Biblion Bible Commentary
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His Heart Was Not Perfect
1 Kings 11:1-25
1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites, · WEB
The wisest man in the world builds shrines for his wives' gods, and the sentence falls — softened twice, for a dead man's sake.
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women... of the nations concerning which Yahweh said... "surely they will turn away your heart after their gods" 1 Kings 11:1–2.
The charge is stated with the warning attached, and the warning is quoted because it was specific: this is exactly what was said would happen Deuteronomy 7:3–4. Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines are diplomatic instruments before they are anything else — each marriage a treaty — which is precisely why the law forbade multiplying them.
When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God, as the heart of David his father was 1 Kings 11:4.
The timing matters: when Solomon was old. This is not a young man's folly but the end of a long, slow accommodation — one shrine at a time, each with a reason, each for someone he loved. And the verdict is not that he abandoned Yahweh. It is that his heart was not perfect, not whole — the very standard he had urged on the nation at the dedication 1 Kings 8:61. He is condemned by his own sermon.
The comparison to David is worth stating plainly, because David's record includes adultery and murder. What the book means by David's perfect heart is not sinlessness but undivided loyalty: David never worshiped another god, and when confronted he repented. Solomon's failure is of a different kind — not collapse but drift, not rebellion but addition.
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the mountain that is before Jerusalem 1 Kings 11:7.
The shrines go up on the hill facing the temple he built, in sight of it. Molech's worship involved children Leviticus 18:21, and the king who prayed that all the earth would know Yahweh alone is God has installed the alternatives on the opposite ridge. Josiah is still tearing them down three centuries later 2 Kings 23:13.
Yahweh was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 1 Kings 11:9.
The ground of the verdict is the two appearings — the privilege is the aggravation. More light received, more accountable; the man who heard God's voice twice and built the house is judged by what he was given Luke 12:48.
"I will surely tear the kingdom from you... Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days, for David your father's sake... I will give one tribe to your son" 1 Kings 11:11–13.
The sentence is real and it is twice softened, and both mitigations are for someone else's sake. Not in Solomon's lifetime, and not the whole kingdom — because of David, and because of the city God chose. Grace in this book is regularly extended on account of a promise made to a third party, which is the pattern the whole covenant runs on.
Then the adversaries appear, and the narrator says who raised them: Hadad the Edomite, surviving a massacre Joab conducted 1 Kings 11:15–17, and Rezon in Damascus 1 Kings 11:23–25. Old brutalities come back with names, and the peace on every side that made the temple possible 1 Kings 5:4 is quietly over.
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