40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 10:11-11:8 (Episode 305)

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Solomon gives the Queen of Sheba anything she desires. His wealth is beyond comprehension. He takes hundreds of wives and concubines. And as is always the case, idolatry threatens to ruin everything. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you click on the events page so that you can go and register for the Here We Still Stand regional event in Bentonville, Arkansas. That's April 22nd and 23rd. Two-day event. Chad will be there.

I'll be there. Eric Sorensen, Scott Keith, Kelsey Clambora, Dan Van Voorhis, Caleb Keith, Blake Flatley will be doing music. Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips will be doing music. Scott Davis will be doing devotions and doing an interview with a bunch of guys. It's going to be a bunch of talks, a bunch of hanging out, a bunch of food, a bunch of music. it's going to be a good time. And so, hey, make it happen. Make sure you register for that. There's also a link in the show notes. You can click on that and get registered. Only $99 to hang out with us for two days in beautiful Northwest Arkansas in the spring. Well, Chad, we had the Queen of

Sheba show up last episode. We spent the bulk of the episode talking about that. We're going to hear a little bit about the kind of wood that they're using to make everything coming up here. and Solomon's going to give the Queen of Sheba basically anything she wants before he sends her packing. And then we're going to get into the ridiculous wealth of Solomon. So fun stuff coming up. A lot of stuff about a lot of gold. A lot of gold.

We'll summarize it that way. You're going to hear a lot about gold. Yeah, it's sort of a break here between the bulk of what we heard about the Queen of Sheba and then what is going to be said at the end of that section. So, yeah, verses 11 and 12 seem like they should have come after, you know, verses, you know, after verse 13. Yeah, it does seem kind of like it's out of order here. So I'm not sure exactly why you have this kind of parenthetical comment in here about this wood and precious stones. But that's where it's at.

11 and 12 says that the fleet of Hiram, Hiram being the king of Tyre that we've talked about multiple times. they went to that uh strange place called ophir which we also talked about the last episode not exactly sure where that was but a lot of gold in ophir and this fleet of ships that solomon and hiram had built together they uh they went to ophir and they brought back a whole bunch of gold but not just gold they brought back some sort of strange wood in uh the esv it's uh i don't even how to say it a-l-m-u-g all mug all mug in hebrew it's all the mugim and which so our english all mug is just a transliteration of that not sure what this is uh some people say that it's sandalwood that's i guess possibility whatever whatever it was uh we can't really pinpoint precisely what

type of what it was but they brought back they were they were impressed with it they brought like a bunch and they did a lot of stuff with it we're told that verse 12 the king used this wood to make supports for the temple for the house of the lord and for his own house so they used it for both both residences and not only that but i guess it was good for making musical instruments because they used it for harps and lyres for the singers as well so no such almug wood has come or been seen to this day, the writer tells us. So this was a one-off type deal. They went to wherever these forests of all mug trees were

and brought back a whole bunch of it. I was going to say, there's some serious deforestation going on after this wood, apparently. Yeah. I was talking about a luxury item. It certainly was. I was telling Chad before we were recording that this is very impressive to everyone but me.

But you, yeah, not impressive to you at all. No, because if this is in fact sandalwood, that's one of only two things in the world that I know for sure that I'm allergic to. And so that would be a real bummer. No church, no going to my house, no playing guitar or harp for me. No concerts for you.

Yeah, you would be out of luck. Yeah. Not a good situation. Yeah. I mean, I could be around it. It's not that I can't be around it, but I don't want to touch it. If I touch it...

