Who was Solomon?
When they lived The united kingdom of Israel, around the tenth century BC
In short
Solomon was king of Israel, son of David and Bathsheba, and built the first temple in Jerusalem. He asked for discernment rather than riches, settled the dispute between two mothers with a sword, received the queen of Sheba, and ended his life with seven hundred wives and a kingdom about to divide.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 9 min read
Solomon is remembered for one quality, and the book that tells his story is far less one-sided than the memory. 1 Kings gives nine chapters to the height of his reign — the wisdom, the temple, the trade, the international reputation — and then a whole chapter to the ruin, written in the same register and with no attempt to soften it.
Reading the whole thing changes the character. It is not the story of a wise man; it is the story of a man who was given wisdom as a gift, used it to build a state, and ended up doing precisely what his country’s own law forbade a king to do.
The request at Gibeon
The founding scene happens in a dream. God offers Solomon whatever he wants to ask, and his answer opens with an admission unusual in a newly installed king: he says he is a small child, and reaches for the idiom of the period for not knowing how to manage one’s own comings and goings.
What he asks for is not wisdom in the sense of learning. It is a heart able to judge the people and to tell right from wrong, and the reason he gives is administrative: the people are too many to govern without it.
The answer grants the request and adds what was not requested — riches and honour. It is that addition popular reading holds on to, and the book itself will show, further on, that it was the dangerous part of the gift.
7And now, O Lord God, you have caused your servant to reign in place of David, my father. But I am a small child, and I am ignorant of my entrance and departure.
8And your servant is in the midst of the people that you have chosen, an immense people, who are not able to be numbered or counted because of their multitude.
9Therefore, give to your servant a teachable heart, so that he may be able to judge your people, and to discern between good and evil. For who will be able to judge this people, your people, who are so many?”
Three verses containing the whole request. Note that he does not ask to be wise: he asks for a heart able to judge, and the stated reason is the size of the people, not his own reputation.
12behold, I have done for you according to your words, and I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so much so that there has been no one like you before you, nor anyone who will rise up after you.
The grant arrives in the superlative, and the superlative runs in both directions in time: nobody before, nobody after. The book is setting a standard it will itself invoke in chapter 11.
The two women and the child
The case the book picks to illustrate the gift is deliberately sordid, and most retellings cut the opening detail: the two women who come before the king are prostitutes, they live in the same house, they gave birth days apart, and one of the babies died in the night.
There are no witnesses and no evidence. It is one woman’s word against another’s, the kind of case no ancient court had a way of settling. Solomon’s order — bring a sword and cut the surviving baby in half — is the only route available when there is no proof: manufacture the proof out of the reaction.
And it works because the reaction is asymmetric. One asks that the boy be given to the other so that he may live; the other agrees to the division. The king returns the child to the woman who preferred losing him to seeing him dead.
24Therefore the king said, “Bring a sword to me.” And when they had brought a sword before the king,
25he said, “Divide the living infant in two parts, and give a half part to the one and a half part to the other.”
26But the woman, whose son was alive, said to the king, for her heart was moved concerning her son, “I beg you, my lord, give the living infant to her, and do not kill him.” To the contrary, the other said, “Let it be neither for me, nor for you, instead divide it.”
27The king responded and said: “Give the living infant to this woman, and do not kill it. For she is his mother.”
Four verses with the order, the two reactions and the verdict. Note that the text nowhere says the order was a ruse: it records what was said and what happened, and leaves the king’s intention without comment.
The temple, and the line that relativises it
The building of the temple takes whole chapters of technical description: dimensions, materials, labour conscripted, deadlines. It took seven years, and the book treats the project as the central achievement of the reign.
What surprises is the dedication speech. In the middle of the ceremony Solomon asks a question that seems to contradict everything just built: if not even the whole of heaven can hold God, what is to be said of a house raised by him. It is one of the most sophisticated formulations in the Old Testament about the limits of any temple.
One fact rarely accompanies the story: the construction was carried out with conscripted labour, and it is precisely the weight of that regime that the people will put to his son as their reason for the revolt that splits the kingdom in two.
27Is it, then, to be understood that truly God would dwell upon the earth? For if heaven, and the heavens of heavens, are not able to contain you, how much less this house, which I have built?
