Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 1:1
Now king David was old [and] stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he got no heat.
THE
FIRST BOOK OF THE KINGS,
commonly called,
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE KINGS
Ch. 1Ki 1:1-4. David’s Feeble Age (Not in Chronicles)
1. Now ] The Hebrew has only the conjunction usually rendered And. This sentence is not to be regarded as the commencement of a new history, but a continuation of what has been told in 2 Samuel. In Hebrew MSS. 1 and 2 Kings form but one book, as do also 1 and 2 Samuel , , 1 and 2 Chronicles. The division was first made in the LXX. which Jerome followed, and it was introduced in the printed Hebrew Bibles by Daniel Bomberg. The LXX. however treats these books as so closely connected with Samuel that the four books are all named alike ( . . . . ). They are so catalogued also in Origen’s list of the Canonical Books (Euseb. H. E. vi. 25), and in Jerome’s Prologus Galeatus. But we shall have occasion to point out some matters (e.g. the worship on the high places) which were viewed in a different light by the compiler of these later books from that in which they are regarded in the books of Samuel.
The two books fall naturally into three sections. (1) The reign of Solomon, 1 Kings 1-11. (2) The history of two kingdoms after their separation, till the overthrow of the northern kingdom, 1 Kings 12 – 2 Kings 17. (3) The history of the kingdom of Judah from the Assyrian to the Babylonish Captivity, 2 Kings 18-25.
king David was old ] The circumstances recorded in this passage must have happened when the feeble king had taken to his bed. By comparing 2Sa 5:4-5, with 1Ki 2:11, we arrive very nearly at the age given by Josephus ( Ant. vii. 15. 2) who says David was seventy years old when he died.
stricken in years ] Rendered literally on the margin ‘entered into days.’
they covered him with clothes ] i.e. With bed-clothes; just as in 1Sa 19:13 where A.V. has ‘with a cloth.’ The word is however most frequently used of garments for wear.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Now – Rather, and. The conjunction has here, probably, the same sort of connecting force which it has at the opening of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, etc., and implies that the historian regards his work as a continuation of a preceding history.
King David – The expression king David, instead of the simpler David, is characteristic of the writer of Kings. (See the introduction to the Book of Kings) The phrase is comparatively rare in Chronicles and Samuel.
Stricken in, years – David was perhaps now in his first year. He was thirty years old when he was made king in Hebron 2Sa 5:4; he reigned in Hebron seven years and six months 2Sa 2:11; 1Ch 3:4; and he reigned thirty-three years at Jerusalem 2Sa 5:5. The expression had here been used only of persons above eighty Gen 18:11; Gen 24:1; Jos 13:1; Jos 23:1 : but the Jews at this time were not long-lived. No Jewish monarch after David, excepting Solomon and Manasseh, exceeded sixty years.
Clothes – Probably bed-clothes. The king was evidently bed-ridden 1Ki 1:47.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Ki 1:1-4
Now King David was old and stricken in years.
The Winter of Life
I. Overtakes men in the highest rank.
II. Chills the vital sources of the naturally robust. And they covered him with clothes, and he gat no heat.
III. Is but temporarily alleviated by the best considered human devices. The cherishing of Abishag was–
1. Advised by the court physicians. An expedient not unusual in similar cases, when internal cordials failed, and with the limited skill of the faculty in the use of warmth-creating potions.
2. Was innocent. Suggested for no other than purely medical reasons. Sophocles lauded old age as a deliverance from the tyranny of the passions, as an escape from some furious and savage master.
3. Suspended only for a brief season the inevitable progress of decay. Medical skill is no more efficacious for the monarch than for the humblest subject. David died within the year. A moment comes in the winter of life when the warm pulse is stilled, and the once stalwart frame is locked in the icy embrace of death. (J. Barlow.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE KINGS
-Year from the Creation, according to the English Bible, 2989.
-Year before the Incarnation, 1015.
-Year from the destruction of Troy, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 170.
-Year before the first Olympiad, 239.
-Year before the building of Rome, 262.
-Year of the Julian Period, 3699.
-Year of the Dionysian Period, 507.
-Cycle of the Sun, 3.
-Cycle of the Moon, 13.
-Year of Acastus, the second perpetual archon of the Athenians, 31.
-Pyritiades was king over the Assyrians about this time, according to Scaliger, Langius, and Strauchius. He was the thirty-seventh monarch, (including Belus,) according to Africanus, and the thirty-third according to Eusebius.
-Year of Alba Silvius, the sixth king of the Latins, 15.
-Year of David, king of the Hebrews, 40.
CHAPTER I
David, grown old, is, by the advice of his physicians,
cherished by Abishag the Shunummite, 1-4.
Adonijah conspires with Joab and Abiathar to seize on the
government, 5-10.
Nathan and Bathsheba communicate these tidings to the aged king,
11-27.
David immediately pronounces Solomon his successor, and causes
Zadok and Nathan to proclaim and anoint him king, 28-40.
Adonijah and his friends hear of it, are afraid, and flee away,
Adonijah laying hold on the horns of the altar, from which he
refuses to go till Solomon shall promise him his life; this he
does, and banishes him to his own house, 41-53.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. Now King David was old] He was probably now about sixty-nine years of age. He was thirty years old when he began to reign, reigned forty, and died in the seventieth year of his age, 2Sa 5:4, and 1Kg 2:11; and the transactions mentioned here are supposed to have taken place about a year before his death.
But he gat no heat.] Sixty-nine was not an advanced age; but David had been exhausted with various fatigues, and especially by family afflictions, so that he was much older in constitution than he was in years. Besides he seems to have laboured under some wasting maladies, to which there is frequent reference in the Psalms.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Stricken in years; Being in the end of his seventieth year. He gat no heat; which is not strange in a person not only of so great an age, but also who had been exercised with so many hardships in war, and with such tormenting cares, and fears, and sorrows, for his own sins, (as divers of his Psalms witness,) and for the sins and miseries of his children and people. See Pro 17:22. Besides, this might be from the nature of his disease, or bodily distemper.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1, 2. Now king David was oldHewas in the seventieth year of his age (2Sa 5:4;2Sa 5:5). But the wear and tearof a military life, bodily fatigue, and mental care, had prematurely,if we may say it, exhausted the energies of David’s strongconstitution (1Sa 16:12). Inmodern Palestine and Egypt the people, owing to the heat of theclimate, sleep each in a “separate” bed. They only departfrom this practice for medical reasons (Ec4:11). The expedient recommended by David’s physicians is theregimen still prescribed in similar cases in the East, particularlyamong the Arab population, not simply to give heat, but “tocherish,” as they are aware that the inhalation of young breathwill give new life and vigor to the worn-out frame. The fact of thehealth of the young and healthier person being, as it were, stolen tosupport that of the more aged and sickly is well established amongthe medical faculty. And hence the prescription for the aged king wasmade in a hygienic point of view for the prolongation of his valuablelife, and not merely for the comfort to be derived from the naturalwarmth imparted to his withered frame [PORTER,Tent and Khan]. The polygamy of the age and country mayaccount for the introduction of this practice; and it is evident thatAbishag was made a concubine or secondary wife to David (see on 1Ki2:22).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Now King David was old, [and] stricken in years,…. Was seventy years of age; for he was thirty years of age when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years, 2Sa 5:4; this was just the age of man, Ps 90:10;
and they covered him with clothes; not wearing apparel, but bed clothes; he seems to have been bedridden and paralytic:
but he got no heat; by them; having no natural heat in him, clothes could not communicate any to him, only keep the cold from him, see Hag 1:6; there are many persons at the age he was, that are lively, healthful, and robust, comparatively speaking at least; but David’s strength was impaired, and his natural force abated by his many wars, fatigues by night and day in campaigns, and the many sorrows and afflictions he met with from his family and his friends, as well as enemies; which exhausted his natural moisture, weakened his nerves, and drank up his spirits, and brought upon him the infirmities of a decrepit old age very soon.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
When king David had become so old that they could no longer warm him by covering him with clothes, his servants advised him to increase his vitality by lying with a young and robust virgin, and selected the beautiful Abishag of Shunem to perform this service. This circumstance, which is a trivial one in itself, is only mentioned on account of what follows – first, because it shows that David had become too weak from age, and too destitute of energy, to be able to carry on the government any longer; and, secondly, because Adonijah the pretender afterwards forfeited his life through asking for Abishag in marriage. – The opening of our book, ( and the King), may be explained from the fact that the account which follows has been taken from a writing containing the earlier history of David, and that the author of these books retained the Vav cop. which he found there, for the purpose of showing at the outset that his work was a continuation of the books of Samuel. as in Jos 13:1; Jos 23:1; Gen 24:1, etc. “ They covered him with clothes, and he did not get warm.” It follows from this that the king was bedridden, or at least that when lying down he could no longer be kept warm with bed-clo thes. does not mean clothes to wear here, but large cloths, which were used as bed-clothes, as in 1Sa 19:13 and Num 4:6. is used impersonally, and derived from , cf. Ewald, 193, b., and 138, b. As David was then in his seventieth year, this decrepitude was not the natural result of extreme old age, but the consequence of a sickly constitution, arising out of the hardships which he had endured in his agitated and restless life. The proposal of his servants, to restore the vital warmth which he had lost by bringing a virgin to lie with him, is recommended as an experiment by Galen ( Method. medic. viii. 7). And it has been an acknowledged fact with physicians of all ages, that departing vitality may be preserved and strengthened by communicating the vital warmth of strong and youthful persons (compare Trusen, Sitten Gebruche u. Krankheiten der Hebrer, p. 257ff.). The singular suffix in is to be explained on the ground that one person spoke. , a maid who is a virgin. , to stand before a person as servant = to serve (cf. Deu 1:38 with Exo 24:13). , an attendant or nurse, from = , to live with a person, then to be helpful or useful to him. With the words “that she may lie in thy bosom,” the passage passes, as is frequently the case, from the third person to a direct address.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Introduction. | B. C. 1015. |
1 Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat. 2 Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. 3 So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not.
David, as recorded in the foregoing chapter, had, by the great mercy of God, escaped the sword of the destroying angel. But our deliverances from or through diseases and dangers are but reprieves; if the candle be not blown out, it will burn out of itself. We have David here sinking under the infirmities of old age, and brought by them to the gates of the grave. He that cometh up out of the pit shall fall into the snare; and, one way or other, we must needs die. 1. It would have troubled one to see David so infirm. He as old, and his natural heat so wasted that no clothes could keep him warm, v. 1. David had been a valiant active man and a man of business, and very vehement had the flame always been in his breast; and yet now his blood is chilled and stagnated, he is confined to his bed, and there can get no heat. He was now seventy years old. Many, at that age, are as lively and fit for business as ever; but David was now chastised for his former sins, especially that in the matter of Uriah, and felt from his former toils and the hardships he had gone through in his youth, which then he made nothing of, but was now the worse for. Let not the strong man glory in his strength, which may soon be weakened by sickness, or at last will be weakened by old age. Let young people remember their Creator in the days of their youth, before these evil days come. What our hand finds to do for God, and our souls, and our generation, let us do with all our might, because the night comes, the night of old age, in which no man can work; and, when our strength has gone, it will be a comfort to remember that we used it well. 2. It would have troubled one to see his physicians so weak and unskilful that they knew no other way of relieving him than by outward applications. No cordials, no spirits, but, (1.) They covered him with clothes, which, where there is any inward heat, will keep it in, and so increase it; but, where it is not, they have none to communicate, no, not royal clothing. Elihu makes it a difficulty to understand how our garments are warm upon us (Job xxxvii. 17); but, if God deny his blessing, men clothe themselves, and there is none warm (Hag. i. 6), David here was not. (2.) They foolishly prescribed nuptials to one that should rather have been preparing for his funeral (v. 2-4); but they knew what would gratify their own corruptions, and perhaps were too willing to gratify his, under colour of consulting his health. His prophets should have been consulted as well as his physicians in an affair of this nature. However, this might be excused then, when even good men ignorantly allowed themselves to have many wives. We now have not so learned of Christ, but are taught that one man must have but one wife (Matt. xix. 5), and further that it is good for a man not to touch a woman, 1 Cor. vii. 1. That Abishag was married to David before she lay with him, and was his secondary wife, appears from its being imputed as a great crime to Adonijah that he desired to marry her (ch. ii. 22) after his father’s death.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Introduction to Books of Kings
Like the Books of Samuel the Books of Kings were originally one book. The Books were given their name in ancient times, by the Hebrews, because they begin with the words, “Now King”; and of course, because they deal with the kings of Israel, and later those of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Whereas the Books of Samuel dealt much more fully with the reigns of Saul and David, relatively little space is given the many kings of the divided kingdoms. The portion of First Kings dealing with Solomon is the exception to this.
The author of the Books of Kings, under God, is unknown, although scholars have found considerable evidence to believe that it was authored by the Prophet Jeremiah. It was almost certainly written by a contemporary of Jeremiah, if not he himself. The language is said to be quite similar to that in the Prophecy of Jeremiah, while certain statements indicate that all except the closing verses of Second Kings were written by a contemporary. It is believed that Jeremiah was returned to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar when that king captured Egypt, after the prophet had been carried there unwillingly.
The Books fall into three distinct parts: 1) The reign of Solomon, 1Ki 1:1 to 1Ki 11:43; 1 Kings 2) reigns of the contemporary kings of Israel and Judah 1Ki 12:1 – 2Ki 17:41; 2 Kings 3) reigns of the Judaic kings to the captivity of Babylon, 2Ki 18:1 to 2Ki 25:30. The first period ends with the death of Solomon and the division of the kingdom; the second period ends with the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom, Israel; the third period ends with the fall of Judah to Babylon, with a postscript to the release of King Jehoiachin in Babylon. Chronologically the Books span a period of more than four hundred years, about 972-560 B. C.
Author’s Note: The parallel sections of Kings and Chronicles will be treated jointly in the following commentary. The Introduction to Chronicles and a treatment of other portions will be found at the end of this section.
First Kings – Chapter 1
David’s Illness, verses 1-4
First Kings opens with the information that David had become old and decrepit.
Actually the record shows that he was about seventy years old at his death, an age not thought of even then as extremely. old. However, seventy years may well have been fairly aged for most persons of the times.
Others are mentioned who lived to be much older, but David had been through many hardships and sorrows. He had seen much of life in seventy years, and it had not always been good to him.
His ailment seems to be one that is common in the aged, even to present times.
David’s circulation was poor and his body remained cold. The remedy proposed was likely one not uncommon for the times. It was not of the immoral nature which might suggest itself to a modern reader. A warm, healthy young body against that of the king would be very comforting, and to nourish a young woman in his bosom was perhaps less suggestive than to have so used a young boy.
So they found a very beautiful girl, from Shunem, in the tribe of Issachar, near the head of the Valley of Jezreel. Her name was Abishag, and she fulfilled her task well. She treated the king tenderly, nursing and waiting upon him.
She became a part of his harem, but he never violated her, or used her as a concubine. It appears that she was actually no more than his nurse.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
SOLOMON AND THE SACRED TEMPLE
1 Kings 1-11.
IN previous discussions, we have called attention to the chronology of the Old Testament, and have shown that the Books are correctly placed from the standpoint of history. Certainly the Books of the Kings belong where found in the Sacred Canon. David has held the field of view in the Books of Samuel, and I Kings opens with a record of his age, infirmity and approaching death.
The Books of Biblical history make up, for the most part, an unbroken series. The events reported as attending the kings death are at once natural, in keeping with the times and customs of that far-off century. The scramble between the sons as to succession in office and the inheritance of riches and honor, are easily believable because they belong to every century, and abate not. The methods of Adonijah, amounting to merely a repetition of Absoloms abortive attempt, reveal the mental inability and moral and political incapacity of that ambitious boy. His neglect to take Nathan, the Prophet, into counsel, or to seek advice from Benaiah and other mighty men, or even regard his brother Solomons claims, reveal the fact that he knew himself to be indulging a political plot that could succeed only in shadows and secrecy.
The opening chapter makes clear the fact that the Prophet of God is a capital statesman, for it was Nathan who brought this whole matter to the attention of Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon; and through her, reached the king and settled the question, and seated Bathshebas son on the throne.
An interesting study is excited by those verses in this same first chapter which reveal two things; first, that the dying man is far more interested in things eternal than in things temporal (1kings 1:29); more deeply concerned in permanent Israel than in his own passing throne (1 Kings 1:30); more alive to the moral and spiritual interests of his country than to its material and political supremacy; and in proportion to that interest, anxious to be succeeded in office by the one man to whom he could intrust both Gods people and Gods truth (1Ki 2:2 fol.).
With this introduction, we come naturally to three themes that compass somewhat clearly the chapters of our text: Solomons Succession to the Throne; Solomons Greatest Single Achievement; The Secrets of Solomons Signal Failure.
SOLOMONS SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE
Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father; and his kingdom was established greatly (1Ki 2:12).
In coming to this office, he came as his fathers favorite. In the establishment of Israel, Isaac desired the line through Esau, and Rebecca contrived to secure it through her favorite, Jacob; but in this instance, father and mother agree as to the son who shall stand in the fathers stead. It is not at all likely that this choice was wholly a result of the certain influence exerted over the king by the beautiful Bathsheba. That impulse was doubtless present, but the controlling sentiment of the matter rested upon a firmer foundation. A father knows his own children. He knows their weaknesses and their strength; their abilities and their disabilities; their traits of dependableness and their habits of deceit. As between Adonijah and Solomon, David did not need to debate. From the days when as infants they lay in his arms until now, he had studied them, and doubtless often with this very hour in view; and his judgment was already made and had been communicated to both Bathsheba and the Prophet. It is difficult for children to imagine that their parents understand them, properly estimate them, justly judge them; but practically every family furnishes a positive proof that the best judges of character are the very people who have sought to control conduct and direct endeavor. The after history of Solomon is not all the Christian reader could wish. Had David lived on for two-score more years, feeble, infirm, having surrendered the reigns of rule into Solomons hands, he would have seen much come to pass that would have grieved his aged soul; but in spite of all that, he still would have gone to his grave, convinced beyond debate that Adonijah would have fallen shorter still, and Israels interests suffered more deeply in his hands.
These facts are the basis of a second reason why the rulership went to Solomon.
He was the Lords chosen. Men easily make mistakes in judging their fellows. Fathers even fall short in truly estimating the worth or worthlessness of their own, but God, who looketh on the heart rather than on the outward appearance, and who knows what is in man, as against what man imagines and announces himself to be, makes no such mistake. With the discernment of an infinite wisdom, Jehovah saw in Solomon mental traits, moral convictions, spiritual aspirations, that led Him, as He was led in the case of David, the father, to elect this man from among many sons.
The reaction in my mind, on reading the first chapters of I Kings, was a revolt. In my haste I came near questioning the wisdom of God to set such a man as Solomon on the throne, or to lend His approval to his methods of government. That grew out of the slaughters recorded in chapter 2. My soul sickened when he sent his servant Benaiah to slay his brother, and he fell upon him that he died (1Ki 2:25); when Joab was taken from the horns of the altar and slain without mercy (1Ki 2:30-34); when Shimei perished at Benaiahs hands and by the kings command (1Ki 2:39-41), I confess I came to the phrase, And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon, with a sickening sense, asking myself, Can one cement the foundations of a true throne with the blood of his brothers, and be under a Divine benediction?
But I am glad for further study. Our judgments are often immature; our speech is often hasty, and when we take issue with the Divine will, our way is always mistaken. I had overlooked for the time that each of these men had not only courted death, but practically compelled it, and had compelled it by the violation of the Law of the Lord. For instance, the one of them to whom the readers sympathy goes out most quickly is Joab, the warrior, the man who had once favored David and fought for him; but alas, when one reviews the history of Joab, he consents to the justice of his fate. How many he had slain, and with what perfidy he had performed these slaughters! Guile had been his brutal instrument. He took Abner aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smote him there under the fifth rib, that he died (2Sa 3:27). He concealed his sword while whispering in Amasas ear and yet ripped him until his bowels fell to the ground (2Sa 20:10). The Law of the Lord was, If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from Mine altar, that he may die (Exo 21:14); and the Law of the Lord is living still and Solomons servant is merely executing the same.
Slaughter is horrible; battle and death wound and offend our spirits; but battle and death and slaughter are not, when all are combined, the undermining factors of civilization, the fiends of successful rebellion against all moral worth, that disregard of Divine law and disobedience to the same, surely effect. It is important, I grant you, that men shall live their natural days, but far more important is it that the law of God shall live. In the last analysis, death is the natural incident of disobedience, so that the brutal features of Solomons reign are features intended to end the shedding of blood. It was a war against war; it was a just judgment against unjust judgments; it was a capital punishment of most capital crimes.
Solomon also became the choice of the people.
And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.
And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them (1Ki 1:39-40).
It is a great sequence when the public acclaims the will of the Lord. The government chosen of God and clearly accepted by the people has magnificent promise, and holds momentous prospects. It is fairly evident from the whole text that Solomon had those personal traits that rendered Absalom popular in his daythe traits of physical beauty and prowess; but in Solomons case, intellectual acumen and even a certain spiritual power added to his acceptance with the people. It may be true that the designing politician easily deceives the public and often experiences undeserved popularity; but few uninspired sentences are more true than Abraham Lincolns, You cannot fool all the people all of the time.
We are not enamored of the notion of the old Latin proverb, Vox populi, vox Dei, for it is a rule that has more exceptions than applications! But on the other hand, the final judgment of man is compelled to conform to the judgment of God, for what God sees and understands by His infinite wisdom becomes increasingly evident by the action that makes history; and sooner or later the voice of the people will second the voice of God.
Victory ought to be comparatively easy for a young man entering upon an important office with the backing of a kingly father, an infinite Lord and the will of the people. At many points Solomon witnessed success; his rule was long continued; his material prosperity became the amazement of the age; his political powers rapidly increased, while his mental and spiritual perceptions were the envy of kings and queens.
I think, however, it is well to dwell upon
SOLOMONS GREATEST SINGLE ACHIEVEMENT
This was not his alliance with Pharaoh, nor his marriage into the kings house, nor the political supremacy to which he attained, nor the luxurious living in which he indulged himself, nor the splendors of his court! On the other hand, it was the creation of the temple of God. That achievement is as easily linked up, however, with some facts of his mental and spiritual existence as it is with his political and religious supremacy.
He laid for lifes fabric a true foundation. When God appeared to him in Gibeon in a dream at night, and said, Ask what I shall give thee (1Ki 3:5), the answer revealed the soul of the youth. Give * * Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad (1Ki 3:9). A prayer like that could result only in the Divine favor; yea, even in the Divine affection. So far as the record goes, the boy Solomon had been a beautiful lad, his life clean, his conduct upright, his character above reproach; and now to have such a prayer emanate from his lips invites both human and Divine love. We are compelled to think that the principles which compel Gods love are not wholly different from those which control human affection. When the rich young ruler, white-souled, intellectually accomplished, spiritually enthusiastic, fell at the feet of Jesus to inquire what good thing he could do to inherit eternal life, Christ looked upon him to love him. It may be true that by the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God; but it is not true that God disregards the deeds of the Law, looks with contempt or indifference upon high human conduct, takes no vital concern in beautiful character. The whole Scripture seems to clearly intimate that upright conduct linked with spiritual expression is lovely in the sight of God.
Neither the Bible nor Spirit-instructed men imagine, with the author of a certain University textbook, that the human intellect is merely a brute mind greatly developed, nor do they hold with another author, compulsory upon students study in some institutions, that the soul is accounted for by the development of the social in brute life.
On the contrary, the Bible teaches that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, including intellect and spirit, his reasoning powers and his capability of receiving revelation.
If Solomon lived now and was a student in certain departments of the University, they would be teaching him that the only possible way of having wisdom is to evolve the ape intellectuality to a higher plane; but suffering the misfortune of living and dying before Darwins day, the great soul of the worlds wisest man knew no better than to look upward instead of downward for such acquisition, and pray, Give * * Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad (1Ki 3:9).
There are some of us who are perfectly willing to be regarded as belonged to Mediaeval times, if Mediaevalism takes the Scripture against the speculation of man and looks above for true wisdom instead of back, beneath, or below. If I could have my personal choice for every child born into my home, concerning the whole matter of education, I would rather have him or her begin the real battle of life begging for such a blessing and believing that God is capable of granting it, than to have him made familiar with all the sophistries and speculations of those modern text-books that turn men to believing that they are a big improvement on brute ancestors, and boasting the same. One thing is fairly clear, namely, that men who believe God and build life according to the laws of His Book, are the simple men of the centuries to which they belong, and become the inspiring examples to children born of later days.
He built not for self alone, but he remembered God. It is not difficult to believe, if one follows the personal history of this potentate, that his steps are determined by definite objectives. When all Israel had come under his sway, he appointed twelve officers, which provided victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a year made provision (1Ki 4:7). In other words, he was a man who organized government and who organized finances, and witnessed the fruits of his organization in both fields by bringing the entire people to subjection and creating a palace of such splendor and attendants as the world has seldom seen. Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen (1Ki 4:26), sound almost as extravagant as the years of Methuselahs life, and yet there is far less doubt of the latter than of the former. That he was not a mere indolent, daddled in the lap of a daily luxury wrung from unwilling taxpayers, is everywhere apparent. He was a man among men, a prince among thinkers, a king among courtiers. His fame was in all the nations. He spake 3,000 proverbs; he wrote 1,005 songs; he made all nature to contribute in illustration, and he compelled admiration from all the kings of the earth (1Ki 4:29-34). His banqueting halls assembled the worlds elite, his wisdom astonished the worlds wise.
His alliance with King Hiram, however, was made, not that he might further extend his kingly power, nor that he might exercise a wider world influence, but in the interest of A TEMPLE OF GOD. In the realms of Hiram were the cedars of Lebanon coveted for that sanctuary. In the able-bodied men of his own kingdom were the thousands he proposed to set at the task. He laid upon these competent builders a tax of time, tithing every three months, and builders in wood and stone wrought together that the temple might rise. And what a temple it was!
That sanctuary, glorious as is this description, requires many another line to do it justice. 2 Chronicles 3, 4 tells of the same great subject. The tabernacle was the prophecy of it, and the New Jerusalem to be let down from Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, is the final substance of which this was the symbol. It arose without sound of a hammer; it excelled all the sanctuaries that the world had ever seen or has yet seen; its appointments were the most expensive and yet intended in every case to turn the mind to God, to teach the heart to pray, the feet to walk in the path of the just, and the tongue to sing.
There are some extravagances that are justified. It pays to put great sacrifice into the proper education of your child, for when the preparation days are over, life is to follow; and it pays to put thousands of dollars into a sanctuary, because when the men who sacrificed to erect it sleep in the dust, the sanctuary will live and pour upon the world streams of sacred influence.
There is, however, in the first verse of the 7th chapter a significant remark, But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house. In other words, while he built for himself, he at the same time and on a vaster scale, built for God. There are people who think when they build for themselves that is all they can do. Gods house must wait until mine is finished! Divinely sacred obligations must be delayed until the domestic and secular are discharged. God cannot receive a gift until the grocer is fully paid. How strangely men reason! How quickly they forget revelation. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness?. It would be an interesting thing to investigate history to find whether Israel was impoverished by the erection of the Temple, or whether she was not enriched instead, to discover whether those were days of financial reverses or the one period of Israels material prosperity.
The reign of Solomon remains forever glorious and stands as a symbol of all material success. Sacrifices for the sanctuary do not impoverishthey enrich; they do not bleedthey bless! The only man who suffers when the sanctuary is going up is the man who withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
But an equally significant thing is found in another statement from this Scripture.
Solomon knew that an elegant Temple was inadequate without God. One no sooner reads, So was ended all the work that king Solomon made for the house of the Lord (1Ki 7:51), than he finds the same king exercising some of the wisdom that had come in answer to his prayer. That wisdom voiced itself in the decision to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. That ark of the covenant represented the Divine Presence and the expression of the Divine favor. Until it came into the Temple, the Temple itself, with all its splendid proportions and appointments, was destitute of spiritual power. There is no advantage resident in an elegant house called a church of God. There are many fanes that are cold, ceremonious, spiritually dead. In all their splendid precincts there is not the sound of an angels wing, nor the sense of a spiritual presence. The most pathetic sight in the world is the stately sanctuary out of which God has gone, or into which He has never come.
I have seen, in the Old World, cathedrals that were merely show-houses open to the eyes of American visitors; but few folk ever gathered in their spacious halls, and even those who came had not sufficient spiritual life to start one sleepy rivulet of praise, and the consequence was that a vested choir of boys were salaried to provide a substitute. They are elegant sarcophagi, enshrining the dead forms of a former faith; and we rehearse all of this to remind those who worship in this house of God and by whose splendid and heroic sacrifices these buildings are rising at this city centerhouses better adapted to Divine worship than any I have ever seen besidethat they could and would become mausoleums and empty ones at that, if out of them we lost God, or into them we failed to bring the ark of the covenant with its Shekinah glory, symbol of the Presence of God, and its typical content, Aarons rod that budded, sign of life coming out of death; the pot of manna, type of the bread from Heaven, and the tables of the Law, a faithful transcription of the Divine Word.
I say it solemnly and with the profoundest conviction that these buildings will mean to us and to our children and to our city and country and to the world, exactly as much as may be measured by the Divine presence in them, and the emanation of the Word of God from them. They are not an end in themselves, but a medium instead; and the medium of a message Divine. If God be here, and here His Word be preached and believed and practised, then the untold ages will unfold the influences of this sanctuary and the nations of the world will feel it.
SOLOMONS SECRETS OF SIGNAL FAILURE
The Bible is unique in that it as faithfully presents the secrets of failure as it does those of achievement. Its photographic effects reveal blemishes as surely as beauty, and make as evident the sins of men as they make clear the sanctity of God. Through these same chapters there runs an undertone, a minor key, a note set to sobs, and Solomon is the subject of this as well.
He started wrong by a compromise of his convictions. Life is a composite! Conduct is paradoxical! Character itself is unnatural compromise! The good and bad mix together. Successes and failures are sometimes so interwoven that the lesser is not seen in the light of the greater.
In the 3rd chapter we read, And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaohs daughter (1Ki 3:1). That is a significant step. Its original objective may have been political, but politics and morals cannot be divorced; life and religion cannot be separated. We are told that Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, but there must be added, only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places (1Ki 3:3). How significant! An unholy alliance results in disloyalty to the Divinest, and in partial departure from the plain Word of God. Thereby a question is raised, Which of these elements will conquer at last? As Joseph Parker says: There may be but a semi-colon between that one path of life and the other in the verbal record of the two, and yet that semi-colon is finally swelled to an infinity of distance and only time will tell which triumphed the statutes of the Lord or the incense of idolatry. When one leaves the incense of idolatry for the statutes of the Lord, he faces away from the morning twilight to a perfect day; but when one leaves the statutes of the Lord for the incense in high places, he is faced from the evening twilight toward utter and increasing darkness.
There is a wonderful psychology in one of Davids prayers, Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression (Psa 19:12-13). There is no doubt whatever that that very utterance describes the intimate and progressive relation between a mere error in judgment or thought, and that final sin described as the great transgression or the iniquity unpardonable.
A second secret of his failure was pride in culture and possessions. His wisdom went on exhibit (1Ki 4:34). The kings and queens of the earth came to Jerusalem (1 Kings 10), not merely to study and admire the material possessions of King Solomon, but to sit under his scintillating genius, give audience to his matchless moral maxims known as proverbs and applaud his superior and almost unnumbered songs. The most insidious temptations of modern times take those two identical forms, the exhibit of wisdom on the one side, and of wealth on the other. It is a serious question now which pride is the more arrogant, that of culture or of wealth. Through the first, men reject God and set themselves above the stars. Through the second, men neglect God and degrade themselves below demons.
Criticism is easy and men can be found who pass unsparing censure upon Solomon, but when we see the millions going down before one or the other of these temptations, why should we be surprised that Solomons feet slid under the shove of both?
Education is a great thing, but when education brings a man to be wise above what is written, it converts him into a cultured fool.
Material wealth has its advantages, but when riches result in luxuries that pander only to lust, then indeed they prove themselves the root of all evil.
I shall not stop now to elaborate on the dedication of the Temple, to remark upon the prayers made in the place, and the promises of God uttered for its good. The service of dedication, in which we now engage together, affords us further opportunity for such study.
But I want to conclude by calling your attention to the contents of the 11th chapter. It might be named The Eclipse of Solomons Sun!
Through unholy alliances he lost out with God. The chapter not only records his love of many strange women, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites, etc., but as one author has said, lays emphasis upon the fact that they were strange women, not in the ordinary sense of scarlet, but in the Bible sense, strangers to God and His Word. The alliance was not so much a personal one, with wives and concubines, as it was an irreligious one with false systems.
The Lord had warned the Children of Israel concerning the nations about, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods; and yet it is written, Solomon clave unto these in love; and again, his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel. No wonder it was said, And the Lord was angry with Solomon, nor yet further theatened concerning his kingdom, I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.
Whatever the alliance is that turns one from God and His Word, that is unholy, and in the end, destined to destroy.
The 11th chapter of I Kings is pathetic in that it records the down-going of Solomon. He not only worshipped at false shrines but even consented to construct the same (1Ki 11:7). To turn from God is eventually to turn against God. To admit a false shrine into your life is to cease from worship at the true one, and who will tell the final result? With Solomon the foundations crumbled. His religion wrong, his kingdom rent; his religion wrong, his friends turned to enemies, and his lovers sought his life, and when the day broke that personal, political, fraternal and domestic disaster swept over his soul, wave upon wave, it was the same day in which he must prepare to meet his God, for the record concludes, And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead (1Ki 11:43).
It will forever remain a question as to what that sleep meant for the soul of the matchless man. Theologians will always dispute whether he was saved or lost and whether he went to his grave in calm confidence or with cringing and justifiable fear.
