1 Kings 5

1 Kings 5:1-18

SOLOMON AND THE SACRED TEMPLE1 Kings 1-11.IN previous discussions, we have called attention to the chronology of the Old Testament, and have shown that the Books are correctly placed from the standpoint of history. Certainly the Books of the Kings belong where found in the Sacred Canon. David has held the field of view in the Books of Samuel, and I Kings opens with a record of his age, infirmity and approaching death.The Books of Biblical history make up, for the most part, an unbroken series. The events reported as attending the king’s death are at once natural, in keeping with the times and customs of that far-off century. The scramble between the sons as to succession in office and the inheritance of riches and honor, are easily believable because they belong to every century, and abate not. The methods of Adonijah, amounting to merely a repetition of Absolom’s abortive attempt, reveal the mental inability and moral and political incapacity of that ambitious boy.

His neglect to take Nathan, the Prophet, into counsel, or to seek advice from Benaiah and other mighty men, or even regard his brother Solomon’s claims, reveal the fact that he knew himself to be indulging a political plot that could succeed only in shadows and secrecy.The opening chapter makes clear the fact that the Prophet of God is a capital statesman, for it was Nathan who brought this whole matter to the attention of Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon; and through her, reached the king and settled the question, and seated Bathsheba’s son on the throne.An interesting study is excited by those verses in this same first chapter which reveal two things; first, that the dying man is far more interested in things eternal than in things temporal (1 Kings 1:29); more deeply concerned in permanent Israel than in his own passing throne (1 Kings 1:30); more alive to the moral and spiritual interests of his country than to its material and political supremacy; and in proportion to that interest, anxious to be succeeded in office by the one man to whom he could intrust both God’s people and God’s truth (1 Kings 2:2 fol.).With this introduction, we come naturally to three themes that compass somewhat clearly the chapters of our text: Solomon’s Succession to the Throne; Solomon’s Greatest Single Achievement; The Secrets of Solomon’s Signal Failure.SOLOMON’S TO THE THRONE“Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father; and his kingdom was established greatly” (1 Kings 2:12).In coming to this office, he came as his father’s favorite. In the establishment of Israel, Isaac desired the line through Esau, and Rebecca contrived to secure it through her favorite, Jacob; but in this instance, father and mother agree as to the son who shall stand in the father’s stead.

It is not at all likely that this choice was wholly a result of the certain influence exerted over the king by the beautiful Bathsheba. That impulse was doubtless present, but the controlling sentiment of the matter rested upon a firmer foundation. A father knows his own children. He knows their weaknesses and their strength; their abilities and their disabilities; their traits of dependableness and their habits of deceit. As between Adonijah and Solomon, David did not need to debate. From the days when as infants they lay in his arms until now, he had studied them, and doubtless often with this very hour in view; and his judgment was already made and had been communicated to both Bathsheba and the Prophet.

It is difficult for children to imagine that their parents understand them, properly estimate them, justly judge them; but practically every family furnishes a positive proof that the best judges of character are the very people who have sought to control conduct and direct endeavor. The after history of Solomon is not all the Christian reader could wish.

Had David lived on for two-score more years, feeble, infirm, having surrendered the reigns of rule into Solomon’s hands, he would have seen much come to pass that would have grieved his aged soul; but in spite of all that, he still would have gone to his grave, convinced beyond debate that Adonijah would have fallen shorter still, and Israel’s interests suffered more deeply in his hands.These facts are the basis of a second reason why the rulership went to Solomon.He was the Lord’s chosen. Men easily make mistakes in judging their fellows. Fathers even fall short in truly estimating the worth or worthlessness of their own, but God, who “looketh on the heart” rather than on the “outward appearance”, and who knows what is in man, as against what man imagines and announces himself to be, makes no such mistake. With the discernment of an infinite wisdom, Jehovah saw in Solomon mental traits, moral convictions, spiritual aspirations, that led Him, as He was led in the case of David, the father, to elect this man from among many sons.The reaction in my mind, on reading the first chapters of I Kings, was a revolt. In my haste I came near questioning the wisdom of God to set such a man as Solomon on the throne, or to lend His approval to his methods of government. That grew out of the slaughters recorded in chapter 2.

