"Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" (a paraphrase of 1 Kings 10:23).

So Solomon had the greatest wealth and wisdom in the world. And with all of it, did he worship the Lord? Sadly, his devotion went elsewhere: he clung in love to wives who worshiped other gods (1 Kings 11:2).

Is it wrong to love your wife faithfully? To listen to her? To respect her convictions? Of course not — unless doing so means contradicting the Word of God. Even the command to love your neighbor as yourself is secondary to the first command, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Every other devotion must be defined and ordered by our devotion to God. Family obligations take second place to our devotion to God and His will for our lives. Job did not follow the foolish counsel of his wife when she told him to curse God and die.

Jesus taught, "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). The word "first" indicates both time and priority. We must always begin with God, and always keep Him as our central focus.

Solomon did not. His devotion began to slip as he grew older. As powerful people are prone to do, he forgot that he would not remain powerful forever.

So, friends, we must remain vigilant until the day we die. We must diligently study God's Word. We must pray without ceasing. We must remain humbly teachable and keep the priority of God and His calling ever before us. Once we let down our guard and think, "This little sin is okay," or "I can tolerate that," or "That's not all bad," then, like a gap in a warrior's armor, it gives the enemy of our souls a place to attack.

Whether or not we are endowed with wealth and wisdom, let us never cease to worship the Lord first and foremost. And let us be careful about any influence — from a spouse, a friend, or anyone else — that would draw us away from God. Let us also be wary of pride, for when we think we can stand on our own, we will certainly fall.

AI-Expanded Reflection

1 Kings 11:1–8 describes the decline carefully: Solomon "loved many foreign women" (11:1), "clung to these in love" (11:2), and "when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods" (11:4). The text does not say he abandoned the Lord outright; it says his heart "was not wholly true to the Lord his God," and he built high places for the gods of his wives (11:7–8). Divided devotion, not open apostasy, is what Scripture names as the failure.

It is worth noting that the problem was religious rather than ethnic: the nations named in 11:2 are those whose gods God had warned would turn Israel's heart away, and Scripture elsewhere honors foreign women who embraced the Lord — Rahab, Ruth, and the widow of Zarephath among them. The comment's broader warning stands for every believer: Jesus said that loving family more than Him disqualifies a disciple (Matthew 10:37), and Paul urged believers to marry "only in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:39). The safeguard the comment names — daily Scripture, prayer, and teachability — is the ordinary means by which a heart stays whole toward God.

"Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you," and set you on Israel's throne. Because the Lord loved Israel forever, He made Solomon king, "that you may execute justice and righteousness" (a paraphrase of 1 Kings 10:9).

The queen of Sheba praises the Lord, the God of Israel, because of the wisdom, justice, and righteousness of King Solomon. I wonder whether she came to this conclusion on her own or whether Solomon told her. Apart from Solomon's praise of God in the early years of his reign, the narrative does not suggest a continuing humility before the Lord.

Remember King Saul. He was humble and honored the Lord in the early years of his reign, but pride and insecurity soon became his prevailing attitude. Perhaps Solomon was on the same slippery slope. By contrast, King David remained humble and honored the Lord throughout his reign.

Friends, these examples from Scripture remind me that I must always be humble and honor the Lord, even on occasions when it feels awkward to do so. For example, I was recounting to an unbeliever the confidence I had in sharing some new ideas with leaders at a martial arts testing. I sincerely confessed that this confidence came entirely from the Lord, even though I knew my listener might not believe me.

Every morning and evening I pray before the Lord: "Father, thank you for your mercies and grace..."; "I always need your providence and grace to lead me..."; "May you always receive the highest glory from all that I do..."; "You are my chief delight above all things." While my chief intention in these words is to praise the Lord, they also serve as reminders to remain humble and to honor Him.

