The first act of the foreign policy of the new reign must have been to most Israelites a very startling one. Solomon showed the desire to strengthen his throne by foreign alliances in a manner which marks the great difference of spirit between the new monarchy and the ancient theocracy. He made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and took his daughter to be his wife. This Pharaoh was probably a late king of the xxist (Tanite) dynasty; for the eminent head of the xxiind dynasty, Sheshonk I. (Shishak), belongs to the latter part of the reign of Solomon, and to that of Rehoboam." That this flagrant breach, not only of a general principle, but of the specific law against intercourse with Egypt, passed unpunished for the time, is an example of that great system of forbearance which lies at the basis of each new dispensation of God's moral government. But the law of retribution for sinful actions by their natural effects was working from the very first, and this marriage of Solomon was the first step toward his fall into idolatry. Meanwhile "Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father," and "God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly;" and the only blot upon the outward purity as well as prosperity of the kingdom was the retention of the "high places," which had been the seats of the ancient worship, for sacrifice, in the absence of any house of God. The hill of Gibeon, where stood the tabernacle and the altar of burnt-offering, seems only to have been regarded as the chief of these high places; and it f was probably in the course of a series of sacrifices at the dif ferent sacred heights that Solomon visited Gibeon, "the great high place," and there, in the midst of a great convocation of the people, sacrificed a tenfold hecatomb-a thousand burntofferings-upon the altar."

This was the occasion chosen by Jehovah for His first personal revelation to Solomon. In the following night God appeared to him in a dream, and asked him to choose what He should give him. After a thanksgiving for the mercies shown to David, and a prayer that the promise made to him might be established, Solomon, confessing himself to be but a little child in comparison to the great work committed him in governing and judging the people, asked for the wisdom and knowledge that might fit him for the office-“ an understanding heart to judge Thy people, to discern between good

1 K. iii. 1. But, as Rehoboam his father's death, and therefore bewas forty-one years old at his acces- fore he married the daughter of Phasion, Solomon must have married his raoh. "See chap. xxiii. § 2. mother-Naamah of Ammon-before 1 K. iii. 2-4; 1 Chron. i. 1-6.

and bad." The desire, thus expressed in Solomon's own words, does not seem to have so high a meaning as is often assigned to it. He does not ask that profound spiritual wisdom, which would teach him to know God and his own heart: in this he was always far inferior to David. His prayer is for practical sagacity, clear intelligence, quick discernment, to see the right from the wrong amid the mazes of duplicity and doubt which beset the judge, especially among an Oriental people. And this gift he received. His aspirations, if not for the highest spiritual excellence, were for usefulness to his subjects and fellow-men, not for long life, riches, and victory for himself; and because he had not selfishly asked these things, they were freely granted to him in addition to the gift he had chosen. Assured of God's favor, he returned to Jerusalem, and renewed his sacrifices before the ark, and made a feast to all his servants.'

An occasion soon arose to prove his divine gift of sagacity. Two women appeared before his judgment-seat with a dead and a living infant. The one who appealed to the king for justice alleged that they had both been delivered in the same house, the other woman three days after herself; that the other had overlaid her child in the night, and had exchanged its corpse for the living child of the first while she slept. The second declared that the living child was hers, and both were alike clamorous in demanding it. The king resolved to appeal to the maternal instinct, as a sure test even in the degraded class to which both the women belonged. Calling for a sword, he bade one of his guards divide the living child in two, and give half to one woman and half to the other. It is a strange proof of the progress of the monarchy toward despotic power that the command should have been taken in earnest, but so it seems to have been. The woman who had borne the living child now prayed that it might be given to the other to save its life, while the latter consented to the cruel partition; and the king had now no difficulty in deciding the dispute. The fame of the decision spread through all Israel, inspiring fear of the king's justice, and a conviction that God had given him that wise discernment which is prized in the East as a ruler's highest quality."

§ 3. Solomon arranged his court on the same general basis as his father's, but on a scale of much greater magnificence.

1 K. iii. 5-15; 2 Chron. i. 7-13.

1 K. iii. 16-28. See the story of a similar judgment by an Indian king in Kitto's Daily Bible Illustrations, vol. iv. in loc.

Among the names of his chief officers we find several of his father's most distinguished servants and their sons. There were "princes" or chief governors, two "scribes" or secretaries, a "recorder," a "captain of the host," ""officers" of the court, the chief of whom had, like Hushai under David, the title of "the king's friend;" there was a chief over the household, and another over the tribute. The priests were Zadok and Abiathar, though, as we have seen, the latter was deposed. The supplies needed for the court were levied throughout the whole land by twelve officers, to each of whom was allotted a particular district to supply one month's provisions." But these contributions were increased by the subject kingdoms between the Euphrates, which was the eastern border of Solomon's dominions, from Tiphsah (Thapsacus) to Azzah, and the land of the Philistines and the Egyptian frontier. The provision for each day consisted of thirty measures of fine flour and seventy measures of meal, ten fat oxen and twenty from the pastures, and 100 sheep, besides venison and fowl. Judah and Israel, increasing rapidly in numbers, gave themselves up to festivity and mirth, and "dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon."12 In the great military establishment, which Solomon maintained for state as well as for defense, he set at naught the law against keeping up a force of cavalry. He had 40,000 stalls of horses for his 1400 chariots and 12,000 cavalry horses," and their supplies of straw and provender were furnished by the twelve officers just mentioned. The horses and chariots were brought from Egypt, whence also the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria obtained theirs. A chariot cost 600 shekels of silver, and a horse 150. The chariots and cavalry were placed in garrison in certain cities, called "chariot cities," and partly with the king at Jerusalem. The commerce with Egypt supplied also linen yarn, which was made a royal monopoly. As the result of this and other commerce (to be spoken of presently), silver and gold are said, in the hyperbolical language of the East, to have been as stones at Jerusalem, and the cedars of Lebanon as abundant as the sycamore, the common timber of Palestine.1

But all this magnificence was transcended by the personal qualities of Solomon himself. We have, it is true, no di

V 1 K. iv. 1-6. 10 1 K. iv. 7-19.

