Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Regarding Solomon getting horses from QWH at I Kings 10: 28, Jonathan Mohler quoted NetBible as follows:  “⁴⁸ sn From Egypt. Because Que is also mentioned, some prefer to see in vv. 28-29 a reference to Mutsur. Que and Mutsur were located in Cilicia/Cappadocia (in modern southern Turkey). See HALOT 625 s.v. מִצְרַיִם.”

But I don’t think that Que in Anatolia was ever associated with horses, much less with the finest horses in the world.

The place that is sometimes thought to be the origin of domesticated horses is Qijia, in China.  Although the Qijia culture ended before Solomon’s day, maybe the name was vaguely remembered, as being the place where all domesticated horses had originated.  QW-H could be a Biblical reference to what by then was legendary Qijia:  the place where domesticated horses had originated back in the day.

The next verse, I Kings 10: 29, brags that Solomon supplied fine horses to the Hurrians [XTY : H-XT-YM] throughout Syria.  The Hurrians were known to have been the finest horsemen of their day, with the best horse-drawn chariots, in the Late Bronze Age [pre-dating any historical Solomon;  the Hittites were also long gone by Solomon’s day].  To claim to be supplying the Hurrians, of all people, with fine horses is quite a claim.  To me that fits with claiming to have acquired those horses in the place where all domesticated horses had originated, in Qijia, China.

It may well be that the fanciest chariots in the world were pharaoh’s chariots.

I Kings 10 is claiming that Solomon had the best of everything, and likely is verging on the mythological in the amount of tremendous exaggeration in those claims.  I Kings 10: 28-29 may be claiming that Solomon got the finest chariots in the world from Egypt, and the finest horses in the world from the place where domesticated horses may have originated, Qijia, in China, which had a direct connection to the steppe culture of Eurasia.  And Solomon topped it all off by supplying horses to the very people who, some centuries earlier historically, had been known to be the finest horsemen in the world:  the Hurrians of Syria.

Yes, both Qijia and the Hurrians pre-date an historical Solomon, but that just means that the claims at I Kings 10: 28-29 are anachronistic.  Or perhaps it’s just those two names that are deliberately anachronistic.  The current peoples of Syria, who remained good horsemen in Solomon’s day, were being called “Hurrians”, meaning “the finest horsemen the world had ever seen”, in the same way that a cavalry regiment in the 19^th century A.D. might be called “mounted knights” -- a deliberate anachronism [by many centuries], as a sign of respect.

I just don’t see why bragging about having the finest of everything in the world would involve claiming to have horses from Que in Anatolia, since I don’t think Que ever had any reputation at all for being a place that had fine horses.  If you’re going to brag that King Solomon had the finest of everything in the whole world, why on earth mention small-time Que?

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>
To: B-Hebrew Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; dekruidnootjes <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net>
Sent: Sun, Jun 30, 2013 7:57 pm
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] To Bless and Pools ofWater

I thought I might throw in this quote from the NetBible notes regarding Egypt in the same sentence.

⁴⁸ sn From Egypt. Because Que is also mentioned, some prefer to see in vv. 28-29 a reference to Mutsur. Que and Mutsur were located in Cilicia/Cappadocia (in modern southern Turkey). See HALOT 625 s.v. מִצְרַיִם.

(https://net.bible.org/#!bible/1+Kings+10:14)

Jonathan Mohler

Oh...that was an eye opener, I read a couple of other translations and the King James is the only one to say linen yarn.  Mmm, I wonder how on earth those 17th century geniuses arrived at that then?  Thankyou Michael.

Chris Watts
Ireland



On 29 Jun 2013, at 22:56, Michael Abernathy wrote:

Chris,
They look alike but I think what you are looking at are actually three words.
1 Kings 10:28  has the conjunction ו , the preposition מן , and the name of a cityְ קוה ְ translated variously as Keveh or Kue. I don't know where they got linen from.
Jeremiah 3:17 is obviously a verb form of the word for gather. And Genesis 1:10,  מקוה ,  is a word meaning a gathering place or a pool.
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy

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