And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he
offered unto the Lord
Part of which belonged to the offerer, and with those Solomon feasted the people all the days of the feast of the dedication, if not of tabernacles also; for the number was exceeding large, as follows:
22,000 oxen, and 120,000 sheep;
which, as suggested, might be the number for all the fourteen days; nor need it seem incredible, since, as Josephus F2 says, at a passover celebrated in the times of Cestius the Roman governor, at the evening of the passover, in two hours time 256,500 lambs were slain; however, this was a very munificent sacrifice of Solomon's, in which he greatly exceeded the Heathens, whose highest number of sacrifices were hecatombs, or by hundreds, but his by thousands:
so the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the
Lord;
devoted it to divine and religious worship by these sacrifices: hence in imitation of this sprung the dedication of temples with the Heathens; the first of which among the Romans was that in the capitol at Rome F3 by Romulus; the rites and ceremonies used therein by them may be read in Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and others F4.