Here is an excerpt from "PROPHET, PRIEST AND KING":

A woman’s love to a thirsty man is like a mouthful of water distilled from a garland of thorns. At first, the water tastes as sweet and refreshing as a spring in the Garden of Eden — but then comes the searing after-taste of the thorns. His mouth puckers, his throat contracts, his belly feels like coals of fire. As the man rolls around on the ground in agony, he wishes to God that he had never tasted the water; never relieved his thirst, for it were better to die thirsty, his throat parched with dust, than have his whole body seared with the fire of the all-embracing thorns.

They say that I am a “great lover” and that I have “loved many women”. It is not true. I have loved only one. One only.

My mother was a Hittite. You did not know that, did you? I am not Jewish at all. I, Solomon, who built the great temple for the great god of the Jews, am not a Jew. Yet I say the god of the Jews appeared to me twice. He is not invisible after all? And did I not also see His Glory, the cloud of His presence, when I dedicated the temple?

What was He like? Well, I started off to tell you of the woman that I loved — the lily among the thorns.

You would rather hear first what God was like? What He said to me is widely known — did I not report it widely? — yet even that is a lie. The first leads to the other — if you would know the other, you must first know the first. If you would know the end, you must first know the beginning.

In the springtime of my youth — if youth can be said to have a springtime, it has all been autumn with me — I fell in love. For the first and only time. The first time is the hardest. You look in the mirror and you think you are as charming in women’s eyes as in your own. Do your muscles not tremble with strength as the wild hart’s? Do your eyes not sparkle as dew upon the terebinth? What woman could look upon the beauty of your youth and not be enthralled? What man would not turn tail as he beheld the power of your arms and legs? The brown bear or the aurochs had not more enemies or inspired more fear!

It is always the way. To youth is given strength — and the folly to mis-use it! To old age is given infirmity — and the wisdom to lament it!

The girl came from Shunem, a town up north in Issachar. Or rather she was brought back from there. She didn’t come too willingly. Without doubt, she was the most beautiful girl in all Israel. She really was. Don’t take my word for it. My father’s courtiers chanced their future on her. They searched the whole kingdom; they sought her in the towns and in the mountains, in the smallest villages, in the most far-flung farms. When they caught sight of this girl, they knew she was one in ten thousand. They brought her back to Jerusalem in triumph, with dancing and singing, feasting and rejoicing. For had they not found the perfect maiden, the one who would gladden the heart and unfreeze the limbs of a king whose eyes were dim, whose heart was surfeited and whose strength was fled?

Her name was Abishah.

The darkness of her skin was as a cluster of grapes on a sun-scorched vine; her eyes the reflection of twin moons skimming in the pools of Eshbonby, the Gate-of-Many-Daughters; her thighs, turned on the craftsman’s lathe that curved the jeweled beads of Sheba’s necklace; her navel — never was the rim of a golden goblet more delicately carved; her belly rounded like a new-mown hay-stack in a field of corn; her breasts like ripe pomegranates, firm to the touch.

A man had no need of wine. He had only to look upon Abishah and his spirits were lifted, his soul set free.

“So you are Solomon,” she said. Her voice was like saffron, dripping on a cone of honey.

I drew myself up proudly. “I am a son of David. And Bathsheba.”

She laughed. Her laughter was a tinkle of little silver bells. “So you are a prince, Prince Solomon. And what prince are you?”

I looked at her, puzzled. What sort of a question is that? I decided to ignore it. “You are beautiful,” I said. “No garden holds a flower more beautiful, more lovely.”

“Am I not?” she said, thrusting out her shoulder and tilting her head at an angle so that the pendant of her earring swung to and fro.

“I wish,” I began. “I wish...” I blushed. I could not finish what I wanted to say. “I wish you would stop and talk to me for a while,” I added quickly.

She laughed again, tinkling gaily. “Talk to you, Prince Solomon! Are you the heir to the kingdom?”

“I am a son of my father,” I answered proudly.

“But is not Adonijah, the heir?” she persisted.

“He may be, he may be not,” I answered evasively. To tell you the truth, up to this point, I hadn’t really given the matter much thought. It was enough for me that I was a son of David, a prince in a royal household. “What if he is the heir?” I added.

Abishah threw back her head, shaking the ringlets and waves of her black, fragrant hair. “Then I would marry the heir,” she laughed.

That night, I said to my mother, “I would be the heir.”

“What is this?” she asked. “Is it not enough to be a prince in the banqueting houses of kings? Must you inherit the kingdom as well?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I would be the heir.”

