The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  The Solomonic “cabinet” list in 1 Kings 4.1–6 for the most part retains the officers established by David. The few modifications reflect the changing organization of the early state. To begin with, there are now two “secretaries”—officials perhaps charged with record keeping and/or diplomatic correspondence, which increased significantly in Solomon’s reign. The role of the military is reduced: the chief army officer no longer comes first, and an officer over mercenary forces has been dropped. Apparently Solomon, while holding a considerable supply of arms and chariots along with a standing army, did not wage wars. Rather, he maintained control through diplomacy over the territories conquered or forced to pay tribute by David’s war efforts. His legendary coterie of wives and concubines, criticized by the DH (which records their presence in Jerusalem), represents liaisons with tributary states secured through marriage or concubinage (1 Kings 11.1–8).

  That such “foreign affairs,” which maintained a flow of goods to the capital (1 Kings 4.21), resulted from his diplomatic skill is suggested by Solomon’s association with wisdom and wisdom literature. The narrative of his legendary relationship with the queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10.1–10) builds on his fame as a wisdom figure. In addition, the DH reports a special source, the Book of the Acts of Solomon, for the Solomonic segment of the Samuel-Kings account of the monarchy. This is the only such source cited for a single king; such a work is not even mentioned for David. The use of a special source is indicated by the way 1 Kings 3–11 constitutes a highly structured and self-contained work, unified by the themes of wealth, honor, and wisdom. That source provided information about “the acts of Solomon, all that he did as well as his wisdom” (1 Kings 11.41). Solomon’s reputation for wisdom is an aspect of the internationalism of his reign. He succeeded in maintaining Davidic holdings not by battle but by persuasive speech, backed by a well-stocked arsenal and the reputation of his father’s brilliant military leadership.

  Other changes in the list of Solomon’s cabinet indicate a growing bureaucracy. An added official “in charge of the palace” was perhaps the majordomo overseeing the elaborate palace complex, now visited by many foreign emissaries as well as by local officials. The person designated to serve “over the officials” was another new cabinet officer, appointed to coordinate the twelve officials charged with supplying provisions for the court on a monthly basis. Finally, the priestly representation on the cabinet expands, as one might expect in a state erecting a major temple building; there is now a third priestly officer, the “king’s friend,” who perhaps integrated the sacral and secular functions of the Temple institution with those of the royal administration.

  An officer in charge of the labor forces remains on the list, as the need to oversee the workers in building projects, begun by David, continued and expanded during Solomon’s rule. The question is, who were the laborers? Davidic claims to have secured prisoners of war for laborers appear likely. A similar claim is made for Solomon—he conscripted a levy of “forced labor out of all Israel” (1 Kings 5.13), a workforce that, according to 1 Kings 9.20–22, consisted only of non-Israelites still remaining within national territories. This claim seems dubious because of counterclaims in 1 Kings 11.28 and 12.10–11 about Solomonic conscription of Israelites for work gangs. Those texts, however, form part of DH’s rationale for the breakup of the United Monarchy, so that Solomon’s maintenance of a foreign rather than a domestic labor force remains likely. Even the famous protest (1 Sam. 8.11–17) against a state system attributed to Samuel stops short of warning the people that they would be conscripted into labor gangs; they would serve in the military and in service professions but their servants (presumably nonnatives) would work on state projects.

  Sacral-Royal Ideologies of the Monarchic State

  The ability of a national ruler to exercise power over a large group of people—over kinship groups with which he has little or no connection—was facilitated by military successes, by favorable redistribution policies (2 Sam. 6.18–19), and by securing loyal subjects and staff through both those means. All these processes are related to or contingent upon an ideological component of royal rule. A king’s power ultimately rested on and was legitimized by a series of symbolic acts, attitudes, icons, and structures connecting the king with the deity and human kingship with divine rule. Ancient Israel clearly shared in this fundamental aspect of the construction of kingship, both in its general features and in its specifically Near Eastern manifestations. The king in Israel was accepted because he was perceived as appointed by Yahweh; and Yahweh’s character in turn was increasingly and richly expressed by the metaphor of divine kingship.

