Chapter Four. The Divine Presence and a Heavenly Voice Come to Solomon’s Aid—On Sin, Repentance, and Absolution

Solomon is not merely a prefiguration of Jesus, nor simply an ideal king. He is also a king judged by his own misconduct, for his sins against God; and in both Jewish and Christian tradition, his biblical biography occupies a central place in the debate on the nature of crime and punishment, repentance and forgiveness. Nonetheless, Christian literature accorded far more attention to this aspect of Solomon’s biography than did Jewish writers. The correspondence that existed here was not one in which each side responded to the claims of the other, but rather a seemingly shared interest in, or need to address, the biblical account of Solomon’s life. In this chapter, I will present only a few of the many treatments of this subject by Jewish and Christian writers in an attempt to understand the roots of their intensive occupation with the idea of Solomon as a sinner—an occupation that clearly reflects Christianity’s attempt to grapple with the Bible and to do so through exegetical methods. More than one biblical king, after all, was held to account for his sins.