Jeremy Rosen
From David to Solomon: From Strength to Wisdom
Jeremy Rosen - From David to Solomon: From Strength to Wisdom
- [Wendy] Jeremy, it… My whole family have all got COVID, so yeah.
Oh dear.
It seems, it seems like it’s just spreading like wildfire.
It is. My son got it 10 days ago. He’s just recovering now. It’s all over. I’m all vaccinated as well.
Yes. Anthony was vaccinated. Gerard’s vaccinated. They’re all vaccinated. So is is he all right?
Oh yeah, he’s okay. He just had a bad terrible week.
Oh, shame. Shame, shame, shame. Well, you know what? We’re lucky we’ve got the park. We could walk in the park.
It is. Now definitely, that would be great. I look forward to that. We’ll fix it.
Very good.
So whenever you’re ready.
Okay, I’m ready. I’m ready when you are.
[Wendy] Okay, over to you. Thanks.
Okay. Hello everybody. First of all, I want to wish you all happy new secular year coming up. It’s, I feel despite the should we say the technological side of this, I feel like we’re a kind of a community, sort of a, a group of friends, those of you who contact me, those of you who leave questions and I really appreciate it and that’s part of the pleasure I get from this experience. So today, we are dealing with transition of power from David to Solomon. And as I’ve mentioned before, these books, early books of the Bible, beyond the five books of Moses, are really studies of the conflict between religion and politics and how they both evolve. Now David has gone through a pretty tough life. He has been chased and harassed. He’s moved from one place to another. And the fact is that his whole life has been one fight. Either it’s a fight in the physical sense or it’s a fight with his advisors or it’s a fight with his sons or with his wives. He’s constantly poor guy in conflict. And that the prophet has said is one of the reasons why we’re going to have to wait till his son Solomon in order to enter a period of universal peace. But before that happens, there’s a final flick of the tail. And that is just as David is getting over to the end of his life, there is another rebellion.
And the “Book of Kings” starts off with a story of Abishag the Shunammite. David is old and cold and if you’ve been in Jerusalem in the winter, you know it gets very, very cold and nothing seems to work. And so they go round looking for a beautiful girl to lie upon him to keep him warm. Now I don’t know why they had to choose a beautiful girl. The fact that they chose a beautiful girl might imply something else. And in fact, there is in the various commentaries in the Midrashim, and I want to say, there’s another word I should have said by way of introduction. There are literally thousands, thousands of commentaries on the text. And in these commentaries, many of them are inventions, are ideas that come up at different stage and at different times. And they reflect the mind of the people who are actually writing down these ideas. And part of this is comes under the general heading of Midrash. Midrash literally means to examine and to interpret. And it doesn’t have the same authority as Jewish law and that’s why you have lots of different, various opinions. There is one lovely opinion. I’m talking about Abishag the Shunammite who is lying possibly naked on King David in his old age to keep him warm. No central heating or heat or steam or whatever it was. And the question was, did David sleep with her? The tradition is no he didn’t. He could have done, I mean the king, he could do it. It’s good to be a king but he didn’t. And Abishag was teasing him saying “You, you’re impotent.” And according to this, according to this Talmudic tradition, he called in Bathsheba and he had sex with her 70 times in order to prove to Abishag that if he was not having sex with her, it wasn’t because he was impotent. But nevertheless, that is Midrash, an example of the fanciful Midrash that you can find in the different commentaries.
Anyway, so Abishag is there with the king and all of a sudden, the eldest son Adonijah, the eldest son Adonijah, suddenly decides my old man’s passed it. Reminds me of various television programmes. My old man’s passed it, the younger generation have to take over. And so he gathers around him a group of the closest advisors of King David. There was Joab, his uncle who’s the general who saved his life and saved him time and time again. And at the same time, there is Abiathar who is the high priest. And so Adonijah has gathered around himself a group of elite advisors around the king who think he would be the best man to succeed David and he has proclaimed himself king. He’s proclaimed himself as king. When Nathan the prophet who wasn’t called to attend and in a sense he was the great spiritual advisor of the king, hears about this, he goes into Bathsheba and he says, “Have you heard? She says, "No, what’s going on?” He says “ Adonijah has anointed himself king. "What are we going to do?” Nathan says to Bathsheba, “I tell you what we’re going to do. "I tell you what do. "You are going to go in to the king, "gain access to him in a way that I can’t immediately, "only when he calls me and say to the king, "David, is it true that you have anointed, "you have agreed that Adonijah is going to be the king?” And her his reply is “Hello, this is news to me.” And she said, “But you promised me that Solomon, "Schlomo my son, not the oldest one, "but is the most suitable would be king.” Yes, I said he did that.
