illustration of it. The pattern-instance is, in all its circumstances, thoroughly Oriental. (1 Kings
3:16-28)
•In reference to the king’s finances, the first impression of the facts given us is that of abounding
plenty. Large quantities of the precious metals were imported from Ophir and Tarshish. (1 Kings
9:28) All the kings and princes of the subject provinces paid tribute in the form of gifts, in money
and in kind, “at a fixed rate year by year.” (1 Kings 10:25) Monopolies of trade contributed to the
king’s treasury. (1 Kings 10:28,29) The total amount thus brought into the treasury in gold,
exclusive of all payments in kind, amounted to 666 talents. (1 Kings 10:14)
•It was hardly possible, however, that any financial system could bear the strain of the king’s
passion for magnificence. The cost of the temple was, it is true, provided for by David’s savings
and the offerings of the people; but even while that was building, yet more when it was finished
one structure followed on another with ruinous rapidity. All the equipment of his court, the “apparel”
of his servants was on the same scale. A body-guard attended him, “threescore valiant men,” tallest
and handsomest of the sons of Israel. Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve
thousand horsemen made up the measure of his magnificence. (1 Kings 4:26) As the treasury
became empty, taxes multiplied and monopolies became more irksome.
•A description of the temple erected by Solomon is given elsewhere. After seven years and the
work was completed and the day came to which all Israelites looked back as the culminating glory
of their nation.
•We cannot ignore the fact that even now there were some darker shades in the picture. He reduced
the “strangers” in the land, the remnant of the Canaanite races, to the state of helots, and made
their life “bitter with all hard bondage.” One hundred and fifty-three thousand, with wives and
children in proportion, were torn from their homes and sent off to the quarries and the forests of
Lebanon. (1 Kings 5:15; 2 Chronicles 2:17,18) And the king soon fell from the loftiest height of
his religious life to the lowest depth. Before long the priests and prophets had to grieve over rival
temples to Molech, Chemosh, Ashtaroth and forms of ritual not idolatrous only, but cruel, dark,
impure. This evil came as the penalty of another. (1 Kings 11:1-8) He gave himself to “strange
women.” He found himself involved in a fascination which led to the worship of strange gods.
Something there was perhaps in his very “largeness of heart,” so far in advance of the traditional
knowledge of his age, rising to higher and wider thoughts of God, which predisposed him to it.
In recognizing what was true in other forms of faith, he might lose his horror at what was false.
With this there may have mingled political motives. He may have hoped, by a policy of toleration,
to conciliate neighboring princes, to attract larger traffic. But probably also there was another
influence less commonly taken into account. The widespread belief of the East in the magic arts
of Solomon is not, it is believed, without its foundation of truth. Disasters followed before long
as the natural consequence of what was politically a blunder as well as religiously a sin. VI. His
literary works.—little remains out of the songs, proverbs, treatises, of which the historian speaks.
(1 Kings 4:32,33) Excerpts only are given from the three thousand proverbs. Of the thousand and
five songs we know absolutely nothing. His books represent the three stages of his life. The Song
of Songs brings before us the brightness of his -youth. Then comes in the book of Proverbs, the
stage of practical, prudential thought. The poet has become the philosopher, the mystic has passed
into the moralist; but the man passed through both stages without being permanently the better
for either. They were to him but phases of his life which he had known and exhausted, (Ecclesiastes
frankie
(Frankie)
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