SOLOMON:
HIS LIFE AND TIMES.
BY
REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R,S.
ARCHDEACON AND CANON OF WESTMINSTER; AND CHAPLAIN
IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN.
NEW YORK
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY
88 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1886?
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
Chequered fortunes of David—His early prosperity as a king—
His career darkened—Uriah and Bathsheba—Joab's power over
David—The birth of Solomon—Significance of David's remorse.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHILDHOOD OF SOLOMON 5
Influences which surrounded the childhood of Solomon—His
father—Evil effects of his fall—His family—Bathsheba—David's
fondness for his children—The name Shelômôh—Jedidiah—In-
fluence of Nathan—His retirement—Solomon comes to be
secretly regarded as the heir to the throne—Claims of Absalom.
CHAPTER II.
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON 13
Troubles of the period—The crime of Amnon—David's supine-
ness—Absalom's revenge—His flight, return, and forgiveness--
His ambition—His rebellion— Ahitophel—David's flight from
Jerusalem—His impotent resentment against Joab—The murder
of Amasa—Solomon learns who are the friends and the enemies
of his house—Intestine quarrels—The numbering of the people—
Dislike of the measure and its imperfect results—The pestilence—
The vision on the threshing-floor of Araunah.
CHAPTER III.
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON 24
Feebleness of David's age—Abishag of Shunem—Conspiracy of
Adonijah—His adherents—His attempted coronation feast—
Adherents of Solomon—Counter efforts of Nathan and Bath-
Sheba—Interviews of David with Bathsheba and Nathan—David
iv CONTENTS.
PAGE
rouses himself, and orders Solomon to be anointed and crowned—
Popular enthusiasm—Collapse of Adonijah's plot—Terror of
his guests—He is magnanimously pardoned—General amnesty—
David's last song, and death—His dying directions to Solomon—
His burial.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON 35
Development of Jewish royalty—The nation enters upon its
manhood—The Gibborim—The army—The nation realizes its
unique position--Possession of a strong and beautiful capital—
Passionate fondness for Jerusalem—Commencing centralization
of worship—The Ark at Jerusalem—"Jehovah's people"—Out-
burst of poetry—Dawn of prose literature—Elements of
danger—Limits of the kingdom—Lines of possible progress—
Significance of the records of Solomon.
CHAPTER V.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN 43
Tragic events—Secret ambition of Adonijah—His visit to Bath-
sheba, the Queen-mother—Interview between them—Her unsus-
pecting acceptance of his request for the hand of Abishag—She
visits the king—Her gracious reception—Sudden fury of Solo-
mon—Possible causes for his violent anger—He dooms Adonijah
to death—Alarm of Joab—Benaiah ordered to slay him—Hesi-
tates to drag him from the horns of the altar—Execution of
Joab—Fate of his posterity—Disgrace and banishment of the
High Priest Abiathar — Zadok and the House of Eleazar-
Destiny of the two families of Eleazar and Ithamar—Shimei
ordered to live at Jerusalem—His visit to Gath to recover his
slaves—His execution—Vigour of Solomon's rule—His kindness
to Chimham, son of Barzillai—Foreign enemies—Escape of
Hadad from the massacre of the Edomites—His reception in
Egypt—His return—The Syrian Rezon—Geshur— Solomon's
affinity with Pharaoh—One of the Tanite dynasty—National
disapproval of the wedding in later times—Establishment of
Solomon's power—The Second Psalm—Note on the Pharaoh
of z Kings iii. 1.
CHAPTER
VI.
SOLOMON'S SACRIFICE AND DREAM 58
General peacefulness of Solomon's reign—He offers a tenfold
hecatomb at Gibeon—His dream—Modes of Divine communi-
cation—His prayer for wisdom—The ideal not perfect—A con-
ditional promise—Great sacrifice on Mount Zion—The dead and
the living child—Nature of Solomon's wisdom—The wisest
man of his age—His proverbs and songs, and other intellectual
efforts—Riddles—Hiram and Abdemon.
CONTENTS v
PAGE
CHAPTER VII.
THE COURT OF SOLOMON 63
Growing complexity and magnificence of the Court—High
officers—Azariah, grandson of Zadok—Use of the word
"Priest"—The two Scribes—The Recorder—The Captain of the
Host—Zadok—Bamoth or High Places—The Farmer-general
"The King's friend"—The Chamberlain; growing importance
of this official—The Superintendent of the levies—Forced
labour—The twelve districts to supply the Court—Significance
of these districts—Judah possibly exempted— Immense exaction
of provisions—The burdens not felt at first—Prevailing peace
Solomon's one conquest.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BUILDINGS OF SOLOMON 71
The Temple—The design of David—He is forbidden to build—
His immense preparations—In what sense the Temple was
"exceeding magnifical"—Its substructions, walls, and cisterns,
and the toil they involved—Embassy from Hiram of Tyre, and
compact between the two kings—The levy or corvée—The
burden-bearers and quarrymen—The Canaanites were the
Helots of Palestine—The Giblites—The slaves of Solomon—
Hiram of Naphtali—General form of the Temple and its measure-
ments—Curious statements of the Chronicler—The Holy of
Holies quite dark—Outer lattices of the Holy Place—The outer
chambers—What a visitor would have seen—The outer court—
The inner court—The brazen altar—The molten sea and the
caldrons—Why the brazen oxen were permitted—The actual
Temple—What was its external aspect?—Had it pillars within?—
Jachin and Boaz—Theories about them—The Porch—The Sanc-
tuary and its furniture—The Oracle; its doors—The Ark—The
Cherubim— Built in silence—The general workmanship—Time that
it occupied in building—Organization of Levitic ministry—The
Temple a symbol of God's Presence—The actual building not used
for prayer or public worship—The sacrifices, and what they
involved—Water for ablutions—The Ceremony of Dedication—
The old Tabernacle—The procession—Transference of the Ark to
its rock—The staves—Splendour of the ceremony—The Cloud of
Glory—Solomon's prayer; its spirituality—Stupendous thank-
offering and festival—The fire from heaven—Prominence of the
king in priestly functions—Second vision of Solomon—Intense
affection and enthusiasm inspired by the Temple, as illustrated in
various Psalms—Functions of the Levites.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE PLAN AND ASPECT OF THE TEMPLE 100
Ideal reconstructions—Few remains—Scantiness of trustworthy
information—Fancies of Josephus—Recent excavations—The
Talmud—Size of the platform—Theories as to the style—I. Prof,
vi CONTENTS.
PAGE
Wilkins and the Greek theory; now abandoned—2. Canina and
the Egyptian theory—3. Fergusson, Robins, and others believe
that the architecture was Asiatic and Phoenician; reasons for
this view—Analogous buildings—The Temple as restored on the
Phœnician theory.
CHAPTER IX.
SOLOMON'S OTHER BUILDINGS AND CITIES 107
The passion for building—Solomon's palace, and its adjoining
edifices—Obscurity of all details—The House of the Forest of
Lebanon; its shields—The Porch of pillars—The Hall of Judg-
ment—The Palace—The staircase to the Temple—Water supply-
Gardens—Summer retreats—Works of national usefulness—For-
tification of the city—A chain of fortress-towns—Hazor,
Megiddo, Gezer — The Beth-Horons — Baalath — Store cities,
and chariot towns—Roads—Tadmor in the wilderness.
CHAPTER X.
SOLOMON'S COMMERCE 114
The ideal of peaceful wealth—Extended commerce: I. by land
and II. by sea—I. Influence and splendour of Phoenicia: i.
Land traffic with Tyre; Hiram and Solomon; Embarrassed con-
dition of Solomon's resources; He alienates twenty cities; Scorn
and dissatisfaction of Hiram; An obscure transaction; Inexplic-
able conduct of Solomon; Prosperity of Hiram—ii. Land traffic
with Arabia; Spices and precious stones—iii. Egypt and the
Tanite dynasty; Land traffic with Egypt; Horses and chariots;
Profits of the trade; Two great inland roads—II. Sea-traffic
The Phoenician traffic with Tarshish—ii. Traffic by the Red Sea
to Ophir; Ezion-Geber—Theories about Ophir; identified by many
with Abhîra at the mouths of the Indus— Beautiful and curious
articles of export—i. Ivory (Shen habbîm)—ii. Apes (Kophîm)—
Hi. Peacocks (tukkiîm)--iv. Almug-trees—Sanskrit origin of these
words—Did the fleets circumnavigate Africa?—Result of the
commerce—Losses—Intercourse with idolators—The Red Sea
fleets a failure—The king's revenue—His enormous expenses —
Advantages of the commerce, direct and indirect.
CHAPTER XI.
SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY 129
Visitors and presents—Royal state—Solomon, on a progress, as
described by Josephus—As described in the Song of Songs—A
nuptial psalm (Ps. xlv.)— Allusion to Solomon by our Lord—
Other allusions—His ivory throne—Visit of the Queen of Sheba—
Traditions about the Queen of Sheba—Legends of her visit and
questions—Her admiration of his buildings and his magnificence
—Interchange of presents—Naturalization of the balsam-plant-
Our Lord's allusion—Summary of Solomon's wealth and grandeur.
vii CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XI I.
THE DECLINE OF SOLOMON 139
An unsubstantial pageant—Solomon's heart not "perfect"—Two
deadly evils—What a king ought not to do: 1. The multiplication
of horses; 2. Accumulations of treasure; 3. Polygamy—Number
of his wives—Evils of polygamy—Solomon's apostasy—Moral de-
terioration—Influence of strange wives—Immoral tolerance:
Worship of Ashtoreth; 2. Of Milcom; 3. Of Chemosh—Idol
shrines on "the mount of corruption"—Evil effects of extrava-
gant luxury—Grievous bondage felt by the people—Expense of
maintaining the Court—A Divine warning—The growth of adver-
saries--Degeneracy of the people, and of the youth—Illustrated
in the advice of the "young men" to Rehoboam--Torpor of the
priesthood—Silence of the prophets—Jeroboam, his early life,
his rapid rise, his politic bearing—Ahijah the Shilonite—Symbol
of the disruption of the kingdom Jeroboam begins to plot and is
forced to fly into Egypt—Alienation of Egypt under Shishak I.—
Close of the reign—Gifts and character of the king—Three stages
in his career: I. His early prosperity; 2. The zenith of his glory;
3. His decline—"Vanity of vanities"—Arabian legend of his
death—His life less interesting than that of David—Doubts ex-
pressed as to his salvation—Orcagna—Vathek—Dante—Services
which Solomon rendered—The darker aspect of his reign—The
true Jedidiah.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON, AND BOOKS ATTRIBUTED TO HIM. 166
Character of Solomon's wisdom — I. His interest in natural
science—Admiration—Similitudes—Legendary magical powers—
Importation of new forms of animal and vegetable life—2. Solo-
mon as a poet —The One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Psalm—
The Seventy-second Psalm—Changed intellectual tendency of his
age—3. The Canticles—Date of the Book—Probably written by a
Northern Israelite—Some characteristics of the Book—Its allusions
to an age of luxury—Its allusions to nature—Difference of its tone
from that of the Nature-Psalms—Not on the surface a religious
poem—Supposed outline of the poem as an idyl of consecrated
love—This view adopted by most modern critics—The poem
allegorized by Rabbis, Fathers, and Schoolmen—Real subject of it
—Specimens of the allegoric interpretation—Not an epithalamium
—Difficulties of believing it to be intentionally allegoric—The
allegoric application religiously tenable, though not to be regarded
as primary—The sanctification of love—Human love as a symbol
of Divine.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES 182
Due to the general impulse given to Jewish thought by Solomon,
though it cannot have been written by him —The title Qoheleth-
Conjectures as to the date of the Book—"Elohim"—A struggle
with
perplexity and despondeney—Outline of the Book: I. The
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Prologue; 2. The first section, personal experiences; 3. The
second section; 4. The third section; 5. The fourth section,
partial conclusion; 6. The Epilogue—A general summary—Pro-
gressiveness of revelation—Doubts of some of the Rabbis—Two
general lessons—The emptiness of worldly pleasure—The teaching
of bitter experience.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. 192
Solomonic proverbs—Three words—I. Mashal, "a parable";
Various applications of the word 2. Chîdâh, "a riddle";
Enigmas in the East; "Dark sayings" in the Proverbs—Prov.
xxvi. 10-3. M'létzah, "a figure "—Outline of the Book: 1. The
Introduction; A manual of moral guidance—2. The Wisdom
section; How it differs from the rest of the Book; Conceptions of
"wisdom" among the Hebrews—3. "The Proverbs of Solomon;"
Their general structure; Their substance; Twofold beauty of
tone: i. It is kindly; ii. It is religious—Few traces of the national
religion—4. "The words of the wise"—5. Further "words of the
wise"—6. Hezekiah's collection—7. Three appendices: α. The
words of Agur; β. The exhortation of Lemuel; γ. The acrostic
of the virtuous woman—General remarks : I. Cosmopolitan spirit
—2. Had the Hebrews a philosophy? —3. Three phases of thought
about difficulties in the moral government of the world: α. The'
era of general principles; β. The era of difficulties; γ. The era
of acquiescence; δ. The final eschatological conclusion—4.
Sapiential literature not Messianic, yet in one sense Christologi-
cal—5. Exaltation of morality —6. Frequent references to the Book
in the New Testament.
CHAPTER XVI.
LEGENDS OF SOLOMON 208
Predominance of Solomon in legend—Knowledge ascribed to him
—I. The Talmud: i. Solomon, the demon Ashmodai, and the
worm Shamîr; ii. Solomon, Naama, and the ring; iii. The Hag-
gada, Solomon and the demons—II. Legends in the Qur'ân-
i. His power—ii. His early judgment—iii. The magic wind;
The steeds; The hoopoe; Balkis, Queen of Sheba—III. Ethiopian
legend—IV. The Angel of Death.
INTRODUCTION.
Chequered fortunes of David—His early prosperity as King—His
career darkened—Uriah and Bathsheba—Joab's power over David
—The birth of Solomon—Significance of David's remorse.
FEW careers have been more chequered than that of David;
few even of the lives recorded in the sacred volume are more
deeply instructive. The ruddy shepherd-lad, who tended his
few poor sheep in the wilderness, rapidly sprang into the great
warrior, the darling and hero, the poet and ruler of his people.
Gaining yearly as Saul lost, superseding even Jonathan in the
favour of the multitude, he had been so openly regarded as the
future wearer of the crown, that the king's jealousy drove him
into outlawry, and repeatedly sought his life. Save from im-
minent perils, and from incessant temptations to adopt a career
of crime, he had shown such consummate tact and skill as the
chief of a dangerous band, that on Saul's death he had been
chosen king by the tribe of Judah, and solemnly anointed at
Hebron. After he had reigned seven and a half years as King
of Judah, the murder of Ishbosheth, son of Saul, left Israel
free to elect a successor, and David was unanimously invited to
rule over the Twelve Tribes. Then began a period of un-
exampled prosperity. He gained secure possession of the City
of Jerusalem, and consecrated it by the translation of the Ark
thither from Gath-Rimmon. He strengthened his throne by a
Court, a Bodyguard, and an Army. God "made him a great name
like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth."1 He
became the father of a large and beautiful family, He was recog-
nized not only as a King, but also as a Psalmist and Prophet. At
1 2 Sam. vii. 9.
1
2 SOLOMON.
times he even wore an ephod, and exercised many of the func-
tions of the priestly office.1 On every border of his kingdom he
drove back and subdued his hostile neighbours. The Philistines,
the Moabites, the rising power of Syria, the predatory Edomites,
and Amalekites, were thoroughly broken into submission. From
a petty chieftain he became a great sovereign. With the Phœ-
nicians in the north-west, he was in cordial and intimate alliance.
One misfortune alone—a three years' famine—seems to have
disturbed the brighter and earlier portion of his reign.
Then calamity burst over him like thunder out of a clear sky,
and his glory and prosperity were shattered by his own sin.
The crime, the infamy, of one hour precipitated upon him for
all the rest of his life a terrible load of disgrace and ruin.
He had an officer named Uriah, who like many of those who
served in his bodyguard, belonged to the old race of Canaan.
He was by birth a Hittite, but had probably become a prose-
lyte, and was, at any rate, conspicuous for his chivalrous bravery
and austere sense of duty. Among his comrades was Eliam, a
son of Ahitophe1,2 who, like himself, had risen by valour and
conduct to be one of the thirty commanders of David's thirty
companies. Eliam had a fair daughter named Bathsheba,3 and
it was natural that he should have given her in marriage to a
fellow-officer so distinguished as Uriah. The Hittite soldier
loved her with a passionate tenderness.4 While he was absent
in the war against the Ammonites, Bathsheba lived in his
house, which was one of those which clustered under the shadow
of David's palace on Mount Zion. One evening David, accord-
ing to his wont, was walking on his palace-roof, after the burning
1 2 Sam. vi. 13, 17, 18; I Chron. xvi. 42.
2 2 Sam. xxiii. 34. Jerome ("Qu. Heb." on 2 Sam. ix. 3; I Chron. iii. 5)
mentions the tradition, which he had learnt from the Rabbis who taught
him Hebrew, that these two Eliams—the son of Ahitophel and the father
of Bathsheba—were one and the same person. Eliam's name is omitted
from 1 Chron. xi., whence some have inferred that he lost his post, and was
involved in his father's ruin, but perhaps he may be dimly indicated under
the name of "Ahijah the Pelonite" (I Chron. xi. 36). Pelonî in Hebrew
means "so and so," like the Spanish Don Fulano.
