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Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 9; 1 Kings 10; 1 Kings 11
We, the believers in Christ, are the greatest people in the universe. We have received God into us, and He is continuously working Himself into our constitution to make us God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead). According to Romans 5:17, we reign in the life which we have received. To be today's overcomers we must reign as kings in life. If we do not, we will lose the top portion of the enjoyment of Christ and will be chastised by the Lord in the coming age. We all have to mature sooner or later. If we mature in this age, we will reign as kings in life in this age and will be the co-kings with Christ in the next age to rule over the nations. We need to keep this in mind as we consider what is revealed in 1 Kings 9—11 regarding the reign of Solomon.
First Kings 9 and 10 show us the highest peak of Solomon's glory among the nations.
Jehovah accepted Solomon's prayer and promised him that He would establish his throne forever (9:1-9). Here we see that it was God who made Solomon prosperous.
Solomon's alliance with Hiram was established in their mutual giving of gifts to each other (vv. 10-14). This was a great strengthening and help from the human side. Thus, in addition to the strengthening on the divine side, there was the strengthening on the human side.
Solomon built further cities, levying the Canaanites as forced labor, and he made the children of Israel men of war, his servants, his officers, his captains, and his officers over his chariots and his horsemen (vv. 15-24).
Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to Jehovah and burned incense with the offerings on the golden altar which was before Jehovah. Thus he finished the building of the temple (v. 25).
There were two altars: the bronze altar in the outer court of the temple and the golden altar inside the temple. The bronze altar was for the offering of the offerings; the golden altar was for the burning of the incense. The sweet savor of the incense burned at the golden altar, the incense altar, signifies Christ as our acceptance by God. The burning of the incense was based upon Christ as the offerings offered on the bronze altar. Whereas the bronze altar was the place for the accomplishment of Christ's redemption, the incense altar is the place for our acceptance by God based upon the redemption accomplished by Christ at the bronze altar.
Solomon also built up a navy with the cooperation of Hiram to get the best gold, the gold of Ophir (vv. 26-28).
The queen of Sheba came to pay her honor to Solomon and to listen to his words of wisdom (10:1-10, 13).
Hiram's fleet carried gold from Ophir and a great number of almug trees and precious stones to Solomon for decorating the temple of God and his palace and for making musical instruments (vv. 11-12).
Solomon was enriched with the tribute by the kings of the nations and the tariff on the traders and merchants, with which Solomon made small and large shields of gold for display and a large ivory throne overlaid with the finest gold for his splendor in his exaltation, putting them in the Lebanon Forest House (a place of luxury). He also made silver as plentiful as stones. Thus, he excelled all the kings of the earth not only in wisdom but also in wealth (vv. 14-25, 27).
Solomon, with his abundant wealth, built a defense of 1,400 chariots and 12,000 cavalrymen, the horses of which were bought from Egypt (vv. 26, 28-29).
It seems that the whole world was for Solomon, but his glory was like the full moon which was about to wane. As we will see, the tragedy of Israel's history (ch. 11) was due to Solomon's indulgence of lust and worship of idols.
In 11:1-8 we have a record of Solomon's fall.
Solomon's fall was in his indulgence of his lust by loving many foreign women: 700 wives, who were princesses of the kings of the nations, and 300 concubines, in addition to Pharaoh's daughter (vv. 1-3). In having so many wives and concubines Solomon was most foolish.
Solomon's fall was also in his forsaking God, who appeared to him twice (v. 9), and in worshipping the Gentile idols through the seducing of the foreign women he loved (vv. 4-8).
As a result of Solomon's fall, God's chastisement came in. After Solomon fell, God came in to punish and discipline him.
God became angry with Solomon and determined to tear the kingdom away from him and give it to his servant (vv. 9-13). However, for David's sake God would not do this in Solomon's days but in the days of his son (vv. 12, 34). Moreover, for David's sake and for the sake of Jerusalem, which God had chosen, God would still keep one tribe for the son of Solomon (vv. 13, 32-33, 35-36).
In verses 14 through 40 we see the actions of God's chastisements. God raised up Hadad the Edomite to attack Solomon (vv. 14-22); He raised up Rezon, the king of Syria, to become another adversary to Solomon (vv. 23-25); and He raised up Jeroboam, a servant of Solomon, to revolt against Solomon (vv. 26-40).
Solomon's decease after reigning over all Israel for forty years (vv. 41-43) was in a gloomy disappointment. His glory fell off like the flower of grass (Matt. 6:29; 1 Pet. 1:24), and his splendid career became "vanity of vanities," as he had preached (Eccl. 1:2). However, what God did through him as a type of Christ remains forever. We, therefore, need to discern between what Solomon was in his personal life and what he was as a type of Christ.
Under the light of the spiritual life, we can see that Solomon was a wise man but not a spiritual one; a man of capability, not one of life; a man whose wisdom was a gift, not a measure of life. The careers he accomplished were evidences of his capacity from the God-given gift of wisdom, not manifestations of the ability of the maturity of life.
In the Lord's recovery we should first take care of life. Then to some extent and in a certain sense we need capability. In the church our capability should be the manifestation of the maturity of life. Capability apart from life is like a snake, poisoning the church; life is like a dove, supplying the church with life. Instead of being today's Solomon, we should be "doves" with the proper measure of life.
Solomon's enjoyment of the God-given good land reached the highest level through his God-given gift. However, due to his dwarf measurement in the maturity of the spiritual life, he was cut off from the enjoyment of the good land in God's economy, in his unbridled indulgence of his lust in sex. His father David, a man according to God's heart, failed in this gross and ugly sin — the indulgence of sexual lust. Solomon's failure in this satanic temptation was much greater than his father's, beyond people's imagination. This caused him and his descendants to lose more than ninety percent of their kingdom and caused the people of God's elect to suffer division and confusions among themselves throughout quite a number of generations. They lost the God-given land and became captives in the foreign lands of idol worship. The nation of Israel is still suffering due to Solomon's failure. What a warning and an alarm this should be to us! We must be careful. Even a little failure in the indulgence of lust can damage the church and kill the splendid aspects of the church life.
