1 Kings 11:1–43

Original Meaning

Prophetic Judgment of Solomon (11:1–13)

THIS SECTION HAS been characterized as a theological review.2 It contains offenses and judgment statements that evaluate the king according to prophetic orthodoxy. The prophetic indictment is given as a word from Yahweh without any specification as to the occasion or manner in which that word is delivered (vv. 11–13). The indictment is part of the narrative; the condemnation may have come through the written words of the covenant. Such reviews evaluate a reign (e.g., 2 Kings 10:28–31) or explain misfortune such as the northern exile (17:7–18). In this case the review does both, passing judgment on the reign of Solomon and explaining the reason for the division of the kingdom. Judgment against Solomon is mitigated by the promise to David (1 Kings 11:12–13). It does not take place during the time of Solomon, and the city of Jerusalem survives as part of the tribe of Judah.

Solomon attaches himself to foreign women (v. 2), accommodating their practices. He builds altars for them in the presence of the temple (vv. 7–8), though it is not said that he actually worships with them. The covenant contained specific warnings about intermarriage with the nations (Deut. 7:1–5). This review of Solomon’s reign has a particular focus on that failure.

Solomon builds altars instead of tearing them down in order to appease the women who are part of his harem. The size of his harem is given in schematic numbers, multiples of seven and three. The numbers of wives and concubines with their children are deemed beyond enumeration. The wives are princesses, women of high political rank (v. 3). The Moabites and Ammonites are subject nations under Solomon’s domain; the Phoenicians and Egyptians are allies. Though these relationships may have begun as a matter of political expediency, the end result is the catastrophe Deuteronomy warned would happen.

“Ashtoreth” is a form of the name of the Canaanite goddess Ashtart (v. 5). The pronunciation is sometimes deemed to be a deliberate parody, changing the normal vowels to those of the word for shame (bōšet). She was the Canaanite counterpart to the Akkadian Ishtar and Sumerian Inanna, a goddess of war and sexuality. In Phoenician sources Ashtart is the patron goddess of both Tyre and Sidon, closely associated with Baal (perhaps as a consort).3 Exported by the Phoenicians, worship of Ashtart thrived throughout the Mediterranean; her name is found in inscriptions in Carthage and Spain.

Milcom is the national god of the Ammonites (v. 5), also pronounced Molek (v. 7), a name that meant kingship. This god is associated with child sacrifice (2 Kings 23:10; Jer. 32:35). Chemosh, the national god of the Moabites, is also worshiped in Syria. A Moabite king offered his son in sacrifice to his god in desperation in his war with the Israelites (2 Kings 3:27).

Enemies of Solomon (11:14–25)

Bridging Contexts

BLESSINGS AND CURSES. Blessings and curses are fundamental to the theology of Kings; these are the alternatives of the covenant relationship with God. The theology in Kings is not immediate retribution; grace is extended, particularly to the dynasty of David, but the conditions of the covenant cannot be violated indefinitely. Of all the kings in the history of Israel, the review of Solomon is most mixed in terms of blessing and curse.

The divide between blessing and curse is said to be youth and old age (11:4), but the narrative itself indicates the process begins much earlier. Like any great monarch of ancient time, Solomon has many wives and concubines (v. 3), who retain their cultural and religious affiliations (vv. 7–8). Solomon builds shrines in their place of residence, an abominable compromise to the temple with its exclusive claims of kingship for Solomon’s God. This can only be described as an offense; the final prophetic judgment of Solomon is the first of a refrain that applies to all kings that compromise the covenant (v. 6). The prophetic indictment of Solomon indicates that the punishment will be delayed until his death (vv. 11–12), but the adversaries begin their work during his lifetime (vv. 21–22, 25). The insurrection of Jeroboam begins sometime during the reign of Solomon and is serious enough that Solomon takes measures to dispatch him (v. 40).

Dissension within the kingdom in the latter part of Solomon’s reign appears to be the result of seeds of rebellion planted early on, which only blossom when Solomon becomes old.12 Note, for example, how Solomon tells Hiram his kingdom is at peace, there is no adversary (śāṭān), there is no trouble (rāʿ, 5:4). This terminology is retained to say that Yahweh raises up adversaries (śāṭān) against Solomon who cause trouble (rāʿâ) the entire time that Solomon is on the throne (11:25). Further, there is good reason to present the reign of Solomon as a failure, because the division of the kingdom takes place at his succession. The climactic judgment on the dynasty of David does not begin with the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonians.

