CHAPTER 1
1. When King David was old, entering into the days, they would cover him [heavily] with [his] garments, but he was not warming up.
Entering into the days: an idiom for being on his deathbed or at the end of his life. This disease may be what eventually led to his relatively early death (at 70), though he had somewhat of a remission. It does not seem to be a lingering effect of the plague at the end of 2 Shmu’el, for that killed people immediately. Some known maladies that cause such hypothermia are low blood pressure and hypothyroidism, in which the thyroid gland is not producing enough hormones (which could fit with verse 4).
2. So his servants said to him, “Let a search be made for a young virgin, and she will remain in the king’s presence and be of benefit to him, and she can lie in your bosom so my master the king can become warm.”
Be of benefit: as someone of service to him, someone useful; some translate it “a nurse”. A virgin: important because her job was going to be full-time, and she did not have to deal with the issue of loyalty to another man being questioned.
3. So they searched throughout all the territory of Israel for a beautiful young [maiden], and they found Avishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king.
Shunem is in Yissakhar’s territory south of Mt. Tavor in the Yezre’el Plain between Megiddo and Beth She’an. Elisha, who was from not far away, later frequented this town. (2 Kings 4)
4. And the young woman was beautiful to the extreme, and she did turn out to be of benefit to him as she would wait on him, but he did not know her.
Know her: i.e., have sexual relations with her. But they knew there was nothing better to "heat him up" than a lovely woman, for which he had a reputation of appreciation! Apparently she “thawed him out” sufficiently to respond to affairs of state that had been getting out of hand because of his lack of involvement:
5. Then Adoniyah the son of Khaggith exalted himself, saying, “I will reign!” So he prepared a chariot, war horses, and fifty men to run ahead of him.
Adoniyah was one of David’s sons. We know nothing else about who his mother Khaggith was.
6. Now his father had not bothered him [all] his days, saying, “Why have you acted this way?” Now he was also very nice-looking, and he had been born after Avshalom.
He was used to getting whatever he wanted. Nice-looking: He turned out to follow Avshalom in this way, too, as well as in his style of self-proclamation. David’s other son Dani’el was either better disciplined or less ambitious.
7. And he had words with Yo’av the son of Tz’ruyah and with Evyathar the priest, and they began to help Adoniyah with backing.
No one came right out and said David was dying, but all these who were closest to him could not help but recognize that fact. These men do not seem to have been rebellious or intending to betray David; they probably thought they were upholding his dynasty by making sure one of his sons was the next king.
8. But neither Tzadoq the priest, Benayahu the son of Yehoyada, Nathan the prophet, Shim’i and Re’i, or the heroic [warriors] who belonged to David, went with Adoniyah.
9. Then Adoniyah slaughtered sheep and oxen—fat ones at that—near the Crawling Stone, which is beside Eyn-Rogel, and he summoned all of his brothers, the sons of the king, as well as all the men of Yehudah [who were] servants of the king,
Crawling: or shrinking back like a serpent. Eyn-Rogel is in the Hinnom Valley.
10. But he did not invite Nathan the prophet, Benayahu, the heroic [warriors], or his brother Shlomoh.
The first three parties had already shown him that they were not particularly interested in making him king, but he specifically chose to exclude Shlomoh, probably because he knew David favored Shlomoh since he had undoubtedly seen David showing him the model and plans for the construction of the Temple, which was his biggest dream late in life. (1 Chron. 28:4-11) The one who had the plan, which had been shown David by YHWH Himself, had the same kind of authority as Moshe. David knew YHWH wanted Shlomoh to be the next king (1 Chron. 22:5), and Shlomoh knew too, so he would be expected to raise objections at his brother’s coronation. The fact that Adoniyah did not seek David’s blessing, but tried to make sure it was an accomplished fact before David knew about it also makes it clear that he did not expect David to support this move.
11. Then Nathan spoke to Bath-Sheva, the mother of Shlomoh, saying, “Haven’t you heard that Adoniyah the son of Khaggith has begun to reign, while our master David is not aware [of it]?
Apparently David was so ill that they did not wish to bother him with such news.
12. “So come now, please let me give you some advice so you can escape with your life and your son Shlomoh’s life:
13. “Go and approach King David, and say to him, ‘My master the king, didn’t you swear to your maidservant, saying, “Since Shlomoh your son will reign after me, he will sit on my throne”? So why has Adoniyahu taken the throne?’
Adoniyahu: the different spelling is present in the Hebrew text.
14. “And while you are speaking there with the king, I will indeed come in behind you and confirm your words.”
15. So Bath-Sheva approached the king [in] the [bed]chamber. Now the king was very old, and Avishag the Shunammite was waiting on the king.
16. So Bath-Sheva bowed down and did homage to the king, and the king said, “What [will it be] for you?”
Avishag was privy to this conversation, as she must have been to all that took place in David’s last days. This fact will be very important as background to an event in the next chapter.
17. And she said, “My master, you swore to your maidservant by YHWH your Elohim, ‘Since Shlomoh your son will reign after me, he will sit on my throne.’
18. “But now, look! Adoniyah has begun to reign—already, while you were not aware of it!
Like Rivqah, she sees things more clearly than her husband, and intervenes to ensure that the blessing goes to the right son. Rather than use an accusatory tone, as the prophet hinted at, she recognized, or at least respectfully insinuated, that the king must not have known what had taken place, assuming he would have done something about it already if he had. She was in the position of Esther, coming before the king unsummoned, so she acts with restraint that Nathan, who had a long history of confronting David, would not need to use. She did not approach him as queen per se, but as his servant.
19. “And he has been slaughtering oxen—and fat ones [at that]—as well as sheep to a great extent, and has summoned all the king’s sons, as well as Evyathar the priest and Yo’av the commander of the army! But he has not called for your servant Shlomoh.
20. “As for you, my master the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you to declare to them who is to sit on the throne of my master the king after him;
YHWH had given Shlomoh his name 20 years before, and revealed to David that he would be the one to build the Temple after him. (1 Chron. 22:9) Yet still this depended on David’s cooperation now. If he decided to let Adoniyah’s actions slide because he did not want to anger another son, the whole nation would be out of YHWH’s will and Adoniyah would have at least tried to kill Shlomoh. The very imperfect tense used in many commands and prophecies indicates an action not yet completed, and can be read as “should”, “may”, “can”, or “must” just as well as “will”. A covenant must be upheld by both parties in order to be fulfilled.
21. “otherwise when my master the king lies down [to rest] with his ancestors, what will take place is that I and my son Shlomoh will end up being considered offenders.”
I.e., they were likely to be killed as potential threats to Adoniyah’s authority.
22. And indeed, while she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet came in
23. and they [brought a] report to the king, saying, “Nathan the prophet is here!” And he entered the king’s presence and did homage to the king on [his face, with] his nostrils to the ground.
Bath-Sheva brought a more authoritative second witness to back her up. Nathan always had had David’s ear in the past.
24. Then Nathan said, “My master the king! [Did] you say, ‘Adoniyah will reign after me, and he will sit on my throne’?
25. “Because he has gone down today and slaughtered oxen—and fat ones [at that]—and sheep to a great extent, and has summoned all the king’s sons and the captains of the army, as well as Evyathar the priest, and there they are, eating and drinking in his presence, and they have been saying, ‘[Long] live Adoniyahu the king!’
Gone down: rather than up to the slaughtering place David had appointed. Being in the Valley of Hinnom, he may have slaughterwhere at times children were burned alive in pagan fertility rites.
26. “But he has not called for myself, your servant, or Tzadoq the priest, or Benayah the son of Y’hoyada, or your servant Shlomoh.
He knew better than to inform any of these people who were known to be loyal to his father. He knew they could easily have him killed if he did not present his coup as an already-accomplished fact before David knew about it. But he may have forgotten that YHWH spoke directly to Nathan, informing him of what was going on, no matter how successful they might have been at keeping any word from leaking out.
27. “If this thing has come from my master the king, then you have not let your servant know who will sit on the throne of my master the king after him.”
28. So King David responded by saying, “Summon Bath-Sheva to me!” And she came before the king, and stood in the king’s presence.
29. And the king made an oath and said, “[By the] life of YHWH, who has ransomed my soul out of every [kind of] tight spot,
30. “As I have adjured myself to you by YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, saying, ‘Since Shlomoh your son will reign after me, he will sit on my throne’, I will do the same this [very] day.”
I will do the same: i.e., not change what I have given my word about. He acted more responsibly this time than when Avshalom did the same thing.
31. And Bath-Sheva bowed down with her nostrils to the ground and did homage to the king, and she said, “May my master the king live forever!”
Literally, may he live into the age (i.e., be counted worthy to again be alive during the Messianic Kingdom). And so he will, according to Y’hezq’el 24:23-24; 37:24-25; Hoshea 3:5.
32. Then King David said, “Summon to me Tzadoq the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada.” And they came into the king’s presence.
33. And the king told them, “Take with you the servants of your master, and have Shlomoh my son ride on the she-mule that is my own, and have him go down to Gihon,
The Gihon was one of the four rivers that flowed from Eden, and therefore the anointing of the king following David in his dynasty at this location symbolizes the next step in the return to Eden. With each king in David’s line that is anointed, we would be moving one step closer to the restoration of all things.
34. “and let Tzadoq the priest along with Nathan the prophet anoint him there as king over Israel. Then blow the shofar and say, ‘[Long] live King Shlomoh!’
Psalms 2 and 110 were written for the fuller coronation ceremony that was to follow.
35. “Then come up after him and he will sit on my throne, so he may reign in my place, since I have ordered him to become ruler over Israel and over Yehudah.”
Sit on my throne: Y’shua said his father (apparently David, based on this precedent) had given him the same privilege, and he would give the same privilege to anyone who overcomes the present age, as these three delegated men did. (Rev. 3:21) The phrasing here suggests that Adoniyah may not have been trying to take the throne of Yehudah from Shlomoh (especially while David was still alive), but only that of Israel.
36. Then Benayah the son of Y’hoyada responded by saying, “So let it be! May YHWH, the Elohim of my master the king say the same!
So let it be: Heb., amen, based on the word for “true” or “reliable”, firmly-founded, as this indeed was founded in David’s YHWH-given authority, in contrast with Adoniyah’s authority, which was given by unauthorized men.
37. “Just as YHWH has been with my master the king, so may He be with Shlomoh, and make his throne greater than the throne of my master the king!”
38. So Tzadoq the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada, and the Krethites and Plethites, and they had Shlomoh ride on David’s mule, and escorted him over the Gihon.
Benayah was the commander over the Krethites and Plethites, who were foreign mercenary soldiers who constituted David’s special forces or bodyguards. (2 Shmu’el 8:18)
39. Then Tzadoq the priest took the horn of oil out from the tent and anointed Shlomoh, and they blew the shofar and all the people said, “[Long] live King Shlomoh!”
