1 Kings 14:23

23 For also they builded to themselves altars, and images, and woods (For they also built altars for themselves, and poles, and sacred groves), on each high hill, and under each tree full of boughs.

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 Forsooth Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Judah; Rehoboam was of one and forty years, when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord chose of all the lineages of Israel (the city which the Lord chose out of all the tribes of Israel), that he should set his name there. And the name of his mother was Naamah (the) Ammonite.

22 And Judah did evil before the Lord, and they stirred him to ire on all things, which their fathers did in their sins, by which they sinned. (And the people of Judah did evil before the Lord, and they stirred him to anger with their sins which they sinned, more than all the things that their forefathers had done.)

23 For also they builded to themselves altars, and images, and woods (For they also built altars for themselves, and poles, and sacred groves), on each high hill, and under each tree full of boughs.

24 But also men of women's conditions/womanish men were in the land, and they did all the abominations of heathen men, which the Lord all-brake before the face of the sons of Israel. (And also male and female whores were in the land, serving at the hill shrines, and they did all the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the Israelites.)

25 Forsooth in the fifth year of the realm of Rehoboam (Now in the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign), Shishak, the king of Egypt, went up into Jerusalem;