And at that moment, Nathan comes in and he corroborates what Bathsheba had said. And David says, “This is not going to work. "I’m not going to have my son Adonijah tell me what to do.” And he calls in Zadok. Zadok who is the assistant priest, not Abiathar the top one. He gets Nathan together with him. He brings in Benaiah. Benaiah is the assistant to Joab, the number two in the military. And he calls in something that are called in the text, the Kreti and the Pleti. And nobody can agree what the Kreti and the Pleti are. In the Bible, there are two different versions. One of them is they’re the inner, the Swiss guard, the inner bodyguard of King David. And the other say no, it refers to the orimanatumin, the oracles, the stones that the priest had in order to divine the divine will. He calls ‘em all together and officially he anoints King Solomon, the youngest son, to be the king in his presence. As soon as word gets to Adonijah, he realises he’s lost the battle. All these guys, king of anointed publicly, he’s lost the battle and he flees to an altar and grabs hold of what are call the horns, the care in the corner of the altar. And this is the first example of sanctuary, think of Thomas a Becket. And he’s there and the question is what is going to happen? The messages go between Adonijah and the king. And Adonijah says, “I accept, I accept the authority.” I’m not going to challenge it and that’s where things rest.“ And now David calls in Solomon his son and declares himself in chapter two his final wish. And his final wish divides into two parts.
The first part is if you’re going to be a good king, you’ve got to follow the ways of our tradition. You’ve got to make sure that our tradition is strengthened. You’ve got to take care of the country. You’ve got to run things properly. You’ve got to try to make a break With all the disruption and all the conflicts that have gone on while I’ve been king And having blessed him and hoped everything for the best for him, he then turns around and says "But there’s some final wishes of mine "that I was not able to carry out, "that I’m handing over you to do. "The first thing is this man you of my uncle. "I’ve always held it against him that he did things "I didn’t approve of, "most of all that he killed Abner, "the general of Saul who was bringing peace.” And although he had, he claimed reason 'cause Abner had killed his brother. I did not want it. This disrupted the kingdom. It disrupted peace. It challenged my authority. I was not strong enough during my kingdom to do anything. I want you to make sure he’s dealt with. He just says in the way you consider to be the wise thing to do but it’s pretty clear what he wants to do. Secondly, there was a man called Shim'i ben Gera. Shim'i ben Gera also was a sympathiser of the House of Saul. And when Absalom had driven King David out of Jerusalem and he was going down through the Jordan, Shim'i ben Gera was on a hill overlooking him and he cursed him and says “You deserve this because you usurped the throne from Saul. "You are terrible. I hope everybody kills you, kills you.”
And in the end, when David overcame Absalom, he came grovelling back and saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it” in one thing in another. And so again, he says, “I want you to deal with Shim'i ben Gera in the right way.” In fact, what Solomon did with Shim'i ben Gera was to say to Shim'i ben Gera, “I’m confining you to Jerusalem "where I can keep an eye on you. "I don’t want you to cause any trouble. "I’m putting you on the house arrest in Jerusalem. "I want you to know if you step out of your house, "you’re a dead man.” Unfortunately, a while later, Shim'i ben Gera left because he had some business dealings down in Gaza. And so having ignored the king, he was showing his disrespect. And at that moment again, Benaiah, his general number two, stepped in and sorted him out. That was the end of Shim'i ben Gera. And the final thing was look there are people who have been good to me, certain families, I want you to thank them, take care of them and keep them close to you 'cause you can rely on them. 'Cause you need a team, you need to be able to delegate and these are good people. And that is what happened. And King David dies and Solomon takes over the throne. And as soon as he’s taken over the throne, he has a challenge.
