The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings. Farrar Frederic William

66

From the fact that his son Eliada (2 Sam. v. 16) is called Beeliada (i. e., "Baal knows") in 1 Chron. xiv. 7, it is surely a precarious inference that "now and then he paid his homage to some Baal, perhaps to please one of his foreign wives" (Van Oort, Bible for Young People, iii. 84). The true explanation seems to be that at one time Baal, "Lord," was not regarded as an unauthorised title for Jehovah. The fact that David once had teraphim in his house (1 Sam. xix. 13, 16) shows that his advance in knowledge was gradual.

67

Chileab was either dead, or was of no significance.

68

2 Sam. xiii. 39. "The soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom."

69

Max. Tyr., Dissert., 9 (Keil, ad loc.).

70

In 2 Sam. xv. 7 we should certainly alter "forty" into four.

71

Rephaim seems a more probable reading than Ephraim in 2 Sam. xviii. 6; see Josh. xvii. 15, 18. Yet the name "Ephraim" may have been given to this transjordanic wood. The notion that he hung by his hair is only a conjecture, and not a probable one.

72

His three sons had pre-deceased him; his beautiful daughter Tamar (2 Sam. xiv. 27) became the wife of Rehoboam. She is called Maachah in 1 Kings xv. 2, and the LXX. addition to 2 Sam. xiv. 27 says that she bore both names. The so-called tomb of Absalom in the Valley of Hebron is of Asmonæan and Herodian origin.

73

Morier tells us that in Persia "runners" before the king's horses are an indispensable adjunct of his state.

74

The Stone of Zoheleth, probably a sacred stone – one of the numerous isolated rocks of Palestine; is not mentioned elsewhere. The Fuller's Fountain is mentioned in Josh. xv. 7, xviii. 16; 2 Sam. xvii. 17. It was south-east of Jerusalem, and is perhaps identical with "Job's Fountain," where the wadies of Kedron and Hinnom meet (Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874, p. 80).

75

Comp. 1 Kings i. 9-25.

76

The same phrase is used of Rehoboam (2 Chron. xii. 13, xiii. 7) when he was twenty-one, reading כא for מא, forty-one.

77

2 Sam. xii. 25: "And he sent by the hand of Nathan, the prophet; he called his name Jedidiah, because of the Lord" (A.V.). The verse is somewhat obscure. It either means that David sent the child to Nathan to be brought up under his guardianship, or sent Nathan to ask of the oracle the favour of some well-omened name (Ewald, iii. 168). Nathan was perhaps akin to David. The Rabbis absurdly identify him with Jonathan (1 Chron. xxvii. 32; 2 Sam. xxi. 21), nephew of David, son of Shimmeah.

78

1 Chron. xxii. 6-9.

79

LXX., Σαλωμών, and in Ecclus. xlvii. 13. Comp. Shelōmith (Lev. xxiv. 11), Shelōmi (Num. xxxiv. 27). But it became Σαλόμων in the New Testament, Josephus, the Sibylline verses, etc. The long vowel is retained in Salōme and in the Arabic Sūleyman, etc.

80

Among Solomon's adherents are mentioned "Shimei and Rei" (1 Kings i. 8), whom Ewald supposes to stand for two of David's brothers, Shimma and Raddai, and Stade to be two officers of the Gibborim. Thenius adopts a reading partly suggested by Josephus, "Hushai, the friend of David." Others identify Rei with Ira; a Shimei, the son of Elah, is mentioned among Solomon's governors (Nitzabim, 1 Kings iv. 18); and there was a Shimei of Ramah over David's vineyards (1 Chron. xxvii. 27). The name was common, and meant "famous."

81

Duncker, Meyer, Wellhausen, Stade, regard Solomon's accession as due to a mere palace intrigue of Nathan and Bathsheba, and David's dying injunctions as only intended to excuse Solomon. They treat 1 Kings ii. 1-12 as a Deuteronomic interpolation. Dillmann, Kittel, Kuenen, Budde, rightly reject this view. Stade says, "Nach menschlichen Gefühl, ein Unrecht war die Salbung Salomos." He thinks that "the aged David was over-influenced by the intrigues of the harem and the court" (i. 292).