Blessing and the curse are both integral within the reign of Solomon in Deuteronomistic theology. The blessing is present in that not one word of what God promised Moses fails (8:56); God has granted rest to his people. In Solomon the promise to David is fully realized (8:20–21); the choice of David and Zion is established with the construction of the temple (9:3). This fulfillment is nothing less than uncompromised glory that characterizes the kingdom of Solomon (10:9). God fulfills his promise with multiple tons of gold (v. 14), land for every citizen within a vast empire that stretches to the Euphrates, and security from any invader (4:24–25).

Though God has repeatedly fulfilled the promise of blessing, Israel has always been disobedient and suffers the curse. The division of the kingdom is a punishment, not a failure. The failure happens during the reign of Solomon just as much as the blessing. This pattern is consistent with Deuteronomistic understanding of the covenant with Moses. The evidence of blessing is present during the reign of Solomon; the signs of the curse become evident when the disintegration of the kingdom rapidly advances in Solomon’s old age.

Marvin Sweeney has proposed that the narrative presents Solomon as an unfaithful king to serve as a foil to Josiah, the model of a faithful king.13 The theme of apostasy permeates the narrative (chs. 3–11). Solomon compromises the covenant in his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter, apparently as a means to secure his kingdom, but in the end Jeroboam finds refuge in Egypt, and Pharaoh becomes a means through which the revolt is facilitated and the kingdom divided. It is also notable that the administrative taxation system (4:7–19) appears to have an imbalance that discriminates against the northern tribes, violating the principles of just rule. The summary of Solomon’s rule is that he does what is wrong (11:4) while the summary of the rule of Josiah is that he does what is right without exception (2 Kings 22:2), just as David his father.

While it is true that the mixed presentation of Solomon is integrated into the account of Solomon’s reign, it is unlikely that the prophetic authors intend to present Solomon as the opposite of Josiah.14 The only explicit link between the narratives is in Josiah dismantling the cultic high places Solomon built (2 Kings 23:13; cf. 1 Kings 11:7). None of the other failures of Solomon, such as the amassing of wealth, horses, and foreign women, are specifically rectified in the reforms of Josiah. Scattered references to Pharaoh’s daughter or allusions to the mistreatment of northern tribes allow for certain kinds of historical deductions, but cannot be said to conscientiously advance a literary intent to present a contrast of the two kings.

Amos Frisch finds nine units in the narrative of Solomon, which he defines as 1 Kings 1:1–12:24.15 These are arranged in a concentric structure with the building and dedication of the temple at the center, but with implicit criticism of Solomon. The parallels give weight to the concept of reward and punishment, showing that blessing and curse are directly related to obedience and disobedience. Though the fulfillment of the prophetic word of Ahijah (12:1–24) might be considered to belong with the prophecy as part of the punishment (11:26–39), it is not made a part of the narrative of Solomon’s reign. The closing formula to Solomon’s reign indicates closure to his story (11:41–43). The focus then shifts to the reign of Jeroboam, who is the recipient of the prophetic word. The punishment of Solomon is explicitly said to occur after his reign (11:12, 35); though the fulfillment of the prophecy is about Solomon, it is not included as part of the narrative that deals with his reign.

Visions. The one unequivocal association that occurs in the narrative of Solomon’s reign is that of the visions. Yahweh appears to Solomon a second time as he did at Gibeon (9:2). This point is taken up again in the prophetic judgment against Solomon; Solomon has turned away from his devotion to Yahweh in spite of the fact that God appeared to him twice (11:9). These deliberate literary repetitions are an important guide to narrative structure and the message of the story. The second vision, with its stern warnings, in contrast to the first vision of wisdom and wealth, shifts the evaluation of Solomon to reveal important lessons of the narrative.16 Though the temple is prominent in the narrative, the counterpart is Solomon’s high places built for his foreign wives (11:7–8). The contrast between worship at the temple and worship at the high places is an issue throughout the books of Kings.

The burden of the prophetic history in Kings is the problem of disobedience. The narrative of Solomon participates fully in that burden. Everything else about Solomon serves to accentuate the enormity of that tragedy. The greater his wealth and wisdom, the greater the tragedy of his fall. The visions have a central role in providing that orientation to the story. God has not failed Solomon in any way; from the start he is fully equipped to be the ideal king of the nation. The second vision provides the warning: Status and achievement have increased potential for vulnerability. Wisdom brings success; reliance on wisdom brings total disaster (9:6–9).

This lesson must be conveyed to everyone who hears about Solomon. The nations, who have no experience with God, will see the ruin of his exalted house and whistle in amazement, fully understanding that the problem is abandonment of the oath with God. All other sins or failures are a manifestation of this one sin (11:9). It reverses every other virtue and achievement.

Wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is to know and follow God’s teaching, to know the fear of Yahweh. The great rewards of all other wisdom are lost unless they continuously find their starting point with the fear of Yahweh (Job 28:28). The gold of Solomon is many times what the sophisticated mining operation described in Job might yield (28:1–11). As the bitter experience of Job reveals, such wealth does not convey wisdom needed for living.

For entirely different reasons than Solomon, Job also loses his vast resources. It drives him to ask the question repeatedly: “From where does wisdom come?” (28:12, 20). No amount of the finest gold or any other treasure can begin to compare with the worth of such wisdom (28:15–19). In his hymn to wisdom, Job is fully conscious of the reality that the wisdom mortals need is completely outside their grasp (28:12–14, 20–22). Only God knows the way to such wisdom (28:23–27); God has revealed the one thing that all mortals must know; to turn from wrong is understanding (28:28).

Rather than turn from wrong (rāʿ ), Solomon turns to wrong (1 Kings 11:6); that is not wisdom, no matter what other wisdom skills enable the greatest of power and fortune. This point of wisdom the Deuteronomistic Historians understand fully, and they portray its bitter reality with great skill in the life of Solomon. Tensions are allowed free reign: the grandeur of Solomon is real; the blessing of God is genuine in every respect. All this is in perfect conformity with covenant truth. The epitome of blessing and curse can be present in one individual virtually simultaneously. Blessing and curse do not operate in such mechanical fashion.

The further question of Job was not germane to the Deuteronomists: Can one who fears God still suffer the curse? This is the occasion for the profound eulogy to wisdom in Job. This question has profound implications for understanding God. This question is not pertinent to Solomon or to any part of Israel’s past in the historiography of the Deuteronomists. The punishment is fully justified in every case, especially so when the blessing is palpable as in the case of Solomon. Such grandeur is not earned; the divine gift is not gained through merit, but is always lost through demerit.

Covenant. The prophets are responsible to maintain accountability to the covenant. It is the reason they have such a prominent role in the story of the nation. Transitions of kingship, for woe or weal, usually involve a prophet. In the case of Jeroboam it is some of both; hope for what is lost in the promise to David is present in him (11:35–38). Influence and power of prophets in political affairs are necessary and possible because of the covenant. The king is subordinated to the rule of God the same as every other Israelite. In this respect all are brothers. Kings who violate the brotherhood forfeit their right to rule (11:11). In Israel kingship is determined by covenant loyalty, not by dynastic succession. Dynastic succession continues in Judah, to maintain a lamp for David, but this will not be the case in Israel.

Contemporary Significance

THE VALUE OF true wisdom. There is a story about a president who had a dream. God visited him in a vision; in the vision he was given a choice. He could have the wealth of Solomon, the fame of Solomon, or the wisdom of Solomon, but only one of the three. Being a pietistic individual, he naturally chose the wisdom of Solomon. Word soon spread about that the president had received the wisdom of Solomon. His cabinet quickly convened to hear what this wisest of all men would have to say. They waited breathlessly as he began to speak: “I should,” he said, “have taken the money.”

To most people most of the time the real deficiency seems to be money. It is always possible to think of what good things could be done if only there were more money. Wisdom is simple enough when there is money; those who have money also have wisdom. Advice is sought from those who are successful; success is measured in the wealth it brings. Though intellect may inform otherwise, the passions that govern life generally overrule rational thought.

The distinction between wisdom and folly is not as obvious as it would seem. Those with great wisdom may live as fools. John Ortberg says that one of the marks of the human condition is not to say it is depraved or lost but that it is ridiculous. Foolishness is not a series of bad choices; it is a choice to live as though God can be ignored.

Foolishness, in this way of thinking, is not so much a disease of the intellect as of the will. The fool says in her heart that there is no God; or that she will live as god, which is perhaps the same thing. The fool thinks he needs bigger barns for the riches that he in his cleverness has accumulated, and forgets that the night when his construction project is finished is the night he has scheduled a massive coronary. You can be a fool and still find good work in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or on Madison Avenue. Sometimes it helps.17

For the prophetic writers of Kings, the dichotomy of Solomon is the problem, Ortberg observes. Solomon had wisdom in terms of intellect, but he came to live as a fool. Their description of this foolishness is monotonously simple: He followed other gods and built other high places. The very man who led in that marvelous prayer at the dedication of the temple did not abide by his own confession. His prayer was that the people of God’s inheritance might follow in his directives, his decisions, his ways (8:58). Perhaps he believed that he followed the desire of his prayer. The decisions of foolishness seem rational, or at least they are easily rationalized. Solomon denied God only by compromise; the prophets understood that this was nothing less than outright abandonment. For this he paid the price of the division of the kingdom.

