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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 323. The Apostate
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The Apostate
1. It is a strange and startling step from Solomon the wise temple-builder to Solomon the sensual sybarite, filling Jerusalem with idol-shrines, and setting up those cults, at once licentious and cruel, against which God had launched the whole strength of the Israelitish nation, with a mission to overthrow and utterly extirpate them out of the land. Solomon, the builder of a Temple, which David might not build, to the one true God, raised round about the sacred city shrines to the foul idols of the neighbouring peoples-shrines to Astarte, to Moloch, to Chemosh. Solomon, who had organized the priests and Levites, the services and sacrifices of the sacred ritual, was now encouraging, if not assisting at, rites which were cruel and impure as well as idolatrous.
2. To understand how far Solomon was guilty of religious apostasy, it would be indispensable to ascertain the precise character of the religion of the Israelites before his accession. This is an almost impossible task, and any statement on this subject must be made with hesitation. Israel under Solomon underwent its third great change. At first a collection of wandering tribes, driving their cattle from pasture to pasture, the Israelites were addicted to a very simple worship of Jehovah, the national God. On settling in Canaan, Israel became an agricultural nation, and adopted many of the religious beliefs and customs of the natives of Palestine. David, the shepherd king, was devoted to Jehovah, the God of his ancestors, and showed no disposition to worship the gods of the tillers of the soil, even when he became king. Solomon, however, represented neither the ancient Israelitish nomad nor the more modern settler in Canaan. He was reared in an Oriental court and was devoted to foreign luxury and refinement. He honoured Jehovah by building a superb Temple modelled on the shrines of other nations. Tyrians, not Israelites, designed and erected it. Under him the Israelites had a glimpse of civilization greater than they had ever enjoyed, and it was but natural that they should try to emulate other nations. To do so was almost of necessity to tolerate, even to imitate, their religious customs. The zeal Solomon showed for foreign usages extended to their religions, and he doubtless cherished the ambition of breaking down the barriers by which Israel was separated from the rest of the world. For this reason, he built the sanctuaries to foreign gods in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. But the chief glory of Israel has ever been that no worldly advantages have been sufficient to tempt the nation to assimilate with the rest of the world; and the first result of Solomon's policy was probably the disruption of his kingdom, and the second the great strife between the prophets and the House of Omri in Northern Israel, when it endeavoured to follow in his steps.
It must have been toward the close of Solomon's imposing career that the eternal law of action and reaction began to assert itself. Not that Solomon's policy had changed. Not that he was any more uxorious in his old age than before. But simply because a kingdom practically without resources, roads, buildings, commerce, cities, or established institutions, and a people poor and uncultured, though hardy and brave, cannot in one generation be transformed into one of the established world-powers, possessed of all these adjuncts of a settled civilization, even by all the wisdom of Solomon-at least not without incurring a debt so vast as to overtax its endurance. The maintenance of a seraglio, like the increased luxury of the court in all its appointments, did not differ in kind, but only in degree, from the practice of David, and even of Saul. The erection of shrines to various foreign divinities in the environs of Jerusalem, so far as the story rests on trustworthy tradition, was simply an unavoidable adjunct of the policy of commercial and matrimonial alliance with surrounding powers of importance; obnoxious no doubt to the stricter Mosaists, prophets, Rechabites and the like, as Mary Stuart's Popish chapel was obnoxious to John Knox, but no more affecting the Jehovah-worship of Israel or of Solomon than Mary's masses affected the Protestantism of Scotland. We have no need to call to our aid any hypothetical change in the policy or character of Solomon in his old age. The working of Divine laws in the history of human progress out of a rude and severe, but in many ways purer and nobler, barbarism, into the culture, luxury, refinement, liberalism of a broader but almost invariably laxer and more sensual civilization, is far more vividly illustrated without any such improbable suppositions. The reign of Solomon was a period of rapid, yet uniform transition.1 [Note: B. W. Bacon.]
