next year's work, wherein he did cut off all means of succour from the Ammonites; all Syria, Moab, and Idumea, being now at his own devotion. By this reckoning, it must have been the twentieth year of David's reign, and about the fiftieth of his life, in which he sent forth Joab to besiege Rabbah, and finished the war of Ammon; wherein also fell out the matter of Uriah's wife. So one-half of David's reign was very prosperous; in the other half he felt great sorrow by the expectation, execution, and sad remembrance of that heavy judgment laid upon him by God, for his foul and bloody offence.

Now, very manifest it is, that in the year after the death of that child, which was begotten in adultery, Solomon was born, who must needs therefore have been nineteen years old, or thereabouts, when he began to reign at the decease of his father, as being begotten in the twenty-first year of his father's reign, who reigned in all forty.

This account hath also good coherence with the following times of David, as may be collected out of ensuing actions; for two years passed ere Absalom slew his brother Ammon; three years ere his father pardoned him; and two years more ere he came into the king's presence. After this, he prepared horses and men, and laid the foundation of his rebellion, which seems to have been one year's work. So the rebellion itself, with all that happened thereupon, as the commotion made by Sheba, the death of Amasa, and the rest, may well seem to have been in the thirtieth year of David's reign.

Whether the three years of famine should be reckoned apart from the last years of war with the Philistines, or confounded with them, it were more hard than needful to conjecture. Plain enough it is, that in the ten remaining years of David, there was time sufficient, and to spare, both for the three years of famine, for four years of war, and for numbering the people, with the pestilence ensuing; as also for his

own last infirmity, and disposing of the kingdom. Yet indeed it seems, that the war with the Philistines was but one year's work, and ended in three or four fights, of which the two or three former were at Gob or Nob near unto Gezer, and the last at Gath. This war the Philistines undertook, as it seemeth, upon confidence gathered out of the tumults in Israel, and perhaps emboldened by David's old age; for he fainted now in the battle, and was afterwards hindered by his men from exposing himself unto danger any more. So David had six or seven years of rest; in which time it is likely, that many of his great men of war died, (being of his own age,) whereby the stirring spirit of Adonijah found little succour in the broken party of Joab the son of Zeruiah.

At this time it might both truly be said by David to Solomon, thou art a wise man;' and by Solomon to God, I am but a young child :' for nineteen years of age might well agree with either of these two speeches.

Nevertheless, there are some that gather out of Solomon's professing himself a child, that he was but eleven years old when he began to reign. Of these Rabbi Solomon seems the first author, whom others of great learning and judgment have herein followed; grounding themselves perhaps upon that which is said of Absalom's rebellion, that it was after forty years, which they understood as years of David's reign. But whereas Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was forty-one years old when he began to reign, it would follow hereby that his father had begotten him, being himself a child of nine or ten years old; the difference between their ages being no greater, if Solomon (who reigned forty years,) were but eleven years old when his reign began. To avoid this inconvenience, Josephus allows eighty years of reign to Solomon; a report so disagreeing with the scriptures, that it needs no confutation. Some indeed

have, in favour of this opinion, construed the words of Josephus, as if they included all the years of Solomon's life. But by such reckoning he should have been forty years old at his father's death; and consequently should have been born long before his father had won Jerusalem; which is a manifest untruth. Wherefore the forty years remembered in Absalom's rebellion, may either seem to have reference to the space between David's first anointment, and the trouble which God brought upon him for his wickedness, or perhaps be read, (according to Josephus, Theodoret, and the Latin translation,) four years, which passed between the return of Absalom to Jerusalem, and his breaking out.

SECT. V.

Of Solomon's writings.

