SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.
"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of
Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given
by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14,
15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the
words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book
(Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book
is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest,
the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the
contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.
One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by
Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist
atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is
this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which
show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names,
derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic
throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims
became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly,
the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian
Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this
day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"
appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith,
discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many
American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in
Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which
he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"
spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the
principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy
Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since
the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they
had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson,
and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah
to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.
"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah
(xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in
the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the
existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you,
We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying
pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are
grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith
the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)
The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic
cult and régime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with
foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's
example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son
from following me, that they may serve other gods." The wife, or other
member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other gods, is to
be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as anticipating
the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's
reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26),
his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver
and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that:
"He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses
... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)
This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine
appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise
set him king over thee whom thy God shall choose: one from among thy
brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner
over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from
Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark
that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the
proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be
king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common
Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and
it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.
The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19,
xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun,
when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly associated with
the punishable practice alluded to in Job xxxi. 26, of kissing the
hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the
Massoretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they
are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of
Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern
critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]
which then would read:
"The sun is known in the heavens,
But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
I have built up a house of habitation for thee,
A place for thee to dwell in forever.
Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]
This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost
of a grand poetic antithesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted
ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how
many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and
interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many
of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in
families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is
a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to
most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the
scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious
stories in Genesis.
Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a
Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has
been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many
of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of
the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with
the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity
is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to
the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive
right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry
the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father's harem,
and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story
of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base
on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.
Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the
sentence pronounced against David because of his crime against
Uriah. A close examination of that passage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must
suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is
not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not
taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but
some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act
(2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to
perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded
to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this
grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris,
so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing
David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is
described as "the word of God," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and
the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly
becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister
name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging
himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor
his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original
story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12
(2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been
that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation,
or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its
original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor
of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of God" Ahithophel,--and
the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar,
David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom,
apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of
the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan,
of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?
In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the
fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by
his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abishag,
and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry
between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have
been the real history there is little doubt that there was substituted
for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards
ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her
grandfather is in the case of Absalom.
It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which
produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's
wife, and the contrast with his chastity represented in the profligacy
of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. xxxv. at the end of
verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no
doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben
was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his
condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about
Judah (Gen. xxxviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter
chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba,
Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel
fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some
of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:
"In Genesis xxxviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown
in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went
to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite,
the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was
displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His
second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his sexual
sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously
stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare
him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may
therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the
father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib
has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and
is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in
our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the
allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons
are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad
ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar,
who played the prostitute. Thus only did Judah found a generation,
from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called
Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed
to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.
"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast
a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of
Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah
marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hittite (murdered
at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This
wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named
Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse
12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1
Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of God, just
like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is
alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards
(rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan,
and dies for sexual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who
meets his death on account of his sexual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar
of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the
daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is,
to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays
the prostitute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the
letter m, and you have Solomon."
If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character
of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings
of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will
be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:
"A lion's whelp is Judah,
Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."
Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away
the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?
"The staff shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the rod from between his feet
Until Shiloh come."
Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites,
pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah
is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's
encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their
headquarters.
It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The
words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he
(Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come
to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to
identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this
is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and
Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It
will be observed that in Gen. xxxviii. Shelah is the only person
whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings
of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford
a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to
suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated
the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's
blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with
a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among
his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the
coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace,
Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.