CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 11:15. When David was in Edom; or, was (at war) with. The Sept. and Peshito read, had smitten. Hadad was a royal child, rescued from Joab’s extirminating slaughter (2 Samuel 8:13) in Edom, carried into Egypt, and fostered by the Egyptian king. On learning of the death of David and Joab, he quitted Egypt, returned to his own land, and sought to restore the ruined kingdom of his fathers. Foilod in his efforts, he joined himself to Rezon another of Solomon’s adversaries (1 Kings 11:23-25).
1 Kings 11:22. Let me go in any wise—The Sept. and Codex Vat. insert here, “And Hadad returned to his own land; this is the mischief which Hadad did; and he abhorred Israel, and reigned over Edom.”
1 Kings 11:23. Another adversary, Rezon—Comp. 2 Samuel 8:3, sq.
1 Kings 11:25. Beside the mischief that Hadad did יְאֶת־הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר הֲדָד—A peculiar phrase, not easy to render; yet A. V. gives the sense fairly; or thus, But as for this mischief that Hadad did; or, And, indeed, along with the evil that Hadad did (so Bertheau).
1 Kings 11:26. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite, i.e., an Ephraimite. Hadad and Rezon were “adversaries” to Solomon; but Jeroboam was an internal enemy, a subject and servant who developed into a rebel, and a more dangerous enemy. Being a young man of industry and talent, Solomon entrusted him with the honourable position of superintendent of the engineering works in progress around Jerusalem. He evidently used this eminence to sow sedition, for “this was the cause,” &c., 1 Kings 11:27. Lange suggests that the Ephraimites had an old and irrepressible jealousy of Judah, and very reluctantly submitted to labour in the king’s citadel. Compulsory labour increased this dislike to hatred so that Jeroboam found it easy to fan the flame of insurrection among them.
1 Kings 11:29. Ahijah the Shilonite—Shiloh was in the tribe of Ephraim; hence Ahijah and Jeroboam were of the same tribe—probably, of the same spirit also.
1 Kings 11:40. Solomon sought, therefore, &c.—Jeroboam’s inflated pride and restless ambition led him to conspiracies even before Solomon’s death, as 1 Kings 11:26 affirms. Unto Shishak, king of Egypt, who harboured this seditions rebel, thus showing his own hostility to or jealousy of Solomon. Shishak was of a different dynasty from Solomon’s father-in-law.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 11:41-43
THE DEATH OF GREAT MEN
I. Is not always a calamity to a nation. When the powers of a great mind are devoted to the best interests of the people irrespective of selfish and ulterior designs, and when the nation is flourishing under the sagacious and virtuous policy adopted, the death of such a character is an irreparable loss, a lamentable disaster. But a great man may be a great curse to a nation. He may be a genius in wickedness, aggrandising and indulging himself by cruel oppression and shameless fraud. The death of such a man, terrible as it may be to himself, is a blessing to the nation he has so wofully wronged. It is well for humanity that death does come to the great tyrants of society, else life on earth would become intolerable. The world would be transformed into a Gehenna of unutterable torture.
II. Is a humbling spectacle when it happens after they have outlived their reputation. Napoleon Bonaparte lamented that he did not fall at Waterloo. And it is said of Daniel O’Connell, the great and gifted Irish patriot, that he ought to have died thirty or forty years before he did, and while he stood on the highest pinnacle of fame he ever reached, alter the victories he achieved on behalf of Catholic emancipation. So it might be said of Solomon that had he died immediately after the great event of his reign—the dedication of the Temple—he would have fallen in the midst of glory untarnished and of greatness unexampled, and bequeathed to history a character of wondrous moral symmetry and unrivalled reputation. But Solomon lived too fast, and, though not old, lived too long. His death, which, had it occurred years before, would have produced a profound impression and wrung the nation’s heart with sorrow and wailing, was chronicled without emotion. “Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David” (1 Kings 11:43). Death in any form is a saddening sight—in bird, or beast, or flower. Decay is a subtle, mysterious, but all-potent power, which baffles inquiry and conquers all opposition. It is heart-breaking to watch the ravages we are so powerless to arrest. The death of a good man is sad; but it is a still sadder sight to witness the death of one who once was great and noble, and has sunk into obscurity and disgrace. Oh, the weakness and vanity of man! How little is he to be trusted, how deeply to be pitied! How manifold are the changes through which he passes during the course of one brief life-time!
III. Does not hinder the progress of the Divine purpose concerning the race. The individual may prove unfaithful, God never. Great as is the power for evil of one erring spirit, the evil is circumscribed, and will not be allowed to imperil the good which God has provided for sinning humanity. “Where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound.” It is humbling to observe how soon and how easily the greatest men can be dispensed with. The defection of Solomon, and of the nation he governed, did not prevent Jehovah from carrying out his merciful intention of redeeming humanity. By methods the most insignificant and unexpected He can accomplish His gracious designs.
LESSONS:—
1. Death brings both great and small to one common level.
2. The most brilliant gifts will not protect man from committing the most ruinous follies.
3. Greatness is supremely contemptible when divorced from goodness.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 11:40. Sin obscures the soul. He who turns aside from God departs from wisdom; and let those who, instead of bowing and submitting with resignation to the chastisements of God, haughtily strive against them, contemplate the fate of Jeroboam, who doubtless stirred up the plot against Solomon, since he afterwards eagerly abetted the desertion of the ten tribes. Even as Solomon, when he sought to slay Jeroboam, must have felt that in vain he resisted the Divine decrees, and was powerless to hinder them, so likewise Jeroboam, compelled to fly to Egypt, must have become conscious that in vain he strove rashly and insolently to anticipate the execution of the Divine decrees. We must ever make bitter expiation when we haughtily resist and oppose the Lord, or when we strive to hasten His designs, or to appoint time and place for their fulfilment. The life of Solomon closes with the words—“Therefore Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam.” Instead of seeking forgiveness from Him who forgiveth much, and himself granting forgiveness, he is thinking of murder and vengeance. How great and noble the contrast between this and the figure of Him who in the face of death upon the cross cried—“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Let us strive to become like unto His image, and that our last thought in life may be of love and reconciliation, and not of revenge and hatred. Solomon possessed the fairest and noblest crown that mortal can wear, yet it was perishable, not enduring beyond death and the grave. The Lord promises an immortal crown to those who love and follow Him. Be faithful unto death, then He will give thee the crown of life: blessed is he who endureth unto the end.—Roos.
1 Kings 11:40-43. These three truths are nowhere more powerfully exemplified than in the life of Solomon.
1. What is a man profited, &c. (Matthew 16:26).
2. Vanity of vanities (Ecclesiastes 1:2).
3. The world passeth away (1 John 2:17).—Lange.
1 Kings 11:43. Solomon died in almost the flower of his age, and, it appears, unregretted. His government was no blessing to Israel, and laid, by its exactions and oppressions, the foundation of that schism which was so fatal to the unhappy people of Israel and Judah, and was the most powerful procuring cause of the miseries which have fallen upon the Jewish people from that time until now.—A. Clarke.
—His son followed him in the throne. Thus the graves are filling in with the generations that go off, and houses are filling in with those that are growing up. As the grave cries—Give, give; so land is never lost for want of an heir.—M. Henry.
—Solomon a type of Christ.
1. As the child of promise.
2. As the king of Israel, though ready to spare, yet finally executing and destroying every obstinate rebel against his government.
