Book of Ecclesiasticus.

The

Doctrine of
Wisdom.

Lactantius and Epiphanius believed that it was written by the great King whose name it bears. All critics now are of opinion that it was the work of an Alexandrian Jew. But it is one link more in the chain by which the influence of Solomon communicated itself to succeeding ages. As the undoubted Wisdom,' or Proverbs of Solomon, formed the first expression of the contact of Jewish religion with the philosophy of Egypt and Arabia, so the apocryphal ‘Wisdom ' of Solomon' is the first expression of the contact of Jewish religion with the Gentile philosophy of Greece. Still the apologue and the warning to kings keeps up the old strain; still the old Wisdom' makes her voice to be heard; and out of the worldly prudence of Solomon springs, for the first time, in distinct terms, the hope full of immortality."1

One further step remains. "The wisdom of Joshua, the son ' of Sirach,' through its Latin title known as Ecclesiasticus," is a still more direct imitation of the works of Solomonaccording to St. Jerome, not merely of the Proverbs, but of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles all in one. We might now seem to have reached the verge to which 'the 'Wisdom of Solomon' extended. But it is just at this moment that it strikes out in two new lines, each of the utmost importance in the history of the chosen people-each, by a continuous process, carried back to Solomon himself.

The first of these came directly from that contact with the Greek philosophy, of which the two apocryphal books are the earliest outward expression.

The exaltation and the personification of Wisdom' lent itself to those abstract speculations which drew out the different ideas wrapt up in the Divine Essence. Sophia,' or "Wisdom,' became the feminine, as Logos,' or 'Reason,' was the masculine, representation of the doctrine of the Divine Intelligence communicating itself to the mind of man.

1 Wisdom i. 1, vi. 1, 9, iii. 1-4, v. 1-5, &c. &c.

The teach

ing by

Parables.

Accordingly, when, on Christ's appearance, the stores of
the Greek language were ransacked to furnish expressions
adequate to the occasion, the word Wisdom,' oopia, was
called forth to do service for the last time, in the Jewish
history, on the grandest scale. Twice, in the New Tes-
tament itself, the term is actually applied. The next
generation of Christian theologians found, in the pathetic
expostulations of Wisdom, and the descriptions of her
eternal greatness, the fittest exponents of the words and
nature of Christ; and in the Eastern Church, the name has
been perpetuated for ever in the cathedral of its greatest see.
'Santa Sophia' is the christianisation and divinisation of
the word which was bequeathed to the Church by Solomon.
The other is a still more direct connexion. Not only was
Christ the subject in which the name of The Wisdom of
Solomon found its last and highest application, but His
teaching was the last and highest example of the thing itself.
If we look back to the older Scriptures for the models on
which, in form at least, our Lord's discourses are framed,
it is, for the most part, not the Psalms, nor the Prophecies,
nor the Histories, but the works of Solomon. Not only do •
the short moral and religious aphorisms resemble in general
form the precepts of the Proverbs and of Ecclesiasticus, but
the very name by which the greater part of His teaching is
called is the same as that of the teaching of Solomon. He
spoke in parables' or 'proverbs.' The two Greek 2 words
are used promiscuously in the Evangelical narratives, and
are in fact representatives of one and the same Hebrew
word. It is, we might say, an accident that the Proverbs of
Solomon are not called the Parables,' and that the teachings
of the New Testament are called the Parables' and not
the Proverbs of the Gospels. The illustrations from
natural objects, the selection of the homelier instead of the
2 Παραβολή and παροιμία.

1 Luke vii. 35, xi. 49.

The deeline of Solomon.

grander of these, are not derived from the Prophets, or from the Psalmists, but from the wise Naturalist, who spake

6

of trees, and beasts, and fowls, and creeping things, and fishes,' 'of the singing birds, of the budding fig-tree, of the 'fragrant vine.' The teaching of Solomon is the sanctification of common sense in the Old Testament, and to that sanctification the final seal is set by the adoption of the same style and thought in the New Testament by Him who, with His apostles, taught in 'Solomon's porch,' and expressly compared His wisdom to the wisdom which gathered the nations round Solomon of old.3

From this, the highest honour ever rendered to Solomon, we must pass, before completing the cycle of his wisdom, to the sad story of his decline. The Arabian traditions relate that in the staff on which he leaned, and which supported him long after his death, there was a worm, which was secretly gnawing it asunder. The legend is an apt emblem of the dark end of Solomon's reign. As the record of his grandeur contains a recognition of the interest and value of secular magnificence and wisdom, so the record of his decline and fall contains the most striking witness to the instability of all power that is divorced from moral and religious principle. As Bacon is, in English history,

'The wisest, greatest, meanest, of mankind,'

so is Solomon in Jewish and in sacred history. Every part of his splendour had its dark side, and those dark shades have now to be brought out.

