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the most voluptuous, magnificent, and in- human grandeur. Solomon, in his old age, structed of monarchs, who sums up the esti- was about to bequeath to his heir, an inmate of human life in the melancholy sentence secure throne, a discontented people, formid-Vanity of vanities! vanity of vanities! | able enemies on the frontiers, and perhaps a It is a sad commentary on the termination contested succession. He could not even of the splendid life and reign of the great take refuge in the sanctuary of conscious Hebrew sovereign. For even had not this For even had not this innocence, and assume the dignity of sufferdesponding confession been extorted by the ing unmerited degradation; for he had set satiety of passion, and the weariness of a at defiance every principle of the Hebrew spirit, over-excited by all the gratifications constitution. He had formed a connection he had multiplied a great this world can bestow had no higher wis- with Egypt force of cavalry he had accumulated gold dom suggested this humiliating conclusion the state of his own powerful kingdom, dur- and silver- he had married many foreign ing his declining years, might have furnished wives. His seraglio was on as vast a scale a melancholy lesson on the instability of as the rest of his expenditure - he had seven

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hundred wives and three hundred concubines. | reignty, thus endangering the communicaThe influence of these women, not merely tion from Tadmor. A domestic enemy, still led him to permit an idolatrous worship with- more dangerous, appeared in the person of in his dominions, but even Solomon had Jeroboam, a man of great valor, supported been so infatuated, as to consecrate to the by the prophet Ahijah, who foretold his obscene and barbarous deities of the neigh- future rule over the ten tribes. Though boring nations, a part of one of the hills, forced to fly, Jeroboam found an asylum which overlooked Jerusalem a spot almost with Shishak, or Sesac, the Sesonchosis of fronting the splendid temple, which he him- Manetho, who was raising the kingdom of self had built to the one Almighty God Egypt to its former alarming grandeur; and of the universe. Hence clouds on all sides notwithstanding his alliance with Solomon, gathered about his declining day. Hadad, made no scruple against harboring his reone of the blood-royal of the Edomite princes, bellious subject. Above all, the people were began to organize a revolt in that province, oppressed and dissatisfied; either because on which so much of the Jewish commerce the enormous revenues of the kingdom were depended. An adventurer seized on Da- more than absorbed by the vast expenditure mascus, and set up an independent sove- of the sovereign; or because the more pro

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ductive branches of commerce were inter-people had suffered deeply from the arbitrary rupted by the rebellions of the Edomites and exactions of the king, who, with the state Damascenes. At this period likewise, Solo- and splendor, had assumed the despotism of mon departed from the national, though an Oriental monarch. Hence the decline of iniquitous policy of his earlier reign, during the Jewish kingdom, supported rather by the which he had laid all the burdens of labor fame of its sovereign, than by its inherent and taxation on the strangers, and exempted strength, was as rapid as its rise. Solomon the Israelites from every claim but that of died after a reign of forty years, and with military service. The language held to him expired the glory and the power of the Rehoboam, on his accession, shows that the Jewish empire.

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THE effects of the arbitrary policy and inordinate expense which had prevailed in the court of Solomon during the last years of his reign began to appear as soon as his death was announced. The rulers of the tribes assembled at the city of Shechem, in the tribe of Ephraim, which tribe, it will be remembered, was always disposed to regard with strong jealousy the superiority of Judah. Here they wished to enter into a new stipulation with the heir to the throne

a precaution which had been neglected under the excitement and extraordinary circumstances which attended the accession of Solomon. If Rehoboam had been wise, the place which had been chosen for this congress, and the presence of Jeroboam, who had hastened from Egypt when he heard of Solomon's death, and took a prominent part in the present matter, were circumstances, which among others, might have apprised him that the occasion was one of no ordinary moment, and required the most careful and skilful management. Rehoboam was not equal to this crisis; for when the rulers demanded, as the condition of their submission, that he should abrogate a portion of the burdens which his father had imposed upon them, he failed to discern what might be gained by a ready and cheerful concession, and required three days on which to deliberate on their demand. In this time he decided to reject the counsel of the older and more prudent counsellors, who enforced the necessity of compliance with this demand, and

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REHOBOAM.

AHAB.

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and that whereas his father had only chastised them with whips, he would chastise them. with scorpions. Nothing could more clearly than this answer evince the unfitness of Rehoboam for the crisis which had now occurred, and his utter ignorance of the spirit which was in Israel; while it at the same

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