David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (20 page)

The text describing the construction of the Temple and palace in Jerusalem is full of references to copper items, another seventh-century
BCE
connection. Solomon himself is said to have smelted great quantities of copper in the Jordan Valley, “between Succoth and Zarethan” (1 Kings 7:46), and in the early days of biblical archaeology, in the 1930s, references to copper became a major issue in the search for the historical Solomon. Yet the discovery of “Solomon’s mines” at Timna in southern Israel and his “smelting plants” at nearby Tell el-Kheleifeh (identified with biblical Ezion-geber and declared by the American archaeologist Nelson Glueck to have been the “Pittsburgh of Palestine”) proved to be archaeological illusions. The Timna mines are now dated at least two centuries
before
Solomon. And it seems clear that Tell el-Kheleifeh was first settled—as a fort, not an industrial center—two centuries
after
Solomon in connection with the Assyrian-dominated Arabian trade.
†

Another important source of copper is the area of Wadi Feinan, on the eastern margin of the Arabah Valley, approximately thirty miles south of the Dead Sea. Recent studies by German, American, and Jordanian scholars revealed evidence there for continuous activity in the Iron Age, with one of the intense periods of mining and production dated to the late eighth and seventh centuries
BCE
. Like all other lucrative economic activities in the region, this industry was carried out under Assyrian auspices. The mined copper must have been transported mainly to the west, to the Assyrian centers and ports in Philistia. Since the roads from Feinan to the west passed through Judahite territory in the Beer-sheba Valley, Judah—as a vassal of Assyria—would have participated in the lucrative copper industry.

All things considered, we have a situation where the conditions described in the great kingdom of Solomon closely resemble those of King Manasseh’s realm. Well-administered districts and large numbers of corvee laborers building new royal cities; the trading connection with foreign leaders; caravans plodding northward through Judahite territory; and ambassadors from Arabia present in Jerusalem—when combined with the hazier, borrowed memories of northern Israel’s commercial heyday—all bolstered belief in the antiquity and wisdom of King Manasseh’s new strategy of wholehearted participation in imperial commerce and diplomacy.

CREATING THE SOLOMONIC MYTH

The stories of Solomon in the Bible are uniquely cosmopolitan. Foreign leaders are not enemies to be conquered or tyrants to be suffered; they are equals with whom to deal politely, if cleverly, to achieve commercial success. The biblical tales of Solomon’s dealings with Hiram of Tyre and the queen of Sheba are literary acts of self-promotion—in trade negotiations, in diplomatic relations, in the status of the king. Solomon’s legend, first put into writing in the seventh century
BCE
, asserts Judah’s greatness—and the essential skill of its monarch—in the brave new world of trade and cross-cultural communication of the Assyrian empire.

In ruling, administering, trading, and wisely judging his people, Solomon is presented as an ideal leader on the model of the Assyrian king: “And men came from all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom” (1 Kings 4:34). “Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom. And the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom” (1 Kings 10:23–24). Even the extent of territory ruled by Solomon—in one version, from the Euphrates to Gaza (1 Kings 4:24)—reflects a vision of Assyrian kingship as the ultimate ideal. Though the dating of this verse is uncertain, the territory described is roughly equivalent to the western territories ruled by the Assyrian kings in the late eighth and seventh centuries
BCE
.

Closer to home, the Solomonic legend expresses nostalgia for the achievements of the fallen kingdom of Israel. Another description of the extent of Solomon’s kingdom—from Dan to Beer-sheba (1 Kings 4:25)—actually fits the borders of Judah and Israel combined. While the stories of David were used to refute the accusations of the northerners, the image of Solomon borrows heavily from northern royal traditions—not refuting them but rather adopting them and depicting him as equal or even superior to the most powerful north Israelite kings. Just as
they
sailed the high seas in search of treasure; just as
they
traded in thoroughbred horses; just as
they
attracted the interest of the far-off Arabian kingdoms, so
our
cherished founding father Solomon had done on an even more massive and lucrative scale. Thus in addition to merging the cherished memories of the Israelites within the southern kingdom with the prestige of the Davidic dynasty, the Solomonic narratives were used to legitimize for
all
of Judah’s people the aristocratic culture and commercial concerns of the court of Manasseh that promoted Judah’s participation in the Assyrian world economy.

The Bible’s composite vision of Solomon’s wisdom, commerce, and far-flung international connections has filled a thousand church windows and illustrated Bibles for centuries. While David was a man of war, Solomon was the prince of peace through diplomacy and trade. Solomon’s image promises security, stability, and happiness in a world in which boundaries are fluid and national glory is achieved through wisdom and commercial acumen.

