“Following is the account of the forced labor levied by King Shlomo for building the house of Adonai, his own palace, the Millo, the wall of Yerushalayim, and the cities of Hatzor, Megiddo and Gezer. Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, taken Gezer, burned it to the ground, and killed the Kena‘ani living in the city; then he had given it as a dowry for his daughter, Shlomo’s wife. So Shlomo rebuilt Gezer; he also built Lower Beit-Horon,“-1 Kings 9:15-17
We continue with our discussion of the place names Solomon mentioned in verse 15 (copied and pasted above).
Up next are the cities of GEZER and BETH-HORON.
They were situated smack-dab in the center of Israel along the southern border of Ephraim territory.
Verse 16 provides some interesting historical background about how Solomon acquired GEZER and how it became an Israelite city.
Gezer was one of those Canaanite cities Israel never managed to take.
Check out these verses:
“They did not drive out the Kena‘ani living in Gezer,
so the Kena‘ani live together with Efrayim to this day,
having become slaves to do the heavy work.”
-Joshua 16:10
“Efrayim did not drive out the Kena‘ani living in Gezer;
so the Kena‘ani continued living in Gezer along with them.”
-Judges 1:29
See, what happened was that at some point early in Solomon’s reign, the Pharaoh of Egypt attacked Gezer, leveled the city to the ground, and killed off its Canaanite population.
However, instead of keeping it, he handed the city to Solomon as a wedding gift when his daughter married Solomon.
That marriage is first mentioned in 1 Kings 3:1, when Solomon makes a marriage alliance with Egypt.
Many readers see this as an early crack in Solomon’s story.
Why?
Because Deuteronomy 17 warns kings against multiplying wives and turning back to Egypt.
So that’s one takeaway to be extracted from all of this.
But there’s another one as well.
It goes back to the above Scripture references about how the Canaanites weren’t driven out of the Promised Land, and they should’ve been.
Even during Solomon’s reign, there were still a ton of cities and communities populated by Canaanite homies.
It really wasn’t that different than the US today, with all of its black, brown, and yellow communities separate from the majority white American culture.
Now some folks will argue that we shouldn’t picture Israel’s cities as enemy strongholds that had invaded Israel.
They’ll say that in many cases, these were established communities made up largely of non-Israelite peoples who continued living in the land alongside the Hebrews in peace.
I wonder about that, though.
While things may have appeared peaceful on the surface, a dormant cancer is still cancer, and you never know when it can suddenly turn aggressive.
October 7th is a perfect example of that.
You can’t live in peace with another group of people whose fundamental ideology is to destroy you.
I’ve said this a million times already, and I’ll say it again.
If Joshua had thoroughly driven out the Canaanites as God instructed him to do when he led the Israelites into the Promised Land, we wouldn’t have a Middle East crisis on our hands today.
Yeah, I know it’s not the most politically correct thing in the world to say.
But it’s the truth.
See ya all next time.
P.S. Just to be clear, I have nothing against minority communities as long as they don’t harbor a violent ideology that seeks to destroy others if they don’t share the same beliefs. I myself am yellow (my father is Japanese). And look, you know me, I believe that when the Messiah returns, he will establish Torah law throughout the whole planet.
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