Verse 14
14. In my trouble I have prepared for the house Margin, in my poverty. So also Septuagint and Vulgate. Bertheau and Keil, by my painful labour; that is, by great toil and effort on my part. The word thus variously rendered generally means affliction, distress; and such is, probably, the sense in which it should here be taken. David means to say that under varied circumstances of trouble, warfare, and distress, he had accumulated the treasures he here enumerates.
A hundred thousand talents of gold About $5,690,000,000.
A thousand thousand talents of silver About
$1,660,000,000. These numbers are incredibly large, and unless the value of the talent in question was vastly less than that at which the Hebrew talent is commonly estimated, the statement of the text is probably extravagant. Bertheau thinks the writer merely meant to designate an extraordinary amount, and made a free use of numbers without any close estimate of the precise amount. Keil, however, thinks the numbers may not be exaggerated; but, reckoning the talent at half the usual standard, (“according to the king’s weight,” 2 Samuel 14:26,) and appealing to the enormous amounts of treasure often accumulated in ancient kingdoms, he concludes that the “shields of gold,” and other similar spoil which David captured in war, (2 Samuel 8:7-11; 1 Chronicles 18:11,) may not have been improperly valued at the figures here used.
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