  The conceptualization of the right of a king to rule over his subjects appears, for example, in the use of anointing as part of the ritual of accession to the throne. Anointing a king to office is a religious rather than a secular act throughout the ancient Near East, as elsewhere. Samuel pours oil on Saul’s head, but Yahweh is attributed with anointing him ruler over Israel (1 Sam. 10.1). The elders make David king at Hebron by anointing him because Yahweh instructed that he thus be made ruler over Israel (2 Sam. 5.2–3; see also Ps. 89.20). And the priest Zadok anoints Solomon, with the prayer that Yahweh ordain his rule (1 Kings 1.35–39). Royal as well as priestly recipients of unction are designated “Yahweh’s anointed” (for example, 1 Sam. 16.6), never “Israel’s anointed.” The ceremony of anointing was a sign of divine election and legitimated the king’s right to rule.

  Another aspect of Near Eastern kingship ideology that finds its counterpart in ancient Israel also emphasizes the divine-human connection: the king is said to be the “son of Yahweh.” This appears in the adoption formula of 2 Samuel 7.14, where God says of Solomon: “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.” In several psalms (Pss. 2.7; 89.26–27; and perhaps 110.3) the Israelite king, probably David, is presented as God’s (firstborn) son. These texts are all difficult to date and may not come from the period of the early monarchy. Yet the wide occurrence of “son of god/goddess” as a royal title in the ancient Near East makes it likely that this familiar way of expressing divine sanction for a human ruler was part of the ideology accompanying the establishment of kingship in Israel. The use of son-of-god terminology, however, does not necessarily mean that the king himself was considered divine. Near Eastern sources vary in this respect, with Egyptian rulers claiming actual divinity but Semitic ones, Israel included, using the concept metaphorically to connote divine sanction for dynastic power.

  These aspects of royal ideology are recovered mainly from Near Eastern and biblical texts. Yet the most important representations of royal-sacral ideology were communicated visually, through crowns (2 Sam. 1.10; 2 Kings 11.12; see also Ps. 132.17–18), scepters, garments, and thrones (2 Sam. 14.9; 1 Kings 2.12). These symbols of royal power are also accoutrements of divine rule in Near Eastern iconography; indeed, deities are signified in art by their distinctive headgear, clothing, and insignia of office. In Israel, with its aniconographic stance precluding images of God, the throne especially served as a visible sign of Yahweh. The many enthronement and other royal psalms conveyed the idea of Yahweh’s royal power (Pss. 47.8; 89.14; 93.1; etc.), as did the references to God enthroned on cherubim (Pss. 80.1; 99.1; Isa. 37.16). The ark of Yahweh (or of the covenant, or of God) with the attached cherubim was conceptualized as Yahweh’s throne (1 Sam. 4.4; 2 Sam. 6.2). Just as God ruled from a throne in a heavenly abode, so divine presence and power emanated from an earthly structure—a temple. The ark was placed within the Temple as the locus of Yahweh’s unseen reality. The Temple building itself served many of the integrative functions of an emerging nation-state, and it was also the primary visual representation of the divine election and sanction of the king who built it and of his dynastic successors. Royal authority compelling people to act against individual or kinship group interests was powerfully legitimized as God’s will as represented by God’s earthly dwelling in the capital city.

  The idea of constructing the Temple in Jerus
alem probably originated with David. The various stages of temple building are well known from other ancient Near Eastern states, and David seems to have carried out most of them. The explanation of the DH about David’s failure to complete the project—1 Kings 5.3 attributes it to his preoccupation with military operations—probably has validity. At the same time, the census attempted by David (2 Sam. 24), perhaps related to the need to secure revenues for construction projects, coincided with one of the era’s periodic and deadly outbreaks of pestilential disease. Such a trauma, understood as a sign of divine disfavor, would have sufficed to keep David from temple building. Instead, he is said to have brought the major icon of the premonarchic era—the ark of Yahweh—to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6.17) and to have constructed the future Temple’s altar on the very site where the Temple would stand (2 Sam. 24.25; 1 Chron. 22.1). Whatever David’s role in initiating the process of building and dedicating a temple, it was Solomon who completed it.

