Barley also, and straw for the horses and dromedaries,.... Or rather mules, by comparing the passage with 2 Chronicles 9:24; the particular kind of creatures meant is not agreed on; though all take them to be a swifter sort of creatures than horses; or the swifter of horses, as race horses or posts horses: barley was for their provender, that being the common food of horses in those times and countries, and in others, as Bochart h has shown from various writers; and in the Misnah i it is called the food of beasts; and Solomon is said to have every day his own horses two hundred thousand Neapolitan measures of called "tomboli" k; so the Roman soldiers, the horse were allowed a certain quantity of barley for their horses every morning, and sometimes they had money instead of it, which they therefore called "hordiarium" l and the "straw" was for the litter of them: these
brought they unto the place; where the officers were; not where the king was, as the Vulgate Latin version; where Solomon was, as the Arabic version, that is, in Jerusalem; nor
where [the officers] were; in their respective jurisdictions, as our version supplies it, which would be bringing them to themselves; but to the place where the beasts were, whether in Jerusalem, or in any, other parts of the kingdom:
every man according to his charge: which he was monthly to perform.
h Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 9. col. 158, 159. Vid. Homer. Iliad. 4. ver. 196. and Iliad. 8. ver. 560. i Sotah, c. 2. sect. 1. k Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 10. 2. l Vid. Valtrinum de re Militar. Roman. l. 3. c. 15. p. 236.