The solemn day was followed bj' a week of festival, sjnichronizing with the Feast of Tabernacles, the time
SOLOMON
870
SOLOMOX
of the completed vintage. Representatives of all the tribes, elders, fathers, captains, proselytes, it may be, from the newly acipiired territories in Northern Syria (2 Chn)n. vi. 32 ; vii. 8) — all were assembled, rejoicing in the actual glory and the bright ho])es of Israel. For the king himself tlien. or at a Inter period (tlie narrative of I Kin''s ix and 2 Cliroii. vii leaves it doubtfid), there was a strange contrast to the glory of that day. A crit- icism, misled bv its own acuteness, may see in that warning prophecy of sin, punishment, desolation, only a inliciiiiit'U ej- ereiitu, added some centuries afterwards (Kwalil, iii, 404). It is open to us to maintain that, with a character such as Solomon's, with a religious ideal so far beyond his actual life, such thoughts were psychologically probable, that strange misgivings, sug- gested by the very words of the jubilant hymns of the day's solemnity, might well mingle with the shouts of the people and the hallelujahs of the Levites. It is in harmony with all we know of the work of the Divine Teacher that those misgivings should receive an inter- pretation, that the king should be taught that what he had ilone was indeeil right and good, but that it was not all, and might not be permanent. Obedience was better tlian sacriiice. There was a danger near at hand.
4. Idnldtry. — The danger came, and, in spite of the warn- ing, the king fell. Not very long afterwards the priests and prophets had to grieve over rival temples to Moloch, Chemosh, Asbtaroth; forms of ritual not idolatrous only, but cruel, dark, impure. This evil came, as the com- piler of 1 Kings xi, \-H records, as the penalty of another. Partly from policy, seeking fresh alliances, partly from the terrible satiety of lust seeking the stimulus of change, he gave himself to ''strange women." He found him- self involved in a fascination which led to the worship of strange gods. The starting-point and the goal are given us. We are left, from what we know otherwise, to trace the process. Something tliere was perhaps in his very " largeness of heart," so far in advance of the tr.iditional knowledge of his age, rising to higher and wider thoughts of God, which predisposed him to it. His converse with men of other creeds and climes might lead him to anticipate, in this respect, one phase of mod- ern tbouglit, as the confessions of the preacher ni Kohe- leth anticipate another. In recognising what was true in other forms of faith, he might lose his horror at what was false— his sense of the pre-eminence of the truth re- vealed to him — of the historical continuity of the nation's religious life. His worship might go backward from Jehovah to Klohim, from Eloliim to the "gods many and lords many" of the nations around. Jehovah, Baal, Ashtaroih, Chemosh, each form of nature worship, might come to seem ecpially true, e(iually acceptable. The women whom he brought from other countries might well be allowed the luxury of their own superstitions; ami, if permitted at all, the worship must be worthy of hi^ fame and be |iart of his magnilicence. With this tin-re may, as Ewald suggests (iii, 3«0), have mingled jiolitical motives. He may have hopeil, by a policy of iolcratii>n. to conc-iliate neighboring princes, to attract a larger irallic. Hut probably also there was another in- tluen(;e liss commonly taken into account. The wide- Hpread belief of the Kast in the magic arts of Solomon is not, it is btlicve<l, without its foundation of truth. On the one hand, an ardent study of nature, in the pe- ri'Ml ilini precedes science, runs on inevital)ly into the pursuit of (Mxidi, mysterious properties. On the other, tliroughont the whole history of Judali, the element of idolatry which has tlie strongest hold on men's minds was the tliaumaturgic— soothsaying, incantations, divi- Iiulions (■> Kings i,2, Isa. ii.C, 'iCbron. xxxiii.O elal.). The reli^jion of Israel ojiposed a stern prohibition to all mich iHTiloiiH yet temptnig arts (Dent, xviii, 10 et (d.). The religions of the nations aroiuid fostered them. Was it sirnnt'e that one who founil his progress impeded in one path sbonlil turn into the other "(• So, at any rate, it wn«. Th«! reign which began so gloriously wasa step backward into the gross darkness of fetich worship. As
he left behind him the legacy of luxun,', selfishness, op- pression, more than counterbalancing all the good of liigher art and wider knowledge, so he left this, too, as an ineradicable evil. Not less truly than the son of Nebat might his name have been written in history as Solomon the son of David who ''made Israel to sin." The iilolatry of Solomon is commemorated in the tradi- tionary name of " the Mount of Offence," given to the southernmost peak of the range of which Olivet (q. v.) forms a part. ( See Brucker, De Salom, Idololatria [Lips. 1755] ; Niemeyer, Charakt. iv, 562 sq.)
Disasters followed before long, as the natural conse- quence of what was politically a blunder as well as re- ligiously a sin. The strength of the nation rested on its unity, and its unity depended on its faith. What- ever attractions the sensuous ritual which he introduced may have had for the great body of the people, the priests and Levites must have looked on the rival wor- ship with entire disfavor. The zeal of the prophetic order, dormant in the earlier part of the reign, and, as it were, hindered from its usual utterances by the more dazzling wisdom of the king, was now kindled into ac- tive opposition. Ahijah of Shiloh, as if taught by the history of his native place, was sent to utter one of those predictions which help to work out their own fultilment, fastening on thoughts before vague, pointing Jeroboam out to himself and to tlie people as the destined heir to the larger half of the kingdom, as tridy called as David had been called to be the anointed of the Lord (1 Kings xi, 28-39). The king in vain tried to check the cur- rent that was setting strong against him. If Jeroboam was driven for a time into exile, it was only, as we have seen, to be united in marriage to the then reigning dy- nasty, and to come back with a daughter of the Pha- raohs as his queen (Sept. ut sup.). The old tribal jeal- ousies gave signs of renewed vitality. p]phraim was prepared once more to dispute the supremacy of Judah, needing special control (1 Kings xi. 28). With this weakness withni there came attacks from without. Ha- dad and Kezon — the one in Edom, the other in Syria — who had been foiled in the begmning of his reign, now found no effectual resistance. The king, prematurely old (about sixty -one), must have foreseen the rapid breaking-up of the great monarchy to which he had succeeded. Kehoboam, inheriting his faults without his wisdom, haughty and indiscreet, was not likely to avert it.