleam, whence he fled to Megiddo, where he breathed out his life. On the other hand, in the perfectly summary account in the Chronicles, ˆwOrm]vo zb;j; aWh may be understood as referring to the attempt to escape to Samaria and hide himself there, and may be reconciled with the assumption that he was seized upon the way to Samaria, and when overtaken by Jehu was mortally wounded. According to C. a Lapide, Jehu took him up into his chariot “that he might establish his authority with the Samaritans, and secure a name for integrity by having Jehonadab as his ally, a man whom all held to be both an upright and holy man, that in this way he might the more easily carry out the slaughter of the Baalites, which he was planning, without any one daring to resist him.” In both accounts we have only short extracts preserved from a common and more complete original, the extracts having been made quite independently of one another and upon different plans. Hence the apparent discrepancies, which have arisen partly from the incompleteness of the two abridged accounts, and partly from the different points of view from which the extracts were made, but which contain no irreconcilable contradictions. The assertion of De Wette, which has been repeated by Thenius and Bertheau, that the chronicler distorted the true state of the case to favour the Levites, rests upon a misinterpretation of our account, based upon arbitrary assumptions, as I have already shown in my apologetischer Versuch über die Chronik (p. 361ff.). There is no ground either in the words or in the facts for restricting the perfectly general expression “taxes of Moses and of the congregation of Israel” to the payment mentioned in Ex 30:12, as Thenius and Bertheau have done, except perhaps the wish to find a discrepancy between the two accounts, for the purpose of being able to accuse the chronicler, if not of intentional falsification, as De Wette does, at any rate of perverting the true state of the case. The assertion of Thenius, that the yearly payment of half a shekel, which was appointed in the law and regarded as atonement-money, appears to be directly excluded in our text, is simply founded upon the interpretation given to `rbæ[; ãs,K, as current money, which we have already proved to be false. On the other hand, Thenius, who follows des Vignoles and Winer, not only defends the correctness of the account “in the twenty-third year of Joash,” because it agrees with the twenty-eight years’ reign of Jehu (2 Kings 10:36), but also holds fast the seventeen years’ duration of the reign of Jehoahaz on account of its agreement with 2 Kings 14:1; for years (Athaliah) + 40 years (Joash) = 46 years, and 28 years (Jehu) + 17 years (Jehoahaz) = 45 years; so that, as is there affirmed, Amaziah the son of Joash ascended the throne in the second year of Joash the son of Jehoahaz. But to arrive at this result he assumes that there is an error in v. 10, namely, that instead of the thirty-seventh year we ought to read the thirty-ninth year there, according to the edit. Aldina of the LXX. But apart from the fact that, as we have shown above in the text, the datum “in the twenty-third year of Joash” does not harmonize with the twenty-eight years’ reign of Jehu, this solution of the difference is overthrown by the circumstance that, in order to obtain this agreement between v. 1 and v. 14, Thenius reckons the years of the reigns not only of Athaliah and Joash, but also of Jehu and Jehoahaz, as full years (the former 16 + 40, the latter 28 + 17); whereas, in order to bring the datum in v. 1 (in the twenty-third year of Joash) into harmony with the emendation proposed in v. 10 (in the thirty-ninth year of Joash), he reckons the length of the reign of Jehoahaz as only sixteen years (instead of seventeen).
For example, if Jehoahaz reigned seventeen years, supposing that he ascended the throne in the twenty-third year of Joash of Judah, he died in the fortieth year of Joash (not the thirty-ninth), and his son began to reign the same year. In that case Amaziah would have begun to reign in the first year of Jehoash of Israel, and not in the second, as is stated in 2 Kings 14:1.-The reading of the LXX (ed. Ald. v. 10), “in the thirtyninth year,” is therefore nothing but a mistaken emendation resorted to for the purpose of removing a discrepancy, but of no critical value. “When the king reflected upon the power of the kings of Syria, since he had not implicit faith in Elisha, he thought that it was enough if he struck the earth three times, fearing that the prophecy might not be fulfilled if he should strike more blows upon the ground.”-Clericus. Thenius takes a different view. According to the description which Josephus gives of this event (Ant. ix. 9, 3), he assumes that Jehoash had the four hundred cubits of the city wall thrown down, that he might get a magnificent gate (?) for himself and the invading army; and he endeavours to support this assumption by stating that the space between the Ephraim gate and the corner gate was much more than four hundred cubits. But this assertion is based upon an assumption which cannot be sustained, namely, that the second wall built by Hezekiah (2 Chron 32:5) was already in existence in the time of Amaziah, and that the gates mentioned were in this wall. The subjective view of the matter in Josephus has no more worth than that of a simple conjecture. Ewald in the most marvellous manner has made qbl`-m into a king (Gesch. iii. p. 598). There is no foundation for the view propounded by Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 599), Simson (Hosea, pp. 20, 21), Thenius, and many others, that Tiphsach was a city between Tirzah and Samaria, which Menahem laid waste on his march from Tirzah to Samaria to dethrone Shallum; for it rests upon nothing more than the perfectly unwarrantable and ungrammatical combination of hxrrm with hylwbgAta , “its boundaries towards Tirzah” (Sims.), and upon the two worthless objections: (1) that the great distance of hxrtm from hk;n; precludes the rendering “going out from Tirzah;” and (2) that Menahem was not the man to be able to conquer Thapsacus on the Euphrates. But there is no foundation for the latter assertion, as we have no standard by which to estimate the strength and bravery of the Israelitish army commanded by Menahem. And the first objection falls to the ground with the correct rendering of mtrtsh, viz., “proceeding from Tirzah,” which is preferred even by Ewald and Thenius. With this rendering, the words by no means affirm that Menahem smote Tiphsach from Tirzah on the way to Samaria. This is merely an inference drawn from v. 13, according to which Menahem went from Tirzah to Samaria to overthrow Shallum. But this inference is open to the following objections: (1) that it is very improbable that there was a strong fortress between Tirzah and Samaria, which Menahem was obliged to take on his march before he could overthrow the usurper in the capital of the kingdom; and (2) that the name Tiphsach, trajectus, ford, is by no means a suitable one for a city situated on the mountains between Tirzah and Samaria, and therefore, in order to carry out the hypothesis in question, Thenius proposes to alter Tiphsach into Tappuach, without any critical warrant for so doing. It is true that some trace of his expedition has been found in the monuments, since an inscription has been deciphered with tolerable certainty, stating that king Minikhimmi of Samirina (Menahem of Shomron or Samaria) paid tribute to an Assyrian king. But the name of this Assyrian king is not determined with certainty, as Rawlinson, and Oppert read it Tiglat-palassar, and suppose Tiglath-pileser to be intended; whereas M. v. Niebuhr (p. 132, note 1) imagines it to be the full name of Pul, since no Assyrian king ever had a name of one syllable like Pul as his official name, and even before that Hincks had detected in the name Minikhimmi the king Menahem who had to purchase the friendship of the Assyrian ruler Pul with 1000 talents of silver. (Comp.
