Commentary on 1 Kings 9:20–23 (Summary)

1 Kings 9:20–23 is connected to the previous verses in that it tells us about the labour force that Solomon used in his building programs. There is a positive and negative aspect to this. The positive is found in the description that differentiates the Gentile slave labour that was made use of from the free labour of the Israelites. The negative aspect is found in the question as to why the particular Gentile labour force was available for Solomon’s use.

The flow of the passage makes it necessary that we deal with the negative in the first place. The list of Gentile peoples that the writer gives us is made up of nations that were to be destroyed as Israel entered the Promised Land. It is true that it was a slow progress, according to God’s design, of the elimination of these people because of the fear that if they were immediately destroyed, then the wild beasts would take over the land because Israel at that time was not populous enough to fill the entire land. Yet, God’s will was not that these peoples be preserved for centuries. The only Gentile people who lived under the protection of the covenant of the Lord were the Gibeonites, who had tricked Joshua and Israel into thinking they were a people group from far away. They were protected because Joshua had sworn at the behest of the people that Israel would not wipe these people out. Moreover, he had sworn this in the name of Yahweh.

The next thing to say concerning the conscription of Gentile slaves, of a negative nature, is something that we see as a problem in the continued history of Israel up until the time of its exile into Babylon. This is the fact that Israel was not zealous in preventing the spread of pagan idolatry from the remnant of the Canaanite peoples that remained in Israel. The model in the ancient world was that a conquered people would take on the religion of their conquerors because it was felt that the gods that had conquered them were more powerful (and therefore more useful) than their own gods. Why did Israel, who had conquered these nations, reverse the process and take on the worship of the foreign gods?

It is curious that Solomon seems not to have remembered the history of his people. They had been slaves in Egypt engaged in the building programs of Pharaoh. Specifically, they had built store cities for Pharaoh; one of those cities was the city of Rameses. You might think that Solomon would have thought twice before he engaged in the exact same process of slave labour that his people had suffered from.

The positive side of the coin is seen in the fact that Solomon did make a distinction between Gentiles and Israel. In not forcing Israel into slavery, he was showing obedience to God’s law that said that an Israelite was not to put another Israelite into slavery against his will. The law allowed an Israelite to sell himself into slavery for a specific time. But there was no legitimacy in enforcing another Israelite into bondage against his will (see Exodus 21:1–11).

The free labour that Solomon made use of in this place seems to be designated as those in the military in various capacities and those in the administrative arm of the kingdom. There is a slight problem in this regard, for earlier (1 Kings 5:13–14) when the building of the temple was contemplated in the gathering of materials for that project, the labourers used besides those borrowed from Hiram were Hebrews divided into groups of the labour force that spent some time working in Lebanon and sometimes released to go home. This segment of the labour force, which does not seem to be slaves, has no accounting here in the listing of the free Israelites who served Solomon. This omission has caused some commentators to equate the forced labor mentioned in 1 Kings 5:1–18 with the Gentile slaves listed in this chapter. There are some problems with either interpretation.

Regarding this last point, it is well to remember that in the reign of King Zedekiah, shortly before Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon, he had temporarily gained God’s approval by decreeing that all Hebrews who were slaves to other Jews were to be set free. But God’s displeasure came upon him when he rescinded that order and allowed people to take their brethren back into involuntary servitude. It is an open question whether the history of Judah would have been considerably different if Zedekiah had not rescinded the emancipating decree (see Jeremiah 34:9–11).