The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings
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Farrar Frederic William. The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings
AUTHORITIES CONSULTED
BOOK I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. THE HIGHER CRITICISM
CHAPTER II. THE BOOKS OF KINGS
CHAPTER III. THE HISTORIAN OF THE KINGS
CHAPTER IV. GOD IN HISTORY
CHAPTER V. HISTORY WITH A PURPOSE
CHAPTER VI. LESSONS OF THE HISTORY
BOOK II. DAVID AND SOLOMON
CHAPTER VII. DAVID'S DECREPITUDE
CHAPTER VIII. AN EASTERN COURT AND HOME
CHAPTER IX. ADONIJAH'S REBELLION
CHAPTER X. DAVID'S DEATH-BED
CHAPTER XI. AVENGING JUSTICE
CHAPTER XII. THE BOY-KING'S WISDOM
CHAPTER XIII. SOLOMON'S COURT AND KINGDOM
CHAPTER XIV. THE TEMPLE
CHAPTER XV. THE IDEAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TEMPLE
CHAPTER XVI. THE ARK AND THE CHERUBIM
CHAPTER XVII. THE GRADUAL GROWTH OF THE LEVITIC RITUAL
CHAPTER XVIII. THE TEMPLE WORSHIP
CHAPTER XIX. THE TEMPLE SACRIFICES
CHAPTER XX. SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY
CHAPTER XXI. HOLLOW PROSPERITY
CHAPTER XXII. THE OLD AGE OF SOLOMON
CHAPTER XXIII. THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND
BOOK III. THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
CHAPTER XXIV. A NEW REIGN
CHAPTER XXV. THE DISRUPTION
CHAPTER XXVI "JEROBOAM THE SON OF NEBAT, WHO MADE ISRAEL TO SIN."
CHAPTER XXVII. JEROBOAM, AND THE MAN OF GOD
CHAPTER XXVIII. DOOM OF THE HOUSE OF NEBAT
CHAPTER XXIX. NADAB; BAASHA; ELAH
CHAPTER XXX. THE EARLIER KINGS OF JUDAH
CHAPTER XXXI. JEHOSHAPHAT
CHAPTER XXXII. THE KINGS OF ISRAEL FROM ZIMRI TO AHAB
BOOK IV. AHAB AND ELIJAH
CHAPTER XXXIII. KING AHAB AND QUEEN JEZEBEL
CHAPTER XXXIV. ELIJAH
CHAPTER XXXV. ELIJAH AT SAREPTA
CHAPTER XXXVI. ELIJAH AND AHAB
CHAPTER XXXVII. ELIJAH ON MOUNT CARMEL
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE RAIN
CHAPTER XXXIX. ELIJAH'S FLIGHT
CHAPTER XL. ELIJAH'S DESPAIR
CHAPTER XLI. HOW GOD DEALS WITH DESPONDENCY
CHAPTER XLII. THE THEOPHANY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
CHAPTER XLIII. THE CALL OF ELISHA
CHAPTER XLIV. AHAB AND BENHADAD
CHAPTER XLV. AHAB'S INFATUATION
CHAPTER XLVI. NABOTH'S VINEYARD
CHAPTER XLVII. ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD
CHAPTER XLVIII. CONCLUSION
NOTE ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS
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God has given us many Bibles. The book which we call the Bible consists of a series of books, and its name represents the Greek plural τὰ Βίβλια. It is not so much a book, as the extant fragments of a literature, which grew up during many centuries. Supreme as is the importance of this "Book of God," it was never meant to be the sole teacher of mankind. We mistake its purpose, we misapply its revelation, when we use it to exclude the other sources of religious knowledge. It is supremely profitable for our instruction, but, so far from being designed to absorb our exclusive attention, its work is to stimulate the eagerness with which, by its aid, we are able to learn from all other sources the will of God towards men.