Ortberg points out that Christians are no less foolish than Solomon. Christians fail in worship no less than Solomon in his building other high places:

Paul says that as we relate to each other we are to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord in our hearts and giving thanks to God at all times. But even in the church we end up spending more time fighting about the kind of melodies we should sing, and whether the Lord God prefers organ or guitar. People split churches over how loudly the songs should be amplified. We are ridiculous.18

It is tragic when intelligent people are ridiculous, especially when they can be wise in so many ways. It is a matter of perspective; it is a failure to focus on the one single value from which all other choices derive their relative importance.

It is easy to believe that glorifying God is the one thing that matters in this world. It is even easier to follow the sensualism of Ashtoreth of the Sidonians or the abominations of the Ammonites (11:5). Sidonians were allies of Israel; Ammonites contributed to Israel’s wealth. If Solomon were to go back to the covenant and the warning about allying with other nations, he would have found that these were not in the list (cf. Deut. 7:1–7). Moabites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites were not among the autochthonous nations of Canaan that Israel was to destroy.19 Solomon could reason that this was another time, that clinging to these nations and their princesses did not come under the covenant restriction. This was not self-evidently contradictory to glorifying God in the temple. Whether or not Solomon thought along these lines, the prophets who wrote Kings knew better. All his wisdom is subverted in a foolish choice.

Solomon has been immortalized as the ideal king. In teaching his followers not to worry about clothes Jesus pointed to the beauty of the flowers of the field and reminded his hearers that not even Solomon in all his glory could compare. Jesus could use Solomon as an antitype of himself. The queen of the south would stand in judgment against religious leaders demanding a sign, because she came from distant regions to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and a greater than Solomon was present with them (Matt. 12:42).20

The glory of a king blessed by wisdom is a critical aspect of the story of Solomon, but the lessons of Solomon taught in the narrative of Kings are much more sobering. A great and wise king may at the same time be a foolish and weak king. This is the irony of Solomon’s life; wisdom has the power to produce wealth, but the seductive power of wealth can erode the wisdom of following God. The narrative of Kings calls everyone to be a person greater than Solomon. None might compare to Solomon in the glory of his reign or the wisdom discovered by the queen of Sheba, but all need the wisdom of faithfulness to God.

Loyalty and faithfulness. Spirituality may be measured in different ways, but the critical standard is given in the story of Solomon. Spirituality is never anything less than uncompromised loyalty to God. If there ever was an individual with the opportunity to serve God with such loyalty it was Solomon. The Lord appeared to him twice. In the first instance God assured him of incomparable blessing because of the priority he had chosen. The fulfillment of this incomparable blessing should have been motivation to absolute devotion to God. The second vision comes as a warning—a reminder that such blessing is not an assurance of continued blessing. Neither the gift nor the warning is sufficient for Solomon. His heart is seduced, his kingdom divided; his life is a failure.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” which needs to be interpreted as, “Cause us not to be led into temptation.” It is not external enemies like Hadad and Rezon who are a threat to Solomon and his kingdom, though they trouble him the entire time of his rule. The revolt of Jeroboam is not the problem, and exiling Jeroboam to Egypt does not solve anything for Solomon. The problem for Solomon is the power of influences in his daily life, the people who are part of his household. This is the reason why the covenant gives such firm warnings against intermarriage and alliances with peoples of a foreign faith. Such intimacy is a source of constant conflict or fateful compromise. Certain distances must be maintained or they will cause us to be delivered to harm. The beginning of not being led into temptation, of being rescued from evil, is to avoid compromising situations.

There is no assurance for faithfulness. Solomon incurs the wrath and judgment of Yahweh, who appeared to him twice (11:9); the point is emphatic. Solomon did not come to know the God of the temple; his involvement with other gods led him into temptation. Faithfulness is not maintained by the greatest of past experiences. Faithfulness is to seek God daily; that is a wisdom for which there is no substitute. That wisdom is sufficient for every challenge life may have.

The persistent lesson of Solomon for those who live under a new covenant is the importance of faithfulness. Success at any one point in the life of an individual—spiritually, materially, or both—is no assurance of continued loyalty to God. This message is skillfully articulated in the prophetic portrayal of Solomon’s reign.

