_SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY._
1 KINGS x. 1-29.
"O Luxury! thou curs'd by Heaven's decree!
How do thy potions with insidious joy
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!
Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown
Boast of a florid vigour not their own."
GOLDSMITH, _Deserted Village_.
"The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment against this
generation, and shall condemn it. For she came from the uttermost
parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon."--MATT. xii. 42.
The history of the Temple is the event which gives supreme religious
importance to the reign of one who became in other respects a worldly
and irreligious king. It is for this reason that I have dwelt upon
its significance, and on the many interesting questions which its
worship naturally suggests. Solomon gave an impulse to outward
service, not to spiritual life. His religion was mainly that form of
externalism which rose but little above the
"Gay religions full of pomp and gold"
of the surrounding heathens. The other fragments of his story which
have been preserved for us are mainly of a political character. They
point us to Solomon in his wealth and ostentation, and contain nothing
specially edifying. Our Lord thought less of all this splendour than
of the flower of the field. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
Princes who have once begun to build find a certain fascination
in the task. After the seven years devoted to the Temple, Solomon
occupied thirteen more in building "halls of Lebanoniac cedar" for
himself, for his audience-chamber, and for Pharaoh's daughter.
Chief of these were:--
1. The house of the forest of Lebanon, a sort of arsenal so called from
its triple rows of cedar pillars, on which hung the golden shields for
the king's guards when they attended his great visits to the Temple.
2. The justice hall, the "Sublime Porte" of Jerusalem, built of gold
and cedar. It contained the famous Lion Throne of gold and ivory, with
two lions on each of its six steps.[378] It is not known whether these
buildings formed part of the palace and harem of Solomon, nor is it
worth while to waste time on the impossible attempt to reconstruct them.
Solomon also built the fortification of Jerusalem known as the "Millo,"
and the wall of Jerusalem, and repaired the breaches of the city of
David,[379] as well as the fortresses and treasure cities to which we
have already alluded, and the summer palaces in the region of Lebanon
known as "the delights of Solomon."[380] Amid these records of palatial
architecture we hear next to nothing of the religious life.
He further dazzled his people by an extensive system of foreign
commerce. His land-traffic with Arabia familiarised them with spicery
(_necoth_), gum tragacanth, frankincense, myrrh, aloes, and cassia
and with precious stones of all kinds. From Egypt he obtained horses
and chariots. They were brought from Tekoa, by his merchants, and
kept by Solomon, or sold at a profit.[381]
He found a ready market for them among the Hittite and Aramæan kings.
Emulating the Phœnicians, and apparently invading the monopoly of
Tyre, he had--if we may take the chronicler literally--a fleet of
"ships of Tarshish" which sailed along the coasts of Spain.[382]
Above all, he made the daring attempt to establish a fleet of
Tarshish-ships at Ezion-Geber, the port of Elath, at the north of the
Gulf of Akaba. This fleet sailed down the Red Sea to Ophir--perhaps
Abhîra, at the mouth of the Indus--and amazed the simple Hebrews with
the sight of gorgeous iridescent peacocks, wrinkled chattering apes,
the red and richly scented sandal wood of India, and the large tusks
of elephants from which cunning artificers carved the smooth ivory to
inlay furniture, thrones, and ultimately even houses, with lustrous
ornamentation. Cinnamon came to him from Ceylon, and "sapphires"
(_lapis lazuli_) from Babylon.[383] Other services which he rendered
to his capital and kingdom were more real and permanent.
1. Jerusalem may have been in part indebted to Solomon for its supply
of water. The magnificent springs of pure gushing water at Etam are
still called "Solomon's fountains," and it is believed that he used
their rocky basins as reservoirs from which to irrigate his garden
in the Wady Urtas (Lat., _Hortus_). Etam is two hours distant from
Jerusalem, and if Solomon built the aqueduct which once conveyed its
water supply to the city he proved himself a genuine benefactor.[384]
There was immense need of the "fons perennis aquæ" of which Tacitus
speaks for the purifications of the Temple, soiled by the reek and
offal of so many holocausts.