My soul sickened when he sent his servant Benaiah to slay his brother, “and he fell upon him that he died” (1 Kings 2:25); when Joab was taken from the horns of the altar and slain without mercy (1 Kings 2:30-34); when Shimei perished at Benaiah’s hands and by the king’s command (1 Kings 2:39-41), I confess I came to the phrase, “And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon”, with a sickening sense, asking myself, “Can one cement the foundations of a true throne with the blood of his brothers, and be under a Divine benediction?”But I am glad for further study. Our judgments are often immature; our speech is often hasty, and when we take issue with the Divine will, our way is always mistaken.

I had overlooked for the time that each of these men had not only courted death, but practically compelled it, and had compelled it by the violation of the Law of the Lord. For instance, the one of them to whom the reader’s sympathy goes out most quickly is Joab, the warrior, the man who had once favored David and fought for him; but alas, when one reviews the history of Joab, he consents to the justice of his fate. How many he had slain, and with what perfidy he had performed these slaughters! Guile had been his brutal instrument. He took Abner “aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smote him there under the fifth rib, that he died” (2 Samuel 3:27). He concealed his sword while whispering in Amasa’s ear and yet ripped him until his bowels fell to the ground (2 Samuel 20:10).

The Law of the Lord was, “If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from Mine altar, that he may die” (Exodus 21:14); and the Law of the Lord is living still and Solomon’s servant is merely executing the same.Slaughter is horrible; battle and death wound and offend our spirits; but battle and death and slaughter are not, when all are combined, the undermining factors of civilization, the fiends of successful rebellion against all moral worth, that disregard of Divine law and disobedience to the same, surely effect. It is important, I grant you, that men shall live their natural days, but far more important is it that the law of God shall live.

In the last analysis, death is the natural incident of disobedience, so that the brutal features of Solomon’s reign are features intended to end the shedding of blood. It was a war against war; it was a just judgment against unjust judgments; it was a capital punishment of most capital crimes.Solomon also became the choice of the people.“And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.“And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them” (1 Kings 1:39-40).It is a great sequence when the public acclaims the will of the Lord. The government chosen of God and clearly accepted by the people has magnificent promise, and holds momentous prospects. It is fairly evident from the whole text that Solomon had those personal traits that rendered Absalom popular in his day—the traits of physical beauty and prowess; but in Solomon’s case, intellectual acumen and even a certain spiritual power added to his acceptance with the people. It may be true that the designing politician easily deceives the public and often experiences undeserved popularity; but few uninspired sentences are more true than Abraham Lincoln’s, “You cannot fool all the people all of the time”.We are not enamored of the notion of the old Latin proverb, “Vox populi, vox Dei”, for it is a rule that has more exceptions than applications!

But on the other hand, the final judgment of man is compelled to conform to the judgment of God, for what God sees and understands by His infinite wisdom becomes increasingly evident by the action that makes history; and sooner or later the voice of the people will second the voice of God.Victory ought to be comparatively easy for a young man entering upon an important office with the backing of a kingly father, an infinite Lord and the will of the people. At many points Solomon witnessed success; his rule was long continued; his material prosperity became the amazement of the age; his political powers rapidly increased, while his mental and spiritual perceptions were the envy of kings and queens.I think, however, it is well to dwell uponSOLOMON’S SINGLE This was not his alliance with Pharaoh, nor his marriage into the king’s house, nor the political supremacy to which he attained, nor the luxurious living in which he indulged himself, nor the splendors of his court!

On the other hand, it was the creation of the temple of God. That achievement is as easily linked up, however, with some facts of his mental and spiritual existence as it is with his political and religious supremacy.He laid for life’s fabric a true foundation. When God appeared to him in Gibeon in a dream at night, and said, “Ask what I shall give thee” (1 Kings 3:5), the answer revealed the soul of the youth. “Give * * Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad” (1 Kings 3:9). A prayer like that could result only in the Divine favor; yea, even in the Divine affection. So far as the record goes, the boy Solomon had been a beautiful lad, his life clean, his conduct upright, his character above reproach; and now to have such a prayer emanate from his lips invites both human and Divine love. We are compelled to think that the principles which compel God’s love are not wholly different from those which control human affection.

