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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
11:1-43 Solomon's Apostasy, Opponents, and Death. Throughout chs. 1-10 the reader has received hints that all is not well with Solomon's heart: 3:1-3 juxtaposed his love for God with suggestions of divided loyalties revealed in his choice of marriage partner; 4:26 and 4:28 told of his accumulation of horses; 6:38-7:1 pursued the question of building project priorities; and 10:26-29 did the same with regard to horses, in a context in which the topic of Solomon's great wealth was introduced and the marriage question again briefly addressed. Since the prayer of 8:22-53 and God's response to it in 9:1-9 have made clear both the importance of keeping the law and the consequences of disobedience, 9:10-10:29 sounded ominous; and now the authors reveal the inevitable consequences of all that has gone before. Solomon's sins have led him to apostasy.
11:1-4 Solomon loved many foreign women . . . clung to these in love. Solomon loved (Hb. ’ahab, 3:3) the Lord, but he also loved (Hb. ’ahab) the daughter of Pharaoh and many other women, and he clung (Hb. dabaq) to them (11:2). Both verbs appear in Deuteronomy (Deut. 6:5; 10:12, 20; 11:1, 22; 13:4; 30:20), where they speak of unswerving human loyalty to God. Solomon's heart, however, was divided (1 Kings 11:4); and in spite of his pious hope that God would always turn Israelite hearts to himself (8:58), the king's wives, in his old age, turned away his heart in the opposite direction, after other gods.
11:5 At ancient Ugarit in Syria the sun was worshiped as Shapash, the moon as Yarikh, and Venus as Astarte. Ashtoreth is the biblical name for Astarte (a deliberate distortion of the original using the vowels of the Hb. word boshet, "shame"). Milcom was a god of the underworld.
11:6 Individual kings are characteristically assessed in 1-2 Kings in terms of whether on the whole they "did what was right" or what was evil in the eyes of the Lord (e.g., 1 Kings 15:11, 26, 34); Judean kings are additionally said to be like David or not (e.g., 15:3, 11).
11:7-8 The worship of other gods at high places lies at the very heart of the authors' concern in 1-2 Kings (e.g., 1 Kings 12:25-33; 14:23; 16:31-33). Chemosh was the chief god of the Moabites, already known in ancient Ebla in Syria as Kamish and probably to be identified with the Mesopotamian deity Nergal, an underworld god associated with famine, drought, plague, and death. Molech is possibly, but not certainly, to be identified with Milcom in 11:5. The biblical authors associate Molech with child sacrifice, which was a prominent feature of at least some of the polytheistic Canaanite religion practiced in ancient times in Syria-Palestine. This sacrificing involved the burning of the victim (e.g., Lev. 18:21; 2 Kings 16:3; 21:6; Jer. 32:35).
11:9-13 the Lord was angry with Solomon . . . I will surely tear the kingdom from you. This is what 2:4; 8:25; and 9:4-5 have led the reader to expect. Yet the punishment is unexpectedly mitigated: I will not do it in your days (11:12). . . . I will not tear away all the kingdom (v. 13). One tribe remains out of grace, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.
11:14-25 In 5:4, Solomon told Hiram, in the midst of God's blessing, that he had peace on every side (no adversary). Now the blessing has departed and the peace is fractured. Two men who had hitherto not caused Solomon significant problems are now raised up by God to oppose the apostate king in his old age. The first is Hadad, a victim of David's wars (2 Sam. 8:13-14); the second is Rezon, who had apparently either escaped from the battle described in 2 Sam. 8:3-4 or fled from Hadadezer later, unwilling to submit to imperial rule from Jerusalem. Damascus, from ancient times a major site on the main caravan route from Africa to Mesopotamia, now becomes the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Syria, which will rise to become a significant power in the region during the divided monarchy in Israel. Syria will often be in conflict with Israel and Judah but will sometimes ally with them against common foes. The kingdom will ultimately be absorbed into the Assyrian Empire as a result of the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III in Rezon opposes Solomon from the north, Hadad from the south; and where the king once had peace on all sides, he now finds enemies.
11:26-33 Solomon's most important enemy, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, was to be found right on his doorstep. He was the former superintendent of the forced labor of the house of Joseph, those who had been helping with the construction work in Jerusalem (vv. 27-28). He was approached outside the city by the prophet Ahijah (v. 29) with a prophecy concerning the kingship. The scene is reminiscent of the rejection of Saul in 1 Samuel 15; in both passages an outer garment is torn as a symbol of the fact that God is tearing the kingdom away from the reigning king (cf. 1 Sam. 15:27-28; 1 Kings 11:11). The garment here is divided into
11:34-39 a lamp before me in Jerusalem. The mitigation of vv. 13-14 is repeated, although in a slightly different way. Solomon will lose no tribes during his lifetime; and his son is to have one tribe, so that the Davidic flame will always burn. In fact, although Jeroboam has been promised that he can also have a dynasty like David's if he is obedient (v. 38), this promise already conceals within it the expectation of failure; the division of the kingdom in v. 39 is not forever.
