King James Version · The united kingdom
Song of Songs 3
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By night on my bed I sought him whom loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I charge you, O ye daughters of , by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. Who is this that cometh out of like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and , with all powders of the merchant? Behold his bed, which is ’s; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel. They all hold , being expert in war: every man hath his upon his thigh because of fear in the night. King made himself a chariot of the wood of . He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of . Go forth, O ye daughters of , and behold king with the wherewith his mother him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.