God’s Word for You
2 Chronicles 9:22-28 the whole banana
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, November 1, 2024
22 King Solomon surpassed all the kings of the earth in wealth and in wisdom. 23 And all the kings of the earth sought to see Solomon to hear the wisdom that God had put in his heart. 24 Each of them came, year upon year, bringing him gifts, vessels of silver and vessels of gold, robes and weapons, spices, horses, and mules. 25 And Solomon had 4,000 stalls for horses and chariots, and 12,000 horsemen, whom he stationed in chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. 26 And he ruled over all the kings from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. 27 And the king made silver in Jerusalem as common as stone, and he made cedar as abundant as the sycamores of the foothills. 28 They imported horses for Solomon from Egypt and from every land.
Just as the Queen of Sheba came, so also other kings and queens came to see Solomon and to listen to his wisdom, “year upon year.” Wouldn’t it have been natural for some of this to have become popularized, available to rulers to take along with them in written form?
The ancient Christian writer Theodoret and others compared the summaries of Solomon’s three books with the three parts of philosophy. “Because according to the Stoics and Platonists all philosophy is divided into three parts—namely, physics, ethics, and dialectics (that is, metaphysics)—therefore they say that in Proverbs there is set forth the ethical part of philosophy, the useful discipline concerning behavior. In Ecclesiastes there is set forth the physical part of philosophy, indicating the nature of those things perceived by the senses and teaching the vanity of this present life and all things that are seen here, so that as we recognize the fluctuating and fragile character we may spurn them as fleeting, passing things and acknowledging that what is to come is firm and will endure forever. In the Song of Songs there is set forth theology and the metaphysical part of philosophy, which denotes the mystic union of bride and Bridegroom.”
Chariot cities were fortified camps, sometimes part of actual walled cities such as Megiddo, Gezer, and Hazor. He also traded in horses with Egypt and other kingdoms. But notice that Solomon kept a force of chariots in Jerusalem, close by. Whether this was a special royal division or simply one of his many chariot groups is not stated, but it is significant that the author says that they stayed “with the king in Jerusalem” and not simply “with King Solomon.” This feature of Solomon’s kingdom remained with later kings; it did not change except perhaps in numbers throughout the history of the nation, until the exile.
The land of Canaan and the regions that bordered it show up on a map looking something like a banana with its stem on the bottom pointing left. In the days of Joshua and the Judges, the tribes were trying to possess the land, but they were sometimes more like banana slices here and there rather than a whole banana. Then Saul went to war to defend the borders of his kingdom, which was really just the middle third of the whole banana. David extended his borders, but now Solomon was the first and only king to rule over the whole banana. Soon the upper two-thirds would be cut away, and then the stem would vanish, and Solomon’s descendants would rule over less than even Saul had governed. But for the moment, the northern frontier was as far away as one man could truly govern: the borders of the Euphrates River that was almost two hundred miles north of Jerusalem—a week’s travel by chariot or wagon; three or four week’s round-trip by donkey or mule. To the east, he was on friendly terms with the kings of Moab and Ammon (one of his wives was an Ammonite princess; her son, Rehoboam, would succeed Solomon on the throne). To the west, he ruled over “the land of the Philistines,” not “over the kings of the Philistines.” The Philistines as a power had collapsed during David’s years, and there would never be another rise of the Philistines as a nation.
We have already seen that Solomon had port cities on the Red Sea at Ezion Geber, and that his territory extended to the border of Egypt and the stream known as “the river of Egypt,” which was not the Nile but a stream some forty miles southwest of the city of Gaza.
Solomon ruled over a larger land than any other Israelite king. His territory was about the same size as the state of Minnesota. The reporting in this chapter reminds us that God’s glory and splendor far surpasses anything we know on earth, but that his glory is also reflected by the glorious things we see here. A government, unwittingly in almost every case, makes large structures and memorials that draw the awe and attention from its people. The simple Christian does well to ignore the political purposes of such things and to say, as Solomon did, “What a great and marvelous God we have! Praise his holy name now and forevermore!”
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.