1 Kings 3:1

THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN OF SOLOMON

(Note: 1 Kings 3:3-11 are devoted to a discussion of the reign of Solomon)

In a sense, the previous chapter gave us the beginning of Solomon's reign, but it was concerned chiefly with his "liquidation" of potential enemies such as Shimei and Abiathar and with his carrying out of David's sentence of death upon Joab. Here, we have the actual beginning of Solomon's reign, which is usually described in the most complimentary terms. As LaSor said, "For some strange reason Christian literature has idealized Solomon, so that he hardly resembles the scriptural portrait."[1]

It should be remembered that Solomon did NOT build his glorious empire; he only inherited it, and that he at once sowed the seeds of its destruction culminating in the near-total loss of it as soon as he died. His vaunted "wisdom" was not demonstrated by any noticeable application of it in his own undisciplined life. He violated with abandon the commandments of God: (1) which forbade his multiplying wives for himself; (2) the amassing of silver and gold; and (3) the accumulation of vast numbers of war-horses (Deuteronomy 17:16-17). In addition to all this, he became a gross idolater. Even that marvelous temple which he built, and to which God indeed accommodated himself for the sake of his people, was never, in any ultimate sense, the will of God, as a reference to 1 Samuel 8 clearly indicates.

Despite the consummate wickedness of Solomon and his scandalous reign, however, the Jewish people were completely captivated and enamoured by it, an infatuation which they never outgrew; because, even in the times of the Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord, they desired nothing either in heaven or upon earth as much as they desired the restoration of that old Solomonic empire. Furthermore, their rejection of Christ himself was, in the last analysis, due solely to their realization that the Saviour's "Kingdom of Heaven" was something utterly different from the earthly kingdom of Solomon.

"The shipwreck of Solomon is surely the most terrible tragedy in all the world."[2] His Book of Ecclesiastes is a pessimistic description of the whole world, and even of life itself. "All rivers ran into Solomon's sea: wisdom and knowledge, wine and women, wealth and fame, music and songs; he tried them all but found them `vanity and vexation of spirit,' simply because he left God out of his life."[3] It would be wonderful to know that he repented and turned his life back to God, but there is no record of it. He never wrote a penitential psalm as did his father (Psalms 51). He was a strange contradiction in that all of his wisdom did not teach him self-control; and out of that harem of a thousand pagan women, the only thing Solomon received from it was a senseless egotistical fool for a son who at once lost the vast majority of that so-called `glorious' empire.

SOLOMON BECAME THE SON-IN-LAW OF PHARAOH!

"And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of Jehovah, and the wall of Jerusalem round about. Only the people sacrificed in the high places, because there was no house built for the name of Jehovah until those days. And Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places."

"Pharaoh's daughter" (1 Kings 3:1) Gates identified this Pharaoh as being, "Either the last of the 21st Dynasty of Egyptian rulers or the first of the 22nd Dynasty."[4] Most scholars declare him to be "unknown." The significance of this note is that it was unlawful for an Israelite to marry a foreign woman unless she changed her religion to that of her husband's nation. Even then, the permission to marry foreign women was usually related to captives taken in war. "But, at the same time, it was permitted only when the foreign wives renounced their idolatry and confessed their faith in Jehovah. It was only then that such marriages were in accordance with the spirit of God's law."[5]

Keil and other scholars, "Assume that this was the case in Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter," but this writer cannot allow the accuracy of such an assumption. Keil pleaded Solomon's love of Jehovah, as stated in 1 Kings 3:2, as the basis of his assumption; but those words appear to have been applicable only to a very short period of Solomon's reign. And the uncertainty of the date of this marriage leaves the question doubtful of whether or not it came within that very brief period of Solomon's loving Jehovah and keeping his commandments. As LaSor noted: "This account of the marriage has no chronological intention."[6]

Jamieson was of the opinion that the Song of Solomon and Psalms 45 were both composed in honor of this, marriage of Solomon to the daughter of Pharaoh.[7]

"Only he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places" (1 Kings 3:3). Christian students should beware of the tenderness with which many scholars comment on Solomon's sins. Jamieson, for example, with regard to this passage wrote, "The word `only' here is not to be understood as a qualifying circumstance that reflected any degree of censure upon Solomon,"[8] to which it must be replied that it could not possibly reflect anything else.

Leviticus 17:9 makes it clear enough that worshipping Jehovah at the high places of Canaan was sinful. As Hammond stated it, "Israel's continuing to violate this sacred prohibition was among the sins that "God winked at (Acts 17:30)."[9] The excuse for this sin, already given in 1 Kings 3:2, was that, "No house had been built for the name of Jehovah in those days." However, that was only an excuse; because, in the first place God never desired a house (Temple) (2 Samuel 8) nor did he ever approve of David's notion of building one.