But human judgment is inadequate, superficial, even censorious. How blessed the circumstance that Divine judgment is after another manner! If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Personally, I believe that Solomon was a saved man, whose weaknesses, incidental to the flesh, never wholly eclipsed his faith in God, and whose disloyal acts were Divinely judged, and sentence executed even while he lived, whose soul was saved; yet so as by fire, and many of whose works were burned even before his very eyes. The pathos of his death is not in the danger that for him to be dead is to be in hell. It is in the failure to so fight the battle of life as to come to a victorious close, to a triumphant entry, to the shout of a Paul, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day (2Ti 4:7-8).
It is worth an eternal contest against the adversary and his multiplied forms of temptation, to be able to come to the last hour as Dwight L. Moody met the last enemy, when, silencing his daughters prayers, he said, No, no, Emma; dont ask that. The earth is receding; the heavens are opening; God is calling. I am going!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
SCENES IN THE CLOSING CAREER OF A GREAT KING
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
The opening word, now, is and, the cop. indicating the unbroken connexion of this book with a prior record. Originally the books of Kings were a continuation of those of Samuel, and constituted one whole narrative, styled respectively the First, Second, Third and Fourth Books of Kings; and the four books bear a common heading in the LXX. and Vulgate.
1Ki. 1:1. David was oldIn his seventieth year (compare 1Ki. 2:11 with 2Sa. 5:4; 2Sa. 5:6).
1Ki. 1:2. Get heatAn established medical fact that the aged and sickly may thus derive vital warmth from the young and healthy. Josephus calls these servants who advised this course physicians (Ant. vii. 14, 3).
1Ki. 1:3. ShunemiteShunem, five miles south of Tabor, on the table-land of Esdraelon.
HOMILETICS OF 1Ki. 1:1-4
THE WINTER OF LIFE
I. Overtakes men in the highest rank. Now King David was old and stricken in years. Even the monarch is not exempt from the paralysing influence of lifes winter. David had just escaped from the terrible plague which had smitten fatally 70,000 of his subjects, only to waste away more gradually under the remorseless ravages of time, from which there is no escape but in death. If men escape one peril it is only to meet another. The holiest soul dwells not in an impregnable fort. The aged king had projected a great workthe building of the templeand made vast preparations for it. He was not permitted to finish it. As the frosts of winter arrest the growth and development of the most magnificent tree, so the progress of lifes bleak winter interrupts the work of the most gifted.
II. Chills the vital sources of the naturally robust. And they covered him with clothes, and he gat no heat. As a youth, David was noted for beauty and physical strengthwas ruddy and of a fair countenance. He scarcely knew the limit of his power. He hesitated not to attack and slay a lion and a bearwas the victor of Goliaththe terror of the Philistinesthe hero of a hundred fights. But, as the shadows of the grave creep into the midst of the gayest scenes of our mortal life, so, in the mid-career of those exploits which raised him into fame, there were admonitory blasts of the coming of that winter which must ere long freeze the vital energies at their source. Exposure, hardship, suffering and sorrow, wore down a constitution naturally robust; and now, in his 0th yeara period when many are still vigorousDavid was greatly enfeebled. He was also suffering from a wasting disease to which frequent allusion is made in the Psalms. Coverings and garments can only preserve and accumulate the heat actually existing in the body, but cannot supply that which is gone. An affecting picture of the pitiable weakness of a once powerful and victorious monarch! Let not the mighty man glory in his might.
III. Is but temporarily alleviated by the best considered human devices. The cherishing of Abishag was
1. Advised by the court physicians. An expedient not unusual in similar cases, when internal cordials failed, and with the limited skill of the faculty in the use of warmth-creating potions.
2. Was innocent. Suggested for no other than purely medical reasons. In those days, when polygamy was not forbidden by the Jewish law, and when perverted views as to the relation of the sexes were so prevalent, Abishag was recognized as Davids wife. She ministered to him also as a nurse. Sophocles lauded old age as a deliverance from the tyranny of the passions, as an escape from some furious and savage master.
3. Suspended only for a brief season the inevitable progress of decay. Medical skill is no more efficacious for the monarch than for the humblest subject. David died within the year. A moment comes in the winter of life when the warm pulse is stilled, and the once stalwart frame is locked in the icy embrace of death.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
I. THE CONSPIRACY OF ADONIJAH 1:110
Davids final years were full of turmoil and tribulation and even as he lay critically ill and at the point of death he was yet to experience one last heartbreak. His disgruntled eldest son, Adonijah, tried to take advantage of Davids condition and usurp the throne. By the way of background the author first describes (1) the decrepitude of David (1Ki. 1:1-4); and then (2) the designs of Adonijah (1Ki. 1:5-10).
A. DAVIDS DECREPITUDE 1:14
TRANSLATION
(1) Now King David was old, advanced in years; and they covered him with covers, but he could not make himself warm. (2) Therefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a maiden who is a virgin and let her stand before the king, and be his intimate companion; and let her lie in your bosom, that my lord the king may be warm. (3) So they sought for a fair maiden in all the borders of Israel, and they found Abishag the Shunammite, and they brought her to the king. (4) The maiden was exceedingly fair, and she became an intimate companion to the king, and she ministered to him; but the king knew her not.
COMMENTS
At the outset two points of a somewhat technical nature need to be made. The chapter is introduced with the word now which renders the Hebrew particle vav. While this particle usually has a connecting force, it is frequently used at the beginning of a book where there is no connection whatever with any earlier writing (as in Esther, Ezekiel, Jonah, etc.). Therefore, one cannot argue on the basis of this particle that the author of Kings considered his work a continuation of preceding history (as Rawlinson argues) or that he has lifted this material from a writing containing the earlier history of David (as Keil argues). The second point concerns the title king which is given to David in this chapter. While this title is used infrequently in Samuel, it is characteristic of the author of Kings.
The Book of Kings opens with a sad scene. David the mighty hero of the books of Samuel has succumbed to the vicissitudes of his life and reign. He is an old man stricken in years (lit., entered into days). Since David began to reign when he was thirty years old, and since he ruled forty years (2Sa. 5:4), he must have been seventy years of age at this time.[74] The hardships of his youth, the wounds of battle, the sorrows of his later years, and perhaps disease as well have all taken their toll. Even though blankets were piled upon him, the old king was not able to maintain normal body temperature (1Ki. 1:1).
[74] Of the kings of Judah only David, Solomon and Manasseh exceeded sixty years of age.
As a solution to the kings desperate physical condition, the court servantsperhaps the royal physicians[75]suggested that a young virgin (lit., a maiden, a virgin) be secured to stand before the king, i.e., to become his servant. She was to be young so that her body might provide warmth to the ailing monarch; a virgin, as befitted a king. She was to become a companion (sekhenet) to the king, i.e., one who stands in intimate relationship with another.[76] Suggested in this Hebrew word is the idea that the maiden would become a concubine to the king (1Ki. 1:2).[77]
[75] Josephus (Ant. VIII, 19.3) regarded the advice to procure a maiden as a medical prescription.
[76] Slotki, SBB. p. 1.
[77] While the evidence falls short of being conclusive, in the light of Solomons violent response to Adonijahs request to marry Abishag it seems best to regard her as a member of the royal harem. Cf. Gray, QTL, p. 76.
With Davids consent, a search was conducted throughout the kingdom for a suitable maiden. Finally in the tribe of Issachar, the town of Shunem,[78] the royal committee found a girl named Abishag who met all the qualifications (1Ki. 1:3). She was very fair (lit., fair to exceeding), and apparently willing to become the intimate companion to the decrepit king. Abishag ministered unto the physical needs of David, but the king knew her not (v.4). This latter remark serves the dual purpose of indicating the wane of Davids physical faculties[79] and the legal grounds upon which Adonijah would dare to request the hand of this maiden after Davids death (1Ki. 2:17).
[78] Shunem is the modern Arab town of Sulem, located about seven miles from Nazareth. Another Shunammite woman appears in 2Ki. 4:8.
[79] Snaith (IB, pp. 1920) feels that the Israelite king, like his Canaanite counterpart, had to prove his sexual potency or lose his right to govern. According to this theory, Abishag was procured in order to excite David sexually. Wilson (WBC p. 241) has fol lowed Snaith in this interpretation for which there is not the slightest warrant in the text. While the phrase lie in your bosom often refers to sexual intimacy, the meaning is here modified by the primary purpose of the suggested remedy, viz., the supplying of vital body heat by physical contact. See Matheney and Honeycutt, BC, p. 151.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) Now king David.Now is the simple illative conjunction and, found at the beginning of all the historical books (Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, &c.). It marks the general conception of the unity of the whole history, but implies nothing of special connection of time or authorship with the books of Samuel. In fact, although these books are in some sense the continuation of the former, yet the narrative is hardly continuous. The history passes at once to the closing scene of Davids life, leaving a comparative blank in the period succeeding the restoration after the defeat of Absaloma blank which is partly filled up in the later books (1 Chronicles 22-29).
Stricken in yearsabout seventy years old. Since clothes mean bed-clothes, the meaning is that the King was now too feeble to rise from his bed. His life began its responsibilities early; it had been hard and trying; and, as the history shows, not wholly free from self-indulgence. Hence, at no excessive age, its complete decrepitude.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
DAVID’S OLD AGE, 1Ki 1:1-4.
In these introductory verses the writer prepares the way for the history that follows. The age and infirmity of David account for the ease with which Adonijah seems to usurp royal powers, and our introduction here to the fair Abishag prepares us for subsequent events in Adonijah’s career. 1Ki 2:12-25.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. David was old As he was thirty years old when he began to reign, and reigned forty years, (2Sa 5:4,) he must now have been in his seventieth year.
Stricken in years Literally, as the margin, entered into days; far gone in days, having reached an advanced period of life.
Clothes Probably bedclothes are to be understood; coverlets.
He gat no heat Literally, there was no heat to him. Abundance of clothes could not restore animal heat to a decrepit system. The older expositors assign various causes for this lack of animal heat: as, an attack of some disease of a chilling nature; the loss of much blood by war and other ways; or the result of excessive labours in earlier life. But the loss of animal warmth is a common experience of the old age of persons who have spent a life of vicissitudes and anxious toils.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
David’s Condition In Old Age ( 1Ki 1:1-4 ).
The importance of this initial passage lies in the fact, firstly that it indicates the king’s poor state of health, and secondly that it introduces Abishag who will play an important part in what follows. It makes clear exactly what her position was. She was there mainly to keep the king warm, and to look after him, but did not have sexual relations with him. She was, however, seen as his concubine (common wife) as is evident from 1Ki 2:22. She would probably not have been expected to take up the position otherwise, for her later position would have been untenable.
Analysis.
a
b For which reason his servants said to him, “Let there be sought for my lord the king a young woman, and let her stand before the king, and cherish him” (1Ki 1:2 a).
c “And let her lie in your bosom, that my lord the king may obtain warmth” (1Ki 1:2 b).
b So they sought for a beautiful young maiden throughout all the borders of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king (1Ki 1:3).
a And the damsel was very beautiful, and she cherished the king, and ministered to him, but the king knew her not (had no sexual relations with her) (1Ki 1:4).
Note that in ‘a’ David needed to be ‘cherished’ (made warm), and in the parallel Abishag did cherish him. In ‘b’ they stated their intent to seek out a young unmarried woman, and in the parallel they sought her out and that young unmarried woman is described. Centrally in ‘c’ her duties are laid out.
1Ki 1:1
‘ Now king David was old and coming in of days (reaching the end of his life, stricken in years), and they covered him with clothes (or ‘covers, sheets, blankets’), but he generated no warmth.’
The sad state to which David had come is made clear, and while partly due to old age, must surely also have resulted from some illness. For him to have been feeling cold when we consider the heat of the climate must have had some medical condition at the back of it as its cause. He was after all only about seventy years of age. His state, and no doubt his shivering, naturally perturbed his faithful ‘servants’.
1Ki 1:2
‘ For which reason his servants said to him, “Let there be sought for my lord the king a young woman, and let her stand before the king, and cherish him, and let her lie in your bosom, that my lord the king may obtain warmth.’
His ‘servants’ therefore determined to find for him a young woman to lie close to him and warm him. ‘Bethulah’ does not technically mean a virgin, and for that reason often need to be qualified by the phrase ‘and had not known a man’ where virginity is in mind. (Anath, the sister of Baal, was a bethulah, but could by no means be seen as a virgin. She was a fertility goddess. Compare also the ‘virgin daughter of Babylon’ who was also a widow (Isa 47:1; Isa 47:9) and see Joe 1:8). Here no doubt a young unmarried woman is indicated, one who was therefore reputedly a virgin as any reputable young unmarried woman in Israel would be expected to be. Her purpose was to be to be in the king’s presence, to serve his needs, and to lie with him in order to warm him. She was thus more than an attendant. She was a concubine wife.
To ‘obtain warmth’ may well have included the thought of sexual relations if the king wished for it (the Old Testament regularly uses similar euphemisms), but a more physical warmth was undoubtedly the main factor in mind. The king simply could not get warm. This was probably seen as a standard method of keeping the wealthy, who could afford another ‘wife’, warm when they grew old. It is testified to elsewhere, and was experimented with by the famous physician Galen. In fact the poor also no doubt regularly ‘cuddled up’ with other members of the family so as to keep warm on cold nights, while preserving decency. It was only more unusual for kings, for they usually had other means of keeping warm.
“His servants.” This is a term which can have a wide variety of meaning from signifying high court officials, to signifying king’s physicians, personal servants, the common people, or bondslaves, depending on the context All were servants to the king. Here it is probably high court officials who are in mind, although the king’s personal servants may be included.
1Ki 1:3
‘ So they sought for a beautiful young maiden throughout all the borders of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king.’
They sought throughout the kingdom for a suitable beautiful young woman, and chose a Shunammite named Abishag. There is no indication anywhere that she was connected with the Shunammite in the Song of Solomon, but the parallel may suggest that the Shunammites were well known for their beauty, as well as being the kind who could keep a king warm. Shunem was eleven kilometres (seven miles) south east of Nazareth in the territory of Issachar.
1Ki 1:4
‘ And the damsel was very beautiful, and she cherished the king, and ministered to him, but the king knew her not (had no sexual relations with her).’
Note how the beauty of the young woman is stressed, which appears to be in contrast to the fact that ‘the king knew her not’ (had no sexual relations with her). It certainly stresses how ill the king was, and some have suggested that it was a virility test in order to indicate his state of health. In other countries failure in such a test could result in the king being deposed, or replaced by a regent, but there is no hint of that in this case. There is no suggestion that Solomon was crowned because David had failed a virility test. He was crowned in order to counteract Adonijah’s attempted coup. Thus his lack of sexual activity was simply an indication of his failing condition. But it does possibly explain why Adonijah saw Abishag as still available to be his wife on the grounds that David had not had sexual relations with her (although David’s sons do not appear to have been too fussy about such things).
The main importance of all this was firstly in order to emphasise the king’s poor health, and secondly in order to prepare for Abishag’s part in what was coming. But it is also a reminder to us that even in such a situation God looks after His own servants in His own way and makes provision for each of them according to their need.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
SECTION 1. The Last Days Of David (1:1-2:12).
The ‘and’ with which the book begins is clearly intended to link the book to the earlier books. The writer wanted it to be seen that he was carrying on the sacred history of YHWH. And he commenced his narrative by describing the events which established the kingship of Solomon, the one whom God especially loved (2Sa 12:24-25), as David’s life was coming to its close. But there is no direct continuation of any previous incident in Samuel. The ‘and’ is very general. What he was about to describe were the necessary events that would lead up to Solomon’s coronation. There are no real grounds for suggesting that 2 Samuel 11-20 were specifically a ‘succession narrative’ which is being rounded off here, even though what they describe may possibly, at least theoretically, have affected the succession. For the writer of Samuel the stories of Amnon and Absalom had more to do with the consequences of David’s gross sins being reflected in his sons than with explaining a succession which was already clear in his mind, although undoubtedly any death of a king’s son would appear to some extent to affect the succession. But the chapters certainly do not read like a succession narrative might be expected to read, while they do very much read like a judgment on David’s sins, and in fact the Book of Samuel almost certainly saw Solomon as YHWH’s appointed heir from the time of his birth, something which comes out from 2Sa 7:12 with 2Sa 12:24-25. YHWH could have given no broader hint to David, as David (and probably Absalom and Adonijah) recognised. (A succession narrative may, of course, have been one of his sources, but if so he has carefully selected his material).
Analysis.
a
b Adonijah’s Attempt To Seize The Kingship (1Ki 1:5-28).
c David Arranges For The Crowning Of Solomon (1Ki 1:29-40).
b The Conspirators Disperse And Adonijah Obtains Mercy (1Ki 1:41-53).
a David’s Final Dying Exhortation (1Ki 2:1-12).
Note that in ‘a’ David is clearly dying, and in the parallel we have hid dying exhortation. In ‘b’ Adonijah seeks to seize the kingship, and in the parallel he obtains mercy from the true king. Centrally in ‘c’ we have the crowning of YHWH’s chosen king.
Chapter 1.
The chapter begins with the delineation of the king’s sad situation, and what was done about it, and continues by describing Adonijah’s attempt at a pre-emptive coup carried out in a way which makes quite clear that he knew in his heart that Solomon was destined to be king, something which resulted in Solomon himself being crowned at David’s command. Adonijah then sought, and was granted, Solomon’s pardon.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Ki 1:1-4 King David’s Old Age The story of King Solomon’s reign begins with an account of David’s old age and test of sexual vigour, which event begins the struggle to find his successor. The Hebrews understood that a man’s sexual vigour was indicative of his physical strength and mental alertness, which were important aspects in ruling a kingdom. David’s failure to pass this text of sexual vigour prompted a struggle for a new king between his sons Adonijah and Solomon.
1Ki 1:5 Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him.
1Ki 1:5
2Sa 3:2-5, “And unto David were sons born in Hebron: and his firstborn was Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; And his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; And the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son of Abital; And the sixth, Ithream, by Eglah David’s wife. These were born to David in Hebron.”
Jos 13:13, “Nevertheless the children of Israel expelled not the Geshurites , nor the Maachathites: but the Geshurites and the Maachathites dwell among the Israelites until this day.”
1Ki 1:6 And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly man; and his mother bare him after Absalom.
1Ki 1:6
1Ki 1:9 And Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle by the stone of Zoheleth, which is by Enrogel, and called all his brethren the king’s sons, and all the men of Judah the king’s servants:
1Ki 1:9
[16] John Gill, 1 Kings, in John Gill’s Expositor, in e-Sword, v. 7.7.7 [CD-ROM] (Franklin, Tennessee: e-Sword, 2000-2005), comments on 1 Kings 1:9.
Jos 15:7, “And the border went up toward Debir from the valley of Achor, and so northward, looking toward Gilgal, that is before the going up to Adummim, which is on the south side of the river: and the border passed toward the waters of Enshemesh, and the goings out thereof were at Enrogel :”
Jos 18:16, “And the border came down to the end of the mountain that lieth before the valley of the son of Hinnom, and which is in the valley of the giants on the north, and descended to the valley of Hinnom, to the side of Jebusi on the south, and descended to Enrogel ,”
2Sa 17:17, “Now Jonathan and Ahimaaz stayed by Enrogel ; for they might not be seen to come into the city: and a wench went and told them; and they went and told king David.”
We can see from the other three references that it was located in the Kidron valley beside Jerusalem. There was a spring of water here, which made it an ideal place to slaughter and wash animals for a meal.
1Ki 1:11 Wherefore Nathan spake unto Bathsheba the mother of Solomon, saying, Hast thou not heard that Adonijah the son of Haggith doth reign, and David our lord knoweth it not?
1Ki 1:11
1Ch 22:8-9, “But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight. Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days.”
The birth and naming of Solomon took place in 2Sa 12:24-25.
2Sa 12:24-25, “And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon: and the LORD loved him. And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, because of the LORD.”
God revealed to King David that Solomon was to succeed him on the throne.
1Ch 28:5-6, “And of all my sons, (for the LORD hath given me many sons,) he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the LORD over Israel. And he said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build my house and my courts: for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father.”
We also see evidence in Pro 4:3-4 that King David favored his son Solomon above his other sons.
Pro 4:3, “For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.”
As he groomed Solomon for the kingship, his other sons appear to be raised without discipline and training. We see immorality in Amnon, murder and rebellion in Absalom, and insurrection and pride in Adonijah. Thus, we see how Solomon was corrected in the smallest of areas, while his brothers remained without discipline in their sins.
1Ki 1:50 And Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.
1Ki 1:50
1Ki 2:28, “Then tidings came to Joab: for Joab had turned after Adonijah, though he turned not after Absalom. And Joab fled unto the tabernacle of the LORD, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Reign of King Solomon over a United Israel (970-930 B.C.) 1Ki 1:1 to 1Ki 11:43 records the story of the reign of King Solomon. The plot of this historical account of Solomon’s life takes a familiar structure as it discusses the establishment, prosperity and failure of his reign as king over Israel.
1. The Establishment of Solomon’ Reign 1Ki 1:1 to 1Ki 2:46
2. The Prosperity of Solomon’s Reign 1Ki 3:1 to 1Ki 10:29
3. The Failure of Solomon’s Reign 1Ki 11:1-40
4. Epilogue 1Ki 11:41-43
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Adonijah Attempts to Seize the Kingdom
v. 1. Now, King David was old and stricken in years, v. 2. Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin, v. 3. So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag, a Shunammite, v. 4. And the damsel was very fair, v. 5. Then Adonijah, the son of Haggith, exalted himself, saying, I will be king. v. 6. And his father had not displeased him at any time, v. 7. And he conferred with Joab, the son of Zeruiah, v. 8. But Zadok, the priest, v. 9. And Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle, v. 10. but Nathan, the prophet, and Benaiah, and the mighty men, v. 11. Wherefore Nathan, v. 12. Now, therefore, come, let me, I pray thee, give thee counsel, that thou mayest save thine own life and the life of thy son Solomon, v. 13. Go and get thee in unto King David, v. 14. Behold, while thou yet talkest there with the king, I also will come in after thee, v. 15. And Bathsheba went in unto the king, into the chamber, v. 16. And Bathsheba bowed and did obeisance unto the king. And the king said, What wouldest thou? v. 17. And she said unto him, My lord, thou swarest by the Lord, thy God, unto thine handmaid, saying, Assuredly Solomon, thy son, shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne.
v. 18. And now, behold, Adonijah reigneth, v. 19. And he hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the sons of the king, v. 20. And thou, my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are upon thee, v. 21. Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers, v. 22. And, lo, while she yet talked with the king, Nathan, the prophet, v. 23. And they told the king, saying, Behold Nathan, the prophet; v. 24. And Nathan said, My lord, O king, hast thou said, Adonijah shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne? v. 25. For he is gone down this day and hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the king’s sons, and the captains of the host, v. 26. But me, even me, thy servant, and Zadok, the priest, and Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, and thy servant Solomon hath he not called. v. 27. Is this thing done by my lord the king, and thou hast not showed it unto thy servant who should sit on the throne of my lord the king after him?
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
THE REVOLT OF ADONIJAH AND THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON.The first chapter of this book is occupied with the accession of Solomon and with the circumstances which preceded, marked, and followed that event. The author, or compiler, evidently considered that his work properly began with the reign of Israel’s third king, and David’s illness and death are only introduced into the narrative because they necessitated a hasty and premature coronation of Solomon, and exercised an important influence on the beginning of his reign (1Ki 2:1-46). In the natural order of events, Solomon would not have succeeded until his father’s death, but Adonijah’s attempt to possess himself of the kingdom required the immediate elevation of Solomon to the throne, and this attempt having been suggested by David’s extreme feebleness, the author is compelled to begin his history with an account of David’s decay and death. In the opening verses, consequently, he introduces us into the chamber of sickness. His materials for this part of the history were no doubt derived from the “Book of Nathan the prophet” (1Ch 29:29; 2Ch 9:29). The date of these events is B.C. 1015.
1Ki 1:1
Now [Hebrews and, but “now” more nearly expresses the import of the original, for has here little or no connecting force. It is commonly found at the beginning of a book (as in Exodus, Leviticus, Joshua, Judges, 2 Samuel, Ruth, etc.), and that where there is no connection whatever with any earlier writing (as in Esther, Ezekiel, Jonah, etc.) It can hardly imply, therefore, “that the historian regards his work as a continuation of a preceding history” (Rawlinson), nor is there any need to suppose that it has been taken from a writing containing the earlier history of David.” Keil] King [Hebrews the king. The frequent use of this title, “King David,” “King Solomon,” “King Asa,” etc; is characteristic of our author. The expression is not unknown in 2 Samuel, but it occurs so rarely as to constitute a distinction (not a link, as Wordsworth) between that book and the Kings.] David was old [yet 2Sa 5:4, 2Sa 5:5, shows that he cannot have been more than seventy. (He was thirty at his accession; his reign at Hebron lasted seven years and a half; at Jerusalem thirty-three years.) Rawlinson says, “the Jews at this time were not long lived.” Certainly, the Jewish kings were not. Only David, Solomon, and Manasses exceeded threescore] and stricken [Hebrews gone, i.e; advanced] in years. [A common expression, only found with as in Gen 18:11; Gen 24:1; Jos 13:1, etc.] And they covered him with clothes [lit. coverings. is used of any covering, whether of the person (Gen 39:12; 1Ki 22:10), or the bed (1Sa 19:13), or even a table (Num 4:6). Indeed, the outer garment was used, at least by the poor, for a covering at night (Exo 22:27). The context (verse 47) shows that bedclothes are intended here] but he gat no heat. [A common experience of the aged. David’s early hardships and later sorrows and anxieties appear to have aged him prematurely. Possibly he was also afflicted with disease.]
1Ki 1:2
Wherefore [Heb. and] his servants [according to Josephus (Antiq. 7.14, 3), his physicians] said unto him, Let there be sought [lit. as marg; “let them seek“] for my lord the king [the singular pronoun is used as representing the servant who was spokesman for the rest] a young virgin [marg; “a damsel, a virgin.“ She must be young, to impart heat, and a virgin, as befitted a king. Though she was recommended as a nurse, they would naturally suppose she might be taken as a concubine] and let her stand before the king [i.e; as servant (Verse 4). Cf. 1Ki 12:6, 1Ki 12:8; Gen 41:46; Dan 1:5; Deu 1:38 (with Jos 1:1) 1Ki 10:8. In the East, servants still stand and wait their masters’ pleasure. Cf. 2Ki 5:25], and let her cherish him [So also the LXX; . But Gesenius, al, “be a companion to him”] and let her lie in thy [or “his,” LXX. , Vulg. sue] bosom [the expression is generally, but not invariably (see 1Ki 3:20; Rth 4:16) used de complexu venereo] that my lord the king may get heat. [This close embrace of youth was an obvious way of imparting animal heat to age (“Color a corpore juvenili ac sane maxime prodest senibus.” Grotius), and was the more favoured because other and internal remedies were not then known. It is recognized by Galen, and is said to have been prescribed by a Jewish physician to the Emperor Frederick Bar-baressa (Bhr). It is stated by Roberts that it is still largely followed in the East.]
1Ki 1:3
So [Heb. and] they sought (cf. Est 2:2), for a fair [this word points to the same conclusion as “virgin” in per. 2] damsel throughout all the coasts [i.e; borders (costa = rib, side). An old writer speaks of the “coasts and quarters of heaven”] of Israel, and found Abishag [= “Father of error.” Names compounded with Ab, “father,” were and are very common in the East. We have, e.g; Ab-salom in Per. 6, and Abi-athar in Per. 7] a [Heb. the] Shunammite [Shunem, a town of Issachar (Jos 19:18), now called Solam, “a flourishing village encompassed by gardens” (Porter), and “in the midst of the finest cornfields in the,world” (Grove), lies on the lower slope of “Little Hermon,” and has before it the wide plain of Esdraelon. Another Shunammite appears in the sacred history (2Ki 4:8)] and brought her to the king.
1Ki 1:4
And the damsel was very fair [lit. ,fair to exceeding] and cherished [see on 1Ki 1:2] the king, and ministered to him; but the king knew her not. [This is mentioned to explain the history of 1Ki 2:13-25. Had it been otherwise, Adonijah could never have presumed to seek her in marriage, and Bathsheba would never have promised her help in his suit. Such an incestuous alliance would not only have been contrary to the law (Le 1Ki 18:8), but abhorrent to all true Israelites (cf. 1Co 5:1). In this fact, which the court knew, and which the nation at large did not knowthey could only suppose that such a “search” for one so exceeding “fair” meant the increase of the seraglioAdonijah found his point d’appui for a second attempt on the throne. The older expositors and some of the modern, notably Wordsworth, assume that Abishag was David’s wife, in the sense of being legally married to him. (Corn. A Lap. discusses the question at considerable length, and with needless pruriency.) But this idea finds no support in Scripture, which represents her as simply an attendant. It is idle to remark, consequently, that “the Jewish law allowed polygamy” (Rawlinson).
1Ki 1:5
Then Adonijah [=”Jehovah is my Lord.” The fourth son of David, and now apparently the eldest surviving. It seems probable that Chileab, or Daniel (1Ch 3:1), David’s second son, died in infancy. For Amnon’s death, see 2Sa 13:29; for Absalom’s, 2Sa 18:14. He must now have been between thirty-three and forty years of age (having been born in Hebron)] the son of Haggith [= “Festive” (Gesen.) “the dancer” (Stanley)] exalted himself, saying [to him self and his confederates], I will be king. [It is not difficult to trace this resolve to its sources. They were
(1) his seniority (1Ki 2:22). It is true there was no “right of primogeniture” in the Hebrew monarchy. “The God King had reserved to Himself the choice of the earthly king” (Keil). David himself was not the eldest, but the youngest brother. At the same time primogeniture, ceteris paribus, would have, and as a matter of fact had, considerable weight. The firstborn had the birthright; can we doubt he would expect the crown, and think it hard if he were passed over? (see 2Ch 21:3).
(2) His personal attractions. Adonijah would think that his beauty and stature (Josephus mentions the latter) marked him out, as similar gifts had done Saul (1Sa 9:2),. for the throne.
(3) He was encouraged in his pretensions, if indeed they were not suggested to him, by others, by Joab, for example (see on 2Sa 18:7).
(4) Possibly love for the beautiful Shunammite and the desire to gain possession of her may have strengthened his resolves. It is noteworthy that he and his beauty are mentioned just after her and hers]: and he prepared [Hebrews made] him chariots and horsemen [rather horses, as in 1Sa 8:11; 1Ki 5:6, Hebrews The former passage almost settles the meaning here. Keil assumes that a mounted escort is meant], and fifty men to run before him [as Absalom before him (2Sa 15:1). Adonijah seems in every way to have imitated Absalom. Josephus says he resembled him in disposition. Chariots, horses, and outrunners are mentioned (1Sa 8:11) as the very first of the king’s insigina. Horses were such natural and familiar tokens of royal state (not being employed in agriculture or for travelling), that the Hebrew kings were warned (Deu 17:16) against multiplying them. Outrunners again, such as the Roman emperors had (called by them cursores), and such as we find at the present day in Egypt, footmen who precede the chariot at full speed, and by their shrill cries clear the way, are admirably calculated to impress the public mind. According to Morier, “runners before the king’s horse in Persia are indispensable to the royal state.” Adonijah hoped by this display of regal pomp to win the suffrages of the people.]
1Ki 1:6
And his father had not displeased [or pained, afflicted. The LXX. has ] him at any time [Hebrews from his days, i.e; all his days, LXX. , Vulg. a diebus ejus. Sein Lebtage (Bhr). Some (Seb. Schmiat, e.g.) would understand since the days of his ambition and display”] in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also [i.e; he also, as well as Absalom, mentioned presently; or, possibly, he as well as Abishag just mentioned. Bhr’s rendering, “Und dazu war er sehr schon,” etc. “And moreover he“ was, etc. will not stand] was a very goodly man [cf. 2Sa 14:25. This accounted in part not only for his ambition, but also for his following]; and his mother [the two last words are not in the original, which simply has “and she bare,“ . There is no need, Thenius, to read, genuit, or with others, . We have a similar ellipsis in Num 26:59. The meaning is quite clear, viz; that Haggith bare Adonijah to David next after Maachah bore him Absalom. This fact is mentioned to show that he was the eldest surviving son; and it shows therefore that seniority counted for something (cf. 1 Kings if. 25)] bare him after Absalom.
1Ki 1:7
And he conferred [Hebrews “his words were“ (2Sa 3:17, Hebrews)] with Joab [Joab’s share in this conspiracy, despite his hitherto unwavering fidelity to David, is easily accounted for. He must have known that he was under David’s displeasure, and he must have feared, too, that he would be an object of dislike and distrust to a successor trained, as Solomon had been, under David’s and Nathan’s immediate influence. He could hardly be unconscious that under a new reign his positionunless he took measures to assure itwould be a precarious one. He resolved, therefore, to secure himself by helping Adonijah to his throne. It is also highly probable that Adonijah’s ambitious character was much more to his liking than that of the pious and pacific Solomon. Adonijah’s physical qualities, again, would no doubt commend him to this rough soldier, who may also have sympathised with him as the eldest son. And there may have been other circumstances (such, e.g; as close personal friendship), of which we know nothing] the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar [in 2Sa 8:17, we read that “Ahimelech son of Abiathar” was priest. Similarly, 1Ch 24:6. An obvious transposition] the priest. [“Abiathar’s defection is still more surprising” than Joab’s (Rawlinson). It is certainly remarkable, when we consider the close ties which subsisted between Abiathar and David, ties which were cemented by the blood of eighty-five persons (1Sa 22:18), and strengthened by the many afflictions which they had shared in common (ibid. 1Ch 24:23 to 1 Kings 28.; 2Sa 15:24-29), that he should have joined in a plot to defeat David’s cherished hopes and plansplans, too, which he must surely have known, had the sanction of religion (1Ch 28:5), and there must have been some powerful motive to account for this. May we not find one in jealousy of Zadok, who had for some time been associated with him in the priesthood, who is generally mentioned first (2Sa 8:17; 2Sa 15:29, 2Sa 15:35, 2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 20:25). as if he were the more important and influential, and whose advancement, after the prophecy of 1Sa 2:33-36, Abiathar could not contemplate without suspicion and dread. Is it not highly probable that among the “words” Adonijah had with him was a promise to restore the priesthood to his family exclusively, as the reward of his allegiance]: and they following Adonijah helped him.