3. As the Prince of Peace.
4. As the builder of the Temple of the Lord.
5. As the embodiment of Wisdom
6. As attracting multitudes towards him, even of the most distinguished rank.—Robinson.
REFLECTED RAYS FROM THE BEST LITERARY LIGHTS ON THE CHARACTER AND CAREER OF SOLOMON
You have seen a blight in summer. The sky is overcast, and yet there are no clouds; nothing but a dry and stifling obscuration, as if the mouth of some pestilent volcano had opened, or as if sulphur mingled with the sunbeams. “The beasts groan; the cattle are oppressed.” From the trees the embryo fruits and the remaining blossoms fall in an unnoticed shower, and the foliage curle and crumples. And whilst creation looks disconsolate, in the hedgerows the heavy moths begin to flutter, and ominous owlets cry from the ruin. Such a blight came over the Hebrew summer. By every calculation it ought to have been high noon; but the sun no longer smiled on Israel’s dial. There was a dark discomfort in the air. The people murmured. The monarch wheeled along with greater pomp than ever; but the popular prince had soured into the despot, and the crown sat defiant on his moody brow; and stiff were the obeisances, heartless the hosannas, which hailed him as he passed. The ways of Zion mourned; and whilst grass was sprouting in the temple-courts, mysterious groves and impious shrines were rising everywhere; and whilst lust defiled the palace, Chemosh and Ashtoreth and other Gentile abominations defiled the Holy Land. And in the disastrous eclipse beasts of the forest crept abroad. From his lurking place in Egypt Hadad ventured out, and became a life-long torment to the God-forsaken monarch. And Rezon pounced on Damascus, and made Syria his own. And from the pagan palaces of Thebes and Memphis harsh cries were heard ever and anon, Pharaoh and Jeroboam taking counsel together, screeching forth their threatenings and hooting insults, at which Solomon could laugh no longer. For amidst all the gloom and misery a message comes from God: the kingdom is rent; and whilst Solomon’s successor will only have a fag-end and a fragment, by right Divine ten tribes are handed over to a rebel and a runaway.
What led to Solomon’s apostasy? And what, again, was the ulterior effect of that apostasy on himself? As to the origin of his apostasy the Word of God is explicit. He did not obey his own maxim. He ceased to rejoice with the wife of his youth; and loving many strangers, they drew his heart away from God. Luxury and sinful attachments made him an idolater, and idolatry made him yet more licentious; until in the lazy enervation and languid day-dreaming of the Sybarite, he lost the perspicacity of the sage and the prowess of the sovereign; and when he woke up from the tipsy swoon, and out of the kennel picked his tarnished diadem, he woke to find his faculties, once so clear and limpid, all perturbed, his strenuous reason paralysed, and his healthful fancy poisoned. He woke to find the world grown hollow, and himself grown old. He woke to see the sun bedarkened in Israel’s sky, and a special gloom encompassing himself. He woke to recognize all round a sadder sight than winter—a blasted summer. Like a deluded Samson starting from his slumber, he sought to recall that noted wisdom which had signalized his Nazarite days; but its locks were shorn; and, cross and self-disgusted, wretched and guilty, he woke up to the discovery which awaits the sated sensualists. He found that when the beast gets the better of the man, the man is abandoned by his God. Like one who falls asleep amidst the lights and music of an orchestra, and who awakes amidst empty benches and tattered programmes—like a man who falls asleep in a flower-garden, and who opens his eyes on a bald 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 voluptuary—“Vanity of vanities! vanity of vanities! all is vanity!”—Dr. James Hamilton.
