SOLOMON’S SIN.
- December 6. - I
Kings 11:4-13. -
“Let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” - I Cor. 10:12.
AS Solomon was the
wisest man, so also he was the most foolish man; for the greater the
opportunity the greater the loss, and the greater the knowledge possessed the
greater the sin in its misuse.
McLaren has truthfully said of Solomon:-
“There are many instances in history of lives of genius and enthusiasm, of high
promise and partial accomplishment, marred and flung away, but none which
presents the great tragedy of wasted gifts and blossoms never fruited in a
sharper, more striking form than the life of the wise King of Israel, who, ‘in
his later days,’ was ‘a fool.’ The goodliest vessel may be shipwrecked in sight
of port.
“The sun went down in a thick bank of clouds, which rose from undrained marshes
in his soul; and, stretched far up in the western horizon. His career in its
glory and its shame preaches the great lesson which the Book of Ecclesiastes
puts into his mouth as ‘the conclusion of the whole matter:’ ‘Fear God, and
keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.’”
(4-6) “When Solomon was old.” We last saw him at forty entertaining the Queen
of Sheba with his wisdom, and noted that at about that time the Lord appeared
to him a second time to indicate that he had reached a crisis where he must
choose the right or the wrong path of life-wisdom or folly. Solomon chose the
wrong path. He gave himself up to self-gratification, to “every desire of his
heart [mind].” The result was a premature old age, for he died about fifty-nine
years old. We may suppose (verse 4) that Solomon was to be reckoned an old man
from his fiftieth year onward; whereas really that should have been but the
prime of his life had he walked in the ways of wisdom.
Contrary to the divine law (Deut. 17:17), Solomon multiplied wives till he had
seven hundred. (Vs. 3.) Some of these “queens” were ladies of rank and
refinement from the various royal families of surrounding nations, one being
Pharaoh’s daughter. Solomon in his wisdom was esteemed by them, and they in
turn were esteemed by him, not only for their personality, but because of the
court alliance and influence with other kingdoms which it cemented. Having
slipped from the path of obedience to God and integrity of heart, Solomon fell
readily under the influence of his young wives into the support of idolatry.
We are not to suppose that he ceased to believe in the only true God and
believed in the heathen gods and idols and nonsense; but that he came gradually
to feel that he wished to please his various wives. This thought is borne out
by verse six, which declares not that Solomon left the Lord, but that he went
not fully after the Lord, and that he did that which was evil in the Lord’s
sight in sanctioning in any degree the idolatrous desires of his wives.
(7-8) Like all sins this one had its beginning- when Solomon built the high
place or altar of Chemosh to satisfy his Moabitish wives; and what might be
expected is told us in verse eight: that when one system of idolatry had been
introduced, the other foreign wives claimed similar rights, privileges, altars,
etc., for the divinities of their lands. In yielding to these Solomon no doubt
had in mind the foreign maids and servants of these wives and yet more the
visiting delegations of court representatives from those various lands which,
finding altars and temples to their divinities, would praise Solomon for
breadth of character. But very different was such praise from that of the Lord
and from that of the Queen of Sheba, who recognized in her day Solomon’s true
wisdom in his fidelity to Jehovah God.
(9-10) The Lord’s anger with Solomon was not a burst of fury nor a malicious
anger. It was a righteous indignation against sin; and an anger of this sort
is the only kind compatible with God’s character. It is the only kind,
therefore, that the children of God should cultivate or exercise. While anger in the nature of hatred, malice, strife, envy
should be put away by all who are seeking to be copies of God’s dear Son, anger
in the sense of righteous indignation against wrong-doing, sin in its various
forms, is proper; and although it should be used with great moderation, backed
by love, there are circumstances and conditions in which it would be wrong not
to have righteous anger and use it.
(11-12) The rending of the bulk of the kingdom from the hand of
Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was apart of the penalty for Solomon’s sin; yet it
came in a natural way, and as the result of natural causes. The evil course
which started in self-gratification and was manifested in the multiplication of
wives and the gratifying of their desires for false religions did not stop
there, but extended in other directions throughout Solomon’s affairs and
kingdom. He patterned his conduct more and more after other rulers of his day,
selfishly augmented his own fortune, and ministered to his own desires and the
desires of his numerous household, regardless of the interests of the Lord’s
people in whose interest and for whose happiness and welfare he should have
sought to use the gifts of wisdom, influence and wealth bestowed upon him by
the Lord. On the contrary, as we have seen (I Kings 12:4, 11), he bound heavy
burdens upon the people.
The Jews as a people have always zealously guarded their liberties; and the
spirit of liberty, as we have already seen, was the result of the measure of
divine truth which had been granted them, which showed that the King upon the
throne was as accountable as the peasant in the field to God the judge of all.
