III. SOLOMON AND HIRAM OF TYRE

Connected with the circumstances of this same colony of Laish is another coincidence which I have to offer, and I introduce it in this place, because it is so connected, for otherwise it anticipates a point of Jewish history, which, in the order of the books of Scripture, lies a long way before me. The construction of Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem is the event at which it dates.

In the seventh chapter of the First Book of Kings I read, “And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a widow’s son of the Tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass; and he was filled with wisdom and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work.” (v. 13.) But in the parallel passage in the second chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles (v. 13), where we have the answer which king Hiram returned to Solomon, when the latter desired him to “send him a man, cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass;” I find it running thus:—“Now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father’s (or perhaps Huram-Abi by name), the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold.” It is evident, that the same individual is meant in both passages; yet there is an apparent discrepancy between them: the one in Kings asserting his mother to be a woman of the Tribe of Naphtali; the other, in Chronicles, asserting her to be a woman of the daughters of Dan. The difficulty has driven the critics to some intricate expedients, in order to resolve it. “She herself was of the Tribe of Dan,” says Dr. Patrick; “but her first husband was of the Tribe of Naphtali, by whom she had this son. When she was a widow, she married a man of Tyre, who is called Hiram’s father, because he bred him up, and was the husband of his mother.” All this is gratuitous. The explanation only serves to show that the interpreter was aware of the knot, but not of the solution. This difficulty, however, like many others in Scripture, when once explained, helps to confirm its truth. We have seen in the last paragraph, that six hundred Danites emigrated from their own Tribe, and seized upon Laish, a city of the Sidonians. Now the Sidonians were subjects of the king of Tyre, and were the selfsame people as the Tyrians; for in the fifth chapter of the First Book of Kings, where Solomon is reported as sending to the king of Tyre for workmen, he is said to assign as a reason for the application, “Thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.” (v. 6.) The Tyrians, therefore, and the Sidonians were the same nation. But Laish or Dan, we found, was near the springs of Jordan; and therefore, since the “outgoings” of the territory of Naphtali are expressly said to have been at Jordan, there is good reason to believe that Laish or Dan stood in the Tribe of Naphtali. But if so, then is the difficulty solved; for the woman was, by abode, of Naphtali; Laish, where she dwelt, being situated in that Tribe, as Jacob is called a Syrian, from his having lived in Syria [Deut. 26:5.] ; and by birth, she was ofDan, being come of that little colony of Danites, which the parent stock had sent forth in early times to settle at a distance. Meanwhile the very circumstance which interposes to reconcile the apparent disagreement, accounts no less naturally for the fact, that she had a Tyrian for her husband.

Now upon what a very trifle does this mark of truth turn! Who can suspect anything insidious here? any trap for the unwary inquisitor after internal evidence in the domestic circumstances of a master-smith, employed by Solomon to build his temple?

I am glad to have it in my power to produce this geographical coincidence, because it is rare in its kind—the geography of Canaan, owing to its extreme perplexity, scarcely furnishing its due contingent to the argument I am handling. However, that very intricacy may in itself be thought to say something to our present purpose; arising, as it in a great degree does, out of the manifold instances in which different places are called by the same name in the Holy Land. Now whilst this accident, creates a confusion, very unfavourable to determining their respective sites, and consequently stands in the way of such undesigned tokens of truth as might spring out of a more accurate knowledge of such particulars; still it accords very singularly with the circumstances under which Scripture reports the land of Canaan to have been occupied:—I mean, that it was divided amongst Twelve Tribes of one and the same nation; each, therefore, left to regulate the names within its own borders after its own pleasure; and all having many associations in common, which would often overrule them, no doubt, however unintentionally, to fix upon the same. We have only to look to our own colonies, in whatever latitude dispersed, to see the like workings of the same natural feeling familiarly exemplified in the identity of local names, which they severally present. And it may be added, that such a geographical nomenclature was the more likely to establish itself in the new settlements of the Israelites, amongst whom names of places, from the earliest times downwards, seem to have been seldom, if ever, arbitrary, but still to have carried with them some meaning, which was, or which was thought to be, significant.