1Ki 1:8
But Zadok the priest [2Sa 8:17. It is generally said to be difficult to explain “how Zadok and Abiathar came both to be “priests at this time.” Rawlinson, who adds that “the best explanation is that Abiathar was the real high priest,” officiating in Zion, while Zadok acted as chief priest at the tabernacle at Gibeon. (Bhr, by a strange oversight, assigns to Zadok the care of the ark on Mount Zion, whereas 1Ch 16:39, distinctly connects his ministry with the tabernacle of witness at Gibeon.) But the precedence (see on 2Sa 8:7) generally assigned to Zadok is hardly consistent with the idea that Abiathar was “the real high priest.” The fact is that a duality of high priests, associated, apparently, on pretty equal terms, was not unknown in Jewish history. The cases of Eleazer and Ithamar, Hophni and Phinehas, Annas and Caiaphas, will occur to all. 2Ki 25:18, speaks of “the chief priest” and “the second priest;” 2Ch 31:10, of the “chief priest of the house of Zadok.” And a dual priesthood would be the more necessary in David’s days, because of the two sanctuaries, Zion and Gibeon. We find, however, from 1Ch 15:11, that Zadok was already priest at the time of the bringing up of the ark. And the true explanation, no doubt, is that Zadok had succeeded some member of his family, in all probability Jehoiada, called in 1Ch 12:27, “the leader of Aaron” (Hebrews), who had certainly been high priest in the time of Saul (1Ch 27:5), and who would hardly be degraded when, with 3700 followers, he joined David at Hebron. On his decease, or cession of orifice, Zadok, who had joined at the same time with a large contingent,was associated with Abiathar in the priest’s office. This dual arrangement, consequently, was the result of David’s having taken over a high priest from Saul, together with the kingdom, when he had Abiathar as priest already,] and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, [i.e; Jehoiada the high priest (1Ch 27:5). Benaiah was consequently a Levite, and of the family of Aaron; set, however, by David, because of his prowess (2Sa 23:20, 2Sa 23:21; 1Ch 11:22) over the bodyguard (2Sa 8:18; 1Ch 18:17). Probably he was a near relative of Zadok.], and Nathan the prophet [a Jewish tradition makes Nathan the eighth son of Jesse. He comes before us 2Sa 7:2, 2Sa 7:3, 2Sa 7:17; 2Sa 12:1-12, 2Sa 12:25] and Shimei [by Ewald identified with Shammah (1Sa 16:9), or Shimeah, David’s brother (2Sa 13:3; 2Sa 21:21). Others suppose him to be the Shimei of 1Ki 4:18. But see note on 1Ki 2:8. Josephus calls Shimei (not Rei, as Bhr states) ], and Rei [this name occurs here only. Ewald would identify him with Raddai (1Ch 2:14), another brother of David, but on very slender grounds], and the mighty men [or heroes. Gesen. “chiefs.” Not the 600 men who formed David’s band in his wanderings (1Sa 25:13; 1Sa 27:2) (Rawlinson), but the 30 (or 37) to whom this name of Gibborim is expressly given, 2Sa 23:8; 1Ch 11:15, 1Ch 11:25; 1Ch 29:24. Comp. 2Ki 10:25, Hebrews] which belonged to David [same expression as in 2Sa 23:8] were not with Adonijah.
1Ki 1:9
And Adonijah slew [or sacrificed, LXX. . It was a sacrificial feast, like Absalom’s, 2Sa 15:12 (where see Speaker’s note). Religious festivity, i.e; was the apparent object of their assembling: religion was invoked, not merely to cloke their designs, but to cement them together] sheep and oxen and fat cattle by [Hebrews with; same expression, 2Sa 20:8] the stone of Zoheleth, [i.e.,”the serpent” (Gesen.) “No satisfactory explanation has been given of this name” (Rawlinson). See Smith’s “Dict. Bible” sub voc; where the various interpretations are given. The stone, which served as “a natural altar for the sacrificial feast,” the spring, which afforded “water for the necessary ablutions,” and the situation with respect to the adjoining city recommended this place as a rendezvous] which is by En-Rogel [Jos 15:7; Jos 18:16; 2Sa 17:17. Perhaps “the spring of the spy.” The Chald; Arab; and Syr. render “the spring, of the fuller”the Orientals wash clothes, etc; by treading (rogel) them. Josephus says it was without the city, in the royal garden ( ). The authorities are divided between the “Fountain of the virgin” (Ain um ed-Deraj), and the “Well of Job” (Bir Eyub.) See the arguments in Bonar’s “Land of Promise,” App. 5; Thomson’s “Land and Book,” vol. 2 p. 528; and Mr. Grove’s Art. in Smith’s “Dict. Bib.” Porter (“Handbook of Palestine “) identifies En-Rogel with Bir Eyub without remark. There is much to be said on either side. The pool of Siloam (“Bib. Museum”) has nothing in its favour] and called all his brethren the king’s sons [including, it would seem, even the elder sons of David and Bathsheba, who would bring up the number to fifteen (1Ch 3:5). They too, if living, would naturally resent the preference of the youngest brother], and all the men of Judah, the king’s servants [“all the Judeans who were serving at court, as being members of his own tribe” (Keil). The fierce jealousy between Ephraim and Judah would almost compel the king to surround himself with soldiers and attendants of the latter tribe. Some of the invited guests, no doubt, like Absalom’s two hundred, “went in their simplicity and knew not anything” (2Sa 15:11).
1Ki 1:10
But Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, and the mighty men, and Solomon his brother, he called not. [It is clear from this verse that Adonijah perfectly understood that he had in Solomon a rival. The intentions and promises (1Ki 1:13) of his father can hardly have been unknown to him. The name “Jedidiah, too, bestowed upon Solomon by Nathan (2Sa 12:25), taken in connexion with the prophecy of Nathan (ibid. 1Ki 7:12; cf. 1Ch 22:9, 1Ch 22:10), must have proved to him that Solomon was marked out for David’s successor. He seems to have been well aware also who were Solomon’s supporters. To some of them he may have made indirect overtures.
The historian having recorded Adonijah’s preparations for a coup d’etat, now relates the manner in which the plot was frustrated. The prophet, who had been the guardian and preceptor of Solomon’s youth, and who knew the Divine will respecting the succession (1Ch 22:9, 1Ch 22:10), takes prompt and energetic measures to defeat the conspiracy.
1Ki 1:11
Wherefore Nathan spake unto Bathsheba the mother of Solomon [the person after Solomon most directly concerned and also best fitted to approach the king] saying, Hast thou not heard that Adonijah tile son of Haggith [possibly there is a touch of worldly wisdom here, as Rawlinson suggests, “Haggith, thy rival.” We may be sure David’s harem was not without its fierce jealousies. But (see 1Ki 1:5, and 1Ki 2:13) the patronymic is so common in Hebrews that we cannot safely found an argument upon it. See on Heb 2:5] doth reign [Hebrews did reign. LXX. , aor. = “succeeded.” “Schon so gut wie Konig geworden ist.” Bhr and Keil] and David our Lord knoweth it not.
1Ki 1:12
Now therefore come, let me give [Hebrews counsel] thee counsel, that thou mayest save [Hebrews and save, i.e; by acting upon it] thine own life, and the life of thy son Solomon. The custom of Eastern kingsto secure their thrones by a massacre of their rivalshas received many illustrations, notably among the Ottomans, and is receiving one in Burmah at the present moment. We have Scripture instances in Jdg 9:5; 1Ki 15:29; 2Ki 10:7, 2Ki 10:14; 2Ki 11:1 (cf. 1Sa 24:21). To put a royal mother to death, along with her offspring, though perhaps unusual, was not unknown. Rawlinson cites the instances of Cleopatra, widow of Philip of Macedon, who was murdered with her infant son Caranus by Olympias; and Roxana, widow of Alexander the Great, who, with her son, was put to death by Cassander. Nathan does not say this will be, but may be, Bathsheba’s fate.
1Ki 1:13
Go and get thee in [Hebrews come] unto king David, and say unto him, Didst not thou, my lord, O king swear unto thine handmaid [this oath of David’s to Bathsheba (see verses 17, 30) is not elsewhere recorded, but it was evidently well known to Nathan, and probably, therefore, to others also] saying, Assuredly [Hebrews that, , recitantis] Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he [emphatic] shall sit upon my throne? why therefore doth Adonijah reign?
1Ki 1:14
Behold, while thou yet talkest there [the original is more graphic, “thou art yet talking and I”] with the king, I also win come after thee and confirm [marg; “fill up,” of. , LXX. Still an idiom of the East. Roberts (quoted in the “Biblical Museum”) cites many illustrations. The meaning is, not to add to, amplify, but to corroborate. See 1Ki 2:27; 1Ki 8:15, 1Ki 8:24) thy words.
1Ki 1:15
And Bathsheba went In unto the king into the chamber [lit. inner chamber, , cubiculum penetrale, Buxtorf. Same word 2Sa 4:7; 2Sa 13:1-39 :0] and the king was very old [the repetition (see 2Sa 13:1) is not idle or unmeaning. Here the word refers to feebleness rather than age. It is mentioned to explain David’s confinement to his chamber] and Abishag the Shunammite ministered unto the king. [This is introduced to show the king’s helplessness. It does not prove that “there was a disinterested witness present” (Rawlinson), for she may have withdrawn, as Bathsheba did presently (2Sa 13:23), and Nathan (2Sa 13:32). It is a graphic touch, painted probably from the life, and by the hand of Nathan, from whom this narrative is derived.
1Ki 1:16
And Bathsheba bowed, and did obeisance [cf. 2Sa 14:4. But we are hardly justified in seeing here “more than the ordinary Eastern salutation” (Rawlinson). The Jewish court seems to have been very ceremonious and stately (1Sa 24:8; 2Sa 19:24). The king was the representative of Heaven]. And the king said, What wouldest thou [marg; What to thee? Not necessarily, What thy supplication? (as Rawlinson). It rather means generally, “What thy business?” Quid tibi, not quid petis.
1Ki 1:17
And she said unto him, My Lord, thou swarest by the Lord thy God unto thine handmaid, saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne.
1Ki 1:18
And now, behold, Adonijah reigneth; and now my Lord the king, thou knowest it not.
1Ki 1:19
And he hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the sons of the king, and Abiathar the priest, and Joab the captain of the host; but Solomon thy servant hath he not called. [Said, not to “show that Solomon had reason to fear the worst if Adonijah should succeed” (Keil), but to prove that there was a plot. It showed the cloven foot.]
1Ki 1:20
And thou [instead of , the Chald; Syr; and Vulg; with many MSS, read “and now;” but this looks like an emendation, and “proclivi lectioni praestat ardua.“ Similarly, the second “now” in 1Ki 1:18 appears as “thou” in 200 MSS. These variations are of very little consequence, but the received text, in both cases, is somewhat the more spirited] my lord, O king [the repetition (see 1Ki 1:18, 1Ki 1:21, 1Ki 1:24, 1Ki 1:27) illustrates the profound deference and court paid to the Hebrew monarch (see on 1Ki 1:16), especially when we remember that these are the words of a wife], the eyes of all Israel are upon thee (cf. 1Ki 2:15) that thou shouldest ten them who shall sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. This shows that there was no “right of primogeniture.” The kings of the East have always designated their successor amongst their sons. “Alyattes designated Croesus; Cyrus designated Cambyses, and Darius designated Xerxes” (Rawlinson). “The Shah of Persia, at the eginning of this century, had sixty sons, all brought up by their mothers, with the hope of succeeding” (Holier, quoted by Stanley). And the kings of Israel claimed and exercised a similar right (2Ch 11:22; 2Ch 21:3).
1Ki 1:21
Otherwise [there is no corresponding word in the Hebrews] it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep [strictly, “lie down:” see on 1Ki 2:10] with his fathers [this phrase, so common in the books of Kings and Chronicles, only occurs “once in the Pentateuch (Deu 31:16) and once in the historical books before Kings” (Rawlinson). It was evidently the product of an age when the nation was settled, and men had their family sepulchres] that I and my son Solomon shall be counted [Hebrews be] offenders [Hebrews as marg; sinners. The primary meaning of is “to miss the mark.” Like , it came to be used of all erring and transgression. Bathsheba and Solomon would be obnoxious to Adonijah, as representing a rival cause; possibly also as guilty of high treason (Clericus, Bhr, al.)
1Ki 1:22
And lo, while she yet talked with the king, Nathan the prophet also came in. [Heb. came, i.e; to the palace. “Came in“ almost implies that he entered the room, which he did not till summoned (verse 23). Observe, Nathan’s words convey no suggestio falsi. He does not deny a previous interview with Bathsheba, nor does he confess it. If there is an appearance of artifice, there was no intention to deceive. And the artifice, such as it was, was not only harmless, but for the public good.
1Ki 1:23
And they told the king, saying, Behold Nathan the prophet [we are scarcely justified in seeing in this “solemn announcement of his approach” an “indication of the consideration in which he was held” (Stanley). It is difficult to see how otherwise he could be announced. It is clear that he was constantly spoken of as “the prophet” (1Ki 1:10, 1Ki 1:22, 1Ki 1:34, 1Ki 1:38, etc. Cf. 2Sa 7:2; 2Sa 12:25]. And when he was come in before [Hebrews and he came beforethree words instead of six] the king, he bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground [see on verses 16, 20; and cf. verse 31, where we have a similar expression. “In the Assyrian sculptures, ambassadors are represented with their faces actually touching the earth before the feet of the monarch” (Rawlinson). This profound reverence on the part of Nathan is the more remarkable, when we remember how he had once denounced David to his face (Samuel Heb 12:7)].
1Ki 1:24
And Nathan said, My Lord, O king, hast thou said [the Hebrews has no question, but a strong affirmation: “thou hast said,” i.e; “thou must have said (Du hast wohl gesagt.” Bhr). Nathan puts it thus forcibly, in order to draw from the king a disclaimer], Adonijah shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne? [Same words as in 1Ki 1:13, 1Ki 1:17, and possibly designedly so. The coincidence conveys the meaning, “Thou hast sworn Solomon shall reign,” etc. “Thou hast said, Adonijah shall reign,” etc.]
1Ki 1:25
For [proof that the king must have decreed that Adonijah should succeed him. There appears to be an undertone of reproof in these words. Nathan assumes that Adonijah cannot have done all this without David’s knowledge and sanction, because “his father had not displeased him at any time” (1Ki 1:6). This uprising was the result of David’s over indulgence and. want of firmness] he is gone down this day, and hath slain [see on 1Ki 1:9] oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the king’s sons, and the captains of the host [Joab was the captain (1Ki 1:19). The plural shows that other high officers had followed his lead. “Under the captains of the host (1Ki 1:25), the servants of the king (1Ki 1:10) are included” (Bhr). Bhr’s accidental miscitation (1Ki 1:10 for 1Ki 1:9) has apparently led his American translator to the serious mistake of identifying these “captains of the host” with “the mighty men” (Gibborim) of 1Ki 1:10, who, it is distinctly said, “were not with Adonijah] and Abtathar the priest, and behold, they eat and drink before him [convivia apta conjurationibus. Grotius] and say, God save king Adonijah. [Hebrews “let the king Adonijah live,” or better, “live the king,” etc. (comp. the vivat rex, and the vives and vivas of later days.) This was the customary acclamation wherewith the Jews greeted their kings (cf. verse 39; 1Sa 10:24; 2Sa 16:16 : 2Ki 11:12; 2Ch 23:11).
1Ki 1:26
But me, even me [Heb. I] thy servant [to Nathan this omission was most significant. He seems to say that he had not been called because he had been concerned in the appointment of a successor 2Sa 7:13] and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and thy servant Solomon [Bhr thinks that “we have in the order of these names a climax, in which Solomon, as the highest personage, is named last”] hath he not called.
1Ki 1:27
Is this thing done [ = an, or perhaps, num, “Is it then the ease that,” etc.] by [lit; from with] my lord the king [i.e; with his privity and by his appointment], and thou hast not showed it unto thy servant [Hebrews “made thy servant know.” Nathan submits that he has a strong claim (2Sa 12:25) to be informed, should there be any change in the king’s plans], who should sit upon the throne of my lord the king after him? [Same expression as in verse 20. The repetition was well calculated to impress upon the king the importance of nominating a successor at once.
1Ki 1:28
Then king David [see on verse I] answered and said, Call me Bathsheba [she evidently left the chamber when Nathan entered it. “This was done, not to avoid the appearance of a mutual arrangement (Cler; Then. al.), but for reasons of propriety, inasmuch as in audiences granted by the king to his wife or one of his counsellors, no third person ought to be present unless the king required his assistance.” Keil.] And she came into the king’s presence, and stood before the king. [Here, as in numberless other instances, our translators have disregarded literalness in favour of euphony. The Hebrew has here an exact repetition, “came before the king, and stood before the king.” The Authorized Version rendering was adopted as the more spirited and rhythmical.
1Ki 1:29
And the king sware [see on 1Ki 1:51] and said, As the Lord liveth [or “by the life of Jehovah.” Cf. “by the life of Pharaoh” (Gen 42:15). This was the common form of oath. See, e.g; 1Ki 2:24; Jdg 8:19; Rth 3:13; 1Sa 14:39; 1Sa 19:6; 1Sa 20:24; 1Sa 29:6; and especially Jer 4:2; Jer 5:2; Hos 4:15. It is characteristic of David to introduce into the formula some such clause as the following], that hath redeemed my soul [i.e; life] out of all distress. Same expression as in 2Sa 4:9. Similar expressions are found in Psa 25:22, and Psa 34:22. The repeated deliverance out of straits and danger”out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul”was one of the most remarkable features of David’s life, and it is no wonder that he repeatedly commemorates it, converting every adjuration into an act of thanksgiving. Similarly, Jacob (Gen 48:16.)
1Ki 1:30
Even as I sware unto thee by the Lord God of Israel, saying, Assuredly [Heb. that, often prefixed to the oratio directa; not lending any emphasis ( = immo), as Keil says the first and third of this verse do, but in English simply redundant. See on verses 13, 17] Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne [same words as in verses 13, 17, 24. These close repetitions are the habit of the East] in my stead, even so [Heb. that so] will I
, suggested to David by the usus loquendi of the court. This expression seems at first a strange periphrasis for “my servants.” But David naturally adopts the language those around him were always using. See verse 43; also 2Sa 11:11, and 2Sa 20:6. Note: The latter passage, which refers to the king, has the plur.; the former, referring to Joab, the sing.] and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, [lit; “the she mule” (the most prized in the East. Cf. Jdg 5:10, Hebrews) “which is mine.” This was not merely a mark of honour (cf. Gen 41:43; Est 6:8, Est 6:9), but a public and very significant indication of David’s will respecting his successor. The populace would perceive at once who was destined to sit in David’s seat. “The Rabbins tell us that it was death to ride on the king’s mule without his permission” (Rawlinson). , the fem. form is only found here and in verses 38, 44. The mule would seem to have been a recent importation into Palestinewe never read of them before the time of Davidand the Israelites were forbidden to breed them (Le 2Sa 19:19). Their use, consequently, was naturally restricted to royal or distinguished personages (2Sa 13:29). Wordsworth sees in the word a proof that David had not disobeyed God by multiplying horses to himself], and bring him down to Gihon. [Not Gibeon, which Thenius most arbitrarily would substitute for the received text. Where was Gihon? The popular belief (accepted by Bhr and Keil, as well as by some geographers) is that it was in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, a part of which still bears the name of Gihon, i.e; to the west of Jerusalem, and not far from the Jaffa gate. By many indeed the present Birket-es-Sultan is identified with the Lower Pool of Gihon. But others (Ferguson, Rawlinson, etc.) see in it the ancient name of the Tyropaeon. Scripture does not speak of it as a spring, though the “source of the waters of Gihon” is mentioned 2Ch 32:30, Hebrews The text shows that it was below the city (“bring him down upon Gihon,” verse 33. Cf. also verse 40). 2Ch 33:14, speaks of “Gihon in the valley,” where it is very noticeable that the word used is Nachal (i.e. Wady, watercourse). But this “is the word always employed for the valley of the Kedron, east of Jerusalem, the so called valley of Jehoshaphat; ge (ravine or glen) being as constantly employed for the valley of Hinnom, south and west of the town” (Grove,” Dict. Bible,” art. Gihon). It is also to be noticed that the text last cited mentions Gihon in connection with Ophel, which lies southeast of Jerusalem.. The Chald; Arab; and Syr. are probably right, therefore, in identifying Gihon here with Siloam (which lies at the foot of Ophel), in favour of which it may further be said that it would be admirably suited for David’s purposeof a counter demonstrationand that whether En-Rogel is to be found at the Well of the Virgin or the Well of Job. Siloam is at no great distance from either, and quite within earshot, whereas the traditional Gihon is altogether out of the way. It must be borne in mind that this procession to and from Gihon was ordained, not because there was any special reason for anointing Solomon there for it was not a holy placebut purely as a demonstration to the populace, and to checkmate the conspirators. It was probably a public place, and would accommodate a large concourse (Poole).
1Ki 1:34
And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet [Bhr sees in the fact that Nathan was associated with Zadok in the anointing, “the high significance David attributed to the prophetic office in Israel” But the prophets constantly performed this ceremony. Samuel anointed both Saul and David; Elisha anointed Jehu (2Ki 9:1), and was commissioned to anoint Hazael (1Ki 19:15, 1Ki 19:16) ] anoint him [the king, being a sacred personage, was set apart to the office, like the priest and prophet, by anointing. Saul was probably anointed twice (1Sa 10:1; 1Sa 11:15. Cf. 1Sa 12:3). David was anointed thrice (1Sa 16:13; 2Sa 2:4; 2Sa 5:3. Solomon was anointed twice (verse 39; 1Ch 29:22). The Rabbins have always held that subsequent kings were not anointed, where the succession was regular. But this opinion must be taken quantum valet. It is true that we only read of the anointing of Jehu (2Ki 9:6), Joash (2Ki 11:12), and Jehoahaz (2Ki 23:30), and that in these three cases the accession was irregular. But it is obvious that other kings may have been anointed as well, though the fact is not recorded. There would be no reason for recording it in ordinary cases It seems hardly likely, too, that any king would readily dispense with an ordinance which would so much strengthen his title] there king over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet [the sound of the trumpet would almost seem to have been a necessary accompaniment of coronations, or the proclamation of a new king. See 2Sa 15:10; 2Ki 9:13; 2Ki 11:14], and say, God cave king Solomon. [See on verse 25.]
1Ki 1:35
Then ye shall come up. Besides, we can hardly suppose that the historian has in every case, though he probably has in this, preserved the exact words of the speaker; and it need cause us no surprise had he put into David’s mouth the phraseology of a later age. In the nature of things he can only give us the substance of conversations such as these.
1Ki 1:36
And Benaiah the son of Johoiada [probably he spoke, not because the execution of the order depended upon him (Bhr); for both Zadok and Nathan had a much more important part to perform, but as a blunt soldier who was accustomed to speak his mind] answered the king and said, Amen: the Lord God [lit; “Jehovah, he God,” etc.] of my lord the king say so too.
1Ki 1:37
As the Lord hath been with my lord the king [cf. 1Sa 20:13. “This phrase expresses a very high degree of the Divine favour” (Rawlinson). See Gen 26:3, Gen 26:4; Gen 28:15; Gen 39:2,Gen 39:21; Exo 3:12; Jos 1:5; 1Ch 22:11, etc.], even so be he with Solomon, and make has throne greater than the throne of my lord king David. [This was said from a full and honest heart, not to flatter David’s vanity (Thenius). It is thoroughly characteristic of the man so far as we know him. And the prayer was fulfilled (1Ki 3:11,1Ki 3:12).]
1Ki 1:38
So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites [these were the royal bodyguard Josephus calls themwho were commanded by Benaiah (2Sa 8:18; 2Sa 15:18; 2Sa 20:23; 2Sa 23:28). But while their functions are pretty well understood, great difference of opinion exists as to the origin or meaning of the words. By some they are supposed to be Gentile names. A tribe of Cherethites is mentioned 1Sa 30:14. (Cf. Eze 25:16; Zep 2:5), and in close connexion with the Philistines (1Sa 30:16). Hence Cherethite has been thought to be another name for Philistine; and as the LXX. and Syr. render the word “Cretans,” it has been conjectured that the Philistines had their origin from Crete. They did come from Caphtor, and that is probably Crete (see Gen 10:14; Jer 47:4; Amo 9:7; Deu 2:23). again, is not unlike In favor of this view is the fact that David certainly had a bodyguard of foreign mercenaries (2Sa 15:18, where the “Gittites” are connected with the Cherethites). Nor does it make against it that “two designations” would thus “be employed side by side for one and the same people”as if we should speak of Britons and Englishmen (Bhr). For the names look like a paronomasiaof which the Jews were very fondand a trick of this kind would at once account for the tautology. [Since writing this, I find the same idea has already occurred to Ewald.] But the other view, adopted by Gesenius, is that the names are names of office and function. Cherethite he would derive from , cut, slay; and by Cherethites he would understand “executioners,” which the royal bodyguard were in ancient despotisms (Gen 39:1, Hebrews; Dan 2:14, etc. See on 1Ki 2:25). In the Pelethites (, swiftness) he would see the public couriers () of Eastern men. archies (see Herod. 8:98 and 2Ch 30:6). We see the guard discharging the function first named in 2Ki 10:25; 2Ki 11:4, 2Ki 11:8; and the latter in 1Ki 14:27 (marg.)] went down [i.e; from the palace on Mount Zion] and caused Solomon to ride upon King David’s mule, and brought him to [: cf. 1Ki 2:26] Gihon [Chald; Syr; Arab; Shiloha].
1Ki 1:39
And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil [Hebrews the oil. The “holy anointing oil,” Exo 30:25, Exo 30:31, compounded as directed in Exo 30:23-25, was evidently part of the furniture of the tabernacle (Exo 31:11; Exo 39:38). Eleazer was charged with its preservation (Num 4:16), and the Rabbins say it lasted till the captivity] out of the tabernacle [the tabernacle on Mount Zion, containing the ark (2Sa 6:17; 1Ch 15:1) must be meant here. There was not time to have gone to the tabernacle at Gihon (Stanley), which was three hours distance from Jerusalem (Keil). Though Abiathar had charge of this sanctuary, yet Zadok would readily gain access to it, especially in the king’s name] and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet [cf. 2Sa 15:10; 2Ki 9:13; 2Ki 11:14]; and all the people said, God save king Solomon. [Notice the exact fulfilment of the threefold charge of verse 34 and its result. Solomon was confirmed in his office by the suffrages of the people.]
1Ki 1:40
And all the people came up after him [same expression as 1Ki 1:35. The procession, the sound of the trumpets, etc; had collected a large crowd, which followed Solomon on his return], and the people piped [Heb. were piping] with pipes [pipes or flutes were used on occasions of rejoicing (Isa 5:12; Isa 30:29. Cf. 1Sa 10:5), and so of mourning (Jer 48:36; Mat 9:23). It is true that a very slight change ( instead of ) will give the meaning, “dancing with dances,” which Ewald prefers, on the ground that “all the people” could not have produced their pipes at a moment’s notice. But the objection loses its force when it is observed (Rawlinson) that the text implies that only some of the people piped. “All the people came up and the people,“ etc. Besides, even if it were not so, some allowance is surely to be made for Eastern hyperbole. And the received text is to be preferred on other grounds. The LXX; however, has ], and rejoiced with great joy [Hebrews “were rejoicing a great joy”], and the earth rent [this is certainly a strangly hyperbolical expression. For strictly means to cleave asunder, tear open (see, e.g; Num 16:31; Amo 1:13; 2Ch 25:12). And Thenius suggests a slight emendation of the text, viz; (i.e; “resounded”) for which would obviate this difficulty. He points out that while the LXX. Cod. Vat. has , some versions have , and the Vulg. insonuit. But perhaps it is safer to keep to the lectio ardua] with the sound of them [Heb. “with their voices”].
1Ki 1:41
And Adonijah and all the guests that were with him heard it [it is probable they “were listening with some anxiety to hear if anything would occur.” Rawlinson] as they had made an end [Heb. “and they had finished”] of eating, And when Joab heard the sound of the trumpet [the original almost implies that Joab’s practised ear was the first to catch the note of the trumpet. He seems to have been the first to suspect its significance], he said, Wherefore is this noise of the city being in an uproar? [More exactly, “in commotion.” , an onomatopoetic word, like our English “hum.” We speak of the “hum of the city,” “the buzz of business,” etc.]
1Ki 1:42
And while he yet spake, behold, Jonathan the son of Abiathar the priest [Cf. 2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 17:17. His experience had marked him out for the post of watchman] came [That he bad not arrived before shows how prompt, and even hurried, had been the measures taken by Solomon’s party] and Adonijah said unto him [Hebrews and LXX. omit “unto him”] Come in [Heb. come. See on verse 22. “Come in“ suggests the idea of a house or tent, whereas the feast was al fresco]; for thou art a valiant man [it is Adonijah (not Joab, as Bhrof course by an oversightsays) who speaks thus. Perhaps “able,” “honest,” or “worthy man” (cf. verse 52; same word in Hebrews; also Pro 12:4) would be nearer the mark. “Valiant” is clearly out of place] and bringest good tidings. [A similar expression 2Sa 18:27. It was evidently a familiar saying. The idea, “a good man will bring good news” corresponds with that of the proverb of 1Sa 24:13. Adonijah’s misgivings reveal themselves in these words. He fears the worst, but strives to put on a cheerful face and to encourage his guests.]
1Ki 1:43
And Jonathan answered and said to Adonijah, Verily [Rather, “nay but,” “on the contrary” (immo vero). See Gen 17:19, Heb; “Nay, but Sarah thy wife,” etc; and Gesen; Thesaurus, sub voce . This particle has not “always an objecting force” (Rawlinson)see Gen 42:21, and especially 2Sa 14:5; 2Ki 4:14but only in the later Hebrew, e.g; 2Ch 19:3; 2Ch 33:17] our Lord king David hath made Solomon king.
1Ki 1:44
And the king hath sent with Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites [see on 1Ki 1:38], and they have caused him to ride upon the king’s mule.
1Ki 1:45
And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon: and they are come up from thence rejoicing, so that the city [ same word as in 1Ki 1:41. Elsewhere almost exclusively found in poetry] rang again [rather, “is in commotion.” Same expression in 1Ki 1:41 and Rth 1:19, where it is translated, “the city was moved“]. This is the noise [Heb. voice] that ye have heard.
1Ki 1:46
And also [the same two words are found at the beginning of 1Ki 1:47, 68. They accord well with the breathless and excited state of the speaker, and suggest how each successive detail told on the hearers] Solomon sitteth [rather, “sate, took his seat,” (LXX.) aorist. See 1Ki 1:35] on the throne of the kingdom [rather, “the royal throne.” So Gesen. All David’s directions were now fulfilled].
1Ki 1:47
And moreover [ as before] the king’s servants [see on 1Ki 1:33] came to bless our lord king David [Jonathan here refers in all probability to the words of Benaiah, 1Ki 1:36, 1Ki 1:37. He does not know the exact particulars, and ascribes to the “servants” the words of their commander. Of course it is possible that “the bodyguard took up the words of Jehoiada (Benaiah?) their captain and repeated them with some slight alteration.” Rawlinson] saying, God [so the Keri. The Cethib has “thy God”] make the name of Solomon better than thy name and make his throne greater than thy throne [This prayer was fulfilled (1Ki 3:12; 1Ki 4:21-24]. And the king bowed himself [in worship. Cf. Gen 47:31] upon the bed.
1Ki 1:48
And also thus saith the king, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even seeing it. [These last words are added because it is quite an exceptional thing for a king to see his successor on the throne.]
1Ki 1:49
And all the guests [Heb. called, LXX. ] that were with [Heb. to] Adonijah were afraid [Heb. trembled] and rose up [LXX. omits] and went every man his way. [This fear and flight betray a consciousness of guilt. They cannot have believed in the right of primogeniture.]
1Ki 1:50
And Adonijah feared because of Solomon and he arose and went and caught hold of the horns of the altar. [Cf. 1Ki 2:28. Probably the altar of Mount Zion, 1Ki 3:15; 2Sa 6:17. Though it is impossible to say positively whether this or the altar at Gibeon (2Sa 3:4) or that recently erected on the threshing floor of Araunah (2Sa 24:25) is meant. For the “horns,” see Exo 27:2; Exo 38:2; and compare Exo 30:2. They were of shittim (i.e; acacia) wood overlaid with brass, and served a double purpose. Victims were bound to them (Psa 118:27), and blood was put upon them, Exo 29:12. As to the altar as a place of sanctuary, see on 1Ki 2:28. Evidently a right of sanctuary existed amongst both Jews and Gentiles at the time of the Exodus, and probably from time immemorial. It is referred to in Exo 21:14, but it was much circumscribed by the appointment of the cities of refuge (Num 35:10 sqq.) By “laying hold of the horns the offender thereby placed himself under the protection of the saving and helping grace of God” (Bhr, “Symbolik,” 1:474)
1Ki 1:51
And it was told Solomon, saying, Behold Adonijah feareth King Solomon, for lo, he hath caught hold on the horns of the altar, saying, let king Solomon [this repetition of the title is striking. Both courtiers and criminals hasten to give the young king his new honours. In Adonijah’s mouth it is also a virtual abdication of his claim to the throne and a direct acknowledgment of the new monarch. But see on 1Ki 1:1 and 1Ki 1:35.] swear unto me today [Cf. 2Sa 19:23. This is one of many passages which show how lightly the Jews esteemed promises in comparison with oaths. The sentiment possibly took its rise in the oaths sworn by the Divine Being (Gen 22:16; Gen 24:7; Exo 16:16, etc.), though it is possible, on the other hand, that these asseverations were made in deference to the popular sentiment. Be that as it may, the oath held a much more conspicuous and important place in the Jewish than the Christian economy. See Gen 21:23; Gen 31:23; Num 14:2; Num 30:2; Jdg 15:12; Jdg 21:1; 1Sa 14:28; Jer 5:2, and, to omit other passages, 1Ki 1:13; 1Ki 2:8, 1Ki 2:23, 1Ki 2:42. Even our Lord, who rebuked the habit (Mat 5:34-37; Mat 23:16-22) respected the adjuration of Caiaphas, and St. Paul frequently appeals to God (Act 26:29; 2Co 1:23; 2Co 11:31; Php 1:8.) The Christian religion, as it has gradually begotten a reverence for truth, has made the simple word into a bond] that he will not slay his servant [Cf. “I will be King,” 1Ki 2:5.] with the sword [the usual form of capital punishment, 1 Kings if. 8, 25, 31, 46. Adonijah indirectly confesses that he had merited death].
