Solomon's earliest work is mostly confined to biblical compositions, usually treating subjects of Jewish history. He was a natural choice to provide illustrations for the 'Bible Gallery', an ambitious project of a hundred or more wood engravings conceived by the brothers Dalziel in 1859. This extraordinary drawing was much too risque for that purpose, and was exhibited separately at the French Gallery Winter Exhibition in 1859. It illustrates a passage in Jeremiah containing the prophet's lamentation over the Jewish people's captivity under the kingdom of Babylon: 'Babylon hath been a golden cup in the hand of God, which hath made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine, therefore all the nations are mad.'

When this drawing entered the Birmingham Collection it was known as 'King David' and was thought to depict the maiden, Abishag, ministering to the aged king (1 Kings 1:1-4). Gayle Seymour, in her PhD thesis, 'The Life and Work of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)', identified the drawing as the one exhibited at the French Gallery, London, in 1859, with the catalogue entry quoted above.