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Title:       Accession Of Solomon
Author:      Milman, Henry Hart

Accession Of Solomon

B.C. 1017

Introduction

     After many weary years of travail and fighting in the wilderness and the
land of Canaan, the Jews had at last founded their kingdom, with Jerusalem as
the capital.  Saul was proclaimed the first king; afterward followed David,
the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." During the many wars in which the Israelites
had been engaged, the Ark of the Covenant was the one thing in which their
faith was bound.  No undertaking could fail while they retained possession of
it.

     In their wanderings the tabernacle enclosing the precious ark was first
erected before the dwellings for the people.  It had been captured by the
Philistines, then restored to the Hebrews, and became of greater veneration
than before.  It will be remembered that, among other things, it contained the
rod of Aaron which budded and was the cause of his selection as high-priest.
It also contained the tables of stone which bore the Ten Commandments.

     David desired to build a fitting shrine, a temple, in which to place the
Ark of the Covenant; it should be a place wherein the people could worship; a
centre of religion in which the ark should have paid it the distinction due it
as the seat of tremendous majesty.

     But David had been a man of war; this temple was a place of peace. Blood
must not stain its walls; no shedder of gore could be its architect. Yet David
collected stone, timber, and precious metals for its erection; and, not being
allowed to erect the temple himself, was permitted to depute that office to
his son and successor, "Solomon the Wise".

     At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered, the country
was at peace; the domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any other time,
before or afterward.  It was the fitting time for the erection of a great
shrine to enclose the sacred ark.  Nobly was this done, for no human work of
ancient or modern times has so moved the multitude as the mention of Solomon's
Temple.

[See Solomon: Solomon, Last King of Judah and Israel. From the picture by Van
Ghent in the Palazzo Barberini.]

Building Of The Temple At Jerusalem

     Solomon succeeded to the Hebrew kingdom at the age of twenty.  He was
environed by designing, bold, and dangerous enemies.  The pretensions of
Adonijah still commanded a powerful party: Abiathar swayed the priesthood;
Joab the army.  The singular connection in public opinion between the title to
the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's harem is well
understood. ^1 Adonijah, in making request for Abishag, a youthful concubine
taken by David in his old age, was considered as insidiously renewing his
claims to the sovereignty.  Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's
dying admonition: he seized the opportunity of crushing all future opposition
and all danger of a civil war.  He caused Adonijah to be put to death;
suspended Abiathar from his office, and banished him from Jerusalem: and
though Joab fled to the altar, he commanded him to be slain for the two
murders of which he had been guilty, those of Abner and Amasa.  Shimei,
another dangerous man, was commanded to reside in Jerusalem, on pain of death
if he should quit the city.  Three years afterward he was detected in a
suspicious journey to Gath, on the Philistine border; and having violated the
compact, he suffered the penalty.

[Footnote 1: Kings, i.]

     Thus secured by the policy of his father from internal enemies, by the
terror of his victories from foreign invasion, Solomon commenced his peaceful
reign, during which Judah and Israel dwelt safely, Every man under his vine
and under his figtree, from Dan to Beersheba.  This peace was broken only by a
revolt of the Edomites.  Hadad, of the royal race, after the exterminating war
waged by David and by Joab, had fled to Egypt, where he married the sister of
the king's wife.  No sooner had he heard of the death of David and of Joab
than he returned, and seems to have kept up a kind of predatory warfare during
the reign of Solomon.  Another adventurer, Rezon, a subject of Hadadezer, king
of Zobah, seized on Damascus, and maintained a great part of Syria in
hostility to Solomon.

     Solomon's conquest of Hamath Zobah in a later part of his reign, after
which he built Tadmor in the wilderness and raised a line of fortresses along
his frontier to the Euphrates, is probably connected with these hostilities.
^2 The justice of Solomon was proverbial.  Among his first acts after his
accession, it is related that when he had offered a costly sacrifice at
Gibeon, the place where the Tabernacle remained, God had appeared to him in a
dream, and offered him whatever gift he chose: the wise king requested an
understanding heart to judge the people.  God not merely assented to his
prayer, but added the gift of honor and riches.  His judicial wisdom was
displayed in the memorable history of the two women who contested the right to
a child.  Solomon, in the wild spirit of Oriental justice, commanded the
infant to be divided before their faces: the heart of the real mother was
struck with terror and abhorrence, while the false one consented to the
horrible partition, and by this appeal to nature the cause was instantaneously
decided.

