1 Kings 8:51

8:51 After all, ¹  they are your people and your special possession ²  whom you brought out of Egypt, from the middle of the iron-smelting furnace. ³ 

1 Kings 11:17

11:17 Hadad, ⁴  who was only a small boy at the time, escaped with some of his father’s Edomite servants and headed for Egypt. ⁵ 

1 Kings 12:2

12:2 ⁶  When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard the news, he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon and had been living ever since. ⁷ 

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¹ tn Or “for.”

² tn Heb “inheritance.”

³ tn The Hebrew term כּוּר (kur, “furnace,” cf. Akkadian ku„ru) is a metaphor for the intense heat of purification. A כּוּר was not a source of heat but a crucible (“iron-smelting furnace”) in which precious metals were melted down and their impurities burned away (see I. Cornelius, NIDOTTE 2:618-19). Thus Egypt served not as a place of punishment for the Israelites, but as a place of refinement to bring Israel to a place of submission to divine sovereignty.

sn From the middle of the iron-smelting furnace. The metaphor of a furnace suggests fire and heat and is an apt image to remind the people of the suffering they endured while slaves in Egypt.

⁴ tn The MT reads “Adad,” an alternate form of the name Hadad.

⁵ tn Heb “and Adad fled, he and Edomite men from the servants of his father, to go to Egypt, and Hadad was a small boy.”

⁶ tc Verse 2 is not included in the Old Greek translation. See the note on 11:43.

⁷ tn Heb “and Jeroboam lived in Egypt.” The parallel text in 2 Chr 10:2 reads, “and Jeroboam returned from Egypt.” In a purely consonantal text the forms “and he lived” and “and he returned” are identical (וישׁב).