3 2 Sam. xi. 3. It is a somewhat suspicious circumstance, due perhaps
to Jewish falsification, that in I Chron. iii. 5, Eliam is disguised into Am-
miel, and Bathsheba into Bathshua. Bathshua is a heathen name. "The
daughter of Shua, the Canaanites" (I Chron. ii. 3; Gen. xxxviii. 2-12).
4 2 Sam. xii. 3.
INTRODUCTION. 3
heat of day, when he saw Bathsheba, who was "very beautiful to
look upon," washing herself in a cistern on the top of her house.
Forgetful of all his past, and of all that was due from him as
God's anointed, he made Bathsheba the victim of his guilty
passion. There is no need to detail the fresh crimes in which
he was entangled by the desire to hide his guilt. His attempt at
concealment was frustrated by the fine feeling and honourable
firmness of his unsuspecting soldier,1 and no way remained to
escape the consequences of his misdoing except to plot the base
murder of Uriah while he was fighting the king's battles before
Rabbath-Ammon. David, whom God had chosen from the
sheepfolds, to be the ruler of His people Israel, became the secret,
treacherous assassin of his brave commander. The murder
could only be carried out by making Joab his accomplice.
From that hour his peace was gone. It might have been said
to him as to the chief in the great tragedy—
"Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owd'st yesterday."
Joab, as commander-in-chief and nephew of the king, had
already been too powerful for a subject, but from that time he
became the complete controller of David's destiny, because he—
and at first he alone—was master of his guilty secret. Ahito-
phel too, hitherto David's most trusted counsellor, was now
secretly his enemy. He may not, at first, have been aware of
the murder of Uriah, but he was the grandfather of the woman
whom David had so foully wronged.2
That woman was the mother of King Solomon. The date of
Solomon's birth cannot be ascertained with any certainty, be-
cause we do not know the age at which he ascended the throne.
1 That Uriah had become a proselyte we infer from his language in
2 Sam. xi. II.
2 See Blunt's "Undesigned Coincidences," Pt. II. x. p. 145. Professor
Blunt is usually credited with the first notice of this probability. It had,
however, been pointed out in the commentary of David Qimchi, and he
only quotes it from earlier expositors (see Grätz, "Gesch. d. Juden." i. 263).
In 2 Sam. xv. 31, David's prayer that God would turn the counsel of
Ahitophel to foolishness seems to be a play on his name, "brother of
foolishness" (?), though his advice was regarded as an "oracle of God''
(2 Sam. xvi. 23).
4 SOLOMON.
He speaks of himself indeed at that time as "a little child," but
the expression is metaphorical, and is only used as the language
of deep humility.1 He succeeded to the crown in early man-
hood. If so, he was probably born not long after the year B.C.
1035 of the chronology which is most usually adopted, and
which is, so far as we can discover, reasonably accurate.2
But before we leave the tragic circumstances which accom-
panied David's first introduction to the mother of Solomon, it
is worth notice that the deadly wound which it inflicted on
the king's conscience, and the indignation which it caused
in the hearts of all to whom it became known, are proofs
of that loftier morality and keener sense of sin which resulted
from the Divine training of the Hebrew people. There were
many of the surrounding nations among whom this crime of a
brilliant and successful monarch would have been regarded as
venial or indifferent. The subjects of a Pagan autocrat would
have easily forgiven such an offence, and he would have found
no difficulty in forgiving himself. Indeed it is doubtful whether
any Egyptian or Assyrian subject would have ventured to in-
quire into circumstances which were surrounded with mystery
and doubt. But "the eye of the Lord is ten thousand times
brighter than the sun," and it was by a holy inspiration that His
prophets had been taught to look on sin "with such a glance as
strook Gehazi with leprosy, and Simon Magus with a curse."
The gaze of Nathan pierced through the precautions which
veiled the guilty secret of the king, and his voice—the voice of
the king's own conscience, and of the conscience of all the nation
—awoke the offender to that burst of heartfelt penitence which
expressed itself in language never to be forgotten in the Peni-
tential Psalms. The king's repentance was as signal as had been
his crime.
1 I Chron. xxii. 5; xxix. 1. "Solomon my son is young and tender." But
the same phrase is applied to Rehoboam, when he was forty-one (2 Chron.
xii. 13; xiii. 7), unless that (מא) be a clerical error for twenty-one (כא).
2 The systems of chronology vary. Ewald dates the reign of Solomon
from 1025-986; Usher from 1017-977. Hales, Jackson, and Bunsen adopt
other schemes.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHILDHOOD OF SOLOMON.
Influences which surrounded the childhood of Solomon—His father—Evil
effects of his fall—His family—Bathsheba— David's fondness for his
children—The name Shelômôh—Jedidiah—Influence of Nathan—His
retirement—Solomon comes to be secretly regarded as the heir to the
throne—Claims of Absalom.
THE brief sketch in the last chapter will suffice to show us some
of the conditions of the Court and family into which Solomon
was born.
His father was a king who, in many respects, had fallen from
his high estate. The golden dawn and glorious noonday of his
reign were over. He was no longer the pride and the idol of
Israel and Judah. Not only had his administration ceased to be
so vigorous as once it was, but the dark story of his relations
to Bathsheba and Uriah was but an imperfect secret, and in
proportion as it became known David lost ground in the affec-
tions of his people. There was, indeed, no concealment in the
intensity of his remorse, and God forgave him, and restored to
him the clean heart and the free spirit. But the forgiveness of
sins is not the same thing as the remission of consequences,
and the consequences of sin are moral and spiritual as well as
physical. They leave their scars upon a man's character. Re-
pentance is less strong and less beautiful than his elder
brother Innocence. No man can stain his soul with such
crimes as those of David, and remain unscathed thereafter.
His powers of resistance are weakened; his tranquillity
becomes less secure. The intercourse of the boy Solomon with
his father must have been intercourse with a gloomy and
5
6 SOLOMON.
saddened man, who was still capable indeed of flashes of his
old nobleness, but whose recorded deeds show a marked dete-
rioration from the splendid religious promise of his youth. He
withdrew more and more into the pompous surroundings of
a Court, and the voluptuous seclusion of the harem. His
judicial duties were so much neglected as to give strength to
the complaints and promises of Absalom. The spell of his
early ascendency was broken, and a deep indignation against
him burned in many hearts. In a twofold way his evil
example produced bitter fruit. On the one hand, it caused the
enemies of the Lord to blaspheme; on the other, it acted as
a spiritual empoisonment in the hearts of all who were unstable.
It broke down in many minds the altar of confidence in the
reality of virtue, leading them to say, "If he is not good, no one
is good." His sons inherited from him the legacy of imperious
passions, and they had also before their eyes the fatal example
of a weakness in the Reason and the Conscience which, in
David if in any one, ought to have sufficed to keep those
passions under firm control. The transgression of the monarch
tended to lower the morality of the entire nation.
The influence of David over any of his sons now that he was
weak and fallen, can hardly have been entirely beneficial, but it
is probable that his intercourse with Solomon was small. Be-
sides his daughters, David had at least twenty sons born of his
numerous wives.1 Following the bad custom of polygamy
which had only been practised to a very small extent by the
early patriarchs of his race, or by his immediate predecessor,
he had two wives during his wanderings, five during his reign
at Hebron, and an unknown number at Jerusalem, besides the
harem of ten or more concubines which was regarded as an
almost necessary appendage of Eastern royalty. The number
of his family, and the mutual jealousies between the separate
establishments, would naturally tend to diminish his intercourse
with his sons; nor is it the custom in the East for fathers to
take much part in the early training of their children, however
fondly they may be beloved. Polygamy necessarily tends to
break down domestic affections.
To Bathsheba must have fallen the chief share in the educa-
1 Seer 1 Sam. xxvii. 3; 2 Sam. iii. 2-5, v. 13-16; I Chron. iii. 5-8,
xiv. 4-7. There were also sons of concubines who are not named (2 Sam.
xv. 16; 1 Chron. iii. 2).
THE CHILDHOOD OF SOLOMON. 7
tion of her child, and it is impossible to suppose that her
influence could have been very good. We know but little of
her, but that little is almost wholly to her disadvantage. If
her name was originally Bathshua1 this may possibly imply
that she was, in part at least, of heathen extraction; but
whether this be so or not she must have had a deep share in
David's guilt. In her son's reign, the young and beautiful
maiden of Shunem could be faithful to her peasant lover in
spite of the unequalled magnificence of the royal match which
was so passionately pressed upon her.2 Not so Bathsheba.
She seems to have offered no resistance to the far graver crime
of adultery committed against a most tender and faithful hus-
band. She came to David in secret. She must have acquiesced,
at least with silent complicity, in the base plot by which the
king would fain have concealed his guilt; and to that plot she
seems to have opposed no remonstrance. Of Uriah's murder
she may have known nothing, but, if he was sacrificed without
her cognizance at the time, she can hardly have remained
unaware of that which afterwards, in Court circles at any rate,
became an open secret. Yet she was so far from turning with
abhorrence from the hands which were red with her husband's
blood, that directly the legal period of mourning for Uriah was
over, she was content to add one more to the discreditable
number of David's wives. We may make every allowance for
the different views of morality taken by Eastern peoples in
ancient days, but the fact remains—Bathsheba had been a
willing adulteress, and she continued to enjoy till death the
earthly fruits of her transgression. There is no certainty, and
little probability in the notion of the Rabbis that she was "the
mother of King Lemuel," whose appeals to her son are preserved
in the Thirty-first Chapter of Proverbs; but, if she were, those
exhortations to chastity would have come with more weight
from other lips.
According to the order of names in I Chron. iii. 5, Solomon
was the youngest of five sons born to David and Bathsheba.
The eldest—the child of the adultery—died in infancy. The
1 I Chron iii. 5.
2 She is called the Shulamite, but Shunem was known as Sulem in the
days of Eusebius and Jerome, and the village is now called Solam. See
Robinson's "Researches in Palestine," vol. iii. p. 402. The only other
Shunammite in Scripture is Elisha's hostess (2 Kings iv. 12).
8 SOLOMON.
other three were Shimea, Shobab, and Nathan, of wham the
latter became the ancestor of Christ after the extinction of
Solomon's line in the person of Jeconiah.1 Possibly, however,
Solomon's name may only be placed last by way of emphasis,
for in 2 Sam. xii. it is implied that Solomon was born first of the
sons of Bathsheba after her legal marriage, and this is also
distinctly stated by Josephus.2 David was a fond father to all
his children, but the circumstances of Solomon's birth tended
to make him specially dear to the rapidly-ageing king. He was
the son of a mother passionately, if guiltily, beloved, and his
birth came to fill up the void caused by the death of the first
child. David would naturally regard his birth and survival as
a proof that God in mercy had accepted his prayers, and seen
his remorseful tears.
When Solomon was born, the kingdom was at peace. David
had seen enough, and more than enough of war. The thought
of all the blood which he had shed weighed heavily upon his
conscience, and his enemies called him "a man of blood." His
yearning for peace appears in the name Absalom—"Father of
Peace"—which he had given long before to the son born to
him in Hebron of Maacah, daughter of Talmai, king of
Geshur. By this time it must have been still stronger, and he
gave to his son by Bathsheba the stately name of Shelômôh,
or "The Peaceful,"3 the name which is still so common in the
East in the form Suleimân.4 Nathan was immediately in-
formed of the auspicious birth, and the child was placed
under his sponsorship and care.5 He, too, hailed the birth
1 Luke iii. 31. Salathiel, the direct descendant of Solomon and Bath-
sheba in the line of Nathan, was probably adopted by Jeconiah. Comp.
Zech. xii. 12; and comp. I Chron. iii. 17; Jer. xxii. 30; Matt. i. 11, 12.
Salathiel's real father was Neri (Luke iii. 27), of the house of Nathan. If
"Assir" ("captive") was (as the Talmudists assert) a son of Jehoiachin,
he died young, and the exiled king adopted his kinsman, Salathiel.
2 "Antiq." vii. 7, 4,
3 According to one reading in 2 Sam. xii. 24, Bathsheba conferred the
name.
4 Comp. the names Shelômith, Lev. xxiv. 11; I Chron. xxvi. 25;
Numb. xxxiv. 27. So Frederick is Friedereich, "rich in peace." We speak
of Solomon because the New Testament and Josephus translated Shelô-
moh not by Σαλωμὼν), as is done by the LXX., but by Σολομών. The
long vowel is retained in Salôme.
5 2 Sam. xii. 25. The verse may either mean—" He (David) sent him (the
THE CHILDHOOD OF SOLOMON. 9
of the child as a sign that God had restored to David the
favour which had been promised to his repentance. He there-
fore gave to Solomon, "because of Jehovah," the more sacred
name of Jedidiah—"Beloved of Jah."1 David himself had been
called by a name which meant "The Beloved," "The Darling";
but to Solomon the prophet desired to give a name expressive
of something deeper than family affection.2 This name, how-
ever, is never again referred to, for it was not meant to be used
in common life. The name Solomon was like a prophetic inti-
mation of the ideal and the history of the magnificent unwarlike
king.3
In Nathan we might have expected that the boy would have
had a pure, wise, and faithful teacher; and such, we may trust,
was to some extent the case. But it is impossible to overlook the
fact that, after his one exhibition of fearless faithfulness, Nathan
seems to have sunk into comparative apathy. He lived till
Solomon's accession certainly, and perhaps late into the reign,
of which he wrote the earlier annals.4 If the Jewish tradition
mentioned by Jerome be correct, Nathan was the eighth, perhaps
the adopted, son of Jesse,5 and the same as the warrior
Jonathan, who is called David's "uncle" in 2 Sam. xxi. 21.6 He
has also been identified with the Nathan whose sons occupied
high places in Solomon's Court,—one of them, Zabud, being
"The King's Friend," and also "Priest."7 But the father of these
child) into the hand of Nathan;" or "He sent by the hand of Nathan," i.e.,
as Ewald (iii. 168) explained it "entreated the oracle through Nathan, to
confer on the new-born child some name of lofty import;" or even "He
(Jehovah) sent by the hand of Nathan." Comp. I Chron. xxii. 9.
1 Amahilis Domino. Comp. Lemuel, Jonathan, Nathanael, Adeodatus,
Diodorus, Theodore, Gottlieb, &c.
2 Comp. Ps. cxxvii. 2. "So every Muhammedan, besides his so-called
baptismal names, may have an additional name of loftier significance
ending in eldîn, which signifies the man in his religious capacity" (Ewald,
iii. 165: comp. Noor-ed-Din, Saleh-ed-Din, &c.).
3 I Chron. xxii. 9.
4 2 Chron. ix. 29.
5 Jerome, " Qu. Hebr."; I Sam. xvii. 12; I Chron. ii. 13-15.
6 It is more probable that "uncle " in I Chron. xxvii. 32 is a mistake
for "nephew," the mistake arising from a wrong punctuation of 2 Sam. xxi.
21. This Jonathan is described as a wise man, a scribe, and David's coun-
sellor.
7 It does not follow that this Nathan was of Aaronic descent, for David's
10 SOLOMON
officials was more probably the younger brother of Solomon.
The prophet Nathan himself did not continue to play any
memorable part in the religious service of the people. After
Solomon's accession his name is not mentioned, and although
David consulted him about the building of the Temple, and
the organization of public worship, we do not hear of his
voice being raised in any of the crimes and tumults which
marked the closing years of the hero-king. It was Gad the
seer, not Nathan the prophet, who warned David of the
punishment which would follow the guilty pride—possibly the.
tyrannous purpose of levying a poll-tax or conscription—
which had induced him to number the people in defiance of
the wishes of his wisest counsellors.1 If, indeed, we could
attach any importance to a confused fragment of the Greek
historian, Eupolemus, Nathan may have had some message for
David during the three years' pestilence.2 But Eupolemus con-
fuses different events, and if the census had any reference to the
system of collecting funds for the future Temple, Nathan may
have persuaded himself that the measure was justifiable. Pos-
sibly the weight of advancing years may have impaired his
energy, but to him we must still attribute the best of the influences
which surrounded the life of the youthful prince. Himself •
trained in the School of the Prophets, he must have instructed
Solomon in all the poetry, the "wisdom of the East," and the his-
torical literature of his nation, and especially in whatever portions
of the Mosaic law were then committed to writing. The literary
capacities which Solomon had inherited from his father must.
have received a careful cultivation, although they assumed a
sons are also called priests (2 Sam. viii. 18), and even Ira (2 Sam. xx. 26).
By the time the Books of Chronicles were written there was some feeling
against the union of civil and ecclesiastical offices, and instead of "kohen,''
"priest," they have " chief at the hand of the king." The LXX. render
the name αυλάρχαι in the case of David's sons, and the Authorized Version
"officers," while the Vulgate honestly gives sacerdotes, and the Revised
Version "priests," as well as Luther and Coverdale. See Ewald, "Alter-
thümsk.," p. 276.
1 2 Sam. xxiv. 25; I Chron. xxi. xxvii. 23, 24.
2 The passage is preserved in Eusebius, "Prep. Ev." ix. 30, "An angel
painted David the place where the Temple was to be, but forbade him to
build it, as being stained with blood, and having fought many wars. His
name was Dianathan." The blundering name is taken apparently from the
διὰ Νόθαν in the LXX. Version. Sec 2 Sam. vii. and I. Chron. xxii.
THE CHILDHOOD OF SOLOMON. 11
different development from that which has immortalized the
name of David as "the sweet Psalmist of Israel."
