Lower Bethhoron, i.e., Beit-Ur Tachta, on the western slope of the mountains, four hours' journey from Gibeon. According to 2Ch 8:5, Solomon also fortified Upper Bethhoron, which was separated by a deep wady from Lower Bethhoron, that lay to the west (see Comm. on Jos 10:10 and Jos 16:3). The two Bethhorons and Gezer were very important places for the protection of the mountainous country of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Judah against hostile invasions from the Philistian plain. The situation of Megiddo on the southern edge of the plain of Jezreel, through which the high road from the western coast to the Jordan ran, was equally important; and so also was Hazor as a border fortress against Syria in the northern part of the land.
Verse 18
Solomon also built, i.e., fortified, Baalath and Tadmor in the desert. According to Jos 19:44, Baalath was a city of Dan, and therefore, as Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 1) justly observes, was not far from Gezer; and consequently is not to be identified with either Baalgad or Baalbek in Coele-syria (Iken, ich. Rosenm.; cf. Robinson, Bibl. Res. p. 519). תמר (Chethîb) is either to be read תּמר, or according to Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 344) תּמּר, palm, a palm-city. The Keri requires תּדמר (Tadmor, after 2Ch 8:4), a pronunciation which may possibly have simply arisen from Aramaean expansion, but which is still the name for the city current among the Arabs even in the present day ((
Arabic characters), locus palmarum ferax). The Greeks and Romans called it Palmyra. It was situated in what is certainly now a very desolate oasis of the Syrian desert, on the caravan road between Damascus and the Euphrates, - according to modern accounts, not more than seventeen hours' journey from that river; and there are still magnificent ruins which attest the former glory of this wealthy and, under queen Zenobia, very powerful city (cf. Ritter, Erdk. xvii. 2, p. 1486ff., and E. Osiander in Herzog's Cycl.). The correctness of this explanation of the name is placed beyond all doubt by the words “in the wilderness;” and consequently even Movers has given up his former opinion, viz., that it was the city of Thamar in southern Judah (Eze 47:19; Eze 48:28), which Thenius has since adopted, and has decided in favour of Palmyra, without being led astray by the attempt of Hitzig to explain the name from the Sanscrit (vid., Deutsche morgld. Ztschr. viii. p. 222ff.). The expression בּארץ appears superfluous, as all the cities