1Ki 1:51
And Solomon said [i.e; he refused to swear], If he will shew himself a worthy man [, cf. , 1Ki 1:42], there shall not an hair of him fall to the earth [i.e; not a single hair shall be injured. Same expression 1Sa 14:45; 2Sa 14:11; Act 27:34. It was evidently a familiar saying] but if wickedness shall be found in him, [i.e; if he shall commit any fresh crime] he shall die [Hebrew , “then he shall die,” emphatic.]
1Ki 1:53
So King Solomon sent and they brought him down [The altar was elevated: probably a slope, not steps (Exo 20:26) led to it] from [Hebrew from upon. He was still clinging to it] the altar. And he came and bowed himself to king Solomon [i.e; made obeisance to him as king. Cf. 1Ki 1:16, 1Ki 1:23, 1Ki 1:31] and Solomon said unto him, Go to thine house. This was not a sentence of banishment from court, but merely a dismissal to a private life, involving a tacit admonition to live quietly and be thankful that his life was spared him. “Vade in domum tuam, ibi quiesce et res tuas age, nec te publicis regni mei negotiis immisceas” (Corn. A Lapide).
HOMILETICS
1Ki 1:1
The chamber of sickness.
This opening chapter of 1 Kings introduces us into the privacy of a sick room. Stretched upon a couch, covered with many folds of rich Eastern drapery, we see a feeble, decrepit, attenuated man. At his side stands a fair young girl, assiduously ministering to his wants. From time to time the door opens, and prophet, priest, and warrior enter to receive his instructions; for happily the mind is not a wreck like the body. Its vigour is hardly abated, though the bodily strength is well nigh exhausted. He has but reached the appointed threescore years and ten, and yetsuch have been the hardships of his lifethe vital force is spent. They cover him with clothes, but he gets no heat. The flame of life is slowly but surely expiring. But we see at once that this is no ordinary room; that this is no common patient. The gorgeous apparel, the purple and fine linen, the “attendance of ministers, the standing of servants,” proclaim it a king’s court. And the insignia, the pomp, the profound homage proclaim that this sick man is a king. Yes, it is David, second king of Israel, but second to none in goodness and true greatness, who lies here. His chequered life, so full of romance, of chivalry, of piety, is drawing near its close. But the hour of death is preceded by a period of feebleness and decay. For sickness is no respecter of persons. It, too, like death, “thunders at the palace gates of kings and the dwellings of the poor.” There is no release in that war,
“Sceptre and crown must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor common scythe and spade.”
The sickness of David, then, may fittingly suggest some thoughts as to sickness in general. What, let us ask, is its purpose, what its uses? Why is it that, as a rule, a period of gradual decay precedes death? For it is worthy of remark that man alone, of all the animals, dies of disease. Among all the myriad forms of life, that is, he alone dies gradually. The lower animals, as a rule, prey upon each other. Beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all die a violent death. No sooner is one of them attacked by sickness, or enfeebled by old age, than it is dispatched and devoured by its fellows. It is thus the balance of the species is preserved. But in the case of men, sudden death is the exception. For them there remains, as a rule, a discipline of pain prior to dissolution. It is well to ask why this is. The general answer is, of course, obvious. It is because of that other life, that future reckoning which awaits men after death. Let us consider, however, in what ways sickness and pain are a preparation for the life and the judgment to come.
I. SICKNESS IS GOD‘S NOTICE TO QUIT. We should think it hard to be ejected from our home and turned into the street without due notice. We want a little time to make preparations. Especially is this the case when we are leaving our earthly tabernacleleaving not a home, but a world. Now God has given us abundant and repeated notice in the various accidents and occurrences of life. Too often, however, both the lessons of Providence and the warnings of the preacher are unheeded. So the Lover of souls will give men a final warning, and one that they cannot mistake, cannot well disregard. They shall feel it in their own persons. Sickness shall bid them set their house in order and prepare to meet their God. A German fable tells us that once upon a time Death promised a young man that he would not summon him until he had first sent several messengers to apprize him of his coming. So the youth took his fill of pleasure, and wasted health and strength in riotous living. Presently, a fever laid him low. But as no messenger had appeared, he had no apprehensions; and when he recovered, he returned forthwith to his former sins. He then fell a prey to other maladies, but, remembering his covenant with Death, made light of them. “I am not going to die,” he cried; “the first messenger has not yet come.” But one day some one tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and saw Death standing at his elbow. “Follow me.” said the King of Terrors; “the hour of thy departure is come.” “How is this?” exclaimed the youth; “thou art false to thy word! Thou didst promise to send me messengers, and I have seen none.” “Silence!” sternly answered the Destroyer. “I have sent thee messenger after messenger. What was the fever? What was the apoplexy? What was each sickness that befel thee? Each was my herald; each was my messenger.” Yes, the first use of sickness is to remind men of death. And how much they need that reminder we may learn from the case of David. He had long been familiar with death, lie was no stranger to “th’ imminent deadly breach,” had known many “hairbreadth ‘scapes,” and often there had been “but a step between his soul and death.” Nay, he had once seen the Destroyer himself, seen him standing with his drawn sword ready to smite. And yet the man who had faced death, who had long carried his life in his hand, receives a final warning ere its close. That sickness, perhaps, first brought home to him his mortality, first cried to him, “Thus saith the LORD GOD, Remove the diadem and take off the crown” (Eze 21:26). But
II. SICKNESS IS GOD‘S WAY OF WEANING MEN FROM THE WORLD. It is natural to cling to life; but it is necessary we should be made willing to leave it. The wrench is felt the less when some of the ties which bind us to earth have been sundered: when life loses its attractions. It is the office of pain and sickness to make life valueless, to make men anxious to depart. How often it happens that men who at the beginning of illness will not hear of death are presently found praying for their release. Such are the “uses of adversity.” An old writer compares affliction to the bitter unguent which nursing mothers who would wean their offspring sometimes put upon their breast. A few weeks on the couch of pain, and we soon cry out that life is not worth the living.
III. SICKNESS IS GOD‘S DISCIPLINE FOR PARADISE. True it is that all “earthly care is a heavenly discipline.” All the ills that flesh is heir to are designed to be the instruments of our perfection. Like the Captain of our salvation, we are “made perfect through sufferings.” For us, as for Him, “the cross is the ladder to heaven.” Those are two suggestive words, which only differ by one letter, , “afflictions, instructions.” But while all affliction is a school, the last illness should be the finishing school. At the last assay the furnace must he heated more than it has been wont to be. “I have learnt more,” said Mr. Cecil, “within these curtains in six weeks than I have learnt in all my life before.” The chamber of sickness is an enforced Retreat. There, ears “that the preacher could not school” are compelled to listen. There, “lips say ‘God be pitiful’ which ne’er said ‘God be praised.’ There, many have learnt for the first time to know themselves. And how necessary is this last discipline David’s sick chamber may teach us; for he had already had his share of troubles. His life had been largely spent in. the school of adversity.” In journeyings often, in peril of robbers,” etc. (2Co 11:25, 2Co 11:26), these words aptly describe his early career. And even since he ascended the throne, how often has the sword gone through his soul. Amnon, Absalom, Tamer, Abner, Amasa, what tragedies are connected with these names. Few men have experienced such a long and bitter discipline as he; and it would seem, too, to have accomplished its world. If we may judge by some of his later Psalms, full of contrition, of humility, of devout breathings after God, that sweet and sanctified soul had “learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” But he is not spared the final chastening. The sweet singer of Israel, the man after God’s own heart, must go awhile into the gloom and the silence of the sick room, there to be made fully “meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.” Men often pray to be spared a long sickness, often commiserate those who experience one. But we have learned that it has its uses. We see that it is a last chance given to men: a last solemn warning, a final chastening to prepare them for the beatific vision. The Neapolitans call one of the wards of their hospital L’Antecamera della Motrethe ante chamber of death. It is thus that we should regard every “chamber of sickness.”
1Ki 1:5 sqq. with 1Ki 2:13 sqq
Adonijah’s history and its lessons.
I. HE WAS A SPOILT CHILD.”His father had not displeased him at any time.” (1Ki 1:7). There is no greater unkindness and injustice to a child than over indulgence. The child is the father of the man. The boy who has all his own way will certainly want it in after life, and will not get it, to his own disappointment and the unhappiness of all around him. He that loveth his son chasteneth him betimes. David was probably so engrossed with public cares and duties that his first care, after Godhis familywas neglected. How unwise are those parents who devolve the care of their children at the most critical and impressionable time of life on domestics, who are often ill suited or unequal to the charge. One of the first duties a child demands of its parents is that it should be corrected and conquered. The will must be broken in youth. The sapling may be bent, not so the trunk. David’s unwise indulgence, his sparing the rod, prepared a rod for his own and Adonijah’s back. It was the sin of Eli that “his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not.” And one sin of David was that he had not checked and “displeased” this wilful son.
II. HE WAS ENDOWED BY NATURE WITH A DANGEROUS PROPERTY. “He also was a very goodly man.” Gifts of form and feature, much as all admire them, and much as some covet them, are frequently a snare to their possessor. Perhaps, upon the whole, personal beauty has oftener proved a curse than a blessing. “For the most part,” says Lord Bacon, “it maketh a dissolute youth.” Oftener still it spoils the character. The conceit of the Platonists, that a beautiful body loves to have a beautiful soul to inhabit it, is unhappily not borne out by facts. “A pretty woman,” it has been said, and it is often true, “adores herself” (Eugenie de Guerin). The natural tendency of this possession is to engender pride, selfishness, conceit, ambition. A striking exterior has often cost its possessor dear. It did both Absalom and Adonijah no good. It is worthy of notice that it was David’s “goodly” sons conspired against him, and it was his “fair“ daughter Tamar was dishonoured. Adonijah’s face was an important factor in his history: it contributed to his ruin. It favoured, perhaps it suggested, his pretensions to the throne. He thought, no doubt, “the first in beauty should be first in might.” Had he been blessed with an insignificant appearance he would probably have saved his head. As it was, courted and admired, he thought the fairest woman of her time was alone a fit match for him; and pride whispered that a man of such a presence was marked out for a king, and so urged him to his ruin. Let us teach our children to covet only “the beauty of the soul.”
III. HE WAS CURSED WITH AN INORDINATE AMBITION. “I will be king.” “Cursed,” for it has cursed and blighted many lives. Like the ignis fatuus, it has lured men to their destruction. It has been well called “a deadly tyrant, an inexorable master.” “Ambition,” says the most eloquent of divines, “is the most troublesome and veratious passion that can afflict the sons of men. It is full of distractions, it teems with stratagems, and is swelled with expectations as with a tympany. It is an infinite labour to make a man’s self miserable; he makes his days full of sorrow to acquire a three years’ reign.” What a striking illustration of these words does Adonijah’s history supply. If he could but have been content to fill the second place he might have lived honoured, happy, and useful. But ambition soured and then cut short his life. How much of the misery of the world is caused by despising “that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call us” and stretching out after another for which we are not fitted. Adonijah’s history teaches this lessonSolomon may have partly drawn it from his life and death”Pride goeth before destruction,” etc.
IV. HE STOOPED TO UNWORTHY MEANS TO ATTAIN HIS OBJECT. “Chariots,” “horses, fifty men to run before him.” It is much like the Roman device, “Panem et circenses.” History repeats itself. But these things were almost innocent compared with the measures he took when these failed. The smooth intrigue of a marriage, the employment of the king’s mother as his tool, the plausible words, the semblance of resignation to the Divine willand all this to overthrow a brother who had generously spared his life. And all this was the outcome of ambitionambition which makes men trample on the living and the dead. Alas! we never know to what base courses we may be reduced if we once embark in immoral enterprises. Adonijah’s “I will be king” led to conspiracy, rebellion, intrigue, ingratitude; to defiance of a father, of a brother, of God.
V. HE WAS NOT WITHOUT WARNING, BUT IT WAS IN VAIN. The failure of his first conspiracy, the abject terror which followed, the flight to the sanctuary, the terrified clinging to the horns of the altar, the piteous entreaty for lifethese things should have been remembered, should have “changed his hand and checked his pride.” Still more, his brother’s magnanimity, “there shall not an hair of him fall to the earth;” or, if not that, his message, “If wickedness be found in him he shall die.” All are of no avail. The passion for empire, like the passion for play, is almost incurable. Adonijah was playing for a throne: he staked honour, safety, pietyand lost. He played againand this time a drawn sword was suspended over his headhe staked his life, and lost it.
VI. HE WAS SUDDENLY CUT OFF, AND THAT WITHOUT REMEDY. And this was the end of the spoiled child, of the “curled darling;” this the end of his pomp and circumstance, of his flattery and intrigue, of his steadfast resistance of the will of heaventhat the sword of the headsman smote him that he died. Instead of the throne, the tomb; instead of the sceptre, the sword. Chariots and horses, visions of empire, visions of loveone fell thrust of the steel put an end to all that. Died Adonijah as a fool dieth, ingloriously, ignobly. “When we are dead, all the world sees who was the fool.” Adonijah’s death was the fitting and natural conclusion of his life. He has sowed to the wind: what wonder if he reaps to the whirlwind.
1Ki 1:5
Adonijah and the Lord’s Anointed.
The conspiracy of Adonijah and its issue may suggest some lessons as to the kingdom of Christ and those who oppose His reign. For consider
I. SOLOMON IS A TYPE OF OUR BLESSED LORD. This is universally allowed. The true “son of David” is the Son of God. He is the Divine Wisdom, the true Anointed One, the eternal King of Israel. Solomon “the peaceful” prefigured the great “Prince of Peace.”
II. THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON FORESHADOWED CHRIST‘S REIGN. This is taught “by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture” (see e.g; Luk 1:32, Luk 1:33, and cf. 2Sa 7:11, 2Sa 7:12; Psa 72:11, sqq.; Isa 9:7; Isa 16:5; Jer 23:5).
III. THE OPPOSITION TO SOLOMON‘S RULE PREFIGURED THE RESISTANCE OF THE POWERS OF THIS WORLD TO CHRIST. The second Psalm, the primary reference of which is to Solomon, has its absolute fulfilment in our Lord (Act 4:25-27). Note here
(1) As against Solomon were leagued princes, priest, and general, so against the Christ were gathered tetrarch, priests, and proconsul.
(2) As the aid of religion was invoked against Solomon by Adonijah and Abiathar (note on 1Ki 1:9), so it was invoked against our blessed LORD by Annas and Caiaphas (St. Mat 26:65; St. Joh 19:7). In both cases, religion was used as a cloke. Now observe
IV. THE COURSE OF ADONIJAH‘S CONSPIRACY FORESHADOWS
(1) THE BRIEF SUCCESS, AND
(2) THE SUDDEN OVERTHROW, OF THE POWERS OF EVIL.
(1) The brief success. As for a time everything seemed to favour the conspiratorsDavid’s indecision, Adonijah’s following, etc.so now the powers of this world seem to have their own way. The silence of God, a corrupt priesthood, physical force, the chariots and horses of the world, the pomp and glitter of wealthall seem to promise success. The cause of Christ, like that of Solomon, seems to be desperate. But
(2) The sudden overthrow. In the very hour of apparent success, amid cries of “God save King Adonijah,” the trumpet blast proclaimed the destruction of their hopes, and the trembling and terrified guests hurriedly dispersed to their homes. So, at the trump of the archangel, if not before, the “gates of hell” shall be overcome and the enemies of our Lord shall be put to confusion, and flee to the mountains and hills to cover them (St. Luk 23:30). Meanwhile the Church and her ministers, like Bathsheba and Nathan, must cry to the Eternal Father, “Lord, how long” (Rev 6:10)?
V. THE DURATION OF THE CONSPIRACY PREFIGURES
(1) THE BRIEF REJECTION AND
(2) THE ETERNAL REIGN OF CHRIST.
The conspiracy lasted at the longest a few weeks; the peaceful reign of Solomon extended over forty years. The conspiracy against Christ has lasted over 1800 yearsfor “we see not yet all things put under him”but what is this compared with eternity, and “He shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15; cf. Dan 6:26).
VI. THE END OF THE CONSPIRATORS FORESHADOWS
(1) THE JUDGMENT AND
(2) THE DOOM OF THE ENEMIES OF CHRIST.
(1) The judgment. No sooner was Solomon anointed king than he sate in judgment upon Adonijah (1Ki 1:52), and no long time afterwards upon Joab and Abiathar.
(2) The doom. He condemned Abiathar to banishment (1Ki 2:26), and appointed Adonijah and Joab to be slain. Even so our Lord will presently sit upon the judgment throne and will in like manner banish (“Depart, ye cursed”) and deliver to death (“These mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me”) the opposers of His glorious reign.
1Ki 1:11 sqq
The Jewish prophet: an example to the Christian pastor.
The dealings of Nathan with David may suggest some thoughts as to
(1) the office, and
(2) the duties of the Christian minister. For observe
THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER OCCUPIES IN THE NEW DISPENSATION A POSITION SOME, WHAT ANALOGOUS TO THAT OF THE PROPHET IN THE OLD. Prophecy, that is to say, is one of his functions. For prophecy does not, strictly and properly, mean prediction (or foretelling), but preaching (or forthtelling). The prophetes was the spokesman or interpreter of God. (See Introduction, note.) The “prophesyings” of the New Testament (1Co 11:14) were preachings or expositions; and in this sense the word is used by Lord Bacon, and others. So the prophet was, and the preacher is, an ambassador for God, an expounder of his laws, a herald of his kingdom. The former, therefore, may well serve as a pattern to the latter. Now the dealings of the prophet Nathan with King David were of two kinds:
1. He admonished him in health;
2. He counselled him in sickness.
Hence let us learn that we owe doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness; in other words, “both public and private monitions and exhortations, as well to the sick as to the whole within our cures.” (See “The Ordering of Priests,” Book of Common Prayer.) The latter are liable to be overlooked. But the prophet further suggests to us
(1) what are the ministrations or admonitions the pastor owes to his flock, and
(2) what is the spirit in which he should offer them. He teaches the former by his dealings with David in health, and the latter by his dealings with David in sickness.
I. Under the first head, observe that,
1. He boldly denounced David‘s sin (2Sa 12:7) at the risk, perhaps, of his life, and fearlessly threatened him with shame (1Ki 1:11) and sword (1Ki 1:10).
2. He proclaimed forgiveness on David‘s repentance (1Ki 1:13).
3. He ministered comfort in David‘s sorrow (1Ki 1:25).
4. He encouraged and advised David in his undertakings
. (A great churchman confessed that he had not served his God as faithfully as he had served his king. Nathan was true to both.)
3. He was disinterested. He asks no favours for himself. It is for the Hebrew commonwealth, for the Jewish Church, that he act and speaks. He does not abuse his position to extort gifts from a dying man. (Compare Savonarola dictating the terms of absolution to Lorenzo de’ Medici.)
4. He was discreet. “Wise as serpent, but harmless as dove.” He approaches Bathsheba (2Sa 7:11), excites her alarm (2Sa 7:12), uses her as the most likely agent to prevail with the king, instructs her (2Sa 7:13), follows her (2Sa 7:22). “The policy of Nathan was of use as well as his prophecy” (Bp. Hall) Thus the prophet teaches the pastor to use all fidelity, to show true loyalty and courtesy, to act purely and unselfishly, to use the means God has put within his reach with consideration and discretion.
The Benedictus of the Old Testament, and the Benedictus of the New (Verse 48; Luk 1:68).
On two memorable occasions this doxology has been found on the lips of the saints. No doubt the formula, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,” was a favourite one with the people of Israel; no doubt the words were often used (cf. Psa 41:13; Psa 72:18). But there are two occasions of pre-eminent interest and importance when this thanksgiving broke from joyful lips. Let us consider them.
1. It was used (as we see) by the aged King David on the day that he saw his son Solomon (Peace) a forerunner of the Messiah, seated on the throne of Israel.
2. It was used by the aged priest Zacharias on the day that he saw his son John (Grace), the forerunner of Messiah, brought into the commonwealth of Israel. It is just possible, but hardly probable, that the words, as used by the latter (under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, Luk 1:67) had a reference to their use by the former. But it may be instructive, nevertheless, to compare these two ascriptions of praise, for they are more or less characteristic, the one of the old dispensation, the other of the new. Let us observe,
I. THEIR POINTS OF CONTACT,
II. THEIR POINTS OF CONTRAST.
I. They are alike in three particulars.
1. Each Benedictus was in some sort the “Nunc Dimittis“ of an aged saint. Each proceeded from a man “old and stricken in years” (1Ki 1:1; Luk 1:7); each from a man of fervent piety (1Ki 11:4; Luk 1:6); each was suggested by the speaker’s son rising up to take his place, and to carry on his and God’s work.
2. Each Benedictus was connected with a son of David. The first was a grateful acknowledgment of the anointing of a Son of David to be King; the second was in thankful anticipation of the coming of the Son of David to be Prophet, Priest, and King. Note: all the praises of Scripture connect themselves directly or indirectly with Christ.
3. Each Benedictus was elicited by God‘s gracious fulfilment of His promise. The first commemorated the realization of the promise of a successor made through the prophet Nathan (2Sa 7:12); the second, the (proximate) fulfilment of the promises of a Saviour, made by “all the holy prophets since the world began” (Luk 1:70), and of which the promise of 2Sa 7:1-29; was a foretaste and pledge. Note: in all ages the faithfulness of God has elicited the thankfulness of his people.
II. But let us now consider their points of contrast. These are four in number, and show how the thanksgiving of David was for temporal, and that of Zacharias for spiritual benefits.
1. The Benedictus of David celebrated the ascent of the throne of Israel by his Son; that of Zacharias, the leaving of the throne of Heaven by the Son of God. Solomon was beginning his glory: Jesus had laid His aside. Solomon was going to be ministered unto: Jesus to minister to others.
2. The Benedictus of David commemorated the gift of a son to rule His people: that of Zacharias, the gift of a Saviour to redeem the world (verses 68, 77, 79).
3. The Benedictus of David proclaimed that the succession to the throne was preserved in his house: that of Zacharias, that through the “house of David” a “horn of salvation” was raised up for men. The aged king, doubtless, thought that in Solomon God had “made the horn of David to bud” (Psa 132:17); but Zacharias celebrated the true fulfilment of that promiseits blossoming into salvation.
4. The Benedictus of David celebrated the reign of a son who should be a man of peace (1Ch 22:9): that of Zacharias, the coming of one who should guide men’s “feet into the way of peace” (verse 79). We said each Benedictus was a sort of Nunc Dimittis. That last sentence of David’s”Mine eyes also seeing it”carry our thoughts to another of the Evangelical Hymns, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon”Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Zacharias was not a greater poet than David. And David, as well as he, spake by the Holy Ghost (2Sa 23:2). Yet how much grander, and every way nobler, is the Benedictus of the latter than that of the former; of the New Testament than the Old. It is because the theme is so much higher, and the benefits are so much greater, because “a greater than Solomon is here.”
The two triumphal entries.Twice in the history of Jerusalem has a Son of David ridden through her streets, sitting on ass or mule, amid the shouts and praises of the people. Let us compare the two occasions. They will furnish a further proof and illustration of the typical character of Solomon; a further proof that a “greater than Solomon is here.” Observe
I. THE TRIUMPHAL RIDE THROUGH THE CITY WAS IN EACH CASE AFTER AN ANOINTING.Solomon had been anointed by prophet and priest: Jesus, the Divine Solomon, by God himself. Solomon’s anointing was with holy oil out of the tabernacle (verse 39); that of Jesus with the Holy Ghost (Luk 4:18; Act 4:27; Act 10:38). Solomon was anointed to be king: Jesus to be King, and Priest, and Prophet.
II. EACH RODE THROUGH THE CITY AS KING (verses 34, 35).”God save King Solomon,” cried the populace. “Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Luk 19:38). In each case the words were true, “Behold thy King cometh” (Mat 21:5; Joh 12:15). And
III. EACH RODE AS THE SON OF DAVID (1Ki 1:43; Mat 21:9).Did the populace remember the triumphal progress of Solomon, one thousand years before, through those same streets, as they cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David“ (Mat 21:9-15).
IV. EACH RODE AMID THE ACCLAMATIONS OF THE PEOPLE.Each, that is to say, was acknowledged as king by popular acclaim. In each case, a curious Oriental hyperbole expresses the enthusiastic rejoicing and the deafening cries of the throng. “The earth rent” (1Ki 1:40). “The stones would immediately cry out” (Luk 19:40; cf. Mat 21:10). But here the resemblance ends.
Henceforward how great and striking is the contrast.
I. ALL THE GREAT PEOPLE SURROUNDED SOLOMON OUR LORD WAS PRECEDED AND FOLLOWED BY THE POOR. The dignitaries of the realm, both in church and state, prophet and priest, soldier and civilian, all assembled to do Solomon honour. But our Lord had none of these to do Him reverence. “Master, rebuke Thy disciples” (Luk 19:1-48 :89). The pomp and grandeur were all on the side of Solomon.
II. SOLOMON WENT TO SIT ON HIS THRONE JESUS TO SUFFER AND REIGN ON THE CROSS. The former rode to ease and glory and pomp and unparalleled magnificence; the latter to shame and spitting, to denial and death. But, crux scala caeli.
III. SOLOMON RODE TO GLORY: JESUS TO BRING OTHERS TO GLORY. The triumphal entry of Solomon was an ordinary thing. Such royal progresses have often been before and since. But never has the world seen such an entry as that of our Redeemer. He might have reigned as a king, but He chose to suffer as a felon: He might have lived for self, He chose to die for others. Shall we deny Him our hosannas? Shall not earth and heaven ring with His praises?
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND
1Ki 1:5
The sin of ambition.
Ambition is not always wrong. It is a common inspiration; and when the desire for distinction is associated with fitness for it, the call to effort and advance is from God. But for such ambition the world would stagnate. When the schoolboy is working for a prize, when the writer or speaker resolves to be amongst the foremost men of his age, when the man of business presses on towards the front ranks in the commercial world, we see what should be applauded and not condemned, so long as lawful objects are sought by lawful means. Let us, in all our pursuits, remember God’s laws for exaltation. Men are to go higher, when they have fulfilled the duties of the lower sphere. They are to rise on performances, and not on discontent. Hence, if ambition be conscientious, it will prompt to the minutely faithful performance of trivial duties. With a tireless hand crooked things will be made straight, and rough places plain, before the glory is revealed. If, however, ambition be not ruled by righteousness, or modified by love, if it is regardless of the rights of others and of the will of God, then it is a sin; the sin which was the herald of disobedience and death, the source of the tyranny and bloodshed which have desolated the world. It was this sin of which Adonijah was guilty when he “exalted himself, saying, I will be king!”
Let us see wherein the sinfulness of his sin lay.
I. THIS AMBITION PROMPTED ADONIJAH TO AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE DIVINE ORDINANCE. It has been said that his act was natural, though foolishly precipitate; for, according to the usual law of primogeniture, he had a right to expect the throne. But the law of primogeniture was never the law of the kingdom of Israel, which in spirit was a theocracy throughout. The invisible King distinctly reserved to him. self the right of appointment (Deu 17:14, Deu 17:15). True, seniority was a tacit indication of the Divine will, but this was always overruled by any special revelation of God’s choice. He who had chosen David from amongst his brothers, chose Solomon, and there was fitness in the choice; not only because as a man of peace he was qualified to build the Temple (1Ch 22:8, 1Ch 22:9), but also because his succession was a pledge to his parents, and to all the people, that after the death of their first child the sin of David and Bathsheba was buried in oblivion (comp. Psa 51:2, Psa 51:7, Psa 51:9, with Isa 43:25, etc.). This Divine choice was publicly known. Nathan sided with Solomon not as “the leader of a court cabal,” but as the prophet of the Lord; and Adonijah himself was well aware of the election of his brother (1Ki 2:15). When Adonijah said “I will be king,” he deliberately set up his will against God’s. A deep significance underlies God’s choice of men. He elects according to fitness and fits according to election, so that there is ultimate harmony between circumstances and character. The two sons of Zebedee were taught this. They had as much seeming right to the place of honour which they sought as had Adonijah to the throne. They belonged to “the twelve,” were personally beloved of their Lord, and their mother was related to the Virgin Mary, and was of those who ministered to Jesus. But Jesus said, “to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to those for whom it is prepared of my Father.” In other words, honours would be given by law and not by favour; not from arbitrary impulse, but from a knowledge of what was right and fitting. Draw lessons of contentment from the assurance that our lot is appointed by God. Show the necessity for our own sakes of submissiveness in prayer, lest God should give us our request and send leanness into our soul.
II. THIS AMBITION WAS A CRAVING FOR OUTWARD HONOUR, AND NOT FOR INWARD WORTH. “He prepared him chariots and horsemen and fifty men to run before him.“ His ambition was to have these for their own sakes, not to increase his influence for good. Nor was he the last man who cared for glitter and show. The candidate for a competitive examination, who seeks only for honours, and cares nothing for the learning and studious habits which may be acquired, will never be a true student. So with the professional man who works for money only, etc. Honours thus won are unsatisfying and transient. Their worth is fitly represented in the ceremonies observed at the coronation of a Pope. The M. C. holds in one hand a lighted taper, and in the other a reed surmounted by a piece of flax. The flax is ignited and flashes up into light, but in a few moments the flame dies out and the thin ashes fall at the Pontiffs feet, while a sonorous voice chants the words, “Pater sanctus, sic transit gloria mundi.” The pagans understood to some extent the lesson we seek to enforce. Their temple of honour had only one entrance, and that was through the temple of virtue. Over the gates of the kingdom of Christ these words are written, “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he that exalteth himself shall be abased.” In the day when spiritual realities shall be revealed there shall be not the glorification, but the “manifestation of the sons of God,” and in the outcome of character inwrought by God’s Spirit true and lasting glory shall be found.
III. THIS AMBITION ASSERTED ITSELF WITH A COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS.David still reigned; Solomon was his appointed successor; but Adonijah trampled their rights beneath his feet as he mounted the throne. Selfishness is the chief of those elements in ambition which constitute its sinfulness. Hence we may test ambition, by asking ourselves how we regard our competitors. If a man envies others; if, without compunction, he will crush another to the wall that he may pass him by; if he refuses to help another in sore straits, who is within his reach, on the ground that every man is for himself; then his ambition is a sin. This is more clearly revealed by our Lord than by the old dispensation. He has taught us not only to love our neighbours, but our competitors, and even our foes. He has urged us to “bear one another’s burdens,” to deny ourselves, and take up our cross to follow Him. The Christian Church has a sacrifice for its basis, and a cross for its banner.
IV. THIS AMBITION WAS NURTURED IN DEFIANCE OF SIGNIFICANT WARNING. Adonijah repeated his brother’s offence. He knew how that bright young life had closed in darkness, when Absalom died helpless and unpitied by the hand of Joab. He had often seen his father sitting looking at himself with a far off look in his eyes, as if he still were saying, “O, Absalom, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Yet the same sin which had been so signally punished he resolved to commit. History is crowded with illustrations of the fact that men who have lived as Adonijah did have found their honours unsatisfying, and have died in disappointment and despair. Alexander, who conquered the world, died, after setting fire to a city, in a scene of awful debauchery. Hannibal, who at one time could fill three bushels with the gold rings of fallen knights, died by poison, administered by his own hand, unwept in a foreign land. Caesar, who conquered eight hundred cities, fell stabbed to the heart by his friends, in the place of his noblest triumph. Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, died a heart broken captive. It has been writ large, in letters of blood, so that he who runs may read, “the expectation of the wicked shall be cut off!”
Conclusion.Will you, with the nobler possibilities set before you in the gospel, whom angel voices are calling to higher things, whose conscience is whispering of duty and love, to whom Christ, the suffering Saviour, the King of Glory, says, “Follow Me!” will you, like Adonijah, turn to the ways of self indulgence and vainglory, to prove as he did that “the wages of sin is death.”A.R.
1Ki 1:6
Moral ruin in a religious home.
It is a notorious fact that the sons of devout men sometimes prove a curse to their parents, and bring dishonor on the cause of God. When sin entered the world, it caused the earth, on which flowers had aforetime blossomed, to bring forth thorns and briars. This is a picture of a sad truth, known in the first home, and in many another since. Eve rejoiced over the fair child she had “gotten from the Lord,” and did not suspect that passions were sleeping within him which would nerve his arm to strike the fatal blow which slew his brother and destroyed his mother’s peace. Such sorrow has been experienced in subsequent history. Isaac’s heart was rent by the deceit of Jacob and the self will of Esau. Jacob found his own sin repeated against himself, for he who had deceived his father when he was old and blind, suffered an agony of grief for years, because he was falsely told by his sons that Joseph was dead. Probably few have had more domestic sorrow than David. He experienced, in its bitterest form, the grief of a parent who has wished that before his son had brought such dishonour on the home, he had been, in the innocence of his childhood, laid to rest beneath the daisies. Of David’s sons, Amnon, the eldest, after committing a hideous sin, had been assassinated by the order of Absalom, his brother. Absalom himself had rebelled against his father, and had been killed by Joab, as he hung helpless in the oak. Chileab (or Daniel) was dead. And now of the fourth son, the eldest surviving, Adonijah, this sad story is told. Adonijah’s sin seems so unnatural at first sight that we must try and discover the sources whence so bitter and desolating a stream flowed. We shall find them in THREE ADVERSE INFLUENCES AROUND HIM AT HOME, which are hinted at in our text.
