King Solomon's Israel : 40 years of peace with surrounding nations.

"Because you have not requested riches and honor but only that which would benefit all the people, I will give you not only an understanding heart like none other before or after you ... but also riches and honor like no other king in your days." (1 Kings 3:7-13)

Born in 848 BCE, Solomon dies at age 52 in 796 BCE, ruling as king for 40 years -- the best years in all of Israel's history -- 40 years of peace and prosperity. He is known as chacham mi'kol ha'adam, "wisest of all the men." The Bible relates that kings from all over the world came to hear his wisdom, which included not only Torah wisdom, but also wisdom in secular knowledge and science. 

His fame spread through all the surrounding nations. He composed 3,000 parables, and 1,005 poems. He discoursed about trees, from the cedars of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows from the wall. He also discoursed about animals, birds, creeping things and fish. Men of all nations came to hear Solomon's wisdom, as did all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom. (1 Kings 5:11-14)

For the first time in the history of Israel, alliances were entered into with other nations.  Solomon had married an Egyptian princess. Then he made a treaty with his neighbor on the Mediterranean coast, Hiram, king of Tyre, who in exchange for corn agreed to supply Solomon with timber for building the Temple and his own magnificent palace. The timber was floated down from Tyre to Joppa whence it was transported to Jerusalem or wherever needed.

At peace with surrounding nations, and with a thoroughly systematized and centralized government, Solomon sat on his throne of ivory and gold and looked around on his people, to see an astonishing increase of population and a tremendous growth in business and wealth, especially during the first half of his reign.

Naturally, Solomon's commercial greatness, together with the pomp and splendor of his court and government, carried his fame to all parts of the earth. But that for which he received the greatest respect from surrounding nations was his wisdom, manifested in many ways but chiefly in his writings. One of the marked effects of David's long and vigorous reign was to stimulate mental activity in the Hebrew mind. The great foreign wars with the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Sabeans, and the surrounding nations, who were more or less advanced in a knowledge of the arts and sciences, had the effect of widening the range of knowledge of Israel as a nation, and of stirring her up to an ambition to excel her neighbors in affairs of peace as well as in those of war. Solomon's peaceful and wise reign, characterized as it was by commercial prosperity, gave the people both the time and means for cultivating the arts. In study and in wisdom the king was the leader of his day and generation. He was learned in political economy, a great king. He was learned in music and poetry, having composed some of the most beautiful of the Psalms, such as the second. But in cultivating the fine arts he did not neglect the physical sciences, for he was a botanist, writing of all kinds of trees and plants; and he was a natural historian, writing works on beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. It would be most interesting to see these science primers prepared by Solomon, and compare them with what we see on the same subjects in our own day. But the Bible has not preserved them, and they have long centuries ago passed into oblivion. Solomon's knowledge was not of that shallow sort which is limited to the sphere of earthly material, "seen things;" for he was wise with that deeper knowledge which has for its object God and the human soul, and their natures and movements in their natural relations. This wisdom is illustrated and handed down to us in his Proverbs of which we are told he spoke three thousand. A portion of these is in the Book of Proverbs, the others are lost to us.