The History of the World

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. 6 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 re port, 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 4 Reinecc. in Jul, Hist

VOL. III.

8 S. Sen. f. 62.

N

⚫ 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 overcome 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.

I

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, Sosac; 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.

quities, reproveth it as an error in Herodotus, that he ascribeth the acts of Sesac to Sesostris, which perchance Herodotus might have done by comparison, accounting Sesac another Sesostris, for the great things he did.

Of the great acts and virtues of king Sesostris, I have spoken already, in the story of the Egyptian princes; only in this he was reproved, that he caused four of his captive kings to draw his chariot, when he was disposed to be seen, and to ride in triumph; one of which four, saith Eutropius, as such time as Sesostris was carried out to take the air, cast his head continually back upon the two foremost wheels next him; which Sesostris perceiving, asked him what he found worthy the admiration in that motion; to whom the captive king answered, that in those he beheld the instability of all worldly things; for that both the lowest part of the wheel was suddenly carried about, and became the highest, and the upmost part was as suddenly turned downward and under all; which, when Sesostris had judiciously weighed, he dismissed those princes, and all others, from the like servitude for the future. Of this Sesostris, and that he could not be taken for Sesac, I have spoken at large in that part of the Egyptian kings preceding.

2 Hist. Miscel, 1. xviis

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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 overcome 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.