Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Kings 3:1

"And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh`s daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of Jehovah, and the wall of Jerusalem round about." — 1 Kings 3:1 (ASV)

Pharaoh king of Egypt: At this time, it would appear from Egyptian records and traditions that Egypt was weak and divided, and that what is called the twenty-first dynasty of the Tanite kings was ruling in Lower Egypt. This, along with a corresponding suspension (judging from the monuments) of Assyrian power, allowed for the Israelite kingdom under Solomon to rise to sudden greatness and wealth. It also probably induced the Egyptian king of those days to consent to an alliance that, at other times, the greatness of the Pharaohs might have spurned.

No fault is found with the alliance by the sacred historian, for the Egyptians were never looked upon with the same aversion as the strange women of the Canaanite races. Furthermore, as it is not in any way connected with Solomon’s subsequent decline into idolatry, noticed in 1 Kings 11:1–8, it is likely that the new queen literally acted on the call of the Psalmist (Psalms 45:10) to forget her own people and her father’s house.