Episode #29 A Thousand Pagan Princesses

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes how the women Solomon married to seal alliances with his neighbors corrupted the royal palaces.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A Thousand Pagan Princesses

In David’s later years, the line of succession became an issue. Earlier, his son Absalom had tried to usurp the throne, and when the end drew near, his son Adoniahu declared himself the king and was hailed by the crowds. Batsheva, David’s wife, was alarmed. David had promised that Solomon, their son, would succeed him, and now, it seemed that Adoniahu would become king instead. Solomon was only twelve years old. He would not be able to contend with Adoniahu.

Together with the prophet Nathan, she approached the king and reminded him of his promise, which he acknowledged. She asked him to make a public declaration that Solomon would succeed him, which he did, and Solomon’s accession to the throne was assured.

David had led a turbulent life. Pursued and persecuted by his enemies, he found refuge in God, as he so vividly portrayed in his Psalms. He was also a great general, a decisive leader, valiant on the battlefield. He fought many wars, and through his military conquests, he expanded the borders of Israel into Philistia, Ammon, Moab and Aram, all the way to Damascus. Under his guidance, Israel became an important regional power.

Because of his military exploits, however, he was denied his greatest dream. The time had come to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem as a permanent Abode for the Divine Presence in the lower world, but God did not allow him to do it. It was inappropriate for the House of God to be built by even a righteous warrior with bloodstained hands. The Holy Temple was a house of peace, and David, despite his holiness and his profound devotion to God, was a man of war.[1] The most God allowed David to do was purchase a tract of land in Jerusalem for the site of the Holy Temple that he himself would never see. In 837 b.c.e., after reigning over a united Israel for thirty-three stormy years, David passed away. He was succeeded by his son Solomon.

In his own way, Solomon was also one of the greatest people who ever lived, but he was not a duplicate of David. His father had been a warrior, a passionate and exuberant man who would dance with abandon among the throngs of his people.[2] Solomon, however, was more reserved and restrained, a cerebral man more at ease in the worlds of wisdom than on the heated plains of battle. Pure wisdom was his dominant characteristic and the guiding force of his life.

From the first, Solomon beseeched God for the gift of wisdom, which was granted in such measure that he became “the wisest of all men,”[3] his very name becoming synonymous with wisdom. He studied Torah under the greatest sages of his time and surpassed them in knowledge and understanding. He then explored the frontiers of philosophy and the natural sciences in the light of his vast Torah knowledge, gaining a deeper understanding of the total integration of the physical and spiritual worlds than any man before or after. His almost limitless wisdom, knowledge and poetic vision are impressively displayed in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, the divinely inspired supplementary books of the Torah that he authored.

Solomon’s route to popularity with his subjects was also through his phenomenal wisdom, which he used to great advantage in the conduct of his royal duties.[4] Over time, his fame spread far and wide, and nobles came from distant lands to pay homage to him and see for themselves the wonders of his legendary wisdom. He would eventually use his great wisdom to become the master of a far-flung empire without waging war or even fighting a single battle, but first he had to build a House for God in the Jewish capital of Jerusalem.

Solomon’s father David, for all his glorious achievements as a warrior and a pacifier, had not been granted the honor and privilege of building a permanent Abode for God in the sacred city of Jerusalem.[5] But Solomon was a man of peace ruling over the pacified land he had inherited from his father. The nation was spiritually purified, secure, prosperous and united behind its wise and illustrious king. After five centuries of temporary residence in the Mishkan in the Desert, Gilgal, Shiloh, Nob and Gibeon, the time had come to build a permanent residence for the Presence of God to crown this hopeful new society.

In 833 b.c.e., the mammoth construction project began. Covering an entire hilltop at the highest point of the city of Jerusalem, the magnificent complex of structures, courtyards and walls rose over a period of seven years before the dazzled eyes of the people.

The construction of the Holy Temple marked the fulfillment of the Biblical promises to the Jewish people. They had been brought out of bondage in Egypt, given the Torah, given the land, brought to a state of peace, security and prosperity and crowned with the Divine Presence in their midst. At last, they could set their sights on the messianic age that was coming into view on the distant horizon.

The Jewish people had proven incapable of reaching this point by internal fortitude under conditions of total freedom. The attempt at an interim monarchy had also been found wanting. Only the stimulus of the spiritual monarchy of Judah, held so long in guarded reserve, had brought them to this happy state. During the four golden decades of Solomon’s reign, the people lived under ideal conditions, free to study the Torah in security “in the shade of their own grapevines and date palms.”[6] There had never been, nor would there ever be, a more propitious time for making the final leap to the highest levels of spiritual achievement attainable by man. The possibility that disaster lurked unnoticed in the shadows was far from anyone’s mind. But lurk there it did, waiting for complacency, its old accomplice, to open up the door.