"1 K. iv. 21-24. 121 K. iv. 20, 25. "This is the proper sense of the

word rendered "horseman" in 1 K. iv. 26. The "dromedaries" of ver. 28 are properly "swift horses" used for posts. 14 2 Chron. i. 14-17.

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rect description of his personal appearance, but the wonderful impression which he made upon all who came near him may well lead us to believe that with him as with Saul and David, Absalom and Adonijah, as with most other favorite princes of Eastern peoples, there must have been the fascination and the grace of a noble presence. Whatever higher mystic meaning may be latent in Ps. xlv., or the Song of Songs, we are all but compelled to think of them as having had, at least, a historical starting-point. They tell us of one who was, in the eyes of the men of his own time, "fairer than the children of men," the face "bright and ruddy” as his father's;" bushy locks, dark as the raven's wing, yet not without a golden glow, the eyes soft as "the eyes of doves," the "countenance as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars," "the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely.' Add to this, all gifts of a noble, far-reaching intellect, large and ready sympathies, a playful and genial humor, the lips "full of grace," the soul "anointed "' as "with the oil of gladness,' " and we may form some notion of what the king was like in this dawn of his golden prime. He used these gifts not only for the government of his people, but for the acquisition and the embodiment in writing of all the learning of the age." He gave equal attention to the lessons of practical morals and to the facts of natural science. "He spake 3000 proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five.” "And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes;" in short, of the whole cycle of natural history." We must, however, avoid misconceptions, both as to the matter of Solomon's knowledge, and as to the form of its utterance. It does not appear that he possessed what would now be considered great proficiency in natural science, nor even such knowledge as Aristotle's, whose works on natural history the Rabbis pretend to have been derived from a copy of the writings of Solomon sent to him from the East by Alexander! Solomon's natural science, like that of Oriental philosophers in general, consisted rather in the observation of the more

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15 Cant. v. 10; 1 Sam. xvii. 42. 1 Chron. ii. 6). The word Mahol is 16 Cant. v. 9-16. 17 Ps. xlv. supposed to be an appellative denoting 18 The four sons of Mahol, Etham, them as sons of song," in reference Heman, Chalcol, and Darda, whose to their skill in music and poetry, the proverbial wisdom was surpassed by organs of wisdom in early times. that of Solomon, were the sons of Ze- Heman's name is prefixed to the 88th rah, son of Judah (1 K. iv. 31; comp. Psalm. 19 1 K. iv, 32, 33.

obvious facts in the common life and habits of God's creatures, with an especial view to use them for the poetical illustration of moral lessons: and in this way we find such knowledge used, not only in the Proverbs ascribed to him, but in many of the Psalms, and throughout the Book of Job. The discourses in the latter part of that book about Behemoth and Leviathan are probably a type of the manner in which "Solomon spake of beasts." It clearly follows that we ought not to suppose that Solomon wrote elaborate treatises on these subjects which are now lost. Such forms of communicating knowledge do not belong to his age or country. His 3000 proverbs and 1005 songs probably contained nearly all that he wrote upon such matters in the form of poetical illustration. For the rest, it should be remembered that instruction, in his time and long after, was chiefly oral. The tents of the patriarchs and the abodes of their descendants witnessed many an hour when the ancient father would discourse to his descendants on the lessons of his experience and the traditions handed down by his fathers; and such we conceive to have been the converse held by Solomon in the midst of his splendid court, only on a much grander scale, and covering a much wider field. Thus, amid the public life of an Eastern monarch, not in the seclusion of the retired student, he poured out the knowledge which attracted the subjects of other kings from all nations of the earth, to hear for themselves that wisdom the fame of which had reached them in their distant countries." In one celebrated instance the attraction proved sufficient to bring one of those sovereigns themselves from the remotest regions: but this visit of the Queen of Sheba belongs to a later period of Solomon's reign.

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§ 4. The king was meanwhile occupied with three great works the building of the house of God, of his own hous< and of the wall of Jerusalem. We have seen the vast preparations that David had made for the erection of the Temple, the designs for which he had given into the hands of Solomon, and how he had been aided by Hiram, king of Tyre. That faithful ally sent an embassy of congratulation on his son's accession, and Solomon sent back an answer informing Hiram of his prosperity, declaring his intention of building a house for God, and requesting his assistance, which Hiram gladly promised in a letter.22

21

22 2 Chron. ii. 11. The second re

201 K. iv. 34. On the writings of | Solomon, see Notes and Illustrations corded instance of epistolary correspondence, the first being David's let ter to Joab by Uriah.

(B.).

aí 1 K. v. ;

2 Chron. ii.

X