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[ Since the beginning of Solomon's evil life and adversity was the time when Hadad or Ader, who was born at least twenty or thirty years before Solomon came to the crown, in the days of David, began to give him disturbance, this implies that Solomon's evil life began early, and continued very long, which the multitude of his wives and concubines does imply also; I suppose when he was not fifty years of age.]
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[ This youth of Jeroboam, when Solomon built the walls of righteous and keep the laws, because he hath proposed to thee the greatest of all rewards for thy piety, and the honor thou shalt pay to God, namely, to be as greatly exalted as thou knowest David to have been." Jerusalem, not very long after he had finished his twenty years building of the temple and his own palace, or not very long after the twenty-fourth of his reign, 1 Kings 9:24; 2 Chronicles 8:11, and his youth here still mentioned, when Solomon's wickedness was become intolerable, fully confirm my former observation, that such his wickedness began early, and continued very long. See Ecclus. 47:14.]
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[ That by scorpions is not here meant that small animal so called, which was never used in corrections, but either a shrub, furze bush, or else some terrible sort of whip of the like nature see Hudson's and Spanheim's notes here.]
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[ Whether these "fountains of the Lesser Jordan" were near a place called Dan, and the fountains of the Greater near a place called Jor, before their conjunction; or whether there was only one fountain, arising at the lake Phiala, at first sinking under ground, and then arising near the mountain Paneum, and thence running through the lake Scmochonitis to the Sea of Galilee, and so far called the Lesser Jordan; is hardly certain, even in Josephus himself, though the latter account be the most probable. However, the northern idolatrous calf, set up by Jeroboam, was where Little Jordan fell into Great Jordan, near a place called Daphnae, as Josephus elsewhere informs us, Of the War, B. IV. ch. 1. sect. 1: see the note there.]
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[ How much a larger and better copy Josephus had in this remarkable history of the true prophet of Judea, and his concern with Jeroboam, and with the false prophet of Bethel, than our other copies have, is evident at first sight. The prophet's very name, Jadon, or, as the Constitutions call him, Adonias, is wanting in our other copies; and it is there, with no little absurdity, said that God revealed Jadon the true prophet's death, not to himself as here, but to the false prophet. Whether the particular account of the arguments made use of, after all, by the false prophet against his own belief and his own conscience, in order to persuade Jeroboam to persevere in his idolatry and wickedness, than which more plausible could not be invented, was intimated in Josephus's copy, or in some other ancient book, cannot now be determined; our other copies say not one word of it.]