And he said,.... By letter to him:
what cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother? so he called him, being not only his neighbour, but his ally, in friendship and covenant with him; and this he said of them not by way of complaint, or contempt, as unworthy of his acceptance; for so munificent a prince as Solomon would never offer to a king to whom he was so much obliged anything mean and contemptible; but as being unsuitable to him, however valuable they might be in themselves, or of advantage to others:
and he called them the land of Cabul unto this day; or rather the words should be rendered impersonally, "they were called so"; for Hiram could not call them by this name to the times of the writer of this book; nor is there any reason to think he would give them any name at all, and much less a contemptible one, as this is thought to be, when he did not choose to accept of them. Some interpret g the word shut up, or unfruitful, sandy, dirty, clayey; so in the Talmud h it is said to be a sandy land, and called Cabul, because a man's foot was plunged in it up to his ankles, and is represented as unfruitful. Josephus i says, in the Phoenician tongue it signifies "not pleasing", which agrees with what Hiram says, 1 Kings 9:12. Hillerus k interprets it "as nothing", they being as nothing to Hiram, of no use to him, whatever they might be to others; and therefore he restored them to Solomon, 2 Chronicles 8:2, which seems to be the best sense of the word. They are the same with Decapolis, Matthew 4:25 so called from ten cities therein l.
g David de Pomis, Lexic fol. 58. 2. h T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 54. 1. i Antiqu. l. 8. c. 5. sect. 3. k Onomastic. Sacr. p. 435. l Vid. Castel Lex Heptaglot. col. 1669. & Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 18.