Horn of oil: Much as animal horns were used in more recent centuries to carry gunpowder, they worked very well for holding olive oil and drizzling it onto the king’s head through the opening at the small end while the other end was sealed shut with leather.
40. And all the people came up after him, piping on flutes and celebrating with [such] great gladness that the earth was split open with their sound!
This may be hyperbole, but it may have some parallel to the time all Israel shouted with Y’hoshua and the walls of Y’rikho fell down. Notice the contrast between David’s method of coronation and that chosen by his rebellious son who exalted himself. The latter followed Avshalom’s pattern, based on an Egyptian one, of having a chariot with forerunners. Shlomoh was riding David’s own mule, which gave him immediately more authority than the chariot ever could. Adoniyah did this behind some people’s back, and used no shofar, whereas David did, so people knew this was official (probably having a special pattern of notes used only on such occasions). Adoniyah needed to stage a grand event to hide what he was not doing and the fact that he had no authority to do this. Shlomoh does not need to draw attention to himself with a lot of noise in a carnival or circus atmosphere, because his is the real thing, and the people naturally fell in and followed because he was doing the right thing.
41. When Adoniyah and all the invitees who were with him heard [it], they quit eating. When Yo’av heard the sound of the shofar, he said, “Why is the town’s voice so uproarious?”
They were far enough away to escape David’s notice but close enough to hear this uproar and the shofar.
42. While he was still speaking, here came Yonathan the son of Evyathar the priest, and Adoniyah said, “Come in! Because you are a soldier and [must be] bringing glad news!”
Yonathan’s name is spelled defectively, since he was not acting in the role of truly being “provided by YHWH” at this time. Yonathan was one of the two who spied for David after Avshalom revolted. After what David did to the messenger who brought word that he had killed King Sha’ul, certain people were not seen as appropriate to bring bad news.
43. But Yonathan answered and told Adoniyah, “Rather, our master, King David, has made Shlomoh king!
44. “And the king has sent Tzadoq the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada, and the Krethites and Plethites with him, and they have set him on the king’s mule to ride!
45. “And they—Tzadoq the priest and Nathan the prophet—have anointed him as king at [the] Gihon, and they have come up from there celebrating, and the town was in an uproar. That was the sound that you heard!
46. “And Shlomoh has even sat down on the royal throne!
47. “The king’s servants have also come to bless our master, King David, saying, ‘May your Elohim make Shlomoh’s name [even] better than your name, and his throne [even] greater than your throne!’ And the king has prostrated himself on the bed!
48. “And what’s more, the king [himself] said something like this: ‘Blessed is YHWH the Elohim of Israel, who has provided someone to sit on my throne while my eyes can see it!’”
49. And all the invitees who belonged to Adoniyah shuddered and started getting up and each was going in his own direction.
They were either proving that they were each there for selfish reasons rather than truly in unity, or realizing that they have been fooled (once the king’s true will was made known) and knew they would be the ones killed, as when the same type of banquet was broken up during Avshalom’s revolt.
50. And Adoniyah was afraid because of the presence of Shlomoh, so he got up and took hold of the horns of the altar.
Horns: not as pointed as animal horns, but projections extending from the four corners. This was perceived as a place where no one would dare kill another, just like the churches in mafia movies. (The power of the empire was seen to be behind such a refuge.) In other nations, altars were places of blood and death, but in Israel, the slaughter was not done on the altar itself, but a place of mercy. This expectation is alluded to all the way back in Exodus 21:14, where YHWH says that if someone has been treacherous in planning to kill his brother, he should be taken away even from His altar. Adoniyah had not tried to kill Shlomoh, but the fact that he was afraid Shlomoh would kill him shows that he assumed he would do the same thing he would do if the tables were turned. So it is his own guilt accusing him rather than Shlomoh.
51. And Shlomoh was told, “Look! Adoniyah is afraid of King Shlomoh, and indeed, he has taken hold of the horns of the altar, saying, ‘Let King Shlomoh swear to me, as of today, [that] if he puts his servant to death by the sword…’”
52. So Shlomoh said, “If he becomes a capable son, not a hair of his will fall to the ground, but if wickedness is found in him, he will die.”
This was already a demonstration of the wisdom emerging in Shlomoh. He neither acted rashly nor overly defensively (by immediately killing even a potential rival), yet still did not let him feel that he was off the hook or out from under scrutiny. Not a hair of his head: David had said the same thing to the woman who brought the concocted story designed to keep David from killing Avshalom. (2 Shmu’el 14)
53. And King Shlomoh sent and had them bring him down from the altar, and he came and prostrated himself to King Shlomoh. And Shlomoh told him, “Go to your home.”
Sent: or, stretched out [his scepter]. Prostrated himself: i.e., “knuckled” under to his authority.
CHAPTER 2
1. As the days of David drew near to die, he gave orders to his son Shlomoh, saying,
2. “I am going on the way of all the earth. So take a firm hold and become a man,
Become a man: David is laying more expectations on this son than he had done for any of his other sons, possibly because he was too busy with the affairs of state to be very involved in their upbringing. He apparently believes this son can live up to them, and gives him a heritage the others did not receive. But Shlomoh had been chiefly raised by his mother (Prov. 4:3), and now he will be required to make decisions unclouded by emotion. He would no longer be the “spoiled rich kid”, and the throne would require much more maturity than his more handsome brothers had ever had, for a king must be even more stable than his subjects, because their stability rests on his.
3. “and pay attention to what YHWH your Elohim has given you as a responsibility—to walk in His ways and guard the ordinances He has prescribed, His commandments, His judicial procedures, and His testimonial evidence, as written in Moshe’s instruction, so that you may make everything you do successful and prosper wherever you turn your face,
Make successful: with the connotation of being wise, prudent, circumspect, and full of insight. This is what constitutes “being a man” in Israel. (v. 2) These two verses are a paraphrase of Y’hoshua 23:14-16. As a warrior, David probably looked to Y’hoshua as his hero and inspiration, especially when it came to killing giants! But Y’hoshua was more “firm” (v. 2) than David, because he did not say, “Wherever you turn”, but “Do not turn from it to the right or the left”. David had turned from it, but turned back; in the words of Lao Tzu, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading!” The firmness required here is not so much physical strength as it is determination—a decision to do the right thing no matter what.
4. “so that YHWH may make His word endure, which He spoke to me, saying, ‘If your sons will keep watch over their path, to truly walk in My presence with all their heart and with all their soul, [then,’ He] said, ‘not a soul of yours will be cut off from the throne of Israel.’
Spoke to me: Though it is not verbatim, he may be referring to YHWH’s words as recorded in 2 Shmu’el 7:12-16, or alluding to Psalm 132:12. This is based on parallel generalities in Deut. 11:18-21, but is also a special covenant specific to the descendants of David, to which Y’shua would also be heir. Since some of the intervening kings did not live up to these requirements, he was required to pay a heavy price to repair what they broke, and has had to wait a long time to receive his throne in actuality.
5. “Now you also know what Yo’av the son of Tz’ruyah did to me—what he did to the two commanders of the armies of Israel (to Avner the son of Ner and to Amasa the son of Yether)—how he murdered them and brought the blood of war into peace[time] and allowed the blood of war to be on the belt that was around his waist and on his sandals that were on his feet.
These stories are found in 2 Shmu’el chapters 3 and 20. To me: Yo’av sinned against David himself by murdering his generals and robbing him of valuable resource persons. Into peacetime: Yo’av was a great warrior, probably the best of his day other than David, but he took his specialty out of its proper context and brought the rules appropriate in wartime outside that framework, killing his fellows as if they had been enemies, while they were in fact people for whom David had a special affinity and did not want killed. Shlomoh would not have expected to be king, being at least fourth in line by normal patterns, but he is suddenly given that responsibility. David immediately puts him in some tough situations so he will exercise strength and become more mature and readier for more difficult things which might come later—though starting off with a show of strength is probably what prevented him from ever having to go to war. Belt…sandals: possibly actual traditions in that day; there are vestiges of this still in the Middle Eastern psyche, as exemplified by the Muslims who killed Jews in a public building and showed their blood on their hands in the fall of 2000 while the world watched on cameras positioned outside the building in Ramallah.
6. “So act according to your better judgment and don’t let his grey hair go down to the grave peacefully.
7. “But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai the Gil’adite by letting them eat at your table, because they indeed came close to me when I was running from your brother Avshalom.
Though Barzillai declined this honor (2 Shmu’el 19:31ff), David did not yet feel that he had honored him thoroughly enough. We were only told earlier that Barzillai himself helped David, but his sons must have been faithful to act in unison with him, and now they were the only ones left to honor, since Barzillai was close to death at the time David made him this offer the first time. Came close: They publicly stuck with David even when it was politically dangerous for them to do so.
8. “But take note that Shim’i the son of Gera the Binyamite from Bakhurim is with you. Now he treated me very contemptuously on the day I was going to Makhanayim, when he came down to meet me at the Yarden, but I swore to him by YHWH my Elohim, saying, ‘If I kill you with the sword…’
If I kill: the sentence is unfinished in the standard format of Hebraic oaths, but it implies, “May the same thing befall me if I do.” But apparently he had still turned out to remain a thorn in David’s side, and David had a loophole now; he had never promised that his son would not kill him!
9. “So now, don’t exempt him from punishment, because you are a skillful man, and you know what you must do to him so as to bring his grey hair down to She’ol in a bloody [way].”
You are a skillful man: i.e., You will figure out how to correct my mistake with integrity. The last thing David did was to ensure that old accounts were settled so that Shlomoh would not have the trouble he had had, and so that these examples would act as a deterrent to others from the start of his reign and no one would think he was weaker than his father and that they could now get away with more. Only after he had set these precedents could he relax into the role he had been chiefly called to as a peacetime king.
10. Then David lay down with his ancestors, and was buried in the City of David.
Though Beyth-Lekhem is called the City of David in 1 Shmu’el 20:6 and Luqa 2:4, 11, the more contemporary writings of 2 Shmu’el 5:7 and 1 Chronicles 11:7 identify this title with the stronghold of Tzion, and 8:1 below will again call Tzion the City of David. But what is called Mt. Tzion today is not the same part of Yerushalayim; that area was not yet annexed to the city with a wall at this time. It was the now-unwalled hill immediately to the south of the Temple Mount, and some archaeologists (led by Weill) think they have found David’s actual tomb, as contrasted with the one on the present Mt. Tzion which has long been called David’s but probably is not.
11. Now the [length of] time that David had reigned over Israel was 40 years (he reigned in Hevron 7 years and he reigned in Yerushalim 33 years),
Seven years: This is rounded down. 2 Shmu’el 2:11 and 5:5, as well as 1 Chron. 3:4 are more precise, saying he reigned over only Yehudah for seven years and six months. Yerushalim: this truncated spelling of Yerushalayim appears in the Hebrew text here and in some other places.
12. then Shlomo sat on the throne of his father David, and his kingdom was being established very firmly.
