wer
of the House of David," as one of these was called, hung a thousand
golden bucklers; while in the great judgment-hall stood the far-famed
throne of the great king. (1 Kings x. 18-20.) Solomon's other buildings
were beautiful gardens and pools, and aqueducts and a luxurious summer
resort. He moreover, either established or built many important towns or
fortresses, among others being Tadmor in the wilderness, afterward
celebrated in history as Palmyra. Countless workmen and inestimable
wealth were involved in the building enterprises of the great king,
which included at the last, to his shame, rival temples to Moloch, and
the other false gods of his heathen wives.

Of course, Solomon's government, household, and buildings, as we have
considered them, involved the accumulation and expenditure of vast sums
of money. But the king's ambition, energy, industry, and business talent
rose to the height of these demands. From two sources he drew his vast
wealth, namely, taxation and commerce. He received large revenues in the
way of tributes from subject peoples, in addition to the increasingly
heavy taxes which he imposed on the people of Israel. Besides taxation,
the king increased his wealth by means of his great commercial
operations in the desert, which was the highway between the Orient and
the Occident, and by means of his two fleets, one on the Mediterranean
and the other on the eastern arm of the Red Sea, which provided a
waterway to both Southern Asia and Western Africa. So rich did Solomon
become from these sources that it is said that he "made silver and gold
at Jerusalem as plentiful as stones." (2 Chron. i. 15.) There was,
however, one fatal fault in Solomon's commercial policy: all the gain
went to the palace and the government. Herein lay one of the secrets of
the division and fall of the nation immediately upon the close of his
career.

Naturally, Solomon's commercial greatness, together with the pomp and
splendor of his court and government, carried his fame to all parts of
the earth. But that for which he received the greatest respect from
surrounding nations was his wisdom, manifested in many ways but chiefly
in his writings. One of the marked effects of David's long and vigorous
reign was to stimulate mental activity in the Hebrew mind. The great
foreign wars with the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Sabeans, and the
surrounding nations, who were more or less advanced in a knowledge of
the arts and scienc