Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; of the nations concerning which Yahweh said to the children of Israel, “You shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon joined to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. His wives turned his heart away.
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Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; of the nations concerning which Yahweh said to the children of Israel, “You shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon joined to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. His wives turned his heart away. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God, as the heart of David his father was. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, and didn’t go fully after Yahweh, as David his father did. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the mountain that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon. So he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. Yahweh was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he didn’t keep that which Yahweh commanded. Therefore Yahweh said to Solomon, “Because this is done by you, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant. Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days, for David your father’s sake; but I will tear it out of your son’s hand. However I will not tear away all the kingdom; but I will give one tribe to your son, for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen.”
Parallel Translations
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Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites;
of the nations concerning which Yahweh said to the children of Israel, “You shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon joined to these in love.
He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. His wives turned his heart away.
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But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;
Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.
And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.
Show all 3 translations
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Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;
of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel: 'Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods'; Solomon did cleave unto these in love.
And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (38)
- Exodus 34:16 (v2) and you take of their daughters to your sons, and their daughters play the prostitute after their gods, and make your sons play the…
- Deuteronomy 7:3-4 (v2) You shall not make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son. For that…
- Deuteronomy 17:17 (v1) He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away. He shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
- Joshua 23:12-13 (v2) “But if you do at all go back, and hold fast to the remnant of these nations, even these who remain among you, and make marriages with…
- Exodus 23:32-33 (v2) You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you…
Show all 38 cross-references
- Numbers 25:1-3 (v2) Israel stayed in Shittim; and the people began to play the prostitute with the daughters of Moab; for they called the people to the…
- 1 Corinthians 15:33 (v2) Don’t be deceived! “Evil companionships corrupt good morals.”
- 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 (v2) Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with…
- Romans 12:9 (v2) Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil. Cling to that which is good.
- Proverbs 6:24 (v1) to keep you from the immoral woman, from the flattery of the wayward wife’s tongue.
- 1 Kings 11:8 (v1) So he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
- Nehemiah 13:23-27 (v1) In those days I also saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab; and their children spoke half in the speech of…
- Proverbs 2:16 (v1) to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words,
- Proverbs 7:5 (v1) that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words.
- 2 Samuel 5:13-16 (v3) David took more concubines and wives for himself out of Jerusalem, after he had come from Hebron; and more sons and daughters were born to…
- 1 Kings 3:1 (v1) Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter, and brought her into David’s city, until he had finished…
- Proverbs 5:8-20 (v1) Remove your way far from her. Don’t come near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one;…
- Proverbs 22:14 (v1) The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit. He who is under Yahweh’s wrath will fall into it.
- Ecclesiastes 7:28 (v3) which my soul still seeks, but I have not found. I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all those.
- Malachi 2:11 (v2) Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the holiness of Yahweh…
- Romans 1:32 (v2) who, knowing the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those…
- Revelation 2:4 (v2) But I have this against you, that you left your first love.
- Genesis 2:24 (v2) Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh.
- Genesis 34:3 (v2) His soul joined to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young lady, and spoke kindly to the young lady.
- Judges 3:6-7 (v2) They took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons and served their gods. The children of Israel did…
- Judges 8:30-31 (v3) Gideon had seventy sons conceived from his body, for he had many wives. His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named…
- Judges 9:5 (v3) He went to his father’s house at Ophrah, and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, being seventy persons, on one stone; but Jotham the…
- Judges 16:4-21 (v2) It came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. The lords of the Philistines came up to her…
- 2 Samuel 3:2-5 (v3) Sons were born to David in Hebron. His firstborn was Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; and his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of…
- 1 Kings 16:31-33 (v2) As if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal…
- 2 Chronicles 11:21 (v3) Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines; for he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and…
- 2 Chronicles 19:2 (v2) Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked, and love those who hate…
- 2 Chronicles 21:6 (v2) He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did Ahab’s house; for he had Ahab’s daughter as his wife. He did that which was evil in…
- Ezra 9:12 (v2) Now therefore don’t give your daughters to their sons. Don’t take their daughters to your sons, nor seek their peace or their prosperity…
- Ezra 10:2-17 (v2) Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered Ezra, “We have trespassed against our God, and have married foreign women of…
- Psalms 139:21 (v2) Yahweh, don’t I hate those who hate you? Am I not grieved with those who rise up against you?
- Proverbs 23:33 (v1) Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind will imagine confusing things.
- Leviticus 18:18 (v1) “ ‘You shall not take a wife in addition to her sister, to be a rival, to uncover her nakedness, while her sister is still alive.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (25 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Which were idolaters.
Which were idolaters.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1Ki 11:1 But king Solomon loved many strange women,…
1Ki 11:1 But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, [and] Hittites;
Ver. 1. But king Solomon loved many strange women.] Praeceps ruit in libidinem, as if he had been born pro l’amore delle donne, - as Boccace saith of himself, - merely for love of fair ladies, to putrify and perish daily {a} under a tabes of impure lusts, as Tiberius did at Caprea - though a good prince at first, as was also Alexander the Great, Nero, and some others. This was a bitterness beyond that of death. {Ecc 7:26} And surely it had been better for Solomon to have been buried alive, than thus to have miscarried in his old age, to the great dishonour of God, and offence of his people Israel, the beginning of whose sins, causing the destruction of Solomon’s temple, and ruin of that commonwealth, is reckoned from the seven and twentieth year of Solomon’s reign; about which began this his foul revolt here related, {Eze 4:5} as Junius observeth.
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Together with the daughter of Pharaoh.] Or, Besides her; by a monstrous kind of polygamy and γυναικομανια, such as hath hardly been heard of in any other. His father, David, cannot be excused for his many wives and concubines, but himself much less; who could not but know that it was a direct violation of the law, {Deu 17:17} and that in the kingdom of pleasure, virtue could not consist.
{a} Quotidie perire me sentio.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–3 He loved them inordinately and lustfully, and he sinned…
He loved them inordinately and lustfully, and he sinned against God’s known law, both in their number, Deu 17:17, and in their quality.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 This is a sad story, and very surprising, of…
This is a sad story, and very surprising, of Solomon's defection and degeneracy.
I. Let us enquire into the occasions and particulars of it. Shall Solomon fall, that was the beauty of Israel, and so great a blessing of his generation? Yes, it is too true, and the scripture is faithful in relating it, and repeating it, and referring to it long after, Neh 13:26. There was no king like Solomon who was beloved of his God, yet even him did outlandish women cause to sin. There is the summary of his apostasy; it was the woman that deceived him, and was first in the transgression.
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1. He doted on strange women, many strange women. Here his revolt began. (1.) He gave himself to women, which his mother had particularly cautioned him against. Pro 31:3, Give not thy strength unto women (perhaps alluding to Samson, who lost his strength by giving information of it to a woman), for it is that which, as much as any thing, destroys kings. His father David's fall began with the lusts of the flesh, which he should have taken warning by. The love of women has cast down many wounded (Pro 7:26) and many (says bishop Hall) have had their head broken by their own rib. (2.) He took many women, so many that, at last, they amounted to 700 wives and 300 concubines, 1000 in all, and not one good one among them, as he himself owns in his penitential sermon (Ecc 7:28), for no woman of established virtue would be one of such a set. God had, by his law, particularly forbidden the kings to multiply either horses or wives, Deu 17:16, Deu 17:17. How he broke the former law, in multiplying horses, and having them out of Egypt too (which was expressly prohibited in that law) we read Kg1 10:29, and here we are told how he broke the latter (which proved of more fatal consequence) in multiplying wives. Note, Less sins, made gold with, open the door to greater. David had multiplied wives too much, and perhaps that made Solomon presume it lawful. Note, If those that are in reputation for religion in any thing set a bad example, they know not what a deal of mischief they may do by it, particularly to their own children. One bad act of a good man may be of more pernicious consequence to others than twenty of a wicked man. Probably Solomon, when he began to multiply wives, intended not to exceed his father's number. But the way of sin is down-hill; those that have got into it cannot easily stop themselves. Divine wisdom has appointed one woman for one man, did so at first; and those who do not think one enough will not think two or three enough. Unbridled lust will be unbounded, and the loosened hind will wander endlessly. But this was not all: (3.) They were strange women, Moabites, Ammonites, etc., of the nations which God had particularly forbidden them to intermarry with, Kg1 11:2. Some think it was in policy that he married these foreigners, by them to get intelligence of the state of those countries. I rather fear it was because the daughters of Israel were too grave and modest for him, and those foreigners pleased him with the looseness and wantonness of their dress, and air, and conversation. Or, perhaps, it was looked upon as a piece of state to have his seraglio, as his other treasures, replenished with that which was far-fetched; as if that were too great an honour for the best of his subjects which would really have been a disgrace to the meanest of them - to be his mistresses. And, (4.) To complete the mischief, Solomon clave unto these in love, Kg1 11:2. He not only kept them, but was extravagantly fond of them, set his heart upon them, spent his time among them, thought every thing well they said and did, and despised Pharaoh's daughter, his rightful wife, who had been dear to him, and all the ladies of Israel, in comparison of them. Solomon was master of a great deal of knowledge, but to what purpose, when he had no better a government of his appetites?
2. He was drawn by them to the worship of strange gods, as Israel to Baal-peor by the daughters of Moab. This was the bad consequence of his multiplying wives. We have reason to think it impaired his health, and hastened upon him the decays of age; it exhausted his treasure, which, though vast indeed, would be found little enough to maintain the pride and vanity of all these women; perhaps it occasioned him, in his latter end, to neglect his business, by which he lost his supplies from abroad, and was forced, for the keeping up of his grandeur, to burden his subjects with those taxes which they complained of, Kg1 12:4. But none of these consequences were so bad as this: His wives turned away his heart after other gods, Kg1 11:3, Kg1 11:4. (1.) He grew cool and indifferent in his own religion and remiss in the service of the God of Israel: His heart was not perfect with the Lord his God (Kg1 11:4), nor did he follow him fully (Kg1 11:6), like David. We cannot suppose that he quite cast off the worship of God, much less that he restrained or hindered it (the temple-service went on as usual); but he grew less frequent, and less serious, in his ascent to the house of the Lord and his attendance on his altar. He left his first love, lost his zeal for God, and did not persevere to the end as he had begun; therefore it is said he was not perfect, because he was not constant; and he followed not God fully, because he turned from following him, and did not continue to the end. His father David had many faults, but he never neglected the worship of God, nor grew remiss in that, as Solomon did (his wives using all their arts to divert him from it), and there began his apostasy. (2.) He tolerated and maintained his wives in their idolatry and made no scruple of joining with them in it. Pharaoh's daughter was proselyted (as is supposed) to the Jews' religion, but, when he began to grow careless in the worship of God himself, he used no means to convert his other wives to it; in complaisance to them, he built chapels for their gods (Kg1 11:7, Kg1 11:8), maintained their priests, and occasionally did himself attend their altars, making a jest of it, asking, "What harm is there in it? Are not all religions alike?" which (says bishop Patrick) has been the disease of some great wits. When he humoured one thus, the rest would take it ill if he did not, in like manner, gratify them, so that he did it for all his wives (Kg1 11:8), and at last came to such a degree of impiety that he set up a high place for Chemosh in the hill that is before Jerusalem, the mount of Olives, as if to confront the temple which he himself had built. These high places continued here, not utterly demolished, till Josiah's time, Kg2 23:13. This is the account here given of Solomon's apostasy.
II. Let us now pause awhile, and lament Solomon's fall; and we may justly stand and wonder at it. How has the gold become dim! How has the most fine gold changed! Be astonished, O heavens! at this, and be horribly afraid, as the prophet exclaims in a like case, Jer 2:12.
1. How strange, (1.) That Solomon, in his old age, should be ensnared with fleshly lusts, youthful lusts. As we must never presume upon the strength of our resolutions, so neither upon the weakness of our corruptions, so as to be secure and off our guard. (2.) That so wise a man as Solomon was, so famed for a quick understanding and sound judgment, should suffer himself to be made such a fool of by these foolish women. (3.) That one who had so often and so plainly warned others of the danger of the love of women should himself be so wretchedly bewitched with it; it is easier to see a mischief, and to show it to others, than to shun it ourselves. (4.) That so good a man, so zealous for the worship of God, who had been so conversant with divine things, and who prayed that excellent prayer at the dedication of the temple, should do these sinful things. Is this Solomon? Have all his wisdom and devotion come to this at last? Never was gallant ship so wrecked; never was crown so profaned.
2. What shall we say to all this? Why God permitted it it is not for us to enquire; his way is in the sea and his path in the great waters; he knew how to bring glory to himself out of it. God foresaw it when he said concerning him that should build the temple, If he commit iniquity, etc., Sa2 7:14. But it concerns us to enquire what good use we may make of it. (1.) Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. We see how weak we are of ourselves, without the grace of God; let us therefore live in a constant dependence on that grace. (2.) See the danger of a prosperous condition, and how hard it is to overcome the temptations of it. Solomon, like Jeshurun, waxed fat and then kicked. The food convenient, which Agur prayed for, is safer and better than the food abundant, which Solomon was even surfeited with. (3.) See what need those have to stand upon their guard who have made a great profession of religion, and shown themselves forward and zealous in devotion, because the devil will set upon them most violently, and, if they misbehave, the reproach is the greater. It is the evening that commends the day; let us therefore fear, lest, having run well, we seem to come short.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–3 But King Solomon loved many strange women,.... His love…
But King Solomon loved many strange women,.... His love was a lustful and not a lawful one, and of women who were not only of foreign countries, but not his lawful wives, and these many:
together with the daughter of Pharaoh; besides her, or as he loved her, and perhaps more; his sin was not that he loved her who was his lawful wife, but others with her; it is very probable she was a proselytess, and had no hand in turning him to idolatry, since we read not of any high place built for an Egyptian idol:
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women of the Moabites, Anmonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; all of the neighbouring nations. Some think he did this with political views, to get intelligence of the state of those countries, or to abate and extinguish their enmity; but it rather seems to be the fruit of lust or pride.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Solomon's many wives turn his heart from God, ver.…
Solomon's many wives turn his heart from God, ver. 1-8. God reproves and threatens him, ver. 9-13. Stirs up Hadad and Rezon against him, ver. 14-25. An account of Jeroboam, ver. 26-40. Solomon's death and burial, ver. 41-43.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Solomon's attachment to strange women, and consequent idolatry,
CHAPTER XI
Solomon's attachment to strange women, and consequent idolatry,
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1, 2.
Number of his wives and concubines, 3.
In his old age they turn away his heart from God, 4.
He builds temples to idols, burns incense and sacrifices to
them, 5-8.
The Lord is angry with him, and threatens to deprive him of the
kingdom, but will leave one tribe for David's sake, 9-13.
The Lord stirs up Hadad, the Edomite, to be his enemy; the
history of this man, 14-22.
He stirs another adversary against him, Rezon the son of
Eliadah. He and Hadad plague Israel, 23-25.
Jeroboam also becomes his enemy, and the reason why, 26-28.
Ahijah the prophet meets Jeroboam, and promises, in the name of
the Lord, that God will rend Israel from the family of Solomon,
and give him ten tribes, 29-39.
Solomon, hearing of this, seeks to put Jeroboam to death, who
escapes to Egypt, where he continues till the death of Solomon,
40.
Solomon dies, after having reigned over Israel forty years; and
his son Rehoboam reigns in his stead, 41-43.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI
Verse 1. Many strange women] That is, idolaters; together with the daughter of Pharaoh: she was also one of those strange women and an idolater. But many think she became a proselyte to the Jewish religion; of this there is no evidence.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1Ki 11:1. King Solomon loved many strange women —…
1Ki 11:1. King Solomon loved many strange women — It was not a fault in him that he married Pharaoh’s daughter; she being a proselyte, as is generally supposed, to the Jewish religion. But in marrying so many other women besides, he committed two sins against the law; one in multiplying wives, and another in marrying those of strange nations, who still retained their idolatrous religion; which was expressly against the law, as the next verse declares.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–3 In noticing successively Solomon’s excessive accumulation of silver and…
In noticing successively Solomon’s excessive accumulation of silver and gold 1Ki 10:14-25, his multiplication of horses 1Ki 10:26-29, and his multiplication of wives, the writer has in mind the warning of Moses against these three forms of princely ostentation, all alike forbidden to an Israelite monarch (marginal reference).
Zidonians - i. e., Phoenician women. A tradition states that Solomon married a daughter of Hiram, king of Tyre.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Strange women, who had been brought up in the…
Strange women, who had been brought up in the service of idols, and were not sincerely converted. (Haydock) --- Riches engaged Solomon in the love of pleasure, and this brought on his ruin. (Calmet) --- He began with the spirit, but ended in the flesh, Galatians iii. 3., and Ecclesiasticus xlvii. 21. He was aware of the dangerous conversation of women, Ecclesiasticus xix. 2. Yet he has left us in his own person an example of that dreadful truth, that it is difficult to love with discretion. (Haydock) --- Amare et sapere vix cuiquam conceditur. Nothing could be more beautiful than the commencement of his reign, nor more terrible than the latter part of it. Thou hast stained thy glory, &c., Ecclesiasticus xlvii. 22. Hence we may apply to him, How are thou fallen from heaven? (Isaias xiv. 12.) (Calmet) --- Pharao. This marriage seems to be blamed, as the source of Solomon’s misfortunes; though it is probable, that she had pretended to embrace his religion. (Menochius) (Salien) --- He ought to have repudiated her as soon as she relapsed. (Tirinus)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Solomon’s Fall And End
FIFTH SECTION
Solomon’s Fall And End
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Chap. 11
A.—The unfaithfulness towards the Lord and its punishment
1Ki_11:1-13
1But king Solomon loved1 many strange [i.e. foreign] women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh,2 women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; 2of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. 3And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods3: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord [Jehovah] his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5For Solomon went after4 Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord [Jehovah], and went not fully after the Lord [Jehovah], as did David his father. 7Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Amnion. 8And likewise did he for all his strange [i.e. foreign] wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.
9And the Lord [Jehovah] was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, 10and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods: but he kept not that which the Lord [Jehovah] commanded. 11Wherefore the Lord [Jehovah] said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to 12thy servant. Notwithstanding, in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s 13sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit, I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe5 to thy son, for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen.
Exegetical and Critical
1Ki_11:1-2. But king Solomon loved, &c. With these words a new and very essential part of the history of Solomon begins; they do not break the thread of the story abruptly, but stand in a connection with the preceding, to be well considered. Our writer evidently had in his mind the command given to kings in Deuteronomy 17 in which, 1Ki_11:16-17, it is said: “but he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses. … neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.” The great riches in silver and gold were mentioned in the preceding section, 1Ki_10:14-29, and also, finally, the number of horses brought out of Egypt; and mention of the many strange wives immediately follows. If there were danger of turning away from the strict and serious religion of Jehovah connected with the enormous riches, the luxury and splendor of the court, this was much more the case with the large harem. Solomon did not withstand this last danger; what was foreseen in the laws for the kings happened: “his heart was turned away.” What we learn from the connection of these two sections is very important: namely, that it was not vulgar, coarse sensuality that gave rise to such a large harem, but the reason was rather, that as Solomon grew in riches, esteem, and power, excelling all other kings in these (1Ki_10:23), he wished also to surpass them in what, according to Eastern ideas, even in the present day, especially belonged to the court and splendor of a great monarch; that is, the largest possible harem. But this was the occasion of his fall. It is therefore very arbitrary of the Sept. to describe אָהַב 1Ki_11:1 by ἦν φιλογύναιος καὶ ἔλαβε γυναῖκας ἀλλοτρίας, and quite wide of the mark in Thenius, who, explaining this for the original reading, says that Solomon was an “enervated slave to his senses.” Were this the case, traces of it would have been apparent earlier; but we do not hear, respecting Solomon, the slightest intimation of any previous sexual irregularity; he did not succumb to the influence of his many wives until he had become advanced in years (1Ki_11:4), and had reached the summit of his prosperity and power. For his marriage with the Egyptian, see above on 1Ki_3:1; she did not rank among the other strange women, i.e., those whom it was forbidden in the law to marry, as 1Ki_11:2 expressly remarks (cf. Exo_34:16; Deu_7:3-4; Jos_23:12). It was only through them that strange worship, the Asiatic, was introduced into the land; but there is not the slightest trace of Egyptian worship. The Moabites dwelt east of the Dead Sea, the Ammonites were north of them, and the Edomites south; but the Zidonians and Hittites lived north of Palestine, where Phœnician worship prevailed. Cf. Deu_23:4; Ezr_9:12; Neh_13:23.
