Son of David, king of Israel: his name is derived from Shalem, peaceable. His history we have at large in the first book of the Kings. But the greatest improvement we can make of the view of Solomon, is to consider him in those features of his character which were typical of the Lord Jesus Christ. I shall beg to detain the reader for a few moments on this account respecting Solomon, as it is striking.

As Solomon was the son of David after the flesh, so Christ in his human nature is expressly, marked for the comfort of the faithful, as of the same stock. "Remember (saint Paul to Timothy) that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel." (2 Timothy 2:8) Hence when Christ "whose son he was, they answered, the son of David." (Matthew 22:42) And it is remarkable that the Lord should have sent by the hand of Nathan, at the birth of Solomon, and called him Jedidiah, that is, beloved of the Lord. (2 Samuel 12:24-25) And we need not be told how the Lord, by a voice from heaven, proclaimed Christ to be his"beloved Son in whom he was well pleased."Add to these, Solomon king of Israel typified Christ as a king and as a preacher in Jerusalem; and also in his wisdom, in the riches, magnitude; peaceableness, and glory of his kingdom, and in the building of the temple, which was a beautiful type of the Lord Jesus; who is not only the builder of the temple, which is his church, but the foundation of it, the substance, and the glory of it; for he and he alone, as the Lord said by the prophet, was the only one fit to build the temple of the Lord, and he alone "could only bear the glory." (Zechariah 6:13)

But when we have looked at Solomon, king of Israel, as in those and the like instances, as becoming a lively type of the ever-blessed Jesus, and see in our Lord Jesus Christ a greater than Solomon in every one, I would request the reader to detach from the person and character of David's son all that belongs not to him in those Scriptures, and particularly in the book of the Psalms, which are as if directed to him and spoken of him, but certainly with him have nothing to do. I mean such as Psalms 20:1-9; Psalms 21:1-13 and Psalms 72:1-20. I know that some commentators have supposed that what is there said is said first of Solomon, king of Israel, and secondly in an higher sense of the Lord Jesus Christ. But oh, what a degradation of the subject is it thus to suppose! Oh, what indignity is thereby offered to the Lord Jesus Christ! I have said so much on this point in my Poor Man's Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, that I think it unnecessary in this place to enlarge; but I could not suffer the subject even in this little work, while speaking of Solomon, to pass by without remarking the great perversion of the Scripture to suppose that there is in those things the least reference to Solomon, king of Israel.