My mother laughed shortly. “Look at you! You are nothing but a dreamy youth with nothing but songs on your mind and nothing but riddles in your heart. You wander about the palace like a young slave who has forgotten what duties he ever knew, and you creep about the fields, mooning over tufts of grass and butterflies, while your brothers are out disputing or fighting, collecting taxes, counseling their elders, getting drunk or chasing village maidens. Look at you! Have you taken some vow not to trim your beard? And your hair is full of thorns and grass, your clothes are soiled, your girdle half undone, and you have lost the strap of your sandal. You don’t look like a prince so much as a shepherd boy or a goat-herder’s son!” But then she stepped back and looked me up and down even more appraisingly. “Still, why not? Why should not a son of mine be king? You have a head on your shoulders, even though that head be filled with poetry and ‘wisdom’ and other such nonsense! And did not David swear to me, did he not promise me that our son should be king? Else I should have stayed with my husband, else I should rather have plunged a dagger into my breast than yielded to him? Did he not come to me with such sweet entreaties, did he not say that the boy should be king? Did he not swear on his own head? The boy died. But does death cancel the king’s oath? Do we not have another son? You? Solomon? I shall speak to the king.”

My mother sought the help of a prophet named Nathan. Like most of his kind, he was one of those old furies who believed than an oath was an oath — words that were binding forever — that could be cancelled neither by death nor dishonor, neither by change of circumstance nor change of heart. My mother was not the least bit frightened of him — though she had every reason to be — but he scared me wall-eyed! He was the very man who had denounced her for adultery and complicity in the murder of her Hittite husband, Uriah. And although he always looked kindly upon me — saying that God Himself named me Jedidiah (“beloved of Yahweh”) — he always filled me with fear and loathing. My mother willingly sent for this man and he came to her that very night. Like all other prophets except Ahijah and Iddo, he always carried himself very proudly, left his beard untrimmed to add fierceness to his face, and carried a great big shepherd’s crook or staff. He and mother plotted far into the night. The upshot of it all was that Nathan promised to remind the king of his oath when a suitable opportunity arose.

That opportunity came sooner than any of us expected. A few days later, I saw Abishah sitting on a rock near the top of Mount Moriah (for of course the temple had not yet been built and the Ark of the Covenant still dwelt on Mount Zion). She was attended by only two female slaves. “Soon you shall marry me,” I said to her, “for I shall be king.”

She laughed with that tinkle of sound that was both so attractive and so infuriating. Oh, to silence those lips with kisses, that laughter with rapture! “How so, my little prince?” she asked.

“I shall be king,” I replied sulkily. “David my father has promised the kingdom to me.”

She sat forward on the rock, cupping her chin in her hands, and looked me straight in the eyes. It was heartening to see that my words had some effect on her. She appeared serious and attentive for once. “I have not heard tell of such a promise,” she said. “Tell me more!”

I explained to Abishah everything my mother had told me and what I had overheard from Nathan.

It was not more than a week later that Nathan presented himself unannounced and unexpected at my mother’s door again. “Take the child and flee for your life!” he exclaimed without any preamble. I was more indignant that he referred to me as a child — a youth who had already obtained his majority — than frightened by his alarmist words. “Have you not heard that the priests and the other royal princes, supported by the treasonous commander-in-chief of the army, have already crowned Adonijah king? Soon they will come here seeking your life — and that of your child!”

“Who remains faithful to us?” asked my mother.

“Why, there is no-one but me!” cried the alarmist prophet.

“What about Zadok, the high priest?” pursued my mother. “Have you not promised him property and influence?”

“Yes, he might support us,” admitted Nathan.

“Has he not been slighted by his brother priests?” my mother continued. “And is he not jealous of their ring-leader, Abiathar?”

“Yes,” admitted Nathan once more.

“Jealousy is a most fertile field on which to plough,” added my mother. “There is the young captain of the guard, Benaiah, is he not jealous of the commander-in-chief?”

“Yes,” admitted Nathan once again.

“Quickly round up our supporters. In the meantime I will go straight to the king and remind him of his promise.”

“Take the child with you,” advised Nathan. “None would dare strike him down in the presence of the king!”

“As soon as you have gathered our supporters, you must come in with them also and back up all that I have to say.”

“I will present myself to the king while you are still talking to him,” promised the prophet.

We found the king with Abishah. She was smoothing ointment into the dry skin on his forehead and slapping it gently into his sallow cheeks. He was sitting in a chair. He had taken off his robes of state and wore but a plain white shift. He was obviously being prepared for bed, although it was still more than an hour till dark.

My mother thrust me before the king and knelt down. I remained standing, as befits a prince. Abishah regarded me with a peculiar, enigmatic smile.

“What is this?” asked David, his old eyes starting in surprise. “What is your wish?”

