_HOLLOW PROSPERITY._
1 KINGS xi.
"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all
is vanity."--ECCLES. i. 2.
"At every draught more large and large they grow
A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe,
Till, sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round."
GOLDSMITH.
There was a _ver rongeur_ at the root of all Solomon's prosperity. His
home was afflicted with the curse of his polygamy, his kingdom with the
curse of his despotism. Failure is stamped upon the issues of his life.
1. His Temple was a wonder of the world; yet his own reign was
scarcely over before it was plundered by the Egyptian king who had
overthrown the feeble dynasty on alliance with which he had trusted.
Under later kings its secret chambers were sometimes desecrated,
sometimes deserted. It failed to exercise the unique influence in
support of the worship of Jehovah for which it had been designed.
Some of Solomon's successors confronted it with a rival temple, and a
rival high priest, of Baal, and suffered atrocious emblems of heathen
nature-worship to profane its courts. He himself became an apostate
from the high theocratic ideal which had inspired its origin.
2. His long alliance and friendship with Hiram ended, to all
appearance, in coolness and disgust, even if it be true that a
daughter of Hiram was one of the princesses of his harem.[400] For
his immense buildings had so greatly embarrassed his resources
that, when the day for payment came, the only way in which he could
discharge his obligations was by alienating a part of his dominions.
He gave Hiram "twenty cities in the land of Galilee." The kings
of Judah, down to the days of Hezekiah, and even of Josiah, show
few traces of any consciousness that there was such a book as the
Pentateuch and such a code as the Levitic law. Solomon may have
been unaware that Phœnicia itself was part of the land which God
had promised to His people. If that gift had lapsed through their
inertness,[401] the law still remained, which said, "The land shall
not be sold for ever; for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers
and sojourners with Me." It was a strong measure to resign any part
of the soil of Judæa, even to discharge building debts, much more
to pay for mercenaries and courtly ostentation. The transaction,
dubious in every particular, was the evident cause of deep-seated
dissatisfaction. Hiram thought himself ill-paid and unworthily
treated. He found, by a personal visit, that these inland Galilæan
towns, which were probably inhabited in great measure by a wretched
and dwindling remnant of Canaanites,[402] were useless to him,
whereas he had probably hoped to receive part, at least, of the Bay
of Acco (Ptolemais).[403] They added so little to his resources, that
he complained to Solomon. He called the cities by the obscure, but
evidently contemptuous name "_Cabul_," and gave them back to Solomon
in disgust as not worth having.[404] What significance lies in the
strange and laconic addition, "And Hiram sent to the king six-score
talents of gold," it is impossible for us to understand. If the
Tyrian king gave as a present to Solomon a sum which was so vast as
at least to equal £720,000--"apparently," as Canon Rawlinson thinks,
"to show that, although disappointed, he was not offended!"--he must
have been an angel in human form.
3. Solomon's palatial buildings, while they flattered his pride
and ministered to his luxury, tended directly, as we shall see,
to undermine his power. They represented the ill-requited toil of
hopeless bondmen, and oppressed freedmen, whose sighs rose, not in
vain, into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.
4. His commerce, showy as it was, turned out to be transitory and
useless. If for a time it enriched the king, it did not enrich his
people. At Solomon's death, if not earlier, it not only languished
but expired. Horses and chariots might give a pompous aspect to
stately pageants, but they were practically useless in the endless
hills of which Palestine is mainly composed. Apes, peacocks, and
sandal wood were curious and interesting, but they certainly did
not repay the expense incurred in their importation. No subsequent
sovereign took the trouble to acquire these wonders, nor are they
once mentioned in the later Scriptures. Precious stones might
gleam on the necks of the concubine, or adorn the housings of the
steed, but nothing was gained from their barren splendour. At one
time the king's annual revenue is stated to have been six hundred
and sixty-six talents of gold; but the story of Hiram, and the
impoverishment to which Rehoboam succeeded, show that even this
exchequer had been exhausted by the sumptuous prodigalities of a too
luxurious court. And, indeed, the commerce of Solomon gave a new
and untheocratic bias to Hebrew development. The ideal of the old
Semitic life was the pastoral and agricultural ideal. No other is
contemplated in Exod. xxi.-xxix. Commerce was left to the Phœnicians
and other races, so that the word for "merchant" was "Canaanite." But
after the days of Solomon in Judah, and Ahab in Israel, the Hebrews
followed eagerly in the steps of Canaan, and trade and commerce
acting on minds materialised into worldliness brought their natural
consequences. "He is a merchant," says Hosea (xii. 7); "the balances
of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to defraud." Here the words "he
is a merchant" may equally well be rendered "as for Canaan"; and
by Canaan is here meant Canaanised or commercial Ephraim. And the
prophet continues, "And Ephraim said, Surely I am become rich, I
have found me wealth: in all my labour they shall find in me none
iniquity that were sin." In other words, these influences of foreign
trade had destroyed the moral sense of Israel altogether: "Howl, ye
inhabitants of Maktesh"--_i.e._, "The Mortar," a bazaar of that name
in Jerusalem--"for all the people of Canaan" (_i.e._, the merchants)
"are brought to silence." But the hypnotising influence of wealth
became more and more a potent factor in the development of the
people. By an absolute reversal of their ancient characteristics they
learnt, in the days of the Rabbis, utterly to despise agriculture and
extravagantly to laud the gains of commerce. Of too many of them it
became true, that they
"With dumb despair their country's wrongs behold,
And dead to glory, only burn for gold."