13. Then Adoniyahu the son of Khaggith came to Bath-sheva the mother of Shlomoh. And she said, “Do you come [in] peace?” And he said, “[In] peace.”
She thought he still might want to kill her—or her son, whose name, incidentally, means “his peace”.
14. And he said, “[May] I have a word with you?” And she said, “Speak.”
15. So he said, “You know that the royalty was mine, and all Israel had set their face toward my becoming king, but the kingly office has been turned in a different direction, and it [has gone] to my brother, because it was his from YHWH.
I.e., “That is no problem; it’s water under the bridge.” Yet he adds a “but” to what he has already acknowledged is YHWH’s will:
16. “But now I am requesting one favor of you; do not turn your face away.” And she told him, “Speak.”
17. So he said, “Please speak to Shlomoh the king, because he will not turn your face away. [Ask] that he give me Avishag the Shunammite as a wife.”
He will not turn your face away: an idiom for refusing his request. The king’s mother was more of a queen than his wives, having more influence over him and the nation than any of them. Avishag was the woman who had kept David warm on his deathbed. (1:3) Avshalom had used sleeping with his father’s concubines as a statement that he was next in line to be king. Though David had not been intimate with Avishag, she essentially belonged to him, and a similar interpretation would be likely. This could be the start of a slippery slope.
18. And Bath-Sheva said, “Fine. I myself will speak to the king in regard to you.”
19. When Bath-Sheva approached King Shlomoh to speak to him about Adoniyahu, the king stood up to welcome her, then bowed to her and sat [back] down on his throne. And he put in place a seat for the king’s mother, and she sat at his right hand.
Note how he honors her, though he is the king. Of course, she was the one who ensured that he would be king.
20. And she said, “I have one favor to ask of you—a small one; do not turn my face away.” And the king said to her, “Ask, my mother, because I will not turn your face away.”
21. So she said, “Let Avishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adoniyahu as a wife.”
22. But King Shlomoh answered and said to his mother, “And why are you requesting [only] Avishag the Shunammite for Adoniyahu? [Go ahead and] request the kingship for him too, because he is my elder brother—for both him and for Evyathar the priest and for Yo’av the son of Tz’ruyah!”
His tone changed rather quickly! The elder brother would be expected to have the prior claim to the throne. Shlomoh becomes very sarcastic here, even if he is speaking to his mother, because he recognizes that Adoniyahu does not particularly love this woman (as beautiful as she is), but has put his mother up to this for political reasons, because Avishag was privy to any words that passed between anyone and the king for the last several weeks or months of his life, and she would be able to give him any incriminating information that there might be about anyone close to him who might be able to fall in order to get him back in line to be the king. Avshalom had been killed, yet here he seemed to be again in the form of his brother. This may be a prophetic reference to the counterfeit Messiah whose mortal wound seems to be healed. (Rev. 13:14)
23. And Shlomoh the King swore an oath in YHWH[’s Name], saying, “May Elohim do the same to me and add more of the same [if I do], because Adoniyahu has spoken this thing in his ambition.
In his ambition: some translate it, against his own life; i.e., it would seal the guarantee of his doom.
24. “So now, [as surely as] YHWH lives, who has established me and seated me upon the throne of David my father, and who has brought about a household for me as He promised, Adoniyah will be put to death this very day!”
25. And King Shlomoh sent [orders] by the hand of Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada, and he struck him so that he died.
26. Then the king said to Evyathar the priest, “Go to Anathoth, to your fields, because you are indeed a man [deserving] death, but I will not put you to death on this day, since you have carried the ark of Adonai YHWH in the presence of my father David, and because you were afflicted in everything that afflicted my father.”
On this day: i.e., at this time. As he extended a test to Adoniyahu, which he failed, he gave the same veiled ultimatum to Evyathar, that if he did not behave himself, he, too, could suffer the same end as the one whom he had wrongly supported. His early faithfulness counted for enough to spare his life, but Shlomoh could not bear the sight of him, however, as it would constantly remind him of this incident, now that he recognized that Adoniyahu had still left a door open for the conspirators to rise up again. He thus prevented a “threefold cord” from being bound together again. Afflicted: or, humiliated, mistreated, occupied with.
27. Thus Shlomoh ousted Evyathar from being a priest to YHWH, to fulfill YHWH’s word, which He had spoken concerning the house of Eli at Shiloh.
The background to this is found in 1 Shmu’el 2:17-25, 31-33 and 3:11-14. To fulfill: Not necessarily consciously for that purpose, because Shlomoh had a more immediate score to settle by doing this. As long as anyone of the house of Eli acted worthily, he was able to remain in the priestly office, for YHWH did not say the curse on Eli would necessarily take effect immediately. In fact, it had been about 100 years—possibly more—since Shmu’el had brought that message to Eli as a child. But now there was no longer any excuse for YHWH’s mercy to be prolonged.
28. When the report reached Yo’av (because Yo’av had defected to follow Adoniyah, though he had not defected to follow Avshalom), Yo’av fled to the tent of YHWH and took hold of the projections of the altar.
One out of two right choices was not enough. Compare Hebrews 6:4-8. Now that his ally is gone, Yo’av knows he is defenseless and recognizes that he is next in line. He saw what became of his co-defectors, and knew now that Shlomoh would not slack off where his father had been firm. Took hold of the projections (or, horns): This is the same thing Adoniyah had done (1:50) and was spared at that time, and Yo’av might have assumed this would work for him as well. But the Torah-based exception to the protection afforded there (Ex. 21:14) applied in this case.
29. And it was reported to King Shlomoh that Yo’av had fled to the tent of YHWH and indeed, he was attached to the altar when Shlomoh sent Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada, saying, “Go, strike him down!”
30. When Benayahu came into the tent of YHWH, he told him, “This is what the king says: Come out!” But he said, “No, because I can be put to death right here!” So Benayahu brought the message back to the king, saying, “This is what Yo’av said, and this is how he responded to me!”
He tried to get him to leave the Tabernacle precincts so he would not have to kill him in a holy place. But Yo’av did not seem to care, suggesting a callous disregard for things holy.
31. So the king told him, “Do as he said, and strike him down. Then bury him, and turn away from me and from the house of my father the blood that Yo’av shed needlessly.
Do as he said: Shlomoh would not let this deter him from fulfilling David’s dying wish. No one had avenged these men’s deaths, and though David had not been aware of Yo’av’s plans to kill them and had not approved, still the responsibility fell upon David because they had been under his command. A guilt by association still remained, and his lineage was now responsible to silence the outcry of their innocent blood.
32. “Thus YHWH will turn his blood back on his own head—he who has struck down two men more righteous and better than he, murdering them with the sword without my father David knowing it: Avner the son of Ner, the commander of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Yether, the commander of the army of Yehudah.
Though the kingdom was still united, the armies of the two houses of Israel are already considered separate. Yo’av had been a great warrior, but he let this aspect of reality have more emphasis than it deserved, and it became a demon, as he turned into someone bloodthirsty at all times, not just in legitimate battle.
33. “Their blood will therefore come back onto the head of Yo’av and onto the head[s] of his descendants forever, while to David and to his descendants and to his household and to his throne, there will be peace from YHWH forever.”
If Shlomoh had not avenged them, this peace would not have come, for injustice would still be unresolved. Many today do not recognize this, and think that if injustice is simply forgiven without repentance and restitution, the world can still somehow be at rest. There must be justice on the earth, and not just in the age to come.
34. So Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada went up and struck him and killed him, and he was buried at his own home in the wilderness.
Went up: The tabernacle may already have been on the present Temple Mount, which is higher than the city, since David had put an altar there before he died. But in any case, the tabernacle, and especially the altar, was a place of greater sanctity than any other part of the city, and therefore to go there was always to ascend, at least figuratively. At his home: or possibly, in his home. Some wealthy people (like Herod and many of the later regents of the northern kingdom of Israel) had their tombs built right under the floor of their houses, and since Yo’av had taken so much plunder, he probably had multiple estates.
35. And the king appointed Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada to his position over the army, and the king appointed Tzadoq the priest to Evyathar’s position.
His: that is, Yoa’v’s. Shlomoh might have wished to retain Yo’av, because he was a man who would get the job done, but too often he acted against those David had made peace with.
36. Then the king sent and summoned Shim’i and told him, “Build yourself a house in Yerushalayim and live there, but do not go out from there to anywhere else.
He was keeping him where he could keep an eye on his every activity. He may have even provided the funding for the house—which would have made Shim’i all the more responsible to follow his instructions.
37. “[Because] what will be the case [is that] on the day you leave and cross over the Qidron Valley, you will know for sure that you will certainly die; your blood will be on your own head.”
He was exiled from even the place where he had attacked David with insults soon after he had crossed the Qidron. Valley: a dry riverbed which can become a flood zone in the rainy season.
38. And Shim’i said to the king, “The thing is appropriate. As my master the king has spoken, so will your servant do.” And Shim’i lived in Yerushalayim many days.
39. But what took place at the end of three years [was] that two of Shim’i’s servants ran away to Akhish, the son of Maakhah, the king of Gath, and they reported it to Shim’i, saying, “There your servants are—in Gath!”
40. So Shim’i got up and saddled his donkey, and went to Akhish in Gath to demand his servants [back]. Thus Shim’i went and brought his servants [back] from Gath.
Since Gath was not across the Qidron Valley, but to the west of Yerushalayim, Shim’i might have thought this was a loophole, but Shlomoh had said “anywhere else”. (v. 36) It seemed to be a necessity, but that is where the real test lies, as Uzzah learned the hard way. (2 Shmu’el 6)
41. But it was reported to Shlomoh that Shim’i had gone from Yerushalayim to Gath and back.
42. So the king sent and summoned Shim’i, and said to him, “Didn’t I have you take an oath by YHWH, and solemnly warn you again by saying, ‘On the day you leave to go anywhere at all, you will know for sure that you will certainly die’? And didn’t you say to me, ‘The word that I have heard is appropriate’?
43. “Why, then, have you not kept the oath of YHWH and the order that I have [laid] on you as a responsibility?”
YHWH’s own name was compromised, and that was his biggest violation. Like Adam and Chawwah, he had only one simple command to obey to guarantee his well-being, but for some reason he thought he had “done his time” and had a valid reason to be exempt from further obedience. Shlomoh had given him a test to determine if he was worthy of forgiveness, and he had predictably failed it. David had told him to be crafty with this crafty man, and he did: he did not kill him for anything he had done in David’s day, since that had been forgiven because of David’s undeserved mercy. He put him in a position to demonstrate that rebellion still remained in his heart, and, though it took some time to surface, when it inevitably manifested itself, that was all he punished him for.
44. The king also said to Shim’i, “You are aware of all the wickedness about which your heart has had the know-how, which you perpetrated toward my father David, so YHWH has turned the evil back on your own head,
45. “while King Shlomoh will be blessed, and the throne of David established before YHWH forever!”
46. And the king gave orders to Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada, and he went out and struck him down, and he died. Thus the kingdom was made stable in the hand of Shlomoh.
