“What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?” he asked. And he called them the Land of Kabul, a name they have to this day. – 1 Kings 9:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 7, 2013): 1 Kings 9

There is a scene in the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” – a movie about a group of elderly British people who for various reasons find themselves attempting to spend their retirement years in India at the “Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and the Beautiful” – where Muriel (played by the talented British actress Dame Maggie Smith), a bigoted woman who at the beginning of the movie wants nothing to do with anyone who is not white and English, comes face to face with one of the untouchables of India, a lady who was employed as a sort of housekeeper at the Hotel. Muriel is taken to this lady’s home to meet her family because apparently Muriel had been “nice to her.” But when Muriel finds out about this reason she exclaims “but I wasn’t.” Muriel had not really been ‘nice’ to anyone in India, but she had acknowledged this house keeper, which no one else had. The bigoted Muriel blows that first meeting, but later comes back to make amends realizing that she has more in common with this poor maid than she had first realized. And I think maybe she realized that if she had lived in India, that just possibly she would have been an untouchable as well.

Solomon’s bill for the twenty years of building has finally come due. And so he gives to Hiram twenty towns close to Hiram’s border in the northern part of Israel. It is thought that these towns were towns that were within the original borders that Moses had described for Israel, but they had never been given to or conquered by any of tribes of Israel. As a result they were towns of little consequence for Israel.

Unfortunately they were also towns of little consequence to Hiram; he called them Kabul which basically means dirt. His response could be summed up by the idea that these towns were Kabul – they were the good for nothing district. For Hiram, any land locked town was of marginal value which all of these towns were. What he wanted was port towns. Some experts have wondered about the contradiction between this verse and 2 Chronicles 8:2 where it speaks of Solomon settling Israelites into the towns that Hiram had given to him, but the reality is that there is no contradiction. Solomon gave Hiram these good for nothing towns and Hiram promptly gave them right back.

But the reputation that Hiram gave to these dirt towns stuck. And generations later Kabul became known by another name. It was called Galilee of the Gentiles – and the question that was asked then was can anything good come out of Galilee.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 10

Personal Note: Happy Birthday to my son, Craig. Have a great Day!