Friends, I encourage you to take this view of things in every purpose and outcome. Always remember to humble yourself and honor the Lord. Pride and insecurity are two sides of the same mountain of spiritual failure. They are slippery slopes, countered only by constant vigilance to remain humble and to honor the Lord.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The queen of Sheba's visit is placed at the height of Solomon's glory, and her words are notable: a foreign monarch blesses the God of Israel and grasps the purpose of Solomon's throne — "that you may execute justice and righteousness." Jesus later referred to her as "the queen of the South," who "came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon," and said that she would rise at the judgment and condemn His generation, "for behold, something greater than Solomon is here" (Matthew 12:42). A Gentile queen's eagerness to seek wisdom became a rebuke to those who had the Messiah among them.

Chapter 10 also quietly sets up chapter 11. It records Solomon accumulating gold in enormous quantities, importing horses from Egypt, and amassing chariots (10:14–29) — precisely the three things Deuteronomy 17:16–17 warned Israel's king not to multiply, along with wives. The narrative never comments; it simply lists. Then 11:1 begins, "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women." The comment's warning about slow drift is exactly what the text portrays: decline rarely announces itself, which is why the daily vigilance and habitual humility the comment describes matter so much.

God told Jeroboam that if he would listen to all God commanded, walk in His ways, and do what was right in His eyes by keeping His statutes and commandments as David did, then God would be with him and build him "a sure house, as I built for David," and give Israel to him (a paraphrase of 1 Kings 11:38).

Wow! God promises to do for Jeroboam what He promised to do for David. What an amazing opportunity! But there is one major difference. Listen to God's promise to David and see if you notice it. God declared that He would make David a house; when David's days were fulfilled, God would raise up his offspring after him and establish his kingdom; that son would build a house for God's name, and God would establish the throne of his kingdom forever; God would be a father to him, and he a son to God; when he did wrong, God would discipline him with the rod of men, "but my steadfast love will not depart from him," as it departed from Saul; and David's house and kingdom would be made sure forever (a paraphrase of 2 Samuel 7:11–16).

Did you catch it?

God's promise to Jeroboam was conditional. God's promise to David was unconditional. God's promise to Jeroboam depended on Jeroboam's obedience to the Law. God's promise to David depended on God's faithfulness to His covenant.

This may be the only difference between the two, but it is an ocean of difference — the difference between a right standing with God by works and a right standing with God by grace. As Paul would later write, by works of the law no one will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin (cf. Romans 3:20).

Jeroboam therefore serves as a kind of literary foil for God's incomparable faithfulness. He would immediately fail to keep his side of the covenant and would even become a byword for the unfaithfulness of all the kings after him. In other words, I believe Jeroboam represents human depravity and the failure of human free will to fulfill God's requirements.

Yet, my friends, our hope rests not on a conditional covenant but on an unconditional one. We recognize our inability and glory in God's ability alone. What we could not accomplish because of our hopeless depravity, God did for us by His sovereignty. He Himself kept the lamp of David's line burning until it found its eternal fulfillment in Christ Jesus, through whom God achieved for us an eternal salvation by establishing for us in Him an eternal throne and kingdom. To God alone, therefore, be all the glory!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The contrast the comment draws is real and important, though interpreters note that the Davidic covenant also contained conditional elements for individual kings. God told Solomon that if his sons turned away, He would cut Israel off from the land (1 Kings 9:4–7), and Psalm 132:12 says, "If your sons keep my covenant... their sons also forever shall sit on your throne." Many theologians describe the Davidic covenant as unconditional in its ultimate promise — an eternal king from David's line — and conditional in its blessings for each generation. That is exactly how history unfolded: individual kings were disciplined, the kingdom went into exile, yet God kept "a lamp" for David (1 Kings 11:36; 15:4) until the promise was fulfilled in Jesus, "the son of David" (Matthew 1:1; Luke 1:32–33).

Jeroboam's story shows how quickly a God-given opportunity can be squandered through fear. Once king, he worried that his people's loyalty would return to Jerusalem if they worshiped there, so he set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:26–30). Fear of losing what God had promised led him to abandon the God who promised it. The phrase "the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin" echoes through the rest of Kings as the pattern for the northern kingdom's failure.

