Troublesome Topic: The End of Solomon’s Life

Once Solomon turned and walked away from God he never looked back.

However, when he took this step, many things about his life and his kingdom fell apart in quick succession:

1. The violence Solomon had eschewed all his life found him at the end. Solomon never wanted to use warfare to grow his kingdom. It put at risk too many human lives. Being a man of peace he had an aversion to violence. Treaties were his game and he was very good at it. During most of his reign God protected him from all the attempts made by his enemies. He seemed untouchable.

But I Kings 11:14-25 tells us about two of Solomon’s key adversaries that started having success in their attacks at the end of Solomon’s life, i.e. after he turned his back on God. The text says that God “raised them up,” meaning that they started to have success against Solomon, where before he had always been able to outsmart them. Their names were Hadad and Rezon.

Hadad, of the royal line of Edom, had been a boy when David’s army, lead by Joab, attacked his homeland. Some of his father’s government officials helped him escape to Egypt where he was well received by Pharaoh. Was this the same Pharaoh who gave Solomon a daughter as a wife? We don’t know, but whether it was he, or his father, his willingness to receive someone who was opposed to the king of Israel shows that the gift to Solomon may have been accompanied by something less than best wishes. When Hadad heard that David and Joab were dead, he left the comforts of Egypt and made it his purpose to cause trouble for Solomon. He tried to do this throughout all of Solomon’s reign but only became successful after Solomon’s apostacy.

Rezon was older than Hadad. The best I can tell, he had become a leader of a warring band in David’s day, but he probably did not take control of Damascus until after David was dead because David installed a puppet king in Damascus for some time. Like Hadad, he had a chip on his shoulder and wanted to hurt Solomon to get back at David. He likewise attempted throughout all of Solomon’s life to cause trouble but was not successful until after Solomon’s apostacy.

Both of these men would have been very old by the time of Solomon’s apostacy, but they would have had men under them who could do the actual fighting.

Here is an imaginary scenario:

After Solomon’s apostacy one of Solomon’s two life-long adversaries heard a wise man say, “your greatest weakness is often your greatest strength out of control.” They realized that they had been looking for the wrong thing. They had been trying to find a weakness; instead they should watch his strengths.

They had a spy inside the Solomon’s palace and they told him this bit of wisdom and instructed him to watch for strengths, not weaknesses. When an area of strength got out of control, that would be their signal to move.

After a report came from their spy in the palace they also realized that their attacks had been focused on the wrong targets. They had been carrying out skirmishes against Solomon’s homeland, which was well guarded. So they changed tactics and began trying to stir up trouble for Solomon in the vassal nations.

I also imagine that both Hadad and Rezon saw that Solomon had increased the size of his army a small amount since he became king, but his kingdom had increased greatly in size. One problem with taking land with military force is that you must then be able to occupy it; treaties don’t seem to have as high a demand for troops, but one must be able to enforce the conditions of the treaty and the more places where such enforcement may be necessary the greater the demand for troops. Hada and Rezon both saw that Solomon no longer had the troops needed for enforcement if a number of his vassal states rebelled against him at one time. Yes, his army was trained and well equipped, but they were not experienced in battle like David’s troops had been. They reasoned that Solomon’s success at making treaties might become his downfall.

Solomon understood the power of first impressions and he knew that if his army looked well prepared they would be considered well prepared and would be feared. Therefore Solomon placed great emphasis on things like organization, discipline, and the shininess of their weapons and shields. He wanted people to think that his was the best organized and best equipped army they had ever seen, and he hoped they would assume they were also the best at fighting. Most people fell for his ploy.

But Hadad and Rezon were not fooled by appearances. They knew that in battle, when arrows are flying and men are dying all around, nice appearances mean nothing. There is no way to gain the steely resoluteness and discipline required for battle apart from doing battle. That was what made David’s fighting forces such juggernauts; all his men were experienced in battle and were undaunted. But Solomon’s soldiers had never seen battle, not the real thing. They had been in a few skirmishes before, but never heavy battle where the blood runs like water, where men are dying on every side of you, and your death is almost certain. Solomon’s men were nothing more than toy soldiers, or paper tigers.

So the very thing that Solomon wanted to avoid, violence, became a real problem for him after he rebelled against God. These men started having success in their attempts to cause trouble for Solomon. They thought it was because they had changed tactics, but it really because Solomon had turned his back on God and God had allowed his adversaries to gain a new perspective on how best to plan their attacks.

2. During the first part of Solomon’s reign everything seemed to be going great and everyone was happy. As time went on the taxes went up and the value of their coins went down. The attitudes of the people toward Solomon followed the value of their coins. Solomon’s great success was now bearing fruit. That fruit was extremely sweet at first, but it had a nasty aftertaste.

The dissension between the tribes began to surface again. King David had done a good job at uniting the nation and the dedication of the temple had a strong uniting effect. But now there was talk once again in certain tribes about leaving the union.

After Solomon’s apostacy, God told Jeroboam that He would take 10 tribes away from Solomon’s son and give them to Jeroboam. God promised Jeroboam continuing success if he would be faithful to God. Solomon found about this somehow and Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam (I Kings 11:40); that shows how low Solomon had fallen – instead of repenting, he tried to kill the one God had chosen.

