Stable borders facilitated the expansion of commerce and trade. The
alliance with Egypt expanded trade in horses and chariots. An alliance with
the king of Tyre gave Solomon access to a lucrative coastal trade along the
Mediterranean. Israelite merchants traded along the Red Sea all the way to
Africa, and expanded the caravan trade into Arabia, including profitable trade
in spices and other luxury goods. Finally, Solomon acquired a large quantity
of copper and built an industry around it – although no one knows where
exactly the copper came from.
Although there were no major wars during his reign, Solomon expanded the
military to maintain stable borders. He fortified border cities. He transformed
some cities into military bases, and erected a chain of military installations from
the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. The horse trade with Egypt allowed him to
maintain a large standing army, complete with cavalry and chariots.
Yet perhaps Solomon’s most memorable achievements were his construc-
tion projects in the city of Jerusalem. According to I Kings, he transformed
the recently conquered Jebusite city into the largest and most impressive
Israelite city. He built the City of David and a series of royal palaces for him-
self and for many of his three hundred wives. And, of course, he built the
Temple of Solomon (alas, there are no archeological remains of this temple).
The Temple embodied the Deuteronomic impulse toward centralization. It
was the center of the cult of Yahweh, and also the commercial and cultural
center of the United Monarchy. As a dynastic shrine, its preeminence insured
that the priesthood would remain under the jurisdiction of the royal crown.
From this point, the high priest was the highest royal official, and was chosen
by the king. Under Solomon, moreover, Jerusalem became a more cosmopoli-
tan city, epitomized by the appearance of a Wisdom School disseminating
Wisdom Literature. The latter, recorded primarily in the biblical Book of
Proverbs but also in scattered passages elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible such as
Psalms 1, reflected the cultural assimilation of ideas from parallel schools in
Egypt and Mesopotamia.
These achievements, though impressive, provided fodder for the anti-
monarchic voice of I Kings, who implicitly pointed to parallels between the
reign of Solomon and servitude in Egypt and recalled the antimonarchic
warnings of Samuel. The reign of Solomon was a time when the rich became
richer and lived ever more comfortable lives – the good life described in
Proverbs; while the lower classes became poorer and had to devote more of
their time and energy to serving the needs of the state. The emergence of a
wealthy commercial class accentuated the divisions between the wealthy and
the lower classes. Undertaking massive construction projects and expanding
the military required large sums of money and labor, leading to ever-increasing
taxes and corvee obligations to the crown.
I Kings also contains murmurs of religious discontent. The large presence
of foreign wives and their entourages, many of which operated a temple to a
foreign deity, did not resonate well with the image of Jerusalem as the center
14 The world of the Hebrew Bible