(4.) Concerning his general administration little is recorded beyond the names of various high officers. Among his chief ministers (1 Kings iv. 1-6) are named a son of Zadok and two sons of Nathan. There is a difficulty in the list, since it names Abiathar and Zadok as joint priests, at a time when Benaiah is already over the host ;' al though the latter event could not have been until after the death of Joab, and therefore after the ejec tion of Abiathar. The two sons of Nathan seem to be named as peculiarly eminent ; for one of them, Azariah, is said to have been over the officers ;' the other, Zabud, is called principal officer and the king's friend.' It is not likely that any other considerable changes were made in his government, as compared with David's, than such as peace and commerce, in place of war, necessitate. Yet it is probable that Solomon's peculiar talents and taste led him to perfonn one function which is always looked for in Oriental royalty—viz. to act personally as judge in cases of oppression. His award between the two contending mothers cannot be regarded as an isolated fact : and the porch ot judgment' which he built for himself may imply that he devoted fixed portions of time to the judicial duties (see 2 Kings xv. 5 of Jotham). In all the older civilisation of the world, the quality most valued in a judge is the ability to detect truth in spite of the perjury of witnesses, or defect of (what we should esteem) legal evidence ; a defect which must be of daily occurrence where the art of writ ing is little used for common contracts. The cele brity which Solomon gained for wisdom, although founded mainly perhaps on his political and com mercial sagacity, must have received great popular impetus from his administration of law, and from his readiness in seeing through the entanglements of affairs which arise in commercial transactions.
(5.) For the harem of Solomon—consisting of 700 wives and 300 concubines—no other apology can be made than the fact that in countries where poly-gamy is not disreputable an unlimited indul gence as to the number of wives is looked upon as the chief luxury of wealth and the most appropriate appendage to royalty. Permission once being given and the taste established, nothing but poverty can set a limit ; since an establishment of a hundred or a thousand wives is perhaps more harmonious than one of two or three. The only remarkable facts are, his marriage with an Egyptian princess, and his establishment of his wives' idolatry.
The commercial union of Tyre with Egypt, in spite of the vast diversity of genius between the two nations, was in those clays very close ; and it appears highly probable that the affinity to Pharaoh was sought by Solomon as a means of aiding his commercial projects. Although his possession of the Edomite ports on the gulf of Akaba made him to a certain extent independent of Egypt, the friend ship of that power must have been of extreme im portance to him in the dangerous navigation of the Red Sea ; and was perhaps a chief cause of his brilliant success in so new an enterprise. That Pharaoh continued for 30MC time on good terms with him, appears from a singular present which the Egyptian king made him (1 Kings ix. 16) : 'Pharaoh had gone up and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter. Solomon's wife ;' in consequence of which Solo mon rebuilt and fortified the town. In his declin ing years, a very different spirit is manifested to wards him by Slishak, the new Egyptian king ; whether after the death of the princess who had been the link between the two kingdoms, or from a new view of policy in the new king, is unknown.
The proceedings of Solomon towards the religion of his wives has been mildly or approvingly re garded by various learned men as being only what we have learned to name Toleration. But such a view seems to imply a want of discrimination be tween those times and our own ; and besides, would require us to suppose the statements in the history to be exaggerated, as though they were highly im probable. The religions of antiquity, being essen tially ceremonial, were of a most obtrusive kind. It is one thing to allow men in private to hold their conscientious sentiments, or indeed by argument and discussion to aim at propagating them, and quite another to sanction public idolatries, which appeal to and allure the senses of the ig,norant, ancl scandalise the minds of the better taught ; to say nothing of the impurities and cruelties with which these idolatries were almost always connected. The spirituality and individuality of religion were not as yet so developed as to allow of our ascribing Solo mon's conduct to right and noble views of tolera tion. Besides, he was under no necessity to marry these foreign wives at all. Unless prompted by mere voluptuousness (as in the case of the concu bines), he must have taken them from political mo tives ; although distinctly knowing that the step would draw after it his public establishment of heathen sin and superstition. This is widely dif ferent from allowing foreigners, who for trade re sided in the country, to practise their own religious ceremonies at their own prompting and expense ; and yet even this, if permitted at all, would have been permitted only within walled and separated streets appropriated to the foreigners, by a king anxious to obey the law of Moses and of Jehovah in ever so liberal and unconfined a spirit. This is