God speaks to us in many voices. In the Bible He revealed Himself to all mankind by His messages to the individual souls of some of His servants. But those messages, whether uttered or consigned to writing, were but one method of enabling us to hold communion with Him. They were not even an indispensable method. Thousands of the saints of God lived the spiritual life in close communion with their Father in heaven in ages which possessed no written book; in ages before any such book existed; in ages during which, though it existed, it was practically inaccessible; in ages during which it had been designedly kept out of their hands by priests. This fact should quicken our sense of gratitude for the inestimable boon of a Book wherein he who runs may now read, and respecting the main teaching of which wayfaring men, and even fools, need not err. But it should at the same time save us from the error of treating the Bible as though it were in itself an amulet or a fetish, as the Mohammedan treats his Koran. The Bible was written in human language, by men for men. It was written mainly in Judæa, by Jews, for Jews. "Scripture," as the old theological rule said, "is the sense of Scripture,"1 and the sense of Scripture can only be ascertained by the methods of study and the rules of criticism without which no ancient document or literature can be even approximately understood. In these respects the Bible cannot be arbitrarily or exceptionally treated. No a priori rules can be devised for its elucidation. It is what it is, not what we might have expected it to be. Language, at the best, is an imperfect and ever-varying instrument of thought. It is full of twilight, and of gracious shadows. Vast numbers of its words were originally metaphorical. When the light of metaphor has faded from them they come to mean different things at different times, under different conditions, in different contexts, on different lips. Language can at the best be but an asymptote to thought; in other words, it resembles the mathematical line which approaches nearer and nearer to the circumference of a circle, but which, even when infinitely extended, can never actually touch it. The fact that the Bible contains a Divine revelation does not alter the fact that it represents a nation's literature. It is the library of the Jewish people, or rather all that remains to us of that library, and all that was most precious in it. Holy men of old were moved by the Spirit of God, but as this Divine inspiration did not make them personally sinless in their actions, or infallible in their judgments, so neither does it exempt their messages from the limitation which attaches to all human conditions. Criticism would have rendered an inestimable service to every thoughtful reader of the Scriptures if it had done nothing more than impress upon them that the component books are not one, but complex and multiform, separated from each other by centuries of time, and of very varying value and preciousness. They too, like the greatest apostles of God, have their treasure in earthen vessels; and we not only may, but must, by the aid of that reason which is "the candle of the Lord," estimate both the value of the treasure, and the age and character of the earthen vessel in which it is contained.
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And this is one of the great lessons which we learn alike from Scripture and from the experience of every holy and humble life. It may be briefly summed up in the words, "Put thou thy trust in God and be doing good, and He shall bring it to pass." In multitudes of forms the Bible inculcates upon us the lesson, "Have faith in God," "Fear not; only believe." The paradox of the New Testament is the existence of joy in the midst of sorrow and sighing, of exultation (ἀγαλλίασις) even amid the burning fiery furnaces of anguish and persecution. The secret of both Testaments alike is the power to maintain an unquenchable faith, an unbroken peace, an indomitable trust amid every complication of disaster and apparent overthrow. The writer of the Book of Kings saw that God is patient, because He is eternal; that even the histories of nations, not individual lives only, are but as one ticking of a clock amid the eternal silence; that God's ways are not man's ways. And because this is so – because God sitteth above the water floods and remaineth a King for ever – therefore we can attain to that ultimate triumph of faith which consists in holding fast our profession, not only amid all the waves and storms of calamity, but even when we are brought face to face with that which wears the aspect of absolute and final failure. The historian says in the name of his nation what the saint has so often to say in his own, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Amos, earliest of the prophets whose written utterances have been preserved, undazzled by the magnificent revival of the Northern Kingdom under Jeroboam II., was still convinced that the future lay with the poor fallen "booth" of David's royalty: "And I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old, … saith the Lord that doeth this."41 In many a dark age of Jewish affliction this fire of conviction has still burned amid the ashes of national hopes after it had seemed to have flickered out under white heaps of chilly dust.42
Had the compiler of the Book of Kings been so incompetent and valueless an historian as some critics have represented, it would indeed have been strange that his book should have kindled so immortal an interest, or have taken its place securely in the Jewish canon among the most sacred books of the world. He could not have secured this recognition without real and abiding merits. His greatness appears by the manner in which he grapples with, and is not crushed by, the problems presented to him by the course of events to him so dismal.
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