Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 4-6.

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Wow, that was a tough read, reading some of those names out loud really challenged me.  On the other hand, as I said shortly after I started making a video of me reading the Scripture for my Bible study every day, reading it out loud really helps me pay attention on parts which I generally find little of interest in, such as the detailed description of who Solomon’s officials were.  It says here that Zadok and Abiathar were priests.  Yet in yesterday’s passage it tells us that Solomon expelled Abiathar from being a priest.  Hopefully you can understand that this is not a contradiction.  Because in that same list of Solomon’s officials it says that Azariah the son of Zadok was the priest, and that Zabud the son of Nathan was priest.  That means that at the beginning of Solomon’s reign Zadok and Abiathar were the priests.  At a later point in Solomon’s reign, Zadok’s son was priest and Nathan’s son was also the priest.  I do not think we can tell whether Abiathar’s son and Nathan’s son were priests at the same time or not.  It would certainly be consistent to believe that Zabud, Nathan’s son became priest alongside Zadok when Abiathar was expelled from the priesthood, and then continued to serve as priest when Ahaziah, Zadok’s son, succeeded his father as priest.  I mention this because there are other places in the Bible where someone is mentioned as having a role which seems to contradict what is said elsewhere about who had that role.

One example of this is Mark 2:26 (I have linked to the entire story so you can see the context) where Jesus refers to when David was fleeing King Saul and came to Ahimelech.  In that passage Jesus says that David “entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest.”  Some people say, “But the high priest in that story was Ahimelech, Abiathar’s father.  How can Jesus be God if He mistakes Abiathar for Ahimelech?”  My answer to that is this.  Abiathar was alive when David did that, which means that it was in the time of Abiathar.  Abiathar was also later the high priest.  We often speak in this manner.  We might say, “When President George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot.”  When George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot, someone else was the President of the United States, but no one would say I was wrong for saying what I wrote about him.  So, Jesus was not wrong, David ate the bread of the presence in the time of Abiathar.  I am just using this story as an example of ways in which a biblical passage might refer to things which a casual reader might think was a contradiction, but is not.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Kings 4-6.

First, I want to note that this passage lists “Shimei son of Ela” as one of King Solomon’s governors.  So, perhaps the Shimei who failed to support Adonijah’s attempt for the throne was this Shimei rather than Shimei son of Gera, or perhaps that was a third Shimei.  I usually look at Solomon’s preparations for and then building the temple, but today I want to look at some other things in this passage.  The writer makes the point that everyone in Israel lived safely under their own vine and fig tree.  The phrase “everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree” seems to me likely to be an idiom.  Considering the context, I think it would be an idiom for safety and peace.  In fact, this expression is used twice more in the Old Testament: once in Micah and another time in Zechariah.

I think the writer is contrasting life for Israelites under Solomon to what things were like under the Judges and even under King Saul.  In those earlier times there was a lot more raiding between the various peoples of the region (take a look at the account of how David and his men lived while they were among the Philistines in Ziklag, and even what happened to Ziklag when David and his men went with the Philistine army).  Further, it gives us an idea about why David conquered the neighbors he did while remaining peaceful with the Phoenicians (or, more accurately as it is understood today, the Canaanites of the Tyre and Sidon regions).  The other areas around Israel spent a lot of time raiding their neighbors, while those we now know as the Phoenicians were more interested in trade with those they encountered.  Solomon’s borders were the Hittite empire to the north, the Egyptian empire to the south, basically desert to the east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the east, except for the areas controlled by Tyre and Byblos (I believe that Tyre controlled Sidon at this time, while Byblos is mentioned as a separate entity in this passage) which were on the northern part of his eastern border.  We can learn from this that peoples prosper when they live by their own efforts and trade peacefully with those around them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Kings 4-6.

King Solomon inherited a kingdom at peace, and was able to maintain that peace (for the most part, a later passage touches on some of the disturbances which happened later in his reign).  Solomon maintained peace in his kingdom by delegating authority to well chosen subordinates.   As a result, King Solomon was able to dedicate time to becoming knowledgeable about many different subjects.  This passage shows the important connection between wisdom and knowledge.  Wisdom will lead us to seek the knowledge necessary to make wise decisions, but knowledge does not make us wise.  I wrote above that King Solomon maintained peace by carefully delegating authority.  However, another element in maintaining the peace within his kingdom was the fact that he built the Temple.  The passage tells us that Solomon was able to build the Temple because he had peace, but it also allowed him to maintain that peace.  By focusing the practice of worshiping God in Jerusalem, he brought the people of Israel together.  They came from all parts of his kingdom with a common interest in worshiping God.  That connection made them feel like one people, and it caused them to have a unified understanding of what it meant to worship God.  It should encourage us to gather with other Believers so that we can both learn from them what God has revealed to them and teach them what God has revealed to us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Kings 4-6.

We learn from this passage that King David had left Solomon a unified country with no enemies threatening it.  King Solomon was able to build upon this and maintain the peace for which his father had fought.  King Solomon established a bureaucracy which allowed him to spend time studying many other things without having to spend all of his time governing. It seems that this study did not just generate useless knowledge since the kings of many nations sent envoys to learn from King Solomon.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 4-6.

The first thing I noticed when reading this was that King Solomon had time to learn about all of the subjects it later says he was knowledgeable about because he set up his government with people in charge of various aspects of it.  This included regional governors.  King Solomon demonstrated the wisdom for which he was famous by delegating his authority to others instead of trying to run everything himself.  Unlike his two predecessors, King Solomon delegated specific areas of responsibility to specific individuals.  King Saul had delegated responsibility sparingly, and only on a task by task basis.  King David had delegated responsibility on a more consistent basis, but did not clearly divide areas of responsibility.

Another item of interest to me was that the Temple of Solomon had what we would consider low ceilings.  The passage tells us that each story of the Temple complex was 7 1/2 feet high.  There was a two-fold reason for this.  Building materials were outrageously expensive, especially those used by Solomon in the Temple.  Also, the Israelites of that time had not developed the more advanced architectural techniques which make high ceilings practical.  This second point is related to the first in that what building materials one uses will impact how advanced one’s architectural techniques need to be to build high ceilings.  I will note it is likely that the impact of the level of architectural skill is more on it not occurring to them to build high ceilings than on them not being able to figure out how to do so.  Now, as I was doing a little research on the design of Solomon’s Temple I came across a reference suggesting that the design of Solomon’s Temple was a copy of the Temple of Melqart in Tyre.  This is certainly possible because King Solomon hired builders from Hiram of Tyre to assist in building the Temple.  However, while we do not know for sure, it seems probable that it was Hiram who built the Temple of Melqart in Tyre.  Which means that he may have copied Solomon’s design rather than the other way around.