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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 166. I am going to walk you through 1 Kings, chapter 9, 10, and 11. Once we hit the end of chapter 11, that's the natural dividing point of this entire book. And so chapter 12 will now pick up the divided kingdom. And so these are the last three chapters that we have for the united Kingdom of Israel under a singular monarchy. Remember, the united Kingdom of Israel spans the life of Saul, David, and Solomon. Everything after this point in the book of Kings, first and second Kings, you're going to get what's happening in the north and what's happening in the south. So you're going to get who's ruling Israel in the north, and then you're going to get who's ruling Judah in the south. So this is the last three chapters that we have to look at the united monarchy. Like always, if you've done the reading, then everything that I'm gonna say will make sense and you'll have context for what I'm going to walk us through. Because you've done the reading. If you haven't done the reading, stop the video. Stop the audio. Go do the reading. We're in First Kings, chapter 9 to 11, and it's day 166, so let's dive in. I've got context clues for you. I've got a lot of nerdy nuggets for you, and I've got a timeless truth. So for you, like always, here's our big context. Immediately following the building of the Temple, Solomon's life. Drumroll, please. Gets worse. Okay? So Solomon's life does not get better. Okay? So these chapters need to all be seen as a cluster. Chapter 9, 10, and 11 should be read together. Oftentimes, people will separate chapter 9 and 10, and then chapter 11, they'll really see as, like, the downfall of Solomon's kingdom. But the reality is that that downfall's been happening. Like, there's these slow cracks in the foundation. There's an Egyptian princess, right? There's forced labor. There's worship on the high places still. So Solomon's already kind of a compromised character. And it's gonna go from, you know, gray to fully black and white. It's gonna be very, very clear. And that actually starts in chapter nine. I don't think it's ironic that the author is going to place this after the building of the temple. So chapter nine is going to start. It's going to say, when Solomon had finished building the temple of the Lord and the royal palace and had achieved all he had desired to do, the Lord appeared to him a second time as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. Remember when he appears to him at Gibeon, he gives him a supernatural deposit of wisdom. Supernatural gift of wisdom. Let's pick up in verse four, he makes a promise about the, about the temple. And then he says this. And then Yahweh says this. As for you, if you walk before me faithfully with integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish a rule of throne over Israel forever. And you won't fail. You have a successor on the throne. So I love how God almost gives like a warning, like, hey man, watch your faithfulness, watch your integrity. You've accomplished a lot. Let's deal with some of these cracks in the foundation so that this doesn't turn into full blown failure. And now we're gonna start to get some, some details that is gonna begin to be worrisome for the careful reader. And so that's our context. Our context is the building of the Temple. Does it make Solomon's life better? It's not like David, it's not like Solomon builds a temple and all of a sudden, oh my gosh, he just has a heart for God. No, he builds the temple. And now the Bible is going to tell us about his downfall because. And this is going to be a theme that continues, okay, so when we, when the kingdom splits, Israel in the north, Judah in the south, Judah's going to have this supernatural belief that, because, remember, Israel is going to fall to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. so for over a hundred years, Judah, 100 and whatever, the gap is between 722 and 586, someone can do that math. That whole time, Judah's essentially saying, you know, we can never fail because we have the temple. So there's this superstitious belief that the Temple will save us. God will never allow the Babylonians to come and destroy us because the Temple is here and he cares about the Temple. And sure enough, in 586 BC, God certainly sends the Babylonians in and destroy the temple. So the Temple can't keep People safe. So this theme is starting where, like, Solomon builds a temple, but God wants obedience. God actually wants him to, To. To have a fully devoted heart. We're going to begin to see that Solomon has a divided heart. Where his father had a heart after God, his father sinned, but his father's sin never, never attached itself to his, to his heart. I think it's important