The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6)

Solomon felt it incumbent on him to secure his land, and not merely to adorn the metropolis by splendid buildings, but to make it inaccessible to attack. To protect northern Israel against Rezon and Damascus he fortified Hazor, whose king had once so grievously oppressed Israel, and Baalath; to protect the western border he fortified Megiddo, Gezer, and Beth-horon.344 The defensive works which David had added to the old fortifications of the metropolis he enlarged and extended. The gorge which, running from north to south, divided the city of Jerusalem on the western height from the citadel of Zion on the east he closed towards the north by a separate fortification, the tower of Millo. By another fortification, Ophel, he protected a depression of Mount Zion between David's palace and the new temple, which allowed the citadel to be ascended from the east. The space over which the city had extended on the western height opposite the temple, in consequence of the growth of a suburb there towards the north, the lower city, he surrounded with a wall.345 He raised the number of the chariots of war, which David had introduced, to 1400, for which 4000 horses were kept. He formed a cavalry force of 12,000 horses, he built stables and sheds for the horsemen and chariots. If we include the body-guard, the standing army which Solomon maintained may very well have reached 20,000 men.346

The excellent arrangement of his military means and forces must have contributed to make Israel respected and to preserve peace in the land. In Solomon's reign, so we are told in the Books of Kings, every one could dwell in peace under his own vine and his own fig tree.347 This peace from without, united with the peace which the power and authority of the throne secured in the country, must have invigorated trade, favoured industry, and considerably increased the welfare of Israel. The example of the court, the splendour and magnificence of which was not increased by buildings only, made the wealthy Israelites acquainted with needs and enjoyments hitherto unknown to their simple modes of life. If hitherto the Israelites had sold to the Phenicians wine and oil, the wool of their flocks, and the surplus products of their lands for utensils and stuffs, the finer manufactures of the Phenicians now found a demand in Israel. If the king of Israel was friendly to the Phenicians, he allowed them a road by land through his territories to Egypt; now that the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites had been subjugated he could close or open the caravan road past Rabbath-Ammon, Kir Moab, and Elath to South Arabia (I. 320), and when Tadmor was in his hands he could permit or prohibit a road to the Euphrates beside that past Damascus. Solomon prohibited none of these; on the contrary, he promoted the intercourse of the merchants by erecting resting-places and warehouses on all the lines of traffic which crossed his dominions.348 The exportation of chariots and war-horses from Egypt to Syria, which the Pharaoh no doubt permitted in an especial degree to his son-in-law, Solomon carried on by means of merchants commissioned by him.349 Another trade undertaking, at once much more far-seeing, and promising far greater gains, he commenced in union with the king of Tyre. It was of great importance to the Phenicians to obtain an easier connection with South Arabia in the place of, or at least in addition to, the dangerous and very uncertain caravan routes past Damascus and Dumah (I. 320), or past Elath along the coast of the Red Sea, to South Arabia. The circuit by Babylon was very distant, and not much more secure. The rule of Solomon over Edom pointed out the way, and secured the possibility of reaching South Arabia by the Red Sea. At Eziongeber, near Elath, Tyrian shipbuilders built the vessels which were to explore the coasts of South Arabia, the coasts of the land of gold. Guided by Phenician pilots, Phenicians and Israelites sailed into the unknown sea, and to unknown and remote corners of the earth. They succeeded not only in reaching the South Arabian coasts and the coasts of East Africa, but in passing beyond to Ophir, i. e., as it seems, to the mouths of the Indus. After an absence of three years the first expedition brought back gold in quantities, silver, ivory, sandal wood, precious stones, apes and peacocks. The profits of this expedition are said to have contributed as Solomon's share 420 Kikkars of gold, i. e. towards 20,000,000 thalers (about £3,000,000).350