The question is asked by the builder himself, on the day of the dedication. The temple is inaugurated with a declaration that it is not enough.
The queen of Sheba
The visit is short in the text and enormous in later tradition. A foreign queen hears of Solomon’s reputation, travels with a caravan loaded with spices, gold and precious stones, and comes to test him with hard questions.
What the text says is that he answered everything, that she was impressed by the court and by the organisation of the kingdom, and that the two exchanged gifts of very high value. That is all: the Bible says nothing further about the relationship between them.
Everything else — romance, a son, a dynasty — comes from later traditions, above all the Ethiopian one, which traces the country’s imperial line back to her. Those are narratives in their own right, with their own value, and they are not in the biblical text.
1Then, too, the queen of Sheba, having heard of the fame of Solomon in the name of the Lord, arrived to test him with enigmas.
2And entering into Jerusalem with a great retinue, and with riches, and with camels carrying aromatics, and with an exceedingly great quantity of gold and precious stones, she went to king Solomon. And she spoke to him all that she held in her heart.
3And Solomon taught her, in all the words that she had proposed to him. There was not any word which was able to be hidden from the king, or which he did not answer for her.
Three verses with the arrival and the test. The verb is to test: she does not come to admire, she comes to examine, and the text records that he answered everything she brought.
The fall
Chapter 11 changes register without warning. It reports the number — seven hundred wives of royal rank, plus three hundred concubines — and ties those figures, in the same paragraph, to alliances with nations about which there had been an explicit prohibition.
The text’s charge is not about quantity and not about sexual morality. It is about worship: the foreign wives brought their own gods, and the king built places of worship for them. The book states outright that in his old age his heart was no longer whole as his father’s had been.
The consequence is announced immediately: the kingdom will be torn away and handed to a servant. It happens shortly after his death, and the united Israel of David and Solomon never exists again. The height and the fracture sit in the same book, a few chapters apart.
1But king Solomon loved many foreign women, including the daughter of Pharaoh, and women of Moab, and of Ammon, and of Idumea, and of Sidon, and of the Hittites.
2These were of the nations about whom the Lord said to the sons of Israel: “You shall not enter to them, and none of them shall enter to anyone of yours. For they will most certainly turn aside your hearts, so that you follow their gods.” And yet, to these Solomon was joined with a greatly enflamed love.
3And for him, there were seven hundred wives, as if they were queens, and three hundred concubines. And the women turned aside his heart.
4And when now he was old, his heart was perverted by the women, so that he followed strange gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.
Four verses establishing a chain: the alliances, the prohibition known in advance, the number, and the effect on his heart. The text does not leave the conclusion to the reader.
9And so, the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his mind had been turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice,
10and who had instructed him about this matter, lest he follow strange gods. But he did not observe what the Lord commanded to him.
11And so, the Lord said to Solomon: “Because you have this with you, and because you have not kept my covenant and my precepts, which I commanded to you, I will tear apart your kingdom, and I will give it to your servant.
The aggravating factor the text underlines: he had received an appearance twice and direct instruction on this very point. The sentence on the kingdom follows immediately.
The books attributed to him
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon appear on almost every list as "the books of Solomon". It is worth seeing what each of them actually claims about its own authorship, because the three say different things.
Proverbs opens with his name. But the book itself carries, further on, two other signatures: a collection the text says was transferred by officials of Hezekiah — a king who lived roughly two and a half centuries later — and a chapter attributed to the words of king Lamuel, taught to him by his mother. In other words: the book presents itself as an anthology, and says so plainly.
Ecclesiastes does not mention Solomon in any verse. Its opening identifies the speaker by description alone — a descendant of David reigning in the city — and it is from that description that the traditional attribution comes. As for the Song, in this edition his name does not appear in the first verse at all: it turns up a few lines later.
None of this diminishes the books. It only diminishes the certainty about who wrote them — a different piece of information, and one the text itself helps to correct.
1These, too, are parables of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, transferred.
The line hardly anyone reads: this part of the book was transferred by the men of Hezekiah, centuries after Solomon. It is Proverbs itself reporting that it passed through later hands.
