Palms in the Wilderness

Solomon is a builder. The verb banah (build) is used 31 times in the Chronicler’s account of Solomon, mostly with reference to the construction of the temple. Chapter 8, though, uses the verb 8 times, mainly to refer to building projects other than the temple. After twenty years of building the temple and his palace (8:1), then Solomon gets busy building—cities, storage facilities, stables, a palace for Pharaoh’s daughter.

One project arrests the eye: “Tadmor in the desert” (8:4). It’s arresting, first, because of the word play. “Desert” is midbar, a word that shares three of four consonants (mem, daleth, resh) with “Tadmor.” Turn that beth into a tav, and you have a city instead of a wilderness.

It’s arresting too because it sums up in four Hebrew words, the direction of redemption, from wasteland to city. That image is underscored by the name of the city itself. 1 Kings 9:18 names the city Tammor, related to tamar, a female name and a word that means “palm tree.” In the wilderness, Solomon note only builds a city, but a city of palms, a fertile oasis. Building another “Elim” (Exodus 12; elim also means “palms”), he plants Eden in the howling waste.