The first prominent scene in the reign of Solomon is one which presents
his character in its noblest aspect. There were two holy places which
divided the reverence of the people--the ark and its provisional
tabernacle at Jerusalem and the original Tabernacle of the Congregation,
which, after many wanderings, was then pitched at Gibeon.
It was thought right that the new king should offer solemn sacrifices at
both.
After those at Gibeon there came that vision of the night which has in
all ages borne its noble witness to the hearts of rulers.
Not for riches, long life or victory over enemies did the son of
David--then, at least, true to his high calling, feeling himself as “a
little child” in comparison with the vastness of his work--offer his
supplications, but for a “wise and understanding heart,” that he might
judge the people.
The “speech pleased the Lord.”
There came in answer the promise of a wisdom “like which there had been
none before--like which there should be none after.” So far all was
well. The prayer was a right and noble one. Yet there is also a contrast
between it and the prayers of David which accounts for many other
contrasts.
The desire of David’s heart is not chiefly for wisdom, but for holiness.
He is conscious of an oppressing evil, and seeks to be delivered from it.
He repents and falls, and repents again.
Solomon asks only for wisdom. He has a lofty ideal before him, and seeks
to accomplish it, but he is as yet haunted by no deeper yearnings, and
speaks as one who has no need of repentance.
Then began Solomon’s marvelous development as a builder and statesman.
He was not content to build the house of the Lord alone. This is a
remarkable circumstance, as illustrating the spirit which is created and
sustained by all truly religious exercises. It would have been ambition
enough for any man religiously uninspired to have erected such an edifice
as the Temple. Most men are contented to do one thing, and to rest their
fame on its peculiar excellence.
Having completed the house of the Lord and his own house, Solomon began
to build the cities which Huram had restored to him, and to cause the
children of Israel to dwell there.
A religion that ends only in ceremony building is little better than
a superstition. No man can be zealously affected in the interests of
the Church without having his whole philanthropic spirit enlarged and
ennobled, so that he may become a builder of cities as well as a builder
of churches. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that he who builds
a synagogue really helps to build the town in which it is located. A
synagogue, temple or church is not to be looked on in its singularity,
as if it were so many walls, with so many doors and so many windows. A
church is a representative institution, through which should flow rivers
that will fertilize all the districts of the city--rivers of knowledge,
rivers of charity, rivers of brotherhood, rivers of co-operation--so that
men should turn to the Church, assured that every rational and healthy
expectation would be satisfied by its provisions.
Having completed for the time being the measure of building on which his
mind was set, Solomon went forth to war.
It would seem as if, in ancient days, kings could not be satisfied to
dwell at peace. Even Solomon, whose very name signifies peace, had in
him the military spirit which was characteristic of his race and time;
it was in him, indeed, as the word of the living God. Solomon did not go
forth to war for the sake of war; he believed he was obeying a divinely
implanted instinct, or carrying out to the letter some divinely written
law.
Having passed through another military period, King Solomon began once
more to build. He built Tadmor, and all the store cities; he built
Beth-horon the Upper and Beth-horon the Lower, and fenced cities with
walls, gates and bars.
A busy time it was in the reign of Solomon. But even all this building is
not without its suggestion of a corresponding evil.
Why were the cities fenced? Why the gates? Why the bars? We have
instances of the same kind in our own civilization--silent witnesses
against the honesty of the society in which we live. Every bolt on the
door is a moral accusation; every time we turn the lock we mean that
there is an enemy outside who may endeavor to violate the sanctity of the
house.
We sometimes forget the moral suggestiveness even of our commonest
institutions and plans of procedure. Every precaution that is taken for
our preservation implies the presence of hostile elements in the society
that is round about us.
Solomon may be taken in this instance as representing the great doctrine
that men should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and
afterward attend to minor matters, or even leave those minor matters to
the adjustment of providence.
Solomon is represented as first most anxious about the Temple, giving
himself wholly to its erection, occupying his thoughts night and day,
turning every thing to account in its relation to the Temple. Having
finished that marvelous structure, he was prepared to descend to other
levels and do the commoner work which lay to his hand.
Many persons leave the temple half finished. What wonder if they go out
to the war and return wounded and disabled? Our religious purposes are
broken off. What wonder if our political ends pierce us and sting us by
way of retribution?
“But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no servants for his work;
but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and captains of his
chariots and horsemen.”
The statesmanship of Solomon is as distinctly proved by this arrangement
as by any thing we have yet seen in his whole policy. Solomon knew that
one man was not as good as another, however much democratic philosophy
may have endeavored to prove the contrary. One man is a genius, but
another man is a slave--an imitator, a hewer of wood; very serviceable,
and in fact indispensable, but not adorned with the very highest
excellence and dignity of mind.
Solomon made a distribution of classes, saying in effect that some men
can do the drudgery, some men can dig and build, some can pull down and
take away and make ready for the exertions of others; the higher class
of men can think and direct, for they are inspired with the genius of
administration, and are men of powerful mind, of fertile resources in
government and in war. So Solomon made the best use of the material at
his disposal--not getting great men to do small work or setting small men
to fail in great work.
Adaptation is the secret of success. For want of knowing this, many men
fail in life.
