Context & Key Themes
1 Kings 11 is the chapter where the wisdom of Solomon collides with the failure of Solomon, and wisdom loses. He loves many foreign women — seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines — and they turn his heart. He builds high places for their gods on the hill east of Jerusalem and burns incense to Ashtoreth and Milcom and Chemosh. The Lord is angry and tells him that the kingdom will be torn from him and given to his servant, though for David’s sake this will not happen in his lifetime. The adversaries God raises up in this chapter are the first glimpse of the slow dismantling that will accelerate after Solomon’s death. The wisest man in the world, given everything, did the one thing he was warned not to do.
Key Verse
“For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.”
— 1 Kings 11:4
Summary
Solomon loves many foreign women — the daughter of Pharaoh, women of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and the Hittites — from the nations concerning which the Lord told Israel: you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clings to these in love and has seven hundred princess wives and three hundred concubines. When he is old, his wives turn away his heart. His heart is not wholly true to the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father. He goes after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. He does what is evil in the sight of the Lord. He builds a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem. He does the same for all his foreign wives who offer incense and sacrifice to their gods.
The Lord is angry with Solomon because his heart has turned from the Lord who had appeared to him twice. God tells him: because you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days; I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Adversaries are raised against Solomon: Hadad the Edomite, Rezon the son of Eliada, and Jeroboam son of Nebat — a mighty man, whose mother was a widow. The prophet Ahijah meets Jeroboam on the road and tears his new garment into twelve pieces, giving Jeroboam ten: because Israel has forsaken me and worshipped other gods, I am going to tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon. I will give you ten tribes. I will give one tribe to his son for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem. Solomon seeks to kill Jeroboam but Jeroboam flees to Egypt. Solomon reigns forty years over all Israel and dies. Rehoboam his son reigns in his place.
Reflection
The fall of Solomon is not a sudden collapse. It is a slow turning, measured in wives and high places and the passage of years, until the man who prayed that God’s eyes would always be on the temple is himself looking the wrong way. The text is precise about the mechanism: his wives turned his heart. He was not taken down by an enemy or an army. He was turned by love. Or by what he called love — the accumulated weight of seven hundred relationships pulling him incrementally away from the one covenant that actually held his kingdom together.
The word that cuts deepest is his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father. David sinned more dramatically than Solomon. David committed adultery and arranged murder. But David’s heart always came back. He confessed, he mourned, he wrote psalms out of the depth of his failure. Solomon’s heart simply drifted, quietly, over decades, and apparently never came back. There is no confession recorded, no return, no psalm of repentance from Solomon. Just the slow accumulation of high places on the hill east of Jerusalem and the word of God through Ahijah: I am going to tear the kingdom from his son’s hand.