What Does 1 Kings 10:16 Mean?

(16, 17) The shields overlaid with gold—the larger called “targets,” and the lesser called “shields”—were evidently used for ornamenting the king’s palace, and (as we may gather from the notice in 2Chronicles 12:11, of the brazen shields which superseded them) taken down and borne before the king on solemn occasions, as “when he went to the house of the Lord.” We have notices of shields of gold among the Syrians of Zobah (2Samuel 8:7; 1Chronicles 18:7), and of shields hung on the walls of Tyre (Ezekiel 27:10-11). The use of such ornaments argues a plethora of gold, too great to be absorbed either in currency or in personal and architectural decorations.