Solomon in the Shadows

There’s a paradox at the heart of kingship. A king requires power—often manifested in the ancient world in a great army to intimidate and defeat his enemies, and wives reflecting military and trade alliances with neighbouring countries.

He also needs great wealth to finance all this, and the magnificent buildings—palaces and temples—that are his visible presence in the world.

Yet the acquisition of power and wealth may paradoxically cause the oppression of the people it was intended to protect. Deuteronomy 17:14–20 both warns against and provides a control mechanism for such oppression: subservience to Torah law.

1 Kings 4–11 is the fulfilment of Deuteronomy’s warning.

Frans Francken II’s painting of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon’s court draws heavily on the Bible (1 Kings 10:1–13). As is common in depictions of this episode, the Queen of Sheba’s foreignness is not on display—her pale skin and fair hair are far from Ethiopian, and her attire is European. The same goes for her female attendants. Yet gender itself may be a signifier of foreignness in this painting, and in the Bible; as possible agents of seduction (whether political, religious, or moral), all women are potentially ‘foreign’.

We, the viewers, are being invited to take a position on the paradox of kingship. The figure dressed in a red cloak and ermine fur at the left of the composition—the chamberlain perhaps—has fixed us with his gaze. He’s pointing at the Queen of Sheba and the pile of gold and silver that are her tribute to the king. But other than two or three of Solomon’s courtiers, and the maidservant who’s holding the queen’s gown, no-one in the painting looks directly at the king and queen. Most of the spectators are engaged in animated debate with each other, modelling, perhaps, another way that we might respond.

As its viewers, we seem invited both to see, and to see through this scene. Do we see the power and wealth that are the foundation of Solomon’s glorious kingdom, or do we see the ‘foreign’ woman and the cache of silver and gold that herald a very bad end (cf. Deuteronomy 17:17)?

Solomon’s judgement of the two prostitutes who both claim to be the mother of one living baby was a popular subject for artists. Jusepe de Ribera’s painting departs from artistic tradition by depicting an intimate drama, not a major spectacle (cf. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s 1726–28 version of the scene in the Patriarchal Palace, Udine). Ribera’s small, dark, enclosed area, in which a few ‘props’—a pillar for a palace, a paw for a throne—stand for the whole, has the feel of a stage set.

True to the biblical account (1 Kings 3:16–28), Ribera makes it next to impossible for the viewer to know which of the women is the real mother.

The biblical narrator creates uncertainty by neither naming nor describing the two women, by the ambiguous use of personal pronouns (especially in Hebrew), and by inconsistency regarding the order of speakers. Readers cannot be sure that Solomon gave the living baby to the woman the narrator called the true mother.

Ribera has the two women dressed almost identically, their expressions and postures giving little away. Based on visual evidence, a case can be made for either.

The Bible locates this episode immediately after Solomon’s inaugural dream at Gibeon (1 Kings 3:4–15); a sign that he’s qualified for the job of judge. All Israel, and all future readers, are witnesses to a demonstration of Solomon’s God-given capacity to adjudicate between right and wrong (v.9).

Ribera, however, portrays Solomon as an old man, hinting that the story’s significance lies elsewhere.

Read in the light of Deuteronomy 17:8–13, and in the company of Ribera’s painting, the episode can seem to say that, in baffling legal disputes such as this one, the judge’s decision, right or wrong, just or unjust, must stand. The formulation that occurs in both 1 Kings 3:28 and Deuteronomy 17:13—‘all Israel heard … and feared’—may hint that the king awarded the baby to the ‘wrong’ mother. Not the compassionate one, but the one who, like Solomon himself, compensated for the absence of birthright (Solomon was not David’s firstborn) and bluffed fearlessly to keep the whole baby (read ‘kingdom’).

The implied reader of Deuteronomy 17:2–7 is not the perpetrator of the crime in question—the worship of other gods—but the person who hears of or sees the prohibited crime. Turning a deaf ear or a blind eye is out of the question. Whoever has reason to suspect is legally obliged to investigate, and witnesses are bound to cast the first stone.

Viewed through this lens, Sébastien Bourdon’s Solomon Worshipping Idols depicts a nightmare. He makes you, the viewer, into an unwilling, terrified witness of a capital crime involving the king.

You come upon a clearing in the Jerusalem hills. A column, a massive urn, and two statues—one male and dark and one white and female—are permanent fixtures, but they can’t be dismissed as the decaying remains of an earlier civilization. An expanse of fabric has been draped around the tree and the urn, creating the sense of an enclosure, and there’s a red carpet trimmed with gold on the steps. The statues are festooned with garlands of fresh flowers. There’s music—you see a small flute and cymbals, and snatches of song emerge from the open mouths of a couple of the women. Pungent smoke drifts up from a golden incense altar, and a libation offering with a silver chalice and platter is in process. Can these be the very vessels designated for use in the holy Temple (1 Kings 7:48–51)?

King Solomon is gazing up at the statues, as directed by a woman in white at centre stage. His hands are on his chest. She’s literally turning his heart towards other gods (Deuteronomy 17:17). There’s no way out of this: you’re a witness to royal idol worship. Your hand will throw the first stone of a public stoning that will end with the king’s death (v.7). You and you alone will be responsible for regicide.

But wait. You and you alone. You’re the only witness, and ‘a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness’ (v.6). Without making a sound, you turn on your heels and tiptoe away.