I. ADONIJAH INHERITED A CONSTITUTIONAL TENDENCY AMBITION AND SELF CONCEIT. His association with Absalom is not without significance. The two brothers were alike in their sin and in the tendencies which led to it. These were inherited,
(1) The law that “like produces like,“ which is proved to demonstration in the breeding of lower animals (illustrations from horses bred for speed or endurance, dogs for fleetness or scent, pigeons for swiftness or beauty, etc.), asserts itself in man. Not only are physical qualities inherited, so that we recognise a “family likeness” between children of the same parents; but mental qualities are inherited too; statesmanship, heroism, or artistic gift, reappearing in the same family for generations. Moral tendencies are transmitted too; and Scripture exemplifies it. If Isaac is so luxurious that he must have his savoury dish, we do not so much wonder that Esau, his son sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. If Rebekah, like Laban her brother, is greedy and cunning, her son Jacob inherits her tendency, and must live a life of suffering, and present many an agonising prayer before he is set free from his besetting sin. So is it still. The drunkard gives to his offspring a craving for drink, which is a disease. In more senses than one, “The evil that men do lives after them.” Surely, then, when not only future happiness, but the destiny of children depends on the choice of a life partner, there should be regard paid not merely to physical beauty, or mental endowment, or social position, but, above all these, to moral and spiritual worth.
(2) It is argued that this law of moral heritage affects personal responsibility; that it is hardly fair to condemn a man for a sin to which he is naturally prone. But “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Whatever your parentage, you are not “committed to do these abominations.” If the disposition be evil, it need never become the habit of life. It is something you may yield to, but it is something you may resist; for “He is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able to bear.” Rather should any tendencies to evil be recognised as God’s voice calling attention to the weak places of character, that there we may keep most eager watch and ward. And because we are weak, He has sent His Son to bring deliverance to the captives, that through Him we may be inspired with hope, and fitted with strength, and rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free.
II. ADONIJAH WAS MISLED BY ADULATION. “He was also a very goodly man.“ Physically, as well as morally, he was a repetition of Absalom. His parents were guilty of partiality. David loved him the more because (like the lost boy) Adonijah was so fair, so noble in mien, so princely in stature. Courtiers and soldiers (who looked, as they did in Saul’s time, for a noble-looking king) flattered him. Joab and Abiathar joined the adulators. Intoxicated with vanity, Adonijah set up a royal court, as Absalom had done (see 1Ki 1:5). Every position in life has its own temptations. The ill-favoured child who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home is tempted to bitterness and revenge. His character is likely to be unsightly, as a plant would be, which grows in a damp, dark vault. There can belittle beauty if there is no sunshine. On the other hand, if the gift of physical beauty attracts attention and wins admiration, or if conversational power be brilliant, etc; it is a source of peril. Many a one has thus been befooled into sin and misery, or entrapped into an unhappy marriage, and by lifelong sadness paid the penalty of folly, or venturing too far, prompted by ambition, has fallen, like Icarus when his waxen wings melted in the sunshine. When that time of disappointment and disenchantment comes, happy is it when such an one, like the prodigal, comes to himself, and says, “I will arise, and go to my father!”
III. ADONIJAH WAS UNDISCIPLINED AT HOME. “His father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?“ This refers not only to the special act of rebellion, but to the tendencies and habits leading up to it, which David had not checked, for fear of vering the high spirited lad. The weak indulgence of children (such as that which Eli exhibited) is the cause of untold misery. Not many parents blazon abroad the story of their domestic grief. Loyal hands draw down the veil over the discord at home, and that agony of prayer which is heard by “the Father who seeth in secret.” You do not see the girl who mars the beauty of her early womanhood by a flippant disregard of her parents, and whose own pleasure seems to be the only law of her life. You do not see the child whose hasty passion and uncontrolled temper are the dread of the household; who, by his ebullitions of rage, gets what he wishes, till authority is disregarded and trodden underfoot. You do not see the son who thinks it manly to be callous to a mother’s anxiety and a father’s counsels, who likes to forget home associations, and is sinking in haunts of evil, where you may weep over him as a wreck. But, though you see them not, they exist. Far otherwise, in some of these sad experiences, it might have been. Suppose there had been firm resolution instead of habitual indulgence; suppose that authority had been asserted and used in days before these evil habits were formed; suppose that, instead of leaving the future to chance, counsels and prayers had moulded character during moulding timemight there not have been joy where now there is grief? Heavy are our responsibilities as parents. Yet splendid are our possibilities! These children who may prove our curses may, with God’s blessing on our fidelity, grow up to be wise, pure hearted, courageous men of God, who will sweeten the atmosphere of the home, and purge this nation of its sins, and make the name of “the King of saints” honoured and praised throughout the world! “Train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”A.R.
1Ki 1:39-41
The dethronement of the false by the enthronement ofthetrue.
When Bathsheba and Nathan brought David news of Adonijah’s revolt, and told him that Joab and Abiathar were at the coronation feast at En-rogel, it is noteworthy that the king made no direct attack on the conspirators. He merely commanded that Solomon should be seated on the royal mule, that he should ride in state to Gihon, and that there Zadok should anoint him king, and proclaim by the sound of trumpet that he was appointed ruler. It was this which paralysed the traitorous assembly. The sound of the trumpet was to their scheme what the blast of the rams’ horns was to the walls of Jericho, when they fell in irreparable ruin. David’s method was the wisest, the surest; for it not only removed a present evil, but provided a future good. The lesson is obvious, and is susceptible of wide application; that the false is most surely dethroned by the enthronement of the true. The strong man armed keeps his goods in peace, until a stronger than he shall come. (See Luk 11:21, Luk 11:22.) Suggest: applications of this principle.
I. VAIN THOUGHTS ARE TO BE EXPELLED BY THE INCOMING OF WHAT IS WISE AND GOOD. The Psalmist hated “vain thoughts,” because he loved God’s law (Psa 119:113). When the heart is empty, swept, and garnished, there is room for worse evils to come (Mat 12:44). The full mind and heart are safe. Apply to the conquest of wandering thoughts in worship, of vanity in children, etc.
II. SELF WILL IS TO BE CONQUERED BY A NOBLER AND STRONGER WILL. We are early taught this. Every child carries out his own wishes without regard to others, till he recognizes that the parent’s will is authoritative. Sooner or later there is struggle, and only when it is decided in one way is there rest. Similarly we have to learn to subordinate our thoughts to God’s revelation, our wishes to His will, and this lesson is more painfully learnt as the years pass by and the habit of self rule grows stronger.
III. UNWORTHY AFFECTIONS ARE TO BE OVERCOME BY A WORTHY LOVE. When love is set on the unworthy, force is useless, argument is vain. But if the love is diverted to a nobler object, it naturally disentangles its tendrils from the unworthy. In the highest sphere it may be said of love to our Lord, “that love shall all vain love expel.”
IV. ERROR IS TO BE SUBDUED BY TRUTH. The hatred of artisans to machinery when first introduced was not conquered by dragoons, nor by prisons, but by the discovery on their part of the mistake they had ignorantly made. So with all errors. We shall not destroy heathenism by the abuse of the idols, but by the presentation of Christ.
V. CARE IS TO BE EXTIRPATED BY PRAYER. In many hearts care is enthroned. To many a one our Lord might say, “Thou art careful and troubled about many things.” We cannot reason away our anxieties, nor force them from our minds, but we can have the rest our children have, who never trouble about the morrow, because they trust in us. It would be vain to say, “Be careful for nothing,” unless the apostle could add the alternative, “but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God; and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds.”
VI. EVILS REIGNING IN SOCIETY ARE TO BE OVERTHROWN BY WHAT IS NOBLER THAN THEY.Apply this broadly, e.g; wholesome literature must defeat pernicious. Low amusements, intoxicating drinks, etc; will pass away when there is the establishment of nobler substitutes for these.
The whole subject is summed up in Christthe true King of humanity, the incarnation of all that is worthy of being loved and enthroned. Draw the analogy between Solomon the anointed king, as he rides on the mule into Jerusalem amid the acclamations of the people, and the entry of our Lord into Jerusalem as described Mat 21:1-46. If worldliness, or selfishness, or ambition, or lust has been reigning in your heart, the usurped will be dethroned when you welcome Christ as King and say, “O Lord our God, other lords besides thee have had dominion over us, but now we acknowledge Thee to be our Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Descend to Thy Jerusalem, O Lord,
Her faithful children cry with one accord;
Come, ride in triumph on; behold, we lay
Our guilty lusts and proud wills in Thy way.
Thy road is ready, Lord; Thy paths, made straight,
In longing expectation seem to wait
The consecration of Thy beauteous feet,
And, hark, hosannas loud Thy footsteps greet.A. R.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
1Ki 1:1-4. Now King David was old, &c. It appears from 2Sa 5:4-5 that he was seventy years old. The strength of nature was so far abated in him, that clothes could not keep him warm in his bed. His physicians therefore advised, that a fair and youthful virgin should be sought for, who might cherish his vital heat; the natural warmth of a young healthful human body being, as the physicians observe, best fitted for that end, both in kind and degree. If it be asked, how the beauty of the person to be employed for this purpose was concerned in David’s health; I answer, that the beauty here required, is evidently beauty of complexion, which, as it indicates the health and temperament of the body, might be of importance in this case. Possibly too, as David was very beautiful himself, they sought for some person of complexion and constitution likest to his own, and, of consequence, best suited, and most congenial to it. Scheuchzer, on the place, has entered philosophically into the subject; to him, therefore, we refer. We should remark, however, that concubinage was not at that time deemed criminal; and it will I hope, says Dr. Delaney, be thought no wild paradox, to venture to surmise, that a man can with less reluctance suffer his infirmities to be relieved by a wife, than by any other mortal.
Note; (1.) They who come to old age, must expect the burden of infirmities which attend it. (2.) Though the candle of life escape the furious blasts of disease or accident, it must shortly burn out of itself. (3.) The view of approaching old age and death should enliven our diligence to work for God, whilst life and strength are with us.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
THE
FIRST BOOK OF THE KINGS
FIRST PERIOD, (1015 TO 975 B. C.)
THE KINGDOM UNDER SOLOMON.1
(Chapters 12)
FIRST SECTION
solomons accession to the throne
1 Kings 1, 2
A.Adonijahs attempt to seize the kingdom for himself; Solomons elevation to the throne
1Ki 1:1-53
1Now king David was old and stricken in years;2 and they covered him with clothes,3 but he gat no heat. 2Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin [virgin damsel];4 and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy5 bosom, that my6 lord the king may get heat. 3So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a [the7] Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not.
5Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. 6And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly man; and his mother bare him after Absalom. 7And he conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar the priest: and they following Adonijah helped him. 8But Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and Nathan the prophet, and Shimei, and Rei, and the mighty men which belonged to David, were not with Adonijah. 9And Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle by the stone of Zoheleth, which is by En-rogel [the well of Rogel], and called all his brethren the kings sons, and all the men of Judah the kings servants: 10but Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, and the mighty men, and Solomon his brother, he called not.
11Wherefore Nathan spake unto Bath-sheba the mother of Solomon, saying, Hast thou not heard that Adonijah the son of Haggith doth reign, and David our lord knoweth it not? 12Now therefore come, let me, I pray thee, give thee counsel, that thou mayest save thine own life, and the life of thy son Solomon. 13Go and get thee in unto king David, and say unto him, Didst not thou, my lord, O king, swear unto thine handmaid, saying, Assuredly [That8] Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne? why then doth Adonijah reign?9 14Behold, while thou yet talkest therewith the king, I also will come in after thee, and confirm10 thy words.
15And Bath-sheba went in unto the king into the chamber: and the king was 16very old; and Abishag the Shunammite ministered unto the king. And Bath-sheba bowed, and did obeisance unto the king. And the king said, What wouldest thou? 17And she said unto him, My lord, thou swarest by the Lord [Jehovah] thy God unto thine handmaid, saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne. 18And now, behold, Adonijah reigneth; and now [thou11], my lord the king, thou knowest it not: 19And he hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the sons of the king, and Abiathar the priest, and Joab the captain of the host: but Solomon 20thy servant hath he not called. And thou,12 my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are upon thee, that thou shouldest tell them who shall sit on the throne of my 21lord the king after him. Otherwise [But] it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be counted13 offenders. 22And, lo, while she yet talked with the king, Nathan the prophet also came in. 23And they told the king, saying, Behold Nathan the prophet [has come]. And when he was come in before the king, he bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground. 24And Nathan said, My lord, O king, hast thou said,14 Adonijah shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne? 25For he is gone down this day, and hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in abundance, and hath called all the kings sons, and the captains of the host, and Abiathar the priest; and, behold, they eat and drink before him, and say, God 26save king Adonijah [let king Adonijah live]. But me, even me thy servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and thy servant Solomon, hath he not called. 27Is this thing done by my lord the king, and thou hast not shewed it15 unto thy servant16 who should sit on the throne of my lord the king after him?
28Then king David answered and said, Call me Bath-sheba. And she came into the kings presence, and stood before the king. 29And the king sware, and said, As the Lord [Jehovah] liveth, that hath redeemed my soul out of all distress, 30even as I sware unto thee by the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, saying, Assuredly [That17] Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon 31my throne in my stead; even so will I certainly18 do this day. Then Bath-sheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence to the king, and said, Let my lord king David live for ever.
32And king David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the king. 33The king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord,19 and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to Gihon;20 34And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there king over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet, and say, God save king Solomon [let king Solomon live]. 35Then ye shall come up after him, that he may [and he shall] come and sit upon my throne; for [and] he shall be king in my stead: and I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and over Judah. 36And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said, Amen: the Lord [Jehovah] God of my lord the king say so too [so spake21]. 37As the Lord [Jehovah] hath been with my lord the king, even so be he with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord king David.
38So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king Davids mule, and brought him to Gihon.22 39And Zadok the priest took a horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon 40[Let king Solomon live]. And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them.
41And Adonijah and all the guests that were with him heard it, as they had made an end of eating. And when Joab heard the sound of the trumpet, he said, Wherefore is this noise of the city being in an uproar? 42And while he yet spake, behold, Jonathan the son of Abiathar the priest came: and Adonijah said unto him,23 Come in; for thou art a valiant man, and bringest good tidings. 43And Jonathan answered and said to Adonijah, Verily our lord king David hath made Solomon king. 44And the king hath sent with him Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, and they have caused him to ride upon the kings mule: 45and Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon:24 and they are come up from thence rejoicing, so that the city rang again. This is the noise that ye have heard. 46And also Solomon sitteth on the throne of the kingdom. 47And moreover the kings servants came to bless our lord king David, saying, [Thy25] God make the name of Solomon better than thy name, and make his throne greater than thy throne. And the king bowed himself upon the bed. 48And also thus said the king, Blessed be the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, which hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even seeing it.
49And all the guests that were with Adonijah were afraid, and rose up,26 and went every man his way. 50And Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar. 51And it was told Solomon, saying, Behold, Adonijah feareth king Solomon: for, lo, he hath caught hold on the horns of the altar, saying, Let king27 Solomon swear unto me to [this28] day that he will not slay his servant with the sword. 52And Solomon said, If he will shew himself a worthy man, there shall not a hair of him fall to the earth: but if wickedness shall be found in him, he shall die. 53So king Solomon sent, and they brought him down from the altar. And he came and bowed himself to king Solomon: and Solomon said unto him, Go to thine house.
Exegetical and Critical
1Ki 1:1. Now king David was old, &c. 1Ki 1:1-4 introduce the entire narration following, the central point and chief object of which is Solomons ascension to the throne. Adonijahs endeavor to usurp the throne was the reason why this event took place before the death of David. Adonijah proceeded to carry out his purpose when David was old and infirm, and apparently near his end. The author begins, consequently, with the description of Davids condition, and is reminded particularly of Abishag, his waiting-maid, because Adonijah, after the misadventure of his enterprise, sought her for a wife in order to gain the throne by means of her, and so wrought his destruction (1Ki 2:13 sq.). The at the beginning has no connection with anything preceding; least of all does it connect our books with the books of Samuel (see Introduction, 3). Nor is it mechanically retained from a passage of the life of David inserted-here (Keil); but it stands, as elsewhere so often at the beginning of a book (Jos 1:1; Jdg 1:1; 2Sa 1:1; Rth 1:1; Est 1:1; Ezr 1:1; Eze 1:1; Jon 1:1), where the first verse forms the antecedent to the second.When David was old and infirm, his servants said unto him. David was then seventy years of age (comp. 1Ki 2:11, with 2Sa 5:4-5): that his natural warmth then failed him, was not ex nimio mulierum usu (Le Clerc), but was the result of the extraordinary cares and conflicts of his earlier life (Ewald).
1Ki 1:2-4. Wherefore his servants said unto him, &c. Josephus expressly names them physicians (Ant vii. 14, 3), comp. Gen 50:2. The remedy which one of them, in the name of the rest, advised when the clothes ( as in 1Sa 19:13; Num 4:6) were of no use, was known in ancient times. Without skill in infernal remedies, men sought to warm, by means of living vigorous bodies, those whose vital powers were chilled and enfeebled. Galen (Method. Medic. 8, 7) says: Ex iis vero, qu extrinsecus applicantur, boni habitus puellus una sit accumbans, ut semper abdomen ejus contingat. Bacon (Hist. Vit. et Nec.): Neque negligenda sunt fomenta ex corporibus vivis. According to Bartholinus (De Morb. Bibl. 9), a Jewish physician advised the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa to allow young and strong boys to lie upon his breast (comp. Trusen, Sitten, Gebr, and Krankh. der Hebrer, s. 257 sq.). This was not designed hero for the gratification of bodily passion, by means of a concubine, as Winer calls Abishag, but before all, for service and assistance, such as was deemed most effective after the unavailing application of the usual remedies to the aged man confined to his bed. The physicians expressly state this, and it agrees with the words: and let her stand before the king, i.e., let her servo him (Gen 41:46; Deu 1:38), and be his attendant, i.e., let her wait upon, help him: let her lie in his bosom [not thy, see textual note] that ho may become warm. If by these last words they may have presupposed that he would know her, they do not state it as the design, as, moreover, must not be understood necessarily only of cohabitation (comp. 1Ki 3:20; Rth 4:16). They sought a beautiful maiden because she was destined for the king (Thenius), and they found such at Shunem, a city of the tribe Is-sachar, in the plain of Jezreel, at the foot of the so-called little Hermon (Jos 19:18; 1Sa 28:4). The text states expressly that the king did not know her: she was, therefore, not his concubine, but his waiting-maid and attendant. In a wholly perverse way Josephus, and after him J. D. Michaelis, adduces impotency, in consequence of old ago and weakness, as the reason why he did not know her. In that case the remark would be superfluous (Thenius). It serves, however, to make it clear how it was that Adonijah could seek Abishag for his wife, 1Ki 2:17 (Keil), and go to Bath-sheba for her intercession with Solomon. Older interpreters have maintained that she was the actual wife of David, or at least his concubine, and that the relation also, according to the morality of the time, was unobjectionable. Bat neither hero nor in the second chapter is she so named. Amongst the people she may have well passed for such, since Adonijah, through alliance with her, wished to facilitate his way to the throne (see on 1Ki 2:13).29
1Ki 1:5-6. Then Adonijah the son of Haggith, &c. Of the sons of David born at Hebron, Adonijah was the fourth (2Sa 3:2-4). The first, Amnon, and the third, Absalom, were already dead, and the second also, Chileab, of whom nothing more is said, had doubtless died much earlier. As the eldest living son, Adonijah believed that he had claims to the throne. Besides this, his beautiful person came into the account, as with Absalom, by which, because it was valued in a ruler (1Sa 9:2; 2Sa 14:25; 2Sa 16:7; Eze 28:12), he hoped for the favorable regard of the people, 1Ki 1:6 cannot, with some, be translated: and ho was born unto him after Absalom, but only, as in Gen 16:1 : and she had borne him after Absalom, i.e., after the latter had been borne of Maacah. The alteration of the text into he had begotten him after Absalom (Thenius), is wholly unnecessary. The succession to the throne in Israel was certainly hereditary; but no law required that the eldest son, at the time, should be the heir-apparent. From 1Ki 1:17; 1Ki 1:20, as also from 2Ch 11:22, it is clear that it was regarded as the right of the reigning king to determine who amongst his sons should succeed him. He could transmit the kingdom to his first-born or to his eldest son, but he was not obliged (2Ch 21:3) thereto. Adonijah was not at all first-born, but only the fourth son. He himself does not take his age into the account, and appeals, in 1Ki 2:13 sq., not to this, but to the voice of the people who had shown themselves favorably disposed towards him. Davids designation of Solomon as his successor, has its reason in the promise in 2Sa 7:12-16; 2Sa 12:24 sq.;1Ch 22:9-10; he regarded him as the one who, according to the prescript touching a king in Deu 17:15, was chosen by Jehovah. Of a formal right to the throne, possessed by Adonijah, which he thought to assure himself of (Thenius), there can be no discussion. That he knew well the will of his father, by virtue of which Solomon was to be his successor, is clear from the circumstance that he invited all his brothers, and the men who were employed in the royal service, to a feast prepared by him. Solomon only, and the more confidential friends of David, were not invited. His design was to render null the purpose of his father, and to possess himself of the throne, by conspiracy and force, in opposition to his wish. His undertaking was a formal usurpation, and like that of Absalom, to which the whole narrative manifestly points. Upon this account also the text says: he exalted himself, i.e., he over-exalted himselfmade himself somewhat that did not become him ( used here as in Pro 30:32; Num 16:3), with this result, that his father left him to his will ( means from his, Adonijahs days, and is not, with Seb. Schmidt, to be understood first of his attempt at royal sovereignty). The moral infirmity of the royal father, coupled now with bodily weakness, induced Adonijah to enter upon his guilty enterprise. Just as Absalom had done (2Sa 15:1), he provided himself with what, according to 1Sa 8:11, is designated as the first royal prerogative, chariots, riders, and body-guardsmen, i.e., a brilliant court, in order thereby to impose upon the multitude.
1Ki 1:7-10. And he conferred with Joab, &c. Through the commander-in-chief, Adonijah hopes to win over the army, and through the high-priest, to secure also the priesthood. Not the conviction that he had right on his side (Thenius), induced both men to enter into his plans. Joab had observed that he was sunken in the good graces of David (1Ki 2:5), and consequently could not hope for much for himself from Solomon; but from Adonijah he could hope, especially if made king by his assistance. Abiathar seems to have felt himself set aside by David for Zadok, which priest was at the tabernacle with the ark of the covenant at Zion (see on 1Ki 1:33; 1Ki 1:39), and to have feared that the high-priestly family of Eleazar, to which Zadok belonged, would supplant his own, viz.: the family of Ithamar. Upon Benaiah, comp. 2Sa 8:18; 2Sa 23:20 sq.; upon Nathan, see 2 Samuel 7, 12. Shimei is mentioned in 1Ki 4:18 : Josephus names Rei . Doubtless these latter filled high offices. That they were the only surviving brothers of David (Ewald), has nothing probable to rest upon. Upon the heroes of David, comp. 2Sa 23:8 sq., and 1Ch 11:10 sq. Adonijah, like Absalom (2Sa 15:8; 2Sa 15:12), prepared a great feast, which was ostensibly also sacrificial, in order to impart to the transaction a religious coloring. The well, i.e., the sources of Rogel (Jos 15:7; Jos 18:16), lay, according to 2Sa 17:17, southeasterly from Jerusalem, in the loveliest, most fruitful plain; according to Josephus, in ; according to Schulz (Jerus., s. 79), even now a place of recreation for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thenius derives the name Zoheleth from , to crawla rock which one must climb with difficulty. This place was in every respect suited for a public festivity. (Comp. Robinson, Palestine, vol. i. p. 333; Boston, 1868.)
1Ki 1:11-14. Wherefore Nathan spake unto Bath-sheba, &c. According to the custom prevailing anciently in the East, on the occasion of the forcible seizure of the throne, of murdering the dethroned ruler, or the opposing pretenders to the crown, with all their nearest relations (Jdg 9:5; 1Ki 15:29; 2Ki 10:6; 2Ki 10:13; 2Ki 11:1), in the event of the success of Adonijahs undertaking, there was very much to fear for the life both of Solomon and of his mother. That David knew nothing of the plans of Adonijah, and that Nathan was first informed of them only at the moment of their execution, shows how secretly the affair had been managed. This would have been unnecessary had Adonijah a recognized right to the throne, and had his own conscience been right in the premises. David, moreover, would not have been so very much surprised at his undertaking. The prophet Nathan also deemed it his duty to prevent, as far as possible, a repetition of the history of Absalom. With great wisdom and prudence, he addressed himself to the mother of Solomon, who was especially beloved of David, begging her to apply to the king, with whom rested the right to designate his successor, to represent to him the mortal peril which threatened both her son and herself, and to remind him of his promise to her. When Davids mind should first, by this means, become aroused, than he (the prophet) would, in the name of Jehovah, appear before the king, and place before him his given word (1Ch 28:5), in order to incite him to immediate action. When David first promised Bath-sheba, upon his oath, that her son Solomon should become king, is not known. Obviously it was after the promise he had received in 2 Samuel 7. (Keil).
1Ki 1:15-27. And Bath-sheba went in unto the king, &c. The statement that king David Was old, &c, (1Ki 1:1), explains the words: into the chamber (1Ki 1:15), and means ho was so feeble that he could not leave his sick-room, and needed constant attention.From 1Ki 1:20, comp. 27, it is most explicit, once more, that no one entertained the thought that Adonijah, as the eldest surviving son of the king, had a right to the succession; but that the right to decide whether of his sons should be king, remained rather with the king, and that his decision was anxiously waited for.I and my son Solomon shall be counted offenders,i.e., we shall be treated as traitors and offenders guilty of death. After these words Bath-sheba retired, and Nathan, informed in the meanwhile, went unto the king. While the former addressed her statement to the king directly, as a mother, the latter, as prophet, begins with a question in which, upon the one side, a slight reproach was conveyed that David should not have put a stop sooner to the design of Adonijah, and have exposed his own friends to great danger, and on the other side it expressed the confidence that the king would hold to his oath, and carry it out forthwith.Under the captains of the host, 1Ki 1:25, the servants of the king (the mighty men) in 1Ki 1:10 are included. Kings used to be saluted by the people with the salutation, Live the king! (1Sa 10:24; 2Sa 16:16; 2Ki 11:12; 2 Chron. 23:31.) the order of names in 1Ki 1:26 contains a climax in which Solomon, as the highest personage, is named last. Nathans words are anything also than the expression of wounded vanitythey simply exhibit Adonijahs hostile sentiment towards the friends of the king, and also the fate in store for them should Adonijah become sovereign.
1Ki 1:28-38. Then king David answered, &c. The quick and firm resolution of David shows how strong he was yet in mind and will, notwithstanding all his bodily weakness. He repeats his oath, not, however, employing merely the usual formula, as Jehovah liveth! but adding most significantly, who hath redeemed my soul out of all distress. i.e., to the God who has been true to me, and delivered me wonderfully out of so many and great dangers, will I also remain true unto the end. His oath, coming from deep emotion, is likewise a praise and thanksgiving unto Jehovah. Had Adonijah an actual formal right to the throne, such an oath would have been the greatest sin, in so far as David, while appealing to the divine mercy and grace, would have knowingly trodden under foot the right of his son. the added , 1Ki 1:31, exhibits the vivacity of the thought. Amongst the Persian kings it appears to have been customary (Dan 3:9; Dan 5:10; Dan 6:22; Neh 2:3).
1Ki 1:33-37. The king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord, &c. As no one but the king himself dared ride his mule, the command to let Solomon ride thereon was an actual declaration that he was king (Est 6:8-9). Gihon is a place near Jerusalem, on the west side, with a spring of water (2Ch 32:30; 2Ch 33:14). the valley hero situated bears still this name (Robinson, Palest. vol. i., p. 346). It was proper for the anointing to take place at a spot where a large assemblage could be gathered, and whence a solemn entrance into the city, which had no open public square, could be made. Gihon, moreover, was considerably distant from the rock Zoheleth, which was on the southeasterly side of Jerusalem, whore Adonijah had gathered together his adherents, so that a collision would be avoided. According to the account of the rabbins, kings were anointed only at places abounding in water, and upon that account also much frequented. But they erroneously identify Gihon with Siloam, which spring lies southeast of Jerusalem. Thenius prefers the reading to , because the tabernacle was there, from which, according to 1Ki 1:39, Zadok took the horn of oil. But the three hours distance of Gibeon from Jerusalem is conclusive against this. Besides, by , in 1Ki 1:39, we are not to understand the tabernacle of the covenant, but the tent erected by David upon Zion for the ark of the covenant (2Sa 6:17; 1Ch 15:1; 1Ch 16:1). David expressly gave order for the anointing of Solomon, so that nothing appertaining to the investiture of the king should be wanting. the supposition that anointing took place only with those kings who were not free from exceptions, or who had no historic right to the throne (Winer and Grotius, after the rabbins), is unfounded, for David, who here ordered the anointing, regarded Solomon in no respect as an exceptional successor. From the fact that he wished this done not simply by the high-priest, but also by the prophet, we learn the high significance he attributed to the prophetic office in Israel. He says purposely, ruler over Israel and over Judah. He had himself, for some time, been ruler only over Judah: then ho had conquered Ephraim, which named itself Israel, and had united it again with Judah. The old disunion had again exhibited itself on the revolt of Absalom (2Sa 19:40 sq.); hence, with Adonijahs like undertaking in view, he deemed it necessary to declare expressly that Solomon should be ruler over Israel and Judah. Benaiah, as the person upon whom the execution of the order devolved, answered David, and declared himself ready to carry it out,not, as Thenius supposes, to flatter the paternal vanity, but, in the conviction that the kings command was in conformity with the will of Jehovah, he wished that the divine blessing might rest upon the government of Solomon.
1Ki 1:38. So Zadok the priest, &c. By the Cherethites and Pelethites we must understand the royal body-guard (Josephus, ). On the other hand, the modern interpreters are not agreed whether both expressions are to be under stood ethnographically or appellatively. They who urge the former, appeal to 1Sa 30:14, and hold for the designation of the parentstem of the Philistines, which had migrated from Crete, and that , too, is the same with . David, who for a long while had remained amongst the Philistines, had collected his body-guard from amongst foreigners and not from his own people, and afterwards the appellative remained (Movers, Hitzig, Bertheau, Ewald). Others derive from , and from the Arabic, cognate with , &c., understanding by the former, lictors, the royal executioners of the punishment of death, and by the latter, runners who, like the of the Persians, had to carry commands to remote places (2Ch 30:6). we hold to this latter view, along with Gesenius, Keil, and Thenius, for although the plural form instead of for appellations is certainly unusual, we cannot perceive why two designations should be employed side by side, for one and the same people. (We do not say Britons and Englishmen.) So, then, later the royal body-guard were called (comp. 2Ki 11:4 sq.), i.e., executioners and runners. And last of all, it is highly improbable that David, who was perpetually at war with the Philistines, would have selected his body-guards from them.The horn of oil out of the tabernacle (1Ki 1:39). The oil of holy ointment (Exo 30:23 sq.) was preserved in the tabernacle in which the ark of the covenant was kept (1Ch 15:1). The pouring of this oil upon the head symbolized the communication of the Spirit () of Jehovah (1Sa 16:13). By anointing, the royal office with which Solomon was to be invested was set forth as essentially theocratic. The king of Israel was, upon this account absolutely the anointed of the Lord (1Sa 2:10; 1Sa 2:35; 1Sa 24:7). The taking of the horn from the tabernacle does not force us to the conclusion that the act of anointing took place before or at it and at the same time, also at Gibeon, as Thenius maintains. The great joy and jubilation of the whole people shows that they knew nothing of Adonijahs right to the throne, but that they rather accepted Davids decision, who alone had the right to decide. They saw in Solomons elevation a victory over the unauthorized usurper. Flutes were used at festivals, especially at the feast of tabernacles (Isa 5:12; Isa 30:29; Winer, R. – W.- B., ii. s. 123).30
1Ki 1:40. The earth rent. So according to the Chald., which explains by . The Sept. has ; the Vulg. insonuit. Thenius reads , the earth was struck = quaked, which seems unnecessary.
1Ki 1:41-48. And Adonijah . heard it, &c. While the assembled guests heard the noise and the cry in the city, the experienced soldier Joab caught the sound of the trumpets especially, and concluded, from this warlike token, nothing good. Jonathan, the son of Abiathar, who here, as in 2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 17:17 appears as the bringer of news, was probably left behind in the city designedly to observe what was going on. Although scarcely himself a witness of what transpired in the royal palace, he could, nevertheless, as Solomon had already made his entrance, be well informed by eye and car witnesses. Joab named him a valiant man, i.e., a person whoso report could be trusted. The at the end of 1Ki 1:47, as David was lying upon his bed, certainly cannot mean that ho fell upon his knees; still less is a thankful bow in return to those who were congratulating him meant (Thenius). The king bowed himself with his body as far as he could, before his Lord and God, and spake: Blessed, &c. The at the beginning of 1Ki 1:48 does not indicate a new, different action, but simply states that besides his bowing, he spake also the words which follow.
1Ki 1:49-53. And all the guests . were afraid, &c. The panic which forthwith seized Adonijah and his followers, shows that their conscience was not upright in their undertaking, i.e., that they themselves were not convinced of the righteousness of Adonijahs claims, otherwise they would, with Joab at their head, have made a stand, and not scattered at once. To save his life, which he, as a usurper of the throne, believed he had forfeited, Adonijah fled to the altar, which stood before the tabernacle upon Zion (1Ki 3:15; 2Sa 6:17). He laid hold of the horns of the altar, as did Joab afterwards (1Ki 2:28), and appealed thereby to the pardoning power and grace of Jehovah (comp. upon the significance of the act, my Symbolik des Mos. Cult., i. s. 473 sq.). This asylum was ordained originally for unintentional man-slayers (Exo 21:12 sq); but later on it appears to have been made use of by persons who feared punishment by death. Solomon regarded Adonijahs flight to the horns of the altar as a confession of his guilt and repentance, and he exercised an act of clemency which could only produce the most favorable impression upon the people. Yet ho adds a warning in the words: Go to thine house, i.e., not: Do not come into my presence (2Sa 14:24), but: Keep thyself quiet, live as a private person, then not the least harm shall befall thee.