He has a problem of how to deal with Adonijah because Adonijah has fallen in love with Abishag, Abishag who was sleeping with King David. And he approaches Bathsheba, he approaches Solomon’s mother. He can’t do it straight and says “Look, "would you do me a favour? And would you?” And she said to him “I’ll do you any favour you want.” He says, “Would you please intercede with Solomon "and ask him if I can marry Abishag?” Bathsheba in all her innocence goes to Solomon and says, “Look, Adonijah has asked for this. "What do you think?” And he consults his inner circle and they say listen, why do you think Adonijah is doing this? He can have plenty of other women. Why is he doing it? Clearly he still wants to threaten you. And this, by marrying the concubine of your father, which only a king can do, is another way of saying he wants to be king. So don’t let him get away with it. Solomon took their advice. And again, Benaiah took care of Adonijah and Adonijah was killed. So there were three people who Solomon put to death either because of the wishes of David or because he needed to cement his own authority. So again, you can see the interplay between people, between people of power. How do you preserve your position? Why are people constantly challenging your authority? And so now having dealt with these initial challenges to Solomon’s reign, he then starts about cementing his authority. And the first thing he does is to make an alliance with Pharaoh of Egypt.
And he marries Pharaoh’s daughter or at least it seems at this stage, he made the alliance. We’re not certain yet whether she came right away because he’s going to build her a palace later on which we’ll come to. So already, he’s doing this. Interestingly enough, nowhere at any stage is there any mention of these wives going through any process of conversion. We’re going to come to talk about this later on. So what was the law in those days? And once again, the rabbis much later in the time and say “Ah yes, "he convened the Sanhedrin.” Well Sanhedrin is a Greek word so it’s unlikely there was a Greek Sanhedrin at that stage. He conveyed and they went through a conversion process. Anyway, we now come to Solomon’s famous dream and dreams play as you know a very important part throughout the Torah. In the Torah of course you’ve got the dreams of Pharaoh, of Joseph. You’ve got dreams of Jacob. You’ve got dreams of Absalom and of Abimelech, rather the king of the Philistines. You have lots of dreams and dreams are taken very, very seriously and God appears in dreams. And if you study the whole history of dreams long before the period of the Bible, there’s a technical term for it called oneiromancy, the study of dreams.
You find that thousands of years beforehand in these early books of Sumeria and Assyria, kings have dreams. And these dreams are dreams that tend to confirm them in their authority and their position of authority. So there’s this ancient tradition, just ancient tradition of the floods and creation, everything like that’s an ancient tradition of dreams. So King Solomon has his dream at a place called Gibeon. Gibeon is an unusual place. It’s not in Jerusalem. It’s a place where there was apparently some kind of special religious altar there, maybe in Jerusalem and this is in between the tabernacle and the temple. And in this dream, a God appears to him and he says, “Ask me for anything you want "and I will help you establish your reign.” And the thing that then Solomon does is pray to God and say, “Look, I’m an inexperienced. I’m young. "The one thing I need is wisdom. Make me wise.” And this is the origin of the supposed wisdom of Solomon. And then follows this famous story which I’m sure you all know, of these two women appearing before King Solomon. And these two women, apparently not women of very good repute, are living in the same place. They were both pregnant, both of them gave birth. One died, one child died and the other child is alive and they are both claiming it is my child, my child. Now, there’s no proof. There’s no evidence. They didn’t have genetic testing in those days. Paternity testing. How are they going to find out? And the baby’s young and and when and they don’t know who the father is so that’s another problem. What does Solomon do? So Solomon says, “Well very clear. "I’ll cut the baby in half.” Very clever strategy.
