Failure; Consequences. 1 Kings 11:1-8

 

Failure in Solomon’s life occurred over a period of time. When God lowers the boom on Solomon it is not because he stumbled once, it is not because he had one major failure, but this was a pattern of rebellion against God that began some time in his later years, and it tells us that Solomon was older at this time. It was after the time that he had built the temple and had finished most of his building projects—the temple was built when he was approximately 40 years old, he died when he was about 60, so it was at some time in those latter years—and it was extended over a great period of time.

 

1 Kings 11:1 NASB “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women …” This becomes the source of the problem and it was really a power lust problem. The women that he married would strengthen his alliances with the surrounding countries. The problem that it shows is that rather than trusting God to provide security for the nation Israel he is putting his trust in man. Putting trust in man and the arm of the flesh is always a path to failure, especially for the nation Israel which has a unique relationship with God in that theocratic relationship. Solomon married these 700 wives and 300 concubines and they influenced him. This is always one of the major problems that believers face in terms of those with whom they closely associate. It is a problem of peer pressure. So we see that Solomon has to face a people test, and part of that people test is peer pressure and the values systems of those who are close to us and how they influence us. No matter who people are and what that relationship is when we have close intimate relationships with folks who do not hold to the same system of divine viewpoint thinking that we hold to from the Scripture it is very easy to become influenced and seduced by false doctrine or false teaching. Depending on the circumstances it may vary in its strength from one degree to another.

 

1 Kings 3:14 NASB “If you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.” What does God mean when He uses this phrase “walk in my ways”? Does He mean to be completely obedient? It can’t mean that because He uses David as a standard and we know that David had some grievous sins. So the phrase doesn’t mean to be sinless or flawless or to be without fault or sin in the life, it means to be focused and oriented to God and not violating the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” When we look at the context in 1 Kings 11 the evil that is done by Solomon is defined in context as introducing, committing and advocating idolatry, violating the first commandment of the Decalogue. “Walking in my ways” as far as God is concerned is related to keeping the Law primarily, not necessarily being sinless/keeping it perfectly. So the promise is that if Solomon remains loyal to God then God is going to prolong his days and there would also be additional blessing. 1 Kings 9:4, 5 NASB “As for you, if you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you {and} will keep My statutes and My ordinances, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’” But that did not happen with Solomon. Because of his disobedience God is going to take this blessing away from him and so there will be a loss of this additional blessing in Solomon’s descendants.

1 Kings 9:5 NASB “then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’” But in verse 6 He gives the contrast: “But if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and the house which I have consecrated for My name, I will cast out of My sight. So Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.” This is what happens in 1 Kings 11: Solomon turns away from following God. This divine discipline ultimately comes upon Judah in 586 BC. [8] “And this house will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by will be astonished and hiss and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’ [9] And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore the LORD has brought all this adversity on them.’” So this becomes an object lesson in history as to what happens to those who are disobedient. 1 Kings 11:4 NASB “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father {had been.}”  

1 Kings 11:5 NASB “For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and after Milcom the detestable idol [abomination] of the Ammonites.” This is so politically incorrect but since it is God the Holy Spirit articulating this; it is a very clear pattern for how to address idolatry. The Jews in their history kept on assimilating to these religious systems around them and to syncretise with them, which means to absorb the ideas and practices within these pagan religions into the worship of Yahweh. That is why they will be punished. As we go through the rest of Kings this is what we see again and again: this cyclical pattern of turning against God and turning to these other gods. The other thing to point out here that breaks open the whole passage is that Yahweh is the covenant God of Israel, but He is not simply the God of Israel, He is the God who created the heavens and the earth, and the seas and all that is in them. He is the true God in heaven above. That becomes the challenge that we see again and again, and it culminates in the prophetic ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and especially with Elijah’s grand confrontation with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. So this begins to foreshadow what is coming—this head-on confrontation between God and the false gods of the people who surround Israel.

What we should note is that each of these gods and goddesses that are mentioned are identified with these particular nations. So what Solomon is doing is entering into these alliances, with his wives, with these other nations, and there is a religious element that goes with that. As these wives come to take up residence in Israel they are bringing their gods and goddesses with them and when Solomon validates their gods and goddesses and builds altars for them what he is getting involved in is really a form of internationalism. That is what this sin is all about. It is not a sin that is primarily about sex, it is a sin that is about being a traitor in a political sense to God because God is the ultimate King of Israel. It is a denial of the unique national status of Israel and the assimilation is an early form of multiculturalism and internationalism and globalism, and assimilating these other gods and goddesses so that everything is fine and all paths lead to God.

Who were these gods and goddesses?  The first mentioned is the Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians. The term itself is a plural term and the ‘eth” refers to a grouping of goddesses and their various manifestations. In this passage she is mentioned as the goddess of the Sidonians but she was also very famous and very central in the pantheon of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. Another thing that is interesting to note about her name is that the normal way in which a feminine noun is pluralised in Hebrew is by adding an ‘ot’ at the end. But her name is pluralised by adding ‘et’ at the end, and this was a deliberate attempt in the Hebrew language to offer her name in such a way that they created a pun. They put the vowels into her name that came from the Hebrew word which means “shame.” This was done in order to emphasise the shame of the worship of Ashter. She was the chief goddess among the Phoenicians. She is also called the goddess of holiness. Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and the term “went after” has certain sexual overtones because that is inherent within that worship, and that vocabulary stands out in contrast to the vocabulary of verse 7 NASB “Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon”—but for Ashtoreth he “went after.” Milcom and Molech are just different manifestations of the same god. Molech is the abomination of the people of Ammon and Milcom is the abomination Ammonites in v. 5. They are basically the same god and Molech was considered the deity who was honoured by the sacrifice of children.

