Chapter XII · The Wisdom of Solomon.

Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira’s work, came an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the so-called “Psalter of Solomon.” This is no wisdom book, and need not detain us. It is mainly a hash—one may say a mess—made up out of the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare’s tomb, and the fling at England’s greatest poet written on the tomb of his daughter,—“Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall,” etc.

Before passing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.: “Behold, O God, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David, in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel thy servant.” There is nothing in the literature of the time before or after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist (B. C. 70–60) of an idea which would then have been original. The verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The title “Son of David” occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.

The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.

But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims our attention.

This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading “Wisdom of Solomon” (Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the King, though herein also the name “Solomon” appears only in the title. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the heresies anciently associated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees, who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon’s famous chaplain, Zadok.

This “Wisdom of Solomon” probably appeared not far from the first year of our era. It is written in almost classical Greek, is full of striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon is summoned much in the way that the “Wandering Jew,” Ahasuerus, is called up in Shelley’s “Prometheus,” yet not quite allegorically, to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having been a saint from the beginning, albeit “chastised” and “proved.” In fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son of God wise and “undefiled” from childhood. His burden is to warn the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the righteous,—the misery that awaits the unrighteous,—beyond the grave.

The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never dead. “For thou (God) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of Hades, and bringest up again.” “The giving heed unto her (Wisdom’s) laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption maketh us near unto God: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to a Kingdom.”

The Jewish people idealised Solomon’s reign long before they idealised the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified epithets derived from his fame,—as “Melchizedek,” and “Prince of Peace.” The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire, but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon, because the priests and prophets,—a gentry little respected by the Wise Man,—steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as “the House of David,” “Jesse’s branch,” and finally “Son of David.”

But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages, then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero (which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew) appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King Yima, in Persia,—the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem) would no doubt have been central among the “Undying Ones” had it not been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.

In the “Wisdom of Solomon” the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. “All good things together came to me with her,” and “Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that she was the mother of them.” She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him his knowledge:

“All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God, and prophets. For God loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars; compared with the light she is found before it,—for after light cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom.” (vii. 21–30.)

In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom, who sat beside the throne of God (ix. 4). But there remains with God a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy Spirit have different functions. “Thy counsel who hath known except thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?” This verse (ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. “For thine incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that offend,” etc. (xii. 1, 2.)

Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer of his words: for God is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pass by him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the ungodly; the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the sound even of murmurings is not secret.”

The Word in this place (ὁ παντοδύναμός σου λόγος) is clearly reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). “The Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;” and the same military metaphor accompanies this “Word” into Revelation xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of the phrase “Word of God” (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ) as linking Revelation to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is never followed by “of God,” while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.

This evolution of the “Word” is clear. In the “Wisdom of Solomon” Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy Spirit (called in i. 5 “the Holy Spirit of Discipline”). But in the era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things, and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those who first uttered them.

“God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. He created all things that they might have their being; and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was) no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death, being fit to take sides with it.”

In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that in Jesus Ben Sira’s contribution to his fathers’ “Wisdom,” the moral character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God, and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing, and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was taken in “Wisdom of Solomon.” There remained but one more necessity, namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future existence. Agur’s question had remained unanswered—

“Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?

Such an one would I question about God.”

To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.