ve been reversed, and Hiram is made the
donor of the twenty towns.

In a future age, when priestly and prophetic influences had gained the
ascendant, amid the perils which assailed Jerusalem, and the miseries of
the exile, the Israelites, contrasting their humiliation with the glory
of the past, forgot the reproaches which their forefathers had addressed
to the house of David, and surrounded its memory with a halo of romance.
David again became the hero, and Solomon the saint and sage of his race;
the latter "spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand
and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even
unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." We are told that
God favoured him with a special predilection, and appeared to him on
three separate occasions: once immediately after the death of David,
to encourage him by the promise of a prosperous reign, and the gift
of wisdom in governing; again after the dedication of the temple, to
confirm him in his pious intentions; and lastly to upbraid him for his
idolatry, and to predict the downfall of his house. Solomon is supposed
to have had continuous dealings with all the sovereigns of the Oriental
world,* and a Queen of Sheba is recorded as having come to bring him
gifts from the furthest corner of Arabia.

* 1 Kings iv. 34; on this passage are founded all the
legends dealing with the contests of wit and wisdom in which
Solomon was supposed to have entered with the kings of
neighbouring countries; traces of these are found in Dius,
in Menander, and in Eupolemus.

His contemporaries, however, seem to have regarded him as a tyrant who
oppressed them with taxes, and whose death was unregretted.*

* I am inclined to place the date of Solomon's death between
935 and 930 B.C.

[Illustration: 384.jpg King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba]

His son Rehoboam experienced no opposition in Jerusalem and Judah on
succeeding to the throne of his father; when, however, he repaired to
Shechem to receive the oath of allegiance from the northern and central
tribes, he found them unwilling to tender it except under certain
conditions; they would consent to obey him only on the promise of his
delivering them from the forced labour which had been imposed upon them
by his predecessors. Jeroboam, who had returned from his Egyptian exile