2. Maritime allusions now began to appear in Hebrew literature;[385]
and maritime enterprise produced the marvellous effect it always
produces on the character and progress of the nation. Along the black
basalt roads--the king's highways--of which the construction was
necessitated by the outburst of commercial activity flocked hundreds
of foreign visitors, not only merchantmen and itinerant traffickers,
but governors of provinces, and vassal or allied princes. The
isolated and stationary tribes of Palestine suddenly found themselves
face to face with a new and splendid civilisation. Admiring visitors
flocked to see the great king's magnificence and to admire his
foreign curiosities, bringing with them presents of gold and silver,
armour[386] and spicery, horses and mules, the broidered garments of
Babylon, and robes rich with the crimson, purple, and scarlet dyes
of Tyre.[387] Instead of riding like his predecessors on a humble
mule, the king made his royal progress to his watered garden at Etam
drawn by steeds magnificently caparisoned. He reclined in "Pharaoh's
chariot" richly chased and brilliantly coloured. He was followed by
a train of archers riding on war-horses and clothed in purple, and
was escorted by a body-guard of youths tall and beautiful, whose dark
and flowing locks glittered with gold dust. In the heat of summer,
if we may accept the poetic picture of the Song of Songs, he would
be luxuriously carried to some delicious retreat amid the hills of
myrrh and leopard-haunted woods of Lebanon, in a palanquin of cedar
wood with silver pillars, purple cushions, and richly embroidered
curtains, wearing the jewelled crown which his mother placed on his
head on the day of his espousals.[388] Or he would sit to do justice
on his throne of ivory and gold,[389] with its steps guarded by
golded lions leaning upon the golden bull of Ephraim which formed its
back,[390] in all his princely beauty, "anointed with the oil of
gladness," his lips full of grace, his garments breathing of perfume.
On great occasions of state his Queen, and the virgins that bore
her company, would stand among the crowd of inferior princesses, in
garments of the wrought gold of Ophir, in which she had been carried
from the inner palace upon tapestries of needlework. In the pomp of
such ceremonials, amid bursts of rejoicing melody, the people began
to believe that not even the Pharaohs of Egypt, or the Tyrian kings
with "every precious stone as their covering," could show a more
glorious pageant of royal state.[391]
This career of magnificence culminated in the visit of Balkis, the
Queen of Sheba,[392] who came to him across the desert with "a very
great train of her camels, bearing spices and very much gold and
precious stones." She saw his abounding prosperity, his peaceful
people, his houses, his vineyards at Beth-Haccerem, his parks and
gardens, his pools and fruit trees, his herds of cattle, his horses,
chariots, and palanquins, and all the delight of the sons of men.
She saw his men singers and women singers with their harps of red
sandal wood and gold. She saw him at the banquet at his golden table
covered in boundless profusion with delicacies brought from every
land. She saw his hosts of beautiful and richly dressed slaves with
lavers, dishes, and goblets all made of the gold of Uphaz. She saw
him dispensing justice in his pillared hall of cedar, seated on his
lion-throne. She saw the golden shields and targets[393] carried before
him as he went in state to the Temple over the Mount, across the
valley, and mounted from the palace to the sacred courts by the gilded
staircase with its balustrades of aromatic sandal wood.[394] Perhaps
she was present as a spectator at some great Temple festival. And when
she had tested his wisdom by communing with him of all that was in her
heart, "there was no more spirit in her." She confessed that the half
of his wisdom and glory had not been reported to her. Happy were his
servants, happy the courtiers who stood by him and heard his words!
Blessed was the Lord his God who delighted in him, and who, out of
love for Israel, had given them such a king to do justice and judgment
among them. The visit ended with an interchange of royal presents.[395]
Solomon, we are vaguely told, "gave unto her all her desire, whatsoever
she asked," and sent her away glad-hearted to her native land, leaving
behind her a trail of legends. Before her departure she opened her
treasures, and gave him vast stores of spicery and gold.[396]
And to sum up the accounts, which read like a page of the story of
Haroun al Raschid, the king made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem,
so that it was nothing accounted of in the day of Solomon,[397] and
the cedars made he to be as the sycomores which are in the "Shefelah"
for multitude.
It is around this epoch of Solomon's career that the legends of the
East mainly cluster. They have received a larger development from the
allusions to Mohammed in the Qur'an.[398] They take the place of the
personal incidents of which so few are recorded, although Solomon
occupies so large a space in sacred history. "That stately and
melancholy figure--in some respects the grandest and the saddest in
the Sacred Volume--is in detail little more than a mighty 'shadow.'
Yet in later Jewish records he is scarcely mentioned. Of all the
characters in the sacred history he is the most purely secular; and
merely secular magnificence was an excrescence, not a native growth
of the chosen people."[399]
FOOTNOTES:
[378] To form some notion of these buildings, see the excellent
illustrations in Stade, i. 318-25.
[379] The hill of Zion, the city of David, had become overcrowded,
and the hill which lay to the north, which was called Millo, or "the
border," had to be included in it. A narrow valley lay between them.
"Mount Moriah, and its offshoot Ophel, remained outside the city, and
the latter was inhabited by the remnant of the Jebusites" (Grätz,
_Hist. of the Jews_, E. T., i. 121); Millo, LXX., ἡ ἄκρα. See 1 Macc.
iv. 41, xiii. 49-52; Josephus, _Antt._, XIII. vi. 7.
[380] 1 Kings ix. 19.
