2-chronicles 2:11

Answered in writing - Though correspondence among persons of distinction was, in these early times, carried on by confidential messengers, yet we find that epistolary correspondence did exist, and that kings could write and read in what were called by the proud and insolent Greeks and Romans barbarous nations. Nearly two thousand years after this we find a king on the British throne who could not sign his own name. About the year of our Lord 700, Withred, king of Kent, thus concludes a charter to secure the liberties of the Church: Ego Wythredus rex Cantiae haec omnia suprascripta et confirmavi, atque, a me dictata propria manu signum sanctae crucis pro ignorantia literarum espressi; "All the above dictated by myself, I have confirmed; and because I cannot write, I have with my own hand expressed this by putting the sign of the holy cross +." - See Wilkins' Concilta.

Josephus and others professed to give Greek versions of the correspondence, which (they said) had taken place between Hiram and Solomon. No value attaches to those letters, which are evidently forgeries.

Because the Lord hath loved his people - Compare the marginal references. The neighboring sovereigns, in their communications with the Jewish monarchs, seem to have adopted the Jewish name for the Supreme Being (Yahweh), either identifying Him (as did Hiram) with their own chief god or (sometimes) meaning merely to acknowledge Him as the special God of the Jewish nation and country.