CHAP. III.

Of such Places as are mentioned in the first Book of Kings, and not spoken of before.

1.

Solomon

Gihon.

THE first book of Kings begins with giving us an account of David's being now grown old; and how there- anointed upon his then eldest son Adonijah set himself up for King, King at making a great entertainment for his party near Enrogel. News whereof being brought to David, he ordered his son Solomon to be anointed King at Gihon; of which place we have before spoken, in our description of the city of Jerusalem, chap. ii. §. 20. as of Enrogel, ibid. §. 36.

Some time after David's death, Solomon orders Abiathar the priest, who had sided with Adonijah, to retire from Jerusalem to Anathoth his own city, being one of the cities of the tribe of Benjamin, that were given to the sons of Aaron; and, as Eusebius and Jerom tell us, no more than three miles distant from Jerusalem, and that to the north, as Jerom further informs us in his comments on Jerem. i. For the prophet Jeremiah was of this same city, as he himself tells us, chap. i. ver. 1.

2.

Of Ana

thoth.

3.

sah, and

of Solo

Solomon going to Gibeon to sacrifice, and there preferring wisdom before other things, God gave him not Of Tiphonly wisdom, but also riches and honour, so that there was the extent not any among the Kings like unto him all his days, chap. mon's doiii. 1-13. Accordingly we are informed chap. iv. ver. 21. minion. that Solomon reigned over all kingdoms, from the river (Euphrates) unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; or, as it is expressed ver. 24. He had dominion over all on this side the river, (i. e. on the west side of the Euphrates) from Tiphsah, even to Azzah. Where, as by Azzah is denoted Gaza, a city lying in the southwest corner of the land of Israel, and belsewhere spoken of; so Tiphsah is very probably thought to be the same

b Geography of the New Testament, Part II. chap. ii. §. 6.

PART III. with Thapsacus, a considerable city lying on the Euphrates, and frequently mentioned by Heathen writers. There is mention made, 2 Kings xv. 16. of a Tiphsah, that Menahem, then King of Israel, smote: but this must be different from the Tiphsah before mentioned, and must, according to the circumstances of the story, lie not far from Tirzah, and so on the west side of the river Jordan, in the land of Israel.

4.

Of SoloTemple.

mon's

In the following chapters (from the fifth to the eighth inclusively) we have an account of the building of Solomon's Temple, of which I have spoken largely in my Geography of the New Testament, Part I. chap. iii. §. 7. It will not, I suppose, be unacceptable to the reader, to have here represented to him two draughts relating to Solomon's Temple, taken from Villalpandus.

The first draught, No. 1. represents the ichnography or ground-plot of the whole Temple, both courts and buildings.

The second draught, No. 2. represents the ichnography or ground-plot of the Temple, or house of the Lord more properly so called; which consisted of these two principal parts, the sanctuary or holy, and the holy of holies, or most holy.

From these draughts compared together may be framed a somewhat just idea of the Temple of Solomon, as to the nobleness and magnificence of its structure. And that it was a most noble and magnificent structure, and every way most agreeable to the rules of symmetry and proportion, can in no wise be rationally doubted, or indeed without great impiety, since we learn from 1 Chron. xxviii. that the Temple was built by Solomon according to the pattern which God himself had been pleased to give to David for that purpose. Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch, and of the houses thereof, and of the treasuries thereof, and of the upper chambers thereof, and of the inner parlours thereof, and of the place of the mercyseat; and the pattern of all that he had by the spirit, of the courts of the house of the Lord, and of all the chambers

Measure Reeds

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