for us as leaders to realize there's areas where we sin with our hands and there's areas where we sin in our heart where. When David. David, of course, kills Uriah, rapes Bathsheba. But idolatry is a sin of the heart. If you put God versus, you know, Bathsheba in front of. In front of David, he's going to pick God because he's a man. After God's heart, he has a failure. But, but he, he really. If. If you look into the core of his heart, he loves the Lord with his heart. Where Solomon. Solomon is in. In terms of his. Comparing him to his father. Solomon doesn't murder anybody, doesn't rape anybody, but he has a divided heart. And this is really, man. This is where there could be sins of the heart that are more grievous than sins of the hands. But we just live in a culture that really wants to judge people based on the sin of their hands. But only God can judge the heart. And so the Bible's gonna tell us that Solomon has a divided heart. So we're gonna look at chapters 9, 10, and 11 with that lens. Okay, let's get into some nerdy nuggets. Okay, number one, Solomon is gonna give Hiram land in exchange for gold. This may not seem like a big deal, but it's a huge deal. The land is the. Is the thing that God has given the people of Israel as their possession. It's a gift from Yahweh to the people of Israel. This is completely. This goes against the law. I mean, Solomon, he gives Hiram a bunch of cities in Galilee, and they're like throwaway cities. So when we begin to look at contempt with contempt, the things that God has blessed us with, this is a bad start. And so now I want you to start to count how often the word gold is going to get thrown around in chapters 9, 10, and 11. So Solomon is amassing a hoard of gold. I mean, there's going to be gold everywhere. Hiram sent to the king 120 talents of gold, which is about 9,000 pounds of gold. Okay, verse 19. This is again, you gotta be a careful reader of scripture, verse 19. Well, let's start reading in verse 17. Okay. Solomon rebuilt Gezer. He built up Lower Beth, Haran, Baoth and Tadmor in the desert within his land, verse 19, as well as all his store cities. Now I remember when I first read that, I went. That sounds so familiar. Someone else had store cities. Well, yeah, I, I want you to actually go to Exodus, chapter 1, verse 11. It says this. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, labor. And they built Pithom and Ramses as store cities for Pharaoh. Who else had store cities? Pharaoh had store cities. So the text is actually painting Solomon as a new pharaoh. So we're actually gonna get some Exodus themes that are gonna begin to emerge by the time we get into chapter 11. There's gonna be a man by the name of Jeroboam, that's going to be a new Moses figure. And Solomon is gonna be a full blown pharaoh figure by that point. So we got store cities. Again, you see how this is subtle, small indictments. And if you're a careful reader of scripture, you just go, oh, like let's put the breadcrumbs together, let's follow the breadcrumbs and kind of paint the picture that the author's trying to paint. For last, I want you to go to verse 28. If you remember, we had 120 talents of gold. And now in verse 28, this is Hiram again, the King of Tyre. It's going to say that Solomon built ships, okay? And Hiram sent his men, sailors who knew the sea, to serve in the fleet of Solomon's men. They sailed to Ophir and brought back 422 talents of gold which they delivered to King Solomon. So he's amassing wealth, he's amassing gold. He's amassing billions of dollars worth of gold, okay? I read one commentary that said if you actually translated this into the amount of money you would get today for gold, this is somewhere in the range of like $49 billion worth of gold, okay, that Solomon was amassing during his life. And it's not over, okay? Chapter 10, verse 2. Queen Sheba comes arriving at Jerusalem with a great caravan, with camels, carrying spices, large quantities of gold. Okay, we got gold. And gold. And gold. Now, people typically interpret this passage as, oh my gosh, even the Queen of Sheba is impressed by Solomon. This is amazing. And I would say let's be careful because it's not like the Queen of Sheba leaves converted. It's not like she becomes a God fearer or gives her Life over to the lordship of Yahweh. She's not impressed with God. She's impressed with Solomon. And if pagan rulers are impressed with a king of Israel, it means that that king of Israel probably looks pagan. Okay, so there's nothing here that would actually tell us that she's impressed with how godly he is. She's impressed with the wealth that he's accumulated. And it does require wisdom to accumulate wealth. But Solomon has used that wisdom for himself. He has not used wisdom in order to really govern the people well. And she gave the king 120 talents of gold. So this is verse 10, so another 9,000 pounds of gold. So I think that I've heard this preached tons of times that this is the goal. This is what it means to be salt and light is that the Queen of Sheba should. They are heathens that should be impressed with what we're doing. I hear that, but Jesus said that we'd be persecuted. So I hear you like I hear you. And I'm not saying that non believers should never be impressed with our life, with our joy, with our peace, with the fruits of the spirit that are in our life. But this feels very, very, very shallow. Like the stuff that she's impressed by is very, very shallow. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. You know, how happy your people must be, how happy your officials who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. So she mentions God, she mentions Yahweh, but there's no. I just think that we over emphasize this encounter a little bit because it is in the portion of scripture where it is outlining Solomon's downfall. Okay, verse 14. The weight of gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents. So if there's like a. A smoking gun. Here it is right here. 666 talents of gold is astronomical. Like, and that is unfathomable. And this is yearly. Okay, and why 666? Okay, 666. Because that's the number of humanity. So I want you to think, right, if I was like, the 49 states of America, you'd go, there's one short. It's 50. So 49, the focus. If I said 49 states, you would immediately focus on. No, that's one short, 50s complete. If I were to say, yeah, number 22, you know, playing for the Chicago Bulls, number 22, you'd be like, no, no, no, no. Michael Jordan's number was 23. 23's the right number. So if I say 22, you're immediately going, is this like a broke man's Michael Jordan? What? What? Who's that? Like, what's that? Okay, so 666. If God's number is seven, then six is the number of man. Because it's one short. It would be like 49 states. It's like the number 22 in basketball. It's just. Yeah, it's. It's so close, but it's just. It's not God. And so 666 talents of gold is essentially man. All of Solomon's wealth, it falls short to be who God's called him to be, but it's man's best effort. It's like, man. The. The best man can do is gold, but. But the best man can do is God. Okay? But Solomon would rather have gold than have God. And so I just want you to see, like, how the focus of these three chapters is gold, gold, gold, gold, gold. And that's not including the revenues from merchants and traders from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the territories. Okay, I need you to see this. King Solomon made 200 large shields of hammered gold. Shields of gold. Like, not even useful. Like a shield of gold. You're gonna die. Like, first of all, it's really heavy. It's not useful. Anyway. 600 shekels of gold went into each shield. He made 300 small shields of hammered gold. Just gold. Gold, gold, gold, gold. Verse 21. All King Solomon's goblets were gold. And all the household articles in the palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. That's the nickname that Solomon's palace has been given. The palace of the Forest of Lebanon because there's so much cedar, pure gold. Nothing was made of silver because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's days. That's how much gold this man's got. People like silver. We don't rock with silver no more. It's all about the gold. The king had a fleet of trading ships. Verse 23. King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. They wanted to hear the wisdom that God put in his heart. Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift. Articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices and horses and mules. Solomon accumulated chariots and horses. So if you go back to Deuteronomy, this is not what kings are supposed to be doing. Okay? Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt. Not good. The Bible tells kings, put no faith in Egypt, do not believe in Egypt. Don't rely on Egypt. They imported a chariot from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver and a horse for 150. And then we get to verse 11. Chapter 11. Sorry, not verse 11, chapter 11. King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter. Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, you must not intermarry with them. This is where we get the clearest, like this man is beyond the bounds. Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And his wives led him astray. So, last little nerdy nugget. Okay, so verse 6 of chapter 11. Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did not follow the Lord completely. Not following the Lord completely means that he's got a divided heart. He loves his wives and he loves God. He loves his gold and he loves God. He loves his palace and he loves God. He loves his temple that he's made, and he loves God. He loves his own glory and he loves God. He loves other stuff and he loves God. Whereas David is a man after God's own heart. He really loves God. He loves the Lord. He may love other stuff, but it's not 50, 50. He doesn't have a divided heart. Maybe it's, you know, 5,000, 149. But it's like, ah, my heart really is given to the Lord. I'm so sorry. I keep sinning, I keep falling short. But I love the Lord. When the Bible says The Lord, verse 9 became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. There's two gods that are gonna be named here. The first is Chemosh, C H E I M O S H and Molech. These are both gods that are known for child sacrifice. Okay, this is not good. And because of this, God is gonna raise up adversaries, two external and one internal. So the kingdom is going to explode and implode. He raises up adversaries, and really the one that we're gonna focus on is Jeroboam, because this is going now. Solomon is painted as a new Saul. Okay? So the same way that Saul's kingdom is torn, we're going to have the exact same thing happen. A robe is going to get torn. Robes represent authority. And since robes represent authority, it's going to be a sign that 10 of the tribes are going to get given to Jeroboam. Instead of there being an all out civil war. Solomon is going to try to kill Jeroboam in the same way that Saul tried to kill David. And Jeroboam is going to flee, but instead of fleeing into the rest of Israel, he's going to flee to Egypt, which is a mistake, because trusting in Egypt is always a mistake. And then Solomon is going to die. Okay? And those are a ton of nerdy nuggets to just kind of help us navigate. So most people are going to start seeing the fall of Solomon in chapter 11. My contention is that the fall, the falling away of Solomon starts in chapter nine, which leads us to our timeless truth. And that is compromise never starts. Big compromise starts. Small compromise starts with the small decisions. Yeah, let's accumulate horses. I know God said not do it, but it's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know God said, don't gather a lot of gold, but it's okay. And now we gotta look back at Deuteronomy chapter 14 and go, okay, based on what God outlined in Deuteronomy chapter 14 on what's a good king and what's not a good king. Now let's judge Solomon, because I don't wanna use my own human wisdom to judge whether or not Solomon did a good job or a bad job. I wanna go, even if he looked like a great king to me, only God can say whether or not he was actually a truly good king. And the scorecard on Solomon is actually gonna come back and go, not a good king. Which is why the consequence is God will be faithful to David. And the stipulations of the covenant that God made with David is that there will Always be someone on the throne. So God is going to protect Judah. Now, last nerdy nugget, you may be doing some math and going, okay, if Jeroboam's going to take 10 tribes and Solomon's line is going to keep one tribe, that's 11. But I thought there were 12 tribes. Couple options that scholars give. Here's the first one is there's a lot of scholars that believe that Judah kind of consumes the tribe of Simeon. And then there's a lot of people who will believe that because Benjamin is a small tribe, that Benjamin kind of gets consumed by Judah. So it's either Simeon or Benjamin, they kind of get consumed by Judah. But this is actually where a lot of conspiracies start about the lost tribes of Israel, and we're just not going to entertain any of that. Okay, so there, you're right. If you add 10 plus 2, that should be 12. So there should be two tribes in the south and 10 tribes in the north. But. And these are political tribes, which is why. So technically there are 13 tribes, but we don't count the tribe of Levi because they don't have political power and they don't have land. So, anyway, okay, that's my last Sunday nugget. And my timeless truth for the day is that compromise always starts small, not big. Solomon used his wisdom for himself. Wisdom is a great thing to have. It's a game changer. But we're supposed to use wisdom to lead people, not to amass wealth and to amass wise and to. And to create power for ourselves. So that's the end of Solomon. Tomorrow we'll pick up at day 167. We'll start at chapter 12. And now we are gonna begin to look at a divided kingdom. Okay. A divided monarchy. And we'll start to look at what's happening in the north, what's happening in the south. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, today's a good day to start one. I'll see you tomorrow right here for day 167. So proud of you. I love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.