  If the ark was a national or Israelite symbol of divine presence, effective in communicating to the people of the realm that God favored the king and his bureaucracy, the Temple was essential for projecting that message internationally. Israelite forces achieved military dominance over neighboring states or areas; the legitimization of that political dominion was then made known through the Temple to the tribute-bearing envoys and other representatives of non-Israelite polities who came to Jerusalem. The newly established capital in Jerusalem could not effectively serve its diplomatic, imperialistic, and national functions without the visual sign of Yahweh’s sanction of the monarchy.

  The artistic and architectural features of the Solomonic Temple are known principally from 1 Kings 5–7. According to that detailed description, the resplendent tripartite building and its accoutrements contained elements recognizable in the Phoenician, Egyptian, Canaanite, Aramean, and Neo-Hittite artistic vernacular of the Iron II period. Representatives of all the foreign peoples either dominated by the early monarchy or with which it had established at least parity, as well as Israelite pilgrims and tribal officials visiting Jerusalem, would see the Temple as a symbol of the Israelite god’s presence and power. The Temple’s architectural and artistic conventions thus formed a visual idiom meaningful to the widest audience.

  Two gigantic pillars stood at the entrance to the Temple, each 23 or more cubits (over 10 meters [33 feet]) high and bearing the enigmatic names Jachin and Boaz. As freestanding columns, they flanked the building’s forecourt (NRSV “vestibule”), just as pillars marked the monumental gateways of sacred precincts throughout the ancient Near East. Carved reliefs of such gateways show that the completion of a temple was marked by a grand procession and celebration, which brought the statue of the realm’s chief god into the temple. The 1 Kings 8 account of bringing the ark into the Jerusalem Temple depicts just such a significant religio-political act: installing a deity into a new abode. The highly visible pillars—the only elaborately decorated elements in the otherwise stark and plain exterior of the Temple—thereafter communicated the legitimizing presence of Yahweh to all onlookers.

  The interior of the Temple in Jerusalem, like most other such buildings in the ancient Near East, was not a place of public worship. Rather it was the dwelling place of God’s unseen presence, entered regularly by just a few senior priestly officials. The size of the Temple building, considerably smaller than the adjacent palace in the royal-sacral precinct of Jerusalem, thus does not mean that it was simply a royal chapel nor that God’s house was less important than the king’s house. The palace complex was inhabited by scores of people and was the major government building; its interior space needs were considerably greater than that of a temple that was home to a single deity. Yet the Temple had important exterior space—courtyards for sacrificing and where pilgrims could gather. In addition, the Temple interior was flanked by an extensive, three-storied series of side chambers, all contained within the exterior walls of the building, that served as storage rooms for the valuable items of tribute acquired by David and Solomon (see 1 Kings 7.51), as well as for items received as offerings. Befitting its role as a national treasury, the building itself in architectural plan was fortresslike in its exterior appearance—looming high above its platform and surrounding courts. While its interior space was smaller than that of the palace complex, its main hall, lacking interior columns, was as large as such a space could be; and the building as a whole was larger than any other known sacral structure of its time in the Levant. Jerusalem thus became the core of a royal Zion theology heralding Yahweh’s choice of the city as the seat of dynastic rule and concomitant divine presence.

