Wednesday Bible Study: All the Kings, men part 11

 

 

 Ecc 4:13  Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.

One question one must ask is, Solomon had a long reign- 40 years.  Yet, after about 20 of them, his story seems to end.  Only the reproval in 1 Kings 11 about all his foreign wives finishes his tale of accomplishment.  But we can piece together what happened from 3 things shown in 1 Kings- and what they involved from his song of repentance in Ecclesiastes.

First, obviously, was the marriage to Pharaoh's daughter, which opened the door to all the rest.  In Ecclesiastes, Solomon brings that very thing up:

 Ecc 7:25  I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness.
Ecc 7:26  And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. 

Much of his warnings about the seducer in Proverbs is based right here, and he admits he, "the sinner" fell to her.  Without fail, Proverbs describes this path as "the way to death".  Solomon KNEW this was the greater part of his failure, and the consequences destroyed his relationship with God:

1Ki 11:4  For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.
1Ki 11:5  For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
1Ki 11:6  So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done.

1Ki 11:9  And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice
1Ki 11:10  and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded.
1Ki 11:11  Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant.

More on this later.  The second thing that then happened was, his fall began to ruin his other actions.  Remember last week:

1Ki 9:10  At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house,
1Ki 9:11  and Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon gave to Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
1Ki 9:12  But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, they did not please him.
1Ki 9:13  Therefore he said, "What kind of cities are these that you have given me, my brother?" So they are called the land of Cabul to this day.

This must have stemmed from a growing sense of arrogance- one that reached its peak at the visit of the Queen of Sheba:

1Ki 10:4  And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built,
1Ki 10:5  the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the LORD, there was no more breath in her.
1Ki 10:6  And she said to the king, "The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom,
1Ki 10:7  but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard.
1Ki 10:8  Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!
1Ki 10:9  Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the LORD loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness."

I want you to understand this: a woman who had come from her own land, with the equivalent of a quarter-BILLION dollars of our money just in GOLD, on top of a bunch of other loot, for the purpose of giving as a GIFT- this woman FAINTED at the wealth of Solomon! She praised God for it... but I think Solomon stopped halfway through the soliloquy.

I think Solomon began to see himself AS a god.

In the beginning, he was able to say,   "So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me." (Ecl 2:9).  But as he tried to work things out in the end, he had to admit, "All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, "I will be wise," but it was far from me." (Ecl 7:23) 

What happened?

The story in Ecclesiastes starts with him having it all, and wondering what it meant.  If a poor man and a rich man die the same, what does it matter? He tried to apply his wisdom, but it failed him because he applied it to gain, instead of where he had asked it for- for his people.  That's where the problem began:

Ecc 6:3  If a man fathers a hundred, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, and his soul is not filled with good, and also is for him no burial; I say, a miscarriage is better than he. 

He was not seeking GOOD.  He was trying to re-write the world in a way God hadn't made it...

Ecc 7:13  Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?

But lost as he was, trying to play ALL angles, he didn't grasp this- he thought he could be know-all,be-all.  But that position has no vacancies, and the attempt broke him:

Ecc 2:20  So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun,
Ecc 2:21  because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 

He tried to debate with God over things, and quickly found out that doesn't work, either:

Ecc 5:6  Never let your mouth cause you to sin and don't proclaim in the presence of the angel, "My promise was a mistake," for why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy what you've undertaken? 

All of his study- his attempt at godhood-on-my-own- lead him to see that God had it under control- and he did NOT:

Ecc 7:27  Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things--
Ecc 7:28  which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.
Ecc 7:29  See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

Eventually, he was humbled- and that came when God came back and pronounced the curse on his future.  Not that God didn't start setting it up right away, as he was beset by first an enemy he thought destroyed (Hadad, a son of Edom who had fled to Egypt, see 1 Kings 11 for all of these); then, a personal Robin Hood to his Sir Guy (Rezon of Zobah); and finally, the one who would steal the kingdom from his son- a man of his own inner circle (Jeroboam) to break his heart the final extent.  And yet, instead of accepting God's judgment as his father David had, he went into "Saul mode":

1Ki 11:40  Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam. But Jeroboam arose and fled into Egypt, to Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon.

At last, at some point, he comes to himself, and humbles himself before God- the writing of Ecclesiastes is the evidence of that.  And he tries to repair the damage his 'search' had caused- Proverbs was an attempt to keep Rehoboam from just what he did to cause the revolution.  And finally, he admits he had overreached himself:

Ecc 12:11  The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd.
Ecc 12:12  My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecc 12:13  The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecc 12:14  For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. 

 

 But of his historical record, all that remains is:

1Ki 11:41  Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the Book of the Acts of Solomon?
1Ki 11:42  And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years.
1Ki 11:43  And Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David his father. And Rehoboam his son reigned in his place. 

The thing he feared most- all his works were left to a fool.