King Solomon observed Succot, but not Kippur
Could it be that Solomon was not a model king but rather an autocrat who ruled with an iron fist and maintained his power by building monumental structures at the expense of his subjects...?
King Solomon is best known for building the Temple of Jerusalem. The description of it is elaborate and lists many costly materials, such as gold, copper, and cedar wood. It took seven years to build, and then he went on to build his palace, which took another 13 years (1 Kings 7:1). The Temple and the palace shared courtyards (7:7), so Solomon could not hold the great celebration of completion until both were furnished and finished. That was in the month of Ethanim, which today is called Tishrei, and "All Israel celebrated for seven days and seven days, even fourteen days" (8:65), which suggests that they celebrated from the first to the fifteenth of Tishrei, the date of the festival of Succot, or Tabernacles.
The account in Second Chronicles is more precise. They dedicated the altar for seven days, had a solemn assembly on the eighth, and then celebrated for another seven days, finishing on the 23rd of the month, after which the people went home "joyful and glad of heart" (7:10).
This makes it clear that the celebrations covered the festival of Succot, from the 15th to the 22nd of Tishrei, but also the eight days beforehand, which included Yom Kippur on the 10th. Did Solomon and his celebrators enjoy Succot but ignore the fast, which is today considered to be the most solemn date of the year?
The Talmud takes the view that the Day of Atonement was abrogated that year, as the overriding joy at the completion of the Temple had to take precedence over all other considerations. So that year "Israel did not observe Yom Kippur...as there is no joy without eating and drinking" (Moed Katan 9A).
To have held the fast in the middle of the celebrations would have spoiled the spirit of pure unadulterated joy and achievement that the completion of the Temple engendered.
But was that joy so pure and unadulterated?
When Solomon built the Temple, he employed forced labor to procure the timber from Lebanon. The people were organized to work in three shifts of 10,000, working one month in Lebanon and two months at home. In addition, there were 70,000 laborers, 3,000 officers and 80,000 quarry workers; and the whole workforce was under the command of one Adoniram (5:27-30). It was not a popular mode of work. He must have been a cruel taskmaster for, some years later, when this same minister of works resurfaces under Rehoboam, Solomon's son, to quell the rebellious workers, Adoniram is stoned to death by the people (12:18).
Solomon reorganized the tribal boundaries into 12 districts, each of which had to supply his court with their luxuries and essentials for one month of the year (4:7). The new boundaries were changes from the old tribal areas, which had not been effaced by Saul or David.
What Solomon did was probably highly efficient for his own taxing purposes, and he set up his sons-in-law as governors over two of the districts. But the changes must have been anathema to the old tribal loyalists, and their very efficiency would have ensured that the tax collection was oppressive and highly unpopular.
The gold that flowed into the treasury was impressive. As Hiram of Tyre paid only 120 talents for the 20 cities of Cabul that Solomon ceded to him in the northwest (9:14), the 666 talents that flowed into Solomon's treasury every year (10:14) must have been an enormous sum.
In addition, Solomon received gold from the taxes of the merchants, presumably the foreign merchants and their caravans.
The amount of gold is recorded; but when it came to copper, the weight was so great that the scribes lost count of it (7:47). Both the gold and the copper were used extensively in the Temple and in Solomon's palace, built alongside the Temple.
The Temple was in fact a royal temple, built as part of the palace, as in Assyria, and not immediately accessible to the people. To reach it they had to traverse the palace, and it was probably only on state occasions that they would have had access. Zadok and his priests administered the Temple, but it was Solomon himself who brought the sacrifices, at least three times a year (9:25) and on other special occasions, when perhaps the whole population was invited to attend. There is no mention of the people bringing their own personal sacrifices to the Temple. Rather, it would have been the custom to continue bringing them to the local shrines (bamot) as was the practice before the Temple was built.
Solomon initiated great building enterprises which must have absorbed much of his wealth. He is also credited with maintaining 40,000 stalls for horses, many of them coming from Egypt (10:28), and a cavalry force of 12,000 horsemen (10:26). Solomon had enemies in Edom and Aram (Syria), but no single war is mentioned during his reign.
As for territory, it is clear that Solomon made love rather than war. He brought into his harem all the women of the surrounding territories and, by marrying the daughters of prominent local sheikhs and petty kings, he was able to annex their lands to his own personal possessions. Political marriage was something he had learned from his father.
Not only did David marry local princesses, but it seems that he induced Solomon to take as his first wife Na'ama, the Ammonite princess, for political reasons. It was her son, Rehoboam, Solomon's firstborn (14:21), who stepped onto the throne after his father's death. It is indeed curious that the dynasty of David was perpetuated by the son of what looks like a forbidden marriage, to one of the people of Ammon.
Nevertheless, Solomon continued the process and is credited with a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines (11:3). These extraordinary figures are unbelievable, and one wonders on what basis they are given.
But then the receipt of 666 talents of gold annually, and 12,000 horsemen at the ready are also difficult to believe. Can we just dismiss them as attempts to increase admiration for this wisest of kings, who spoke great proverbs and praise of all the wonders of nature and to whom God Himself had given wisdom?
There must be more to it than pure exaggeration, especially as these three matters - the wives, the horses from Egypt and the vast quantities of gold - are exactly the three indulgences that Moses had prohibited to any Israelite king that the people might appoint (Deut.17:16-17).
Solomon must have been a deeply unpopular monarch. He forced the people into labor corvées, he taxed heavily all the districts except his own tribe of Judah, and he married foreign wives and built pagan altars to their gods alongside the Temple (11:7-8). It is no wonder that on his death, his empire collapsed and the nine or 10 northern tribes split off from his rule and his Temple for the next 200 years, never to return.
It is therefore quite possible that one of the royal scribes, whose official reports form the basis of the Book of Kings, gave an overblown account of the number of his wives, the count of his horses and his vast quantities of gold. On the face of it, these numbers serve to aggrandize the king; but on closer examination they are seen to be gross exaggerations, which put Solomon in direct opposition to the Law laid down by Moses.
In that sense, the royal scribe is telling us, in an indirect way - for, of course, no official scribe could record direct criticism - that Solomon was not the perfect model king that he was portrayed to be, the builder of God's Temple, the wise and wonderful poet and lover. In reality he was an autocrat who "chastised the people with whips," who ruled with a fist of iron and held on to power by means of conspicuous monumental construction built at the expense of the peasants and the products of their land.
And in that sense, Solomon ignored the Law of Moses, not only in indulging his wives in their idol-worshiping practices but also indulging himself in the amassing of women, horses and gold, in direct defiance of the Torah. And for him the festival of Succot suited his celebrations but the observance of the Day of Atonement was not of supreme importance, when it ran counter to his own matters of state.
Stephen Rosenberg is a Fellow of the W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem.
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