You’ll have half and you’ll have half. One of the women says, “All right, fair enough. "That’s a fair compromise.” And the other woman says, “No, I can’t bear this. "Let her have the child. "I’d rather she have the child than the child cut in two.” And Solomon says, “Well that’s obvious from that who the mother is.” This is a sweet little example but it’s given to show that you know, when you are in this position, you’ve got to make the right judgement . Sometimes you don’t have the evidence. Sometimes you’ve got to find ways of getting people to give you the information. And that’s the example of King Solomon’s wisdom, the first example of his wisdom. The next example of his wisdom that the Bible gives is the idea that he has to delegate responsibility, something that King David didn’t do. Although in the “Book of Chronicles,” all the advisors of David, the close ones, inner and outer, all mentioned. So he had a huge big retinue but there’s no indication of administration. And now the first thing Solomon does is set up an administration with 12 governors, one governor per tribe, spread around and each governor has the responsibility of supporting the royal family and the king for one month in the year.
Something those of you are familiar with mediaeval European history will know something that was quite common in those days. Barons and lords were expected to support the king and kings often went round from one place to another. Then not only he begins to establish his kingdom by expanding it militarily. And so the famous King Solomon’s stables apparently excavated and to be found in Northern Israel, Megiddo. And there were 40,000 stables. I don’t know if that means 40,000 stables scattered around the country for communication or 40,000 stables in one place but there were and there were 12,000 charioteers. Well charioteers are also soldiers and as well as if you like like the Pony Express taking messages around. So he is building up first of all his infrastructure, administrative infrastructure, and then he is establishing his inner court of advisors. And there’s one man interestingly mentioned there as Etan ha Ezrahi, Ethan the citizen. Ethan the citizen seems to have been King David’s conciliary in addition to everybody else. This man also was very talented. He’s elsewhere described as a prophet. He’s elsewhere described in the “Book of Psalms” as a composer of psalms in the way that King David was.
There’s even a theory that he’s Abraham, which is a bit fanciful 'cause Abraham lived a thousand years beforehand. But nevertheless, this is the character Etan ha Ezrahi who is often mentioned. And in modern Hebrew today, Etan is a very famous name. Watch you, I have a grandson by that name. And Ezrahi is also a well-known the citizen. It was a very popular name for people to adopt when they came to Israel to show that they were citizens of the state. And this is the beginning of his structured system of government which during his lifetime succeeded right until towards the very end. And now the main thing that he has to do is to build the temple. And so we come to this massive structure. King Solomon, the first temple. It took 13 years to build. And in order to build it, first of all he needed material. Where was the material? In Lebanon. And so the first thing he does is he makes a treaty with King Hiram of Tyre. King Hiram, very famous name except interestingly, the main architect and builder was also called Hiram. But he was an Israelite who’d gone north to learn the trade. And the two of them, between the two of them, they were responsible for providing everything that was needed for the temple. Hiram provided the wood and then Hiram the other provided the technology. But what King Solomon also did, which was right at the time but produced problems later on, was he imposed a levy of 10,000 people from the community, from the tribes per month, towards supervising the structure of the temple. And he records in the Bible, there were 70,000 workers drawn in from all over the place.
There were 80,000 choppers of wood and another 3000 managers. Everything is documented, but not only everything is documented there. It’s documented in the structure of this building that took 13 years to put up, 13 years to put up this building. It’s detailed just as the tabernacle was detailed in the Torah itself. Every single colour, every single material, every single item. So too here, the same thing. There’s a whole chapter of every single ingredient there was in the Bible. I’ll just read out some of the texts of what actually went into the structure of this temple. It was absolutely unbelievable. There were, I’m not going to read out to them, there’s just just a list actually of items that were very, very important in those days. They were every culture at the time documented all this both as a record and to make sure that the work was done, the work was paid for. It was a very, very important administrative but also it was a public relations exercise to show how powerful and how important the temple was. What is interesting in this temple that after the 13 years and there were certain variations in it to the original description, for example in the tabernacle, the cherubim were gold.
