Solomon

Who Was Solomon?

Solomon was the third king of Israel, son of David and Bathsheba, and the figure to whom the biblical tradition attributes the founding of the Jerusalem Temple, the height of Israelite political and cultural achievement, and the greatest body of wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible. His reign, traditionally dated to approximately 970–931 BC, represented the apex of the united monarchy — a period of prosperity, diplomatic sophistication, and cultural creativity that the subsequent tradition looked back on as the golden age of Israelite civilization.

The books attributed to Solomon in the Hebrew Bible — Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs — constitute one of the most diverse and most philosophically serious bodies of literature in the ancient world. Proverbs presents the wisdom tradition at its most confident: the conviction that the moral order of the universe is intelligible, that careful observation of human life reveals its patterns, and that living in accordance with those patterns produces flourishing. Ecclesiastes presents the same tradition under pressure: the voice of one who has pursued wisdom, pleasure, and achievement to their limits and found them insufficient. The Song of Songs is an erotic poem whose place in the canon has been debated for two millennia but whose presence there is a statement about the goodness of embodied love and its capacity to image the love between God and his people.

Solomon’s own story is one of the most complex in Scripture: a man of extraordinary gifts who is given wisdom by God, builds the Temple, and then, in the latter part of his reign, allows his many foreign wives to draw his heart after other gods — a failure that the Deuteronomistic historian presents as the root cause of the subsequent division of the kingdom.

In Their Own Words

Selected Bibliography

• Proverbs — attributed to Solomon, collected and edited over centuries
• Ecclesiastes — attributed to Solomon; probably composed in the post-exilic period
• Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) — attributed to Solomon
• 1 Kings 1–11 — narrative of Solomon's reign