want to be like sitting leaning against the wall of the temple no it's a skin my skin doesn't react good and uh to the sandalwood it doesn't it does not like it and so that would have been a real bummer if all the pews at church were made out of sandalwood luxury for everybody else curse for you yes that's what this would devolve to and then uh first 13 wraps up the sheba story by selling telling us that king solomon gave to the queen of sheba all that she desired whatever she asked besides what was given her by the bounty of king solomon i suspect it's that verse that people uh interpret to mean that whatever she asked for solomon gave to her uh part of which could have could have been the reason that she went home and had uh the child

of solomon who began that could be ethiopia yeah it does seem like an all-inclusive statement and it seems pretty all-inclusive yeah so well who knows uh but that's that's what it says so she after her time there, she turned and went back to her own land with her servants. It doesn't even say the camels, so I don't know if they left the camels there or not, but she did leave a whole bunch of stuff there, brought a whole bunch of stuff back, and

that's all we know about her and Solomon's time together. Then, verse 14 can pick up a new section. This is 1 Kings 10, 14. I've got highlighted here in the Bible program that I use

all the words for gold. And I think there's like between verses 14 and 25, there's like 11 highlights of gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold. So we're going to be hearing a lot about, it's kind of strange because Solomon wasn't just like gathering gold and then like a dragon, you know, finding a cave and hiding it, guarding it. He was using it to make stuff. Yeah. Things that were just ornamental. it was just ornamental so he's going to use it to make uh weaponry you don't take gold weaponry out into into battle this is all just for show but i guess he wanted to do something with all this gold

you gotta just if you got that much gold you gotta do something with it yeah yeah it doesn't it doesn't seem like he's just like hoarding it like you know scrooge mcduck or whatever and just kind of like diving into all his gold coins or whatever it seems like he's acquired an insane amount of gold and he's like let's just make everything out of gold this is what's going to happen guys Everything's going to be sandalwood and gold going forward. The gold, I'm assuming you'd be fine with. Sandalwood, not so much. Yeah, gold's fine.

I handle gold. Yeah. So the weight of the gold, kind of a strange number here, the weight of the gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold. Oh, very suspect number there. Very suspect number. They should have really made it either 665 or 667,

but it was not. It was 666 talents. This truly is the beginning of the end here. This is it, yeah. it's a bad sign when you got that much gold. So, uh, and that was besides that, which came from all these other people, explorers, uh, the, the merchants, the Kings of the West, uh, the governors of the land, I guess they were contributing their own, their own gold. So what's all I'm going to do with it? Well, verse 16 tells us that he's going to make some ornamental weaponry with some

of this he had 200 large shields of beaten gold 600 shekels of gold went into each when each shield so we're down to some exactitude here and then he made uh 300 more shields so hebrew has a couple different words for different size shields there's a sena which is like when you picture like a greek phalanx or roman phalanx where they have the large body shields that's what this would been so large full body shields sena but the smaller one that's often referred to as a buckler smaller usually circular shield that you're going to hold on your in your hand your wrist that is the second word that's used to describe here it's a it's a it's a magon so you got two different words two different kinds of shield basically just different in size but solomon

makes the golden big shields and the golden small buckler shields both out of out of gold and having made all these he put them in what's referred to as the house of the forest of lebanon really strange name but we talked about that a couple chapters ago of course made out of uh made out of cedar because that's what lebanon was associated with and this was i don't know scholars differ here some people say it was more of a treasury some people say it was an armory maybe it's both it's like where you keep all your stuff so it's a treasury but it's a treasury where all the treasures are or a lot of the churches are actually made to look like weapons and that's maybe that's where you take people to show off all of your your wealth but anyway that's one of the

construction projects that sovereign was engaged in and this is where he put all these golden golden weapons you know you're in a time of peace when you're making your shields out of gold and i might be wrong here but i know this i know it's beaten gold i know i realize it says that but gold is not even remotely the best material to make shields out of like gold gold is not that No, not that hard. No, no. This is not practical in the sense of if you were like, we're actually going to fight a war, would you like the gold shield?

I'd be like, I would not. I like the gold shield. Thank you, but no. We will leave that back in the treasury. That'll be something we can look at and be impressed with how much money we have. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons to do it. You don't want a gold shield because that is not the hardest metal, and I need my shield to be made out of something harder than gold.

Also, I don't want a gold shield because I'm not interested in someone trying to kill me specifically for the purpose of taking my shield. I mean, you don't have to put a target on you. You can just have this massive gold shield. Yeah. Take out the guy with the gold shield. Yeah, it was not a good idea.

