In this chapter we come to the history of the responsible king, a subject the Second Book of Chronicles passes over in absolute silence.
Up to this point, though it is a question of a man and therefore of an imperfect being, we have been able to see in the life of Solomon a beautiful unity joined to the wisdom that highly exalted the king’s name among the nations, in association with the name of the Lord. The greatness, the majesty, the power, the wealth of his reign were but a feeble image of what will be seen during the Millennium under the reign of the true King of Glory.
Now God points out the blemish in this reign to us. It was not the marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter, for this was indispensable if Solomon were to be a type of Christ in His government. Joseph in his time had contracted a similar union; the sons who issued therefrom had given their names to two of the tribes of Israel after having received the blessing of the patriarch, the father of this people. What is more, Solomon had acted according to the thoughts of God toward this Gentile wife, and Chronicles is careful, as we have seen before, to show us that the king did not give her a place of immediate nearness to the ark of the covenant and the city of the son of David. Thus it was not on account of this union that blame fell upon Solomon; as a millennial type, he, “the light of the nations,” of necessity went beyond the ordinary relationships of a king of Israel. Also the Word sets Pharaoh’s daughter in a place that is distinct from the other strange wives (1 Kings 11:1).
“But king Solomon loved many foreign women, besides the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites; of the nations of which Jehovah had said to the children of Israel, Ye shall not go into to them, neither shall they come in to you; they would certainly turn away your heart after their gods... and his wives turned away his heart” (1 Kings 11:1-3). Solomon’s sin lay in having “loved many foreign women.” These latter had played a relatively restrained role in David’s life, and yet, as we have seen in 2 Samuel, he had borne some sad and often dreadful consequences in his children. By the very discipline which had resulted from these prohibited marriages God had of old kept His anointed from the snares that might have been spread for his piety. But if his lusts had swept him away in his affair with Bathsheba, a daughter of Israel, Solomon’s lusts attracted him to foreign women. And yet God had said: “And thou shalt make no marriages with them: Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor take his daughter for thy son; for he will turn away thy son from following Me, and they will serve other gods, and the anger of Jehovah will be kindled against you, and He will destroy thee quickly” (Deut. 7:3-4). And again: “And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods” (Ex. 34:16).
At the head of this humiliating list we find the Moabites who had led Israel astray into the idolatry of Baal-Peor, having gained control of them through the lust of the flesh (Num. 25:1-5). All the nations—the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zidonians—at the borders of Canaan hated God and His people. The Hittites, mentioned in last place, should have been exterminated, and never had been. Solomon was openly disobeying god who had said to His people: “Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in to you.” There was a double prohibition. We are in danger of going to the world or of letting it come in to us. Perhaps the latter possibility is even more dangerous than the first. On account of conscience towards God the Christian might perhaps abstain from an act of self-will or of disobedience that might incline him to go to the world, whereas the world might more easily seduce him by coming to him. Little by little it insinuates itself into our homes and into our lives, and often when we open our eyes to the danger, it is already too late. “They would certainly turn away your heart after their gods,” the Lord had said. Marriage with the world will necessarily lead us to the religion of the world. This is an earnest word and well worth being weighed by every godly soul today. In the measure that we avoid or cultivate such union, our religion will take on a heavenly or an earthly character. “To these Solomon was attached in love.” And it was this same king whose lips, by divine inspiration, had dropped wisdom for others and had shown them the path to follow with respect to the strange woman lest they fall into “all evil in the midst of the congregation and the assembly” (Prov. 5:1-14)! It was he, too, who in Proverbs 7 had insisted upon the terrible consequences of evil conduct. What blindness! What a sad spectacle! He had taught others and had not taught himself. He, the responsible head of the people, did things from which the people were to abstain, but in which the king failing, he would draw down judgment not only on himself, but also on those whom he should have been feeding, leading, and protecting!
“His wives turned away his heart”—the word is repeated in 1 Kings 11:4. It is a terrible thing when that which is in the world lodges in the heart and takes control of it, thus turning one’s affections aside from their only object to turn them towards vile, shameful, guilty objects. We would remark that these things did not arise suddenly in the life of this man of faith, or at least their consequences did not develop all at once. For “it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods.” Time was needed for this fleshly sowing to bear its fruit. Who would have believed that the Solomon of the temple, at one time on his knees, spreading out his hands toward God in the sight of the people, would become an idolater? Perhaps today some might say that he had a large heart, respecting the freedom of conscience of others; some would adorn this idolatry with some lovely humanitarian or social label. But of what value is human opinion? The question is what God thinks of it. God was dishonored. “Solomon did evil in the sight of Jehovah.” It was not indifference, hateful enough in itself, to build these high places for his wives: it was associating himself with their worship and becoming one with them. It also says, “Solomon went after Ashtoreth (Venus Astarte) the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.” He himself is regarded as an idol-worshipper. He “followed not fully Jehovah, as David his father,” that is, he did not follow him to the end. And yet the Lord “had appeared to him twice,” the first time at Gibeon, the second time after the consecration of the temple. God had warned him about idol worship (1 Kings 9:6-9), showing him its terrible consequences for the people—and he had not kept His commandment! David had committed serious, humiliating errors, but at least he always kept the Lord in view. Even after his fall, his first words were “I have sinned against the Lord.” All the affliction of this man of faith had only the glory of God as its goal, and the close of his life had magnified grace joined to complete self-judgment. Such was not the case with Solomon. We do not even hear the cry of a convicted conscience from him when the terrible words, “Forasmuch as this is done by thee,” resound in his ears just as once the words “Because thou hast despised Me,” had rung in his father’s ears. We are about to learn what very different feelings God’s discipline elicited from his heart. But God would have him know all that is to happen to him. The kingdom, that kingdom of glory spread by divine power to the borders of the nations, was to be violently torn away from him; his son would keep but one tribe, Judah, for Benjamin scarcely counted. In a moment power, majesty, wealth, unprecedented glory, the submission of nations—all was to melt away, and in the midst of the storm only a poor remnant preserved by God would remain, like a fragile boat which had lost everything: oars, sails, masts, and ropes—except only its compass and rudder.
As far as man is concerned, this is the end of the kingdom. But what a perspective for the future! After the judgment of the kingdom of Satan, the Beast, and the False Prophet, the kingdom of the Divine Solomon will reappear like the sun that shines in its strength, never again to depend on the fallible obedience of man, but upon the infallible responsibility of the King whom God shall anoint upon Zion, the mountain of His holiness.