Yet the circumstances that gave birth to this vision were not to last forever. As we will see in the next chapter, by the end of the seventh century, internal tensions within Judah and a change in the imperial landscape would sour belief in Solomonic-style globalization and bequeath to it a decidedly negative aspect. Those who sought to retreat from the imperial world into a puritanical, closed vision of ancient Israel would transform the entire David and Solomon story to serve a completely different set of values, infusing it with the messianic themes and apocalyptic tension that it still possesses today.

THE BIBLICAL SOLOMON IS HAUNTED BY A GREAT CONTRADICTION
. In 1 Kings 3–10, he is the great successor of David, a larger-than-life ruler who builds the Temple in Jerusalem and who provides the standards of wisdom and opulence that countless later kings would attempt to achieve. Yet in 1 Kings 11:1–13 he is little more than a senile apostate, who is led astray by the charms of his many foreign wives.

In fact, his sins are so grave that they lead to a bitter split between Judah and Israel and the breakdown of the great Davidic state.

How can we assess these frankly conflicting biblical evaluations? Many scholars have accepted the positive chapters as representing old archival material, dating to the supposed great era of enlightenment in the days of the united monarchy. We have argued that this positive vision of Solomon was a product of the Judahite court in the early seventh century
BCE
. The tales of splendid Solomonic court life in Jerusalem, the impressive Temple, chariot cities, maritime commercial ventures, and lucrative trade with Arabia should be seen as a literary construct, a description of an idyllic and idealized figure that would have redounded to the credit of the entrepreneurial King Manasseh and warmed the hearts of the Judahite aristocracy who directly benefited from the new prosperity that was brought about by the incorporation of Judah into the Assyrian world economy.

But what is the source of this negative view of Solomon? In whose interest was it to blacken the reputation of the great king? The prosperity of the Assyrian trading system that Solomon came to personify would have had a very different aspect to those who were its unwilling pawns rather than its beneficiaries. Manasseh’s strategy of international trading may well have devalued the traditional agricultural economy long shared by both the Judahites and many of the refugees from direct Assyrian rule in the north. The king’s far-reaching intercultural contact amounted to an abandonment of time-honored ways—and not only in religion, but in social relations and economy. Those who supported his father, Hezekiah’s, cult centralization and his nationalistic revolt against Assyria must have been appalled by the reign of Manasseh. And they were soon back in power—with pens in their hands.

The second book of Kings devotes a relatively brief and wrathful description to Manasseh’s fifty-five-year reign that is preoccupied mainly with recounting his religious offenses and placing the blame for the greatest catastrophe that Judah would later experience directly on him:

Biblical scholars have traditionally interpreted the reports of Manasseh’s fondness for pagan religious customs as evidence of the wholesale assimilation of Judah’s ruling class into the religious syncretism of the Assyrian age. But in the ancient world, neatly dividing economics and politics from religion was not quite so simple.

For at least some of Manasseh’s subjects, settled in new development towns and subject to royal regulation and taxation, his long reign must have been a source of misfortune and far-reaching social dislocation. We have seen the abundant evidence in the archaeological record of the emergence of a wealthy, literate, and influential ruling class in Jerusalem, but no evidence of great prosperity beyond that. Manasseh’s new strategy brought survival to the state and prosperity to those who hosted trade ambassadors in their elegant houses. But for those who did not profit from this prosperity, the promise of safety and security—the day when every man would sit in contentment “under his vine and under his fig tree”—must have seemed further away than ever before.

The tension was clearly building. According to the Bible, after the death of Manasseh, in 642
BCE
, and the succession of his son Amon, a violent series of events seemingly shattered the decades-long rule of the Judahite internationalists:

We cannot identify the “servants of Amon” who killed him, though they seem to have been a faction in the royal court of Jerusalem. Likewise the identity of “the people of the land” who installed the eight-year-old boy King Josiah has long been a matter of dispute by scholars, some of whom have suggested that they represent the countryside aristocracy, who supported Manasseh’s policies.

In fact, opposition to Manasseh’s rule seems to have come from a coalition of dissatisfied groups within Judah, whose political influence would rise as the power of Assyria began to wane. They would have a powerful effect in reshaping the institutions of the kingdom of Judah, and they would use their talents in the rewriting of the history of David and Solomon. During the reign of Josiah, all the preexisting traditions, poems, chronicles, and ballads about the first two kings of Judah were combined, producing the passionate and uncompromising tale of sin and redemption that remains a central message of the biblical story today.

