Tucked away at the end of 1 Kings 9 are three little verses that describe the fact that King Solomon, among other accomplishments, had built a fleet of ships. This is totally out of character with the general biblical view of the sea whose unstable waves were untrustworthy and in whose depths lurked evil. One was not to venture upon the sea.
Whether there was some subliminal memory of the Great Flood or not, there were no sailors among our biblical forebears. Even Solomon, with all his zeal in building ships, was hard pressed to man them and had to rely on his father's good friend, Hiram of Tyre, for help in training the would-be sailors for this nascent merchant fleet.
Solomon's navy had a short life in the Red Sea. Even though it was part of his expansionist dreams and pleasing as were the goods which arrived from Ophir, it was hard to find men willing to trust their lives to the ever-changing sea. A century later King Jehoshaphat made another attempt to build a navy, but when his ships were wrecked, it was interpreted as the will of God opposing navies.
The only other Old Testament sea story concerns Jonah who used the sea as a way to flee the will of God. He ended up in its depths, mercifully swallowed by a fish who gave him time to reconsider his goals before obligingly coughing him back up on the shore where his flight had begun. The delightful parable has a vivid storm and a crew of superstitious sailors who are terrified of the watery element.
By the time we reach the New Testament, despite a long Mediterranean coastline, the Jews have not become deep-sea fisherman. The fisherman disciples of Jesus ply their trade on a fresh water lake which is incorrectly labeled the Sea of Galilee. Their fears of the unsteady water is only too apparent in several incidents.
Solomon was definitely a man far ahead of his time and of common belief. I do hope he got to sail in one of his ships himself. |