All the troublemakers who had survived David were now gone from the earth, and the Davidic era had completely passed, except for his remaining widow, Bath-Sheva and possibly some other widows of his.
CHAPTER 3
1. Then Shlomoh made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, through marriage when he took the daughter of Pharaoh and brought her into the City of David until he had finished building his own house and the House of YHWH, and the wall encompassing Yerushalayim.
This is the first of many such alliances he would make, though the Torah had told kings not to multiply wives for themselves lest their hearts turn away from YHWH. (Deut. 17:17) YHWH had told Israel not to intermarry with the peoples of the Land (Ex. 34:16), and had said specifically that the king of Israel should never take His people back to Egypt in particular to amass an army (Deut. 17:16), so he should have put two and two together and realized this was not a wise move, if not an outright sin. YHWH had clearly expressed on many occasions that He had no taste for Egypt. Ezra and Nekhemyah later overtly forbade such alliances for any Israelite. David could easily have made such a treaty, but had chosen not to, which should have told Shlomoh something. But this part of the chapter is emphasizing that Shlomoh was not yet the wisest of rulers. His own house: It would not technically be within the City of David, though it would be made contiguous with it once the wall mentioned here was built. His house would sit between the original part of the city and the Temple.
2. It was just that the people were still slaughtering [animals] at cultic platforms, because until those days no house had been built for the name of YHWH.
Cultic platforms: usually places of pagan worship, though as is stated here, the worship of YHWH had not yet been fully centralized at Yerushalayim. But one senses the disapproval in the scribe’s tone here. At the very least it was a disunifying factor, and is again one of the worst aspects of our exile that there is no place where all of Israel can worship YHWH together. But a bigger reason is that these cultic platforms had been built specifically for the worship of pagan deities (usually for fertility rites) by the Kanaanites before them, and YHWH had said to break them down. (Ex. 34:13; Deut. 7:5; 12:3) YHWH does not want His worship associated with the places other elohim have been worshipped. But the early Church made exactly the same mistake, by taking over pagan temples and leaving their steeples (which were phallic symbols much like those used at such Kanaanite sites) in place to identify to other that these were still places of worship or to show that Hebraic truth had overcome the paganism once practiced there. It was, however, this displacement that ended up making that paganism an integral part of Christianity, thereby neutralizing most of the gains that had been made. The reason the Dome of the Rock has eight sides is because it was built over a Roman temple to Jupiter that had been put there to symbolize the displacement of the worship of YHWH. It was already a holy place in people’s minds, but YHWH prefers to build a wall between such sites and His. It was not built on a former Yevusite worship site, but on a former threshing floor, which holds better pictures—those of the teacher who elevates his students to where the wind (spirit) can separate away what is useless. Until the fullness of the Kingdom arrives, He intends for His people to be separated from other forms of worship rather than conquering them as such.
3. Now Shlomoh loved YHWH [enough] to walk within the limits prescribed by David his father, except that he was slaughtering [offerings] and burning incense at cultic platforms.
4. The king even went to Giv’on to offer a slaughter there, because it was the biggest cultic platform. Shlomoh offered a thousand ascending offerings on that altar.
This would represent the expenditure of great wealth, and no one would even have eaten of these; they were fully consumed, as symbolic of giving them completely to YHWH. But Shlomoh’s remarkable generosity seems to have been misplaced. Giv’on (in Binyamin’s territory, northwest of Yerushalayim) means “a very large hill”, which explains why the biggest worship site was there. It may have remained active for pagan worship much longer than the others, because the Giv’onites, who were Kanaanite, had been spared by Y’hoshua because of a hasty promise he had made, and had gone on living in their hometown. But 2 Chron. 1:3 says Elohim’s Tent of Meeting that Moshe had built was at Giv’on at this time, so this does not sound too bad at first. However, Leviticus 17:3-5 says no Israelite may slaughter an animal outside the camp without bringing it to the priests, and the priests were with the altar and the ark in Yerushalayim. So the tent was just an empty shell, being separated from the covenant. YHWH was somewhere else, so why was His “dinner” still being delivered here? They were just walking in tradition without understanding. The ark was also missing from the Second Temple, giving an apt picture of the way Israel was in Y’shua’s time—without covenant. Men had added many things to it, but only what could be traced back to the Tabernacle had unquestioned validity.
5. At Giv’on, YHWH appeared to Shlomoh in a dream at night, and Elohim said, “Make a request: What should I give you?”
YHWH knew he was inexperienced and did not castigate him for that, but it was now time for him to stop being an unlearned child, for he was already king! This is not exactly the “three wishes” of the fairy tales, but it was a privilege very few people every received so overtly—though YHWH always invites us to bring our needs and requests before Him.
6. And Shlomoh said, “You showed great kindness to my father David when he walked before You in faithfulness, did what was right, and was upright in heart along with You, so You have reserved for him this great kindness, and have allowed him to have a son sitting on his throne, as [it is] this day.
The blessing on his ancestor would not take effect unless he, too, took it up.
7. “So now, O YHWH, my Elohim, you have allowed your servant to reign in the place of David my father, but I myself am a little lad; I do not know how to go out or come in.
A little lad: We are not told how old Shlomoh was when he began to reign (we only know he reigned 40 years), but by tradition he was 20 years old—the age at which men were first eligible for “draft” into the army. He cannot have been much older than that. Go out or come in: an idiom for being skilled in warfare. He knew it had pleased YHWH that his father excelled at that.
8. “And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen, a great people that cannot be counted or described for the [sheer] size [of it]!
In the midst: i.e., the center of attention, bearing the weight of the responsibility to protect them all from enemies and ensure that they followed YHWH’s Torah.
9. “So give Your servant a perceptive mind to judge Your people—to distinguish between right and wrong—because who is able to govern this great people of Yours?”
Perceptive: literally, listening or obedient—a “hearing heart”. He may have received this concept from his own father’s words, which may be reflected in Proverbs 2:2. David had kept telling Shlomoh at the end of his life to seek wisdom (Prov. 4:4-6), so he knew what his father had desired him to be, and when YHWH gave him this offer, he recognized he did not have as much wisdom as he needed. He was not wise in his own eyes, and that in itself is evidence of some wisdom. (Prov. 3:7) Giv’on was a place where Y’hoshua had been distinctively unwise and lacking perception, so he was making a reparation for this by asking for wisdom at specifically this place.
10. And the matter was appropriate in the eyes of Adonai, that Shlomoh had asked for this thing.
11. So Elohim said to him, “Because you have asked for this thing instead of requesting many days for yourself, nor have you asked for wealth for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself the discernment to hear judicial case[s],
12. “here! I have done as you have said. Indeed, I have provided you with such a skillful and instructed heart that there has never been one like you before you, nor will there [ever] arise [one who is] your equal after you!
Skillful: or, wise. He had his priorities right, but Shlomoh had only asked for understanding, which is a step higher than knowledge and is built upon it. But understanding is futile if it is not applied. So YHWH took it a step further and offered him the “principal thing: wisdom”, which he had not asked for; he may not have yet known that it was a higher gift. (Prov. 4:7) Instructed: one observant and gifted with perceptiveness, understanding, attentiveness, and consideration—in short, wisdom. Heart: can be understood as mind as well, as in verse 9. An equal: literally, your equal.
13. “But I have also given you what you didn’t ask for—both wealth and honor such that for all your days there will not be a man like you among the kings.
Shlomoh did not ask for anything for himself except in relation to what YHWH’s people needed. He had self in the right perspective, so YHWH allowed it to prosper as well. He wants us to be generous because He is! But note that YHWH did not offer him the third thing he had not asked for—the life of his enemies. Shlomoh had just rid Israel of his internal enemies, and David had rid them of any active enemies on the outside, so what enemies were left? His very name bespeaks the fact that Shlomoh was called to be a peacetime king, and indeed there were none that tried to attack Israel during his lifetime. He would, however, end up becoming his own worst enemy.
14. “And if you will walk in My ways in order to guard the boundaries and orders that I have prescribed—just as your father David walked—then I will let your days continue for a long time.”
Note the conditionality of this offer. Shlomoh started well, but would end up going back and forth in his obedience when led by anything other than Torah (whether his wives or diplomatic concerns), and so though he did not exactly die young, he apparently did not even live as long as his father.
15. Then Shlomoh woke up, and, lo and behold, it had been a dream! So he came into Yerushalayim and stood before the ark of YHWH’s covenant and made ascending [offering]s go up, and prepared completeness-offerings, and made a [drinking] banquet for all of his servants.
After YHWH met with him, he came back to his senses and offered slaughterings in the right place. Yerushalayim is where Avraham and Yaaqov had both met with YHWH, and he knew immediately that this is where he had to go. No one had to tell him to do the right thing; he exercised wisdom in one case, and was given more. One has to wonder whether he offered a thousand again to correct his former error.
16. Then two women—prostitutes—approached the king and stood before him,
We are not told whether this was at the banquet described above. A king holds the life of his subjects in his hands. (Prov. 16:14-15) One who comes before a wise king should expect that he will see through any ruse they may be concocting, and this should cause them a healthy fear. These women do not seem to have been afraid to come before the king, as the witch of Eyn-Dor had been afraid to be seen by Sha’ul, showing that it was not illegal for prostitutes as such to exist in the Land as long as long as they did not belong to a particular husband or father. They probably chose this trade because they felt they had no other choice, being orphaned with no one to care for them, which may be why it seemed so important to each of them to have a son, who would care for them in their old age.
17. and the one woman said, “Excuse me, my master. I and this woman live in one house, and I gave birth [to a baby] in the house with her [there].
Note that she puts herself first in the sentence, already suggesting an animosity or a lower regard for the other woman.
18. “But what took place was [that] on the third day [after] I gave birth, this woman also gave birth [to a child], and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house; only the two of us were in the house.
No stranger: i.e., they were not plying their trade at such a time!
19. “But this woman’s son died at night, because she lay down on top of it.
20. “And she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from right beside me while your maidservant was sleeping and laid him in her bosom, and she laid her son who had died in my bosom!
21. “When I got up the [next] morning to nurse my son, lo and behold, it was dead! But when I looked at him carefully in the morning [light], he was not the son I had given birth to!”
22. But the other woman said, “Not so, because my son is the live one, and your son is the dead one!” Then this [first] one said, “No, because my son is the live one, and your son is the dead one!” And they spoke [so] intensely in the king’s presence.
23. Then the king said, “This one says, ‘This is my son—the one that’s alive—and your son is the dead one’, but that one says, ‘Not so, because my son is the dead one, and your son is the live one!’”
24. And the king said, “Get me a sword!” So they brought a sword into the king’s presence.
25. And the king said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to the one and the [other] half to the [other] one!”
26. But while that one was saying, “Don’t let him be either mine or yours; divide him!”, the woman whose son was the living one spoke to the king, because her compassion grew agitated over her son, and she said, “Please, my master, give her the living child, but whatever you do, don’t kill him!”
