his line on the same conditions as those on which it had been promised to David. Informed of this transaction, or suspecting some such intrigue, Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam, who, however, escaped into Egypt, and remained there till the king's death. After a reign of forty years, "Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father; and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.”* 1 Kings xi. 1-43." When Solomon was old" (4); but, if he came to the throne at eighteen years of age, he was but fifty-eight at his death (comp. 42). "Solomon went after Ashtoreth," &c. (5). How he did this is specified in the following verses: "Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh. . . . . . And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods." It does not appear that the historian meant to charge Solomon with worshipping idols himself, or with any thing beyond the constructive idolatry of allowing and providing for the idolatry of his foreign wives. — “Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon " (7); that is, their abominable idol. —“I will give one tribe to thy son (13); the tribe of Benjamin continued to adhere to the fortunes of the house of Solomon, but because of its inferiority of numbers, it is here treated as but an appendage of that of Judah. —“After he had smitten every male in Edom" (15); comp. 2 Sam. viii. 14; Psalm lx. 1. — “He gathered men unto him, and became captain over a band ” (24) ; Dean Prideaux ("Connection," &c., Part I. Book 1) considers this to have been the foundation of the kingdom of Syria.—"Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel" (42); which none of his posterity did."Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead" (43). So imperfect is the history, that, with all Solomon's wives, Rehoboam is the only child of his who is mentioned. LECTURE XL. THE PERIOD FROM SOLOMON TO ELISHA. 1 KINGS XII. 1.-XXII. 53. CONDITION OF NEIGHBOURING NATIONS AT THIS PERIOD. — DATE OF THE --- PHAT, IN JUDAH; OF NADAB, - In our survey of the Jewish records, we have arrived at a period, from which the history of the people has more connection than in earlier times with that of other ancient nations, more or less known to us through the profane writers. It will contribute to a satisfactory view of some of the events of which we are presently to read, to bear in mind a few facts concerning the condition of the principal states which bordered on the territory of the Jews, or which from other causes came into political relations with them. The method of calculation by which the foundation of Solomon's temple is referred to the year 1012 be fore Christ has been already explained.* With what date in the history of the earth, or of its human inhabitants, this corresponds, we do not know. If the views formerly presented concerning the book of Genesis are correct, it follows that no aid whatever can be obtained from that treatise in fixing the period of the Creation, or of what is called the Universal Deluge. If we abandon this resource, we have no other. In fact, we possess no means of constructing a chronology founded upon the date of the beginning of the race of man. We know nothing about that date, except by very vague approximation, the best inferences in respect to it being drawn from sources quite different from that of the Mosaic books. On the one hand, that the creation of man belongs to the latest period in the series of geological transformations of our planet appears from the fact, that no fossil human remains have been found in any of the earlier formations. On the other hand, sufficient indications show that a much longer time than has commonly been supposed must have elapsed between the creation of the first man and the dawn of authentic history. The dispersion of men over distant regions of the globe, the inventions in art and discoveries in science, and the various arrangements and accommodations of social life, which appear with the first glimpses of human condition that history presents, seem to require much more time to bring them from their feeble beginnings to such a maturity, than the score or two of centuries which the common reckoning allows. The great diversity of languages, differing so widely both in their roots and in grammatical construction, and the physiological varieties of the Vol. II. pp. 130, 131. different races, present further objections to the theory of a recent creation of mankind, provided one supposes at the same time that the whole race sprang from a single pair, - an opinion, however, which rests mainly on those two ancient fragments, incorporated by Moses into the beginning of his first book, and, as I conceive, so used by him without any intention to express so much as an opinion of his own upon the subject. The first appearance of man upon this planet seems, from such evidence as we have, to have belonged to the same period with that of the domestic animals who have been made to serve his uses, and of the wild animals upon which he has made war for his security or for his supplies. How many ages intervened between that creation and the dawn of authentic history, how many human generations came and passed away before human society was sufficiently consolidated to furnish materials for any record, and before inventions in art and permanent domestic and political relations had provided the means of preserving any memory of the past by record or tradition, this is a question on which we have only to confess our ignorance. Nothing can be plainer than that Egypt and the countries of the East could not have been in the advanced condition in which Abraham is represented to have seen them, within four or five hundred years after an annihilating deluge had swept over the globe, and a new cycle in human things had begun. The furthest limit of any thing that can be called history is to be found somewhere between twenty-five and thirty centuries before Christ, in the reign of the Egyptian king named Menes; and the first glimpse we have of the condition of that people presents them as already advanced in the arts of civilized life, and in the security and comforts of a social state. Egypt continued to be a flourishing monarchy through the whole period of Jewish independence, and down to its disastrous war with the Persians, in the year 525 before Christ. Edom, or Idumæa, was a territory lying southwest of the Holy Land, on the eastern confine of Egypt. Its inhabitants, who traced their parentage to Esau, the elder son of Isaac, constituted an independent nation before the time of the Exodus from Egypt. Subjugated, as we have seen, by David, they revolted from Solomon. The little of their history which survives presents no remarkable persons or events. The recent examinations, by travellers, of the remains of their capital, Petra, have given unexpected confirmation to the ancient representations of its consequence and wealth. Of the history of the ancient, or first Assyrian empire, extending over the territory on the east of Judea, along the banks of the Asiatic rivers Tigris and Euphrates, the first traces appear about the year 2200 before our era.* Its capitals were Nineveh on the former river, and Babylon on the latter. It appears to have been at a period not far from that of the foundation of the first Assyrian monarchy, that Abraham emigrated from that country into Canaan; and one may conjecture that the political revolution which was going on may have had an influence in determining the * According to the fragments of Ctesias preserved by Diodorus Siculus, there were 1306 years from the accession of Ninus to the death of Sardanapalus, in 876 B. C. Strabo, Abydenus, and other writers, adopt this date. Eusebius allows 1240 years between Ninus and Sardana palus, and places the death of the latter in 819 B. C. For a learned investigation of the Assyrian chronology, with full references to the authorities above mentioned, and others, see Clinton's "Fasti Hellenici," Vol. I. pp. 263–283. |