Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from the drawing by Petrie.
The completion of the whole plan occupied thirteen years; at length both palace and temple were finished in the XVIIth year of the king’s reign. Solomon, however, did not wait for the completion of the work to dedicate the sanctuary to God. As soon as the inner court was ready, which was in his XIth year, he proceeded to transfer the ark to its new resting-place; it was raised upon a cubical base, and the long staves by which it had been carried were left in their rings, as was usual in the case of the sacred barks of the Egyptian deities.* The God of Israel thus took up His abode in the place in which He was henceforth to be honoured. The sacrifices on the occasion of the dedication were innumerable, and continued for fourteen days, in the presence of the representatives of all Israel. The ornate ceremonial and worship which had long been lavished on the deities of rival nations were now, for the first time, offered to the God of Israel. The devout Hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. Compared with the magnificent monuments of Egypt and Chaldæa, the work of Solomon was what the Hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world—a little temple suited to a little people.
* 1 Kings viii. 6-8, and 2 Ghron. v. 7-9.
** 1 Kings vi. 37, 38 states that the foundations were laid
in the IVth year of Solomon’s reign, in the month of Ziv,
and that the temple was completed in the month of Bui in the
XIth year; the work occupied seven years. 1 Kings vii. 1
adds that the construction of the palace lasted thirteen
years; it went on for six years after the completion of the
temple. The account of the dedication (1 Kings viii.)
contains a long prayer by Solomon, part of which (vers. 14-
66) is thought by certain critics to be of later date. They
contend that the original words of Solomon are confined to
vers. 12 and 13.
The priests to whose care it was entrusted did not differ much from those whom David had gathered about him at the outset of the monarchy. They in no way formed an hereditary caste confined to the limits of a rigid hierarchy; they admitted into their number—at least up to a certain point—men of varied extraction, who were either drawn by their own inclinations to the service of the altar, or had been dedicated to it by their parents from childhood. He indeed was truly a priest “who said of his father and mother, ‘I have not seen him;’ neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew he his own children.” He was content, after renouncing these, to observe the law of God and keep His covenant, and to teach Jacob His judgments and Israel His law; he put incense before the Lord, and whole burnt offerings upon His altar.*
* Those are the expressions used in the Blessing of Moses
(Deut. xxxiii. 8-12); though this text is by some writers
placed as late as the VIIIth century B.C., yet the state of
things there represented would apply also to an earlier
date. The Hebrew priest, in short, had the same duties as a
large proportion of the priesthood in Chaldæ and Egypt.
As in Egypt, the correct offering of the Jewish sacrifices was beset with considerable difficulties, and the risk of marring their efficacy by the slightest inadvertence necessitated the employment of men who were thoroughly instructed in the divinely appointed practices and formulæ. The victims had to be certified as perfect, while the offerers themselves had to be ceremonially pure; and, indeed, those only who had been specially trained were able to master the difficulties connected with the minutiae of legal purity. The means by which the future was made known necessitated the intervention of skilful interpreters of the Divine will. We know that in Egypt the statues of the gods were supposed to answer the questions put to them by movements of the head or arms, sometimes even by the living voice; but the Hebrews do not appear to have been influenced by any such recollections in the use of their sacred oracles. We are ignorant, however, of the manner in which the ephod was consulted, and we know merely that the art of interrogating the Divine will by it demanded a long noviciate.* The benefits derived by those initiated into these mysteries were such as to cause them to desire the privileges to be perpetuated to their children. Gathered round the ancient sanctuaries were certain families who, from father to son, were devoted to the performance of the sacred rites, as, for instance, that of Eli at Shiloh, and that of Jonathan-ben-Gershom at Dan, near the sources of the Jordan; but in addition to these, the text mentions functionaries analogous to those found among the Canaanites, diviners, seers—roê—who had means of discovering that which was hidden from the vulgar, even to the finding of lost objects, but whose powers sometimes rose to a higher level when they were suddenly possessed by the prophetic spirit and enabled to reveal coming events. Besides these, again, were the prophets—nabî**—who lived either alone or in communities, and attained, by means of a strict training, to a vision of the future.
* An example of the consulting of the ephod will be found in
1 Sam. xxx. 7, 8, where David desires to know if he shall
pursue the Amalekites.
** 1 Sam. ix. 9 is a gloss which identifies the seer of
former times with the prophet of the times of the monarchy.
Their prophetic utterances were accompanied by music and singing, and the exaltation of spirit which followed their exercises would at times spread to the bystanders,—as is the case in the “zikr” of the Mahomedans of to-day.*
* 1 Sam. x. 5-13, where we see Saul seized with the
prophetic spirit on meeting with a band of prophets
descending from the high place; cf. 2 Sam. vi. 13-16, 20-23,
for David dancing before the ark.
The early kings, Saul and David, used to have recourse to individuals belonging to all these three classes, but the prophets, owing to the intermittent character of their inspiration and their ministry, could not fill a regular office attached to the court. One of this class was raised up by God from time to time to warn or guide His servants, and then sank again into obscurity; the priests, on the contrary, were always at hand, and their duties brought them into contact with the sovereign all the year round. The god who was worshipped in the capital of the country and his priesthood promptly acquired a predominant position in all Oriental monarchies, and most of the other temples, together with the sacerdotal bodies attached to them, usually fell into disrepute, leaving them supreme. If Amon of Thebes became almost the sole god, and his priests the possessors of all Egypt, it was because the accession of the XVIIIth dynasty had made his pontiffs the almoners of the Pharaoh. Something of the same sort took place in Israel; the priesthood at Jerusalem attached to the temple built by the sovereign, being constantly about his person, soon surpassed their brethren in other parts of the country both in influence and possessions. Under David’s reign their head had been Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, a descendant of Eli, but on Solomon’s accession the primacy had been transferred to the line of Zadok. In this alliance of the throne and the altar, it was natural at first that the throne should reap the advantage. The king appears to have continued to be a sort of high priest, and to have officiated at certain times and occasions.* The priests kept the temple in order, and watched over the cleanliness of its chambers and its vessels; they interrogated the Divine will for the king according to the prescribed ceremonies, and offered sacrifices on behalf of the monarch and his subjects; in short, they were at first little more than chaplains to the king and his family.