Though Solomon was the first Jewish king "born in the
purple," it is by no means certain that he had been destined
from the first to be David's heir. The old king may have felt
the same reluctance to name his successor as has been felt by
other great sovereigns; and to nominate an infant or a young boy
would be dangerous. It is not till the time of Adonijah's rebellion
that we hear of an oath to Bathsheba that her son should suc-
ceed to the throne,1 and as there is no independent mention of
that oath we do not know at what period it was given. It was
felt indeed that the king's nomination was one of the most
powerful factors in a claim to the throne, but the nomination
could hardly be arbitrary. The murder of Amnon, David's
eldest son, took place when Solomon was a child. Of the second
son, Chileab or Daniel, we hear no more, and it is probable that
he died early. Of the remaining sons, Absalom was the eldest
He certainly regarded himself as the intended heir. Not only
was David already a king when Absalom was born at Hebron,
but the youth was of royal descent on both sides, since his
mother Maacah was a daughter of the king of Geshur. He
was also strong in the admiration of the multitude, and in the
passionate affection which his father entertained for him. When
Absalom perished in battle against his father, Adonijah, the
eldest surviving son, regarded his own claims as valid. Next
in order to Adonijah were at least twelve sons of whom we know
next to nothing, and who may have been excluded either from
the lack of any commanding qualities, or because their
mothers were of private and undistinguished families.2 The pro-
raise to Bathsheba may have been one of the whispered secrets
of the palace, but it does not seem to have been generally
11 Kings i. 13, 17.
2 In 2 Sam. iii. 1-5, we have six sons of David mentioned—Amnon,
Chileab, Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, Ithream; in 1 Chron. iii. 1-9 we
have (if the text be correct) besides these (Daniel being put for Chileab)
Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, Elishama, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg,
Japhia, Eliada; besides the sons of the concubines, and Tamar. A similar
list, with variations, occurs in 2 Sam. v.14-16 ; and in I Chron. xiv. 3-7, where
Ibhar is put next to Solomon. Besides these we have a Jerimoth in 2 Chron.
xi. 18, whose daughter Mahalath was married to Rehoboam. Josephus
("Antiq." vii, 3, § 3) gives a totally different list of eleven sons. Some of
them became "priests" (2 Sam. viii. 18, Authorized Version "chief rulers").
12 SOLOMON.
known. It would be unfair to ascribe it solely to the ascendency
which Bathsheba had acquired over the mind of the uxorious
king. Solomon early displayed the capacity which marked
him as conspicuously superior to all his brethren. It was
clear to all "that the Lord loved him."1 David's insight in
choosing him to be his heir had received the prophetic ap-
proval of Nathan. But however early this design was formed,
there was an obvious wisdom in confining the knowledge of the
secret to a few. To make it generally known while Solomon
was a child would have been to awaken the turbulent jealousies
of his powerful and unscrupulous rivals, and to mark him out
for almost certain destruction. It must have early become clear
that such men as Amnon and Absalom and Adonijah—men of
fierce passions and haughty temperament—would be singularly
unfitted to carry out the peaceful and religious designs which
David wished to bequeath to his successor. The promise of
calm wisdom and stately demeanour which marked the childhood
of Solomon,2 combined with David's passionate devotion to
Bathsheba to make him pass over the pretensions of his elder
sons, and with the approval of his truest religious adviser, to
swear by the name of Jehovah, "Assuredly Solomon my son
shall reign after me."
1 2 Sam. xii. 24.
2 Compare Wisd. viii. 19, "But I was a clever child, and received a good
soul."
CHAPTER II.
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON.
Troubles of the period—The crime of Amnon—David's supineness—Absa-
lom's revenge—His flight, return, and forgiveness—His ambition—His
rebellion—Ahitophel—David's flight from Jerusalem—His impotent
resentment against Joab—The murder of Amasa—Solomon learns who
are the friends and the enemies of his house—Intestine quarrels—The
numbering of the people—Dislike of the measure and its imperfect
results—The pestilence—The vision on the threshing-floor of Araunah.
THE youth of Solomon fell in a dark and troubled period,
during which the sins and errors of David were bringing about
their natural retribution.
The first event which shocked the nation and rent the king's
heart was the horrible misconduct of his eldest son Amnon,
who had been born to him during his days as a fugitive, by his
first wife Ahinoam of Jezreel. There is no need to detail one
of the foulest incidents which sully the sacred page. It is not
often that the fierce light of history burns into the secrets of an
Eastern palace, but, in this instance, it reveals a state of things
truly shocking. Violent and insolent as his ancestor Reuben, this
first-born of David did not allow the Mosaic law to restrain the
growth of his ungovernable passion for his half-sister Tamar.1
Aided by the cunning of his cousin Jonadab, the son of David's
brother Shimeah, he accomplished his purpose, and then, with a
1 Grätz ("Gesch. d. Juden." i. 264) assumes, without a shadow of proof,
that Tamar was a daughter of Maacah by an earlier marriage, so that there
was no blood-relationship between her and Amnon. A man guilty of con-
duct so atrocious as that of Amnon would hardly be hindered by any
barrier.
13
14 SOLOMON.
sudden revulsion of feeling, rendered his crime yet more detest-
able by driving the maiden from him with pitiless brutality. His
conduct can only be accounted for by the glare of unnatural
horror often flung by a guilty conscience when a deed of shame
is done. With her "sleeved upper garment"1 rent, and ashes
on her head, the dishonoured princess fled to her own brother
Absalom, uttering loud cries of despair. He, with a deeply-
seated purpose of revenge bade her to dissemble her anguish
as he dissembled his own rage, and to remain in her palace
quiet though desolate. Under such circumstances it was David's
duty2 to see that punishment fell on the head of the atrocious
criminal. But David, like Eli, yielded to a foolish fondness for
his son, and spared to bring him to justice because he was his
first-born, and he did not like "to vex his soul."3 He was
"very wroth," but he did nothing.
But if the king would do nothing, Absalom determined that
due vengeance should wipe out the shame of incest and out-
rage.4 He nursed his wrath, and said nothing to Amnon. He
was sullenly waiting for the opportunity which was sure to rise
when suspicion had been lulled to sleep. After two years had
elapsed he made "a feast like the feast of a king"5 at Baal-
Hazor, near the little town of Ephraim—the hamlet in which
our Lord took refuge after His excommunication by the Priests.6
Sheep-shearings were recognized seasons of festivity,7 and it
was quite in accordance with Absalom's known character, that
he should desire to make the occasion as splendid as possible.
He, therefore, invited the king and the princes to be present
at the celebration. David, as Absalom no doubt had expected,
declined to go in person, on the plea that his visit would in
volve Absalom in great expense; but he permitted all the
king's sons to go. It seems to have been regarded as a matter
of course that Amnon would not be invited; but when David
1 2 Sam. xiii. 18. It was her dress as a princess (comp. Gen. xxxvii. 3).
2 See Levit. xx. 17.
3 2 Sam. xiii. 21. LXX.
4 It is a touching sign of Absalom's affection for his dishonoured sister
that he called his own daughter after her—Tamar (2 Sam. xiv. 27).
5 2 Sam. xiii. 27. LXX.
6 This cannot be regarded as certain. The words mean, according to
Ewald, "on the borders of the tribe of Ephraim." A various reading is
"the valley of Rephaim."
7 Gen. xxxviii. 12, 13; I Sam. xxv. 4, 36.
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON. 15
had refused the invitation, and contented himself with blessing
Absalom, there was a plausible excuse for asking permission
that the eldest son, the presumptive heir to the throne, should
be present as David's representative. It was not without mis-
giving that the king granted the request, for hatred is not easily
concealed, and David was aware of his own neglect, and of the
deadliness of Amnon's offence. But he could never resist the
subtle fascination of Absalom's appeals, and disguising his sus-
picion he gave a reluctant assent. Revenge was now within
Absalom's reach. He ordered his servants to wait till Amnon
was flushed with wine, and then fearlessly to murder him,
promising them the protection of his position and influence.
The murder was accomplished. The banquet broke up in wild
confusion, and the terrible news was brought to Jerusalem that
all the princes were slain. In that awful moment as amid his
wailing courtiers he grovelled in the dust with rent clothes, and
recognized the fatal similitude to his own crime in these deeds
of lust and blood, the iron must indeed have entered deep into
David's soul.
His nephew, the subtle Jonadab, removed the most over-
whelming part of his anguish by assuring him that Absalom
could only have killed Amnon. He had read the secret of
Absalom's revenge in his face, as he read the secret of Amnon's
lawless passion. The appearance of the king's sons on their
mules, all weeping bitterly, confirmed the surmise of Jonadab.
But the facts were still sufficiently terrible. Dark spirits were
walking in the house of the Psalmist of Israel. A brother had
outraged his sister, and had fallen by his brother's hand.
Absalom was now the heir, and though his father had never
said him nay he did not venture to appear before the deeply-
incensed king, but fled to the Court of his maternal grandfather,
Talmai, king of Geshur. There he remained in exile for three
years. For a year David continued to wear mourning for
Amnon, and then his heart began to go forth once more to his
banished son.1 Joab, loyal to his master in every respect so long
as he was left undisturbed in the command of the army, read
the king's hidden yearning, and by the device of the widow of
Tekoah, induced him, to recall Absalom. Perhaps his conduct
in the matter was not quite so disinterested as it looked. Ab-
1 2 Sam. xiv. 1. Dr. Edersheim and others render it "the king's heart
was against Absalom" (comp. Dan. xi. 28).
16 SOLOMON.
salom, at any rate, had ulterior designs. In murdering Am-
non he had borne in mind that his brother's removal left his
path clear to the throne, and he relied for success on his own
prowess, cunning, and popularity, supported as they were by
his father's boundless pride in his beauty. It probably never
occurred to him to regard Solomon as an obstacle in his way.
The kingdom needed a strong ruler, and being in the prime of
life he would not have feared that his wishes could be thwarted
by an inconspicuous child, the son of a mother of no import-
ance. He had been forbidden to see his father's face, and this
was the condition of his return. It was, however, essential to
his plans that there should be an open reconciliation between
his father and himself, and he had not the least doubt that this
could be assured if once the king could be induced to permit
him to enter his presence. Five years had now elapsed since
the tragedy at Baal-Hazor, and he thought that it was time for
the condonation of a fratricide, which he defended by his duty
as an avenger. He sent for Joab twice, but Joab was afraid or
unwilling to visit a prince who was in disgrace. With charac-
teristic insolence he therefore ordered his servants to set Joab's
barley-field on fire, and when the rude soldier came to demand
compensation he vehemently reproached him with having
brought him back from Geshur to no purpose. Joab accordingly
used his irresistible influence to bring about an interview between
David and his son, and it ended, as Absalom had expected, in
his father's extending to him full forgiveness, ratified by a kiss
of peace.
He might now have felt assured that he would succeed to the
throne, but his impetuous vanity and ambition would not suffer
him to await his father's death, His position as the king's
eldest son enabled him to surround himself with chariots and
horsemen and a bodyguard, and he also deliberately set himself
to create a popular movement in his own favour. In this base
plot he was aided not only by his own peerless beauty, an in-
fluence doubly powerful in Eastern countries, but also by the
growing remissness of the king's old age, and possibly of his
long illness. He gradually got round himself a powerful
party, and the conspiracy grew stronger every day, while the
king, rarely leaving the precincts of his palace, remained in
unsuspecting security. For four years, with unsleeping assi-
duity, he set himself to steal away the hearts of the people
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON. 17
by blandishments and bribes. At last the time seemed ripe
for throwing off the mask. David's rule had in some way
alienated his own tribe of Judah, and the disaffection was
particularly strong in his early capital of Hebron. The in-
habitants of that old and sacred city perhaps looked with
jealousy on the growing glories of Jerusalem by which they had
been so totally thrown into the shade. Absalom, under pre-
tence of a vow, asked leave to sacrifice at Hebron, and went
thither with two hundred followers, from whom he had con-
cealed his designs. But no sooner was he safe in Hebron, than
he sent for Ahitophel, whose wisdom had secured him the high
post of the king's counsellor, and whose counsel was reverenced
in those days like an oracle of God. Now, Ahitophel was the
grandfather of Bathsheba, and it is difficult to imagine that he
would have joined Absalom if he had been aware that his own
great-grandson was David's destined successor. It is indeed
possible that ambition may have been suppressed by the sterner
passion of revenge. Like Absalom himself he may have nursed,
during many years, a secret wrath for Bathsheba's dishonour.
His motives must be only a matter of conjecture; but as his
grand-daughter was now the king's favourite wife, and the
mother of four of his sons, his defection is, at any rate, a clear
sign of David's waning popularity.
On receiving the news of this formidable revolt, David im-
mediately decided to leave Jerusalem until he should have
gathered a sufficient force to fight against his son's adherents.
He took with him all his wives and sons, only leaving ten con-
cubines to look after the royal abodes. Bathsheba and her
young son must therefore have been with him during that long
and tragic day, so full of heart-shaking scenes, which is described
at greater length than any other day in the whole Bible. Per-
haps they stood by David's side under the olive-tree by the
last house in the suburbs of Jerusalem, on the edge of the dark
Kidron, while the soldiers and people defiled past him. On the
sensitive mind of a boy those scenes must have left a deep im-
pression, and they also taught him the friends on whom he could
1 In 2 Sam. xv. 7 it is clear that the true reading is, "It came to pass
after four (not forty) years." This is the reading of the Peshito, the Vul-
gate, Josephus, and most modern critics. The conduct of Absalom was
like that of Agamemnon (Euripides, "Iphig." 337 sqq.) and Bolingbroke
(Shakespeare, "Richard II.," act v. sc. ii.).
18 SOLOMON.
most securely rely. For without the aid of the mercenary and
alien bodyguard known as Cherethites, Pelethites,1 and Gittites
David must have been crushed at once. They were under the
command of Benaiah and Ittai of Gath, and they acted in
concert with a body of six hundred, the little nucleus of the first
standing army known to the Hebrews. The whole force was
popularly spoken of as the Gibborim or Heroes, a name which
properly belonged only to those who had shown distinguished
prowess.2 Of the priests, Zadok was conspicuous for loyalty,
and his reputation as a seer added greatly to David's strength.
Abiathar also remained faithful, but he is mentioned after Zadok,
though he was older and had the precedence in religious rank,
and he seems to have shown tardiness in taking the final
decision.3 Hushai the Archite,4 David's "friend," and perhaps,
like Ittai, of alien race, was also faithful. With rent garments
1 The origin of these names is disputed. Ewald and Hitzig (following the
LXX. in Ezek. xxv. 16; Zeph. ii. 5) regard them as Cretans (comp. Tacitus,
"Hist." v.2, but see 1 Sam. xxx. 14), and Philistines; but Gesenius,Thenius,
and Keil think that they are the names of officers, "executioners (2 Kings
xi.4) and couriers" (1 Kings xiv. 28), from כרת "to slay," and פלת "to run."
Josephus calls them σωματοφύλακες (2 Sam. xxiii. 23). In 2 Sam. xx. 23
and 2 Kings xi. 4 the word rendered in our Authorized Version by
"Cherethites" and "captains" is really כרי, perhaps "Carians."
2 The word "Gittites" in 1 Sam. xv. 18 should probably be "Gibborim"
or "Heroes," as in xvi. 6. This is the reading of the LXX. Grätz
("Gesch. d. Juden." i. 270) thinks that Ittai and the mercenary force had
been got together evidently but a short time before the rebellion, 2 Sam.
xv. 19) to overawe the designs of the Tanite Pharaoh Psusennes (?) on the
domains of Geshur. It has been conjectured that by "Gittites" are,
meant soliders who had served under David in old days at Gath.
3 He "stood still" (according to the conjectural reading) until all the
people had streamed out of the city, whereas Zadok and his Levites had at
once taken out the Ark to accompany David (2 Sam. xv. 24). But the
meaning of the passage is not quite clear. It may be that Abiathar had
accompanied Zadok with the Ark, and that his name has dropped out of
2 Sam. xv. 24 (of which there is a very possible trace in the LXX. reading απὸ
Βαιθάε), and that Abiathiar stood still (comp. Josh. iii. 17) with the king
under the olive-tree (LXX.), by "the last house" (2 Sam. xv. 17, Hebr.),
while the Ark was motionless until all the people had passed.
4 This title is of certain meaning. It might mean "from the town of
Erek," but no town of that name is known. Perhaps the Archites, like the
Jebusites, &c., were the remnant of some aboriginal tribe of Palestine.
Josephus, with a strange play on the word, calls him αρχιεταῖρος, "chie
of the companions."
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON. 19
and ashes on his head, he joined David at the little oratory
(proseucha) on the top of the Mount of Olives (2 Sam. xv.
32, Hebr.). Mephibosheth, still perhaps brooding over the
miserable fate of Saul and his house, and the bloody end
of so many of his brethren, seems to have been lukewarm
at the best, but his powerful agent, Ziba, made up for this
remissness of the last surviving son of the friend of David's
youth. Joab also and his brother Abishai remained loyal
to their uncle and old master, and shared with Ittai the com-
mand of the forces. On the other side of the Jordan three
powerful and generous sheykhs, Shobi, the son of Nahash, who
had survived the destruction of his native Rabbah,1 Machir of
Lo-debar, and the aged Gileadite, Barzillai, rendered to the
fugitive king an invaluable service. The friends who thus rallied
round David were, with few exceptions, the friends and partisans
of Solomon at a later period.