J. Brandis, uber d. histor. Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der assyr.
Inschriften, Berl. 1856, p. 50.) As this is apparently at variance not only with v. 30, according to which Pekah was slain in the twentieth year of Jotham, i.e., in the fourth year of Ahaz, abut also with 2 Kings 17:1, according to which Hosea the murderer of Pekah became king in the twelfth year of Ahaz and reigned nine years, Ewald has added [væTe after `µyric][, without any hesitation, and lengthened Pekah’s reign to twenty-nine years, whereas Thenius proposes to alter twenty into thirty. But we do not thereby obtain an actual agreement either with v. 30 or with 2 Kings 17:1, so that in both these passages Thenius is obliged to make further alterations in the text. For instance, if Pekah had reigned for thirty years from the fifty-second or closing year of Uzziah’s reign, Hosea would have ascended the throne in the fourteenth year of Ahaz, supposing that he really became king immediately after the murder of Pekah, and not in the twelfth, as is stated in 2 Kings 17:1. It is only with a reign of twenty-eight years and a few months (one year of Uzziah, sixteen of Jotham, and eleven of Ahaz), which might be called twenty-nine years, that the commencement of Hosea’s reign could fall in the twelfth year of Ahaz. But the discrepancy with v. 30, that Hosea conspired against Pekah and slew him in the twentieth year of Jotham, is not removed thereby. For further remarks see at v. 30 and 2 Kings 17:1. M. Duncker (Gesch. des Alterthums, i. pp. 658, 659) also assumes that the dynasty changed with the overthrow of the Derketades, but he places it considerably earlier, about the year 900 or 950 B.C., because on the one hand Niebuhr’s reasons for his view cannot be sustained, and on the other hand there are distinct indications that the change in the reigning family must have taken place about this time: viz., 1. in the ruins of the southern city of Nineveh, at Kalah, where we find the remains of the palace of two rulers, who sat upon the throne of Assyria between the years 900 and 830, whereas the castles of Ninos and his descendants must undoubtedly have stood in the northern city, in Nineveh; 2. in the circumstance that from the time mentioned the Assyrian kingdom advanced with fresh warlike strength and in a fresh direction, which would agree with the change in the dynasty.-Which of these two assumptions is the correct one, cannot yet be decided in the present state of the researches on this subject. Other attempts to solve this difficulty are either arbitrary and precarious, e.g., the conjectures of the earlier chronologists quoted by Winer (R. W. s. v. Jotham), or forced, like the notion of Vaihinger in Herzog’s Cycl. (art. Jotham), that the words hyz[Aˆb µtwyl are to be eliminated as an interpolation, in which case the datum “in the twentieth year” becomes perfectly enigmatical; and again the assertion of Hitzig (Comm. z. Jesaj. pp. 72, 73), that instead of in the twentieth year of Jotham, we should read “in the twentieth year of Ahaz the son of Jotham,” which could only be consistently carried out by altering the text of not less than seven passages (viz., v. 33; 2 Kings 16:1, and 2, 17; 2 Chron 27:1 and 8, and 28:1); and lastly, the assumption of Thenius, that the words from hn,v; to hyz[ have crept into the text through a double mistake of the copyist and an arbitrary alteration of what had been thus falsely written, which is much too complicated to appear at all credible, even if the reasons which are supposed to render it probable had been more forcible and correct than they really are.
For the first reason, viz., that the statement in what year of the contemporaneous ruler a king came to the throne is always first given when the history of this king commences, is disproved by 2 Kings 1:17; the second, that the name of the king by the year of whose reign the accession of another is defined is invariably introduced with the epithet king of Judah or king of Israel, is shown by 2 Kings 12:2 and 16:1 to be not in accordance with fact; and the third, that this very king is never described by the introduction of his father’s name, as he is here, except where the intention is to prevent misunderstanding, as in Kings 14:1,23, or in the case of usurpers without ancestors (v. 32, 16:1 and 15), is also incorrect in its first portion, for in the case of Amaziah in 2 Kings 14:23 there was no misunderstanding to prevent, and even in the case of Joash in 2 Kings 14:1 the epithet king of Israel would have been quite sufficient to guard against any misunderstanding. In the East they marry girls of nine or ten years of age to boys of twelve or thirteen (Volney, Reise, ii. p. 360). Among the Indians husbands of ten years of age and wives of eight are mentioned (Thevenot, Reisen, iii. pp. 100 and 165). In Abyssinia boys of twelve and even ten years old marry (Rüppell, Abessynien, ii. p. 59). Among the Jews in Tiberias, mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen are not uncommon (Burckh. Syrien, p. 570); and Lynch saw a wife there, who to all appearance was a mere child about ten years of age, who had been married two years already. In the epist. ad N.
Carbonelli, from Hieronymi epist. ad Vitalem, 132, and in an ancient glossa, Bochart has also cited examples of one boy of ten years and another of nine, qui nutricem suam gravidavit, together with several other cases of a similar kind from later writers. Cf. Bocharti Opp. i. (Geogr. sacr.) p. 920, ed. Lugd. 1692. The Greeks and Romans also use the plural instead of the singular in their rhetorical style of writing, especially when a father, a mother, or a son is spoken of. Cf. Cic. de prov. cons. xiv. 35: si ad jucundissimos liberos, si ad clarissimum generum redire properaret, where Julia, the only daughter of Caesar, and the wife of Pompey the Great, is referred to; and for other examples see Caspari, der Syr. Ephraimit. Krieg, p. 41. “If this idolatry had occurred among the Israelites before the time of Ahaz, its abominations would certainly not have been passed over by the biblical writers, who so frequently mention other forms of idolatry.”
