03.11. 1 Kings 11
1 Kings 11:1-43 1 Kings 11:1-13 - The Cause of the Kingdom’s Ruin In this chapter we come to the history of the responsible king, a subject the Second Book of Chronicles passes over in absolute silence.
Up to this point, though it is a question of a man and therefore of an imperfect being, we have been able to see in the life of Solomon a beautiful unity joined to the wisdom that highly exalted the king’s name among the nations, in association with the name of the Lord. The greatness, the majesty, the power, the wealth of his reign were but a feeble image of what will be seen during the Millennium under the reign of the true King of Glory.
Now God points out the blemish in this reign to us. It was not the marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter, for this was indispensable if Solomon were to be a type of Christ in His government. Joseph in his time had contracted a similar union; the sons who issued therefrom had given their names to two of the tribes of Israel after having received the blessing of the patriarch, the father of this people. What is more, Solomon had acted according to the thoughts of God toward this Gentile wife, and Chronicles is careful, as we have seen before, to show us that the king did not give her a place of immediate nearness to the ark of the covenant and the city of the son of David. Thus it was not on account of this union that blame fell upon Solomon; as a millennial type, he, "the light of the nations," of necessity went beyond the ordinary relationships of a king of Israel. Also the Word sets Pharaoh’s daughter in a place that is distinct from the other strange wives (1 Kings 11:1).
"But king Solomon loved many foreign women, besides the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites; of the nations of which Jehovah had said to the children of Israel, Ye shall not go into to them, neither shall they come in to you; they would certainly turn away your heart after their gods . . . and his wives turned away his heart" (1 Kings 11:1-3). Solomon’s sin lay in having "loved many foreign women." These latter had played a relatively restrained role in David’s life, and yet, as we have seen in 2 Samuel, he had borne some sad and often dreadful consequences in his children. By the very discipline which had resulted from these prohibited marriages God had of old kept His anointed from the snares that might have been spread for his piety. But if his lusts had swept him away in his affair with Bathsheba, a daughter of Israel, Solomon’s lusts attracted him to foreign women. And yet God had said: "And thou shalt make no marriages with them: Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor take his daughter for thy son; for he will turn away thy son from following me, and they will serve other gods, and the anger of Jehovah will be kindled against you, and he will destroy thee quickly" (Deuteronomy 7:3-4). And again: "And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods" (Exodus 34:16). At the head of this humiliating list we find the Moabites who had led Israel astray into the idolatry of Baal-Peor, having gained control of them through the lust of the flesh (Numbers 25:1-5). All the nations - the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zidonians - at the borders of Canaan hated God and His people. The Hittites, mentioned in last place, should have been exterminated, and never had been. Solomon was openly disobeying god who had said to His people: "Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in to you." There was a double prohibition. We are in danger of going to the world or of letting it come in to us. Perhaps the latter possibility is even more dangerous than the first. On account of conscience towards God the Christian might perhaps abstain from an act of self-will or of disobedience that might incline him to go to the world, whereas the world might more easily seduce him by coming to him. Little by little it insinuates itself into our homes and into our lives, and often when we open our eyes to the danger, it is already too late. "They would certainly turn away your heart after their gods," the Lord had said. Marriage with the world will necessarily lead us to the religion of the world. This is an earnest word and well worth being weighed by every godly soul today. In the measure that we avoid or cultivate such union, our religion will take on a heavenly or an earthly character. "To these Solomon was attached in love." And it was this same king whose lips, by divine inspiration, had dropped wisdom for others and had shown them the path to follow with respect to the strange woman lest they fall into "all evil in the midst of the congregation and the assembly" (Proverbs 5:1-14)! It was he, too, who in the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 7:1-27) had insisted upon the terrible consequences of evil conduct. What blindness! What a sad spectacle! He had taught others and had not taught himself. He, the responsible head of the people, did things from which the people were to abstain, but in which the king failing, he would draw down judgment not only on himself, but also on those whom he should have been feeding, leading, and protecting!
