What are three qualities of Solomon from the Bible?

Answer 1

A:From The Bible, one quality of Solomon was his great wisdom, gifted to him by God. Solomon, in a dream, asked God for wisdom and soon after this was granted , two women asked for judgement over the ownership of a small baby. In this episode, Solomon gave his most famous judgement, the only biblical example of his great wisdom. Solomon, with his profound wisdom, just knew that only one woman would be willing to give up her claim to the child rather than have it killed. Whether the insight this passage describes was really wise can be a matter for our own judgement. According to the Bible, Solomon demonstrated no political wisdom, nor even sufficient common sense to govern wisely in the interests of his own son's succession to the throne of the United Monarchy. The Bible tells us that Solomon's reckless spending and swingeing taxes, maintained by his son, were the cause of the breakup of the United Monarchy. In spite of his supposedly personal knowledge of God, 1 Kings chapter 11 says that he unwisely began to worship other gods. Although much of the narrative in the Book of Chronicles follows the Book of Kings more or less word for word, there is no mention of Solomon's judgement of the two women and throughout the narrative the strong emphasis on the wisdom of King Solomon is absent.

A second quality of Solomon was his great wealth. The Bible describes the fabulous wealth of his kingdom and how he even entranced the Queen of Sheba with his wealth. Lester L. Grabbe (Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?) says that he does not discount the existence of a king Solomon but finds it difficult to discover much in the Solomon story that strikes him as likely to be historical. The episodes about the Queen of Sheba were invented by the post-Deuteronomic redactor.

A third quality of Solomon in the Bible was his great sexual proclivity. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. This is puzzling since the entire population (male and female) of Jerusalem appears to have been less than one thousand during the tenth century BCE. If true, this would certainly have left most of his male subjects in and around the city to lead lives of celibacy. It can only be remarked that there was no rebellion before his death.