1Ki_11:3. And he had seven hundred wives, &c. 1Ki_11:3. שָרוֹת means princesses, women of the first rank; not those who received rank by entrance into the harem, but those who were of noble families. The great number of these women, with all of whom it was not possible for Solomon (now elderly) to hold sexual intercourse, but especially their high rank, shows the reason they were maintained; seven hundred from the noblest princely houses of foreign nations served to add the greatest splendor to the court. Many think it probable that the majority of these wives, although they all were in subjection to him, served rather as singers and dancers to amuse the old and feeble king (Stollberg, Lisco). The opinion is entirely wrong, that (according to Ecc_4:8) Solomon was “guided by a theological idea, and intended to furnish a symbolical representation of the kingdom of Christ, and his dominion over all nations” (Evgl. Kirch.-Zeitg. 1862, s. 691). The numbers 700 and 300 may be only “round, i.e., approximate” ones (Keil), but are not therefore necessarily exaggerated or false. Ecc_6:8 has been quoted in opposition to them: “sixty are the queens, and eighty are the concubines, and innumerable are the virgins,” and in order to reconcile the two passages, the supposition is thrown out, that 60 and 80 were the number in the court at one time, and 700 and 300 the number of all the women at the court during Solomon’s reign (Ewald, Keil). This Thenius, with some reason, declares to be a “subterfuge;” but when he asserts that the statement in the Canticles is “historically founded,” and on the other hand, regards our own statement “as an evidence of the legendary character of the entire section,” we answer that Canticles is not historical but is poetic, and cannot be adduced as testimony against our historical books. Finally, the supposition to which Keil inclines, that there may be errors in the numeral-letters (ש = 300 instead of פ = 80), rests evidently in the consideration that the numbers 700 and 300 appear too large. But this difficulty ceases when we compare our own with other accounts of the harems of Eastern rulers. Curtius relates (III. 1Ki_3:24) that Darius Codomanus, on his expedition against Alexander, carried 300 pellices with him. Public accounts state that the harem of the present Turkish Sultan contains 1,300 women. The Augsb. Allg. Zeitung of 1862, No. 181, says “that the mother of the Taiping, emperor in Nankin, is the head of her son’s harem, a great establishment containing 3,000 women,” whom the same “lady” has to keep in order. Magelhäus gives the same number, and adds that the emperor had never seen some of them in his life. “The travellers of the seventeenth century reported the number of the wives of the Great Mogul to have been 1,000” (Philippson). In Malcom’s history of Persia it is stated that king Kosros had 5,000 horses, 1,200 elephants, and 12,000 wives; this may be greatly exaggerated, but shows the notions that were entertained about the state which a great ruler should maintain. Cf. also other instances in Rosenmüller, Altes und Neues Morgenland, III. s. 181. The evident intention of the narrator is, not to picture these rulers as brutal sensualists, but, on the contrary, to add to their fame. An immense harem is held in the East to be as requisite to a splendid court as a large stud.
1Ki_11:4. For it came to pass when Solomon was old, …… after other gods, &c. By old age is not meant the time “when the flesh obtained mastery over the spirit” (Keil)—sensuality never first begins with old age—but the time when, in consequence of luxury and indulgence, the energy of spirit and heart deserted him, and a relaxing took possession of him more and more. Then first it happened that the many foreign, well-conditioned women succeeded in turning away Solomon’s heart, i.e., in reducing his tone, making him indifferent towards the strict and exclusive religion of Jehovah, and milder and more indulgent towards the worship of their gods, yea, so to insnare him that he favored the latter by the building of altars to idols. When the text adds, and his heart was not (any longer) perfect (שָׁלֵם = complete) with the Lord his God, it says thereby as clearly, as positively, that he did not completely fall away from Jehovah’s service, but that he permitted the idolatrous worship of his wives besides. The formula, he did evil in the sight of the Lord, is used in speaking of every one who broke the commandment in Exo_20:3-4, because this is the first and supremest will of God. To avoid any misunderstanding, 1Ki_11:6 repeats, he went not fully (מִלֵּאsc.לָלֶכֶת, as in Num_14:24; Num_32:11-12; Deu_1:36) after the Lord (Jehovah). It is therefore difficult to conceive why it is so often asserted that Solomon formally departed from Jehovah, and became an idolater (Thenius, Duncker, Menzel, and others). All the kings of Judah or of Israel who were idolatrous are said to have served (עָבַד) strange gods (cf. 16:31; 22:54; 2Ki_16:3; 2Ki_21:2-6; 2Ki_21:20-22), but this expression is never applied to Solomon either here or elsewhere. Chronicles is never silent in respect of the kings in Judah, when any one of them served idols (2Ch_28:2-3; 2Ch_32:2 sq.; 2Ch_33:22; 2Ch_36:8), yet it says nothing of Solomon in this respect; but this is inconceivable, were it true that he had wholly forsaken Jehovah, and turned to idolatry. Jesus Sirach complains indeed (Sir_47:12-23) that the great Solomon succumbed to the influence of his wives, but does not say a word of his idolatry. All the Jewish traditions, the Talmud, and the Rabbins (Ghemara Schabb. lvi. 2) know nothing of the idolatry of Solomon. Had he himself, as well as his wives, formally worshipped idols, he would have fallen far deeper than Jeroboam, who only made images to represent Jehovah; and his sin would have been far greater than “the sin of Jeroboam,” which is so often alluded to in these books, while there is no mention of the idolatry Solomon is accused of. The statement of the unreliable Josephus (Antiq.viii. 7, 5) about Solomon’s idol-worship is just as much to be credited as his statement that he was ninety-four years of age, and that he broke the law of Moses in placing twelve oxen around the molten sea, and the twelve lions near the throne. We cannot even admit that Solomon held idolatrous worship along with Jehovah’s worship (Winer), nor that his fall “consisted in a syncretistic mixture of Jehovah-worship and idol-worship” (Keil), for in so doing he would have placed Jehovah on a level with idols, whereas the very nature of Jehovah’s service is the sole and exclusive worship of Him. The לא … שָׁלֵם and לֹא מִלֵּא 1Ki_11:4; 1Ki_11:6 does not say: he served Jehovah and the idols both, but: he was no longer wholly and completely with Jehovah; and this is made clear in that he allowed his strange wives to observe idolatrous service in the city which the Lord had chosen to put His name there, and even went so far as to favor it by the building of “high-places” (1Ki_11:36; 1Ki_8:16; 1Ki_14:21; 2Ch_6:6). So Hess (Gesch. Salomo’s, s. 436), and recently Vilmar (Pastoral-theol. Blütter, 1861, s. 179); Ewald also (Gesch. Isr. III. s. 378 sq.) says: “there is no evidence from ancient documents that Solomon ever left the religion of Jahve, even in his extreme old age, or sacrificed with his own hands to heathen deities; but, on the contrary, all historical evidences of his times are against the idea. Besides, we find it is expressly mentioned that he sacrificed upon the altar of Jahve, built by him, three times a year (according to the order of the three great festivals) with the greatest solemnity, as befitted a king such as he was” (1Ki_9:25). Cf. below on 1Ki_11:9 sq.
1Ki_11:5-8. Solomon went after Ashtoreth, &c. The וַיֵּלֶךְ, &c., 1Ki_11:5, means that he served these gods, personally, no more than יִבְנֶה in 1Ki_11:7 which follows, means that he built, with his own hands, high-places for the heathen gods; but he allowed it, permitted it to be done. 1Ki_11:8 adds expressly, “and likewise did he (i.e., he built high-places, 1Ki_11:7) for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.” This plainly shows that he did not build the heights for himself and his people, and that he did not burn incense, nor sacrifice on them, but that his strange wives did. He allowed public worship to all, whatsoever divinities they might adore, but did not himself renounce Jehovah-worship. Diestel (in Herzog’s Real-Encyklop. XIII. s. 337) grants that Solomon did not wholly go over into idolatry, but thinks that there is as little question that there was more than mere tolerance. The religious consciousness of the Israelite could not (he thinks) get rid of the idea that certain peculiar powers ruled other nations, dependent indeed upon Jehovah, and a limited service devoted to these foreign inferior gods did not consequently annul the service of the all-ruling Jehovah. This artificial view, in which Niemeyer joins, is contradicted decisively by the fact that the so-called “inferior gods” are mentioned as שִׁקֻּץ, abomination (1Ki_11:5; 1Ki_11:7), תּוֹעַבָה abomination (2Ki_23:13), הֲבָלִים vanity (Jer_2:5) and גִּלּוּלִים stercora (Deu_29:17), which would not have been possible had “the greatest sympathies” existed “in Israel” for these gods as really “superior beings.” We need not stop to refute the frivolous assertion of Menzel (Staat- und Rel.-Geschichte der Königreiche Israel und Juda, s. 142), that our author, who was devoted to Jehovah’s service, preferred to place the king in an unfavorable light rather than to let it be known how long the strange worship had existed among the people, and in which they took part. For the divinities named in 1Ki_11:5; 1Ki_11:7, cf. Movers, Relig. der Phönizier, s. 560–584, 602–608; Keil, bibl. Archäologie I. s. 442 sq.; Winer, R.- W.-B. under the appropriate names. Ashtoreth is the highest of the Phoenician (Sidonian) and Syrian female deities, and a personification of the feminine principle in nature. Her form is differently represented, sometimes with a bull’s or woman’s head with horns (crescents), sometimes as a fish (symbol of the watery element). She was specially adored by women; her worship, which is not exactly known, was most probably associated with indecency. Cf. especially Cassel, in the Bibelwerk, on Jdg_2:13. Milcom is said to be the chief god of the Ammonites, in 1Ki_11:33, and 2Ki_23:13; 2Sa_12:30; Jer_49:1; Jer_49:3; there is no accurate description of his nature or worship. As Moloch is immediately after (1Ki_11:7) said to be the god of the Ammonites, and the two names (מלבם and מלך) are closely related to each other, it is very reasonable to suppose they were different names for the same divinity. The translations also confuse them; the Sept., 1Ki_11:5; 1Ki_11:7, gives Μελχὼμ, the Vulg. gives Moloch twice; but in 2Ki_23:13 the former renders Milchom by Μόλοχ, and the latter by Melchom. Thenius therefore reads ומלכם in 1Ki_11:7 instead of ומלך, but there is no reason for doing so. Keil and Ewald agree with Movers in holding Milchom and Moloch to be different deities, partly because of the different names, and partly because 2Ki_23:10; 2Ki_23:13 mention that they had different places of sacrifice, and that Moloch was always named in connection with sacrifices of children. Winer, however, justly remarks that each, though not essentially different, had different attributes, and had therefore various altar-places in one and the same town. As for the rest, Molech or Moloch was the divinity which was known and adored throughout Anterior Asia, whose image, according to the Rabbins, was made of brass, with the head of an ox and human arms, in which the children offered were laid. Movers thinks he was the same in part as Saturn or Chronos, and in part the same as Baal the sun-god (cf. s. 322 sq.). There were certainly no child-sacrifices at Jerusalem in Solomon’s time; they were first offered under Ahaz (2Ki_16:3). Chemosh or Chamosh was the war-and-fire-god, according to Movers; Num_21:9, Jer_48:46 call the Moabites the people of Chemosh. That this was the divinity to whom the Moabite king offered his son, 2Ki_3:27, is only a matter of conjecture. At any rate, the character of the latter deity seems very similar to that of Milchom or Molech of the Ammonites, as it (the former) appears, in Jdg_11:24, to be the god of the Ammonites; cf. Cassel on this passage. We have no exact accounts of them. For the “heights,” see above on 1Ki_3:4; for the places where they were built, see on 2Ki_23:13.
1Ki_11:9-13. And the Lord was angry. Solomon, by his conduct, excited the extremest divine displeasure, and deserved punishment the more, as he had been so richly blessed in every respect by Jehovah, and had even been earnestly and emphatically warned in a peculiar vision against leaning towards other gods (1Ki_3:5 sq.;1Ki_9:1 sq.). The announcement of the subsequent chastisement did not follow in another direct revelation, but was no doubt conveyed by a prophet, who, as Nathan was no longer living, must have been Ahijah the Shilonite (1Ki_11:29). It is well worthy of notice that, in this announcement, the oppression of the people by compulsory labor, and taxes, or despotism, is not given as the reason of the dividing of the kingdom by Jehovah, and of limiting Solomon’s dynasty to dominion over one tribe; but only the sin against Jehovah, the “going after other gods.” It was just the same in Ahijah’s address to Jeroboam, 1Ki_11:29-39. For one tribe (1Ki_11:13) see on 1Ki_11:31-32. For David’s sake,i.e., on account of the promise given, for his unchanging fidelity to Jehovah (2Sa_17:12 sq.). Cf. that on 1Ki_8:15 sq. We are not told what impression the prophecy made on Solomon, but we may just for this reason conclude that it was not such as Nathan’s discourse made on David (2Sa_12:13).
Historical and Ethical
1. The turn which, with the events described in the section before us, the reign of Solomon takes, is of the weightiest moment, because it exercised the most wide-spread and lasting influence upon the whole history of Israel: for its immediate result was the rending of the kingdom, which was the beginning of the end. “The happiness to be the most favored people on the earth under a wise king—this happiness which Israel could, as it were, be shown from afar for a brief space, was itself the source of its wretchedness. Wisdom as well as wealth and power were intrusted to a sinful man, who could not keep himself erect upon this dizzy height. Hence this kingdom of peace and of prosperity should be, even in its fall, both a warning example and also a type of the kingdom which, through another, was to bring the blessings of salvation to men which Solomon’s reign signified in earthly symbols” (Von Gerlach). “Just in the period of the highest perfection of the worldly kingdom, the insufficiency thereof to satisfy the higher expectations and hopes, the complete faultiness cleaving to it, and the incapacity to meet the deepest needs of the spirit by sensuous splendor and earthly exhibition of power, must, for the first time, have dawned upon the consciousness” (Eisenlohr, das Volk Isr. II. s. 119).
2. The change which overtook Solomon in his extreme old age would be an insoluble psychological riddle if it consisted in his abandonment of the service of Jehovah, and his yielding to the idolworship practised by his wives. It is impossible that a man who had been brought up in the fear of Jehovah, and had declared this to be the beginning of all wisdom, who up to the fulness of his age had an unclouded and undisturbed knowledge of the one living God, as is shown in the discourse and prayer at the dedication of the temple (chap. 8), that a man who shone forth upon all sides as light amid the darkness, and throughout the whole Orient was regarded as a living symbol of wisdom (1Ki_4:30; 1Ki_9:24), should in his still riper age have fallen into a most gross superstition, and abandoned himself to the crudest, most senseless, and immoral of all forms of worship, namely, that of the Canaanites and the peoples of anterior Asia. We look in vain through all Scripture for an example in the remotest degree like it. Recognizing this, those critics of late, who think that idolatry is actually charged upon Solomon in our text, have adopted the notion, either that the accounts respecting his wisdom and his knowledge of God are false, that in fact he had always before this been given over to idolatry (Gramberg, Vatke, and others)—a view striking all history in the face, and hence needing no refutation—or inversely, that our account about Solomon’s idolatry is inaccurate, and rests first upon the later “deuteronomistic elaborators of the history” who misunderstood and represented the facts falsely (Ewald, Eisenlohr, and others), an assumption which is violent and arbitrary, but which, to be sure, is the most convenient way of solving the problem. By the correct interpretation of the text, according to which Solomon did not himself practise idolatry, but allowed his wives the exercise of public idol-worship, indeed favored it, the difficulty disappears. It is not indeed an unusual psychological phenomenon that a man highly gifted, standing upon a lofty eminence of knowledge and wisdom, decided in his moral and religious principles, should lose, in his old age, in consequence of various influences and relations, and of some especial fortunes of his life, the energy of his spirit and will, or, without abandoning precisely his past convictions, should resign them in respect of decisiveness and exclusiveness, so that towards what he had once regarded as error and had zealously combated it as such, he becomes tolerant and, as it were, indifferent, especially when he hopes thereby to attain ends otherwise pursued by him, as this was the case with Solomon, as we shall see, who therefore furnishes a warning and instructive example in history.
3. The formal allowance and patronage of different idolatries, especially in the place where the central Jehovah-sanctuary of the whole people stood, was, upon the part of the king, an actual equalization of the same with the Jehovah-worship; an official declaration of the equal authorization of idol-worship with the service of the one, true, living God who is the God of Israel. But thereby the first and supreme command of the Israelitish law, i.e., of the Covenant (Exo_20:2), was directly transgressed, and indeed set aside. The people Israel were chosen by God to be the upholders of the knowledge of the one God, and thereby to act for the healing of all nations. To this end it was necessary that as a people they should “be separated” from all peoples (Lev_20:24; 1Ki_8:53): participation in the election and in the covenant was made continual through obedience upon the part of the people, and also through race-derivation. Jehovah’s kingdom and the people’s hence coincide, the religion with the nation, and they stand and fall together. Permission, reception, and introduction of any heathen religion or of different idolatrous worships was not merely an assault upon the religious conviction of individuals, but was also an undermining of the national being inseparably connected therewith. The exclusiveness of the Jehovah-cultus was for the people, in their peculiar life, an absolute necessity. To set aside or remove it was to threaten the existence of this peculiar estate, and to deny its world-historical distinction. If Solomon himself neither offered incense nor sacrificed unto idols, he did yet nothing less than attack the foundations of the kingdom; he brought into the unity of the Israelitish public life the germ of dissolution, and threatened to destroy the covenant and God’s plan of salvation. To this extent his conduct and undertaking must be characterized as a real falling away.
4. The text gives only, as the immediate occasion of this falling away of Solomon, his love for his many foreign wives. We have already remarked, in respect of these high-bred dames from all the neighboring countries, that reference was had to the splendor of the court rather than to the gratification of a common, ungovernable lust. From their youth accustomed to their sensuous, more or less unchaste worship, they were more reluctant to abandon it as the earnest and severe Jehovah-cultus could not please them. What was more natural than the effort to induce the king, advancing in years, that he would permit them to observe their own native religious rites, and would make the regulations necessary therefor, by means of which his kingdom might become a sort of assembly-place for all religions, and acquire additional splendor and glory? This indeed they succeeded in, but not in the way of gross sensuality.—Niemeyer remarks with great pertinence (Charakteristik der Bib. IV. s. 487): “We do not find that Solomon gave the strength of his youth to women, and went the way which destroys kings (Pro_31:3). But even because he did not indulge so much in sensual enjoyment, the more refined voluptuousness became for him the more dangerous: that adhesion of the spirit, that secret enravishment of heart which, unobserved, breaks up the entire independence of the man, and, before he is aware of it, makes him the helpless slave of the woman. It begins far more innocently than that which we call crime, properly speaking, but it leaves behind it usually more melancholy ruins in the soul than the other. In like manner also, Vilmar observes (s. 180), it is not so much coarse sensuality as rather ‘psychical bondage to the female sex’ which wrought the fall of Solomon.” Psychical polygamy dissipates, pulls to pieces, and wastes irresistibly the core of the human soul. … At a certain stage of “culture,” in the intercourse between a man and woman, coarse sensuality by no means prevails, but the psychical pleasure in the woman, and the psychical abandonment to the woman, the desire of the eye, and the desire of the eye for the sex as such, and not for an individual woman.” The surroundings or relations were singularly fitted to awaken that kind of spiritual condition and to impart nourishment to it. The long peace, broken neither by war nor other calamity, the great wealth, the extensive trade, the abundance, by these means, of all objects of luxury possible, the voluptuous court-life in consequence, everything conspired to bring about a relaxation; and this was the soil upon which the numerous strange women could carry out their nature without hindrance. It is very probable that Solomon allowed himself to be governed by the political considerations “to give to the strangers flocking to Jerusalem an opportunity for the exercise of their own worship, and make his residence the desirable centre for the commercial peoples of Anterior Asia” (Bertheau, Zur Gesch. der Israel., s. 323). Like the crowded, brilliant harem itself, so the secured freedom of worship must needs increase the authority and glory of the great king. But always his polygamy is and must remain the first and chief cause of his downfall; this, as Ewald remarks (Gesch. Isr. III. s. 215) strikingly, concerning David’s adultery, is the “inexhaustible source of evils without number. … Here is concealed an inextricable coil of the direst evils, of which scarcely is one put out of the way, when two, three others start up, and each is enough to destroy the peace of an entire kingdom.” So long as this evil, “which the whole ancient world did not sufficiently regard as an evil,” remained, “the kingdom in Israel was therewith exposed to the same convulsions to which all polygamous kingdoms are to this day exposed: and consequently, in his earliest bloom we see arise in Israel the germ of its destruction, which sooner or later can combine with other causes of dissolution. The evils in the house of David introduced by Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah … all hang together with the fundamental evil once brought out; many evils also amongst his successors are fastened to the same thread.” Although Mosaism even in the history of creation represents Monogamy as the original relation ordained by God Himself, nevertheless polygamy was so deeply rooted in the habits of all peoples, that the strict law-giver was not able to uproot it, but sought, by various limitations, to make it difficult (Deu_21:15 sq.; Exo_21:9 sq. Cf. Winer, R.- W.-B. II. s. 662). It was expressly forbidden to a king to have many wives (Deu_17:17), because the dangers which inhered in polygamy were doubly great, and could become dangerous for the whole realm, as Solomon’s example conspicuously shows. The temptation was especially great with kings, because a large harem, according to the custom then prevalent, belonged to a royal state. It is, nevertheless, and remains a shadow resting upon the Old Covenant, and under it the sanctity of marriage was not properly understood and secured. Christendom was the first to make holy the band of matrimony. Without taking away the subordination of the woman, which is grounded in nature (Lev_3:16), it has given to her her rightful place (Gal_3:28), and thereby, in that it represents the relation of Christ to His Church as the examplar of marriage, it sets forth, as a principle, monogamy as the only form and order of the sexual relation (Eph_5:22-33).
