Solomon and Solomonic Literature

by Moncure Daniel Conway

And in my name shall his horn be exalted.

25. I will extend his hand on the sea also,

And his right hand on the rivers:

26. He shall address me, “Thou, my father,

My God, and the rock of my support”;

27. In answer I constitute him first-born,

Elyon of the kings of the earth.

Although in all of these verses the Davidic royalty is exalted, the reference to David’s own reign passes at verse 24 into a celebration of Solomon. Here, as in Psalm cxxxii. 17, Solomon is the “horn” of David: he was distinctively the power on sea and river, phrases inapplicable to David, and there is a contrast between the anointed “servant” (verse 20) and the “first-born” (verse 27). The next title, “Elyon” (Most High), comes very near to that of the deity (El Elyon) of the mysterious priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek, whose mythical character and identity with the legendary Solomon will be hereafter considered.

Here we have no doubt the germs of the narrative in 2 Sam. vii. of the formal adoption of Solomon as Jahveh’s son, with the addition of a metaphysical connotation of the sonship not found in the Psalm. In the Psalm the fatherhood is that of support, the position of “first-born” is that of chieftainship among kings; and it is further said (31, 32) that if any of the sons of the Davidic line profane the divine statutes, “Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.” But in 2 Sam. vii. 14, Jahveh applies this warning to Solomon alone, and with a remarkable modification: “I will be his father and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him.” That is, though a son of God he may be chastened like the sons of men,—an intimation of a difference between Solomon and ordinary human nature not intended in the words of the Psalm.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of “first-born” into the world, for there is no article preceding the word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before “son” (i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels (“holy ones” or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to mean that they, the angels, are to worship the “first-born” as the Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king (19–21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the name of an ancient Phœnician god, slain by his son El, no doubt the “first-born of death” in Job xviii. 13, and the violent “son of evil,” in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty, essence, or title; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to the Hebrews.