  Change and Continuity in the Period of State Formation

  The monumentality and grandeur of the Jerusalem Temple did not mean that it replaced local shrines. The diverse expressions of religious life in villages and cities distant from the capital continued, and local priestly families remained important in various aspects of community life. Regional centers of worship from the tenth century have been located, for example, at Megiddo and at Taanach, each with its own repertoire of vessels and ritual objects, not all compatible with Jerusalem ideology; later Deuteronomic and prophetic tirades against such local shrines provide further evidence. The continuing existence of these religious centers is just one dimension of the complex dynamics of the transition to statehood in ancient Israel. The emergence of the state did not obliterate other existing features of Israelite culture, and not everyone was caught up in the political, religious, and economic culture of a dynastic state.

  The persistence of strong kinship-based culture in monarchic Israel is apparent in the Bible’s continued attention to tribal identities and territories. Indeed, tribal ideology colors the stories and narratives of Israel’s premonarchic period, materials that apparently took shape under the monarchy. While tribal structures and values may be at odds with those of a state, they can also be complementary and supportive of the state’s stability, as ethnographic evidence shows. This is particularly true when tribal solidarity, manifest in grassroots support for local lineage heads, is transferred to the crown, as in the Judean segment of the premonarchic tribal units. Supratribal administrative organs diminish aspects of tribal influence and power; but in smaller villages and settlements, and among those distant from the central or regional authorities, group identity and loyalty normally abides in the kinship and clan units that constitute the tribe.

  Legal cases, for example, tend to be decided at the lowest available authority level. Family households resolve the simplest disputes. As societies become larger and more complex, the family locus of managing conflict is complemented by the formation of lineage judicial authorities—the elders. When disputes cross lineage lines, clan or tribal leaders conduct legal proceedings. The problems of premonarchic Israel that led to state formation included those requiring supratribal authority to deal with disputes. In biblical texts associating the king with justice, David holds a paradigmatic role. The connection of monarch with judicial authority represents general social stability under a state system. In terms of everyday adjudication, the king acts as a kind of highest court of appeals—the court of last resort. The incident in 2 Samuel 15.1–6 seems to represent a rival’s distortion of David’s success in settling claims (see also 1 Kings 3.16–28, where Solomon’s adjudication is linked to his wisdom). Yet royal or national-level adjudication was the exception rather than the rule; the absence of a cabinet-level judicial officer from the Davidic and Solomonic lists is significant in this regard.

  The sociopolitical shift involved in Israelite state formation did not mean organizational discontinuity. Many elements of pre-state society were surely left intact for a long time after the emergence of a new political structure and its accompanying ideologies. Nor did the new administrative apparatus entail the dissolution of prior ones; the state added layers of sociopolitical organization to existing ones. The successful functioning of the state system thus depended on the continued operation of kinship structures, and st
ate and tribe were not in constant and inevitable tension.

  Yet the Bible does express reservations about centralized monarchic government. Most noteworthy are the antimonarchic passages of 1 Samuel (8.4–28 and 10.17–19; see also 1 Kings 12.1–4 and the “law of the king” in Deut. 17.18–22), in which Samuel warns the people about negative aspects of a state system. The dating of these texts is unresolved, although the weight of the evidence seems to preclude an authentic eleventh-century speech of Samuel. State systems are usually not contested by a groundswell of public complaint against monarchic hierarchies, policies, conscription, or even taxes. Rather, they break down as the result of jealousies among leadership factions over the perquisites of being at the top of a distribution system that clearly advantages the king and his courtiers. In this regard, the legendary accounts of usurpers and of succession struggles in the books of Samuel and also in Kings reveal the true nature of the opposition: to the privileges of individual kings and their followers, not to kingship itself. From the outset the monarchy was meant to be dynastic. David was in fact a wildly successful usurper, however the later pro-Davidic narrative of the DH justifies his replacement of Saul’s line. Having established a loyal patronage among Judeans, the army, and a priestly faction, David was well situated to move into the position of God’s chosen once Saul had died. Yet his sons struggled against each other to achieve their father’s vaunted power, and Solomon’s heir was opposed and ultimately rejected by a northerner.