p. 52 | SCRIPTURE NOTES

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1868

SCRIPTURE NOTES.

THE GREATNESS OF GOD.

1 Kings viii, 27. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?

The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.] Lit. the heavens, and the heavens of heavens. What inconceivable sublimity of thought is here! The systems upon systems, equal in extent to our solar system, stretching throughout the infinity of space, with their millions upon millions of suns, whose light, traveling these 6000 years, at the rate of 190,000 miles a second, may not yet have reached us, these systems are represented not only as pervaded throughout their endless infinitude by the omnipresent Deity, but as inadequate to contain God! What unparalleled magnificence of thought! How do the conceptions of the heathen of their gods dwindle into nothingness before this Hebrew expression.—Jenks.

BOND-SERVICE OF CAPTIVES.

CHAP. ix, 21. Their children that were left after them in the land whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bond-service unto this day.

Bond-service.] When Sesostris (king of Egypt) returned from his wars, he caused temples to be built in all the cities of Egypt; but did not employ one Egyptian in the work; having builded the whole by the hands of the captives which he had taken in his wars; and caused this inscription to be placed on each temple: “No native has labored in these.”—Dr. A. Clarke.

QUEEN OF SHEBA AND THE GLORY OF SOLOMON.

CHAP. x, 4, 5. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.

No more spirit (breath?) in her.] She fainted. I have seen precisely the same effect produced: a lady, who was herself an artist, viewing some exquisitely finished oriental paintings, was so struck with astonishment, that she twice nearly fainted; and was obliged to leave the room. What happened to the queen of Sheba is a natural and not uncommon effect, which will be produced in a delicate, sensitive mind, at the sight of rare and extraordinary productions of art.—Dr. A. Clarke.

SYCAMORE TREE.

VERSE 27. And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the vale, for abundance.

Sycamore.] A large evergreen tree, very common in Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt, especially in the low lands. Its wood is very durable, as the mummy chests of it, 3000 years old, prove. Its fruit is like a fig, and eaten by the poor, and its leaves like the mulberry. Hence its name, syke, a fig, in Greek, and morea, a mulberry tree, called Sycamore in the SS. See Harris. Its fruit springs from the trunk and not the branches, is destitute of seeds, very luscious, and is produced abundantly seven times a year.—Jenks.

DANGER OF IMPROPER MARRIAGES.

VERSE xi. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods.

Probably, Solomon's declension was gradual; he was perhaps elated with spiritual pride, as well as induced by his prosperity to indulge in luxury and ostentation; or, perhaps, he deemed it unnecessary for one of his wisdom and ability, and of his rank and authority, to restrict himself by those rules, which were needful or salutary to inferior persons, as if he were secure from those evils which they were intended to prevent! Thus he proceeded, till, perhaps, persons were employed to collect from every part of his kingdom, but especially from the subjected nations, every beautiful woman whom they found, without regard to her religion. Those of superior rank seem to have been numbered among his wives, and styled princesses; while the inferiors were his concubines, with inferior privileges. Those who have noted in history, or in society, the effects of the influence of inveigling women over the greatest and wisest of men, will readily perceive that matters were speedily in a train; and that it was almost impossible, without an immediate divine interposition, that Solomon should stop short of this extreme folly and wickedness, when he had once suffered himself to be entangled in the fatal net. (Judg.

xvi, 4-21.) The inspired historian, therefore, quotes the prohibition of marrying strange women, with the annexed consequence, “Surely they will turn away your heart after their gods,” to show that no eminency of wisdom, or firmness of resolution, will secure any man, when, in a careless or self-confident spirit, he presumes to violate God's commandments, and thus to run into temptation. Of this, Solomon formed a most striking proof.—Scott.

THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

VERSE 24. And he gathered men unto him, and became captain over a band, when David slew them of Zobah; and they went to Damascus, and dwelt therein, and reigned in Damascus.

Damascus.] Called also Damask, but generally El Sham (the sun), by the Arabs, is in a delightful plain, amid extensive gardens, forming a circuit of 25 or 30 miles, well watered by the Barrada, at the east foot of Antilibanus, being surrounded by hills in the form of a triumphal arch, 136 miles north of Jerusalem, 195 south of Antioch, and 276 south southwest of Diarbekir. It is a city of the highest antiquity, being at least as old as Abraham's time; it has often been captured, and several times demolished, but has always risen to splendor and dignity. It has well paved streets, with sidewalks, and above 500 large and magnificent houses entitled to the name of palaces; each house has a canal or fountain. Mosques and chapels are numerous, and the grand mosque is of great extent and magnificence. There are a Greek, Syrian, Maronite, and Armenian church, and 8 synagogues of Jews. Maundrell describes the modern town as long, straight, from northeast to southwest, slender in the middle, but bigger at each end, especially the northeast. Niebuhr makes the walls something less than a league and a half in circumference; and the population is estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000. [Burkhardt says 250,000; Lamartine, 400,000.]—Greenfield, and Enc. Am.

A late traveler, Lamartine, says of it in 1833: “In coming towards the city, we ascended a few hundred paces to a deep defile; our Arabs suddenly stopped short, and uttering exclamations of joy, pointed to an opening in the rock on our right. I approached, and looking through the cleft, beheld the grandest and most singular prospect that ever presented itself to the eye of man. It was Damascus and its boundless desert, lying at the depth of a few hundred feet below us. The city, surrounded by its ramparts of black and yellow marble, flanked by its innumerable square towers, crowned by sculptured crannies, commanded by its forests of minarets of every form, and intersected by the seven branches of its river and its numberless streams, extended as far as the eye could reach. It was a labyrinth of gardens and flowers, thrusting its suburbs here and there in the vast plain, encircled by its forest of ten leagues in circumference, and everywhere shaded by groves of sycamores, and trees of every form and hue.”—Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1832-3.