Basemath, Daughter of Solomon: One Verse, One Marriage

A Daughter of the King, Named Once

Basemath (Hebrew בָּֽשְׂמַת) belongs to the era of the united kingdom, a woman of the tribe of Judah who lived, on the era placed on Ussher's chronology (1650), around 1095 BC to 975 BC. She is the daughter of Solomon (1 Kings 4:15). Her mother is one of Solomon's wives, but Scripture does not give her name. Everything the Bible records about Basemath fits inside a single verse. She has no speech, no journey, no recorded prayer, and no described deed. She has a father, a husband, and a name that someone thought worth writing down.

The Only Passage

The verse reads: "Ahimaaz, in Naphtali (he also took Basemath the daughter of Solomon as wife);" (1 Kings 4:15).

That is the whole of it. Notice what kind of mention this is. Basemath does not appear in a narrative scene but inside a list, and even there she appears in a parenthesis. The entry is about Ahimaaz and where he is, in Naphtali; the marriage is added as a further note about him. Grammatically, Basemath is the object of another man's verb: he took her as wife. This is how much of the Old Testament record of people works, and it is worth naming honestly rather than dressing it up. Some people in Scripture are given chapters. Some are given a clause.

And yet the clause is not empty. The writer could have written "Ahimaaz, in Naphtali" and moved on. Instead he records that this man's wife was a daughter of the king, and he records her name. Basemath is not an anonymous daughter of Solomon. The list preserves the particular woman, not only the connection.

Her Family

Basemath's father is Solomon (1 Kings 4:15). Her mother is a wife of Solomon whose name Scripture does not supply (1 Kings 4:11). Her sister is Taphath (1 Kings 4:11), and her brother is Rehoboam (1 Kings 11:43). Her husband is Ahimaaz (1 Kings 4:15).

That is the family as the record gives it, and it is a striking set of relations for a person with one verse. She stands inside the house of the king, sister to a man who would be remembered and to a sister whose own record is likewise brief. Her marriage joins that house to a man connected with Naphtali, while Basemath herself is reckoned to the tribe of Judah. Scripture reports the marriage without telling us anything about how it came about, whether she consented, whether she was glad, or how she fared there.

What Scripture Does Not Charge Against Her

The honest thing to say about Basemath's failures is that the record names none, because the record contains almost nothing at all. There is no sin named, but neither is there any act of faith named. Silence is not a commendation. We cannot say she was righteous, and we cannot say she was not. One verse will not carry that weight in either direction, and to fill the space with a character sketch would be to write fiction and call it Bible study.

What the text does quietly display is her situation: a daughter given in marriage, mentioned as part of the description of the man who took her. Readers who have felt themselves to be a parenthesis in someone else's paragraph will recognize the shape of it.

What We Do Not Know

We do not know when Basemath was born or when she died. We do not know her mother's name. No children of hers are named anywhere in Scripture. No scene is told about her at all; every mention is a list, a genealogy or a passing note, and in her case there is only the one. We do not know how long she was married to Ahimaaz, or whether she outlived her father, or what became of her after the days of Solomon. The Bible does not say, and neither will this article.

The dossier lists no New Testament references for Basemath. Her name is not picked up again beyond 1 Kings 4:15, so nothing further may be drawn out of her story than what that verse holds. She belongs to the Old Testament record as it stands, one name preserved in a list of officers and territories.

Why the Name Was Kept

The value of Basemath for an experienced reader lies precisely in her smallness on the page. Scripture keeps records of people whose lives it does not narrate. It names a woman that the storyline does not need, in a parenthesis that the sentence does not require. The writer of 1 Kings 4:15 set down Basemath's name, and there it has stood since, next to Ahimaaz, next to Naphtali, next to her father the king. A single verse is not much of a life, but it is a real one, and it was thought worth recording.