[♦] ‘whieh’ replaced with ‘which’
As also in chap. x. 22—“For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish, with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, &c.”
The Israelites, therefore, had an opportunity of traversing the known world at a very early period of their history, and thus made known the wisdom of their heaven-taught monarch; we can, therefore, admit in the amplest magnitude of signification the narrative contained in verses 23–26 of the same chapter. “So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom.
“And all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.
“And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and garments, and armour, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year.
“And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at Jerusalem.”
It will be interesting to our subject to take a brief view of the navigating expeditions of the Phœnicians at that period, which was their most prosperous epoch, and who, with far more knowledge of the art of navigation than modern assumption gives them credit for, were to be seen in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Atlantic—every where upon the waters; and in doing so, I must refer you to the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, where we have a concise, but precise description of their marine expeditions, which is as follows—“O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, thus saith the Lord God; O Tyrus, thou hast said I am of perfect beauty.
“Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty.
“They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir; they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee.
“Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim.