Solomon And Solomonic Literature Part 3

There can be little doubt that Solomon, by his patronage of these foreign religions, detached them from the cruel rites traditionally a.s.sociated with them. Among all the censures p.r.o.nounced against him none attributes to him any human sacrifices, though such are ascribed to David and Samuel, (1 Sam. xv. 33, 2 Sam. xxi. 9). The earliest rebukes of sacrifice in the Bible are those attributed to Solomon. "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice" (Prov. xxi. 3). "By mercy and truth iniquity is atoned for" (Prov. xvi. 6). "Mercy and truth preserve the king; he upholdeth his throne by mercy" (Prov. xx. 28). "Deliver them that are carried away to death: those that are ready to be slain forbear not thou to save" (Prov. xxiv. 11). "Love covereth all transgressions"

(Prov. x. 12).

Solomon may not indeed have written these and the many similar maxims ascribed to him, but they are among the most ancient sentences in the Bible, and they would not have been attributed to any man who had not left among the people a tradition of humanity and benevolence. Had the royal "idolator" or his wives stained their shrines with human blood the prophets would have been eager to declare it. Two acts of cruelty are ascribed to Solomon's youth, in the book of Kings: one of these, the execution of Shimei, carried out his father's order, but only after Shimei had been given fair warning with means of escape; while the other, the execution of Adonijah (Solomon's brother), if true, is too much wrapped up in obscurity to enable us to judge its motives; but it cannot be regarded as historical.

The second historiographer of Kings, setting out to record Jahveh's anger about Solomon's foreign wives and shrines (1 Kings xi) says, with unconscious humour, that Jahveh raised Satan against him,--two Satans. One of these was Hadad, an Edomite, the other Rezon, a Syrian. The writer says that this was when Solomon was old, his wives having then turned away his heart after other G.o.ds. Fortunately, however, this writer has embodied in his record some items, evidently borrowed, which contradict his Jahvistic legend. One of these tells us that Hadad had been carried away from Edom to Egypt, when David and his Captain Joab ma.s.sacred all the males in Edom; that he there married the sister of Pharaoh; and that he returned to his own country on hearing of the death of David and Joab. When this occurred, Solomon, so far from being old, was about eighteen. The Septuagint (Vatican MS.) says that Hadad "reigned in the land of Edom." We may conclude then that on the return of this heir to the throne Edom declared its independence, nor is there any indication that Solomon tried to prevent this. Another contradiction of this writer is a note inserted about Rezon the Syrian,--"He was an adversary of Israel all the days of Solomon." Not, therefore, a Satan raised up by Jahveh against Solomon when in old age he had turned to other G.o.ds. Rezon "reigned over Syria," and there is no indication of any expedition against him sent out by Solomon. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch, Vol. III., p. 101), in referring to these points remarks that we do not read of a single warlike expedition undertaken by Solomon. [5]

The remark (1 Kings xi.) about the Satans set against Solomon is more applicable to the Shiloh traitors, Ahijah and Jeroboam. Jeroboam,--a servant whom Solomon had raised to high office,--was instigated by Ahijah, a "prophet" neglected by Solomon, to his ungrateful treason. Ahijah pretended that he had a divine revelation that he (Jeroboam) was to succeed Solomon on account (of course!) of the king's shrines to Istar, Chemosh, and Milcom. If the narrative were really historic nothing could be more "Satanic" than the lies and treacheries related of those self-seekers. Were the story true, the failure of these divinely appointed "Satans" to overthrow the kingdom of Solomon, who did not arm against them, must have been due to his popularity. In after times this impunity of the glorious "idolator" would have to be explained; consequently we find Jahveh telling Solomon that, offended as he was by the shrines, he would spare him for his father's sake, but would rend the kingdom, save one tribe, from his (Solomon's) son. That this should be immediately followed by the raising up of "Satans" to hara.s.s Solomon and Israel, Jahveh having just said the trouble should be postponed till after the king's death, suggests that the whole account of these quarrels (1 Kings xi. 14-40) is a late interpolation. Up to that point the old record is unbroken. "He had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings iv. 24-25).

Jahveh, in his personal interview with Solomon (1 Kings xi. 11-13), said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it to thy servant." That is, as explained by the "prophet" Ahijah, to Jeroboam. As a retribution and check on idolatry the selection, besides violating Jahveh's promise to David (1 Chron. xxii), was not successful: after the sundering of Israel and Judah into internecine kingdoms, Jeroboam, King of Israel, established idolatry more actively than either Solomon or his son Rehoboam. On Jeroboam, his selected Nemesis, Jahveh inflicted his characteristic punishment of visiting the sins of the fathers on the children; as David was left the seduced wife whose husband he had murdered, while his son was executed; as Solomon was left in peaceful enjoyment of his kingdom and none of the sinful shrines destroyed, while his son bore the penalty; so now Jeroboam, elect of Jahveh, built golden calves, surpa.s.sed Solomon's offences, and vengeance was taken on his son Abijah, who died. This Abijah left a son, Baasha, who, undeterred by these fatalities, continued the "idolatries" with impunity for the twenty-four years of his reign, the punishment falling on his son Elah, who was slain after only two years' reign by his military servant, Zimri. And this Zimri, who thus carried on Jahveh's decree against idolatry, himself continued "in the ways of Jeroboam," the shrines and idols themselves being meanwhile unvisited by any executioner or iconoclast until some centuries later.

