2. But the heathen religion of these strange women from so many nations "turned away the heart of Solomon after other gods." It may be doubted whether Solomon had ever read the stern prohibitions against intermarriage with the Canaanite nations which now stand on the page of the Pentateuch. If so he broke them, for the Hittites and the Phœnicians were Canaanites. Marriages with Egyptians, Moabites, and Edomites had not been, in so many words, forbidden, but the feeling of later ages applied the rule analogously to them. The result proved how necessary the law was. When Solomon was old his heart was no longer proof against feminine wiles. He was not old in years, for this was some time before his death, and when he died he was little more than sixty. But a polygamous despot gets old before his time.
The attempt made by Ewald and others to gloss over Solomon's apostasy as a sign of a large-hearted tolerance is an astonishing misreading of history. Tolerance for harmless divergences of opinion there should always be, though it is only a growth of modern days; but tolerance for iniquity is a wrong to holiness.
The worship of these devils adored for deities was stained with the worst passions which degrade human nature. They were themselves the personification of perverted instincts. The main facts respecting them are collected in Selden's famous _De Dis Syris Syntagma_, and Milton has enshrined them in his stateliest verse:--
"First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears: ... Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons, Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the Grove Of Moloch homicide; lust, hard by hate: Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. ... With these in troop Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phœnicians call Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; In Sion also not unsung, where stood Her temple on the offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul."
What tolerance should there be for idols whose service was horrible infanticide and shameless lust? "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" How vile the worship of Chemosh was, Israel had already experienced in the wilderness where he was called Peor.[418] What Moloch was they were to learn thereafter by many a horrible experience. Had Solomon never heard that the Lord God was a jealous God, and would not tolerate the rivalries of gods of fire and of lust? At least he was not afraid to desecrate one, if not two, of the summits of the Mount of Olives with shrines to these monstrous images, which seem to have been left "on that opprobrious mount" for many an age, so that they "durst abide"
"Jehovah, thundering out of Sion, throned Between the cherubim; yea, often placed Within His sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations, and with cursed things His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront His light."
And, to crown all, Solomon not only showed this guilty complaisance to _all_ his strange wives, but even, sinking into the lowest abyss of apostasy, "burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods."
"He that built a temple for himself and for Israel in Sion," says Bishop Hall, "built a temple for Chemoch in the Mount of Scandal for his mistresses in the very face of God's house. Because Solomon feeds them in their superstition, he draws the sin home to himself, and is branded for what he should have forbidden."