7. Last on the list stands the minister who has the ominous title of al-ham-Mas, or "over the tribute." The Mas means the "levy," corvée, or forced labour. In other words, Adoram was overseer of the soccagers. Saul had required an overseer of the flocks, and David a guardian of the treasury, but Adoram is not mentioned till late in his reign.[215] The gravamen of David's numbering of the people seems to have lain in the intention to subject them to a poll tax, or to personal service, such as had become necessary to maintain the expenses of the court. It is obvious that, as royalty developed from the conception of the theocratic king to that of the Oriental despot, the stern warning of Samuel to the people of Israel was more and more fulfilled. They had said, "Nay, but we will have a king to reign over us, when Jehovah was their king"; and Samuel had told them how much less blessed was bondage with ease than their strenuous liberty. He had warned them that their king would take their sons for his runners and charioteers and reapers and soldiers and armourers, and their daughters for his perfumers and confectioners; and that he would seize their fields and vineyards for his courtiers, and claim the tithes of their possession, and use their asses, and put their oxen to his work. The word "Mas" representing soccage, serfdom, forced labour (corvée; Germ., Frohndienst), first became odiously familiar in the days of Solomon.
Solomon was an expensive king, and the Jewish kings had no private revenue from which the necessary resources could be supplied. In order to secure contributions for the maintenance of the royal establishment, Solomon appointed his twelve Prefects. The list of them is incorporated from a document so ancient that in several instances the names have dropped out, and only "son of" remains.[216] The districts entirely and designedly ignored the old tribal limits, which Solomon probably wished to obliterate. Ben-Hur administered the hill country of Ephraim; Ben-Dekar had his headquarters in Dan; Ben-Hesed had the maritime plain; Ben-Abinadab the fertile region of Carmel, and he was wedded to Solomon's daughter Taphath;[217] Baana, son of Ahilud, managed the plain of Esdraelon; Ben-Geber the mountainous country east of Jordan, including Gilead and Argob with its basaltic towns; Ahinadab, son of Iddo, was officer in Mahanaim; Ahimaaz in Naphtali (he was married to Solomon's daughter Basmath, and was perhaps the son of Zadok); Baanah, son of David's faithful Hushai, was in Asher; Shimei, son of Elah, in Benjamin; Jehoshaphat in Issachar. Geber administered alone the ancient dominions of Sihon and Og. We see with surprise that Judah seems to have been exempted from the burdens imposed on the other districts, and if so the impolitic exemption was a main cause of the subsequent jealousies.[218]
The chief function of these officers was to furnish provisions for the immense numbers who were connected with the court. The curious list is given of the provision required for one day—thirty measures of fine flour, sixty of bread,[219] ten fat oxen, twenty pasture oxen, and one hundred sheep, besides the delicacies of harts, gazelles, fallow-deer, and fatted guinea-hens or swans.[220] Bunsen reckons that this would provide for about fifteen thousand persons. In this there is nothing extraordinary, though the number is disproportionate to the smallness of the kingdom. About the same number were daily supported by the kings of the great empire of Persia.[221] We see how rapidly the state of royalty had developed when we compare Solomon's superb surroundings with the humble palace of Ishbosheth less than fifty years earlier—a palace of which the only guard was a single sleepy woman, who had been sifting wheat in the noontide, and had fallen asleep over her task in the porch.[222]
Yet in the earlier years of the reign, while the people, dazzled by the novel sense of national importance, felt the stimulus given to trade and industry, the burden was not painfully felt. They multiplied in numbers, and lived under their vines and fig trees in peace and festivity.[223] But much of their prosperity was hollow and shortlived. Wealth led to vice and corruption, and in place of the old mountain breezes of freedom which purified the air, the nation, like Issachar, became like an ass crouching between two burdens, and bowing its shoulders to the yoke in the hot valley of sensuous servitude.
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay!"
It is impossible to overlook the general drift of Jewish royalty towards pure materialism in the days of Solomon. We search in vain for the lofty spirituality which survived even in the rough epoch of the Judges and the rude simplicity of David's earlier reign. The noble aspirations which throb in one Davidic psalm are worth all the gorgeous formalism of the Temple service. Amid the luxuries of plenty and the feasts of wine on the lees there seems to have been an ever-deeping famine of the Word of God.
There was one innovation, which struck the imagination of Solomon's contemporaries, but was looked on with entire disfavour by those who had been trained in the old pious days. Solomon had immense stables for his chariot horses (susim), and the swift riding horses of his couriers (parashim).[224] It seems to have been Solomon's ambition to equal or outshine "the chariots of Pharaoh,"[225] with which his Egyptian queen had been familiar at Tanis. This feature of his reign is dwelt upon in the Arabian legends, as well as in all the historical records of his greatness.[226] But the maintenance of a cavalry force had always been discouraged by the religious teachers of Israel. The use of horses in war is forbidden in Deuteronomy.[227] Joshua had houghed the horses of the Canaanites, and burned their chariots at Misrephoth-maim. David had followed his example. Barak had defeated the iron chariots of Sisera, and David the splendid cavalry of Hadadezer with the simple infantry of Israel.[228] The spirit of the olden faithfulness spoke in such words as, "Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God." Solomon's[229] successors discovered that they had not gained in strength by adopting this branch of military service in their hilly and rocky land. They found that "a horse is but a vain thing to save a man, neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength."[230]
For a time, however, Solomon's strenuous centralisation was successful. His dominion extended, at least nominally, from Tiphzah (Thapsacus), beside the ford on the west bank of the Euphrates, to the Mediterranean; over the whole domain of the Philistines; and from Damascus to "the river of Egypt," that is, the Rhinokolura or Wady el-Areesh. The names Jeroboam and Rehoboam imply that they were born in an epoch of prosperity.[231] But the sequel proves that it was that sort of empire which,