1 Kings 7:1-12

SOLOMON’S PALACE, 1 Kings 7:1-12.

The description given in this chapter of Solomon’s royal house is, on account of its brevity, exceedingly obscure, and we are often obliged to conjecture the meaning, or to gather it from supposed analogies in ancient Oriental architecture. Fergusson, in his article on Solomon’s Palace in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, observes: “The exhumation of the palaces of Nineveh, and the more careful examination of those at Persepolis, have thrown a flood of light on the subject. Many expressions which before were entirely unintelligible are now clear and easily understood; and, if we cannot yet explain every thing, we know at least where to look for analogies, and what was the character, even if we cannot predicate the exact form, of the buildings in question.” But this writer, with all his knowledge of architecture, has manifestly given the Hebrew text of this passage little or no study, for he follows the common version, which, in the rendering of a number of words, is unquestionably wrong; and he shows as much deference to Josephus as to the Bible. In these notes we mainly follow Thenius, whose diagrams and comments on the text furnish, perhaps, as satisfactory a solution of the difficulties as we may, with present light, expect to find.

The SITE of Solomon’s palace is a question yet unsettled. It has been quite generally believed to have occupied the northeastern part of the modern Zion, and to have been connected with the temple-mountain by a bridge over the Tyropoean valley. Here stood a palace erected by the Asmoneans. Josephus, 1 Kings 20:8 ; 1 Kings 20:11. Accordingly Barclay writes: “In all Jerusalem there is not a more eligible spot for a palace than the high northeastern cliff of Zion, nearest the temple the site of the American Christian Mission premises and accordingly it is at this spot that Josephus locates with so much precision the royal residence of the Asmonean and Herodian sovereigns; nor is there the slightest reason to doubt that it was the royal abode of the Davidian dynasty also; indeed, no other locality is at all consistent with the frequent allusions to the ‘king’s house’ in the Old Testament.” City of the Great King, p. 166. This strong statement, however, seems to us unwarranted. What may seem to a modern resident an “eligible spot for a palace,” and the selection of it for that purpose by the Asmonean princes, is no proof that the same spot had been selected in the more ancient times of Solomon. On the contrary, the biblical allusions seem rather to locate the king’s house on the temple-mountain, and at a lower elevation than the temple itself. So especially the passages which speak of Solomon’s bringing his Egyptian wife, after the completion of his palace, “out of the city of David,” which was on Zion. (1 Kings 9:24; 2 Chronicles 8:11; compare note on 1 Kings 3:1,) and of “his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord.” 1 Kings 10:5. Compare also 2 Kings 11:19. We incline, therefore, with a number of recent authorities, to place the palace of Solomon at the southeast corner of the modern Haram area. Here Captain Warren’s excavations revealed walls as ancient as the time of Solomon, and here he locates the ancient palace. We furnish on the opposite page a plan of the topography of ancient Moriah, showing the contour of the rock, and the probable sites of the temple and the palace, according to the conclusions of Captain Warren. Of course the question cannot at present be settled with absolute certainty. For a detailed discussion of the subject, see Recovery of Jerusalem, chaps. 11 and 12.