Leviticus 20:2 NASB “You shall also say to the sons of Israel:   ‘Any man from the sons of Israel or from the aliens sojourning in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. [3] I will also set My face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given some of his offspring to Molech, so as to defile My sanctuary and to profane My holy name. [4] If the people of the land, however, should ever disregard that man when he gives any of his offspring to Molech, so as not to put him to death, [5] then I Myself will set My face against that man and against his family, and I will cut off from among their people both him and all those who play the harlot after him, by playing the harlot after Molech.” This explains why God is so strong in His punishment toward Solomon as to remove from him the blessing that the line of the Messiah would come through him.

1 Kings 11:6 NASB “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not follow the LORD fully, as David his father {had done.}” In the context of 1 Kings 11, what is evil? Evil is establishing idolatry. We will see this pattern again and again and we need to pay attention to that. The root of evil is worshipping anything other than God as the creator. It can involve morality, all kinds of self-righteous religious activities. Evil is not necessarily what we tend to think of as something that is horrific. [7] “Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon.” Chemosh is thought to have been worshipped in a similar way to Molech, sacrificing children to him in the fire. The word “detestable” is also translated “abomination” is some versions. It means something that is abhorred, something that is a curse, despicable, disgusting, heinous or loathsome. [8] “Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.”

What could Solomon have done to avoid his failure? Let’s break this down in terms of the soul fortress. We have a base, which is the filling of the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t apply in the Old Testament because they weren’t indwelt by the Spirit or filled with the Spirit, but they did have a procedure of cleansing or confession through sacrifice. Obviously Solomon quit going to the temple and confessing his sins. The next stage is the faith-rest drill. How could Solomon have applied the faith-rest drill? He had something that we don’t have: specific individual promises that were given to him by God. He had promises that if he remained faithful God would bless him, establish his throne, and the promise was that the seed would come through him. All he had to do was claim that promise that were inherent in the Mosaic covenant and the Davidic covenant and in the promises to him. But he fails to claim those promises and to make them a reality in his life.

The next problem-solving device is grace orientation. Grace has to do with recognising that God’s blessing us has nothing to do with who we are or what we have done, that in and of ourselves we are nothing. Solomon depicted grace orientation in those early years when he was king and when he was humble and dependent upon God. But as he saw the grandeur of his kingdom and the wealth that he had accumulated, and looked at all of his accomplishments and the results of his building programs, he began to think that he had something to do with his prosperity. Yet it is very clear from 1 Kings 3 that God said: “Because you asked for wisdom and didn’t ask for wealth or power or military strength I am going to give you all of these other things.” It was very clear to Solomon that everything that he had was just based on the grace of God, but he forgot that. He lost his grace orientation and began to think that what he had was the result of who he was and what he had done in his own inherent wisdom and strength.

The next step is doctrinal orientation: orienting our thinking to the plan of God. God had outlined His plan to Solomon in the Mosaic covenant as well as the Davidic covenant, and the promises He made to Solomon are all involved in the plan of God. So Solomon is not orienting his thinking to the plan of God as it had been revealed to him. He is not orienting his thinking to the mandates of God as revealed to him in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus, and so he is violating the Word of God and disobeying the Word of God in specific commands over a long period of time. He lost his doctrinal orientation and he was worshipping other gods. This divorces him from reality as he begins to buy into and live his life on the basis of these fantasy constructs of these other religious systems.

The next problem-solving device is a personal sense of eternal destiny but we can modify that for Solomon and realise that God was offering him a specific destiny in terms of being the progenitor for the line of the Messiah and that of he is obedient then God would establish his throne forever as He had established David’s throne forever. But he got his eyes off of the eternal plan of God and living his life in light of God’s future destiny and he focused it on what was going on in the present, in the here and now.

He failed in his personal love for God. Deuteronomy states in numerous places: “If you love me you will keep my commandments and my statutes and my ordinances.” So he lost his love for God. Once grace orientation, doctrinal orientation and a personal sense of destiny is lost then love for God is gone, and it is replaced with disobedience and a disregard and disrespect for God.

If also affected his love for other Jews: his impersonal love. He overtaxed the people, placed burdens upon the people, and the blessing that they had enjoyed under him which was related to his relationship with God caused a failure on their part. They experienced the discipline that came as a direct result of his disobedience. They were disciplined and hurt by association because of the disobedience of Solomon. So there was no love for his fellow Jews. He disregards his neighbours—the other Jews in the kingdom—by leading them into idolatry and validating idolatry.

Then we have occupation with Christ which is not an Old Testament problem-solving device. But what they had in the Old Testament was God, and a focus on God is the orientation of their life, and they failed at that. Therefore there is misery in his life and that is what he comes to when he tells his story in Ecclesiastes. He became absolutely miserable when he tried to find meaning and happiness searching for it in wisdom and accomplishments and riches and power. None of these things could bring him what a relationship with God alone could bring him.

The result of this is 1 Kings 11:9 NASB “Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.” That is brought out because so many people think that if they could just see a miracle, just witness the resurrection, etc., then maybe I could believe. No, they couldn’t. That is indicated not only in this passage but even more so in the passage in Luke 16 related to the rich man and Lazarus. Signs and wonders are not what convinces people of the truth of God’s Word. That issue is a volitional issue and it is not a matter of proof in that empirical sense. The concept of anger in v. 9 is really an anthropopathism related to the expression of God’s justice. [11] “So the LORD said to Solomon, ‘Because you have done this, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant. [12] Nevertheless I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David, {but} I will tear it out of the hand of your son. [13] However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, {but} I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.’” So this is the statement by God that He is going to split the kingdom in two and there will be a northern kingdom comprising most of the tribes (ten of them) and two tribes in the south.