When the rich young ruler, white-souled, intellectually accomplished, spiritually enthusiastic, fell at the feet of Jesus to inquire what good thing he could do to inherit eternal life, Christ looked upon him to love him. It may be true that “by the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified” in the sight of God; but it is not true that God disregards the deeds of the Law, looks with contempt or indifference upon high human conduct, takes no vital concern in beautiful character.

The whole Scripture seems to clearly intimate that upright conduct linked with spiritual expression is lovely in the sight of God.Neither the Bible nor Spirit-instructed men imagine, with the author of a certain University textbook, that “the human intellect is merely a brute mind greatly developed,” nor do they hold with another author, compulsory upon students’ study in some institutions, that the soul is accounted for by the development of the social in brute life.On the contrary, the Bible teaches that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”, including intellect and spirit, his reasoning powers and his capability of receiving revelation.If Solomon lived now and was a student in certain departments of the University, they would be teaching him that the only possible way of having wisdom is to evolve the ape intellectuality to a higher plane; but suffering the misfortune of living and dying before Darwin’s day, the great soul of the world’s wisest man knew no better than to look upward instead of downward for such acquisition, and pray, “Give * * Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad” (1 Kings 3:9).There are some of us who are perfectly willing to be regarded as belonged to Mediaeval times, if Mediaevalism takes the Scripture against the speculation of man and looks above for true wisdom instead of back, beneath, or below. If I could have my personal choice for every child born into my home, concerning the whole matter of education, I would rather have him or her begin the real battle of life begging for such a blessing and believing that God is capable of granting it, than to have him made familiar with all the sophistries and speculations of those modern text-books that turn men to believing that they are a big improvement on brute ancestors, and boasting the same. One thing is fairly clear, namely, that men who believe God and build life according to the laws of His Book, are the simple men of the centuries to which they belong, and become the inspiring examples to children born of later days.He built not for self alone, but he remembered God. It is not difficult to believe, if one follows the personal history of this potentate, that his steps are determined by definite objectives. When all Israel had come under his sway, he appointed twelve officers, “which provided victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a year made provision” (1 Kings 4:7). In other words, he was a man who organized government and who organized finances, and witnessed the fruits of his organization in both fields by bringing the entire people to subjection and creating a palace of such splendor and attendants as the world has seldom seen. “Forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen” (1 Kings 4:26), sound almost as extravagant as the years of Methuselah’s life, and yet there is far less doubt of the latter than of the former.

That he was not a mere indolent, daddled in the lap of a daily luxury— wrung from unwilling taxpayers, is everywhere apparent. He was a man among men, a prince among thinkers, a king among courtiers.

His fame was in all the nations. He spake 3,000 proverbs; he wrote 1,005 songs; he made all nature to contribute in illustration, and he compelled admiration from all the kings of the earth (1 Kings 4:29-34). His banqueting halls assembled the world’s elite, his wisdom astonished the world’s wise.His alliance with King Hiram, however, was made, not that he might further extend his kingly power, nor that he might exercise a wider world influence, but in the interest of A TEMPLE OF GOD. In the realms of Hiram were the cedars of Lebanon coveted for that sanctuary. In the able-bodied men of his own kingdom were the thousands he proposed to set at the task. He laid upon these competent builders a tax of time, tithing every three months, and builders in wood and stone wrought together that the temple might rise.

And what a temple it was!That sanctuary, glorious as is this description, requires many another line to do it justice. 2 Chronicles 3, 4 tells of the same great subject. The tabernacle was the prophecy of it, and the New Jerusalem to be let down from Heaven, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”, is the final substance of which this was the symbol.

It arose without sound of a hammer; it excelled all the sanctuaries that the world had ever seen or has yet seen; its appointments were the most expensive and yet intended in every case to turn the mind to God, to teach the heart to pray, the feet to walk in the path of the just, and the tongue to sing.There are some extravagances that are justified. It pays to put great sacrifice into the proper education of your child, for when the preparation days are over, life is to follow; and it pays to put thousands of dollars into a sanctuary, because when the men who sacrificed to erect it sleep in the dust, the sanctuary will live and pour upon the world streams of sacred influence.There is, however, in the first verse of the 7th chapter a significant remark, “But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house”. In other words, while he built for himself, he at the same time and on a vaster scale, built for God. There are people who think when they build for themselves that is all they can do. God’s house must wait until mine is finished! Divinely sacred obligations must be delayed until the domestic and secular are discharged.

