CHAPTER 5
Solomon’s Wisdom?
Client Kingship and International Trade
—EARLY SEVENTH CENTURY BCE—
THE BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION OF KING SOLOMON’S FORTY-YEAR reign of royal prosperity and grandeur (1 Kings 3–10) has provided western civilization with some of its most glittering images of enlightened kingship, guided by wisdom and blessed with unparalleled wealth. With a regal bearing unmarred by David’s violent background and warrior image, Solomon serenely establishes an efficient bureaucracy to administer his vast kingdom and presides over a court and palace that is renowned for its opulence and refinement. He judges the most difficult cases—even of disputed babies—with consummate wisdom. He marries a pharaoh’s daughter and constructs the great Jerusalem Temple. His possessions are boundless: thousands of horses and chariots (1 Kings 4:26) and a harem of seven hundred wives (1 Kings 11:3). He conscripts work gangs to refortify Jerusalem and other regional centers, and commissions far-flung trading expeditions for “gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks” (1 Kings 10:22). His reputation as a wise and powerful ruler is unparalleled; when the queen of Sheba travels to Jerusalem from her far-off land to test King Solomon’s wisdom, she finds that Solomon’s wealth and splendor far surpass even her grandest expectations, so that “there was no more spirit in her” (1 Kings 10:5).
The biblical world of King Solomon
As a story of royal manners and aristocratic deportment, the biblical narrative of Solomon has for centuries provided artists, poets, and theologians with timeless images of royal leadership. But as an accurate chronicle of tenth-century affairs—describing the actual life and works of Solomon—it has no historical value at all. The grandiose descriptions of Solomonic wealth and unchallenged royal power are absurdly discordant with the historical reality of the small, out-of-the-way hill country kingdom that possessed no literacy, no massive construction works, no extensive administration, and not the slightest sign of commercial prosperity. Of course one might argue that admiration for the kinds of achievements attributed to Solomon might have been conceivable in even the poorest or most backward of kingdoms. But the biblical narrative is filled with so many specific details about trade transactions, monetary values, and complex royal administration that its authors seem to be describing a reality they knew from personal experience—not merely dreaming of an invented or imagined utopia.
It is a world of effortless international connections and the celebration of commercial prosperity, in which the labor of skilled craftsmen and common workers (for building the Temple), no less than cedar logs or spices, is seen as a commodity whose price is open to negotiation. The profit to be made on the resale of imported chariots and horses (1 Kings 10:28–29) and the precise accounting of the kingdom’s annual income “from the traders and from the traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and from the governors of the land” (1 Kings 10:15), assume an understanding of and appreciation for great administrative and commercial detail. Indeed, the stories of Solomon’s negotiations with King Hiram of Tyre to help build the Temple, his international trade in thoroughbred horses, his lucrative maritime expeditions, and the gifts of precious goods from the queen of Sheba enthusiastically celebrate the values and vision of what we would call today a globalized economy.
As we will see in this chapter, the most famous episodes of the Solomon story reflect an accurate historical memory not of Solomon, but of the dramatic era when the kingdom of Judah recovered from Sennacherib’s destructive campaign by plunging headlong into the world of imperial commerce. Judah’s economic development in the era of Ahaz and Hezekiah was just the beginning. The Solomon story refers to the next act. It does not merely dress an old tale of a founding father in late-eighth-and seventh-century costume. As we will see, Assyrian-era details and values are central to understanding the motivations for composing the tale of Israel’s most prosperous king.
RISING FROM THE ASHES
The biblical Solomon sits majestically enthroned at the summit of a lofty pyramid of royal power. His kingdom—stretching from Dan to Beer-sheba (1 Kings 4:25), or, according to another verse, from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt (1 Kings 4:21)—boasted a sophisticated administration directed from Jerusalem by the king and a coterie of priests, secretaries, scribes, palace administrators, army officers, and overseers of conscripted labor gangs. Twelve district officers, identified by name and connected with clearly delineated territories, were stationed throughout the kingdom with the task of providing “food for the king and his household; each man had to make provision for one month in the year” (1 Kings 4:7). Grain, cattle, sheep, and wild game flowed into Jerusalem to provide the king’s daily provision. Thousands of laborers were conscripted to carry out the king’s ambitious building projects, including the fortification of Jerusalem, the construction of Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer, the establishment of new settlements in the wilderness, and the construction of “all the store-cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion” (1 Kings 9:19). The kingdom was secure and united. As the Bible puts it, “Judah and Israel dwelt in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:25).
This idealized vision clearly has nothing to do with the poor villages and the rugged conditions in tenth-century BCE Jerusalem, nor is it an accurate description of the rapidly growing kingdom of Ahaz and Hezekiah. Its picture of well-established and far-reaching royal organization more closely resembles, at least in its broad outlines, if not in all its hyperbole, the increasingly organized and centralized kingdom of Judah in the early seventh century BCE. The instruments of royal power—trade, building projects, and administration—that begin to emerge during the reign of Hezekiah were exercised more extensively during the reign of his son and successor Manasseh (698–642 BCE). If any historical character resembles the biblical Solomon, it is he.