Compassion grew agitated: or, her “gut” grew warm and tender. This is the natural response of a true mother. The other woman’s response, in contrast, was as cold as ice. (“If I can’t have him, nobody can!”) Letting anyone else rear him would be far preferable to seeing him cut in half.
27. So the king said, “Give her the living one that was brought forth, and by no means kill him; she is his mother.”
28. When all of Israel heard the verdict that the king had rendered, they were awed by the king’s presence, because they saw that the wisdom of Elohim was within him in order to make judicial ruling[s].
Deut. 4:5-6 says that if we keep YHWH’s prescribed customs and principles for judicial rulings, we will appear very wise and understanding to the nations around us. Even if we do not understand all the logic of them at first, the outcome of obedience will demonstrate His wisdom, and our name will be linked with it as well. Shlomoh had based his ruling on the closest thing he could find to the situation within the Torah: If one man’s ox kills another’s, they divide the dead ox between them and sell the living one and split the profits. (Ex. 21:35) For this case to come before the king, it meant rulers of ten, fifty, one hundred, and one thousand had had to refer it up higher, either not knowing how to rule or not being willing to go to such an extreme. What made Shlomoh a true king was that he was willing to search out what YHWH had hidden. (Prov. 25:2) Because he knew he had to walk in Torah and was willing to apply such a radical principle to a human situation, the other factors revealed themselves once he decided that “the buck stops here”. Any right ruling must be based solidly on something in the Torah. Because he applied Torah, the child’s life was saved because the came out. Deut. 4:5-6 says that if we keep YHWH’s prescribed customs and principles for judicial rtruth ulings, we will appear very wise and understanding to the nations around us. Even if we do not understand all the logic of them at first, the outcome of obedience will demonstrate His wisdom, and our name will be linked with it as well.
CHAPTER 4
1. While King Shlomoh was king over all of Israel,
2. these were the officials whom he had: Azaryah the son of Tzadoq the priest;
We are not told his position, but he would be expected to take over as priest when his father (v. 4) died. The types of departments a government has tell us a great deal about national priorities. The United States has just opened a Department of Homeland Security in response to terrorism. The Department of Transportation reflects a national penchant for efficient travel. Modern Israel has a Department of Antiquities because archaeological sites are one of the nation’s richest treasures. By looking at who made up Shlomoh’s “cabinet”, we can get a snapshot of what was most important to the nation at that time.
3. Elikhoref and Akhiyah the sons of Shisha [were the] accountants; Y’hoshafat the son of Akhilud [was the] chronicler,
Both of these men were “scribes”—one relating more to financial or possibly census records, and the other to historical records. Not only is a historian valuable in helping a nation avoid making the same mistake twice; in Israel it would be especially important to keep records of who lost his land to pay off a debt so that he or his son could receive it back on the fiftieth year (Lev. 25:10ff), or so that other property rights issues could be readily resolved. (Deut. 19:14; 27:17)
4. while Benayahu the son of Y’hoyada [was] over the army, and Tzadoq and Evyathar were priests.
Part way into his reign, Shlomoh deposed Evyathar because of his association with conspirators. (2:27)
5. Azaryah the son of Nathan was over the stationed [deputies], while Zavud the son of Nathan was a priest associated [with] the king.
These may be sons of Nathan the prophet, David’s closest advisor. Priest: Zavud may have served as a priest only for Shlomoh, rather than in the Temple. He may not have even been a Levite. The Torah tells us that a priest’s role is to provide judgment and justice. (Deut. 17:9-12; 21:5) David did the same. (2 Shmu’el 8:15) Two priests were part of his “cabinet” of officials, along with generals, scribes, etc. One was the high priest; the other was related to him, but chosen as sort of a “personal priest” to David when he was fleeing from King Sha’ul. (1 Shm. 22:20ff) He was later removed from this office by Shlomo to fulfill a prophecy that none of Eli’s descendants would retain authority. (3:12) So a king had the authority to remove a priest who held his position because of a political arrangement. Azaryah the son of Tzadoq the priest is the first in this list of “officials” (sarim) here. David had some of his own sons in the role of cohanim (literally, officiators), the same word usually translated priest, as here. (1 Shm. 8:18) They did not officiate in the Tabernacle. They held this second kind of priesthood that Zavud apparently also held, or a third type—the priestly order of Melkhitzedeq, which simply means a priest who is also king in Yerushalayim—the right of any descendant of David who was in line for the throne. (Psalm 110:4). Zavud’s job may have been to remind Shlomoh of the specifics of the Torah, with which a king is required to be very familiar (Deut. 17:18), and in which the son of a prophet would also have been very well-versed.
6. Also, Akhishar was over the household, and Adoniram the son of Avda was over the [forced] laborers.
Akhishar means “my brother is upright”. There were 30,000 of these conscripted workers. (5:13) Shmu’el the prophet had warned Israel from the time that they first demanded a king that a king would by definition make such heavy demands of them which had not been imposed until that time. (1 Shm. 8:11-17)
7. Shlomoh also had twelve deputies [stationed] over all of Israel, and they supplied sustenance for the king and his household; it was the responsibility of [each] one to [provide the] supply [for one] month of the year.
The number of people Shlomoh was responsible to feed required him to make such demands on the other tribes. Giving a specific responsibility to each one at a specific time rather than leaving it random not only left no question about his responsibility; it also allowed each to demonstrate the agricultural wealth as well as the generosity of the region under his jurisdiction. If they all brought something each month, it would be hard to know what came from where.
8. And these are their names: Ben-Khur in the mountains of Efrayim,
Most of them are named “Ben…” (son of) something. These may have been titles Shlomoh created for the sake of some uniformity, but at this time it was common for most names to be structured in this way. Khur means “white cloth”. This region is in the center of the country north of Yerushalayim.
9. Ben-Deqer in Maqatz, and in Shaalvim and Beth-Shemesh and Eylon Beth-Khanan,
Deqer means “piercing through” or “stabbing”. This region is between Yerushalayim and the coast. Most is in Yehudah’s territory, but some is in Dan’s.
10. Ben-Khesed in Arubboth (Sokhoh and all the territory of Khefer belonged to him),
Sokhoh is in the western section of Menashe’s territory.
11. Ben-Avinadav [was over] all the coast of Dor. (Shlomoh’s daughter Tafath became his wife.)
Avinadav means “my father is generous”. Coast: or height, elevation, possibly region; Dor is a harbor on the Mediterranean north of the later city of Caesarea and south of the present city of Haifa.
12. Baana Ben-Akhilud [was over] Taanakh, Megiddo, and all of Beyth-She’an, which is near Tzarthanah, below Yezre’el—from Beyth-She’an all the way to Avel-M’kholah, as far as the area across from Yoqmeam.
Taanakh was a Levitical city southeast of the often-visited tel of Megiddo in Yissakhar’s territory, on the southern edge of the Yezre’el Valley, guarding a pass over Mt. Karmel. Beyth-She’an is where the Yezre’el and Yarden Valleys meet. Yezre’el (the city) was on the edge of Mt. Gilboa on the southern side of the Yezre’el Valley. Avel-Meholah is south of Beyth-She’an along the western Yarden Valley, and Yoqmeam is further south, in Efrayim’s territory; this district would end just before the border between Menashe and Efrayim.
13. Ben-Gever [governed] in Ramoth-Gil’ad; to him [belonged] Khavoth-Ya’ir the son of Menashe, which are in Gil’ad. His was the region of Argov, which is in Bashan—sixty large walled cities with bars of bronze.
Gever means “a strong man”. Khavoth means “towns” or “living places”. Bars: for the gates of the city. This region is across the Yarden in the area of the Golan Heights and the part of Jordan just across the Yarmuq River from there.
14. Akhinadav Ben-Iddo was in Makhanayim.
Akhinadav means “my brother is generous”. Iddo means “his testimony”.
15. Akhimaatz was in Nafthali. (He also took Basmath the daughter of Shlomoh as a wife.)
Akhimaatz means “my brother was angry”. Was it due to jealousy for who he got as a wife? His name lacks “ben”; Shlomoh or the scribe may have thought he stood on his own reputation rather than his father’s because he was the king’s son-in-law. Basmath was named after Esau’s daughter; her name means “spicy fragrance”.
16. Baana Ben-Hushai was in Asher and in Aloth.
Asher is along Israel’s northern coast, and extended up to or toward the great cities of Tzur (Tyre) and Tzidon. Aloth may mean the heights above Asher—possibly part of the foothills of Levanon.
17. Y’hoshafat Ben-Paruakh was in Yissakhar.
This is in the eastern Yezre’el Valley north of Beyth-She’an and south of the Kinnereth (Sea of Galilee).
18. Shim’i Ben-Ela was in Binyamin.
Ela means “a great tree”. Binyamin extends from the Temple Mount northward to Beyth-El and includes Giv’on and Y’rikho.
19. Gever Ben-Uri was in the land of Gil’ad—the land of Sikhon king of the Emorites and Og king of Bashan, and there was one deputy posted in the region.
Uri means “my light”. One deputy: yet this seems to overlap somewhat with the area Ben-Gever was responsible for (v. 13); that Ben-Gever may have been the son of this Gever. This territory is in modern-day Jordan and runs into Syria. Some of these districts remain along tribal lines; others did not. Other factors that contributed to the borders probably had to do with population or the distribution of natural resources, or the amount of arable land in each area. If these were administrative districts for other areas beside agriculture (though this is not certain), then we see a trend away from the inheritance Y’hoshua had laid out for the nation. Two generations of kings before him had already upset the households by taking many away from their inherited lands, and the fact that Israel had not been letting the land lie fallow every seventh year (Lev. 26:34, 43), which was the direct cause of the Babylonian captivity (Yirmeyahu 25; 2 Chron. 36:21), suggests that they were also not keeping the fiftieth year restoration of ancestral lands, for this would have been based on the seven-year cycles. Some of the problem also came because though he had not completely finished ousting foreigners from the Land, Y’hoshua had left no successor, and the next generation thought the status quo was adequate. As the Kanaanites who remained in the Land began to cramp them too much, some from other tribes (notably David) began to come conquer their cities, and it would be hard for the local tribe to tell those who brought them such relief that they could not stay and inhabit the cities they had fought to take. Therefore some tribal boundaries had probably been blurred form early on. In the Kingdom there will also be a change in where the inheritances are located, but all will be along tribal lines.
20. Yehudah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the sea [shore] for abundance—eating, drinking, and rejoicing.
This sounds like the fulfillment of YHWH’s promise to Avraham in Genesis 22:17. Though it turned out to be only temporary, we will see many ways in which Shlomoh’s reign is a foreshadowing of the Messianic Kingdom of Y’shua. In many English versions, the chapter continues for 14 more verses.
CHAPTER 5
1. While Shlomoh was ruling in all the kingdoms from the River, the land of the Filistines, as far as the border of Egypt, they approached him with tribute and were serving Shlomoh all the days of his life.
