In First kings, chapter fourteen, verse twenty-six, God permitted Shishak, the King of Egypt, to invade the temple and carry away its treasures. The temple, where God had manifested His glory during Solomon’s early rule in chapter eight, verse eleven, became a scene of disgrace just five years after the death of Solomon, as God’s own people cast aside His righteous ways.
King Shishak of Egypt invaded the land with a powerful army, conquered all the fortified cities, penetrated Jerusalem, and would probably have put an end to the kingdom of Judah if God had not had compassion upon him and saved him from destruction. The consequence of the humiliation of the king and the chiefs caused by the caution of the prophet Shemaiah, so that after the conquest of Jerusalem, Shishak contented himself with withdrawing, taking with him the treasures of the temple and of the royal palace. Compare the fuller account of this expedition in Second Chronicles twelve, two through nine.
Shishak was the first king of the twenty-second dynasty. He has celebrated his expedition against Judah by a bas-relief on the outer wall of the pillar-hall erected by him in the first palace at Karnak, in which more than one hundred and thirty figures are led in cords by Ammon and the goddess Muth with their hands bound upon their backs. The lower portion covered by escutcheons, the border of which these figures provided with, show that the prisoners are symbols of conquered cities. About a hundred of these escutcheons are still legible, and in the names upon them.
Shishak was probably bent chiefly upon the conquest and plundering of the cities. However, from Jerusalem, other treasures of the temple and palace, he also carried off the golden shields that were made by Solomon, as in First Kings, ten, verse sixteen.