Sennacherib’s invasion resulted in far-reaching destruction, devastating Judah’s main regional centers and richest agricultural areas. By the time of Manasseh’s accession, the economy of Judah was in ruins. The city of Jerusalem was isolated in the midst of a depopulated countryside; it had become the lonely “lodge in a cucumber field” described by the prophet Isaiah (1:8)—a huge, crowded city in the midst of an overwhelmed agricultural hinterland. Archaeological excavations throughout the Shephelah and the Beer-sheba Valley have exposed the extent of the destruction in ash layers, smashed pottery, and the tumbled stones of collapse uncovered at virtually every settlement that flourished during the reign of Hezekiah at the end of the eighth century BCE.
This, then, was King Manasseh’s great double challenge: a huge yearly tribute was demanded by the Assyrians, and the agricultural potential of Judah was severely impaired. Hezekiah’s son and successor had to formulate a new economic strategy for survival. With its vital grain-growing region of the Shephelah lost, Judah had to find alternative means of agricultural production. Since the towns and villages in the central mountain ridge—which specialized in horticulture—could not be relied on to make up the difference, other places in the kingdom would have to be found to supply the kingdom with vital grain and field crops. Still other sources of income would be needed to meet the obligations of Assyrian tribute. There are archaeological indications that Manasseh met the challenge. The sweeping changes and economic revival that took place in early-seventh-century BCE Judah—evident in the archaeological record—uncannily mirror the descriptions of planned royal colonization and administration that the story of Solomon so enthusiastically celebrates.
First came the development of environmentally marginal areas. Even in the time of Manasseh’s immediate predecessors, the wilderness of Judah had been a desolate area of deep ravines, caves, and isolated landmarks in the Dead Sea region, a wild and dangerous backdrop to the stories of David’s flight
with his band of outlaws from the vengeance of King Saul. Yet in the seventh century BCE, farms and small settlements were established in this arid, virtually rainless region, where herding had long been the main way of life. On the basis of archaeological finds here, there is good reason to suggest that during the long reign of Manasseh, settlements were established at En Gedi and at small sites along the western coast of the Dead Sea. At the same time, agriculture began in the arid Buqei‘a Valley south of Jericho, and on the arid slopes east of Jerusalem.
Far to the south, in the Beer-sheba Valley—another dry and sparsely populated area of the kingdom dotted only with a few fortresses to guard the caravan routes—settlement dramatically increased in the seventh century BCE. New sites were established at Tel Masos, Horvat Uza, and Horvat Radom, and the settlements of Tel Ira and Aro‘er expanded. Surface surveys have revealed the presence of many more. As in the wilderness of Judah, the goal was clearly agricultural. In good years, the Beer-sheba Valley alone could produce over five thousand tons of grain per annum through traditional dry farming methods, while the basic needs of its population required no more than 5 percent of that amount. Thus, if the agriculture in both the Beer-sheba Valley and the wilderness of Judah was well organized—with maximum cultivation in years of adequate rainfall, irrigation, and efficient storage in times of drought—these two regions could replace at least a portion of the grain yield of the now-lost Sephelah and supply a significant proportion of Judah’s agricultural needs.
The expansion into the arid regions was a matter of survival. It seems to have been part of a carefully planned and directed royal policy. In the wilderness of Judah especially, there is evidence of ambitious agricultural constructions, including the hewing of cisterns and the construction of dams to retain the precious winter floodwaters. And in the newly settled Negev communities, evidence for the reconstruction of the royal fortress at Arad and the construction of another fort at Horvat Uza testifies to a high level of administration and royal control. Moreover, the steady increase in the number of seals and seal impressions on storage vessels and bullae in Judah during this same period shows that commercial transactions and careful accounting of agricultural shipments had become a high priority.
As Manasseh reorganized his kingdom, the main elements of a well-planned royal administration materialized on the landscape and in the lives of the officials, workers, and settlers who were marshaled and organized to carry out his commands. It was only at this time that a detailed description of royal officers, regional fortresses, and district capitals would have begun to acquire a recognizable significance in celebrating the achievements of Solomon.*
Of course there were obvious differences between seventh-century Judah and Solomon’s vast biblically described domain. In Manasseh’s time, Judah was restricted to the southern hill country and the desert fringes, with the territory of the former kingdom of Israel under direct Assyrian rule. The biblical descriptions, by contrast, depict a Solomonic administration that stretches across the entire land of Israel, encompassing all of Israel’s northern lands and tribes. This obviously calls for an explanation. If the intention was to celebrate persuasively a new and more efficient kind of royal administration in Judah, why was the geographical extent of Solomon’s kingdom described as so vast?
The main sites of King Manasseh’s realm
HAZOR, MEGIDDO, AND GEZER
In contrast to the great administrative achievements of the fallen kingdom of Israel, Manasseh’s efforts at reorganization would have seemed puny. But in the crafting of the pan-Israel ideology in Hezekiah’s time, the David tradition—and by extension the birthright of Solomon—had been expanded to cover the territory of both Judah and Israel. Thus the geographical expansion of Solomon’s extensive administration to encompass the north would have been a logical and necessary step in legitimizing the new Judahite royal order—and its Davidic pedigree—as a venerable tradition that stretched back to the origins of the dynasty.
