SoVomon (Ueb.Shelomoh', ft^h^, peaceful ; Sept. SoXoiftwv; New Test, and Josephus, SoXojkw)/; Vulg. Saloriio), the son of David by Bathsheba, and his suc- cessor upon the throne. B.C. 1013-973. (The impor- tance of his character and reign justify a full treatment here, in which we make use of whatever materials we find appropriate in the Biblical dictionaries.) See David.
I. ,Sou7-ces. — l. The comparative scantiness of his- torical data for a life of Solomon is itself significant. While that of David occupies I Sam. xvi-xxxi, 2 Sam. i-xxiv, 1 Kings i, ii, 1 Chron. x-xxix, that of Solomon fills only the eleven chapters 1 Kings i-xi and the nine
SOLOMON
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SOLOMON
2 Chron. i-ix. The compilers of those books felt, as by I a true in^i)iration. unlike the authors of the Apocryphal , literature cited bdow, that the waniierinjis, wars, and sufferings of Daviil were better fitted for the instruction of after-a^^es than the inajiuitioence of his son. They manifesilv pve extracts only from larger works which •were before them, "The l)ook of the acts of Solomon" (I Kings xi. 41); "Tlie book of Nathan the prophet, the IxM.k of Ahijah the SliiUmite. the visions of Iddo the seer" r- <"liron. ix. 29). Those which they do give l»ear. with what for tlie historian is a disproportionate fulness, on tlie early glories of his reign, and speak but little (those in 2 Chron. not at all) of its later sins and misfortunes, and we are consequently unable to follow the annals of Solomon step by step.
2. Kwald. with all his usual fondness for assigning different portions of each book of the Old Test, to a se- ries of successive editors, goes through the process here with much ingenuity, but without any very satisfactory resiult {Hesch. hr. iii, 259-263). A more interesting iiuiuiry would be to which of the books above named we may refer the sections that the compilers have put together. We shall probaiily not be far wrong in think- ing of Nathan, far advanced in life at the commence- ment of tbe reign, David's chief adviser during the years in which he was absorbed in the details of the Temple and its ritual, himself a priest (1 Kings iv, 5 [Heb.]; comp. KwaM, Gesc/i. Isr. iii, 116), as having written the account of the accession of Solomon and the dedication of the Temple (1 Kings i-viii, 66, 2 Chron. i-viii, l.'>). The prayer of .Solomon, so fully n pro- duced and so obviously precomposed, inay have been written under his guidance. To Ahijah the Shilouite, active at the close of the reign, alive some time after Jeroboam's accession, we may ascribe the short record of the sin of .Solomon, and of the revolution to which he himself had so largely contributed (1 Kings xi). From the IxMik of the acts of Solomon probably came the mis- cellaneous facts as to the commerce and splendor of his reign (ix. lO-x, 20).
H. I{«sides the direct history of the Old Test., we may find some materials for the life of Solomon in the books that bear his name, and in the psalms which are refer- red In' some to his lime ( Psa. ii, xlv, Ixxii, cxxvii). Whatever doubts may hang over the date and author- ship of Ecclcsiastes and the Song of Songs, we may at least see in them the reflection of the thoughts and feel- ings of his reign. If we accept the latest date which recent criticism has assigned to tiiem, they elaborately work up materials which were accessible to the writers and are not accessiljle to us. If we refer them in their substance, following the judgment of the most advanced Shemitic scholars, to the Solomonic period itself, they then come before us with all the freshness and vividness of contemporary evidence ( Kenan, JJist.iks Langues 8e- mit. p. \M).
•I. Other materials are very scanty. The history of JoM-phus is, for the most |)art, only a loose and inac- curate paraphrase of the f >ld-Tost. narrative. In him, and ill the more erudite among early Christian writers, we find some fragments of olilcr history not without, their value — extract!* from archives alleged to exist at Tyri- in the first century of tiic ( iiristian a-ra. and from the I'hienician histories of .Mciinndcr and Dins (Aiil. viii, 2, 6; .0, 3), from Kup<ilenius (ImiscI). I'nrp. Krtuiii, ix, ;{(!), from Alexander I'olyliislor, Meiiander, and Lai- tuH (Clem. Al. Shum. i, 21). Writers such as these were of course only compilers at secon<l-hand, but they probably Imd access lo Home earlier documents which have now perished.
U. The legends of later f)riental literature will claim a difitinct notice. All that I hey contribute to history is the hel(> they give us in realizing the im[iression made by the colossal greatness of S<ilomon, as in earlier and lat«r times by that of Nimrod and Alexander, on the mimU of men of many countries and through manv ages.
II, Early Life.—I. The student of the life of Solo- mon must take as his starting-point the circumstances of his birth. He was the child of David's old age, the last-born of all his sons (1 Chron. iii, 5). B.C. 1034. The narrative of 2 Sam. xii leaves, it is true, a different impression. On the other hand, the order of the names in 1 Chron. iii, 5 is otherwise unaccountable. Josephus distinctly stales it (.4«^ vii, 14, 2). His mother had gained over David a twofold power — first, as the object of a passionate though guiltj' love; and, next, as the one person to whom, in his repentance, he could make something like restitution. The months that preceded his birth were for the conscience-stricken king a time of self-abasement. The birth itself of the child who was to replace the one that had been smitten must have been looked for as a pledge of pardon and a sign of hope. The feelings of the king and of his prophet-guide ex- pressed themselves in the names with which they wel- comed it. The yearnings of the '• man of war," who " had shed much blood," for a time of peace — j'earnings which had shown themselves before, when he gave to his third son the name of Ab-salom ( = father of peace) — now led him to give to the new-born infant the name of Solomon (Shelomoh = the peaceful one). Nathan, with a marked reference to the meaning of the king's own name ( = the darling, the beloved one), takes an- other form of the same word, and joins it, after the growing custom of the time, with the name of Jehovah. David had been the darling of his people. Jedid-jah (the name was coined for the purpose) should be tVie darling of the Lord (2 Sam. xii, 24, 25 , see Ewald, Gesch. Isr. iii, 215). See Jedidiah. According to the re- ceived interpretation of Frov. xxxi, 1, his mother also contributed an ideal name, Lemuel ( = to God, Deoda- tus), the dedicated one (comp. Ewald, Poet. Biich. iv, 173). On this hypothesis the reproof was drawn forth by the king's intemperance and sensuality. In contrast to what his wives were, she draws the picture of what a pattern wife ought to be (Pineda, Be Reb. Sol. i, 4).