These are the correct words of Movers (Phöniz. i. p. 65), who only errs in the fact that on the one hand he supposes the origin of human sacrifices in the time of Ahaz to have been inwardly connected with the appearance of the Assyrians, and traces them to the acquaintance of the Israelites with the Assyrian fire-deities Adrammelech and Anammelech (2 Kings 17:31), and on the other hand gives this explanation of the phrase, “cause to pass through the fire for Moloch,” which is used to denote the sacrificing of children: “the burning of children was regarded as a passage, whereby, after the separation of the impure and earthly dross of the body, the children attained to union with the deity” (p. 329).
To this J. G. Müller has correctly replied (in Herzog’s Cyclop.): “This mystic, pantheistic, moralizing view of human sacrifices is not the ancient and original view of genuine heathenism. It is no more the view of Hither Asia than the Mexican view (i.e., the one which lay at the foundation of the custom of the ancient Mexicans, of passing the newborn boy four times through the fire). The Phoenician myths, which Movers (p. 329) quotes in support of his view, refer to the offering of human sacrifices in worship, and the moral view is a later addition belonging to Hellenism. The sacrifices were rather given to the gods as food, as is evident from innumerable passages (compare the primitive religions of America), and they have no moral aim, but are intended to reward or bribe the gods with costly presents, either because of calamities that have already passed, or because of those that are anticipated with alarm; and, as Movers himself admits (p. 301), to make atonement for ceremonial sins, i.e., to follow smaller sacrifices by those of greater value.” Compare C. P. Caspari’s article on the Syro-Ephraimitish war in the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz (Univers. Progr. von Christiania, 1849), where the different views concerning the relation between the two accounts are fully discussed, and the objections to the credibility of the account given in the Chronicles most conclusively answered. If we only observe that µymwra has not the article, and therefore the words merely indicate the march of an Aramaean colony to Elath, it is evident that µymwda would be unsuitable; for when the µydwhy had been driven from the city which the Syrians had conquered, it was certainly not some Edomites but the Edomites who took possession again. Hence Winer, Caspari, and others are quite right in deciding that ‘rwmym is the only correct reading. There is nothing in the text to support the view of Thenius, that Urijah had the brazen altar of burnt-offering erected by Solomon moved farther forwards, nearer to the temple-house, and the new one put in its place, whence it was afterwards shifted by Ahaz and the new one moved a little farther to the south, that is to say, that he placed the two altars close to one another, so that they now occupied the centre of the court. It is true that M. Duncker says, “Synchronism gives Sabakon, who reigned from 726 to 714;” but he observes in the note at pp. 713ff. that the Egyptian chronology has only been firmly established as far back as the commencement of the reign of Psammetichus at the beginning of the year 664 B.C., that the length of the preceding dodekarchy is differently given by Diodorus Sic. and Manetho, and that the date at which Tarakos (Tirhaka), who succeeded Sevechus, ascended the throne is so very differently defined, that it is impossible for the present to come to any certain conclusion on the matter. Compare with this what M. v. Niebuhr (pp. 458ff.) adduces in proof of the difficulty of determining the commencement and length of the reign of Tirhaka, and the manner in which he proposes to solve the difficulties that arise from this in relation to the synchronism between the Egyptian and the Biblical chronology. The supposition of the older commentators, that Hoshea fought a battle with Salmanasar before the siege of Samaria, and was taken prisoner in that battle, is not only very improbable, because this would hardly be passed over in our account, but has very little probability in itself. For “it is more probable that Hoshea betook himself to Samaria when threatened by the hostile army, and relied upon the help of the Egyptians, than that he went to meet Salmanasar and fought with him in the open field” (Maurer). There is still less probability in Ewald’s view (Gesch. iii. p. 611), that “Salmanasar marched with unexpected rapidity against Hoshea, summoned him before him that he might hear his defence, and then, when he came, took him prisoner, and threw him into prison in chains, probably into a prison on the border of the land;” to which he adds this explanatory remark: “there is no other way in which we can understand the brief words in 2 Kings 17:4 as compared with 2 Kings 18:9-11.... For if Hoshea had defended himself to the utmost, Salmanasar would not have had him arrested and incarcerated afterwards, but would have put him to death at once, as was the case with the king of Damascus.” But Hoshea would certainly not have been so infatuated, after breaking away from Assyria and forming an alliance with So of Egypt, as to go at a simple summons from Salmanasar and present himself before him, since he could certainly have expected nothing but death or imprisonment as the result. The explanation given in the text of the geographical names, receives some confirmation from the Jewish tradition, which describes northern Assyria, and indeed the mountainous region or the district on the border of Assyria and Media towards Armenia, as the place to which the ten tribes were banished (vid., Wichelhaus ut sup. pp. 474ff.). Not only Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 612), but also M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. Ass. p. 159), has decided in favour of this view; the latter with this remark: “According to the present state of the investigations, Chalah and Chabor are no doubt to be sought for on the slope of the Gordyaean mountains in the Kalachene of Strabo, the Kalakine of Ptolemaeus, and on the tributary of the Tigris, which is still called Chabur, therefore quite close to Nineveh. The Yudhi mountains in this region possibly bear this name with some allusion to the colony.” But with reference to the river Gozan, Niebuhr is doubtful whether we are to understand by this the Kisil Ozan or the waters, in the district of Gauzanitis by the Kehbar, and gives the preference to the latter as the simpler of the two, though it is difficulty to see in what respect it is simpler than the other. As the Hebrew `d[æ , like the German bis, is not always used in an exclusive sense, but is frequently abstracted from what lies behind the terminus ad quem mentioned, it by no means follows from the words, “the Lord rejected Israel...to this day,” that the ten tribes returned to their own country after the time when our books were written, viz., about the middle of the sixth century B.C. And it is just as impossible to prove the opposite view, which is very widely spread, namely, that they are living as a body in banishment even at the present day. It is well known how often the long-lost ten tribes have been discovered, in the numerous Jewish communities of southern Arabia, in India, more especially in Malabar, in China, Turkistan, and Cashmir, or in Afghanistan (see Ritter’s Erdkunde, x. p. 246), and even in America itself; and now Dr. Asahel Grant (Die Nestorianer oder die zehn Stämme) thinks that he has found them in the independent Nestorians and the Jews living among them; whereas others, such as Witsius (Dekaful. c. iv.ff.), J. D. Michaelis (de exsilio decem tribuum, comm. iii.), and last of all Robinson in the word quoted by Ritter, l. c. p. (The Nestorians, etc., New York, 1841), have endeavoured to prove that the ten tribes became partly mixed up with the Judaeans during the Babylonian captivity, and partly attached themselves to the exile who were led back to Palestine by Zerubbabel and Ezra; that a portion again became broken up at a still later period by mixing with the rest of the Jews, who were scattered throughout all the world after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and a further portion a long time ago by conversion to Christianity, so that every attempt to discover the remnants of the ten tribes anywhere must be altogether futile.