With the increased sale of the products of the country, the improvement and security of the great routes of traffic, the entrance of Israel into the trade of the Phenicians, and the influx of a considerable amount of capital, money seems to have become very rapidly and seriously depreciated in price in Israel. Before the establishment of the monarchy a priest is said to have received 10 silver shekels, with food and clothing, for his yearly service at a sacred place.351 The amount from which Abimelech is said to have maintained his retinue (p. 107) is placed at only 70 shekels of silver. Before the epoch of the monarchy the prophet received a quarter of a shekel as a return for his services. David purchased the threshing-floor of Araunah at Zion with two oxen for 50 shekels of silver.352 On the other hand, Solomon appears to have paid the keepers of his vineyards a yearly salary of 200 silver shekels, and in his time 150 shekels were paid for an Egyptian horse, and 600 shekels (500 thalers = £80) for a war-chariot.353

The prosperity of the land allowed Solomon to increase the income of the throne by taxation of the people. His income from the navigation to Ophir, from trade, from the royal demesnes, and the taxes of Israel is said to have brought in a yearly sum of 666 Kikkars of gold, i. e. about 30,000,000 of thalers (about £5,000,000).354 He applied these revenues to the support of his army, to his fortifications, sheds, and splendid buildings, to the erection of the stations on the trade roads, and finally to the adornment of the court. "He built in Jerusalem, on Lebanon, and in the whole land of his dominion," say the Books of Kings.355 We hear of conduits, pools and country houses of the king on Antilibanus; of vineyards and gardens at Baal-Hammon. The splendour of his court is described in extravagant terms. All the drinking-vessels and many other utensils in the palace at Jerusalem, and in the forest-house in Antilibanus, are said to have been of pure gold, and the servants were richly clad.356 In a costly litter of cedar wood, of which the posts were of silver, the arms of gold, and the seat of purple, Solomon was conveyed to his vineyards and pleasure-houses in Antilibanus, surrounded by a retinue of 60 men chosen from the body-guard.357 At solemn processions the body-guard carried 500 ornamented shields: 200 were of pure gold, – for each 600 shekels were used, – 300 of alloyed gold.358 The number of male and female singers, of the servants for the king and crowded harem, and the kitchen, must have been very great, as may be inferred from the very considerable consumption of food and drink in the palace. From the court and from trade such an amount of gold flowed to Jerusalem that silver was in consequence depreciated.359

The new arrangement of state life, which was partly established, partly introduced, by Solomon, the leisure of peace, the close contact with Phœnicia and Egypt, the entrance of Israel into extensive trade, the increase of prosperity, the richer, more various, and more complicated conditions of life, the wider range of vision, could not be without their influence on the intellectual life of the Israelites. From this time an increased activity is displayed. They were impelled and forced to observation, comparison and consideration in quite another manner than before. The results of these new reflections grew into fixed rules, into proverbs and apophthegms. In this intellectual movement Solomon took a leading part. A man of poetical gifts like his father, he composed religious and other poems (1005 in number, according to the tradition). The impulse to knowledge and the sense of art which he excites must first have found room within himself; his vision, like his means, reached the furthest. Hence we have no reason to doubt that he was one of the wisest in his nation. "God," says the Book of Kings, "gave Solomon a spirit beyond measure, as the sand of the sea. And the wisdom of Solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the East, and the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than all men, and he spoke of the trees, from the cedar on Lebanon to the hyssop which grows on the wall, and of the cattle and the birds, and the worms and the fishes."360 Beside poetry and extensive knowledge of nature, in which he surpassed his wisest countrymen, Ethal and Heman, Chalcol and Darda, it was his keen observation, his penetrating knowledge of mankind, his experience of life which made the greatest impression. His proverbs and rules of life seemed to the Israelites so pointed and exhaustive that they attributed to Solomon the entire treasure of their gnomic wisdom, which was afterwards collected into one body. Among these proverbs scarcely any can with complete certainty be ascribed to Solomon, but the fact that all are attributed to him is a sufficient proof that Solomon possessed a very striking power in keen observation of human nature and human affairs, in the pregnant expression of practical experience, in combining its lessons into pointed and vigorous sentences.

