Who was King Solomon?

A son with two names

Solomon was born in Jerusalem to King David and Bathsheba, the woman David had taken from Uriah the Hittite. Their first child had died. The next son is a sign of grace, and the text gives him two names.

She bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. Yahweh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he named him Jedidiah, for Yahweh’s sake.

Jedidiah means “beloved of Yahweh.” Solomon, Shlomo in Hebrew, echoes shalom, peace, and Chronicles makes the link: “his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days” (1 Chronicles 22:9).

He was not the eldest son. As David lay dying, his older half brother Adonijah threw his own coronation feast, and Nathan and Bathsheba hurried to the old king’s bedside to remind him of a promise. Solomon rode David’s mule down to the Gihon spring, and the priest Zadok anointed him while the crowd shouted, “Long live King Solomon!” (1 Kings 1:39). Handel set the scene for George II’s coronation in 1727, and Zadok the Priest has been sung at every British coronation since.

What he is known for

• Wisdom. At Gibeon God offered him anything, and he asked for “an understanding heart” (what Solomon asked for). His first famous case, two mothers and one baby, made the judgment of Solomon a byword for wisdom.
• The Temple. In his fourth year he began the house of God that David had not been allowed to build, with cedar from Lebanon and Phoenician craftsmen, and finished it seven years later (1 Kings 6:1, 38).
• Trade and gold. His ships sailed from Ezion-geber, on the Red Sea, to Ophir, and the Queen of Sheba crossed Arabia to test him with hard questions (who she was).
• Words. “He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered one thousand five” (1 Kings 4:32). Tradition credits him with Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, and two psalms carry his name (Psalms 72 and 127). Catholic and Orthodox Bibles add the Wisdom of Solomon, written in Greek centuries later.

So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.

The other side of the ledger

The same chapters that praise him keep accounts. He married Pharaoh’s daughter to seal an alliance, and many foreign princesses after her (how many wives he had). He drafted Israelites in shifts to cut timber in Lebanon. In old age his wives turned his heart to other gods, and after forty years on the throne he died with the northern tribes close to revolt (how his life ended). His son Rehoboam lost ten of the twelve tribes at the very start of his reign.

Solomon beyond the Bible

No inscription from his day names him, a puzzle explored in Was King Solomon a real person? Yet few figures have traveled farther in legend. The Quran honors Sulayman as a prophet and king who understood the speech of birds and ants and set the jinn to work. Ancient and medieval magic made him a master of demons: the Testament of Solomon has him bind them with a ring sent by the archangel Michael and force them to build the Temple, the root of the “Seal of Solomon.” Ethiopia’s emperors traced their line to him and the Queen of Sheba until 1974. And in English, a Solomonic decision is still a wise one.