In the meantime, as the spiritual level of the country continued to rise under his wise guidance, Solomon prepared to safeguard the future security and stability of Israel without resorting to war. He chose a two-pronged approach, economic and diplomatic. Both were successful in the short term, but the long term was an altogether different matter.

On the economic front, he formed a mercantile alliance with Hiram, the king of the Phoenician city of Tyre, who had befriended David and had subsequently sent gifts to Solomon for the Holy Temple.

The Phoenicians were accomplished sailors, but they had no access to the Red Sea trading routes; the Suez Canal would not be built for another two and a half thousand years. In cooperation with Solomon, they now built a large trading fleet at the port of Ezion Geber near Eilat on the northern arm of the Red Sea. From there, the Phoenician-Jewish fleets sailed to East Africa and brought back immense treasures of gold, silver, coral and ivory, as well as apes and peacocks.[7]

This advantageous alliance also provided the impetus for the Phoenician colonization of the entire Mediterranean basin, around which they built dozens of trading colonies, such as Cadiz in Spain and the metropolis of Carthage in North Africa. The financial strength and strategic location of Israel and the maritime talents of Phoenicia proved a very potent combination, and within a few short years, the Phoenician-Jewish economic axis dominated the markets of the civilized world.

On the diplomatic front, Solomon exploited the growing prestige of his young kingdom to conclude treaties with numerous major and minor powers in the Imperial Quadrant. Under Solomon, Israel had emerged as the foremost power of the Quadrant, eclipsing Egypt and the Amorite kingdoms of Mesopotamia. Israel had a strong army, a huge cavalry and thousands of war chariots. Enormous wealth poured into Jerusalem from tributary payments, internal economic growth and the Phoenician-Jewish mercantile empire. The nations of the Quadrant had witnessed the rise of empires from less auspicious beginnings, and they were afraid Israel would soon embark on a program of regional conquest. With all the imperial weapons at Israel’s disposal, and its outstanding strategic location, it was only reasonable to expect Israel to harbor such notions. The opportunity to form alliances with Israel was therefore very appealing to the regional powers in the Quadrant.

In the custom of the times, as indeed the custom remained until the last centuries, diplomatic treaties between two kingdoms were sealed by matrimonial alliances between the respective royal families. And thus, each of the treaties Solomon signed came along with the hand of a royal princess, who was, of course, duly converted to Judaism. The nations stumbled over each other in their eagerness to sign the treaties, sweetening the dowries of their princesses with extravagant gifts. Even the mighty Egyptian pharaoh went to the trouble of conquering the Canaanite city of Gezer just to add it to the dowry of the daughter he had given Solomon. By the time all the treaties were signed, Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, a sure invitation to catastrophe.

After such a long string of glorious successes, Solomon’s great wisdom had finally led him astray. “Let not the wise man pride himself on his wisdom,” the prophet advises,[8] for in the end, a man is but a man. For no mortal man is completely immune to the weakness of the flesh, to minuscule pricks of vanity, to twinges of forgotten pride, to the vulnerability of emotion.

Solomon had reached frontiers of wisdom upon which no other man would ever tread, and as he writes in Ecclesiastes, he had penetrated the veneers of all worldly pursuits and found them meaningless. He thus became, as much as a man can be, a being of pure intellect and spirituality, a holy denizen of the celestial worlds. He forgot the vain and confused world of ordinary men, and he forgot that little fragments of that world would be buried in his soul as long as warm blood flowed through his veins.

In its commandments to the king of Israel, the Torah declares, “Let him not marry too many women, so that he not be led astray.”[9] Although the Torah generally does not give reasons for its commandments, the Torah here states explicitly that this particular commandment was for precautionary purposes. Solomon, therefore, assumed that the interpretation of “too many” was subjective and that each king must ascertain for himself how many women he could safely marry without being led astray.[10] For most men, a thousand wives would most definitely be “too many,” but Solomon was enormously superior to most men. If his diplomatic initiatives for the welfare of Israel required that he marry a thousand princesses, this holy sage believed he could do so with impunity. He was mistaken.