Historical and Ethical
1. The entire first chapter turns upon the eleven Hon of Solomon to the throne, which is narrated so circumstantially with its immediate occasion and all the attending circumstances, because, as has already been shown in the Introduction, 3, it constitutes in the highest degree a weighty moment in the development of the history of the Old Testament theocracy. With it begins the period of a blooming of the kingdom of Israel which it never had before, and which never came again. Solomon thereby became elevated to the type of a great, mighty, wise, and prosperous king, which lie passes for even to this day in the Orient. The prophets even depict the glory and happiness of the Messianic kingdom with expressions which are borrowed from the description of the kingdom of Israel under Solomon. (Comp. Mic 4:4, and Zec 3:10, with 1Ki 5:5.) He is, according to his name, the prince of peace, , and the beloved of God (2Sa 12:25), designations which by the prophets and in the New Testament are applied, in like manner, to the Messiah the son of David in the most eminent sense (Isa 9:5-6; Eph 1:6; Eph 2:14; Col 1:13). The reception of The Song of Solomon into the Old Testament canon shows that to the Jewish synagogue the typical relation was not unknown, and in the Christian Church it has always been maintained.
2. The brief introductory narrative, 1Ki 1:1-4, has been found in many respects very scandalous. This has arisen from the wholly false presupposition that it treats of the gratification of the lustfulness of a worn-out old man by means of a concubine. But of this the text declares so little, that it rather states explicitly, David did not know Abishag. The means winch the physiciansnot he himselfselected to restore to him his lost natural warmth, were, if not unheard of, at least morally questionable, yea, from a Christian point of view, decidedly objectionable. That they did not hesitate to recommend it, has indeed its ground, not in conscious immorality and frivolity, but in the perverted views prevalent throughout the entire ancient Orient upon the relation of the sexes, or in the deeply-rooted lack of chastity, which even the stern lawgiver Moses was not able to put an end to. Hence polygamy was not only permitted, but it was regarded by kings as somewhat belonging to their royal estate, and it never occurred to any one to object to them upon that account. (Comp. 2Sa 5:13; 1Ki 11:3; 2Ch 11:21; Jdg 8:30.) This explains the reason why David did not reject the medical advice, and why the matter did not cause any scandal among the people, why even Bath-sheba herself did not feel aggrieved (1Ki 1:15). Whatsoever the narrative has which is repulsive to us, does not adhere to a particular person nor to this particular instance, but to the general lack of conjugal chastity in the Old Testament.
3. Adonijahs undertaking, in which there is so unmistakably a reference to Absaloms, is to be understood throughout as blameworthy. He knew that the decision upon the succession to the throne depended upon his father, and that he had already selected Solomon. He knew also the tragical end of Absaloms attempt. Nevertheless, he would not be warned by it, but set himself up in the way of self over-estimation, making boast of his beautiful figure. King will he be at any cost. He makes his preparations without his fathers consent, takes advantage of his infirmity and weakness, and secretly enters into combinations with the most influential men who belonged, more or less, to the class of malcontents. He allows himself to become impatient through his lust for ruling, and to rush into a measure in every respect premature. Upon the first intelligence, nevertheless, of Solomons accession, a shameful panic seizes him. All courage to risk the least thing for his cause fails him. The whole crowd of his followers scatters like dust, and he himself, in a cowardly way, seeks to save only his life. He anxiously flies to a place of refuge, clings to it, calls himself Solomons servant, and salutes him as king. But, scarcely is the danger past, he breaks his pledged word to behave quietly, and starts anew in secret machinations to reach his goal, He flatters the mother of Solomon with hypocritical humility, and seeks to move the heart of the wife (see on 1Ki 2:13 sq.). Rightly does Ewald say of him: A man who, according to all the known features of our memorial of him, has much that resembles Absalom, fine form, airy, and ambitious of power, yet inwardly scarcely fit for governing; of an obdurate mind, and yet afraid to venture upon open battle. That he was no proper sovereign for such a kingdom as Israel then was, must be obvious to intelligent men.
4. Nathan hero, as always (2 Samuel 7, 12), appears right genuinely as prophet. When there is an attempt to bring to completion human self-willed beginnings over-against the counsel and will of God, where the safety and well-being of the chosen people were at stake, then it was the calling of the prophet to interfere, counselling and reminding, warning and punishing. It was not so much personal friendship for David, and love for his pupil Solomon, as rather, and before all, the known will of Jehovah, which had determined that the latter should be king, that induced him to take the step which would have had the most disastrous consequences for himself, yea, might have cost him his life, had Adonijah become king. It was not Zadok, nor Benaiah, nor any of the other friends of David, who brought to nought the ill-starred enterprise. But the same prophet, through whom the great promise had been made to David in respect of the succession; by the providence of God, averted also that which interfered with the fulfilment of the promise. And without his prompt, spirited interference there would have been for Israel no Solomon-era, no glorious age of the theocratic house. He proceeded in the matter with great wisdom and circumspection. First he allows the mother of Solomon to prepare the way, conciliating the infirm and feeble king, then he enters before him himself, with all deference indeed, nevertheless at the same time earnestly reminding and slightly reproving him, and calls upon him as a man and servant of God to fulfil the promise ho had given unto the Lord.
5. The conduct of David, when ho learns what is going on, corresponds fully with the divine will and with his great calling as the founder of the theocratic kingdom, and of the new dynasty which is to sit forever upon the throne of Israel. He does not stagger irresolutely hither and thither, like a sick, feeble old man without any will of his own, but, as if ho were still the strong hero, the undismayed, determined, energetic man, such as in his best years he had so often shown himself amid dangers and in critical situations, he raises himself from his sick-bed, swears to observe his word, issues his orders, and puts them into immediate execution. This resolution and firmness could not have proceeded possibly from their opposite, from an inward infirmity, i.e., from compliance with the supplication of a wife, nor from dislike of Adonijah, whom ho had never interfered with (1Ki 1:6), but had heretofore always indulged too much. It is to be explained only by his faith in the promise of Jehovah, by his firm certainty and assurance that Solomon was appointed by Jehovah to be his successor, and that through him as well his own house, as the house of Jehovah, which it was permitted himself no longer to take care of, should be built up (2Sa 7:11-13). Upon this account also the Epistle to the Hebrews mentions him expressly in the list of the men who have held the faith, and obtained the promise (1Ki 11:32). How could Ho have sworn by Him who had redeemed his soul out of all distress, and then, in deep humility, have praised and glorified Him, had ho been conscious of any injustice towards Adonijah, and had not, in the prosperous issue of his commands, beheld a gracious guidance of the God of Israel? It is clear that under such a man as Adonijah, who was lacking in all the qualities requisite for the head of the theocracy, the kingdom never would have reached the bloom which it reached under Solomon. It would have been the greatest misfortune for Israel had he ascended the throne, while, viewed apart from the promise, the high and extraordinary endowment of Solomon was a clear indication of Providence that he alone of all his brothers was fitted to preserve, indeed to increase, what David had acquired with indescribable toil and great conflict, under the visible assistance of God. David did not deprive Adonijah of what rightly belonged to him, he only did not bestow upon him what he craved in his foolish arrogance and ambition, to the detriment of the kingdom.
6. Of Solomon himself we learn here only this one thing, that he instantly allowed Adonijah to go free, who, by his flight to a place of refuge, was self-convicted of guilt, and, according to the custom in such cases, feared punishment by death. His first act as king was significantly an act of magnanimity and grace, which appears all the more worthy of admiration when we remember that Adonijah, had ho won, would certainly have destroyed his brother and all his chief supporters (Ewald), as both Nathan and Bath-sheba undoubtedly expected (1Ki 1:12; 1Ki 1:21).
7. The new historic criticism sees in our narrative, distinctly, the fully natural machinery of human actions (Thenius), a court-cabal, the astute manager of which is Nathan (Kster). Bath-sheba sought to secure the crown for her son Solomon, although, after Absaloms death, it devolved upon the fourth son of David, Adonijah, whom Hagith had borne to him. One of the two priests at the ark of the covenant, Zadok, supported Bath-shebas designs, just as Nathan the prophet Both could expect from the young Solomon a greater complaisance towards priestly influence than from the more independent Adonijah, especially if they helped the young man, against right, to the throne. It was characteristic of Bath-sheba to induce David to swear by Jehovah that Solomon, instead of Adonijah, should be his successor. But Adonijah was resolved not to allow himself to be robbed of his good right through an intrigue of the harem As David was sinking upon his death-bed, Adonijah believed that he must anticipate his enemies, &c. (Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums i. s. 385). Nothing is more certain than that the biblical author did not look upon the matter in such light. This whole exposition is a distinct example of the mode of treating biblical history already described in the Introduction, 5. It abandons the standpoint of the narrator, arranges the history man-fashion, and then, as is the case here, perverts it into its opposite. The divine promise becomes a fine-spun harem intrigue, the great prophet, as Ewald also calls him, becomes the intriguing manager of a court-cabal, the true priest is reduced to the level of a self-seeker, the firm believing king, the man after Gods heart, the play-ball of a woman and of a court-party, the greatest and wisest king of Israel is a throne-robber, and on the other hand the airy, incapable, deceitful, and cowardly usurper Adonijah becomes a martyr of the right and the unfortunate victim of impure machinations. This entire perverted interpretation rests upon the presupposition, already sufficiently proved groundless, that Adonijah, was the rightful heir, and falls to pieces with it.
8. [It is true that Adonijah was Davids eldest son now remaining, and therefore might seem to challenge the justest title to the crown; but the kingdom of Israel, in so late an erection, had not yet known the right of succession. God himself, that had ordained the government, was as yet the immediate elector; He fetched Saul from among the stuff, and David from the sheep-fold, and has now appointed Solomon from the ferule to the sceptre.Bp. Hall, Contemplations, Bk. xvii., Contemplation i.E. H.]
Homiletical and Practical
1Ki 1:1-4. Weakness and infirmity in old age are: (a) the universal human lot to which we must all consider ourselves appointed (Psa 90:10); (b) they should loosen the bands which hold us to the temporal and perishable, and ripen us for eternity (2Co 4:17 sq.).Wrt. Summ.: They who, through many a cross, and sorrow, and anxiety, expend their bodily powers, should be all the more patient, and console themselves here with the example of David, and know that among the saints of God, also, feebleness of body is found.We may, and should, follow advice for the relief of our distress and the preservation of our life, in so far as it does not militate against the commands of God; for the Lord says, it is better, &c. (Mat 18:8).Old and sick people should, and it is expected of them as a work well pleasing to God that they bear this with a willing heart, with patience, self-denial, and sacrificing love.
1Ki 1:5-10. Adonijahs attempt to obtain the crown: (a) the ground upon which it rests (upon self-assertion, pride, lust of power, 1Ki 1:5, but God resisteth the proud, and a haughty spirit goeth before a fall: upon outward qualities, age, and beautiful person, 1Ki 1:6, but 1Sa 16:7; Psa 147:10-11); (b) the means which he employed (he seeks to impose upon the people by chariots and horsemen, but Psa 20:8; he conspires with false and faithless men, but they forsake him in the hour of danger, 1Ki 1:49; Psa 101:6-7; he prepares for appearance sake a religious festival, 1Ki 1:9, but 2 Mos. 1Ki 20:7).
1Ki 1:5. The effort after high things (Rom 12:16).How many a person thinks: I will become a great personage, a man of authority and influence, and then scruples at nothing in order to attain his goal. But that which is written in 1Co 7:20; 1Co 7:24 applies to the individual as well as to entire classes.Wrt. Summ.: Let no one attempt to take an office against God and His will; and no man taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God (Heb 5:4).
1Ki 1:6. The father who allows his son to go on in his pride and in worldly or sinful conduct, and shuts his eyes, not to trouble him, must expect that the son will trouble him and embitter the evening of his life. It is the right and duty of every father to speak to his son about his conduct even when he is no longer a child, and to ask, Why dost thou so? A perverted parental love is self-punished, Pro 29:17; Sir 30:9.
1Ki 1:7. High personages always find people for the execution of their sinful plans, who, from subserviency or desire of reward, from ambition or revenge, will act as counsellors and agents; but they have their reward, and for the most part end with terror.
1Ki 1:8. With those who are meditating treason and destruction we should never make common cause (Pro 24:21-22).
1Ki 1:9-10. Seiler: He who will not abide his time until God himself shall elevate him, will fall even when he attempts to rise. He who gives the crowd wherewith to eat and to drink, who prepares for them festivities and pleasures (panem et circenses), makes himself popular and beloved for the moment; but all who allow themselves to be gained in such way, to-day shout Hosanna! and to-morrow, Crucify! By not inviting Solomon, Adonijah betrayed his plans, and himself gave the occasion for their frustration (Psa 69:23; Rom 11:9). It is a rule of the divine world-government that the cause of God, through that whereby its enemies seek to thwart and hinder it, is only so much the more promoted.
1Ki 1:11-27. Nathan, the type of a true prophet: (a) through his watchfulness and fidelity (Eze 33:7), he is not silent when it was his duty to open his mouth (Isa 56:10); (b) through his wisdom and gentleness (Mat 10:16); (c) through his earnestness and courage (Mat 10:28; see Histor. and Ethical). How grand is this Nathan, how reproving to all who sleep when they should be wakeful, who are dumb when they should counsel, who flatter when they should warn.
1Ki 1:11. It is a solemn duty not to conceal what can prove an injury and evil to an individual or to a community, but to expose it at the right time and in the right place, so that the injury may be averted.
1Ki 1:12. What Nathan here says to Bath-sheba, Christ and his apostles, in an infinitely higher sense, say to us all, especially to every father and to every mother. He who has come into the world to deliver and to save our souls, cries, Come unto me, &c. (Mat 11:28-29), and the apostle advises the jailor, who asks in terror and alarm, What shall I do to be saved? i.e., delivered, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, so shall thou and thy house be delivered. How many take kindly the good advice of a wise man, for themselves and for their children, in their earthly and outward affairs, but who wish to hear nothing of the best advice which shall bring blessedness to their souls.
1Ki 1:14. The purity of the counsel is confirmed by the accompanying result.
1Ki 1:15-21. Bath-sheba before the king. She reminds him of his duty (a) towards God, before whom he had sworn (what one has vowed before God, according to Gods will, one must hold to under all circumstances; of this one must remind kings and princes); (b) towards the people whose well-being and whose woe were in his keeping (the great responsibility of him towards whom all eyes are directed); (c) towards the wife and son whose happiness and life were at stake (woe to the father through whose guilt wife and children, after his death, fall into contempt and wretchedness).
1Ki 1:22-27. As Nathan does not hold back from the fulfilment of his holy calling through consideration of the danger threatening his life, and of the illness of the king, so David is deterred in nothing when it was said, Behold the prophet! from listening to the man of God, though his word, like a two-edged sword, may pierce through his soul. To have a Nathan by ones side, who refers at the right time and in the right way to the will of God, is the choicest blessing for a prince. He who fears God lays hold of such a friend (Eccles. 6:16).The ministers of God and the preachers of His word should not indeed mingle in worldly business and political affairs, but their calling always requires them to testify against uproar and sedition, for he who resisteth the powers, resisteth the ordinance of God (Rom 13:2).With questions which lead to a knowledge of self, he who has the care of souls often accomplishes more than by direct reproaches and disciplinary speeches.
1Ki 1:28-37. Davids decision: (a) His oath (1Ki 1:29-30) is an evidence of his firm faith in the divine promise; (b) his command is a living proof of the truth of the word, Isa 40:31, and Psa 92:15 sq. (see Histor. and Ethical).
1Ki 1:30 sq. The word of a prince must stand firm and not be broken. Happy for the king who, under all circumstances, observes what he has promised. Fidelity in high places meets with fidelity from those below.
1Ki 1:36. Where the government is in firm hands there is found also a willing, joyous obedience. Upon Gods blessing all is founded. Without Gods Amen our Amen avails nothing. Loyal subjects know that they can wish for nothing greater and better for their prince and ruler than that God, at all times, may be with him.
1Ki 1:38-40. The typical in Solomons elevation to the sovereignty: (a) He is established in spite of all machinations against him (Psa 2:2; Heb 5:5); (b) he is anointed with oil from the sanctuary (Isa 61:1; Luk 4:18); (c) he makes his entry as prince of peace amid the jubilee and praise of the people (Zec 9:9; Mat 21:1 sq.).Starke: My Christian! reflect here upon the trumpet-sounding and the jubilee-shout, when the heavenly Solomon shall take possession of his kingdom (Rev 11:16), and see to it that thou also mayest be amongst those who have part in this joy.
1Ki 1:41-49. The frustration of the schemes of Adonijah (Job 5:12): (a) The intelligence he obtains; (b) the effect produced by this intelligence. To an evil conscience (Joab) the trumpets which announce victory and joy are judgment-trumpets, which sound forth, Thou art weighed and found wanting. The same message in which David expresses himself, Blessed be, &c., 1Ki 1:48, works terror and alarm in Adonijah and his party. So still ever sounds the good message that the true Prince of peace, Christ, has won the victory, and is seated at the right hand of God, which to some is for thanksgiving and praise, so that they support themselves upon it, but to others it is a stone of stumbling, so that they fall and are confounded (Isa 8:14; Luk 2:34).In the intoxication of sinful pleasure and of God-forgetting, frivolous jubilation, the holy God sends, oftentimes, the thunder and lightning of his judgment, so that the besotted and maddened may thereby be rendered sober and made to experience that there is an holy God in heaven who will not allow himself to be mocked. When Adonijah held a great festivity he had plenty of friends; but when the messenger came with evil tidings, no one, not even the bold Joab, stood by him; they all forsook him (Ecc 6:10-12).
1Ki 1:50-53. Adonijah covered himself with shame (Pro 11:2): (a) He was afraid of Solomon (he who does not fear the Lord, must at last become afraid of men). How miserable the contrast between the young, haughty Adonijah and the aged, feeble, but faithful-hearted and humble David; (b) he flies to the horns of the altar and begs for mercy: (he who said, I will be king, calls himself Solomons servant. Ostentation and boasting, as a rule, end in cowardice and cringing. He can bring down him who is proud (Dan 4:34). In the old covenant the horns of the altar were the places of refuge for those who had forfeited life and sought grace; in the new covenant God has directed us to a horn of salvation (Luk 1:69), the cross of the Lord, which all must seize and hold fast to who seek forgiveness and grace, and wish to pass from death unto life. That is the only and true asylum; he who flees thither avails himself of the word of the great Prince of peace, Go in peace, thy faith hath saved thee. The most beautiful prerogative of the crown is to do mercy for judgment; but mercy must never be for a covering of iniquity. Hence by the side of the word: Thy sins are forgiven thee! stands the other word: Sin no more! Kings and princes do well when, after Solomons example, they begin their reign with an act of grace.
[Bp. Hall. Outward happiness and friendship are not known until our last act. In the impotency potency of either our revenge or recompense it will easily appear who loved us for ourselves, who for their own ends. Suitable for 1Ki 1:7.
Bp. Hall, for 1Ki 1:41. No doubt at this feast there was many a health drunken to Adonijah, many a confident boast of their prospering design, many a scorn of the despised faction of Solomon; and now, for their last dish (1Ki 1:49) is served up astonishment, and fearful expectation of a just revenge.E. H.]
Footnotes:
[1][I am indebted to my friend, Frederic Gardiner, D. D., Professor in the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. for the accompanying textual revision and original grammatical notes.E. H.]
[2]1Ki 1:1.[ always connected with (Gen 18:11; Gen 24:1; Jos 13:1 bis, Jos 23:1-2) exactly corresponds to the phrase in A. V.
[3]1Ki 1:1.[ bed-clothes (cf. 1Sa 19:13), not garments.
[4]1Ki 1:2.[The translation of in 1Ki 1:3-4 may well stand here also.
[5]1Ki 1:2.In place of the suffix the Sept. has and the Vulg. suo, which Thenius prefers to the reading of the textBhr.
[6]1Ki 1:2.[The Alex. Sept., Syr., and Vulg., read our.
[7]1Ki 1:3.[The definite article should be expressed as in 1Ki 1:15.
[8]1Ki 1:13.[The particle , as is recognized in all the V V., can hardly give the emphasis of the Eng. assuredly.
[9]1Ki 1:14.[Many MSS. and VV. prefix and.
[10]1Ki 1:14.[ not complete, fill out, but, as in A. V., confirm; Chald. , Sept., . The phrase is used of the fulfilment of divine utterances. cf. 1Ki 2:27; 1Ki 8:15; 1Ki 8:24.
[11]1Ki 1:18.All the VV. and 200 MSS. [and the early editions] read instead of , as the connection requires.Bhr.
[12]1Ki 1:20.Instead of the Chaldee [Syr. and Vulg.], and some [many] MSS. have , which Thenius considers right. On the other hand, Maurer remarks that the pronoun stands hero first, just as in Gen 49:8, with emphasis, instead of the suffix.Bhr.
[13]1Ki 1:21.[Counted is implied by the connection, but not expressed in the Hbr.
[14]1Ki 1:24.[ , the question is indicated only by the tone.
[15]1Ki 1:27.[The pronoun it is better omitted, as in the Hbr. and all VV.
[16]1Ki 1:27.The kri has , also nearly all the translations have the singular; but the reading of the text is preferred.Bhr. [It is that of many MSS.]
[17]1Ki 1:30.[See note 1Ki 1:13.
[18]1Ki 1:30.[Hbr. and VV. omit certainly.
[19]1Ki 1:33.[ in the pl. is rightly rendered by the sing. as referring to Davidnot to David and Solomon.
[20]1Ki 1:33.[The Chaldee and Syr. read Siloa; Arabic, fountain of Siloa.
[21]1Ki 1:36.[The words say so too at the end of this ver. in the A. V. should be omitted; is to be taken historically, not optatively. Three MSS. followed by the Syr. and Arab, read for .
[22]1Ki 1:38.[The Chald., Syr., and Arab., make the same change here as in 1Ki 1:33.
[23]1Ki 1:42.[The words unto him are unnecessary; not contained in the Hbr. nor the V V.
[24]1Ki 1:45.[As. in 1Ki 1:33; 1Ki 1:38.
[25]1Ki 1:47.The ktib [] is plainly preferable to the kri Bhr [and is followed by the Syriac].
[26]1Ki 1:49.[The Vatican (not Alex.) Sept. omits and rose up.
[27]1Ki 1:51.[The Vatican (not Alex.) Sept. omits king.
[28]1Ki 1:51.[Instead of some MSS. read , which has been followed apparently by the A. V.F. G.]
[29][The allegorical interpretation of Jerome makes the Shunammite damsel the ever-virgin wisdom of God so extolled by Solomon (sapientia qu numquam senescit, Epist. 2; ad Nepotianum, chap. 4; Opera, i. p. 288). But in another passage Jerome understands the story literally, and enumerates this relation among the sins and imperfections of David, which would not be allowed under the gospel dispensation (contra Jovin. l. i., chap. xxiv., tom. i. 274).P. S.]
[30]The translator, after some hesitation, have adopted the above as a caption. It is not a translation of the authors heading. He has It heilsgeschichtliche, which expresses the conception of the historical process of healing or salvation. It is a term for which we have no available equivalent In English, although the thought embodied by the word is clear enough.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
David, in his old age, unable to keep warmth, hath an handmaid provided to cherish him. Adonijah, his son, taking advantage of David’s imbecility, usurpeth the kingdom. Solomon, by David’s direction, is anointed king. Adonijah fleeth for refuge to the altar. These are the principal things contained in this Chapter.
1Ki 1:1
(1) Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
How humiliating to our nature are the infirmities of our old age; not because they are our nature, but because they are the fruits of sin. Disease, and languor of every kind, are the consequences of the fall. Hence the prophet describing the recovery of our nature by redemption, represents it under the similitude of a favoured climate, where the inhabitants shall not say, I am sick; the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity. Isa 33:24 . David’s age was not so very great. It was indeed the age of man; for I conjecture that he was now about 70. But Reader! David had been much worn. Troubles from others, and passions in himself; these wear fast the constitution.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Usurpation
1Ki 1
DAVID is “old and stricken in years.” Round about him there are certain proceedings which are almost always associated with the death of great men. There are persons who are wondering who will succeed to the throne. One man has made up his mind that he will be the king. Could we understand all that is going on in the minds of our friends when we ourselves are approaching the hour and article of death, we should be surprised by some revelations of character which we had little suspected. Even now, when there is no sign of immediate dissolution upon us, there are some who are appropriating what possessions we may have to bequeath: they have already laid out our estate in new figures; they have in imagination sold part of it, and given a new direction to many things which we thought permanently established; and they have sometimes ventured to forecast the time, or thereabouts, when we may die. Not a word of this do they say to us: they wish us well; they desire for us on each birthday “Many happy returns.” Oh! but human nature is a puzzle, a problem, a mystery all darkness. Sometimes we think it is better to have nothing to leave; then there will be more honesty in our contemporaries. Expectation of property seems to destroy real affection. But it is singular altogether, so mixed and involved and unworkable. The Lord grant us sincerity all round, that we may speak to one another more frankly, and truthfully, and so make human intercourse into a Christian sacrament.
Adonijah said, “I will be king” ( 1Ki 1:5 ). How certainly, then, he will not! “Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself.” He did not hear the voice sounding far away in the coming time which said, “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased” always; by a sweet necessity. May we hearken unto this doctrine, and pray God to incline our hearts to keep the law which it represents. Adonijah was the fourth son of David born in Hebron, but probably he had become the eldest son by the death of his three senior brothers. Even then there was a charm about primogeniture, as there is about many long words. Adonijah said: I am the eldest, therefore I ought to be the richest; Solomon is comparatively young: surely he ought not to stand in the way; I will be king. Did he spring into this self-conceit all at once, or is there a story behind it explaining this development of mischief? Certainly; there always is such a story if we could find it out. You will find that Adonijah was a spoiled child, for “his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?” ( 1Ki 1:6 ). That is the explanation. Every will has to be. broken, and it ought to be broken as soon as possible; it is not as if the will could go on always having its own way, marching from conquering to conquer, going on from throne to throne; it is the law of life, and it is the most solemn fact in personal history, that the will must be broken, in the sense of being subdued, chastened, made to feel that there are other wills in creation, and that peace can only come by mutual understanding and concession. How cruel, then, are parents! They think they are kind, but their kindness is the worst form of cruelty. How would it be in physical matters? You say that a man’s hand is out of action, and the doctor says that hand might have been as good as the other if the infirmity or accident had been attended to when the child was young. That we call reason. A child does not see straightly; its eye is somewhat askance; and the doctor again says that eye could have been made perfectly right if it had been attended to when the child was young. When the doctor says that, everybody looks upon him as a wise man. So many things ought to have been done when we were young! Yet we ourselves will not do them to those who are young, and who depend upon us for discipline, education, and general training. When the preacher says, this will, so urgent, so self-regarding, so selfish, might have been made better if the child had been taken in hand in time, the preacher is thought to be a sentimentalist. The doctor was right about the hand, and most learned about the eye; but when the preacher says the same thing about the will he is smiled upon as a man who has certain nostrums by which he thinks the world can be cured; and he knows of course how everybody’s children ought to be trained; and generally he is a kind of decent and well-meaning gentleman who ought to be borne with. It is in vain that he points to history. It goes for nothing that he says, You are killing your children. David seems to have been the murderer of all his children: a great public man, but of no use at home; one of those men who could fight a battle, but never broke the will of his own children; a great man on the public rostrum; doing good upon a great scale, but neglecting the details of domestic life. Adonijah, whose will had never been broken, said, “I will be king.” What more natural? This is the fruit of the tree which David planted. We wonder that the harvest should not be of a different quality from the seed that was sown! Be not deceived; nature is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. The logic sometimes takes abrupt and terrible forms, but it is logic still. Our surprise is either a display of ignorance or a display of affectation. We can tell perfectly well what the child will turn out. We know precisely whether we are on the right-hand of God or on the left. These revelations are not matters of futurity: they are in the essence of things which are now ruling us and directing our course. When Adonijah said, “I will be king,” he carried to its logical issue the training which he had received, or lacked, at home.
How will he set about this business? Exactly like a spoiled child. There is a striking consistency in all the parts of his character and action. If you ask for his programme, you may yourself write it for him; there is no need to make inquiry as to what he will do. Spoiled children can only do one thing. They are absolutely destitute of originality. What, then, does Adonijah do? Just what Absalom did. He copied Absalom whom in some degree he resembled, being also “a very goodly man.” That is to say, a well-favoured man physically; good to look upon, a handsome, noble figure. What will Adonijah do? The answer is in the fifth verse: “He prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him.” What a spoiled baby must do! It looked so pleasing, so striking; the popular imagination would instantly take fire when such a display of chariots and horses and forerunners was discovered. But the popular imagination is a more solid thing than it is often accounted to be. We shall see that presently. Adonijah thought that if he put on his best things he would be king by virtue of his garments. He thought that fine binding makes fine books. He supposed that noble houses make noble tenants. The abiding sophism: the continual mistake! Yet this was precisely in the line of his training. What have not spoiled children at home? what wooden horses, and banners, and drums, and toys of every kind! and they have only to cry long enough in order to multiply what they have got by ten. They need not resort to reason: it is enough that they resort to tears.
How will Adonijah proceed? quite consistently. In the seventh verse we find him still pursuing the same level of thought and purpose: “And he conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar the priest.” What was Abiathar the priest? the priest of the tent in which the ark of God was kept? or was he but some subordinate, good and honest in his own way, but a little tempted to believe in chariots and horses and forerunners and outriders? Alas! it is possible for a priest even to be so demented. This was the bound of Adonijah’s counsel: the crafty Joab and Abiathar. Not the people. Not a word was said to the people. The people were to be taken by a storm of music. That was Adonijah’s great plan for taking the nation! Slay sheep and oxen, create a great festival: at a given moment sound the trumpet, make a display, and let the people come in under such glittering circumstances. But the people are wiser than they are often thought to be. Have faith in the people. You cannot easily measure them. Taken one by one, they do not seem to amount to much; but when they touch one another, and feel the contagion of sympathy and the inspiration of common interests; when they listen as one man to the voice of the declaimer or the charmer, the reasoner and the statesman, they know who is right and who is wrong. We shall see the lamentable position of Adonijah better when we ask concerning the absences which mark his limited counsel. We have seen who was there: now ask who was absent. The eighth verse is a melancholy answer: “But Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and Nathan the prophet, and Shimei, and Rei [probably brothers of David] and the mighty men which belonged to David were not with Adonijah.” “Nathan the prophet,” we read in the tenth verse “and Benaiah, and the mighty men, and Solomon his brother, he called not” The absence was not fortuitous, but calculated. There are some men whom we cannot invite to certain counsels of our life. And our wish is to be estimated quite as much by the men who are not there as by the men who are present. Conceive the possibility of entering into some scheme or venture that is not wholly of the nature of daylight, that has in it flaws, breaks, bruises; and you dare not ask your wife to hear the plan before you put it into action; you dare not ask your most honest friend to review the case for you before you proceed any further. You make a noise in your head, you slay sheep and oxen, and blow trumpets, and get up a great excitement, hoping that the thing will turn out a success, and then you may invite your friends to look upon it, and praise you for a longheaded man. There are some conversations at which we dare not allow children to be present: suspect them close them! Sometimes a straightforward honest soul is as terrible to us as God Almighty. If he only had kept out of the way, we might have perfected our plan and realised the satisfaction of perdition. But the honest man spoiled everything! he came in at the wrong moment. He came in blithely as the morning; his voice was pure music; there was the resonance of a soldier’s heartiness in every tone. But he knew not that his very voice was a judgment upon our hidden iniquity. Suspect any plan to which you cannot invite Nathan and Zadok and Solomon, taking these names typically. We do not always want the minister to be present. We have many laymen’s parties. The minister, poor soul, would spoil this game! so we have a side-room in which we will go through it, and when all is over we will come in and look upon the minister as if nothing out of the common had occurred. We will leave the minister: we will withdraw: it is a bad scheme you are up to if he cannot join it. If he is a man at all, a truly human soul, he will join any game that will bear investigation. The very fact that you dare not have him present is a sign that you are going to snatch thievishly at a crown or throne or joy which does not belong to you.
Why these signs of masonry? Why this desire to get away from the society of pure women and frank children, question-asking youth, and unsuspecting love? Why did you not call Zadok and Nathan and Solomon? Out of thine own mouth I condemn thee. The honest man would have said, Let all come; this thing shall not be done in a corner; it is right, sound, clear-hearted, through and through, come one, come all, and guide me if I am wrong. The right man need not be in any hurry. He will be sent for in due time. Solomon need not discompose himself; the prophet will see after him that marvellous man who has a prophetic instinct, who reads the reality of things, who knows God’s purpose and works out God’s harmonies. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” When the right man came, “all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy,” so that the earth, as if a sympathetic listener, vibrated, and was rent with the sound of a festival. If nature will take no part with us, it is a poor coronation. If every little flower on the wayside does not as it were leap as we pass by, saying in its allegorical manner, God bless you: go on to your feast, for the victuals are honestly bought; if every star that twinkles does not send us a message of light amounting to a benediction, then depend upon it we are upon a wrong road, and we are forcing ourselves to a wrong issue. All the people came up after Solomon. Then Solomon must be king sooner or later; the other man must go down, whoever he is, however many chariots and horses and outrunners he has. There is a popular instinct. But was not the popular instinct wrong in the case of Christ when it cried out Crucify him! Crucify him!”? No; certainly not. Nor need we be surprised. The idea which prevailed in the popular mind was that Christ was going to be what he was not going to be; the purpose of Christ was not seized; a totally false conception had got abroad concerning him, for want of instruction and illumination. The popular instinct with regard to Christ is pledged. When the angel of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the great deep, then all men shall call him their desire, and he shall be fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely; because then he will be understood: his kingdom will be seen to be not of this world; he is no small king, no petty monarch; he rules in the spirit, he rules over the heart, he conquers the will, he reigns over all the forgiven life: so spread the knowledge of his name; show how this man receiveth sinners and eateth with them, and that he is a shepherd seeking the lost; and when that idea is really perceived and grasped there will come out of this great popular heart a grand acclaim, a burst of thankfulness, a shout which will rend the earth and make the heavens vibrate. The seer beheld the day in which all this took place. A prophet heard a voice as of many waters a great multitude without number. Judge the popular instinct by that revelation, and not by some intermediate and mistaken phases of passing events.