This view is in general the correct one, though its supporters have mixed up the sound arguments with many that are untenable. For example, the predications quoted by Ritter (p. 25), probably after Robinson (viz., Jer 50:4-5,17,19, and Ezek 37:11ff.), and also the prophetic declarations cited by Witsius (v. §§11-14: viz., Isa 14:1; Mic 2:12; Jer 3:12; 30:3-4; 33:7-8), prove very little, because for the most part they refer to Messianic times and are to be understood spiritually.
So much, however, may certainly be gathered from the books of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, that the Judaeans whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive were not all placed in the province of Babylonia, but were also dispersed in the different districts that constituted first the Assyrian, then the Chaldaean, and afterwards the Persian empire on the other side of the Euphrates, so that with the cessation of that division which had been so strictly maintained to suit the policy of the Israelitish kings, the ancient separation would also disappear, and their common mournful lot of dispersion among the heathen would of necessity bring about a closer union among all the descendants of Jacob; just as we find that the kings of Persia knew of no difference between Jews and Israelites, and in the time of Xerxes the grand vizier Haman wanted to exterminate all the Jews (not the Judaeans merely, but all the Hebrews). Moreover, the edict of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1-4), “who among you of all his people,” and that of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:13), “whoever in my kingdom is willing of the people of Israel,” gave permission to all the Israelites of the twelve tribes to return to Palestine. And who could maintain with any show of reason, that no one belonging to the ten tribes availed himself of this permission?
And though Grant argues, on the other side, that with regard to the 50,000 whom Cyrus sent away to their home it is expressly stated that they were of those “whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away into Babylon” (Ezra 2:1), with which 2 Kings 1:5 may also be compared, “then rose up the heads of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites, etc.;” these words apply to the majority of those who returned, and undoubtedly prove that the ten tribes as such did not return to Palestine, but they by no means prove that a considerable number of members of the remaining tribes may not have attached themselves to the large number of citizens of the kingdom of Judah who returned. And not only Lightfoot (Hor. hebr. in Eph 1 ad Cor.
Addenda ad c. 14, Opp. ii. p. 929) and Witsius (p. 346), but the Rabbins long before them in Seder Olam rab. c. 29, p. 86, have inferred from the fact that the number of persons and families given separately in Ezra 2 only amounts to 30,360, whereas in v. 64 the total number of persons who returned is said to have been 42,360 heads, besides men-servants and maid-servants, that this excess above the families of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, who are mentioned by name, may have come from the ten tribes.
Moreover, those who returned did regard themselves as the representatives of the twelve tribes; for at the dedication of the new temple (Ezra 6:17) they offered “sin-offerings for all Israel, according to the number of the twelve tribes.” And those who returned with Ezra did the same. As a thanksgiving for their safe return to their fatherland, they offered in sacrifice “twelve oxen for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven sheep, and twelve he-goats for a sin-offering, all as a burnt-offering for Jehovah” (Ezra 8:35). There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of those who returned with Zerubbabel and Ezra belonged to the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi; which may be explained very simply from the fact, that as they had been a much shorter time in exile, they had retained a much stronger longing for the home given by the Lord to their fathers than the tribes that were carried away 180 years before. But that they also followed in great numbers at a future time, after those who had returned before had risen to a state of greater ecclesiastical and civil prosperity in their own home, is an inference that must be drawn from the fact that in the time of Christ and His apostles, Galilee, and in part also Peraea, was very densely populated by Israelites; and this population cannot be traced back either to the Jews who returned to Jerusalem and Judaea under Zerubbabel and Ezra, or to the small number of Israelites who were left behind in the land when the Assyrian deportation took place.
On the other hand, even the arguments adduced by Grant in support of his view, viz., (1) that we have not the slightest historical evidence that the ten tribes every left Assyria again, (2) that on the return from the Babylonian captivity they did not come back with the rest, prove as argumenta a silentio but very little, and lose their force still more if the assumptions upon which they are based-namely, that the ten tribes who were transported to Assyria and Media had no intercourse whatever with the Jews who were led away to Babylon, but kept themselves unmixed and quite apart from the Judaeans, and that as they did not return with Zerubbabel and Ezra, they did not return to their native land at any later period-are, as we have shown above, untenable.
Consequently the further arguments of Grant, (3) that according to Josephus (Ant. xi. 5, 2) the ten tribes were still in the land of their captivity in the first century, and according to Jerome (Comm. on the Prophets) in the fifth; and (4) that in the present day they are still in the country of the ancient Assyrians, since the Nestorians, both according to their own statement and according to the testimony of the Jews there, as Beni Yisrael, and that of the ten tribes, and are also proved to be Israelites by many of the customs and usages which they have preserved (Die Nestor. pp. 113ff.); prove nothing more than that there may still be descendants of the Israelites who were banished thither among the Jews and Nestorians living in northern Assyria by the Uramiah-lake, and by no means that the Jews living there are the unmixed descendants of the ten tribes.