Faithfulness requires an integration of various activities and relationship in life. Katharin Henderson asks whether God and mammon can be held together; can mammon be a means of service to God? Her answer comes in the testimony of Laura Jervis, who coined for her the term seamlessness. Laura has spent the past twenty years developing thousands of units of housing for the poor elderly on the west side of Manhattan. When asked if she considered this work a job, a profession, or ministry, she said that the personal, professional, and religious dimensions of her life all fit together as a whole. In her words,

My life on the West Side is really life in community, and there is a sense of seamlessness to my life … which I sometimes resent a little because it can feel like there’s no escape.… That’s hard. But most of the time I think it’s the right way to live. But it is a kind of public life … it’s the community board, it’s the churches and several synagogues, it’s the community of my organization … and it’s all really one. There’s a sense of symmetry and wholeness about it, which, if I were asked to, I don’t think I could sacrifice.21

Few Christians can manage the kind of seamlessness described by Laura Jervis; life is segmented into obligations of employment, community, church, marriage, and family. Often these seem to have little to do with each other. But we must remember that our lives are judged as a whole. Christians live in realms of secular and sacred; each individual shares in several roles, and not all of those roles are performed with equal skill. Faithfulness cannot be limited to some of these responsibilities; in one life, each role relates to another. Faithfulness is learning to integrate rather than segregate. Life lived as a dichotomy is a life of harsh experience. Success and happiness in one role cannot compensate for faithlessness in another. Sorrows generated in one area of life will erode the joy of another.

Not long ago I received a rather curt and chastising response to an article I had written on work. It was my intent to show that God made the world as the crown of his work and that all human work is to be a part of God’s work in the world. This is how I understand the sentiments of Psalm 104. The response came from the foreman of a crew doing roadwork, in which he asked how this was going to encourage the people he worked with in harsh weather conditions each day. My answer to that question is that meaningful work must have a greater purpose than earning a living; but further to the point, for the Christian all work is more than earning a living. Work regarded as nothing more than earning a living is a segmentation that dishonors God.

The work of Moses for most of his life consisted of desert wanderings, either herding sheep or, even worse, trying to lead people. The one psalm read as a prayer of Moses (Ps. 90) is a prayer that God will take human work and make it a part of his work. God will honor that prayer, even as he did in the life of Moses. This is the faithfulness that God requires. The mighty work of Solomon was not so honored; faithlessness in his divided life ended in the division of the kingdom and was the beginning of that great disaster that was to overtake the chosen city.

Original Meaning

Enemies of Solomon (11:14–25)

THE ADVERSARIES OF Solomon are human political opponents designated by God to punish Solomon (vv. 14, 23, 25). In later Hebrew this word for “adversary” meant “prosecutor” (śāṭān), in some instances a member of God’s court (Job 1:9; 2:2; Zech. 3:1–2); eventually the term became a name for the devil.4

Hadad (meaning “thunder”) is a common name for the fertility god known in the Bible as Baal (“master”). Two kings named Hadad are known from the genealogies of Edom (Gen. 36:31–39). David conquered Edom as one of the expansions of his empire (2 Sam. 8:13–14), an exploit remembered in the superscription to Psalm 60. There may have been more than one war in the effort to exterminate the Edomites. First Kings 11:15 is sometimes emended to say David carried out the massacre of the Edomites (RSV) rather than Joab (v. 16), but there is no need to postulate two different traditions in the brief account of the conquest of Edom (vv. 15–16).5

Nothing is said of the fate of Hadad,6 but his servants take the young prince to Midian, east of the Gulf of Aqaba, then to Paran in the western Sinai. There they solicit the help of guides familiar with the territory and finally find refuge in Egypt. The reigning pharaoh not only gives the young prince a home, provisions, and land; he makes him a member of the royal family. Tahpenes is apparently a Hebrew transliteration of an Egyptian word meaning “wife of the king.”7 Like Moses, her son Genubath is raised in the Egyptian court. David and Joab are his dreaded enemies (v. 21); when they die, Hadad renounces the security and luxury of Egypt and enters into some type of guerilla warfare against Solomon (v. 25). The reintroduction of Hadad in connection with Rezon is abrupt, but it hints of a detail not noted earlier.

David’s defeat of Hadadezer king of Zobah is described in some detail (2 Sam. 8:3–8). Aram Zobah was an Aramean kingdom located along the upper Orontes River in the Beqaʿ Valley of Lebanon. Hadadezer (unknown outside of the Bible) ruled over a vast territory, allying with the Ammonites in the wars against David (10:6). David set up a garrison in Damascus with a governor to maintain control over the territory and enforce taxation. Rezon, a rebel against Hadadezer, organized a guerilla movement and eventually gained control of Damascus (1 Kings 11:23–24). Rezon founded a dynasty that became the kingdom of Aram-Damascus, the most powerful Syrian state in the days following Solomon.8 As an independent power he resisted Solomon during the whole time of his rule.

Revolt of Jeroboam (11:26–43)