1-kings 1:1

Now King David was old - He was probably now about sixty-nine years of age. He was thirty years old when he began to reign, reigned forty, and died in the seventieth year of his age, 2 Samuel 5:4, and 1 Kings 2:11; and the transactions mentioned here are supposed to have taken place about a year before his death.

But he gat no heat - Sixty-nine was not an advanced age; but David had been exhausted with various fatigues, and especially by family afflictions, so that he was much older in constitution than he was in years. Besides he seems to have labored under some wasting maladies, to which there is frequent reference in the Psalms.

Now - Rather, "and." The conjunction has here, probably, the same sort of connecting force which it has at the opening of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, etc., and implies that the historian regards his work as a continuation of a preceding history.

King David - The expression "king David," instead of the simpler "David," is characteristic of the writer of Kings. (See the introduction to the Book of Kings) The phrase is comparatively rare in Chronicles and Samuel.

Stricken in, years - David was perhaps now in his first year. He was thirty years old when he was made king in Hebron 2 Samuel 5:4; he reigned in Hebron seven years and six months 2 Samuel 2:11; 1 Chronicles 3:4; and he reigned thirty-three years at Jerusalem 2 Samuel 5:5. The expression had here been used only of persons above eighty Genesis 18:11; Genesis 24:1; Joshua 13:1; Joshua 23:1 : but the Jews at this time were not long-lived. No Jewish monarch after David, excepting Solomon and Manasseh, exceeded sixty years.

Clothes - Probably "bed-clothes." The king was evidently bed-ridden 1 Kings 1:47.

1:1 Old - Being in the end of his seventieth year. No heat - Which is not strange in a person who had been exercised with so many hardships inwar, and with such tormenting cares, and fears, and sorrows, for his own sins(as divers of his Psalms witness) and for the sins and miseries of hischildren and people. Besides, this might be from the nature of his bodilydistemper.