It is needless to follow the story of Absalom's rebellion, defeat,
and death.2 The king's impolitic outburst of sorrow at the news
of his son's death shows how easy it would have been for
Absalom to have succeeded but for his own headstrong folly
His murder—for it was nothing else, though Joab may have
thought it justifiable—left no real competitor between Solomon
and the throne.3
Solomon was already of an impressionable age, and the events
of this rebellion must have taught him much. Among other
things he must have perceived the dangerous power of Joab
and the reckless use which he made of it. His language to the
king was even insolent in its tone of menace, and David in his
resentment superseded him in his command, and placed Amasa
—another of his nephews—in his place. The resentment was
perfectly impotent. Joab, master of David's secrets, was master
of David's fate. He had made himself indispensable, and he
1 He may have been a brother of the insulting Hanun, and as Nahash
had been a firm friend, and perhaps a kinsman, of David, David may have
made him "chief" (δυνάστης, Josephus, "Antiq." vii. 9, § 8) of the Am-
monite country in his brother's place.
2 It has been supposed that in Psalms iii., xxxix., xli., lv., lxii., lxiii., we
have allusions to the circumstances of Absalom's conspiracy.
3 The mode of Absalom's murder seems to have been exceptionally cruel.
Joab transfixed him with three wooden staves, and left his armour-bearers
to kill him. He had old grudges to satisfy.
20 SOLOMON.
gave David plainly to understand that, while he would be
faithful in all other respects, he did not mean to be cashiered
from his command. His brutal murder of Amasa caused a
shock of disgust, and men remembered long afterwards his
horrible appearance as he went in pursuit of Sheba with his
girdle and all his garments down to his sandals soaked in his
murdered cousin's blood.1 Yet David did not dare to punish
him! There had been an obvious injustice and feeble im-
policy in the appointment of Amasa, a rebel and the son
of an Ishmaelite,2 over the head of the very commander
who had just defeated him in the king's battle. Indeed,
Amasa at once proved his own incompetence, and Joab, by
bringing the rebellion of Sheba to a speedy and successful
issue, placed himself beyond the reach of David's anger. The
manner of Amasa's murder had been craftily made to wear the
appearance of an accident, and perhaps this furnished David
with an excuse for not bringing to justice a kinsman who had
nought for him for so many years, and had become far too
powerful for his control. He hates him, he feels his dependence
on him, he is afraid of him, curses him again and again, tries
get rid of him, yet, in spite of the murders of Abner and
Amasa, always kept him at hand, and finally commands his son
to punish the servant whom he feared to touch himself.3
Again, Solomon must have perceived that the animosities of
the house of Saul still smouldered beneath the surface. The
curses heaped upon David in his hour of shame by Shimei, son
of Gerar, who was of Saul's family, showed that there were still
many adherents of the old royal house. He followed David to
curse him as the murderer of his race, and never stopped his
curses till the king and his followers had reached a spot which per-
haps from this circumstance received the pathetic name of Aye-
phim—"the place of the weary."4 David had certainly behaved
with generosity to the descendants of his former master, and
especially to Jonathan's son Mephibosheth. The guilt—for so
it was regarded at the time5—of the execution of Saul's seven
sons and grandsons—five sons of his daughter Merab,6 and two
1 I Kings ii. 5.
2 2 Sam. xvii. 25, Hebr.; comp. I Chron. ii. 17.
3 See Oort, "Bible for Young People," iii. 87 (E. tr.).
4 See 2 Sam. xvi. 14 (the probable reading).
5
2 Sam. xvi. 7.
6 So we should read in 2 Sam. xxi. 8.
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON. 21
of his sons by Rizpah—must fall not upon David, but upon the
priesthood who furnished David with the answers of the oracle,
and on the Gibeonites who demanded this horrible expiation
by human sacrifice. But the lonely anguish of Rizpah, as, for
month after month, in burning heat and searching cold, seated
on sackcloth upon the rocks, she scared the vultures and the
jackals from the crosses on which hung the blackened and
shrivelled bodies of her two sons—
"Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,"
had awakened a deep sympathy, and the action of Mephibosheth
himself in not joining the faithful soldiers and courtiers who
left Jerusalem with David seems to show that a reaction in
favour of Saul's house was not deemed impossible even then.
Ziba, at any rate, charged his master with cherishing secret
hopes of the overthrow of David, and although Mephibosheth
excused his tardiness by the fact that he was lame, it has been
said that the excuse was as lame as he who offered it.1
Solomon's later policy towards Joab and Shimei and Abiathar
was probably influenced by all that he had seen and heard,
when, as a boy, he stood with his father under the olive-tree
beside the Ark, and accompanied his mother Bathsheba on that
long day of flight and weeping up the slopes of Olivet and
down the deep valley into the wilderness of Jordan.
He must also have learnt that the kingdom was still far from
consolidated. The furious quarrel between the men of Judah
and the men of Israel, and the revolt of Sheba the Benjamite
from the mountains of Ephraim, showed that tribal jealousies
could at any moment be fanned into a flame. The tribe of
Ephraim could not acquiesce in the loss of its old pre-eminence;
the men of Benjamin could not readily forget that the first
monarch of Israel had been one of themselves.
Another great calamity broke the returning peace of David's
later years. It was the numbering of the people and the pesti-
lence, which was regarded by the national conscience as the
punishment for this offence.
1 It must however be admitted that later Jewish sentiment condemned
the act as hasty and unfair. "In the hour when David said, 'Thou and
Ziba divide the land,' a Bath Kol (voice from heaven) came forth and said
to him, 'Rehoboam and Jeroboam shall divide the kingdom'" (Talmud,
Shabbath, 56. 2, quoted by Dr. Edersheim, "Bible History," v. 31).
22 SOLOMON.
This passage of David's history is surrounded by obscurities,
for we are not told his exact motive.
There could have been nothing sinful in the mere wish to
ascertain the numbers of the population, and the statistics
of its various elements. The growth and organization of the
kingdom rendered such a step desirable. Possibly, also, David
was in dread of an Egyptian encroachment on his southern ter-
ritories, and may have felt it necessary to be prepared for war.1
Solomon in his reign carried out the census more completely, and
no pestilence followed, and no blame is attached to him. Moses
had thrice been ordered to take a census of the Israelites in the
wilderness, partly in order to ascertain the number of the fight-
ing men.2 But in Exod. xxx. 12 we find a command never to
number the people without requiring of every man half a shekel
as atonement-money, which was to be for every man "a ransom
for his soul unto the Lord," for the express reason "that there
may be no plague among them when thou numberest them."
David exacted no atonement-money, and may not even have
been aware of this law. It is clear, however, that the census—
or its unavowed motives—was repugnant to the general feeling.
Joab and his officers ventured to dissuade the king from his
purpose, but they counselled in vain. The mass of the people
shared Joab's sentiments, because they disliked so prominent
an assertion of regal power. They looked on the census as an
ill-omened expedient of worldly policy, and its results were not
even entered in the official chronicles.3 The historians ascribe
the impulse to "the anger of the Lord," and to "a Satan," and
Joab did the work both tardily and imperfectly.4 At the end of
nine months and twenty days he informed David that the
effective military force of Israel numbered 800,000 men, and of
Judah, 500,000.5 The tribe of Levi was omitted from the census
1 The little raid of the Egyptians on Gezer (i Kings ix. 16) is not defi-
nitely dated, and may have occurred before David's death. It was only
Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter which robbed it of its threat-
ening character, for Gezer was a Canaanite city on the lower border of
Ephraim. The site of Gezer has very recently been identified at Abu
Shusheh, also called Tell-el-Gezer, between Ramleh and Jerusalem (L.
Oliphant, "Haifa," p. 253).
2 Exod. xxxviii. 26; Numb. i. 2, 3, xxvi. 1-4,
3 I Sam. xxiv. 1; I Chron. xxi, 1. 4 I Chron. xxi. 5, 6; xxvii. 24.
5 In I Chron. xxi. 5 we have the astounding, total numbers. of 1,100,000
for Israel, and 470,000 fighting men for Judah.
THE YOUTH OF SOLOMON. 23
as a matter of course, in accordance with the ancient precedent,1
but the Chronicler says that Joab also purposely omitted to
number the tribe of Benjamin, because "the king's word was
abominable to him,"2 and that he did not include those who
were under twenty years of age.3 He seems to have thought
that by thus frustrating David's purpose he might avert the
calamitous retribution which was expected by the religious
sense of the nation. Of that feeling Gad became the spokes-
man, and David, having already experienced three years'
famine,4 and three months' flight from his enemies, has now to
suffer the misery of a three days' pestilence.5 His conscience,
though often tardy in its action, was never seared, and he
admitted that he had sinned a grievous sin, for which he im-
plored forgiveness. The "death" raged the appointed time,
and had slain 77,000 victims, when David saw the vision of the
Destroying Angel, with his sword outstretched over Jerusalem,
standing by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.6
The king's prayer of agonized remorse was heard, and the
plague was stayed. The same day the seer came to David,
and bad him to rear an altar on the threshing-floor and offer
burnt-offerings. From that time David used to sacrifice on the
spot hallowed by such tremendous associations. It became
the site of the future altar of burnt-offering in the Temple of
Solomon,7 and its consecration added another impulse to the
growing desire to centralize in the capital the religious worship
of the entire nation.
1 Numb. i, 47-49.
2 I Chron. xxi. 6. Comp. Josephus, "Antiq." vii. 13, § 1.
3 The reason given, "because the Lord had said he would increase Israel
like to the stars of the heavens," shows how many current feelings were
offended by David's census. There is still throughout the East a super-
stitious prejudice against all numberings, as being calculated to provoke
a jealous Nemesis (Niebuhr, "Descr, de l'Arabie," p. 14).
4 I Chron. xxi. 12.
5 But according to one explanation of 2 Sam. xxiv. 15 the pestilence was
shortened and only lasted from morning till noon (LXX., Peshito), or
"till the time of the evening sacrifice."
6 2 Sam. xxiv. 23. The true rendering is, "All this did Araunah the
king give unto the king"—in which case we must suppose that Araunah
belonged to the old royal race of Jebus; or, as in the Revised Version,
"All this, O king, doth Araunah give unto the king."
7 2 Chron. iii.1.
CHAPTER III.
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON.
Feebleness of David's age—Abishag of Shunem —Conspiracy of Adonijah
—His adherents — His attempted coronation feast Adherents of
Solomon Counter efforts of Nathan and Bathsheba Interviews
of David with Bathsheba and Nathan—David rouses himself, and
orders Solomon to be anointed and crowned—Popular enthusiasm—
Collapse of Adonijah's plot—Terror of his guests—He is magnani-
mously pardoned—General amnesty—David's last song, and death—
His dying directions to Solomon—His burial.
The infirmities of old age came rapidly on one whose days
from his youth upwards had been passed in hardships, battles,
and anxious labours. At the age of thirty he had been chosen
king in Hebron, and he had reigned there for seven and a half
years. He had reigned thirty-three years in Jerusalem. He
was not, therefore, much more than seventy,1 and in modern
times many men at that age are full of vigour. But the Jews
at this period rarely outlived the threescore years and ten of
man's allotted time. Indeed, Solomon and Manasseh were the
only kings of Judah who survived the age of sixty; and in
Solomon's case, it is not even certain that he reached that age.
David was already bedridden, and the vital force was so
much exhausted that he could get no warmth from the clothes
heaped upon him. His attendants knew no better plan for him
than to provide a nurse, fair and young, who might tend and
cherish him.2 Their choice fell upon the beautiful Abishag of
1 Josephus, "Antiq." vii. i5, § 2.
2 Josephus ("Antiq." vii. 14, § 3) says that this was the advice of his phy-
ians. It is recommended by Galen ("Method, Medic." viii. 7), and this
24
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. 25
Shunem, a little town of Issachar on the southern slopes of
little Hermon.1 It is singular that, even for this subordinate and
humble purpose, they thought it necessary to search out the
loveliest maiden whom they could find in all the coasts of
Israel.
Another of David's vain, ambitious, unruly sons determined
to seize the opportunity for usurpation which was opened to
him by his father's increasing feebleness. Now that Amnon
and Absalom were dead, Adonijah, the eldest surviving prince,
entered into a conspiracy to forestall his father's death and to
seize the kingdom. In personal gifts, as in recklessness of
character, he resembled his two elder brothers, and he was
undeterred by the warning of their fate. Like Absalom, beauti-
ful and bad, he had been born while David was king at Hebron;
but as the name of his mother—Haggith—means "a dancer,"
we may conjecture that she was a person of inferior rank to
Maacah of Geshur, and Ahinoam of Jezreel. But Adonijah,
as well as his elder brothers, had been puffed up by the admi-
ration and undue leniency of his father, who "had not displeased
him at any time by saying, Why hast thou done so?" His
first step was to imitate Absalom by providing himself with
chariots, horsemen, and fifty runners. His next step was to
secure two adherents who stood in the highest offices of Church
and State—Joab, the commander of the army, and Abiathar,
the high priest. Strange to say, he succeeded in winning over
both these great officials to his side. Either they were unaware
of the choice of Solomon to be David's successor, or they pre-
ferred the beauty and strength of a young man of thirty-five—
who might now claim the rights of primogeniture—to that of
one who had scarcely emerged from the seclusion of the harem
and was little more than a boy. They might also have thought
that their adhesion to the plot would secure its triumph, seeing
the decrepitude into which David had now sunk. Jealousy
may also have had its part in their motives. Joab could hardly
fail to observe that Benaiah had superseded him in the con-
method of giving warmth was adopted till long after the Middle Ages.
Reinhard, "Bibelkrankh. d. A. Test.," p. 171, mentions that a similar
plan was recommended to Frederic Barbarossa.
1 It is three and a half miles north of Jezreel. The Syriac and Arabic
versions read "Sulamite" here, as in Cant. vi. 13, "Oh Shulamite." On
the identity of the two names Gesenius and Fürst are agreed.
26 SOLOMON.
fidence of the king, and Abiathar, the sole survivor of a house-
hold slain for David's sake, the faithful companion of David's
wanderings and of his reign at Hebron,1 could hardly have
looked with complacency on the growing influence of Zadok.
Or had Adonijah promised both of them an amnesty for past
crimes and past slackness as the price of their adhesion? Both
of them, it must be remembered, but especially Joab, had good
reason to dread the beginning of a new reign, unless the new
king were hound to them by the closest obligations.
Strengthened by the support of two such followers, Adonijah
threw off the mask, and—once more in imitation of Absalom's
methods—invited all the princes except Solomon, and "all the
men of Judah, the king's servants,"2 to a great banquet. He
evidently reckoned on the tribal jealousy which made Absalom
fix upon Hebron as the headquarters of his revolt. The actual
spot which Adonijah selected for his coronation-sacrifice was
"the stone of Zoheleth, which is by En-rogel." Nothing is
known about this "stone of the serpent," one of the many
Ebens with which Palestine abounds, and which probably
possessed a sacred character. A spring of water would be
necessary for the occasion, but we only know that En-rogel,
"the fullers' fountain," lay at the south-east, on the boundary
line between Judah and Benjamin,3 and therefore in the close
vicinity of Jerusalem.4 It may perhaps be identified with the
Fountain of the Virgin, opposite the village of Siloam.5
But Adonijah, in his contempt for the failing powers of his
father, had not taken sufficient account of the weight of influ-
ence opposed to his pretensions. Zadok, the younger and
more popular priest, and descendant of the older line of Aaron's
family, was on the side of Solomon,6 and was supported by
1 2 Sam. ii, 1-3.
2 I Kings i. 9. In verse 25 we have instead, "all the captains of the
host." Abishai was probably dead.
3 Josh, xv, 7; xviii. 16.
4 It was a well-known spot (Josh. xv. 7; xviii. 16). In Absalom's re-
bellion the two young priests Ahimaaz and Jonathan had waited there for
news from the city (2 Sam. xvii. 17). Regel means "a foot," and clothes
were stamped with the feet.
5 Josephus, "Antig." vii. 11, says that it was "in the royal garden,"
which is possible enough.
6 From I Chron. xvi. 39 we should conjecture that Zadok was in per-
manent charge of the old Tabernacle "in the high place at Gibeon; "but
the point is uncertain.
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. 27
Nathan, the venerable prophet. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada
a man of great personal prowess and distinction, could com-
mand the allegiance of the Gibborim, and this trained bodyguard
of 600 warriors was always ready for action. And if Adonijah
had won over the younger princes of David's family to favour
his pretensions, two older and weightier princes—Shimei and
Rei—perhaps the sole and now aged survivors of David's goodly
band of brothers, were faithful to Solomon.1
Nathan, shaking off the lethargy of ease and years, saw that
not a moment must be lost. Solomon had been from his birth
his special ward, and lie had always marked him out as the
destined heir of David's throne, and the fulfiller of designs for
which David was unfitted by his past history. But it is difficult
to get access to an Eastern king at any time, and especially
when he is bedridden. Nathan could find no other way of
letting David know the imminence of the crisis than by obtain-
ing an interview with Bathsheba, and relying on her ascendency
over the mind of her husband. He told her that at that moment
the son of Haggith was practically king, while David knew
nothing of it; and that Adonijah's success meant the certain
death of herself and of Solomon.2 He instructed her at once
to visit the king's bedchamber, and to remind him of his oath
to her that Solomon should reign. He promised to be close at
hand, and to confirm the news that Adonijah had been pro-
claimed in defiance of the king's wishes. Perhaps he feared
that, in the decay of his powers and the apathy of age, David
might delay all effective action till it was too late, unless his old
feelings and affections were roused by Bathsheba.
Bathsheba went to the aged hero who was alone with Abishag.3
1 Ewald conjectures that this Shimei was David's brother Shimeah
("Gesch. Isr." iii. 266). There is a Shimei, a high officer of Solomon in
Kings iv. i8, and he had a brother Shimeah (I Chron. iii. 5). Rei has
been identified by Jerome ("Qu. Hebr." in I Kings i. 8) with Ira the Jairite,
David's "priest" (2 Sam. xx. 26); but Ewald identifies him with Raddai
(I Chron. ii. 14), the fifth son of Jesse. In Hebrew, however, the inter-
change of Raddai and Rei (רֵעִי) is without parallel, and that of Rei (רעי)
and Ira (עירא) is easy.