5. What now, in recent times, has been set forth as the proximate and co-operating cause or as the chief cause of the fall of Solomon, appears, upon closer examination, untenable. They who are of the opinion that Solomon indeed did not abandon the worship of Jehovah, but worshipped, besides Jehovah, heathen deities also, suppose that he reached this syncretism in the way of comparative reflection. Thus Niemeyer remarks (s. 493): “He knew well enough that these wooden and brazen images are nothing, but in them he paid honor to the spirits to whom the Highest, the Unattainable, the Unknowable had intrusted the rulership of the world. The more assuredly that this idea is derived from an oriental source, the more probable is it that Solomon believed that he could find therein the solution of his doubt whether the Creator of the world occupied Himself with what was insignificant, and with the destiny of each particular people.” The love for his foreign wives brought him to the pass of “denying his convictions, which had been becoming enfeebled.” Von Gerlach expresses himself to the same effect: “It is worthy of note that in respect of Solomon’s wisdom, his knowledge of nature is expressly celebrated, and that this wisdom is compared with and placed above that of the Orient and of Egypt (1Ki_4:30 sq.). … It is easy to perceive that he made an attempt to blend the traditional world-knowledge of the East with the knowledge of the revealed God; that he allowed a certain independence to the powers of creation which he had represented in the figures of the Cherubim in the temple standing far below Jehovah, as His servants, and first tolerated the worship of them, and then in a certain degree himself took part therein.” This whole conception rests upon the erroneous presupposition that Solomon had actually burnt incense and had sacrificed to idols (besides to Jehovah), and it disappears with it. The historical text knows nothing at all of Solomon’s being misled to idolatry by his own reflection and by the blending of his wisdom with that of the East: it knows no other reason for his toleration of idolatry than that his strange wives “turned away his heart.” Lastly, neither in the historical books nor in the writings attributed to Solomon is there the slightest trace of the thought that idols were real living creative-powers, and subordinate deities serving Jehovah. It is a question whether such a view of the relation of Jehovah to gods of the heathen ever obtained in Israel. Certainly this was not the case in Solomon’s time, and the later prophets had no occasion to resist this opinion.—Ewald has set forth another view (as above, s. xiii. 368, 379 sq.). He finds the reason in the direction begun in Solomon’s kingdom, and so full of results to the whole history of Israel in the “violence” which cleaved to the kingdom naturally, by virtue of which he sought to make everything depend upon himself, and to extend his power to every phase of life—in fact, in political absolutism. The kingdom of Israel, under Solomon, felt the strongest tendency to become a thorough kingdom of the world; but in such a kingdom the toleration of different religions is inevitable. But as this toleration was as yet strange, “so the sheer royal authority introduced the innovation,” which to many of strict sentiments was abhorrent. This view has less even in its favor than the preceding. It rests upon an entirely false modern political view of monarchy in general, and of the Israelitish in particular. That which the only historical source in our possession gives as the chief occasion of Solomon’s turning is set wholly aside, and in its place something is advanced, of which not a word is said. Neither the announcement of the punishment (1Ki_11:9-12), nor the prophecy of Ahijah to Jeroboam (1Ki_11:31 sq.), gives in the remotest degree, as the ground of the division of the kingdom, “violence,” i.e., excess of the royal authority, but only Solomon’s want of fidelity to Jehovah occasioned through his wives. A world-kingdom, to convert Israel into which, Solomon is supposed to have had the tendency, is established only by means of military conquests, as the history of the world shows. Thus the great Roman power began, yet it ceased with the freedom of all (kinds of) worship. Solomon was “a man of rest” and of peace (1Ch_22:9), who did not extend the limits of the kingdom, but sought to keep and hold those only as they were under David. He meditated no world-power, and least of all to bring it to pass by the toleration of all religions.
6. The announcement of the divine punishment gives, what is well to notice, as the ground there of, not any sinful passion or any immoral act, not even the possession of many wives or unbridled lust, but only that Solomon had permitted and favored idolatrous worship, and in this had not observed the covenant and the commands of Jehovah. David sinned grievously in the matter of Bathsheba, but his procedure was still simply the immoral act of an individual in relation with an individual. Solomon’s deed, on the other hand, concerned the foundations of the theocracy. It was the setting aside and the destruction of the divine law upon which the whole kingdom, the existence of Israel as a people distinct from all heathen peoples, its world-historical destiny, rested. For a king of Israel, whose calling consisted, especially in this, to be a servant of Jehovah, the true king of Israel, and as such before all things to maintain thoroughly the Covenant, there could be no heavier announcement. In the case of Solomon, moreover, Jehovah had vouchsafed to him special revelations, had answered all his prayers, and had made him the most favored, the richest, and most fortunate king of that time. From the theocratic point of view, the punishment itself, the division of the kingdom and the limitation of the dynasty of Solomon to the tribes Judah and Benjamin, appears even-merciful, for in reality Solomon had rendered himself completely unworthy of the theocratic kingdom. For the rest, the punishment corresponded with the offence in so far as it brought to fruit and maturity the germ of the destruction of the kingdom which Solomon by his conduct had planted and tended. And it is true here also that what a man soweth that shall he reap. Solomon, befooled by his wives, believed that he could become still greater by transgression of the Covenant, and that he would make his kingdom more conspicuous and glorious; but this same transgression laid the foundation of irreparable breach and final ruin. From the modern liberalistic point of view Solomon’s act has been judged differently. So Ewald says (s. 380): “In that he allowed his wives to sacrifice to their deities was the best evidence of a general toleration of religion in his kingdom that he could furnish. In fact the act, a legal toleration of different religions in that early age of the wise Solomon was attempted—a toleration which the true religion must allow as soon as it recognizes its own being, and against which in our land to-day, this side the Niemen, the Jesuits alone are condemned to work. Certainly at that time the religion of Jahve was something too weak to stand alone by itself without any outward protection.… If only Solomon’s rule had not become gradually distasteful to the popular feeling for other causes, who knows what might have been established in this age for the continuance of the new wisdom!” After his usual fashion, Eisenlohr has adopted this view (s. 115). With Solomon, says he, “we see in place of the purely hostile posture towards heathenism a friendly approximation, in many respects even a formal blending, and indeed this took shape in a very natural way. In a great kingdom consisting of diverse nationalities, room must be allowed for the most diverse forms of religion.… Every genuine, sound type of religion (religiosität), in so far as its element is freedom, the right of individual contemplation and elevation above stiff outward forms in the region of the spirit, carries within itself the germ for the scattering of every exclusive kind.” That this way of viewing the subject is in direct contradiction with the biblical, scarcely needs mention. Were general religious toleration a work of wisdom, and the furtherance of true religion as soon as it recognizes its own being, Solomon, by his tolerance of the wild, immodest, and shameful Astarte-and-Moloch cultus, instead of the “wrath” of Jehovah and the punishment of the limitation of his kingdom to one tribe only, would have merited praise only, and the broader extension of his kingdom; and all the great prophets, an Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Hosea, &c., who opposed the toleration of every idolatrous cultus, and were zealous for the exclusiveness of the Jehovah-cultus, should be considered as the “Jesuits” of the old world, who did not know the nature of true religion. Solomon would have then erred only in investing the religion of Israel with too much power, and in his zeal for progress, in anticipating general religious freedom. With incomparably more right, Vilmar has rendered an opposite judgment (s. 179 sq.). “We have here before us a type of the authorization of all forms of religion within a definite, limited divine sphere of life.… Solomon’s ideal here is to let each man be saved à sa facon … the beginning of the (unlimited) “authorization of individuality”—this proposition is thoroughly subversive, belonging, in this form, to the last decades, in virtue of which church-bodies, States, peoples come to an end.”
For the rest we need not look for New-Testament views in the Old Testament, nor for Old Testament views in the New. They are distinct economies. Christianity is not like the Mosaic, conditioned by bodily descent and bound up in a given race, and does not impose the obligation forcibly to suppress any other religion within its jurisdiction. It knows no other instrument of its continuance and of its spread than that of the Word, and of the conviction thereby wrought. But if no people can be without religion, and if this have the most decisive, profound influence upon the spiritual and moral formation of the people, then the political power cannot be indifferent in respect of all religions, and cannot simply consider them of equal authority in any relation. Of the Solomonic prototype there remains thus much for all times and peoples, that the introduction and authorization of all, even the most diverse religions and forms of worship within a nation, does not make the same strong, but weak, and carries with it the danger of its national and political division and destruction; for religious indifferentism is the death of all true patriotism, and is more destructive of a people than religious fanaticism.
Homiletical and Practical
1Ki_11:1-13. Solomon’s fall. The beginning, 1Ki_11:1-4; the progress, 1Ki_11:5-8; the end, 1Ki_11:9-13.—M. Fr. Roos: Here we see plainly how a godly man may gradually fall into sin. He first allows himself too much liberty. He ventures into danger, and then perishes therein.… He who scorns danger, who by marriage and by a wilful intrusion upon certain positions exposes himself to it, or who even ventures in his daily course too much into the world, under the pretext of liberty; he who indulges in the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life instead of enjoying with gratitude and moderation the gifts of God, such an one becomes the slave of sin, and falls under the wrath of God. The heart is first inclined, then wanders upon evil paths, and at last does openly what is displeasing to the Lord. At first we permit in others, through complaisance, sin, which we could and should have checked, and thus we actually assist ourselves to sin. Still we preserve our appearance of wisdom and godliness, and will not have it supposed that we have entirely deserted the Lord. But he whose heart is not wholly with the Lord his God, follows him not at all; he who follows him not wholly, follows him not at all; for “a man cannot serve two Masters.” 1Ki_11:1-8. The example given by the Bible in the case of Solomon. 1. What it teaches. (a) That for the sinful human heart, a constant outward prosperity is allied to spiritual dangers; for what profiteth, &c., Mat_16:26. Thus it is that trial and sorrow are often blessings for time and eternity, Heb_12:6-12. (b) That the most abundant knowledge, the highest education and wisdom are no protection against moral and religious short-comings. Wine and women make foolish the wise man (Sir_19:2). No wise man commits a little folly, says an old proverb. Therefore, trust in the Lord, &c. (Pro_3:5-7). How it warns us. (a) Watch. If a Solomon can fall, a Solomon brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and walking in the ways of God in old age, a Solomon, the wisest man of his time! how necessary is it for us all to watch. Without watching, the greatest wisdom may become foolishness, and the highest spiritual condition may end in the wrath and judgments of God. (b) Pray. In the great prosperity and delight of this life, Solomon forgot prayer, as he had so well practised it in earlier years (chaps. 3. and 8.). His wives did not elevate his heart, they debased it. Prayer alone holds watch, and is therefore most necessary in prosperity and success (Psa_76:2; Psa_139:23 sq.).—”Let him who stands take heed,” &c. (1Co_10:12). (a) Solomon did stand in the living knowledge of God, in faith, and in humility (1Ki_3:6; 1Ki_8:23), but (b) he looked not well to himself, he did not observe that the thorns of wealth and the pride of life were choking the good seeds in his heart, therefore he fell, broke his covenant with God, and was under the just judgment of God. 1Ki_11:1-4. Christian marriage in contradistinction to pre-Christian marriage (see Hist. and Ethic. 4) vs. Denial of the existence of marriage as a divine ordinance (Mar_10:6-9) is the source of the greatest and weightiest evils. Solomon sinned in this wise: That, contrary to the Law, he not only took to himself many wives, but foreign, i. e., heathen wives.—Osiander: Not without danger is it that a man takes a wife who is not of his own religion (1Co_7:16).—Lust of the eyes and the pride of life drowse the soul and cripple the will, gradually and imperceptibly influence the heart, so that it loses all sense of holy and earnest things, and all pleasure therein, and becomes stupid and indifferent to everything divine and noble.—A prince who allows himself to be advised and led by women in the affairs of his government, instead of guiding himself by the unchangeable law of God, destroys the prosperity of himself and his kingdom. Confidential intercourse and intimacy with those who know nothing of the living God, and of his word, but rather resist Him—those who well know how to flatter—this is a most perilous position for a God-fearing heart (Ecc_7:27).
1Ki_11:4. Even as in youth exuberance of life and strength opens the door to temptation, so likewise does the weakness of old age. But an old gray-haired sinner is much more abominable in the sight of the Lord than a youth. Therefore, pray ever: Forsake me not in my old age, &c. (Psa_71:9; Psa_71:18).—There is no object worthier of compassion than the man who, having served the Lord, and kept the faith from his youth up, when old age has brought him near to his everlasting rest, turns his back upon it, and thus renders useless all his earlier struggles with sin and the world.—Vilmar: The sole condition under which, amid his natural weakness, an old man can maintain his spiritual strength, and guard his honor, is this: that “his heart is purely fixed upon God;” this condition failing, let a man’s whole life be influenced by the opinions of others; influenced by such opinions without sharing them, yet still without combating them, then complete wantonness will take possession of his old age.
1Ki_11:5-8. Although Solomon did not himself practise idolatry, he permitted and encouraged it in others; but the receiver is as bad as the thief. That is the curse resting upon sin, that the very means by which men seek to raise themselves in the world’s estimation become the very means for their destruction. By perverted compliance and long toleration, Solomon brought ruin and destruction upon himself and his people for centuries to come. All indulgence which is grounded upon indifference to truth, or founded upon lukewarmness, is not virtue but a heavy sin before God, how much soever it may resemble freedom and enlightenment. In a well-ordered Church and State establishment neither bigotry nor superstition should have equal rights with faith and truth. Where the gate is opened to them, or where they are patronized instead of being resisted, then both people and kingdom are going to meet their ruin (see Ethical 6). 1Ki_11:9-13. The punishment that fell upon Solomon shows us (a) the holiness and righteousness of God (Psa_145:17; Psa_5:5; Jer_17:10; Luk_12:47). (b) His faithfulness and mercy (1Ki_11:12-13). He knows how to punish, so that His gracious promises remain firm (2Ti_2:13; Rom_3:3).—God makes known to us His judgments through His Word, so that we may have time to repent and to turn unto Him (Eze_33:2).—If judgment fell especially upon Solomon, notwithstanding the fact that the Lord appeared to him twice in a dream, and he was honored with distinguished grace, what judgment must we expect, to whom He has appeared tenderly in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, &c. (1Co_1:30; Heb_2:3; Heb_10:29).—God knows how, in the proper time, to belittle him who abandons and forsakes the Lord and His cause, in order to become great and distinguished in the eyes of the world (Dan_4:34).
Footnotes:
[1]1Ki_11:1.—[The Sept. renders here ἦν φιλογύνης, which is not borne out by the character of Solomon, as is pointed out in the Exeg. Com. Immediately after this the Vat. Sept. introduces 1Ki_11:3, transposed from its place, but omits its last clause altogether.
[2]1Ki_11:1.—[All the ancient versions class Pharaoh’s daughter among the “strange wives,” which sense our author, as also Keil rejects. See Exeg. Com.
[3]1Ki_11:4.—[The Vat. Sept. omits the middle clause of 1Ki_11:4, and mixes together 1Ki_11:6-8, omitting much of them.
[4]1Ki_11:5.—[Notwithstanding the arguments in the Exeg. Com. against the personal idolatry of Solomon, it is to be remembered that the phrase הָלַךְ אַחֲרֵי אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, to go after other gods (1Ki_11:4-5; 1Ki_11:10) is one already established as far back as the Pentateuch as an expression of idolatry.
[5]1Ki_11:13.—[For one tribe the Sept. have σκῆπτρον ἕν, which is, however, probably to be understood in the same sense.—F. G.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v3 he had seven hundred wives, princesses--They were, probably, according…
he had seven hundred wives, princesses--They were, probably, according to an existing custom, the daughters of tributary chiefs, given as hostages for good conduct of their fathers.
concubines--were legitimate, but lower or secondary wives. These the chief or first wife regards without the smallest jealousy or regret, as they look up to her with feelings of respectful submission. Solomon's wives became numerous, not all at once, but gradually. Even at an early period his taste for Oriental show seems to have led to the establishment of a considerable harem (Sol 6:8).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 THE SINS OF SOLOMON, 1Ki_11:1-8.
THE SINS OF SOLOMON, 1Ki_11:1-8.
We come now to that strange, dark period in Solomon’s career — so strangely dark, and in contrast with his earlier piety and glory so deeply sad, that even the author of Chronicles passes it over in silence, and some modern critics pronounce it incredible and psychologically impossible. We find Jewish pride on the one hand, and German rationalism on the other, uniting to deny or else explain away the literal truth of the history. But there the record stands, and will stand, in unpleasant but simple naked truth, whose obvious meaning none can doubt, holding up to the world a most impressive lesson of human frailty, and showing the terrible danger to spiritual life of the vain pomp and glory of the world. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 1Co_10:12.
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In the earlier part of his reign Solomon was rich towards God, but later he multiplied to himself gold and silver, and horses and chariots, and wives and concubines. In seeking to surpass the magnificence and glory of the kings of the nations, he fell even lower than they all; for better are they who never knew the way of truth, than he who, having been blessed with superior light from God, turns away and runs headlong into a foul idolatry. Solomon’s fall was no sudden apostasy, and doubtless many a deep and wearing heart-struggle did he pass through ere the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, finally gained over him the mastery. We infer from the warnings against transgression contained in the Divine communication of 1Ki_9:6, that already the Lord saw in him tendencies that threatened danger; and we suppose that these tendencies grew stronger and stronger until they resulted in the dark and fatal apostasy which this chapter unfolds to us. Compare Neh_13:26.
1. Loved many strange women — Chiefly princesses, (1Ki_11:3,) the daughters of the many vassal kings who were tributary to Solomon. How strange that he who in his Proverbs (Pro_2:16-19; Pro_5:3-4; Pro_7:5-27) could give such noble counsel to avoid the strange woman, should be himself taken in her snare.
Together with the daughter of Pharaoh — That is, besides the daughter of Pharaoh. She was the wife of his youth and of his better days; and although his marriage with her was not in harmony with the spirit of the law, (see note on 1Ki_3:1,) had he remained true to her no particular harm would have resulted, for we cannot find that she ever seduced him to idolatry. But when he essayed to take other foreign wives, and especially of nations among whom the Hebrews were positively forbidden to marry, his fall was speedy and fatal.
Moabites, Ammonites — According to the letter of the law (Exo_34:11; Exo_34:16; Deu_7:1; Deu_7:3) only marriage with the Canaanitish nations was prohibited; but Moabites and Ammonites were forbidden to enter the congregation until the tenth generation, and the Edomites until the third. Deu_23:3; Deu_23:8. Indeed, the spirit of the law was against intermarriage with any and all who would be likely to turn the heart after false gods.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Chap. 1Ki_11:1-8. Strange wives turn away Solomon’s heart (Not…
Chap. 1Ki_11:1-8. Strange wives turn away Solomon’s heart (Not in Chronicles)
1. Solomon loved many strange women] Where polygamy was common there would be a great temptation to a powerful king to connect himself by marriage with all the nations about him. At the same time a large harem was an element in Oriental pomp. Most of these women were heathen, and their worship would be practised in the harem. In all the nations of antiquity women had special religious observances which they practised without the assistance of the priests. But Solomon built temples for foreign worship. It seems from 1Ki_11:8 that these were for the women. If this were so they must have come, under attendance no doubt, from the harem to the Temple. In taking Pharaoh’s daughter Solomon had joined to him a mighty but somewhat distant monarch. The other nations mentioned in this verse were close at hand. Edom bordered on the south of Palestine, Moab and Ammon were on the east, and Sidon and the Hittite kingdom on the north. The LXX. (Vat.) adds Syrian and Amorite wives to the number, and incorporates part of 1Ki_11:3 with this verse.
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Of this part of Solomon’s conduct and character no mention is made in the books of the Chronicles.
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Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 (1) Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites.—The first three of…
(1) Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites.—The first three of these races were kindred to Israel and of the stock of Abraham, and were now among the subjects of Solomon; the last two were of the old Canaanitish stock, and were now inferior allies. To the last alone properly attached the prohibition of the Law (Exo_34:12-16; Deu_7:3-4); but the reason on which that prohibition was grounded was now equally applicable to the others; for they also had fallen into the worship of false gods. Hence the extension of it to them, recognised by the Jews after the captivity (Ezr_9:2; Ezr_9:11-12; Neh_13:23-29).
It is to be noted that the marriage with the daughter of Pharaoh is apparently distinguished from these connections, which are so greatly censured, and that there is no mention of the introduction of any Egyptian idolatry.
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(1-8) The defection of Solomon is distinctly traced to his polygamy, contracting numerous marriages with “strange women.” Polygamy is also attributed to David (see 2Sa_3:2-5; 2Sa_15:16), marking perhaps the characteristic temperament of voluptuousness, which seduced him into his great sin; but it was carried out by Solomon on a scale corresponding to the magnificence of his kingdom, and probably had in his case the political object of alliance with neighbouring or tributary kings. We find it inherited by Rehoboam (2Ch_11:18-21), and it probably became in different degrees the practice of succeeding kings. Hitherto, while polygamy, as everywhere in the East, had to some degree existed in Israel from patriarchal times, yet it must have been checked by the marriage regulations of the Law. Nor had there yet been the royal magnificence and wealth, under which alone it attains to full development. We have some traces of it in the households of some of the Judges: Gideon (Jdg_8:30), Jair (Jdg_10:4), Ibzan and Abdon (Jdg_12:9; Jdg_12:14). Now, however, it became, in spite of the prohibition of the Law (Deu_17:17), a recognised element of royal self-indulgence—such as is described in Ecc_2:7-8, and is perhaps traceable even through the beauty of the Song of Solomon. In itself, even without any incidental consequences, it must necessarily be a demoralising power, as sinning against the primeval ordinance of God, and robbing natural relations of their true purity and sacredness. But in actual fact it sinned still more by involving forbidden marriages with idolatrous races, with the often-predicted effect of declension into idolatry.
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The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–3 SOLOMON"S DEFECTION. The observant reader will have already remarked…
SOLOMON"S DEFECTION. The observant reader will have already remarked in this history some intimations of Solomon"s approaching fall. Among these are, first, the repeated warnings which are addressed to him, especially in 1Ki_9:6-9, and, second, his repeated transgressions of the law by which he ruled. We have already heard of the multiplication of silver and gold, (1Ki_10:14-25) in defiance of Deu_17:17, and of the multiplication of horses, (1Ki_10:27-29) in disregard of ver. 16 of the same chapter. We now read how the rain of this great prince was completed by the multiplication of wives. The historian obviously had the words of Deuteronomy 17. in his mind as he wrote. It is remarkable that the chronicler is altogether silent as to Solomon"s fall, as he is also as to David"s sin.
But Heb. And. This chapter is a direct continuation of the preceding. LXX kai oJ basileuv k.t.l. The polygamy was but a part of his worldliness, like the chariots, gold, etc. king Solomon loved The LXX hn filogonhv. is misleading. It is perfectly clear that it cannot have been mere sensuality led to this enormous harem. This is evident from
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(1) his time of life. It was "when he was oldi.e. , when passions are not at their strongest that his wives turned away his heart.
(2) The number if the numbers are to be trusted of his wives. A thousand concubines cannot be kept for mere purposes of passion.
(3) The large number of princesses, which shows that the object of this array of mistresses was to enhance his state and renown. As he exceeded other kings in glory, wisdom, and power, so must he excel them not only in armies, chariots, and horses, but also in the number of his wives. It is clear, therefore, that the "lust of the eye" and "the pride of life" had their part in this huge establishment. "The same consideration of state which leads a Western prince or noble to multiply horses, leads an Eastern prince to multiply wives, with often as little personal consideration in the one ease as in the other" (Kitto) many He is blamed for their number. This was against (Deu_17:17) strange not merely foreign, though that is the primary meaning of the word, but strange as opposed to a lawful wife. Cf. Pro_5:20 Pro_6:24 Pro_7:5, etc. No doubt the harlots in Israel were principally aliens women, together with yKAtBAtaew i.e., praeter filiam Ph. (Maurer). Pharaoh"s daughter is regarded as his lawful wife the daughter of Pharaoh, (see note on 1Ki_3:1) women of the Moabites, Ammonites Heb. Moabitesses, etc. Perhaps these two nations are mentioned first because such alliances as these, though not forbidden in terms by the law, would nevertheless, from its spirit and bearing towards these races, be looked upon with especial disfavour. If the Ammonite or Moabite was not to be received into the congregation until the tenth generation; (Deu_23:3) if the Israelite was not to seek their peace or prosperity all the days of his life (ver. 6), then the idea of intermarriage with them must have been altogether repugnant to the Hebrew polity, as indeed we may gather from the book of Ruth, Edomites Favourably distinguished (Deu_23:7) from the two preceding races. The Edomite was a "brother." His children of the third generation might enter into the congregation, Zidonians Rawlinson thinks this word lends "some countenance to the tradition recorded by Menander ( ap. Clem. Alex. "Strom." 1. p. 386), that Solomon married a daughter of Hiram, king of Tyre." But such tradition was sure to arise; the uxorious character of Solomon and his close relations with Hiram are quite sufficient to account for its growth. And a daughter of Hiram would hardly have been passed over without special mention, and Hittites. (see on 1Ki_10:29)
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD. Vers. 1-8.
The Fall of a King.
Solomon was a king of men. Not only was he supreme civil ruler of his nation, he was also chief in wisdom and knowledge, and distinguished in the favour of God. (Neh_13:26) This moral royalty is open to all. The prize is nobler than that of the most glittering "corruptible crown." From this kingship Solomon fell, though he retained the throne of the nation. The rascal often lurks in the heart that is under an anointed face. Let us consider
I THE OCCASION OF THIS DELINQUENCY.
1. Solomon had many wives.
(1) This was an invasion of God"s order. That order was exhibited in Eden, when Eve stood singly by the side of Adam. Lamech was the first polygamist. (Gen_4:19) He was, ominously, the fifth in descent from the fratricide Cain.
(2) Moses tolerated polygamy, as he also suffered divorcements, not with approval of these customs, but rather in judgment upon the people for the hardness of their hearts. (see Mat_19:8-9)
(3) This principle will explain many Mosaic ordinations the observance of which was a burdensome yoke, and from which, by the mercy of Christ, we are happily released. (Act_15:10, Act_15:11) Note: God"s order cannot be invaded with impunity. It is our duty carefully to ascertain it, and faithfully to keep it.
2. His wives were strange women.
(1) Not only were they foreigners, they. were also idolaters. There is no proof that even Pharaoh"s daughter was a proselyte. Solomon could have no spiritual sympathy with these without compromising his loyalty to Jehovah.
(2) They were idolaters of those very nations against alliances with which the law of God was express. (see ver. 2; Exo_34:12-16; Deu_7:8, Deu_7:4) The sin was therefore most flagrant.
(3) The spirit of this inhibition still binds. (see 1Co_7:39; 2Co_6:14) The reason for it is in the nature of things and must abide. Note: Many a man has had his heart pierced and his head broken by his own rib.
3. David had too many wives.
(1) The example of David may have injuriously influenced Solomon. A large harem may have been a sign of grandeur; but these kings ought to have been superior to such fashions. (see Deu_17:17)
(2) The evils in the examples of good men are especially mischievous, for they are liable to be condoned into harmlessness; the more readily so when to follow them is agreeable to natural inclination.
(3) They are liable to be carried farther. If David had many wives, Solomon had very many. David"s wives were chiefly daughters of Israel, but Solomon"s were daughters of foreign idolaters. Amongst his 700 wives and 300 concubines, not one was good. (see Ecc_7:28) Note: Good men should be especially watchful over their influence parents, ministers, Sunday school teachers, professors of religion.
II THE PROGRESS OF THE EVIL.
1. First the heart is set against the head.
(1) The earliest record here is that Solomon"s heart was turned away. His head at first seems to have been clear, as Adam"s also was, who, though in the transgression, yet was "not deceived". (1Ti_2:14) But his heart, like that of Adam, was fatally susceptible to female influence.
(2) It is a foolish thing in a wise man to trust his head when he gives his heart to evil. "Man at his best is vanity.
2. Then the heart rules the head.
(1) This is the next stage and inevitable. This may be disputed long, but will assert itself in time. Observe well that when Solomon was "old" he so far yielded to the influence of his wives as to encourage and join in their idolatry.
(2) Probably his vices made him prematurely old. Calmer supposes him to have been eighteen years old when he came to the throne, and he reigned forty years (ver. 42). Thus he could be only fifty-eight at his death.
3. Finally the wise man becomes a fool.
(1) Behold this wisest of men trying to solve the impossible problem of serving Jehovah and Ashtaroth! He went not fully after the Lord his God as did David his father.
(2) David indeed fell into grievous sin, but his offence was more directly against man; indirectly against God. Even then the offence as against God was the venom of his crimes. (Psa_51:4) But the sin of Solomon was against God directly. Note: Offences against society are denounced without mercy by men, while the mental rebellion of the unbeliever against God is even glorified as "honest doubt!" but the Bible is explicit that "He that believeth not shall be damned.
(3) Behold this wise man further building a temple to Molech, the murderer, the devil, on the Mount of Olives, over against the temple of the Lord, the glorious work of his royal youth! Could folly go farther?
(4) The mischief of Solomon"s idolatry remained to the times of Josiah. (see 2Ki_23:13) Who can say that it terminated even then? Eternity will declare. M.
HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART Vers. 1-8.
Solomon"s Sin.
I THE SIN.
1. Its nature. He not only aided his wives to continue their idolatrous worship, he himself participated in it. He went after strange gods, seeking their favour and observing their ordinances. The worship of Jehovah was not discarded, but delight in the true God was gone, and the flame of that loving zeal for God"s commandments died away: his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God. The worship now offered in the temple was the lingering tradition of a brighter past, a thing of custom and outward necessity, and the heart was given to baser worships, sensuous and sensual The soul had ceased to drink at the fountain of living waters, and was drinking at the fountain of death. Is our heart perfect with the Lord, our delight in His love, our hunger after His righteousness as deep as in the past? Do we offer a cold and formal worship to Him, while our heart warms into living interest and strong desire only at the world"s shrines?
2. Its guilt.
(1) God had given Solomon unparalleled wisdom, wealth, and power, and all were now turned against his Benefactor. All that fame and influence were used to glorify idolatry and lessen zeal for God"s service. How often are God"s gifts thus turned against Him!
(2) The sin of Solomon became the sin of Israel (ver. 33). The responsibility of parents in regard to their children"s attitude toward God the responsibility of the leaders of thought and of society, of all of us, asto how we influence men in their attitude toward the things unseen and eternal.
3. Its sadness. It was his last work, the sin not of youth but of old age. The light which God had kindled did not flame out into eternal glory, but went out in eternal night. The seeds of sin and disaster were sown among his people, his life a wreck, his memory not a star to guide the wanderer in the darkness, but a warning beacon on the waste of death! The story of many a life besides: will it be the story of thine?
II WHAT LED TO IT.
1. Unregulated affections. The wisdom of marrying only in the Lord. The danger of worldly alliances and worldly friendships.
2. The despising of God"s commandments. (see ver. 2, and Deu_17:16, Deu_17:17) The counsels of God were lightly esteemed. Many commands of God are today held to be antiquated and are quietly ignored. The directions of Scripture in regard to what are deemed minor things are set aside. The spirit of unbelief is there. For individuals and for churches it must prove a seed of sin and spiritual disaster.
3. The human love displaced the Divine. The spirit of disloyalty needed only a strong enough inducement to go further, and it found it here. To please his wives, altars to their gods were built on Mount Olivet, and then his own soul was taken in the snare of their abominations. The testimony which we are called to lift up in the face of all life away from God is safety for our own soul. It is hard to do it, but there is life in it for ourselves and, it may be, for others also. U.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 But King Solomon loved many strange women.
1Ki_11:1-13
But King Solomon loved many strange women.
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Solomons sin
A few years ago two paintings were exhibited in this country, which attracted wide attention. One of them represented Rome in the height of her splendour, and the other in the depths of her decay. The contrast was melancholy and instructive. One could not repress the question as he turned from one scene to the other, What led to this mighty change? It was the old story, which every great nation thus far in history has illustrated sooner or later, that of a secret, slow-moving moral decay, preceding and occasioning social upheaval and ruin. We might fancy that a similar picture might be drawn between two periods in the history of Israel--one, that of the latter part of Solomons reign, when there was an unsurpassed wealth and glory and power in the holy city; and the other, only a few years later, when the kingdom was rent and the sceptre had departed.
I. Solomons sin. This was no ordinary transgression of an ordinary evil-doer. It was not the general unworthiness of his life--an unworthiness that pertains to every child of Adam. It was a distinct thing. It had an historical character--Solomons sin. We now ask briefly in what did it consist?
1. It was not, primarily, sensuality. That was only the outworking of an inner and far deeper evil. The simple and honest historian tells us that he loved many strange women, thus breaking an explicit command to the chosen people. Now the ultimate evil against which Moses was led to legislate in this particular was not polygamy nor licentiousness, but the idolatry which the foreigner would inevitably introduce. Among these women he found an intellectual stimulus and gratification. They were more brilliant than Jewish maidens, and their culture was a distinct and attractive element in the royal pursuit of wisdom. For in that great experiment of life Solomon commanded the most costly and varied forms of pleasure and of learning. All the world--all there was in man--was made tributary to the object held up in view.
2. Nor was it pure and simple idolatry. That also was a symptom of inner disorder and weakness. It was like polygamy, a form only of heart-wandering from God. He built high places for his wives, which burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. There is not the slightest evidence that he ever abandoned the worship of Jehovah, or set up images of him as Jeroboam did, or that he ever lost faith in Jehovah as the one and only true God. But his heart was not perfect; and this was the sin beneath his sensuality and idolatry. He began to waver by tolerating the false religions of his wives. He was liberalised in religion. If people were only sincere, he may have said, no matter what they worship. If they live up to their light, it is well enough without letting in more light. Who knows absolute truth? Who can say, Thus saith the Lord? Who, thought this king, sets himself up to say that there is only one narrow way of life? The religious world of to-day finds its most subtle and powerful temptation in the general revolt against restraint and constraint. It takes now one form and now another. It comes as a protest against what is called narrowness, even in construing the terms of the gospel upon which men enter into life. The world has always seen the insolence of greatness against the law of God. It sees now the same insolence under cover of the grace of God. But whatever we may discover in science or art, whatever gains we may make in the domain of reason, there can be nothing essentially new in the way of life by Jesus Christ. The data of theology are all furnished, and have been for ages. The path of life is just as narrow and just as broad as ever. God demands the whole heart, because anything less is nothing at all to Him. Half even of Solomons great soul is worthless in the kingdom of heaven.
II. Solomons punishment. We observe at once that it was of a character to be peculiarly felt by one of his great endowments and brilliant opportunities. It came very slowly In the first place, although we do not find it here recorded, he lived long enough to see that his splendid experiment in life had been a miserable failure. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, was his sad verdict. His world passed away and the lust of it. He ceased to desire. Punishment came in another form. He was unable to transmit the kingdom to his posterity; and such men have an eye to the future, in which their greatness will come to be fully seen and honoured. They are above the narrowest lines of an ignorant selfishness. They would make coming ages tributary to themselves. To Solomon, who had been made acquainted with the mind of God towards Israel, there must have been a profound sorrow in the certainty that his failure carried the nation down with himself. Those in authority hold a peculiar place in the divine economy, because their defections entail such widespread disasters. Hence God rightly exacts extraordinary punishments of them. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Solomons sin
Solomon had come to the throne of the most important kingdom then on the earth at the youthful age of twenty. Proud of his sublime eminence and flattered by the obsequious attentions of foreign nations, he formed matrimonial alliances with the royal families of them all until a harem of seven hundred wives disgraced the Holy City. These heathen wives required their heathen chapels and chaplains, and the complaisant king surrounded Jerusalem with temples for the enactment of pagan idolatries. To the king, prematurely old, at length comes the prophetic voice declaring the wrath of Jehovah upon the apostate kingdom, the doom, however, softened in two particulars for the sake of David, who, though long dead, still benefited the land by the effects of his piety. The rending of the kingdom from the Solomonian line should not take place till Solomon himself had passed away, and then a remnant (Judah) should remain with the regular succession.
I. A life of luxury is perilous to the soul. God intended man to labour even when he was in Paradise. The idler is practically opposing a fundamental law of the Most High. An abundance of wealth tempts a man to a life of pleasure, which is selfish idleness, and when official power is added to the wealth the flood-gates of sin are opened in the soul in almost all cases. He who, if busy in an honest trade or profession, would readily throw off the approaches of gross sin by his preoccupation. Solomon was a luxurious idler. He was not a statesman busying himself for the good of his country. The young man who has independent resources is in a very hazardous position. He is tempted to play the Solomon on his own small scale. The sin, however, is just as great, and the ruin as profound. He seeks associates who will amuse him, and, instead of growing in spiritual wisdom and strength, he descends rapidly to the plane of stupid carnality.
II. The way of wickedness is a steep descent. Solomon found the step from Pharaohs daughter to Pharaohs god a very easy one. Youth flatters itself with an idea of its own strength, and plans a descent into sin only a short distance, when it will return and walk in the path of righteousness. It is the silly bird caught in the fowlers net. Association with evil blunts the perception of the evil, and the young man is soon found apologising for the wickedness he formerly condemned.
III. The wrath of God is a dread reality. Men of loose life love to harp on the truth that God is love, and then interpret love as amiable weakness. It was the Divine anger with Solomon and his corrupted people which rent Israel asunder and raised up formidable foes to destroy the prosperity of the land. Our text is perfectly plain on that head
IV. The source of the false life is in the false heart. Solomons heart was not perfect with the Lord God. The word perfect here is not to be understood as referring to the character, but to the motive and intent. A perfect character never existed on earth since man fell, except the Lord Jesus. Solomon s religion was a political and fashionable affair. A heart devoted to God had nothing to do with it. He would pay outward respect to the religion of the land, but with the grand liberality of a worldly heart he would be so broad in his views and so free in his charity as to welcome all religious into his realm and capital. It is simply the heart that is not perfect with God pursuing its course of nature. It is the heart that can indulge in sin to any extent, and yet speak eloquently on universal love and the excellent glory of humanity in general. The so-called philosophy of the day is brimful of it, destroying the idea of the personality of God in order that it may make room for a universal righteousness, sin being eliminated as an old wifes fable. It is the religion that is lauded on the stage by depraved men and women, because it finds no fault with their defilement. This is the Solomonian religion, which is set over against the Davidic religion in our text. (H. Crosby, D. D.)
Solomons fall
I. The nature of Solomons fall.
1. It was gradual. No man becomes wholly abandoned or altogether depraved at once; formation of character is, both in its construction and destruction, a gradual process.
(1) Because of the power of conscience.
(2) Because the Spirit strives.
(3) Because the Mediator pleads, Let it alone this year also.
(4) Because a warning is oftentimes given.
2. It was sure. From bad to worse, like a stone rolling down a hill.
II. The causes of Solomons fall.
1. The mixing of self-interest with Gods service. He chose wives from nations with whom God had forbidden His people to intermarry; hence contagion from such a bad example.
2. The union of piety and superstition.
III. The consequences of Solomons fall.
1. It brought down God s displeasure.
2. It brought ruin on his kingdom. Even the sins of obscure men pass in their effects beyond the power of their perpetrators (as no man liveth, no man dieth, so no man sinneth to himself) but how much more the sins of the great ones of the earth!
IV. The lessons of Solomons fall.
1. Great opportunities bring great responsibilities, and such cannot be neglected with impunity.
2. Riches hinder access into the kingdom of God. Wealth applied to selfish ends carries no blessing, but hardens the heart and causes it to lose its hold upon God. (C. E. E. Appleyard, B. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 1 Kings 11
HOLLOW PROSPERITY
1 Kings 11
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"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
- Ecc_1:2
"At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe, Till, sappd their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round."
- GOLDSMITH.
THERE was a ver rongeur at the root of all Solomons prosperity. His home was afflicted with the curse of his polygamy, his kingdom with the Curse of his despotism. Failure is stamped upon the issues of his life.
1. His Temple was a wonder of the world; yet his own reign was scarcely over before it was plundered by the Egyptian king who had overthrown the feeble dynasty on alliance with which he had trusted. Under later kings its secret chambers were sometimes desecrated, sometimes deserted. It failed to exercise the unique influence in support of the worship of Jehovah for which it had been designed. Some of Solomons successors confronted it with a rival temple, and a rival high priest, of Baal, and suffered atrocious emblems of heathen nature-worship to profane its courts. He himself became an apostate from the high theocratic ideal which had inspired its origin.
2. His long alliance and friendship with Hiram ended, to all appearance, in coolness and disgust, even if it be true that a daughter of Hiram was one of the princesses of his harem. For his immense buildings had so greatly embarrassed his resources that, when the day for payment came, the only way in which he could discharge his obligations was by alienating a part of his dominions. He gave Hiram "twenty cities in the land of Galilee." The kings of Judah, down to the days of Hezekiah, and even of Josiah, show few traces of any consciousness that there was such a book as the Pentateuch and such a code as the Levitic law. Solomon may have been unaware that Phoenicia itself was part of the land which God had promised to His people. If that gift had lapsed through their inertness. {Lev_25:23-24} See Jdg_1:31-32, the law still remained, which said, The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me. It was a strong measure to resign any part of the soil of Judaea, even to discharge building debts, much more to pay for mercenaries and courtly ostentation. The transaction, dubious in every particular, was the evident cause of deep-seated dissatisfaction. Hiram thought himself ill-paid and unworthily treated. He found, by a personal visit, that these inland Galilaean towns, which were probably inhabited in a great measure by a wretched and dwindling remnant of Canaanites, were useless to him, whereas he had probably hoped to receive part, at least, of the Bay of Aeco (Ptolemais). They added so little to his resources, that he complained to Solomon. He called the cities by the obscure, but evidently contemptuous name "Cabul," and gave them back to Solomon in disgust as not worth having. What significance lies in the strange and laconic addition, "And Hiram sent to the king six-score talents of gold," it is impossible for us to understand if the Tyrian king gave as a present to Solomon a sum which was so vast as at least to equal £720, 000-"apparently," as Canon Rawlinson thinks, "to show that, although disappointed, he was not offended!"-he must have been an angel in human form.
3. Solomons palatial buildings, while they flattered his pride and ministered to his luxury, tended directly, as we shall see, to undermine his power. They represented the ill-requited toil of hopeless bondmen, and oppressed freedmen, whose sighs rose, not in vain, into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.
4. His commerce, showy, as it was, turned out to be transitory and useless. If for a time it enriched the king, it did not enrich his people. At Solomons death, if not earlier, it not only languished but expired. Horses and chariots might give a pompous aspect to stately pageants, but they were practically useless in the endless hills of which Palestine is mainly composed. Apes, peacocks, and sandal wood were curious and interesting, but they certainly did not repay the expense incurred in their importation. No subsequent sovereign took the trouble to acquire these wonders, nor are they once mentioned in the later Scriptures. Precious stones might gleam on the necks of the concubine, or adorn the housings of the steed, but nothing was gained from their barren splendor. At one time the kings annual revenue is stated to have been six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold; but the story of Hiram, and the impoverishment to which Rehoboam succeeded, show that even this exchequer had been exhausted by the sumptuous prodigalities of a too luxurious court. And, indeed, the commerce of Solomon gave a new and untheocratic bias to Hebrew development. The ideal of the old Semitic life was the pastoral and agricultural ideal. No other is contemplated in Ex 21-29. Commerce was left to the Phoenicians and other races, so that the word for "merchant" was "Canaanite." But after the days of Solomon in Judah, and Ahab in Israel, the Hebrews followed eagerly in the steps of Canaan, and trade and commerce acting on minds materialized into worldliness brought their natural consequences. "He is a merchant," says Hosea; {Hos_12:7} "the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to defraud." Here the words "he is a merchant" may equally well be rendered "as for Canaan"; and by Canaan is here meant Canaanised or commercial Ephraim. And the prophet continues, "And Ephraim said, Surely I am become rich, I have found me wealth: in all my labor they shall find in me none iniquity that were sin." In other words, these influences of foreign trade had destroyed the moral sense of Israel altogether: "Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh"-i.e., "The Mortar," a bazaar of that name in Jerusalem-"for all the people of Canaan" (i.e., the merchants) "are brought to silence." But the hypnotizing influence of wealth became more and more a potent factor in the development of the people. By an absolute reversal of their ancient characteristics they learnt, in the days of the Rabbis, utterly to despise agriculture and extravagantly to laud the gains of commerce. Of too many of them it became true, that they
"With dumb despair their countrys wrongs behold, And dead to glory, only burn for gold."
It was the mighty hand of Solomon which first gave them an impulse in this direction, though he seems to have managed all his commerce with exclusive reference to his own revenues.
In the wake of commerce, and the inevitable intercourse with foreign nations which it involves, came as a matter of course the fondness for luxuries; the taste for magnificence; the fraternization with neighboring kings; the use of cavalry; the development of a military caste; the attempts at distant navigation; the total disappearance of the antique simplicity. In the train of these innovations followed the disastrous alterations of the old conditions of society of which the prophets so grievously complain-extortions of the corn market; the formation of large estates; the frequency or mortgages; the misery of peasant proprietorship, unable to hold its own against the accumulations of wealth the increase of the wage-receiving class; and the fluctuations of the labor market. These changes caused, by way of consequence, so much distress and starvation that even freeborn Hebrews were sometimes compelled to sell themselves into slavery as the only way to keep themselves alive.
So that the age of Solomon can in no respect be regarded as an age of gold. Rather, it resembled that grim Colossus of Dantes vision, which not only rested on a right foot of brittle clay, but was cracked and fissured through and through, while the wretchedness and torment which lay behind the outward splendor ever dripped and trickled downward till its bitter streams swelled the rivers of hell:-
"Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow black and deep,
Corytus named of lamentation loud Heard on its rueful stream, fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage."
But there was something worse even than this. The Book of Proverbs shows us that, as in Rome, so in Jerusalem, foreign immoralities became fatal to the growing youth. The picta lupa barbara mitre, with her fatal fascinations, and her banquets of which the guests were in the depths of Hades, became so common in Jerusalem that no admonitions of the wise were more needful than those which warned the "simple ones" that to yield to her seductive snares was to go as an ox to the slaughter, as a fool to the correction of the stocks.
5. Even were there no disastrous sequel to Solomons story-if we saw him only in the flush of his early promise, and the noon of his highest prosperity-we could still readily believe that he passed through some of the experiences of the bitter and sated voluptuary who borrows his name in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The human pathos, the fresh and varied interest, which meet us at every page of the annals of David, are entirely lacking in the magnificent monotony of the annals of Solomon. The splendors of materialism, which are mainly dwelt upon, could never satisfy the poorest of human souls. There are but two broad gleams of religious interest in his entire story-the narrative of his prayer for wisdom, and the prayer, in its present form of later origin, attributed to him at the Dedication Festival. All the rest is a story of gorgeous despotism, which gradually paled into
"The dim grey life and apathetic end."
"There was no king like Solomon: he exceeded all the kings of the earth," we are told, "for riches and for wisdom." But all that we know of such kings furnishes fresh proof of the universal experience that "the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" are absolutely valueless for all the contributions they can lend to human happiness. The autocrats who have been most conspicuous for unchecked power and limitless resources have also been the most conspicuous in misery. We have but to recall Tiberius "tristissimus ut constat hominum," who, from the enchanted isle which he had degraded into the stye of his infamies, wrote to his servile senate that all the gods and goddesses were daily destroying him; or Septimius Severus, who rising step by step from a Dalmatian peasant and common soldier to be emperor of the world, remarked with pathetic conviction, "Omnia fui e nihil expedit"; or Abderrahman the Magnificent who, in all his day of success and prosperity, could only count fourteen happy days; or Charles V, over-eating himself in his monastic retreat at San Yuste in Estremadura; or Alexander, dying "as a fool dieth"; or Louis XIV, surrounded by a darkening horizon, and disillusioned into infinite ennui and chagrin; or Napoleon I, saying, "I regard life with horror," and contrasting his "abject misery" with the adored and beloved dominion of Christ, who was meek and lowly of heart. Napoleon confessed that, even in the zenith of his empire, and the fullest flush of his endless victories, his days were consumed in vanity and his years in trouble. The cry of one and all, finding that the soul, which is infinite, cannot be satisfied with the transient and hollow boons of earth, is, and ever must be, "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." And this is one main lesson of the life of Solomon. Nothing is more certain than that, if earthly happiness is to be found at all, it can only be found in righteousness and truth; and if even these do not bring earthly happiness they securely give us a blessedness which is deeper and more eternal.
If the Book of Ecclesiastes, even traditionally, is the reflection and echo of Solomons disenchantment, we see that in later years his soul had been sullied, his faith had grown dim, his fervor cold. All was emptiness. He stood horribly alone. His one son was not a wise man, but a fool. Gewgaws could no longer satisfy him. His wealth exhausted, his fame tarnished, his dominions reduced to insignificance, himself insulted by contemptible adversaries whom he could neither control nor punish, he entered on the long course of years "plus pales et moins couronnees." The peaceful is harried by petty raids; the magnificent is laden with debts; the builder of the Temple has sanctioned polytheism; the favorite of the nation has become a tyrant, scourging with whips an impatient people; the "darling of the Lord" has built shrines for Moloch and Astarte. The glamour of youth, of empire, of gorgeous tyranny was dispelled, and the splendid boy-king is the weary and lonely old man. Hiram of Tyre has turned in disgust from an ungenerous recompense. A new Pharaoh has dispossessed his Egyptian father-in-law and shelters his rebel servant. His shameful harem has given him neither a real home nor a true love; his commerce has proved to be an expensive failure; his politic alliances a hollow sham. In another and direr sense than after his youthful vision, "Solomon awoke, and behold it was a dream." (1Ki_3:15. See Ecclus. 47:12-21)
The Talmudists show some insight amid their fantasies when they write: "At first, before he married strange wives, Solomon reigned over the angels"; {1Ch_29:23} then only over all kingdoms; {1Ki_4:21} then only over Israel; {Ecc_1:12} then only over Jerusalem. {Ecc_1:1} At last he reigned only over his staff-as it is said, And this was the portion of my, labor; for by the word this, says Ray, he meant that the only possession left to him was the staff which he held in his hand. The staff was not "the rod and staff" of the Good Shepherd, but the earthly staff of pride and pomp, and (as in the Arabian legend) the worm of selfishness and sensuality was gnawing at its base.
THE OLD AGE OF SOLOMON
1Ki_11:1-13
"That uxorious king, whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul."
- MILTON, Paradise Lost.
"Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things?"
- Neh_13:26
"That they might know, that wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also shall he be punished."
- #/RAPC Wis 11:15.
SOLOMON had endeavored to give a one-sided development to Israelitish nationality, and a development little in accord with the highest and purest traditions of the people. What he did with one hand by building the Temple he undid with the other by endowing and patronizing the worship of heathen deities. In point of fact, Solomon was hardly a genuine off-shoot of the stem of Jesse. It is at least doubtful whether Bathsheba was of Hebrew race, and from her he may have derived an alien strain. It is at all events a striking fact that, so far from being regarded as an ideal Hebrew king, he was rather the reverse. The chronicler, indeed, exalts him as the supporter and redintegrator of the Priestly-Levitic system, which it is the main object of that writer to glorify; but this picture of theocratic purity, even if it be not altogether an anachronism, is only obtained by the total suppression of every incident in the story of Solomon which militates against it. In the Book of Kings we are faithfully told of the disgust of Hiram at the reward offered to him; of the alienation of a fertile district of the promised land; of the apostasy, the idolatries, and the reverses which disgraced and darkened his later years. The Book of Chronicles ignores every one of these disturbing particulars. It does not tell us of the depths to which Solomon fell, though it tells us of the extreme scrupulosity which regarded as a profanation the residence of his Egyptian queen on the hill once hallowed as the resting-place of Jehovah s Ark. Yet, if we understand in their simple sense the statements of the editor of the Book of Kings, and the documents on which he based his narrative, Solomon, even at the Dedication Festival, ignored all distinction between the priesthood and the laity. Nay, more than this, he seems to have offered, with his own hands, both burnt offerings and peace offerings three times a year {1Ki_9:25} and, unchecked by priestly opposition or remonstrance, to have "burnt incense before the altar that was before the Lord," though, according to the chronicler, it was for daring to attempt this that Uzziah was smitten with the horrible scourge of leprosy.
The ideal of a good and great king is set before us in the Book of Proverbs, and in many respects Solomon fell very far short of it. Further than this, there are in Scripture two warning sketches of everything which a good king should not be and should not do, and these sketches exactly describe the very things which Solomon was and did. Those who take the view that the books of Scripture have undergone large later revision, see in each of these passages an unfavorable allusion to the king who raised Israel highest amongst the nations, only to precipitate her disintegration and ruin, and who combined the highest service to the centralization of her religion with the deadliest insult to its supreme claim upon the reverence of the world.
1. The first of these pictures of selfish autocrats is found in 1Sa_8:10-18 :-
"And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of Him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint his captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his courtiers, and to his servants., And he will take your menservants and your maidservants, and your goodliest oxen, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep, and you shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day."
2. The other, which is still more detailed and significant, was perhaps written with the express intention of warning Solomons descendants from the example which Solomon had set. It is found in Deu_17:14-20. Thus, speaking of a king, the writer says:-
"Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself; that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. And it shall be that when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book . . . that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, . . . that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, . . . and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel."
If Deuteronomy be of no older date than the days of Josiah, it is difficult not to see in this passage a distinct polemic against Solomon; for he did not do what he is here commanded, and he most conspicuously did every one of the things which is here forbidden.
It is quite clear that in his foreign alliances, in his commerce, in his cavalry, in his standing army, in his extravagant polygamy, in his exaggerated and exhausting magnificence, in his despotic autocracy, in his palatial architecture, and in his patronage of alien art, in his system of enforced labor, in his perilous religious syncretism, Solomon was by no means a king after the hearts of the old faithful and simple Israelites. They did not look with entire favor even on the centralization of worship in a single Temple which interfered with local religious rites sanctioned by the example of their greatest prophets. His ideal differed entirely from that of the older patriarchs. He gave to the life of his people an alien development; he obliterated some of their best national characteristics; and the example which he set was at least as powerful for evil as for good.
When we read the lofty sentiments expressed by Solomon in his dedication prayer, we may well be amazed to hear that one who had aspirations so sublime could sink into idolatry so deplorable. If it was the object of the chronicler to present Solomon in unsullied splendor, he might well omit the deadly circumstance that when he was old, and prematurely old, "he loved many strange women, and went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord as did David his father. Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon. likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods."
The sacred historian not only records the shameful fact, but records its cause and origin. The heart of Solomon was perverted, his will was weakened, his ideal was dragged into the mire by the "strange wives" who crowded his seraglio. He went the way that destroys kings. {Pro_31:3} The polygamy of Solomon sprang naturally from the false position which he had created for himself. A king who puts a space of awful distance between himself and the mass of his subjects-a king whose will is so absolute that life is in his smile and death in his frown-is inevitably punished by the loneliest isolation. He may have favorites, he may have flatterers, but he can have no friends. A thronged harem becomes to him not only a matter of ostentation and luxury, but a necessary resource from the vacuity and ennui of a desolate heart. Tiberius was driven to the orgies of Capreae by the intolerableness of his isolation. The weariness of the king who used to take his courtiers by the button-hole and say, "Ennuyons-nous ensemble," drove him to fill up his degraded leisure in the Parc aux Cerfs. Yet even Louis XV had more possibilities of rational intercourse with human beings than a Solomon or a Xerxes. It was in the nature of things that Solomon, when he had imitated all the other surroundings of an Oriental despot, should sink, like other Oriental despots, from sensuousness into sensualism, from sensualism into religious degeneracy and dishonorable enervation.
Two facts, both full of warning, are indicated as the sources of his ruin:
(1) the number of his wives; and
(2) their heathen extraction.
1. "He had," we are told, "seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines."
The numbers make up a thousand, and are almost incredible. We are told indeed that in the monstrosities of Indian absolutism the Great Mogul had a thousand wives; but even Darius, "the king" par excellence, the awful autocrat of Persia, had only one wife and thirty-two concubines. It is inconceivable that the monarch of a country so insignificant as Palestine could have maintained so exorbitant a household in a small city like Jerusalem. Moreover, there is, on every ground, reason to correct the statement. Saul, so far as we know, had only one wife, and one concubine; David, though he put so little restraint on himself, had only sixteen; no subsequent king of Israel or Judah appears to have had even a small fraction of the number which is here assigned to Solomon, either by the disease of exaggeration or by some corruption of the text. More probably we should read seventy wives, which at least partially assimilates the number to the "threescore queens" of whom we read in the Canticles. {Son_6:8} Even then we have a household which must have led to miserable complications. The seraglio at Jerusalem must have been a burning fiery furnace of feuds, intrigues, jealousies, and discontent. It is this fact which gives additional meaning to the Song of Songs. That unique book of Scripture is a sweet idyll in honor of pure and holy love. It sets before us in glowing imagery and tender rhythms how the lovely maiden of Shunem, undazzled by all the splendors and luxuries of the great kings court, unseduced by his gifts and his persistence, remained absolutely faithful to her humble shepherd lover, and, amid the gold and purple of the palace at Jerusalem, sighed for her simple home amid the groves of Lebanon. Surely she was as wise as fair, and her chances of happiness would be a thousandfold greater, her immunities from intolerable conditions a thousandfold more certain, as she wandered hand in hand with her shepherd youth amid pure scenes and in the vernal air, than amid the heavy exotic perfumes of a sensual and pampered court.
Perhaps in the word "princesses" we see some sort of excuse for that effeminating self-indulgence which would make the exhortations to simplicity and chastity in the Book of Proverbs sound very hollow on the lips of Solomon. It may have been worldly policy which originally led him to multiply his wives. The alliance with Pharaoh was secured by a marriage with his daughter, and possibly that with Hiram by the espousal of a Tyrian princess. The friendliness of Edom on the south, of Moab and Ammon on the east, of Sidon and the Hittites and Syria on the north, might be enhanced by matrimonial connections from which the greater potentates might profit and of which the smaller sheykhs were proud. Yet if this were so, the policy, like all other worldly policy unsanctioned by the law of God, was very unsuccessful. Egypt as usual proved herself to be a broken reed. The Hittites only preserved a dream and legend of their olden power. Edom and Moab neither forgot nor abandoned their implacable and immemorial hatred. Syria became a dangerous rival awaiting the day of future triumphs. "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in princes."
2. But the heathen religion of these strange women from so many nations "turned away the heart of Solomon after other gods." It may be doubted whether Solomon had ever read the stern prohibitions against intermarriage with the Canaanite nations which now stand on the page of the Pentateuch. If so he broke them, for the Hittites and the Phoenicians were Canaanites. Marriages with Egyptians, Moabites, and Edomites had not been, in so many words, forbidden, but the feeling of later ages applied the rule analogously to them. The result proved how necessary the law was. When Solomon was old his heart was no longer proof against feminine wiles. He was not old in years, for this was some time before his death, and when he died he was little more than sixty. But a polygamous despot gets old before his time.
The attempt made by Ewald and others to gloss over Solomons apostasy as a sign of a large-hearted tolerance is an astonishing misreading of history. Tolerance for harmless divergences of opinion there should always be, though it is only a growth of modern days; but tolerance for iniquity is a wrong to holiness.
The worship of these devils adored for deities was stained with the worst passions which degrade human nature. They were themselves the personification of perverted instincts. The main facts respecting them are collected in Seldens famous De Dis Syris Syntagma, and Milton has enshrined them in his stateliest verse:-
"First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears
Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moabs sons,
Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, by the Grove Of Moloch homicide; lust, hard by hate:
Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell."
"With these in troop
Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians call Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul."
What tolerance should there be for idols whose service was horrible infanticide and shameless lust? "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" How vile the worship of Chemosh was, Israel had already experienced in the wilderness where he was called Peor. {Num_25:3} What Moloch was they were to learn thereafter by many a horrible experience. Had Solomon never heard that the Lord God was a jealous God, and would not tolerate the rivalries of gods of fire and of lust? At least he was not afraid to desecrate one, if not two, of the summits of the Mount of Olives with shrines to these monstrous images, which seem to have been left "on that opprobrious mount" for many an age, so that they "durst abide."
"Jehovah, thundering out of Sion throned
Between the cherubim yea, often placed
Within His sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations, and with cursed things
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned,
And with their darkness durst affront His light"
And, to crown all, Solomon not only showed this guilty complaisance to all his strange wives, but even, sinking into the lowest abyss of apostasy "burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods"
"He that built a temple for himself and for Israel in Zion," says Bishop Hall, "built a temple for Chemosh in the Mount of Scandal for his mistresses in the very face of Gods house. Because Solomon feeds them in their superstition, he draws the sin home to himself, and is branded for what he should have forbidden."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 1Ki_11:1. But King Solomon loved many strange women—If importations…
THE DECLINE OF THE HEBREW EMPIRE
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
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1Ki_11:1. But King Solomon loved many strange women—If importations of foreign luxuries and indulgences into his court (see previous chapter) were occasions of peril to Solomon, tending to corrupt his heart from simple fidelity to Jehovah, far more so this creation of a foreign harem. Among the ancient Hebrews polygamy was permitted; and the number of a man’s wives was a standard of his wealth and dignity. Solomon emulated this dangerous and degrading custom; and, being unrivalled in the lavishment of wealth, he seems to have resolved upon excelling in this department of Oriental indulgence, thereby to assert his state magnificence. Together with the daughter of Pharaoh—It is not implied that his marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter was wrong, but his adding others. Contrary to the law of the Lord (Deu_17:17) he took, “together with the daughter of Pharaoh, many strange wives.”
1Ki_11:3. Seven hundred wives, princesses—So great a number from noblest princely houses of foreign nations suggests the splendour of his court. It was a vanity, and fraught with greatest snares.
1Ki_11:4. Solomon’s old age—He was probably not over fifty.
1Ki_11:5. Went after Ashtoreth—Lange thinks he did not himself become an idolater, but allowed every form of idolatry his wives desired; yet, though he offered no sacrifice on the altars he reared, to rear them was equivalent to sacrificing, equally offensive to Jehovah. Ashtoreth, Astarte, the highest feminine deity of the Sidonians; Milcom, Molech; Chemosh (1Ki_11:7), the war and fire-god of the Moabites.
HOMILETICS OF 1Ki_11:1-8
THE FALL OF SOLOMON, AND ITS LESSONS
Everything about Solomon was on a scale of unparalleled greatness. He was great in his descent—the offspring of the renowned David. He was great as a sovereign, raising the kingdom of the Hebrews, which was inaugurated by Saul, and enlarged and consolidated by David, to the highest pitch of imperial greatness and external magnificence it ever attained. He was great in intellectual endowment—“He was wiser than all men, and his fame was in all nations round about.” He was great in Divine benedictions—“For the Lord magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him” (1Ch_29:25). And his greatness was not less conspicuous in his sad and terrible fall. The whole career of Solomon is a succession of surprises and mysteries. As soon as he took up the reins of government he gave evidence of the greatness of his powers. The nation felt itself in the grasp of a master, and became pliant and obedient in his hand. And yet, with all the outward show of his consummate abilities and gigantic enterprizes, we have but few details of his personal life. His works impress and delight us: his personality is vague, and only mystifies us. As you have seen on occasions of public rejoicing, among other illuminations, some gigantic figure lit up and sparkling in brilliant outline, while the interspaces of the figure are dark, vacant, and unintelligible: so was it with Solomon. His imposing and majestic figure occupied a large space in the history of the Jewish Kingdom and in the history of the world, and shed the lustre of its imperial glory over all nations and through all succeeding ages; but the minute personal features of that stately form fade away into the darkness—are, in fact, for the most part invisible. The splendour of Solomon’s reign was like a glare of sunshine resting on the fertile plains, teeming with life and efflorescent with beauty. While the light remains, the scene is gay, brilliant, captivating; but, all unseen and unsuspected, the poisonous miasma is loading the air, and by-and-by will spread sorrow and disaster in its course. Consider—
I. The causes which contributed to the downfall of the great Hebrew monarch. 1. The intoxication of intellectual pride. We have seen how he was gifted with a keen and comprehensive intellect, and was addicted from his earliest youth to the most profound studies. His proverbs were the condensation of the choicest maxims of moral and political science, and have enriched the literature of the world; his songs bear evidence of a lofty, poetic genius; and his discourses and treatises on natural history embraced the most important and most minute facts of the science. It is appalling to think of the powerful ascendency these high qualities must have given him over the minds of others. No wonder the nations crowded around such a prodigy of wisdom (chap. 1Ki_4:30-34); and who could inhale the incense of adulation that daily filled his court without being intoxicated with vain thoughts? It cannot, therefore, surprise us that, puffed up with the flattery of courtiers and the applauses of the multitude, Solomon began to think too highly of himself, and to say: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent” (Isa_10:13). His wisdom having thus become his idol, he persuades himself that it will enable him to solve all mysteries, and to rectify all disorders, and thus to render him the master both of his own destiny and of the destinies of the people—nay, of the whole world. We can imagine how such a notion would captivate a generous, great, and aspiring mind. He sees in the state of society, and in the condition of individual men, evils which he would fain remove, and wrongs which he would fain redress. Many are suffering from disease, many are pining in poverty, many groaning beneath the iron yoke of injustice and oppression. Good men are often treated with neglect, or covered with obloquy, while wicked men are as often high in place and power. Why is all this? What is the source and explanation of these painful anomalies? Cannot I, who have searched out so many deep things, fathom this secret too? Shall it not be the privilege and the prerogative of Solomon the Wise to inaugurate a new and better condition of things?”—R. Buchanan. He thus sought to arrogate to himself a power which no created intelligence is privileged to possess. His condition of mind is the explanation of many sad and painful backslidings that followed.
2. The system of polygamy, which he encourage to an unprecedented extent, left its debasing curse on Solomon and on his family for generations (1Ki_11:1-3). The harem of an Eastern monarch is even at the present day looked upon as a sort of state necessity, and the king’s rank and greatness are estimated according to its extent. He multiplies his wives according to his wealth and power, though many of them he never sees at all. Darius Codomannus is said to have taken three hundred and sixty concubines in his camp when he marched against Alexander. So Solomon, wishing to surpass all other kings in the fame of greatness, filled his harem with a thousand women. This was an enormity. In the simplest view, the sexes being nearly equal, it deprived a thousand men of wives that one man might have 999 more than he required. Such a system brought with it the inevitable evils of the oriental seraglio. Licentiousness taints the intellect, loosens the bonds of morality, and debases the whole man.
3. The estrangement of heart from Jehovah (1Ki_11:4-6). Solomon did not openly or wholly apostatise. He continued his attendance on the worship of Jehovah, and punctually made his offerings three times a year in the temple. But his heart was not perfect with God. Many causes had concurred to weaken the religious earnestness of his younger days—as the corrupting influence of wealth and luxury, the canker of sensualism, an increasing worldliness, leading him to adopt more and more a worldly policy, and, perhaps, a growing latitudinarianism arising from contact with all the manifold forms of human opinion (see Speaker’s Comm.). A most significant sign of religious decay was the almost total absence of prophets during Solomon’s brilliant career. The history of the prophets is the most remarkable and fascinating of any history in the Scriptures. They enter on their career as if thrust forth by some unseen hand: they utter their message as if impelled by some mysterious and irresistible force. Receiving their commission from neither king nor people, they are perfectly independent of both. No amount of violence or suffering could silence their faithful utterances, or retard the accomplishment of their mission. And when their work was done, and their testimony fearlessly borne, like flaming comets, they vanished into the space from which they seemed at first to emerge. The “conspicuous absence” of these faithful messengers indicated the mournful state of piety amid the external splendours of the empire.
4. The public sanction and practice of idolatry (1Ki_11:7-8). Heathen temples were built on the southern heights of Olivet in the very sight of the Holy Temple; and from the abominable rites that were practised there, a name of infamy was given to the whole mountain. It was called—and still bears the name of—the Mount of Offence. This flagrant idolatry roused the displeasure of Jehovah; and the consequent disruption of the kingdom was plainly foretold (1Ki_11:9-13). “He thus became the author of a syncretism which sought to blend together the worship of Jehovah and the worship of idols—a syncretism which possessed fatal attractions for the Jewish nation. Finally, he appears himself to have frequented the idol-temples, and to have taken part in those fearful impurities which constituted the worst horror of the idolatrous systems, thus practically apostatising, though theoretically he never ceased to hold that Jehovah was the true God.”
5. The despotic character of his government. Commerce, to promote the prosperity of a nation, must be national and not regal. But the commerce of Israel, in Solomon’s days, was in all respects a monopoly of the crown. The excessive demands upon the people for sustaining the ever-growing magnificence of the empire became unbearable, and a spirit of discontent spread throughout the nation which ultimately broke out into open and successful rebellion. The structure of the empire was shattered by the weight of its own opulence and greatness.
II. The ultimate fate of Solomon. It was a much contested point among the Fathers of the early Church as to whether Solomon was among the saved or the lost; and both opinions were pretty equally sustained by eminent names in theology. The question was so frequently debated, and seemed so evenly balanced, that in a series of frescoes on the walls of a celebrated church on the Continent, Solomon is represented at the General Resurrection as looking doubtfully to the right and to the left, as if uncertain in which side he would find his destined lot. We incline to the merciful view, and feel supported by two considerations:—
(1). Six hundred years after Solomon had been resting in the grave, and when posterity could pronounce a calm and dispassionate verdict, Nehemiah gave a summary of the character of the great Hebrew king, in which he recognized him as “the beloved of his God” (Neh_13:26, compared with 2Sa_7:14).
(2). Add to this the generally-admitted fact that the book of Ecclesiastes contains the utterances of Solomon at the close of his earthly career; and, in the concluding words of that book, do we not detect a wandering, sinning spirit coming to a halt, and an assured resting-place, as he exclaims:—“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments!”
III. The lessons suggested by Solomon’s life.
1. That worldly greatness has its peculiar perils. Solomon began well. He loved God, and strove to walk in all the ways of David his father; but as he advanced in wealth, and his mind expanded into the vast fields of intellectual research, the simplicity of his trust in God was destroyed, his spiritual fervour was chilled, and religious decline began. His exalted regal position and high mental endowments raised him into a lofty region, in which few but himself could enter; and there were none round about him who had the fidelity or the courage to warn him of his danger, even if they themselves perceived that danger. He became the victim of his own imperious self-sufficiency—the weight of his own aggrandisement crushed him to the dust! Wealth, prosperity, promotion, will ever lift men into the midst of a thousand threatening dangers; and the higher the pinnacle to which they are elevated, the more imminent their peril, and the more awfully calamitous their fall.
2. That in the greatest characters there is a mingling of good and evil. As Bacon is, in English history, “the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.” so is Solomon in Jewish and in sacred history. Every part of his splendour had its dark side. “The web of our life,” says Shakespeare, “is of mingled yarn—bad and good together.” It is important to recognize this fact in forming a just estimate of human character. Solomon is “the chief example in Sacred History of what meets us often in common history—the union of genius and crime. The record of his career sanctions our use of the intellectual power even of the weakest or the wickedest of mankind. As Solomon’s fall is not overlooked in consideration of his power and glory, so neither because he fell does he cease to be called the wisest of men, nor is his wisdom shut out from the Sacred Volume.”—Stanley.
3. That worldly prosperity is powerless to satisfy the deepest needs of the soul. All the great gifts of the world were possessed by Solomon in an unexampled degree. His riches were fabulous, and came from afar—the inexhaustible mines of the Eastern and Western worlds replenished his treasury with an unfailing supply. He wielded the most absolute authority. Whatever pleasure could delight the eye or gratify the taste was at his command. He was a philosopher, a poet, an accomplished scientist, and penetrated to the depths of all human wisdom—even to exhaustion and satiety. And yet there was nothing in all these to make him happy. Turning from all his former delights with unutterable surfeiting and loathing, he raises the sad, melancholy lamentation—“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” All that worldly good can do for us is—to show us its own emptiness: it raises our hopes with delusive promises, and dashes them to atoms with bitter disappointments. The flowers which it sprinkles around our path barely hide the charnel house in which our bones will soon have to rot!
4. That the success of the work of God does not depend upon external display. Solomon appears upon the scene like a mighty magician who, with one stroke of his wand, calls into existence an enchanting spectacle of royal splendour—the towering palace, the shining throne, the courtly attendants in gorgeous apparel, the military with glittering weapons and prancing chargers, the exuberant riches of a prosperous commerce, and all the external evidences of a great and powerful nation—himself the most conspicuous figure in the gay and animated throng; and, before the eye has got well accustomed to the dazzling pageant, both magician and his marvellous creation gradually melt away into the surrounding mysteries. But, all the time, the ulterior purpose of God in raising up the Jewish nation, and through it endowing the world with unspeakable blessing, marched grandly and silently on its way. Through the changing fortunes of succeeding dynasties—through the decline and final extinction of the kingdom—through the disasters, sufferings, and desolations of the long captivities, unto the coming of the Son of God, the gracious purpose slowly ripened, and gave promise of a glorious fruitage. The moral impress on the world of the Saviour’s advent was made utterly independent and in defiance of external pomp. And still the work of God goes on, often silently, often in obscurity and suffering, but always triumphantly!
HIGH INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS PERILOUS
I. Because they are liable to be corrupted by the seductions of sensuality (1Ki_11:1-3). Mental power is no safeguard against the grossest sins. Superior knowledge did not protect Adam from the blandishments of Eve. “If one woman undid all mankind, what marvel is it if many women undid one. To them did Solomon join in love, who can marvel if they disjoined his heart from God? Satan hath found this bait to take so well, that he never changed it since he crept into Paradise. How many have we known whose heads have been broken with their own rib?”
II. Because they may breed an undue consciousness of personal superiority. It is a lovely sight to see wisdom combined with humility, a giant intellect in union with a childlike simplicity of character. It is a thrilling but dangerous moment when the mind becomes conscious of its true power; the danger is increased when it discovers its superiority to others. The dim-sighted wanderer, stumbling with uncertain foothold on the sides of precipitous crags, is not in greater peril. A moment like that came to Mahomet, and thenceforth the noble method of moral suas on gave place to the shorter and more imperious argument of the sword. A moment like that came to Napoleon Bonaparte, and his career thenceforword was a lurid, bloody tragedy.
III. Because they are intolerant of advice and admonition. No one single mind possesses all the truth on any subject. Different shades of the same truth alter the complexion of the whole, and may influence personal action in an opposite direction. It is therefore an unspeakable advantage to be surrounded by those from whom we can take council. The wise man will learn something even from an enemy. To be impatient of advice and indifferent to warning is to be exposed to danger and disaster. It is like rushing into conflict without sword and shield; or fording the turbulent torrent, whilst despising the use of boat or raft. It is one of the misfortunes of the intellectual genius that so many regard him as above the necessity of help from others. Few have the courage to offer him advice; fewer still the fidelity to warn.
IV. Because they are apt to encourage a proud self-sufficiency. Intellectual greatness propounds to itself the sublimest tasks. It “soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, and seeks to find in every region of the universe types and interpreters of its own deep mysteries and glorious inspirations” (Ecc_1:13). No wonder, with such themes revolving in the mind, it should be in danger of losing its balance; and that it should proudly arrogate to itself the credit of all success and discovery. Pride of intellect is the most dangerous form of all pride. “It is a vice,” says the judicious Hooker, “which cleaveth so fast unto the hearts of men, that if we were to strip ourselves of all faults, one by one, we should un loubtedly find it the very last and hardest to put off. In the world many things are the cause of much evil; but pride of all.”
Deep is the sea and deep is hell; but pride mineth deeper:
It is coiled as a poisonous worm about the foundations of the soul.
If thou expose it in thy motives and track it in thy springs of thought,
Complacent in its own detection, it will seem indignant virtue.
Smoothly it will gratulate thy skill, O subtle anatomist of self!
And spurns its very being, while it nestleth the deeper in thy bosom.
Tupper.
V. Because they may disparage the deepest religious sentiments (1Ki_11:4-6). The colossal intellectualism of Solomon did not protect the purity and genuineness of the religion of his youth. His “heart was turned away it was not perfect with the Lord his God.” Not that he ceased to believe in Jehovah as the only true God: he could not so far insult and stultify his intellectual consciousness. But his religious fervour was abated, and his dearest religious convictions dishonoured. The sensual over-shadowed the intellectual; and the intellectual, thus eclipsed, depreciated the religious. And there is a school of thinkers to-day who, in their haste to reconcile difficulties, advance the theory of one theology for the intellect, and another for the feelings. Their theory is, there are two modes of apprehending and presenting truth; the one by the logical consciousness that it may be understood; the other by the intuitional consciousness that it may be felt. These two modes may often conflict, so that what is true in the one may be false in the other, reminding one of the old dictum, “What is true in religion is false in philosophy.” The danger of this theory is evident in its enabling a man to profess his faith in doctrines which he does not believe. If asked, Do you believe that Christ satisfied the justice of God?—he can say Yes, for it is true to his feelings: and he can say, No, because it is false to his intellect. In all true religious experience the head and the heart are in harmony.
VI. Because they render failure the more ignominious and unbearable. The degradation of Nebuchadnezzar was all the more conspicuous because of the loftiness of his vauntings. The humiliation and suffering of the stately dames of Jersualem were all the more noticeable in contrast with their mincing gait, their stretched-out necks, and tinkling ornaments. So the fall of Solomon was the more calamitous because of his rare and vast endowments and high exaltation. The locomotive which slips from the metals when at full speed works all the greater devastation and ruin because of the ponderous power which pulses in its capacious breast. The nature which is capable of the highest ecstasy is susceptible of the deeper woe and misery.
LESSONS:—
1. Intellectual gifts involve corresponding responsibility.
2. It is better to be wiss than to be clever.
3. To be truly good is to be truly great.
SOLOMON’S RESTRORATION
(Compared with Neh_13:26).
The deep interest of biography consists in this—that it is in some measure the description to us of our own inner history. You cannot unveil the secrets of another heart without at the same time finding something to correspond with, and perchance explain, the mysteries of your own. It is for this reason that Solomon’s life is full of painful interest. Far removed as he is, in some respects, above our sympathies, in others he peculiarly commands them. He was a monarch, and none of us know the sensations which belong to Rule. He was proclaimed by God to be among the wisest of mankind, and few of us can even conceive the atmosphere in which such a gifted spirit moves, original, enquiring, comprehending, one to whom Nature has made her secret open. He lived in the infancy of the world’s society, and we live in its refined and civilized manhood. And yet, when we have turned away, wearied, from all those subjects in which the mind of Solomon expatiated, and try to look inwards at the man, straightway we find ourselves at home. Just as in our own trifling, petty history, so we find in him, life with the same unabated, mysterious interest; the dust and confusion of a battle, sublime longings and low weaknesses, perplexity, struggle; and then the grave closing over all this, and leaving us to marvel in obscurity and silence over the strange destinies of man. The career of Solomon is a problem which has perplexed many, and is by no means an easy one to solve. He belongs to the peculiar class of those who begin well, and then have the brightness of their lives obscured at last. His morning sun rose beautifully, it sank in the evening, clouded, and dark with earthly exhalations, too dark to prophesy with certainty how it should rise on the morrow. Solomon’s life was not what religious existence ought to be. The Life of God in the soul of man ought to be a thing of perpetual development; it ought to be more bright, and its pulsations more vigorous every year. Such certainly, at least to all appearance, Solomon’s was not. It was excellence, at all events, marred with inconsistency.
I. The wanderings of an erring spirit. “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things?”
1. This is the first point to dwell on—the wanderings of a frail and erring human spirit from the right way.
1. That which lay at the bottom of all Solomon’s transgressions was his intimate partnership with foreigners. “Did not Solomon sin by these things?” That is, if we look to the context, marriage with foreign wives. Exclusiveness was the principle on which Judaism was built. The Israelites were not to mix with the nations, they were not to marry with them: they were not to join with them in religious fellowship or commercial partnership. And it was this principle which Solomon transgressed. He married a princess of Egypt. He connected himself with wives from idolatrous countries—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites. Sidonians, Hittites. And then Nehemiah’s argument, built on the eternal truth that friendship with the world is enmity with God, is this—“Did not Solomon sin by these things?” That Jewish law shadowed out an everlasting truth. God’s people are an exclusive nation; God’s Church is for ever separated from the world. When a religious person begins to feel an inclination for intimate communion with the world, and begins to break down that barrier which is the line of safety, the first step is made of a series of long, dark wanderings from God. The world changes its complexion in every age. Solomon’s world was the nations of idolatry lying round Israel. Our world is not that. The sons of our world are not idolaters, they are not profligate, they are, it may be, among the most fascinating of mankind. Their society is more pleasing, more lively, more diversified in information than religious society. No marvel if a young and ardent heart feels the spell of the fascination. No wonder if it feels a relief in turning away from the dulness and the monotony of home life to the sparkling brilliancy of the world’s society. No marvel if Solomon felt the superior charms of the accomplished Egyptian and the wealthy Syrian. His Jewish countrymen and countrywomen were but homely in comparison. It is almost natural, almost intelligible—a temptation which we feel ourselves every day. The brilliant, dazzling, accomplished world—what Christian with a mind polished like Solomon’s does not own its charms? And yet now, pause. Is it in wise Egypt that our highest blessedness lies? Is it in busy, restless Sidon? Is it in luxurious Moab? No. The Christian must leave the world alone. His blessedness lies in quiet work with the Israel of God. His home is in that deep, unruffled tranquillity which belongs to those who are trying to know Christ. And when a Christian will not learn this; when he will not understand that in calmness, and home, and work, and love, his soul must find its peace; when he will try keener and more exciting pleasures; when he says, I must taste what life is while I am young, its feverishness, its strange, delirious, maddening intoxication, he has just taken Solomon’s first step, and he must take the whole of Solomon’s after and most bitter experience along with it.
2. The second step of Solomon’s wandering was the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. And a man like Solomon cannot do anything by halves. What he did, he did thoroughly. No man ever more heartily and systematically gave himself up to the pursuit. If he once made up his mind that pleasure was his aim, then for pleasure he lived. There are some men who are prudent in their epicureanism. They put gaiety aside when they begin to get palled with it, and then return to it moderately again. Men like Solomon cannot do that. No earnest man can. No! if blessedness lies in pleasure, he will drink the cup to the dregs. We have none of the cool, cautious sipping of enjoyment here. We have none of the feeble, languid attempts to enjoy the world which make men venture ankle-deep into dissipation, and only long for courage to go a little further. It is the earnestness of an impassioned man, a man who has quitted God, and thrown himself, heart and soul, upon everything that he tries, and says he will try it fairly, and to the full. There is a moral to be learnt from the wildest worldliness. When we look on the madness of life, and are marvelling at the terrible career of dissipation, let there be no contempt felt. It is an immortal spirit marring itself. It is an infinite soul, which nothing short of the Infinite can satisfy, plunging down to ruin and disappointment. Men of pleasure! whose hearts are as capable of an eternal blessedness as a Christian’s, that is the terrible meaning and moral of your dissipation. God in Christ is your only Eden, and out of Christ you can have nothing but the restlessness of Cain; you are blindly pursuing your destiny. That unquenched impetuosity within you might have led you up to God. You have chosen instead that your heart shall try to satisfy itself upon husks.
3. There was another form of Solomon’s worldliness. It was not worldliness in pleasure, but worldiness in occupation. He had entered deeply in commercial speculations. He had alternate fears and hopes about the return of his merchant ships on their perilous three-years’ voyage to India and to Spain. He had his mind occupied with plans for building. The architecture of the temple, his own palace, the forts and towns of his now magnificent empire—all this filled for a time his soul. He had begun a system of national debt and ruinous taxation. He had become a slaveholder and a despot, who was compelled to keep his people down by armed force. Much of this was not wrong; but all of it was dangerous. It is a strange thing how business dulls the sharpness of the spiritual affections. It is strange how the harass of perpetual occupation shuts God out. It is strange how much mingling with the world, politics, and those things which belong to advancing civilization, things which are very often in the way of our duty, deaden the sense of right and wrong. Let Christians be on their guard by double prayerfulness when duty makes them men of business, or calls them to posts of worldly activity.
4. It was the climax of Solomon’s transgression that he suffered the establishment of idolatry in his dominions. There are writers who have said that in this matter Solomon was in advance of his age—enlightened beyond the narrowness of Judaism, and that this permission of idolatry was the earliest exhibition of that spirit which in modern times we call religious toleration. But Solomon went far beyond toleration. The truth seems to be, Solomon was getting indifferent about religion. He had got into light and worldly society, and the libertinism of his associations was beginning to make its impressions upon him. He was beginning to ask, “Is not one religion as good as another, so long as each man believes his own in earnest?” He began to feel there is a great deal to be said for these different religions. After all, there is nothing certain; and why forbid men the quiet enjoyment of their own opinion? And so he became what men call liberal, and he took idolatry under his patronage. There are few signs in a soul’s state more alarming than that of religious indifference—that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true; the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false.
II. Consider God’s loving guidance of Solomon in all his apostacy. “There was no king like unto him who was beloved of his God.”
1. In the darkest, wildest wanderings, a man to whom God has shown his love in Christ is conscious still of the better way. In the very gloom of his remorse, there is an instinctive turning back to God. According to Scripture phraseology, Solomon had a great heart; and therefore it was that, for such an one, the discipline which was to lead him back to God must needs be terrible. “If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men.” That was God’s covenant, and with tremendous fidelity was it kept. You look to the life of Solomon, and there are no outward reverses there to speak of. His reign was the type of the reign of the power of peace. No war, no national disaster, interrupted the even flow of the current of his days. No loss of a childlike David’s, pouring cold desolation into his soul; no pestilences or famines. Prosperity and riches, and the internal development of the nation’s life—that was the reign of Solomon. And yet, with all this, was Solomon happy? Has God no arrows winged in heaven for the heart, except those which come in the shape of outward calamity? Is there no way that God has of making the heart grey and old before its time, without sending bereavement, or loss, or sickness? Has the Eternal Justice no mode of withering and drying up the inner springs of happiness, while all is green, and wild, and fresh outwardly? Look to the history of Solomon for the answer.
2. One way in which his aberration from God treasured up for him chastisement was by that weariness of existence which breathes through the whole book of Ecclesiastes. That book bears internal evidence of having been written after repentance and victory. It is the experience of a career of pleasure, and the tone which vibrates through the whole is disgust with the world, and mankind, and life and self. I hold that book to be inspired. It is not written as a wise and calm Christian would write, but as a heart would write which was fevered with disappointment, jaded with passionate attempts in the pursuit of blessedness, and forced to God as the last resource. That saddest book in all the Bible stands before you as the beacon and the warning from a God who loves you, and would spare you bitterness if He could. Follow inclination now, put no restraint on feeling, say that there is time enough to be religious by-and-by, forget that now is the time to take Christ’s yoke upon yon, and learn gradually and peacefully that serene control of heart which must be learnt at last by a painful wrench—forget all that, and say that you trust in God’s love and mercy to bring all right, and then that book of Ecclesiastes is your history. The penalty that you pay for a youth of pleasure is—if you have anything good in you—an old age of weariness and remorseful dissatisfaction.
3. Another part of Solomon’s chastisement was doubt. Once more turn to the book of Ecclesiastes: “All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.” In this observe the querulous complaint of a man who has ceased to feel that God is the Ruler of this world. A blind chance, or a dark destiny, seems to rule all earthly things. And that is the penalty of leaving God’s narrow path for sin’s wider and more flowery one. You lose your way, you get perplexed, doubt takes possession of your soul. And there is no suffering more severe than doubt. There is a loss of aim, and you know not what you have to live for; life has lost its meaning and its infinite significance. There is a hollowness at the heart of your existence; there is a feeling of weakness and a discontented loss of self-respect. God has hidden his face from you because you have been trying to do without Him, or to serve Him with a divided heart.
4. Lastly, we have to remark that the love of God brought Solomon through all this to spiritual manhood. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” In this we have the evidence of his victory. Doubt, and imprisonment, and worldliness have passed away, and clear activity, belief, freedom, have taken their place. It was a terrible discipline, but God had made that discipline successful. Solomon struggled manfully to the end. The details of his life were dark, but the life itself was earnest; and after many a fall, repentance, with unconquerable purpose, began afresh. And so he struggled on, often baffled, often down, but never finally subdued; and still with tears and indomitable trust returning to the conflict again. And so, when we come to the end of his last earthly work, we find the sour smoke, which had so long been smouldering in his heart, and choking his existence, changed into bright, clear flame. He has found the secret out at last, and it has filled his whole soul with blessedness. God is man’s happiness. “Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.”
LESSONS.—
1. There is a way—let us not shrink from saying it—in which sin may he made to minister to holiness. “To whomsoever much is forgiven, the same loveth much.” There was an everlasting truth in what our Messiah said to the moral Pharisees: “The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” Now, these are Christ’s words, and we will not fear to boldly state the same truth. Past sin may be made the stepping-stone to heaven. Let a man abuse that if he will by saying: “Then it is best to sin.” A man may make the doctrine absurd, even shocking, by that inference, but it is true for all that. God can take even your sin, and make it work to your soul’s sanctification. He can let you down into such an abyss of self-loathing and disgust, such life weariness, and doubt, and misery, and disappointment, that if He ever raises you again by the invigorating experience of the love of Christ, you will rise stronger from your very fall. But forget not this: if ever a great sinner becomes a great saint, it will be through agonies which none but those who have sinned know.
2. I speak to those among you who know something about what the world is worth, who have tasted its fruits, and found them like the Dead Sea apples—hollowness and ashes. By those foretastes of coming misery which God has already given you, those lonely feelings of utter wretchedness and disappointment when you have returned home palled and satiated from the gaudy entertainment, and the truth has pressed itself icy cold upon your heart, “Vanity of vanities”—is this worth living for? By all that be warned. Be true to your convictions; be honest with yourselves; be manly in working out your doubts, as Solomon was. Greatness, goodness, blessedness lie not in the life that you are leading now, they lie in quite a different path; they lie in a life hid with Christ in God.
3. Learn from this subject the covenant love of God. There is such a thing as love which rebellion cannot weary, which ingratitude cannot cool. It is the love of God to those whom He has redeemed in Christ. “Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin? and yet there was no king like him who was beloved of his God.” Let that be to us a truth not to teach carelessness, but thankfulness.—Condensed from F. W. Robertson.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1Ki_11:1-8. We come now to that strange, dark period in Solomon’s career, so strangely dark, and, in contrast with his earlier piety and glory, so deeply sad, that even the author of Chronicles passes it over in silence, and some modern critics pronounce it incredible and psychologically impossible. We find Jewish pride on the one hand, and German rationalism on the other, uniting to deny or else explain away the literal truth of the history. But there the record stands, and will stand, in unpleasant but simple naked truth, whose obvious meaning none can doubt, holding up to the world a most impressive lesson of human frailty, and showing the terrible danger to spiritual life of the vain pomp and glory of the world (1Co_10:12). In the earlier part of his reign Solomon was rich towards God; but later he multiplied to himself gold and silver, horses and chariots, wives and concubines. In seeking to surpass the magnificence and glory of the kings of the nations, he fell even lower than they all; for better are they who never knew the way of truth, than he who, having been blessed with superior light from God, turns away and runs headlong into a foul idolatry. Solomon’s fall was no sudden apostasy, and doubtless many a deep and wearing heart-struggle did he pass through ere the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, finally gained over him the mastery. We infer from the warnings against transgression contained in the Divine communication of chap 1Ki_9:6, that already the Lord saw in him tendencies that threatened danger; and we suppose that these tendencies grew stronger and stronger until they resulted in the dark and fatal apostasy which this chapter unfolds to us. (Compare Neh_13:26).—Whedon.
Here we see plainly how a godly man may gradually fall into sin. He first allows himself too much liberty. He ventures into danger, and then perishes therein. He who scorns danger, who by marriage and by a wilful intrusion upon certain positions exposes himself to it, or who ever ventures in his daily course too much into the world, under the pretext of liberty; he who indulges in the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, instead of enjoying with gratitude and moderation the gifts of God, such an one becomes the slave of sin, and falls under the wrath of God. The heart is first inclined, then wanders upon evil paths, and at last does openly what is displeasing to the Lord. At first we permit in others, through complaisance, sin, which we could and should have checked, and thus we actually assist ourselves to sin. Still we preserve our appearance of wisdom and godliness, and will not have it supposed that we have entirely deserted the Lord. But he whose heart is not wholly with the Lord his God follows Him not at all; he who follows Him not wholly, follows Him not at all.
—The example given by the Bible in the case of Solomon. I. What it teaches.
1. That for the sinful human heart, a constant outward prosperity is allied to spiritual dangers (Mat_16:26). Thus it is that trial and sorrow are often blessings for time and eternity (Heb_12:6-12).
2. That the most abundant knowledge, the highest education and wisdom, are no protection against moral and religious shortcomings. Wine and women make foolish the wise man. Says the proverb, no wise man commits a little folly. II. How it warns us.
1. To watch. If a Solomon can fall, a Solomon brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and walking in the ways of God, in old age, a Solomon the wisest man of his time, how necessary is it for us all to watch! Without watching, the greatest wisdom may become foolishness, and the highest spiritual condition may end in the wrath and judgments of God.
2. To pray. In the great prosperity and delight of this life, Solomon forgot prayer, which he had so well practised in earlier years (chap. 3 and 8). His wives did not elevate his heart, they debased it. Prayer alone holds watch, and is therefore most necessary in prosperity and success.—Lange.
—The vanity and insecurity of human greatness.
1. Exemplified in all ages.
2. Should moderate human ambition.
3. Should beget a constant self-vigilance.
4. Should lead man to aim at accomplishing the highest moral good.
5. Should foster complete reliance on God.
—It is sad to turn from the contemplation of the greatness of Solomon’s wisdom to the mournful reality of his end. But the thought of God flooding the soul of man must always be transcendently more grand than the life lived by man. So it was with Solomon, and so it must ever be. As perhaps chief among the causes which led to his downfall may be mentioned polygamy. Like David, he had his “burst of great heart,” but, like David also, he had his “slips in sensual mire.” A loose morality led to looseness in religion. The commandments of Jehovah, broken in regard to moral conduct, were also broken in regard to religious faith. Under the name of liberty, licence became the rule. The sweet grace of toleration, so invaluable a possession in itself, was profaned; and tolerant men, as they have often been before and since, were made half ashamed of a creed that could lead to such practices as Solomon encouraged. There arose two parties among his subjects—the one favouring his easy, tolerant sympathy of all religious beliefs, and only, probably, too willing to taste some of their sensuous fruits; the other keeping strong by the laws of their early religion, and resolutely opposed to innovations which they saw, under their very eyes, leading to such disastrous and ruinous consequences. The murmurs of discontent grew loud and frequent. The old tribal jealousies, which had been stilled for a time, showed that their fires were only smouldering. There were other agencies at work which helped to fan the flames of discontent. The burdens laid upon the Israelites and the taxes exacted from them were by no means light. We have seen how many of them were taken from their homes and pressed into service at the building of the temple. The obligations of the king were so great that he had to appoint officers over special districts to levy money for his use. It was often exacted in the spirit of the insolence of office. Manliness and independence could not long brook such treatment.—The absence of the prophetical order at the court of Solomon is very striking, and is, no doubt, a marked cause of his downfall. It might appear that in the person of Solomon the offices of king and prophet were fitly joined together; and so, for a time, they might have been, had Solomon only kept a perfect ideal before him. This he could not do; and neither the monarchy nor the prophetic office were at this time ripe for such a union. Only a perfect religion could produce a perfect prophet; and the monarchy was far from being in the position of producing a perfect king. As it was, the time soon arrived for the representatives of the old order to raise their voice on high. Thus arose Ahijah, Shemaiah, and Iddo, stung into speech by the conviction that the monarchy in Israel, by its narrow aims, was degenerating into an ascendency and violence which endangered the theocracy itself, and with it the sacred and inviolable basis of Israel’s whole existence.—(The Quiver for 1875).
1Ki_11:1-2. This “but” is a danger-signal to warn us against—
1. Disobedience of the Divine commands.
2. Evil companionships. We are reminded of St. Paul’s solemn admonition: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1Co_15:33). Solomon’s intercourse with these idolatrous nations led to his adopting their corrupt worship and customs. Every true Christian must be a nonconformist: “Be not conformed to this world” (Rom_12:2). The service of God admits of no compromise. We cannot serve God and Mammon.
The friendship of the world is enmity against God. A distinct line of division must be drawn and maintained between the Church and the world. They are at deadly feud against each other: there can be no truce between them. “There are your foes,” said a general, as he led on his men to the attack; “kill them, or they’ll kill you.” We must not allow our hearts to be turned away from Christ to worldliness, like Demas. The world is not to be converted by unholy alliances with the enemies of God, but is to be conquered by His Word and Spirit.
1Ki_11:1-3. The wise fool. We have seen many strange sights in our time—many horrible sights, but none so strange, none so horrible, as that of a wise man making himself a fool. Solomon did that, and he was a wise man, even the wisest of men. If the deep sagacity of Solomon, if his keen discernment, if his strong reason, if his profound knowledge of human life and character, if even his intimate acquaintance with the law and counsels of the Lord, did not preserve his name from that stamp of foolishness which we find impressed upon so many of the great names and great acts of men, who is there that can hope to stand? Not one, as of himself, but there is without us and above us a power that can exalt even the lowly to high things, and can sustain them in all true wisdom so long as they rest upon it; instead of that, the light which shines upon their path and glorifies their way, shines out of themselves and not into them. Solomon was wise; Solomon was foolish. Strange contrast and contradiction of terms! Yet it does not astonish. It may astonish angels, but not us. We are used to this kind of experience. We see men who are foolish without being wise; but we see not one who is wise without being also foolish. Foolishness, which every man certainly has in his nature; wisdom, if he has it, is a gift bestowed on him—bestowed as freely upon him as it was upon Solomon. The wisdom does not suppress or drive out the foolishness, but is a weapon, it may be a staff, or it may be a glittering sword given into his hands to fight against it, to keep it under; a weapon to be used with daily and ever-watchful vigilance, and not to rest idly in the scabbard. This was king Solomon’s fault. Having been victor in many a deadly fray, until victory became easy and habitual, he forgot that the enemy of his greatness and peace still lived—was not mortally wounded—did not even sleep. He suffered his weapon to rest until its keen edge was corroded, until it clung in rust to the scabbard, and could not be drawn forth.—Kitto.
—It was the charge of God to the kings of Israel that they should not multiply wives. Solomon had gone beyond the stakes of the law, and now is ready to lose himself amongst a thousand bedfellows. Whose lays the reins on the neck of his carnal appetite, can promise where he will rest. O Solomon! where was thy wisdom, while thine affections run away with thee into so wild a voluptuousness? What boots it thee to discourse of all things, while thou misknowest thyself? The perfections of speculation do not argue the inward power of self-government; the eye may be clear, while the hand is palsied. It is not so much to be heeded how the soul is informed, as how it is disciplined: the light of knowledge doth well, but the due order of the affections doth better. Never any mere man, since the first, knew so much as Solomon; many that have known less have had more command of themselves. A competent estate well husbanded is better than a vast patrimony neglected. There can be no safety to that soul where is not a strait curb upon our desires. If our lusts be not held under as slaves, they will rule as tyrants. Had Solomon done this, delicacy and lawless greatness had not led him into these bogs of intemperance.—Bp. Hall.
1Ki_11:3-4. These wives and concubines were introduced to add to the splendour and gaiety of the court. The love of display is destructive of Christian simplicity. It has ruined many by a silly desire to vie with their wealthy neighbours.
1. It has weaned mens’ hearts from Christ and His people.
2. Ruined many families.
3. Swollen the list of commercial failures.
4. Drawn away its victims into wicked associations and pursuits. Fashion is the modern Moloch, whose worshippers are legion. How true is it that:
“Gold glitters most where virtue shines no more,
As stars from absent suns have leave to shine.”
David, with all his faults, never tolerated idolatry during his reign; hence he is called “The man after God’s own heart.”
1Ki_11:1-4. Denial of the existence of marriage as a divine ordinance is the source of the greatest and weightiest evils. Solomon sinned in this wise—that, contrary to the law, he not only took to himself many wives, but foreign—i.e., heathen—wives. Not without danger is it that a man takes a wife who is not of his own religion (1Co_7:19). Lust of the eyes and the pride of life drowse the soul, and cripple the will, gradually and imperceptibly influence the heart, so that it loses all sense of holy and earnest things, and all pleasure therein, and becomes stupid and indifferent to everything divine and noble. A prince who allows himself to be advised and led by women in the affairs of his government, instead of guiding himself by the unchangeable law of God, destroys the prosperity of himself and his kingdom. Confidential intercourse and intimacy with those who know nothing of the living God and of His word, but rather resist Him—those who well know how to flatter—this is a most perilous position for a God-fearing heart (Ecc_7:27).—Lange.
1Ki_11:1. Wasted love.—
1. Love is wasted when it is placed on an unworthy object.
2. When it is not properly concentrated—a multiplicity of interests weaken its power, as the many-pointed rock breaks up the force of the wave.
3. When it is sinful in its tendency.
4. When it weans the heart from God.
5. Is supremely ridiculous and offensive in old age.
1Ki_11:3. Woman was first given to man for a comforter, and not for a counsellor, much less for a controller and director; and, therefore, in the first sentence against men this cause is expressed—“Because thou obeyedst the voice of thy wife.”
1Ki_11:4. What sight on earth more sad than the disgraceful fall of an old man whose youth had been devout and promising and his manhood noble? Well did Solon, the Athenian, insist that no man should be counted blessed until he had nobly ended a happy, noble life.