In Josiah there arrived a king, of the line of David, who might seem by his fury against idolatry to be another "man after G.o.d's own heart." He pulverised the images and the shrines, he "sacrificed the priests on their own altars," he even dug up the bones of those who had ministered at such altars and burnt them. He trusted Jahveh absolutely. He went to the prophetess, Hulda, who told him that he should be "gathered to his grave in peace." He was slain miserably, by the King of Egypt, to whom the country then became subject.

Josephus ascribed the act of Josiah, in hurling himself against an army that was not attacking him, to fate. The fate was that Josiah, having exterminated the wizards and fortune-tellers, repaired to the only dangerous one among them, because she pretended to be a "prophetess," inspired by Jahveh. Her a.s.surances led him to believe himself invulnerable, personally, and that in his life-time Jerusalem would not suffer the woes she predicted. Josiah, "of the house of David," seems to have thought that his zeal in destroying the shrines which his ancestor Solomon had introduced, mainly Egyptian, would be so grandly consummated if he could destroy a Pharaoh, that he insisted on a combat. Pharaoh-Necho sent an emba.s.sy to say that he was not his enemy, but on his way to fight the a.s.syrian: "G.o.d commanded me to hasten; forbear thou from opposing G.o.d, who is with me, that he destroy thee not." Here, however, was the fanatic's opportunity for an Armageddon: Pharaoh had appealed to what Solomon would have regarded as their common deity, but which to Josiah meant a chance to pit Jahveh against the G.o.d of Egypt. On Jahveh's invisible forces he must have depended for victory. So perished Josiah, and with him the independence of his country.

Solomon, the Prince of Peace, had made the house of Pharaoh the ally of his country. Josiah carries his people back under Egyptian bondage. Solomon had built the metropolitan Temple, whose shrines, symbols, works of art, represented a catholicity to all races and religions,--peace on earth, good will to man. Josiah, panic-stricken about a holy book purporting to have been found in the Temple, concerning which the king by his counsellors consulted a female fortune-teller, makes a holocaust of all that Solomon had built up.

CHAPTER VI.

SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.

"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. x.x.xiv. 14, 15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book (Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest, the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.

One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names, derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly, the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"

appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith, discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"

spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson, and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.

"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah (xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)

The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic cult and regime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other G.o.ds." The wife, or other member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other G.o.ds, is to be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as antic.i.p.ating the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26), his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that: "He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses ... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)

This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom thy G.o.d shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.

The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19, xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun, when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly a.s.sociated with the punishable practice alluded to in Job x.x.xi. 26, of kissing the hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the Ma.s.soretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]

which then would read:

"The sun is known in the heavens, But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.

I have built up a house of habitation for thee, A place for thee to dwell in forever.

Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]

This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost of a grand poetic ant.i.thesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious stories in Genesis.

Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry the maiden Abis.h.a.g, who technically belonged to his father's harem, and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.

Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the sentence p.r.o.nounced against David because of his crime against Uriah. A close examination of that pa.s.sage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act (2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris, so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is described as "the word of G.o.d," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12 (2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation, or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of G.o.d" Ahithophel,--and the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar, David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom, apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan, of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?

In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abis.h.a.g, and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have been the real history there is little doubt that there was subst.i.tuted for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her grandfather is in the case of Absalom.

It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's wife, and the contrast with his chast.i.ty represented in the profligacy of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. x.x.xv. at the end of verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about Judah (Gen. x.x.xviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba, Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:

"In Genesis x.x.xviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite, the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his s.e.xual sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar, who played the prost.i.tute. Thus only did Judah found a generation, from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.

"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hitt.i.te (murdered at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse 12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1 Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of G.o.d, just like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards (rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan, and dies for s.e.xual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who meets his death on account of his s.e.xual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is, to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays the prost.i.tute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the letter m, and you have Solomon."

If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:

"A lion's whelp is Judah, Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."

Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?

"The staff shall not depart from Judah, Nor the rod from between his feet Until Shiloh come."

Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites, pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their headquarters.

It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he (Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It will be observed that in Gen. x.x.xviii. Shelah is the only person whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace, Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.

CHAPTER VII.

SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.

The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them, and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:

"If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me, And prove me guilty of blasphemy-- Know then, that G.o.d hath wronged me!"

This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.

It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"