(1) This execution upon Joab, as a murderer, by slaying him, even when he had taken sanctuary at God's altar, is perfectly agreeable to the law of Moses, which enjoins, that "if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar that he die," Exodus 21:14.
(2) This building of the walls of Jerusalem, soon after David's death, illustrates the conclusion of the 51st Psalm, where David prays, "Build thou the walls of Jerusalem;" they being, it seems, unfinished or imperfect at that time.See ch.6.sect.1; and ch.
1.sect.7; also 1 Kings 9:15.
(3) It may not be amiss to compare the daily furniture of king Solomon's table, here set down, and 1 Kings 4;22, 23, with the like daily furniture of Nehemiah the governor's table, after the Jews were come back from Babylon; and to remember withal, that Nehemiah was now building the walls of Jerusalem, and maintained, more than usual, above a hundred and fifty considerable men every day, and that, because the nation was then very poor, at his own charges also, without laying any burden upon the people at all.
"Now that which was prepared for me daily was one ox and six choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and once in ten days store of all sorts of wine; and yet for all this required not the bread of the governor, because the bondage was heavy upon this people," Nehemiah 5:18: see the whole context, ver.14-19.
Nor did the governor's usual allowance of forty shekels of silver a-day, ver.15, amount to 45 a day, nor to 1800 a-year.Nor does it indeed appear that, under the judges, or under Samuel the prophet, there was any such public allowance to those governors at all.Those great charges upon the public for maintaining courts came in with kings, as God foretold they would, 1 Samuel 8:11-18.
(4) Some pretended fragments of these books of conjuration of Solomon are still extant in Fabricius's Cod.Pseudepigr.Vet.
Test.page 1054, though I entirely differ from Josephus in this his supposal, that such books and arts of Solomon were parts of that wisdom which was imparted to him by God in his younger days;they must rather have belonged to such profane but curious arts as we find mentioned Acts 19:13-20, and had been derived from the idolatry and superstition of his heathen wives and concubines in his old age, when he had forsaken God, and God had forsaken him, and given him up to demoniacal delusions.Nor does Josephus's strange account of the root Baara (Of the War, B.VIII.ch.6.
sect.3) seem to be other than that of its magical use in such conjurations.As for the following history, it confirms what Christ says, Matthew 12;27 "If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your Sons cast them out?"(5) These epistles of Solomon and Hiram are those in 1 Kings 5:3-9, and, as enlarged, in 2 Chronicles 2:3-16, but here given us by Josephus in his own words.
(6) What Josephus here puts into his copy of Hiram's epistle to Solomon, and repeats afterwards, ch.5.sect.3, that Tyre was now an island, is not in any of the three other copies, viz.that of the Kings, Chronicles, or Eusebius; nor is it any other, Isuppose, than his own conjectural paraphrase; for when I, many years ago, inquired into this matter, I found the state of this famous city, and of the island whereupon it stood, to have been very different at different times.The result of my inquiries in this matter, with the addition of some later improvements, stands thus: That the best testimonies hereto relating, imply, that Paketyrus, or Oldest Tyre, was no other than that most ancient smaller fort or city Tyre, situated on the continent, and mentioned in Joshua 19:29, out of which the Canaanite or Phoenician inhabitants were driven into a large island, that lay not far off in the sea, by Joshua: that this island was then joined to the continent at the present remains of Paketyrus, by a neck of land over against Solomon's cisterns, still so called;and the city's fresh water, probably, was carried along in pipes by that neck of land; and that this island was therefore, in strictness, no other than a peninsula, having villages in its fields, Ezekiel 26:6, and a wall about it, Amos 1:10, and the city was not of so great reputation as Sitlon for some ages: that it was attacked both by sea and land by Salmanasser, as Josephus informs us, Antiq.B.IX.ch.14.sect.2, and afterwards came to be the metropolis of Phoenicia; and was afterwards taken and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, according to the numerous Scripture prophecies thereto relating, Isaiah 23.; Jeremiah 25:22; 27:3;47:4; Ezekiel 26., 27., 28.: that seventy years after that destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, this city was in some measure revived and rebuilt, Isaiah 23:17, 18, but that, as the prophet Ezekiel had foretold, chap.26:3-5, 14; 27: 34, the sea arose higher than before, till at last it over flowed, not only the neck of land, but the main island or peninsula itself, and destroyed that old and famous city for ever: that, however, there still remained an adjoining smaller island, once connected to Old Tyre itself by Hiram, which was afterwards inhabited; to which Alexander the Great, with incredible pains, raised a new bank or causeway: and that it plainly appears from Ifaundreh, a most authentic eye-witness, that the old large and famous city, on the original large island, is now laid so generally under water, that scarce more than forty acres of it, or rather of that adjoining small island remain at this day; so that, perhaps, not above a hundredth part of the first island and city is now above water.
