Solomon’s Wisdom and Hiram’s Timber

Solomon, now firmly settled in his kingdom and having brought his enemies to punishment, married the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt. He built the walls of Jerusalem much larger and stronger than those that had been there before, and from then on he managed public affairs very peacefully. Nor was his youth any hindrance in doing justice, in keeping the laws, or in remembering the charges his father had given him at his death; he carried out every duty with all the exactness one might have expected from men of age and of the greatest prudence. He now resolved to go to Gibron and sacrifice to God on the bronze altar that Moses had built. There he offered burnt offerings, a thousand in number; and in doing so he was seen to have honored God greatly. For as he slept that very night, God appeared to him and told him to ask for gifts, which he was ready to give him as a reward for his piety. Solomon asked God for what was most excellent and of greatest worth in itself, what God would bestow with the greatest joy, and what it was most profitable for man to receive. He did not wish to be given gold or silver or any other riches, as a man and a youth might naturally have done, for these are the things most people commonly regard as alone of the greatest worth and as the best gifts of God. Instead he said, “Give me, Master, a sound mind and a good understanding, by which I may speak and judge the people according to truth and righteousness.” God was well pleased with these requests, and promised to give him all the things he had not mentioned in his choice: riches, glory, and victory over his enemies; and first of all understanding and wisdom, in such a degree as no other mortal man, king or common person, ever had. He also promised to keep the kingdom for his descendants for a very long time, if he continued righteous and obedient to him and imitated his father in the things in which he excelled. When Solomon heard this from God, he leaped at once out of his bed, and when he had worshiped him, he returned to Jerusalem; and after offering great sacrifices before the tabernacle, he feasted all the Jews. [a]

In those days a hard case came before him for judgment, one it was very difficult to find any end to. I think it necessary to explain the facts of the dispute, so that those who come across my writings may know how difficult a case Solomon had to decide, and so that those concerned with such matters may take the king’s shrewdness as a pattern and the more easily give sentence in such questions. Two women came to him who were prostitutes by way of life. The one who seemed to have been wronged spoke first and said, “O king, this other woman and I live together in one room. It happened that we both bore a son at the same hour of the same day. On the third day this woman lay on her son and killed him, and then took my son out of my bosom and moved him over to herself, and while I was asleep she laid her dead son in my arms. In the morning, when I wanted to nurse the child, I did not find my own, but saw the woman’s dead child lying beside me; for I examined it closely and found it to be so. So I demanded my son back, and when I could not get him, I have turned to you, my lord, for help. Since we were alone and there was nobody there who could convict her, she cares for nothing and persists in stubbornly denying the deed.” When this woman had told her story, the king asked the other woman what she had to say against it. She denied that she had done what she was charged with, and said that it was her child that was living and her opponent’s child that was dead. No one could think what judgment could be given; the whole court was blind in its understanding and could not tell how to solve this riddle. The king alone devised the following way to discover the truth. He had both the dead child and the living child brought in, and sent one of his guards and ordered him to fetch a sword, draw it, and cut both children in two, so that each of the women might have half of the living and half of the dead child. At this all the people privately laughed at the king as no more than a boy. But meanwhile the woman who was the real mother of the living child cried out that he should not do it, but should hand the child over to the other woman as her own; for she would be satisfied with the child’s life and with the sight of it, even if it were counted the other’s child. The other woman was ready to see the child divided, and wanted the first woman to be tormented besides. When the king saw that both their words came from the truth of their feelings, he awarded the child to the woman who cried out to save it, since she was its real mother, and he condemned the other as a wicked woman, who had not only killed her own child but was trying to see her friend’s child destroyed too. The people took this decision as a great sign and proof of the king’s shrewdness and wisdom, and from that day they attended to him as to one who had a divine mind. [e]

These were the commanders of his armies and the officers appointed over the whole country. Over the territory of Ephraim was Ures; over the district of Bithiemes was Dioclerus. Abinadab, who married Solomon’s daughter, had the region of Dor and the seacoast under him. The Great Plain was under Benaiah the son of Achilus, who also governed all the country as far as the Jordan. Gabares ruled over Gilead and Gaulanitis as far as Mount Lebanon, and had under him sixty great and strongly fortified cities. Achinadab managed the affairs of all Galilee as far as Sidon, and he too had married a daughter of Solomon, whose name was Basima. Banacates had the seacoast around Acco, as Shaphat had Mount Tabor and Carmel and Lower Galilee as far as the river Jordan; one man was appointed over all this country. Shimei was entrusted with the territory of Benjamin, and Gabares had the country beyond the Jordan, over which again one governor was appointed. The people of the Hebrews, and the tribe of Judah in particular, grew wonderfully once they gave themselves to farming and the cultivation of their land. For they enjoyed peace and were not distracted by wars and troubles, and they had besides an abundant enjoyment of the most desirable liberty; so everyone was busy increasing the yield of his own land and making it worth more than it had been before. [f]