Less varied and less profound is the insight afforded into the private experience of the Wise King. The insufficiency of the most perfect human wisdom to guard the heart, and of the loftiest eminence of power and earthly magnificence to satisfy its cravings, are almost painfully prominent. From amid the lustre of his throne, and the depth of an experience that had fathomed every created element of happiness, issues the plaintive voice still repeating its witness of the vanity of all human things. It is a happiness to turn from Ecclesiastes to the Song of Solomon, and, in its rich and gorgeous allegory, to read that not in vain had he searched for the secret of human happiness, but had found it in the heavenly Bridegroom and the unutterable joys of His espoused Church. There is, however, another point of view in which this period of imperial splendour stood in very close relation to the Divine plan. For it constituted a new appeal to the consciences and even to the interests of Israel, such as they had not previously experienced. It was, indeed, the fault of their own sin, and of that alone, that they had hitherto, with the brief exception of the latter days of Joshua, tasted the bitterness of the warning, and not the glory of the promise. The alternatives presented by Moses, and again reiterated by Joshua, were two: an extraordinary blessing upon obedience, and an extraordinary curse upon disobedience. They had perversely chosen the second course, and had already experienced the first blows of the scourge, to culminate hereafter in their dispersion among all nations. But thus it happened, that of the other alternative they had enjoyed no experience up to the time of David. It might, therefore, have been open to object against God’s final dealings with His chosen race, on the ground that reward had not been adequately tried. The opposition hardened by the storm would have melted, it might have been thought, amid the sunshine. Had they actually known by experience what the blessing was, who can tell what effect it may have had upon Israel? This possible objection has been foreclosed by the glory of the times of David and Solomon. During this period God, by His own gracious acts—not by virtue of any meritorious obedience of theirs—gave them the enjoyment of the blessing; not wholly, for the sinful luxury and profusion of Solomon rapidly introduced the elements of evil, but sufficiently to indicate the nature of what God had in store for them. Both alternatives were tried, and both the frown and the smile equally failed to conquer the stubbornness of their disobedience. Hence over this brief period of national magnificence and religious progress the clouds soon gathered again. Here the fortunes of the Hebrew race culminated at their highest point, and then hasted to their decline. Not that God wearied in blessing, but that Israel wearied in obeying. If neither the wise king himself, nor the people he ruled, could bear that time of glory without introducing elements of decay amid such a full flush of life, what wonder that others have proved unable to do so; and that the history of every nation under heaven has hitherto been one invariable story of growth, prosperity, corruption, decline, and ruin! Christianity has, indeed, introduced into nations a new principle of life, and extended the duration of their strength far beyond all the limits of the ancient world; but whether, even among them, the purifying salt will permanently correct the festering elements of moral corruption, is a lesson still to be learned.—Garbett’s Divine Plan of Revelation.
Solomon’s character, as drawn in the Scriptures, is surely many-sided. The simple, unpretending child—the darling of Jehovah—the chosen king—the seeker after wisdom: choosing her above all other things—the wise and sagacious judge—the powerful ruler, and glorious sovereign—surpassing, in many ways, all the kings of the nations round about him; his navies traversing many a sea, and kings and princes from afar bringing and laying at his feet their gifts: but in his old age a despot, a polygamist, and an idolater. These last were doubtless the immediate causes of his own decline, and of the subsequent misfortunes of the nation. In his reign the Israelitish monarchy reached the highest pitch of worldly splendour, the memory of which is still preserved in many an oriental legend and tradition. But that very splendour seemed to pervert the nation’s heart, and cause the cloud of Jehovah’s glory to depart from His people and His Holy Habitation. The outer splendour of his court and empire, the magnificence of his buildings, and his commerce with foreign nations were, perhaps, not in themselves wrong. They might have been made the means of leading other nations to the knowledge of the One True God; but they were fraught with danger. Worldly glory has ever had the tendency to take away the heart from the pure and the good rather than to win it to the worship of God. So it was with Solomon, and so it ever has been. “How hardly shall a rich man enter the kingdom of God!” The thing is not impossible with God; but the dangers of wealth and worldly splendour far surpass their probable advantages to their possessor. And so the Church, whenever she has sought to increase her strength by a showing of worldly forces, has become shorn of her spiritual power. “Viewed from the theocratic stand-point, Solomon’s reign was a grand failure. It corresponded largely with the sad failure of Saul, the first king of Israel. Saul’s misfortunes, however, were largely owing to his incapacity for government, as well as to moral obliquity. He was unequal to the exigencies of his age, and the task of successfully moulding into a monarchy the nation so long ruled by judges exceeded his powers. But with Solomon there was no lack of ability. His wisdom, sagacity, and power were equal to any possible emergency. But his grievous sins and neglect of God’s law brought on his ruin. His greatness and glory weaned his heart from God, and his wives led him into idolatry. Speculation as to his probable repentance and final salvation is idle and fruitless, and will always be governed by preconceived opinions. The sacred writers pass it over in utter silence, and give no shadow of intimation that he ever turned from his idolatry. A mighty shadow clouds his latter days: and there, in Holy Writ, he stands depicted—one part of his life and character in strangest contrast with the other—the grandest and saddest personage of sacred history.—Whedon.
