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[39]
The king had also other rulers, who were over the land of Syria and
of the Philistines, which reached from the river Euphrates to Egypt, and
these collected his tributes of the nations. Now these contributed to the
king's table, and to his supper every day 1
thirty cori of fine flour, and sixty of meal; as also ten fat oxen, and
twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred fat lambs; all these were
besides what were taken by hunting harts and buffaloes, and birds and fishes,
which were brought to the king by foreigners day by day. Solomon had also
so great a number of chariots, that the stalls of his horses for those
chariots were forty thousand; and besides these he had twelve thousand
horsemen, the one half of which waited upon the king in Jerusalem, and
the rest were dispersed abroad, and dwelt in the royal villages; but the
same officer who provided for the king's expenses supplied also the fodder
for the horses, and still carried it to the place where the king abode
at that time.
1 It may not be amiss to compare the daily furniture of king Solomon's table, here set down, and 1 Kings 4;22, 23, with the like daily furniture of Nehemiah the governor's table, after the Jews were come back from Babylon; and to remember withal, that Nehemiah was now building the walls of Jerusalem, and maintained, more than usual, above a hundred and fifty considerable men every day, and that, because the nation was then very poor, at his own charges also, without laying any burden upon the people at all. "Now that which was prepared for me daily was one ox and six choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and once in ten days store of all sorts of wine; and yet for all this required not the bread of the governor, because the bondage was heavy upon this people," Nehemiah 5:18: see the whole context, ver. 14-19. Nor did the governor's usual allowance of forty shekels of silver a-day, ver. 15, amount to 45 a day, nor to 1800 a-year. Nor does it indeed appear that, under the judges, or under Samuel the prophet, there was any such public allowance to those governors at all. Those great charges upon the public for maintaining courts came in with kings, as God foretold they would, 1 Samuel 8:11-18.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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