Nor were the other cities of the empire neglected in favour of Jerusalem. Gezer was rebuilt and fortified; so too were ‘Beth-horon the nether and Baalath’ in Judah, and ‘Tadmor in the wilderness,’ the Palmyra of later days.[539] It is true that modern criticism would see in Tadmor the Tamar of the southern desert of Judah which is referred to by Ezekiel (xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28) as a future border of the Holy Land. But, though the Kethîbh or text of the Hebrew Scriptures has Tamar, the reading is corrupt, and has been corrected by the Massoretic scribes themselves.[540] The Chronicler (2 Chron. viii. 4) shows that Tadmor was the reading of the text in his time, and he shows further that it was known to be the desert-city which afterwards became the seat of empire of the merchant prince Odenathus and his queen, Zenobia. We learn from him that Solomon had put down a rising in that part of Zobah which adjoined Hamath, that he had founded ‘store-cities’ in Hamath, and had built Tadmor in the wilderness beyond. It is strange only that no allusion is made to building operations in Israel: perhaps Solomon was disinclined to establish fortresses among the northern tribes which might be used against his own authority, perhaps David had already put the cities of northern Israel in a thorough state of defence. At all events, little danger from abroad was to be apprehended in this part of the Israelitish dominions; Solomon was in alliance with Tyre, and presumably also with Hamath, and Zobah was included in his empire.
We gather from the Assyrian inscriptions that Zobah extended from the neighbourhood of Hamath and Damascus eastward across the desert towards the Euphrates. Midway stood Palmyra, approached by roads from both Damascus and Homs, which there united and then led to the ford across the Euphrates at Thapsacus or Tiphsakh. It was the shortest route from Palestine to Mesopotamia, and avoided the tolls and possible hostility of the Hittites in their strong fortress of Carchemish. The conquest of Zobah would necessarily have laid Palmyra and the roads that passed through it at the feet of David, and the importance of the place for commercial purposes could not have failed to strike the mind of Solomon ever ready to discover fresh channels of trade. Its fortification would naturally have been one of his first cares; even if there had been no mention of the fact in the Old Testament, the historian would have been almost compelled to assume it. It opened to him the merchandise of Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, and Assyria, and brought him into touch with the old monarchies of the Asiatic world. For the trade of the east, Palmyra was to Solomon what the ports of Edom were for the trade of the south.
To the north his dominions touched on those of the Hittites, who were still settled in Kadesh on the Orontes, even if Hamath had long since passed out of their possession. Lenormant was the first to point out that in 1 Kings x. 28 there is an allusion to the importation of horses into Judah, not only from Egypt, but also from the Hittite regions on the Gulf of Antioch. Here lived the Quê of the Assyrian monuments, who are named in the Hebrew text, though it needed the revelations of Oriental archæology to discover the fact. Solomon, it is there said, ‘had horses brought out of Egypt and out of Quê; the royal merchants received it from Quê at a price.’ In the later days of the Assyrian empire Nineveh obtained its supply of horses and stallions from the same part of the world, and there are numerous letters to the king which relate to their importation. The chariots came from Egypt, the value of each being as much as 600 shekels of silver, or £90; it was only the horses that were brought from ‘the kings of the Hittites’ and ‘the kings of Aram.’ The trade in both horses and chariots was a monopoly which Solomon kept jealously in his own hands; the merchants were those ‘of the king,’ and none of his subjects was allowed to import materials of war which might be employed against himself.
It was the trade with the south which introduced into Jerusalem the greatest novelties and the most costly articles of luxury. In imitation of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, Solomon established zoological and botanical gardens where the strange animals and plants that had been brought from abroad were kept. Such collections had been made by Thothmes III. at Thebes, and on the foundations of a ruined chamber in his temple at Karnak we may still see pictures of the trees and plants and birds which he sent home from his campaigns in Syria and the Soudan. In Assyria a botanical garden had been similarly planted by Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and stocked with foreign plants.[541] Solomon’s collections were therefore no new thing in the Oriental world, though they were a novelty in Palestine; and his subjects went to gaze and wonder, like the Cairenes of to-day, at the apes which had come from the far south, or the peacocks whose name (thukîyîm) betrayed their Indian origin. It is even said that he composed books on the animal and vegetable collections he had made.[542]
Gold and silver and ivory were also brought, with the apes and peacocks, by the merchant vessels whose voyages of three years’ duration carried them along the Somali coast, and even, it may be, to the mouths of the Indus. The gold probably came, for the most part, from the mines of the Zambesi region, where foreign mining settlements are now known to have been established at an early date, and where objects have been found, such as birds carved out of stone, which remind us of the civilisation of southern Arabia. But the greater part of the silver, which we are told became as plentiful as ‘stones,’ must have been derived from Asia Minor. Here were the mines from which the Hittites extracted the metal for which they seem to have had a special fancy, and it was through them that it probably made its way to Jerusalem. Copper would have come from Cyprus, and been brought in the ships which trafficked in the Mediterranean. It was the Mediterranean trade, moreover, which supplied the tin needed for the vast quantities of bronze that was used in the Solomonic age. We know of no source of it equal to such a demand except the peninsula of Cornwall; but if it really was Cornish tin that found its way to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age it must have travelled like amber across Europe until it reached the Adriatic or the Gulf of Lyons. The amber found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ is of Baltic origin, and amber beads have been discovered by Dr. Bliss at Lachish, belonging to the century before the Exodus; if amber could travel thus far from northern Europe, the tin might have done the same.