[Footnote 2: I Kings, xi., 23; I Chron., viii, 3.]

     The internal government of his extensive dominions next demanded the
attention of Solomon.  Besides the local and municipal governors, he divided
the kingdom into twelve districts: over each of these he appointed a purveyor
for the collection of the royal tribute, which was received in kind; and thus
the growing capital and the immense establishments of Solomon were abundantly
furnished with provisions.  Each purveyor supplied the court for a month. The
daily consumption of his household was three hundred bushels of finer flour,
six hundred of a coarser sort; ten fatted, twenty other oxen; one hundred
sheep; besides poultry, and various kinds of venison.  Provender was furnished
for forty thousand horses, and a great number of dromedaries.  Yet the
population of the country did not, at first at least, feel these burdens:
Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude,
eating and drinking, and making merry.

     The foreign treaties of Solomon were as wisely directed to secure the
profound peace of his dominions.  He entered into a matrimonial alliance with
the royal family of Egypt, whose daughter he received with great magnificence;
and he renewed the important alliance with the king of Tyre. ^1 The friendship
of this monarch was of the highest value in contributing to the great royal
and national work, the building of the Temple.  The cedar timber could only be
obtained from the forests of Lebanon: the Sidonian artisans, celebrated in the
Homeric poems, were the most skilful workmen in every kind of manufacture,
particularly in the precious metals.

[Footnote 1: After inserting the correspondence between King Solomon and King
Hiram of Tyre, according to I Kings, v., Josephus asserts that copies of these
letters were not only preserved by his countrymen, but also in the archives of
Tyre.  I presume that Josephus adverts to the statement of Tyrian historians,
not toan actual inspection of the archives, which he seems to assert as
existingand accessible.]

     Solomon entered into a regular treaty, by which he bound himself to
supply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn; receiving in return their
timber, which was floated down to Joppa, and a large body of artificers.  The
timber was cut by his own subjects, of whom he raised a body of thirty
thousand; ten thousand employed at a time, and relieving each other every
month; so that to one month of labor they had two of rest.  He raised two
other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of burdens, the other of eighty
thousand hewers of stone, who were employed in the quarries among the
mountains.  All these labors were thrown, not on the Israelites, but on the
strangers who, chiefly of Canaanitish descent, had been permitted to inhabit
the country.

     These preparations, in addition to those of King David, being completed,
the work began.  The eminence of Moriah, the Mount of Vision, i.e., the height
seen afar from the adjacent country, which tradition pointed out as the spot
where Abraham had offered his son (where recently the plague had been stayed,
by the altar built in the threshing-floor of Ornan or Araunah, the Jebusite),
rose on the east side of the city.  Its rugged top was levelled with immense
labor; its sides, which to the east and south were precipitous, were faced
with a wall of stone, built up perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, so
as to appear to those who looked down of most terrific height; a work of
prodigious skill and labor, as the immense stones were strongly mortised
together and wedged into the rock.  Around the whole area or esplanade, an
irregular quadrangle, was a solid wall of considerable height and strength:
within this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were either from the
first, or subsequently, admitted.  A second wall encompassed another
quadrangle, called the court of the Israelites.  Along this wall, on the
inside, ran a portico or cloister, over which were chambers for different
sacred purposes.  Within this again another, probably a lower, wall separated
the court of the priests from that of the Israelites.  To each court the
ascent was by steps, so that the platform of the inner court was on a higher
level than that of the outer.

     The Temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth than the
architectural skill and science of the people.  It was a wonder of the world
from the splendor of its materials, more than the grace, boldness, or majesty
of its height and dimensions.  It had neither the colossal magnitude of the
Egyptian, the simple dignity and perfect proportional harmony of the Grecian,
nor perhaps the fantastic grace and lightness of later Oriental architecture.
Some writers, calling to their assistance the visionary temple of Ezekiel,
have erected a most superb edifice; to which there is this fatal objection,
that if the dimensions of the prophet are taken as they stand in the text, the
area of the Temple and its courts would not only have covered the whole of
Mount Moriah, but almost all Jerusalem.  In fact our accounts of the Temple of
Solomon are altogether unsatisfactory.  The details, as they now stand in the
books of Kings and Chronicles, the only safe authorities, are unscientific,
and, what is worse, contradictory.

