olomon rode so often in state, be not those
alluded to, Ecclesiastes 2:5, 6, where he says, "He made him gardens and
orchards, and planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits: he made him
pools of water, to water the wood that bringeth forth trees;" and to
the finest part whereof he seems to allude, when, in the Canticles, he
compares his spouse to a garden "enclosed," to a "spring shut up," to a
"fountain sealed," ch. 4. 12 [part of which from rains are still extant,
as Mr. Matmdrell informs us, page 87, 88]; cannot now be certainly
determined, but may very probably be conjectured. But whether this Etham
has any relation to those rivers of Etham, which Providence once dried
up in a miraculous manner, Psalm 74:15, in the Septuagint, I cannot say.

[19] These seven hundred wives, or the daughters of great men, and
the three hundred concubines, the daughters of the ignoble, make one
thousand in all; and are, I suppose, those very one thousand women
intimated elsewhere by Solomon himself, when he speaks of his not having
found one [good] woman among that very number, Ecclesiastes 7:28.

[20] Josephus is here certainly too severe upon Solomon, who, in making
the cherubims, and these twelve brazen oxen, seems to have done no more
than imitate the patterns left him by David, which were all given David
by Divine inspiration. See my description of the temples, ch. 10. And
although God gave no direction for the lions that adorned his throne,
yet does not Solomon seem therein to have broken any law of Moses;
for although the Pharisees and latter Rabbins have extended the second
commandment, to forbid the very making of any image, though without any
intention to have it worshipped, yet do not I suppose that Solomon so
understood it, nor that it ought to be so understood. The making any
other altar for worship but that at the tabernacle was equally forbidden
by Moses, Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 5; yet did not the two tribes and
a half offend when they made an altar for a memorial only, Joshua 22;
Antiq. B. V. ch. 1. sect. 26, 27.

[21] Since the beginning of Solomon's evil life and adversity was the
time when Hadad or Ader, who was born at least twenty or thirty years
before Solomon came to the crown, in the days of David, began to give
him disturbance, this implies that Solomon's evil life began early, and
continued very long, which the multitude of his wives and concubines
does imply also; I suppose when he was not fifty years