It was the mighty hand of Solomon which first gave them an impulse in
this direction, though he seems to have managed all his commerce with
exclusive reference to his own revenues.
In the wake of commerce, and the inevitable intercourse with foreign
nations which it involves, came as a matter of course the fondness
for luxuries; the taste for magnificence; the fraternisation with
neighbouring kings; the use of cavalry; the development of a military
caste; the attempts at distant navigation; the total disappearance of
the antique simplicity. In the train of these innovations followed
the disastrous alterations of the old conditions of society of which
the prophets so grievously complain--extortions of the corn market;
the formation of large estates; the frequency of mortgages; the
misery of peasant proprietorship, unable to hold its own against the
accumulations of wealth; the increase of the wage-receiving class;
and the fluctuations of the labour market. These changes caused,
by way of consequence, so much distress and starvation that even
freeborn Hebrews were sometimes compelled to sell themselves into
slavery as the only way to keep themselves alive.
So that the age of Solomon can in no respect be regarded as an age of
gold. Rather, it resembled that grim Colossus of Dante's vision, which
not only rested on a right foot of brittle clay, but was cracked and
fissured through and through, while the wretchedness and torment which
lay behind the outward splendour ever dripped and trickled downward
till its bitter streams swelled the rivers of hell:--
"Abhorrèd Styx, the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow black and deep,
Corytus named of lamentation loud
Heard on its rueful stream, fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage."
But there was something worse even than this. The Book of Proverbs
shows us that, as in Rome, so in Jerusalem, foreign immoralities
became fatal to the growing youth. The _picta lupa barbara mitrâ_,
with her fatal fascinations, and her banquets of which the guests
were in the depths of Hades, became so common in Jerusalem that no
admonitions of the wise were more needful than those which warned the
"simple ones" that to yield to her seductive snares was to go as an
ox to the slaughter, as a fool to the correction of the stocks.
5. Even were there no disastrous sequel to Solomon's story--if we saw
him only in the flush of his early promise, and the noon of his highest
prosperity--we could still readily believe that he passed through some
of the experiences of the bitter and sated voluptuary who borrows
his name in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The human pathos, the fresh and
varied interest, which meet us at every page of the annals of David,
are entirely lacking in the magnificent monotony of the annals of
Solomon. The splendours of materialism, which are mainly dwelt upon,
could never satisfy the poorest of human souls. There are but two broad
gleams of religious interest in his entire story--the narrative of his
prayer for wisdom, and the prayer, in its present form of later origin,
attributed to him at the Dedication Festival. All the rest is a story
of gorgeous despotism, which gradually paled into
"The dim grey life and apathetic end."
"There was no king like Solomon: he exceeded all the kings of the
earth," we are told, "for riches and for wisdom." But all that we
know of such kings furnishes fresh proof of the universal experience
that "the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" are absolutely
valueless for all the contributions they can lend to human happiness.
The autocrats who have been most conspicuous for unchecked power and
limitless resources have also been the most conspicuous in misery.