So that's why we know this was not militarily practical. This was just for show. Yeah, which is impressive. He's like, hey, people coming from all over the world to see me. Let me take you up to the house of the forest of Lebanon and let me show off a bunch of gold weaponry that I'll never use, but I just have it

because why not? Why not? You've got that much gold, you've got to do something with it. And verse 18 tells us that he has a great ivory throne and you would think, well, if you've got an ivory throne, then you're going to, of course, keep it ivory, but not Solomon.

He overlaid it with the finest gold. So he's got to tell them that he's got that gold throne there ivory underneath that's wild yeah it's like having this beautiful hardwood and then not painting it i don't why would you do that but that's what he does he's got so obviously he had access to ivory makes a throne out of it i put some gold on that ivory throne and we're told a little bit more about this throne it was sort of a his throne was sort of a sabbatical we might say because it had six steps leading up to it so you have six steps thrones on top kind of the sitting

there in his Sabbath rest, if you will. Throne had a round top, whatever that means. It's a little bit ambiguous in the Hebrew as to exactly what that implies, but anyway, has a somewhat of a rounded top. And then we do know what was beside the throne on each side of the seat were armrests and there were two lions standing beside the arm rest. And then there were 12 lions because you had one on each of the of the six steps and then where it wraps up by saying the like of it was never made in any kingdom this was an impressive uh specimen of of thronery where you have ivory throne overlaid with gold you've got all of these well the the lions are symbols of course of you know of power of regality of obviously of the of the animal kingdom so the picture of Solomon is

he's atop this this huge throne impressive seat all the gold around all the lions so the whole the whole iconography of of the throne itself conveys to you this guy is powerful important the kind of guy that you don't want to mess with just uh an exemplary figure all around You have to assume these 12 lions represent the 12 tribes of Israel. 12 is not an accident there. Yeah, there's no accident. When you have 7 and 12, it's definitely not accidental. So you have the 12 tribes, on top of which, we might say,

there sits the king reigning over all 12 tribes. And to get to more specifics, verse 21 tells us that Solomon, If he's going to have some wine or maybe some beer or maybe just water, whatever he's drinking out of, whatever he's drinking, it's going to make sure it's not in a glass receptacle. It's in gold because all King Solomon's drinking vessels. I mean, like in my house, and I'm sure yours too. Every time Stacey and I decide we're going to have something to drink, I'll say, well, grab the gold chalice there and we'll have some. It is the only option, after all, because not some of them, all of them, are gold. Yeah, all of them are gold.

And all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. So I guess they also have drinking vessels in that House of the Forest of Lebanon alongside of the shields. And you might be wondering, were some of them silver? No, no, they weren't. They're going to let you know that. No, none, in fact, we're told. None were silver. Because, here you go.

silver this is verse 21 word for word silver was not considered as anything in the days of solomon yeah now that's that's that is quite the statement of how much wealth you've accumulated yeah when you say yeah silver that doesn't mean anything it's not worth anything we've got so much gold that you know you're walking down the street like today you know if you walk by a penny most people don't pick it up it just lays there and i'm not gonna reach down and pick that penny so the impression is that's that's the way silver was oh there's a silver coin in the road yeah no reason to stop and pick that up it's not worth anything yeah it does seem that this chapter is preparing you for the next chapter it's all a setup yeah which is like man things are going

great like how could they be going any better silver doesn't even matter like solomon his approval ratings through the roof he's killing it with the way that everything is going i mean this is this whole like asking for a king business is going great now that solomon's here yeah this is this is all genesis 2 that is preparing us for genesis 3 more or less yes this is uh everything seems to be just a little bit overdone on purpose if this all seems just to be seems a little bit hyperbolic a little exaggerated a little over the top well that's because this is all like a huge ascent and you're going to get to the very top and there's a cliff and then down down solemn goes over the cliff that's the reason this is set up the way it is so uh silver wasn't worth

anything and then we're told that also more ships the king had a fleet of ships and these ships were called the ships of tarshish and they went to well they went along with the fleet of fleet of Hiram. So, uh, Tarshish or in Hebrew Tarshish, again, this is one of these places that's kind of kind of frustratingly unspecific because we don't know where it's at. Uh, there's a lot of proposed, uh, uh, sites for, for Tarshish, uh, every, everything from somewhere in Africa, uh, Josephus, the Jewish historian, first century Jewish historian identified Tarshish, uh, Tarshish with Tarsus, so where Paul was from, Paul of Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. Some people think that it was Carthage, so on the shore there of Africa, and also, of course, probably the dominant

opinion that it was somewhere in modern-day Spain. Now, we ordinarily associate Tarshish with the story of Jonah, because, of course, that's actually where Jonah was heading to. He goes down to Joppa, he gets in the ship ship going to tarshish so that kind of makes sense with the location being being spain but wherever it was specifically and no one no one really knows it was kind of like i'm starting to think of an example today it's kind of like i don't know people even say this anymore but when i was a kid uh they'd say something like uh you know timbuktu that thing is from timbuktu or somebody's going to go to timbuktu and by that expression they meant like the most far-flung ends of the earth possible location that was the idea and tarshish does kind of have that

that uh almost metaphorical meaning there i mean there actually was a place but it also is used in kind of a symbolic sort of way like tarshish was the very end of the world the very ends of the earth and they were known we know from a whole bunch of other places in scripture they were known for their ships so these when they when the reference is made to the ships of tarshish that could mean they came from Tarshish itself. It could just simply mean that they were a variety of ship that was commonly associated with Tarshish. Maybe it's a bigger vessel that's made for long, long voyages.

But wherever Tarshish was, whatever the ships exactly were like, Solomon had some of them. And evidently they made long voyages because we're told once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing, listen to this list, gold obviously silver we're not sure why because who needs silver right and then ivory because you got to make thrones but the last two are the best so you might expect all that because you know gold silver okay ivory yeah yeah all that but the last two in the list are are the the unexpected apes and this can be translated uh possibly as as peacocks or another bird or some people also

suggest baboons yeah those seem different they seem very very different it's like that with with a lot of these these uh very unusual hebrew words that maybe only occurred once yeah sometimes you're especially if it's a reference to animals you don't have any idea what they're talking about unless you're you know given some description of what this animal is it's like that with a list of clean and unclean animals in leviticus well some of those animals on that list we don't have any idea i mean just guessing as to what possibly the hebrew could mean it's the same thing here but i just not the picture that you typically have of what's happening in jerusalem where you have an ape there or a peacock or baboon or whatever whatever it might be but we do know that solomon

kind of likes animals and stuff right i mean he's he's he's a studier of plants and animals and all that stuff so he's like hey man bring me some exotic animals to investigate yeah so uh they they've got them they got the ships of tarshish and they're bringing these animals from uh far flung lands so that uh jerusalem is uh quite a place yeah peacocks shredding around you got apes i mean this this tracks with uh what we know of solomon i think i mean he's like people coming to hang out people coming to check out my wisdom i'd like to have some animals i'd be like hey man have you ever seen one of these and then you go into a place and there's a peacock in there baboon or something and you're like whoa what is that and you're like yeah i brought that over on

the ship you know and you know it's like uh some some real tiger king stuff yeah you know i i guess when you stop and think about it i mean we were raised with tv and of course people today with the internet i mean what animal is there that we can't see a picture or a video of right yeah that just i mean just we're very accustomed to uh to that but if you're living in the ancient world and you just hear about these these animals your descriptions of them maybe you're like wow that's got to be something else and then actually bring one i mean it was like this when the first elephants were used in warfare you can imagine as a soldier if you've gone against plenty of other uh military units uh that had you know they had horses and whatnot but can you imagine you've never seen an

elephant and you're lining up and across the way you know there's alexander the great or whoever it might be and they've got elephants yeah it's wild to uh engage with you in military combat yeah no i mean like i said you could totally see solomon hearing a description from somebody from some far off place about some animal and then him saying oh bring me one of those that would be awesome if i had one like we should have one of those yeah yeah you can definitely hear solomon doing that uh just for the uh you know the strange nature of it and for him to how much how much gold is it going to cost me to get one of those because i've got a lot of it yeah plenty of gold plenty of silver so that that's the uh kind of the