82

She said that they would be counted as "offenders" (chattaim) Comp. 1 Kings i. 12, where Nathan assumes that they will both be put to death. Thus Cassander put to death Roxana, the widow of Alexander the Great, and her son Alexander (Justin., xv. 2).

83

Reuss, Hist. des Israelites, i. 409.

84

Comp. 2 Sam. iv. 9; Psalm xix. 14.

85

"The servants of your Lord." Comp. 2 Sam. xx. 6, 7.

86

Comp. Gen. xli. 43; 1 Kings i. 33; Esth. vi. 8.

87

2 Chron. xxxii. 30, xxxiii. 14. It was apparently "the Virgin's Fountain," east of Jerusalem, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

88

Comp. 2 Kings ix. 13.

89

1 Chron. xxvii. 5, where the true rendering is not "Benaiah the chief priest," as in A.V., nor "principal officer," as in the margin: but "Benaiah the priest, as chief."

90

1 Sam. xxx. 14; Josephus, σωματοφύλακες. The Targum calls them "archers and slingers" (which is unlikely), or "nobles and common soldiers." This body-guard is also said to be composed of Gittites (2 Sam. xv. 18, xviii. 2); but some suppose that they were so called not by nationality, but because they had served under David at Gath. The question is further complicated by the appearance of "Carians" (A.V., captains) in 2 Kings xi. 4, 15, and also in 2 Sam. xx. 23 (Heb.). The Carians were universal mercenaries (Herod., ii. 152; Liv., xxxvii. 40). That there was an early intercourse between Palestine and the West is shown by the fact that such words as peribolory, machaera, macaina, lesche, pellex, have found their way into Hebrew (see Renan, Hist. du Peuple Israel, ii. 33).

91

2 Sam. xxiii. 8-39; 1 Chron. xi. 10-47; 1 Kings i. 8. The Gibborim are by some supposed to be a different body from the Krêthi and Plêthi (2 Sam. xv. 18, xx. 7); but from 1 Kings i. 8, 10, 38 they seem to be the same (Stade, i. 275). The thirty heroes at their head furnish, as Renan says, the first germ of a sort of "Legion of Honour."

92

Saul (1 Sam. x. 1), David (1 Sam. xvi. 13, and twice afterwards, 2 Sam. ii. 4, v. 3), Jehu (1 Kings xix. 16), Joash (2 Chron. xxiii. 11).

93

1 Kings i. 39. "Tent," not "tabernacle," as in A.V. It has generally been supposed that Zadok took it from the tabernacle at Gibeon (1 Chron. xvi. 39), but there would have been no time to send so far. Zadok is called a "Seer" in the A.V. (2 Sam. xv. 27); but the true version may be "Seeth thou?" The LXX. and Vulgate omit the words.

94

Morier, quoted by Stanley, p. 172, says that the Mustched, or chief priest, and the Munajem, or prophet, are always present at a Persian coronation.

95

LXX., ἐῤῥάγη, ἤχησεν; Vulg., insonuit. Comp. Josephus, Antt., VII. xiv. 3, 5.

96

2 Sam. xv. 27, xvii. 17.

97

2 Sam. xviii. 27. Heb., אִשׁחַי; LXX., ἀνὴρ δυνάμεως; Vulg., vir fortis. It is rather "virtuous," as in Prov. xii. 4.

98

It is true that Solomon's adherents had wasted no time over a feast.

99

1 Kings i. 50.

100

Psalm cxviii. 27, and Exod. xxvii. 2 ff., xxix. 12, xxx. 10. Comp. Exod. xxi. 14.

101

Exod. xxi. 14. It protected the homicide, but not the wilful murderer.

102

1 Kings i. 51. The words "this day" should be "first of all," i. e., before I leave the sanctuary. Many must have been reminded of this scene when Eutropius, the eunuch-minister of Arcadius, under the protection of St. Chrysostom, cowered in front of the high altar at Constantinople.

103

"There shall not a hair of