God’s Word for You
2 Chronicles 8:11 Pharaoh’s daughter
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, October 22, 2024
11 Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter up from the City of David to the house he had built for her. He said, “My wife must not live in the house of David king of Israel, because those places the ark of the LORD has entered are holy.”
This is the only passage in Scripture that tells us with certainty that the tent David pitched for the ark of the covenant was actually within the grounds of his own house or palace. Not that it would have been in David’s living room, but he must have set up the special tent in what we would call the grounds of his palace.
We don’t know much about this woman, Pharaoh’s daughter. He married her while his palace and hall of justice were still under construction, because he built a similar palace for her in the same style. She is mentioned in 1 Kings 7:8, and again in 1 Kings 9:24, where we learn that after the marriage, “he constructed the supporting terraces” of the royal dwellings. She is also in the list of his many wives (1 Kings 11:1) just before the grand total of wives is tallied up: “seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3) and the resulting trouble this gave to the king’s faith. Together with the verse before us, these are the only four passages that mention her—not even her name is known to us. In fact, of all Solomon’s wives, the only name we know is Naamah, the Ammonite woman who was the mother of King Rehoboam.
Which Pharaoh was she the daughter of? I don’t think we can say with certainty at this point, unless some record turns up that would confirm her identity. But we can say a few things.
1, Solomon was born about halfway through David’s reign, to David and Bathsheba. He may have been born around 990 BC.
2, Solomon became king in 970 BC.
3, Solomon finished his palace in about 950 BC.
4, Solomon married this daughter of Pharaoh at about the time he was nearing completion of the palace (955-950 BC).
5, The daughter of Pharaoh would likely have been “of marriageable age” when she married Solomon in about 950, therefore she was somewhere between 20 and 30 years old or perhaps a little younger. This would place her birth in 980-970 (she would have been ten to twenty years his junior), or 985 if she were about 35.
6, Pharaoh Osorkon the Elder, fifth king of the 21st Dynasty of Egypt, died in about 986. He reigned six years. If a daughter born in his last year was the daughter in question, she would have been in her mid-thirties. This is not beyond the realm of possibility.
7, Pharaoh Siamun, sixth king of the 21st Dynasty, ruled from 986 to about 967, or 19 years. It is more likely that the daughter of Pharaoh in our text was one of his daughters.
Why did Solomon take precautions about the princess of Egypt and the ark of the covenant—even its former location? There are two possibilities. The first is simply that she was a Gentile. Soon enough, the king would be corrupted by her religious practices and would fall into idolatry (1 Kings 3:3). For the moment, he was still concerned about keeping the things that belonged to the Lord separate and holy.
Another view, the one expressed by Professor Wendland in his People’s Bible Commentary, is that she was a woman. “In the Law of Moses, God has made special provision for the separation and purification of women for the times when they were ‘unclean’ (Leviticus 12)” (2 Chronicles p. 117). This would not be true of the typical husband, not even priests, when their wives were ceremonially unclean on account of their monthly cycle or following childbirth. The difference was that the ark itself had resided in the courtyard of Solomon’s house, and he wanted to take special precautions about everyone who came into contact with the place. We are not subject to the same laws today, since they all were fulfilled by Christ and we are released from them. Jesus said: “I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Whether Solomon had in mind his wife’s nationality, her religion, or her gender, or whether he was just being overly cautious, we appreciate that he acted as he thought best. God is still concerned about us keeping our worship holy. He wants us to separate ourselves from false doctrine (Matthew 16:12) and to be on our guard against false teachers (Mark 13:13; 2 Peter 2:1). The ancient pastor Ignatius praised the Ephesians: “I have learned that some who passed through there had false doctrine, but you did not let them sow it among you, stopping your ears so that you would not receive what they sowed.”
In the early years of the Lutheran Reformation, Martin Luther set himself to helping the worship of the church by writing appropriate hymns in the local language instead of the traditional Latin which was understood by the clergy but not the average Christian. One of the first of these was “Dear Christians, Let Us Now Rejoice.” He wrote the music and the words late in 1523, and it has come down to us as “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice.” It is about the justification of the believer and the desire to give glory only to God. There is also a warning in this final verse about false teaching:
“What I have done, and what I’ve said,
Shall be thy doing, teaching,
So that God’s kingdom may be spread—
All to his glory reaching.
Beware what men would bid thee do,
For that corrupts the treasure true;
With this last word I leave you.”
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.