Scripture Notes | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 18, 1868

Scripture Notes.

SOLOMON'S HORSES.

2 Chron. 1, 16. And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price.

[Had horses.] This Moses expressly prohibited, by which future kings were forbidden to establish a body of cavalry; because this could not be effected without sending to Egypt, the most dangerous of all foreign commerce to true religion. When Solomon had violated this law, and multiplied horses to excess (1 Kings iv, 26), it was soon attended with those fatal consequences the law foretold. For he having, likewise, in violation of another law of Moses, married Pharaoh's daughter, the early fruits of this intercourse; and then, by a repetition of the same crime, but by the transgression of another law, having espoused more strange women (1 Kings iii, 1; xi, 1), they first, in defiance of a fourth law, persuaded him to build them idol-temples for their use; and afterwards, against a fifth law, still more fundamental, they induced him to erect other temples for his own. Now the origin of all this mischief was the forbidden traffic with Egypt for horses. Resist the beginnings of evil.—Warburton, Clarke, Hewlett.

HIGHT OF THE TEMPLE.

Chap. vii, 21. And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passeth by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and unto this house?

Some say the second temple was built up in some parts 700 feet from the valley. It was, probably, on a pinnacle overlooking this hight where Satan set our Lord. Matt. iv, 5.

EVILS OF LUXURIES.

Chap. ix, 21. For the king's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

The imports here mentioned indicate, that prosperity had enervated the minds of Solomon and his subjects, and led them to love things curious and uncommon, though useless in themselves: and, indeed, the East Indian trade has helped to render every nation luxurious and self-indulgent, which has prospered in it, from the beginning to this day.—Scott.

ORIENTAL RAIMENT.

Verse 24. And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and raiment, harness, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year.

[Raiment.] Oriental kings have, ‘in their wardrobes, garments for thousands, the loose robes equally fitting all.’—Jenks.

SCRIPTURAL USE OF SON.

Chap. xi, 18. And Rehoboam took him Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David to wife, and Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse.

[Daughter of Eliab.] Eliab was David’s eldest brother; yet more than 80 years had elapsed, since David, at the age of 30, began to reign. Abihail must, therefore, have been granddaughter, or great-granddaughter to Eliab, and this shows the latitude in which the words, son and daughter, are used in Scripture, for a descendant, even after several intervening generations.—Scott.