- 1Ki 11:1, 1Ki 11:2. “Solomon loved many foreign wives, and that along with the daughter of Pharaoh.” ואת־בּת פ, standing as it does between נכריּות ר נשׁים and מואביּות, cannot mean “and especially the daughter of P.,” as Thenius follows the earlier commentators in supposing, but must mean, as in 1Ki 11:25, “and that with, or along with,” i.e., actually beside the daughter of Pharaoh. She is thereby distinguished from the foreign wives who turned away Solomon’s heart from the Lord, so that the blame pronounced upon those marriages does not apply to his marriage to the Egyptian princess (see at 1Ki 3:1). All that is blamed is that, in opposition to the command in Deu 17:17, Solomon loved (1) many foreign wives, and (2) Moabitish, Ammonitish, and other wives, of the nations with whom the Israelites were not to intermarry. All that the law expressly prohibited was marriage with Canaanitish women (Deu 7:1-3; Exo 34:16); consequently the words “of the nations,” etc., are not to be taken as referring merely to the Sidonian and Hittite women (J. D. Mich.); but this prohibition is extended here to all the tribes enumerated in 1Ki 11:2, just as in Ezr 9:2., 1Ki 10:3; Neh 13:23; not from a rigour surpassing the law, but in accordance with the spirit of the law, namely, because the reason appended to the law, ne in idololatriam a superstitiosis mulieribus pellicerentur (Clericus), applied to all these nations. The Moabites and Ammonites, moreover, were not to be received into the congregation at all, not even to the tenth generation, and of the Edomites only the children in the third generation were to be received (Deu 23:4, Deu 23:8-9). There was all the less reason, therefore, for permitting marriages with them, that is to say, so long as they retained their nationality or their heathen ways. The words בּכם...לא־תבאוּ are connected in form with Jos 23:12, but, like the latter, they really rest upon Exo 34:16 and Deu 7:1-3. In the last clause בּהם is used with peculiar emphasis: Solomon clave to these nations, of which God had said such things, to love, i.e., to enter into the relation of love or into the marriage relation, with them. דּבק is used of the attachment of a man to his wife (Gen 2:4) and also to Jehovah (Deu 4:4; Deu 10:20, etc.).