Solomon

Solomon was the third king of ancient Israel, traditionally dated to a reign of roughly 970 to 931 BC, and the son of King David and Bathsheba. The Hebrew Bible presents him as the ruler under whom the united monarchy reached its widest reach, its busiest trade, and its most ambitious building programme, before the kingdom split apart shortly after his death.

His succession was contested. According to 1 Kings, his older half-brother Adonijah had already begun acting as king when the prophet Nathan and Bathsheba persuaded the dying David to confirm Solomon. Once enthroned in Jerusalem, Solomon consolidated power decisively, removing rivals and reorganising the tribal territories into administrative districts that funded a centralised court.

The defining project of his reign was the construction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, built over seven years using cedar from Lebanon supplied by King Hiram of Tyre. Beside it he raised a larger royal palace complex that took thirteen more years. Trade expeditions reached Ophir for gold, and chariot cities such as Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were fortified.

Tradition credits him with extraordinary wisdom, dramatised in the judgement between two women claiming the same child, and attaches his name to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Heavy taxation and forced labour to sustain his projects bred resentment, and after he died his son Rehoboam lost the northern tribes, ending the united kingdom.

The name Solomon comes from the Hebrew Shelomoh, derived from the root shalom, meaning peace or wholeness. Whatever the strain his policies placed on his subjects, he ruled without major war, and the peaceable sense embedded in his name matched the long quiet of his decades on the throne.