2 1 Kings i. 12. The impression left by the narrative is, that Solomon
was still too young to take vigorous steps on his own behalf.
3 Had Abishag been anything more than a nurse, the most stringent
laws of Eastern etiquette would have rendered the entrance of Bathsheba
impossible.
28 SOLOMON.
she entered with a deep how and prostration,1 which showed
David that she had something serious to tell. The evident
trepidation and solemnity with which both Bathsheba and
Nathan approach the old and broken king contrasts with
the free and bold intercourse of earlier days. It shows
that David; as his power grew, became more and more an un-
approachable Eastern sovereign.2 In answer to his brief ques-
tion Bathsheba reminded him of his oath that Solomon should
sit on his throne, narrated to him the details of Adonijah's
conspiracy, and told him that the eyes of the nation were upon
him to exercise his acknowledged privilege of appointing his
successor.3 If the throne were suffered thus to go by de-
fault, she indicated that her own life and that of Solomon—
who alone of the princes had not been invited to Adonijah's
feast—would speedily be sacrificed.4
While she was yet speaking the Prophet was announced, as
had been concerted between them. He, too, prostrated himself
as though he felt a certain dread in delivering his message.
"Had David really sanctioned," he asked, "the accession of
Adonijah? At that moment a coronation feast was being
held, and the prince's followers were shouting, 'God save king
Adonijah.' Was this in accordance with David wish? had he
ordered it to be concealed from Nathan, and Zadok, and
Benaiah, and Solomon, who had been omitted from the number
of invited guests?"
Then Bathsheba—who in accordance with Eastern propriety
1 1 Kings i. 31, "Then Bathsheba bowed with her face to the earth,
and did reverence." The word (sometimes rendered worship, as in Ps.
lxv. 11; I Chron. xxix. 20) was applied to these Eastern acts of servile
homage (2 Sam. ix. 6; Esth. iii, 2-5), which had now found their way into
David's Court.
2 How widely different is the access to the palace of Ishbosheth, where
the murderers had only to pass one woman who had fallen asleep in
cleaning wheat—2 Sam. iv. 6 (Hebr).
3 So the Persian kings nominated their successors (Herodotus, vii. 2).
4 This was no extravagant supposition. Cleopatra and her son Caranus
were put to death by Alexander (Pausan. viii. 7, § 5); Roxana, and her son
Alexander, by Cassander (Justin. xv. 2). The murder of all "the seed
royal "was quite a common incident in Eastern despotism (2 Kings xi. 1).
See "Speaker's Commentary," ad loc. Gratz explains " I and my son
shall be counted sinners " (I Kings i, 21), to mean that David's marriage
with Bathsheba "als eine schandbare gebrandmarkt werden würde."
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. 29
had left the chamber while Nathan was speaking—was recalled.
The king—swearing by his most solemn form of appealed, by
"the Lord that had redeemed his soul out of all distress"1—
renewed the oath which he had sworn at sonic previous period,
and, with a flash of all his old energy, took the decisive step of
having Solomon anointed and enthroned even in his own life-
time. With another solemn prostration Bathsheba retired, and
Zadok, Nathan, and Benaiah were summoned to the king's
chamber. He ordered them to mount his young son upon his
own royal mule which none but the king might ride,2 and to
conduct him in procession to Gihon, a place which, like
En-rogel, had a supply of water, and was not far from the
city.3 There Zadok was to anoint him with the consecrated oil
taken from David's tabernacle on Mount Zion. This was a
step of solemn-import.4 It had not been done in the case of
Adonijah, perhaps because the sacred oil was in the charge of
Zadok;5 or perhaps, again, because Adonijah was regarded
as the legitimate successor. Then they were to blow the
trumpets,6 and shout "God save king Solomon."
The Levite Benaiah—half-priest, half-soldier—replied to the
king's commands with an emphatic "Amen," and a prayer that
1 2 Sam. iv. 6; comp. Ps. xix. 14. "O Lord, my strength, and my
Redeemer."
2 Comp. Gen. xli. 43; 2 Kings x. 16; Esth. vi. 8. This circumstance
would have a great effect on the popular imagination. In Persia it was
death to pit, even by accident, in the king's seat (Herodotus, vii. 16;
Q. Curt, viii. 4, 17).
3 See 2 Chron. xxxii. 20 ; xxxiii. 14. It was probably at the east of
Jerusalem, and afterwards became a part of the city (2 Chron. xxxii. 20;
xxxiii. 14). The Targ. of Jonathan, and the Syriac and Arabic Versions in
1 Kings i., identify it with Siloam. According to the Talmud, kings ought
always to be anointed near a fountain—Keritoth, 5 (Otho, "Lexic.
Rabbin." s.v. Rex).
4 Judg. ix. 8; I Sam. x. i, xvi. 13; 1 Kings xix. 16; 2 King 3:6;
2 Chron, xxiii. 11. It has been inferred from these passages (the anointing
of Saul, David, Jehu, and Joash) that the anointing was only necessary in
cases of a disputed succession.
5 1 Kings i. 39, "Zadok the priest took a (rather the) horn of oil out of
the tabernacle" (lit. out of the tent). The question arises, out of which
tabernacle? He could hardly have had time to go to Gibeon and back, so
that probably David's tabernacle on Mount Zion is meant.
6 Comp. the tumultuous consecration of Jehu (2 Kings ix. 13).
30 SOLOMON.
God might ratify his choice,1 and make the throne of Solomon
even greater than the throne of his father, Then the impos-
ing procession set forth, with its bodyguard of Cherethites and
Pelethites, and it was seen at a glance that nothing short of a
civil war could shake the crown of the youth who had on his
side the Prophet, the Priest of the house of Eleazer, and the
Captain of the bodyguard, and who had thus been anointed
and proclaimed by the king's direct command. The people
were also on his side. The boisterous feast of Adonijah awoke
no popular enthusiasm; but it was kindled so vehemently on
behalf of Solomon, that the earth rang again with the music of
pipes and dances.2 The coup d'etat of Bathsheba and Nathan
had been managed from first to last with consummate skill, and
was crowned with complete success.
Adonijah's feast had ended, and the revolt had still to be
carried out, when the practised ear of Joab caught the sound of
the trumpet from Gihon, and of the tumultuous rejoicing in the
city.3 His heart misgave him, and, as he spoke, the company
caught sight of their fellow-conspirator Jonathan, the son of
Abiathar, who came running towards them.4 Adonijah affected
to regard his approach as a good omen,5 but Jonathan only
brought the fatal tidings, that while they had been feasting the
friends of Solomon had been acting; that he had been solemnly
anointed at Gihon, and was at that moment sitting on the throne
of the kingdom amid the rapturous congratulations of his Court.
He then added the most chilling proof that Adonijah's attempt
had failed — it was that the aged king had given his public
sanction to the coronation of Solomon. Apparently he had
been brought forth from his sick-chamber, and, in sign of
prayerful approval of his servant's blessing, "bowed himself
1 Jer. xxviii. 6, "The prophet Jeremiah said, Amen: the Lord do so."
2 Josephus, "Antiq." vii. 14, 5; 1 Kings i. 40. In this verse, by a slight
variation of reading, the Septuagint has "danced with dances" for "piped
with pipes." "The earth rent with the sound " (LXX., ερράγη), should
probably be "the earth rang." (Vulg., insonu. Josephus, ως περιη-
χεῖσθαι τὴν γῆν.
3 This shows that both En-rogel and Gihon were near the city, and
within hearing distance of each other.
4 He, too, had joined Adonijah, though he had acted as a watchman and
spy against Absalom (2 Sam. xv. 27; xvii. 17).
5 Perhaps this was an auspicious formula (2 Sam. xviii. 27).
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. 31
upon the bed,"1 and blessed the God of Israel who had thus
enabled him before he died to see one of his sons sitting upon
his throne.2
At these tidings the inflated bubble of Adonijah's crude and
ill-starred conspiracy immediately burst. The guests rose and
scattered themselves in every direction. Adonijah himself,
deserted by every one of his adherents, fled in terror to the
altar—perhaps the one which David had erected on the thresh-
ing-floor of Araunah—and grasped hold of the horns of the
altar.3 His cry for pity was brought to the young king. "Be-
hold," they said, "Adonijah feareth king Solomon: for, lo, he
hath caught hold of the horns of the altar, saying, Let king
Solomon sware unto me to-day that he will not slay his servant
with the sword."
Solomon behaved with calm magnanimity. The devotion of
the people had shown that he had nothing to fear from
Adonijah's rivalry. Had Adonijah been successful he would
certainly have put Solomon, if not Bathsheba also, to death.
So much was known from the character of the man. But
Solomon was unwilling to add another pang and another tragedy
to those which had already rent the heart of his father. He gave
his word, which he thought sufficient without the addition of
an oath, that so long as Adonijah's conduct was trustworthy,
not a hair of his head should fall to the ground.4 Adonijah was
led down the altar steps and taken into Solomon's presence.
He bowed himself before his younger brother, who, without
deigning to reproach him, only addressed to him the laconic
order, "Go to thine house." He was not even imprisoned or
deprived of his rank; but he was told plainly that a second
offence would not be overlooked.
The other conspirators were for the present pardoned. The
rebellion, to which they had lent their influence, was treated as
folly which might be disdainfully amnestied in the joy of a new
1 1 Kings i. 47; comp. Gen. xlvii. 31.
2 In the solemn assembly described in I Chron. xxviii., when David gave
to Solomon his charge about building the temple, we are told that "the
king stood up upon his feet."
3 See 2 Sam. vi. 17, 18; Exod. xxvii. 2, xxix. 12, xxx. 10. Sprinkled
with the blood of, the sacrifices they were "symbols of blessing and salva-
tion," by grasping which the offender put himself under God's protection
(Bähr, "Symbolik," i. 47).
4 A proverbial expression (1 Sam. xiv. 45; 2 Sam, xiv. xx).
32 SOLOMON.
accession, unless they should be guilty of some fresh trans-
gression.1
And now David's death drew near. He had been on the
throne for forty years and six months.2 His last poem has been
preserved to us. In it he calls himself "the man who was
raised on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet
Psalmist of Israel." He alludes to his prophetic gift as coming
from the Spirit of God. The God and the Rock of Israel had
taught him, "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in
the fear of God." Such a righteous ruler is as the cloudless
light of the morning sun, and the tender grass which springs up
and gleams in the sunshine after rain. He expresses the con-
viction that God had granted him an everlasting covenant, and
would cause all his salvation and all his desire to grow.3 Worth-
lessness, indeed, would still continue, and required no gentle
handling. It must be beaten down as with iron and the staff of
a spear, and finally burnt with fire.
But besides this last legacy of song David left some specific
directions to his youthful, inexperienced son. He bids him to
be courageous, and show himself a man;4 and he assures him
that the one secret of his future prosperity depends on his
obedience to the will of God as written in the law of Moses.
He seems to have addressed him both in a private exhorta-
tion, in which he gave him full directions about building the
"house of the Lord,"5 and also at a very solemn public gather-
1 Of these events the Books of Chronicles give no hint. They say only
(I Chron. xxiii. 1): "So when David was old and full of days, he made
Solomon his son king over Israel." Then, after a long account of David's
preparations, and of his organization of the worship, they pass to a solemn
assembly in which David proclaims Solomon as his successor (xxviii.), and
has him anointed, "the second time" by Zadok, to be "ruler" (xxix. 22);
after which the narrative passes on to David's death, and Solomon's offer-
ing; at Gibeon (2 Chron. i.).
2 2 Sam. v. 5; I Chron. iii. 4,
3 The true rendering seems to be-
" For is not my house so with God?
Yet He bath made, with me an everlasting covenant,
Ordered in all things and sure;
For all my salvation and all my desire
Will He not make it to grow?" —2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7.
4 Comp. Deut. xxxi. 7; Josh. i. 6, 7, &c.
5 I Chron. xxii.
THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. 33
ing,1 in which he entrusted him to the charge of the whole con-
gregation, and ended his address with a very noble prayer and
blessing, and with enormous holocausts.
To our modern notions it would have seemed better had he
confined his directions to matters of moral duty and public
service; but again and again in reading the life of David we
are reminded of the differing moral standards of different ages
and countries, and of the imperfect views prevalent in those
times of comparative ignorance, "which God winked at."
David had suffered so terribly at the hands of Joab and Shimei
in the frightful clays which succeeded Absalom's rebellion that
he felt as if he had neglected the demands of justice by per-
mitting them to live. Trained to regard as sacred the duties
of "the avenger of blood," his conscience was uneasy at the
thought that he had been too remiss and too impotent to see
those duties fulfilled. He recalled Joab's two murders of Abner
and of Amasa when he had "shed the blood of war in peace,
and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was about his
loins, and in his shoes that were on his feet;"2 and he enjoined
Solomon not to let his hoar head go down to the grave in peace.3
He gave the same injunction respecting Shimei, the only dan-
1 1 Chron. xxii.-xxix. At the close of this scene the Chronicler says
(ver. 20) that the whole congregation "worshipped the Lord and the king."
The expression significantly shows both the exaltation of the monarch and
the sacred character with which he had been invested.
2 See 2 Sam. iii. 39; xix. 5-7; xx. 10. David does not venture to remind
Solomon of Joab's murder of Absalom, which perhaps rankled most deeply
in his heart, but to which Solomon himself owed his throne. Nor does he
mention Adonijah's rebellion. But Joab had evidently been a lifelong thorn
in David's side; he had found "this son of Zeruiah" too hard for him
(2 Sam. iii. 39).
3 Joab was probably not much younger than David, though he was his
nephew. Zeruiah, the mother of the three heroes, Joab, Abishai, and
Asaliel, was indeed a "sister of the sons of the Jesse" (1 Chron. ii. 16),
but perhaps herself a daughter not of Jesse, but of Nahash, a former hus-
band of Jesse's wife. Abigail, at any rate, mother of Amasa and sister of
Zeruiah (2 Sam. xvii. 25), is called the "daughter of Nahash." The Rabbis
identify Jesse and Nahash; but if, as Dean Stanley conjectured, Nahash
was the king of Amnion, we can account for the kindness existing between
Nahash and David, and the cruel character of Nahash was reflected in his
grandsons. Further, if Joab was thus a grandson of the king of Ammon
as well as a nephew of David, we can see a fresh reason for the position he
assumed.
34 SOLOMON.
gerous representative of the cause of Saul. On the other hand,
he enjoined kindness to Chimham and the other sons of Bar-
zillai the Gileadite, who had shown him such conspicuous loyalty
at the most trying moment of his life.1
So David died, and was buried in the city which he had
founded, and his sepulchre was pointed out down to the remotest
days of Jewish history.2
1 2 Sam. xix. 31
2 Acts ii. 29; comp. Neh. iii. 16; Ezek. xliii. 7-9. There were no graves
in Jerusalem but those of the kings and (tradition says) of the Prophetess
Huldah. Legend spoke of treasures concealed in David's tomb (Josephus,
"Antiq." vii. 13, § 3).
CHAPTER IV.
THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON.
Development of Jewish royalty—The nation enters upon its manhood
—The Gibborim—The army—The nation realizes its unique position
—Possession of a strong and beautiful capital—Passionate fondness
for Jerusalem—Commencing centralization of worship—The Ark at
Jerusalem—"Jehovah's people "—Outburst of poetry—Dawn of prose
literature—Elements of danger—Limits of the kingdom—Lines of
possible progress—Significance of the records of Solomon.
"THEN sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father, and
his kingdom was established greatly."1 It was never quite
forgotten by the national consciousness that the throne of the
King of Judah and Israel was "the throne of the Lord."
The time of his full accession to the throne offers us the
opportunity of judging the nature and resources of the kingdom
which he was thus called upon to rule.
That kingdom had been amazingly developed since the rude
and simple days of King Saul, though we can as little regard it
"as one of the great Oriental Empires on a par with Chaldaea
1 According to Tarikh Montekheb, and most of the Eastern historians,
Solomon was not twelve years old when he came to the throne. (D'Her-
belot, " Bibl. Orient.," s.v. Soloman Ben Daoud.) This tradition is also
adopted by Eupolemus in the fragment preserved by Eusebius. Josephus
says he was fourteen ("Antiq." viii. 7, § 8). Most modern writers suppose
that he was about twenty; and he must certainly have been more than
twelve or fourteen, if he had a son about the commencement of his reign.
He reigned forty years, and Rehoboam at his accession was forty-one
(1 Kings xi. 42; xiv. 21). If, indeed, we could assume that forty-one is
a clerical error for twenty-one in I Kings xiv. 21, many difficulties would
be removed. Comp. 2 Chron. xiii. 7.
35
36 SOLOMON.
and Assyria," as we can place David on a level with such great
world-potentates as Rameses and Cyrus.1
In Saul's days Israel and Judah were little more than a loose
federation of tribes, each more or less independent of the
others, and all of them, time after time, an easy prey to the
surrounding nations. The immense advance made by David
may be estimated by the fact that his household troops and
bodyguard alone consisted of six hundred trained and mighty
warriors,2 whereas in the wars against the Philistines, before his
conquest of Goliath, Saul and Jonathan his son had been the
only two well-armed men in the host of Israel.3 The nation
passed from boyhood to full manhood in the days of David as
thoroughly and as rapidly as Greece did in the days of Miltiades
and Lysander.
