Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

Coffman Commentaries on the Bible

"As for all the people that were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel; their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel were not able utterly to destroy, of them did Solomon raise a levy of bondservants unto this day. But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondservants; but they were the men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his captains, and rulers of his chariots, and of his horsemen."

While true enough that the soldiers and other `servants' of Solomon which were drawn from the Israelites themselves were not called "slaves"; they most certainly were required to serve Solomon, and it was only a matter of time and opportunity until that civilization, much as Israel loved it, was doomed to failure, as are all cultures that are supported and sustained by slave labor and unscrupulous oppression of the poor. The remnants of the Canaanites were slaves, and the Israelites were Solomon's servants, a distinction without much difference.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,.... Who were not destroyed in the times of Joshua, or since, but dwelt in several cities of the land of Israel from those times; see Judges 1:1, which were not of the children of Israel; not natives of the land of Israel, though they might be proselytes, at least some of them.

Geneva Study Bible

(h) These were as bondmen and paid what was required, either labour or money.

John Trapp Complete Commentary

1 Kings 9:20 [And] all the people [that were] left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which [were] not of the children of Israel,

Ver. 20. And all the people that were left.] These and their posterity seem to be called Solomon’s servants, [Ezra 2:55; Ezra 2:58 Nehemiah 7:57; Nehemiah 7:60; Nehemiah 11:3] like as the Gibeonites were called Nethinims. [Ezra 2:43]

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) A tribute of bond service.—This was probably not originated, but simply enforced and organised, by Solomon. It dated, in theory at least, from the Conquest. The most notable example of it is the case of the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:21-27); but there are incidental notices of similar imposition of serfship in Judges 1:28; Judges 1:30; Judges 1:33; Judges 1:35. Many of the dangers of the stormy age of the Judges were due to the uprising of these subject races; as in the revival of the northern confederacy at Hazor under Sisera (Judges 4), and the usurpation of Abimelech by aid of the Shecliemites (Judges 9). Probably their subordination to Israel varied according to the strength or weakness of each age; but, when the monarchy became organised under David and Solomon, it was fixed definitely and permanently, although, like the serfship of the Middle Ages, it might vary in its severity in different times and in different regions.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

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2 Chronicles 8:7,8-18

Amorites

Genesis 15:19-21; Exodus 23:23,28-33; 34:11,12; Deuteronomy 7:1-3