[See The Temple Of Jerusalem: A reconstruction.]

     Josephus has evidently blended together the three temples, and attributed
to the earlier all the subsequent additions and alterations.  The Temple, on
the whole, was an enlargement of the tabernacle, built of more costly and
durable materials.  Like its model, it retained the ground-plan and
disposition of the Egyptian, or rather of almost all the sacred edifices of
antiquity: even its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the
most ancient temples in Upper Egypt.  It consisted of a propylaeon, a temple,
and a sanctuary; called respectively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy
of Holies.  Yet in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple
must rather have resembled the form of a simple Gothic church.

     In the front to the east stood the porch, a tall tower, rising to the
height of 210 feet.  Either within, or, like the Egyptian obelisks, before the
porch, stood two pillars of brass; by one account 27, by another above 60 feet
high, the latter statement probably including their capitals and bases. These
were called Jachin and Boaz (Durability and Strength). ^1 The capitals of
these were of the richest workmanship, with net-work, chain-work, and
pomegranates.  The porch was the same width with the Temple, 35 feet; its
depth 17 1/2.  The length of the main building, including the Holy Place, 70
feet, and the Holy of Holies, 35, was in the whole 105 feet; the height 52 1/2
feet. ^2

[Footnote 1: Ewald, following, as he states, the LXX., makes these two pillars
not standing alone like obelisks before the porch, but as forming the front of
the porch, with the capitals connected together, and supporting a kind of
balcony, with ornamental work above it.  The pillars measured 12 cubits (22
feet) round.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Fergusson, estimating the cubitrather lower than in the text,
makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or HolyPlace, 60 by 30; the Holy of
Holies, 30; the height 45 feet.  Mr. Fergusson, following Josephus, supposes
that the whole Temple had an upper story ofwood, a talar, as appears in other
Eastern edifices.  I doubt the authorityof Josephus as to the older Temple,
though, as Mr. Fergusson observes, the discrepancies between the measurements
in Kings and in Chronicles may bepartially reconciled on this supposition.
Mr. Fergusson makes the height ofthe eastern tower only 90 feet.  The text
followed 2 Chron., iii., 4, reckoning the cubit at 1 foot 9 inches.]

     Josephus carries the whole building up to the height of the porch; but
this is out of all credible proportion, making the height twice the length and
six times the width.  Along each side, and perhaps at the back of the main
building, ran an aisle, divided into three stories of small chambers: the wall
of the Temple being thicker at the bottom, left a rest to support the beams of
these chambers, which were not let into the wall.  These aisles, the chambers
of which were appropriated as vestiaries, treasuries, and for other sacred
purposes, seem to have reached about half way up the main wall of what we may
call the nave and choir: the windows into the latter were probably above them;
these were narrow, but widened inward.

     If the dimensions of the Temple appear by no means imposing, it must be
remembered that but a small part of the religious ceremonies took place within
the walls.  The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the
High-priest alone.  It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of the
Divinity.  The Holy Place, the body of the Temple, admitted only the
officiating priests.  The courts, called in popular language the Temple, or
rather the inner quadrangle, were in fact the great place of divine worship.
Here, under the open air, were celebrated the great public and national rites,
the processions, the offerings, the sacrifices; here stood the great tank for
ablution, and the high altar for burnt-offerings.

     But the costliness of the materials, the richness and variety of the
details, amply compensated for the moderate dimensions of the building.  It
was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El
Dorado.  The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was
richly carved with knosps and flowers; the ceiling was of fir-tree.  But in
every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion; within and without,
the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole house is described as
overlaid with gold.  The finest and purest - that of Parvaim, by some supposed
to be Ceylon - was reserved for the sanctuary.  Here the cherubim, which stood
upon the covering of the Ark, with their wings touching each wall, were
entirely covered with gold.

