e working of the elements; to
fathom the beginning, end, and midst of all ages; to penetrate the
mystery of the eternal, wave-like and rotating recurrence of events;
from the astronomers of Byblos, Acre, Sargon, Borsippa and Nineveh did
he learn to watch the yearly orbits of the stars and the changes in
their positions. He knew also the nature of all animals and divined the
feelings of beasts; he understood the source and direction of winds, the
different properties of plants, and the potency of healing herbs.

The designs in the heart of man are deep waters, but even them could
the king fathom. In the words and voice, in the eyes, in the motions
of the hands, he read the innermost mysteries of souls as plainly as
the characters of an open book. And because of that, from all ends of
Palestine, there came to him a vast multitude of people, imploring
judgment, advice, help, the settlement of some dispute, as well as the
solving of incomprehensible portents and dreams. And men would marvel
at the profundity and finesse of Solomon's answers.

Three thousand proverbs did Solomon compose, and his songs were a
thousand and five. He dictated them to two skilled and rapid scribes:
Elihoreph and Ahiah, the sons of Shisha, and afterwards collated
what both had written. Always did he clothe his thoughts in choice
expressions, for a word fitly spoken is like an apple of gold in a bowl
of translucent sardonyx;[4] and also for that the words of the wise are
as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which
are given from one Shepherd. "A word is a spark in the motion of the
heart,"--thus saith the king. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom
of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of the
AEgyptians. For he was above all men in wisdom; wiser than Ethan the
Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Dardra, the sons of Mahol. But he
was already beginning to weary of the beauty of ordinary human wisdom,
and no longer did it have its former value in his eyes. With a restless
and searching mind did he thirst after that higher wisdom, which the
Lord possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old, set
up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was; that
wisdom which was His great artificer when He set a compass upon the
face of the deep. And Solomon found it not.

The king mastered the teachings of the magi of Chaldaea and Nineveh; the
science of the astrologers of Abydos,