In Temple of Solomon, they were wood. But anyway, when it comes to dedicating after all this period of time, Solomon calls everybody to Jerusalem and he establishes a celebration that starts in the month of Etanim, starts in a particular month, which is the seventh month and it is the month that we know of Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur. And it went on for seven days festival and then another seven days festival in which everybody’s involved. And the question is, did this festival run over Yom Kippur or did it not? Or did it have a break for Yom Kippur? And there’s another version which says it was on the Festival of Sukkot. But if it was on the Festival of Sukkot, what about the seven days before the eight days of Sukkot? Either way, this remains a problem. When was it? But it was very, very big. And the main part of it is this speech that Solomon gave, the speech of dedication to the temple. What’s interesting is again, like King David, he plays a lot of attention to the idea we’ve got to follow in the tradition. We’ve got to keep the tradition, we’ve got to adhere to the tradition which is going to prove a problem later on. We’ve got to do this and if we do this and if you follow God, you’ll be blessed and we will be blessed and we’ll live happily ever after. And may God take care of the house of Israel and the house of of all the different tribes. But what’s interesting is, having said that and having said that this temple exists for the Jewish people, he then says, “And I want to bless the whole of the world, everybody.” I want everybody to come here.
I want everybody to be blessed. I don’t just want this a place for us. It’s an amazing thing. So you know this assumption that everybody was so wrapped up in their religious world, they only thought about themselves, is not born out at all by what King Solomon said in his great dedication. Having done that, the dedication, having prayed and blessed everybody, he then turns to trade and he builds a fleet. The fleet supposed to be at Ezion-geber, supposed to be roughly where Eloth is today to go down the Red Sea. There wasn’t a Suez Canal in those days. He might have gone on to India and beyond but he certainly went down to Somalia, to the Horn of Africa and that’s where he was trading and dealing. And this is where we come across the wonderful Queen of Sheba. Now where is Sheba? Some people say it is Africa, Somalia. Other people say no, it was Yemen, Yemen in Arabia. And to this day, nobody is sure where Shiva, Sheba comes from. Of course, as I’m sure you know, there is the myth that she came from Ethiopia, from Africa. She had a love affair with King Solomon. They had sons and those sons eventually became the kings of Abyssinia. And Haile Selassie the last monarch of Abyssinia was a descended from the Queen of Sheba. And that’s what the rastafarians claim too and they claim they are the religious Jews and we Jews are usurpers. So Queen of Sheba plays an important role. And similarly as I mentioned, the Midrash, the Midrash tells all these stories about the tests that King Solomon put to her and the tests that she put to King Solomon to see how wise he was, which included walking on glass instead of walking on water. And the fact that King Solomon learnt the languages of the birds and the bees and the and everything he knew because he was so wise.
And she came with her retinue and with wonderful presents and gifts to find out if he really was as wise as everybody said he was and to establish an alliance with him. And she stayed and they conversed and they discussed and he gave wonderful presents for her, ivory thrones. And she gave wonderful presents to him and this amazing alliance with what the Queen of Sheba managed to achieve with him and establish. But at the same time, King David had lots of wives, lots and lots and lots of wives. He had 700 wives according to the Holy Book and 300 concubines. Was the Queen of Sheba one of his wives or was she not? Did she count or did she not? We don’t know. We just know she came and she went back home. Now in the “Book of Deuteronomy,” when the Torah says “Look, if you want to, "by all means appoint a king. "But I warn you about a king, "you’ve got to make sure he doesn’t get carried away.” You’ve got to make sure that he doesn’t have too many wives, that he doesn’t have too many arms and horses. Maybe he’ll want to take you back to Egypt to do deals. And later on, King Samuel reiterates the danger of the king that he will take your children and they’ll be your slaves or they’ll serve you or he will make you the more work for you. You don’t want a king. A king comes with a lot of baggage, a lot of problems and obligations.
And yet again the Torah specifies that whatever happens, the king has to always follow the Torah and always keep a copy of the Torah next to his bed so to speak, so that he’ll know by throne actually, he’ll have to know what to do, will know what to do, and will never think he’s above the law. The king always has to be within the framework of Jewish law. And as the Talmud says king Solomon thought he was wise enough to make an exception. I actually, I can cope with this. They say, you know, take too many wives 'cause they’ll turn your heart. No, they won’t turn my heart. Have too many horses and things 'cause you go down to Egypt to buy more. No, I’m not going to go down to Egypt. I’m not going to overtax people. I’m not going to put a burden on them. I’m a wise guy. I don’t need to. So even the wisest of men who Queen Sheba thought was the wisest of men and other people did, made some fatal mistakes. And the first fatal mistake, of course, was his wives. Again, 700 wives. Now wives were political alliances and in fact there is no evidence whatsoever that the wives converted in any structured way. And not only that, but King Solomon built temples for them as well as houses for them and allowed them to go on worshipping their other gods right in Jerusalem. Next to him, specifically Pharaoh’s daughter, he built a special palace for Pharaoh’s daughter and a place called a milah. And we don’t know what the milah was. Nobody can tell. If you look at most translations, if you look at the GPS, they say we don’t know.
