Wesley Corpus

Those - He used them as bondmen, and imposed bodily labours upon them. But why did not Solomon destroy them as God had commanded, when now it was fully in his power to do so The command of destroying them, Deut 7:2, did chiefly, if not only, concern that generation of Canaanites, who lived in, or, near the time of the Israelites entering into Canaan. And that command seems not to be absolute, but conditional, and with some exception for those who should submit and embrace the true religion, as may be gathered both from Josh 11:19, and from the history of the Gibeonites. For if God's command had been absolute, the oaths of Joshua, and of the princes, could not have obliged them, nor dispensed with such a command. Three times - That is, at the three solemn feasts: and undoubtedly at all other appointed times. Made - Not now, but in the beginning of his reign. Knowledge of the sea - For which the Tyrians were famous. He sent also ships to join with Solomon's, not from Tyre, the city of Phoenicia; but from an island in the Red - sea, called Tyre, because it was a colony of the Tyrians, as Strabo notes. Ophir - A place famous for the plenty and fineness of the gold there. It is agreed, that it was a part of the East - Indies, probably Ceylon, which though very remote from us, yet was far nearer the Red - sea, from whence they might easily sail to it in those ancient times, because they might (according to the manner of those first ages) sail all along near the coast, though the voyage was thereby more tedious, which was the reason why three years were spent in it. And here, and here only were to be had all the commodities which Solomon fetched from Ophir, chap.10:22. Fetched - In all there came to the king four hundred and fifty talents, whereof it seems thirty talents were allowed to Hiram and his men, and so there were only four hundred and twenty that came clear into the king's treasury.