Then Ahijah took hold of the new cloak which was on him and tore it into twelve pieces. He said to Jeroboam, “Take for yourself ten pieces; for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes (but he will have one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel) (1 Kings 11:30–32).

When you saw this text, perhaps it gave you some pause. Didn't Ahijah tear the cloak into twelve pieces? He gave ten pieces, representing ten tribes, to Jeroboam. But he left one tribe, presumably one piece, for Solomon. Ten plus one makes eleven. What about the twelfth piece/tribe?

This has been explained in various ways in various commentaries. Here's my take. The listing of the twelve tribes varies throughout the history of Israel; however, it seems best to me to number the tribes according to their original designation. If we do so, the twelve tribes would be as follows: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. These were the original twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob, whose name was consequently changed to Israel. What is more, the nearest listing of the tribes in the context of the monarchy gives these names (cf. 1 Chronicles 2:1–2)

I believe the twelve pieces that Ahijah tore from his cloak represented these original twelve tribes. When the prophecy of Ahijah was fulfilled, the one tribe that remained loyal to the house of David was Judah:

When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David (1 Kings 12:20).

That means the remaining eleven went with Jeroboam, right? No. We are told that the tribes that lived within the towns of Judah were also ruled by Rehoboam (i.e. the house of David). While we are not told that the tribe of Benjamin was loyal to the house of David, we, nevertheless, know that much of this tribe was ruled over by Judah because it resided within the towns of Judah. Even the capital city of Jerusalem, where King Rehoboam reigned, was within the boundaries of Benjamin. That is why we are told that when Rehoboam mustered his forces to war against Jeroboam, he got his troops from both Judah and Benjamin. The Chronicler even goes so far as to say that both Judah and Benjamin were in Rehoboam's possession (cf. 2 Chronicles 11:12). Therefore, while God had only promised the house of David one tribe, practically speaking, he had two.

One might think that Judah was still vastly outnumbered by Israel; however, this may not have been the case. For example, the priests and Levites sided with Rehoboam. Some even left their pasturelands in Israel and migrated to Judah and Jerusalem:

The priests and Levites from all their districts throughout Israel sided with him [i.e. Rehoboam]. The Levites even abandoned their pasturelands and property and came to Judah and Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them as priests of the Lord when he appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat and calf idols he had made. Those from every tribe of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the Lord, the God of Israel, followed the Levites to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the Lord, the God of their ancestors. They strengthened the kingdom of Judah and supported Rehoboam son of Solomon three years, following the ways of David and Solomon during this time (2 Chronicles 11:13–17).

What is more, we learn that large numbers from Israel came over to Judah:

Then he assembled all Judah and Benjamin and the people from Ephraim, Manasseh and Simeon who had settled among them, for large numbers had come over to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him [i.e. Asa, a king of Judah] (2 Chronicles 15:9).

Therefore, while the house of David had a smaller geographical area when the kingdom was divided, they did not necessarily have a weaker populace. Over time, the Southern Kingdom of Judah, representing the House of David, would endure longer (by approx. 150 years) as an autonomous nation than the Northern Kingdom of Israel, representing the ten tribes of Israel.

I remember that when I first read about Israel being divided into ten tribes versus one tribe, I felt that this division was so lopsided, and that the ten would swallow up the one. But I realized that I was thinking in a wrong way. Just as Solomon's greatness could be destroyed in one generation because of his unfaithfulness to the LORD, even so, one tribe could be greater than ten if the one tribe received the favor of the LORD. And so it was.

Friends, let us also have this view of things. "If God is for us, who can be against us" (Romans 8:31). When the LORD is with us, though we are vastly outnumbered, we are still stronger:

I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side (Psalm 3:5–6).