As a proof of his acuteness and the calm penetration of his judicial decisions, the people used to narrate the story of the two women who once came before Solomon into the hall of justice. One said: I and that woman lived in one house, and each of us bore a male child. In the night the son of this woman died. She rose, laid her dead son at my breast, and took my living child to her bosom. When I woke I had a dead child in my arms; but in the morning I perceived that this child was not the son which I had borne. The other woman answered: No; the living boy is my son, and thine is the dead child. The king turned to his retinue and said: Cut the living child into two parts, and give half to one and half to the other. Then tenderness for her child arose in the mother of the living child. I pray you, my lord, she said, give her the living child, but slay it not. And the king gave sentence: This is the mother, give her the child. It is further narrated that the fame of Solomon's wisdom reached even to distant lands, and kings set forth to hear it. From Arabia the queen of the Sabæans (Sheba, I. 315) is said to have come with a long train of camels, carrying spices, gold, and precious stones, in order to try Solomon with enigmas. And Solomon told her all that she asked, and solved all the enigmas, and nothing was hidden from him. When the queen perceived such wisdom, and saw the house which he had built, and the food on his table, and his counsellors, and his cup-bearers, and servants, and the burnt sacrifice which he offered in the house of Jehovah, she sent him 120 Kikkars of gold, and such an amount of spices as never afterwards came to Jerusalem. This narrative may not be without some foundation, in fact we saw above how old was the trade of Egypt and Syria with the land of frankincense. We shall afterwards find queens among the Arabians in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.: Zabibieh, Samsieh, and Adijah, and even at the head of the tribes of the desert. To this day the East preserves the memory of the wise king Solomon, who, in their legends and stories, has at the same time become a great magician and exorcist.

However great the splendour of Israel in Solomon's reign, this advance was not without a darker side. The new paths in which Solomon led his people brought the Israelites comfort and opulence, the advantages and impulses of a higher civilisation and more active intellectual life. But with the splendour and luxury of the court, and the increasing wealth, the old simplicity of manners disappeared. The land had to bear the burden of a rule which was completely assimilated to the forms of court life, and the mode of government established in Egypt and Syria, in Babylon and Assyria. The court, the army and the buildings required heavy sums and services, and these for the most part had to be paid and undertaken by the people. Solomon not only imposed on the tribes the maintenance of his standing troops, the cavalry and the chariots, he also demanded that they should support the court by contributions in kind. This service was not inconsiderable. Each day 30 Kor of fine and 60 Kor of ordinary meal were required, 10 stalled oxen, and 20 oxen from the pasture, and 100 head of small cattle. Besides this, deer and fallow-deer, gazelles and fed geese were supplied. The assistance which Hiram king of Tyre gave to Solomon's buildings, the wood from Lebanon, had to be paid for; each year 20,000 Kor of wheat and 20,000 Bath of oil and wine were sent to Tyre, and this the Israelites had to provide. Further, the people had to pay a regular yearly tax in money to the king.361 Still more oppressive was the task-work for the buildings of the king. It is true that the remnant of the tribes subject to the Israelites, the Amorites, Hittites, Hivites and Jebusites, were taken chiefly for these tasks, for Solomon had compelled them to do constant task-work,362 but the Israelites themselves were also employed in great numbers in the building. Over each tribe of Israel Solomon placed an overseer of the task-work, and these overseers were all subordinate to Adoniram, the chief task-master. The Israelites summoned for these services are said to have had two months' rest after one month of work, and there was a regular system of release. In the years when the buildings were carried on with the greatest vigour, 80,000 workmen are said to have been engaged in felling wood in Lebanon, in quarrying and hewing stones under Tyrian artisans, while 70,000 others carried out the transport of this material. Though the workmen were constantly changed and the extension of the task was not unendurable, these burdens were unusual and certainly undesirable. In order to introduce regularity into the payments in kind and the taxes of the land, the country was divided into twelve districts, – no doubt on the basis of the territorial possessions of the tribes, – and over these royal officers were placed. Each district had to provide the requirements of the royal house for one month in the year. These overseers of the districts were subordinate to a head overseer, Azariah, the son of that Nathan to whom, next to his mother, Solomon owed the throne.363 Yet in spite of all the services of subjects, in spite of all means of receipts, Solomon's expenditure was in excess of his income. When the settlement with Hiram followed the completion of the building of the temple and palace, it was found that Hiram had still 120 Kikkars of gold to receive. As Solomon could not pay the sum, he ceded to Tyre twenty Israelite places on the border. No doubt the king of Tyre was well pleased to complete and round off his territory on the mainland.364