end of that particular section and we have a summary statement here in verse 23 thus king Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. So if the details had not sufficiently convinced you of that summary statement, which is admittedly a little bit hyperbolic, that summary statement is intended to make sure you realize if you're talking riches, if you're talking wisdom, Solomon is your man. He's the one who's at this point world-renowned for having having both of those yeah it's making huge statements on purpose i mean that's the next verses and the whole earth sought the presence of solomon i mean obviously that's not literally true but but it's trying to convey a truth which is perhaps solomon was the most sought after man in

all the earth yeah i mean any hyper any hyperbole is based upon some element of truth and there was plenty of truth here because we have examples of the queen of sheba coming to to listen to him so the whole earth sought the presence of solomon to hear his wisdom which god had put into into his mind and they all show up not empty-handed but they've got their own ships for camels and so they bring articles of silver gold garments myrrh spices horses mules so much year by year so a lot of people are wanting an audience with the king they all show up with gifts and so you have this picture of Jerusalem as just overflowing with visitors from other countries, with wealth never seen before, animals you've never seen before. It really is, as we've talked about

before, it's a sort of an Edenic scene here between people from all over the place and the animals and the silver and the gold this garden-like setting is what jerusalem has has become so he is an adam sort of figure uh a messianic sort of figure but acknowledging all that kind of still keeping your mind we talked about earlier that this is all setting us up for what is to happen in in chapter 11 to wrap this up verse 26 says that wrap up this chapter rather verse 26 says that he also gathered together chariots and horsemen 1400 chariots 12 000 cowboys 12 000 horsemen when it says horsemen could mean a lot of these chariots had two people so you have one driver one charioteer who's got the the weapon so maybe that's a combination of

those two but either way you got a lot of people who are able to handle these chariots and these horses and he puts them in the chariot cities all over the the land of israel we've already heard about silver not being worth anything 27 is going to make sure we realize this because it repeats basically the same thing king solomon made silver as common in jerusalem as stone yeah many of the inflation is really high in jerusalem right now big time big time just yeah imagine a scenario where you look at a rock and you look at silver, you think, ah, basically the same thing. That's where we're at here.

And then he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephelah, which is an idiomatic expression that probably just, you know, we get the point. But yeah, I mean, there's sycamore trees all over the hill country, the lowlands. So you've got the same thing happening here with cedars in Jerusalem.

now verse 28 i mean a lot of this has actually begun to make make us a little bit nervous because we're already hearing about all these horses and we're going to hear in the next chapter about all these wives and we've already heard about all this all this gold well if you're familiar at all with deuteronomy 17 and what the what the lord said through moses about the king of israel what he should not do and what he should do if you're familiar with that at all which i'll read in just a second then you'd be getting nervous because hearing about all this gold and now all of a sudden you're hearing about all these horses and pretty soon you're going to hear about all these wives all of this is going to do from from the the deuteronomy 17 perspective is

is going to make you realize this this isn't good doesn't matter how much peace there is or how much prosperity or how much fame or how much wisdom there is there's a there's a ticking time bomb going off in the text and it's just about to just about to explode so let me just read a couple of verses from Deuteronomy 17 so this is way before of course this is at the end of the 40 years of wondering Moses is about to die this is his last this is his swan song of most of Moses long sermon and before a king was even on the horizon God said all right when you get a king one of these days when you get a king here's what i want him not to do here's how i want him to be and here's what i want him to do so that first of all he's got to be an israelite that's one of the

things that deuteronomy 17 says right when you when you have a king then he needs to be one of your people an israelite now let me pick it up with verse 16 moreover he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never again return that way. Now verse 17, neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. So the horses, the silver and gold, and the wives, all three are big no-nos for the king of israel what he shall do we're told in the verses that follow that is he's to make a copy of the torah he's to study it day and night this is to be the his this is to be the way that he

reigns by the wisdom that comes from from the torah so the mention of wives the mention of silver and gold and the mention of horses horses from egypt all three of those uh when you when you look at them in in the light of what solomon did this is the ticking time on that so that's about to go off here and i say that at this point because listen to this from verse 28 back in first kings chapter 10 verse 28 and solomon's import of horses was from egypt and from another place that i also don't know how to say it's k-u-e uh it's a lot easier in hebrew kveh is the way you say it in Hebrew, but it's written as K-U-E, Kui, maybe? Anyway, Kui, Kivei. So Egypt, of course, is south and to the west. Kivei is a Hittite kingdom that is located in Cilicia, so southeast

