Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [85]
After David’s death, his eldest son, Adonijah, made a futile grab for the throne by asking Bathsheba if he might sleep with David’s virgin concubine, Abishag. Bathsheba reports this request to Solomon, knowing that Solomon will understand the implications of Adonijah’s design. Solomon has his half brother Adonijah assassinated. He will make short work of the few other possible threats to his rule, proving himself as ruthlessly cold-blooded as his father was. When God later commends him for not asking for the life of his enemies, Solomon must have snickered. He had already dispensed with all of them.
BIBLICAL VOICES
God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you.” (1 Kings 3: 11-13; emphasis added)
Was Solomon really so smart?
In the ancient joke, when the comedian is asked, “Who was that lady?,” the famous reply goes, “That was no lady. That was my wife.”
The punch line changes when it comes to Solomon: “Those were no ladies. They were prostitutes.”
Think of Solomon and we think of wisdom, the ancient Israelite equivalent to the Judge Wapner on television’s People’s Court, coolly making wise judgments at a moment’s notice. In a dream, the newly crowned King Solomon asked God for wisdom. Impressed by the request, God grants Solomon’s wish but also gives him everything else he didn’t ask for. While Kings asserts that Solomon “spake three thousand proverbs,” the biblical evidence of his smarts rests largely upon a story told over and over again. But the story that most people remember is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
In this well-known folktale, two women bring a baby to King Solomon. One woman’s child has died in the night. Both women live in the same house and both claim this live baby as their own. Solomon ponders the case for a moment and orders the baby to be cut in half, and a half given to each mother. One woman shrieks and says to give the child to the other. Solomon knows that she is the real mother. Such wisdom. All Israel is impressed.
What they didn’t tell you in Sunday school was that those two women were prostitutes. So what were two prostitutes doing in King Solomon’s palace? There are two choices here. One is that they were simply harlots of the sort readers of the “real” Bible should now be accustomed to encountering. The other possibility is that they were cultic prostitutes, also well known throughout the Hebrew scriptures. At the end of 1 Kings, mention is even made of male temple prostitutes who were finally cleaned out of Jerusalem by King Jehoshaphat during his reign in 873 BCE.
A grim archaeological dig, reported in Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 1997), offers evidence that prostitution continued long afterward in this part of the world. Near the remains of a Roman-era building that may have been a brothel in the city of Ashkelon, two archaeologists found the remains of many infant children, leading them to speculate that the prostitutes of this later era did not share the same maternal concerns as the two prostitutes who presented themselves to Solomon.
Even though Solomon is conventionally viewed with reverence for building the first Temple in Jerusalem, he allowed other religions and cults to flourish in his kingdom, especially to keep his many wives and concubines happy. The number of Solomon’s “strange women,” according to the text, reached seven hundred princesses