The example of a lavish and luxurious court, the spectacle of a crowded harem, the influence and demeanour of these females, was not only injurious to the morals of the people, but to their religious conduct. If the national elevation of the Israelites under Saul and David had forced back the foreign rites which had taken a place after the settlement beside the worship of Jehovah, it is now the court which adopts the culture and manners of the Phenicians and Syrians, and by which the worship of strange gods in Israel again becomes prominent. Among the wives of the king many were from Sidon, Ammon, Moab and Edom. Solomon may have considered it wise to display tolerance towards the worship of the tributary nations, but it was going far beyond tolerance when the king, who had built such a richly-adorned and costly temple to the national god of Israel, erected, in order to please these women, altars and shrines to Astarte of Sidon, to Camus of the Moabites, and Milcom of the Ammonites.365

Yet the impulse which Solomon's reign gave to the worship of Jehovah was far the most predominant. It is true that the idea of raising a splendid temple to Jehovah in Jerusalem arose out of the model of the temple-service of the Phenicians and Philistines and their magnificent rites (I. 367), whereas the Israelites hitherto had known nothing but places for sacrifice on altars on the heights and under the oaks, – nothing but a sacred tent. The temple itself was an approximation to the worship of the Syrians; but it was at the same time the completion of the work begun by David. This building of the temple was the most important of the acts of Solomon during his reign, and an undertaking, which in its origin was to some degree at variance with national feeling, not only contributed to the maintenance of the national religion, but also had very considerable influence upon its development. Solomon, after his manner, may have had the splendour and glory of the structure chiefly in view, – yet just as the monarchy comprised the political life of the nation, so did the specious, magnificent temple centralise the religious life of the nation, even more than David's sacred tent. By this the old places of sacrifice were forced into the shade, and even more rarely visited. The building of the temple increased the preponderance of the sacrifice offered in the metropolis. The priests of the altars in the country, who mostly lived upon their share in the sacrifices, turned to Jerusalem, and took up their dwelling in the city. Here they already found the priesthood, which had gathered round Abiathar and Zadok (p. 164). The union of a large number of priestly families at Jerusalem, under the guidance of the high priest appointed already by David, caused the feeling and the consciousness of the solid community and corporate nature of their order to rise in these men, while the priests had previously lived an isolated life, at the places of sacrifice among the people, and hardly distinguished from them, and thus they were led to a far more earnest and systematic performance of the sacred worship. It was easy to make use of the number of priests already in existence in order to give to the rites the richer and more brilliant forms which the splendour and dignity of the temple required. For this object the arrangements of the sacred service must be divided, and the sacred acts allotted to special sections of the priests at hand.