THE DEUTERONOMISTIC VERSION

The complex, sprawling literary epic of David and Solomon, when read from its beginning in the first book of Samuel to its tragic conclusion in the first book of Kings—from the shepherd boy David’s anointment to the death of the aged King Solomon amidst rebellion and tumult—offers a single, sobering moral: calamity inevitably follows disobedience of God’s will. Saul, the troubled savior of Israel, loses his anointment and eventually his life for his cultic violations; David suffers family misfortune for his foibles; and Solomon, the resplendent monarch, pays for his sinful involvement with foreign wives and pagan ways with the loss of his greatness and the division of his vast kingdom.

These grim lessons are starkly contrasted with the rewards of righteousness. The united monarchy of David and Solomon, before its fall, in its moments of splendor, showed what the people of Israel could achieve when they were led by a righteous ruler and were perfectly faithful to God’s laws. Yet this overarching moral scheme is not part of the original story. The separate cycles of folktales, heroic stories, and royal propaganda were distinct developments of the evolving ideology of Judah’s ruling dynasty. It was only when the David and Solomon story was linked with a powerful religious message that the biblical narrative we now know finally began to take shape.

The editing and writing that occurred in Josiah’s time were not the final stages of the writing of David and Solomon’s stories, but they had a crucial impact on the Bible as we know it. Many biblical scholars argue that the composite narrative from 1 Samuel 16 to 1 Kings 11—from the anointment of David to the death of Solomon—is part of a longer saga, which spans the book of Joshua through the second book of Kings, and is known as the Deuteronomistic History. This sweeping chronicle of the people of Israel, from wandering to conquest to golden age to exile, has a clear connection with (in fact it clearly illustrates) the ideology expressed in the book of Deuteronomy. And the biblical narrative of David and Solomon bears the indelible stamp of the aggressive and uncompromising ideology not evident in earlier traditions: the Deuteronomistic doctrine of the worship of one God, in the Jerusalem Temple, under the auspices of a Davidic king, advanced through the zealotry of holy war.

The core of Deuteronomy’s law code (Deuteronomy 4:44–28:68) has been convincingly connected by scholars with the “Book of the Law” suddenly “discovered” by the high priest Hilkiah in the Jerusalem Temple in the eighteenth year of the reign of the Judahite king Josiah, the grandson of Manasseh and son of Amon, in 622
BCE
.

According to the biblical account (2 Kings 22:8–23:3), the discovery of the “Book of the Law” (or the “Book of the Covenant” as it is sometimes called) created an uproar and a spiritual crisis in Judah. When the book was read to King Josiah, he rent his clothes and declared, “Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us” (2 Kings 22:13).

Judah in the days of Josiah

Josiah’s subsequent actions—at least as they are described in the Bible—bear a direct relation to Deuteronomy’s explicit commandments. After “renewing” the exclusive covenant between God and the people of Israel, Josiah cleansed the Temple of all pagan cult objects; defiled the pagan high places and deposed idolatrous priests; commanded the people to keep “the Passover to the
LORD
your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant” (2 Kings 23:21); and banned the use of mediums and wizards. All of these actions—uncompromising law observance, aggressive prohibition of idolatry, and restriction of worship to a single place, namely, the Temple in Jerusalem—are expressed as strict commandments in Deuteronomy’s law code.

For his pious actions in upholding this new scripture, Josiah, a seventeenth-generation descendant of David, is described in 2 Kings 23:25 as uniquely saintly: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.” He “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father” (2 Kings 22:2). In the biblical authors’ opinion, David had embodied the idea of righteousness expressed in Deuteronomy; Josiah was his most righteous successor. The links between Josiah and David, between laws of Deuteronomy and the splendor of the united monarchy, are unmistakable. The anachronisms, narrative devices, and contemporary allusions woven through the final form of the David and Solomon story show how the narrative was shaped and whose interests it promoted as it reached its recognizable biblical form in the late seventh century
BCE
.

Understanding this crucial stage in the evolution of the Davidic tradition is central not only to an appreciation of the history of seventh-century Judah but also to an important innovation in the religious history of the western world. It was in the fateful reign of King Josiah that the mystique of the Davidic dynasty was suddenly, dramatically transformed from a collection of dynastic legends into a messianic faith that would long outlive the independence of the tiny Iron Age kingdom, to become the irreducible basis for Judeo-Christian religious belief.

EMPIRES IN TURMOIL

In order to understand the motivations for the ideological transformation of the David and Solomon tradition, we must briefly describe the dramatic events that swept over the region during King Josiah’s reign. When Josiah came to the throne as an eight-year-old boy in 639
BCE
, in the wake of his father’s assassination, Assyria was still at the height of its power. The territory of the former northern kingdom of Israel was still under direct Assyrian administration and the coastal Philistine cities were administered by Assyrian client kings. Just a few years later, however, by around 630
BCE
, the Assyrian empire was in a state of rapid disintegration. Pressures in the north and east severely strained the empire’s resources. Its military might, though still formidable, had seriously declined.