River: when used alone like this, the term almost always refers not to the Yarden but to the “great river”—the Ferath, or Euphrates. This is another picture of the Messianic Kingdom (Psalm 72:8), when all nations will contribute to Israel—largely because they are not doing so now. (Yeshayahu 60:11; Rev. 21:25-26)
2. And this was Shlomoh’s food for a single day: 30 kors of fine flour, 60 kors of ground meal,
A kor was ten eyfoth, or 100 omers, so 30 kors would be the equivalent of 3,000 portions of manna. This is a huge amount, but considering how large each administrative district was, it would not be overwhelming. Ground meal: a coarser flour. There was more of it than the more expensive, finer flour.
3. ten well-fed cattle, twenty oxen [from the] pasture, and a hundred sheep, let alone buck, gazelle, [other] deer, and fattened field-birds,
Well-fed…from the pasture: Again we see two grades of meat quality (compare v. 2), hinting that he was feeding people at different levels. Fattened field-birds: This would include quail, pheasant, and pigeons raised in captivity, for most methods of hunting them (other than trapping) would render them not kosher, and there was no way to guarantee that a bird in the wild would be fattened before being caught.
4. because he had subjugated the whole Trans-River area, from Tifsakh all the way to ‘Azzah—all of the Trans-River kings—and he had peace from everyone across [his borders] on every side.
Trans-River: that which is across (on the west side) from the perspective of Kharan or Nin’veh. Tifsakh is on the western bank of the Ferath (Euphrates). Its name really means “skipping-over” and is related to the name of Pesakh (Passover). The trade route from Babylon went through here, probably because it was narrow or shallow enough to “hop across” easily at this point. ‘Azzah: i.e., Gaza.
5. So Yehudah and Israel dwelt securely, [every] man under his own vine and under his own fig tree, from Dan all the way to Be’ersheva, all the days of Shlomoh.
This is a picture of what the Messianic Kingdom will be like. (Mikha 4:4; Zkh. 3:10) Vines and fig trees both need intense tending at harvest-time to keep the birds or other predators away, and this could not be done if they were at war. This is therefore an idiom for peacetime. This explains what Y’shua meant when he said he had seen Nathan’el “under the fig tree”. (Yoch. 1:48) He meant that he had already seen that he would be in the Kingdom.
6. Now Shlomoh had 40,000 stalls’ [worth] of horses for his chariotry and 12,000 war-horses.
This is in direct violation of YHWH’s command for kings in Deut. 17:16. The fact that Shlomoh did not pay the price for this in his own lifetime is a direct result of David’s merit in YHWH’s eyes, but it did lead to civil war after he died. Megiddo and Gezer were some of the cities developed chiefly to house these horses.
7. When those deputies supplied sustenance for King Shlomoh and all who came near to King Shlomoh’s table, each [in] his month, they didn’t lack a thing.
Those: refers to the ones mentioned in 4:7.
8. They also brought barley and straw for the horses and dromedaries to the place where [each] was, [each] man as he judged [appropriate].
Barley: At the time of Y’hoshua, this was the staple crop for the Israelites. Now there is so much prosperity that the coarser grain was not even eaten by humans; the finer-grained wheat was plentiful enough. But this trend could explain why Y’shua, after his resurrection on the Firstfruits of the Barley Harvest, put so much emphasis on “feeding his sheep”. (Yoch. 21:16) Dromedaries: the meaning is uncertain in Hebrew. As he judged: or, according to his responsibility.
9. And Elohim gave Shlomoh skill and very much insight, as well as broadness of heart like sand that is on the shore of the sea.
Broadness of heart: or of mind. It may refer to an understanding of a wide range of subjects, as we see by his own description in the book of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes). It also means that with each thing he learned, he made room for more learning. He looked closely at things and became very well-rounded. As we will see below, Shlomoh lectured on many subjects, for he was extremely knowledgeable about how things work and how they interact with one another. If we only “get” one kind of knowledge, it should, of course, be Torah knowledge. But any kind of learning can become Torah knowledge if we apply it properly, for looking at things from many perspectives does increase our understanding and make room for more knowledge. We see someone who is ignorant as a small person, because he has chosen to ignore the knowledge he could have gained. Of course, science has its limits because its methods are often misdirected, so as we open many rooms inside ourselves, we need to, again through the Torah, control what goes into them. But as Avraham did not stay stuck in the stream of idolatry, but made room for the ocean that is YHWH, we, too, can increase our capacity for greater wisdom by acting on what we already do know. Like sand: The promise to Avraham (Gen. 22:17) did not concern only number of descendants, but that he would have descendants who would carry on his traits. Shlomoh was one of them. Shore: literally, lip.
10. And Shlomoh’s wisdom increased beyond the wisdom of all the sons of the east and beyond all the wisdom of Egypt.
Sons of the east: Those descendants of Avraham’s concubines to whom he had given “gifts” when he sent them away from Yitzhaq. (Gen. 25:6) Confucius was not born yet, but there was already much “eastern wisdom”, which was much more accurate than eastern philosophy. The word for east also means “antiquity”, so he may be saying he was wiser than any who had come before him, which lines up with YHWH’s promise in 3:12.
11. And he grew wiser than any [other] human being—than Eythan the Ezrakhite or Heyman or Khalkol or Darda, the sons of Makhol. And his reputation spread to all the Gentiles round about.
These must have been the best-known sages at this time. Eythan was the author of Psalm 89.
12. And he uttered 3,000 proverbs, and his songs came to 1,005.
His father David may have taught him musical skills as well, though the strength of David’s was in his lyrics, because he played a ten-stringed harp, which has limited potential for intricacy. Or he simply had a very large collection of songs others wrote. His proverbs also were not all of his own writing;
13. And he discoursed on the topic of trees, from the cedar that is in Levanon to the hyssop that comes out of a wall. He also discoursed on the beasts, the flying creatures, the reptiles, and the fish.
Cedar: more like a redwood than what we call cedar in the west, which is very flammable. With a different tilt of the axis at that time (prior to a 6-degree pole shift in 701 B.C.E.), Israel's climate was more like that of northern California, where the redwoods grow, than its present Southern California-like climate, making it truly a "land of milk and honey", and allowing these trees to also reach immense size. Shlomo was a master of botany and zoology. He brings out this knowledge in Proverbs (e.g., “Go to the ant, you sluggard!”)
14. And they came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Shlomoh—associates of all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.
Associates: Few of the kings themselves came, but at least one queen did come herself. (ch. 10)
15. [5:1 in English versions] Then Khiram, king of Tzor, sent his servants to Shlomoh, because he had heard of his wisdom, because he heard that they had anointed him to reign in place of his father, because Khiram was one who had been a friend to David all his life.
With all the other kings in far-off lands (v. 14) sending representatives, Khiram may not have wanted to seem like one of the many “Johnnies-come-lately”, saying in effect, “His father and I go way back”, and therefore wanted to have a special stake in the kingdom which was also his next-door neighbor. It was obvious to him that Shlomoh could easily crush his kingdom militarily, so he quickly came to terms with this and became subservient to him.
16. So Shlomoh sent [word] to Khiram, saying,
17. “You know that my father David was not able to build a house for the Name of YHWH his Elohim because of the presence of the war that was all around him until YHWH had put them under the soles of his feet.
David did not have time to focus on building projects because there was always upheaval in his kingdom. His calling was to be a warrior (1 Chron. 28:3), but it was not so with Shlomoh:
18. “But now YHWH has given me rest from every side; there is no adversary nor is there any calamity going on.
There were not even any natural disasters, especially of the huge, planetary-scale catastrophes like the deluge of Noakh or smaller ones like David might have been eyewitness to. (Psalm 18)
19. “So here I am, declaring [that I will] build a house for the Name of YHWH my Elohim, as YHWH promised to David my father, saying, ‘Your son, whom I will set in your place on your throne—he [is the one who] will build the House for My Name.’
He publicly obligated himself to do what he knew was right because of YHWH’s promise (though YHWH had never asked for a house; He granted David’s desire), having another man of his stature as king hold him accountable. The way he did so was by asking him to get directly involved in the provisions:
20. “So now, give orders that cedars from Levanon be cut for me, and my servants will be with your servants, and I will give you any wage at all that you name for your servants, because you know that among us there is not a man who knows [how] to cut timber like the Tzidonians.”
Cedars, again, were more like redwoods, which grow very tall (some reaching over 100 meters) and straight and have a wide girth as well. (See note on v. 13) Y’hezq’el 31:3 supports this, saying the cedar tree grew taller than any other. The root word for “cedar” in Hebrew means “firm”. These were no ordinary trees, and so required people of special skill. Israel had a different calling and therefore did not have time to specialize in this area as well, and there was really no need, since none of the trees in Israel itself grew this big. Psalm 92:12 compares the growth of the righteous to the Cedars of Levanon. They did not grow as well in Israel; there, sycamores were usually used where durable wood was needed, but for the Temple of YHWH, Shlomoh wanted the best available anywhere. It has been found that inhaling the scent of cedar enhances concentration, allowing one to meditate more effectively. This would especially be helpful when the high priest needed to remember perfectly all the steps he had to perform in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. Cedar was the only wood besides acacia used in the Tabernacle, but there it was not for building but for ceremonies involving lepers, cleansing of houses, and the burning of the red heifer for its ashes, which would in turn be used in other ceremonies. So this may be another reason he chose this type of wood. He also knew Khiram had sent such wood for his father’s palace (2 Shmu’el 5:11), and could see its quality firsthand there. Shlomoh also gave Khiram 20 cities as payment. (9:11) But contrast his purchase of these supplies with the way the Tabernacle was built—out of freewill offerings from plunder gotten when leaving Egypt.
21. And it turned out that when Khiram heard the words of Shlomoh, he was extremely glad and said, “Blessed be YHWH today, who has given David [such] a wise son over this vast people!”
He was glad to see that David’s name and glory were being carried on without fading.
22. And Khiram sent [word] to Shlomoh, saying, “I have heard what you have sent me. I myself will do all that you wish in regard to the cedar trees--and cypress trees as well!
Cypress trees: Not the type with “knees” such as found in American swamps, but an evergreen, a large stand of which grows on the northern edge of the Temple Mount over the fosse which served as a moat for the Fortress of Antonia. (Photo at left.) Some alternately translate it “fir”, “juniper”, or “pine”. In any case, it was a lighter wood both in color and weight than the cedar/redwood, and might have been used simply to inlay as an artistic contrast in color to beautify the Temple even more. It was used for the Temple flooring or some other sort of paneling. (2 Chron. 3:5) As a softer wood, it would have been easier on the priests’ bare feet. He added a bonus.
23. “My servants will bring [them] down from Levanon to the sea, and I will make them into rafts [to convey them] by sea to the place which you send to me, and there I will take them apart so you can carry them away. And you [in exchange] shall carry out my pleasure to provide food for my household.”
