Lessons from Solomon’s failure and our only hope

I once went to a birthday party where I accidentally met an old homegroup member from the time I was a young adult. She was about ten years older than me, and I remember her commitment to the Lord in those early years, the insightful things she used to say in Bible study, the glowing relationship she had with a man who became her husband. Talking to her at the party, I soon came to realise that she no longer went to church and did not seem to have contact with her husband. She sounded a little cagey about the latter and a mutual friend told me later that she had moved out of the family home and was living with another man. It made me so sad to see someone I looked up to as a faithful Christian leave all of that behind. It also made me wonder how such a change happens and where things go wrong.

The heart of Solomon’s failure

Solomon’s life raises similar questions. To his marriage alliance with Pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kings 3:1), is added a staggering number of other wives (contra Deut 17:17). Some would have cemented political or trade agreements, others were more like possessions to increase his consequence. The real issue is the threat foreign wives with their foreign gods pose to faithfulness to God (1 Kings 11:2; Deut 7:3-4). Revealingly, Solomon ‘holds fast’ (davaq) to his wives (1 Kings 11:2). Even though ‘love’ is mentioned, ‘holding fast’ is a term of commitment, not emotional clinginess (Gen 2:24; NASB ‘joins to’). It is also Deuteronomy’s favourite word to express wholehearted commitment to the Lord (e.g. Deut 10:20; 13:4; 30:20). Thus, Kings sets out the issue as an ordering of ‘loves’, or priorities and commitment. Solomon put his love of women before his love of God. Since worshipping was a religious obligation in ancient societies, all these women needed shrines for their gods, which Solomon duly built (1 Kings 11:7-8) becoming enticed into idolatry himself (1 Kings 11:5-6).

The greatest omission

God’s anger at Solomon (1 Kings 11:9) is not surprising. Worshipping other gods is to Him like adultery is to marriage: the ultimate destroyer of a relationship. The passage repeatedly compares Solomon with David (1 Kings 11:4, 6) and we may wonder how God can characterise David as following Him fully given he abused his royal power in taking someone else’s wife and having her husband murdered (2 Sam 12:7-10). The key difference is that David responded with repentance and the Lord forgave him (2 Sam 12:13). God erased the record and summed up his life as wholly devoted to Him (1 Kings 11:4). Solomon’s lack of response when challenged about sin, on the other hand, is a glaring omission. It seems that he was too far gone and could no longer turn back to the Lord. Nevertheless, we still get a glimpse of God’s grace because of His promise and commitment to David. The kingdom will be torn from Solomon but only in his son’s time and the Lord will leave a remnant for the Davidic dynasty (1 Kings 11:11-13).

Lessons and our only hope

Solomon’s story points out that we ignore God’s Word to our peril. Marriage alliances ensuring the stability of the realm would have been such commonplace in Solomon’s world that seeing it as a problem may have been difficult. Likewise, worshipping more than one god was the norm then – could it really do harm? When culture gives us permission to act in certain ways in how we arrange our lives, relationships, material comforts, priorities, it is hard to hear Scripture’s warning that some of those ways may be destructive. Secondly, idolatry may look different in our world, but it has not gone away. The issue is one of ‘love’ and commitment. What is our highest priority in life? What matters to us most? Where do we turn for solace and hope first? What gives us delight that we cannot live without? When our first and foremost answer to those questions is not God, then we have replaced Him with idols. Finally, habitual disobedience can blunt the conscience and harden our heart, so repentance becomes more difficult. As always, when we realise how inadequate we are, our only hope is Jesus Christ, who can sympathise with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15) and renew our heart.  

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