God cannot receive a gift until the grocer is fully paid. How strangely men reason!

How quickly they forget revelation. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness?”. It would be an interesting thing to investigate history to find whether Israel was impoverished by the erection of the Temple, or whether she was not enriched instead, to discover whether those were days of financial reverses or the one period of Israel’s material prosperity.The reign of Solomon remains forever glorious and stands as a symbol of all material success. Sacrifices for the sanctuary do not impoverish—they enrich; they do not bleed—they bless! The only man who suffers when the sanctuary is going up is the man who “withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty”.But an equally significant thing is found in another statement from this Scripture.Solomon knew that an elegant Temple was inadequate without God. One no sooner reads, “So was ended all the work that king Solomon made for the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 7:51), than he finds the same king exercising some of the wisdom that had come in answer to his prayer. That wisdom voiced itself in the decision to “bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion”.

That ark of the covenant represented the Divine Presence and the expression of the Divine favor. Until it came into the Temple, the Temple itself, with all its splendid proportions and appointments, was destitute of spiritual power.

There is no advantage resident in an elegant house called “a church of God”. There are many fanes that are cold, ceremonious, spiritually dead. In all their splendid precincts there is not the sound of an angel’s wing, nor the sense of a spiritual presence. The most pathetic sight in the world is the stately sanctuary out of which God has gone, or into which He has never come.I have seen, in the Old World, cathedrals that were merely show-houses open to the eyes of American visitors; but few folk ever gathered in their spacious halls, and even those who came had not sufficient spiritual life to start one “sleepy rivulet of praise,” and the consequence was that a vested choir of boys were salaried to provide a substitute. They are elegant sarcophagi, enshrining the dead forms of a former faith; and we rehearse all of this to remind those who worship in this house of God and by whose splendid and heroic sacrifices these buildings are rising at this city center—houses better adapted to Divine worship than any I have ever seen beside—that they could and would become mausoleums and empty ones at that, if out of them we lost God, or into them we failed to bring the ark of the covenant with its Shekinah glory, symbol of the Presence of God, and its typical content, Aaron’s rod that budded, sign of life coming out of death; the pot of manna, type of the bread from Heaven, and the tables of the Law, a faithful transcription of the Divine Word.I say it solemnly and with the profoundest conviction that these buildings will mean to us and to our children and to our city and country and to the world, exactly as much as may be measured by the Divine presence in them, and the emanation of the Word of God from them. They are not an end in themselves, but a medium instead; and the medium of a message Divine.

If God be here, and here His Word be preached and believed and practised, then the untold ages will unfold the influences of this sanctuary and the nations of the world will feel it.SOLOMON’S SECRETS OF SIGNAL FAILUREThe Bible is unique in that it as faithfully presents the secrets of failure as it does those of achievement. Its photographic effects reveal blemishes as surely as beauty, and make as evident the sins of men as they make clear the sanctity of God.

Through these same chapters there runs an undertone, a minor key, a note set to sobs, and Solomon is the subject of this as well.He started wrong by a compromise of his convictions. Life is a composite! Conduct is paradoxical! Character itself is unnatural compromise! The good and bad mix together. Successes and failures are sometimes so interwoven that the lesser is not seen in the light of the greater.In the 3rd chapter we read, “And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter” (1 Kings 3:1). That is a significant step. Its original objective may have been political, but politics and morals cannot be divorced; life and religion cannot be separated.

We are told that “Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father”, but there must be added, “only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places” (1 Kings 3:3). How significant! An unholy alliance results in disloyalty to the Divinest, and in partial departure from the plain Word of God. Thereby a question is raised, “Which of these elements will conquer at last?” As Joseph Parker says: There may be but a semi-colon between that one path of life and the other in the verbal record of the two, and yet that semi-colon is finally swelled to an infinity of distance and only time will tell which triumphed the statutes of the Lord or the incense of idolatry. When one leaves the incense of idolatry for the statutes of the Lord, he faces away from the morning twilight to a perfect day; but when one leaves the statutes of the Lord for the incense in high places, he is faced from the evening twilight toward utter and increasing darkness.There is a wonderful psychology in one of David’s prayers, “Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression” (Psalms 19:12-13).