The place: 2 Chron. 2:16 specifies that this “place” was Yafo (Joppa). It is also thought that because of the wetter climate Israel had at that time until the 6-degree axis shift in 701 B.C.E. (evidenced by the difference in orientation of this Temple and the second), the Ayalon Valley had a perennial river whose mouth was at Yafo, and that Shlomoh could have the rafts brought much closer to Yerushalayim thereby than can be done by way of water today. The rafts may have been made of the cypresses, being a lighter-weight wood. Provide food: He does not ask for gold or jewels, but only what will be needed to sustain such a labor force. He would not even ask for meat, but simply for the ingredients for bread (v. 25), the most basic necessity—carbohydrates for hard-working woodcutters. He seems to have dropped everything, even taking his subjects away from their own fields—essentially putting his own kingdom on hold--in order to have such a major part in building YHWH’s Temple. He did the opposite of those after the exile. (Khaggai 1:4) Another reason he requested this food was that wheat fields require great amounts of land to produce a little bit of bread, and Levanon is made up largely of mountains, many of them snow-capped, which is a wonderful climate for the trees, but does not lend itself well to farming, especially grain crops. His country may not have been capable of growing as much as they would need to feed so many laborers, but Israel could.
24. So Khiram started giving Shlomoh cedar trees and cypress trees—all that he wanted.
25. And Shlomoh gave Khiram 20,000 kors of [various types of] wheat as food for his household, as well as 20 kors of oil [of the first] pressing. Shlomoh gave Khiram the same year by year.
First pressing: i.e., “extra virgin” oil. Neot Kedumim Biblical Landscape Museum estimates that this was the equivalent of 4,400,000 liters of wheat and 440,000 liters of oil per year.
26. And YHWH gave Shlomoh wisdom, as He had promised him, and there was peace between Khiram and Shlomoh, and the two of them cut a covenant.
Cut: possibly a pun on the cutting of the cedar trees. (v. 20) Between kings, such covenants were often sealed with the marriage of the two households, and indeed, Shlomoh married the daughter of the king of Tzor. (Psalm 45:12) Should he have made a covenant with a foreign king? David had carried on a stable relationship with him without any covenant. Only those within the Land of Kanaan were proscribed for Israel (Ex. 23:31-32), and this king not only appears not only noble in every respect, but righteous as well, in contrast with a later, or figurative, king of Tyre. (Y’hezq’el 28:12ff). He blessed YHWH (v. 21), and the parallel account in 2 Chron. 2:12 includes the fact that he even called YHWH “maker of heaven and earth”, so he at least had respect for Him. (The fact that David had conquered the whole region showed, at least in the eyes of the Gentiles, that his Elohim was more powerful than theirs. As David’s name became great, YHWH was more often seen as supreme.) A building this grand had not been built in Israel before, and Shlomoh trusted him to do it well. So this covenant does seem justified on all counts.
27. And Shlomoh raised a labor force from all of Israel, and the labor force was 30,000 men.
That Shlomoh let their burdens become too heavy (as Shmu’el had promised any king would) and his son would not lighten them were the seeds of the division of the kingdom in the next generation.
28. And he sent them to Levanon, 10,000 men in each monthly shift; they were in Levanon for a month, then two months at their own home, and Adoniram was over the labor force.
Thus they were basically slaves for four months of the year, and their time off was not “vacation”, but the now-limited time to grow their crops and fulfill all their other obligations.
29. And Shlomoh had 70,000 loadbearers and 80,000 [stone]cutters in the mountains,
Mountains: not in Levanon, but at home in Israel. (See note on v. 31.) There is plenty of stone there, and it far outlasts wood, so even the main support beams for the second floor of many Israelite houses were made of stone.
30. besides the chief of Shlomoh’s deputies, who were over the work—3,300 [who] oversaw the people who were doing the work.
This is nearly one to every 60 workers.
31. At the king’s order they brought large stones and costly stones to lay the foundation of the House—cut stones.
Quarries have been found which appear to be those from which the stones for the Temple were cut and apparently assembled at this remote location to ensure that they fit together before bringing them. (6:7) These stones were immense. One of Herod’s stones along the western wall of the Temple Mount was over 20 feet long and weighed as much as a fully-loaded 747 airplane, and one cannot even slide a credit card between two of them! The way they were placed on top of others without breaking the lower ones was by putting lead balls between them, which bore the entire brunt of the impact and were melted in the process, with the molten metal running out from between them. Tiny remnants of the lead were found. After Israel recovered the Old City of Yerushalayim, part of the northeastern wall of the Temple Mount collapsed, and while it was being put back together, Paleo Hebrew numbers were found designating how they were to fit together, so some of these very stones (the lowest two tiers on the photo at left) are still in place there today! The stones for the altar were not cut, so these are the second tier in terms of both construction and holiness.
32. And Shlomoh’s builders, Khiram’s builders, and the Givlites made the wood and the stone ready to build the house.
Givlites: a people who lived near Levanon (Y’hoshua 13:5), in the maritime city near Tzor known now as Jebeil, but known to the Greeks as “Byblos”. Because papyrus reed was so often shipped there to make scrolls, the word for “book” came from its name. But in Hebrew the name is based on a word meaning “border” or “boundary”, suggesting that this was on Israel’s border or that they worked with boundary-marker stones. Y’hezq’el 27:9 says they were “caulkers” (probably of ships’ hulls, but it can also be read as “repairers of seams”, and if involved in stone masonry, this would be especially important in keeping cisterns from leaking by fitting them together as tightly as possible where people were not favored with being able to build theirs right into the bedrock. (R. Webster)
CHAPTER 6
1. So in the 480th year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Shlomoh’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziu (that is, the second month), he did begin to build the House for YHWH.
480 years: symbolically, 12 generations. In Acts 13:18-21, Paul counts 40 years in the wilderness, 450 years under the Judges, and 40 years under King Sha'ul, totalling 530 years. Adding 40 years of David’s reign and the first three years of Shlomo’s, the total is 573. But if we subtract the 8 years of subservience to Mesopotamia, 18 to Moav, 20 to the king of Kanaan, 7 to the Midyanites, and 40 to the Filistines (Judges 3:8, 14; 4:2-3; 6:1; 13:1), a total of 93 years that the people of Israel were cast off by YHWH in punishment for their idolatry, the resulting total is indeed 480. (Sir Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, p. 81ff) So this scribe only counted the years in which Israel was in favor with YHWH. He was still putting up with much; they were not letting the land lie fallow every seventh year, and only occasionally did they keep the festivals YHWH had prescribed. But it was only the years they owed for their idolatry that He did not count this time. Recent archaeology in Egypt, based on this count, has turned up many evidences of Israel’s presence there, previously thought to have been lacking because of dating the Exodus in the reign of Raamses II due to the mention of their building a city with that name; much of the evidence has been found at that very site, but on a lower stratum than previously excavated. (Timothy Mahoney) Ziu means “brightness, flowering, or cheerfulness”—and indeed it falls in the springtime, starting two weeks after Passover. This was the mood with which construction started. Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 8:3:1-3) says this in Khiram’s eleventh year, 240 years after the city of Tzor was founded. He says the foundations were laid deep in the ground, of strong stones that would resist the force of time, uniting them to the earth so they would be a sure foundation for the very heavy stone of the buildings.
2. Now the House that King Shlomoh built for YHWH was sixty cubits in its length, twenty in its width, and thirty cubits in its height.
The second Temple was about twice as tall, at least in the front portion.
3. And the porch on the front of the House’s sanctuary was twenty cubits in its length, covering the face of the [whole] width of the House, and its [own] width was ten cubits over the front of the House.
Length…width: Somewhat confusing because the “length” corresponds to the measurement of the width of the (eastern) front of the building. In this case, the porch is “turned sideways”, so we would nowadays call the second “width” listed here the depth. In other words, it covered the whole front of the Temple building, and extended ten cubits outward from it.
4. And he made windows [with] narrowing frames for the House.
Narrowing: they got narrower from the outside to the inside of the wall they were set in, with diagonal sides to the casing. This is the opposite of how most ancient buildings were made, which allowed the light to diffuse over a wider area inside. The intended ambience inside may have been better accomplished by a more subdued lighting effect. The rabbis also say these windows were not designed to let light into the Temple, but to let the light from within the Temple (i.e., the menorah and whatever radiance of YHWH’s presence was there at any time) shine outward from within. Compare the Temple that still remains to be built, as described in Y’hezq’el (Ezekiel) 40ff.
5. And against the wall of the House on every side he built extensions of the walls of the House all around for the temple-building and the [sanctuary of] the oracle, and he made side-chambers all around.
Compare the description in Y’hezq’el 41. Side-chamber: apparently cells within the thick walls of the structure surrounding that which housed the sanctuaries, with a thick buffering wall on each side. The word for “side-chamber” is the same as the Hebrew word for “rib” (surrounding the “heart” of the Temple), and comes from a root word meaning to curve, possibly because, as we will see, each of the three levels drew in a cubit closer to the main structure. The shape also suggested “shoulders” (v. 8), as they would only be half as tall as the central structure. This also suggests the shape of a tent, to be reminiscent of the Tabernacle.
6. The lowest side-chamber was five wide by the cubit, the middle one, six, and the third, seven in its width by the cubit, because on the outside of the House all around he set [ledges] recessing [toward the building] so as to avoid [their] being fastened into the [actual] walls of the House.
Apparently there was a separate wall of the building housing the side-chambers which sat directly beside the wall of the Temple proper, but was not actually connected to it. It got narrower with each level, withdrawing toward the main structure, so that the next level could rest on the one beneath it without having to support it with beams that would require cutting into the Temple proper to insert them firmly.
7. And during its construction, the House was built of stone fully prepared [at the] quarry, so that no hammers or chisel or any iron tool was heard at the House while it was being built.
This is a picture of how YHWH is again preparing His “living stones” outside His Land so that we will be perfected and ready to fit together into the House that He really wants to live in by the time He brings us back from exile. It would not be fitting for us to continue to be corrected and disciplined after we are already in the fullness of His presence and in a position to be a visible picture for the nations of what kind of people He wants to dwell among. Like the Sabbath, we must be fully prepared in advance. The noise of iron is connected in Deut. 28:48 with the curse of slavery to our enemies, and that is not the goal here. Rabbinic writers say the reason no noise was heard was because clashing iron is most often heard in the context of war, so it is considered the sound of death, and this was a place of life. Josephus says the stones were polished and laid together so smoothly and harmoniously that onlookers could not tell that any tool had even been used on them, but they seemed naturally united together, much as stone masons can do today with countertops which seem seamless when sanded properly. The altar would be constructed first, out of stones which were never even touched by iron tools (Deut. 27:5), a picture of those whose lives are shaped directly by the water of the Torah. They are held together by commitment to the Torah and to one another. But others fit together much less readily, having been reshaped by men’s doctrines or mere selfishness; they will have to submit to the chiseling of the way the Messiah interprets the Torah if they are to fit properly together to form one unified dwelling-place for YHWH. (R. Webster)
8. The entrance to the middle side-structure was on the right shoulder of the House, and they went up onto the middle [floor] by way of winding stairs, and [the same way] from the middle one to the third.
