An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the time of Maccabees, a mere brothel _plenum scortantium cum meretricibus_.[16] It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her grandmother. Joshua's spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab, whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judæa. Samson chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact legally domiciled in Judæa at a very early period, and never lost the foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]