     The sumptuous veil, of the richest materials and brightest colors, which
divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was suspended on chains of
gold.  Cherubim, palm-trees, and flowers, the favorite ornaments, everywhere
covered with gilding, were wrought in almost all parts.  The altar within the
Temple and the table of shewbread were likewise covered with the same precious
metal.  All the vessels, the ten candlesticks, five hundred basins, and all
the rest of the sacrificial and other utensils, were of solid gold. Yet the
Hebrew writers seem to dwell with the greatest astonishment and admiration on
the works which were founded in brass by Huram, a man of Jewish extraction,
who had learned his art at Tyre.

     Besides the lofty pillars above mentioned, there was a great tank, called
a sea, of molten brass, supported on twelve oxen, three turned each way; this
was seventeen and one-half feet in diameter.  There was also a great altar,
and ten large vessels for the purpose of ablution, called lavers, standing on
bases or pedestals, the rims of which were richly ornamented with a border, on
which were wrought figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim.  The bases below were
formed of four wheels, like those of a chariot.  All the works in brass were
cast in a place near the Jordan, where the soil was of a stiff clay suited to
the purpose.

     For seven years and a half the fabric arose in silence.  All the timbers,
the stones, even of the most enormous size, measuring seventeen and eighteen
feet, were hewn and fitted, so as to be put together without the sound of any
tool whatever; as it has been expressed, with great poetical beauty:

     "Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew."

At the end of this period, the Temple and its courts being completed, the
solemn dedication took place, with the greatest magnificence which the king
and the nation could display.  All the chieftains of the different tribes, and
all of every order who could be brought together, assembled.

     David had already organized the priesthood and the Levites; and assigned
to the thirty-eight thousand of the latter tribe each his particular office;
twenty-four thousand were appointed for the common duties, six thousand as
officers, four thousand as guards and porters, four thousand as singers and
musicians.  On this great occasion, the Dedication of the Temple, all the
tribe of Levi, without regard to their courses, the whole priestly order of
every class, attended.  Around the great brazen altar, which rose in the court
of the priests before the door of the Temple, stood in front the sacrificers,
all around the whole choir, arrayed in white linen.  One hundred and twenty of
these were trumpeters, the rest had cymbals, harps, and psalteries.  Solomon
himself took his place on an elevated scaffold, or raised throne of brass.
The whole assembled nation crowded the spacious courts beyond.  The ceremony
began with the preparation of burnt-offerings, so numerous that they could not
be counted.

     At an appointed signal commenced the more important part of the scene,
the removal of the Ark, the installation of the God of Israel in his new and
appropriate dwelling, to the sound of all the voices and all the instruments,
chanting some of those splendid odes, the 47th, 97th, 98th, and 107th psalms.
The Ark advanced, borne by the Levites, to the open portals of the Temple. It
can scarcely be doubted that the 24th psalm, even if composed before, was
adopted and used on this occasion.  The singers, as it drew near the gate,
broke out in these words: - Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted
up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.  It was
answered from the other part of the choir, - Who is the King of Glory? - the
whole choir responded, - The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory.

     When the procession arrived at the Holy Place, the gates flew open; when
it reached the Holy of Holies, the veil was drawn back.  The Ark took its
place under the extended wings of the cherubim, which might seem to fold over,
and receive it under their protection.  At that instant all the trumpeters and
singers were at once to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking
the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice, with the trumpets, and cymbals,
and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for
his mercy endureth forever, the house was filled with a cloud, even the house
of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the
cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.  Thus the
Divinity took possession of his sacred edifice.

     The king then rose upon the brazen scaffold, knelt down, and spreading
his hands toward heaven, uttered the prayer of consecration.  The prayer was
of unexampled sublimity: while it implored the perpetual presence of the
Almighty, as the tutelar Deity and Sovereign of the Israelites, it recognized
his spiritual and illimitable nature.  But will God in very deed dwell with
men on the earth? behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee,
how much less this house which I have built?  It then recapitulated the
principles of the Hebrew theocracy, the dependence of the national prosperity
and happiness on the national conformity to the civil and religious law.  As
the king concluded in these emphatic terms: - Now, therefore, arise, O Lord
God, into thy resting-place, thou and the ark of thy strength: let thy
priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and thy saints rejoice in
goodness.  O Lord God, turn not away the face of thine anointed: remember the
mercies of David thy servant, - the cloud which had rested over the Holy of
Holies grew brighter and more dazzling; fire broke out and consumed all the
sacrifices; the priests stood without, awestruck by the insupportable
splendor; the whole people fell on their faces, and worshipped and praised the
Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever.

