Every child used to know John Masefield’s poem ‘Cargoes’. Children in my part of the world could visit a dock and see timber being unloaded, see ships and sailors from Scandinavia and the Baltics, and glimpse a world of bustle and enterprise.
Masefield’s poem ends with a dirty British coaster. The coaster with its salt-caked smoke stack (try saying that 20 times without getting tangled) was cheerfully carrying a cargo of Tyne coal and tin trays but the poem begins with a quite different vessel.
That different vessel was the quinquireme. It was propelled by banks of oarsmen. Weather permitting, it plied its trade between Ophir (Arabia) and Ezion-geber (Palestine). Such ships depended on disciplined muscle, not a reciprocating engine or turbine. They carried not coal and tin trays but ivory, apes and peacocks (or perhaps the word means baboons) plus other luxuries destined for King Solomon’s palace and temple. We are told that Solomon had a fleet of galleys to satisfy the nation’s consumers, but mostly the king. On a three-year schedule the king took possession of commodities. He did deals for chariots, horses and raw materials such as cedar which were used in the manufacture of musical instruments, amongst other things. His tableware was all gold. Silver was too common to be noticed.
Solomon was no ascetic. He was a fully paid up sybarite. We are told that he outdid all the kingdoms of the earth (as far as the writer was aware of them) in wealth. Solomon was undoubtedly rolling in it. He had precious stones galore, gold, silver, perfumes, spices, horses and mules. He also had a vast number of women – and these introduced him to their own gods. For his building projects Solomon relied on forced labour.
It is difficult to place this king in the unfolding of a story leading to the advent of a Messiah. Certainly we read that God was displeased with him but Solomon also seems to have attracted domestic adulation as did our own Charles II. Sometimes the biblical writers seem to be excessively and uncritically candid in their treatment of events in the story of Israel. But then there were the prophets. They were the odd men out and they had quite other things on their minds. They make it clear that there is more to life than being a fully paid up sybarite. We turn to Isaiah more often than we do to I Kings.
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