What became of Adonijah? He “feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar” the projecting pieces of wood overlaid with gold, to which the sacrifices were fastened with bands or ropes. Laying hold of these, he thought he had the right of asylum; and he feared Solomon, “saying, Let king Solomon swear unto me today that he will not slay his servant with the sword” ( 1Ki 1:50-51 ). “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased.” Adonijah, who began by saying, “I will be king,” ended by saying, I am a servant. See the end of all vanity, foolish conceit, mistaken and selfish ambition; so Solomon, being a king in very deed, said: He shall have a conditional pardon “If he will shew himself a worthy man, there shall not an hair of him fall to the earth: but if wickedness shall be found in him, he shall die” ( 1Ki 1:52 ). So Adonijah became a ticket-of-leave man. What a fame! but right. Do not let us mistake this: for we are all ticket-of-leave men. Let there be no boasting. We are all out of hell conditionally. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” We have no respectability. Our supposed respectability is a millstone round about our neck. Hear the word of the living God, and mistake not the exact position which every man occupies. He is spared on probation, he is watched; if he live as he ought to live, by the grace of God he will be saved; if he serve himself, if he live the earthly life, if he deny the Lord that bought him, if he endeavour to find some way of living without God, he will be lost. Do not let us boast as if we were free men. We are only temporarily free; we are living by permission; our breath is in our nostrils. Hear the word of the Lord: there is but a step between thee and death!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXIII
DEATH OF ABSALOM; PREPARATION FOR SOLOMON’S ACCESSION,
AND THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE
2Sa 18:1-20:26
We should continually bear in mind that in order to interpret the inner life of David, the Davidic psalms must be studied in connection with the history. I never got a true insight into the character of this man, into his religious life, into his staying powers, until I studied the history very carefully in connection with the Psalms. I spent one whole summer studying the history of David in the Psalms.
David stopped at Mahanaim; that is the place where Jacob met the angelic host, as the name signifies. While Absalom was making his muster, David was also mustering a host; while Absalom was godless and prayerless, David was penitent for his sins, humble toward God, and courageous toward men. Absalom appointed as his commander-in-chief a nephew of David, a son of Abigail; David had for his commanders Joab, Joab’s brother Abishai, and the Gittite, Ittai.
One of the most touching things in connection with David’s atay at Mahanaim is the coming together from three different directions of three friends to help: “Shobi the son of Nahash of Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and Machir the son of Ammiel of Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim, brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and meal, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and parched pulse, and honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat.” It is noticeable always, however, that a man of strong character will draw to him friends whose friendship cannot be broken. David’s character developed friendship so that people would come to him and stand by him to the very last extremity. Of course there were some traitors. Absalom could draw men to him, but could not hold them.
The battle between the opposing armies took place in what is called the “Wood of Ephraim,” a very considerable forest somewhere near the banks of the Jordan. David’s army was in three divisions. He wanted to lead in person, but they objected and he stayed over the gate of the city, with one concern in his heart, deeper than all others, and that was about the fate of his son, Absalom, he was very much devoted to him, foolishly so, as the charge that he gave to each officer as each division marched through the gate indicates: “For my sake deal gently with Absalom.” Absalom’s army was utterly routed.
I remember preaching a sermon in 1887, when canvassing the state for prohibition, on the text: “Do thyself no harm,” basing my argument upon this thought, that no man can cause a harm that he does to terminate in himself. A man might be somewhat excused for doing harm to himself, if he harms only himself. I illustrated Absalom’s banning himself in two scenes. First, on that battlefield 20,000 men lay dead; a man goes over the field and tries to identify the slain. He turns over a victim whose face is to the ground, and feels in his pockets to see if he can find anything to identify him, and perhaps finds a letter from his wife stained with his heart’s blood. It reads: “When are you coming home? The children every evening sit out on the gatepost and look toward the scene of war until their eyes fill with tears, then come in and say, ‘Mamma, whenever is papa coming home?’ ” Never! There are 20,000 men like him, 20,000 wives like that wife, and 40,000 children like those children, all harmed because Absalom did harm to himself! The other scene of the picture was the old man, the father, at the gate of the city, listening for news of the battle, and when the message is received, colder than lead and sharper than the dagger, it strikes his heart. Stripping off the crown and purple robe, he wraps himself in sackcloth, and puts ashes on his gray head. It breaks his heart. He wrings his hands and sobs: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” In view of the father’s unspeakable grief, it was not right for that young man to harm himself, since the harm did not terminate in him.
That sermon changed more votes than all the speeches that had been made. Power in preaching consists in having an imagination that will enable you to make a scene live before you,
I preached another sermon in Waco that I think I shall never forget. It was an afternoon sermon, when all the churches in the city were united. I took a double text: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” That was the first part of the text. The other part was, “Absalom, my son, my son, would God that I had died for thee.” I contrasted the sorrow of David over his two children; the separation between him and his baby was temporary; they would soon be together forever, but the separation from Absalom was an eternal separation. He knew his child was lost forever, which accounts for his inconsolable grief. The power of that sermon was in vivid stress of two things: holding one picture up and saying, “Look at that,” and holding up the opposite picture and saying, “Look at that.”
The rebellion perished with the death of Absalom, but David was so utterly overwhelmed with his grief that he did not follow up his victory, and really he became sinful in his grief. It took the heart out of his own people. They became ashamed and sneaked back to town, feeling that their victory was dreadful to their king. Joab, though his heart was as hard as iron, was right in his rebuke; but it was very unfeelingly done, especially as he had been the one, in violation of orders to take the life of Absalom. This is what he said “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest them that hate thee, and hatest them that love thee. For thou hast declared this day, that princes and servants are naught unto thee: for this day I perceive, if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants; for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry a man with thee this night.” That was pretty straight talk, but it was successful, and it waked David up. He was so stunned by his grief that he took no steps to follow up his victory.
The question of his restoration came up with the people this way: “Shall we now take the king back to his throne? Absalom is dead and there is no other king.” And then David made overtures to Judah, his own tribe; he sent to Zadok and Abiathar, the priests, saying that the tribe of Judah was his own flesh and blood, and they had said nothing about his coming back. He then made this promise: “As the Lord God liveth I will make Amasa, Absalom’s general, commander-in-chief of my armies.” It would have been all right to dismiss Joab, but it certainly was impolitic to put a rebellious general at the head of his army. We will see directly that it cost Amasa his life.
The men who stood by David and won his victory for him felt like they were strangers here with these people who had been against him and the enemies’ general made their commander. Whenever a strong feeling of resentment exists there will always be somebody to give voice to it, hence the shout of Sheba: “To your tents, O Israel!” You will hear that cry again in the days of Rehoboam, when the same ten tribes say, “To your tents, O Israel! What have we in the son of Jesse?” The tribes were always loosely held together, and it was easy for them to separate and disintegrate. For some reason, not stated, Amasa was very dilatory to take command and subdue Sheba, and David commands Abishai, not Joab, to take command and pursue Sheba until he is caught and destroyed. Joab goes along as a volunteer, and on the way he meets Amasa whom he thus addressed: “Art thou in health, my brother?” And then stabs him under the fifth rib, Just as he had killed Abner; then he usurps command, Abishai giving way to him, and put down the rebellion very speedily. David did not feel strong enough to displace him again, so after that Joab was commander-in-chief, too big a man to be put out!
In going back to Jerusalem there were several touching things: In the first place that cursing man, Shirnei, comes out and makes submission and asks to be forgiven. David forgives him for the present. You will see later how he made provision for bringing him to judgment, but he forgave him for the present. The darkest blot on David, outside of the sin against Uriah, is in this paragraph, the meeting with Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth comes to meet him and David sternly asks why he had not gone out with him when he left Jerusalem. He gently explains that he was crippled and could not walk, and that he ordered his beast to be saddled and his servants went off and left him; that he is now glad to welcome David back, and that it was a falsehood that he ever intended to profit by David’s misfortunes. David then restores to him part of his property and lets that rascal Ziba keep half of it. In all this transaction Mephibosheth comes out in a much more favorable light than David: “Let him take it all forasmuch as my lord, the king, has come in peace unto his own house.” This does not show off David very well. It is customary for everybody in going over this part of the history, to speak with great favor of old Barzillai. Everything he did was pure disintereetedness. David offers compensation, offers to give him a permanent home in Jerusalem. He says this would not be a favor to him, as he is old and blind and cannot taste anything or discriminate. Then David asks him if there is not somebody in his house that he can promote, and the son of old Barzillai is promoted.
We will now consider the preparation David made for the succession to guard against any other rebellion. He wanted the succession established in his lifetime. If you are familiar with English history you know that a nation is in a great stir every time its king gets sick, unless it is clearly established who shall succeed him. The question for succession was a serious one when Queen Elizabeth died, and again at Queen Anne’s death, when the kingdom was transferred to the house of Hanover. Some of the most thrilling pages in history are devoted to these transition periods. David wanted no trouble about the succession; so he assembled the great convocation, consisting of princes, captains of thousands, and hundreds, etc., and caused them to recognize Solomon as his successor, and he was so announced. Every officer in the kingdom was precommitted to Solomon. And yet, notwithstanding this precaution, Adonijah, the third son prominent in history, now the oldest, since Absalom is dead, determined that he should be king. He adopted Absalom’s expedients, prepared chariots and men to run before him. He got Abiathar, one of the priests, and Joab to stand with him and went off to a place called En-rogel and there to be announced as king. David was too old and feeble to do anything, but the prophet Nathan sent the mother of Solomon to him to let him know what was impending. David took steps instantly to have Solomon crowned king, and proclamation made. Adonijah, when he heard that Solomon was king, returned to Jerusalem and begged for mercy, and the rebellion was ended. This led to the displacement of Abiathar as priest, and led to the permanency of the high priest in the line of Zadok, who stood firmly with David.
The crowning act of David’s life, the one most profitable in its lesson to us, was his provision for the erection of the great Temple. All the devoted treasure from Saul’s wars and his own, all the spoils of many nations subdued by him, immense treasures of gold, silver, precious stones, precious metal, and cloth were stored up for this purpose. Then by revelation from God the plans and specifications of the building and its furniture received by him were given to Solomon, accompanied by a solemn charge to build the house. But yet the gathered material was not sufficient for so great an enterprise. So David at this great convocation engineered the most remarkable public collection known to history the most remarkable in its method, its principles, and in the amount raised.
Method. First of all he, himself, out of his own proper fund, made a cash donation never equalled since, not even by Carnegie nor Rockefeller. The princes, and then all subordinate officers) followed the lead of their rulers.
Principles. (1) It was a “prepared” donation. (2) The preparation was “with all his might.” (3) The donation was for God’s house and cause. (4) It was prompted by “affection for God’s cause.” (5) It was purely voluntary. (6) It was preceded by a “willing consecration of himself to God.” (7) It was followed by great joy because a willing and not an extorted offering.
Amount. It staggers credulity to accept the vast total. The total, by any fair method of calculation, goes beyond anything else known to history. No offhand, impulsive collection could have produced such a result. It was a long-purposed, thoroughly prepared contribution flowing from the highest possible motives.
Lesson. Our preachers today should lay it to heart. We need the lesson particularly in times of financial stringency. We see our preachers scared to death without cause and our people demoralized. We need the application intensely. We should know that God is never straightened in himself that today, if we willingly consecrate ourselves to God first of all, like the Philippians who first gave themselves to the Lord, and if we have true affection for God’s cause, and if we purpose great things in our hearts, and prepare a collection, with all our might appealing to the voluntary principle in the loving hearts of God’s people, and ourselves have strong faith in God who is able even to raise the dead, then the stringency of the times will only brace us and call out our courage. But if we are whipped inside, if we feel that we are butting our heads against a stone wall, if we take counsel with our fears and become timid and hesitating moral cowards when we should be heroes, of course we will miserably fail. We will become grasshoppers in the sight of opposing giants, and grasshoppers in our own eight. Hard times, difficult situations, are methods of providence to prepare us. They are touchstones of character, revealing who are weaklings and who are heroes. Go off to thyself; shut out the world. Shut up thyself alone with God, fight the battle to a finish once for all in thine own heart, and then with the sublime audacity of faith, do thy work for the Lord.
QUESTIONS
1. Contrast Absalom and David as to character.
2. Who were chosen as commanders by Absalom and David respectively?
3. What was the touching incident at Mahanaim?
4. Give an account of the battle between David’s army and Absalom’s.
5. How did David show his concern for Absalom?
6. Show in two ways how Absalom in banning himself, harmed others.
7. Contrast David’s sorrow upon the death of his infant with that upon the death of Absalom.
8. How did the rebellion end?
9. Give Joab’s rebuke, and its effect on David.
10. How was David restored as king of the people?
11. What was his mistake, and its result?
12. What were the touching events on David’s return to Jerusalem?
13. What preparation did David make for a successor?
14. Who at once became competitor for the kingship?
15. What was his method?
16. How did this episode end?
17. What was the crowning act of David’s life?
18. How was the provision made?
19. What was the method?
20. What were the principles?
21. What was the amount?
22. What was the lesson, and its application?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1Ki 1:1 Now king David was old [and] stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
Ver. 1. Now king David was old. ] His numbering the people is by some held to be the last act he did before he took his bed. But by others, with more probability, that all those things recorded in the eight last chapters of the First Book of Chronicles were done whilst David was able to go abroad; for it is said in 1Ch 28:2 that he “stood upon his feet in the assembly of the princes,” and spake unto them. And he so spake that they might well perceive his intellectuals were no whit decayed, though he were old and cold, rigens prae senio.
And they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
king David: Occurs in 2Sa 6:12, 2Sa 6:16; 2Sa 7:18; 2Sa 8:8, 2Sa 8:11; 2Sa 9:5; 2Sa 13:21, 2Sa 13:39; 2Sa 16:5, 2Sa 16:6; 2Sa 17:17, 2Sa 17:21; 2Sa 19:11, 2Sa 19:16. Books begins with king David and ends with king of Babylon. Opens with Temple built, and closes with Temple burnt. Begins with David’s first successor on the throne of his kingdom, and ends with David’s last successor released from the house of the captivity. Characters of all are tested by the standard if David.
old: About seventy. Compare 2Sa 5:4, 2Sa 5:5.
gat no heat. Compare Psa 32:3, Psa 32:4.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Tonight let’s turn to First Kings beginning with chapter one.
First Kings, of course, is just the continuation of the history of the kings of Judah and Israel. First and Second Samuel are taken up pretty much with the time from Samuel through the reign of David. As we get into the book of the Kings, we continue now the story of the history of the kings of Israel and Judah after David passes from the scene.
First and Second Kings actually cover a period of approximately four hundred years and they give to us the record of the kings. First of all, those that ruled over Judah. Now as we get into First and Second Chronicles, you have a repetition of a lot of the history, but First and Second Chronicles are the chronicles of the kings of Judah. So they don’t really deal so much with the kings of Israel, whereas, First and Second Kings deals with both Israel and Judah, the kings that reigned in the north, the kings that reigned in the south.
So in chapter one, we read now.
King David was old and stricken in years ( 1Ki 1:1 );
When it says that they were old and stricken in years, it means that they have begun to become an invalid as others in the Old Testament. Some, of course, like Moses their strength abated not. His sight and all was excellent right up until the day of his death. But others it declares that as they became old, they became stricken in years.
It is tragic to see a person stricken in years, such as David who lived such a vital, active life. But David as he got older just wasn’t the person that he was when he was younger, as is the case for all of us. But David as he became older was out in battle, you remember last week, and started to faint.
And so they said, “Hey, you’re not going to go out and fight anymore. You stay home, we’ll do the fighting.” But now as he continues to age, he becomes sort of an invalid, stricken in years. It’s a sad statement of that invalidism that oftentimes overtakes an elderly person. So this is far from David, the great warrior and David the man who was so active as he becomes old.
In fact, I hate to see my hero this way. They putting on blankets and he’s still shaking, you know. And so someone suggested that they get hold of a young virgin that she might stand before the king and love him and cherish him and take care of him and lie in his bosom that he might be warmed.
And so they sought for a beautiful damsel from all of the areas of Israel, and they came across Abishag a Shunammite, and they brought her to the king. And she was very beautiful, and she loved the king, and ministered to him: but David did not have relations with her ( 1Ki 1:3-4 ).
Now David’s son Adonijah who was the brother, full brother of Absalom, he was the son of Haggith, this Jesurite. She bore David at least two sons and both of them actually sort of rebelled against their dad. And Adonijah, when he saw that his dad was getting old and feeble, decided that he would take over the kingdom. And so he gathered together Joab who was, of course, David’s chief general; Abiathar, who was the priest during the time of David, and he conferred with them of his desire to take over the throne of his father.
But Zadok the other priest, and Benaiah, and Nathan the prophet, and Shimei, and other mighty men which were with David, did not go along with Adonijah ( 1Ki 1:8 ).
But Adonijah threw a great party, killing many sheep and oxen and fat cattle and had this big sort of an announcement or pronouncement of himself as king over Judah.
But Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, and these other fellows, weren’t invited. So Nathan came to Bathsheba and he said, Did not David promise to you that Solomon, your son, would reign in his stead ( 1Ki 1:10 , 1Ki 1:13 )?
Now you better hurry and get in unto David because Adonijah is gathering men around him and he’s planning to take over the kingdom.
And so you go into David, and you say to David, Did you not promise me that my son Solomon would reign in your stead? How is it that Adonijah has set himself up as king? And while you’re talking to David, I will come in and confirm to David that what you’re telling him is true ( 1Ki 1:13-14 )
That Adonijah in reality has gathered Joab and these other fellows and is trying to set himself up as king.
So Bathsheba came in to David ( 1Ki 1:15 ):
And said according to the words of Nathan, said, “How is it, you know, I thought that David that my son Solomon was going to get to reign in your stead,” you know and all. “And how is it that Adonijah now is setting himself up and what’s going on?”
And David, of course, was not aware of what Adonijah was doing and while she was talking, Nathan came in and David questioned Nathan. Nathan confirmed the fact that Adonijah had called these fellows together and was having this big shindig in which he was making the announcement of himself as king and the people were saying, “Long live Adonijah the king,” and all.
And so David then ordered that they take his mule and set Solomon upon it and take him through the street and let the people proclaim, “Long live Solomon the king.” Take him down to the spring of Gihon and there let him be anointed as king over Israel by Zadok the priest. And let Benaiah go before him and the mighty men and announce the reign of Solomon with David’s blessing, that David has declared Solomon to be the king.
And so the king said, Call Bathsheba. And she came back in and stood before David. And the king sware, and said, As the LORD liveth, that hath redeemed my soul out of all distress, even as I sware unto thee by the LORD God of Israel, saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne in my stead; even so will I certainly do this day. So Bathsheba bowed with her face to the earth, did reverence to the king, and said, Let my lord king David live for ever ( 1Ki 1:28-31 ).
And so he made the arrangements then for Solomon to be anointed by Zadok the priest there at the pool of the springs of Gihon and then to be led into the city proclaimed as king.
So, verse thirty-nine,
Zadok the priest took the horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and he anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon. And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with their pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, and the earth was torn with the sound of them. And Adonijah and all of the guests that were at his party when they heard all of the noise in the town, the trumpets blowing and all of the uproar, they said, someone came in and said that Jonathan, the son of Abiathar the priest came: and Adonijah said unto him, Come in; you’re a valiant man, you must have good news ( 1Ki 1:39-42 ).
He said, “Not so good.”
He said,
The king has sent Zadok the priest, and he has anointed Solomon to be king. And Nathan the prophet, they’ve gone before him there at Gihon, anointed him. And this is the meaning of all of the rejoicing. This is the noise that you hear. For Solomon sits on the throne of the kingdom. And moreover the king’s servants came to bless our lord king David, saying, God make the name of Solomon better than thy name, and make his throne greater than thy throne. And the king bowed himself on the bed ( 1Ki 1:44-47 ).
In other words, when they came to David and said, May God bless your son even greater than you’ve been blessed and all, David acquiesced and acknowledged, you know, by his bowing to Solomon’s reign and the declaration of Solomon’s reign should be great, even greater than David’s.
One verse here that especially stood out in my mind, verse twenty-nine, as David was addressing his wife Bathsheba, he declared, “As the Lord lives that hath redeemed my soul out of all distress.” What a glorious testimony that is. Now he didn’t say the Lord kept my soul from all distress.
A lot of times people have a mistaken notion that God somehow is going to give me divine immunity from problems. That somehow I’m going to be immune from any kind of distressing or vexing situation. Not so. As a child of God, I face many distressing situations. I have no immunity from problems, from sufferings, from hurts. Nor will you. But I do know that God will deliver me out of all my distresses.
Now you see, the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian isn’t the fact that a Christian doesn’t have distresses and doesn’t have problems because I have just as much distress and problem as an ungodly person has. The only thing is I have One who redeems me out of them all. The ungodly not so. They’ve got to make their way the best they can through them or perish in them or whatever. But the Lord will redeem my soul out of all distresses.
So Paul the apostle spoke, “Who hath delivered me from so great a death, so doth now deliver me: and I am confident that He shall yet deliver me” ( 2Co 1:10 ). But being a child of God did not give any kind of protection against problems, against battles. And if you think that being a Christian means that life is just going to be a pleasure, bed of roses, then you’re due for some very difficult and rude awakenings in your Christian experience. If you think now that you’re a Christian you’re not going to have any problems, that’s not so. And you’re apt to get very discouraged when problems come. But if you know that as a child of God I’m going to face problems just like everybody else, but the Lord will be with me and redeem me and help me in my problems, and will bring me forth victorious, that’s the important thing. So that even in my problems, I do have a different mental attitude than the non-Christian. They don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen to them, whereas I know that the Lord’s going to see me through. I know the Lord’s going to deliver me out.
And so David’s glorious witness. And this is the end of his life, the end of the road. What a beautiful witness. “As the Lord liveth that hath delivered my soul out of all distresses.”
So Solomon is now sitting on the throne. And when Adonijah heard this, of course, his guests all fled.
And Adonijah ran in, and grabbed hold on the horns of the altar ( 1Ki 1:50 ).
Now on the altars that they used to make, on the corners of the altar, they had these little raised areas that looked like a horn on the four corners of the altar, these little areas. We saw one of the altars that the archaeologists uncovered there in Beersheba, the ancient city of Beersheba. And they haven’t really uncovered too many altars whole. In fact, this is one of the first one where all four horns were still intact. And they’re just little horns that sort of come up on the edge.
Well, Adonijah went in and grabbed hold of the horns. And when you read, he went in and grabbed hold of the horns of the altar, it means he grabbed hold of these two little handle-like things that come up that look like horns there on the corners of the altar.
And so they came and told Solomon that Adonijah is afraid of you. And he’s in holding on to the horns of the altar, saying, Let Solomon swear to me this day that he will not slay me with the sword. And Solomon said, If he behaves himself, he’ll be all right. Let him go home. So Adonijah went to his own house ( 1Ki 1:51-53 ). “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
The two Books of Kings appear in the Hebrew Bible as one. Together they practically cover the whole period of kingly rule over the ancient people. The first Book deals mainly with events centering around two persons, Solomon and Elijah.
The opening verses of this chapter give the account of the days of David’s feebleness. These days created the opportunity for rebellion under Adonijah. A remarkable statement concerning the training of this son of David throws light on his action (verse 1Ki 1:6). It may be that the bitterness of his sorrow over Absalom was the cause of his foolish indulgence of Adonijah.
As a result of this rebellion Solomon was crowned before the passing of David. Thus, while the life of David was shadowed to the last, the satisfaction of seeing the divine will carried out in the accession to the throne of Solomon was granted to him.
Solomon’s action toward Adonijah was characteristic of the best side of his nature, in which clemency and dignified authority were alike manifest. From the beginning of the story of Solomon it is well to remember he was the child of Bathsheba and David. In some sense, therefore, his inheritance was against him; but it is equally true that he inherited excellences as well as defects. Moreover, what was of greater value was that God was ever on his side when he answered the call of the good within him. Had he completely yielded it he would have found sufficient strength to overcome the evil.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
a Self-Seekers Scheme
1Ki 1:1-14
Adonijah was the fourth son of David, but probably the oldest of those who survived. He was born after Absalom, and like him was goodly in appearance, ambitious in spirit, and equally spoiled by his fathers indulgence, 1Ki 1:6. His attempt to usurp the kingdom reminds us of another great usurper. Satan, we know, in one last desperate effort, will try to secure the empire of the world. But when the people rage and the rulers devise, Psa 2:1-2; Psa 2:4, Heaven will laugh at them. The Lamb that was slain is the destined King of men, Rev 11:15. The book of destiny is in the pierced hand. The government is upon Christs shoulders. He declares the decree, The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool, Psa 110:1.
We look out on the world which is rent by revolt. The prince of this world is attracting to himself the Joabs and Abiathars. They make merry, but do not realize that the hour is at hand when they shall cry to the rocks and the hills to fall on them and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb, Rev 6:16. Remember the counsel of Augustine, If you would flee from God, flee to Him!
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Analysis and Annotations
I. DAVIDS LAST DAYS AND THE CROWNING OF SOLOMON
1. Adonijahs Exaltation to be King
CHAPTER 1:1-27
1. Davids decrepitude (1Ki 1:1-4)
2. Adonijahs self-exaltation (1Ki 1:5-9)
3. The plot of Nathan and Bath-sheba (1Ki 1:10-14)
4. Bath-sheba and Nathan before the king (1Ki 1:15-27)
David was about 70 years old and extremely feeble. The strenuous life he had led, the exposures and hardships of his youth, the cares and anxieties of his reign, and the chastenings through which he passed on account of his great sin, and much else were responsible for this enfeebled condition. It is but another illustration of that rigid law, What a man soweth that shall he reap. It was a premature decay with the complete loss of natural heat. While the king was in this helpless condition Adonijah (My Lord is Jehovah) exalted himself to be king and like his unhappy brother Absalom he prepared chariots and horsemen and fifty men to run before him. Like Absalom he also was of great physical beauty. There is a significant sentence which reveals the weakness of David towards his favorite children, a weakness which has borne its sad fruits in many families. And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so? There had been no discipline in Davids family; he had spared the rod. By right of primogeniture he thought of claiming the throne. However, he must have known that his younger brother Solomon had been selected by David to fill the throne after him. But Adonijah knew not the Lord nor was he subject to His will. In his selfish ambition he was upheld by Joab and Abiathar, the priest. No doubt but both of these men sought their own interests; Joab to continue in his position he held with David; Abiathar to get supremacy over Zadok his rival in the priesthood. But Zadok the priest, who ministered at Gibeon (1Ch 16:39), Benaiah, who had charge of the Cherethites and Pelethites (2Sa 8:18), Nathan, the faithful prophet, Shimei (not the one who cursed David), Rei and Davids mighty men kept aloof from the revolt. They remained true to Jehovah and to His anointed. Then Adonijah made a sacrificial feast to give his self-exaltation a religious air. He invited all the kings sons, his brethren, and the men of Judah; but Nathan, Benaiah, Davids mighty men and his brother Solomon were not called. It was meant to be his coronation. In this revolt, preceding the enthronement of Gods king, Solomon, the king of peace, we have another foreshadowing of what will precede the reign of the Prince of Peace, our Lord. It seemed as if Adonijah might succeed. But Nathan, the prophet, begins to act. In agreement with the mother of Solomon the plan is made to discover what Adonijah had done to the aged King. Bath-sheba goes in first and after a while Nathan appeared to tell the King the same story he had heard from the lips of his wife. She reminded David of his oath, that Solomon her son was to be the successor to the throne, and after telling him of Adonijahs act, she appealed to him to proclaim now who was to sit upon the throne. She speaks to him repeatedly as My lord the King. And when Nathan appeared before David he also said, My lord O King. Some have gathered from this that aged David had become filled with the pride of life. However, the honour done to him may have been true reverence for the Lords anointed King.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
old: David was probably now about sixty-nine years of age. He was thirty years old when he began to reign, reigned forty, and died in his seventieth year; and the transactions mentioned here are supposed to have taken place about a year before his death. Sixty-nine was not an advanced age; but he had been exhausted with various fatigues, and especially family afflictions, so that he was much older in constitution than in years. 2Sa 5:4, 1Ch 23:1, 1Ch 29:27, 1Ch 29:28, Psa 90:10
and stricken in years: Heb. and entered into days, Gen 18:11, Gen 24:1, Jos 23:1, Jos 23:2, Luk 1:7
Reciprocal: Jos 13:1 – Joshua Ecc 4:11 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A TROUBLED OLD AGE
Old and stricken in years.
1Ki 1:1
With the transition from 2 Samuel to 1 Kings, David passes from mature life into the physical feebleness of old age. For nearly forty years he had been king,seven of these forty over Judah only, and the remaining thirty-three over the united kingdom of Judah and Israel. His had been a long and stormy reign; the earlier part of it occupied with winning his kingdom and extending his empire, the latter part embittered by domestic jealousies, by rebellion, and by the avenging stroke of the angel of God. But now all the kings battles were past; and the feeble old man was dwelling quietly in Jerusalem, awaiting his latter end.
I. But even now the curse which ever seems to cling to polygamy again made itself manifest.Adonijah (Jehovah in my Lord), the fourth son of David, and the son of Haggith, one of Davids rival wives, taking advantage of his fathers feebleness, made an attempt to gain the crown for himself. Adonijah, like Absalom, was handsome in person, but he seems to have lacked that power of political intrigue which Absalom possessed. He had organised no military force, such as Absalom had gathered at Hebron; and his revolt, if such it could be called, was rather against Solomon than against David. But of popularity, or of shrewdness, he had enough to pervert to his cause the warrior Joab and the priest Abiathar. On the set day, the excited throng, down at the foot of the valley, began their eating and drinking, and ever and anon made the welkin ring with the shouts of God save the king, Adonijah! In accordance with Nathans instructions, Bathsheba hastened to the kings presence to make known the insurrection, Nathan following her to confirm her assertions.
It is to be noted that Solomon was not the eldest of Davids sons; and hence, so far as the custom of primogeniture was concerned, he would not have been the first to inherit. But he was the son of Davids favourite wifeone whom David had before wronged, and to whom he had promised that her son should be his successor on the throne of Israel. These were the surface reasons for the preference given to Solomon; but beneath these was the fact recognised by David himself: Of all my sons (for the Lord hath given me many sons) He hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel (1Ch 28:5). As Bathsheba and he met for perhaps almost the last time on this dark day, both of them must have remembered the announcement of Nathan, still with them as friend and counsellor, which he had given so long before (2Sa 12:10-11). How carefully we should walk with God, trusting Him to keep us moment by moment, since one glance of the eye at the forbidden may lead to such disastrous results!
II. Old age had not dimmed Davids clear apprehension of wise policy, nor dulled his sense of Gods redeeming mercy.Old age gives us time to review the way in which we have been led, and to recall interpositions of Gods helping hand, which in the rush of life we had hardly noticed. Let not the young glory in their strength, for it soon fades away; and let them give the vigour of their early days to God, that when the years come in which they shall say, I have no pleasure in them, they may be able, like David, to look back over a long life and say with him that the Lord hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity.
Illustrations
(1) Adonijahs undutiful and criminal conduct is traced by the sacred writer to his fathers fond indulgence, and the lack of proper parental control (1Ki 1:6). Gods covenant is with His people and their children, but this involves fidelity on their part likewise to their covenant engagements (Gen 17:7; Gen 17:18-19; Pro 22:6). David gave his son a name indicative of his pious desires and hopes on his behalf; Adonijah means Jehovah is my Lord; how sadly different was the issue of his manhood from this cherished expectation in his infancy!
(2) In advancing a good cause a little quiet planning may accomplish excellent results, and not be dishonest. Nathan and Bathsheba had made their arrangements beforehand.
In advancing a good cause, a good action or good advice wins much in efficacy by being skilfully performed or given.
In advancing a good cause a respectful demeanour toward those in authority costs nothing, and usually accomplishes much.
In advancing a good cause a good name is of the first importance. David knew at once that Nathans plea was not for anything bad.
(3) Repentance and forgiveness did not neutralise the natural consequences of Davids sin. Nor will they do so for us. God often leaves them to be experienced, that the experience may make us hate the sins the more.
(4) In advancing a bad cause, it is natural to have good things to eat.
In advancing a bad cause, its promoters are always forward in appealing to the Divine protection, God save King Adonijah!
In advancing a bad cause its promoters are generally exclusive in their friendships. Of course Nathan was not admitted to a share in proceedings upon which he would have frowned.
In combating a bad cause it is always best to come to a clear understanding of exactly who are its friends, and who its enemies. That is what Nathan sought in questioning David.
In combating a bad cause, the more care that is exercised the better. Every bad cause has at least one very skilful promoter, whose mere tools Adonijah and Abiathar and all the rest of them are. The devil keeps a close watch over his own interests.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
THE CORONATION OF SOLOMON
THE OCCASION FOR SOLOMONS CORONATION (1Ki 1:10)
The incident in the first four verses is recorded not for itself, but because of what grew out of it in Adonijahs case (1Ki 2:13-25). It was a custom in the Orient, and still is, to do this for hygienic reasons on the supposition that the inhalation of young breath will give new vigor to a worn-out frame. The event shows that Abishag was made a concubine or secondary wife to the king (1Ki 2:22).
Adonijah, doubtless, felt some justification for his conduct in that he was now the eldest son of David (2Sa 3:4), and no public intimation had been made as to the successor on the throne. Moreover, his father seems to have indulged him in certain liberties (1Ki 1:6).
For the history of Zadok and Benaiah, see 2 Samuel 8:17; 15:24; 21:53 and 1Sa 8:18; 1Sa 20:23. With Nathan we have met (2 Samuel 7). There was something ominous in the omission of these men from Adonijahs feast (1Ki 1:10).