There is a bold expression of Schiller that the Fall was a giant stride in the history of the human race. A reverse of this saying may be applied to the giant stride which Jewish

11 Kings iv. 33; Cant. i. 12, 13, vi. 11, vii. 12, 13, &c. Comp. Sinai and Palestine, Chap. XIII.

2 John x. 23; Acts iii. 11, v. 12. Matt. xii. 42; Luke xi. 31.

civilisation made in the reign of Solomon. It brought with it the fall of the Jewish nation. The commercial intercourse with foreign nations, the assimilation of the Israelite monarchy to the corresponding institutions of the surrounding kingdoms, though it was, as we have seen, indispensable to certain elements of the church and state of Judæa, yet was fraught with danger to a people whose chief safeguard had hitherto been their exclusiveness, and whose highest mission was to keep their faith and manners distinct from the contagion of the world around them. It is not for us to say that this danger was inevitable. The mere fact of the wide extension of the Christian Church and ReligionJewish, Semitic, Palestinian, in their origin-shows that, under certain conditions, the breadth and length of a Religion is as essential as its depth and elevation. But the time was not yet come. The gigantic experiment of Solomon, though partially and prospectively successful, yet in greater part and for the moment failed. Neither he nor his

country were equal to the magnitude of the occasion. As

he is the representative of the splendours of the monarchy,

so is he also the type and cause of its ruin.

Four main causes of corruption are indicated in the Its causes. sacred narrative.

1. Of all the institutions of an Oriental monarchy, the Polygamy. most characteristic and the most fatal is polygamy. It is not on Solomon, but on David, that the heavy responsibility rests, of having first introduced polygamy on an extended scale into the court of Israel. But Solomon carried it out to a degree unparalleled before or since, and his wider intercourse with foreign nations gave him a wider field for selection. The chief Queen, no doubt, was the Egyptian Princess. But she was surrounded by a vast array of inferior wives and concubines, all of them, as far as appears, of foreign extraction; from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Phoenicia,

Polythe

ism.

and the old Canaanitish races.1 Such a system must have completely destroyed the character of the royal family, and brought with it the inevitable evils of the Oriental seraglio.

It may be that the direct demoralisation of the nation was not equal in proportion to that of the court. The seraglio is considered a royal privilege, and the mass of an Eastern population is always monogamist. But the general loosening of the moral and intellectual character by licentiousness is described by Solomon in the Book of Proverbs in terms which assume a mournful interest when viewed in their exemplification in the life of their author. The dangers that haunted the streets of Jerusalem, the disastrous consequences of revelry and debauchery, seem to be the description of a modern, Western capital, rather than of an Oriental city. But, if the most recent expositions of the Canticles be correct, that book contains a picture both of the peril which the Jewish morality must have encountered, and also of its pure and successful resistance. The maid of Shunem is courted by Solomon, but courted in vain. She remains faithful to her true lover, and in their passionate expressions of affection, and in their mutual alarms for each other's safety, lies the lasting2 interest and instruction of the story.

2. The most direct proof of the effect of these foreign influences over Solomon was in the authorised establishment of idolatrous worship. This was in part, we may

The number of the whole harem is stated in 1 Kings xi. 3, at the almost incredible amount of 700 wives, and 300 concubines. This number has been attempted to be reduced from 700 to 70, and from 300 to 80: which would be confirmed by the actual and relative numbers given in Cant. vi. 8,-60 wives and 80 con

cubines. Some of them may have been for state. Darius Codomannus took 360 concubines to battle (Curt. iii. 3, 24). Rehoboam had only 18 queens and 60 (Josephus, 30) coneubines, 2 Chr. xi. 21. See Rosenmüller, A. und N. Morgenl. iii. 181.

2 See Rénan, Cantique des Cantiques; Ginsburg on the Canticles.