Tafsiran Ulangan 17:16: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Chizkuni & Ramban

“He shall not keep many horses” [17:16]. The king of the Jews should not do as the kings of the nations who collect many horses, gold, silver, and wives. The king of Israel should not do this. He should not rely on many horses or on much gold, but the king of Israel had to have a personal Torah scroll. He should always read it in order to fear God, as the verse says here. He should not have many horses, expecting that he should not return the people of Israel to Egypt, since the best horses were brought from Egypt. This is so that Israel should not learn from the evil ways of the Egyptians. The commandment was only in effect during the time that they did not need to travel to Egypt. However, in the present generations one may certainly live in Egypt, since there are large and important communities in Egypt. Would the Torah have forbidden living in Egypt forever? How could our sages stood by and not issued a ban of excommunication on those communities? They would have had to leave. He was also not to have many wives, but he was allowed to have eighteen wives, expecting that they would not convince him to do evil. Adam had one wife and she convinced him to do evil. He should not accumulate an excessive amount of money, expecting that he should not burden Israel with taxes and would want to make treasuries. Wealth is compared to fire. One puts wood on it and one burns it. So too it is with the one who has much money. He never has enough. King Solomon was punished for all three things. He assembled many horses, forty thousand stables, and he took seven hundred wives, all noble and important women. He also took three hundred concubines. He gathered silver in Jerusalem, like large stones. He relied on his wisdom instead of the Torah. Therefore, he sinned with all these things. The wives made him sin and the money made him haughty.¹¹Bahya, Deuteronomy, 17:16, 17.

לא ירבה לו סוסים HE SHALL NOT MULTIPLY HORSES TO HIMSELF — but he shall have only what is sufficient for his carriages, in order that he shall not cause the people to return to Egypt, because horses come from there, as it is said in the history of Solomon (1 Kings 10:29) “And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver and a horse for a hundred and fifty” (Sanhedrin 21b).

וה׳ אמר לכם לא תוסיפו, “seeing that the Lord has said to you (not to return to Egypt to reside there).” (Ibn Ezra)