Milah could be one of several things. From the word , it could be a store chamber for all her goods and all her retinue and everything like that. It could be a swimming pool. It could be a storehouse but it could also be a special connection, connecting path between her palace and her temple next door which is a bit further away. But he built these temples and it specifies that between these wives and these concubines, they turned his heart and Solomon turned in effect a blind eye to incipient idolatry going on within his own kingdom. The wisest of men who had expanded his kingdom to the greatest area territorially that it ever had and would ever have in the future. At this moment, things begin to go downhill. And there are rumblings going on about the workers that he is taking from each tribe to build one thing, building a temple. It’s another thing building these palaces for his wives and building pagan temples too. So there are rumblings of discontent. There are rumblings of discontent from the tribes rather like devolution or if you like, the system in America of Independence States. They’re saying why should all our money, tax money, go up to Jerusalem, to provide for Jerusalem? We need devolution. So these rumblings lead to a threat from outside that people realise outside, ah, he’s not as secure as we thought he was. And on the other hand, from within. Outside, there are two Hadads. There’s Hadad the King of Edom. Actually, he had been defeated. His family had been defeated by King David and he had gone into exile.
And in exile, he turned up at the court of Pharaoh of Egypt and Pharaoh rather liked him and he married another daughter of Pharaoh. So he’s strongly placed to try to come back and reclaim his heritage of Edom. And at the same time another Hadad, Hadadezer of Aram which is Syria, again another one who David had soundly defeated has come back and they are both threatening Solomon on the outside. But within, there is a man called Riyavam, Jeroboam in English. I don’t know why they have to call him Jeroboam. We’re going to come across him in course as the rival to Rehoboam or Rehavam who is the son of King Solomon. And Jeroboam protests at this massive waste of money as he sees it, at the discontent, sets himself up as a rebel and actually meets one of the great prophets of the time, a man called Ahijah a Shiloni and Ahijah says, “You are going to challenge the authority of Solomon "and I predict that you are going to be the king "of your own kingdom carved out from amongst the 10 tribes.” And this incident, which leads to Jeroboam being driven out and going again to Egypt to join the rebels, is the beginning of the end of the unified kingdom that David had fought for, that Solomon worked so hard to preserve. But in the end, through despite his own wisdom, his own mistakes, he sowed the seeds of his own dynasty’s challenge, of challenge to his own dynasty.
There’s one other side to Solomon that one has to deal with in trying to assess his impact and that is works attributed to him, whether they were attributed to him and written by him or under his guidance or whether they came later as a result of earlier oral traditions, we don’t know. But there are three books in the Bible that are attributed to King Solomon, which means that he left a legacy despite the political side that I’ve been describing here, there is a spiritual side as well. Not just that the temple was built and became the centre of Jewish life, the sanctuary, which in itself important as it was, had certain disadvantages in focusing on only one place. But nevertheless, it’s also in the tradition of wisdom that Solomon passed on. Two of the books are wisdom books: the “Book of Ecclésiastes, Qohelet” and the “Book of Proverbs, Mishlei.” But the other one is the “Song of Songs.” The “Song of Songs” is a beautiful short poem, series of poems in the Bible. It is magnificent poetry and it is the poetry about the love of a boy for a girl and a girl for a boy unable to consummate their love. They’re always approaching each other, getting close, and then something happens and they go apart. They praise each other and they express their love to each other. But somehow or other, they just can’t get there. And in the background, there is the figure of the king. And is the king interfering? Is he controlling? And there are the daughters of Jerusalem, a kind of a Greek chorus in the background, intervening at crucial moments. But the love goes through this book from beginning to end. The “Song of Songs” and it starts off by saying, “This is the song of songs of Solomon, the king of the king, "the the son of David who lived in Jerusalem.”