[381] The "linen yarn" of 1 Kings x. 28 seems to be an error. The
Hebrew is מִקְוֵה; LXX., ἐκ Θεκουέ; Vulg., _de Coâ_; R.V., "in droves."
[382] 2 Chron. ix. 21.
[383] See Max Müller, _Lectures on Language_, i. 191. The names
_Shen Habbim_, "ivory" (Sanskr. _ibhas_, "elephant"), _Kophim_,
"apes" (Sanskr. _kapi_), _Tukkyim_, "peacocks" (Tamil, _togei_),
"algum trees" (Sanskr. _Valgaka_, LXX. πελεκητά, Alex. ἀπελέκητα,
Vulg. _thyina_), all point to India. Aloes (_ahalim_, Psalm xlv.
8) are a fragrant tree of Malacca; cassia (Ind. _koost_), cinnamon
(_cacyn-nama_) come from Ceylon. See Stanley, ii. 185. European
history here first comes into contact with Sanskrit.
[384] See Eccles. ii. 4-6. See on the extensive water-works, Ewald,
iii. 252-57.
[385] 2 Chron. ix. 21.
[386] נֶשֶׁק; LXX., στακτή, "oil of myrrh."
[387] 1 Kings x. 25.
[388] See Cant. i. 9, iii. 6-11, iv. 8; 2 Chron. xi. 6; Josephus,
_Antt._, VIII. vii. 3; Psalm xlv.
[389] The great statue of Athene by Phidias was of this
"Chryselephantine" work. Comp. "ivory palaces" (Psalm xlv. 8; 1 Kings
xxii. 39; Amos iii. 15) and "ivory couches" (Amos vi. 4).
[390] Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. v. 2; Hosea iv. 16; Jer. xxxi. 18, etc.
[391] Ezek. xxvii., xxviii.; Zech. ix. 3.
[392] The Abyssinian, confusing Sheba (Arabia Felix) with Seba (as do
Origen and Augustine), call her Makeda, Queen of Abyssinia, and say
that she had a son by Solomon named Melinek (Ludolphus, _Æthiop._,
ii. 3), from whom all their emperors down to Theodore were descended.
The legend of the Queen of Sheba is related in the Qur'an, _Sura_
xxvii. 20-40 (chapter of the Ant). The Arabs call her Balkis, whose
legends are narrated by D'Herbelot (_Bibl. Or._, s.v. Balki).
Josephus identifies her with Nicaule (the Nitocris of Herod., ii.
100), Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. vi. 2. In the New Testament she is
called "the Queen of the South" (Matt. xii. 42).
[393] He had made two hundred large shields (_tzinnîm_, θυρεοί,
_scuta_) and three hundred targets (_maginnîm_, ἀσπίδες, _clypei_)
of gold at fabulous cost (1 Kings x. 16). They were all plundered by
Shishak.
[394] 1 Kings x. 5, but "ascent" should perhaps be "burnt offering,"
as in margin of R.V. and in all the versions. Comp. 2 Chron. ix.
4 (LXX.). A special seat or platform of brass seems to have been
assigned to Solomon in the Temple court (2 Kings xi. 14, xvi. 18,
xxiii. 3; 2 Chron. vi. 13).
[395] Josephus says that she introduced the balsam plant into
Palestine, which, in later years at Jericho, became a great source of
revenue. Jer. viii. 22, xlvi. 11; Ezek. xxvii. 17; Josephus, _Antt._;
VIII. vi. 6, XIV. iv. 1, XV. iv. 2; Pliny, _H. N._, xii. 54, xiii. 9
(but see Gen. xliii. 11).
[396] Psalm lxxii. 15. Spices, Herod., iii. 107-113. For one hundred
and twenty talents we should probably read twenty (comp. Josephus,
_Antt._, VIII. vi. 6), _i.e._, twelve thousand pounds. Into the
riddles of Balkis (1 Kings x. 1, "hard questions"; LXX., αἰνίγματα),
and all the strange Talmudic and Arabian legends which have gathered
round her visit, we need not enter. I may perhaps refer to my little
monograph on Solomon (pp. 134-37), in the Men of the Bible series.
[397] The 666 gold talents of his revenue are estimated at
£3,613,500, and this is described as _his own_ revenue, exclusive
of tolls, tributes, etc. (1 Kings x. 15). Presents reached him from
"kings of the mingled people" (Jer. xxv. 24), Pachas of the country
(פֶחָה Ezra v. 6; Neh. v. 14).
[398] See Weil, _Biblische Legenden_; D'Herbelot, _Bibl. Oriental_,
s.v. Soliman ben-Daoud; Qur'an, _Suras_ xxii., xxvii., xxviii.,
xxxiv. "Suleyman" means "Little Solomon," a term of affection.
[399] Stanley, _Lectures_, ii. 166, 167.