The statements made by the Jews lose all their importance from the fact, that Jews of other lands maintain just the same concerning themselves. And the Mosaic manners and customs of the Nestorians prove nothing more than that they are of Jewish origin. In general, the Israelites and Jews who have come into heathen lands from the time of Salmanasar and Nebuchadnezzar onwards, and have settled there, have become so mixed up with the Jews who were scattered in all quarters of the globe from the time of Alexander the Great, and more especially since the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans, that the last traces of the old division into tribes have entirely disappeared. On comparing the account of Hezekiah’s reign given in our books (ch. 18-20) with that in 2 Chron 29-32, the different plans of these two historical works are at once apparent. The prophetic author of our books first of all describes quite briefly the character of the king’s reign (2 Kings 18:1-8), and then gives an elaborate description of the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib and of his attempt to get Jerusalem into his power, together with the destruction of the proud Assyrian force and Sennacherib’s hasty return to Nineveh and death (2 Kings 18:13-19,37); and finally, he also gives a circumstantial account of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery, and also of the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem, and of Hezekiah’s conduct on that occasion (ch. 20). The chronicler, on the other hand, has fixed his chief attention upon the religious reformation carried out by Hezekiah, and therefore first of all describes most elaborately the purification of the temple from all idolatrous abominations, the restoration of the Jehovahcultus and the feast of passover, to which Hezekiah invited all the people, not only the subjects of his own kingdom, but the remnant of the ten tribes also (2 Chron 29-31); and then simply gives in ch. 32 the most summary account of the attack made by Sennacherib upon Jerusalem and the destruction of his army, of the sickness and recovery of Hezekiah, and of his great riches, the Babylonian embassy being touched upon in only the most casual manner.
The historical character of the elaborate accounts given in the Chronicles of Hezekiah’s reform of worship and his celebration of the passover, which Thenius follows De Wette and Gramberg in throwing doubt upon, has been most successfully defended by Bertheau as well as others.-On the disputed question, in what year of Hezekiah’s reign the solemn passover instituted by him fell, see the thorough discussion of it by C. P. Caspari (Beitrr. z. Einleit. in d. B. Jesaia, pp. 109ff.), and our Commentary on the Chronicles, which has yet to appear. We have a parallel and elaborate account of this campaign of Sennacherib and his defeat (2 Kings 18:13-19:37), and also of Hezekiah’s sickness and recovery and the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem (2 Kings 20:1-19), in Isa 36-39, and a brief extract, with certain not unimportant supplements, in 2 Chron 32.
These three narratives, as is now generally admitted, are drawn independently of one another from a collection of the prophecies of Isaiah, which was received into the annals of the kingdom (2 Chron 32:32), and serve to confirm and complete one another. We may get some idea of the works connected with this aqueduct from the description of the “sealed fountain” of the Solomon’s pool at Ain Saleh in Tobler, Topogr. v. Jerus. ii. pp. 857ff., Dritte Wanderung The identity of the brkh, which Hezekiah constructed as a reservoir for the overflow of the upper Gihon that was conducted into the city (2 Kings 20:20), with the present “pool of Hezekiah” is indeed very probable, but not quite certain. For in very recent times, on digging the foundation for the Evangelical church built on the northern slope of Zion, they lighted upon a large well-preserved arched channel, which was partly cut in the rock, and, where this was not the case, built in level layers and coated within with a hard cement about an inch thick and covered with large stones (Robinson, New Inquiries as to the Topography of Jerusalem, p. 113, and Bibl. Res. p. 318), and which might possibly be connected with the channel made by Hezekiah to conduct the water of the upper Gihon into the city, although this channel does not open into the pool of Hezekiah, and the walls, some remains of which are still preserved, may belong to a later age.
The arguments adduced by Thenius in support of the assumption that the “lower” or “old pool” mentioned in Isa 22:9 and 11 is different from the lower Gihon-pool, and to be sought for in the Tyropoeon, are inconclusive. It by no means follows from the expression, “which lies by the road of the fuller’s field,” i.e., by the road which runs past the fuller’s field, that there was another upper pool in Jerusalem beside the upper pool (Gihon); but this additional clause simply serves to define more precisely the spot by the conduit mentioned where the Assyrian army took its stand; and it by no means follows from the words of Isa 22:11, “a gathering of waters have ye made between the two walls for the waters of the old pool,” that this gathering of waters was made in the Tyropoeon, and that this “old pool,” as distinguished from the lower pool (v. 9), was an upper pool, which was above the king’s pool mentioned in Neh 3:15.
For even if hchmtym byn occurs in 2 Kings 25:4; Jer 39:4; 52:7, in connection with a locality on the south-east side of the city, the Old Testament says nothing about two pools in the Tyropoeon at the southeast corner of Jerusalem, but simply mentions a fountain gate, which probably derived its name from the present fountain of the Virgin, and the king’s pool, also called Shelach in Neh 2:14; 3:15, which was no doubt fed from that fountain like the present Siloam, and watered the royal gardens. (Compare Rob. Pal. i. pp. 565ff., and Bibl. Res. p. 189, and Tobler, Die Siloah-quelle u. der Oelberg, pp. 1ff.). The two walls, between which Hezekiah placed the reservoir, may very well be the northern wall of Zion and the one which surrounded the lower city (Acra) on the north-west, according to which the words in Isa 22:11 would admirably suit the “pool of Hezekiah.” Again, Hezekiah did not wait till the departure of Sennacherib before he built this conduit, which is also mentioned in Wisd. 48:17, as Knobel supposes (on Isa 22:11), but he made it when he first invaded Judah, before the appearance of the Assyrian troops in front of Jerusalem, when he made the defensive preparations noticed at v. 14, as is evident from 2 Chron 32:3-4, compared with v. 30, since the stopping up of the fountain outside the city, to withdraw the water from the Assyrians, is expressly mentioned in vv. 3, 4 among the measures of defence; and in the concluding notices concerning Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:20, and 2 Chron 32:30, there is also a brief allusion to this work, without any precise indication of the time when he had executed it. “But the most wise king did not meet his blasphemies with weapons, but with prayer, and tears, and sackcloth, and entreated the prophet Isaiah to be his ambassador.”-Theodoret According to Jul. Afric. (in Syncell. i. p. 139, ed. Dind.) he reigned eighteen years, according to Euseb. (in Syncell. p. 140) twenty years.