Well, not to David and not to the son of David, doesn’t mention Solomon actually so, you know, sort of could be another person. But either way, Solomon’s imprimatur so to speak, is on this beautiful book of poetry. And people say it was written in his youth when he was young and the sap was rising and he had all these women and he was in love with them. And the Talmuds has a problem with this book. It says, come on, this is all, it’s all sex, all about sexuality. We can’t surely have this in our Bible. And Rabbi Kiva, the great Rabbi Kiva, lived in the second century. He said, “No, I’m telling you. "If the rest of the Bible is holy, this is holy of holies "because it is not about a boy and a girl. "It’s about the relationship between God and Israel, "about the fact how God loves us and we love God. "But we’re always unfaithful, we’re always betraying. "God’s disappearing from our lives. "We’re disappearing from his lives. "We come together again. "We have people trying to warn us, "the daughters of Jerusalem, to warn us "about this relationship. "We’ve got to put it together. "And if we don’t, the whole thing will fall apart.” What is interesting is how Rabbi Akiva in contrast to the theological philosophical preoccupation of the nature of God, is saying no, this is all about experience.
The relation with God has got to be about feeling, not about intellectual sort of gymnastics, about how you prove the existence of God or not. So an existential, passionate, mystical relationship. And so that idea of the mystical relationship within Judaism is one aspect of the legacy of Solomon. The other aspect of this legacy of Solomon comes in the “Book of Ecclesiastes” which he is said to have written at the end of his life. And the “Book of Ecclesiastes,” on the face of it is a highly cynical book. Again, a very short book. It’s a cynical book which basically starts off as saying what’s the point of life? It’s all a load of hot air. There’s nothing new. The sun keeps on going round and round. What’s happened has happened before. I think he means about emotions, not about interventions. People write books all the time and it gets us nowhere. The sun rises and the sun sets and we work and we, what do we get? We all end up dead in the end so what’s the point? Very, very stoic if you like. Wisdom literature in a general sense but they say that’s him at the end of his life. And in the book he says, you know, “I’ve been the wisest man. "I’m supposed to be the wisest man "in the whole of Jerusalem. "And I’ve looked at everything from top to bottom, "from in and out. "And I’m telling you I cannot discover a good reason "for why we are here.” Now that’s what he says. But what he’s really asking for is what is the secret? Is there a secret of how to succeed in life? So he says okay, we’re going to do first thing I did, I tried wisdom. I asked for wisdom.
I became very wise. I amass more wisdom than anybody else. Look at my “Book of Proverbs” which I’ve written all these different proverbs which shared with some other authors. But nevertheless, clearly I was into wisdom and I was into following Torah and being a good person. But in the end I found that wisdom is frustrating. The famous thing, “the more you know, "the more you know you don’t know. "The more you want to know.” There’s no end to it. It doesn’t solve anything. So I thought okay, wisdom isn’t the sole answer. I’ll try another answer. I’ll try pleasure. Let’s have fun. Let’s be an epicurian. Let’s have fun. And I had fun. I had every pleasure you could possibly have on earth. Every physical pleasure. I built gardens and waterfalls and swimming pools and singers and made singers and good looking women and belly dancers. A lot, I tried it all. And that didn’t satisfy 'cause they realised there was an end. You can only indulge so much. And sometimes the more you eat, you then sick up and it’s not good anymore. So that wasn’t the answer. And I tried a combination of all these and that still wasn’t an answer. “And who knows?” he said. “What happens after we die?” I don’t know what happens after we die. I don’t know if we go up to heaven and animals go down to earth. What we know, we can’t know anything. In the end, there’s an addendum at the end and it was added on people say because otherwise this book would never have survived. And the last line in the book says My final conclusion when I’ve been through everything, time for this, a time for that. A time to live, a time to die. A time to love, a time to hate.
