Solomon

Solomon (Hebrew Shelomo, 'peaceful') is known almost entirely through 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. He was the second son of David and Bathsheba, born in Jerusalem and also called Jedidiah. When David was dying, Adonijah tried to claim the throne; Bathsheba and Nathan persuaded the king to crown Solomon instead, perhaps aged fifteen. He began with a purge of Joab and other rivals - a consolidation that belongs in the record alongside the legend of wisdom.

The defining episode appears in 1 Kings 3. At Gibeon, Solomon is asked in a dream what he wishes. He requests not wealth or his enemies' deaths but 'an understanding heart to judge the people'. God promises wisdom and adds the wealth he did not ask for. The Judgement of Solomon follows: two women claim one child, and Solomon orders it cut in half; the true mother withdraws her claim. Tradition assigns him Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, though modern scholarship dates the latter two centuries later.

The signature project was the Temple in Jerusalem, built over seven years from his fourth year. He partnered with Hiram of Tyre, importing Lebanese cedar; the work was financed through heavy levies and corvee labour. Joint fleets traded to Tarshish and Ophir; 1 Kings 10 declares silver was as common as stones. Most scholars treat this as hyperbole. A historical Solomon remains plausible, but the imperial splendour reads as later idealisation.

The darker turn comes at the end. Solomon is said to have taken 700 wives and 300 concubines, many foreign; 1 Kings 11 records altars built to their gods beside the Temple. His son Rehoboam refused to lighten taxes; the northern tribes rejected the Davidic line under Jeroboam, and around 931 BC Israel divided in two. Wisdom, wealth, and apostasy coexist - cited by Jesus as a teacher, revered in the Quran as Sulayman, and in later lore made a magician.