Asia, modern Turkey. So both north and south, he's getting the horses from there. The king's traders would bring these to Solomon, and then they import the chariots from Egypt for 600 their shekels of silver and then he'd get horses from there and he and now listen to this and so through the king's traders these horses were also exported to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria reason that is important is Solomon is weaponizing the very nations that will not very long after Solomon's death are going to turn against Israel so he's supplying him with horses probably supplying him a lot of other things which then is going to basically build up the arsenal which one day is going to be turned against israel he's so he's loading the gun that's going to be

turned and facing israel eventually so we haven't heard about the wives that's what we're about to turn to in chapter 11 but certainly we've heard a lot about gold now we're hearing a lot about horses so solomon's already done like the the two out of the three prohibitions in deuteronomy 17 and now as soon as we hear about the wise we're gonna hear about the the third element of this it's almost like he took that as the uh description of what you should do yeah so what you shouldn't do yeah he looked at that and said thou shalt not and he uh he somehow didn't read the not part and just thou shalt this whole thing yeah thou shalt accumulate uh gold thou shalt accumulate horses thou shalt also accumulate uh accumulate wives and it's to the wives then

that we that we now turn this is the beginning of chapter 11 and chapter 11 is going to it's going to it's going to bring to the fore a lot of the stuff that's been lurking in the background this whole time so we we've talked multiple occasions in these last few episodes about how there's hints of problems with solomon and we're gonna and we've this has been all building up of course especially in this last chapter where you have the description of the wealth of solomon and his accumulation of everything. Well, as soon as we get to the beginning of 11 now, we're going to hear about that third component, the wives, and then it's especially from his attachment to them that we're going to see his drifting away from fidelity to Yahweh to fidelity to other gods,

and how that all worked out practically. So the chapter begins this way. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh. So we've heard plenty about her. We know that Solomon early in his kingship, early in his reign, he married the daughter of Pharaoh

in his political marriages. We've talked about how he built a separate house for her. So we've heard plenty about her. now we're here about uh all these other ones and there's a list of them where these wives come from well some of them were moabites some were ammonites and edomites and sidonians and and hittite women and then verse 2 says from the nations concerning which the lord had said to the people of israel quote you shall not enter into marriage with them neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. I could be wrong, but I think

this is the first express condemnation of something that Solomon did. A lot of it's been implicit. You know, you realize how he shouldn't have done that. That's not looking good. That seems like a real risky, risky thing. I've heard plenty of that, but we haven't heard anything that I can recall anyway, where it comes right out and says, oh, this thing that Solomon did, God said, don't do it. And here we have that quoted verbatim from earlier in the Torah, where God says, don't engage in intermarriage with these peoples. And it's not because I just don't like them or something. The reason is given is because if you do, here's what's going to happen. They're going to take your heart, which is supposed to be devoted to me, and they're going

to twist it around so that that heart is going to turn away to other gods and of course that's what happened we're told that solomon clung to these in love the hebrew verb there is davach it's the same verb that we have in the book of genesis where it says a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall davach to his wife shall cleave it's the idea of i think in modern hebrew it even becomes the word for like an adhesive or glue. So you stick two things together. They adhere together. That's this idea.

So a man is supposed to cleave to his wife, be joined to her so that much of them become one flesh. So Solomon clung to these. He divocked to these in love. How many? A bunch. Verse three, he had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines.

and his wives turned away his heart. Verse 4 tells us, when Sodom 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. I'm just going to finish this out, and then we'll talk about it. Verse 5 through 8 basically tells us the real dark, sinister, evil part of how all of this played out.

So what did Solomon do? He went after the Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians. And after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. So we have a Sidonian god, an Ammonite god that he went after. Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, did not wholly follow the Lord as David, his father, had done. So he also built high places for Chemosh, who's not even called the god. He's called the abomination of Moab.

