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THE AGONY OF SOLOMON 181
realized with a shock one day that his heir would not carry on his work. Doubt entered his heart and with the doubt a profound despair. It was then that he wrote: ‘I have carried out monumental works and I shall have to leave everything to an heir who will possibly be a fool. Everything done under the sun is vanity and everything seems to run round in a fatal circle; down here, the just is no happier than the unjust, and to devote oneself to study is an empty pursuit, because increased wisdom brings increased sorrow. Aman dies like an animal and nobody knows whether man s spirit rises heavenward or if that of the animal falls to the earth. The man who is too wise becomes dazed and folk do not know whether he should be loved or hated. Let us live a day at a time and remember that God will judge us.’
‘Woe,’ he said on another occasion, while musing bitterly on his son, ‘woe to the nation whose prince is only a chiTd.’
These fits of infinite sadness of a great soul, isolated on its pinnacle of power, feeling cut off from earth yet unable to soar higher, are reminiscent of the lamentations ofJob and the cry of Jesus on Calvary: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani’. (‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’)
Instead of creating a united world with Jerusalem as its centre, Solomon sensed that his own kingdom would be violently torn apart. The populace was agitated and looked for reforms which may have been promised for a long time; the Temple was finished and the exceptional taxes which had been levied for its construction, or for which its construction was a pretext, had not been reduced.
An agitator named Jeroboam formed a political party in the provinces. Rehoboam, who had become the blind instrument of the self-styled conservatives, made an almost public bonfire of his father’s ?hil0S0Plhi books, which vanished completely after Solomon s death, and the old master of spirits, forsaken by those he loved, resembled that king of Thule in the German ballad, who wept in silence into his cup and drank his wine mixed with tears. It was then that he execrated joy, saying: ‘Why have you deceived me?’ It was then that he exclaimed: ‘it is better to enter the house of weeping than the house of rejoicing’. But why? He does not say. Centuries later, a wisdom which was greater than his, come to wipe away all tears, would say: ‘Blessed are you who weep now, because the day will come when you shall
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