There is no doubt whatever that that very utterance describes the intimate and progressive relation between a mere error in judgment or thought, and that final sin described as “the great transgression” or the iniquity unpardonable.A second secret of his failure was pride in culture and possessions. His wisdom went on exhibit (1 Kings 4:34).

The kings and queens of the earth came to Jerusalem (1 Kings 10), not merely to study and admire the material possessions of King Solomon, but to sit under his scintillating genius, give audience to his matchless moral maxims known as “proverbs” and applaud his superior and almost unnumbered songs. The most insidious temptations of modern times take those two identical forms, the exhibit of wisdom on the one side, and of wealth on the other. It is a serious question now which pride is the more arrogant, that of culture or of wealth. Through the first, men reject God and set themselves above the stars. Through the second, men neglect God and degrade themselves below demons.Criticism is easy and men can be found who pass unsparing censure upon Solomon, but when we see the millions going down before one or the other of these temptations, why should we be surprised that Solomon’s feet slid under the shove of both?Education is a great thing, but when education brings a man to be wise above “what is written”, it converts him into a cultured fool.Material wealth has its advantages, but when riches result in luxuries that pander only to lust, then indeed they prove themselves the “root of all evil”.I shall not stop now to elaborate on the dedication of the Temple, to remark upon the prayers made in the place, and the promises of God uttered for its good. The service of dedication, in which we now engage together, affords us further opportunity for such study.But I want to conclude by calling your attention to the contents of the 11th chapter.

It might be named “The Eclipse of Solomon’s Sun”!Through unholy alliances he lost out with God. The chapter not only records his love of many strange women, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites, etc., but as one author has said, lays emphasis upon the fact that they were “strange” women, not in the ordinary sense of scarlet, but in the Bible sense, strangers to God and His Word.

The alliance was not so much a personal one, with wives and concubines, as it was an irreligious one with false systems.The Lord had warned the Children of Israel concerning the nations about, “Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods”; and yet it is written, “Solomon clave unto these in love”; and again, “his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel”. No wonder it was said, “And the Lord was angry with Solomon”, nor yet further theatened concerning his kingdom, “I will rend it out of the hand of thy son”.Whatever the alliance is that turns one from God and His Word, that is unholy, and in the end, destined to destroy.The 11th chapter of I Kings is pathetic in that it records the down-going of Solomon. He not only worshipped at false shrines but even consented to construct the same (1 Kings 11:7). To turn from God is eventually to turn against God. To admit a false shrine into your life is to cease from worship at the true one, and who will tell the final result? With Solomon the foundations crumbled.

His religion wrong, his kingdom rent; his religion wrong, his friends turned to enemies, and his lovers sought his life, and when the day broke that personal, political, fraternal and domestic disaster swept over his soul, wave upon wave, it was the same day in which he must prepare to meet his God, for the record concludes, “And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead” (1 Kings 11:43).It will forever remain a question as to what that sleep meant for the soul of the matchless man. Theologians will always dispute whether he was saved or lost and whether he went to his grave in calm confidence or with cringing and justifiable fear.But human judgment is inadequate, superficial, even censorious.

How blessed the circumstance that Divine judgment is after another manner! “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things”. Personally, I believe that Solomon was a saved man, whose weaknesses, incidental to the flesh, never wholly eclipsed his faith in God, and whose disloyal acts were Divinely judged, and sentence executed even while he lived, whose soul was “saved; yet so as by fire”, and many of whose works were “burned” even before his very eyes. The pathos of his death is not in the danger that for him to be dead is to be in hell. It is in the failure to so fight the battle of life as to come to a victorious close, to a triumphant entry, to the shout of a Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Timothy 4:7-8).It is worth an eternal contest against the adversary and his multiplied forms of temptation, to be able to come to the last hour as Dwight L. Moody met the last enemy, when, silencing his daughter’s prayers, he said, “No, no, Emma; don’t ask that. The earth is receding; the heavens are opening; God is calling. I am going!”