3. The vassal kings were required to give Solomon gold and other goods each year. I Kings 10: 14 tells us that Solomon received 666 talents of gold every year (in that part of the world a talent was 75 to 110 pounds, and the Jewish talent was often heavier than that of their neighbors, thus closer to 110 pounds). If we shoot for the middle, right between 75 and 110, and we go with a figure of 92 pounds per talent, that would equal 61,272 pounds of gold per year. Don’t forget that we calculate the price of gold per ounce, not per pound. If a number of these smaller kingdoms united against him they could spell trouble for him. Early on they did not know he was not inclined to use force; they only knew that his father had done so and that Israel had become a military power to be reckoned with, so they agreed to pay him what he demanded. But appearing to fail on his end of a treaty, even if the treatment of the gift-wife was an unspoken part of the deal, could mean trouble for him. Solomon had built a large and prosperous kingdom, but by the end it required heavy taxation to keep it functioning properly due to the fact that so many people now worked for the king. If he lost those 666 talents of gold each year he would have to cut back on services or increase taxes even more, and either one could increase the discontent among his people. He would no longer look very wise, and everything would start to unravel. He could not risk such losses.

I envision Hadad and Rezon making trips to some of the vassal states to convince them to conspire together to refuse to pay Solomon. They convinced these foreign leaders that Solomon did not have the troops needed to take military action against a group of them at one time.

4. In the end it was Rehoboam, the son of the Ammonite princess, Naamah, who succeeded Solomon as king (I Kings 12:14). I think Solomon did this in an effort to hurt God for having hurt him by taking away his favorite wife. The inspired writer of the biblical text knew this choice would be a problem and wanted the reader to see it as a problem. It is significant that the I Kings passage mentions the foreign mother of King Rehoboam twice.

Right after Rehoboam became king, 10 of the tribes of Israel seceded from the union and formed their own country under the leadership of Jeroboam.

The biblical text tells us that Rehoboam, son of Solomon, and the people of Judah “walked in the ways of David and Solomon for three years” (II Chron 11:17). Notice that this casts Solomon in a positive light, meaning that his apostacy only characterized the last few years of his life. Then we read this in II Chron 12:1 “It happened that when the kingdom had been established and Rehoboam had become strong, he forsook the law of YHVH and all Israel with him.”

Why the change?

When Jeroboam took the northern 10 tribes and made his own country, he quickly realized that he needed to do something to keep his people from being dependent on the temple in Jerusalem for all aspects of their religion. So he set up two idols, one in the south and one in the north of his country, and told the people to worship them and not go down to the temple in Jerusalem. He also established a priesthood for those idols, leaving the priests of God out in the cold.

According to II Chronicles 11:13-16, seeing what was going on, the Priests of God, the Levites who took their turns serving in the temple, and lots of God-fearing people, moved from the northern 10 tribes to the southern tribes to be close to the temple. It was the influx of these righteous people that caused things to go in a positive direction for about 3 years (II Chron 11:17). However, was this a spiritual revival or just political positioning and economic maneuvering on the part of Rehoboam? I think it was politically motivated. As long as it was politically advantageous in order to keep drawing people from the north to the south, Rehoboam pretended to follow YHVH, but once everyone who was inclined to move to his kingdom had done so, he showed his true colors and made an abrupt change to following idols. It is the abruptness of his change that makes me think those were his true colors and the first three years he was just doing what was necessary in order to firmly establish himself as the unquestioned leader of his kingdom.

Therefore, it almost seems like Solomon purposefully put a son on the throne who would predictably lead the nation to self-destruction, through tribal division, heavy taxation, and idolatry.

It seems like Solomon was saying: “If God can hurt me so deeply, I will hurt God back. I’m so angry at God I’ll purposefully send the children of Israel into idolatry.” He thought he could threaten God by shaking his shriveled fist in God’s face.

Although sending the Israelites into idolatry was the primary way, I think there were a few other ways Solomon thought he was hurting God:

1) the child (Rehoboam) was illegitimate, having been produced by a sexual relationship which did not honor God, and making him king would legitimize and promote sexual promiscuity among the general population,

2) he was born to a foreign woman, who, at the time of sexual intercourse, was not an Israelite, nor a follower of God,

3) he was raised by a mother who (in my opinion) had been forced to convert to Judaism but who had never been changed on the inside; she never stopped believing in the gods of her childhood,

4) making Rehoboam king was a tribute to evil itself, represented in the name Naamah, just like the daughter of wicked Lamech in Genesis 4; evil always promises to be “pleasant” (which is what Naamah means) but turns out to be “bitter.”

In my theory, I find it interesting that Solomon ended up honoring the one whose seduction he had called “more bitter than death” (Ecc 7:26) In an attempt to hurt God, he was willing to honor the woman who had hurt him the most.

The way I see things, Solomon did not last long after he turned and walked away from God. After his apostacy his health went downhill quickly. The nation was shocked by the speed of his downward spiral into sin, but they did not have long to wait until a new king was on the throne. I will not venture a guess on how long it was, but the way the biblical narrative reads it seems like his apostacy happened very close to the end of his life and then it was all over.

He died alone, his multiple palaces filled with servants, wives, concubines, and government officials, but he was still alone. He longed for his Shuly, but he did not yearn for God. He knew God would forgive him and accept him, even after all he had done against God, but he could not bring himself to forgive God.

The next lesson is: Was the Shulammite Rehoboam’s Mother?