THERE remain of Solomon's works, the Proverbs, the Preacher, and the Song of Solomon. In the first he teacheth good life, and correcteth manners; in the second, the vanity of human nature; in the third, he singeth as it were the Epithalamion of Christ and his church. For the book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, which some give unto Solomon, and some make the elder Philo the author thereof, Jerome, and many others of the best learned, make us think it was not Solomon that wrote it. Stylus libri sapientiæ,' saith Jerome', qui Salomonis inscribitur, Græcam redolet eloquentiam: the style of the book of wisdom, which is ascribed to Solomon, savoureth of the Grecian eloquence. And of the same opinion was St. Augustine; and yet he confesseth, in the nineteenth book and twentieth chapter of the city of God, that the author of that book hath a direct foretelling of the passion of Christ in these words; Circumveniamus justum quoniam insuavis est nobis,' &c. Let us circumvent the righ

teous, for he is unpleasing to us, he is contrary to our doings, he checketh us for offending against the law, he makes his boast to have the knowledge of God, and he calleth himself the son of the Lord, &c., And so doth the course of all the following words point directly at Christ. The books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Cantica Canticorum3, Rabbi Moses Kimchi ascribeth to Isaiah the prophet. Suidas and Cedrenus report that Solomon wrote of the remedies of all diseases, and graved the same on the sides of the porch of the temple, which they say Ezechias * pulled down, because the people, neglecting help from God by prayer, repaired thither for their recoveries.

Of Solomon's books of invocations and inchantments to cure diseases, and expel evil spirits, Josephus hath written at large, though, as I conceive, rather out of his own invention, or from some uncertain report, than truly. He also speaketh of one Eliazarus, who, by the root in Solomon's ring, dispossessed divers persons of evil spirits, in the presence of Vespasian, and many others, which I will not stand to examine.

Certainly, so strange an example of human frailty hath never been read of as this king; who having received wisdom from God himself, in honour of whom, and for his only service, he built the first and most glorious temple of the world; he that was made king of Israel and Judæa, not by the law of nature, but by the love of God, and became the wisest, richest, and happiest of all kings,-did in the end, by the persuasion of a few weak and wretched idolatrous women, forget and forsake the Lord of all the world, and the giver of all goodness, of which he was more liberal to this king than to any that ever the world had. Of whom Siracides writeth in this manner: 'Solomon reigned in a peaceable time and was 'glorious, for God made all quiet round about, that

VOL. III.

3 S. Sen. f. 62.

N

4 Reinecc. in Jul. Hist

he might build a house in his name, and prepare the sanctuary for ever: how wise wast thou in thy youth, and wast filled with understanding, as with a flood! Thy mind covered the whole earth, and hath filled it with grave and dark sentences. Thy name went abroad in the isles, and for thy peace 'thou wast beloved,' &c. But thus he concludeth, ⚫ thou didst bow thy loins to women, and wast over' come by thy body; thou didst stain thine honour, and hast defiled thy posterity, and hast brought 'wrath upon thy children, and felt sorrow for thy folly,' chap. xxvii.

SECT. VI.

Of the contemporaries of Solomon.

NEAR the beginning of Solomon's reign, Agelaus, the third of the Heraclidæ in Corinth, Labotes in Lacedemon, and soon after Sylvius Alba, the fourth of the Sylvii, sway'd those kingdoms: Laosthenes then governing Assyria: Agastus and Archippus, the second and third princes after Codrus, ruling the Athenians.

In the twenty-sixth of Solomon's reign, Hiram of Tyre died, to whom Baliastrus succeeded, and reigned seventeen years, after Mercator's account, who reckons the time of his rule by the age of his sons. Josephus gives him fewer years. Theophilus Antiochenus against Autolicus, finds Bozorius the next after Hiram, if there be not some kings omitted between the death of Hiram, and the reign of Bozorius.

Vaphres being dead, about the twentieth of Solomon, Sesac or Shisak, (as our English Geneva terms him,) began to govern in Egypt, being the same with him whom Diodorus calleth Sosachis; Josephus, So

Cedrenus, Susesinus; Eusebius, in the column of the Egyptian kings, Smendes, and in that of the Hebrews Susac. Josephus, in the eighth of his Anti

1 Ant. lib. iii.