The Dedication Becomes a Daily Order

The verse is only a time clause; the sentence it begins finishes in verse 2. Counting from the fourth year, when the foundation was laid (3:2), the end of twenty years falls in about the twenty-fourth year of Solomon’s reign.

First Kings 9:11–13 tells it the other way: Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in Galilee, and Hiram, unimpressed, called them “Cabul”, which sounds like “as nothing”. Chronicles has Huram handing towns to Solomon, perhaps the same towns returned, which Solomon then rebuilds and settles with Israelites.

This is the only campaign of Solomon that Chronicles records, and Hamath-zobah is a combined name found nowhere else, joining the two Aramean territories David had fought in 1 Chronicles 18:3. The man of rest (1 Chronicles 22:9) goes to war once.

Tadmor is the desert oasis later known as Palmyra, on the caravan route between Damascus and the Euphrates. In 1 Kings 9:18 the written Hebrew has Tamar, a town in the south of Judah, while the traditional reading there is Tadmor; Chronicles reads Tadmor outright.

The two Beth-horons guarded the ascent from the coastal plain up to the hill country north of Jerusalem, the road down which Joshua chased the Amorites under the hailstones (Joshua 10:10–11). “Fenced” means fortified, and bars were the heavy bolts across a gate.

Baalath was a town of Dan’s territory (Joshua 19:44). First Kings 9:15 names Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer among Solomon’s works; similar six-chambered gates found at all three have often been attributed to him, though their dating is still argued.

The old list of the peoples of Canaan usually runs to six or seven names (Exodus 3:8; Deuteronomy 7:1). Here there are five; the Canaanites and Girgashites are missing, and the Jebusites of Jerusalem, Ornan’s people, close the list.

“Consumed not” means did not destroy under the ban of Deuteronomy 20:17. Judges 1:28 records the same outcome from the other end: when Israel grew strong, it “put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out”.

First Kings 5:13–14 reports a levy of thirty thousand Israelites sent to Lebanon in monthly shifts. A proposed reconciliation distinguishes rotating corvée from permanent servitude: Israelites served in turns, but were not made slaves. The man over that levy, Hadoram, is stoned by Israel in 10:18.

“Bare rule” is radah, to hold dominion, the verb Leviticus 25:43 uses in forbidding an Israelite to rule over his brother “with rigour”, as the Egyptian taskmasters had done. First Kings 9:23 gives 550 such officers.

This is her only appearance in Chronicles; Kings mentions her five times, beginning with the marriage alliance (1 Kings 3:1). Egyptian kings of the Amarna age boasted that no Pharaoh’s daughter was given to a foreign ruler, which makes the match itself a sign of Solomon’s standing.

First Kings 9:25 says Solomon offered three times a year and burned incense himself. Chronicles says nothing of the incense, which by its own later account belonged to priests alone, the offence for which Uzziah was struck with leprosy (26:18–19).

“After a certain rate every day” is literally “the matter of a day in its day”, each day’s due on its own day. The three feasts are the pilgrim festivals of Deuteronomy 16:16: “Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD”.

“The man of God” is usually the title of Moses, Elijah or Elisha. It is given to David only here and twice in Nehemiah 12:24 and 36, each time in connection with the order of worship he laid down.

“The king” probably means David, whose commandment was just named in verse 14, rather than Solomon. The treasures are those kept by the Levite treasurers of 1 Chronicles 26:20–28.

“Perfected” is shalem, complete, whole, from the same root as Solomon’s name, Shelomoh. The last word on the temple’s completion is a pun on its builder.

Ezion-geber and Eloth stood at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba; Israel had camped at Ezion-gaber in the wilderness (Numbers 33:35). Solomon could reach the port only because David had put garrisons in Edom (1 Chronicles 18:13).

Ships could not sail from Tyre to the Red Sea, so Huram must have sent timber, shipwrights and crews overland; 1 Kings 9:26 says Solomon built the fleet at Ezion-geber. Kings gives 420 talents of gold to the 450 here.