Future generations looked back upon the reign of Solomon as the golden age of Israel. But there was a reverse side to the picture. The combination of culture and arbitrary power produced in him the selfish luxury of an Oriental despot, which is bent on satisfying its own sensuous desires at the expense of all around it. Solomon’s extravagance was like that of the Khedive Ismail in our own day, and it led to the same amount of misery and impoverishment in the nation. He found on his accession a treasury well filled by the thrifty government of his father; and his trading monopolies and alliances brought him an apparently inexhaustible supply of wealth. But a time came when even this supply began to fail, and to cease to suffice for his reckless expenditure. Heavier taxes were laid on the subject populations; the free men of Israel were compelled to work as unpaid serfs under the lash of the taskmaster, and the older population of the land, who were still numerous, were turned into veritable bond-slaves. To the Gibeonites, who had long been the serfs of the Levitical sanctuary, were now added the Nethinim, a part of whom went under the name of ‘Solomon’s slaves’ (Ezra ii. 55, 58). The building of the temple had cost the people dear: the Israelites had been robbed of their freedom to provide for it stone and wood; the Canaanites had been given to it as actual slaves.
Doubtless the policy of Solomon was partly determined by the same considerations as those which had moved the Pharaoh of the Oppression. He mistrusted the Canaanites, he was afraid of the northern tribes. In either case he endeavoured to break their spirit, and render them powerless to revolt. But in the case of the Hebrew tribesmen he did not succeed. Discontent was smothered for awhile, but it was none the less dangerous on that account. And towards the end of Solomon’s life an incident occurred which led eventually to the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam the son of Nebat—in whom Dr. Neubauer has seen the name of a ‘Nabathean’—and whose mother belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, had distinguished himself by his activity and abilities. Solomon had finished the Millo or Fort, and was now at work on the other fortifications of Jerusalem. His notice was drawn to Jeroboam, and he made the young man the ‘taskmaster’ or overseer of the corvée of Ephraimites employed upon the walls. Like Moses in old days, Jeroboam’s sympathy was aroused by the sufferings of his fellow-tribesmen, which found a mouthpiece in Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh. Ahijah was himself one of the dispossessed. The glory of Shiloh had passed away from it; Jerusalem had taken its place. The tabernacle of Shiloh had been rejected in favour of the temple of the Jewish king. The centre of Hebrew religion and power had departed from the house of Joseph, and been transferred to the mixed parvenus of Judah.
In Jeroboam the prophet recognised the leader who should restore the lost fortunes of Ephraim and revenge its injuries. Jeroboam listened to the counsels of revolt, but the time for making use of them had not yet come. His plans and plotting became known to Solomon, and, once more like Moses, he had to fly for his life. He made his way to the Egyptian court, where a ready welcome awaited him.
A new dynasty had arisen there. The Libyan mercenaries had dethroned their feeble masters, and seated Shishak or Sheshanq, their general, upon the throne of the Pharaohs. The Tanitic dynasty which ruled the Delta was swept away; so also was the rival dynasty of high-priests who reigned at Thebes and held possession of Upper Egypt. With the rise of the twenty-second dynasty at Bubastis, a new and unaccustomed vigour was infused into the government of Egypt. Shishak proved himself an able and energetic king. His earlier years were occupied in putting down opposition at home, and restoring order and unity throughout the country. When once the task was accomplished, he began to turn his attention elsewhere. Egypt had never relinquished its theoretical claims to sovereignty in Canaan; and the new power that had arisen there menaced the safety of the Asiatic frontier. Solomon, it is true, had allied himself by marriage with the Pharaohs; but it was with a Pharaoh of the fallen dynasty, and this in itself made him all the more dangerous a neighbour. At present Israel was too powerful to be attacked; but a time might come when the Egyptian monarch might venture to march again along the roads that had once conducted the armies of Egypt to the conquest of Syria. Meanwhile Shishak could stir up disaffection and rebellion in the Israelitish empire, and could harbour pretenders to the throne who might hereafter undermine the very existence of the new power.
As long as Solomon lived Jeroboam did not dare to stir. But he was not the only ‘adversary’ of the Jewish king. Hadad, the representative of the old kings of Edom, had also found a refuge in the Egyptian court, and had there married the sister-in-law of the Pharaoh. In spite of the Pharaoh’s remonstrances he had returned to the mountains of Edom when David and Joab were dead, and had there carried on a guerilla warfare with the Israelitish garrisons. Throughout the lifetime of Solomon he had maintained himself in the fastnesses of Seir, and had been, as it were, a thorn in the side of the conquerors of his country. But he never succeeded in seriously injuring the caravan trade that passed through Edom, or in shaking off the Israelitish yoke. The male population of Edom had been too mercilessly exterminated for this to be possible, and all that he could do was to molest the trade with the Red Sea. But even in this he does not seem to have been successful.
