No throne like Solomon’s was made for any other kingdom.

II_Chronicles.9:17-19

Is it how much gold you got that will matter at the end? Is wealth the measure of success and happiness?

Back in biblical days, as is now, it depends on how you ask. Whoever wrote Chronicles is impressed with the Midas touch of King Solomon and his preference for all things gold. The text doesn’t tell us the dark side of the story - as with Midas - but we know that this obsession with greed and gold will cost Solomon’s son the kingdom. There is a warning hidden somewhere in these texts, hidden under heaps of golden splendor.

The royal caravan is loaded with gold, gems and spices, gifts from the African Queen of Sheba on her famous visit to King Solomon. It’s repeated here for the second time in the Bible. The story exudes innuendo of eros and wealth and will yield the Ethiopian legend of Menelik - their born son who will forever carry Solomon’s seed in the royal African tradition.

Gold glitters and shows up all over this story and this chapter - not just in the gifts the queen brings the king and the gifts he gives her back.

The word gold shows up 16 times in chapter 9 -- Solomon’s court is gleaming with displays of precious power. His throne is pure ivory, covered in solid gold, with 12 lions made of of gold on each side of the 6 steps leading up to his majesty - and 2 more golden lions by his side as armrests:

וַיַּ֧עַשׂ הַמֶּ֛לֶךְ כִּסֵּא־שֵׁ֖ן גָּד֑וֹל וַיְצַפֵּ֖הוּ זָהָ֥ב טָהֽוֹר׃ וְשֵׁ֣שׁ מַעֲל֣וֹת לַ֠כִּסֵּ֠א וְכֶ֨בֶשׁ בַּזָּהָ֤ב לַכִּסֵּא֙ מׇאֳחָזִ֔ים וְיָד֛וֹת מִזֶּ֥ה וּמִזֶּ֖ה עַל־מְק֣וֹם הַשָּׁ֑בֶת וּשְׁנַ֣יִם אֲרָי֔וֹת עֹמְדִ֖ים אֵ֥צֶל הַיָּדֽוֹת׃ וּשְׁנֵ֧ים עָשָׂ֣ר אֲרָי֗וֹת עֹמְדִ֥ים שָׁ֛ם עַל־שֵׁ֥שׁ הַֽמַּעֲל֖וֹת מִזֶּ֣ה וּמִזֶּ֑ה לֹא־נַעֲשָׂ֥ה כֵ֖ן לְכׇל־מַמְלָכָֽה׃

The king also made a large throne of ivory, overlaid with pure gold.

Six steps led up to the throne; and the throne had a golden footstool attached to it, and arms on either side of the seat. Two lions stood beside the arms,

and twelve lions stood on the six steps, six on either side. None such was ever made for any other kingdom.

II_Chronicles.9:17-19

He only drinks from gold cups as does his royal court -- silver is in bad taste, it’s been devalued.

There are 4000 stables and 12,000 trained riders for the king’s pure bred horses.

This excess is massive and deplorable. Like Midas, he has lost touch with the humanity of it all.

Solomon will rule for 40 years but as soon as he dies the kingdom is torn into two - but this book wont tell you why and how it happened - what was his role in leading up to this rift. It’s the gold. But does this book critique or cover up the greed?

Chronicles was written by pro-Judean authors in the generations later, glorifying Solomon’s legacy and omitting all the problematic stuff such as the slave labor he created for the people in order to build the lavish temple and palaces. All that gold had to come from somewhere - and at the people’s expenses. They won’y take it for long. No oppression lasts.

But though this book tolerated no criticism of the king’s glory - other books do.

One of the books that first got me to get curious about the bible’s origins and lesser told truths was this novel published in the 1970’s in German. I read the Hebrew translation in my late teens and it blew my mind. THIS was the Bible? Solomon and David were not saints?? Our history is more complicated???

The King David Report was written by Stefan Heym, an East-German Jewish author who was disillusioned with Communism and wrote a veiled criticism of the regime - disguised as a story about King Solomon’s court and the hiring of an official author to tell the story of King David’s ascent to the throne.

The King David Report is more than a satirical retelling of biblical politics—it’s a piercing allegory of life under authoritarian regimes, then and now. Framed as the biblical historian's struggle to write the official account of King David’s reign, the novel examines how truth is distorted by power. Ethan ben Hoshaja, the scribe, is instructed to write not what happened, but what glorifies the regime: “The truth, Ethan, is what His Majesty wants it to be.”

The critic K. E. Attar noted, “Heym’s novel dramatizes the rewriting of history as a tool of power.” Solomon’s bureaucrats resemble the Stalinist state: secretive, cruel, obsessed with loyalty. Ethan, caught between conscience and survival, becomes an emblem of resistance.

The novel’s enduring power lies in its double critique—of biblical glorification and totalitarian modernity.

I’m grateful to celebrate this book’s courage today, so many years after I first read it, helping me open my eyes to the multiple layers of my history and reality and wonder what is the story of all this gold and power, god-fueled faith and cruelty, mixed with wisdom and poetry, national pride and legends of longed for peace and power?

Solomon dies at the end of this chapter and with him dies the fact of fiction of the united kingdom.

Coming next - Chronicle’s version of the collapse of the kingdom and how the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah were born out of the rift.

It all begins, of course, with gold.

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