“My lord, am I not your servant and have I not followed you faithfully in everything your heart desired?” answered my mother. The king nodded. “And did you not swear to your servant by the God of Your Ancestors that our son Solomon should be king after you?” David inclined his head. My mother went on to tell him that Adonijah had been acclaimed king by the priests. And while she was still speaking, the prophet Nathan entered and confirmed all she had said.

Now David rose up from his chair. He placed his trembling hands on my shoulders. “By the God of Israel,” he swore, “I declare that Solomon shall be king after me and shall take my place on the throne of Israel this very day!”

“But Adonijah, my lord?” cried Abishah.

“Whatever he has done shall be undone,” declared the king, “for what I have sworn to do, I shall do.”

I sent for Abishah. “Now I am king, am I not?” I crowed. “And you shall marry me!”

She laughed. “And what would your father, King David, say if the son should steal his father’s servant?”

I gazed at her in surprise. “What should he say? What is one servant more or less to a man who commands ten thousand?”

She laughed again. “But was I not specially selected to minister to him in his old age? Am I not one among the whole nation?”

“Another servant can be found,” I declared.

She laughed a third time. “My little prince does not understand the ways of the world.”

“I am not your little prince!” I thundered. “You shall be mine!”

She laughed again, even louder than before. “I would not marry you, even though you were really king.”

“I am king!” I shouted. “You shall marry me, whether you like it or not!”

She looked at me petulantly, standing with her hands on her hips, throwing her shoulders back and thrusting her breasts forward so that they strained against her bodice.

I tried to break her down. “Did you not say, did you not promise me that you would marry the heir?” I reasoned.

She laughed bitterly. “I meant your brother, Adonijah.”

“Am I not greater than my brother?” I asked.

She regarded me contemptuously. “No. You are not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal!” She turned about and strode from the room.

I ran after her. “What is this?” I cried. “How can you say those things to me? Have we not talked together — often — as friend to friend, brother to sister?”

“What can I say to you to dissuade you?” she replied. “You have been neither friend nor brother to me. Look at you! Are you tall and handsome? Are you rugged and full of spirit? Do you take what is rightfully yours? No! You go worming through corridors or creeping behind locked doors, plotting veiled schemes to confuse a doting king! Do the people love you? Do the soldiers adore you? Do wise men seek your advice? Are girls entranced by your beauty, the suppleness of your limbs, the fire of your voice? Look at you! Is your complexion clear and ruddy, your beard golden as honey? Are you not short and fat, pock-marked and dainty? Are your robes not always askew and disheveled? You may be king or not, Solomon; but what-ever the case, you can wear a crown neither with judgment and distinction, nor style and daring!”

“I am a poet,” I said. “What does it matter my appearance? What does it matter what any man looks like? What does it matter what he wears, or at what angle he wears it? Only one thing matters and that is simply this: Is he carried in a litter to his palace by a hundred slaves, or does he plod home in the mud on an ass?”

“Palaces, slaves are nothing!” she cried. “How a man uses what he has is everything. How a man stands and bears himself — though he has nothing to stand on and nothing to bear himself for — is everything.”

“Are a man’s dreams nothing to you? How he thinks, what he hopes, how he is — is that nothing? Whether he is kind or vicious, merciful or just, greedy or gentle, faithful or dishonest — all this means nothing, though he were the world’s greatest fool or the world’s bloodiest tyrant, so long as he wears his crown with style and speaks with strength?”

“Let me go!” she cried. “You are a fool!”

“Where will you go?” I asked. “To Adonijah — is he the lover of your dreams, the conqueror of your strength, the commander of your desires? Adonijah! Is he? Is he?” I shook her by the shoulders.

“Yes.”

“I am going the way of all men.”

King David opened his eyes for an instant. Slowly, painfully he beckoned me to draw closer. I bent over his bed. “Be strong,” he whispered, “and show yourself a man.”

“How do you show yourself a man, father?” I whispered back.

The old man pulled himself up on his pillows. For a moment, fire returned to his sunken eyes and strength to his quavering voice. “Blood!” he cried. “Blood! Be thou the Avenger of Blood! Avenge my honor with the blood of my enemies!” Here he enumerated two in particular. He made me swear that I would “not allow their gray hairs to go down to the grave in peace.”

The captains of the palace were mine to command. They carried out my orders without argument or delay. After that it was easy.

A month went by. I was sitting on my throne when my mother came to visit me. I rose to meet her and bowed down before her. A chair was brought out and placed next to my throne. “Do not refuse me,” she said, “I have but a small request to make of you, a small petition I would have, oh my son — not for me but for thy brother.”

“My brother?” I asked, immediately suspicious. “Which brother? Have I three or three hundred brothers? Who knows?”