"His wives turned away his heart" - the word is repeated in 1 Kings 11:4. It is a terrible thing when that which is in the world lodges in the heart and takes control of it, thus turning one’s affections aside from their only object to turn them towards vile, shameful, guilty objects. We would remark that these things did not arise suddenly in the life of this man of faith, or at least their consequences did not develop all at once. For "it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods." Time was needed for this fleshly sowing to bear its fruit. Who would have believed that the Solomon of the temple, at one time on his knees, spreading out his hands toward God in the sight of the people, would become an idolater? Perhaps today some might say that he had a large heart, respecting the freedom of conscience of others; some would adorn this idolatry with some lovely humanitarian or social label. But of what value is human opinion? The question is what God thinks of it. God was dishonoured. "Solomon did evil in the sight of Jehovah." It was not indifference, hateful enough in itself, to build these high places for his wives: it was associating himself with their worship and becoming one with them. It also says, "Solomon went after Ashtoreth (Venus Astarte) the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites." He himself is regarded as an idol-worshipper. He "followed not fully Jehovah, as David his father," that is, he did not follow him to the end. And yet the Lord "had appeared to him twice," the first time at Gibeon, the second time after the consecration of the temple. God had warned him about idol worship (1 Kings 9:6-9), showing him its terrible consequences for the people - and he had not kept His commandment! David had committed serious, humiliating errors, but at least he always kept the Lord in view. Even after his fall, his first words were "I have sinned against the Lord." All the affliction of this man of faith had only the glory of God as its goal, and the close of his life had magnified grace joined to complete selfjudgment. Such was not the case with Solomon. We do not even hear the cry of a convicted conscience from him when the terrible words, "Forasmuch as this is done by thee," resound in his ears just as once the words "Because thou hast despised me," had rung in his father’s ears. We are about to learn what very different feelings God’s discipline elicited from his heart. But God would have him know all that is to happen to him. The kingdom, that kingdom of glory spread by divine power to the borders of the nations, was to be violently torn away from him; his son would keep but one tribe, Judah, for Benjamin scarcely counted. In a moment power, majesty, wealth, unprecedented glory, the submission of nations - all was to melt away, and in the midst of the storm only a poor remnant preserved by God would remain, like a fragile boat which had lost everything: oars, sails, masts, and ropes - except only its compass and rudder. As far as man is concerned, this is the end of the kingdom. But what a perspective for the future! After the judgment of the kingdom of Satan, the Beast, and the False Prophet, the kingdom of the Divine Solomon will reappear like the sun that shines in its strength, never again to depend on the fallible obedience of man, but upon the infallible responsibility of the King whom God shall anoint upon Zion, the mountain of His holiness.
1 Kings 11:14-43 - The Enemies
God does not limit Himself to revealing to Solomon the judgment which out of regard for David his father would fall upon Rehoboam his son instead of upon himself; but the king’s unfaithfulness would also bring down on himself the Lord’s discipline during the last years of his reign. Peace, that fruit characteristic of this reign, is destroyed; Solomon goes through a period abounding in troubles, seditions, and plots against his throne; nations such as Egypt who had in former times deemed being allied with him an honour, now nourish, raise to honour, and support his worst enemies. All kinds of ties are weakened. The yoke of the king weighs heavily upon the people in order to avoid internal sedition. This results only in poorly repressed discontentment which breaks out from time to time (1 Kings 12:4).
God stirs up enemies against Solomon from among those nations toward whom his lusts had drawn him. Edom was filled with deadly hatred against Israel because David, by the hand of Joab, had cut off all the males of that land (2 Samuel 8:13-14; 1 Chronicles 18:12; Psalms 60:1). Hadad had escaped with a few servants. But had his hatred lessened because Solomon had taken Edomite women as wives? Hadad had fled to Egypt, had been welcomed at Pharaoh’s court, had become his brother-in-law, and his son had been brought up among the heirs to the throne. Where do the sympathies and favors of the world go? Not to David, but to David’s enemy. One emotion in the heart of Hadad speaks more loudly than all the honours and delights of Egypt’s court: hatred, hatred against Solomon. He gives up all his advantages to satisfy this hatred. Doubtless the conduct of David’s companions had provided the motive for it, but Joab and David were dead: the hatred continued. Underneath it all, the world always hates the Lord’s anointed, and conduct of believers, whether more or less blameable, only serves as a pretext for this hatred.
