1 Kings 10:16

16 King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold; 600 shekels[a] of gold went into each shield.

1 Kings 10:16 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 10:16

And King Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold,
&c.] Which were a larger sort of shields, which covered the whole body; and these were made of gold beaten with the hammer, or drawn into plates, being melted like wax; so the Poeni or Carthaginians made shields of gold F13:

six hundred shekels of gold went to one target;
which is to be understood not of the weight, but of the price or value of them, which amounted to four hundred and fifty pounds of our money; so Brerewood F14.


FOOTNOTES:

F13 Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 35. 3.
F14 Ut supra. (De Ponder. & Pret. c. 5.)

1 Kings 10:16 In-Context

14 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold,
15 besides that which came from the explorers and from the business of the merchants, and from all the kings of the west and from the governors of the land.
16 King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold; 600 shekels of gold went into each shield.
17 And he made 300 shields of beaten gold; three minas of gold went into each shield. And the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon.
18 The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. A shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.