Year One, October 31

Abstain From the Passions of the Flesh, Which Wage War Against Your Soul1

We now come to the sad part of Solomon’s life, when the wise man played the fool to a great extreme. He proved that without the grace of God the greatest of people may lower themselves to commit the worst of sins. Who would have believed that Solomon could become so lustful and the son of David become a worshiper of idols?

  

1 Kings 11:1-5; 9-13

1Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of 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 clung to these in love. 3He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. 4For 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. 5For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

9And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 10and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. 11Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. 12Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”

Dr. James Hamilton has beautifully described the events of this part of Jewish history. “The people murmured. The monarch wheeled along with greater pomp than ever; but the popular prince had soured into the tyrant. The crown sat defiant on his unpredictable head. His subjects bowed down to him without feeling and their hearts were not in it when they sang his praises. The people of Zion were in mourning. The unused temple courts sprouted grass and weeds while mysterious groves and unholy shrines were popping up everywhere. The palace was defiled by lust. Chemosh and Ashtoreth, and other Gentile abominations, defiled the Holy Land.

“In the disastrous darkness in the land, beasts of the forest crept abroad. Hadad the Edomite ventured out of Egypt and became a lifelong torment to the God-forsaken king of Israel. Rezon the Syrian pounced on Damascus and made Syria his own. From the Pagan palaces of Thebes and Memphis harsh cries were soon heard; Pharaoh and Jeroboam taking counsel together, screeching forth their threats, and hooting insults at which Solomon could no longer laugh.

“Amidst all the gloom and misery a message comes from God: The kingdom is torn. Solomon’s successor will have only an inferior piece and a fragment of Israel, while God hands ten tribes over to a rebel and a runaway.

 “Luxury and sinful wives made him an idolater, and idolatry made him yet more lustful. Finally, in the lazy exhaustion and idle daydreaming of the pleasure seeker, he lost the discernment of the wise man and the bravery of the sovereign. And when he rose from his drunken daze and picked up his tarnished crown from the mess, he woke to find his powers, once so clear and unclouded, all troubled and his strong reason paralyzed and his healthy imagination poisoned. He woke to find the world grown hollow, and himself grown old. He woke to see the sun in Israel’s sky now dark. A special gloom surrounded him. Like one who falls asleep amidst the lights and music of the orchestra, and who awakes amidst empty benches and tattered programs; like a man who falls asleep in a flower garden, and who opens his eyes on an empty and locust-blackened wilderness; the life, the loveliness, was vanished, and all the remaining spirit of the mighty Solomon yawned forth that verdict of the tired pleasure seeker: ‘Vanity of vanities! vanity of vanities! All is vanity!’”2

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¹ 1 Peter 2:11

² From the Royal Preacher: Lectures on Ecclesiastes by James Hamilton (1814-1867).