And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the LORD, and the wall of Jerusalem round about.
Ver. 1. And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh.] That his kingdom might the better be established, 1Ki 2:46 which albeit God had promised, yet Solomon knew that his providence was to be served, and all good means used.
And took Pharaoh's daughter.] After he had first taken Naamah, the Ammonitess, Rehoboam's mother, a year and more before David's death: for Solomon reigned but forty years, 1Ki 11:42 and Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign. These ladies probably were proselyted, ere Solomon married them: else the marriage could not be lawful. It was in his best time that he did it; neither is he anywhere blamed for this with Pharaoh's daughter at least, to whom both David is thought by some to allude in Psalms 45:10, and Solomon in the Canticles; yet others think otherwise. Josephus saith he married Pharaoh's daughter in the first year of his reign, while his father David was yet alive. Those who hold he did ill in it, say, that God afterwards punished him for it, in his posterity, by Shishak, king of Egypt. How fearfully the wrath of God fell upon the Protestants in France, for that unhappy marriage of the king of Navarre with the daughter of France, a Papist, a little afore the Parisian massacre, who knoweth not?
And the house of the Lord.] This Solomon would finish, before that he would set up the queen's palace; such was his zeal, while young: but he suffered sad decays afterwards I read of a holy man who oft prayed that he might keep up his young zeal with his old discretion.