(Now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with
cedar trees and fir trees
For the building of both his houses; see ( 1 Kings 5:8 1 Kings 5:10 ) ,
and with gold, according to all his desire):
which is not before mentioned, and accounts for it from whence Solomon had his gold; if he made no use, as some think he did not, of what his father left him; see ( 1 Kings 7:51 ) with which he covered several parts of the temple, and made several vessels in it. Hiram traded to Ophir, and had it from thence; and he could supply Solomon with it, and did, before he sent a navy thither:
that then Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee;
that is, by or near it, for they were not in the land of Canaan; for then Solomon could not have disposed of them, being allotted and belonging to one of the tribes of Israel, and part of the Lord's inheritance; but they were upon the borders, particularly on the borders of Asher, if Cabul in ( Joshua 19:27 ) , can be thought to be the same with these; though some think that Solomon did not give Hiram the possession of these cities, but the royalties and revenues of them, their produce until the debt was paid: but they rather seem to be a gratuity, and a full grant of them, and might be cities which David had conquered, and taken out of the hands of the ancient inhabitants of them; and so Solomon had a right to dispose of them, being left him by his father; for it is plain as yet they were not inhabited by Israelites; see ( 2 Chronicles 8:2 ) . They are by a Jewish writer F6 said to be twenty two, very wrongly.
The Brenton translation of the Septuagint is in the public domain.