There are employers who are making themselves but little better than
toilers, when they might by an expenditure of money apparently distinctly
not economical very greatly assist the progress and solidity of their
fortunes. A man may be industrious in a way which involves the absolute
frittering and humiliation of his energies.
We are to be careful not only to be industrious, but industrious about
the right things and in the right proportion. A man might slave himself
to death cutting down wood or in throwing away stones, but if some other
man of inferior mental faculty could be employed to do that work the
superior man should turn his attention to other and nobler pursuits, and
thus with smaller expenditure of strength he might be doing immeasurably
greater good.
If the thinker is not to degrade himself to the level of a drudge,
neither is the drudge to attempt to force his way to positions for which
he is not qualified. Nothing is mean that is not meanly done.
The Canaanites might be as useful as the Israelites in their own way.
With the eye of a statesman and with the inspiration of a genius, Solomon
saw that he must distribute and classify men, and set each man to do that
for which he was best fitted. Even Solomon could not do all the work
alone.
“And Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David
unto the house that he had built for her; for he said: ‘My wife shall not
dwell in the house of David, king of Israel, because the places are holy
whereunto the ark of the Lord hath come.’”
This may be taken as an instance of punctilious morality. We are not
able to understand all that was involved in the incident. Evidently
we are in the presence of conscience working under some eccentric law
or suggestion. Yet here is a conscience, and by so much the action of
Solomon is to be respected. He will not have any place or institution
even ceremonially defiled. He will go back to precedents; he will consult
the genius of history; he will preserve the consistency of the royal
policy. Solomon felt that the ark of the Lord had sanctified every
locality into which it had come, and that a broad distinction must always
be maintained between heathenism and Judaism--between the idols of pagan
lands and the Spirit of the living God.
In these matters Solomon’s wisdom was displayed as certainly as in the
greater concerns of State and Church. We are to remember that at the
beginning Solomon was endowed with the spirit of wisdom and of a sound
mind. The Lord quickened his sagacity and gave him that marvelous insight
which enabled him to penetrate into the interiors and cores which were
hidden from the scrutiny of other men.
We are, therefore, to give Solomon credit for being at once wise and
conscientious; we are to see in his action the working of a tender
conscience. Even though he may be appeasing his conscience by some trick
or ceremony, yet he is showing us the working of the moral nature within
the kingly breast.
Yet there is a point to be noted here which is common to human
experience. Why should Solomon have married the daughter of Pharaoh?
Why should he, in the first instance, have placed himself in so vital a
relation to heathenism? Are there not men who first plunge into great
mistakes, and then seek to rectify their position by zealous care about
comparatively trifling details? Do not men make money by base means, and
then most zealously betake themselves to bookkeeping, as if they would
not spend money except in approved directions?
There is nothing more misleading than a conscience that does not rest
on a basis of reason. We are to beware of the creation of a false
conscience, or a partial conscience, or a conscience that operates only
in given directions, but which makes up for sins of a larger kind by
ostentatious devotion at the altar of detail and ceremony and petty
ritual.
“Then Solomon offered burnt offerings unto the Lord on the altar of
the Lord, which he had built before the porch, even after a certain
rate every day, offering according to the commandment of Moses--on the
Sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts, three times
in the year, even in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of
weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles.”
Solomon was great in burnt offerings. Do not men sometimes make up
in burnt offerings what they lack in moral consistency? Is not an
ostentatious religion the best proof of internal decay? It ought not to
be so.
The hand and the heart should be one; the outward and the inward should
correspond; the action should be the incarnation of the thought. We are
not always to look on the ceremonial action of the Church as indicative
of its real spirituality.
Solomon did not live to a very great age, since he was not more than
twenty years old when he ascended the throne. Whether Solomon turned to
the Lord again with all his heart--a question widely discussed by the
older commentators--can not be ascertained from the Scriptures.
If the Preacher (Koheleth) is traceable to Solomon so far as the leading
thoughts are concerned, we should find in this fact an evidence of his
conversion, or at least a proof that at the close of his life Solomon
discovered the vanity of all earthly possessions and aims, and even
declared the fear of God to be the only abiding good with which a man can
stand before the judgment of God.
The Temple of Solomon was, according to our ideas of size, a small
building. It was less than one hundred and twenty feet long, and less
than thirty-five feet broad; in other words, it was not so large as
one of the ordinary parish churches of our own land. Much less did it
approach to the size of the colossal buildings in Babylon or Egypt.
But in Jewish eyes, at the time that it was built, it may have been
“great”--that is to say, it may have exceeded the dimensions of any
single separate building existing in Palestine up to the time of its
erection. It may even have been larger than the buildings which the
neighboring nations had erected to their respective gods.
Ancient worship was mainly in the open air, and the temples were viewed
as shrines for the Deity and for His priests--not as buildings in which
worshipers were to congregate. Hence their comparatively small size.
“And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the city of
David, his father; and Rehoboam, his son, reigned in his stead.”
This seems to be a lame and impotent conclusion. Yet it distinctly sets
forth the common humanity of this most extraordinary and brilliant king.
Literally, the passage means that Solomon lay down with his fathers. He
might hardly be recognized from the humblest of them. The Sun dies at
evening with scarcely a reminder of the glory which shone from him at
mid-day.