An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 76: Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and Euphemisms (2 Chronicles 6-10)

2 Chronicles 6-10
Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and Euphemisms.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

2 Chronicles 6

“And the king turned his face, and blessed the whole congregation of Israel: and all the congregation of Israel stood.”

Solomon delivers a sermon in front of the temple, from a platform that he has had specially built. He reminds everyone, once again, of how God made David a king, how David wanted to build a temple but that God made the task fall to Solomon. The rest of the sermon is then an exhortation to God to “hear thou from the heavens” to the prayers of the people whenever they repent for some wrong-doing and are being punished. It’s interesting to note that Solomon also asks God to hear the prayers of strangers from outside Israel if they come to worship, indicating that Yahweh worship is not an exclusively Israelite matter, rather that gaining converts is seen as a more potent symbol. I also quite liked that in V36 Solomon notes that “there is no man that sinneth not” – the prayer basically runs that when men sin (which they inevitably will do), please forgive them. This all has a quite a modern feel to it, so surprising to find it within all the smiting and doom of the OT, but then it also gives Solomon a different feel to the majority of kings and judges, more of a philosopher than a warrior.

2 Chronicles 7

“Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the house.”

A fire from heaven consumes Solomon’s offerings but then the smoke renders the temple uninhabitable for a while. Again, it would seem. The feast continues for seven days, and after this God visits Solomon in a dream and basically puts over His side of the contract given in the previous chapter, to whit; yes, I will save you from drought, locusts etc. when you ask it, provided that you keep to your side of the covenant, and if you don’t, I’ll mess you up bad.

2 Chronicles 8

“And Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he had built for her: for he said, My wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places are holy, whereunto the ark of the LORD hath come.”

A short chapter that summaries the ongoing reign of Solomon. He extracts tribute from the various Amorites, Perrizites and so forth, and the implication is that these people become slaves for the martial Israelites. Hiram of Tyre also sends ships of tribute, but this is more from friendship than conquest. All religious observations are conducted in good order.

I wanted to note the bit in the quote above, that Solomon marries an Egyptian noblewoman. Technically this mixing with non-Israelite is against the covenant, although no mention is made of this here, other than that she should be kept away from the holy sites. However, marriage between noble families of different nations is pretty much a standard way of forging alliances between societies with monarchs; it seems to me that disallowing this for religious reasons is a very good way of alienating a lot of possible allies. Fine if you are absolutely sure of your strength to remain independent, perhaps, but not very politically wise.

2 Chronicles 9

“And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.”

This chapter covers the visit from the Queen of Sheba, as well as more tributes received by Solomon and the various artifacts, such as an ivory throne, that he uses them to build. Now, I was under the impression that there was more of a relationship between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, but as with Samuel in this book she just comes with questions, which he answers (and as before the text very sneakily glosses over any specifics). I suppose it could depend on how you want to interpret V12 “And king Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she asked…” and what her desire might be, but there’s no "laying with" or "going in unto" or "having knowledge of" or any other biblical euphemisms employed, so perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt (of course, there’s Song of Songs to considers, but we’ll get to that later).

At the end of the chapter, Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam becomes king. And as I recall from Kings, things go to pot pretty soon after. One last thing, V29 “Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?” They may very well be, but we don’t have them!

2 Chronicles 10

“And king Rehoboam took counsel with the old men that had stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, saying, What counsel give ye me to return answer to this people?”

Rehoboam, son of Solomon, becomes king. Jereboam returns from exile in Egypt (for which, in Chronicles, we have been given no context) and he leads the people to request more freedom from Rehoboam. It would seem from the context that a lot of Solomon’s riches come from heavy taxation. Rehoboam takes a three day recess and consults with his advisors. The older advisors, who were part of Solomon’s court, advise that if he is kind to the people, they will be good servants.

The younger advisors, friends of Rehoboam, however, advise him to tax them even more, and of course he takes this latter course of action.

Net result, Jeroboam leads the majority of Israel in revolt to Rehoboam’s rule, leaving him in charge of only the land of Judah. So Rehoboam has managed in a single stroke to undo everything that his father and grandfather have built. My first comment was “nice job, idiot”, but then I thought a bit more on this point. The online version of the KJV that I use has a an additional commentary written in 1710 by Matthew Henry appended to each chapter, and quite often Henry tries to bring in either a moral element to chapters like this, or, just as often, tries to tie it in with a metaphor for Christ. These usually feel pretty shoe-horned, and I think to be honest this really is just a history lesson, not a moral reference. What lessons could we draw from this chapter? Listen to the advice of old men rather than young? Well in this case it doesn’t work well for Rehoboam, but there’s nothing to say that if he’d instead lowered taxes the people wouldn’t have seen him as a weak king and rebelled. This kind of “what if” scenario is largely pointless in history. In my opinion, at least, these chapters ought to be purely read as the sequence of events, and not a series of lessons.