For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
At sea - on the Mediterranean. A navy of Tharshish - Tartessus, between the mouths of the Boetis, now Guadalquiver, in the south of Spain [Septuagint, Vatican: Tharsis; Alexandrine: Tharseis], where gold, and especially silver, was obtained anciently in so great abundance that it "was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon." But Tharshish came to be a general term for the west of Europe, (Psalms 72:10; Jonah 1:1.) Solomon's fleet, "with the navy of Hiram - i:e., manned with Phoenician mariners, sailed from the port of Ezion-geber; but whether, doubling the Cape, they steered by the western coast of Africa. northward to Tartessus, in Spain, or there might be a place of that name in India, is unknown. 'There may have been,' as Henderson remarks, 'both a Spanish and an Indian Tharshish, just as the name India Came to be transferred from the east to the distant west.'
Once in three years - i:e., third year. Without the mariner's compass, they had to coast along the shore, and make their voyage by monsoons. The ivory, apes, and peacocks might have been purchased, on the outward or homeward voyage, on the coast of Safola, in South Africa, and some portion of the Indian peninsula, where those animals were to be found.
Ivory, х shenhabiym (H8143) plural] (cf. 2 Chronicles 9:21) - known to the ancients as an Indian product. Thus, Virgil, 'India mittit ebur; molles sua thura Sabaei.' [This word, according to Gesenius, is compounded of sheen (H8127), tooth-generally used in the Old Testament for ivory-and haa'ibiym, contracted for habiym, from the Sanskrit ibha-s, elephant. Keil derives the Hebrew word from the Coptic eboy, elephant, with the article he (h). Other derivations have been suggested. The Septuagint and Vatican has: lithoon toreutoon kai pelekeetoon, turned and polished stones (1 Kings 10:11). The Alexandrine renders it by: odontoon elefantinoon, elephants' teeth.]
And apes, х wªqopiym (H6971). The Hebrew koph bears a considerable resemblance to the Singhalese kapi, rendered by Clough, in his valuable 'Dictionary,' an 'ape or monkey;' Septuagint, Alexandrine, pitheekoon, apes].
And peacocks, х tukiyiym (H8500), plural (cf. 2 Chronicles 9:21)]. 'The word "sikhi," rendered by the same lexicographer, a "peacock," also bears some similarity to the Hebrew tukiem. In Malabar the word "togu," which (as well as kapi and sikhi) is derived from the Sanskrit, is said to mean peacocks; and this comes nearer the Hebrew' (Hardy's 'Notices of the Holy Land,' p. 3). [Septuagint, Alexandrine, taoonoon]. 'These names for apes and peacocks are foreign words in Hebrew, as much as gutta percha and tobacco are in English; and as those animals are natives of India their names make it certain that this country was Ophir' (Max Muller). They were particularized probably as being the rarest articles on board, and received as great and interesting curiosities (previously unknown in Western Asia) into that large and noble collection of animals which Solomon, in his fondness for natural history, had made (1 Kings 4:33).