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TRANSFER OF THE

Ciiap. III.

sand measures of wheat and twenty measures ofpure oil for food for the household of the kingand that the king, on one occasion, sent him“ six score talents of gold or about six hun-dred thousand pounds.

This view of the intercourse between Phoe-nicia and Judea may enable us to account for acircumstance otherwise so strange, as that Solo-mon, the monarch of a country which affordedno articles for distant foreign trade, who hadneither ships nor sailors in his dominions, andonly the port of Ezion-geber, on the easternbranch of the northern part of the Red Sea ,which had been conquered by his father, and theinhabitants destroyed, should have undertakendistant commercial expeditions. As the shipshe sent on such expeditions were manned withPhoenician sailors, so it is probable they wereloaded with the goods which he had receivedfrom those people in exchange for the cattle,the corn, the wine, the oil, and the other pro-ductions of the soil which he furnished to them.

We are informed of the amount of the pre-cious metals which the fleets brought back toSolomon at the termination of a voyage of threeyears’ duration, but whether it far exceeded thevalue of what they carried with them appears atleast doubtful; and if we may judge from the

1 Kings, cap. x. v. 14.