Hence the Israelites were prevented from believing, as did the heathen nations
round about, that their kings were a kind of demi-god whose every wish was law;
and hence, although we find no protest of the people against Solomon’s
departure from the Lord, nor against his erection of the altars for worship of
false gods, we do find that they were disposed to resent Solomon’s intrusion
upon their personal rights and liberties. He divided the whole country into
twelve districts, each of which was compelled to furnish contributions to the
luxury of the royal palaces and court. He also established a system of forced
labor in connection with the building of roads, palaces, fortifications,
immense gardens, reservoirs, etc. And while these public improvements were in
many respects proper enough, the method of securing the labor was particularly
distasteful to the Israelites, who were thereby reminded of the Egyptian
slavery. Thirty thousand men were set to work to fell trees on Mount Lebanon
and to work in quarries under Jerusalem, each division of ten thousand serving
for one-third of a year; seventy thousand were made carriers and general laborers,
while eighty thousand others were engaged as stone masons and carpenters; and
it appears that in all there were thirty-two hundred overseers of this
labor-army. The heavy work now done by machinery was in those days all done by
physical strength. In all this Solomon only copied the methods of his day
which treated the masses of mankind virtually as the slaves of the rulers.
Besides the forces above mentioned, other levies were made for the royal army
and general service. In the end the Israelites were learning under their
wisest and greatest King what God, through Samuel, the prophet, had forewarned
them they must expect.-See I Samuel 8:18.
(13) This verse was fulfilled through Jeroboam, who had been an officer in
Solomon’s industrial-army. Partly from sympathy and largely through ambition,
he sought to steal the hearts of the people away from Solomon and attempted a
rebellion in Solomon’s day, but contrary to the Lord’s plan. (I Kings 11:31) It
was after Solomon’s death that Jeroboam, allying himself with the ten tribes of
Israel, aroused a certain amount of animosity by pointing out that King
Solomon, being of the tribe of Judah, had favored that tribe chiefly. He then
joined with the chief men of the ten tribes in demanding of Rehoboam how he
would conduct the kingdom, telling him that unless he promised reform from his
father’s methods and oppression they would revolt. Reboboam refused to reform
and they did revolt, and constituted a separate kingdom down to the time of the
taking away into captivity by the King of Babylon, who took first the ten
tribes and afterward the two tribes called Judah. Since the return from that
captivity the distinction between Judah and Israel has not been maintained, and
we find both the Lord and the apostles speaking of them, and applying
prophecies to them, as “the twelve tribes,” “the house of Israel,” “the twelve
tribes [a part of whom were] scattered abroad”-not ten tribes scattered abroad
and two tribes at home in their own land, but a part of the twelve tribes in
Canaan (chiefly Judah), and the remainder of the twelve tribes scattered
abroad and living in the various cities of the Gentiles; as for instance,
those at Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Thessalonica, etc., to whom the apostles
first preached the gospel when they went with it amongst the Gentiles.-Acts
16:13; 17:2, 10; 18:8, 19.
The statement here is that one tribe would be given to Solomon’s son; and this
is entirely consistent with the facts, for although sometimes called two
tribes, yet really the remnant of the tribe of Benjamin (after it was almost
destroyed) was absorbed into the tribe called Judah.
We may learn from this sad lesson of Solomon’s fall, that it is not only
important to begin life wisely in harmony with God, but equally necessary to
continue it, and to end it so. We may learn also that the temptations and
trials of life are not upon the young only, but rather that the strongest
temptations are apt to come as we advance in life; and that for these we need
the preparation of character well begun and cultivated, developed, strengthened
by experience and endurance.
Another lesson respects the importance of marriage, and fully corroborates the
Apostle Paul’s statement, that while marriage is honorable, it should be only
“in the Lord.” Whoever has neglected this advice has either rued his neglect or
by it has been led so far astray as to be unable to appreciate his own decline
from godliness. Each Christian has in his own fallen members quite a
sufficient downward tendency to fight against, without putting himself directly
in the way of outside temptation, although he has the Lord’s promise of grace
sufficient for every time of need. If, neglecting the Lord’s instruction, he
surround himself with additional downward tendencies, by taking a husband or a
wife not in the Lord-not seeking chiefly the Kingdom of God and setting his
affections upon the things above, but upon the things beneath-he will surely
find it greatly to his disadvantage, as did Solomon in the taking of foreign
wives-aliens to the divine promises and blessings, the commonwealth of Israel.
Another lesson is that wisdom and wealth, education and influence and great
opportunities are sure to become snares and injurious, unless we are
continually guided in their use by the wisdom which cometh from above. And the
more of these talents we possess by nature or by acquisition, the more need we
have for the divine grace provided in our Lord Jesus only, the more need to
study and ponder and practice the exhortations to humility and godliness contained
in his Word, and the more need to make full use of every other agency which he
has provided for our blessing and help”-“building one another up in the most
holy faith.”