3. Whether Solomon's encouragement of alien cults was prompted by cosmopolitan tastes and motives of policy, or whether it was the result of a real religious indifference, it marked in any case a disastrous turning-point in Israel's religious history. It familiarized the people with the spectacle of idolatrous rites; it introduced a condition of things which, until the age of Josiah, it was found impossible or impolitic to abolish. In fact the evil consequences of Solomon's weakness far outweighed the effects of the zeal which he displayed as founder of the Temple. Nor was his own life what religious existence ought to be-a thing of steady development. If it was excellence, it was excellence marred by inconsistency. It was original uprightness disgraced by a fall, and that fall so prolonged and signal that it has always been a disputed question among commentators whether he ever rose from it again at all. We have nothing to do with pronouncing on Solomon's final condition. Where the giants of the ancient Church of Christ, St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom, differed, we may be content with admitting our ignorance. Nothing is gained by straining the eyes at nightfall over the edge of a precipice; we cannot search out the secrets of the Divine judgment or of the predestination of souls. Certain it is that Solomon's sin brought its punishment in this world: “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee.” The oppressive system of forced labour and burdensome taxation by which the king gratified his taste for luxury and for splendid architecture; his heartless disregard for the welfare and even the liberty of his subjects; his despotic treatment of the Northern tribes, coupled with his manifest partiality for his own kinsmen of Judah-all these things sowed broadcast the seeds of discontent and prepared the way for a disruption of the kingdom. The ravages of Hadad, the son of the last Edomitish king, and of Rezon, king of Syria, and, above all, the revolt of Jeroboam, which, after Solomon's death, resulted in the disruption of his kingdom, must, according to the historian, be regarded as so many signs of Jehovah's anger at Solomon's apostasy.
He who is of noble descent through his father or his forefathers, and degenerates therefrom, is not only vile, but most vile, and more worthy of reproach and contempt than any base churl. And to the end that a man may keep himself from this lowest depth of vileness, Solomon, in the twenty-second chapter of his Proverbs, says unto him whose forefathers have been righteous: “Thou shalt not transgress the ancient boundaries, which thy fathers did set up.” To his further shame I say that this most vile person is as dead, though he seem alive; and know ye that verily the wicked man may be said to be as dead, and above all such an one as walks not in the ways of his righteous forefathers.1 [Note: Dante, Convivio, iv. 7 (trans. by Paget Toynbee).]
4. We cannot attribute to Solomon personally much share in the literary product of his age, though Hebrew literature, as such, unquestionably dates its beginnings from this period. It is beyond dispute that, under the influence of the genius of Solomon, there grew up in his court a school of wisdom. Whilst the Levitical institutions performed their functions regularly, and the Mosaic ordinances were more and more impressing their stamp upon the life of the people, the leading minds, with the king himself at their head, were feeling the necessity of searching more deeply into the knowledge of things Divine and human. Beneath the Israelite they tried then to find the man; beneath the Mosaic system, that universal principle of the moral law of which it is the perfect expression. Thus they reached to that idea of Wisdom which is the common feature of the three books, Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. The Divine Wisdom, in the idea of which are included the notions of intelligence, justice, and goodness, is personified as the supreme object of Divine love, and as the spirit which gives existence and order to the world; this Wisdom has marked with her stamp everything that exists in the universe; her delight is not in the Jews only, but in the children of men. To conform to her laws is, for man, wisdom; to act against them is folly.
The Wisdom which the Wise inculcate is not the slow, prudent thrift of life, gathered by petty experiences, more or less sordid and selfish; but is the reverent and whole-hearted acceptance of great principles, such as capture the heart, stir us to enthusiasm, and lift us above ourselves. In contrast to the prophets who won their truth by vision, the wise men got theirs by experience. Yet do not understand by this that they would counsel their disciples to wait for their own experience-to gather wisdom merely by trying life as it came to them. They would have them begin with Wisdom from the first, get hold of her principles, submit to her discipline, and then test her in all their daily fortunes and duties. Righteousness is not abstract nor unreal; not hard to find in the crowd about us, nor in her beginnings beyond the reach of any, however thronged or trampled by the world. Everywhere her gates are open, her presence manifest, her joys obvious and solid. She dwells with men. There is not an arena on which we are called to live but is brilliant with the incarnate examples of righteousness and purity. She dwells with God, and was with Him when the world was made. The forces of the Universe are on the side of the will that chooses virtue: and to the ignorant and the wanderer, if they have but one spark of desire for what is pure and honest and lovely, the heart of God Himself comes forth with the desire to teach, to lift, to restore. This is the Spirit of Christ in Hebrew Wis_1:1-16 [Note: G. A. Smith, Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, 313.]