and he had peace on all sides around him. (1King 4:24)
Peace and prosperity go together. Prosperity without peace is not true prosperity
Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots (1 King 4:26)
famous stables of Solomon show what a vast cavalry he assembled for Israel. 2 Chronicles 9:25 is a parallel passage and has 4,000 chariots instead of 40,000 – the smaller number seems correct and the larger number is probably due to copyist error.
Unfortunately, it also shows that Solomon did not take God’s word as seriously as he should. In Deuteronomy 17:16, God spoke specifically to the future kings of Israel: But he shall not multiply horses for himself. One may argue if 20 or 100 horses violates the command to not multiply horses, but certainly forty thousand stalls of horses is multiplying horses.
For he was wiser than all men—than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. (1 Kings 4:31)
Ethan the Ezrahite is the songwriter-author of Psalm 89. The title of that psalm says it is “a maskil of Ethan the Ezrahite.” In addition to Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezrahite is mentioned in 1 Kings 4:31 as a wise man, yet not as wise as King Solomon, who “was wiser than anyone else, including Ethan the Ezrahite.”
First Chronicles 2:6 gives the added information that Ethan had four brothers and was the son of Zerah (called Mahol in 1 Kings 4:31). He was of the tribe of Levi.
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