The Gibborim ("heroes," or bravi) were to David what the
Prætorian cohort was to the Roman emperors, or the Varangian
Guard to the Byzantine emperors, or the Janissaries to the
Sultans, or the Swiss Guards to the French kings.
They were soldiers by profession, dependent on the king for
their houses and their pay, and subservient to him with an
allegiance which was not without danger to the popular liberty.
To belong to this body was itself a distinction, and the records
of deeds of prowess achieved by the leading officers were like
the chronicles of chivalry, and fired the imagination of younger
aspirants for warlike fame. Besides them, or mingled up with
them and often under the same command, were the Cherethites,
Pelethites, and Gittites, in all probability a band of foreign mer-
cenaries, who served as a body of lictors to execute the king's
commands.
David hardly possessed a "standing army" (as we should
understand the term) in addition to these private troops; but,
if we can rely upon the accuracy of the numbers, there were
1,300,000 men in Israel and Judah capable of bearing arms.4
1 These are the opinions of Canon Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies,"
vol. ii. p. 333, quoted approvingly by Grätz, i. 299.
2 The nucleus of these had been with him in his wanderings (2 Sam.
xxiii.8-13; I Sam. xxv. 13).
3 Even in a time of war Saul had only had 3,000 men with him (1 Sam.
xiii.2).
4 A sort of standing army had been one of the evils of a monarchy
which Samuel had foretold (I Sam. viii. xi, 12).
THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON. 37
Besides the levies which could be called out at any time, David
seems to have maintained in his service a body of 288,000 men,
who served in monthly relays of 24,000 under the command
apparently of leading Gibborim.1 But much obscurity hangs
over this statement, for this body of troops took no discernible
part either in Absalom's or Adonijah's rebellion. They may,
however, have been a sort of drilled militia serving in garrison
towns. Cavalry was never an effective branch of the service, as
it had been always discouraged by the religious teachers of the
nation. David houghed the horses which he took in war, for
the nature of the country made them, in any case, all but use-
less. The offensive arms used by the soldiers were chiefly
spears and bows; for defence they were supplied with shields,
and probably with nothing else, though the Qurân credits David
with the invention of chain armour.2
But besides this strong military organization David left to his
people the tradition of victory. When the troops of Israel
went to battle they were very far from being the timid warriors
of old days whom a single champion could terrify. They had
grown into a force which had a prestige to maintain, and which
struck terror into the enemy by its very name and by the fame
of its leaders.
The whole nation was further elevated by the consciousness
of its position. A people which has produced so gifted a son as
David rises at once to a higher rank. A vista of infinite possi-
bilities opens before it. David owed none of his advantages to
the accident of birth. Warrior and Poet and King and Priest
and Prophet as he was, he had come to the front by the blessing
of God upon his own natural genius. Many a bright-eyed
youth on the hills of Judah as he contemplated that brilliant
career of a sovereign taken from the sheepfolds may have felt in
his heart the stirrings of high and honourable ambition.
The sense of nationality was enhanced by the possession for
the first time of an undisputed capital. No city in the land
could thenceforth rival Jerusalem, and David by conquering it
from the Jebusites rendered a service of which the effects
1 1 Chron. xxvii. 1-15. Afterwards the troops were divided by their
different arms (2 Chron. xiv. 8).
2 Sura xxi. 80, quoted by Ewald, iii, 146. Goliath, however, had
squamous armour (qasqassîm, I Sam. xvii, 5), and Ahab's "harness''
(2 Chron. xviii. 33) was a sort of coat of mail, or corslet (shiryôn).
38 SOLOMON.
lasted for many centuries. He furnished the Hebrews with a
citadel beautiful, central, and all but impregnable from its natural
advantages. Jerusalem soon attracted to itself the passionate
affection which has magnetized the imagination of Jews for so
many centuries. Beautiful in situation, the joy of the whole
earth, God was well known in her palaces for a sure refuge. In
exile their poets sang—
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning;
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
If I remember thee not;
If I prefer not Jerusalem
Above my chief joy"1 (Ps. cxxxvii. 5-8).
And at the most solemn moment in the history of the Lord
Himself, His only recorded outburst of weeping was when He
cried to Jerusalem, "If thou hadst known, even thou at least
in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace! but now
they are hid from thine eyes."
But besides this, David, with deep insight, was determined
that Zion, "the City of David," should henceforth be the centre
not only of the national life, but also of all the deepest religious
associations of the people. This consecration of a new city
into a shrine was by no means an easy task. Palestine abounded
in high places and sanctuaries of all kinds, many of which, like
Hebron, had been venerated from time immemorial. Moreover,
the old Tabernacle of the Wanderings still stood at Gibeon, and
David did not venture to remove it. The Ark, however, was
not at that high place. After its capture by the Philistines, it
had come to be regarded with such intense terror, that the men
of Bethshemesh, only desirous of getting rid of it, sent to the
people of Kirjath-jearim to come and fetch it; and they had
placed it on a hill under the charge of Eleazar the son of
Abinadab. David's first attempt to carry it thence to Jerusalem
had been cut short by the tragic death of Uzzah, and it had been
left at the house of Obed-Edom in Gath-Rimmon. But hearing
that it had brought to Obed-Edom a great increase of prosperity,
David had brought it to Mount Zion with a joyous procession of
1 Compare Psalms xlviii. 12, 13; cxvii. 18, 19; cxxii.; cxxv. 2.
2 Luke xix. 42--ἔκλασυσεν, "He wept aloud." In the case of Lazarus
He only εδάκρυσεν, "shed silent tears."
THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON. 39
Levites, singers, elders, and soldiers, amid a scene which made
a deep impression on the national imagination. Thenceforth it
never left Jerusalem till it was either destroyed in the invasion
of Nebuchadnezzar, or carried away to Babylon, or, according
to the Jewish tradition, safely hidden by Jeremiah.1 For a short
time it made Jerusalem as sacred as Gibeon, until, in the reign of
Solomon, the old Tabernacle was removed from Gibeon alto-
gether, and stowed away in one of the chambers of the Temple.
Solomon did but carry out the far-seeing plan of his father,
which caused the capital of the nation to be henceforth regarded
also as the City of Jehovah, and the "Kibleh" or sacred direction
of the nation's worship, which it continued to be, even when they
were carried into distant lands.2
Of David's great preparations for the building of the Temple,
and of the elaborate religious reform with which it was con-
nected, we shall speak hereafter; but the Temple was only the
visible sign of the impress which he stamped upon his people,
and which was his most memorable service. It was the sole
effectual mode of counteracting their tendency to plunge into a
career of worldly commerce and conquest, and to become ob-
livious of the loftier mission to which they were called. With
the distinctness of their nationality was brought home to them
the lofty consciousness that they were "Jehovah's people." The
monarchy had not been inaugurated until they had learnt the
lessons of the long period of the Judges, which taught them, by
reiterated crises of defeat and servitude, that they could only
be strong in God's protection, and that this protection depended
on their own faithfulness. David immortalized his own yearn-
ings and convictions in imperishable song, and thus they passed
into the common thoughts of the nation. The supreme gifts
with which God had endowed him were given him for the pur-
pose of fixing the faith of Israel, and pointing to the Messianic
hope which was to be their main support during ages of affliction.
It was granted to him to pour forth the songs which were the
most precious part of their worship. The poetic spirit thus
awakened did not wholly desert them for more than five hun-
dred years, and it echoed to the last the sacred aspirations by
which it had been inspired in the breast of the hero-king.
This outburst of poetry was naturally accompanied by a wider
1 2 Macc. ii. 1-8. 2 Dan vi. 10.
40 SOLOMON.
development of prose literature. We henceforth hear of a
Recorder or Historiographer as one of the regular officials in
the Court of the kings of Judah. For the first time the
"Chronicles" or State papers began to be carefully preserved.1
No less than three great prophets—Samuel, Gad, and Nathan—
became biographers of parts of his life and reign,2 and it formed
an epoch sufficiently important for long subsequent notice by
heathen historians like Nicolaus of Damascus and Eupolemus.3
But it would be wrong to overlook the fact that the legacy
left by David to his son was not one of unmixed good. In the
senile neglect of kingly duties which seems to have marked his
later years, and which forfeited in great measure the old affec-
tion of his people, we mark the deteriorating influence of more
pompous surroundings, a deeper seclusion, a more arbitrary
government. All his Temple preparations were less inspiring
and less significant than one of his earlier outbursts of spiritual
emotion. In a larger harem, a more punctilious etiquette, a
more materialized conception of religion, we find traces of the
lowered ideal of the kingliness and worship which had shone forth
in days when he was as yet unweakened by his great sin, and its
terrible retribution. The grandeur of Solomon's inheritance was
impaired by the personal deterioration of its glorious founder.
We may conclude this survey of the state of the people over
whom Solomon was now called to reign, by mentioning the
limits of the kingdom which David's power had so widely ex-
tended. When Saul died, Israel was struggling for bare exist-
ence against the paltry power of the Philistines. Before David
died he was king of a district which might be said, with little
exaggeration, to stretch from the Orontes to the border of the
Egyptian desert, and from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.
Parts of this territory were nominally ruled by native kings, but
they all more or less acknowledged the supremacy of David.
Very early in his reign at Jerusalem, he had crushed the Philis-
tines and taken from them Metheg-ha-Ammah, "the bridle of
the mother city," or, as it is expressed in the Chronicles, "Gath
and her daughters,"4 though he allowed Gath to retain a tribu-
tary king.5 He almost annihilated the predatory hordes of
1 1 Chron. xxvii. 24. 2 Ibid. xxix. 29.
3 Josephus, "Antiq." vii. 5, § 2; "C. Apion." i. 23; Eusebius, "Prcep.
Ev." lx. 30.
4 2 Sam. viii. 1; I Chron. xviii. 1. 5 I Kings ii. 39.
THE KINGDOM OF SOLOMON. 41
Amalek in the south. Aided especially by Benaiah, who slew
with his own hand two sons of Ariel the king of Moab,1 he
had reduced the Moabites to tribute, and put a multitude of
them to death. Northwards he had conquered Hadarezer,
king of Zobah, who had probably lent his assistance to Hanun,
king of Ammon, when that foolish son of David's old friend
Nahash had rejected the advances of David with wanton
insult.2 In this war he stormed Rabbah, the strong capital of
Ammon.3 It was from this city that he took the jewelled crown
of Milcom which, according to Jewish tradition, no one but Ittai
of Gath had ventured to tear from the idol's forehead.4 He de-
feated the kings of Zobah and Maacah in a great victory. In a
subsequent battle at Helam,5 he so completely routed the Syrian
forces of Damascus, and their auxiliaries, of whom some had
joined them from beyond the Euphrates, that he broke down the
Aramæan supremacy and subjected the Syrians to tribute. These
successful wars greatly increased his wealth,6 and he received
large congratulatory or propitiatory presents from Toi, king of
Hamath on the "Orontes,7 who sent his own son to cement the
treaty between them. The overthrow of the Edomites in the
Valley of Salt, somewhere to the south of the Dead Sea,8 and
the occupation of their towns with Israelite garrisons completed
the triumphs by which David "gat him a great name," and
handed down to his son a strong and compact empire. In his
person the old promise to Abraham was first fulfilled.9
What his son made of that empire we shall see in the follow-
ing pages. Israel was liable to a new danger. That the Israelites
should feel that they had now attained to a cosmopolitan condi-
tion, and that their kingdom could enter into a feeling of solid-
1 2 Sam. xxiii. 20, 21; I Chron. xi. 22. The true reading is, "he slew
the two sons of Ariel of Moab."
2 2 Sam. x. 4.
3 Ibid. xii. 29. The Ark was taken to this siege, and David himself
was present at the capture.
4 Josephus, " Antiq." vii. 5. ; Jerome, "Qu. Hebr. " ad I Chron. xx. 2.
5 2 Sam. x. 16, 17. The Vulgate reads חֵילָם, and renders "adduxit
exenitum eorum."
6 From Hadarezer's soldiers were taken the "shields of gold" (2 Sam.
viii. 7), which were the proudest of all the trophies of Jerusalem (Cant. iv. 4).
7 Josephus says that Toi wanted to buy off David's opposition with
"vessels of ancient workmanship" ("Antiq," vii. 5; § 4).
8 2 Sam. viii. 13.
9 Gen. xv. 18-21.
42 SOLOMON.
arity with surrounding kingdoms was natural, and in some
respects advantageous. But the advantage would be purchased
at a fatal cost if the sons of the Chosen People forgot their
unique function, and, while they entered into the career of
worldly politics, ceased to look, or looked only with a feeling of
half contempt, at the rock whence they were hewn, and the hole
of the pit whence they were digged. Would Solomon guide
them safely through the perils of contamination from those
"gay religions full of pomp and gold" which adored devils for
deities, and against which the very existence of the Hebrews
was intended to be a Divine protest? Would he inspire them
with loftier ideals than those of vulgar magnificence, material
prosperity, and a liturgical religion? Would he leave them
with a deeper conviction that no national happiness was com-
parable with that of the nation which had the Lord for their
God? Or would he, on the other hand, sink into a mere Oriental
despot, absolute amid the torpor of a dreadful serfdom, gorged
with wealth amid an oppressed population, the loveless lord of
a voluptuous harem, ruling over the destinies, but not in the
hearts of his people? If he fell into the latter temptations, the
"Syrian, ready to perish," who was the father of the race, would
have been a safer pattern and a less erring guide.
The sacred records enable us indeed to answer these ques-
tions, but their treatment of the reign of Solomon differs
characteristically from their account of David. The rich and
varied story of the hero occupies a large part of two entire books.
The original documents which recorded the fame of Solomon—
the "Book of the Acts of Solomon," and the writings of Nathan,
Ahijah, and Iddo—have disappeared, but the Books of Kings
and Chronicles devote not more than ten or eleven chapters to
the Wise King; and those chapters are mainly occupied with
details about his commerce, his buildings, and his organization.
They dwell but lightly on his fall, to which indeed the Chronicler
makes no allusion. There was little of spiritual instructiveness
in a reign during which, from the disappearance of Nathan from
public life down to the rise of Ahijah, the voice of the prophets
was dumb, and men spoke in whispers under a despotic rule.1
1 The details derivable from other sources such as Josephus, and the few
fragments of Pagan historians, Dins, Eupolcimus, Nicolaus of Damascus,
Alexander Polyhistor, Menander, and Laitus, which are referred to by him
("Antiq." 5, § 3), by Eusebius ("Præp. Evang." ix. 30), and by Clemens
of Alexandria ("Strom," 1. 21, § 114), are of little or no importance.
CHAPTER. V.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN.
Tragic events—Secret ambition of Adonijah His visit to Bathsheba—The
Queen-mother —Interview between them—Her unsuspecting acceptance
of his request for the hand of Abishag—She visits the king—Her
gracious reception—Sudden fury of Solomon—Possible causes for his
violent anger—He dooms Adonijah to death—Alarm of Joab—
Benaiah ordered to slay him—Hesitates to drag him from the horns of
the altar—Execution of Joab—Fate of his posterity—Disgrace and
banishment of the High Priest Abiathar—Zadok and the House of
Eleazar—Destiny of the two families of Eleazar and Ithamar—Shimei
ordered to live at Jerusalem—His visit to Gath to recover his slaves—
His execution—Vigour of Solomon's rule—His kindness to Chimham,
son of Barzillai—Foreign enemies—Escape of Hadad from the massacre
of the Edomites—His reception in Egypt—His return—The Syrian
Rezon—Geshur—Solomon's affinity with Pharaoh—One of the Tanite
dynasty—National disapproval of the wedding in later times— Estab-
lishment of Solomon's power—The Second Psalm—Note on the Pha-
raoh of 1 Kings iii. x.
BEFORE entering on the peaceful developments of Solomon's
government, it will be necessary to glance at some of the
troubles which marked the beginnings of his reign, before he
had won for himself a secure seat upon David's throne.1
1 It is obviously no part of my task to enter into minute critical questions
as to the date and origin and character of various elements in the Books of
Kings. They are acknowledged by all inquirers to be honest and trust-
worthy sources of information, though they are fragmentary and did not
assume their final form till about B.C. 560. But though the language and
references of these Books show that they were not composed as a whole
till nearly five centuries after the earlier events which they record, the author
43
44 SOLOMON.
The first tragedy was but a sequel to the rebellion of
Adonijah.
Solomon had not stained his accession by any deeds of blood.
The deadly spirit of Eastern monarchies, which
"Bears like the Turk no brother near the throne,"
had not led him to interfere with the rank or peace of any of
David's other sons. Even Adonijah had been magnanimously
pardoned, and had been allowed with unusual generosity to live
in his own palace, and resume his position as a prince of the
royal house. But the vain and restless spirit of the son of
Haggith could not rest content. He brooded sullenly over the
collapse of his conspiracy, and on the vain fancy that the
choice of Israel had confirmed the right of seniority by which
he claimed the kingdom. He determined upon subtle means to
strengthen his pretensions, and vainly hoped that the young
brother—whose qualities, were as yet unknown, and whom in
his heart he probably despised—would not be keensighted
enough to penetrate his designs. He determined, if possible,
to gain for his wife, Abishag, the beautiful maiden of Shunem,
who had been selected rather as the nurse than as the bride of
David's old age. The possession of a late king's wife would, by
all the customs and traditions of Eastern monarchy, greatly
enhance the dignity of his position, and give him opportunities
for urging further claims.1
Yet he did not venture to approach Solomon himself with a
request, which even to his stupidity must have been seen to be
of a perilous character. He determined to ingratiate himself
with Bathsheba, and so to beguile the king into granting a
favour of which perhaps he might not suspect the secret import,
or which, at any rate, he would not like to refuse if his mother
asked it.
