604. Palaces

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1. The expressions “winter-house” and “summer-house” do not of necessity imply two separate houses, but may mean separate suites of apartments in the same house. Thomson says: “Such language is easily understood by an Oriental. In common parlance, the lower apartments are simply el beit—the house; the upper is the alliyeh, which is the summer-house. Every respectable dwelling has both, and they are familiarly called beit sheiawy and heft seify—winter and summer house. If these are on the same story, then the external and airy apartment is the summer-house, and that for winter is the interior and more sheltered room. It is rare to meet a family that has an entirely separate dwelling for summer” (The Land and the Book, vol.1, p. 478). It may have been in the interior apartment that Jehoiakim sat when Jehudi read the roll in his presence. See Jeremiah 36:2222Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. (Jeremiah 36:22).
2. By “houses of ivory” we are not to understand houses built of that material, but houses richly ornamented with it. The ancients decorated the ceilings, doors, and panels of their rooms with ivory. It was in this way that Ahab is said to have built an “ivory house” (1 Kings 22:3939Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he made, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? (1 Kings 22:39)). Such houses are the “ivory palaces” mentioned in Psalm 45:88All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. (Psalm 45:8).