After the dedicatory prayer both the outer and the inner court of the Temple reeked and swam with the blood of countless victims--victims so numerous that the great brazen altar became wholly insufficient for them.[287] At the close of the entire festival they departed to their homes with joy and gladness.[288]
But whatever the Temple might or might not be to the people, the king used it as his own chapel. Three times a year, we are told, he offered--and for all that appears, offered with his own hand without the intervention of any priest--burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar. Not only this, but he actually "burnt incense therewith upon the altar which was before the Lord,"--the very thing which was regarded as so deadly a crime in the case of King Uzziah.[289] Throughout the history of the monarchy, the priests, with scarcely any exception, seem to have been passive tools in the hands of the kings. Even under Rehoboam--much more under Ahaz and Manasseh--the sacred precincts were defiled with nameless abominations, to which, so far as we know, the priests offered no resistance.
[233] Psalm lxxviii. 58-64.
[234] According to 2 Chron. i. 3.
[235] David's suggestion does not seem to have been received favourably at first (2 Sam. vii. 1-17). The chronicler (1 Chron. xxviii. 19) indulges in the amazing hyperbole that David had been made to understand all the works of the pattern of the Temple "_in writing_ from the hand of the Lord."
[236] The ancient Israelites named their months from the seasons, as did the Canaanites. Only four of those old names are preserved in the Bible: _Zif_, "brightness" (comp. _Floreal_, _Lenz_); _Bul_, "rain-month" (_Pluviose_); _Abib_, "corn-ear month"; _Ethanim_, "fruit-month" (_Fructidor_).
[237] In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt." This may possibly be a later gloss. The LXX., Origen, Josephus, etc., omit the words, and the Old Testament does not, as a rule, date events by epochs. Further, the date is full of difficulties, though our received chronology is based on it. It was perhaps arrived at after the Exile, by counting backwards from the Decree of Cyrus, B.C. 535. See note at the end of the volume.
[238] 1 Chron. xxii. 14 says that David (comp. xxviii., xxix.) "with much labour" (A.V., "in my trouble," 1 Chron. xxii. 14) bequeathed to Solomon 100,000 talents of gold and 100,000 talents of silver! This impossible number is very considerably reduced in 1 Chron. xxix. 4, where the mention of _darics_ shows an author living in the captivity.
[239] Comp. Ezek. xxvii. 17; Acts xii. 20.
[240] According to Tatian, _Orat. ad Græc._, p. 171, Solomon married a daughter of Hiram. Hiram, like the Queen of Sheba, acknowledges Jehovah as the (local) God of Israel. He was the son of Abibaal, and, according to Menander (a Greek historian of Ephesus about B.C. 300, who consulted Tyrian records), he began to reign at nineteen, and reigned thirty-four years. Josephus thinks that there were two successive Hirams.
[241] _Giblim_, 1 Kings v. 18, where "and the stone-squarers" should be "and especially the men of Gebal." LXX., Alex., οἱ Βίβλιοι; Vulg., _Giblii_, Comp. Ezek. xxvii. 9, Psalm lxxxiii. 7, "The ancients of Gebal and the wise thereof were in thee." It is now Jebeil, between Beyrout and Tripoli. The Phœnician and Sidonian artisans were famous from the earliest antiquity for metal-work, embroidery, dyes, ship-building, and the fine arts (Hom., _Il._, xxiii. 743; _Od._, iv. 614-18, xv. 425; Herod., iii. 19, vii. 23, 96, etc.).
[242] 2 Chron. ii. 13, iv. 16, where "a cunning man of Huram my father's" should be "even Huram, my father," _i.e._, master-workman or deviser (comp. Gen. xlv. 8). In Chronicles he is called the son of a Danite mother. Here we have another of the manipulations used by later Jewish tradition to get rid of what they disliked; for in Eupolemos (Euseb., _Præp. Evang._, ix. 34) Hiram is said to belong to the family of David. "Quite a little romance," as Wellhausen says, "has been constructed out of the fact that the chronicler assigns his mother to the tribe of Dan; but it is not worth repeating, being a mass of hypotheses." To the dislike of Sidonian and semi-Sidonian influence, we perhaps owe the notion that David had already received a design from the hand of God Himself (1 Chron. xxviii. 11-19) (Ewald, iii. 227). Jerome mentions the Jewish fable that the artist Hiram was of the family of Aholiab, the artist of the wilderness.