18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over Israel. 18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver as lead. 19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have dominion over thy body. 20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan in their beds. 21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled a rebel kingdom. 22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a root unto David. 23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people. In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's Ammonite mother was Naamah.) It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of women,--a charge not known to the canonical books. The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name"). The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics. Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of "our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son, and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon." It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work, yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.