“Your brother, Adonijah. As you do know, your father’s servants are now your servants. The king’s servants remain the king’s. But your brother would have one of thy servants for a wife — Abishah of Shunem who ministered to thy father in his last days, lightened his cares and gladdened his heart.”

“Now she would gladden the heart of Adonijah! She has refused me, her king, yet she would gladden the heart and lighten the burden of him who rebelled against me and would have taken my life. Now behold, his own life is forfeit! Adonijah shall be put to death this very day. Then shall we see if the weak do not circumvent the strong; the ugly, the beautiful; the disdained, the popular. What price shall his handsome head fetch when his heart is pierced with a sword? Shall a barber be fetched to value the locks of his hair?”

I called over the captain of the guard. “My brother, the rebel, Adonijah, is to be seized this very hour and put to death. Cut off his head and put it in a basket and deliver it to Abishah. Tell her it is a present — a worthless gift on which her king puts no value!”

“How can you do this thing?” cried my mother.

“Am I not the son on whom his mother puts no value, the feckless youth whose dreams and aspirations, whose hopes and thoughts are as naught compared to the peacock display of idle strength? Does not a man study to be wise? Is wisdom learnt in a day? Yet can any amount of thought change a man’s beard from black to gray or his complexion from white to dark?”

“It is well said, oh king!” cried one of the courtiers.

“Is not King Solomon as wise as his father David?” cried another.

“Wiser still!” echoed a third.

     I had sought wisdom all my life, but never with a conscious purpose. Until now. It had always been at the back of my mind or simply part of my very nature. Perhaps I unconsciously wanted to compensate for my looks and appearance and lack of charm. I was forced to admit I was not dashing or handsome, I had not been gifted with looks. But I had a brain — a brain that loved wisdom and nature and beauty. I could strengthen my brain. I could empower myself with knowledge.

Now my courtiers put it in my mind to actively seek wisdom. If I could not fight battles or cut a dashing figure at feasts, at least I would be wise. And is not the wise man valued more than even the most successful soldier, most liberal of hosts or benevolent of kings?

Yes, I would be wise. Wiser even than Ethan the Ezrahite or the priests, Heman and Calcol, who daily disputed with all comers at the gates of the city. Even the sons of Mahol or Zerah would not be more famous than I. The wisdom of Solomon would be proverbial, my sagacity the measure of all others.

But how to be wise? I climbed the high places, offered sacrifices and burnt incense before the gods. But to no avail. The gods did not hear me. I asked the priests. They laughed at me. I disputed with the sages of my court. But it soon became apparent they held back their arguments as much as they poured forth their praises. I had wise men from Egypt and Assyria and Mesopotamia and Greece to dine at my table. When I asked them how a man would be wise, some looked puzzled and answered that wisdom was born in a man like bravery or cowardice, ugliness or beauty. Others replied that wisdom was acquired with age. But the answer I liked best was that “a wise man advances himself by his words.”

Yes, it is the spoken word that makes the wise man wise — in other men’s eyes!

But I am a king. I can declare myself wise and men will say they believe me. But if a wise man declares the king wise, who could dispute him? And who is the wisest man of all? Who?

“Who is the wisest man of all, Zabud?”

My companion thought for a moment. “Tebaliah, the priest who instructed us in the Law when we both were young, was he not a wise man?”

“Bah! Tebaliah! What would he know of hyssop and plants or the wild stag that ranges in the mountains? Could he converse of clouds and stars and signs in the sky, or rocks and insects and the colors of earth? Did he know how to make bricks, polish diamonds or win at ‘Hounds and Jackals’? Could he tell why one goat gave milk and another was dry? Why one womb was fertile and another barren? Don’t speak to me of Tebaliah! All he could talk about was all he knew about — and that was his precious Law! I have heard him tell off the regulations of Moses frontwards, sideways and backwards until I was heartily sick of them.”

“How can you say such a thing of our old teacher?” protested Zabud. “You were always his favorite pupil. Even now he boasts to his students that he taught the king —”

“Taught him all he knows, I suppose,” I interrupted.

“Why, no,” exclaimed Zabud with that foolish expression of hurtful surprise of his, “I was merely going to say that he taught the king as a child.”

“And taught him childish things! But now we would put off the things of a child and put on the maxims of youth — of a wise youth who is king. What is the wisest thing you have ever heard?”

“The wisest thing I have ever heard,” mused Zabud, stroking his beard. He was just as slow-witted a youth as he is in old age.

“Yes, come, come, you must have heard some wisdom in your time!”

“The wisest thing I have ever heard... Well, I heard tell of two brothers once — twins.”

“What of them?”

“It was a tale told me by my old nurse. I remember it made quite an impression on me at the time —”

“Get on with it!”

“It seems there were two brothers — identical twins — and they went off into a far country where they captured a beautiful girl whom they made their slave."