A more formidable opponent of Israel was Rezon of Zobah. He, it would seem, had established himself at Damascus even before the death of David, and all the efforts to dislodge him were of no avail. It is possible that the insurrection in Zobah, which led to the construction of fortified posts on the borders of Hamath (2 Chron. viii. 3), was connected with his revolt. At any rate, Rezon founded a kingdom and a dynasty in the old Syrian capital, which in years to come was to shake the monarchy of northern Israel to its base. ‘He abhorred Israel,’ we are told, ‘and reigned over Aram.’
The Jewish historian traces the misfortunes of Solomon to the religious indifferentism of his later years. His wives were many, his concubines innumerable. They had been added to his harîm from all parts of the known world; and they brought with them the worship of their native deities. Solomon had none of that intense belief in the national God which had distinguished Saul and David, or which made the Assyrian kings conquer and slay the unbelievers who would not acknowledge the supremacy of Assur.[543] He was a cultured and selfish epicure, catholic in his tastes and sympathies, and doubtless inclined to stigmatise as narrow-minded fanaticism the objections of those who would have forbidden him to indulge his wives in their religious beliefs. On the hill opposite Jerusalem they were allowed to worship in the chapels of their own divinities, and the king himself did not refuse to bow himself with them in the house of Rimmon. Shrines were erected and altars blazed to Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to Milcom of Ammon, and to Chemosh of Moab.
Modern criticism has averred that all this was only in accordance with the general ideas and practice of the time, and that not Solomon alone but the rest of his people saw little or no difference between Yahveh and Baal. The Song of Deborah, which reflects the feelings of so much earlier an epoch, is a sufficient answer to such an assertion. The whole history of Saul and David points unmistakably to the contrary, and the temple bears witness that there was a time when Solomon also shared the belief that Yahveh alone was God in Israel, and that He would brook the presence of no other god beside Himself. The character of Solomon, his habits and alliances,—above all, the seductions of the harîm, are quite enough to account for a gradual change in his views. It is probable, moreover, that the death of his old guide and instructor Nathan may have had much to do with what an undogmatic theology might call emancipation from the narrow and exclusive circle of Hebrew religious ideas; we know that such was the case with Jehoash after the death of Jehoiada the priest. The king who began by sending to Phœnicia for the architects and builders of the temple, ended not unnaturally with the erection of sanctuaries to a Phœnician goddess.
In fact, the artistic tastes of Solomon ran counter to the puritanical tendencies and restrictions of the Mosaic Law. It had been made for the wanderers in the desert, for hardy warriors intent on the conquest of a foreign land, for the simple peasantry of Palestine. It was directed against the cultured vices and artistic idolatries of Egypt and Canaan: on its forefront was the command: ‘Thou shalt not make the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth.’ The temple at Jerusalem, with its costly decoration and graven images, was in itself a violation of the letter of the Law. Solomon was called indeed to be king over Israel, but his heart and his sympathies were with Phœnicia.
He had been carefully educated, and, like our own Henry VIII., was a learned as well as a cultivated prince. His wisdom was celebrated above that of the wisest men of his day (1 Kings iv. 30, 31), and he left behind him a large collection of proverbs. Some of these were re-edited by the scribes of Hezekiah’s library (Prov. xxv. 1), the foundation of which may possibly go back to him. Indeed, he showed himself so anxious to imitate the civilised monarchs of his day that it is hard to believe he established no library at Jerusalem. The library had been for untold centuries as essential to the royal dignity in Western Asia or Egypt as the temple or palace, and the annals of Menander imply that one existed at Tyre in the age of Hiram. Archæology has vindicated the authenticity of the letters that passed between Solomon and the Tyrian king (2 Chron. ii. 3, 11); similar letters were written in Babylonia in the age of Abraham, and the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have demonstrated how frequent they were in the ancient East. As in Babylonia and Assyria, so, too, in Palestine, they would have been preserved among the archives of the royal library.
Hiram was nineteen years old when he ascended the throne, and he died at the age of fifty-three. Solomon was probably of about the same age as his friend both at his accession and at his death. He died, worn out by excessive self-indulgence, leaving behind him an impoverished treasury, a discontented people, and a tottering empire. But he had achieved one great result. Jerusalem had become the capital of a united Judah and Benjamin, Hebrew religion had obtained a local habitation round which henceforward it could live and grow, and the dynasty of David was planted firmly on the Jewish throne. When the disruption of the kingdom came after Solomon’s death, it did no more than give outward form to the estrangement that had so long been maturing between Judah and the northern tribes; the temple, the line of David, and the fortress-capital of Jerusalem remained unshaken. The work of David and Solomon was accomplished, though in a way of which they had not dreamed; and a nation was called into existence whom neither defeat nor exile, persecution nor contempt, has ever been able to destroy.