(i) In Genesis 2 God creates a
garden in Eden – a place of plenty and safety, which is to be guarded by human
beings. Solomon’s kingdom also has Edenic qualities. It is a place of
prosperity and abundance, of biological variety and shalom; a place of
safety for God’s people that is protected by Shelomoh (an archaic Hebrew
spelling of ‘his peace’), and by Shelomoh’s chariots and horsemen. All
this comes in the course of Solomon’s reign. The young king did not start (in 1
Kings 2—3) with this abundance.16 Similarly, Adam was created outside Eden and
then set in the garden of delights (Genesis 2.7–8). Other biblical and Ancient
Near Eastern texts show that the association of the ideal king with gardens of
plenty was traditional (e.g. Ecclesiastes 2.4–6).
(ii) In Genesis 1.26 God makes
humankind in his image and likeness and to have dominion (rāḏāh) in
creation. He blesses them so that they might ‘be fruitful and multiply [pᵉrû
ûrᵉḇû], and fill the earth [hāʾāreṣ] and subdue it and have dominion
[rᵉḏû]’ (1.28). Echoing this command to humankind, 1 Kings 4.24 says
that Solomon ‘had dominion [rōḏeh] over all the region west of the
Euphrates from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings west of the Euphrates’. And
the description of Israel spread out in distinct territories, living in
abundance, suggests God’s people have achieved a partial fulfilment of the
original command to be fruitful and multiply.
(iii) The sweep of the narrative
of Genesis 1 builds to a climactic vision of humanity as God’s image-idol (the tselem
elohim), enshrined, as it were, in the central nave of the cosmic temple.
Everything else is ordered to create a place fit for human flourishing. And on
the sixth day, God lays down humanity’s dining rights (Genesis 1.29–30):
‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all
the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for
food.’ Not that humanity’s needs compete with the needs of others (Genesis
1.30): ‘And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to
everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I
have given every green plant for food.’
A similar theme is prominent in 1
Kings 4. Almost everything in the Solomonic utopia is oriented to the
flourishing of Solomon and his people: the arrangement of 12 officers over 12
districts is ‘for the provision of food for the king’ (v. 7). All his subject
kingdoms bring tribute (v. 21) and the rich fare of his kitchen is laid out:
‘Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty cors of fine flour and sixty cors
of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle, a hundred sheep, besides
deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened fowl’ (vv. 22–23).
The land (ʾāreṣ, v. 19)
of greater Israel is the provider for Solomon, just as the whole earth (ʾāreṣ)
is the provider for Adam in Genesis 1.30. (That there are seven types of meat
on Solomon’s table presumably signifies a fullness of the land’s, or the
earth’s, provision.) And to the account of the food given to the beasts in
Genesis 1.30 there corresponds the notice that barley and straw was prepared
for the horses in 1 Kings 4.28.
(iv) At the climax of Genesis 1,
humanity created as God’s tselem and demut is exalted over the
rest of creation: ‘over all the earth’ (v. 26). At the climax of 1 Kings 4,
Solomon – the new Adam – is twice exalted in his wisdom. He is master of the
natural world by his science, and he is exalted over his peers – wiser than
‘all other men’ (v. 31).
(v) In his learning, Solomon ‘speaks
of’ trees, beasts, birds, creeping things and fish (vv. 33–34). That surely
means he knows their names. So in this mastery of the natural world we are
bound to recall Adam’s naming of all the animals (Genesis 2.19–20) and to hear
a further echo of the original command to subdue and have dominion over beasts,
birds, creeping things and fish (Genesis 1.26, 28).
In these and other ways Solomon
is a new Adam. In other respects he is so much the image and likeness of God
that he imitates, or actualizes, God’s own creativity.
(vi) In 1 Kings 4.32 (MT 5.12)
Solomon ‘is the image of the creator God in . . . the creative impulse of his
poetry and songs’.
vii) In Genesis 1, creation comes
about through God’s establishing of order. Days 1–3 comprise an ordered
structure in space and time, with heavenly and earthly spheres then governed by
a distinct entity (the sun and the moon, and human beings) on days 4 and 6.
Solomon creates a well-ordered kingdom, defined spatially by 12 economic
districts (4.7–19) and temporally by a monthly contribution to the king
and his household (4.7). So he creates his own, well-ordered microcosm in space
and time of the order of the whole cosmos that God has created.
The Hebrew text of Genesis 1
emphasizes the theme of order with an intricate web of numerical patterns: 3s,
7s, 10s and multiples of 7s. For example, 7 times God sees that what he has
made is ‘good’. There are 7 words in Genesis 1.1; 14 words in verse 2; and so
on. The numerical order of the passage ‘imparts a remarkable mathematical
aesthetic, the quantifiable order of a fully stable, life-sustaining,
differentiated world’. Numerical patterns are used in a similar way in 1 Kings
4. There are several 12s: a 12-man cabinet (if we include Solomon, in 4.1–6),
12 officers over the 12 districts (and also 12,000 horsemen), following a
monthly cycle of service of the centre. There are 7 animals served up on
Solomon’s table (v. 22), and in verses 32–33 the king’s scientific and artistic
interests cover 7 disciplines (proverbial wisdom, songs, dendrology, zoology,
ornithology, herpetology and ichthyology).
(viii) Both God’s and Solomon’s ordering
creativity is an expression of wisdom. In Proverbs 3.19 the Lord creates
the heavens and the earth by wisdom and understanding. As a sequel to
chapter 3, 1 Kings 4 invites the conclusion that it is by his wisdom that
Solomon creates his ordered, life-giving, value-laden world.
(ix) The God of Genesis takes
initiative in creating the world and there are hints already in Genesis 1 that
he will be revealed, in due course, as the king of all creation and
history. But if he is a sovereign, he is no totalitarian tyrant. He gives
freedom to his humanity and, before that, his creative work proceeds, in part,
through a delegation of authority to other entities. He delegates creativity to
the land (which brings forth both the vegetation and the living creatures, vv.
11 and 19) and to the seas (which bring forth swarming living creatures, v.
20). His own sovereignty is parcelled out to the sun and moon (over the day and
the night in Genesis 1.16–18) and to humanity. In a similar way, 1 Kings 4
presents Solomon as a king, who in his wisdom rules by sharing power with an
executive. He shares power with his high officials and with the officers over
the land (1 Kings 4.1–20).
So, in all these ways Solomon is
caught up into God’s story and the story of the rediscovery of the truly human
identity that God originally intended. In the context of all that goes before
and that comes after these chapters, especially Solomon’s building of the
Temple as a place of divine habitation, 1 Kings 3—4 says that, in and
through this wise and Torah-faithful king, the grand stories of God, humanity
and Israel have now found an ending (of sorts). (Though tragically, in
time, any sense of arrival is frustrated by Solomon’s failings and inability to
cope with threats from outside his pristine world.) (Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “King
Solomon a new Adam and incorporative representative of God’s people (1 Kings
3-4): a text that supports N. T. Wright on Paul and the Messiah,” in One
God, One People, One Future in Honor of N. T. Wright, ed. John Anthony
Dunne and Eric Lewellen [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2018], 136-39)
