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The BibleTexts.com Bible Commentary Copyright 1996-2005 Robert Nguyen Cramer THE BOOK OF FIRST KINGS |
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The Accession of Solomon. At the beginning of the story, David is still alive, but old and debilitated. He cannot live long, and the question of the succession is the central theme of the narrative. Of David’s many sons, only two are still alive. Adonijah is the older of the two (v. 6; cf. 2:22) and, thus, the heir presumptive. He has the support of Joab, David’s chief general, and Abiathar, one of David’s two high priests (v. 7). His rival is his younger brother, Solomon, who has the support of Benaiah, another ranking military figure, Zadok, the other high priest (v. 8), and Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba... The narrator’s purpose is to defend the legitimacy of the accession of Solomon. To achieve this, he first shows that David exercised his right to set aside primogeniture (the law of the firstborn) and designate his successor. In vv. 32-35, therefore, the old king names Solomon his heir, fulfilling a promise made long before (vv. 17, 30). At the same time, the narrator presents Adonijah as an unworthy candidate for the throne by pointedly associating him with his elder brother Absalom, a rebel (v. 6). In vv. 5-6, therefore, Adonijah appears as a very handsome man who procures a chariot with horses and fifty runners and declares himself king—in short, as another Absalom (cf. 2 Sam. 14:25; 15:1, 10).
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The Death of David. The narrator shows that two of the executions ordered by Solomon at the time of his accession were carried out in compliance with the deathbed instructions of his father. David condemns Joab for the murders of Abner (2 Sam. 3:27) and Amasa (2 Sam. 20:10), crimes for which bloodguilt was attached to David (reading the superior Gk. text of 1 Kings 2:5). He also condemns the Benjaminite agitator Shimei for abusing him and imposing a curse on him (v. 8; 2 Sam. 16:5-14). By contrast, David stipulates that Barzillai, the Gileadite who provided for David’s troops during Absalom’s revolt (2 Sam. 17:27-29; 19:31-39), should be given favored treatment at Solomon’s court. A Deuteronomistic expansion of David’s words (1 Kings 2:3-4) links the duration of the dynasty to the new king’s obedience to Mosaic law, and the biblical story of David’s life concludes with a Deuteronomistic succession summary (vv. 11-12), including a calculation of the length of his reign (v. 11; cf. 2 Sam. 5:4-5).
The Death of Solomon’s Enemies. Solomon is now king, and those who opposed him are executed one after another. The narrator’s purpose is to justify these executions. Adonijah, though given an opportunity to live under the protection of the court (1:52), asks to marry Abishag the Shunammite, the young woman who nursed David during his last illness (1:3-4). Because claiming the harem of the previous king is a standard way of claiming the kingdom itself (cf. 2 Sam. 16:21-22), Solomon interprets Adonijah’s request as an attempt to reestablish his claim to the throne, an open act of treason, and orders his execution. Joab is executed not for his opposition to Solomon—though that is the reason for his flight to the asylum of the altar (1 Kings 2:28; cf. Exod. 21:14)—but in compliance with David’s deathbed orders (1 Kings 2:5-6). Shimei, who was also condemned by David (2:8-9), is given an opportunity to live under house arrest in Jerusalem, but he violates the terms set by Solomon and forfeits his life. Another opponent of Solomon, the priest Abiathar, is exiled, but his life is spared because of his early assistance to David (cf. 1 Sam. 22:20-23; 23:6; 30:7-8) and his service as high priest (2 Sam. 8:17; 20:25). A comment by a Deuteronomistic editor (1 Kings 2:27) connects the banishment of Abiathar with the prophecy in 1 Sam. 2:33.
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The Divine Gift of Wisdom. Biblical tradition associates wisdom in general with Solomon. What he requests at the beginning of his reign, however, is a specific and pragmatic kind of wisdom, the ability to govern his people well. The attribution of this type of wisdom to a good king was commonplace in ancient Near Eastern tradition, and it is found in the Bible in the cases of David (2 Sam. 14:17, 19, 20) and other good kings. Such wisdom was regarded as the basis of an enduring kingship and a successful reign (cf. Ps. 72).
3:1, Solomon’s Marriage to Pharaoh’s Daughter. The general circumstances of Solomon’s alliance with Egypt can be reconstructed from the scattered references preserved in 1 Kings. Early in Solomon’s reign an Egyptian army captured the Canaanite-Philistine city of Gezer on the border of Israel. At the same time Solomon married an Egyptian princess, and the pharaoh gave his daughter the city as a dowry (9:16-17). Solomon brought the pharaoh’s daughter into the City of David (3:1), where she lived until a house was built for her nearby (9:24). The unidentified Egyptian king is thought to have been one of the pharaohs of the weak twenty-first dynasty (ca. 1070-945).
3:2-3, Sacrifice at “High Places.” These two verses are editorial (Deuteronomistic), having been inserted ahead of the account of Solomon’s visit to the high place at Gibeon. The later Davidic kings will be censured for their failure to remove the high places (14:23; 15:14; 22:43), but Solomon’s action in this chapter is mitigated by the fact that the Temple has not yet been built.
The Dream at Gibeon. Solomon’s revelatory dream belongs to the widespread ancient Near Eastern practice of incubation dreaming, by which an individual slept in a sanctuary in the hope of receiving a divine message. Partial biblical parallels include Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:11-19) and Samuel’s call at Shiloh (1 Sam. 3:2-18). Gibeon, which lay northwest of Jerusalem, seems to have been a prominent city in the time of David and Solomon). Although the statement in 1 Kings 3:4 that Solomon made regular sacrifices there of a thousand whole burnt offerings must be an exaggeration, the Gibeonite high place and altar clearly constituted an important cultic center before the erection of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The gift Solomon requests is the wisdom to govern well. Yahweh is so pleased that he gives Solomon more than he has asked for: he will receive unparalleled wisdom (v. 12) and, with it, wealth and fame (v. 13).
