Jerusalem: The Biography

Yet Solomon’s own magnificence came first. He took seven years to finish the Temple, and thirteen to build his own palace, which was larger. There had to be silence in God’s house, so ‘there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house’: his Phoenician craftsmen dressed the stones, carved the cedar and cypress, and crafted the silver, bronze and gold decorations in Tyre before shipping them to Jerusalem. King Solomon fortified Mount Moriah by expanding the old walls: henceforth the name ‘Zion’ described both the original citadel and the new Temple Mount.

When all was finished, Solomon assembled the people to watch the priests bear the acacia wood chest of the Ark of the Covenant from its tent on the citadel of Zion, the City of David, to the Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon sacrificed at the altar and then the priests took the Ark into the Holy of Holies and placed it beneath the wings of the two immense gold cherubim. There was nothing in the Holy of Holies except the cherubim, and the Ark, and nothing within the Ark – just 4 by 2 feet – except the tablets of Moses’ law. Its holiness was such that it was not designed for public worship: In this emptiness resided the austere, imageless divinity of Yahweh, an idea unique to the Israelites.

As the priest came out, the ‘cloud’ of the Divine Presence, ‘the glory of the Lord, filled the house of the Lord.’ Solomon consecrated the Temple before his people, declaring to God: ‘I have surely built thee a house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide for ever,’ God replied to Solomon, ‘I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father.’ This became the first of the festivals that developed into the great pilgrimages of the Jewish calendar: ‘three times a year did Solomon offer burnt offerings upon the altar’. At that moment, the concept of sanctity in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic world found its eternal home. Jews and the other Peoples of the Book believe that the Divine Presence has never left the Temple Mount. Jerusalem would become the superlative place for divine-human communication on earth.

SOLOMON: THE DECLINE

All the ideal Jerusalems, new and old, celestial and temporal, were based on the Bible’s description of Solomon’s city. But there is no other source to confirm it, and nothing has been found of his Temple.

This is less surprising than it sounds. It is impossible to excavate the Temple Mount for political and religious reasons, but even if such excavations were allowed we would probably find no traces of Solomon’s Temple because it was obliterated at least twice, cut down to bedrock at least once and remodelled countless times. Yet the Temple is plausible in size and design even if the biblical writers exaggerated its splendour. Solomon’s Temple was a classic shrine of its time. The Phoenician temples, on which Solomon’s was partly based, were thriving corporations run by hundreds of officials, temple prostitutes whose fees contributed to corporate income, and even in-house barbers for those who dedicated their hair to their gods. The layout of Syrian temples, discovered all over the region, along with their sacred paraphernalia such as their lavers, were very similar to the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s Sanctuary.

Its bounty of gold and ivory is completely credible. A century later, the kings of Israel reigned from sumptuous palaces in nearby Samaria where their ivory has been found by archaeologists. The Bible says Solomon dedicated 500 gold shields to the Temple in an era when other sources prove that gold was plentiful – imported from Ophir, the Egyptians also mined it in Nubia. Just after Solomon’s death, the pharaoh Sheshonq was paid off with the Temple’s treasury of gold when he threatened Jerusalem. King Solomon’s mines were long thought to be mythical, but copper mines have been found in Jordan that were working during his reign. The size of his army, too, was feasible given that we know a king of Israel would field 2,000 chariots just over a century later.^*12

Solomon’s magnificence may be exaggerated, but his decline rings only too true: the king of wisdom became an unpopular tyrant who funded his monumental extravagances through high taxes and the ‘chastisement of whips’. To the disgust of the monotheistic biblical authors, writing two centuries later, Solomon prayed to Yahweh and other local gods, and furthermore he ‘loved many strange women’.

Solomon faced rebellions from Edom in the south and Damascus in the north, while his general, Jeroboam, started to plan a revolt among the northern tribes. Solomon ordered Jeroboam’s assassination but the general fled to Egypt where he was backed by Sheshonq, the Libyan pharaoh of a resurgent empire. The Israelite kingdom was tottering.

THE KINGS OF JUDAH

930–626 BC

REHOBOAM VERSUS JEROBOAM: THE SPLIT