The danger came, and, in spite of the warning, the king fell. Before long the priests and prophets had to grieve over rival temples to Moloch, Chemosh, and Ashtoreth, forms of ritual, not idolatrous only, but cruel, dark, impure. This evil came as the penalty of another. He gave himself to “strange women.” He found himself involved in a fascination that led to the worship of strange gods. The starting point and the goal are given us. We are left, from what we know otherwise, to trace the process. Something there was, perhaps, in his very “largeness of heart,” so far in advance of traditional knowledge of his age, rising to higher and wider thoughts of God, which predisposed him to it. In recognising what was true in other forms of faith, he might lose his horror at what was false. With this there may have mingled political motives. He may have hoped, by a policy of toleration, to conciliate neighbouring princes, to attract a larger traffic. But probably also there was another influence less commonly taken into account. The widespread belief of the East in the magic arts of Solomon is not, it is believed, without its foundation of truth. Disasters followed before long as the natural consequence of what was politically a blunder as well as religiously a sin. The strength of the nation rested on its unity, and its unity depended on its faith. Whatever attractions the sensuous ritual which he introduced may have had for the great body of the people, the priests and Levites must have looked upon the rival worship with entire disfavour. The seal of the prophetic order was now kindled into active opposition. The king in vain tried to check the current that was setting strong against him. The old tribal jealousies gave signs of renewed vitality. Ephraim was prepared once more to dispute the supremacy of Judah, needing special control. And with this weakness within there came attacks from without. The king, prematurely old, must have foreseen the rapid breaking up of the great monarchy to which he had succeeded. Of the inner changes of mind and heart, which ran parallel with this history, Scripture is comparatively silent. We may not enter into the things within the veil, or answer either way the doubting question—Is there any hope?—Smith’s Bible Dictionary. (See also Smith’s Old Testament History, p. 419–424; also Stanley’s Jewish Church, second series, p. 256–260.)
It is extremely difficult to give a portraiture of Solomon which can harmonize at once both the demand for historic truth and the general estimation which tradition assigns to him. The story is extraordinary. David, the father of the wise king, founded and consolidated the kingdom. His life was stormy and chequered. His character was romantic, chivalric, and generous. He showed himself capable of both self-sacrifice and of revolting criminality and treachery. He was tender, and he was brave. His soul rested upon the covenant-keeping Jehovah, yet he dared to violate all the duties of the Decalogue which concern man’s dealings with his brother man. Solomon did not inherit the personal traits of his father. He was not warlike; he was a man of peace. He sought wisdom, and he sought it from Jehovah. He desired to administer his government according to the law and will of God. He had fine talent for observation. He was a naturalist of rare attainments. He knew much of the earth; he knew much of men. He was a man of understanding, expressing his thoughts and observations in proverbs. He was splendid in his tastes. He sought wealth by commerce and by trade with heathen nations. He made Israel a kingdom of this world. At the same time he built the Temple, lavishing upon it untold sums of money, and aiming to make it, according to Eastern conceptions, splendid in all respects. Certainly at its dedication he is one of the most imposing and majestic figures in all history. But by degrees, enervated by luxury, by pleasure, by plenty, he lost the strength of his convictions. He became wise in this world. The law of Jehovah lost its hold upon his conscience. He began to justify idolatry. By degrees the splendour passed away, and darkness, and weariness, and hopelessness, and an ignoble old age came on. He forsook the noble path of his youth, and his glory was lost. The sun of his life rose in all splendour and shone brilliantly, to go down at last amid the heavy darkness of impending storm and night. The people lost their sense of the exclusive sovereignty of Jehovah; their burdens were heavy, and the brief glory of Israel as a kingdom of this world passed away for ever.—Dr. E. Harwood in Lange.