     Which was the greater, the external magnificence, or the moral sublimity
of this scene?  Was it the Temple, situated on its commanding eminence, with
all its courts, the dazzling splendor of its materials, the innumerable
multitudes, the priesthood in their gorgeous attire, the king, with all the
insignia of royalty, on his throne of burnished brass, the music, the radiant
cloud filling the Temple, the sudden fire flashing upon the altar, the whole
nation upon their knees?  Was it not rather the religious grandeur of the
hymns and of the prayer: the exalted and rational views of the Divine Nature,
the union of a whole people in the adoration of the one Great,
Incomprehensible, Almighty, Everlasting Creator?

     This extraordinary festival, which took place at the time of that of
Tabernacles, lasted for two weeks, twice the usual time: during this period
twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep were
sacrificed, ^1 every individual probably contributing to this great
propitiatory rite; and the whole people feasting on those parts of the
sacrifices which were not set apart for holy uses.

[Footnote 1: Gibbon, in one of his malicious notes, observes, "As the blood
and smoke of so many hecatombs might be inconvenient, Lightfoot, the Christian
Rabbi, removes them by a miracle.  Le Clerc (ad loc.) is bold enough to
suspect the fidelity of the numbers." To this I ventured to subjoin the
following illustration:" According to the historian Kotobeddyn, quoted by
Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, p. 276, the Khalif Moktader sacrificed during
his pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 350, forty thousand camels
and cows, and fifty thousand sheep.  Barthema describes thirty thousand oxen
slain, and their carcasses given to the poor.  Tavernier speaks of one hundred
thousand victims offered by the king of Tonquin." Gibbon, ch. xxiii., iv., p.
96, edit.  Milman.]

     Though the chief magnificence of Solomon was lavished on the Temple of
God, yet the sumptuous palaces which he erected for his own residence display
an opulence and profusion which may vie with the older monarchs of Egypt or
Assyria.  The great palace stood in Jerusalem; it occupied thirteen years in
building.  A causeway bridged the deep ravine, and leading directly to the
Temple, united the part either of Acra or Sion, on which the palace stood,
with Mount Moriah.  In this palace was a vast hall for public business, from
its cedar pillars called the House of the Forest of Lebanon.  It was 175 feet
long, half that measurement in width, above 50 feet high; four rows of cedar
columns supported a roof made of beams of the same wood; there were three rows
of windows on each side facing each other.  Besides this great hall, there
were two others, called porches, of smaller dimensions, in one of which the
throne of justice was placed.  The harem, or women's apartments, adjoined to
these buildings; with other piles of vast extent for different purposes,
particularly, if we may credit Josephus, a great banqueting hall.

     The same author informs us that the whole was surrounded with spacious
and luxuriant gardens, and adds a less credible fact, ornamented with
sculptures and paintings.  Another palace was built in a romantic part of the
country in the valleys at the foot of Lebanon for his wife, the daughter of
the king of Egypt; in the luxurious gardens of which we may lay the scene of
that poetical epithalamium, ^1 or collection of Idyls, the Song of Solomon. ^2
The splendid works of Solomon were not confined to royal magnificence and
display; they condescended to usefulness.  To Solomon are traced at least the
first channels and courses of the natural and artificial water supply which
has always enabled Jerusalem to maintain its thousands of worshippers at
different periods, and to endure long and obstinate sieges. ^3

[Footnote 1: I here assume that the Song of Solomon was an epithalamium.  I
enter not into the interminable controversy as to the literal or allegorical
or spiritual meaning of this poem, nor into that of its age.  A very
particular though succinct account of all these theories, ancient and modern,
may be found in awork by Dr. Ginsberg.  I confess that Dr. Ginsberg's theory,
which is rather tinged with the virtuous sentimentality of the modern novel,
seems to me singularly out of harmony with the Oriental and ancient character
of the poem.  It is adopted, however, though modified, by M. Renan.]

