Improvements by Solomon

Improvements by Solomon.

Under Solomon the city took on a much grander aspect. There is now definite reference to a wall surrounding it (I Kings iii. 9, ix. 15), a part of which seems to have been the Millo mentioned above. This wall must have enclosed some portion left open by David (ib. xi. 27). Solomon erected a palace made up of various buildings (ib. iii. 1), which took thirteen years to build (ib. vii. 1). The Temple was commenced in the month Ziv (ib. vi. 1; see Temple); it occupied seven years in construction, and was finished in the month Bul (ib. vi. 38). With the help of a Tyrian, the two pillars Jachin and Boaz were fashioned out of bronze (ib. vii. 13 et seq., ix. 11). The Temple was made up of a forecourt, the Holy Place (40 × 20 × 30 ells), the Holy of Holies (a cube of 20 ells), and various smaller buildings adjoining. To this Temple the Ark was removed from the city of David on the Feast of Tabernacles (ib. viii. 1). With the assistance of Hiram of Tyre (I Kings v. 15 et seq.), Solomon built a palace for Pharaoh's daughter (ib. vii. 8), and the "house of the forest of Lebanon" ("bet ya'ar ha-Lebanon," ib. vii. 2), which measured 100 × 50 × 30 cubits, and the top part of which was used as an armory (ib. x. 16). All these buildings, constructed of stone and wood, seem to have stood in a sort of court ("Hazer"), around which was a wall of three courses of stone (ib. vii. 12). Smaller courts surrounded the individual buildings. Solomon is said to have embellished Jerusalem with silver and costly wood (ib. x. 27). In later years he built, also, a "bamah" to Chemosh and to Molech "in the Mount that is before Jerusalem" (ib. xi. 7, R. V.).

The extent of the city at this time might be gaged by tracing the probable line of the wall, if that line were at all certain. Some scholars believe that Solomon enclosed the western hill; the wall would then be the first of the three, which had sixty crenelations, mentioned by Josephus ("B. J." v. 4, § 2). It would accordingly have commenced at what was later the tower Hippicus, near the present Jaffa Gate; running eastward to the Xystus, it would then have encircled the greater part of the Temple mount; bending south and southwest, it would have skirted Ophel, though not including the Siloam Pool (Josephus says "above the fountains"); and, enclosing the present Jewish and Protestant cemeteries, it would then have turned north again, meeting the other end at the Jaffa Gate. Upon this supposition, the remains found in the excavations of Maudslay in 1865, successfully followed by Bliss in 1896-97, are parts of this wall. Where the towers Hananeel and Ha-Meah or Meah stood can not be ascertained. They are mentioned in Jer. xxxi. 38; Zech. xiv. 10; Neh. iii. 1, xii. 39. The former seems to have marked the northeast corner of the city; the latter, to have been on a wall leading westward from this corner.

Jerusalem