Vayyomer Solomon to all Israel … and Solomon and all the assemblage went. This means: He told them (amar la-hem) to go to the shrine at Gibeon, the copper altar that Moses had made, and they went. This is similar to “Vayyomer the Lord to the fish and it spewed Jonah out” (Jonah 2:11): He told it to spew him out, and it did so. And the same for: “Vayyomer the Lord to the angel and he returned his sword to its sheath” (1 Chr 21:27).

**And on it [Solomon] sacrificed a thousand burnt offerings—**before he returned from there to Jerusalem, but not all at once.

Solomon went la-bamah asher be-Giv‘on to Jerusalem. The lamed of la-bamah is not in place of a mem as R. Jonah [ibn Janaḥ] has written (Riqmah 55–56), for one is the opposite of the other! After all, lamed indicates movement toward, while mem indicates movement away from—so how could one be in place of the other? Rather, the meaning is as follows: Solomon went—that is, he [first] went—la-bamah asher be-Giv‘on (=to the shrine at Gibeon); he [then] went to Jerusalem, [meaning] from before the Tent of Meeting that was in Gibeon he went to Jerusalem; and he reigned over Israel. In a midrashic vein, our Sages, of blessed memory (b. Yoma 53a), explain [the phrase] as follows: When Solomon went from Gibeon to Jerusalem, his face was la-bamah asher be-Giv‘on (=toward the shrine at Gibeon), just as it was when he went there; that is, out of respect for the shrine, when he left the building that it was in, he walked backward, facing the shrine. They derive from this (ibid.) that the same was true when the priests would take leave of their service, the Levites their stands, and the Israelites their posts: they would not turn back their faces and go but would turn them sideways. And the same holds true for a student taking leave of his mentor (ibid.).

And he placed [the charioteers] in the chariot towns. [This means]: in towns where horses were raised; that is, cattle country.

As stones. This is not referring to the value. Rather, it is that the gold and silver in Jerusalem were as plentiful as its stones: it is an exaggeration. In a midrashic source (y. Sanhedrin 13a) [we find]: “‘As stones’—and they did not get stolen? Rabbi Jose says: [They were like] stones of ten or eight cubits.”

And Solomon’s holdings in the exportation of horses from Egypt. [Addressing the parallel statement] in the book of Kings, my master, my father, of blessed memory, explained that Pharaoh transferred to him the expenses and profits generated by Egypt’s exportation of horses, which [Solomon] would then lease to merchants on a yearly basis. This, then, is [the meaning of]: “they would purchase the collection rights (miqveh) for a price” (1 Kgs 10:28)—the sense of miqveh is collection. In Kings miqveh is spelled with a hei and here with an alef, because the letters alef, hei, vav, and yod interchange.

A chariot for six hundred [shekels of] silver, and a horse for one hundred and fifty. From here we derive that a chariot consists of four horses.

By their hand (be-yadam) they would take out. [This means]: with their permission; that is, all the kings who took horses out of Egypt would do so through (‘al yad) the merchants who purchased the exportation rights from King Solomon, and they would pay one hundred and fifty [shekels of] silver per horse.