The Father has given us what is most precious to Him, His one and only Son. Therefore, let us not worry or fear that God will not be with us throughout the vicissitudes of life. Instead, let us trust that He is with us always, and let us do our utmost to humbly and faithfully serve Him in this life in keeping with His unique and sovereign design for us.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Ahijah's torn garment makes the coming division visible. Ten pieces are assigned to Jeroboam, while the promise concerning David's house preserves a continuing portion for the sake of David and Jerusalem. The apparent mismatch between twelve pieces and the language of one remaining tribe is a real interpretive question. The narrative's political terminology does not function as a simple census table in which every reference uses the same tribal accounting.

The original rightly observes that biblical lists vary according to purpose. A genealogy names Jacob's sons, while territorial allotments distinguish Ephraim and Manasseh and treat Levi differently. Simeon's location within Judah also complicates a purely geographical count. These variations mean that the symbolism should be read with the historical account rather than solved by assuming a single list governs every passage. The genealogical list cited in the original extends through 1 Chronicles 2:1–2.

The later narrative explicitly associates Benjamin with Rehoboam's kingdom. First Kings 12:21 describes troops from Judah and Benjamin, and 2 Chronicles 11:12 identifies both within his rule. Some interpreters understand the “one tribe” as an additional tribe alongside David's own Judah; others emphasize Judah as the dominant political designation that includes Benjamin. The original offers another way of organizing the evidence. None should be presented as though the text supplied a complete explanation of the unused piece of cloth. The broader outcome is clearer than every detail of the symbolism.

The movement of priests, Levites, and people from other tribes to Judah further shows that political division did not create entirely separate ancestral populations. Second Chronicles 11 and 15 describe people whose allegiance to the Lord leads them toward worship in Jerusalem. The southern kingdom's identity therefore cannot be reduced to a claim that only descendants of one tribe lived there. Nor does the number of tribal labels by itself establish population, resources, or military strength.

The original's spiritual conclusion is strongest when it does not depend on proving that Judah was demographically equal to Israel. God's faithfulness is not measured by numerical advantage. Yet Judah's longer survival should not be treated as uninterrupted approval. Its own history includes idolatry, injustice, judgment, and eventual exile. The Davidic promise persists through that crisis rather than making the southern kingdom immune to it.

Romans 8:31 speaks to believers whose circumstances may include persecution, deprivation, and death. God's being for them means that no accusation or hostile power can finally undo his saving purpose in Christ. It does not guarantee that the smaller group will win every earthly contest. Psalm 3 likewise gives language for trust amid threat, grounding rest in the Lord's sustaining care rather than in a favorable count of opponents.

The passage can therefore free us from both numerical anxiety and numerical pride. A small community need not assume insignificance, and a large one should not confuse influence with faithfulness. We can attend to the responsibilities actually entrusted to us, welcome those who seek the Lord, and resist judging spiritual worth through institutional size. God's promise calls for trust and obedience, while the divided kingdom warns that neither ancestry nor political survival can replace a faithful response to him.

Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt and stayed there until Solomon's death (a reference to 1 Kings 11:40).

Jeroboam was one of Solomon's own officials, particularly capable, so Solomon promoted him and gave him greater responsibility. Then the prophet Ahijah tells Jeroboam that God will take ten tribes from Solomon and give them to him, because of Solomon's persistent idolatry. Solomon apparently learns of this and seeks to kill Jeroboam.

Does this sound familiar? Saul saw David's gifts and made him his armor bearer. Samuel anointed David king in Saul's place. When Saul realized it, he tried to kill David. Just like Saul, Solomon began well and ended badly. And when God judged him, rather than humbling himself and returning to the LORD, Solomon took matters into his own hands.

What caused this? Saul disobeyed in part because he feared the people more than God. A primary reason for Solomon's fall is that he clung to his foreign wives in love (1 Kings 11:2), even though the Law explicitly forbade those marriages.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The parallel is well drawn and the sequence is nearly identical in both cases: recognize a gifted subordinate, elevate him, learn that God has designated him, attempt to kill him. In both cases the attempt fails and the designated man becomes king anyway.

