SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY.
Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song
of Songs:
"Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon,
With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of
his espousals."
Bathsheba, as we have seen, was said to have written Proverbs
xxxi. as an admonition or reproof to her son on his betrothal with the
daughter of Pharaoh. The words of David, "Send me Uriah the Hittite"
(2 Sam. xi. 6), and the emphasis laid on Uriah's being a Hittite (a
race with which intermarriage was prohibited, Deut. vii. 1-5) might
have been meant as some legal excuse for David's conduct. He rescued
Bathsheba, Hebraised (1 Chr. iii. 5), from unlawful wedlock, it might
be said, and her exaltation in Talmudic tradition may have been meant
to guard the purity of David's lineage. But the ascription to Bathsheba
of especial opposition to her son's marriage with the daughter of
Pharaoh indicates that the gravamen in Solomon's posthumous offence
lay less in his intermarriage with foreigners than in building for
them shrines of their several deities,--Istar, Chemosh, Milcom, and
the rest. Against Pharaoh's daughter the Talmud manifests a special
animus: she is said to have introduced to Solomon a thousand musical
instruments, and taught him chants to the various idols. (Shabbath,
56, col. 2.)
There is a bit of Solomonic folklore according to which the Devil
tempted him with a taunt that he would be but an ordinary person
but for his magic ring, in which lay all his wisdom. Solomon being
piqued into a denial, was challenged to remove his ring, but no
sooner had he done so than the Devil seized it, and, having by its
might metamorphosed the king beyond recognition, himself assumed
the appearance of Solomon and for some time resided in the royal
seraglio. The more familiar legend is that Solomon was cajoled into
parting with his signet ring by a promise of the demon to reveal
to him the secret of demonic superiority over man in power. Having
transformed Solomon and transported him four hundred miles away,
the demon (Asmodeus) threw the ring into the sea. Solomon, after long
vagrancy, became the cook of the king of Ammon (Ano Hanun), with whose
daughter, Naamah, he eloped. [4] One day in dressing a fish for dinner
Naamah found in it the signet ring which Asmodeus had thrown into the
sea, and Solomon thus recovered his palace and harem from the demon.
The connexion of this fish-and-ring legend,--known in several versions,
from the Ring of Polycrates (Herodotus III.) to the heraldic legend
of Glasgow,--with the Solomonic demonology, looks as if it may once
have been part of a theory that the idolatrous shrines were built for
the princesses while the Devil was personating their lord. In truth,
however, all of these animadversions belong to a comparatively late
period. Many struggles had to precede even the recognition of the
idolatrous character of the shrines, and to the last the Jews were
generally proud of the "graven images" in their temple,--including
brazen reproductions of the terrible Golden Calf. At the same time
there were no doubt some old priests and soothsayers to whom these
new-fangled things were injurious and odious, and superstitious
people enough to cling to their ancient unhewn altar rather than to
the brilliant cherubim, just as in Catholic countries the devotees
cannot be drawn from their age-blackened Madonnas and time-stained
crucifixes by the most attractive works of modern art.
Although there is no evidence that the God of Israel was known under
the name of either Jah or Jahveh in Solomon's time, there is little
doubt that the rudimentary forces of Jahvism were felt in the Solomonic
age. The furious prophetic denunciations of the wise and learned which
echoed on through the centuries, and made the burden of St. Paul,
indicate that there was from the first much superstition among the
peasantry, which might easily in times of distress be fanned into
fanaticism. The special denunciation of Solomon by Jahveh, and his
suppression during the prophetic age, could hardly have been possible
but for some extreme defiance on his part of the primitive priesthood
and the soothsayers. The temple was dedicated by the king himself
without the help of any priest, and the monopoly of the prophet was
taken away by the establishment of an oracle in the temple. And the
worst was that these things indicated a genuine liberation of the king,
intellectually, from the superstitions out of which Jahvism grew. This
was especially proved by his disregard of the sanctuary claimed by
the murderer Joab, who had laid hold of the horns of the altar. The
altar was the precinct of deity, and beyond the jurisdiction of civil
or military authority; yet when the "man of blood" refused to leave
the altar our royal forerunner of Erastus compelled the reluctant
executioner to slay him at the altar,--even the sacred altar of
unhewn stone. As no thunderbolt fell from heaven on the king for this
sacrilege, the act could not fail to be a thunderbolt from earth
striking the phantasmal heaven of the priest. The Judgment Day for
settlement of such accounts was not yet invented, and injuries of
the gods were left to the vengeance of their priests and prophets.
There is an unconscious humour in the solemn reading by English
clergymen of Jahvist rebukes of Solomon for his tolerance towards
idolatry, at a time when the Queen of England and Empress of India is
protecting temples and idols throughout her realm, and has just rebuilt
the ancient temple of Buddha at Gâya; while the sacred laws of Brahman,
Buddhist, Parsee, Moslem, are used in English courts of justice. If
any modern Josiah should insult a shrine of Vishnu, or of any Hindu
deity, he would have to study his exemplar inside a British prison.