Note, finally, that the story of Solomon’s dream has been expanded editorially by the insertion of certain materials lacking in the parallel version of the event in 2 Chron. 1:3-13, which seems to have escaped Deuteronomistic editing. Thus, 1 Kings 3:6 has been elaborated to connect Solomon’s succession to David’s throne with the dynastic promise in 2 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 3:14 has been added to qualify Yahweh’s promise; and v. 15 has been altered to shift the place of sacrifice from Gibeon to Jerusalem.
The Judgment of Solomon. The account of the divine gift of wisdom is followed by an example of its practical application. The sagacity with which Solomon arbitrates between two prostitutes convinces the Israelites that “the wisdom of God was within him” (v. 28).
The story of the wise judge who identifies the true mother of a disputed child by ordering that the child be cut in half is very widespread in world folklore. Of some twenty-two examples that have been collected, the closest to the biblical story is a Jain tale of two women, widows of the same man, who claim to be the mother of his child and, therefore, the rightful head of his household and heir to his estate. When the magistrate rules that the estate should be divided and the child sawn in half, the true mother earnestly relinquishes all claims, pleading that the child should not be harmed. The magistrate awards her both the estate and the child.
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The Queen of Sheba. Sheba, Seba, or Saba was a land in the part of the Arabian peninsula corresponding to modern Yemen. When they clashed with the Assyrian kings in the eighth century, the Sabeans were still ruled by queens. The tradition of a visit by an earlier queen of Sheba to the court of Solomon suggests that the Sabeans were already actively involved in trade along the caravan routes of the Arabian subcontinent in the tenth century. Solomon’s maritime activities in the south brought him to the attention of the those who had their own trading interests in the region.
This episode has been included to enhance the theme of the legendary wisdom of Solomon. The queen comes to Jerusalem to test Solomon with riddles (v. 1). She leaves praising his sagacity and the good fortune of his subjects, and her acknowledgement of the good fortune of the Israelites is all the more significant because—like that of Jethro, Balaam, Rahab, and others—it comes from a foreigner.
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John Gray (The Old Testament Library: I & II Kings, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970, pages 378-380) translates this passage:
4 and it shall be that you shall drink of the wadi, and I have commanded the Arabs to feed you there... 6 And the Arabs brought him bread in the morning and flesh in the evening and he would drink of the wadi.
Gray explains in a footnote:
Reading arabim for MT orebim ('ravens'), though there is no support inthe Versions. We adopt this reading solely because of its congruity with the sequel, where Elijah is fed by an alien Phoenician woman. That he should also have experienced the humanity of Arabs (Bedouin) was perhaps divine preparation for the emergence in the prophetic conscience of a larger humanity and a fuller appreehension of the sole sovereignty of God, such as is found in Amos (chs. 1-2) a century later.
In his commentary Gray further explains:
Skinner's [John Skinner, in a 1893 Century Bible commentary on 1 Kings] suggestion that the word should be pointed arabim ('Arabs') has been condemned as 'a rationalistic absurdity'. We accept this [Skinner's] reading because of the resulting congruity with the following episode of the charity of the Phoenician woman. The provision of meat twice daily by Bedouin seems at first sight highly abnormal, since they live mainly on milk and its by-products, with such meal as they secure by barter of their butter. Meat is eaten only when a beast is killed for a guest or in fulfilment of a vow. Our explanation is that in the severe drought feeble beats were being killed off by the Bedouin. As crows are known to anticipate the death of such beasts, this might justify the MT reading, which has the unanimous support of the Versions. The feeding of the hero by the beasts, on the other hand, is a well-known theme in folk-story. Gesem signifies the heavy rain of late autumn and winter, which soften the earth, hardened by the summer drought, and makes cultivation and growth possible.
On the other hand, Norman H. Snaith (The Interpreter's Bible, Volumes 3, edited by George Arthur Buttrick, Nashville: Abingdon, 1954, page 146) briefly notes:
Attempts to rationalize the story have turned the ravens into merchants or into Arabians (both reading arabhim instead of orebhim, but it is best to leave the story as it is. We have a whole series of wonder stories in these "Tales of the North," and a more-than-human ingenuity is required in order to excise all miraculous elements from them.
There is no mention of any reading but "ravens" in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, in the Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, in the HarperCollins Study Bible, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, or in The New American Bible.
Elijah’s second place of refuge is the Phoenician city of Zarephath or Sarepta, where he finds shelter with a widow. In place of the miracle of the ravens is the miracle of the unfailing jar of meal and cruse of oil... The closest biblical parallel is found in 2 Kings 4:1-7 in the Elisha cycle, where the widow of one of the sons of the prophets is sustained by a bountiful jar of oil (cf. 2 Kings 4:42-44 and, more remotely, Matt. 14:13-21; 15:32-38; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-14).
This miracle also has a close parallel in the Elisha cycle (cf. 2 Kings 4:18-37). In the present story, the widow’s reactions have thematic importance. When her child is on the verge of death, she angrily blames the catastrophe on Elijah. Various forms of guilt or impurity that might otherwise be inconsequential become dangerous in the presence of the holy man (1 Kings 17:18). When her son is revived, however, she is moved to acclaim the special powers of Elijah, which the transmission of vitality from his body to that of the child has demonstrated (v. 21), and to acknowledge the veracity of the word of Yahweh (v. 24).
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Copyright
1996-2005 Robert Nguyen Cramer
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