The king also had other rulers over the land of Syria and of the Philistines, which reached from the river Euphrates to Egypt, and these collected his tribute from the nations. They supplied the king’s table and his supper every day with about 180 bushels of fine flour and 360 of meal, ten fattened oxen, twenty oxen from the pastures, and a hundred fattened lambs. All this was besides the deer and wild oxen taken by hunting, and the birds and fish that foreigners brought to the king day by day. Solomon also had so great a number of chariots that the stalls of the horses for them numbered forty thousand; and besides these he had twelve thousand horsemen, half of whom attended the king in Jerusalem while the rest were scattered about and lived in the royal villages. The same officer who provided for the king’s expenses also supplied fodder for the horses, and always carried it to the place where the king was staying at the time. [j]

The shrewdness and wisdom that God had given Solomon were so great that he surpassed the ancients. He was in no way inferior to the Egyptians, who are said to have surpassed all men in understanding; indeed, it is evident that their shrewdness fell far short of the king’s. He also excelled and distinguished himself in wisdom above those who were most eminent among the Hebrews of that time for cleverness: I mean Ethan, Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Hemaon. He also composed books of odes and songs, a thousand and five, and three thousand books of parables and comparisons. For he told a parable about every kind of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar, and likewise about beasts and all kinds of living creatures, whether on the earth, in the seas, or in the air. He was not ignorant of any of their natures and did not neglect to inquire into them, but described them all like a philosopher and showed his exact knowledge of their various properties. God also enabled him to learn the skill that drives out demons, a science useful and healing to men. He composed incantations too, by which illnesses are relieved, and he left behind him forms of exorcism by which people drive out demons so that they never return. This method of cure is of great force to this day. For I have seen a certain man of my own nation, named Eleazar, freeing people possessed by demons in the presence of Vespasian and his sons, his officers, and the whole crowd of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this. He put to the nostrils of the possessed man a ring that had under its seal a root of one of the kinds Solomon mentioned, and then, as the man smelled it, drew the demon out through his nostrils; and when the man at once fell down, he charged the demon never to come back into him, all the while making mention of Solomon and reciting the incantations he had composed. And when Eleazar wanted to persuade the spectators and prove to them that he had such a power, he set a cup or basin full of water a little way off, and commanded the demon, as it went out of the man, to overturn it, and so let the spectators know that it had left the man. When this was done, the skill and wisdom of Solomon were shown very plainly. It is so that all men may know the greatness of Solomon’s abilities and how he was loved by God, and so that the extraordinary virtues of every kind with which this king was endowed may not be unknown to any people under the sun; for this reason, I say, we have spoken so fully of these matters. [m]

Hiram king of Tyre, when he heard that Solomon had succeeded to his father’s kingdom, was very glad of it, for he had been David’s friend. So he sent ambassadors to greet him and congratulate him on the present happy state of his affairs. In reply Solomon sent him a letter, whose contents follow: “King Solomon to King Hiram. Know that my father wanted to build a temple to God, but was prevented by wars and continual campaigns; for he did not stop overthrowing his enemies until he had made them all pay tribute. But I give thanks to God for the peace I now enjoy. Because of it I am at leisure, and I intend to build a house to God, for God foretold to my father that such a house would be built by me. So I ask you to send some of your subjects with mine to Mount Lebanon to cut timber, for the Sidonians are more skillful than our people at cutting wood. As for wages for the woodcutters, I will pay whatever price you set.” [q]

When Hiram had read this letter, he was pleased with it, and wrote back this answer to Solomon: “King Hiram to King Solomon. It is right to bless God that he has entrusted your father’s government to you, a wise man endowed with every virtue. For my part, I rejoice at your situation and will serve you in everything you send to me about. When my subjects have cut down many large trees of cedar and cypress, I will send them down to the sea, and order my men to make rafts of them and sail them to whatever place in your country you wish, and leave them there; after that your subjects can carry them to Jerusalem. But see that you provide us with grain for this timber, for we need it, because we live on an island.” [r]

Copies of these letters remain to this day, preserved not only in our books but among the Tyrians as well; so if anyone wants to know the certainty about them, he may ask the keepers of the public records of Tyre to show them to him, and he will find that what is set down there agrees with what we have said. I have said this much because I want my readers to know that we say nothing but the truth. We do not compose a history out of plausible tales that deceive people and please them at the same time; we do not try to avoid examination or ask people to believe us at once. Nor are we free to depart from the truth, which is the proper praise of a historian, and still be blameless. We insist that nothing we say be accepted unless we can show its truth by demonstration and the strongest evidence.

As soon as this letter from the king of Tyre was brought to King Solomon, he praised the readiness and goodwill Hiram had shown in it and repaid him with what he asked. He sent him every year about 120,000 bushels of wheat and as many measures of oil, each measure holding about ten gallons, and the same quantity of wine. So the friendship between Hiram and Solomon grew more and more, and they swore to keep it forever. The king also laid a levy on all the people of thirty thousand laborers, whose work he made easy for them by dividing it prudently among them. He had ten thousand cut timber on Mount Lebanon for one month and then come home and rest for two months, until the other twenty thousand had finished their task at the appointed time; and so afterward the first ten thousand returned to their work every fourth month. Adoram was over this levy. Of the foreigners whom David had left, there were seventy thousand to carry the stones and other materials, and eighty thousand who cut the stones; and three thousand three hundred of these were rulers over the rest. He also ordered them to cut out large stones for the foundations of the temple, and to fit them and join them together on the mountain, and so bring them to the city. This was done not only by our own workmen but also by the workmen Hiram sent. [s]