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The sea-coast with its harbours was in the hands of the Phoenicians and the Philistines, and though the Philistines at one time owned an unwilling allegiance to the Jewish king, the Phoenicians preserved their independence, and even Solomon had to find harbours for his merchantmen, not on the coast of his own native kingdom, but in the distant Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, in the Gulf of Aqabah.
Thirteen hundred years after the flood, Solomon caused a navy to be constructed at Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, which sailed to Tharsis and Ophir, which some believe to have been islands in the East Indies.
Besides sharing with the Phoenicians in the trade of the Mediterranean, he constructed with their help a fleet at Ezion-Geber upon the Red Sea, and the two allies conjointly made voyages to the region, or country, called Ophir, for the purpose of procuring precious stones, gold, and almug-wood.
Moreover, the king built many ships in the Egyptian Bay of the Red Sea, in a certain place called Ezion-geber: it is now called Berenice, and is not far from the city Eloth.
Eloth and Ezion-Geber both places situated in the inner recess of the Elanitic Gulf, or Gulf of Akaba, the more eastern of the two arms into which the Red Sea divides. David's conquest of Edom had put these ports into the possession of the Israelites, and the friendship between Hiram and Solomon had given the Phoenicians free access to them.
Solomon, on his side, being master of the port of Ezion-Geber on the Red Sea, had access to the lucrative traffic with Eastern Africa, Arabia, and perhaps India, which had hitherto been confined to the Egyptians and the Arabs.
He went down to Ezion-geber and ordered a fleet of ships to be constructed, oversaw the workmen, and watched the launching of the flotilla which was to go out on more than a year's voyage, to bring home the wealth of the then known world.
Edom was rich neither agriculturally nor commercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the trade which afterwards passed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber in the Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through their possession of the Gulf of Suez.
The two travellers reached Alexandria and Cairo, where they were much gratified at meeting with some Moorish traders from Fez and Tlemcen, who conducted them to Tor the ancient Ezion-geber at the foot of Sinai, where they were able to procure some valuable information upon the trade of Calicut.
Solomon, doubtless by the assistance of shipwrights furnished to him from Tyre, "made a navy of ships at Ezion-Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom," and the sailors of the two nations conjointly manned the ships, and performed the voyage to Ophir, whence they brought gold, and "great plenty of almug-trees," and precious stones.