22 The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.
This was Solomon’s treasure fleet, not the fleet built by king Jehoshaphat that a century later was wrecked at Ezion Geber (1 Kings 22:48). The NIV has a footnote about the term “trading ships,” noting that ‘ani tarshish could also mean “ships of Tarshish.” Solomon’s vessels could have been made in Tarshish, but it’s more likely that these vessels were a class of ship that were capable of making the long voyage through the entire length of the Mediterranean (more than 1800 miles) to Tarshish and out into the Atlantic. 2 Chronicles 20:36 describes such vessels as “ships that could go to Tarshish” (‘anioth laleceth tarshish).
23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. 24 The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. 25 Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift—articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules.
While our author piles the wealth of Solomon higher and higher, he remembers another source of the king’s income: his wisdom. People came to him with questions and gave him riches in return. The “whole world” here doesn’t need to be taken in the way we might think of the entire planet. The Hebrew word erets can mean “land” or “earth,” and refers to a country, a nation, or the known world. With both Sheba and Kue (verse 28 below) mentioned, the northern and southern extremes are listed. The western limit of the known world was mentioned above, with the ships of Tarshish. As for the east, perhaps the limits of the known world are touched on by the Hebrew text of Isaiah 49:12. There is a strange word there, given as Aswan (extreme southern Egypt) in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but translated the land of the Persians in the Greek Septuagint. It is translated terra australi “the land of the south” in the Latin Vulgate. All of these are attempts to understand the Hebrew term erets sinim, which I think is probably “the land of the Sinim,” or “the Sinoese,” meaning China, the extreme eastern limit of the known world (and the only reference to China in the Bible).
People from all over came to Solomon because God had given Solomon great wisdom. And God kept on giving to the son of David.
26 Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. 27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. 28 Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. 29 They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans. (NIV)
Chariots were known to the Egyptians, and used for warfare by the Assyrians and others. In Israel, they seem to have been used more for executive transportation than as a weapon at first, but later we see them as battle wagons carrying an armed man here and there where he needed to be on the battlefield.
Kue (pronounced quey or koo-ey) corresponds to the New Testament region of Cilisia, the easternmost part of Turkey, directly north of Canaan and Israel. The Apostle Paul was born in that part of the world, in Tarsus. There is a curious note here in verses 28-29, that although Solomon was given a vast amount of wealth and weapons, he paid for his chariots and horses from Kue. Chariots were pulled by teams of horses in pairs, threes or fours. When a team of three was used in battle, two horses pulled from the pole and a third ran alongside the others, to be brought into the yoke if one horse were killed or wounded (like a spare tire). In fours, the four ran abreast, with two pulling from the pole and the others tied to the inner pair but not pulling.
In verse 29, we are told that Solomon exported weapons, chariots and horses to the Hittites and Arameans, probably in return for peaceful relations. Except for references about Solomon’s wives, this is nearly the last time the Hittites are mentioned as a nation in the Bible. The parallel passages in Chronicles don’t tell us much more. Solomon had conscripted some Hittites into his workforce (2 Chronicles 8:7), but the Arameans and Hittites were at war with one another after Solomon’s time (2 Kings 7:6). The Hittite nation had already fallen, but small outposts, cities ruled by individual kings, lingered until the Assyrian conquest of Israel and Canaan in 722 BC.
This particular reference to the Hittites sends up a red flag into the Solomon story. The Hittites were to have been wiped out. God said “you must destroy them totally” (Deuteronomy 7:2). The main reason for this was that “they will turn your sons away from me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you” (Deuteronomy 7:4). The Hittites and the other nations would lead Israel away from their devotion to God, and so to keep his people faithful, he ordered those who had already rejected him to be destroyed.
Chapter 11 begins with words that call our attention to this red flag and wave that flag back and forth in our eyes. Three words proclaim his unfaithfulness and his decline into sin. The three words are, “King Solomon, however…” (1 Kings 11:1).
We see our own sins in this story of Solomon’s sins. We’ll turn our attention next week to a couple of psalms from his period first, but as we see Solomon’s sins, we want to turn to God and ask his forgiveness on our own.
Lord, keep us steadfast in your word.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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