Who Was King Solomon's Father? King David Explained

Who was King Solomon's father? King Solomon's father was King David, the second king of Israel, the shepherd boy who killed Goliath and united the tribes. His mother was Bathsheba. But the answer to that question is the least interesting thing about it, because what David actually passed to his son was not a throne. It was an unfinished temple, a stain he could not wash out, and a symbol that would end up carrying both their names.

Here is who David was, the dark story behind Solomon's birth, why the throne went to Solomon and not to his older brothers, and the strange fact that the six pointed star is called both the Star of David and the Seal of Solomon.

Who was King David?

David is the most human figure in the whole of scripture, which is precisely why people have never stopped telling his story. He begins as the youngest son of a shepherd family, so unimportant that when the prophet Samuel came looking for a future king, nobody thought to call him in from the fields. He kills Goliath as a boy with a sling and a stone. He plays the harp for a king who later tries to murder him. He spends years as a fugitive hiding in caves.

And then he becomes king, unites the tribes of Israel, takes Jerusalem, and builds something that lasts. He is a warrior, a poet, a musician, and by tradition the author of the Psalms. He is also, and this matters for what comes next, a man who does something unforgivable.

The story behind Solomon's birth

Solomon's mother, Bathsheba, was married to another man. Uriah the Hittite was one of David's own soldiers, loyal, away at war, fighting for the king who was sleeping with his wife.

When Bathsheba became pregnant, David tried to cover it up. When the cover up failed, he arranged for Uriah to be placed at the front of the fiercest fighting and then abandoned there, so that he would be killed. And Uriah was killed. That is not a hostile reading of the story, it is what the text plainly says, and the text does not excuse it either. The prophet Nathan comes to David and tells him a parable about a rich man who steals a poor man's only lamb, and when David erupts in fury at the injustice of it, Nathan tells him: you are that man.

The first child of that union dies. Solomon is born later, to the same woman, and inherits everything.

I tell you this because it matters. The wisest king in history was born out of the worst thing his father ever did. Anyone who tells you this tradition is simple, or clean, or comfortable, has not read it.

Why Solomon, and not his older brothers?

Solomon was not the eldest, and by the ordinary rules of succession the throne should not have been his. David had older sons, and they wanted it. Absalom rebelled against his own father and died for it. Adonijah declared himself king while David was dying.

Solomon got the throne because Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan moved faster and more cleverly than Adonijah did, and because David, on his deathbed, named Solomon as his heir. So the wisest king in history came to power not through birthright but through a palace manoeuvre. There is a lesson in that, and Solomon appears to have learned it early.

The temple David was not allowed to build

David wanted to build the Temple. It was the great ambition of his life, and he was refused. The reason given is stark: he was a man of war, with too much blood on his hands. He could gather the materials, draw the plans, prepare the ground. He could not lay the stone.

So Solomon built it. The First Temple, the great work of his reign, the thing his name is still attached to three thousand years later, was his father's dream, handed down unbuilt. David bought it with his life. Solomon got to finish it. That is what a father actually passes down, and it is rarely the crown.

One star, two names

Here is the detail that most people never notice, and it is the reason the two of them are bound together in every occult tradition that followed.

The six pointed star, two interlocking triangles, is called the Star of David. It is also called the Seal of Solomon. The same shape. The father's name and the son's name, on the same symbol.

Let me be honest with you about the history, because I would rather be accurate than impressive. Neither name appears attached to that star in the Bible itself. The hexagram becomes associated with David in medieval Jewish tradition, centuries after he lived, and the Seal of Solomon appears in later Jewish, Islamic, and ceremonial magical texts, where it is the ring and seal by which Solomon is said to have commanded spirits. These are traditions that grew up around the two kings, not scripture.

But traditions are not nothing. Something in the pairing of those two men, the father who could not build and the son who could, the man of blood and the man of wisdom, made people put their names on the same star and keep them there for a thousand years. The upward triangle and the downward triangle. Heaven reaching down and earth reaching up. Two forces held in one shape, which is exactly what a father and a son are.

David's other inheritance

There is one more thing David left behind, and in my own tradition it may be the more important one.

David is credited with the Psalms, and the Psalms did not stay in the temple. They went out into the world and became working texts. Across Mediterranean folk magic, across hoodoo, across the whole quiet inheritance of practical spellcraft, the Psalms are recited for protection, for justice, for court cases, for money, for the removal of enemies, for the safety of a house. Whole traditions of folk practice run on them to this day, and there are practitioners who use nothing else.

So consider what actually passed from father to son, and what passed from father to everyone. Solomon received the ring, the throne, and the temple, and his name went to the grimoires and the seals. David received nothing he wanted, buried a child, lost the temple, and wrote songs while he was suffering. And it is his songs that ordinary people still whisper over candles at three in the morning when they are frightened and have nowhere else to go.

The son got the crown. The father got the words. I have watched the words do more.

What Solomon had that David never did

David had courage, and a gift, and a kingdom, and a great deal of guilt. What he did not have was the thing the legends give to his son: the ring.

In the traditions that grew up after him, Solomon is given a ring set with a seal, and with it he commands the jinn, understands the speech of animals, and compels spirits to labour on the Temple his father was forbidden to build. That is the story, and whatever you make of it, notice what it is really saying. The son was given the tool the father was denied. The building was finished by the one whose hands were clean enough to hold it.

Frequently asked questions

Who was King Solomon's father?

King David, the second king of Israel. The shepherd boy who killed Goliath, united the tribes, took Jerusalem, and is credited by tradition with writing the Psalms.

Who was King Solomon's mother?

Bathsheba. She was married to Uriah the Hittite, one of David's own soldiers, whom David arranged to have killed in battle after Bathsheba became pregnant by him.

Why did Solomon become king instead of his older brothers?

He was not the eldest and had no natural claim. Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan outmanoeuvred his half brother Adonijah, and the dying David named Solomon as his heir.

Why did David not build the Temple himself?

He was refused because he was a man of war with too much blood on his hands. He was permitted to gather the materials and draw the plans, but not to lay the stone. Solomon built it.

Are the Star of David and the Seal of Solomon the same symbol?

They are the same six pointed shape under two names. Neither name is attached to it in scripture. The association with David comes from medieval Jewish tradition, and the Seal of Solomon appears in later Jewish, Islamic, and ceremonial magical texts, where it is the seal by which Solomon commanded spirits.