And for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem. and that's the Mount of Olives, the Mount of Eastern Jerusalem. So on the Mount of Olives, he built shrines, temples, whatever, for these horrific, abominable deities. And that's what he did, we're told in verse 8, for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrifices to their gods. Yeah, so it seems that what he's doing here is he's marrying all these women, he's taking them from all over the place,

and then they're like, well, I just need to be able to make sacrifices to my god you know while i'm here and he's like okay fine so this mount of olives we'll put some we'll put some places up there for you to do this and of course his heart ends up being divided as well and what this tells you is it's so interesting that the the contrast that it gives you between solomon and david because you have explicit things in the life of david that you would say are way worse, particularly on a horizontal level, than anything that you ever hear about Solomon doing. Yeah.

You don't have really the Uriah equivalent happening with Solomon. Just all kinds of stuff, like the way he handles things with his kids and all kinds of things, where if you were to say, which of these guys is a better guy? It seems like Solomon is a much better person.

You know, you might say like, well, 700 wives seems a little bit insane. But other than that, he seems like he's a pretty great guy. And you can't say that about David. You're like, no, there's lots of things to not like about David. But yet that is still the contrast that you use because as you read the Old Testament and when you see that God is upset with his people, you have to understand that what's happening over and over and over and over again just has everything to do with what God they're worshiping.

Yeah, so when you hear this phrase about the heart being wholly true to the Lord their God, hear that as saying a heart which clung to that God and that God alone. So David didn't build shrines to Moloch, the abomination of the Ammonites. David did not burn incense to the gods of the Philistines or whoever it might be. So just understand when it says that, that's talking about basically that he did not engage in the kinds of false worship. that his son and his grandson and most of the kings of Israel and Judah did engage him. Yeah, this is actually interesting, too, because this is the, you know, it only took three, but this is the first king to do this, because this is also things that Saul did not do.

Yeah, and it just goes downhill from here. Saul certainly did not. David certainly did not. But Solomon, yeah, he will. And as we'll see with, you know, with a couple exceptions like Josiah and Hezekiah, most of the kings of Judah will do that. they will not only kind of allow this false worship to take place, but they will actively engage in it.

They'll be proponents of it. They'll finance it. So what Solomon begins to do here sets a very bad precedent for what many of his successors are going to do as well. Well, it seems to me, too, that one of the big problems with this is not, yes, God is a jealous God, and he knows that he's the only God and therefore the only one to be worshipped.

But also, you have all of these sinner kings and these sinner judges or whoever they are, sinner saints of the Old Testament. And the problem becomes that when you start worshipping other gods, you don't have any place to go get your sins wiped away. You don't have a God anymore that can say what he said to David and say,

I've put away your sin. And so now that when you're engaging in all this idolatry, your sin isn't put away. And so you have this compounding effect that goes on where David, who might be a more notorious sinner than his son Solomon, has a place to go put his sin, and Solomon does not. Yeah, and what happens is all this builds up, too. Keeping in mind that this is Jerusalem, this is where the temple is, one of the realities of ancient Israel is that the sins of the people begin to affect even broader things. So there's a pollution of the land that's taking place. There's a pollution of the temple that's taking place, God's house. And this is going to build up over time until

finally, after several generations, the temple is going to be so polluted with idolatry, the idolatry that begins with Solomon, that God will simply say, oh, I'm out, and he'll leave. and the temple will be destroyed. So I guess what impresses me about this, not in a good way, is that one man's sin leads to a whole lot of other sins until it becomes a national issue, such a national issue that eventually it's going to lead to the very destruction of the Southern Kingdom.

The Northern Kingdom is going to be lost very soon, but the Southern Kingdom is going to be lost as well. And it really all begins right here. It all begins with Solomon turning his heart away from the true God to not just enable his wives to worship these foreign gods, but he himself is engaged in this idolatry as well. Yeah. Well, that's it, man. We are out of time.

Next week we will get into God's got some words for Solomon. He's going to tell him that the time of peace is going to be coming to an end because of this. So adversaries are going to be raised up. But we will get into that next week. I'll see you then, Chad. All right. See you then.