1 Kings 16:34

The rebuilding of Jericho (Not in Chronicles)

34. Hiel the Bethelite We may perhaps trace the influence here of evil surroundings. Hiel had been living at one of the seats of Jeroboam's calf-worship, and the neglect of one command had led to ignorance or disregard of another.

did … build Jericho As the kings, Omri and Ahab, were great builders, so their wealthier subjects were led to imitate their grand works. For the command that Jericho should not be rebuilt, see Joshua 6:26. The importance of the place lay no doubt in its neighbourhood to the passage of the Jordan, and at a time when commerce was much fostered this advantage was likely to outweigh, with such men, the prohibition which had been given so many generations before, and would be now reckoned as obsolete.

in Abiram R.V. with the loss of Abiram. The R.V. explains the literal rendering of A.V. The preposition is used to express the cost or price of anything, and so here the penalty which Hiel paid for his transgression. The same change is also made in the second clause of the verse. The meaning is that between the beginning and the end of the undertaking all Hiel's children were cut off.

by Joshua The Hebrew has -by the hand of Joshua," as in so many other places where a message is in question.