1 Kings 14:23

23 For they also built them altars, and statues, and groves, upon every high hill, and under every green tree:

1 Kings 14:23 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 14:23

For they also built them high places
Which, though allowed of, or at least connived at, before the temple was built, and when the tabernacle was unfixed, yet afterwards unlawful; and the tribe of Judah could have no excuse for them, who had the temple in their tribe:

and images;
contrary to the express command of God, ( Exodus 20:4 ) ,

and groves on every high hill, and under every green tree;
that is, set up idols, and temples for idols, amidst groves of trees, and under all green trees; as was the custom of the Heathens, who sacrificed on the heights of hills and tops of mountains, as was particularly the custom of the Persians, as both Herodotus ^F13 and Xenophon ^F14 relate; and with the Getae, a people in Thrace, was a mountain they reckoned sacred {o}.

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FOOTNOTES:

F13 Clio, sive, l. 1. c. 131.
F14 Cyropaedia, l. 8. c. 45.
F15 Strabo Geograph. l. 7. p. 206.

1 Kings 14:23 In-Context

21 And Roboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Juda: Roboam was one and forty years old when he began to reign: and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord chose out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. And his mother’s name was Naama, an Ammonitess.

22 And Juda did evil in the sight of the Lord, and provoked him above all that their fathers had done, in their sins which they committed.

23 For they also built them altars, and statues, and groves, upon every high hill, and under every green tree:

24 There were also the effeminate in the land, and they did according to all the abominations of the people, whom the Lord had destroyed before the face of the children of Israel.

25 And in the fifth year of the reign of Roboam, Sesac, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem.