combined a depth of passionate emotion which doubtless had much to do
with the influence he possessed over others. David was a man of strong
impulses, and we cannot understand his character unless we remember the
fact. The impulses, it is true, were controlled and regulated by the
cool judgment and politic self-restraint which distinguished more
especially his earlier life; but they swayed him to the end, sometimes
for good, sometimes for evil. Above all, he was a religious man, deeply
attached to the faith into which he had been born, full of trust in
priests and prophets and oracles, and convinced that Yahveh would
protect and befriend him as long as he obeyed the divine law. But there
was neither asceticism nor fanaticism in his religion; it was the firm
faith and religious conviction of a healthy mind.
David was not cruel by nature; if he showed himself merciless at times,
it was either for reasons of policy, or because the action was in
accordance with the public opinion of the age. The Assyrian kings gloat
over the barbarities they practised towards their conquered enemies, and
the Hebrew Semite similarly prayed that Yahveh might dip His foot in the
blood of His foes. David might indeed be a man of blood, but by the side
of the rulers of Nineveh he was mercy itself; and the very fact that the
blood he had shed prevented him from building a temple to his God shows
how different the conception of Yahveh must have been from that which
prevailed among the neighbouring nations of their own deities.
Such, then, was David’s character, with all its apparent anomalies.
Brave and active, clear-headed and politic, generous and kind-hearted,
he was at the same time selfish and impulsive, at times unforgiving and
merciless. He had nevertheless a genuine and fervid trust in Yahveh, and
a fixed belief that Yahveh demanded an upright life and ‘clean hands.’
Up to the last he remained at heart the Oriental peasant, who takes a
healthy view of life, whose shrewdness is crossed and chequered by the
impulses of the moment, and whose religion is deep and unquestioning.
But, like the peasant, he failed to be proof against success and
prosperity. The bold and hardy warrior degenerated into the
self-indulgent and even sensual despot. It is true that he repented of
the crimes to which his self-indulgence had led, and which to most other
Oriental despots would have soon become a second nature; the
self-indulgence, however, remained, and a weak will and infirmity of
purpose marred the latter years of his life.
Future generations saw in him the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel.’ As far
back as we can trace it, tradition averred that a large part of the
psalter owed its origin to him. It has been left for the nineteenth
century to be wiser than the past, and to deny to David the authorship
of even a single psalm. But there are some of them which seem to bear
their Davidic authorship on their face,[518] and if there are many which
belong to a later date, while others are pieced together from earlier
fragments,[519] this is only what we should expect when once the nucleus
of a collection had been formed, and the psalms embodied in it employed
liturgically. Assyrian discovery has shown that penitential psalms,
similar in spirit and form to those of David, had been composed in
Babylonia centuries before his time, and there collected together for
liturgical purposes.[520] In Egypt, what we should call ‘Messianic
psalms’ had been written before the age of the Exodus.[521] There is,
therefore, no reason why a part of the Hebrew psalter should not belong
to the Davidic period, and be the work of David himself. There is
nothing in it inconsistent with the character of David or the ideas of
his time. It is only the false theory of ‘the development of Hebrew
religion’ which finds in it the religious conceptions of a later era.
Those indeed who maintain that in the age of David the law of Moses was
as yet unknown, and that faith in Yahveh was hardly to be distinguished
from that in Baal or Chemosh, may be compelled to deny that any of the
psalms, with their high spiritual level, can belong to the king who was
‘after God’s own heart’; but history cannot take note of theories which
are built upon assumptions and not facts. Even in the northern kingdom
of Israel, where the memory of the founder of the Davidic dynasty was
naturally held in little esteem, tradition was obliged to confess that
he had been the inventor of ‘instruments of music’ (Am. vi. 5).
The exact date of David’s death is doubtful. The chronology of the books
of Kings, so long the despair of chronologists, has at length been
corrected by the synchronisms that have been established between the
history of Israel and Judah and that of Assyria. Thanks to the so-called
Lists of Eponyms or Officers from whom the years of the state calendar
took their name, we now possess an exact chronology of Assyria from B.C.
911. In B.C. 854 Ahab took part in the battle of Qarqar, which was
fought by the princes of the west against their Assyrian invaders, and
his death, therefore, could not have happened till after that date. In
B.C. 842 Jehu offered homage to the Assyrian monarch, and Hazael of
Damascus was defeated in a battle on Mount Shenir. Four years previously
the Syrian opponent of the Assyrians was Hadad-idri or Ben-Hadad.
Lastly, Menahem of Israel paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C.
738, Pekah and Rezin were overthrown in B.C. 734, and Damascus was taken
and destroyed by the Assyrian king in B.C. 732. It is only after the
capture of Samaria by Sargon in B.C. 722, when the kingdom of Judah
stands alone, that the Biblical dates harmonise with the Assyrian
evidence, or indeed with one another. It is evident, therefore, that the
Biblical chronology is more than forty years in excess. Ahab, instead of
dying in B.C. 898, as Archbishop Usher’s chronology makes him do, cannot
have died till some forty-five years later. We have no means of checking
the earlier chronology of the divided kingdom, but assuming its
correctness, the revolt of the Ten Tribes would have taken place about
B.C. 930.
Solomon, like Saul, is said to have reigned forty years. But this merely
means that the precise length of his reign was unknown to the compiler.
It could not have exceeded thirty years. Hadoram, who was ‘over the
tribute’ in the latter part of David’s life (2 Sam. xx. 24), still
occupied the same office in the first year of Rehoboam’s reign (1 Kings
xii. 18), and Rezon, who had fled from Zobah when David conquered the
country, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon’ (1 Kings
xi. 24, 25). No clue is given by the statement of Rehoboam’s age in 1
Kings xiv. 21, since when it is said that he was ‘forty and one years’
at the time of his accession this is merely equivalent to ‘_x_ + 1.’
The length of David’s reign is more accurately fixed. Seven years and a
half did he reign in Hebron, and thirty-three years over Israel and
Judah (2 Sam. iv. 5), or forty and a half years in all. Approximately,
therefore, we may date his reign from B.C. 1000 to 960. Saul’s accession
may have been ten or fifteen years earlier.
David’s palace at Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Sam. v. 11, was built by
the artisans of Hiram of Tyre, who also furnished him with cedar wood.
The fragment of Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus from Menander[522]
throws some light on the chronology of the time. Hiram, we are told, was
the son of Abibal, and the names of his successors are recorded one
after the other, together with the length of their reigns. But
unfortunately the sum of the reigns does not agree with their total as
twice given by Josephus, nor indeed are our authorities agreed among
themselves in regard to the length of certain of them. The fact,
however, that Josephus twice gives the same total raises a presumption
in its favour, more especially when we find that it is possible by a
little manipulation to make the sum of the several reigns harmonise with
it.[523] This total is one hundred and forty-three years and eight
months, which, it is said, elapsed from the building of Solomon’s temple
in the twelfth year of Hiram down to the foundation of Carthage in the
seventh year of Pygmalion. But the date of the foundation of Carthage is
itself not a wholly certain quantity, though B.C. 826 is probably that
which was assigned to it by the native historians.[524] A hundred and
forty-three years and eight months reckoned back from 826 would bring us
to B.C. 969 or 970. As the temple was begun in the fourth year of
Solomon’s reign (1 Kings vi. 1), this would give B.C. 973 for the
accession of Solomon, and B.C. 1013 for that of David. The palace
constructed for David at Jerusalem by the workmen of Hiram must have
been erected at the very end of David’s life, after the suppression of
the revolt of Absalom, unless, indeed, the author of the books of Samuel
has mistaken the name of the Tyrian king, and written Hiram instead of
Abibal.
There is yet another synchronism between Hebrew and profane history
which must not be overlooked. Jerusalem was captured in the fifth year
of Rehoboam by Shishak I., the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian
dynasty. But Egyptian chronology is more disputable even than that of
Israel, and we do not know in what year of the Pharaoh’s reign the
invasion of Palestine took place. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho,
places the commencement of his reign in B.C. 934; Unger, on the same
authority, in B.C. 930; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961.
On the whole, then, we must be content with approximate dates for the
founders of the Hebrew monarchy. The revolt of the Ten Tribes will have
taken place somewhere between B.C. 940 and 930; the accession of David
somewhere between B.C. 1010 and 1000. It coincided with the period when
the older kingdoms of the Oriental world—Babylonia, Assyria, and
Egypt—were in their lowest stage of weakness and decay.
Solomon succeeded to a brilliant heritage. The nations which surrounded
him had been conquered or forced into alliance with Israel; there was
none among them adventurous or strong enough to attack the newly risen
power. The caravan-roads which brought the merchandise of both north and
south to the wealthy states of Western Asia passed through Israelitish
territory; Edom, which communicated with the Red Sea and Indian Ocean,
was in Jewish hands, as well as Zobah, which commanded the road to the
Euphrates. The tolls levied on the trade which thus passed through the
empire filled the treasury at Jerusalem with abundant riches, while the
products and luxuries of the whole eastern world flowed into the Hebrew
market. The alliance with the Tyrians gave Solomon a port in the
Mediterranean; the possession of Edom gave him ports of his own in the
Gulf of Aqaba. In return for the use of the Edomite harbours by the
ships of Phœnicia, he was allowed to send forth merchantmen of his own
from the havens of Hiram on the Phœnician coast. The ships themselves
were manned with Phœnician sailors; like the Assyrian kings in later
days he had to turn to the experienced mariners of Phœnicia to work his
fleet.
At home the kingdom had been fully organised. There were an army of
veterans, a foreign bodyguard, who had no interests beyond those of the
master who paid them, a well-selected capital, and a fiscal
administration. The revolts which had disturbed the later years of David
had been suppressed with a heavy hand, and such murmurs as may have been
raised against the enfeebled government and neglected justice of the
late reign were hushed in presence of a young and well-educated prince,
the _protégé_ of priests and prophets, whose very name promised his
people the blessings of peace. The wars of David, with their tax of
blood and treasure, were at an end. Those who had conspired against the
elevation of Solomon to the throne had been put to death at the outset
of his reign: the grey hairs of Joab were stained with his own blood as
he clung to the unavailing altar; Adonijah was executed on the ground
that he had asked to have Abishag for a wife, and it was not long before
a pretext was found for removing Shimei out of the way. Benjamin and
Judah had alike lost their leaders, and Solomon henceforth did his
utmost to win them to himself.
Abiathar was banished to the priests’ city of Anathoth, and the glory of
the high priesthood was left to Zadok and his descendants alone. They
alone were allowed to serve before the ark of the covenant, and the doom
pronounced upon the house of Eli was thus fulfilled. The act placed the
religion of Israel for many generations to come under the domination of
the king. Solomon declared by it his supremacy in the church as well as
in the state. It meant that the king claimed the power and the right to
appoint and dismiss the ministers of the Mosaic law. The central
sanctuary became the royal chapel rather than the temple of the national
God, and its priests were the paid officials of the sovereign rather
than the administrators and interpreters to the people of the divine
law. The democratic element passed out of Hebrew religion, and the king
more than the high priest came to stand at the head of it. The erection
of the temple completed the work which the deposition of Abiathar had
begun; sanctuary, services, and priesthood were all alike under the
royal control. The family of Eli had preserved the tradition of the days
when the priests of Shiloh exercised independent authority, and
interpreted the law which all were called upon to obey. With the
banishment of Abiathar came a break with the past; no venerable memories
were connected with the rival house of Zadok, no recollection of a time
when the word of the priest of Shiloh had been a teacher in Israel.
Under Zadok and his successors the old meaning of the high priesthood
gradually faded out of sight; as in Assyria or Southern Arabia the
priests of an earlier age were supplanted by kings, so too in Israel the
place and influence of the high priest were absorbed by the Davidic
dynasty. Even a Jeroboam could assert his right to establish sanctuaries
and appoint the priests who should serve them.
Solomon had been brought up under the eye and instruction of Nathan, and
to Nathan, therefore, we must probably trace his religious policy. There
was much to be said in favour of it. It prevented friction between the
priesthood and the monarchy; it guaranteed the stability of the dynasty
of David by extending to it the sanction of religion; above all, it
secured the maintenance of the religion itself. It gave it as it were a
local habitation in a costly sanctuary built and endowed out of the
royal revenues, and attached to the royal palace. The ark ceased to be
national, and became instead the sacred treasure of the chapel of the
king. While the monarchy lasted, the religion of the monarchy would last
also, and Nathan and Zadok might be pardoned if they believed that the
Davidic monarchy would last for ever.
The administration of the country next claimed the attention of the new
king. It was organised on an Assyrian model, Palestine being divided
into districts, each of which was placed under a governor who was
responsible for the taxes as well as for the civil and judicial
government of it. Hitherto, it would appear, the old system of tribal
government had been preserved, the tribes owning allegiance to
hereditary chieftains or ‘princes,’ who, like the chieftains of a
Highland clan, represented the tribe, and led its members to war. David
seems to have modified this system for military purposes, if we may
judge from the list of ‘captains’ given in 1 Chron. xxvii., but no
attempt was made to carry out a general system of taxation, or appoint
governors with fiscal powers. The conquered provinces alone were
required to furnish an annual tribute to the treasury, and for this a
single officer, Hadoram, was found sufficient.
The territory of the Israelites themselves was now formed into fiscal
districts. Twelve officers were appointed, who were required to provide
in turn for the necessary expenses of the royal household during the
twelve months of the year. A list of them, extracted from some official
document, is given in 1 Kings iv. 8-19. In the earlier part of the list
the names of the officers have been lost, those only of their fathers
having been preserved. Two of them were married to daughters of Solomon,
indicating that the list must have been drawn up towards the end of
Solomon’s life. One of the king’s sons-in-law was the governor of
Naphtali; the other presided over the Phœnician coast-land south of
Tyre. Here, at Dor, in a country occupied by the Zakkal kinsmen of the
Philistines, and in proximity to Tyre, it was needful that the prefect
should be connected with the king by closer ties than those of
officialism. The direction of the Mediterranean trade was mainly in his
hands, and the resources which were thus at his disposal, as well as the
neighbourhood of Hiram, might have tried the loyalty of any but a
relative of the king. The plateau of Bashan was under the jurisdiction
of one governor who had his residence at Ramoth-gilead; Gilead was under
a second, while a third governor had Mahanaim. We may, therefore, gather
that Ammon and Moab, as well as Geshur, had been absorbed into
Israelitish territory. This may in part explain why at the revolt of the
Ten Tribes Moab went with Israel rather than with Judah.
It is noticeable that there was no governor in Judah. Here, in fact, the
king himself ruled in person. It would seem that Judah was exempt from
the taxes levied on the rest of Palestine. This was in accordance with
the policy which made Solomon court the goodwill of his father’s tribe,
and identify with its interests those of himself and his house. So far
as the continuance of the Davidic dynasty was concerned, the policy
succeeded. Judah identified itself with the house of David, and rallied
faithfully round its king. There was no longer any talk of rebellion, or
of transporting the capital to Hebron; from henceforth Judah and its
kings were one. But the fact only made the breach between Judah and the
rest of Israel wider and more visible, and alienated the other tribes
from the reigning house. They were treated like the conquered Gentiles;
the place of their old hereditary princes and leaders was taken by
governors appointed by the crown, and fixed taxes were rigorously
exacted from them for the support of the royal treasury. They derived no
benefit, however, from the royal expenditure; it was lavished upon
Jerusalem and the Jewish towns which lay near to it. They were too far
off to see even a reflection of that royal glory of which they may have
heard, and for which they certainly had to pay. The same causes which
strengthened the ties of allegiance of Judah to the reigning dynasty
weakened those of Israel.
Throughout the reign of Solomon, Hadoram remained ‘over the tribute,’
and his duties were enlarged by the supervision of the home taxation and
_corvée_ being added to that of the foreign tribute.[525] Jehoshaphat
still continued ‘recorder,’ but the secretary Shisha had been succeeded
by his two sons. The literary correspondence of the empire was
increasing, and one chief secretary was no longer sufficient for it. The
family of Nathan, as might have been expected, was well provided for.
One son was made Vizier; the other became the royal chaplain as well as
‘the king’s friend.’ The latter title, which had been given to Hushai in
the time of David (1 Chron. xxvii. 33), had been borrowed from Egypt;
the title of the Vizier, or ‘head of the officers,’ corresponded with
the Assyrian Rab-saki or Rabshakeh, ‘the chief of the princes.’ Another
office which may have been borrowed from Assyria was that of royal
steward, which was held by Ahishar; along with him the Septuagint
associates a second steward Eliak, and a captain of the bodyguard called
Eliab, the son of Saph or Shaphat.[526] Like the list of governors, the
list of officials must have been drawn up at the end of Solomon’s reign,
since Azariah has already taken the place of his grandfather Zadok as
high priest (see 1 Chron. vi. 9, 10, where a confusion has been made
between Ahimaaz the son of Zadok and Johanan or Jonathan the son of
Abiathar). It is significant that the list begins with the ‘priest,’ not
with the general of the army as in the warlike days of David.
The fame of Solomon’s wealth and magnificence was spread through the
Oriental world. Foreign sovereigns sought his alliance or courted his
favour. Even the Queen of Sheba came to visit him. Modern criticism has
long since banished the Queen to the realm of fiction, but archæological
discovery has again restored her to history. Sheba or Saba was already a
flourishing kingdom in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser
III.; its territories extended from the spice-bearing coasts of Southern
Arabia to the borders of Babylonia and Palestine. If Glaser and Hommel
are right in their interpretation of the south Arabian inscriptions, it
had entered on the older heritage of the kingdom of Ma’ân. The Minæan
kings of Ma’ân had ruled not only in the south but in the north as well;
their records are found near Teima, and they had command of the great
highroad of commerce which led from the Indian Ocean to Egypt and Gaza.
Egypt and Gaza, indeed, are mentioned in Minæan inscriptions.[527] From
an early period the kingdoms of Southern Arabia had been in commercial
contact with Canaan.
The conquest of Edom by David and the Hebrew fleets which sailed from
the Gulf of Aqaba must soon have acquainted the merchant princes of
Ma’ân and Saba with the fact that a new power had risen in Western Asia,
and a new market been opened for their goods. The road to Palestine was
well-known and frequently travelled, and Minæan or Sabæan settlements
existed upon it almost as far as the frontiers of Edom. What more
natural, therefore, than that a Sabæan queen should visit her wealthy
neighbour whose patronage had become important for Sabæan trade? That
queens might rule in the Arabian peninsula we know from the annals of
Tiglath-pileser III., which refer to Zabibê and her successor Samsê,
each of whom is called a ‘queen of the land of the Arabs.’
Even the Pharaoh of Egypt condescended to mingle the blood of the solar
race with that of the grandson of a Hebrew _fellah_. Solomon married the
daughter of the Egyptian monarch. But it was a monarch of the
twenty-first dynasty, who, though acknowledged as the sole legitimate
representative of the line of the Sun-god Ra, had nevertheless been
sadly shorn of his ancient rights and authority. His power was confined
to the Delta, where he held his court in the old Hyksos capital of Tanis
or Zoan, close to the Asiatic frontier, and as far removed as possible
from the rival dynasty which ruled in Upper Egypt. He was doubtless glad
to secure a son-in-law who could defend him from his enemies at home in
case of need, and whose friendship was preferable to his hostility.
The Egyptian princess had brought with her as dowry the Canaanitish city
of Gezer. That it should have been in the power of the Pharaoh to give
it is at first sight surprising. It shows that Egypt had never
relinquished in theory her old claims to be mistress of Canaan. Like the
title of ‘king of France,’ which so long lingered in the royal style of
England, they were never abandoned, but were ready to be revived
whenever an opportunity occurred. Towards the close of the period of the
Judges, but before the Philistines had become formidable, Assyria and
Egypt had met on friendly terms on the coast of Palestine. The Assyrian
conqueror, Tiglath-pileser I. (in B.C. 1100), had found his way to the
Phœnician city of Arvad, and there received from the Egyptian Pharaoh
various presents which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus. The
campaign of the Assyrian king had brought him to the edge of the
territory which the Egyptian rulers of the twenty-first dynasty still
regarded as their own, and they hastened accordingly to propitiate the
invader, and thus to stay his further advance. The embassy and gifts
further show that the occupation of the coast by the Philistines did not
prevent the Egyptians from maintaining their old relations with
Phœnicia, though they may have done so by sea rather than by land. At
all events an expedition sent to Gebal by Hir-Hor, the high priest of
Thebes, at the beginning of the twenty-first dynasty, was despatched in
ships.[528] Had the coast-road been free from danger, the Egyptians
would doubtless have asserted their right to march along it. They seized
the first occasion to do so, when the Philistines had been conquered by
David, and the successor of David was the Pharaoh’s ally.
Solomon engaged in no wars of his own. He was no general himself, and it
may be that he feared to intrust a subject with an army. Joab had taught
him how easily the commander-in-chief might defy his master, Abner how
readily he might betray him. In the list of officials given in the
Hebrew text, Benaiah indeed is stated to have been ‘over the host’ (1
Kings iv. 4), but Benaiah was actually the commander of the bodyguard,
so that his command of the army must have been merely nominal.
Practically the army which had played so large a part in the history of
David had ceased to exist. Hence it was that Rezon was able to establish
an independent kingdom in Damascus, and that when the Ten Tribes
revolted there was no army at hand with which to suppress the rebellion.
Hence, too, the curious fact that just as Solomon sought the help of
Hiram in fitting out his merchant fleet in the Gulf of Aqaba, so also he
sought the help of the Egyptian king in subduing the one Canaanitish
city of importance which still preserved its freedom. Gezer had
maintained its Canaanitish continuity from the days when as yet the
Israelites had not entered Canaan, and the mounds of Tel Jezer which
mark its site must still conceal beneath them the records of its early
history. Doubtless the Egyptian court was gratified at the arrangement
with the Hebrew king. It admitted the Egyptian claim of suzerainty over
Palestine, and admitted the right of its armies to march along its
roads. But the substantial advantages remained with Solomon. He gained
Gezer without either expense or trouble, and at the same time he allied
himself by marriage with the oldest and most exclusive royal race in the
Oriental world. Like the kings of Mitanni in the age of the eighteenth
dynasty, the son-in-law of the Pharaoh was on a footing of equality with
the proudest princes of Asia.
The alliance with Hiram was no less advantageous. Hiram had done for
Tyre what Solomon was doing for Jerusalem. It has been conjectured that
his father Abibal, or Abi-Baal, was the founder of a dynasty; at all
events the accession of Hiram ushered in a new era for the Tyrian state.
He succeeded to the throne at the age of nineteen years, and during his
long reign of thirty-four years he raised Tyre to an unprecedented
height of prosperity and power, and rebuilt the city itself. The ancient
‘rock’ from which it had derived its name was connected by an embankment
with another rocky islet close to it, and a new and splendid city was
erected upon the space thus won from the sea. Excellent harbours were
constructed, massive walls built round the city, and the venerable
temple of Melkarth restored from its foundations, and decorated with all
the sumptuous splendour of Phœnician art.
Tyre had always been famous for its sailors and its ships, and its
wealth is celebrated even in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. But under
Hiram its maritime trade underwent an enormous development. The conquest
of the Philistines by David, and the consequent disappearance of piracy
from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, were the immediate causes
of this. Tyrian ships could now venture into the bays and havens of the
Greek seas in quest of slaves, or the precious purple-fish, and their
merchants could make voyages in safety as far as Tarshish. Riches poured
into ‘the merchant-city,’ and Hiram had resources in abundance for his
public works.
The Hebrew king was eager to follow the example of his Tyrian neighbour.
It was true that his subjects were neither sailors nor traders; it was
true, also, that the harbours on the Mediterranean coast which the
conquest of the Philistines had added to his dominions were few and
poor. But the conquest of Edom had given him the entrance to the
spice-lands of Southern Arabia, and the gold-mines which recent
discovery has found in Central Africa.[529] An agreement was therefore
come to with Hiram which was to the profit of both. Hiram gave Solomon
sailors and boat-builders, as well as the use of his Mediterranean
ports; in return he received from Solomon the right of using the
harbours of the Red Sea. While the products of Europe made their way to
Solomon through Tyre, the products of the south passed to Hiram from the
Edomite havens of Elath and Ezion-geber.
Hiram was useful to Solomon in yet another way. The age of
empire-building was over; the time had come to create a capital which
should be worthy of the empire. Like Ramses II. of Egypt, Solomon made
himself an imperishable name as a builder. Jerusalem was strongly
fortified; royal palaces were erected; above all, a temple was raised to
Yahveh that vied in splendour with those of Phœnicia and the Nile. But
the architects and artisans had to be brought from the dominions of the
Tyrian king; the Israelites had been too much barbarised by the long
struggle for existence they had had to wage for another Bezaleel to be
born among them, as in the days when they had but just quitted the
cultured land of the Delta. It is true that the master-artificer in
bronze, who designed the bronze-work of the temple, was a Hebrew on his
mother’s side, but he bore the Tyrian name of Hiram, and his father was
‘a man of Tyre.’ Even for his carpenters and masons Solomon was indebted
to his Tyrian ally; it was only the gangs of labourers driven to their
forced work among the forests and quarries of Lebanon that were levied
by Hadoram out of ‘Israel.’ The Israelites had become hewers of wood and
drawers of water for their king, and, as in the old days of Egyptian
bondage, 3300 taskmasters were employed in keeping them to their
work.[530] Like the architects, the skilled artificers were lent by
Hiram; from Hiram came also the logs of cedar and fir that were needed
for the buildings at Jerusalem.
In return Solomon provided his ally with wheat and oil. The island-city
was dependent on others for its corn; on the rock of Tyre and on the
barren crags of the opposite mainland no wheat could be grown. Twenty
cities of Galilee, moreover, were ceded to Hiram. But for these Hiram
had to pay one hundred and twenty talents of gold; and in the end, the
wily Hebrew, like his forefather Jacob, had the best of the bargain.
When the Tyrian king came to inspect his new territory, it ‘pleased him
not.’ Solomon, in fact, had given him what it was not worth his own
while to keep.
The royal palace was thirteen years in building. Attached to it was the
armoury, or House of the Forest of Lebanon as it was called from the
cedar used in its construction. Here the three hundred shields and two
hundred targets of gold were stored, which were made for the bodyguard,
and served also as a reserve fund in case of need. The architecture of
the palace itself culminated, as in Persia, in the audience-chamber with
its throne of ivory overlaid with gold, and approached by six steps
which were guarded on either side by the images of lions. Another palace
was erected for the Egyptian queen; like the palace of the king it was
in the Upper City, close to the spot on which the temple was destined to
stand.
The old palace of David, in the lower town or ‘City of David,’ was
deserted; as soon as the new buildings were completed on Moriah, the
king moved to them with his harîm and court. The palace which had
satisfied the simple tastes of the father was no longer sufficient for
the luxury and display of the more cultured son. The ‘City of David’ was
left to the Jews and Benjamites; the court and the priesthood settled
above them by the side of the old Jebusite population, which had been
reduced to serfdom (1 Kings ix. 20). None but slaves and serfs might
dwell where the monarch lived surrounded by his armed bodyguard; the
free Israelite was confined to another quarter of the town.
The palace was protected by a huge fortress called the Millo, which was
connected with the new walls of Jerusalem, and begun as soon as the
palace of the Egyptian princess had been finished. Whether it stood on
the eastern or western side of the city is doubtful; the topography of
pre-exilic Jerusalem is unfortunately still involved in obscurity. The
pool of Siloam, and the identification of the Upper Gihon or ‘Spring’
with the Virgin’s Fountain, the only natural spring of water in the
immediate neighbourhood of the city, are almost the only two points
which can be fixed with certainty. If the subterranean tunnel which
conveys the water of the Virgin’s Fountain to the pool of Siloam is the
conduit made by Hezekiah when he ‘stopped the upper water-course of
Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of
David’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), the west side will be that which overlooks
the Tyropœon valley, where the tunnel ends. In this case the city of
David, which is stated in 2 Sam. v. 7 to have been on Mount Zion, will
be the so-called southern hill or ‘Ophel,’ which lies south of the
Mosque of Omar, and the Tyropœon valley will be the Valley of the Sons
of Hinnom so often referred to in the Old Testament. The Jerusalem of
the kings will thus have been, like most of the cities of the ancient
Oriental world, of no great size according to our modern conceptions;
its population will have been as closely packed together as it is to-day
in the native quarters of Cairo, and the fortifications which surrounded
it would not have occupied too wide a circumference for a Jewish army to
defend. The Tyropœon valley is choked with the rubbish of ancient
Jerusalem to a depth of more than seventy feet; but under it must lie
the tombs of the kings of Judah. The recent excavations of Dr. Bliss
have thrown but little light on the question, since the walls he has
found seem mostly of a late date; but if the rock-cut steps he has
discovered north of the pool of Siloam are really ‘the stairs that go
down from the city of David’ (Neh. iii. 16), a striking verification
will have been given of the theory which sees in the southern hill the
Zion of Scripture, and in the valley of ‘the Cheesemakers’ the gorge of
the sons of Hinnom.[531]
The crown of all the building activity of Solomon was the temple, even
though it did not take so long to construct as his own palace. Materials
for it had already been accumulated by David, and the architects and
workmen came from Tyre. It was built of large blocks of square stone,
the edges of which were probably bevelled as in early Phœnician work,
and the walls inside were covered with panels of cedar. Walls and doors
alike were profusely decorated with the designs of Phœnician art.
Cherubs and palms, lotus flowers and pomegranates were depicted on them
in the forms that have been made familiar to us by the relics of ancient
Phœnician workmanship. The temple itself was of rectangular shape, not
unlike the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, and in front of it
were two large courts, one of which—the ‘inner’ or ‘upper’ court—stood
on a higher level than the other. The whole design, in fact, was purely
Phœnician; in form and ornamentation the building exactly resembled the
temples of Phœnicia. Like them, it must have looked externally like a
huge rectangular box, which was further disfigured by chambers, in sets
of three, being built one over the other against the walls. The great
temple of Melkarth, which Hiram had just completed at Tyre, probably
served as the model for the temple of Jerusalem.
The entrance was approached by steps, and consisted of a porch, on
either side of which were two lofty columns of bronze, called Jachin and
Boaz.[532] Similar columns were planted before the entrance of a
Phœnician temple where they symbolised the fertilising power of the
Sun-god, and Herodotos (ii. 44) states that the two which stood in front
of the temple at Tyre were made of gold and emerald glass. Two similar
columns of stone, though of small size, have been found in the Temple of
the Giants in the island of Gozo, one of which still remains in its
original place. In the outer court was a bronze ‘sea’ or basin, thirty
cubits in circumference, and supported on twelve oxen. The ‘sea’ had
been imported into the West from Babylonia, where it similarly stood in
the court of a temple, and represented the _apsu_ or ‘watery abyss,’ out
of which Chaldæan philosophy taught that all things had been evolved. A
Babylonian hymn which describes the casting of a copper ‘sea’ for the
temple of Chaos tells us that, like the ‘sea’ at Jerusalem, it rested on
the heads of twelve bulls.[533] Along with the ‘sea’ bronze lavers and
basins were provided for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of
the sanctuary.
The temple was but a shell for enclosing the innermost shrine or Holy of
Holies where, as in a casket, the ark of the covenant was placed under
the protecting wings of two gilded cherubim. What they were like we may
gather from the Assyrian sculptures, in which the two winged cherubs are
depicted on either side of the sacred tree.[534] The over-shadowing
wings formed a ‘mercy-seat,’ the _parakku_ of the Babylonian texts,
whereon, according to Nebuchadrezzar, Bel seated himself on the festival
of the new year, while the other gods humbly ranged themselves around
him bowing to the ground.[535] At Babylon, moreover, the table of
shewbread which stood before Bel was of solid gold, like the table which
Solomon made for the service of Yahveh.[536] Indeed, the description of
the lavish use of gold in the temple of Jerusalem finds its echo in the
description given by Nebuchadrezzar of the temples he reared in Babylon.
The altar of Yahveh, it is said, was of gold, so too were the
candlesticks and lamps and vessels; even the hinges of the doors that
opened into the Holy of Holies were of the same precious metal, while
the cedar work was richly gilded, and the floor itself was overlaid with
golden plates. In similar terms Nebuchadrezzar describes his decoration
of Ê-Sagila, the temple of Bel, at Babylon. Here too, the beams and
panels of cedar were overlaid with gold, the gates were gilded, and the
vessels for the service of the sanctuary were of solid gold.[537] There
was one point, however, in which the temples of Jerusalem and Babylon
differed from one another; in the shrine of Ê-Sagila was the image of
Bel: the Hebrew shrine contained no likeness of a god. The only graven
figures within it were the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the ark.
The temple was finished in seven (or more exactly seven and a half)
years. Perhaps an effort was made to restrict the years of building to
the sacred number. At all events, it was in the seventh month of the
Hebrew year, the Ethanim of the Phœnicians, that the feast of the
dedication was kept.[538] It coincided with the ancient festival of the
Ingathering of the Harvest, a fitting season for commemorating the
completion of the work.
The dedication of Solomon’s temple is the beginning of a new chapter in
the history of the Jewish state and of Hebrew religion. It became the
visible centre round which the elements of the Israelitish faith
gathered and cohered together until the terrible day came when the enemy
stormed the walls of the capital and laid its temple in the dust. But it
had already exercised a profound influence upon the history of Judah. It
had helped to unify the kingdom; to bind the population of southern
Palestine, mixed in blood though it were, into a single whole. Unlike
the northern tribes with their two great sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel,
Judah and Benjamin had a common centre in the one sanctuary of
Jerusalem. Around it, moreover, were grouped all the traditions and
memories of a venerable past. It alone was connected with the traditions
of the Mosaic Law and the priesthood of Shiloh, with the rites and
ceremonies that had come down from the primeval days of the Israelitish
people, and with the foundation of the monarchy itself. It was the
dwelling-place on earth of Yahveh of Israel; here was the sacred ark of
the covenant which had once been carried before the invaders of Canaan,
and was still the outward sign and symbol of God’s presence among His
people. With the preservation of the temple the preservation of the
Jewish religion itself seemed to be bound up, as well as of the Jewish
state.
But the temple did something more than help to unify the southern
monarchy and preserve the traditions of the Mosaic law. It served also
to strengthen and perpetuate the Davidic dynasty, and to keep alive in
the hearts of the people their allegiance to the line of Solomon. The
temple, as we have seen, was not only a national sanctuary, it was also
a royal chapel. It formed, as it were, part of the royal palace, in
which the king overshadowed the high priest himself. The halo of
veneration which surrounded the temple was thus communicated to the
royal line. The temple and the descendants of David became parts of the
same national conception; the one necessarily implied the other. When
the throne of David fell, the temple also fell with it. While the temple
lasted, Judah remained a homogeneous state, yielding willing obedience
to its theocratic monarchy, and gradually gaining a clearer idea of the
meaning and practice of the Mosaic Law. The temple of Solomon made
Jewish religion conservative, but it was a conservatism which, as time
went on, evolved the consequences of its own principles, and sought how
best to carry them out in ritual and practice.
Jerusalem had become one of the great capitals of the world. Its public
buildings were worthy of the empire which had been created by David, of
the wealth that had poured into the coffers of Solomon from the trade of
the whole Orient, of the culture and art which the young king had done
his best to introduce. But the necessities of defence were not
forgotten. The fortifications of the city were pushed on—though, it
would seem, not with sufficient rapidity to allow them to be finished
before the king’s death—and horses and chariots were imported from Egypt
and the land of the Hittites in the north. With these Solomon equipped a
standing force of 1400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, who served as
garrisons in Jerusalem and the other fortresses of the country.
Nor were the other cities of the empire neglected in favour of
Jerusalem. Gezer was rebuilt and fortified; so too were ‘Beth-horon the
nether and Baalath’ in Judah, and ‘Tadmor in the wilderness,’ the
Palmyra of later days.[539] It is true that modern criticism would see
in Tadmor the Tamar of the southern desert of Judah which is referred to
by Ezekiel (xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28) as a future border of the Holy Land.
But, though the Kethîbh or text of the Hebrew Scriptures has Tamar, the
reading is corrupt, and has been corrected by the Massoretic scribes
themselves.[540] The Chronicler (2 Chron. viii. 4) shows that Tadmor was
the reading of the text in his time, and he shows further that it was
known to be the desert-city which afterwards became the seat of empire
of the merchant prince Odenathus and his queen, Zenobia. We learn from
him that Solomon had put down a rising in that part of Zobah which
adjoined Hamath, that he had founded ‘store-cities’ in Hamath, and had
built Tadmor in the wilderness beyond. It is strange only that no
allusion is made to building operations in Israel: perhaps Solomon was
disinclined to establish fortresses among the northern tribes which
might be used against his own authority, perhaps David had already put
the cities of northern Israel in a thorough state of defence. At all
events, little danger from abroad was to be apprehended in this part of
the Israelitish dominions; Solomon was in alliance with Tyre, and
presumably also with Hamath, and Zobah was included in his empire.
We gather from the Assyrian inscriptions that Zobah extended from the
neighbourhood of Hamath and Damascus eastward across the desert towards
the Euphrates. Midway stood Palmyra, approached by roads from both
Damascus and Homs, which there united and then led to the ford across
the Euphrates at Thapsacus or Tiphsakh. It was the shortest route from
Palestine to Mesopotamia, and avoided the tolls and possible hostility
of the Hittites in their strong fortress of Carchemish. The conquest of
Zobah would necessarily have laid Palmyra and the roads that passed
through it at the feet of David, and the importance of the place for
commercial purposes could not have failed to strike the mind of Solomon
ever ready to discover fresh channels of trade. Its fortification would
naturally have been one of his first cares; even if there had been no
mention of the fact in the Old Testament, the historian would have been
almost compelled to assume it. It opened to him the merchandise of
Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, and Assyria, and brought him into touch with
the old monarchies of the Asiatic world. For the trade of the east,
Palmyra was to Solomon what the ports of Edom were for the trade of the
south.
To the north his dominions touched on those of the Hittites, who were
still settled in Kadesh on the Orontes, even if Hamath had long since
passed out of their possession. Lenormant was the first to point out
that in 1 Kings x. 28 there is an allusion to the importation of horses
into Judah, not only from Egypt, but also from the Hittite regions on
the Gulf of Antioch. Here lived the Quê of the Assyrian monuments, who
are named in the Hebrew text, though it needed the revelations of
Oriental archæology to discover the fact. Solomon, it is there said,
‘had horses brought out of Egypt and out of Quê; the royal merchants
received it from Quê at a price.’ In the later days of the Assyrian
empire Nineveh obtained its supply of horses and stallions from the same
part of the world, and there are numerous letters to the king which
relate to their importation. The chariots came from Egypt, the value of
each being as much as 600 shekels of silver, or £90; it was only the
horses that were brought from ‘the kings of the Hittites’ and ‘the kings
of Aram.’ The trade in both horses and chariots was a monopoly which
Solomon kept jealously in his own hands; the merchants were those ‘of
the king,’ and none of his subjects was allowed to import materials of
war which might be employed against himself.
It was the trade with the south which introduced into Jerusalem the
greatest novelties and the most costly articles of luxury. In imitation
of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, Solomon established zoological and
botanical gardens where the strange animals and plants that had been
brought from abroad were kept. Such collections had been made by
Thothmes III. at Thebes, and on the foundations of a ruined chamber in
his temple at Karnak we may still see pictures of the trees and plants
and birds which he sent home from his campaigns in Syria and the Soudan.
In Assyria a botanical garden had been similarly planted by
Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and stocked with foreign plants.[541]
Solomon’s collections were therefore no new thing in the Oriental world,
though they were a novelty in Palestine; and his subjects went to gaze
and wonder, like the Cairenes of to-day, at the apes which had come from
the far south, or the peacocks whose name (_thukîyîm_) betrayed their
Indian origin. It is even said that he composed books on the animal and
vegetable collections he had made.[542]
Gold and silver and ivory were also brought, with the apes and peacocks,
by the merchant vessels whose voyages of three years’ duration carried
them along the Somali coast, and even, it may be, to the mouths of the
Indus. The gold probably came, for the most part, from the mines of the
Zambesi region, where foreign mining settlements are now known to have
been established at an early date, and where objects have been found,
such as birds carved out of stone, which remind us of the civilisation
of southern Arabia. But the greater part of the silver, which we are
told became as plentiful as ‘stones,’ must have been derived from Asia
Minor. Here were the mines from which the Hittites extracted the metal
for which they seem to have had a special fancy, and it was through them
that it probably made its way to Jerusalem. Copper would have come from
Cyprus, and been brought in the ships which trafficked in the
Mediterranean. It was the Mediterranean trade, moreover, which supplied
the tin needed for the vast quantities of bronze that was used in the
Solomonic age. We know of no source of it equal to such a demand except
the peninsula of Cornwall; but if it really was Cornish tin that found
its way to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age
it must have travelled like amber across Europe until it reached the
Adriatic or the Gulf of Lyons. The amber found by Dr. Schliemann in the
prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ is of Baltic origin, and amber beads have
been discovered by Dr. Bliss at Lachish, belonging to the century before
the Exodus; if amber could travel thus far from northern Europe, the tin
might have done the same.
Future generations looked back upon the reign of Solomon as the golden
age of Israel. But there was a reverse side to the picture. The
combination of culture and arbitrary power produced in him the selfish
luxury of an Oriental despot, which is bent on satisfying its own
sensuous desires at the expense of all around it. Solomon’s extravagance
was like that of the Khedive Ismail in our own day, and it led to the
same amount of misery and impoverishment in the nation. He found on his
accession a treasury well filled by the thrifty government of his
father; and his trading monopolies and alliances brought him an
apparently inexhaustible supply of wealth. But a time came when even
this supply began to fail, and to cease to suffice for his reckless
expenditure. Heavier taxes were laid on the subject populations; the
free men of Israel were compelled to work as unpaid serfs under the lash
of the taskmaster, and the older population of the land, who were still
numerous, were turned into veritable bond-slaves. To the Gibeonites, who
had long been the serfs of the Levitical sanctuary, were now added the
Nethinim, a part of whom went under the name of ‘Solomon’s slaves’ (Ezra
ii. 55, 58). The building of the temple had cost the people dear: the
Israelites had been robbed of their freedom to provide for it stone and
wood; the Canaanites had been given to it as actual slaves.
Doubtless the policy of Solomon was partly determined by the same
considerations as those which had moved the Pharaoh of the Oppression.
He mistrusted the Canaanites, he was afraid of the northern tribes. In
either case he endeavoured to break their spirit, and render them
powerless to revolt. But in the case of the Hebrew tribesmen he did not
succeed. Discontent was smothered for awhile, but it was none the less
dangerous on that account. And towards the end of Solomon’s life an
incident occurred which led eventually to the division of the kingdom.
Jeroboam the son of Nebat—in whom Dr. Neubauer has seen the name of a
‘Nabathean’—and whose mother belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, had
distinguished himself by his activity and abilities. Solomon had
finished the Millo or Fort, and was now at work on the other
fortifications of Jerusalem. His notice was drawn to Jeroboam, and he
made the young man the ‘taskmaster’ or overseer of the _corvée_ of
Ephraimites employed upon the walls. Like Moses in old days, Jeroboam’s
sympathy was aroused by the sufferings of his fellow-tribesmen, which
found a mouthpiece in Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh. Ahijah was himself
one of the dispossessed. The glory of Shiloh had passed away from it;
Jerusalem had taken its place. The tabernacle of Shiloh had been
rejected in favour of the temple of the Jewish king. The centre of
Hebrew religion and power had departed from the house of Joseph, and
been transferred to the mixed parvenus of Judah.
In Jeroboam the prophet recognised the leader who should restore the
lost fortunes of Ephraim and revenge its injuries. Jeroboam listened to
the counsels of revolt, but the time for making use of them had not yet
come. His plans and plotting became known to Solomon, and, once more
like Moses, he had to fly for his life. He made his way to the Egyptian
court, where a ready welcome awaited him.
A new dynasty had arisen there. The Libyan mercenaries had dethroned
their feeble masters, and seated Shishak or Sheshanq, their general,
upon the throne of the Pharaohs. The Tanitic dynasty which ruled the
Delta was swept away; so also was the rival dynasty of high-priests who
reigned at Thebes and held possession of Upper Egypt. With the rise of
the twenty-second dynasty at Bubastis, a new and unaccustomed vigour was
infused into the government of Egypt. Shishak proved himself an able and
energetic king. His earlier years were occupied in putting down
opposition at home, and restoring order and unity throughout the
country. When once the task was accomplished, he began to turn his
attention elsewhere. Egypt had never relinquished its theoretical claims
to sovereignty in Canaan; and the new power that had arisen there
menaced the safety of the Asiatic frontier. Solomon, it is true, had
allied himself by marriage with the Pharaohs; but it was with a Pharaoh
of the fallen dynasty, and this in itself made him all the more
dangerous a neighbour. At present Israel was too powerful to be
attacked; but a time might come when the Egyptian monarch might venture
to march again along the roads that had once conducted the armies of
Egypt to the conquest of Syria. Meanwhile Shishak could stir up
disaffection and rebellion in the Israelitish empire, and could harbour
pretenders to the throne who might hereafter undermine the very
existence of the new power.
As long as Solomon lived Jeroboam did not dare to stir. But he was not
the only ‘adversary’ of the Jewish king. Hadad, the representative of
the old kings of Edom, had also found a refuge in the Egyptian court,
and had there married the sister-in-law of the Pharaoh. In spite of the
Pharaoh’s remonstrances he had returned to the mountains of Edom when
David and Joab were dead, and had there carried on a guerilla warfare
with the Israelitish garrisons. Throughout the lifetime of Solomon he
had maintained himself in the fastnesses of Seir, and had been, as it
were, a thorn in the side of the conquerors of his country. But he never
succeeded in seriously injuring the caravan trade that passed through
Edom, or in shaking off the Israelitish yoke. The male population of
Edom had been too mercilessly exterminated for this to be possible, and
all that he could do was to molest the trade with the Red Sea. But even
in this he does not seem to have been successful.
A more formidable opponent of Israel was Rezon of Zobah. He, it would
seem, had established himself at Damascus even before the death of
David, and all the efforts to dislodge him were of no avail. It is
possible that the insurrection in Zobah, which led to the construction
of fortified posts on the borders of Hamath (2 Chron. viii. 3), was
connected with his revolt. At any rate, Rezon founded a kingdom and a
dynasty in the old Syrian capital, which in years to come was to shake
the monarchy of northern Israel to its base. ‘He abhorred Israel,’ we
are told, ‘and reigned over Aram.’
The Jewish historian traces the misfortunes of Solomon to the religious
indifferentism of his later years. His wives were many, his concubines
innumerable. They had been added to his harîm from all parts of the
known world; and they brought with them the worship of their native
deities. Solomon had none of that intense belief in the national God
which had distinguished Saul and David, or which made the Assyrian kings
conquer and slay the unbelievers who would not acknowledge the supremacy
of Assur.[543] He was a cultured and selfish epicure, catholic in his
tastes and sympathies, and doubtless inclined to stigmatise as
narrow-minded fanaticism the objections of those who would have
forbidden him to indulge his wives in their religious beliefs. On the
hill opposite Jerusalem they were allowed to worship in the chapels of
their own divinities, and the king himself did not refuse to bow himself
with them in the house of Rimmon. Shrines were erected and altars blazed
to Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to Milcom of Ammon, and to Chemosh of
Moab.
Modern criticism has averred that all this was only in accordance with
the general ideas and practice of the time, and that not Solomon alone
but the rest of his people saw little or no difference between Yahveh
and Baal. The Song of Deborah, which reflects the feelings of so much
earlier an epoch, is a sufficient answer to such an assertion. The whole
history of Saul and David points unmistakably to the contrary, and the
temple bears witness that there was a time when Solomon also shared the
belief that Yahveh alone was God in Israel, and that He would brook the
presence of no other god beside Himself. The character of Solomon, his
habits and alliances,—above all, the seductions of the harîm, are quite
enough to account for a gradual change in his views. It is probable,
moreover, that the death of his old guide and instructor Nathan may have
had much to do with what an undogmatic theology might call emancipation
from the narrow and exclusive circle of Hebrew religious ideas; we know
that such was the case with Jehoash after the death of Jehoiada the
priest. The king who began by sending to Phœnicia for the architects and
builders of the temple, ended not unnaturally with the erection of
sanctuaries to a Phœnician goddess.
In fact, the artistic tastes of Solomon ran counter to the puritanical
tendencies and restrictions of the Mosaic Law. It had been made for the
wanderers in the desert, for hardy warriors intent on the conquest of a
foreign land, for the simple peasantry of Palestine. It was directed
against the cultured vices and artistic idolatries of Egypt and Canaan:
on its forefront was the command: ‘Thou shalt not make the likeness of
anything that is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the
water that is under the earth.’ The temple at Jerusalem, with its costly
decoration and graven images, was in itself a violation of the letter of
the Law. Solomon was called indeed to be king over Israel, but his heart
and his sympathies were with Phœnicia.
He had been carefully educated, and, like our own Henry VIII., was a
learned as well as a cultivated prince. His wisdom was celebrated above
that of the wisest men of his day (1 Kings iv. 30, 31), and he left
behind him a large collection of proverbs. Some of these were re-edited
by the scribes of Hezekiah’s library (Prov. xxv. 1), the foundation of
which may possibly go back to him. Indeed, he showed himself so anxious
to imitate the civilised monarchs of his day that it is hard to believe
he established no library at Jerusalem. The library had been for untold
centuries as essential to the royal dignity in Western Asia or Egypt as
the temple or palace, and the annals of Menander imply that one existed
at Tyre in the age of Hiram. Archæology has vindicated the authenticity
of the letters that passed between Solomon and the Tyrian king (2 Chron.
ii. 3, 11); similar letters were written in Babylonia in the age of
Abraham, and the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have demonstrated how frequent
they were in the ancient East. As in Babylonia and Assyria, so, too, in
Palestine, they would have been preserved among the archives of the
royal library.
Hiram was nineteen years old when he ascended the throne, and he died at
the age of fifty-three. Solomon was probably of about the same age as
his friend both at his accession and at his death. He died, worn out by
excessive self-indulgence, leaving behind him an impoverished treasury,
a discontented people, and a tottering empire. But he had achieved one
great result. Jerusalem had become the capital of a united Judah and
Benjamin, Hebrew religion had obtained a local habitation round which
henceforward it could live and grow, and the dynasty of David was
planted firmly on the Jewish throne. When the disruption of the kingdom
came after Solomon’s death, it did no more than give outward form to the
estrangement that had so long been maturing between Judah and the
northern tribes; the temple, the line of David, and the fortress-capital
of Jerusalem remained unshaken. The work of David and Solomon was
accomplished, though in a way of which they had not dreamed; and a
nation was called into existence whom neither defeat nor exile,
persecution nor contempt, has ever been able to destroy.
Footnote 368:
We hear only of citizens of Mount Ephraim going up yearly to sacrifice
at Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 1-3).
Footnote 369:
It must be remembered that at this time, before the rise of Judah,
Ephraim was the nearest neighbour of the Philistines as well as of the
Amalekites.
Footnote 370:
It cannot be supposed, of course, that an Ephraimite would have
recorded the defeat and slaughter of his tribe at the hands of
Jephthah. But such a momentous disaster could not fail to become known
throughout Canaan, and some notice of it must have been taken by the
chroniclers of Ephraim themselves. Where and by whom, however, the
present account was composed it is vain to inquire, and the question
may be left for discussion to the philological critics. That Samuel,
who was brought up at Shiloh, could write we are assured in 1 Sam. x.
25.
Footnote 371:
1 Sam. ix. 5; xiv. 1.
Footnote 372:
1 Sam. ix. 18, 19. The disintegrating critics have assumed this
narrative to be primitive and contemporary because it presents us with
a picture of Samuel which seems to degrade him into an obscure local
soothsayer, and on the strength of it have disputed the antiquity of
such narratives as assign to him national influence. They might just
as well maintain that the only primitive and contemporary account of
King Alfred that we possess is the story of the burnt cakes at
Athelney.
Footnote 373:
1 Sam. vii. 14.
Footnote 374:
Zuph gave his name to ‘the district of Zuph’ (1 Sam. ix. 5), which has
the plural form in Ramathaim-zophim.
Footnote 375:
Ephraim, however, may be, like Jerusalem, the older form of which has
been recovered from the cuneiform inscriptions, a later Massoretic
mispronunciation of an original plural Ephrim. The Massoretes have
erroneously introduced a dual form into the pronunciation of the name
Chushan-rishathaim, and probably also into that of Naharaim when
compared with the Egyptian Naharin and the Nahrima of the Tel
el-Amarna tablets. Perhaps the dual form Ephraim originated in the
existence of the two Ophrahs (with _’ayin_), which are already
mentioned in the geographical lists of Thothmes III.
Footnote 376:
2 Sam. viii. 18; see also 2 Sam. xx. 26. The Authorised Version
mistranslates the word in both passages.
Footnote 377:
Translated by me in the _Records of the Past_, new ser., IV., pp.
109-113.
Footnote 378:
See above, p. 244. The Hebrew Samuel could also represent a Babylonian
Sumu-il, ‘Sumu is God’ or ‘the name of God,’ which we actually find in
early Babylonian contracts.
Footnote 379:
So, too, the Chronicler states that he was descended from Ithamar the
younger son of Aaron (1 Chron. xxiv. 3).
Footnote 380:
It would seem from 1 Sam. iii. 3, as compared with Exod. xxvii. 21,
and Lev. xxiv. 3, that there was no veil at the time in ‘the temple of
the Lord, where the ark of God was.’
Footnote 381:
‘The priest’ of the narrative is equivalent to ‘high priest’: see
above, p. 219. Eli’s two sons were naturally not on a level of
equality with himself. It has been gravely maintained that there were
only three priests at Shiloh at the time, because nothing is said
about any others; had the narrative not required the mention of Hophni
and Phinehas we should have been told there was only one. Such
trifling with historical documents is unfortunately only too
characteristic of the so-called ‘literary criticism.’
Footnote 382:
It has been assumed that ‘the women that assembled at the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation’ (Exod. xxxviii. 8, 1 Sam. ii. 22) were
religious prostitutes like the _qedashoth_ in the Phœnician temples
(see Deut. xxiii. 17, 18). But the fact that the intercourse of the
sons of Eli with them was a sin in the eyes of both Yahveh and the
people proves the contrary. Here, as in other cases, an old
institution of Semitic religion was retained among the adherents of
the Mosaic law, but it was deprived of its pagan and immoral
characteristics.
Footnote 383:
1 Sam. ix. 9.
Footnote 384:
1 Sam. xix. 23. _Nâbî_ is not of Arabic derivation as is often
supposed, as, for example, by Professor Cornill, _The Prophets of
Israel_, pp. 8-10, where it is erroneously stated that the Babylonian
_nabû_ does not mean ‘to pronounce’ or ‘proclaim.’ The name of Nebo
shows to what antiquity the Babylonian _nabium_ in its special sense
of ‘prophet’ reaches back. The modern Arabic _nebi_ is borrowed from
the Hebrew _nâbî_. _Nâbî_ corresponds with the Greek προφήτης
‘forth-speaker,’ as distinguished from μάντις or ‘diviner,’ the
Babylonian _asipu_. In Babylonia the _asipu_ performed the offices
which the Hebrew _roeh_ had once fulfilled; he determined whether an
army should move or not, whether victory would be on its side, whether
an undertaking would be prosperous or the reverse. While, therefore,
the _asipu_ and the _nabiu_ continued to exist side by side,
performing the functions which had been combined in the Hebrew _roeh_,
and at the outset in the Hebrew _nâbî_, among the Israelites the
_roeh_ disappeared, and the _nâbî_ alone remained with purely
prophetical attributes.
Footnote 385:
Towards the end of Samuel’s life, however, a Naioth or ‘monastery’
grew up around him at Ramah, which must have closely resembled the
Dervish colleges of the modern Mohammedan world; see 1 Sam. xix. 23.
This monastery will have taken the place of Shiloh, and become a
veritable ‘school’ of prophetical training and instruction.
Footnote 386:
Gad, however, still retained the title of ‘seer’ (1 Chron. xxix. 29),
and one of the histories of the reign of Solomon was contained ‘in the
visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam’ (2 Chron. ix. 29). Even
Isaiah’s history of Hezekiah was called ‘the vision of Isaiah the
prophet’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). But the title was merely a survival.
Footnote 387:
We must, however, distinguish between Samuel’s authority as a seer,
which did not excite the jealousy of his Philistine masters, and his
authority as a dispenser of justice. That was confined to a small area
in the heart of Mount Ephraim. Each year, we are told (1 Sam. vii. 16)
he went on circuit like a Babylonian judge, ‘to Beth-el and Gilgal and
Mizpeh.’ This is the Mizpeh of Benjamin.
Footnote 388:
Ramah, ‘the height,’ is identified in 1 Sam. ii. 11 with Ramathaim,
‘the two heights.’ The village evidently stood on two hills. For the
possible site of Aphek, see G. A. Smith, _The Historical Geography of
the Holy Land_, p. 224. Eben-ezer is identified with the great stone
at Beth-shemesh (1 Sam. vi. 14, 18) by M. Clermont-Ganneau (_Quarterly
Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874, p. 279; 1877, pp.
154 _sqq._), but this is questionable.
Footnote 389:
See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 154;
and above, p. 196.
Footnote 390:
1 Sam. iv. 13.
Footnote 391:
The Septuagint text omits the ‘eight.’
Footnote 392:
The Septuagint reads Ouai-bar-khabôth, ‘Woe to the son of glory,’ with
the insertion of the Aramaic _bar_, ‘son.’
Footnote 393:
1 Sam. xiv. 3.
Footnote 394:
As Abiathar was the contemporary of David, and his father Ahimelech or
Ahiah of Saul, Ahitub will have been the contemporary of Samuel. If
Solomon came to the throne about B.C. 965, and Saul was about forty
years of age at the time of his death, we should have about B.C. 1045
for the date of Saul’s birth. Samuel was an old man when he died; if
he lived ten years after Saul’s accession, and was ten years old when
the ark was taken, we may place his birth about B.C. 1090. This would
give about B.C. 1180 for the birth of Eli, or very shortly after the
Israelitish invasion of Canaan. The life of Eli would thus cover
almost the whole period of the Judges, and form a single link between
the Mosaic age and that of Samuel. In such a case it is not
astonishing that the records and traditions of the Mosaic age were
preserved at Shiloh. The ark was only seven months among the
Philistines (1 Sam. vi. 1), and it was removed from ‘the house of
Abinadab’ at Kirjath-jearim some time after the seventh year of David
(see, however, 1 Sam. xiv. 18). ‘The sons of Abinadab,’ in 2 Sam. vi.
4, must mean, as is so frequently the case, the descendants of
Abinadab.
Footnote 395:
In Zeph. i. 9 there is an allusion to the practice of the Philistine
priests of ‘leaping’ over the threshold. For the origin and reason of
this sacredness of the threshold see Trumbull, _The Threshold
Covenant_, pp. 10-13, 116-126, 143. ‘In Finland it is regarded as
unlucky if a clergyman steps on the threshold when he comes to preach
at a church.... In the Lapp tales the same idea appears.’ (Jones and
Kropf, _Folk-Tales of the Magyars_, p. 410.)
Footnote 396:
Philo Byblius according to Euseb., _Præp. Evangel._ i. 6.
Footnote 397:
That Dagon was worshipped in Canaan before he was adopted by the
Philistine emigrants we know, not only from the evidence of
geographical names, but also from the fact that one of the Tel
el-Amarna correspondents in Palestine was called Dagan-takala.
Footnote 398:
It is noticeable that Zophim in Ramathaim-zophim means ‘Watchmen.’
Poels (_Le Sanctuaire de Kirjath-jearim_, Louvain, 1894) has,
moreover, made it probable that Kirjath-jearim, Mizpeh, Gibeah, Geba,
and Gibeon all represent the same place.
Footnote 399:
According to 1 Sam. vii. 2, the victory at Eben-ezer took place
‘twenty years’ after the ark had been removed to Kirjath-jearim. But
this is merely the half of an unknown period, and means that the
interval of time was not long.
Footnote 400:
1 Sam. vii. 13, 14. The area of independence, however, must have been
very confined, since there was a garrison of the Philistines in ‘the
hill of God’ at Gibeah (1 Sam. ix. 5), as well as one at Michmash (1
Sam. xiv. 1).
Footnote 401:
There is no reason for doubting the very explicit statement made in 1
Sam. vii. 14, which explains and limits the preceding verse. Its
antiquity is vouched for by the concluding words: ‘And there was peace
between Israel and the Amorites.’ The term ‘Amorite’ instead of
‘Canaanite’ points to an early date, and the sentence reads like an
extract from a contemporary chronicle. The peace was an enforced one,
as both Israelites and Canaanites alike were under the yoke of the
Philistines.
Footnote 402:
See 2 Kings xviii. 4.
Footnote 403:
1 Chron. xvi. 39, xxi. 293; 2 Chron. i. 3, 5.
Footnote 404:
Is it an inference from 1 Kings iii. 4? That the Chronicler sometimes
drew erroneous inferences from his materials, I have shown in _The
Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 463. It is
difficult to understand how ‘fixtures’ like the tabernacle and the
altar escaped destruction when the temple at Shiloh was ruined.
Footnote 405:
Kirjath-jearim was a Gibeonite town (Josh. ix. 17).
Footnote 406:
1 Sam. ix. 3.
Footnote 407:
1 Sam. viii. 2. Joel is called Vashni in 1 Chron. vi. 28, where the
Septuagint reads Sani.
Footnote 408:
As has been noticed above (p. 315, note 1), the title of the supreme
god of Tyre is evidence that there, too, the state had been originally
regarded as a theocracy.
Footnote 409:
The name of Saul corresponds with the Babylonian Savul, a title of the
Sun-god, though it might also be explained as a Hebrew word meaning
‘asked for.’ But one of the Edomite kings was also named Saul, and he
is stated to have come from ‘Rehoboth (Assyrian Rêbit) by the river’
Euphrates (Gen. xxxvi. 37). This points to a Babylonian origin of the
name. Kish, Saul’s father, has also the same name as the Edomite god
Qos (in Assyrian Qaus), of which the Canaanitish Kishon is a
derivative. As Saul’s successors in Edom were Baal-hanan and Hadad,
while Hadad was a contemporary of Solomon, and El-hanan is said in 2
Sam. xxi. 19 to have been the slayer of Goliath, I have proposed (_The
Modern Review_, v. 17, 1884) to see in the Saul and Baal-hanan of Edom
the Saul and David of Israel. Saul is said to have fought against Edom
(1 Sam. xiv. 47), and Doeg the Edomite was his henchman. But the
proposal is excluded by two facts. The kings of Edom recorded in Gen.
xxxvi. 31-39 reigned ‘before there was any king over the children of
Israel,’ and Saul the son of Kish did not come from the Euphrates.
Footnote 410:
1 Sam. ix. 3. In 1 Sam. x. 14-16, Saul’s uncle takes the place of his
father.
Footnote 411:
Much has been made of the supposed fact that Saul had never heard of
Samuel, and did not know that he was a seer. But the narrative only
says that Saul’s slave informed him that a seer was in the town,
without mentioning his name; and if Saul had never previously seen
Samuel, he would naturally not recognise him in the crowd.
Footnote 412:
That the prophets were at Gibeah is shown by the fact that ‘the hill
of God,’ where they met Saul, was also where ‘the garrison of the
Philistines’ was (1 Sam. x. 5, xiii. 2, 3).
Footnote 413:
It has been usually supposed from this verse that ‘Gibeah of Saul’ was
the original home of Saul’s family. But as the family burial-place was
at Zelah (2 Sam. xxi. 14), this can hardly have been the case. Gibeah
was the scene of Jonathan’s first success against the Philistines, and
it was here that Saul fixed his residence during the latter years of
his life.
Footnote 414:
Cp. Judg. xix. 29, where the Levite similarly cuts up his concubine
and sends the pieces to the several tribes of Israel.
Footnote 415:
See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, pp. 463-4.
When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians against the Assyrian king
Shalmaneser, his whole force consisted of only ten thousand men and
two thousand chariots, and ‘Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of
boasting that he had slain fifty or one hundred and seventy-two of the
enemy in battle.’ The whole of the country population of Judah carried
into captivity by Sennacherib was only two hundred thousand one
hundred and fifty, which would give at most an army of fifty thousand
men. The Egyptian armies, with which the victories of the eighteenth
and nineteenth dynasties were gained, were of small size. One of them,
in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, contained only three thousand
one hundred foreign mercenaries and one thousand nine hundred native
troops (Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, Eng. tr., p. 542). At the same
time, we must not forget that if there were fifty thousand available
fighting men in Judah in the time of Hezekiah, there would have been
about three hundred and fifty thousand among the other seven tribes a
few generations earlier. Consequently the calculation given in the
text of 1 Sam. xi. 8 is approximately correct as a mere calculation.
Between available and actual fighting men there was, of course, a
great difference. In the second year of Saul’s reign, when his
authority was established, he was not able to muster more than three
thousand fighting men (1 Sam. xiii. 2). A larger body, indeed, had
flocked to him, but they were an undisciplined, unarmed multitude, who
had to be dismissed to their homes.
Footnote 416:
As the Hebrew _netsîb_ signifies a ‘governor’ as well as a ‘fortified
post’ or ‘garrison,’ many writers have maintained that the _netsîb_ in
‘the Hill of God’ at Gibeah was the Philistine official. But Jonathan
would not have required a thousand men in order to destroy a single
official and the few soldiers who might have been with him.
Footnote 417:
The Hebrews had, of course, no means of ascertaining the exact numbers
of the enemy. The number of chariots is quite impossible, and they
would have been useless in the mountainous country. In the great
battle in which Meneptah saved Egypt from the combined armies of the
Libyans and their northern allies, nine thousand three hundred and
seventy-six prisoners in all were taken, while the slain amounted to
six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyans and two thousand
three hundred and seventy of their Mediterranean confederates. To
these must be added nine thousand one hundred and eleven Maxyes. And
yet it does not seem that any of the invaders escaped from the battle.
Footnote 418:
1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7. For the distinction that is here drawn between ‘the
men of Israel’ and ‘the Hebrews,’ see above, p. 6.
Footnote 419:
The identification is uncertain, as it depends on the position to be
assigned to Gibeah.
Footnote 420:
Ahimelech (1 Sam. xxii. 9, 11, 20) is here called Ahiah, perhaps out
of reluctance to apply the term Melech, ‘King,’ with its heathen
associations, to Yahveh.
Footnote 421:
Here called by its old name of Beth-On, which the Massoretic
punctuation has transformed into Beth-Aven.
Footnote 422:
Some of the literary critics have started the gratuitous supposition
that a prisoner was substituted for Jonathan, though the fact was
suppressed by the later Hebrew historian. It is perhaps natural that
those who re-write history should have a poor opinion of the
trustworthiness of their predecessors.
Footnote 423:
1 Sam. xii.
Footnote 424:
1 Sam. x. 8, compared with xiii. 8-15.
Footnote 425:
1 Sam. xiii. 14. Though Saul’s kingdom did ‘not continue,’ it
nevertheless lasted some time, and was not overthrown at Michmash, as
those who heard Samuel’s words must have expected. As David was not
anointed until some years later, he cannot be ‘the man’ after Yahveh’s
‘heart,’ whom the seer had in his mind at the time.
Footnote 426:
The _nakhal_ (A.V. ‘valley’) is probably the Wadi el-Arîsh, which lay
on the way to the Shur or line of fortifications that protected the
eastern side of the Delta. Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert, corresponds
with the Melukhkha or ‘Salt’ desert of the Babylonian inscriptions.
The ‘city of Amalek’ may have been El-Arîsh, if this were not in
Egyptian hands at the time.
Footnote 427:
The Israelites had been stirred to vengeance by the murderous raids of
the Bedâwin at a time when the Philistine invasion had made them too
weak to defend themselves (1 Sam. xv. 33).
Footnote 428:
For ‘Edom’ we should probably read ‘Aram,’ as is demanded by the
geographical order of the list of countries which runs from south to
north. In 2 Sam. viii. 13, ‘Aram’ has been substituted for ‘Edom,’
which was still read by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 12), and the
marriage of David with the daughter of the king of Aram-Geshur (2 Sam.
iii. 3) implies hostility between Saul and the Geshurites.
Footnote 429:
The ‘critics’ have decided that the list of Saul’s wars has been
‘borrowed’ from the history of David. In this case, however, we should
have heard of ‘the king’ of Zobah, not of ‘the kings.’ We happen to
know that Saul fought against Ammon. Had the fact not been mentioned,
the ‘critics’ would have maintained, as in the case of Moab and Zobah,
that such a war never took place. The argument from silence may
simplify the process of reconstructing history, but from a historical
point of view it is worthless.
Footnote 430:
Saul showed himself in other cases such a scrupulous observer of the
Law that we can well understand his obeying the precept of Deuteronomy
that the king should not ‘multiply’ horses or wives (Deut. xviii. 16,
17).
Footnote 431:
1 Sam. xxii. 6.
Footnote 432:
It is clear, however, from 1 Sam. xxi. 9, that there must be some
mistake here, since the sword of Goliath was laid up at Nob while Saul
was king.
Footnote 433:
This must be an exaggeration, since David, who was not above the
ordinary size, afterwards used his sword (1 Sam. xxi. 9).
Footnote 434:
The narrative goes on to say that ‘David took the head of the
Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his
tent.’ This verse is given in the Septuagint, though the next nine
verses are omitted. But the statement cannot be right. Jerusalem was
not captured by David until many years after the battle in the valley
of Elah, and the shepherd lad had no tent of his own at the time.
Footnote 435:
1 Chron. xx. 5. ‘Beth-lehemite’ is turned into ‘Lahmi,’ the name of
the ‘brother’ of Goliath, and the unintelligible _Yaare-oregim_
becomes _Yair_. _Oregim_, ‘weavers,’ however, has crept in from the
end of the verse, and the original reading of 1 Sam. xxi. 19 must have
been, ‘El-hanan, the son of Yaari (the forester) the Beth-lehemite,
slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s
beam.’
Footnote 436:
1 Kings xix. 15, 16; 2 Kings ix. 2, 3. Ahijah, however, did not anoint
Jeroboam when he suggested to him that he should head a revolt of the
ten tribes against the house of David. When David was made king at
Hebron he was anointed by ‘the men of Judah,’ not by a prophet (2 Sam.
ii. 4), and no mention is made of a prophet or priest when he was
anointed ‘king over Israel’ (2 Sam. v. 3).
Footnote 437:
We must remember that in any case the act of anointing would have been
a secret, and that consequently an erroneous account of it might
easily have been set on foot.
Footnote 438:
1 Sam. xviii. 6. The singular ‘Philistine’ has to be noted, as if
there was a reference in it to the overthrow of Goliath. Cf. xix. 5.
Footnote 439:
See above, p. 342.
Footnote 440:
It is also possible that chapter xx. ought to precede chapter xix.
Footnote 441:
1 Sam. xix. 2.
Footnote 442:
Hitzig identified the name of Achish with that of the Homeric
Ankhisês. Whether this is so or not, Dr. W. Max Müller is probably
right in seeing the same name in that of a native of Keft, or the
northern coast of Syria, mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus where it is
written Akashau (Spiegelberg in the _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_,
viii. p. 384).
Footnote 443:
Unless, indeed, 1 Sam. xxiii. 16-18 is an interpolation.
Footnote 444:
1 Sam. xxiv. 2. Compare the expression used by Sennacherib when
describing his campaign against the Cilicians: ‘Like a wild goat I
climbed to the high peaks against them’ (W. A. I., i. 39, 77).
Footnote 445:
The name is preserved in the modern Tell Zif.
Footnote 446:
Shunem was a fortified city, already mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna
tablets, Aphek a mere village. Shunem had evidently been captured, and
the Philistine camp subsequently formed outside its walls a little to
the west.
Footnote 447:
See Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27; Deut. xviii. 10, 11.
Footnote 448:
We are told in 1 Chron. xii. 19 that even while he was in the
Philistine camp at Aphek, and again when he was on the march back to
Ziklag, ‘some of Manasseh’ deserted to him.
Footnote 449:
The Negeb or ‘South’ was divided at the time into the Negeb of the
Cherethites or Philistines, of the Jews, and of the Calebites (1 Sam.
xxx. 14, 16.) Up to the end of Saul’s reign, therefore, Caleb and
Judah had not been as yet amalgamated into a single tribe.
Footnote 450:
See above, p. 234.
Footnote 451:
Aroer had belonged to Reuben (Josh. xiii. 16), Hormah, Ziklag,
Chor-ashan, and Ramoth of the south to Simeon (Josh. xix. 4-8.) It is
curious that no mention should be made of Beth-lehem, and it is
therefore possible that ‘Beth-lehem’ should be read in place of
‘Beth-el’ in 1 Sam. xxx. 27. The Septuagint has Baith-Sour.
Footnote 452:
Boaz, the grandfather of Jesse, is said to have been the son of Salmon
or Salma, who, according to 1 Chron. ii. 50, 51, was the founder of
Bethlehem, and the son of Caleb.
Footnote 453:
Criticism has seen in the story told by the Amalekite a second version
of the death of Saul inconsistent with that which precedes it. The
inconsistency certainly exists, but that is because the Amalekite’s
story was a fabrication, the object of which was to gain a reward from
David. There was this much truth in it, that Saul had been wounded and
had desired death; the Amalekite could easily have learned this from
those who had witnessed the last scene of Saul’s life. But the fact
that he had robbed Saul’s corpse shows that he must have come to the
ground after the flight of the Israelitish soldiers; he was, in fact,
one of those Bedâwin thieves who, in Oriental warfare, still hang on
the skirts of the battle in the hope of murdering the wounded and
plundering the dead when it is over and the victors are pursuing the
vanquished.
Footnote 454:
The translation is that of the Revised Version, with a slight change
in the 21st verse. The contrast between the preservation of the text
in this Song and in that of the Song of Deborah is great, no passage
in it being corrupt, and points to the more archaic character of the
latter, as well as to a confirmation of the fact that the Song of the
Bow was learnt in the schools from the time of its composition.
Footnote 455:
Ish-Baal or Esh-Baal, ‘the man of Baal,’ is called Ishui in 1 Sam.
xiv. 49 (where the name of Abinadab is omitted; see 1 Chron. viii.
33). Later writers changed Baal into Bosheth, ‘Shame,’ in accordance
with the custom which grew up when the title of Baal came to signify
the god of Phœnicia, rather than Yahveh of Israel.
Footnote 456:
That the reign of David ‘in Hebron’ continued for five years after the
death of Esh-Baal seems the most probable way of explaining the
statement in 2 Sam. ii. 10, that the reign of Saul’s son lasted only
two years. It is certainly preferable to the usual supposition that
‘two’ is a mistake for ‘seven.’
Footnote 457:
The author of the books of Samuel did not know his age (2 Sam. ii.
10). In 1 Sam. xiv. 49 Ishui is named before Melchi-shua, but in 1
Chron. viii. 33 Esh-Baal is the youngest of Saul’s children. That
Esh-Baal did not take part in the battle of Gilboa would suit equally
well with either hypothesis. Abner, the son of Ner, the son of Abiel,
was the great-uncle of Esh-Baal (1 Sam. xiv. 50, 51). As he was still
in the prime of life when he was murdered, it is reasonable to suppose
that his great-nephew was very young.
Footnote 458:
1 Chron. ii. 16.
Footnote 459:
If, as is probable, we should read ‘Geshurites’ for ‘Ashurites’ in 2
Sam. ii. 9, Esh-Baal would have claimed rule over Geshur, and
consequently would have been as much involved in war with the king of
that country as he was with David. We subsequently find the Aramæans
in alliance with the Ammonites (2 Sam. x. 6, etc.), and the king of
Ammon was the ally of David against Esh-Baal (2 Sam. xi. 2). It is
probable that in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, ‘Aram’ must be read for ‘Edom,’ the
geographical position of which was not between Ammon and Zobah (see
above, p. 368); if so, Esh-Baal, in asserting his authority over
Geshur, would only have succeeded to his father’s conquests.
Footnote 460:
Absalom, as the son of a princess, would claim precedence of his two
elder brothers, who, although born after David’s coronation, were
nevertheless not of royal descent on their mother’s side. The name of
the eldest, the son of Ahinoam, was Amnon, that of the second, the son
of Abigail, is given as Chileab in the Hebrew text of Samuel, Daniel
in that of 1 Chron. iii. 1, the Septuagint reading Daluia (Dalbia) and
Damniêl in the two passages. He seems to have died young. The fourth
son of David was Adonijah, the son of Haggith, who, by the death of
his three elder brothers, became the eldest son before his father’s
death, while the fifth and sixth sons were Shephatiah, the son of
Abital, and Ithream, the son of Eglah. All were born in Hebron.
Footnote 461:
2 Sam. iii. 17. This goes to show that Saul’s suspicions of David were
founded on fact.
Footnote 462:
The name of the Babylonian god Rimmon or Ramman implies that the
family of the murderers were idolaters. They are said to have been
originally from Beeroth, the inhabitants of which had fled to Gittaim
(2 Sam. iv. 3). If the flight had been due to Saul, the hostility of
the sons of Rimmon to the son of Saul would be explained. Beeroth was
one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Josh. ix. 17), and Saul, we learn
from 2 Sam. xxi. 1, had slain the Gibeonites.
Footnote 463:
The name Merib-Baal, given by the Chronicler (1 Chron. viii. 34, ix.
40), is doubtless correct. In the books of Samuel Baal has, as usual,
been changed into Bosheth, and Merib corrupted into the senseless
Mephi.
Footnote 464:
See 1 Chron. xi. 2, and xii. 38-40, where it is added that the
coronation-feast lasted for three days.
Footnote 465:
See 2 Sam. xiii. 13-17.
Footnote 466:
It is difficult to say whether the number of the _gibbôrîm_ or
‘heroes’ was actually restricted to thirty, or whether thirty was an
ideal number which was elastic in practice. In 2 Sam. xxiii.
thirty-seven ‘heroes’ are named, but some of these may have been
appointed to supply the place of others who had died or fallen in war.
To be included among the thirty was equivalent to receiving a Victoria
Cross.
Footnote 467:
2 Sam. xxiii. 8, but the text is corrupt, and reads literally: ‘He
that sitteth on the seat, a Takmonite, chief of the third (?); he is
Adino the Eznite, over eight hundred slain at one time.’ The
Septuagint has: ‘Yebosthe the Canaanite is chief of the third; Adino
the Asônæan is he who drew his sword against eight hundred warriors at
once’; while the Chronicler (1 Chron. xi. 11) omitted the name of
Adino, and read: ‘Jashobeam, a Khakmonite, chief of the captains; he
lifted up his spear against three hundred slain at one time.’ For
Jashobeam the Septuagint gives Yesebada. Adino seems to be the Adnah
of 1 Chron. xii. 20, a Manassite who deserted to David when he was at
Ziklag. Jashobeam is the most probable form of the name, and there
must be some confusion between Jashobeam, who brandished his spear
over three hundred enemies, and an unknown Adino, who did the same
over eight hundred enemies.
Footnote 468:
G. A. Smith, _The Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, p. 218.
Footnote 469:
See 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22, xxiii. 8-17.
Footnote 470:
If the name of Ishbi-benob, ‘my seat is in Nob,’ is correct, ‘Gob’
must be corrected into ‘Nob.’ But perhaps it is the name of the giant
which needs correction.
Footnote 471:
See the map given by Stade, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, p. 268,
and my ‘Topography of Præ-exilic Jerusalem’ in the _Quarterly
Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1883, pp. 215
_sqq._
Footnote 472:
Bliss, ‘Excavations at Jerusalem’ in the _Quarterly Statement_ of the
Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1896 and Jan. 1897.
Footnote 473:
_Antiq._ viii. 5, 3; _C. Ap._ i. 18.
Footnote 474:
It is, of course, possible that Abibal had been preceded by an earlier
Hiram of whom we otherwise know nothing, and who is meant in 2 Sam. v.
11. It is also possible that the use of Hiram’s name in this passage
is proleptic, derived from the fact that it was he who subsequently
sent materials to David for the construction of the temple.
Footnote 475:
1 Chron. xxii. 8.
Footnote 476:
1 Kings v. 3.
Footnote 477:
2 Sam. vi. 3. In Josh. xviii. 18 ‘Gibeah of Kirjath’ is given as one
of the cities of Benjamin. Like most of the Egyptian and Babylonian
cities it had a second and sacred name, Baalê-Judah, the city of ‘Baal
of Judah’ (2 Sam. vi. 2).
Footnote 478:
The name of Obed-Edom, ‘the servant of Edom,’ shows that Edom was the
name of a deity as well as of a country, like Ammi, the patron-god of
Ammon, and it is met with in the monuments of Egypt. A papyrus (_Pap.
Leydens._ i. 343. 7) states that Atum or Edom was the wife of the
Canaanitish fire-god Reshpu, and one of the places in Palestine
captured by Thothmes III. was Shemesh-Edom (No. 51), ‘the Sun-god is
Edom’ (_Records of the Past_, new ser., v. p. 47).
Footnote 479:
2 Chron. i. 3. See above, p. 353.
Footnote 480:
This must be the general signification of the Hebrew expression
_Metheg-ammah_ in 2 Sam. viii. i., which the Septuagint translates τὴν
ἀφωρισμένην, ‘the tribute.’ The Chronicler read Gath for Metheg (1
Chron. xviii. 1), and consequently understood _ammah_ in the sense of
‘mother-city.’ My own belief is that we have in the phrase a Hebrew
transcription of a Babylonian expression which has been derived from a
cuneiform document. The Babylonian _mêtêg ammati_ (for _mêtêq ammati_)
would signify ‘the highroad of the mainland’ of Palestine, and would
refer to the command of the highroad of trade which passed through
Canaan from Asia to Egypt and Arabia. _Ammati_ is the Semitic
equivalent of the Sumerian Sarsar (W. A. I. v. 18, 32 _c._), which was
an early Babylonian name of the land of the Amorites or Syria (W. A.
I. ii. 51, 19; see _Records of the Past_, new ser., v. p. 107); and
_mêtêq_ is given as a rendering of _kharran_, ‘a highroad’ (W. A. I.
ii. 38, 26).
Footnote 481:
2 Sam. xxiii. 20.
Footnote 482:
See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 367.
Footnote 483:
_Ibid._ pp. 349, 350.
Footnote 484:
The Septuagint has misread ‘Amalek’ for ‘Maacah.’
Footnote 485:
El-Hîba probably stands on the site of the Egyptian town of Hâ-Bennu,
the Greek Hipponon, the capital of the eighteenth nome of Upper Egypt,
and its fortifications were built by the high priest Men-kheper-Ra and
his wife Isis-em-Kheb. The Tanite Pharaohs formed the twenty-first
dynasty.
Footnote 486:
See Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies_, pp. 279-280. Assur-bani-pal
states that he sent his troops against the cities of Azar-el, the
Khiratâqazians, Edom, Yabrudu, Bit-Ammani or Ammon, ‘the district of
the city of the Haurân’ (_Khaurina_), Moab, Sakharri, Khargê, and ‘the
district of the city of Tsubitê, or Zobah.’ Delitzsch identifies
Yabrudu with the Yabruda of Ptolemy, the modern Yabrûd, north-east of
Damascus. In the tribute-lists of the Second Assyrian Empire, Tsubitê
or Tsubutu comes between Dûru (_Tantûra_) and Hamath, Samalla
(_Sinjerli_) and Khatarikka or Hadrach (Zech. ix. 1.), and Zemar
(_Sumra_), and the Quê on the coast of the Gulf of Antioch.
Footnote 487:
The fact that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser II. calls Baasha, the
contemporary king of Ammon, ‘the son of Rukhubi’ or Rehob, just as he
calls Jehu ‘the son of Omri,’ shows that Rehob was a personal name.
The Biblical Beth-Rehob is parallel to Bit-Omri, a designation of
Samaria in the Assyrian texts. Beth-Rehob is placed near Dan in Judg.
xviii. 28. In 1 Chron. xix. 6, Aram-Naharaim is apparently substituted
for Aram-Beth-Rehob, though, as the dominions of Hadad-ezer extended
to the Euphrates, soldiers may have come to the help of the Ammonites
from Mesopotamia, as well as from Beth-Rehob. The name of Hadad-ezer
is incorrectly given as Hadar-ezer in 2 Sam. x. 16. It appears as
Hadad-idri in the Assyrian inscriptions (with the Aramaic change of
_z_ to _d_), where it is the name of the king of Damascus, called
Ben-Hadad II. in the Old Testament.
Footnote 488:
So, according to the Septuagint and 1 Chron. xviii. 4. The Hebrew text
of 2 Sam. viii. 4 has ‘700 horsemen.’ But it is possible that we ought
to read ‘1700 horsemen.’
Footnote 489:
Nicolaus Damascenus, as quoted by Josephus, makes Hadad the king of
Damascus, who thus vainly endeavoured to check the torrent of
Israelitish success. Hadad, however, must be merely Hadad-ezer in an
abbreviated form, Perhaps we may gather from 1 Kings xi. 23, that the
ruling prince in Damascus at the time of David’s conquests was Rezon,
the son of Eliadah.
Footnote 490:
1 Chron. xix. 18. In 2 Sam. x. 18, the numbers are 700 charioteers and
40,000 horsemen, which are clearly wrong.
Footnote 491:
The account of the war with Zobah given above is the most probable
that can be gleaned from the scanty and fragmentary notices that have
been preserved to us. But it must be remembered that it is probable
only. It is not even certain that ‘the Syrians that were beyond the
river’ (2 Sam. x. 16) were not the Aramæans of Damascus rather than
those of Mesopotamia, since, as Professor Hommel has shown (_Ancient
Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments_, pp. 195 _sqq._) the
term _Ebir Nâri_, ‘Beyond the river,’ is already used in an Assyrian
poem (K. 3500, l. 9) of the age of David, in the Assyro-Babylonian
sense of the country westward of the Euphrates. Indeed, Professor
Hommel suggests that it already denoted the country westward of the
Jordan. This, however, is inconsistent with 2 Sam. x. 17; and west of
the Jordan, moreover, there were no Aramæan kingdoms.
Footnote 492:
The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 8) has preserved the true form of the
name of Tibhath, which has been corrupted into Betah in 2 Sam. viii.
8. It is the Tubikhi of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Dbkhu of the
geographical list of Thothmes III. (No. 6). Instead of Berothai the
Chronicler has Chun.
Footnote 493:
1 Chron. xviii. 8.
Footnote 494:
Hadoram, the older form of the name, is found only in 1 Chron. xviii.
10. The text of the books of Samuel has the Hebraised Joram.
Footnote 495:
Salamanu appears as Shalman in Hos. x. 14, as Sulmanu in
Assyro-Babylonian. Sulmanu was the god of Peace, like Selamanês in a
Greek inscription from Shêkh Barakât in northern Syria, whose name is
also found in a Phœnician inscription from Sidon (Clermont-Ganneau,
_Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études_ CXIII., vol. ii. pp. 40,
48).
Footnote 496:
This is usually supposed to mean that they were tortured in various
ways, but more probably it means only that they were made public
slaves and compelled to cut and saw wood, harrow the ground, and make
bricks. At all events, if tortures are referred to, no parallel to
them can be found elsewhere. As the crown is said to have weighed ‘a
talent’ it can hardly have been worn by an earthly king.
Footnote 497:
2 Sam. viii. 13. In 1 Chron. xviii. 12, however, the victory is
ascribed to Abishai, the brother of Joab.
Footnote 498:
2 Sam. viii. 13, where the mention of ‘the valley of salt’ shows that
we must read ‘Edom’ instead of ‘Aram,’ as indeed is done by the
Chronicler as well as in the superscription of Ps. lx. and in the
Septuagint. The ‘valley of salt’ was part of the Melukhkha or
‘Saltland’ of the cuneiform inscriptions.
Footnote 499:
2 Sam. xxiii. 37, 36, 34.
Footnote 500:
1 Kings xi. 21.
Footnote 501:
This was Ithra who ‘went in’ to Abigail, the daughter of Nahash, the
sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother (2 Sam. xvii. 25). The form of
expression may imply that Abigail was seduced. If so, the hostility of
Joab would be easily accounted for.
Footnote 502:
It is probable that ‘Shobi the son of Nahash of Rabbah of the children
of Ammon’ (2 Sam. xvii. 27) was a brother of the last king of Ammon,
and it is even possible that he may have been the cause of the
Ammonite war. If he had been a rival of his brother Khanun, and had
received shelter and protection from David, we should have an
explanation of the otherwise gratuitous insult offered by Khanun to
the ambassadors of the Israelitish king.
Footnote 503:
That the forest was on the eastern bank of the Jordan is plain from
Josh. xvii. 15-18 and 2 Sam. xix. 31.
Footnote 504:
It is called Abel-Maim, ‘Abel of the Waters,’ in 2 Chron. xvi. 4,
compared with 1 Kings xv. 20. In 2 Sam. xx. 14, we should perhaps
read, ‘And all the young warriors’ (_bakhûrîm_ for _bêrîm_) ‘were
gathered together,’ as the Septuagint has ‘all in Kharri,’ and the
Vulgate ‘viri electi.’
Footnote 505:
2 Sam. xxiv. 6, according to Lucian’s recension of the Greek
translation (‘Khettieim Kadês’). See Field, _Origenis Hexaplorum quæ
supersunt_, i. p. 587.
Footnote 506:
2 Sam. xix. 29. Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, who was lame, had
accused his master of aiming at the kingdom, and David had accordingly
given him all Mephibosheth’s property. David not only had believed the
accusation, but in spite of Mephibosheth’s protests and excuses, must
have continued to do so, since Ziba, so far from being punished, was
allowed to retain half his master’s possessions. The Jewish historian
evidently takes a different view from that of David, and regards the
accusation as false. Mephibosheth is more correctly written Merib-Baal
in 1 Chron. viii. 34; ix. 40.
Footnote 507:
‘Adriel, the son of Barzillai the Meholathite’ (2 Sam. xxi. 8), cannot
be the same as Phaltiel or ‘Phalti the son of Laish of Gallim’ (1 Sam.
xxv. 44), to whom Saul had given Michal after David’s flight, and from
whom David afterwards took her (2 Sam. iii. 16). As Michal never seems
to have subsequently left the harîm of David (2 Sam. vi. 23), it would
appear that the name of Michal in 2 Sam. xxi. 8 must be a mistake for
that of some other daughter of Saul.
Footnote 508:
See 2 Sam. xxiv. 23, where the Septuagint has ‘Orna(n) the king.’ The
various spellings of the name Araunah, Araniah (2 Sam. xxiv. 18), and
Ornan (1 Chron. xxi. 15) show that it was a foreign word, the
pronunciation of which was not clear to the Israelites. Araniah is an
assimilation to a Hebrew name.
Footnote 509:
2 Sam. xxiv. 6.
Footnote 510:
In 1 Kings v. 3, 4, the reason why David could not build the temple is
given a little differently. It is there stated to have been because of
the constant wars in which he was engaged which prevented him from
securing the needful leisure for the work. This reason, however, does
not apply to the latter part of David’s reign.
Footnote 511:
The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 16) reads Shavsha, apparently through
a confusion with the later Sheva (2 Sam. xx. 25). However, the
Septuagint has Sasa in 2 Sam. viii. 17, and the two scribes of Solomon
at the beginning of his reign were the sons of Shisha (1 Kings iv. 3).
Footnote 512:
The genealogy of the high priests is involved in a confusion which
with our present materials it is hopeless to unravel. In 1 Sam. xiv.
3, Ahimelech is called Ahiah, and in 2 Sam. viii. 17, as well as in
the document used in 1 Chron. xxiv. (verses 3, 6, and 31), he is made
the son of Abiathar instead of his father. In 1 Chron. xviii. 16, the
name is transformed into Abimelech, and in 1 Chron. xxiv. Ahimelech
and Abiathar are stated to have been descended from Ithamar the son of
Aaron, and not from his brother Eleazar. That the genealogy in 1
Chron. vi. 4 _sqq._ is corrupt is evident not only from the repetition
of the triplet Amariah, Ahitub, and Zadok in verses 7, 8, and 11, 12,
but also from the statement that Azariah four generations after Zadok
‘executed the priest’s office’ in Solomon’s temple. In 1 Chron. ix.
11; Neh. xi. 11, again, the order is ‘Zadok the son of Meraioth the
son of Ahitub,’ whereas in 1 Chron. vi. 7, 8, and 52, 53, it is Zadok
the son of Ahitub the son of Amariah the son of Meraioth.
Footnote 513:
Hadoram (2 Chron. x. 18) is written Adoram in 2 Sam. xx. 24, and
Adoniram in 1 Kings iv. 6. Adoni-ram is a Hebraised form of the
original name Addu-ramu, ‘Hadad is exalted.’ His father’s name, Abda,
has an Aramaic termination. An early Babylonian seal-cylinder in the
collection of M. de Clercq has upon it the name of Abdu-ramu.
Footnote 514:
See above, p. 92.
Footnote 515:
1 Chron. xxvii. 25-32.
Footnote 516:
The Jewish historian includes among those who refused to go with
Adonijah the otherwise unknown Shimei and Rei (1 Kings i. 8). They are
referred to as well-known personages, implying that the writer must
have had before him a large collection of documents relating to the
history of the time, most of which have now perished.
Footnote 517:
As Barzillai was already eighty years of age at the time of David’s
flight (2 Sam. xix. 35), the death of David could not have happened
very long after that event. That Joab and Abiathar were still vigorous
implies the same thing. As for the authenticity of David’s dying
instructions, there is no reason to question it. A later writer is not
likely to have gratuitously credited them to David; and inconsistent
though they may seem to us with David’s piety, they were in full
keeping with his character as well as with that of other Israelites of
his age. If they had been falsely ascribed to David by Solomon’s
admirers after the murder of Joab and Shimei, Adonijah also would have
been included among the victims.
Footnote 518:
_E.g._ Ps. lx.
Footnote 519:
_E.g._ Ps. cviii.
Footnote 520:
See my Hibbert Lectures on the _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_,
pp. 348-356. Thus we read:—
‘O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!
The sin that I sinned I knew not.
The transgression I committed I knew not.
The cursed thing that I ate I knew not.
The cursed thing that I trampled on I knew not.
The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;
God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.
I sought for help and none took my hand;
I wept and none stood at my side;
I cried aloud and there was none that heard me.
I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up.
To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer;
O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my
sins!
O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my
sins!’
Footnote 521:
See above, p. 175.
Footnote 522:
_Cont. Ap._ i. 17, 18.
Footnote 523:
The single reigns are:—(1) Hiram for thirty-four years; (2) Baleazor
for seven years according to the Armenian version of Eusebius and the
Synkellos, seventeen years according to Niese’s text of Josephus; (3)
Abdastartos nine years; (4) Methuastartos twelve years; (5) Astarymos
nine years; (6) Phelles eight months; (7) Eithobalos or Eth-Baal
thirty-two years (forty-eight years according to Theophilus _ad
Autolyc._ III.); (8) Balezor six years (seven years according to
Theoph., eight years according to Euseb. and the Synk.); (9) Matgenos
twenty-nine years (twenty-five years according to the Arm. Vers. of
Euseb.); (10) Pygmalion forty-seven years.
Footnote 524:
_I.e._ seventy-two years after the foundation of Rome; Trogus Pompeius
_ap._ Justin. xviii. 7; Oros. iv. 6. Velleius Paterculus (i. 6) makes
it seven years later.
Footnote 525:
See 1 Kings xii. 18. For the forced labour or _corvée_ see 1 Kings v.
13, 14.
Footnote 526:
The Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint has a wholly different list
from that of the Hebrew text, Baasha the son of Ahithalam taking the
place of Azariah as Vizier, Abi the son of Joab being
commander-in-chief, and Ahira the son of Edrei tax-master, while
Benaiah remains commander of the bodyguard as in David’s reign. The
list is perhaps derived from a document that belonged to the early
part of Solomon’s reign. The Syriac reads Zakkur for Zabud, the royal
chaplain; but Zabud is supported by the Vatican Septuagint, which
makes him the chief councillor. For the reading ‘army’ or ‘bodyguard’
instead of the senseless πατριᾶς in iv. 6, see Field, _Origenis
Hexaplorum quæ supersunt_, i. p. 598.
Footnote 527:
See Hommel, _The Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, pp. 252 _sqq._
Footnote 528:
The papyrus in which the history of the expedition is recorded is
preserved in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and has not yet been
published. Mr. Golénischeff, its discoverer, however, has given me a
verbal account of it.
Footnote 529:
There is no gold in Southern Arabia, and consequently Ophir must have
been an emporium to which the gold was brought for transhipment from
elsewhere. The mines were probably at Zimbabwe and the neighbourhood,
where Mr. Theodore Bent made important excavations. For the site of
Ophir, which may have been near Gerrha in the Persian Gulf, see Sayce
in the _Proceedings_ of the Society of Biblical Archæology, June 1896,
p. 174.
Footnote 530:
1 Kings v. 16. These taskmasters must be distinguished from the 550
(or 250 according to 2 Chron. viii. 10) who superintended the work in
Jerusalem itself (ix. 23), on which no Israelites were employed, but
only native Canaanites (ix. 21, 22). The Chronicler makes the
overseers of the preparatory work 3600 in number (2 Chron. ii. 18),
the _corvée_ itself consisting of 150,000 men.
Footnote 531:
See my article in the _Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine
Exploration Fund, 1883, pp. 215-223, where I have staked the
justification of my views on the discovery of the ‘stairs’ near the
spot where the rock-cut steps have been found by Dr. Bliss (_Ibid._
1896-97). Dr. Guthe first noticed that a shallow valley once existed
between the Temple-hill and the so-called ‘Ophel.’
Footnote 532:
The columns were 18 cubits high (1 Kings vii. 15), though the
Chronicler (2 Chron. iii. 15) makes them 35 cubits or 52-1/2 feet. The
_khammânîm_ or ‘Sun-pillars,’ dedicated to the Sun and associated with
the worship of Asherah and Baal, are often referred to in the Old
Testament (2 Chron. xxxiv. 4; Is. xvii. 8, etc.), and are mentioned in
a Palmyrene inscription.
Footnote 533:
A translation of the hymn is given in my Hibbert Lectures on the
_Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 495, 496; see also p. 63.
Footnote 534:
Layard, _Monuments of Nineveh_, i. plate 7A.
Footnote 535:
See above, p. 196.
Footnote 536:
Herod. i. 181.
Footnote 537:
See Ball, _The India House Inscription of Nebuchadrezzar_ in the
_Records of the Past_, new ser., iii. pp. 104-123.
Footnote 538:
1 Kings viii. 2. In vi. 38, however, it is said that the work was not
completed until the eighth month of the year, the Phœnician Bul.
Footnote 539:
To these the Chronicler adds ‘Beth-horon the Upper’ (2 Chron. viii.
5). Possibly the two Beth-horons were fortified in connection with the
reservoirs which Solomon is supposed to have constructed in order to
supply Jerusalem with water. Baalath was, strictly speaking, in Dan
(Josh. xix. 44). The Latin form Palmyra comes from Tadmor by
assimilation to _palma_, ‘a palm.’ The change of _d_ to _l_ in Latin
words is familiar to etymologists, and the initial _p_ for _t_ is
paralleled by _pavo_, ‘a peacock,’ from the Greek ταὧς (Persian
_tâwûs_). One of the Septuagint MSS. has Thermath for Tadmor, but in
the ordinary text the whole passage is omitted.