A time for war, a time for peace. Everything in life has a place. The only thing he says in the end is you’ve got to behave like a good person. You’ve got to follow the Torah. Be a good person. That’s the only thing that matters. Well actually, there’s something else he says. And it’s the only phrase that is repeated seven times in the short “Book of Ecclesiastes.” And this short message goes like this. “The only good,” and this is my translation but some people say that’s not correct. But then everybody argues about translation. But I think it says this. My final word, the only good thing for a human being is to eat and to drink. To live a healthy life and to show his soul the good in what he is doing. Whether he’s working in agriculture, whether he’s working at university, whether he’s working in Wall Street, whatever you’re doing, look at the good side and be positive about it. You’ve got to be positive. That’s the answer in life. To see the good, be positive. But then there’s an addendum. And the addendum is but this is , To be able to do this is a gift for God from God. Some people can’t. Some people seem unable. Some people are able to cope with the pressures. Some people are not. But if you want to know how to cope with life, this is King Solomon, the first self-help book in history and the one if you like, that made his name as a wise guy. But like all wise guys, they’re very good at giving advice to other people and not so good at following it themselves. So there I will end my presentation for today and next time when we get together, I will be talking about the division of the country and the slow deterioration of the monarchy.
Thank you Jeremy. I just a couple of questions if you don’t mind having a quick look on the Q&A.
Yeah, I’m happy to tackle 'em. So let’s have a quick look.
Q&A and Comments:
Sandy Landros, great soap opera. Yeah, you bet! I love soap operas. Hollywood material but for some reason, they find David more attractive than Solomon.
Q: Rose Rami, to marry Pharaoh’s daughter, is that correct thing to do in the terms of idolatrous worship?
A: No, this is precisely the point. In pursuing his political ambition, to spread out his monarchy and in order to expand his kingdom, he made alliances. That’s how you did it in those days. And these alliances involved having all these women around. And you know, if a thousand women, listen, just think about it. If he spent one night with each wife, it would take, what? Three years before he got round each one. So it must have been a problem stewing in the harem there and this was a mistake. So I believe that this was why in the end, his dynasty came to the end that it did. It definitely was idolatrous.
Q: Where do we find the list of materials that went into the temple?
A: Well, if you look at Kings, Kings 1. There’s Kings 1 and there’s Kings 2 and if you go to the 7th chapter, you will start seeing from there the the building programme of King Solomon and how, what every detail was.
Q: Judy Franklin, what does wife imply? A concubine? How could he possibly have any kind of relationship with sex with all these people?
A: Yes, Judy, that’s the whole point. No, a wife was in an official formal position. The wife was somebody, whether it’s inheritance, whether it’s to produce sons to lead. They had a unique position as hopefully every wife has with every husband to this day and age. But in addition, there was a concubine. The concubine was in a sense the property of the king like a super servant with benefits. They had lots of children. He had hundreds of children from them but they had no position of authority. But it’s not again like the court of Louis XIV. The Sun King had all these wives and mistresses. The wives, the official wives produced the heirs. The mistresses, they had sons who were given knighthoods or dukedoms or whatever it was, had positions. Some of them were ignored but that’s how it was. And or to this very day, if you look at Saudi Arabia. So the concubine is somebody with specific sexual rights. Later on, this becomes an interesting theological issue.
Q: Can Jews have concubines?
A: Officially we can’t. But in fact there was a period, particularly in the golden age of Holland, when a lot of Jews did. But that’s another story for a different lecture at a different time.
Michael Web, where do we find the ? So what does wife imply? So I’ve dealt with that one. Jennifer, thank you. Thank you very much.
Faith, just like a mafia, he was a don. Solomon knew how to cement power. Exactly so, I mean this is politics. And he had as I said, his concierge as well. Thinking of Monty Pythons, the meaning of life. Ah, Monty Python. I love Monty Python, particularly “The Life of Brian,” my favourite film of all time.
Thank you, Carla. Thank you. Hey Jackie, thank you very much. How lovely to hear from you and that’s it. So I see you next time.
[Judi] Well thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon for your…
Oh yes, sorry. Yes, yes indeed. Those of you follow me on the Bible will see me tomorrow. Take care everybody.
[Judi] Thank you everybody. Bye-bye.
[Jeremy] Bye.