— Footnote
1. She was by birth a woman of Dan, married into the tribe of
Napthali, lost her husband, and as widow out of the tribe of
Naphtali became the wife of the Tyrian. So Bertheau in loc.
— Footnote
but has no more real value than the idea that sandalwood is obtained from Lebanon. The statement of 1Kings v. 27 [13] (xi. 28, xii. 4) that Israel was requisitioned in large numbers to render forced service to the king has substituted for it by the Chronicler that which occurs in another place (1Kings ix. 2I), that only the Canaanite serfs were employed for this purpose; at the same time, he reckons their number from the figures supplied in 1Kings v. 29 [15] seq. Lastly, the manner in which Solomon (ii. 2 [3] ) assures Hiram that he will arrange the divine service in the new house in a thoroughly correct manner according to the ordinance of the Priestly Code, is also characteristic; similar remarks, from which the uninterrupted practice of the Mosaic cultus according to the rules of the Law is made to appear, are afterwards repeated from time to time (viii. 12-16, xiii. 11).
In chaps. iii., iv. the author repeats the description of the temple in 1Kings vi., vii., with the omission of what relates to profane buildings. Perhaps in one passage (1Kings vii. 23) he found the now very corrupt text in a better state; otherwise he has excerpted from it in a wretchedly careless style or word for word transcribed it, adding merely a few extravagances or appointments of later date (e.g., the specification of the gold in iii. 4 seq. 8, 9, of the ten golden tables and hundred golden basins in iv. 8, of the brass-covered doors of the outer gateway in iv. 9, of the court of the priests in iv. 9, of the curtain between the holy place and the holy of holies in iii. 14; compare Vatke, pp. 332, 333, 340, 341). To deny that the original (to which reference must in many places be made in order that the meaning may be understood) exists in 1Kings vi., vii., requires an exercise of courage which might be much better employed, all the more because in 2Chronicles iv. 11-v. 1, the summary list follows the description of details precisely as in 1Kings vii. 40 - 51.
While the concrete and material details of 1Kings vi., vii. are reproduced only in an imperfect and cursory manner, the act of consecration on the other hand, and the discourse delivered by Solomon on the occasion, is accurately and fully given (v. 2-vii. 10) in accordance with 1Kings viii.; such additions and omissions as occur are all deliberate. In 1Kings viii. the priests and Levites on an occasion which so closely concerned their interests do not play any adequate part, and in particular give none of the music which nevertheless is quite indispensable at any such solemnity. Accordingly, the Chronicler at the word "priests" inserts between the violently separated clauses of 1Kings
viii. 10, 11, the following: "For all the priests present had sanctified themselves without distinction of classes, and the Levites, the singers, all stood in white linen with cymbals and psalteries and harps at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets. And it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when the music began with trumpets, and cymbals, and instruments, and the song of praise,
Praise ye Jehovah, for He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever, then the house was filled with a cloud" (v. 11-13).
Proceeding, the narrative of 1Kings viii. 22 that Solomon came in front of the altar and there prayed is indeed in the first instance copied (vi. 12), but forthwith authoritatively interpreted in the sense that the king did not really and actually stand before the altar (which was lawful for the priests alone), but upon an improvised pulpit in the inner court upon a propped-up caldron of brass (vi. 13), an excellent idea, which has met with the due commendation of expositors. The close of Solomon's prayer (1Kings viii. 49-53) is abridged (vi. 39, 40)—perhaps in order to get rid of viii. 50—and there is substituted for it an original epilogue (vi. 41, 42) recalling post-exilian psalms. Then comes a larger omission, that of 1Kings viii. 54-61, explained by the difficulty involved in the king's here kneeling, not upon the caldron, but before the altar, then standing up and blessing like a priest; in place of this it is told (vii. 1-3) how the altar was consecrated by fire from heaven, which indeed had already descended upon it (1Chronicles xxi.26), but as it appears had unaccountably gone out. In vii. 4 the author again returns to his original at 1Kings viii. 62 seq., but tricks it out, wherever it appears to him too bare, with trumpeting priests and singing Levites (vii. 6), and finally dismisses the people, not on the eighth day of the feast of tabernacles (1Kings viii. 66), but on the ninth (vii. to), in accordance with the enactment in Numbers xxix. 35.
The rest of Solomon's history (vii. 11-ix. 28) is taken over from 1Kings ix., x. In doing so what is said in 1Kings ix. 10-IO, to the effect that Solomon handed over to Hiram twenty Galilaean cities, is changed into the opposite—that Hiram ceded the cities to Solomon, who settled them with Israelites (viii. 1, 2); and similarly the already observed statement of 1Kings ix. 24 about the removal of Solomon's Egyptian wife out of the city of David into his new palace /1/ is altered and put in quite a
— Footnote 1. Even in the text of Kings this statement has been obscured; Comp. 1Kings iii. 1. In ix. 24 we must at least say betho asher bana lo, but this perhaps is not enough. — Footnote
false light: