Dear Friends,

Today’s devotional tells of the fall of Solomon into sin and the response of God to that fall. It is full of practical help. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

John Janney Grace Bible Fellowship Church
Adult SS Elective: I Kings 11:1-43

E. Undermining God’s Kingdom (11:1-43) Cf. Deuteronomy 17:14-20
“This chapter begins with as melancholy a ‘but’ as almost any we find in all the Bible.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 481]
“The shipwreck of Solomon is surely the most terrible tragedy in all the world. For if ever there was a shining type of Christ in the Old Testament church, it was Solomon.” [Alexander Whyte, Bible Characters I, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1952), p. 178]
“Solomon had the greatest opportunity to be the ideal king Israel needed. With the donation of heaven-sent wisdom, the inherited subjection of all external threat, and, for much of his reign, an unchallenged supremacy over his people, he also enjoyed the gifts for the longed-for ideal to be realized. His failure is all the more culpable, and while he bequeathed to the future the perfect religious focus of the first Temple, no future king was compared with him as the model to be followed. This is the extent of his failure.
“With Solomon the possibility of the ‘Judges ideal’ of messianic kingship being fulfilled came to an end. The king whom the author of judges desired would solve the religious, social, moral, and national problems of the people. Saul achieved success religiously (1 Samuel 28:9) but failed to achieve national unity; David brought the nation together around his own person and the new capital city of Jerusalem, but failed morally (2 Samuel 11), whereupon his family, his kingdom, and his own character disintegrated. Solomon, famed as well as chosen to be the builder of the house, corrupted the house with false gods (1 Kings 11:4-8). After this the incompetent Rehoboam fractured the kingdom…” [Motyer, The Story of the Old Testament, p. 66]
“Failure in David; failure in Solomon; failure everywhere, save in Him who is the Witness faithful and true, Jesus Christ.” [Moorehead, Outline Studies in the Old Testament, p. 107]
1. Solomon disobeyed God’s Word (11:1-8)
“If we were called upon to select a man who, as to his life as a whole, perpetrated the greatest folly, we should mention Solomon. Yet he was the wisest of man. Yes, the cream of wisdom, when curdled, makes the worst of folly.” [Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XXXIV, (1888), p. 594]
“…Surely it had been better for Solomon to have been buried alive, than to have miscarried in his old age…” [John Trapp, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments I, (Eureka, CA: Tanski Publications, 1997), p. 562]
“Scripture never blinks the defects of its heroes. Its portraits do not smooth out wrinkles, but, with absolute fidelity, give all faults. That pitiless truthfulness is no small proof of its inspiration. If these historical books were simply fragments of national records, owning no higher source than patriotism, they would never have blurted out the errors and sins of David and Solomon as they do…. The Old Testament histories are not written to tell Israel’s glories, or even…to recount its history, but to tell God’s dealings with Israel, — a very different theme, and one which finds its material equally in the glories and in the miseries, which respectively follow its obedience and disobedience. So Solomon’s fall is told in the same frank way as his wisdom and wealth; for what is of importance is not Solomon so much as God’s dealings with Solomon…” [Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture II, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n.d., p. 202]
“When Solomon was old.’ There is a haunting sadness about this phrase…. ‘When Solomon was old’… At that late hour…this aged man madly let go the hand of God.” [Clovis G. Chappell, Living with Royalty, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), p. 57]
“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: who would have looked but that the blossoms of so hopeful a spring would 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 stubborn, old age weak, all dangerous…. How many have begun and preceded well, who yet have shamed themselves in the last stage! If God uphold us not, we cannot stand; if God uphold us we cannot fall. When we are at the strongest, it is best to be weak in ourselves; and, when at our weakest, strong in him, in whom we can do all things.” [Hall, Contemplations II, p. 133]
“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” [H. L. Mencken in Old Age Is Always 15 Years Older Than I Am compiled by Randy Voorhees, (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001), p. 194]
“Is there not a warning to churches…who have a fixation on youth ministry and a love affair with young marrieds and/or young families? Need we not exercise far more vigilance over our over-sixties crowd, many of whom will doubtless meet the major troubles of their lives in their final years?” [Davis, p. 115]
“Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.” [Arthur Bloch, Murphy’s Law: 26th Anniversary Edition, (New York: Perigee Books, 2003), p. 9]
“…Solomon…sinned away his wisdom as Samson did his strength (and in the same way)…” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 492]
“Remember that according to Deut. 17:17 the king was forbidden to ‘multiply wives to himself,’ even if they were orthodox Israelite women. Solomon’s 700 + 300 harem (v. 3) clearly violated this. In I Kings 11 Solomon’s is a compound offense: his wives are both many and pagan.” [Davis, p. 114]
“The power of Solomon’s love for women ultimately proved greater than the power of his love for the Lord…. His incomparable wisdom, the heritage of his father David, and the messages he received directly from the Lord…were not sufficient to offset his love for idolatrous women and his desire to please them.” [Van Groningen, p. 243]
“How strange, (1.) That Solomon, in his old age, should be ensnared with fleshly lusts, youthful lusts…. (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…. Never was gallant ship so wrecked; never was crown so profaned…. (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…. (3.)…. 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 II, p. 493]
“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.’” [Farrar, p. 274-275]
“…Notice the subtlety of the sin. How is it so subtle? Because it is internal; it is, to use the key word of our passage, a matter of the ‘heart.’ The term occurs five times in verses 2-4… The Bible…does not use ‘heart’ as does contemporary western culture merely to denote emotions or feelings. That’s part of it, but the Bible has a bigger heart; it means the willing, loving, thinking center of the person. The Bible does not separate the head (or brains or mind) and the heart; rather the head is in the heart. The fixation on the heart in this text does tell us we are dealing with the invisible and the internal…. That is what makes infidelity so subtle — it begins in the hidden depths of a man.” [Davis, p. 114-115]
“The text is not interested in Solomon’s politics but in his affections…. Whether many marriages were political does not matter. We must not allow the possible background of a text to overthrow the clear claim of the text.
“So there is the tragedy: a story that begins with ‘Solomon loved Yahweh’ (3:3) and ends with ‘King Solomon loved many foreign women’ (11:1)…. Am I headed for tragedy because I have left my first love?” [Davis, p. 116]
“It was not some sudden attack or irresistible assault that explains Solomon’s plunge into pagan ecumenism. No, it took years — the result of the creeping pace of accumulated compromises, the fruit of a conscience de-sensitized…. It happened gradually, slowly, imperceptibly.” [Davis, p. 115]
“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 forms of human opinion. His lapse into deadly sin was no doubt gradual. Partly from ostentation, partly from sensualism which is the most common failing of Oriental monarchs, he established a harem on a grand and extraordinary scale; he then admitted among his wives and concubines ‘strange women,’ i.e. foreigners, either from worldly policy, or for variety’s sake; he allowed himself to fall too much under seraglio influence; his wives ‘turned away his heart.’ To gratify them he built magnificent temples to their false gods, temples which were the scene of rites cruel and impure; he was not ashamed to build these temples over against Jerusalem, as manifest rivals to ‘the Temple.’ 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. Fin ally, he appear himself to have frequented the idol temples (see verses 5 and 10), and to have taken part in those fearful impurities which constituted the worst horror of the idolatrous systems, thus practically apostatizing, though theoretically he never ceased to hold that Jehovah was the true God.” [Rawlinson, p. 547-548]
“…Sin’s victory in our lives most often occurs not by sudden satanic assaults but by slow moral erosion.” [Dilday, p. 135]
“‘Many roads lead to the divine’ became the mentality in cosmopolitan Jerusalem, and why shouldn’t the queens of Israel have altars for their gods? Soon children were being sacrificed to Molech on a hill east of the capital, and all manner of rites were being performed within.” [Lee-Thorp, Story of Stories, p. 111]
“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.” [Mignon McLaughlin (American author, journalist) in Treasury of Women’s Quotations compiled by Carolyn Warner, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992), p. 54]
“Behind the figure of Solomon we see another. The wisest of men fell shamefully, captured by coarse lust, and apparently steeled against all remonstrances from Heaven. ‘A greater than Solomon is here.’ The faults of the human kings of Israel prophesy of the true King, who is to be the substance of which they were but faint shadows, and whose manhood was stained by no flaw, nor His kingdom ever rent from His pure hands. Solomon was wise, but Christ is ‘Wisdom.’ Solomon built a Temple, but also altars to false gods overtopping it across the valley; and his Temple was burned with fire. But Christ is the true Temple as well as Priest and Sacrifice. Solomon was by name ‘the peaceful,’ and his land had outward rest, darkened at the last by war and rebellion. But Christ is the Prince of Peace, and of His dominion there shall be no end. Solomon is the great example of the sad truth that the loftiest and wisest share in the universal sinfulness. Christ is the one flawless Man, who makes those who take Him for their King wise and peaceful, prosperous, and in due time sinless, like Himself.” [Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture II, p. 207-208]
2. Solomon ignored God’s warning (11:9-13)
“Though God may suffer those whom he loves to fall into sin, he will not suffer them to lie still in it.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 494]
“The chain that binds departure from God with loss of blessing may be of many or few links, but it is riveted on when the evil is done.” [Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture II, p. 205]
“…Our culture is shocked by the Lord’s anger, for he does not conform to canonical human expectations. And — as we’ve said before, Yahweh is unique among ancient Near Eastern gods, goddesses, and godlets. No pagan deity demanded exclusive devotion of his/her worshipers. And the anger of the biblical Yahweh bothers contemporary man because it clearly tells him that the God of the Bible is not a pluralist. He does not fit our times and mentality. Whey should he be so irate because someone (like Solomon) wants to spread his liturgical devotion around, to expose himself to other religious traditions, or to broaden one’s horizons by investigating alternate forms of human spirituality? Folks in our time want no truck with a God who will brook no rival…” [Davis, p. 116-117]
“The sentence is just, that, since he had revolted from God, part of his kingdom should revolt from his family; he had given God’s glory to the creature, and therefore God would give his crown to his servant: ‘I will rend the kingdom from thee, in thy posterity, and will give it to thy servant, who shall bear rule over much of that for which thou hast labored.’… Yet the mitigations of it are very kind, for David’s sake (v. 12, 13), that is, for the sake of the promise made to David… The kingdom shall be rent from Solomon’s house, but, (1.) Not immediately. Solomon shall not live to see it done, but it shall be rent out of the hand of his son, a son that was born to him by one of his strange wives, for his mother was an Ammonitess (1 Kings 14:31)…. (2.) Not wholly. One tribe, that of Judah, the strongest and most numerous, shall remain to the house of David (v. 13), for Jerusalem’s sake, which David built, and for the sake of the temple there, which Solomon built; these shall not go into other hands. Solomon did not quickly nor wholly turn away from God; therefore God did not quickly nor wholly take the kingdom from him.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 493]
“Note the beauty of the paradox: Yahweh does not deny his word — he remains faithful to his promise to David (2 Sam. 7:12-13,16), yet Yahweh does not deny his holiness — he is faithful to his threats (2 Sam. 7:14); and it is dogged grace (2 Sam. 7:15) that fuels hope.” [Davis, p. 123-124]
“…The king with the divided heart leaves behind a divided kingdom…” [Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996), p. 111]
“The separation of the kingdom was not brought about by miracle, but came in the natural course of things. A people ground down by heavy taxation and forced labor, to keep up the luxury of a court containing all that disgusting crowd of wives and concubines, was ripe for revolt, and when the scepter fell into the hands of a headstrong fool, and there was a capable leader on the other side, discontent soon became rebellion, and rebellion soon became triumphant. It all flowed as naturally as possible from the same fountain as the idolatry of which it was the punishment; and so it teaches once more the great truth that ‘the world’s history is the world’s judgment,’ and that the so-called ‘natural consequences’ of our deeds are, even here and now, God’s retribution for our deeds.” [Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture II, p. 207
“If success means more to you than God, then God will spoil your success.” [Lutzer, When a Good Man Falls, p. 93]
“Like all God’s threatenings, it was spoken that it might not be inflicted. Solomon was threatened before the prophet spoke to Jeroboam; and if Solomon had repented, Jeroboam would never have been spoken to.” [Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture II, p. 206]
“Four times in…[this] chapter occur the words, ‘David my servant’s sake;’ God would prove faithful to His covenant, though David’s son would not.” [Moorehead, Outline Studies in the Old Testament, p. 108]
“…Mercy overtakes judgment: one tribe remains. A remnant is saved. Here, in this grace in the midst of judgment, we have abiding enlightenment for the world.”

[De Graff, Promise and Deliverance II, p. 213]
“Following God’s stinging rebuke, we hear only the king’s dull silence.” [Dilday, p. 134]

3. Solomon resisted God’s discipline (11:14-43)
“The final chapter in Solomon’s life is written with the spotlight centered not on the king but on his enemies: Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam.” [Dilday, p. 143-144]
“Although the punishment with which Solomon was threatened for his apostasy was not to be inflicted till after his death, the Lord raised up several adversaries even during his lifetime, who endangered the peace of his kingdom, and were to serve as constant reminders that he owed his throne and his peaceable rule over the whole of the kingdom inherited from his father solely to the mercy, the fidelity, and the long-suffering of God.” [Keil, p. 121]
“…Solomon, who in 5:4 told King Hiram, ‘God has given me rest on every side, so that there is no adversary,’ now had two.” [Dilday, p. 137]
“Solomon’s enemy was not outside himself. Yes, though Hadad and Rezon and Jeroboam all should league themselves against him, Solomon’s enemy was within his own breast. It was no enemy that alienated God, and no other enemy could do that. And failing to do that, no other enemy could make any headway against him.” [Wells, The Living Bible, p. 92]
a. Hadad (11:14-22)
“The first adversary was Hadad the Edomite, a man of royal birth. The name…which is by no means rare was also borne by a prae-Mosaic king of Edom (Gen. 36:35), from which we may see that it was not an uncommon name in the royal family of the Edomites…. When David had to do with the Edomites,…Hadad fled….while yet a little boy, with some of his father’s Edomitish servants, to go to Egypt, going first of all to Midian and thence to Paran…. From Paran they took men with them as guides through the desert. Thus Hadad came to Egypt, where Pharaoh received him hospitably, and gave them a house and maintenance…and also assigned him land…to cultivate for the support of the fugitives who had come with him, and eventually, as he found great favor in his eyes, gave him for a wife the sister of his own wife, queen Tachpenes, who bare him a son, Genubath. This son was weaned by Tachpenes in the royal palace, and then brought up among (with) the children of Pharaoh, the royal princes…. When Hadad heard in Egypt of the death of David and Joab, he asked permission of Pharaoh to return to his own country. Pharaoh replied, ‘What is there lacking to thee with me?’ This answer was a pure expression of love and attachment to Hadad, and involved the request that he would remain. But Hadad answered, ‘No, but let me go.’ We are not told that Pharaoh then let him go, but this must be supplied… The return of Hadad to his native land is clearly to be inferred from the fact that, according to vv. 14 and 25, he rose up as an adversary of Solomon.” [Keil, p. 121-122]
“This meant that Egypt and Edom were now in league against Israel.” [Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 442]
“This constant irritation from the south should have reminded Solomon that God was disciplining him and calling him back to a life of obedience.” [Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 442]
b. Rezon (11:23- 25)
“A second adversary of Solomon was Rezon, the son of Eliadah (for the name see at ch. 15:18), who had fled from his lord Hadadezer, king of Zobah, and who became the captain of a warlike troop…when David smote them…, i.e., the troops of his lord (2 Sam. 8:3, 4). Rezon probably fled from his lord for some reason which is not assigned, when the latter was engaged in war with David, before his complete overthrow, and collected together a company from the fugitives, with which he afterwards marched to Damascus, and having taken possession of that city, made himself king over it. This probably did not take place till towards the close of David’s reign, or even after his death, though it was at the very beginning of Solomon’s reign; for ‘he became an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon (i.e., during the whole of his reign), and that with (beside) the mischief which Hadad did, and he abhorred Israel (i.e., became disgusted with the Israelitish rule), and became king over Aram….’
“Rezon, on the other hand, really obtained possession of the rule over Damascus. Whether at the beginning or not till the end of Solomon’s reign cannot be determined, since all that is clearly stated is that he was Solomon’s adversary during the whole of his reign, and attempted to revolt from him from the very beginning. If, however, he made himself king of Damascus in the earliest years of his reign, he cannot have maintained his sway very long, since Solomon afterwards built or fortified Tadmor in the desert, which he could not have done if he had not been lord over Damascus, as the caravan road from Gilead to Tadmor (Palmyra) went past Damascus.” [Keil, p. 123-124]
“Hadad attacked Solomon from the south and Rezon from the north…” [Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary II, p. 443]
c. Jeroboam (11:26-40)
“We have here the first mention of that infamous name Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that made Israel to sin; he is here brought upon the stage as an adversary to Solomon, whom God had expressly told (v. 11) that he would give the greatest part of his kingdom to his servant, and Jeroboam was the man.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary II, p. 495]
“Solomon…made Jeroboam superintendent of all the forced labor exacted from his tribe ― the tribe of Ephraim ― during the time that he was building Millo and fortifying the city of Jerusalem.” [Rawlinson, p. 551]
“Here we encounter some common features of prophetic methodology. The first is suddenness. Ahijah simply drops into the story from nowhere v. 29). Well, not exactly.
“We’re told he’s from Shiloh. But he just appears. We’ve never heard of him before. We know nothing about him — wife? children? hobbies? Nothing. Because it doesn’t matter. The Lord’s word, not the prophet’s biography, is crucial. The second feature is action (v. 29b-30). The prophetic word is often both verbal and visible — an action accompanies the word that depicts — or embodies — what the word declares. Then there is interpretation (v. 31b), else the action does not speak definitely. If Ahijah had given no verbal declaration with his visible action, what was Jeroboam to make of it?… So this explanatory word about the torn kingdom keeps the prophetic action from being a mystifying charade.” [Davis, p. 121]
“If Jeroboam had done nothing post-Ahijah, why would Solomon seek to execute him (v. 40)? He must have used Ahijah’s prophecy to justify an assault on the throne (though Ahijah had plainly said that the ‘tearing’ would only occur in the reign of Solomon’s son (vv. 34-35). He would not wait for Yahweh to give him the kingdom as David did (1 Sam. 24, 26); rather he will seize it for himself.” [Davis, p. 122]
Yahweh offers Jeroboam “a stable…dynasty if he is faithful but not an everlasting one (cf. 2 Sam 7:13,16). Note that Ahijah holds up David as Jeroboam’s model (‘to keep my statutes and my commandments as David my servant has done’); if he would enjoy David-like benefits he must walk in David-like ways.”   [Davis, p. 123]
“The promise, it will be observed, is conditional; and as the condition was not complied with, it did not take effect. (See 1 K. xiv.8-14; xv.29). The entire house of Jeroboam was destroyed by Baasha.” [Rawlinson, p. 552]
d. Death (11:41-43)
“…Both the Kings and the Chronicles dismiss Solomon with the bare record of his death, ‘Solomon slept with his fathers.’ That is all they have to say of him at the end of he reign of forty years of power and splendor; not a word of praise, not a word of admiration. Evidently the kingdom was not sorry when it heard that Solomon was dead.”

[Clarence Edward Macartney, Bible Epitaphs, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1936), p. 173]
“An Italian artist painted a picture of Solomon in the Day of Resurrection. Solomon is looking doubtfully upon two processions of souls, some on the way to Life Eternal, some to darkness and condemnation. He is not sure to which group he belongs…. Nothing could have been brighter than Solomon’s morning; nothing more glorious than his noonday; nothing darker and gloomier than his evening. Solomon is at once the best known and the least known of Bible characters.”

[Macartney, Bible Epitaphs, p. 165-166]