Rezon, the servant of Hadadezer, king of Zobah, whom David had smitten (2 Samuel 8:3-8; 2 Samuel 10:6), is a second adversary. Rezon becomes king in Damascus and reigns over Syria. "He abhorred Israel" (1 Kings 11:23-25). The world is like Hadad and Rezon. As long as we maintain the place relative to it that the cross of Christ authorizes us to take - the cross by which the world is crucified to us and we to the world (Galatians 6:14) - as long as we consider the world as a defeated enemy (John 16:33), it does not make a move. But let us make alliance with it, then it cannot forget its defeat, and though it may perhaps maintain an appearance of indifference, it will not hate us any less. The last, the most dangerous enemy of Solomon’s, is the enemy from within, Jeroboam (1 Kings 11:26-40). He was "Solomon’s servant," an Ephrathite or Ephraimite. Solomon had set him over Ephraim for the work of the fortification of Millo, which was the defense of Jerusalem against enemies from the north. It was a most dangerous kind of move, but what was Solomon able to foresee? God alone knew. Through his duties Jeroboam knew all the secrets of the stronghold, and he gained the sympathies of his own tribe as well. In the same way, when difficulties arise among God’s people, the greatest danger comes from those who by their activity have appropriated the principles of their brethren and have succeeded in substituting themselves for Christ in winning the sympathies of the many. Such are the weapons they use to make a breach among the people of God. Their motives seem to be unselfish; like Jeroboam, they would deliver the people from a yoke that is difficult to bear; in reality they are Satan’s instruments to destroy the testimony of God, as we shall soon see. And yet they are servants of Christ, as Jeroboam was of Solomon!
Now a prophet appears. Just as Samuel at the time of the ruin of the priesthood, so the fall of the kingship now raises up a prophet. He becomes, as we shall see so strikingly in the course of these books, the bond between the people and God when kingship in responsibility has failed. Ahijah the prophet meets Jeroboam outside Jerusalem. He rends the new garment with which he is clothed (indeed, the kingdom was still quite new), and gives ten parts to Jeroboam. At that very moment the kingdom is torn out of the hands of Solomon, although this fact is only realized later. One tribe is left to the house of David on account of the free choice of grace with regard to David and Jerusalem. "They have forsaken me," says the Lord, "and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in my sight, and my statutes and mine ordinances, as David his father" (1 Kings 11:33). "They" was Solomon, the king! No doubt, all the people later followed that same path, but at this moment one man had sinned - the king. Set before God in a position of responsibility for all the people, his unfaithfulness brought judgment upon Israel. What a severe punishment Solomon had incurred. In 1 Kings 11:34 God, ever coming back to the grace he had shown to David, adds: "And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen for myself to put my name there" (1 Kings 11:36). Grace is more in God’s eyes than all glory, or rather, grace is the most precious part of glory, for it is, so to speak, at the head of all divine perfections.
"And it shall be," says Ahijah to Jeroboam, "if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that which is right in my sight, in keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, that I will be with thee, and build thee a lasting house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee" (1 Kings 11:38). A new responsibility now devolves upon Jeroboam. God was giving him a privileged position. His house was to be as sure as that of David, if he would hearken to the commandments of the Lord. But God makes one reservation: "And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever" (1 Kings 11:39). In due time that grace upon which David’s kingdom was founded would again assert its rights, for it was not upon grace, but upon responsibility that Jeroboam’s kingdom and that of Solomon itself were established. The promises of God are without repentance; He delights in grace. Thus the future kingdom of the true King of Glory will be based upon a new covenant, a covenant of grace where God alone is under obligation, upon a new creation - that which was not the case with Solomon’s kingdom.
"But not forever": one finds in the ways of God, periods where judgment, so to say, eclipses grace. It is not that grace no longer exists - it remains absolutely the same, but it ceases to shine out so that other perfections of divine glory, such as righteousness and judgment, can be manifested. So too the sun which is more than one hundred times the diameter of the earth is eclipsed by the shadow of the latter. When the eclipse is over, the enormous star appears again in all its brightness, for the shadow that covered it has taken away none of its splendor, except to the eyes of men.
Solomon seeks to kill Jeroboam (1 Kings 11:40). Such are the feelings produced in his heart by this discipline! Instead of bringing him into God’s presence bowed, humbly submitting to the chastening, the obstacle God had raised up to him only irritates him and provokes him to seek to free himself of it. How sad the heart that has lost its communion with God and that does not judge itself. What has Solomon, the king of righteousness, come to? His heart is no longer upright before God. How far he is from his beginnings!
Jeroboam flees to Egypt, remaining there until Solomon’s death.
All the events related in 1 Kings 11:1-43 are missing in 2 Chronicles, but two expressions in 1 Kings 9:1-28 give us to know that they are omitted by design. "And the rest of the acts of Solomon first and last, are they not written in the words of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam the son of Nebat?" (2 Chronicles 9:29). An omission in the Word of God always has its reason, and we have so often called attention to this one that there is no need to repeat it.