perhaps the two or three horses (see note scriptions (Diet. Bib. i. 819), with whom on eh. v. 6) nsnelly attached to a chariot Solomon had a sort of allie.nce. It is 11, and the harness. :l~l is used (2 Sam. viii, 4; curious coincidence that we find horses x. 18 ; E11:ek. xxxix. 20) for chariot and and chariots associated in popular estimo., horses] ea.me up a.nd went out of Egypt tion with the Hittites, at a later period of for six hundred shekels of silver [about the history (2 Kings vii. 6). Nor o.re we £80 (Wordsworth, £35), but, as these justified in supposing that these horses figures show, the precise value cannot be and cha.riots were furnished as cavalry to ascertained with certainty. But it is quite "Solomon's vassals, whose armies were at cle1u that these amounts cannot have been his disposal, if he required their a.id" the custom duty, or the profits after reckon- (Rawlinson), for the kings of Syria are ing all expenses (Ewald) paid on cha.riots mentioned presently, and some of these at and horses, but must represent the actual least were enemies to Solomon, Probably priceJ, a.nd &11 horse for a.n hundred and o.11 we a.re to understand is that neighbour- fifty : and so for a.u the kings of the ing nations received their supply of horses Hittites. [We can hardly see in these from Egypt-the home of horses and cha.riots Hittites representatives of the seven nations (Exod. xiv. 6 ; xv. 1 ; Dent. xvii. 16 ; Is~ of Canaan (Wordsworth, al.), though the xxri. 1 ; Jer. xlvi. 2---4)-largely through term "Hittite" is sometimes undoubfedly the instrumentality of Solomon's mer- used as a nomen generale for Canaanites chants], and for the kings of Syria (" who (Josh. i. 4; Ezek. xvi. 3), for the Canaa.nitish became the bitterest enemies of Israel " tribes had been reduced to bond-service, the (Wordsworth): one fruit of e. worldly policy], Hittites amongst them (eh. ix. 20). The did they bring them out by their means. word is probably used somewhat loosely of [Heb. by their hand they brought them out, the semi-independent tribes bordering on i.e., they exported them throngh Solomon's Palestine, the Khatti of the Assyrian in- traders.
HOMILETICS. Vere. 14-29.-The Decline and Fall of Solomon. The fell of Solomon, in itself one of the most portentous facts in Scripture history (see Homiletics, pp. 78-80), is rendered doubly snggestive and admonitory by a consideration of the way in which it was bronght about. It was not that he succumbed to some fierce onslaught of temptation; it was no terrible rush of passion-no sudden guilty love of "fair idolatresses," as some have held-wrought bis ruin ; on the contrary, his decline in piety was so gradual and slow as to be almost imperceptible. It is almost impossible-and this consideration alone is most instructive- to trace with certainty the steps which led to bis downfall. The Arab tradition teaches that 11, little worm-no more-was, silently and unseen, gnawing at the staff on which this Colossus leaned, and that it was only when it broke and he fell that men dis- covered he was dead-an instructive parable of his moral and spiritual decay. We may well cry here- "0 fa.ll'n at length that tower of strength Which stood foursquare to all the winds that blew."