Dear Friends,

Today’s devotional are my notes for the Sunday school class on I Kings 9-10. They show the glory with which God blessed Solomon and provide a glittering background for dark chapter to follow. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney
Grace Bible Fellowship Church
Adult SS Elective: I Kings 9:1-10.29
April 10, 2016

D. Enjoying God’s blessing (9:1-10:29)
“This section describes the glory of the ‘Golden Age of Israel’…” [Dilday, p. 111]
“As long as Solomon lived by the light of the revelation of grace, he was truly enlightened; he was a light to the world.” [De Graff, Promise and Deliverance II, p. 212]
1. Prosperity (9:1-28)
a. God’s warning (9:1-9)
“God had given a real answer to Solomon’s prayer, and tokens of his acceptance of it, immediately, by the fire from heaven which consumed the sacrifices (as we find 2 Chron. 7:1); but here we have a more express and distinct answer to it.”
[Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 485]
“When Solomon had finished the building of the temple, and of his palace, and of all that he had a desire to build, the Lord appeared to him the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon, i.e., by night in a dream (see ch. 3:5), to promise him that his prayer should be answered.”
[Keil, p. 98]
“Twenty-four years had passed since the aging David had named Solomon his son as the successor to the throne…”
[Dilday, p. 111]
“This was a signal occasion — ‘Yahweh appeared to Solomon a second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon’ (v. 2…). This was not something that occurred every other Wednesday. Hence this episode must be as crucial as Yahweh’s first appearance in 3:4-15. The content of Yahweh’s communication can be summarized as consisting of:
Privilege, v. 3
Assurance, vv. 4-5
Warning, vv. 6-9.”
[Davis, p. 96]
“The earlier promises and conditions (3:11-14; 6:11-13) are repeated with greater urgency.”
[Martin, p. 352]
“The unity of the Old Testament is held before the readers of the Bible in a unique manner. Solomon, and all the kings after him, those ruling over Israel as well as Judah, were to consider David as a model. David was the king after God’s own heart. He had learned, loved, and lived obediently according to the will of God as revealed through Moses. David had Moses as his model. Moses, in turn, was called to carry out the promises the Lord had made to Abraham (Gen. 12; 15; 17; 22), Isaac (Gen 23:23-24), and Jacob (Gen. 28:13-15), and to explicate the law which Abraham had kept in obedience to God (Gen. 26:5). Thus Solomon and all succeeding kings were to follow in the will and way the Lord had held before Abraham, Moses and David. Every king was to obey Moses and to be the Lord’s agent in carrying out the covenant promises to Abraham.”
[Van Groningen, p. 242]
“The phrases ‘My name…My eyes…My heart’…indicate God’s nearness to His people. He is identified with us; He watches over us; He loves us.”
[Wiersbe, With the Word, p. 201]
“’Heart’ occurs 51 times in 1-2 Kings; of these verse 3 has the only reference to God’s ‘heart.’”
[Davis, p. 96]
“…Verses 6-9 turn ominous: if Solomon and/or his successors prove faithless, the people will lose their place in the land and the temple will become exhibit a of the disaster. Royal faithlessness (v. 6) will bring judgment on the people (v. 7) — though the people will certainly ape royal apostasy (v. 9).” [Davis, p. 96]
“…God sets forth certain conditions under which he will act toward Solomon and the people of Israel in the future. They are expressed in the literary forms of ‘if…then’ and ‘if not…then.’ The list of positive conditions is given first and forms a basic outline of the devout life.
“1. ‘If you walk before Me as David did.’…
“2. If you walk ‘in integrity of heart.’…
“3. If you walk ‘in uprightness.’ Integrity of heart comes first, because it does no good to perform righteous deeds if our hearts are not right with God first….
“4. If you ‘do according to all I have commanded you.’…
“5. ‘If you keep My statutes.’
“6. If you keep ‘My judgments.’…
“The negative conditions are listed in verse 6. Here the singular ‘you’ is changed to the plural as God included the children of Solomon and the entire nation of Israel…. The negative conditions are:
“1. If you ‘turn from following Me.’
“2. If you ‘do not keep My commandments.’
“3, If you do not keep ‘My statutes.’
“4. If you ‘go and serve other Gods and worship them.’
“The punishments for committing these negative shortcomings are related to the land, the temple, and the people. They are listed in verse 7:
“1. ‘Then I will cut off Israel from the land.’…
“2. Then I will cast the temple out of My sight. He had promised that His eye would be in the temple perpetually if they obeyed Him. But if they disobeyed…the temple would be out of His sight.
“3. Then ‘Israel will be a proverb and a byword.’ The word ‘proverb’ is masal, meaning ‘a pithy statement made in mockery.’ The word ‘byword’ is senina, meaning ‘a pointed, witty, or spiteful saying…. The ruins of their culture would stand as a proverbial symbol of disaster like ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ or ‘Waterloo.’
“4. Then passersby will hiss and question the destruction in astonishment….
“5. Then the answer will be ‘They forsook the Lord.’ Those who see the destruction or read about it in this book would know that Israel’s calamity was not because God was powerless to protect His people, but because they forsook Him.
“The grim punishments in verses 7-9 are the other side of the bright promises in verse 5…. The promises come first, the threats second, because it is God’s nature to bless rather than to smite…. Some would call God’s threat of judgments harsh, but it is never harsh to warn a potential victim of the dangers that lie ahead.”
[Dilday, p. 114-116]
“…If you or your children break off from me, this house will not save you.”
[Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 486]
“God’s gifts are ‘without repentance.’ When He puts His name in the temple He does it, in intention, forever. He will not arbitrarily withdraw it after so many years or so many centuries. Once placed there, it will remain there forever, so far as God is concerned. But the people may by unfaithfulness drive it away.
(See verses 7 to 9.)” [Rawlinson, p, 534]
“Learn ― 1. That all human loss and misery spring from forsaking God; 2. That according to the height of privilege is the depth of condemnation if the privilege is abused.” [Pulpit Com. in Gray & Adams Bible Commentary I, p. 869]
b. God’s blessing (9:10-10:29)
“…Here is Solomon: engaging in politics but unable to keep Hiram smiling (vv. 10-14); giving free rein to his love for building — much of it for defense purposes (vv. 15-24); maintaining orthodoxy in all its liturgical regularity (v. 25); and venturing and profiting in world economy and trade (vv. 26-28)….
“…These activities highlighted in verses 10-28 are, on the whole, legitimate concerns of kings. They are simply what kings do. Perhaps they seem a bit too ‘secular’ for us, but that is the case with most of our daily callings — we find ourselves doing what electricians or paralegals or accountants or welders or real estate agents do. Such activities are perfectly proper and should not be viewed as somehow sub-covenantal… “Yet we must not forget that verses 6-9 stand like a Mt. Rushmore peering down over verses 10-28. One may be enjoying a thoroughly successful kingly…career and yet end in utter ruin unless one takes obedience to the first commandment as his very highest calling.”
[Davis, p. 100-101]
i. Politics (9:10-14)
“Hiram furnished Solomon with construction materials and gold (v. 11a) — in fact over four tons of it (v. 14). Apparently Solomon ran up more debt that he could pay in foodstuffs (cf. 5:9,11) and so ceded twenty border towns to Hiram…. Hiram toured the area and was unimpressed. Not much he could do about it but object. He could tell Solomon he thought they were sorry samples of towns. But Hiram is no dunce. He’s not about to be so upset that he would boycott joining Solomon in a lucrative sea trade (vv. 26-28).” [Davis, p. 97-98]
“Apart from the fact that Solomon shouldn’t have been so extravagant in building his ‘palace,’ he didn’t have the right to give twenty cities away just to pay his debts. All the land belonged to the Lord and could not be deeded away permanently (Lev. 25:23). One purpose for the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:8ff.) was to make sure the land that had been sold was returned to the original owners and so that no clan or tribe could be deprived of their inheritance. But Solomon was starting to behave like his Egyptian father-in-law who had wiped out the population of an entire Canaanite city and given the city to his daughter as a wedding gift (v. 16)….
“Solomon exhibits in this incident some character traits that disturb us, including the extravagant cost of the ‘palace’ that necessitated a loan, and then giving a friend poor collateral that wasn’t even his to give away.”
[Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 435]
ii. Defense (9:15-24)
“David’s fortification (2 S. v.9; 1 Chr. x.8) had been hasty, and had now ― fifty years later ― fallen into decay. Solomon therefore had to ‘repair the breaches of the city of David’ (1 K. xi.27),”
[Rawlinson, p. 536]
“This must be understood in such a sense as to harmonize with the previous statement, that 30,000 of the Israelites were employed by Solomon in forced labor for one-third of each year (1 K. v.13, 14). A modified service of this kind was not regarded as reducing those who were subject to it to the condition of bondmen.”
[Rawlinson, p. 538]
iii. Religion (9:25)
“And orthodoxy seemed to be thriving. Apparently Solomon saw to that, as the three annual festivals were regularly celebrated (…see Exod. 23:14-17). The last part of verse 25….means ‘Solomon met all religious obligations set by the Mosaic law and implied by the building of the central sanctuary.’” [Davis, p. 98-99 citing Paul House, “1, 2 Kings,” New American Commentary, (Broadman & Holman, 1995), p. 159]
iv. Commerce (9:26-28)
“…When a strong power such as the united monarchy of Israel, controlled all the caravan routes connecting the main markets with one another, it was possible to reap vast profits from the flow of goods being shipped between the sophisticated societies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Arabia, Anatolia and Greece. The partnership between Solomon and Hiram king of Tyre guaranteed an abundant financial harvest for both nations.”
[Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-yonah, The Macmillan Bible Atlas (New York: Macmillan, 1993), p. 88]
2. Fame (10:1-29)
“All of chapter 10 can be divided into two major sections, verses 1-13, where the Queen of Sheba says, ‘This is unreal!’ and verses 14-29 where the narrator exclaims, ‘And get a load of this!’… Within each of these two primary divisions the writes places a testimony section: verses 6-9 contain the testimony of the Queen of Sheba and verses 23-25 the testimony of the narrator himself.” [Davis, p. 105]
“Our Lord thought less of all this splendor than of the flower of the field.” [Farrar, p. 269]
a. The Testimony of the Queen of Sheba (10:1-13) Cf. Matthew 12:42
“When the fame of Solomon’s great wisdom came to the ears of the queen of Saba, probably through the Ophir voyages, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem, to convince herself of the truth of the report which had reached her, by putting it to the test by means of enigmas…. This queen… heard the fame of Solomon…literally, ‘belonging to the name of the Lord:’ in other words, the fame which Solomon had acquired through the name of the Lord, or through the fact that the Lord had so glorified Himself in him” [Keil, p. 111]
The Queen of Sheba ‘traveled fifteen hundred miles with a retinue of camels bearing precious gifts. Having heard of his legendary wisdom, she came to test Solomon with hard questions, or riddles.” [Dilday, p. 122]
“How justly shall the queen of the South rise up in judgment, and condemn us, who may hear wisdom crying in our streets, and neglect her!”
[Hall, Contemplations II, p. 126]
“The Queen of Sheba. ― I. She went, notwithstanding the distance of her residence. The gospel is brought to our door. II. She went, notwithstanding all the anxieties of her public station. The claims of business must not be allowed to clash with the claims of religion. III. She went, though uninvited. We have been invited ― how often? IV. She went to hear the wisdom of a mortal, at best fallible, and who, after all, was guilty of sad and criminal defection. We are invited to hear One greater than Solomon. Let us beware lest the Queen of the South by her treatment of the less, become a swift witness against us on account of our treatment of the greater.”
[Brooks in Gray & Adams Bible Commentary I, p. 871]
“Most locate Sheba in S. Arabia, present-day Yemen…”
[Davis, p. 103]
“The Queen of Sheba….found Solomon fully up to his reputation in wits and wisdom (vv. 1-3), but she found Solomonic style literally breath-taking (vv. 3-5)…”
[Davis, p. 103]
“Verse 5 says when she saw it all ‘there was no more spirit in her.’ Spirit is also the word for breath, so some translations say, ‘she was breathless’ or ‘it took her breath away.’”
[Dilday, p. 122]
“This acknowledgement of Jehovah falls below the confessions of Hiram (2 Chr. ii. 12) and Cyrus (Ezr. I.3). It does not imply more than an admission of His power as a local deity, that He is the God of the Jews and of their country.”
[Rawlinson, p. 540]
“Thus Solomon was a type of the Christ, who always gives answers revealed by God in His covenantal grace. The solution to all of the ultimate questions life poses is to be found in the grace of the Lord.” [De Graff, Promise and Deliverance II, p. 214]
“If a type of the Christ made such an impression on her, think of the impression the Christ Himself must make on everyone who knows Him by faith!” [De Graff, Promise and Deliverance II, p. 214]
“…Those who apply to our Lord Jesus will find him not only greater than Solomon, and wiser, but more kind; whatsoever we ask…he will, out of his divine bounty, which infinitely exceeds royal bounty, even Solomon’s do for us more than we are able to ask or think.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 490]
“When the Lord Jesus was on earth and displayed a wisdom far greater than Solomon’s, the Jews remained indifferent. Today we have His wisdom in His Word. We live very near it, but often we are neither delighted nor amazed. Could it be that the queen of Sheba will rise up against us on the day of judgment if our ecstasy has not exceeded hers?”
[De Graff, Promise and Deliverance II, p. 214]
b. The Testimony of the Author of I Kings (10:14-29) Cf. Ecc. 5:10; Matt. 16:26
“Why did Solomon need five hundred shields that required 2,525 pounds of gold to make? Why did he need an ivory throne overlaid with gold? Why must he and his guests drink only from golden vessels? To what purpose were the thousands of horses and chariots he assembled. Why did he need seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines?”
[Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 438-439] Cf. Deuteronomy 17:14-20
“A Roman proverb says, ‘Riches are like salt water ― the more you drink, the more you thirst.” [Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 439]
“The large space of Scripture devoted to him in the Books of Kings and Chronicles is occupied almost exclusively with the details of architecture and display. It is only in the first and last sections of his story that we catch the least glimpse of the man himself. In the central section we see nothing of him, but are absorbed in measurements and descriptions which have a purely archaeological, or, at the best, a dimly symbolic significance. The man is lost in the monarch, the monarch in the appurtenances of his royal display. His annals degenerate into the record of a sumptuous parade.” [Farrar, p. 248]