As Queen-mother, Bathsheba was now the highest lady in
undoubtedly made use of ancient and authentic documents. The Books
of Chronicles are later in date, and are written to present certain views
and aspects of the Sacred History, especially as seen from a Levitical
standpoint.
1 See 2 Sam. xii. 8, where Nathan says to David that God had "given
him his master's wives into his bosom." See, too, 1 Kings xx. 7; 2 Kings
xxiv. 15; Herodotus, iii. 68; Selden, "Uxor. Hebr." i. 10. The request was
at the best unseemly and illegal (Levit. xviii. 8; xx. 11).
INITIAL TROUBLES OF' SOLOMON'S REIGN. 45
the realm. Owing to the jealousies which are inherent in
polygamy, the wife of an Eastern king, even if she be the chief
wife, is yet only one among many, and is in reality a sort of
superior slave. The rank of queen is held by the king's mother.
Every reader of the chronicles of Israel and Judah will have
been struck by the fact that the name of the Queen-mother is
carefully recorded, even when the record is silent as to the king's
wives.1 The influence of Bathsheba must have been further
strengthened by the fact that to her in no small measure Solo-
mon was indebted for the saving of his life, and for his throne.
She was visibly alarmed by the visit of Adonijah. "Comest
thou peaceably?" she asked him, in a formula which was cus-
tomary at moments of misgiving.2 He said, "Peaceably," and
asked leave to prefer a request. "Say on," she said. Adonijah
reminded her, with no very scrupulous regard for truth, that
the kingdom had been his, and that all Israel set their faces on
him, but that he now recognized that though he was king by the
will of men, he was not so by the grace of God, who had be-
stowed the kingdom on his brother. He had come to ask but
for one compensation for so immense a loss, and he once more
intreated Bathsheba not to refuse him. "Say on," she repeated,
cautiously confining herself to the fewest words. Then he
asked her to obtain Solomon's permission for him to wed
Abishag the Shunammite.
Strange to say, Bathsheba failed to see the significance
of the request. Perhaps she pitied the prince who had so
nearly wrested the splendid prize of royalty from her son's
hands, and she may have thought that the position of Abishag
differed entirely from that of David's other wives. "Well,"
she answered, "I will speak for thee unto the king."
She seems to have lost no time in fulfilling her promise.
Solomon received her with every demonstration of love and
respect. He rose to meet her, bowed himself before her, and
ordered another throne to be placed for her at the right hand
of his own. Then she mentioned her "small petition," and
begged him not to refuse it. "Ask on, my mother," he said;
"for I will not say thee nay."3
1 See I Kings xv. 13; 2 Kings xi. 1.
2 I Sam. xvi. 4, 5; 2 Kings ix. 22.
3 We see at once the difference of Bathsheba's position as wife of David,
whom she approached with prostration, and as Queen-mother, to whom
46 SOLOMON.
Then she spoke the fatal words which doomed Adonijah to
death. "Let Abishag, the Shunammite, be given to Adonijah
thy brother to wife."
Was there any secret jealousy or scheme of secret ambition
at work in the mind of Bathsheba, which made it seem to her
not undesirable that the beautiful Shunammite—one it must be
remembered so beautiful that she had been sought for "out of
all the coasts of Israel"—should be removed from the Court of
Solomon? It is not possible to unravel the dark intrigues of
Eastern palaces; but Bathsheba, if any such motive had been
working in her mind, must have been amazed and terrified by
the sudden, and to her incomprehensible, blaze of anger with
which her "small petition " was received.
"And why," he burst out, "dost thou ask Abishag, the
Shunammite, for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also,
for he is my elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the
priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah!
Was the king's sudden fury clue only to the suspicion of
another conspiracy?
It may be so; but an attentive study of the Song of Songs
has led many critics to believe that other and more passionate
feelings were also at work. Passing over for the present the
question of the authorship of Canticles, it is very probable that
the little poem may be founded on traditional circumstances;
and if so, the lovely Shulamite of the Song, whose pure love
for her shepherd lover triumphs over all the seductions of a
royal wooer, may have been meant for no other than Abishag
of Shunem, and may indicate that Solomon desired to make
her his queen. By the ordinary custom of Eastern Courts he had
a right to do so,1 and the damsel was young,2 and "very fair." If
so, the transports of jealousy may have precipitated the conduct
which he believed to be also dictated by the safety of his
crown.3
the king himself bows. An Eastern king's wife receives little public notice,
but a Queen-mother (Sultana walidé) is received with the deepest respect
even by the reigning king. See Cheyne's Isaiah i. p. 47 (on Isa. vii. 13).
1 See 2 Sam. xii. 8, xvi. 22; Herodotus, iii. 68-88.
2 I. Kings i. 2-4, "A young virgin . . . very fair."
3 Compare the helpless remonstrance of Ishbosheth with Abner when he
took Rizpah, Saul's concubine (2 Sam. iii. 7; see, too, Wollaston, "Mu-
hammad," p. 5).
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 47
At any rate, he at once swore, by the most solemn form of
oath, that this petition should cost Adonijah his life.
He had a strong and ready agent at hand in the person of
Benaiah, and this officer apparently, on that same day, de-
spatched the prince with his own hand: "He fell upon him that
he died."1 According to Eastern notions this execution was amply
justified, and there is not the least sign that Solomon showed
any cruel jealousy towards his other brothers. Indeed, he ad
vanced the sons of his brother Nathan to posts of great honour
and responsibility, and when his own line became extinct, the
Davidic succession was restored in the person of Salathiel, a
descendant of Nathan.2 In this respect Solomon contrasts
favourably even with a Constantius for it would have been even
easier for Solomon than it was for the Christian emperor to
sweep away every adult sharer in the royal blood.
The terrible news of Adonijah's execution was at once con-
veyed to Joab. Whether he was still secretly fostering the
cause of Adonijah we do not know, but Solomon was convinced
that this was the case. A various reading in I Kings ii. 28
says that "he had turned after Adonijah, though he turned not
after Solomon." His conduct showed his terror if it did not
prove his guilt. He at once fled to "take sanctuary," as it
would have been called in the Middle Ages, at the tabernacle
of the Lord—probably the old tabernacle of the wilderness,
which was still served by Zadok or Abiathar at Gibeon—and
there he "caught hold on the horns of the altar." And King
Solomon, when he heard the tidings—so runs the addition of
the Septuagint Version—"sent to Joab, saying, What hath
happened to thee, that thou hast fled unto the altar? And
Joab said, I was afraid of thee, and fled unto the Lord!" But
Solomon had determined that this dangerous and blood-stained
man should die. The protection and pardon which David had
promised him had ended with David's life. Innocent blood
still remained unavenged. Joab had left himself without
excuse. He could not lord it over Solomon as he had lorded
it over David by threatening to divulge the guilty secret of his
life. He had no time, and he had probably lost the power, to
raise an armed resistance against the compact force of mer-
1 The Septuagint adds, "And Adonijah died on that day,"
2 Zech. xii. 12; Luke iii. 27-31.
48 SOLOMON.
cenaries whom Benaiah commanded. Benaiah received the
order to fall on him, and went at once to Gibeon. But when
he saw the defenceless old man clinging to the horns of the
altar, he hesitated to slay him there, and bade him in the king's
name to come forth. "Nay," said Joab, "but I will die here."
Benaiah scrupled to violate the sanctity of the place which
had been respected when Adouijah had taken refuge there after
his first rebellion.1 He went back to the king for further in-
structions. But Solomon not hesitate. The altar, in his
judgment, was not meant to shelter so heinous a criminal. The
law of Moses was expressly on his side, for it had ordered that
a wilful murderer was to he torn away even from the altar,
since blood was a pollution of the land.2 He considered that
recent events were as a Divine warning to wipe away in the
blood of the guilty the dark stains of unpunished crime which
might mar the prosperity of David's house. We must judge
him neither by our customs nor by our moral standards.
Benaiah obeyed, and, without one friend to lift an arm or
breathe a petition in his favour, the hoary conspirator fell in
Gibeon, hard by the scene of his vilest and most treacherous
murder—the murder of Amasa "at the great stone of Gibeon."3
It was a just retribution, but a deplorable end to a career of
glory which had struck terror into the enemies of Israel. The
conqueror of the City of Waters, the suppressor of Absalom's
and Sheba's rebellions, died as a common criminal by the
hands of justice.
Solomon's vengeance pursued his guilty cousin no further,
and his friends—who, be it remembered, must have been
Solomon's own kinsmen of David's house—were allowed to bury
him honourably on his own estate in "the wilderness." But
men remarked that a curse—the curse of David after Joab's
murder of Abner4—seemed to cling to his descendants. It
1 So in Athaliah's case the High Priest Jehoiada was naturally anxious
that she should not be slain within the precincts of the sacred building
(2 Kings xi. 15).
2 Exod. xxi. 14; Numb. xxxv. 30-33.
3 2 Sam. xx. 8.
4 Comp. Deut. xix. 13. The fact that Abner was murdered at Hebron,
a refuge city (Josh. xxi. 13), took away from Joab even the poor excuse
that he was acting as a Goel ("blood-avenger") for Asahel his brother;
besides which Abner had only slain Asahel in self-defence, and against his
will.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 49
was believed that those descendants were marked out by
calamity, and that among them. were always some who were
afflicted with leprosy, or were personally contemptible, or who
fell by the sword, or were sunk in poverty and want.1 From
Jewish history they henceforth disappear.
The High Priest Abiathar seems to have viewed the acces-
sion of Solomon with only a sullen acquiescence, and the king
believed that he also was a supporter of the new plot. But he
hesitated to put him to death. He was old; he had long occupied
the highest position in the priesthood; above all, he had been
for many years the unswervingly faithful follower of David's
fortunes when he was a hunted outlaw, although David had
been the unwitting cause of the dreadful massacre at Nob, in
which Ahimelech, the father of Abiathar, and all his kinsmen
had perished.3 The "sharer of all the afflictions wherewith
David had been afflicted," the priest of his religion, the coun-
sellor of his reign—he who had so often consulted the once
famous but now neglected Urim and Thummin—he who
probably had anointed him king at Hebron4 —could not be
put to death with so little formality as even Joab. He was
banished to his paternal estate at Anathoth,5 and "thrust out"
from all priestly functions during the remainder of his life, not
without a significant warning that he would not again be spared
if he gave ground for offence.6 From this time he vanishes
from history. He was regarded as "a man of death." A doom
hung over his head, and, aged as he was, it is probable that he
did not long survive so terrible a disgrace.
Zadok now became sole priest, and in his person was restored
1 2 Sam. iii. 29, "Let there not fail from the house of Joab one that
. . . handleth the distaff" (like a woman). The word means "distaff" in
Prov. xxxi. 19. The rendering of the Authorized Version, "that leaneth on
a staff" (i.e. a cripple), is also tenable.
2 See I Sam. xxii. 20; 2 Sam. xv. 24-29.
3 The line of descent was Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahijah, Ahimelech,
Abiathar. It is not certain whether Ahijah and Ahimelech were not
brothers, or even the same person called by two equivalent names.
4 See for Abiathar's previous history I Sam, xxii., xxiii. 6, 9, xxx. 7;
2 Sam. ii. 1, 4, v. 19, xv., xvii. 15-17; I Kings ii. 26; I Chron. xxvii. 34.
5 Anathoth (now Anata) was a priest's city N.N.E. of Jerusalem, and
little more than an hour's distance (Josh. xxi. 18; 1 Chron. vi. 60; Jer. i. 1,
xxxii. 6-12.
6 I Kings ii. 26, "I will not at this time put thee to death."
50 SOLOMON.
the lost prerogative of the house of Eleazar, the elder son of
Aaron. Eli had been a descendant not of Eleazar, but of
Aaron's younger son Ithamar,1 and from him the priesthood
had descended through several generations. How the house
of Ithamar had succeeded in displacing the house of Eleazar
we are not told, though it is implied that it was in conse-
quence of the Divine sanction.2 The Jewish legend on the
subject is striking, and not impossible. They say that Phi-
nehas, the son of Eleazar, had approved and even carried
out with his own hand the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, but
that this human sacrifice—as in the analogous story of Ido-
meneus of Crete—had aroused such an outburst of popular
indignation that Phinehas and his family had in consequence
been displaced. Had Eli proved himself worthy, the priesthood
would have been established in his line, but his culpable negli-
gence and the crimes of his sons brought down a curse upon
his whole family. When Zadok—then a young and valiant
man—had joined David at Hebron, it was found that, of the
twenty-four priestly courses, only eight were of the line of
Ithamar, and sixteen were of the line of Eleazar.3 From
this time Zadok is always mentioned before Abiathar, though
the actual precedence seems to have belonged to the latter as
the older man, and the one already in uncontested possession
of the dignity. After the conquest of Jerusalem, and the re-
moval of the Ark to Mount Zion, Zadok was perhaps provided
for by being placed at the head of the priestly service in the
capital, while Abiathar remained in charge of the ancient
Tabernacle on the High Place of Gibeon.4 When the design
of building a magnificent Temple to Jehovah as the centre of the
national worship had once been determined on, it may well have
been felt that it would be interfered with by the existence of so
venerable a shrine as that of Gibeon, and Solomon may not
have been sorry that the defection of Abiathar enabled him to
concentrate the sacerdotal dignity in the person of the repre-
1 See 1 Chron. xxiv. 3; 2 Sam. viii. 17; and compare I Chron. vi. 4-15;
Ezra vii. 1-5.
2 I Sam. ii. 30. 3 I Chron. xii. 23; xxiv. 4.
4 Or the arrangement may have been the other way. See 1 Chron. xvi.
39, compared with xv. 11; 2 Sam. xv. 21, 25. We might almost infer
from these passages that the functions of the priests at the two sanctuaries
alternated.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 51
sentative of the older and more powerful line by whose hands
he had been anointed king.1 In that line it continued undis-
turbed till the days of the Maccabees.2
There were eighteen high priests, each averaging a term of
twenty-five years' office, for the four hundred and fifty-four years
from this time till the Captivity; and then, after a lapse of fifty-
two years, the line resumed its office, and there were fifteen
more high priests of this family till the days of Antiochus
Epiphanes. The house of Abiathar, on the other hand,
dwindled, for some time at least, into misery and insignificance.
Some of its members perished by the sword in the flower of
their age,3 while others were reduced to a poverty so abject that
they had to come crouching as suppliants to the priests of the
house of Zadok to obtain some inferior offices about the Temple,
or at least "a piece of silver, and a morsel of bread." Zadok no
doubt took part in that organization of the priesthood and of the
whole Levitic system which was one great work connected with
the completion of the Temple. From this time, however, we
hear little or nothing about him. As he joined David in his
early wanderings he must now have been at least sixty years
old, and sixty years was regarded as an advanced age among
the Jews of this epoch. Zadok's name is not mentioned in the
long details of the ceremony of Dedication; and in the list of
Court officers, Azariah, "the son" or more accurately the
grandson—of Zadok is mentioned first as the Priest. The son
of Zadok was the swift runner and crafty diplomatist Ahimaaz,
who must have died in his father's lifetime, leaving the heritage
of the chief priesthood to Azariah his son.4
The supporters of Adonijah were now crushed, but one power-
ful enemy of the house of David still remained. Shimei was
the sole formidable representative of the ruined house of Saul.
1 This seems to be the sole historical instance of the deposition of a High
Priest during more than eight centuries.
2 B.C. 170. They also furnished the chief Levites (Ezek. xl. 46; and
in Ezek. xliii. 19, xliv. 15. &c., they alone arc recognized, nothing being
said of the "sons of Abiathar,"
3 1 Sam. ii. 33-36 (see the reading of the Septuagint).
4 For Ahimaaz see 1 Chron. vi. 8, 9; 2 Sam, xv., xviii. The Ahimaaz
of 1 Kings iv. 15 is a different person, and in 1 Chron. vi. 9, 10 there is
some obvious disruption in the text (see infr. p. 64). Josephus says that
Ahimaaz became High Priest, and such seems to have been the Rabbinic
tradition. If so, it can only have been for a very short time.
52 SOLOMON.
David had felt that he was still dangerous, and held that the
pardon which he had bestowed was not binding on his successor.
At any rate, Solomon, in his determination to secure his throne
by vigorous measures, sent for Shimei, and ordered him to leave
his home at Bahurim in the limits of the tribe of Benjamin, in
which Saul's adherents were chiefly to be found,1 and to come
and live under surveillance at Jerusalem. He told him in the
most distinct terms that if, on any pretext whatever, he left the
limits of the city and crossed the Wady of Kidron, he should be
put to death; and his blood would be upon his own head.2
Shimei accepted these conditions on oath,3 and for three years
he observed them. At the end of that time two of his slaves ran
away to Achish, king of Gath, and Shimei went to Gath to
demand their extradition. Perhaps he fancied that the fact
would not be known, or persuaded himself that the nature of
his errand would be a sufficient justification, or that the stern
decree had practically fallen into desuetude: or perhaps he
imagined that as he had not crossed the Kidron, or entered the
domain of Benjamin, there could be no great harm in his going.4
But Solomon was not a man to suffer the suspicion of any
weakness in his conduct. Shimei had proved himself wholly
undeserving of favour in past days, and now, with strange levity
and infatuation, and without even asking leave, he had broken
the oath which he had taken, and defied the warning by which
it had been accompanied. Again we must not judge of Solo-
mon's conduct by modern rules. Judged, as he should be
judged, by the standard of his contemporaries, he was so far
from being regarded unmerciful, that he was specially credited
with not having sought from God the death of his enemies.5
He probably saw in Shimei's conduct a proof that the curse of
1 Bahurim, where Shimei lived (I Kings ii. 8) was very near Jerusalem
(2 Sam. iii. 16; xvii. 18).
