Chapters 9-11 bring the Solomon story to a close. There really are just a few more big stories to tell: The Queen of Sheba’s visit (10:1-13) and the rebellion of Jeroboam (11:26-40). What’s amazing is that the Lord himself incited Jeroboam’s defection and tore the ten northern tribes away from Solomon. What would have brought this about? Is God fickle? Is God untrustworthy? Or course he isn’t, but something went wrong with Solomon. When we meditated on Eccelsiastes last year we saw that at some point late in his life Solomon repented of his many sins. It is here in the final three chapters of his story in Kings that we will see what some of those sins were and just how quick a step it can be for a man from being the apple of God’s eye to being a worm-infested lump in the compost pile.
The LORD Appears to Solomon
9 When Solomon had finished building the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had achieved all he had desired to do,
The word “desired” in this verse is ḥosheq, also tranlsated “love” (Psalm 91:14, not the ḥoshek which is the “darkness” of Genesis 1:2). It can also be used in the carpentry sense of “attach” (Exodus 38:28, which ends literally “he overlaid their tops [the tops of the pillars] and attached bands to them”). Whatever Solomon desired, whatever he got attached to, he built or he acquired. God didn’t withhold anything from him, and Solomon did the same: “All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor” (Ecclesiastes 2:10, NASB).
2 the LORD appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The LORD said to him:
The Lord had appeared to the King at Gibeon in the dream when he answered Solomon’s prayer and granted him the wisdom he had asked for (3:4-15). The verb and its relative particle (as he had appeared) suggests that God’s appearance now was also in a dream, just as God had let himself be seen by Solomon twenty years before. It was now the midpoint of Solomon’s reign. Incidentally, Solomon’s son Rehoboam was now 21; he had been a year old when David died and Solomon took the throne.
“I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. (NIV)
It was not the excellent masonry or woodworking that made the temple permanent. It was God’s favor. Notice that God says that he consecrated the temple, not Solomon, not the priests, and not the people. As long as the people remained faithful to him, their nation would be untouchable; Jerusalem would be impregnable. The outlying villages would be safe and peaceful. The rain would come and the frost would be a thing of beauty, not terror. Locusts would appear only when the people retold the story of the Exodus. Their swords would be beaten into blades for plows.
But if they they were unfaithful, God would leave them; he would divorce them. What we will hear later in these chapters is that just as Solomon started chasing after many woman and many gods, so his people did, too. The king was the example and the front page news. What successful Solomon did, the people wanted to do too.
This should be a warning for anyone who wants to be a leader. Our hearts need to be focused on our Savior. And we must never forget that his forgiveness is ours forever. His forgiveness doesn’t depend on anything from inside us. It’s not about how hard we believe or how deeply we feel love, but it depends only on God who gives it. His mercy endures forever.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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