The organisation of the priesthood needed for these divisions was naturally brought about by the fact that those entrusted with the office of high priest supposed themselves to be descendants of Aaron, and that even in David's reign these had been joined by the priests who claimed to be of the same origin. These families, the descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar, retained the essential arrangements of the sacrifice and the expiation, the priesthood in the stricter sense. Even the families, who side by side with these are said to have belonged to the race of Aaron, which, like Aaron, are said to have sprung from the branch of Kohath, were not any longer admitted to this service. The priestly families of this and other origin, which are first found at a later date in Jerusalem, who retained their dwelling outside Jerusalem, were united with the races of Gershom and Merari, and to them, as to the families of the race of Kohath which did not come through Aaron, were transferred the lesser services in the worship and in the very complicated ritual. Those men of these races who were acquainted with music and singing, together with such musicians as were not of priestly blood, were also divided into sections. They had to accompany the sacrifice and acts of religious worship with sacred songs and the harp. Others were made overseers of the sacred vessels and the dedicatory offerings, others set apart for the purification of the sanctuary and for door-keepers. All these services were hereditary in the combinations of families allotted to them. This organisation of the priesthood cannot have come into existence, as the tradition tells us, immediately after the completion of the temple; it can only have taken place as the effects of a splendid centre of worship in the metropolis of the kingdom became more widely felt, and was finally brought to completion under the guidance of the priests attending on the sacred ark.366

Thus there was connected with the building of the temple by Solomon, not only the reunion of the families of the tribe of Levi – if these even previously had formed a separate tribe; – by means of adoption from all the families which for generations had been dedicated to the sacred rites, the formation and separation of the priestly order became perfect.367 At first, without any independent position, this order was dependent on the protection of the monarchy, which built the temple for it, and the importance of the priests was increased with the splendour of the worship. At the head of the new order stood the priests of the ark of Jehovah, who had already, in earlier times, maintained a pre-eminent position, which was now increased considerably by the reform in the worship. But they also were dependent on the court, though they soon came to exercise a certain influence upon it. As David had made Zadok and Abiathar high priests, so Solomon removed Abiathar and transferred the highest priestly office to Zadok, of the branch of Eleazar. Far more important than the position of the priesthood at the court was the feeling and consciousness of the mission given to them, of the duties and rights, to which the priesthood attained when combined in the new society. As they were at pains to practise a worship pleasing to Jehovah, they succeeded even before Solomon in discovering an established connection between the past and the present of the nation, in recognising the covenant which Jehovah had made with his people. From isolated records, traditions, and old customs they collected the law of ritual in the manner which they considered as established from antiquity, the observation of which was, from their point of view, the maintenance of the covenant into which Israel had entered with his God. This was the light in which, even in David's time, the fortunes of Israel appeared to the priests, and from this point of view they were recorded in the first decade of David's reign. The order which the priests required for the worship, its unity, centralisation and adornment, the exact obedience to the ritual which was considered by them true and pleasing to God, the position which the priesthood had now obtained, or claimed, appeared to them as already ordained and current in the time when Jehovah saved his people with a mighty arm, and led them from Egypt to Canaan. They had been thrust into the background and forgotten, owing to the guilt and backsliding of later times. Now the time was come to establish in power the true and ancient ordinances of Moses in real earnest, and to restore them. It was of striking ethical importance, that by these views the present was placed in near relation and the closest combination with a sublime antiquity, with the foundation of the religious ordinances. The impulse to religious feeling which arose out of these views and efforts found expression in a lyrical poetry of penetrating force. David had not only attempted simple songs, but also, as we have seen, more extended invocations of Jehovah; and the skilled musical accompaniment which now came to the aid of religious song in the families of the musicians, must have contributed to still greater elevation and choice of expression. The intensity of religious feeling and its expression in sacred songs must also have come into contact more especially with that impulse which had hitherto been represented in the seers and prophets, who believed that they apprehended the will of Jehovah in their own breasts, and, in consequence of their favoured relation to him, understood his commands by virtue of internal illumination. All these impulses operated beyond the priestly order. In union with the lofty spiritual activity of the people, they led, in the first instance, to the result that in the last years of Solomon the annalistic account of the fortunes of the people and the record of the law was accompanied by a narrative of greater liveliness, of a deeper and clearer view of the divine and human nature (I. 386), which at the same time, in the fate of Joseph, gave especial prominence to the newly-obtained knowledge of Egyptian life, the service rendered by the daughter of the king of Egypt to the great leader of Israel in the ancient times, the blessing derived from the friendly relations of Israel and Egypt, and the distress brought upon Egypt by the breach with Israel.