Both statements are incorrect; for, according to an Apis-stele published by Mariette, the birth of an Apis who died in the twentieth year of Psammetichus fell in the twenty-sixth year of Tirhakah, so that the reign of Tirhakah may be supposed to have lasted twenty-eight years (see Brugsch, l.c. p. 247). But the chronological conclusions respecting the date of his reign are very uncertain. Whereas M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch.
Ass. p. 72) fixes his expedition against Sennacherib in the thirtyseventh aer. Nab., i.e., 710 B.C., and the commencement of his reign over Egypt in 45 aer. Nab., i.e., 702 B.C., and assumes that he marched against Sennacherib before he was king of Egypt, which is apparently favoured by the epithet king of Cush, not of Egypt; Brugsch (l.c. p. 292) has given the year 693 B.C. as the commencement of his reign.
It is obvious that this statement is irreconcilable with the O.T. chronology, since the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, in which Sennacherib invaded Judah, corresponds to the year 714 or 713 B.C.
These diversities simply confirm our remark (p. 411), that the chronological data as to the kings of Egypt before Psammetichus cannot lay any claim to historical certainty. For an attempt to solve this discrepancy see M. v. Niebuhr, pp. 458ff. Compare the similar boasting of Alarich, already quoted by earlier commentators, in Claudian, de bello Geth. v. 526ff.: ----cum cesserit omnis Obsequiis natura meis? subsidere nostris Sub pedibus montes, arescere vidimus amnes. v. 532. Fregi Alpes. galeis Padum victricibus hausi. There is no necessity, therefore, to explain the sign here given, either by the assumption of a sabbatical year, with or without a year of jubilee following, or by supposing that the Assyrians did not depart immediately after the catastrophe described in v. 35, but remained till after they had attempted an expedition into Egypt, or indeed by any other artificial hypothesis. The assertion of Thenius, that vv. 35-37 are borrowed from a different source from 2 Kings 18:13-19,34 and 20:1-19, rests upon purely arbitrary suppositions and groundless assumptions, and is only made in the interest of the mythical interpretation of the miracle. And his conclusion, that “since the catastrophe was evidently (?) occasioned by the sudden breaking out of a pestilence, the scene of it was no doubt the pestilential Egypt,” is just as unfounded-as if Egypt were the only land in which a pestilence could suddenly have broken out.-The account given by Herodotus (ii. 141), that on the prayer of king Sethon, a priest of Vulcan, the deity promised him victory over the great advancing army of Sennacherib, and that during the night mice spread among the enemy (i.e., in the Assyrian camp at Pelusium), and ate up the quivers and bows, and the leather straps of the shields, so that the next morning they were obliged to flee without their weapons, and many were cut down, is imply a legendary imitation of our account, i.e., an Egyptian variation of the defeat of Sennacherib in Judah. The eating up of the Assyrian weapons by mice is merely the explanation given to Herodotus by the Egyptian priests of the hieroglyphical legend on the standing figure of Sethos at Memphis, from which we cannot even gather the historical fact that Sennacherib really advanced as far as Pelusium. With regard to the statement of Abydenus in Euseb. l. c. p. 53, that Sennacherib was followed by Nergilus, who was slain by his son Adrameles, who again was murdered by his brother Axerdis, and its connection with Berosus and the biblical account, see M. v. Niebuhr, Geschichte Assurs, pp. 361ff. Nergilus is probably the same person as Sharezer, and Axerdis as Esarhaddon. The account is still more abridged in the text of Isaiah. In v. 4 the precise time of the prayer is omitted; in v. 5 the words, “behold, I will cure thee, on the third day thou shalt go into the house of the Lord;” and in v. 6 the words, “for mine own sake and my servant David’s sake.” The four verses 8-11, which treat of the miraculous signs, are also very much contracted in Isaiah (vv. 7 and 8); and vv. 7 and 8 of our text are only given at the close of Hezekiah’s psalm of praise in that of Isaiah (vv. 21 and 22). Hitzig and Knobel would therefore read Ëlæh; , though without furnishing any proofs that the inf. abs. is used for the future in the first clause of a double question, especially if the h interrog. is wanting, and there is no special emphasis upon the verbal idea. As, for example, the phenomenon quoted by several commentators, which was observed at Metz in Lothringen in the year 1703 by the prior of the convent there, P. Romuald, and other persons, viz., that the shadow of a sun-dial went back an hour and a half.-The natural explanation of the miracle which is given by Thenius, who attributes it to an eclipse of the sun, needs no refutation.-For the different opinions of the earlier theologians, see Carpzov, Apparat. crit. p. 351ff. Compare M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Ass. p. 40; and with regard to the chronological differences, on account of which many have called in question the identity of Merodach Baladan either with the Marudach- Baladan of Berosus or with the Mardokempad of the Can. Ptol., see the discussion of this point at pp. 75ff. “He calls that good in which it is right to acquiesce, as having proceeded from Him who does nothing but what is not only most just, but tempered with the greatest goodness, even when He inflicts punishment.”-Clericus. “He praises the moderation of the divine decree, because when God, in accordance with His justice, might have brought this calamity upon him in his own person, for His mercy’s sake He was willing to spare him and to put off the evil to a future day.”-Vitringa Movers (Phöniz. i. p. 65) correctly observes, that “in all the books of the Old Testament which are written before the Assyrian period there is no trace of any (?) star-worship; not that the Phoenician (Canaanitish) gods had not also a sidereal significance, but because this element was only a subordinate one, and the expressions, sun, moon, and stars, and all the host of heaven, which are not met with before, become for the first time common now,”-although his proofs of the difference between the Assyrian star-worship and the Phoenician and Babylonian imageworship stand greatly in need of critical sifting. The historical truth of these accounts, which Rosenmüller, Winer, and Hitzig called in question after the example of Gramberg, has been defended by Ewald, Bertheau, and even by Thenius; and the latest attack which has been made upon it by Graf in the theol. Studien u.
