1 Kings 3:1 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Pharaoh king of Egypt. — At this time it would appear, from the Egyptian records and traditions, that Egypt was weak and divided, and that what is called the twenty-first dynasty of the Tanite kings was ruling in Lower Egypt. This, and a corresponding abeyance (judging from the monuments) of Assyrian power, gave scope for the rise to sudden greatness and wealth of the Israelite kingdom under Solomon, and probably induced the Egyptian king of those days to consent to an alliance which, at other times, the greatness of the Pharaohs might have spumed. No fault is found with the alliance by the sacred historian, for the Egyptians were never looked upon with the same aversion as the strange women of the Canaanite races. As, moreover, it is not in any way connected with Solomon’s subsequent declension into idolatry, noticed in 1 Kings 11:1-8, it is not unlikely that the new queen literally acted on the call of the Psalmist (Psalms 45:10) to “forget her own people and her father’s house.”