[Footnote 2: According to Ewald, the ivory tower in this poem was raised in
one of these beautiful "pleasances," in the Anti-Libanus, looking toward
Hamath.]

[Footnote 3: Ewald: Geschichte, iii., pp. 62-68; a very remarkable and
valuable passage.]

     The descriptions in the Greek writers of the Persian courts in Susa and
Ecbatana; the tales of the early travellers in the East about the kings of
Samarcand or Cathay; and even the imagination of the Oriental romancers and
poets, have scarcely conceived a more splendid pageant than Solomon, seated on
his throne of ivory, receiving the homage of distant princes who came to
admire his magnificence, and put to the test his noted wisdom. ^1 This throne
was of pure ivory, covered with gold; six steps led up to the seat, and on
each side of the steps stood twelve lions.

[Footnote 1: Compare the great Mogul's throne, in Tavernier; that of the King
of Persia, in Morier.]

     All the vessels of his palace were of pure gold, silver was thought too
mean: his armory was furnished with gold, two hundred targets and three
hundred shields of beaten gold were suspended in the house of Lebanon.
Josephus mentions a body of archers who escorted him from the city to his
country palace, clad in dresses of Tyrian purple, and their hair powdered with
gold dust.  But enormous as this wealth appears, the statement of his
expenditure on the Temple, and of his annual revenue, so passes all
credibility, that any attempt at forming a calculation on the uncertain data
we possess may at once be abandoned as a hopeless task.  No better proof can
be given of the uncertainty of our authorities, of our imperfect knowledge of
the Hebrew weights of money, and, above all, of our total ignorance of the
relative value which the precious metals bore to the commodities of life, than
the estimate, made by Dr. Prideaux, of the treasures left by David, amounting
to eight hundred millions, nearly the capital of our national debt.

     Our inquiry into the sources of the vast wealth which Solomon undoubtedly
possessed may lead to more satisfactory, though still imperfect, results.  The
treasures of David were accumulated rather by conquest than by traffic.  Some
of the nations he subdued, particularly the Edomites, were wealthy.  All the
tribes seem to have worn a great deal of gold and silver in their ornaments
and their armor; their idols were often of gold, and the treasuries of their
temples perhaps contained considerable wealth.  But during the reign of
Solomon almost the whole commerce of the world passed into his territories.
The treaty with Tyre was of the utmost importance: nor is there any instance
in which two neighboring nations so clearly saw, and so steadily pursued,
without jealousy or mistrust, their mutual and inseparable interests. ^1.

[Footnote 1: The very learned work of Movers, Die Phonizier (Bonn, 1841,
Berlin, 1849) contains everything which true German industry and
comprehensiveness can accumulate about this people.  Movers, though in such an
inquiry conjecture is inevitable, is neither so bold, so arbitrary, nor so
dogmatic in his conjectures as many of his contemporaries.  See on Hiram, ii.
326 et seq.  Movers is disposed to appreciate as of high value the fragments
preserved in Josephus of the Phoenician histories of Menander and Dios.  Mr.
Kenrick's Phoenicia may also be consulted with advantage.]

     On one occasion only, when Solomon presented to Hiram twenty inland
cities which he had conquered, Hiram expressed great dissatisfaction, and
called the territory by the opprobrious name of Cabul.  The Tyrian had perhaps
cast a wistful eye on the noble bay and harbor of Acco, or Ptolemais, which
the prudent Hebrew either would not, or could not - since it was part of the
promised land - dissever from his dominions.  So strict was the confederacy,
that Tyre may be considered the port of Palestine, Palestine the granary of
Tyre.  Tyre furnished the shipbuilders and mariners; the fruitful plains of
Palestine victualled the fleets, and supplied the manufacturers and merchants
of the Phoenician league with all the necessaries of life. ^2

[Footnote 2: To a late period Tyre and Sidon were mostly dependent on
Palestine for their supply of grain.  The inhabitants of these cities desired
peace with Herod (Agrippa) because their country was nourished by the king's
country (Acts xii., 20).]