Lately I’ve been reading through 1 Kings and the Gospel of Matthew. Today, I read 1 Kings 9, and you know, I’ve gotta say that for a man who’s known to be the wisest man to have ever lived, Solomon was really pretty dumb. I mean, here’s this guy to whom the Lord gave such greater wisdom and discernment for good and evil than anybody else ever in all of history, and than anybody said to come after (except Jesus of course), but yet made so many stupid mistakes! For example:
Solomon’s Unwise Decisions
Treaties By Many Marriages
King Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter as a means of a peace treaty. First of all, she’s not an Israelite, and the Law said that no Israelite was to marry a non-Israelite. Second, the marriage was based on a peace treaty with Pharaoh. Granted many marriages in those days were based on property and contracts, but after all the history between the two nations, Solomon decided to make a treaty with Pharaoh? Wouldn’t you think this put a damper on God’s impact on His people when He reminded them of what He did for them?
God: ‘I brought you from out of Egypt…’
People: ‘Wait, Egypt? Oh, you mean that beautiful place I visited the other day to buy incense.’
Idolatry
Solomon married many women as treaty-binders also, as well as picked up many women as concubines. Now, I know this was “a king thing”, but it was still against God’s statutes and ordinances, which Solomon promised to follow.
1 Kings 11 says that Solomon “loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, ‘You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.’ Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 hundred concubines (1000 women in total!), and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.“
Poor money management
Solomon misunderstood the prophecy of David’s son (seed) building a house for the Lord that would stand forever. So figuring the prophecy was about him (but we know today that God was talking about Jesus), Solomon started off building the house for the Lord. And as Solomon built, it’s like he said, ‘sure, what the heck, let’s get everything done now while we’re at it’, and built more than the house for the Lord. Here, I believe Greed led Solomon to build “all that Solomon desired to build.”
However, then the Lord brought the Queen of Sheba, who basically replenished his riches upon her visit.
Solomon’s Main Unwise Decision
And so what confuses me is, how could a man with such wisdom and discernment make so many stupid mistakes and decisions? But here’s what I’m thinking… Solomon had great wisdom and discernment for right and wrong, yet what led him to make such stupid mistakes was that he chose not to obey. It’s like his conscious tells him one thing, but he chooses not to listen to it, and instead goes off and does his own thing. I’ve mentioned this problem before in a previous post about people making decisions based on feelings and desires versus what they know to be right or wrong. It’s also said that wisdom often originates from the mistakes we experience. Could it be that the 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs that Solomon wrote (1 Kings 4:32) were all based on the experiences of his own mistakes?
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