THE glory of Solomon vanished like an unsubstantial pageant, and left nothing behind it but a vague memory. The true golden age of the Jewish past was far more the age of their David, with its outburst of song and golden deeds, than the Byzantine gorgeousness of Solomon, which the sequel proved to be splendid with the colourings of decay. The Book of Kings, with a play upon his name, which if intentional has a certain grimness of its own, says that when he was old—though he could not have been more than 139 140 SOLOMON. wives turned away his heart," and his heart was not perfect shalêm) with Jehovah."1 The Book of Chronicles, after dwelling on the ideal of his glory, his building of the Temple, his prayers, and his commerce, refers to the prophets who had acted as his historiographers, and adds only that he slept with his fathers. Two deadly evils lurked behind the superficial brilliancy, and wrought incredible harm to king and people—the curse of poly- gamy and the curse of despotism. The primitive simplicity of the monarchy was nobler, though less showy, than this irides- cence of moral stagnancy and luxurious decline. There must have been many who watched with unfavourable eyes the displacement of national simplicity by alien magnifi- cence. Strange and apparently universal as was the desuetude into which the provisions of the Mosaic law had fallen, and little as Solomon seems to have been conscious of the obliteration of Mosaic conceptions which was manifest in his proceedings,
rosin). But the assertion of Josephus is doubtful, for "balm" was son by Jacob to Egypt (Gen. xliii. 11). The opobalsamum is still called in Arabic dseri (Heb. tzeri). 2 Josephus, "Antiq." viii. 6, 46; xiv. 4, § 1; xv. 4, § 2. 3 Pliny, "H. N." xii. 54; xiii. 9. 170 SOLOMON. had the honour to find its way into one of the oldest and most valuable uncial manuscripts of the New Testament—the great Codex Alexandrinus. In the Book of Psalms, two—the Seventy- second and the One Hundred and Twenty-seventh—are, in the traditional titles, ascribed to Solomon.1 The Seventy-second is that splendid Psalm—"Give the king thy judgments, oh Lord"— which describes a righteous king ruling from sea to sea in un- troubled prosperity. If it were either by Solomon himself or due to the impulse he gave, as seems very probable, it shows that though poetry may have lost something of the passionate spontaneity which it displayed in the heart of David, it was still capable of the noblest utterances. Psalm the Lord build the house"—is one of the "Songs of Degrees," or as we should call them, "Pilgrim Songs"—"songs of the goings up"— which were perhaps sung by the caravans of pil- grims on their visits to Jerusalem at the yearly feasts. It is an exquisite picture of domestic life in the days when marriage was deemed a blessing left us from the ruins of Paradise, and the multitude of children was regarded as a direct sign of the favour of the Lord. The authorship is, however, quite un- certain, and it may have been ascribed to Solomon only from the mention of "God's beloved" (y'dîdo, "Jedidiah") in the second verse; or from the belief that the "House" spoken of meant the first Temple, whereas the reference is much less ex- clusive.2 Besides these there is at least a possibility that the
proverbs. It only remains to point out four features of great interest for the study of the book. 1. In the first place, it is cosmopolitan. A large part of Hebrew literature is intensely national, and even fanatically exclusive. It is not so with this Book. It recognizes in morality a common ground of consideration for all mankind. Its ethical system is adapted to the needs of human nature in general. "The word 'Israel' does not occur once; the name 'man' (Adam) thirty-three times."3 2. It has often been disputed whether the Hebrews could be said to have a philosophy or not. The answer must, of course, depend very much on what conception we attach to the word philosophy. It is certain that every nation above the savage condition must have attempted in some way or other to solve the problem of existence; and wherever we find such an attempt 1 Ps. xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxi., cxii., cxix., cxlv., and (partially) ix. and x. 2 Thuc. ii. 45, καὶ ῆς αν επ’ ελάχιστον αρετῆς πέρι η ψόγου εν τοῖς αρσεσι κλεός η. 3 Cheync, "Job and Solomon," p. 119. 204 SOLOMON. we have at least the rudiments of a philosophy. There is, how- ever, this great distinction between Hebrew philosophy and that of other nations, that the Hebrews from the earliest days pos- sessed a revelation. The whole tenor of their thought was influenced by the fact that it began with the acknowledgment of one God. It argued from the Being of a God downwards to earthly phenomena. It consisted in the recognition of a Divine