| I Kings 10:17
| And three hundred targets of fine gold: three hundred pounds of gold covered one target: and the king put them in the house of the forest of Libanus.
| Targets, smaller than the former, and resembling a crescent. Ducit Amazonidum lunatis agmina peltis. (Virgil, Aeneid i.) (Calmet) --- Paralipomenon reads, shields. --- Fine. Septuagint, "ductile." Hebrew sséut, "beaten, refined," etc. --- Hundred is omitted in Hebrew and Septuagint, (Haydock) but is found in 2 Paralipomenon (9:16.) where we read 300 of gold, in like manner as 600 of gold in the preceding verse, without specifying the particular weight in either. These targets or shields, seem to have been heavier than the former, and designed only for ornament, being placed in the great hall, as they weighed each 375 Roman pounds, or 18,000 sicles; (Calmet) unless minae, pound, be here put for sicle; as Josephus ([Antiquities?] 2:3.) says that sons of Jacob sold their brother for twenty pieces of silver, Genesis 37:28. (Menochius) --- Salien thinks that 200 shields were each worth 600 sicles, and these 300 targets weighed each 300 sicles of gold. (Haydock)
|