1The words of king Lamuel. The vision by which his mother instructed him:
The most quoted chapter of the book is attributed to another king, and presented as what his mother taught him. Worth knowing before repeating that Proverbs 31 is Solomon’s.
1The words of Ecclesiastes, the son of David, the king of Jerusalem.
The opening identifies the author by description rather than by name. Solomon’s name does not appear in Ecclesiastes — not here, and not in any other verse.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
Solomon wrote Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon.
What Scripture says
Proverbs carries his name at the opening and, inside the book itself, two other signatures: a collection transferred by officials of Hezekiah roughly two and a half centuries later, and a chapter attributed to king Lamuel. Ecclesiastes does not mention Solomon in any verse. The attribution of all three to him is traditional, and the text supports it to very different degrees.
What is commonly said
Solomon’s thousand women are an exaggeration of translation or a folk legend.
What Scripture says
The number is in the text, in chapter 11 of 1 Kings: seven hundred wives of royal rank, plus three hundred concubines. And the book does not treat it as a curiosity — it ties those alliances directly to the turning of his heart and to the sentence on the kingdom.
What is commonly said
Solomon’s wisdom stayed with him to the end of his life.
What Scripture says
The same book that records the gift records the fall. In his old age, according to the text, his heart was turned to other gods and was no longer whole as his father’s had been. The chapter ends with the announcement that the kingdom would be torn away.
What is commonly said
The queen of Sheba and Solomon had a romance, and a son.
What Scripture says
The text narrates a diplomatic visit: hard questions, answers, admiration for the court and an exchange of high-value gifts. There is nothing beyond that. The narratives of romance and descent come from later traditions, above all Ethiopian ones, and not from the biblical text.
Where this person appears
7And now, O Lord God, you have caused your servant to reign in place of David, my father. But I am a small child, and I am ignorant of my entrance and departure.
8And your servant is in the midst of the people that you have chosen, an immense people, who are not able to be numbered or counted because of their multitude.
9Therefore, give to your servant a teachable heart, so that he may be able to judge your people, and to discern between good and evil. For who will be able to judge this people, your people, who are so many?”
The request at Gibeon, with the self-assessment that precedes it.
24Therefore the king said, “Bring a sword to me.” And when they had brought a sword before the king,
25he said, “Divide the living infant in two parts, and give a half part to the one and a half part to the other.”
26But the woman, whose son was alive, said to the king, for her heart was moved concerning her son, “I beg you, my lord, give the living infant to her, and do not kill him.” To the contrary, the other said, “Let it be neither for me, nor for you, instead divide it.”
27The king responded and said: “Give the living infant to this woman, and do not kill it. For she is his mother.”
The dispute between the two women, settled by an order that manufactures the missing proof.
27Is it, then, to be understood that truly God would dwell upon the earth? For if heaven, and the heavens of heavens, are not able to contain you, how much less this house, which I have built?
The question about the limits of the temple, asked on dedication day by the man who built it.
1Then, too, the queen of Sheba, having heard of the fame of Solomon in the name of the Lord, arrived to test him with enigmas.
2And entering into Jerusalem with a great retinue, and with riches, and with camels carrying aromatics, and with an exceedingly great quantity of gold and precious stones, she went to king Solomon. And she spoke to him all that she held in her heart.
3And Solomon taught her, in all the words that she had proposed to him. There was not any word which was able to be hidden from the king, or which he did not answer for her.
The arrival of the queen of Sheba, and the test she came to set.
1But king Solomon loved many foreign women, including the daughter of Pharaoh, and women of Moab, and of Ammon, and of Idumea, and of Sidon, and of the Hittites.
2These were of the nations about whom the Lord said to the sons of Israel: “You shall not enter to them, and none of them shall enter to anyone of yours. For they will most certainly turn aside your hearts, so that you follow their gods.” And yet, to these Solomon was joined with a greatly enflamed love.
3And for him, there were seven hundred wives, as if they were queens, and three hundred concubines. And the women turned aside his heart.
4And when now he was old, his heart was perverted by the women, so that he followed strange gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.
The number of wives and the effect the text attributes to it — the passage that closes his story.
1These, too, are parables of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, transferred.
The editorial note inside Proverbs itself: this part was copied out much later.