Richard Challoner

Chabul: That is, dirty or displeasing.

One tribe: Besides that of Juda, his own native tribe.

The book of the words: This book is lost, with divers others mentioned in holy writ.

Solomon slept: That is, died. He was then about fifty-eight years of age, having reigned forty years.

Juda only: Benjamin was a small tribe, and so intermixed with the tribe of Juda, (the very city of Jerusalem being partly in Juda, partly in Benjamin,) that they are here counted but as one tribe.

Golden calves: It is likely, by making his gods in this form, he mimicked the Egyptians, among whom he had sojourned, who worshipped their Apis and their Osiris under the form of a bullock.

Bethel: Bethel was a city of the tribe of Ephraim in the southern part of the dominions of Jeroboam, about six leagues from Jerusalem; Dan was in the extremity of his dominions to the north in the confines of Syria.

An angel spoke to me: This old man of Bethel was indeed a prophet, but he sinned in thus deceiving the man of God; the more because he pretended a revelation for what he did.

Killed him: Thus the Lord often punishes his servants here, that he may spare them hereafter. For the generality of divines are of opinion, that the sin of this prophet, considered with all its circumstances, was not mortal.

The book of the words of the days of the kings of Israel: This book, which is often mentioned in the Book of Kings, is long since lost. For as to the books of Paralipomenon, or Chronicles, (which the Hebrews call the words of the days,) they were certainly written after the Book of Kings, since they frequently refer to them.

The effeminate: Catamites, or men addicted to unnatural lust.

Maacha: She is called elsewhere Michaia, daughter of Uriel; but it was common in those days for the same person to have two names.

His mother: That is, his grandmother; unless we suppose, which is not improbable, that the Maacha here named is different from the Maacha mentioned, ver. 2.

The high places: There were excelsa or high places of two different kinds. Some were set up, and dedicated to the worship of idols, or strange gods; and these Asa removed, 2 Par. 14. 2; others were only altars of the true God, but were erected contrary to the law, which allowed of no sacrifices but in the temple; and these were not removed by Asa.-- Ibid.

Perfect with the Lord: Asa had his faults; but never forsook the worship of the Lord.

In the one and thirtieth year: Amri began to reign in the seven and twentieth year of Asa; but had not quiet possession of the kingdom till the death of his competitor Thebni, which was in the one and thirtieth year of Asa's reign.

With their vanities: That is, their idols their golden calves, vain, false, deceitful things.

Sarephta of the Sidonians: That is, a city of the Sidonians.

That he might die: Elias requested to die, not out of impatience or pusillanimity, but out of zeal against sin; and that he might no longer be witness of the miseries of his people; and the war they were waging against God and his servants. See ver. 10.

In the strength of that food: This bread, with which Elias was fed in the wilderness, was a figure of the bread of life which we receive in the blessed sacrament; by the strength of which we are to be supported in our journey through the wilderness of this world till we come to the true mountain of God, and his vision in a happy eternity.