THE WAY OF PROCEDURE (1Ki 1:11-40)
Bathsheba was a capable woman, for it is inferred from 1Ki 1:17 that she had great influence with the king. Nathan must have known of the promise spoken of and been aware of its harmony with the divine will to explain his action (1Ki 1:11-27).
THE EARLIEST RESULTS (1Ki 1:4 – 1Ki 2:46)
Adonijah (1Ki 1:50-53; 1Ki 2:13-25). The four corners of the altar of burnt offering to which sacrifices were bound, were symbols of salvation and considered as a sanctuary for all except certain classes of offenders (Exo 21:14). Adonijahs offense was rebellion, but he is spared on the conditions named. Unhappily, however, he violates them and, apparently instigated by Joab and Abiathar (1Ki 1:22), adopts a course which, according to eastern ideas, was of dangerous consequence to the state.
Abiathar (1Ki 1:26-27). The punishment of the priest follows that of the usurper. (Note the fulfillment of 1Sa 2:30.) Joab (1Ki 1:28-34). The crimes of this military leader merited death, according to the divine law (Num 35:33), which would have been visited upon him earlier, no doubt, had it not been for his power with the army. Compare Davids words in 2Sa 3:28-29.
Shiraei (1Ki 2:36-46). By the death of this man all the leaders of factions inimical to Solomon were cut off, which explains the last sentence of the chapter.
QUESTIONS
1. What relation presumably did Abishag sustain to David?
2. Had Adonijah any apparent ground for his action?
3. What shows a plot in his case?
4. How does 1Ki 1:15-31 indicate the dignity associated with the human sovereignty of Israel at this time?
5. How did Adonijah show his heart unchanged?
6. In what line of the priesthood did Abiathar come?
7. In what sense did Solomons kingdom come to be established at this period?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
1Ki 1:1. Now King David was old Being in the end of his seventieth year. They covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat Which is not strange, considering he was a person who had been exercised with so many hardships in war, and with such tormenting cares, and fears, and sorrows for his own sins, (as divers of his psalms witness,) and for the sins and miseries of his children and people. Besides, this might be from the nature of his bodily distemper, which Dr. Lightfoot thinks was a dead palsy. [David now began to feel the effects of old age, and probably remembered with lively interest the words of his faithful friend Barzillai, spoken some time before: Can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink?]
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ki 1:2. A young virgin. This raised Abishag to the rank of a betrothed wife. No doubt there were precedents for this conduct, but history is silent on the subject.
1Ki 1:5. Then Adonijah, the younger brother of Absalom, aspired to the throne. These youths being sons of a princess of Geshur, assumed a sovereignty over their brothers, whose mothers were daughters of Hebrew families.
1Ki 1:6. His father had not displeased him. Vulgate, nec corripuit, had not corrected him. When the Spanish robbers were amusing the feast with tales, one said that he had been delicately brought up, never corrected, but always indulged in what he wanted. Another replied, that his lot had been just the reverse. He had been beaten, starved, kicked about, and left altogether without instruction. Both these modes of education lay the sure foundation of ruin to a boy.
1Ki 1:11. Nathan spake to Bathsheba. This holy man was tutor to Solomon.
1Ki 1:21. I and my son Solomon shall be counted offenders: I an adulteress, and he a son of spurious birth. Bathsheba was a woman of a strong and penetrating mind.
1Ki 1:33. Bring him down to Gihon, the great fount above Jerusalem, described in 2Ch 32:30. Adonijah had been inaugurated at the opposite fount of Rogel.
1Ki 1:39. Zadok the priest anointed Solomon. He was not as yet the highpriest, nor was it requisite. Samuel anointed David, and a prophet anointed Jehu. The Lord can send by whom he pleases to do his own work.
1Ki 1:50. Adonijahcaught hold on the horns of the altar. He fled to Gibeon, for the altar and tabernacle were there, though the ark was in Zion. 2Ch 1:3. The altar of the Hebrews was a refuge, till a mans case was heard. Exo 21:14. Isaiah likewise distinguishes Christ the true refuge, from the refuge of lies. The pagan altars were also places of refuge. So Virgil: Talibus orabat dictis, arsque tenebat. In such words he prayed, holding the altar: neid. lib. 6. line 124. Christian churches, after the age of Constantine, were long regarded as places of refuge.
REFLECTIONS.
While David, though seventy years of age, was fully employed in the civil and military establishments, requisite for the peace and the defence of his vast empire, he was suddenly seized with a chilling cold, or palsy in all his limbs: nor had he, being an absolute monarch, nominated the successor to his throne, farther than an almost private oath to Bathsheba, that Solomon her son should reign. While aged men are busy in their affairs, and as much so as in youth, it would be well for them to recollect, that their advanced age renders them peculiarly subject to afflictions and the approach of death. Their temporal and eternal affairs should therefore be every moment so arranged that they may have nothing to do but to die. The neglect of the former may produce family feuds, and the neglect of the latter may occasion the loss of their souls.
We have to lament that this great and holy man was surrounded in his last moments by foolish and profane physicians, or by generals instead of seers, who provided him with a bride instead of a shroud. It was a most unreasonable imposition on the king, and calculated to disturb the pious ejaculations of his soul. The idea of conveying natural warmth to his body was not altogether reprehensible; but he had wives not so aged as to be incapable of the duty; and we have still to lament the potions which some physicians administer to dying men. On visiting some good men in their affliction in the afternoon, I have found their conversation to correspond with the piety of their former lives; but on calling in a morning I have found them stupid and amazed. The laudanum forced upon them as a night drought, had produced a most stupifying effect on all their senses. It does indeed make a patient quiet and composed; but it totally fails in procuring natural sleep. I would rather see dying saints in the hands of skilful nurses, than profane physicians.
The king had scarcely recovered the use of his limbs, or was able to issue his commands, before he was apprized of the preparations Adonijah had made to ascend the throne; that Joab his general, and Abiathar his priest, had joined the conspiracy, being piqued at the loss of their places. This was the more afflictive as Adonijah well knew the kings pleasure concerning Solomon. But though David had now to reproach himself with excess of indulgence, and with not executing judgment on Joab for the assassination of Abner and Amasa; yet for once, the wisdom of Nathan was greater than the valour of Joab. His wise counsel frustrated the plot; and conformably to the pleasure of God and the king, for the happiness of Israel, he placed the young Solomon on the throne of his father. There being always something extraordinary in the strong and predominant passions of men, children should be taught to obey, that in the issue they may know how to command. Joabs strong passions had hurried him into many crimes during the long and splendid career of life. Now, in hopes of regaining his place and honour under Adonijah, he was regardless of allegiance, of conscience, and of every duty. Abiathar, seeing Zadok wear the mitre, was actuated by the same narrow and selfish views. Thus they drew nearly all the nobility of Jerusalem into the plot. Oh what crimes will some men commit, to gratify their pride and private interest, and mask their wicked views under the garb of a patriotic spirit.
But oh how terrified was this faction when they heard the heavens rend with shouts, and the vales and hills re-echo the joy; when they learned by Jonathan that Solomon was anointed, and riding on the royal beast, followed by the guards and all the good inhabitants of Jerusalem. Appalled and confounded in their hopes they shrunk away from their half-finished feast, to hide in holes, or in the inner chambers of their houses. Yea, even mighty Joab, who never before fled from the proudest of his foes, now had no courage left. So when Christ the anointed of the Father shall take to him his great power and reign, all his enemies shall be disconcerted at his presence, and shall flee before him. Let them triumph; in a little while the company of the Lord shall be greater than theirs, and it shall strike them through with a thousand fears, and with terrors ominous of eternal woe. In a little time the trumpet of the Lords anointed shall sound, and the shouts of his company shall rend the skies; and all his enemies, fainting with fear, shall be speechless at his bar.
Let the wicked, the rebels against heaven, learn, from the delusion and ruin of Adonijah, that the day of the Lord will come upon them in an hour when they are not aware. It was while this prince was seated on his temporary throne, while the two grey-headed rebels who ought to have had wiser heads and better hearts, were arranging his plans, and while the accumulating crowd, attracted more by the feast than the cause, were devouring a thousand oxen, sheep and lambs, and shouting congratulations, or rather, treasons in the princes ears; it was in this moment of festivity and joy that they heard the trumpets and shouts from the city. Hence let the giddy crowd at the ball, let the brilliant circles at the grand fte, let the motley group at the theatre, and the infidel in the narrower circle of his club, be reminded, that as in the days of Noah, so shall the coming of the Son of man be. They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Sinners, to avert the impending blow, run with this prince to the horns of the altar. Refuge and propitiation there are no other. Read, with Adonijah, in that fire, the punishments due to sin; read in the burning limbs of the innocent lamb the death which Jesus died for you. Read in all this transfer of guilt to innocence, the glory of the atonement, the nature of justification, and the foundation of all our hope. Stay there; stay firmly, grasping the prominent horns of hope, till the kings pleasure shall be declared. Leave not hold of this hope for a moment, for the ministers of justice surround you with their swords unsheathed, to inflict the strokes of death. No, never leave your hold, till your offended king shall swear that you shall live and not die.
Learn lastly, that the wary Solomon would give his brother but a conditional pardon. If he show himself a quiet and worthy man, said the generous king, and for the future avoid all revolts and factions, then not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground. Thus also a greater prince than Solomon, forgiving ten thousand talents to his steward, enforced the punishment anew, when the object of so much clemency afterwards would not forgive fifty pense to his fellow servant. Matthew 18. Thus he still keeps the sins of the justified, as the good Baxter teaches, in the book of his remembrance, that in case of dire apostasy he may enforce the penalty in full proportion to the greatness of the guilt.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ki 1:1-53. Last Days of David and Accession of Solomon.This chapter with the following has many analogies with the court history of David (2 Samuel 11-20). The narrative bears every sign of an authentic account of actual events, told with complete impartiality, and without any attempt to comment favourably or otherwise on the events related. David is represented as a very aged man nursed by his youngest wife, Abishag the Shunammite (1Ki 1:3). Her beauty is especially noticed as it may have caused the death of Davids son, Adonijah. Shunem, her native place, was a slope overlooking the plain of Esdraelon near Jezreel, and she is the Shulammite in the Song of Songs (Ca. 1Ki 6:13). The pivot around which all revolves is the succession. The chief claimant was Adonijah the son of Haggith (1Ki 1:9), whose conduct as well as his appearance (1Ki 1:6) recalls Absalom. Adonijah evidently considered himself the legitimate heir, and assumed a semi-royal state without rebuke from David. Like Absalom he made use of chariots, which are first mentioned as employed by the Hebrews in connexion with these two princes (1Ki 1:5, 2Sa 15:1, but see 1Sa 15:13 LXX). Adonijah was supported by Davids older counsellors, Joab the son of Zeruiah, Davids sister, and Abiathar, the sole representative of the house of Eli, who had escaped the massacre of the priests at Nob (1Sa 22:20 ff). Adonijah and his supporters evidently intended to force the aged David to acknowledge his claim. A great feast was held outside Jerusalem by the stone Zoheleth which is beside En-rogel (the fullers well), probably near the village of Siloam (1Ki 1:9), to which Adonijah invited all the great men of Judah, but purposely excluded his brother Solomon, son of Davids favourite wife Bathsheba, together with his supporters, Zadok, Nathan and Benaiah, the captain of Davids bodyguard of Gibborim (2Sa 23:8 ff.). The plot was defeated by the machinations of Nathan, the prophet, who had so fearlessly rebuked David (2Sa 12:1), and Bathsheba. Nathan persuades the queen to go to the king and ask whether it was not his intention that Solomon should be his successor. He promised to come in afterwards to confirm her words. Observe the art with which the historian makes Bathsheba expand the instructions given her by Nathan (1Ki 1:17-21), and the prophets diplomatic question as to whether the king had really appointed Adonijah (1Ki 1:24-27). The old king is aroused to vigorous action. He orders Zadok, Nathan and Benaiah to take Solomon at once, and make him ride on the royal mule (1Ki 1:33) to Gihon (p. 31), probably, like the stone Zoheleth, outside Jerusalem (2Ch 32:30; 2Ch 33:14), and in the valley of the Kidron. There Zadok the priest took the oil from the Tent Sanctuary in Jerusalem (2Sa 6:17; 2Sa 7:2, 1Ki 2:28), and anointed Solomon, proclaiming to the sound of the trumpet that he was king (1Ki 1:39). This is the only example in Israel of a son being anointed king in his fathers lifetime. The RV has Tent and not Tabernacle here (as in Exo 33:11, because this sanctuary could not have been the Tabernacle of the Priestly Code, which, however, preserves the tradition that the anointing oil was kept in the sanctuary (Exo 31:11; Exo 39:38). Though, according to 2Ch 1:3, the Tabernacle at this time was at Gibeon, the Tent in which the oil was kept together with the Ark (2Sa 7:2) must have been in Jerusalem. The only kings after Solomon who are said to have been anointed in Judah are Joash (2Ki 11:12), and Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah (2Ki 23:30). An anointed king was considered a sacrosanct person, the Messiah of Yahweh.
The scene now shifts to the banquet of Adonijah, which, since the revellers heard the trumpets, must have been near the place where Solomon was proclaimed. Jonathan the son of Abiathar (2Sa 15:36; 2Sa 17:7) announces the news (1Ki 1:43-49). Thereupon Adonijahs guests disperse in terror, and the pretender claims the protection of the altar (Numbers 35*, Deu 19:1-13*). Solomon, with a magnanimity rare in Eastern story, promises to spare his brothers life if he will prove himself a worthy man. Adonijah does homage to the new king, and is allowed to retire to his house (1Ki 1:50-53).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
ADONIJAH EXALTS HIMSELF
(vs.1-10)
Being 70 years old, David was near to death. He complained of the cold, though well covered with blankets. His servants thought that a young girl, a virgin, would help to warm him. Why could not one of his wives do this? But they found a beautiful young woman, Abishag, and brought her to the king (v.2). She ministered to the king’s needs, but he did not cohabit with her (v.4). Men will employ any available means of dealing with problems instead of committing the problem to the Lord.
David’s son by Haggith, Adonijah, realizing his father’s death was imminent, took advantage of the situation, deciding he was going to be king. He prepared chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him (v.5). He was imitating the pride of his brother Absalom, who had tried to dethrone his father David and came to an end in shame and disgrace (2Sa 18:1-33). This ought to have been sufficient warning to Adonijah, but caution was overshadowed by his pride.
David had not restrained the pride of his son (v.6), perhaps because of his handsome appearance (v.6), as was true of Absalom also. David loved his sons, but neglected the discipline that love should have exercised, and our sinful flesh will always take advantage of lax government.
Adonijah enlisted Joab, David’s army general, to seek his support in making himself king. Joab had not supported Absalom because David was then an energetic king and Joab knew it would not serve his own best interests to desert David. But now that David was dying, Joab’s natural thoughts inclined him to follow Adonijah, who was David’s oldest living son. Adonijah recognized Joab to be a key man in his gaining his object. Another key man was Abiathar the priest, whom Adonijah also found willing to support him (v.7).
His plans were well thought out, for wanting to include God as one supporting him, he sacrificed sheep, oxen and fatted cattle near to Jerusalem, in the Kidron valley (v.7). Having Abiathar as priest, he could consider these sacrifices appropriate for his purpose. Also, he invited all his brothers, the kings’ sons and many servants of David. He marshaled all the support he could possibly find.
However, he did not invite Nathan the prophet, a faithful man of God, nor Benaiah, a fully devoted servant of David, nor other mighty men similar to Benaiah, nor Solomon his brother (v.10). Why did he not invite these? Because he knew he could not count on their support. In fact, it was common knowledge that David had purposed that Solomon was to be king, but Adonijah seemed to think that David was now too old to enforce this choice, and that popular opinion would favor him. Sad blunder!
When Adonijah made the bold move of proclaiming himself as king, Nathan the prophet took a wise course. He advised Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, to immediately inform David that Adonijah had proclaimed himself king, in spite of the fact that David had sworn to Bathsheba that Solomon would be king (vs.11-13). Then, to confirm this to David, Nathan would come in with the same message (v.14), so that the urgency of the situation would be apparent to David.
Bathsheba then went into David’s bedroom where Abishag was serving as a nurse to David Bathsheba bowed to him, thus showing the humility of her subjection to the king, though he was her husband. In answer to David’s question, she reminded him that he had sworn by the Lord to her that Solomon should succeed him as king, but that Adonijah had taken the place of king without David being aware of it (vs.17-18), that he had sacrificed many animals and invited the king’s sons as well as Abiathar and Joab, but had not invited Solomon (v.19).
She told David also that the eyes of all Israel were on David, interested to find what he would do in view of this turn of events. For if he allowed the crowning of Adonijah to stand, then Bathsheba and Solomon would be counted as offenders, for which they would be killed (v.21).
As she was speaking, Nathan also came in, bowing also in subjection before the king and asking him if he had said Adonijah should reign. He repeated what Bathsheba had said and added that the King’s son, Abiathar and the commanders of the army were celebrating, saying, “Long live King Adonijah!” “But,” said Nathan, “he has not invited me — one of your servants — nor Zadok the priest, nor Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, nor your servant Solomon” (vs.24-26).
Notice that it was those who were willing to be at a distance from David who were moved to follow Adonijah. They were not near to David as were Bathsheba and Nathan. What a lesson for every believer! Only in being near to the Lord shall we be preserved from the danger of dishonoring Him by following what seems to be appealing, but is actually disobedience.
Nathan certainly knew that David had nothing to do with the appointing of Adonijah as king, but he asked David nevertheless if he had ordered this matter without informing Nathan (v.27). This was intended by Nathan to stir David to action, and it was effective.
SOLOMON SUCCEEDS DAVID AS KING
(vs.28-53)
Bathsheba was summoned back to David’s presence (v.28), and David swore to her by the Lord who had redeemed him from all his troubles, that, just as he had before sworn by the Lord God of Israel, so he would carry out what he had sworn, and do so “this day” (v.30), making Solomon king in David’s place.
David then called for Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet and Benaiah, the trusted military leader (v.32), and gave orders that they were to take the servants of David (the Cherethites and Pelethites) and have Solomon ride on David’s mule down to Gihon. This was the same valley in which Adonijah had proclaimed himself king, that is, in the Kidron Valley, but east of Jerusalem rather than south. Thus, Zadok and Nathan were to anoint Solomon king over Israel, with the blowing of the trumpets and the announcement, “Long live King Solomon!”
Adonijah had thought David was too old and depleted in strength that he would have no more power as king, but the God who had brought David through all his adversities was still God, and He could enable David to still use the moral and spiritual power that had before carried him through much opposition. God always backs up what is His own work.
After being anointed, Solomon was to come up and sit on David’s throne, for, as David said, he had appointed Solomon as king in his place. Benaiah answered the king with positive approval (v.36) and added the desire that Solomon’s kingdom would become greater than David’s. In one respect, this proved to be true, for the peace that prevailed in Solomon’s day contributed to make his kingdom wonderfully prosperous. However, that prosperity was marred by the personal disobedience of Solomon that led to the breakup of the kingdom after he died (ch.12).
Such a celebration was a startling interruption to the celebration of Adonijah’s claim to the throne of Israel. Adonijah and his followers had only finished their meal of celebration when this noise erupted in Jerusalem. Joab asked: “Why is the city in such a noisy uproar?”
At that moment Jonathan the son of Abiathar came in. Though his father was already present, it seems Jonathan did not follow his father’s example. Jonathan had shown himself devoted to David at the time of Absalom’s revolt (2Sa 17:17-21). Adonijah thought Jonathan was bringing good news, but it was not good for Adonijah. Jonathan was just as aware of the coronation of Solomon as he was of what Adonijah was doing, and it seems he was not taking sides with Adonijah (vs.42-43). He told him plainly that “our lord King David has made Solomon king.”
Jonathan made no suggestion that Adonijah should resist the crowning of Solomon as king, but rather gave him a full account of what had taken place so that it left no loophole of opportunity for Adonijah to change it. David had sent Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet and Benaiah to military leader, together with the Cherethites and the Pelethites, David’s bodyguard, having Solomon ride on the king’s mule, and at Gihon they had anointed Solomon king, so that the whole city was rejoicing (vs.44-45).
But Jonathan did not stop there. He said that Solomon sat on the throne of the kingdom and David’s servants had gone to bless King David with the desire that God would make the name of Solomon better than the name of David and his throne greater than David’s throne. Thus Jonathan added that the king was bowed with thanksgiving before God, blessing Him for having given David a successor to sit on his throne while he was yet alive (vs.46-48). It seems that Jonathan would not have added these things if he had at all favored Adonijah. He spoke as though the matter had been totally settled by David.
Fear took possession of all the guests of Adonijah, and they immediately left the scene of their unholy celebration, each going his own way (v.49). Adonijah, in mortal fear, went and took hold of the horns of the altar, just as ungodly men today try to find refuge in Christian ritual, outwardly acknowledging the sacrifice of Christ as the place of safety, yet with no love for Christ at all (v.50).
Solomon was told that Adonijah had done this with the desire that Solomon would swear to him by God that he would not put him to death. Solomon was not vengeful toward his brother, but he was guarded in the way he answered. If Adonijah would prove himself dependable, he would not die, but if there was subsequent wickedness found in him, he would not be spared (v.52). At Solomon’s word, he was brought from the altar and bowed to Solomon, who told him simply, “Go to your house.” In other words, he was told to confine himself to private life rather than public.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
1:1 Now king David was {a} old [and] stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no {b} heat.
(a) He was about 70 years old, 2Sa 5:4.
(b) For his natural heat was worn away with travels.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
A. Solomon’s Succession to David’s Throne 1:1-2:12
The first segment of the writer’s story (1Ki 1:1 to 1Ki 2:12) continues the history of Israel’s monarchy where 2 Samuel ended. It records the final events in David’s reign that led to Solomon’s succession to the throne. It answers the question raised in 2 Samuel 9-20, namely, "Who will succeed David?" Similarly, Genesis 12-22 answers the question, "Who will be Abram’s heir?"
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
1. David’s declining health 1:1-4
It was customary in ancient times to warm an elderly person not only by covering him or her with blankets, but also by putting a healthy person in bed with him or her. [Note: Wiseman, p. 67.] The body heat of the well person would keep the older person warmer. David’s physicians chose Abishag to provide nursing care for David as well as to warm him. Since David was the king, they sought and found a beautiful nurse for him. In view of David’s symptoms, he may have suffered from arteriosclerosis. [Note: Gene Rice, Nations under God, p. 8; and Simon DeVries, 1 Kings, p. 12.]
"Shunammite" is an alternate reading of "Shulammite," a resident of Shunem in Issachar. There is no way of telling if Abishag was the Shulammite Solomon loved and wrote of in the Song of Solomon (Son 6:13). The fact that David did not have sexual relations with this "very beautiful" young woman (1Ki 1:4) is significant because it shows that his physical powers were now weak. David had been sexually active, but now his sexual powers were depleted. This shows that it was time for a more energetic man to reign.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
DAVIDS DECREPITUDE
1Ki 1:1-4.
“Praise a fair day at night.”
THE old age of good men is often a beautiful spectacle. They show us the example of a mellower wisdom, a larger tolerance, a sweeter temper, a more unselfish sympathy, a clearer faith.
The setting sun of their bright day tinges even the clouds which gather round it with softer and more lovely hues.
We cannot say this of Davids age. After the oppressive splendor of his heroic youth and manhood there was no dewy twilight of honored peace. We see him in a somewhat pitiable decrepitude. He was not really old; the expression of our Authorized Version, “stricken in years,” is literally “entered into days,” but the Book of Chronicles calls him “old and full of days.” {1Ch 23:1} Josephus says that when he died he was only seventy years old. He had reigned seven years and a half in Hebron and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. {2Sa 5:5} At the age of seventy many men are still in full vigor of strength and intellect, but the conditions of that day were not favorable to longevity. Solomon does not seem to have survived his sixtieth year; and it is doubtful whether any one of the kings of Israel or Judah-excepting, strange to say, the wicked Manasseh-attained even that moderate age. Threescore years and ten have always been the allotted space of human life, and few who long survive that age find that their strength then is anything but labor and sorrow.
But the decrepitude of David was exceptional. He was drained of all his vital force. He took to his bed, but though they heaped clothes upon him he could get no warmth. “He remained cold amid the torrid heat of Jerusalem.” Then his physicians recommended the only remedy they knew, to give heat to his chilled and withered frame. It was the primitive and not ineffectual remedy-which was suggested twenty-two centuries later to the great Frederic Barbarossa-of contact with the warmth of a youthful frame. So they sought out the fairest virgin in all the coasts of Israel to act as the kings nurse, and their choice fell on Abishag, a maiden of Shunem in Issachar. There was no question of his taking another wife. He had already many wives and concubines, and what the bed-ridden invalid required was a strong and youthful nurse to cherish him. We are surprised at such total failure of lifes forces. But David had lived through a youth of toil and exposure, of fight and hardship, in the days when his only home had been the dark and dripping limestone caves, and he had been hunted like a partridge on the mountains by the furious jealousy of Saul. The sun had smitten him by day and the moon by night, and the chill dews had fallen on him in the midnight bivouacs among the crags of Engedi. Then had followed the burdens and cares of royalty with guilty anxieties and deeds which shook his pulses with wrath and fear. Coincident with these were the demoralizing luxuries and domestic sensualism of a polygamous palace. Worst of all he had sinned against God, and against light, and against his own conscience. For a time his moral sense had slumbered, and retribution had been delayed. But when he awoke from his sensual dream, the belated punishment burst over him in thunder and his conscience with outstretched finger and tones of menace must often have repeated to the murderous adulterer the doom of Nathan and the stern sentence, “Thou art the man!” Many a vulgar Eastern tyrant would hardly have regarded Davids sin as a sin at all; but when such a man as David sins, the fact that he has been admitted into a holier sanctuary adds deadliness to the guilt of his sacrilege. True he was forgiven, but he must have found it terribly hard to forgive himself. God gave back to him the clean heart, and renewed a right spirit within him; but the sense of forgiveness differs from the sweetness of innocence, and the remission of his sins did not bring with it the remission of their consequences. From that disastrous day David was a changed man. It might be said of him as of the Fallen Spirit:-
“His face Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek.”
The Nemesis of sins normal consequences pursued him to the end. Dark spirits walked in his house. Joab knew his guilty secrets, and Joab became the tyrannous master of his destiny. Those guilty secrets leaked out, and he lost his charm, his influence, his popularity among his subjects. He was haunted by an ever-present sense of shame and humiliation. Joab was a murderer, and went unpunished; but was not he too an unpunished murderer? If his enemies cursed him, he sometimes felt with a sense of despair, “Let them curse. God hath said unto them, Curse David.” His past carried with it the inevitable deterioration of his present. In the overwhelming shame and horror which rent his heart during the rebellion of Absalom, he must often have felt tempted to the fatalism of desperation, like that guilty king of Greek tragedy who, burdened with the curse of his race, was forced to exclaim, -Curses in his family, a curse upon his daughter, a curse upon his sons, a curse upon himself, a curse upon his people, -there was scarcely one ingredient in the cup of human woe which, in consequence of his own crimes, this unhappy king had not been forced to taste. Scourges of war, famine, and pestilence-of a three years famine, of a three years flight before his enemies, of a three days pestilence-he had known them all. He had suffered with the sufferings of his subjects, whose trials had been aggravated by his own transgressions. He had seen his sons following his own fatal example, and he had felt the worst of all sufferings in the serpents tooth of filial ingratitude agonizing a troubled heart and a weakened will. It is no wonder that David became decrepit before his time.
Yet what a picture does it present of the vanity of human wishes, of the emptiness of all that men desire, of the truth which Solon impressed on the Lydian king that we can call no man happy before his death! Davids youth had been a pastoral idyll; his manhood an epic of war and chivalry; his premature age becomes the chronicle of a nursery. What different pictures are presented to us by David in his sweet youth and glowing bloom, and David in his unloved and disgraced decline! We have seen him a beautiful ruddy boy, summoned from his sheepfolds, with the wind of the desert on his cheek and its sunlight in his hair, to kneel before the aged prophet and feel the hands of consecration laid upon his head. Swift and strong, his feet like harts feet, his arms able to bend a bow of steel, he fights like a good shepherd for his flock, and single-handed smites the lion and the bear. His harp and song drive the evil spirit from the tortured soul of the demoniac king. With a sling and a stone the boy slays the giant champion, and the maidens of Israel praise their deliverer with songs and dances. He becomes the armor-bearer of the king, the beloved comrade of the kings son, the husband of the kings daughter. Then indeed he is driven into imperiled outlawry by the kings envy, and becomes the captain of a band of freebooters; but his influence over them, as in our English legends of Robin Hood, gives something of beneficence to his lawlessness, and even these wandering years of brigandage are brightened by tales of his splendid magnanimity. The young chieftain who had mingled a loyal tenderness and genial humor with all his wild adventures-who had so generously and almost playfully spared the life of Saul his enemy-who had protected the flocks and fields of the churlish Nabal-who, with the chivalry of a Sydney, had poured on the ground the bright drops of water from the well of Bethlehem for which he had thirsted, because they had been won by imperiled lives-sprang naturally into the idolized hero and poet of his people. Then God had taken him from the sheepfolds, from following the ewes great with young ones, that he might lead Jacob His people and Israel His inheritance. Generous to the sad memories of Saul and Jonathan, generous to the princely Abner, generous to the weak Ishbosheth, generous to poor lame Mephibosheth, he had knit all hearts like the heart of one man to himself, and in successful war had carried all before him, north and south, and east and west. He enlarged the borders of his kingdom, captured the City of Waters, and placed the Moloch crown of Rabbah on his head. Then in the mid-flush of his prosperity, in his pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness, “the tempting opportunity met the susceptible disposition,” and David forgot God who had done so great things for him.
The people must have felt how deep was the debt of gratitude which they owed to him. He had given them a consciousness of power yet undeveloped; a sense of the unity of their national life perpetuated by the possession of a capital which has been famous to all succeeding ages. To David the nation owed the conquest of the stronghold of Jebus, and they would feel that “as the hills stand about Jerusalem, so standeth the Lord round about them that fear Him.” {Psa 122:3-5} The king who associates his name with a national capital-as Nebuchadnezzar built great Babylon, or Constantine chose Byzantium-secures the strongest claim to immortality. But the choice made by David for his capital showed an intuition as keen as that which had immortalized the fame of the Macedonian conqueror in the name of Alexandria. Jerusalem is a city which belongs to all time, and even under the curse of Turkish rule it has not lost its undying interest. But David had rendered a still higher service in giving stability to the national religion. The prestige of the Ark had been destroyed in the overwhelming defeat of Israel by the Philistines at Aphek, when it fell into the hands of the uncircumcised. After that it had been neglected and half forgotten until David brought it with songs and dances to Gods holy hill of Zion. Since then every pious Israelite might rejoice that, as in the Tabernacle of old, God was once more in the midst of His people. The merely superstitious might only regard the Ark as a fetish-the fated Palladium of the national existence. But to all thoughtful men the presence of the Ark had a deeper meaning, for it enshrined the Tables of the Moral Law; and those broken Tables, and the bending Cherubim which gazed down upon them, and the blood-sprinkled gold of the Mercy-Seat were a vivid emblem that Gods Will is the Rule of Righteousness, and that if it be broken the soul must be reconciled to Him by repentance and forgiveness. That meaning is beautifully brought out in the Psalm which says, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall rise up into the holy place? Even he that hath clean bands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his mind into vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbor.”
To David more than to any man that conviction of the supremacy of righteousness must have been keenly present, and for this reason his sin was the less pardonable. It “tore down the altar of confidence” in many hearts. It caused the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, and was therefore worthy of a sorer punishment. And God in His mercy smote, and did not spare.
He sinned: then came earthquake and eclipse. His earthly life was shipwrecked in that place where two seas meet-where the sea of calamity meets the sea of crime. Then followed the death of his infant child; the outrage of Amnon; the blood of the brutal ravisher shed by his brothers hands; the flight of Absalom; his insolence, his rebellion, his deadly insult to his fathers household; the long day of flight and shame and weeping and curses, as David ascended the slope of Olivet and went down into the Valley of Jordan; the sanguinary battle; the cruel murder of the beloved rebel; the insolence of Joab; the heartrending cry. “O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom; would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”
Not even then had Davids trials ended. He had to endure the fierce quarrel between Israel and Judah; the rebellion of Sheba; the murder of Amasa, which he dared not punish. He had to sink into the further sin of pride in numbering the people, and to see the Angel of the Plague standing with drawn sword over the threshing-floor of Araunah, while his people-those sheep who had not offended-died around him by thousands. After such a life he was made to feel that it was not for blood-stained hands like his to rear the Temple, though he had said, “I will not suffer mine eyes to sleep nor mine eyelids to slumber, neither the temples of my head to take any rest tilt I find a place for the tabernacle of the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.” And now we see him surrounded by intrigues; alienated from the friends and advisers of his youth; shivering in his sickroom; attended by his nurse; feeble, apathetic, the ghost and wreck of all that he had been, with little left of his life but its “glimmerings and decays.”
It is an oft-repeated story. Even so we see great Darius
“Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare ground exposed he lies
Without a friend to close his eyes.”
So we see glorious Alexander the Great, dying as a fool dieth, remorseful, drunken, disappointed, at Babylon. So we see our great Plantagenet:-
“Mighty victor, mighty lord,
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.”
So we see Louis XIV, le grand monarque, peevish, ennuye, fortunate no longer, an old man of seventy, seven left in his vast lonely palace with his great-grandson, a frivolous child of five, and saying to him, “Jai trop aime la guerre; ne mimitez point. “So we see the last great conqueror of modern times, embittering his dishonored island-exile by miserable disputes with Sir Hudson Lowe about etiquette and champagne. But among all the “sad stories of the deaths of kings” none ends a purer glory with a more pitiful decline than the poet-king of Israel, whose songs have been to so many thousands their delight in the house of their pilgrimage. Truly Davids experience no less than his own may have added bitterness to the traditional epitaph of his son on all human glory: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”