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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 320. Solomon
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Literature
Brown, C., The Birth of a Nation (1908), 189, 201.
Burrows, H. W., Lenten and Other Sermons (1881), 60.
Byrum, E. E., The Secret of Prayer (1912), 143.
Creighton, M., The Claims of the Common Life (1905), 51.
Ewald, H., History of Israel, iii. 204.
Fleming, J. D., Israel's Golden Age (1907), 123.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 193.
Fotheringham, D. R., The Writing on the Sky (1909), 95.
Greenhough, J. G., in Men of the Old Testament: Solomon to Jonah (1904), 3.
Hammond, J., The Boys and Girls of the Bible, i. (1898) 168.
Hutton, J. A., The Fear of Things (1911), 124.
Kittel, R., History of the Hebrews, ii. (1896) 177.
Liddon, H. P., Sermons on the Old Testament (1891), 154.
McClure, J. G. K., Living for the Best (1903), 105.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: 2 Samuel-2 Kings vii. (1906), 148.
McNeill, J., Regent Square Pulpit, ii. (1890) 81.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, i. (1902) 283.
Maurice, F. D., The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament (1892), 75.
Newbolt, W. C. E., Words of Exhortation (1900), 20.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 150.
Pentecost, G. F., Bible Studies: Mark, and Jewish History (1888), 363.
Robertson, F. W., Sermons, iv. (1874) 160.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, ii. (1889) 141.
Stetson, A. E., Reminiscences, Sermons and Correspondence (1913), 58.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 207.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 261.
Whiton, J. M., The Law of Liberty (1888), 25.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters: Gideon to Absalom (1898), 182.
Christian Age, xxvi. (1884) 238.
Church of England Pulpit, lviii. (1904) 146 (H. G. Woods).
Churchman's Pulpit: Eighth Sunday after Trinity, xi. 12 (D. O. Mears), 14 (E. B. Mason), 17 (C. Brown), 19 (J. M. Wilson).
Dictionary of the Bible, iv. (1902) 559 (R. Flint).
New World, vii. (1898) 212 (B. W. Bacon).
Sermons to Britons Abroad (1903), 209.
Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, and he was beloved of his God.- Neh_13:26.
1. From a merely national and secular point of view, Solomon was unquestionably the greatest king of Israel, the only one who takes his rank with the magnificent potentates of the ancient East. The impression he made on his contemporaries is seen clearly enough in the Biblical records, scanty though they are; and yet there is no vivid personal portrait of the man, like that which we possess of his father. Solomon appears as a splendid and stately figure, almost impersonal in his grandeur, and wrapped in the golden haze of romance. That stately and melancholy figure is, in detail, little more than a mighty shadow.
2. That our existing historical books describe Solomon's life at far less length than that of David is certainly owing to the fact that the memory of his age, taken as a whole, did not afford to posterity a picture of such pure delight as his father's. His reign was a period of stationary or declining military glory, and it was marred, indeed, by more than one stain of national humiliation. The bards of his time, if they shared the genius of those who so gloriously depicted the exploits of David, certainly lacked the inspiration of heroic subjects; nor could posterity dwell with much delight upon the scenes of lavish magnificence which issued in the disruption and decline of the kingdom. Solomon's own exploits, moreover, whether in war or in literature, were surely inferior to his father's, and the mason's trowel is a poor substitute in song and story for sword and harp. Such facts as these might well offset the slight advantage to the critical historian of standing some forty years nearer his subject. But, still further to complicate the problem, the mass of literature and legend which scribal theory has fathered upon Solomon is of the latest period, with very slight connexion, if any, even with the proclivities and tendencies of that monarch. Even the historical portrait is not only disappointingly incomplete, but displays in full degree that inconsistency we might expect in a report derived from both sides to the great controversy, the final outbreak of which was delayed till after Solomon's death only because repressed by force of arms during his lifetime, and which destroyed for ever the national unity created by David.
There is perhaps no other person of Israelitish history of whose true character and its historical significance it is so difficult to get a clear conception and give a correct picture; for what we know of him is not only scant but also self-contradictory. It is possible to represent him as an Oriental despot of the most common stamp, and support with Bible references every trait of the picture thus drawn, taking credit into the bargain for one's objectivity and freedom from prejudice. But such a judgment would be absolutely unhistorical: Solomon cannot have been an ordinary and insignificant man; on this point history speaks loud and clear. He is, in a still more exact sense than his father, one of the great men of the earth; and, as such, we can deal with his history.
3. Solomon's reign has sometimes been called the Augustan age of the Jewish nation. But there was this peculiarity, that Solomon was not only its Augustus but also, according to tradition, its Aristotle. With the accession of Solomon a new world of thought was opened to the Israelites. We find the first beginnings of that wider view which ended at last in the expansion of Judaism into Christianity. His reign contains the first historical record of the contact between Western Europe and Eastern India. In his fearless encouragement of ecclesiastical architecture is the first sanction of the employment of art in the service of a true religion. In the writings attributed to him, and in the literature which rose out of them, is the only Hebrew counterpart to the philosophy of Greece.
On the whole, however, his policy, although not uninfluenced by worthy and pious aspirations, must be pronounced essentially selfish. The chief motives of it were the love of pleasure and power, of wealth and splendour and fame; its main object was to promote his own interests, to enrich and glorify himself, and to strengthen and magnify the Davidic dynasty. To obtain his ends, he required to have recourse not only to measures obnoxious to chiefs of tribes, elders of cities, and holders of landed property, but also to such as were most oppressive to the poorer classes. Solomon was responsible for the disruption of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah, and for the consequences of it. That disruption, which led to the loss of the independence of both, was the natural result of the policy on which he acted throughout a forty years' reign.
Solomon belongs to the peculiar class of those who begin well, and then have the brightness of their lives obscured at last. His morning sun rose beautifully; it sank in the evening, clouded and dark with earthly exhalations-too dark to prophesy with certainty how it should rise on the morrow.1 [Note: F. W. Robertson.]