2 Only by crossing Kidron could he enter the tribe in which he was most
dangerous, but he was also forbidden to go "any whither."
3 I Kings ii. 42.
4 A curious Talmudic notice says: "Let a man reside in the same place
as his Rabbi; for so long as Shimei the Son of Gera lived, just so long did
Solomon (Shimei's disciple) defer marrying the daughter of Pharaoh "
(Berachoth, f. 8, 1; Schwab, "Traité des Berakhoth," p. 252; Hershon,
"Treasures of the Talmud," p. 257). Shimei seems to have had illustrious
descendants in Mordecai and Esther (Esth. ii. 5).
5 I Kings iii. 11.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 53
God was resting upon him, and that he was foredoomed to a
bloody end. Sending for him, he sternly upbraided him, and
once more gave to Benaiah the fatal order. In the person of
Shimei the last of the domestic enemies of David's house
perished, and the kingdom was established in the hands of
Solomon. He had made clear to all men that it was no fainéant
who had succeeded to the warrior and poet who had founded
the throne. He had illustrated some of the precepts which were
afterwards enshrined in his Proverbs as representing an ideal
royalty. "A king that sitteth on the throne of judgment scat-
tereth away all evil from his eyes." "A wise king scattereth
the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them." "The wrath of
the king is as messengers of death, but a wise man will pacify
it." "An evil man seeketh only rebellion, therefore an evil
messenger shall be sent against him." "The fear of a king is as
the roaring of a lion; whoso provoketh him to anger endanger-
eth his own soul." "Take away the wicked from before the
king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness."1
On the other hand, "in a king's favour is life." Solomon con-
tinued the grateful acknowledgment which David had bestowed
on the loyal house of Barzillai. Chimham, the youngest son of
the aged Gileadite, continued to reside at his Court and to eat at
his table; and having apparently received a grant from David's
paternal estate, he founded a family of which the descendants
were still flourishing in the days of Ezra. He founded at Bethle-
hem a khan, or caravanserai, which was known by his name
ages afterwards.2 Probably the sudden outburst of commerce in
Solomon's reign made it a prosperous undertaking, and con-
sidering the stationary character of all Eastern institutions, we
may well believe that it was in the stable of that caravanserai
that the Christ was born.
But if Solomon did not wholly escape from opposition in his
own kingdom, it was hardly likely that foreign enemies would
leave him undisturbed. They had quailed before the prowess of
David, and they feared the name of Joab even when David was
dead. But of Solomon and of Benaiah, the new commander
of the forces, they knew nothing. It was not without a
1 Prov. xx. 8, 25; xvi. 14; xvii. 11; xx. 2; xxv. 5.
2 Jer. xli. 17. The house of Barzillai became mingled with the priestly
line of Hakkoz by the intermarriage of an heiress of that line with the son
of Hakkoz (Ezra ii. 61).
54 SOLOMON.
struggle that Solomon was allowed to fulfil the omen of his
name.
The first and most persistent of his enemies was Hadad, a
prince of Edom. "Revenge and wrong," the poet says,
"Bring forth their kind;
The foul cubs' like their parents are."
Hadad had reasons to hate the name of David with an undying
hatred. After the defeat of the Edomites Joab had remained no
less than six months in the conquered country with the express
object of exterminating the detested race. Such a task is, how-
ever, always impossible. Some of the Edomites had escaped
from this indiscriminate massacre, and among them were some
of the king's servants, who had been so fortunate as to save a
little child—the sole survivor of his house. They fled by way of
Midian and Paran to Egypt; and the reigning Pharaoh, who was
hostile to the growing power of Israel, had given to Hadad a
warm welcome. He had not only maintained him and assigned
him an estate, but had even condescended to bestow upon the
homeless fugitive the hand of the sister of his own queen, or
Queen-mother, Tahpenes.1 This lady bore him a son, who was
named Genubath, who was treated in all respects like an Egyp-
tian prince. But the splendours of Pharaoh's palace did not lull
the wrath and vengeance which Hadad nursed in his heart
against the destroyers of his race. On hearing that his old
enemies were dead, he begged Pharaoh's leave to return from
the placid pomp of an Egyptian palace to the wild freedom of
his native land. The Egyptian king was hurt by the request,
which he regarded as ungrateful; but with all the passion of an
avenger of blood Hadad persisted in his wish, and, whether
openly or secretly, succeeded in escaping from Egypt. He found
his people slowly recovering from the dreadful blow which had
1 Gebîrah may mean "Queen-mother " (I Kings xv. 13). In the Septuagint
this Pharaoh is wrongly called Shishak (Σουσακίμ), and his queen Theke-
mina, and it is added that an elder sister of Thekemina, named Anô, was
given in marriage to Jeroboam. The Pharaoh must have been one of the
Tanite kings of Lower Egypt, but we cannot pronounce with any certainty
what was his name. The Septuagint additions are quite apocryphal. The
protector of Hadad must have lived some time before the accession of
Shishak, and the name of Shishak's queen was not Tahpenes, but
Karaäma.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 55
been inflicted on them in the last reign, and he was acknow-
ledged as their king.1 Solomon was far too strong to be seriously
shaken, but Hadad harassed him continually with a guerilla
warfare, which could be easily carried on from the mountain
fastnesses of Idumæa.2
Nor was Hadad the only enemy. One of David's most decisive
and splendid victories had been gained over Hadarezer, son of
Rehob, king of Zobab. A Syrian named Rezon, son of Eliada, had
escaped from the overthrow, and from the wreck of the Syrian
forces had collected an army sufficiently strong to conquer
Damascus. Whether he was long able to maintain himself
there we do not know, but he was a thorn in Solomon's side
during the whole period of his reign.
Besides these troubles in the south and west of his dominions,
Solomon was also harassed for a short time by a revolt of the
Canaanites who rallied round the little kingdom of Geshur.
From this danger, however, he was liberated when he espoused
Pharaoh's daughter. For Pharaoh, landing an army at Joppa,
took Geshur,3 and presented it to Solomon as the dowry of his
daughter. The marriage seems to have taken place early in
the reign. Tradition long remembered these espousals, and
the crown which on that day the Queen-mother herself placed
upon the head of her still youthful son.4
This magnificent alliance—the most magnificent ever made
by any Hebrew king—gave Solomon a new grandeur in the
eyes of all surrounding nations. The Pharaoh in question must
have been a king of the twenty-first or Tanite dynasty, then
1 I Kings xi. 22, LXX., "And he was indignant against Israel, and
reigned in the land of Edom.'' This depends on the reading Edom for Aram
(אַרָם Aram, Syria) in I Kings xi. 25. If the reading Aram be right, then
we must suppose with Josephus ("Antiq." viii. 7, § 6) that Hadad failed in
his attempt on Idumaia, but in some way or other became king of part
of Syria, which may have been ceded to him by Rezon. But there is a
confusion in the original text.
2 I Kings xi. 14-25 sufficiently shows that though narrated out of order,
these events belong to the early parts of Solomon's reign.
3 Gezer is identified by Ewald with Geshur; and Geshur may have
become troublesome because Absalom was a grandson of its king Tohnai.
Deut. xxiii. 7, 8 seems to permit marriage with Egyptians.
4 Cant. iii, 11. This was probably Solomon's first marriage. Pharaoh
would have been less likely to give his daughter to Solomon if he already
had a wife—the Ammonitess Naamah—and a son Rehoboam.
56 SOLOMON.
rather in the decline of its power. Shishak, between 990-980 B.C.,
founded a new dynasty after the middle of Solomon's reign.1
The father-in-law of Solomon must therefore have been one of
the last two kings of the Tanites—either Psinaces or his son,
Psusennes II. More probably it was the former, for
Psusennes II. only reigned fourteen years, and with him the
dynasty of Zoan came to an ond.2 Of Pharaoh's daughter we
hear very little. It is clear that she bore no son to Solomon,
and she probably died before the shameful multiplication of his
harem. Whether she became a proselyte to Judaism we do not
know, but at any rate Solomon was not turned aside by her to
build a temple for any deity of Egypt. The national conscience,
however, was never entirely reconciled to this departure from
theocratic traditions. "When Solomon married the daughter
of Pharaoh," says the Talmud, "Gabriel descended and fixed.
a reed in the sea. A sandbank formed around it, upon which
the mighty city of Rome was subsequently built."3 The meaning,
I suppose, is that at the moment of his sin began the series of
events which after long centuries destroyed his people by
Roman vengeance, and made of Jerusalem and the Temple
a heap of desolation.
As regards the other foes, Hadad was little more than a
marauder, and Rezon was probably crippled by Solomon's con-
quest of Hamath.4 Solomon, in consequence of his own con-
fidence in the Divine establishment of his power was now king
as far as the Euphrates on the east, and as far as the river of
Egypt on the south. The Second Psalm remains as a triumphant
epinician ode in which he, or a poet of the time speaking in
his name, gives thanks to God who has made him triumph over
his enemies, and in which he uses the large, prophetic style of
utterance which only acquires its full significance when we
regard Solomon in his better aspects as the type of the Perfect
King of David's line who should rule in righteousness over all
mankind.
1 Mr. R. S. Poole, "Dictionary of the Bible," s.v. Shishak, dates his
accession from Egyptian sources circ. 983.
2 Josephus says ("Antiq." viii. 6, § 2) that after his time (when the Bubas-
tite dynasty began) Egyptian kings dropped the exclusive title of Pharaoh,
and were known by their own names. According to Brugsch, "Gesch.
Ægypt." 657, the name of Psusennes on the monuments was Piseskban.
But see infra.
3 Sanhedrin f, 21. 2. 4 2 Chron. viii. 3.
INITIAL TROUBLES OF SOLOMON'S REIGN. 57
NOTE ON THE PHARAOH OF 1 KINGS III. I.
It appears from the Egyptian monuments that the twenty-first, or Tanite
dynasty of Egyptian kings was founded by Hir-hor, an ambitious priest of
Amon at Zoan (Tanis) about B.C. 1100. For the most part the annals of
Egypt during the reigns of these kings are a blank. Hir-hor raised himself
to power by driving out Rameses XIII. (?), when the country had sunk
into moral and intellectual degeneracy. The manes of his successors on
the monuments are (according to Brugsch) Plankhi, Pinotem I., Piseb-
khan I., Pinotem II. The names seem to be Assyrian, and Hir-hor pro-
bably made an alliance with Assyria. But the house of Rameses still had
adherents, and Pinotem I. married a princess of that family. After about one
hundred and thirty years (B.C. 1100-975) Shashanq I. founded the dynasty
of Bubastis (Pibeseth, Ezek. xxx. 17), and strengthened himself by marrying
a daughter of the last Tanite king. See Brugsch, "History of Egypt from
the Monuments," ii. 200-214. (E. tr.); Rawlinson, "Ancient Egypt," vol.
ii. ch. xxiii. pp. 412-416; Lenormant, "Hist. Anc.'' vol. 1. p. 304.
CHAPTER VI.
SOLOMON'S SACRIFICE AND DREAM.
General peacefulness of Solomon's reign—He offers a tenfold hecatomb at
Gibeon—His dream—Modes of Divine communication—His prayer
for wisdom.—The ideal not perfect—A conditional promise — Great
sacrifice on Mount Zion—The dead and the living child—Nature of
Solomon's wisdom—The wisest man of his age—His proverbs and
songs, and other intellectual efforts—Riddles—Hiram and Abdemon.
IT is not possible to discover the exact order of events in
Solomon's reign; but it probable that the inaugural sacrifice
with which he celebrated the secure establishment of his throne
was not offered until God had given him some peace before the
face of his enemies. That peace was lasting. He was not
again seriously troubled till towards the close of his reign of
forty years.
Accordingly, when his vigour and self-reliance had struck
terror into all opponents, he went in solemn procession to the
High Place at Gibeon, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and
offered the enormous sacrifice of a thousand burnt-offerings on
the venerable altar which Bezaleel had constructed nearly five
centuries before.1 The splendour of this tenfold hecatomb illus-
trated the magnificence of his conceptions as one who intended
to be every inch a king; and while it showed his sense of grati-
1 See 2 Chron. 1. 2, 3. For going to Gibeon, the chief seat of the
national worship, served by the entire priesthood, Solomon is certainly
not to blame. Where it is said (1 Kings iii. 3) that he "loved the Lord
. . . only he sacrificed and burn: incense in high places," the phrase
expresses the view of later centuries. The implicit prohibition of Lev.
xvii, 3-5 could hardly apply to a Lime when the Ark was at Zion and the
Tabernacle at Gibeon; and high places, in the absence of a regular temple,
were sanctioned by prophets and priests alike. Perhaps the Wady Sulei-
man may retain a trace of Solomon's visit to Gibeon.
58
SOLOMON'S SACRIFICE AND DREAM. 59
tude for God's protection, it would also powerfully influence the
imagination of the people and prepare them for the religious
development by which the reign was to be marked.1
And there at Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a
dream of the night. The consultation of Urim and Thummim
seems to have fallen into desuetude after the days of David,
and about this time there occurred a marked cessation of pro-
phetic activity. We never read that Solomon, like his father,
inquired of the Lord by the high priest. To a certain extent
he was his own priest, and he seems to have offered some of
his burnt-offerings with his own hand. The prophetic work of
Nathan and Gad was finished, and Ahijah of Shiloh had not
yet risen into prominence. Dreams were the third—and indeed
the lowest order of Divine communications. In a dream
God bids Solomon to choose some sign of His favour, and
Solomon, in accordance with the whole tendency of his cha-
racter, asks for kingly wisdom. He is but "a little child," pro-
bably not more than twenty years of age,2 and cannot compare
himself with his father David—a warrior, a poet, a statesman,
a king trained by long and varied experience. Israel had grown
into a mighty and countless people, and Solomon prays for an
understanding heart that he may be enabled in his constant
functions of a judge to discern between good and evil.3
His prayer was pleasing to God, for it was noble and unselfish.
A man of smaller mind might have asked for riches, or glory,
or success in war; and specially—considering the vagueness
and dimness of ancient views about immortality—for length of
days. And God, to reward his better choice, promised him in
pre-eminent, measure the gift of a wise and understanding heart,
and gave him in addition the riches and honour which he had
not directly sought. He had shown something of the spirit
1 The sacrifice of 1,000 victims was sufficiently known to give rise in later
Greek (Julian and Eustathius) to the word χιλιόμβη, for what the LXX.
calls χιλίαν ολοκαύτωσιν. Xerxes offered 1,000 at Troy (Herodotus, vii.
43), and Crœsus 3,000 (Herodotus, i. 50).
2 In 1 Chror. xxix. 1; 1 Kings iii. 7, he is called "young and tender"
at his accession. But the phrase, "I am a child," was more or less pro-
verbial (Jer. i 6).
3 See James i. 5; Wisdom vii. 7, ix. 12. The importance of the king's
judicial functions in the days when he was both the judge and the jury is
illustrated in the training of Cyrus (Xen. "Cyrop." i, 3 § 16; comp. 1 Sam.
viii. 20; 2 Sam. xv. 2-4).
60 SOLOMON.
which seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and therefore all other things were added unto him. The pro-
mise of length of days was, however, made conditional on
Solomon's continued faithfulness, and he forfeited its fulfilment
by his subsequent apostasies. He reigned forty years, but died
at the age of sixty, and did not attain the age of his father.1
The conditions on which the gift of "wisdom" were made to
depend might have served to Solomon as a warning that his
ideal of wisdom was not as yet the highest—that all wisdom
begins and ends in the fear of the Lord; that without holiness
the gift of earthly prudence and political insight and varied
knowledge are of no permanent avail.
Solomon awoke, and behold it was a dream.2 But he felt
that it was a Divine dream; and in sign of his gratitude he
went from Gibeon to the altar on Mount Zion, and stood before
the Ark, and offered fresh burnt-offerings and thank-offerings,
and made a great feast to all his servants.3
The instance which the historian gives us of Solomon's wis-
dom is exactly of a kind which would have taken the fancy of an
Eastern people.
Two harlots came to the king as he sat in the gate to decide
all causes. They brought with them two infants, one living and
one dead, and each of them claimed the living child as her own.
It was a case of conflicting testimony, which to many might
have seemed impossible to decide. Solomon at once decided it
by a flash of intuitive sagacity. He ordered one of his soldiers
to cut the living child in two, and give half to each of the
women.4 Then the passionate cry of the mother's heart, "O my
lord, give her the living child and by no means slay it,"
revealed at once to whom the child belonged. "Give her the
living child and by no means slay it"—the king meditatively
repeated the mother's words, and then burst forth with swift
decision—"She is the mother thereof."
But Solomon's fame for wisdom was founded on far richer and
wider endowments than this swift practical sagacity, this "dis-
1 Compare Wisdom iv. 8, 9.
2 Ps. cxxvii. 2, "God given to His beloved even sleeping."
3 1 Kings iii. 15. This is not mentioned in the Book of Chronicles.
4 See Suet. Claud. 15. Josephus says that he ordered the two children
to be divided between the mothers, and that the people at first laughed at
his simplicity. See Ambrose, "De Off." ii. 8.
SOLOMON'S SACRIFICE AND DREAM. 61
cernment to understand judgment." God gave him "wisdom"
in a higher significance. He had at least a partial sense of
the relation in which man stands to God, and man to man;
of the wisdom w