These foreign princesses had all been raised in pagan societies, but now that they had been given in marriage to Solomon, they were indoctrinated in the truths of Torah and converted.[11] Even in the best case, however, it would be difficult for such converts to develop a deep and abiding Jewish identity, and the situation of these princesses was far from a best-case scenario. Quite probably, some had never given more than lip service to their new faith, and even the sincere ones were not long removed from the pagan temples. Once in Jerusalem, these women were ensconced in opulent palaces and left to their own devices by the generous but preoccupied king. In the absence of a guiding hand and a vigilant eye, the seeds of paganism began to germinate in the royal palace.

Idols appeared in the royal palace. The sounds of pagan rites and the smells of idolatrous incense floated through the royal gardens. One after the other, the princesses cast off their outer garments of Judaism and resumed their former identities. Eventually, even some of the more sincere converts began to slide into their old ways. The royal palace of Jerusalem, home of God’s anointed king, had now become home as well to hordes of strange gods from numerous lands.

All this happened while Solomon was distracted by his incessant quest for truth and wisdom. He should have seen it coming and stopped it before it was too late, but he paid no attention to the warning signs. The Talmud relates that when Solomon married the Egyptian princess she showed him musical instruments and told him how they were used in the pagan rites. Solomon, however, did not reprimand her for speaking of her pagan past. He just let the remarks pass without comment.[12]

At best, we can only speculate about the reasons for Solomon’s silence and tender indulgence. Perhaps he thought she was teasing him and decided not to respond. Perhaps he thought she was making small talk and that these things were really no longer important to her. Perhaps he sensed the strains of her cultural adjustment and decided not to make an issue of it, hoping that with time such nostalgic thoughts would fade from her mind. Whatever his reason, he surely did not suspect that she was an insincere convert.

Yet he should have suspected. He should have been vigilant and critical. He should have discerned the perfidy of his foreign wives and the hollowness of their professed faith. He should have foreseen the problems and nipped them in the bud. But he did not, and by his negligent silence, he allowed his kingdom to be contaminated and eventually destroyed.

“When Solomon grew old, his wives persuaded him to follow alien gods,” the prophet Jeremiah wrote in the Book of Kings four centuries later, “and he was not as loyal to God his Lord as his father David had been . . . Then Solomon built an altar to Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the mountain facing Jerusalem, and to Molech, the abomination of Ammon. And he did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.”[13]

It is absurd to think that Solomon, the wise and holy prophet, suddenly became an old fool, a depraved idol worshipper building altars for the gods of all his foreign wives. In actuality, he did none of these things, as the Talmud explains, but because he was silent, he bears the blame for all the abominations of his wives.[14]

Jeremiah was not writing history but ethical instruction, and we must read between the lines to glean historical information. These words were said to shock, like a parent who exaggerates the crime of a child to emphasize its gravity. Yet even in the midst of this intense criticism, the prophet lets fall a hint that this is not actual fact by saying that Solomon “was not as loyal as his father David.” Solomon was undoubtedly loyal to God, the Talmud infers from this, but not quite with the perfect loyalty of David, who would never have allowed something like this to happen right under his nose. But Solomon did.

The spiritual monarchy of Judah had been contaminated beyond repair, and the citadel of Israel had been breached, not from the weakest elements this time but from the very top. The royal princes were children of idolatrous mothers, and the holy air of Jerusalem smarted with the stench of pagan rites. Therefore, God informed Solomon, the kingship would be taken away from the House of David. For the sake of the loyal David, however, Solomon would be allowed to live out his days as king of a united Israel, but after his death, his descendants would reign only over the tribe of Judah.

How quickly the mighty had fallen. Just a few short years before, the Jewish people had stood at the pinnacle of their history, secure, prosperous, inspired, forging ahead towards the messianic age which beckoned from the horizon. But it had all been a mirage. All that beckoned now was the gaping maw of a dark tunnel whose end was nowhere in sight.

What caused this terrible downfall? Certainly, Solomon’s negligent silence was the direct cause. But was Solomon the only one who was silent? What of all the other people in the royal palace and in the rest of Jerusalem? And how did these foreign women dare trample on the sacred values of their adopted country? Surely, not all the people were wandering in the stellar reaches of wisdom, too distracted to notice the abominations around them. Surely, a thousand royal princesses performing pagan rites must have left some telltale bits of evidence. Surely, there must have been rumors, some whispered gossip about scandal in the royal palace. Why was there no hue and cry? Why didn’t the people rise up and storm the gates of the palace? Why didn’t they demand that Solomon control his wives?

