It is well known that both David and Solomon acquired land and other properties. What is not clearly attested is what kind of labour was used to maintain these various Crown properties. Scholars suggest four possible sources of labour; conscripts/slaves, tenants who rent royal land, semi- free citizens; and clients who are given royal land in exchange for service. Some if not all of these measures strained the populace to the limits and increased poverty among the majority. J. Dearman suggests that agricul- tural workers who worked the palace properties were conscripted Israel- ite labour, as is mentioned in 1 Sam 8:12, where Samuel tells the people that the future king will appoint people to plough and reap his harvest, and make war materials such as weapons and equipment for his chari-
ots.91 Also, according to 1 kgs 5:13-15 narrative, Solomon conscripted 30,
000 Israelites to work in the Lebanon in order to help with the building
of the Temple of Jerusalem.92 These Israelite conscripts were taken away
from their farms and their families one month in every three to hew
cedars in Lebanon,93 and this had adverse effects on the family agricul-
tural economic productivity. The conscripted family men would not get time to work on their fields which exposed the families to starvation and eventual self-sale into debt-slavery.
Further problems of the monarchy particularly to the peasants regarded the issue of taxation. It became clear with the establishment of an un- friendly and almost impoverishing taxation regime that the monarchy was running into collision course with the people. This justifies W.H. Heaton’s argument that ‘even those Israelites who were not sufficiently politically minded so as to resent the growth of a highly centralised form of government soon began to resent the development when they found
that they had to help pay for it’.94
The monarchy became so expensive to the underclasses that they began to question its validity. In order to un-
91
Cf. J. A. Dearman, Property Rights in the Eighth-Century Prophets: The Conflict and its Back-
ground. SBLDS 106. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988.
92
Cf. Soggin, A History of Israel, p. 84; Bright, A History of Israel, p. 230; S. Herrmann, A
History of Israel in Old Testament Times. London: SCM Press, (rev and enlarged edn.), 1981, p. 190; M. Noth, Könige 1. Teilband, BKAT, 9.1.Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968, pp. 92, 216-18.
93
W. H. Heaton, Everyday Life in the Old Testament Times. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1956, p. 165; Callender, Jr. ‘Servants of God(s) and Servants of Kings’, pp. 75-77.
94
derstand the disgruntlement among the ordinary people especially northerners, one needs to situate the taxes in context. For the purposes of taxation, Solomon divided the country into twelve administrative dis- tricts. In each district, he placed a Higher Civil Servant, whose duty was to supply the court with provisions for one month per year. Two of the Higher Civil Servants were Solomon’s sons-in-law and were from Jeru-
salem and not local men.95 Thus, nepotism also glaringly came into
being with the rise of the monarchy.
In order to appreciate the resentment of the people against the monar- chy we need to understand what it demanded on the peasants in all dis- tricts, who even under normal circumstances were struggling to make ends meet. According to 1 kgs 4:22-23, the daily needs of the court in- cluded: thirty measures of fine flour, and sixty measures of meal; ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep and goats. If these figures are to be trusted, each administrative district had to supply an annual average of roughly 5,000 bushels of flour, 10, 000 bushels of meal, 900 oxen and 3, 000 sheep. Since the population of a district has been estimated at less than 100, 000 persons, it is not sur- prising that the burden of taxation led to the rebellion which followed
Solomon’s death (1 kgs.12).96 Israel of the monarchic era had in all re-
spects become similar to other nations, contrary to the previous claims that they had been separated apart by Yahweh. Instead of amending their ways, Israelite kings continued on a downward path over the suc- cessive years of the Davidic dynasty.
There is debate however, regarding whether Solomon divided only the North into twelve districts or also in the South. The problem is compli- cated by 1 kgs 4:7-19 that talks only about the division of ‘Israel’ into twelve districts without specifying if by ‘Israel’, the author also includes Judah. Hence some scholars suggest that only the north was subjected to
tax and the corvée.97 From that perspective, the secession of Israel, that
is, the Northern kingdom from Judah at the death of Solomon is seen as a reaction to corvée that Rehoboam intended to keep and which was
restricted to the North while the South was exempted (1 Kgs 12).98 How-
95
Cf. Heaton, Everyday Life in the Old Testament Times, p. 166.
96
Cf. Heaton, Everyday Life in the Old Testament Times, p. 166.
97
Cf. Soggin, A History of Israel, pp. 82-83; Herrmann, A History of Israel in Old Testament
Times, pp. 177-78.
98
ever, others believe that Solomon’s corvée was collected from both the
South and the North,99 in that way ‘Israel’ in 1 kgs.4:7-19 relates also to
Judah. The bottom line is: the tax regime was punitive for both ordinary Northerners and Southerners and a source of resentment against the monarchy.
The system of taxation did not die with the death of Solomon. It was a necessary strategy for the survival of the palace however burdensome it was for the ordinary citizen. Thus, Solomon’s division of the country for taxation lasted as long as the monarchy existed. At least, there is direct evidence from the time of Amos, from the Samaritan Ostraca of an or- ganised system of taxation in the Northern Kingdom. These small frag- ments of broken pottery, found in one of the storehouses of Jeroboam II’s palace at Samaria, had evidently been used as a receipt for oil and
wine.100 There is also archaeological evidence from the Southern King-
dom which probably shows a similar system of taxation in operation during the two centuries before the Exile. The archaeological finds con- sist of a collection of 550 handles from storage jars, found at more than fourteen sites in Judah, bearing stamp impressions. Scholars have how- ever found the interpretation of this material difficult, but there is weighty support for the view that the stamped jars were used for collect-
ing taxes paid to the king in kind principally wine and oil.101 This evi-
dence suggests that the burden of the poor never was lessened, but maybe even increased.
From the days of Solomon and his son Rehoboam, there are suggestions that the economic position of the poor deteriorated greatly as they lost their means of production, the land, to the marauding greedy rich few. It is likely that the rich landowning elite, many of whom were probably connected with the palace, were able to improve their economic position
through the acquisition of property that was lost on account of debt.102
And the exploitation of the underclasses spilled into later periods, even among the Northerners who had shortly rebelled (922 BCE) against the house of David on account of the burdens of forced labour and heavy taxation (1 kgs 12). During the Omride Dynasty, for example, there was
99
Cf. M. Noth, Könige 1, pp. 216-18.
100
Cf. Heaton, Everyday Life in the Old Testament Times, p. 166.
101
Cf. Heaton, Everyday Life in the Old Testament Times, p. 167.
102
marked increase in the oppression of the free citizens, which evidence has usually been used to understand the whole monarchic era. This implies that the monarchy was the problem, for it could not survive without an economic system that exploits the underclasses.