We have but to recall Tiberius "_tristissimus ut constat hominum_,"
who, from the enchanted isle which he had degraded into the stye of
his infamies, wrote to his servile senate that "all the gods and
goddesses were daily destroying him"; or Septimius Severus, who,
rising step by step from a Dalmatian peasant and common soldier to be
emperor of the world, remarked with pathetic conviction, "_Omnia fui
et nihil expedit_"; or Abderrahman the Magnificent, who, in all his
life of success and prosperity, could only count fourteen happy days;
or Charles V., over-eating himself in his monastic retreat at San
Yuste in Estremadura; or Alexander,[405] dying "as a fool dieth"; or
Louis XIV., surrounded by a darkening horizon, and disillusioned into
infinite _ennui_ and chagrin; or Napoleon I., saying, "I regard life
with horror," and contrasting his "abject misery" with the adored and
beloved dominion of Christ, who was meek and lowly of heart. Napoleon
confessed that, even in the zenith of his empire, and the fullest flush
of his endless victories, his days were consumed in vanity and his
years in trouble. The cry of one and all, finding that the soul, which
is infinite, cannot be satisfied with the transient and hollow boons of
earth, is, and ever must be, "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher,
vanity of vanities; all is vanity." And this is one main lesson of
the life of Solomon. Nothing is more certain than that, if earthly
happiness is to be found at all, it can only be found in righteousness
and truth; and if even these do not bring earthly _happiness_ they
securely give us a _blessedness_ which is deeper and more eternal.
If the Book of Ecclesiastes, even traditionally, is the reflection
and echo of Solomon's disenchantment, we see that in later years his
soul had been sullied, his faith had grown dim, his fervour cold.
All was emptiness. He stood horribly alone. His one son was not a
wise man, but a fool. Gewgaws could no longer satisfy him. His wealth
exhausted, his fame tarnished, his dominions reduced to insignificance,
himself insulted by contemptible adversaries whom he could neither
control nor punish, he entered on the long course of years "_plus
pâles et moins couronnées_." The peaceful is harried by petty raids;
the magnificent is laden with debts; the builder of the Temple has
sanctioned polytheism; the favourite of the nation has become a tyrant,
scourging with whips an impatient people; the "darling of the Lord" has
built shrines for Moloch and Astarte. The glamour of youth, of empire,
of gorgeous tyranny was dispelled, and the splendid boy-king is the
weary and lonely old man. Hiram of Tyre has turned in disgust from an
ungenerous recompense. A new Pharaoh has dispossessed his Egyptian
father-in-law and shelters his rebel servant. His shameful harem has
given him neither a real home nor a true love; his commerce has proved
to be an expensive failure; his politic alliances a hollow sham. In
another and direr sense than after his youthful vision, "Solomon awoke,
and behold it was a dream."[406]
The Talmudists show some insight amid their fantasies when they
write: "At first, before he married strange wives, Solomon reigned
over the angels (1 Chron. xxix. 23); then only over all kingdoms (1
Kings iv. 21); then only over Israel (Eccles. i. 12); then only over
Jerusalem (Eccles. i. 1). At last he reigned only over his staff--as
it is said, 'And this was the portion of my labour'; for by the word
'_this_,'" says Rav, "he meant that the only possession left to him
was the staff which he held in his hand." The staff was not "the rod
and staff" of the Good Shepherd, but the earthly staff of pride and
pomp, and (as in the Arabian legend) the worm of selfishness and
sensuality was gnawing at its base.
FOOTNOTES:
[400] See Euseb., _Præp. Evang._, x. 11.
[401] Lev. xxv. 23, 24. See Judg. i. 31, 32.
[402] Hence, perhaps, the name "Galilee of the nations" (Isa. ix. 1).
Comp. "Harosheth of the nations" (Judg. iv. 2, 13). Hazor was in this
district.
[403] Milman, _Hist. of the Jews_, i. 321.
[404] 1 Kings ix. 10-13. There was a place called Cabul in Asher
(Josh. xix. 27). Ewald thinks that Cabul was a sort of witticism
meaning "as nothing." Josephus (_Antt._, VIII. v. 3) says that in
Phœnician χαβαλὼν means "not pleasing," and that Hiram would not take
the cities. Nothing can be made of the allusion to this transaction
in 2 Chron. viii. 1, 2. Why did Solomon re-occupy these cities? and
why did Hiram give him one hundred and twenty talents of gold? The
gloss put on the matter by late tradition cannot conceal the fact
that Solomon tried to diminish his embarrassments by alienating some
of the sacred territory.
[405] The later Jews chose the name "Alexander" as the Western
equivalent for Solomon: hence the names "_Alexander_ Jannæus," etc.
[406] 1 Kings iii. 15. See Ecclus. xlvii. 12-21.