The detail the comment picks out from 11:2 is the important one, and it is worth being precise about why the marriages mattered. The prohibition in Deuteronomy is not about ethnicity — Ruth the Moabite is in the genealogy, Rahab the Canaanite is in it too — but about religious allegiance, and the text gives that reason explicitly: they will turn your heart after their gods. That is exactly what 1 Kings 11 reports happening. The verse says his wives turned his heart, and that when he was old his heart was not fully devoted as his father David's had been.

The last clause is the one that makes the comparison with David uncomfortable. David's failures were spectacular and he is nevertheless described as wholly devoted. The difference the text draws is not the severity of the sin but where each man's allegiance finally rested.

This section on Solomon's fall is genuinely disheartening for me. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived — if he couldn't remain faithful to the LORD, what hope is there for the rest of us? What does it actually mean to be wise? Solomon himself said the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (a paraphrase of Proverbs 9:10). Is having knowledge and understanding enough to actually keep God's precepts? Looking at Solomon's life, it seems wisdom alone isn't sufficient. Why couldn't the wisest man in history follow his own advice? Solomon was still living in the flesh, and his flesh remained a slave to sin.

Romans 7 describes exactly this kind of struggle — Paul admits the law is spiritual, but he himself is unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin, unable to understand his own actions, doing what he hates instead of what he wants, discovering that sin itself, living within him, is really the culprit — not lacking the desire to do good, but lacking the ability to carry it out, discovering a law at work where evil is always present right alongside his desire to do good, waging war against his mind and taking him prisoner — until he cries out, wretched, asking who will rescue him from this body of death, and immediately thanking God for deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord (a paraphrase of Romans 7:14–25).

I think all of us can identify with this struggling man in Romans 7. We know what we ought to do, we say we love the LORD, yet we struggle daily with sin in our thoughts, actions, and attitudes. Left to ourselves, we couldn't save ourselves no matter how hard we tried — but thanks be to God, it's through Christ and His righteousness that we've been redeemed.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The connection this comment draws between Solomon and Romans 7 is worth extending with one detail specific to Solomon's own case — unlike the anonymous struggling figure in Romans 7, Solomon's specific failure is tied directly to relationships he deliberately chose and maintained over time (his many foreign wives, 1 Kings 11:1–8), not a single moment of weakness he immediately regretted. That distinction matters: Solomon's story isn't simply an illustration of the universal internal struggle Paul describes, but a warning about what happens when that struggle stops being fought at all — when known compromise is repeatedly tolerated and normalized rather than resisted, wisdom itself eventually stops functioning as any meaningful check on behavior.

Do the various other books mentioned in Kings, like The Book of the Acts of Solomon, still exist? Are they used as texts to help study the Old Testament? I recall from last year's readings that the lives and reigns of the later kings are described as "recorded in such and such book," and so on. I know that when the Bible was compiled into its current form, certain books were left out — I'm curious whether these are examples of those. I don't imagine I'll actually go looking for them, but I wonder from what perspective they were written, and for what audience. I really appreciate that aspect of the Gospels — knowing whose perspective each one represents, and who it was written for. I wonder if there's an abridged or simplified summary of these other referenced books somewhere.

AI-Expanded Reflection

These referenced books — like the Acts of Solomon, or the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah mentioned repeatedly through Kings — are genuinely lost to history; no manuscripts of them survive today. They should be distinguished from a different category this comment may be partly thinking of, the biblical Apocrypha (books like Tobit or 1-2 Maccabees), which do still exist and were included in some ancient canons, though not in the Protestant Old Testament. The books actually cited within Kings and Chronicles appear to have been contemporary royal court records or annals, functioning something like official government archives rather than intended Scripture — sources the biblical authors themselves consulted and pointed readers toward for further historical detail, in much the way a modern historian might cite an official record without expecting every reader to go track it down.