rown and the possession of the deceased
monarch's harem is well understood.[25] 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 25: I 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 fig-tree, 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.[26] 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 contes