Their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day.
The descendants of these people who remained in the land - those whom the Israelites had not been able to completely drive out - Solomon forced them to work as slaves, and this continued until the time this was written.
This verse explains that Solomon made the remaining non-Israelite peoples in the land work as forced laborers for his building projects.
📚 Historical Context
During King Solomon's reign, Israel was at the peak of its power and prosperity, following the conquest of the Promised Land as described in earlier books like Joshua. The verse refers to the descendants of the Canaanite peoples who remained in the land because the Israelites had not fully driven them out as God had commanded, leading to their integration into the nation. Solomon then imposed forced labor on these groups to support his extensive building projects and the kingdom's needs, a practice that persisted into the time of the biblical writer.
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