Until recently, a single biblical verse plucked from the Solomonic narrative, which deals with three celebrated northern sites, convinced many archaeologists that Solomon’s great empire was a historical fact:
And this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon levied to build the house of the LORD and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer. (1 Kings 9:15)
The excavation of similar six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer—linked with this single biblical verse and thus dated to the tenth century BCE—established the foundation for the traditional archaeology of Solomon and his united monarchy. Yet this interpretation has been conclusively disproved both on stratigraphic and chronological grounds.* The supposedly Solomonic gates date to different periods of time, in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, and strikingly similar city gates have been found outside the borders of the kingdom of Solomon, even according to a territorially maximalist view. But the specific mention in the Bible of Solomon’s building of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer is significant in an entirely different respect. All three cities were located in the territory of the northern kingdom and were probably its most important administrative centers after its capital in Samaria. Hence, the historical reality behind 1 Kings 9:15 should probably be sought in how the Solomonic tradition assimilated cherished memories from the history of the north.
The six-chambered gate of Megiddo (courtesy of Zeev Herzog)
Megiddo first prospered as a northern Israelite city under the Omrides in the ninth century BCE, when two beautiful ashlar palaces were constructed there. In the eighth century, presumably in the time of Jeroboam II, the city was equipped with an elaborate six-chambered gate and housed an extensive complex of stables, surrounded by a massive city wall. It had a sophisticated water system—a deep shaft and a tunnel that led to a spring at the foot of the mound. Hazor, likewise, had been a prominent city in the time of the Omrides, was briefly occupied and embellished by the kingdom of Damascus, and was returned to Israelite rule and rebuilt on a grand scale in the time of the northern king Jeroboam II, in the eighth century BCE. At Hazor, too, an elaborate rock-cut water system was constructed in the early eighth century BCE. Gezer was also within the boundaries of the northern kingdom and reached its greatest extent in the eighth century BCE, when the town was surrounded by a massive stone wall, similar to the walls unearthed at Megiddo and Hazor. An existing six-chambered gate was then incorporated—as an inner gate—into an elaborate entrance system. Thus Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were all Israelite cities that flourished in the first half of the eighth century, the days of the great Jeroboam II, as the main administrative centers of the northern kingdom. There can be little doubt that their mention in the Solomonic narrative represented an attempt both to enhance Solomon’s stature and to further integrate the prestige of the northern and southern kingdoms by anachronistically attributing their architectural grandeur to him.
The list of Solomonic district officers (1 Kings 4:7–19) likewise bears a close correspondence to the organization of the northern kingdom. It includes royal districts—all of which are located in the north—that roughly cover the geographical extent of the northern kingdom at its peak. West of the Jordan, these districts stretch from Asher and Naphtali in Galilee to the area around the Valley of Aijalon and the highlands of Benjamin in the south. To the east of the Jordan, they extend from Gilead to northern Moab. Many of the main cities of the northern kingdom are explicitly mentioned, but Judah—with its highlands, the Negev, and the Shephelah—is excluded, which suggests that the list is most probably based on a northern administrative text. But this source was adjusted by adding Judah in a summary verse; it could then be put to service in celebrating the Jerusalem-based King Solomon as the father of organized statehood in all of Israel.
We seem to be faced here with a case of creative writing, in the inclusion of later northern administrative history into the biblical tradition of Solomon. For just as Hezekiah was faced with the influx of a significan
t refugee population from the conquered northern kingdom and sought to integrate them into a new Judah and Israel united into a single nation under the twin banners of Dynasty and Temple, his son Manasseh faced the problem of justifying the dramatic increase in royal power to the same mixed population, now resettled and regimented according to royal will.
If it could be shown that such kingly prerogatives were the natural fulfillment of the promise to the house of David, as well as the fulfillment of the venerable royal tradition of the north in the glory days of the Omrides and Jeroboam II, the Solomonic narrative would gain the authority of traditions from both Judah and Israel. The vision of the united monarchy under Solomon is thus an expression of seventh-century political, economic, and social objectives, reinforced by memories of the great administrative and political sophistication of the north. It was the ultimate expression of seventh-century BCE Judahite statism.
A closer look at another element of the Solomon tradition—his association with horses—suggests that the same process of legendary elaboration and assimilation of northern traditions was at work in regard to legitimizing Judah’s increasingly vital participation in the international trade.
ALL THE KING’S HORSES
King Solomon is remembered in the biblical tradition as one of history’s greatest horse traders:
Solomon also had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. And those officers supplied provisions for King Solomon, and for all who came to King Solomon’s table, each one in his month; they let nothing be lacking. Barley also and straw for the horses and swift steeds they brought to the place where it was required, each according to his charge. (1 Kings 4:26–28)
David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition Page 14
