1 Kings 4:28

Contextual Overview

²⁰Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea; they were eating, drinking, and rejoicing. ²⁰ Yehudah and Yisra'el were many as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry. ²⁰ Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry. ²⁰ Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy. ²⁰ There were as many people in Judah and Israel as grains of sand on the seashore. The people ate, drank, and were happy. ²⁰ The people of Judah and Israel were as innumerable as the sand on the seashore; they had plenty to eat and drink and were happy. ²⁰[The people of] Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is in abundance by the sea; they were eating and drinking and rejoicing. ²⁰ Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance; they were eating, drinking, and rejoicing. ²⁰ Iudah and Israel were many, as the sand of the sea in number, eating, drinking, and making merry. ²⁰Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance; they were eating and drinking and being glad.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

dromedaries: or, mules, or swift beasts, Esther 8:10, Esther 8:14, Micah 1:13

Reciprocal: Genesis 36:24 - found 1 Samuel 8:12 - and will set John 6:9 - barley

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Barley also, and straw for the horses and dromedaries,.... Or rather mules, by comparing the passage with 2 Chronicles 9:24; the particular kind of creatures meant is not agreed on; though all take them to be a swifter sort of creatures than horses; or the swifter of horses, as race horses or posts horses: barley was for their provender, that being the common food of horses in those times and countries, and in others, as Bochart h has shown from various writers; and in the Misnah i it is called the food of beasts; and Solomon is said to have every day his own horses two hundred thousand Neapolitan measures of called "tomboli" k; so the Roman soldiers, the horse were allowed a certain quantity of barley for their horses every morning, and sometimes they had money instead of it, which they therefore called "hordiarium" l and the "straw" was for the litter of them: these

brought they unto the place; where the officers were; not where the king was, as the Vulgate Latin version; where Solomon was, as the Arabic version, that is, in Jerusalem; nor

where [the officers] were; in their respective jurisdictions, as our version supplies it, which would be bringing them to themselves; but to the place where the beasts were, whether in Jerusalem, or in any, other parts of the kingdom:

every man according to his charge: which he was monthly to perform.

h Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 9. col. 158, 159. Vid. Homer. Iliad. 4. ver. 196. and Iliad. 8. ver. 560. i Sotah, c. 2. sect. 1. k Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 10. 2. l Vid. Valtrinum de re Militar. Roman. l. 3. c. 15. p. 236.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Barley is to this day in the East the common food of horses.

Dromedaries - Coursers. The animal intended is neither a camel nor a mule, but a swift horse.

The place where the officers were - Rather, “places where the horses and coursers were,” i. e., to the different cities where they were lodged.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 1 Kings 4:28. And dromedaries — The word רכש rechesh, which we translate thus, is rendered beasts, or beasts of burden, by the Vulgate; mares by the Syriac and Arabic; chariots by the Septuagint; and race-horses by the Chaldee. The original word seems to signify a very swift kind of horse, and race-horse or post-horse is probably its true meaning. To communicate with so many distant provinces, Solomon had need of many animals of this kind.