It is impossible not to perceive that such a time as this of Solomon (the dedication of the Temple), though really a great one, is a critical one for any nation. The idea of building a house which the Lord would fill with His glory was a recognition of God as eternally ruling over that people and over all people. Yet there lay close to it a tendency to make the invisible visible; they represent the holy presence as belonging to the building, instead of the building as being hallowed and glorified by the presence. There was no necessity that this evil should grow out of that good; in a very important sense one is the testimony against the other; still all experience, and none more decisively than the experience of the Israelites, prepares us to expect such a result. And here I believe is the precious moral of Solomon’s history, that which makes it a perfectly harmonious history in spite of the incongruities in his own life. There was the seed of idolatry in him, as there is in every man. That early prayer for an understanding heart was the prayer against it—the prayer for an inward eye to look through the semblances of things to their reality; for a continual revelation of that which passeth show. The prayer was answered as fully as any prayer ever was. The Divine judgment, the discrimination of good and bad, came to Soloman: it was not limited in any direction; it could be exercised on persons as on things; it was shown to be the faculty which a king requires, because it is that which a man requires, since by it God perceives the thoughts and intents of the heart. But there comes a moment when the king or the man ceases to desire that the light should enter into him, should separate the good and the bad in him. There comes a time when his faculty begins to be regarded as a craft, when he half suspects that the light by which he sees is his own. Then appears the tempter. He may come in the form of an Egyptian princess, or any other; but he will in some way appeal to the senses; he will point the road to idolatry. The secret desire of the heart, mightily resisted once, will be allowed to prevail; it will convert all that once checked it to its nourishment. The gold and the silver, not of the palace only, but of the temple—not the glory only of the kingdom, but of the sanctuary—will strengthen and deepen the falsehoods of the inner man. The glorious power of judging, which enabled one who knew not how to go out or come in, to look into the hardest cases, and to resolve them, itself receives the yoke and bows to the image; its keenness and subtilty only inventing arguments and apologies for the shame. And the sympathizing king who sent his people away with gladness of heart, sure that God was the king, and that they had a human king, who felt towards them as he felt, would gradually become a tyrant, laying on his subjects Egyptian burdens, compelling them to do the work of beasts, proving that he valued the stones, the iron, and the brass which formed the materials of God’s house, above the living beings who were to draw nigh to offer their supplications in it. So the wise king may prepare his subjects for rebellion, and his kingdom for division. A lesson surely full of instruction and wisdom for all kings and all men; for those who think, and for those who act; for those who study the secrets of the human heart, and for those who investigate the meaning of nature; for those who despise the arts and wealth of the world, and for those who worship them; for those who hold strength and glory to be the Devil’s, and for those who covet them and hunt after them as if they were Divine; for nations upon which God hath bestowed mechanical knowledge, and the blessed results of it; for nations which look upon human beings as only the machines and the producers of a certain amount of physical enjoyments. But though so full of instruction, it would be utterly melancholy and oppressive, seeing that it speaks of retrogression instead of progress, of folly coming forth from wisdom—death from life—if there were no sequel to the story. But the wisdom which Solomon prayed for and pursued with so great and earnest a heart was not a wisdom which could die with him, or which his forgetfulness of it could kill. “The Lord possessed me,” says the writer of the Book of Proverbs, “in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up for everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was.” “In the beginning was the Word,” says St. John, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” This is the King “who shall be found as long as the sun and moon endureth, whom all nations shall call blessed.” This is that Son “who shall judge the people with righteousness and the poor with judgment.” This is He in whom the prayers of David are ended. Brethren, every one of us may ask that Divine Word who is near to us and with us, for an understanding heart. Every one of us who feels that a great work is laid upon him, and that he is in the midst of a people which God hath chosen, and some of whom at least he must teach and judge, and that he is but a little child, may crave for a spirit to discern the good and the bad in himself and in all others. And if we feel, as most of us perhaps do, that we need above all things else, is that sense of responsibility, that consciousness of a calling, that feeling of feebleness which were the source of Solomon’s prayer—let us ask for these gifts first. And so we shall understand more and more clearly that we are called to be kings and priests in that city which He hath set up, and in which He reigns, a city in which there is one visible temple; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it; a city into which the kings of the earth shall at last bring their glory and honour.—F. D. Maurice.