Old Testament - 1 Kings 11 - June 25, 2022

 6/25/2022 – 1 Kings 11

Why don’t we ever learn??? In Solomon’s later years, he disobeyed the Lord’s commandments by marrying many wives outside the covenant. Some of Solomon’s wives encouraged him to worship idols, which turned his heart away from the Lord. After his death, his son Rehoboam, the new king, decided to increase the people’s burdens. The people revolted and were divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Jeroboam, king of the Northern Kingdom, introduced idolatry and other practices the Lord had told them to stay away from. The results: the next kings in Israel and Judah drifted even further into wickedness.

Solomon started off as such a wise man and wise king….that was his prayer. But then he found Pharaoh’s daughter and made her his wife. That was followed by wives from the Moagites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites. (v 1)  V 3 tells us that “he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.” I wonder if he ever thought back to what the Lord had told him about other nations: “Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods”

Solomon was kind to his wives, and he did “build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem…And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.” (v’s 7 & 8) The Lord then appeared unto Solomon two times (v 9) commanding Solomon “not to go after other gods, but he [Solomon] kept not that which the Lord commanded.” And then came the wars!

Jacob 2:24-31 clearly teaches that plural wives may be taken only when doing so is authorized by the Lord. D&C 132: 39 tells us that David’s wives “were given unto him of me [the Lord], by the hand of Nathan {the prophet}, my servant…”. But Solomon, like his father David, began to take any woman they wanted and did NOT make these decisions with the Lord’s approval. 

The Lord had warned Solomon in v 11: “…Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee….” And that is exactly what happened.


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