—Solomon was the less to be excused because his soul had had so long communion with God and experience of His goodness; as also because his body was declining, so that his lust was the more monstrous, like as it is to behold green apples on a tree in winter. Augustine inveighed against those, and worthily, who consecrate the flower of their youth to the devil, and reserve for God the dregs of their old age. Solomon offended on the contrary part. Let every man look to what Lord he dedicateth both his youth and his age; for it sometimes falleth out that Satan preyeth upon those when old, whom he could not prevail with when young; and it is not for nothing that the heathen sages say that old age is to be feared as that which cometh not alone, but is itself a disease, and bringeth with it not a few diseases both of body and mind.—Trapp.
—Even as in youth exuberance of life and strength opens the door to temptation, so likewise does the weakness of old age; but an old grey-haired sinner is much more abominable in the sight of the Lord than a youth. The sole condition under which, amid his natural weakness, an old man can retain his spiritual strength and guard his honour, is this—that his heart is purely fixed on God. This condition failing, let a man’s whole life be influenced by the opinions of others—influenced by such opinions without sharing them, yet still without combating them, then complete wantonness will take possession of his old age.—Lange.
—The ways of youth are steep and slippery, wherein as it is easy to fall, so it is commonly relieved with pity; but the wanton inordinations of age are not more unseasonable than odious. Yet, behold, Solomon’s younger years were studious and innocent: his overhasted age was licentious and misgoverned. If any age can secure us from the danger of a spiritual fall, it is our last; and if any man’s old age might secure him, it was Solomon’s, the beloved of God, the oracle, the miracle of wisdom. The blossoms of so hopeful a Spring should have yielded a goodly and pleasant fruit in the Autumn of age. Yet, behold even Solomon’s old age vicious. There is no time wherein we can be safe while we carry this body of sin about us. Youth is impetuous, mid-age is stubborn, old age weak, all dangerous. Say not now—“The fury of my youthful flash is over, I shall henceforth find my heart calm and impregnable,” while thou seest old Solomon doating upon his concubines, yea, upon their idolatry.—Bp. Hall.
—The fall of an old tree, or of some noble old ruin, is beheld with some regret, but it occasions no rending of heart. It was their doom. Age ripened them but for their fall; and we wondered more that they stood so long, than that they fell so soon. But man is expected to ripen in moral and religious strength—to harden into rock-like fixedness as his age increases. He whom we have looked up to so long, he whose words were wise as oracles, and from whose lips we had so long gathered wisdom, he who had borne noble testimonies for the truth, he who had laboured for the glory of God, who had withstood many storms of human passion and many temptations of human glory, and in whose capacious mind are garnered up the fruits of a life’s knowledge and experience—for such a man to fall from his high place, fills the most firm of heart with dread, and makes the moral universe tremble. It is altogether terrible. It is a calamity to mankind; it is more than that: it is a shame, a wrong, and a dishonour. The righteous hide their heads; and the perverse exult:—hell laughs.—Kitto.
—Old age.
1. Is encumbered with many frailties.
2. Has its peculiar temptations.
3. Is not exempt from the possibility of great crimes.
4. Is often a pitiable contrast to the promise and opportunity of youth.
5. Should be rich in valuable experiences.
6. Is less excusable in yielding to the force of evil passions.
—“His heart was not perfect with the Lord.” The heart the central force of the religious life.
1. The reason may be convinced when the heart is untouched.
2. The truth that moves us most is that which we feel.
3. The highest feeling is the highest reason.
4. If the heart is wrong towards God, all is wrong.
5. He who is unfaithful towards God, is not to be trusted by his fellow-men.
6. The outer evidence of a perfect heart is a loving, obedient life.
1Ki_11:5-8. Although Solomon did not himself practise idolatry, he permitted and encouraged it in others; but the receiver is as bad as the thief. That is the curse resting upon sin, that the very means by which men seek to raise themselves in the world’s estimation become the very means for their destruction. By perverted compliance and long toleration Solomon brought ruin and destruction upon himself and his people for centuries to come. All indulgence which is grounded upon indifference to truth, or founded upon lukewarmness, is not virtue, but a heavy sin before God, how much so ever it may resemble freedom and enlightenment. In a well-ordered church and state establishment, neither bigotry nor superstition should have equal rights with faith and truth. Where the gate is open to them, or where they are patronized instead of being resisted, then both people and kingdom are going to meet their ruin.—Lange.
—The evil results of an unholy alliance.
1. Idolatry was allowed.
2. It became the fashion.
3. It divided the king’s heart.
4. He patronized it.
5. State provision was made for it. We learn from this history—
1. Jehovah is a jealous God, and will tolerate no rivals.
2. The Divine commands are imperial, and must take precedence of all human laws.
3. The impossibility of harmonizing Christianity and heathenism. In ancient times this led to the worship of Baalim and other idols-deities, with their cruel orgies and barbarous rites. A later result has been the birth of Popery, which inculcates image cultus in defiance of the Divine commands, turns the simple spiritual worship of God into an elaborate heathenish ritual, proclaims the Pope infallible, and exalts the Virgin Mary to a higher dignity than the Saviour Himself. Religion demands decision, and admits of no compromise.
1Ki_11:7-8. He that built a Temple to the living God, for himself and Israel, in Zion, built a Temple to Chemosh in the Mount of Scandal, for his mistresses of Moab, in the very face of God’s house. No hill about Jerusalem was free from a chapel of devils. Each of his dames had their puppets, their altars, their incense Because Solomon feeds them in their superstition, he draws the sin home to himself, and is branded for what he should have forbidden. Even our very permission appropriates crimes to us. We need no more guiltiness of any sin than our willing toleration. Who can but yearn and fear to see the woful wreck of so rich and goodly a vessel? O Solomon! wert thou not he whose younger years God honoured with a message and style of love; to whom God twice appeared, and in a gracious vision renewed the covenant of his favour; whom he singled out from all the generation of men to be the founder of that glorious temple which was no less clearly the type of heaven, than thou wert of Christ, the Son of the ever living God? Wert not thou that deep sea of wisdom, which God ordained to send forth rivers and fountains of all divine and human knowledge to all nations? Wert not thou one of those select secretaries, whose hand it pleased the Almighty to employ in three pieces of the Divine monuments of Sacred Scriptures? Which of us dares ever hope to aspire unto thy graces? Which of us can promise to secure ourselves from thy ruins? We fall, O God, we fall to the lowest hell, if thou prevent us not, if thou sustain us not!—Bp. Hall.
—So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!
Of all we loved and honoured, nought
Save power remains;
A fallen angel’s pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from these great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, and honour dies,
The man is dead.
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward with averted gaze,
And hide the shame.—Whittier.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 1Ki 11:22
1Ki 11:22
We can scarcely doubt that love of country was the ruling feeling in Hadad’s wish to return to Edom. Had it been revenge or ambition, he could have named it to Pharaoh, and he would have been understood; but it was a feeling he could not explain. It is an old Edomite anticipation of the saying of the Latin poet, "I know not what charm it is which leads us captive in the love of native land; it will not let us forget."
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I. The love of country is a feeling not only deep in our nature, as we do not need to show, but acknowledged and approved in the Bible. (1) It is one of the ways by which God secures that the earth should be inhabited. The world must have an anchor as well as a sail. Rocky Edom is dear as fertile Egypt, and bleak, storm-struck islands more than southern Edens. (2) This love of the native soil has been one of the great springs of the poetry of the race. Apart from the region of the spirit itself, imagination is never more pure and purifying than when it takes for its subject the things of native land and home.
II. Another thought suggested by this feeling is that it leads to acts of great self-sacrifice and endeavour. Next to religion there is probably nothing in human nature which has called out such a heroic spirit of martyrdom or such long, persistent labour, as the love of native land.
III. This feeling should enable us to understand the hearts and work for the rights of all men. Augustine has said that we may make a ladder of the dead things within us to climb to the highest; but there is another ladder of living things by which we can rise as high, and by which our sympathies can be travelling to and fro like the angels in the dream of Bethel. The vision begins in the dreamer’s own breast, and then it passes up into the skies.
IV. This feeling may help the conception of another and a higher country. It is one of the ways by which God keeps the heart above sensualism and bitter selfishness, a kind of salt that saves nations from entire corruption. He takes hold of this, as of other natural affections, to lift men to the "fatherland of souls." We should purify our affection for the lower, that it may lead us on and lift us to the higher.
J. Ker, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 137.
I. Men cannot always give an account of their impulses. We seem to have everything, yet we want something else. We have all Egypt, yet we are willing to leave it for Edom.
II. What we mistake, either in ourselves or in others, for mere restlessness may be the pressure of destiny. We blame some men roughly for desiring a change when really the Lord has spoken to them.
III. We may judge of the value of our impulses by the self-denial imposed by their operation. This law of judgment will disenchant many of our supposed Divine impulses.
IV. Is it not by some such impulse that the good man meets death with a brave heart? How else could he leave loved ones, home, manifold enjoyment, and social honour?
V. Remember how possible it is to overrule our best impulses. Is not the Spirit of Christ urging every man to leave the Egypt of sinful bondage? "Come out from among them, and be separate, saith the Lord."
Parker, The Ark of God, p. 233.
References: 1Ki 11:14-22.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 342. 1Ki 11:21.—S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 158. 1Ki 11:28.— Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men, p. 175. 1Ki 11:29.—Expositor, 3rd series, vol. v., p. 47. 1Ki 11:31, 1Ki 11:32.—G. Rawlinson, Hampton Lectures, 1859, p. 89; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 14. 1Ki 12:1-3.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. ix., p. 174. 1Ki 12:1-20.—Parker, Fountain, Jan. 4th, 1877. 1Ki 12:1-33.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 18. 1Ki 12:13.—A. Young, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 121.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Solomon's Errors and their Consequences. His Death
Solomon's Errors and their Consequences. His Death
This chapter furnishes an account of Solomon's marriages with numerous foreign princesses, and traces the evil effect of such in the toleration of idolatry, which provoked the Lord's anger. This was manifested in the growth of opposition abroad and disaffection at home, so that an otherwise brilliant reign had a cloudy ending.
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3. Seven hundred wives] The Persian king Darius Codomannus is said to have had, besides his own wife, 329 concubines.
4. Not perfect] Solomon's heart was divided between the Lord and other gods. Without abandoning the service of Jehovah, he tolerated, and even took part in, the religious rites practised by his wives. His luxury and sensuality led to more serious errors still.
5. Ashtoreth] the Phœnician name of the goddess worshipped by the Babylonians under the title of Ishtar, the goddess of love. Milcom] identical with the Molech of 1Ki_11:7.
7. Build an high place] i.e. construct an altar or sanctuary upon a height. Chemosh] The name of this god occurs on the inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, who was contemporary with Ahab. Before Jerusalem] i.e. E. of Jerusalem, the corresponding expression 'behind' being used to denote the W. (Jos_8:4, Jos_8:9; Deu_11:24 RV). The lull here designated is the Mt. of Olives: cp. Eze_11:23.
15. David.. Edom] see 2Sa_8:14. Joab] cp. Psalms 60 (title). According to 1Ch_18:12 the actual victory over the Edomites was gained by Abishai, the brother of Joab.
18. Midian.. Paran] NE. and N. of the Sinaitic peninsula.
19. Pharaoh] either the Egyptian king whose daughter Solomon had married, or his predecessor.
23. Zobah] a small Syrian state lying eastward of Mt. Hermon.
24. Damascus] According to 2Sa_8:6; David had placed garrisons in Damascus, which Rezon and his followers must have expelled.
26. Ephrathite] i.e. an Ephraimite (as in 1Sa_1:1), not a Bethlehemite (as in Rth_1:2).
28. Made him.. charge] RV 'gave him charge over all the labour'; see 1Ki_5:13, 1Ki_5:14. As the system of forced labour introduced by Solomon had as its object the adornment of his capital, which was most closely connected with Judah and Benjamin, it would be the more resented by the other tribes: cp. 1Ki_12:4, 1Ki_12:16. Jeroboam's position enabled him to detect and work upon the discontent, which would be strongest in Ephraim, inasmuch as in the times of Joshua and the Judges it had enjoyed the preeminence which had now passed to Judah.
29. The Shilonite] i.e. a native of Shiloh (1Ki_14:2).
30. Rent it.. pieces] The prophets frequently illustrated the meaning of their utterances by the use of impressive symbolic actions: see 1Ki_22:11; Isa_20:2; Jer_19:1-13; Ezekiel 12 Zec_11:7, Zec_11:10, Zec_11:14
32. One tribe] in 1Ki_12:21, 1Ki_12:23; Benjamin is reckoned with Judah, but see on 1Ki_12:20.
36. A light] cp. Psa_132:17 and contrast Job_18:6. The figure is drawn from the fire or lamp which is usually associated with a permanent habitation.
38. If thou wilt hearken] the same condition as in Job_9:4. A sure house] i.e. a long and unbroken line of descendants. As the condition imposed was not fulfilled, the promise was not carried out, and Jeroboam's house was extirpated in the second generation by Baasha.
39. Not for ever] in spite of the humiliation suffered by the house of David through Jeroboam's revolt, the Davidic dynasty in Judah outlasted the kingdom of the Ten Tribes; and though it finally lost all temporal power, it attained higher preëminence than ever when Christ was born of Mary, a descendant of David.
40. Sought.. to kill] This implies that Jeroboam had excited the king's suspicions by some open act of disloyalty. Shishak] i.e. Sheshonk, the first king of the 22nd dynasty, of Libyan descent.
41. The book, etc.] probably a history based on the official documents kept by the. 'recorder.' The instructiveness of Solomon's history is twofold. (1) Outward zeal for the honour of the Lord, such as Solomon showed by building the Temple, is no proof of inward devotion. (2) Material blessings bestowed by God (like the wealth and honour conferred on Solomon) bring with them increased temptations, needing divine grace for their conquest.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 7. Solomon’s Failure: judgment Announced and the beginning of…
7. Solomon’s Failure: judgment Announced and the beginning of Disruption
CHAPTER 11
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1. Solomon’s polygamy and departure from God (1Ki 11:1-13)
2. Hadad the Edomite (1Ki 11:14-22)
3. Rezon the second adversary (1Ki 11:23-25)
4. Jeroboam (1Ki 11:26-40)
5. Solomon’s reign and death (1Ki 11:41-43)
“But--.” An ominous word with which this chapter begins. It introduces us to the sad picture of Solomon’s great apostasy. “He shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses, for as much as the Lord hath said unto you, ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away, neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold” (Deu 17:16-17). The Lord anticipated a royal form of government for Israel and gave these instructions concerning the King. The first failure is seen in the previous chapter. He multiplied horses and brought them out of Egypt. Egypt is the type of the world. God had answered his prayer and then added riches and everything else. But his heart was captivated by riches and luxuries. No doubt he loved these things and multiplied silver and gold. The Devil’s crime, pride, was found in him. His heart was lifted up (Deu 17:20). But worse than all he multiplied wives. The sad record is found in the opening verses of this chapter. Then his heart was turned away by his wives and concubines after other gods. David, though his trouble also originated in polygamy, had always, in all his sin and failure, clung to Jehovah. In this sense David’s heart was perfect with the Lord his God. He did not turn away from the Lord, nor did David go after strange gods. Solomon’s guilt was great. The Lord had appeared twice to him; He never appeared to David. And with all the Lord had done for Solomon, the evidences of His grace towards him, the house he could build, the superior wisdom he had, the great king departed from the Lord. Such is the heart of man, desperately wicked. It becomes now evident that the oathbound covenant concerning a man to sit upon the throne of David with a glorious kingdom established, must be fulfilled in another son of David. Solomon fails. The kingdom is rent from him. The glory departs. Never again were the scenes of glory repeated in the kingdom of Israel. But when David’s Lord and David’s Son appears, the King of Righteousness, the Prince of Peace, the kingdom and the glory will be restored to Israel.
It has been stated that Solomon himself was not actually guilty of idolatry. If he built the places of idolatrous worship for his many wives only, he was guilty of the sin of idolatry. The abominations were then introduced. Luxuries, wealth, self-indulgence, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life led into idolatry. It is the same in the closing days of the present age. Ashtoreth, a Phoenician goddess, was worshipped with impure rites. Milcom (Molech) was the idol-god of the Ammonites. Chemosh was the sun-god and war-god of the Moabites.
And the Lord who had appeared twice unto Solomon, the Lord who had commanded him not to go after other gods, was now angry with Solomon. Judgment is announced. Two adversaries were stirred up at once against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite and Rezon of Syria, who abhorred Israel.
Jeroboam, a servant of King Solomon (verse 11) lifted up his hand against the king. Ahijah the prophet, attired in a new garment, meets the future king of the ten tribe division and tore his garment into twelve pieces. “And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces, for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee.” But the message of the Lord through Ahijah also declared His faithfulness to David. Jehovah still speaks of “David my servant”; he is “to have a light always before Me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen to put My name there.” The house of David in the midst of all the evil is not forgotten. There will be affliction, “but not forever” (verse 39). And Jeroboam also has the opportunity of having a house “as I built for David” on the condition of obedience. But ambitious Jeroboam did not keep the statutes and commandments of the Lord.
And Solomon? Not a word of repentance! No tears like those his father wept. No confession as it came from David’s lips. Only one thing is stated. Only one act is mentioned of apostatized Solomon. He sought to kill Jeroboam. After a reign of 40 years, Solomon passed away not quite 60 years old.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Solomon’s Love of Women and Idolatry
Solomon’s Love of Women and Idolatry
v. 1. But King Solomon loved many strange women, foreigners, non-Israelites, together with, that is, beside, the daughter of Pharaoh, who was his first wife, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, the tribes east, northeast, and south of the Dead Sea, Zidonians, and Hittites, tribes to the northwest and north of Palestine;
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v. 2. of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods, Exo 34:16; Deu 7:3-4; Deu 17:17. Solomon clave unto these in love, he maintained friendly relations with these nations for the purpose of increasing his harem, thereby becoming the leader among the Oriental monarchs also in this respect.
v. 3. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, members of noble families, who added splendor to his court, and three hundred concubines, such an immense harem being considered an evidence of unlimited wealth among Oriental princes. And his wives turned away his heart, they influenced him in such a manner as to weaken his allegiance to the true God.
v. 4. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, when he lost his youthful energy of spirit and heart, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, causing him to become indifferent toward the strict and exclusive worship of Jehovah in Israel and more indulgent with regard to the heathen worship still maintained by the foreigners; and his heart was not perfect with the Lord, his God, it no longer belonged to the Lord in undivided loyalty, as was the heart of David, his father.
v. 5. for Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, he did not hinder the cult of this idol, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, an idol whose worship was connected with revolting rites, whereas the cult of Ashtoreth was probably connected with indecencies.
v. 6. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David, his father; he did not maintain the full and complete allegiance to the Lord which was expected of him; although he did not himself renounce Jehovah worship, he permitted the public worship of the heathen divinities.
v. 7. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, their god of war and of fire, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon, probably another name for Milcom.
v. 8. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burned incense and sacrificed unto their gods, having Solomon’s full permission to continue to follow their idolatrous customs.
v. 9. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, His displeasure broke out very strongly against him, because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, 1Ki 3:5; 1Ki 9:2,
v. 10. and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods, 1Ki 6:12; 1Ki 9:6. But he kept not that which the Lord commanded.
v. 11. Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, because this was come into his mind, because he was engaged in this matter which was so displeasing to the Lord, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it to thy servant, to one of his subjects, his inferior.
v. 12. Notwithstanding in thy days, during Solomon’s lifetime, I will not do it for David, thy father’s, sake, but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.
v. 13. Howbeit, I will not rend away all the kingdom, he intended still to show his merciful goodness, but will give one tribe to thy son for David, My servant’s, sake and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen, on account of the promise 2Sa 7:12; for the selection of Jerusalem as a place of worship was independent of any man’s actions. Solomon here serves as a warning example to all believers. Many a person who has learned to know the Lord has become a backslider and has turned again to the world and its pleasures. Let every one who standeth take heed lest he fall!
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3 Now King Solomon
Now King Solomon
The word "Now" is used here to mark a break in the main story line where the narrator starts to tell a new part of the story.
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Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites
These are names of people groups. (See: How to Translate Names)
turn your heart to their gods
To "turn someone's heart" is to convince that person to change his affection. AT: "persuade you to worship the gods that they worship" (See: Metonymy and Idiom)
translationWords
king
Solomon
love
alien
Pharaoh
Moab
Ammon
Edom
Sidon
Hittite
nation
Yahweh
people group
Israel
turn
heart
false god
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 11:1-3 In spite of his God-given wisdom, Solomon blatantly…
11:1-3 In spite of his God-given wisdom, Solomon blatantly violated the law of Moses with his excessive wealth and many wives (see Exod 34:12-17; Deut 7:3-4; 17:17). Taking wives to form foreign alliances compromised Solomon’s spiritual commitment, as predicted, and turned his heart away from the Lord. The spiritual and political consequences for his people were disastrous (see 1 Kgs 11:4-13; 12:4, 16; 2 Kgs 17:5-23; 25:1-23).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.