Krit. 1859, iii., has been met by E. Gerlach in the same magazine of 1861. For further remarks see the Commentary on the Chronicles. The widespread Jewish and Christian legend, that Manasseh put to death the prophet Isaiah, and indeed had him sawn in sunder, to which there is an allusion in Heb 11:37, also belongs here. (See Delitzsch, Comm. on Isaiah, p. 5.) Thenius has correctly observed, that “the expression shows very clearly, that the allusion is to something already known, not to anything that had come to light for the first time;” but is he greatly mistaken when, notwithstanding this, he supposes that what we are to understand by this is merely a collection of the commandments and ordinances of Moses, which had been worked up in the Pentateuch, and more especially in Deuteronomy. For there is not the smallest proof whatever that any such collection of commandments and ordinances of Moses, or, as Bertheau supposes, the collection of Mosaic law contained in the three middle books of the Pentateuch, or Deuteronomy ch. 1-28 (according to Vaihinger, Reuss, and others), was ever called hr;wOT rp,se , or that any such portions had had an independent existence, and had been deposited in the temple. These hypotheses are simply bound up with the attacks made upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and ought to be given up, since De Wette, the great leader of the attack upon the genuineness of the Pentateuch, in §162a of the later editions of his Introduction to the Old Testament, admits that the account before us contains the first certain trace of the existence of our present Pentateuch. The only loophole left to modern criticism, therefore, is that Hilkiah forged the book of the law discovered by him under the name of Moses-a conclusion which can only be arrived at by distorting the words of the text in the most arbitrary manner, turning “find” into “forge,” but which is obliged either to ignore or forcibly to set aside all the historical evident of the previous existence of the whole of the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy. Whether the original written by Moses’ own hand, as Grotius inferred from the hvm dyb of the Chronicles, or a later copy of this, is a very superfluous question; for, as Hävernick says, “even in the latter case it was to be regarded just in the same light as the autograph, having just the same claims, since the temple repaired by Josiah was the temple of Solomon still.” In any case the derivation from kmr, to be black (Ges. Thes. p. 693), and the explanation given by Fürst from vi occultandi magicasque, h. e. arcanas et reconditas artes exercendi, and others given in Iden’s Dissertatt. theol. philol. i. diss. 12, are quite untenable. On this worship Movers has the following among other remarks (Phön. i. p. 686): “The mutilated Gallus ( vdq ) fancies that he is a woman: negant se viros esse...muleires se volunt credi (Firmic.). He lives in close intimacy with the women, and they again are drawn towards the Galli by peculiar affection.” He also expresses a conjecture “that the women of Jerusalem gave themselves up in honour of the goddess in the tents of the Galli which were pitched in the temple circle, on which account the klb mchyr went to the temple treasury.” Jerome (on Jer 7:31) says: Thophet, quae est in valle filiorum Enom, illum locum significat, qui Siloë fontibus irrigatur et est amoenus atque nemorosus, hodieque hortorum praebet delicias. From the name Gehinnom the Rabbins formed the name Ge>enna , Gehenna (Matt 5:22,29, etc.), with special reference to the children burnt here to Moloch, to signify hell and hell-fire. Vv. 16-18 are neither an interpolation of the editor, i.e., of the author of our books of Kings (Staehelin), nor an interpolation from a supplement to the account in 1 Kings 13:1-32 (Thenius). The correspondence between the wgm in v. 15 and the wgm in v. 18 does not require this assumption; and the pretended discrepancy, that after Josiah had already reduced the altar to ruins (v. 15) he could not possibly defile it by burning human bones upon it (v. 16), is removed by the very natural solution, that jæBez]mi in v. 16 does not mean the altar itself, but the site of the altar that had been destroyed. M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. Ass. p. 364) also calls Josiah’s enterprise “a perfectly correct policy. Nineveh was falling (if not already fallen), and the Syrian princes, both those who had remained independent, like Josiah, and also the vassals of Asshur, might hope that, after the fall of Nineveh, they would succeed in releasing Syria from every foreign yoke. Now well-founded this hope was, is evident from the strenuous exertions which Nabukudrussur was afterwards obliged to make, in order to effect the complete subjugation of Syria. It was therefore necessary to hinder at any price the settlement of the Egyptians now. Even though Necho assured Josiah that he was not marching against him (2 Chron 35:21), Josiah knew that if once the Egyptians were lords of Coele-Syria, his independence would be gone.” This is favoured by the account in Herodotus (ii. 159), that Necho built ships: trih>rhv aiJ me>n epi> th> borhi>h qala>ssh .. aiJ de> en tw> Arabi>w ko>lpw (triremes in septentrionale et australe mare mittendas.
