Several kings have been good scholars, and have written good books. The king of Prussia, Frederick the Great, is the latest example we have had of it: German monarchs will be found who compose French verses, and who write the history of their countries. James I. in England, and even Henry VIII. have written. In Spain, we must go back as far as Alphonso X. Still it is doubtful whether he put his hand to the “Alphonsine Tables.”
France cannot boast of having had an author king. The empire of Germany has no book from the pen of its emperors; but Rome was glorified in C?sar, Marcus Aurelius, and Julian. In Asia, several writers are reckoned among the kings. The present emperor of China, Kien Long, particularly, is considered a great poet; but Solomon, or Solyman, the Hebrew, has still more reputation than Kien Long, the Chinese.
The name of Solomon has always been revered in the East. The works believed to be his, the “Annals of the Jews,” and the fables of the Arabs, have carried his renown as far as the Indies. His reign is the great epoch of the Hebrews.
He was the third king of Palestine. The First Book of Kings says that his mother, Bathsheba, obtained from David, the promise that he should crown Solomon, her son, instead of Adonijah, his eldest. It is not surprising that a woman, an accomplice in the death of her first husband, should have had artifice enough to cause the inheritance to be given to the fruit of her adultery, and to cause the legitimate son to be disinherited, who was also the eldest.
It is a very remarkable fact that the prophet Nathan, who reproached David with his adultery, the murder of Uriah, and the marriage which followed this murder, was the same who afterwards seconded Bathsheba in placing that Solomon on the throne, who was born of this sanguine and infamous marriage. This conduct, reasoning according to the flesh, would prove, that the prophet Nathan had, according to circumstances, two weights and two measures. The book even says not that Nathan received a particular mission from God to disinherit Adonijah. If he had one, we must respect it; but we cannot admit that we find it written.
It is a great question in theology, whether Solomon is most renowned for his ready money, his wives, or his books. I am sorry that he commenced his reign in the Turkish style by murdering his brother.
Adonijah, excluded from the throne by Solomon, asked him, as an only favor, permission to espouse Abishag, the young girl who had been given to David to warm him in his old age. Scripture says not whether Solomon disputed with Adonijah, the concubine of his father; but it says, that Solomon, simply on this demand of Adonijah, caused him to be assassinated. Apparently God, who gave him the spirit of wisdom, refused him that of justice and humanity, as he afterwards refused him the gift of continence.
It is said in the same Book of Kings that he was the master of a great kingdom which extended from the Euphrates to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean; but unfortunately it is said at the same time, that the king of Egypt conquered the country of Gezer, in Canaan, and that he gave the city of Gezer as a portion to his daughter, whom it is pretended that Solomon espoused. It is also said that there was a king at Damascus; and the kingdoms of Tyre and Sidon flourished. Surrounded thus with powerful states, he doubtless manifested his wisdom in living in peace with them all. The extreme abundance which enriched his country could only be the fruit of this profound wisdom, since, as we have already remarked, in the time of Saul there was not a worker in iron in the whole country. Those who reason find it difficult to understand how David, the successor of Saul, so vanquished by the Philistines, could have established so vast an empire.
The riches which he left to Solomon are still more wonderful; he gave him in ready money one hundred and three thousand talents of gold, and one million thirteen thousand talents of silver. The Hebraic talent of gold, according to Arbuthnot, is worth six thousand livres sterling, the talent of silver, about five hundred livres sterling. The sum total of the legacy in ready money, without the jewels and other effects, and without the ordinary revenue — proportioned no doubt to this treasure — amounted, according to this calculation, to one billion, one hundred and nineteen millions, five hundred thousand pounds sterling, or to five billions, five hundred and ninety-seven crowns of Germany, or to twenty-five billions, forty-eight millions of francs. There was not then so much money circulating through the whole world. Some scholars value this treasure at a little less, but the sum is always very large for Palestine.
We see not, after that, why Solomon should torment himself so much to send fleets to Ophir to bring gold. We can still less divine how this powerful monarch, in his vast states, had not a man who knew how to fashion wood from the forest of Libanus. He was obliged to beg Hiram, king of Tyre, to lend him wood cutters and laborers to work it. It must be confessed that these contradictions exceedingly exercise the genius of commentators.
Every day, fifty oxen, and one hundred sheep were served up for the dinner and supper of his houses, and poultry and game in proportion, which might be about sixty thousand pounds weight of meat per day. He kept a good house. It is added, that he had forty thousand stables, and as many houses for his chariots of war, but only twelve thousand stables for his cavalry. Here is a great number of chariots for a mountainous country; and it was a great equipage for a king whose predecessor had only a mule at his coronation, and a territory which bred asses alone.
It was not becoming a prince possessing so many chariots to be limited in the article of women; he therefore possessed seven hundred who bore the name of queen; and what is strange, he had but three hundred concubines; contrary to the custom of kings, who have generally more mistresses than wives.
He kept four hundred and twelve thousand horses, doubtless to take the air with them along the lake of Gennesaret, or that of Sodom, in the neighborhood of the Brook of Kedron, which would be one of the most delightful places upon earth, if the brook was not dry nine months of the year, and if the earth was not horribly stony.
As to the temple which he built, and which the Jews believed to be the finest work of the universe, if the Bramantes, the Michelangelos, and the Palladios, had seen this building, they would not have admired it. It was a kind of small square fortress, which enclosed a court; in this court was one edifice of forty cubits long, and another of twenty; and it is said, that this second edifice, which was properly the temple, the oracle, the holy of holies, was only twenty cubits in length and breadth, and twenty cubits high. M. Souflot would not have been quite pleased with those proportions.
The books attributed to Solomon have lasted longer than his temple.
The name of the author alone has rendered these books respectable. They should be good, since they were written by a king, and this king passed for the wisest of men.
The first work attributed to him is that of Proverbs. It is a collection of maxims, which sometimes appear to our refined minds trifling, low, incoherent, in bad taste, and without meaning. People cannot be persuaded that an enlightened king has composed a collection of sentences, in which there is not one which regards the art of government, politics, manners of courtiers, or customs of a court. They are astonished at seeing whole chapters in which nothing is spoken of but prostitutes, who invite passengers in the streets to lie with them. They revolt against sentences in the following style: “There are three things that are never satisfied, a fourth which never says ‘enough’; the grave; the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water, are the three; and the fourth is fire, which never sayeth ‘enough.’
“There be three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.
“There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble race, yet they make their houses in rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.”
Can we impute such follies as these to a great king, to the wisest of mortals? say the objectors. This criticism is strong; it should deliver itself with more respect.
The Proverbs have been attributed to Isaiah, Elijah, Sobna, Eliakim, Joachim, and several others; but whoever compiled this collection of Eastern sentences, it does not appear that it was a king who gave himself the trouble. Would he have said that the terror of the king is like the roaring of a lion? It is thus that a subject or a slave speaks, who trembles at the anger of his master. Would Solomon have spoken so much of unchaste women............