Winding stairs: or possibly stairways that doubled back on each other (as with a landing in the middle), or even just a shaft (i.e., stairwell) or enclosed space with stairs or a ladder within. This may have been on the inside of the House, where the math does not otherwise add up exactly per Y’hezq’el’s description. Josephus says the upper room over the Temple (where King Yoash would later be hidden for 7 years) was entered by steps within the thickness of the wall because it had no large door on the eastern end as the lower house had, but entrances were from the sides through very small doors.
9. Thus he constructed the House and brought it to completion, and he paneled the inside with beams and rows of cedar trees.
Some of the huge beams made from the cedars of Levanon used in the Temple appear to have been put to secondary use in the ceiling of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the southern end of the Temple Mount, having been exposed when the mosque was refurbished in the 1930s. (Biblical Archaeology Review)
10. Then he built the side-structure against the whole house, its height five cubits, and they held to the House with timbers of cedar.
This helped to accomplish the intent of verse 6—that the structure itself not be fastened to the Temple, for which they might need to cut niches in its walls to attach it; these beams could rest on the part of the lower level that jutted out further from the Temple, providing a ledge to support them. Josephus said each of the larger rooms had a roof of its own, not connected to one another, but for these, a common roof covered them all, and it was built with very long beams that passed through the rest so the middle walls would be made firmer by their strength. The impression one gets when seeing the shape of the whole complex of buildings here is that of a crouched lion, and indeed Yerushalayim was later affectionately called Ariel (“lion of Elohim”, Yeshayahu/Isa. 29:1).
11. Then the word of YHWH came to Shlomoh, saying,
12. “This House that you are building—if you will walk in the customs I have prescribed and carry out My correct legal procedures, and you pay careful attention to walk in all My commands, then I will confirm with you My word that I promised to David your father,
The promise was still conditional with each generation.
13. “and I will [settle down and] reside in the midst of the descendants of Israel, and I will not abandon My people Israel.”
Unlike idols, He would really be present! Abandon: let go slack, or simply leave. If He did, the whole purpose of beautifying this House in so many ways would be defeated. But to keep Him there, we must keep our house in order. Though in the excitement the scribe inspires by his description here it is hard to think about the fact that this whole structure would later be burned and torn down, we must bear in mind that that is the way this part of the story ended some 400 years later. It was designed to be permanent and probably could have lasted to our own day with very little needing to be replaced, but because some of his descendants rested on their laurels and became slack about the worship of foreign deities. The structure that later replaced it impressed Y’shua’s disciples, as it was far larger than this one, but he too refocused their perspective by prophesying its demise (Luke 19:44) because the people at large were missing its main purpose for existence. The House belonged to YHWH, and He always had the right to take back a gift He had given when it was being abused by the recipients.
14. So Shlomoh kept building the House, and was bringing it to completion.
Bringing it to completion: or, making it a bride. Indeed, in Yochanan’s vision, the New Yerushalayim is called the Lamb’s wife. (Rev. 21:9)
15. As he was building the inside walls of the House with a framework of cedar, from the floor of the House to the sides of the ceiling, he overlaid the inside with wood, and overlaid the floor of the House with planks of cypress.
16. And he built the twenty cubits on the flanks of the [back of the] House of cedar planks, from the floor to the walls, and he built a housing for it to serve as the oracle for the Holy of Holies.
Oracle: Heb., d’vir, related to the term for “spoken word”.
17. And [the] forty cubits became the House—that is, the Temple, in front of it.
This is referring to the “Holy Place” that sat in front of the Holy of Holies, connected to it, but a separate entity. Temple: Heb., heykhal, from a word meaning “to be able”, “to endure”, “to prevail”, and “to overcome”.
18. And the cedar toward the inside on the surface was engraved with buds and open blooms. The whole [thing] was cedar; there was not [one] stone seen.
Buds: or, gourds. Open blooms: or, freed shining things—something that attracts attention, as a flower does to pollinating insects. The contrast may have been to show that not only potential fruitfulness was needed, but actual fullness. Not one stone seen: It was fully insulated, being entirely closed in, hiding the rough and cold exterior. This parallels the fact that no iron tool was heard on site.
19. And he made the oracle in the innermost part of the House ready to place the Ark of the Covenant of YHWH there.
Made ready: finished every aspect of it so YHWH would be “comfortable” there. To place: stood in way that is sure, firm, and stable. Leen Ritmeyer has found evidence (immediately under the present Dome of the Rock) of not only the straightening of the bedrock so the walls could be level (right edge and bottom of photo at left), but exactly the right distance from them, there is a rectangular depression cut into the bedrock that is exactly the size needed to set the ark in so it would not topple on the otherwise-uneven stone floor and just the right distance from where the rear and side walls sat. (See arrow on photo.)
20. And [as] for the dimensions of the oracle, [it was] twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and its height twenty cubits. And he overlaid it with tightly-adhering gold, and overlaid the altar with cedar.
Dimensions: literally, faces. Height twenty: as compared to the thirty for the front section. Either the rear part was lower than the front room in its entirety, or a separate cubical room was built inside the outer structure, which did not reach all the way to the outer roof. But also, most depictions (based on rabbinic writings) show a stepped rise between the two rooms, possibly because the bedrock itself rises several feet higher right at this spot. This may correlate with the “separate base” of verse 30. The altar: This was the altar of incense inside the Holy Place. The wood itself would add a beautiful scent to the room as well. But why overlay further what was already overlaid with gold? He may have built the altar of cedar instead of acacia this time, and overlaid that with gold.
21. Then Shlomoh overlaid the inside of the House with tightly-adhering gold, then he crossed chains over in front of the sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold.
Josephus described the cedar boards overlaid with gold being held together by thick chains, which supported and strengthened the building.
22. And the whole inside he overlaid with gold until the whole House was complete, and all of the altar that belonged to the sanctuary he overlaid with gold.
23. And inside the sanctuary he made two kh’ruvim of oil-wood ten cubits in height.
Kh’ruvim: a class of messengers especially associated with guarding set-apart places. Some depict them as “winged sphinxes”, but this may be a result of Babylonian influence. YHWH is said to dwell between the kh’ruvim. (Yeshayahu 37:16) There was a pair built right into the lid of the ark of the covenant, but these are separate, much larger depictions. Oil-wood: probably olive wood, since oil for anointing comes from that tree’s fruit. But the fact that these two 15-foot-tall depictions cut from the trunks of trees exist in the Temple probably formed the basis for the imagery of the two olive trees (Zkh. 4:11) as the two anointed ones who stand beside the Master of all the earth. Revelation 11:3 carries on this vision, and Y’shua’s transfiguration suggests that these two witnesses are Moshe and Eliyahu, as representatives of the Torah and the prophets, which are indeed where our anointing must come from or it is invalid.
24. And the wing of the one kh’ruv was five cubits, and the wing of the second kh’ruv was five cubits; [it was] ten cubits from the extremity of its wings all the way to the [other] extremity of its wings.
25. And the second kh’ruv was ten by the cubit; both kh’ruvim had one measurement and [the same] shape.
They were a picture of what YHWH wanted for Israel: equal weights and measures. (Deut. 25:15; Prov. 20:10)
26. The height of the one kh’ruv was ten cubits, and the second kh’ruv was the same.
There is no difference between them, except that they are facing opposite directions. This is reminiscent of both Messiah and Yerushalayim being called “YHWH is our righteousness”. (Yirmeyahu 23:6; 33:16)
27. And he put the kh’ruvim inside the innermost [part of the] House, and the wings of the kh’ruvim spread out so that the wing of the one touched the second wall with their wings toward the middle of the House, wing to wing.
28. And he overlaid the kh’ruvim with gold.
29. And [on] all the walls of the House from every side he carved engravings of figures of kh’ruvim, palm trees, and open blooms, [both] inside and outside.
It was a representation of the Garden of Eden, the last place YHWH had been known to walk with men in perfect harmony, for the purpose of the Temple was to bring us back into YHWH’s presence--with the reminder that kh’ruvim still guard it, because particular steps still have to be taken to correct for our continued unworthiness to enter that presence.
30. And he overlaid the separate base of the House with gold, [both] inside and outside.
31. Then [for] the entrance of the sanctuary, he made doors of oil-wood, the strong lintel, [side] doorposts, a fifth.
A fifth: probably the doors constituted one fifth of the length of the wall. 2 Chron. 3:14 tells us there was also a veil covering these doors as well as the other set of doors. It would not physically keep anyone out, but if necessary the w hole room could be blockaded off. Another detail about the front of the building that 2 Chron. 3 includes that this account does not is that there were two separate pillars on the very front of the building (v. 17), which did not hold up the porch or anything else in particular. Some depict them as flanking the entrance to the porch, others as being atop the porch roof.
32. The two doors were also of oil-wood, and he carved on them engravings of kh’ruvim, palm trees, and open blooms, and overlaid [them] with gold, and he beat out the gold over the kh’ruvim and on the palm trees.
Beat out: or possibly, caused to go down.
33. And in the same way he made for the entrance of the Temple [side] doorposts of oil-wood from with a fourth.
Fourth: probably meaning a fourth of the width of the wall.
34. But both of the doors were of cypress wood. The two loose sides of the one door folded [back], and both hanging-leaves of the second door folded [back].
They would fold flat against the doorposts so they would essentially be invisible. In fact, most people would never even see this far into the Temple, as only the priests entered after it was finished. This scribe may have been a priest himself or someone who knew those who had worked on the construction.
35. And he carved kh’ruvim, palm trees, and open blooms, and overlaid [them] with gold fitted smoothly over what was engraved.
36. Then he built the inner court, three rows of hewn stone and a course of cut cedar beams.
37. In the fourth year, the foundation of the House of YHWH was laid, in the month of Ziu,
38. and in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul (which is the eighth renewing), the House was finished [down] to every matter and to its every detail. So he was building it for seven years.
Detail: literally, judgment, measurement, ordinance, proper fitting. More precisely, it was seven years and six months. Bul means “wealth or plenty”.
INTRODUCTION:
This book begins in the 10th century B.C.E. at the end of King David’s life, thus overlapping chrono-logically with the second book of Shmu’el. It covers the division of the Kingdom and continues through the end of Y’hoshafat’s reign in Yehudah and the parallel reign of Akhazyah in Israel.
THE FIRST BOOK
OF THE
Kings
Part 1 (Chapters 1-6)
1:1-31 is a haftarah (companion passage) to
Torah Portion Chayei Sarah
2:1-12 is a haftarah (companion passage) to Torah Portion VaY'khi.
These same cedar beams may still be extant, having been re-purposed when the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built, revealed over 100 years ago when major renovations to the roof were done. (Photos from Biblical Archaeological Society)
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