Clearly, something was fundamentally wrong with Jewish society. Clearly, the pagan influences of the Philistine days were buried but not dead. Clearly, the new piety and purity were only surface deep, and underneath, the polluted society of yesteryear was still fresh in the collective memory. The activities of the foreign princesses did not shock the people, and if Solomon did not bother to protest, they did not feel compelled to do so either. But indifference is a form of acceptance, and by their averted eyes, the Jewish people had condoned the idolatry in the royal palace. Solomon may have been guilty of negligent silence, but they were guilty of deliberate silence.

The prophet Samuel’s nightmare had become reality. The spiritual monarchy of Judah had been introduced before its time, and the people had not risen to the challenge. The purification of society had not been deep enough, and now, this delicate and precious instrument had been blunted and disfigured. What hope was left for the Jewish people? How would they recapture the spiritual exaltation of the early generations? And even if they somehow could, who would lead them across the final hurdles into the messianic age?

In a sense, this is the most tragic point in Jewish history. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the future of the Jewish people stretching away from this point in a seemingly endless trail across the desolate expanses of time, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but never again with a clear view of the ultimate destination.

We see the kingdom torn asunder. We see the permanent demise of the northern half of the kingdom and the temporary demise of the southern half. We see ever stronger alien attacks on the embattled Jewish people. We see the breaches and the hemorrhage and the tragedy of exile. And throughout the ages, we see the core element of the Jewish people, ever steadfast, ever faithful, standing arm in arm around the holy Torah to form a human citadel; we see these tragic heroes endlessly struggling, persistently hopeful, desperately trying to fend off the destroyer and rebuild a lost world from the indestructible kernel that remains.

From this point on, we see the Jewish people become like the mountain climber who, slipping and sliding, scrapes and scrabbles his way up the mountainside only to slide back to the bottom just before he reaches the top. From this point on, the dogged climb goes on, but the slipping and sliding takes place much closer to the base of the mountain. From this point on, although freedom of choice is never restricted, there is little hope of meeting destiny through a monolithic national effort and a triumphant entry into the messianic era. There is only hope that the indestructible, incorruptible core element, no matter how shrunken in size, will bring on the messianic age through an outcry of anguished prayer, that God in His infinite compassion will reach down and lift His tormented children to the mountaintop that has always eluded them.

According to Jewish belief, as explained in Chapter 17, the fortunes of the offspring of Jacob and the offspring of Esau are in constant counterbalance to each other; when the one falls, the other rises.[15] Until the reign of Solomon, the course of Jewish history, for all its fitful lurches, had followed a rising imperative, probing one method after another to reach the shining goal of its destiny. But now, all methods were exhausted, all methods had failed, and the historical imperative shifted to the other side.

The Talmud exclaims that when Solomon married the Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter the angel Gabriel came down and drove a reed into the Mediterranean Sea, and upon this reed the great city of Rome arose; the early stirrings of Roman power coincide with the reign of Solomon.[16]

At this point, when the last grand opportunity of Jewish history was missed, the Roman descendants of Esau began their long and gradual ascent to temporal power, and the Jewish people began their long and gradual descent from temporal power. The first cracks appeared towards the end of Solomon’s reign with the insurrection of the Syrian dominions. Although it would not be completed for several centuries, the disintegration of the Jewish kingdom had already begun.

[1] I Chronicles 22:8

[2] II Samuel 6:16

[3] I Kings 3:12

[4] Rashi, I Kings 4:1

[5] II Samuel 7:12-13

[6] I Kings 5:5

[7] Apparently, they also reached Southeast Asia, to which peacocks are indigenous.

[8] Redak, I Kings 11:1, quotes this verse from Jeremiah 9:22 as referring to Solomon.

[9] Deuteronomy 17:17

[10] Sanhedrin 21b

[11] Rambam, Issurei Biah 13:16.

[12] Shabbath 56b.

[13] II Kings 11:4-8

[14] Sabbath 56b

[15] Rashi, Genesis 25:23.

[16] Sabbath 56b; Sanhedrin 21b. The Talmud states that Solomon “married” the daughter of the pharaoh, and indeed, this wording also appears in I Kings 3:1. The Talmud (Yevamos 76b), however, points out this is merely a euphemistic phrasing, since a traditional nuptial bond with a first-generation Egyptian convert is invalid. Therefore, in strict legal terms, there was no marriage, only an exclusive common law relationship which, in Solomon’s opinion, was considered acceptable under the circumstances.