a topic of prime consequence in the history of the Jewish monarchy. Modern commentators, im pressed with the importance of liberty of conscience, are naturally prone to suspect that the prophetical or priestly feeling under which the history of the kings was composed has misrepresented the more liberal policy of these monarchs. But granting, as we may, that it was not given to those prophets or priests to understand the Christian rule of universal toleration, it is certain that the times were not ripe for the application of that rule, and that the most earliest, devout, and spiritually enlightened men of those days were the most vehemently opposed to a. public toleration of idolatry. Taking this merely as a great and unalterable fact, it was shortsighted policy in Solomon, as well as worldly want of faith, to seek to conciliate the foreign heathen at the ex pense of the devoted allegiance of God's chosen ones in Israel. He won at best a momentary good will frona Ammonites, Moabites, or Sidonians, by such an affinity, and by such an introduction of their favourite idols : he lost the heart of the pro phets of Jehovah, and, as a result, he could not transmit to his son more than a fraction of his king dom. It is no mere fiction of priestly prejudice, but a historical certainty, that David owed his rise mainly to the overruling and pervading power exerted on him by the pure and monotheistic faith of the prophets ; while Solomon lost (for his pos terity) the kingdom of the ten tribes, and perpetu ated strife, weakness, debasement, and superstition, by preferring the attractive splendours of this world to that godliness which would iu the end have been rewarded even in the present life. ; (6.) The enemies especially named as rising against him in his later years, are Jeroboam, Ha. dad the Edomite, and Rezon of Damascus. The first is described as having had no treasonable in tentions until Solomon sought to kill him, on learning the prophecy made to him by Ahijah. Jeroboam was received and fostered by Shishak, king of Egypt, and ultimately became the provi dential instrument of punishing Solomon's iniquity, though not without heavy guilt of his own. As for Hadad, his enmity to Israel began from the times of David, and is ascribed to the savage butchery perpetrated by Joab on his people. He also, when a mere child, was warmly received in Egypt, apparently by the father-in-law of Solomon; but this does not seem to have been prompted by hostility to David. Having married the sister of Pharaoh's queen, he must have been in very high station in Egypt ; still, upon the death of David, he begged leave to depart into Edom, and during the earlier part of Solomon's reign was probably form ing his party in secrct, and preparing for that dan gerous border warfare which he carried on some what later. Rezon, on the contrary, seems to have had no personal cause against the Hebrew monarchy; but having become powerful at Da mascus and on its frontier, sought, not in vain, to aggrandise himself at its expense. In the long con tinuance of peace David's veterans had died, and no successors to them can have been trained; and considering the other great expenses of the court, it may be confidently inferred that the standing army had not been kept up in any efficiency. The revenues which would have maintained it were spent on a thousand royal wives. The king him self was unwarlike ; and a petty foe, if energetic, was very formidable. Such were the vexations which darkened the setting splendours of the greatest Israelitish king. But from within also his prosperity was unsound. Deep discontent per vaded his ornm people, when the dazzle of his grandeur had become familiar ; when it had be come clear that the royal wealth, instead of de noting national wellbeing, was really sucked out of the nation's vitals. Having no constitutional organ to express their discontent, they waited sullenly until the recognition of a successor to tbe crown should give them the opportunity of ex torting a removal of burdens which could not per manently be endured.
The picture of Solomon here drawn is far less favourable than could be wished, yet an endeavour has been made to keep close to the facts. Un doubtedly the book of Chronicles—which (contrary to custom) in this reign adds little or nothing to that of the Kings—by omission nevertheless gives a seriously altered view of this celebrated man ; for not only are his numerous marriages, his idola tries, his oppressions, his vexatious enemies, and the grave rebuke of the prophet Ahijah, left out of the narrative entirely, but his building of a special palace for his Egyptian queen is ascribed to his pious objection to her dwelling in the house of David, because of the ark having passed through it (2 Chrom viii. From a mind of so sensitive scrupulosity no one could have expected an estab lishment of heathenish worship. This very circum stance will show how tender was the feeling of the Levitical body towards him, and how little likely it is that the book of Kings has in any way given a discoloured and unfair view of his lametable world liness of principle.—F. W. N.