Bähr)- kai> tauthsi> te ecra>to en tw> de>onti kai> Su>roisi pezh> oJ Nekw>v sumbalw>n en Magdo>lw eni>khse ; from which we may infer that Necho carried his troops by sea to Palestine, and then fought the battle on the land. M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. p. 365) also finds it very improbable that Necho used his fleet in this war; but he does not think it very credible “that he embarked his whole army, instead of marching them by the land route so often taken by the Egyptian army, the key of which, viz., the land of the Philistines, was at least partially subject to him,” because the oJ>lkadev (ships of burden) required for the transport of a large army were hardly to be obtained in sufficient numbers in Egypt. But this difficulty, which rests upon mere conjecture, is neutralized by the fact, which M. Duncker (Gesch. i. p. 618) also adduces in support of the voyage by sea, namely, that the decisive battle with the Jews was fought to the north-west of Jerusalem, and when the Jews were defeated, the way to Jerusalem stood open for their retreat. Movers (Phöniz. ii. 1, p. 420), who also imagines that Necho advanced with a large land-army towards the frontier of Palestine, has therefore transferred the battle to Magdolo on the Egyptian frontier; but he does this by means of the most arbitrary interpretation of the account given by Herodotus. Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 720) also observes, that “Necho himself may have been in Jerusalem at the time for the purpose of installing his vassal:” this, he says, “is indicated by the brief words in 2 Kings 23:33-34, and nothing can be found to say against it in other historical sources;” though he assumes that Jehoahaz had allowed himself to be enticed by Necho to go to Riblah into the Egyptian camp, where he was craftily put into chains, and soon carried off as a prisoner to Egypt.-We should have a confirmation of the taking of Jerusalem by Necho in the account given by Herodotus (ii. 159): meta> de> th>n ma>chn (i.e., after the battle at Megiddo) Ka>dutin po>lin th>v Suri>hv eou>san mega>lhn ei>le , if any evidence could be brought to establish the opinion that by Ca’dutis we are to understand Jerusalem. But although what Herodotus says (iii. 5) concerning Ka>dutiv does not apply to any other city of Palestine so well as to Jerusalem, the use of the name Ka>dutiv for Jerusalem has not yet been sufficiently explained, since it cannot come from vwOdq; , the holy city, because the v of this word does not pass into t in any Semitic dialect, and the explanation recently attempted by Böttcher (N. ex. Krit. Aehrenlese, ii. pp. 119ff.) from the Aramaean atydj , the renewed city (new-town), is based upon many very questionable conjectures.
At the same time so much is certain, that the view which Hitzig has revived (de Cadyti urbe Herod. Gott. 1829, p. 11, and Urgeschichte der Philister, pp. 96ff.), and which is now the prevalent one, viz., that Ka>dutiv is Gaza, is exposed to some well-founded objections, even after what Stark (Gaza, pp. 218ff.) has adduced in its favour. The description which Herodotus gives (iii. 5) of the land-road to Egypt: apo> Foini>khv me>cri ou>rwn tw>n Kadu>tiov po>liov hJ> esti> Su>rwn tw>n Palaistinw>n kaleome>nwn apo> de> Kadu>tiov eou>shv po>liov ( oJv emoi> doke>ei ) Dardi>wn ou> pollw> ela>ssonov apo> tau>thv ta> empo>ria ta> epi> qala>sshv me>cri Ihnu>sou po>lio>v esti tou> Arabi>ou does not apply to Gaza, because there were no commercial towns on the sea-coast between the district of Gaza and the town of Yenysus (the present Khan Yûnas); but between the district of Jerusalem and the town of Yenysus there were the Philistian cities Ashkelon and Gaza, which Herodotus might call ta> empo>ria tou> Arabi>ou , whereas the comparison made between the size of Kadytis and that of Sardes points rather to Jerusalem than to Gaza. Still less can the datum in Jer 47:1, “before Pharaoh smote Gaza,” be adduced in support of Gaza. If we bear in mind that Jeremiah’s prophecy (ch. 47) was not uttered before the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, and therefore that Pharaoh had not smitten Gaza at that time, supposing that this Pharaoh was really Necho, it cannot have been till after his defeat at Carchemish that Necho took Gaza on his return home.
Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf assume that this was the case; but, as M. v.
Niebuhr has correctly observed, it has “every military probability” against it, and even the incredibility that “a routed Oriental army in its retreat, which it evidently accomplished in one continuous march, notwithstanding the fact that on its line of march there were the strongest positions, on the Orontes, Lebanon, etc., at which it might have halted, should have taken the city upon its flight.” And, lastly, the name Ca’dutis does not answer to the name Gaza, even through the latter was spelt Gazatu in early Egyptian (Brugsch, Geograph. Inschr. ii. p. 32) since the u (y) of the second syllable still remains unexplained. Still less tenable is the view of Hofman, renewed by Zündel (Krit.
Unterss. üb. d. Abfassungszeit des B. Daniel, p. 25), that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, and that it was not till the following, or fourth year, that he defeated the Egyptian army at Carchemish, because so long as Pharaoh Necho stood with his army by or in Carchemish, on the Euphrates, Nebuchadnezzar could not possibly attempt to pass it so as to effect a march upon Jerusalem. Compare the remarks of M. v. Niebuhr on this point (Gesch. pp. 208, 209) and his summary at p. 209: “Nebuchadnezzar had enough to do in Babylon and the eastern half of his kingdom, to complete the organization of the new kingdom, to make the military roads to the western half of the kingdom along the narrow valley of the Euphrates and through the desert, and also to fortify them and provide them with watering stations and every other requisite, to repair the damages of the Scythian hordes and the long contest with Nineveh, to restore the shattered authority, and to bring Arabs and mountain-tribes to order.
All this was more important than a somewhat more rapid termination of the Egyptian war and the pacification of Syria.” The supposition of Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 733), that Jehoiakim was enticed out of the capital by a stratagem of the enemy, and taken prisoner, and because he made a furious resistance was hurried off in a scuffle and mercilessly slaughtered, is at variance with the fact that, according to v. 10, it was not till after his death that the army of the enemy advanced to the front of Jerusalem and commenced the siege. To this section the historical appendix to the book of Jeremiah (Jer) furnishes a parallel, which agrees with it for the most part word for word, omitting only the short account of the murder of Gedaliah and of the flight of the people to Egypt (vv. 22-26), and adding instead a computation of the number of the people who were led away to Babel by Nebuchadnezzar (vv. 28-30). Apart from the less important variations, which have arisen in part simply from copyists’ errors, we have in Jer 52:18, and especially in vv. 21 and 22, by no means unimportant notices concerning the vessels of the temple, especially concerning the ornaments of the brazen pillars, which do not occur anywhere in our books. It is evident from this that our text was not derived from Jer (Hävernick), and that Jer was not borrowed from our books of Kings and appended to the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies (Ros., Maur., Ew., Graf). On the contrary, the two accounts are simply brief extracts from one common and more elaborate history of the later times of the kingdom of Judah, possibly composed by Jeremiah or Baruch, analogous to the two extracts from the history of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18-20 and Isa 36-39.-More minute accounts of this space of time are given in the historical portions of the prophecies of Jeremiah (ch. 39-44), which form an explanatory commentary to the section before us.
