Read 1 Kings 9:1-2
1 When Solomon had finished building the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had achieved all he had desired to do, 2 the Lord appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.
Do you remember what happened there?
This was at the start of his reign, when the Lord asked what he would like and Solomon asked for wisdom.
In the previous study Solomon had just prayed a very specific prayer, and we noted Solomon’s use of the word ‘when’; here the Lord answers him, also very specifically, and here the Lord uses the word ‘if’.
Read 1 Kings 9:3-5
3 The Lord said to him:
‘I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there for ever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.
4 ‘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, 5 I will establish your royal throne over Israel for ever, as I promised David your father when I said, “You shall never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.”
Yes says the Lord – of course I will keep my side of the covenant.
Read 1 Kings 9:6-9
6 ‘But if you or your descendants turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. 8 This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff and say, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?” 9 People will answer, “Because they have forsaken the Lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them – that is why the Lord brought all this disaster on them.”’
Remember here is the Lord who for the second time has appeared to Solomon, speaking directly to him. How did he respond?
We don’t know, and the narrative here and in 2 Chronicles abruptly moves on.
Read 1 Kings 9:10-14
10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built these two buildings – the temple of the Lord and the royal palace – 11 King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.
12 But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them. 13 ‘What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?’ he asked. And he called them the Land of Kabul, a name they have to this day. 14 Now Hiram had sent to the king 120 talents of gold.
‘Kabul’ sounds like the Hebrew for ‘Good-for-nothing’, and 120 talents could be 4 tons, worth as I write this, approximately £120 million. Some have suggested that 2 Chronicles 8:1-2 hints they may only have been given as surety, and when Solomon could, he repaid the gold and reclaimed the land, but there is little evidence for that. There may also be a hint here in verse 19 that Solomon ‘improved’ properties in Lebanon.
Read 1 Kings 9:15-24
15 Here is the account of the forced labour King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. 16 (Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He had set it on fire. He killed its Canaanite inhabitants and then gave it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. 17 And Solomon rebuilt Gezer.) He built up Lower Beth Horon, 18 Baalath, and Tadmor in the desert, within his land, 19 as well as all his store cities and the towns for his chariots and for his horses – whatever he desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and throughout all the territory he ruled.
20 There were still people left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these peoples were not Israelites). 21 Solomon conscripted the descendants of all these peoples remaining in the land – whom the Israelites could not exterminate – to serve as slave labour, as it is to this day. 22 But Solomon did not make slaves of any of the Israelites; they were his fighting men, his government officials, his officers, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and charioteers. 23 They were also the chief officials in charge of Solomon’s projects – 550 officials supervising those who did the work.
24 After Pharaoh’s daughter had come up from the City of David to the palace Solomon had built for her, he constructed the terraces.
Once Solomon had completed all his planned building works he still had access to free materials, and a vast slave labour force (that needed 550 overseers). It was sensible that they should now be put to work on a continuous building and rebuilding schedule. Note that by now Solomon needed whole new cities to contain his wealth (verse 19).
The Terraces mentioned in verse 24 could be within the original ‘City of David’ but could also refer to the ancient terraced fields on the hills around Jerusalem. Where there is little flat land and many rocks, terracing had long been a traditional way of farming (More HERE).
Read 1 Kings 9:25-28
25 Three times a year Solomon sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar he had built for the Lord, burning incense before the Lord along with them, and so fulfilled the temple obligations.
What an interesting verse. It seems to have been randomly inserted amongst Solomon’s other activities. What does it tell us about the man who has spent many years and incredible amounts of money building the Temple? What do you understand that ‘fulfilling obligations’ meant?
26 King Solomon also built ships at Ezion Geber, which is near Elath in Edom, on the shore of the Red Sea. 27 And Hiram sent his men – sailors who knew the sea – to serve in the fleet with Solomon’s men. 28 They sailed to Ophir and brought back 420 talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.
As if he needed another 14 tons of Gold. What would he do with it? Sit and look at it? Or perhaps just show it off?
Read 1 Kings 10:1
1 When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions.
Obviously the fame of Solomon’s power and wealth had spread far and wide. More than that, the fact that the God of his nation had actually spoken face-to-face with him set him apart as someone special.
So where was Sheba? (come to that, where was Ophir?). It seems that again we are in the realms of best guesses. Ophir could have been anywhere – India seems as good a bet as any.
We are told that the Queen arrived by camel train which would indicate an overland journey, and it is suggested that the options for Sheba are possibly Ethiopia or Yemen. Tantalisingly verse 10 tells us she brought large quantities of spices. Yemen was an important stop on the ‘spice route’ from India, but few spices originated from Africa.
Read 1 Kings 10:2-5
2 Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan – with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones – she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. 3 Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. 4 When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, 5 the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed.
She was obviously a very wealthy queen but nothing had prepared her for what she now experienced. Look at verses 4 and 5 again. Can someone explain what ‘overwhelmed’ means?
Read 1 Kings 10:6-9
6 She said to the king, ‘The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. 7 But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard. 8 How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 9 Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.’
‘Praise be to the Lord your God’. You can question whether Solomon’s wealth was healthy, but here at least it brought praise to the Lord.
Read 1 Kings 10:10
10 And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.
Spices were considered in some parts to be more valuable than gold or precious stones.
Read 1 Kings 10:11-12
11 (Hiram’s ships brought gold from Ophir; and from there they brought great cargoes of almug-wood and precious stones. 12 The king used the almug-wood to make supports for the temple of the Lord and for the royal palace, and to make harps and lyres for the musicians. So much almug-wood has never been imported or seen since that day.)
While we’ve taken this diversion I can say that almug-wood, or algum-wood is thought to be a form of red Sandalwood. Rare and expensive, it only grows in southern India.
Read 1 Kings 10:13
13 King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for, besides what he had given her out of his royal bounty. Then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country.
Because of the words used in verse 13 some have thought that Solomon gave her a child, but that is purely speculation.
There is now a section described in the NIV as ‘Solomon’s splendour’.
To me it describes someone who has so much wealth he really doesn’t know what to do with it!
Read 1 Kings 10:14-29
14 The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, 15 not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the territories.
16 King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred shekels of gold went into each shield. 17 He also made three hundred small shields of hammered gold, with three minas of gold in each shield. The king put them in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon.
18 Then the king made a great throne covered with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. 19 The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. On both sides of the seat were armrests, with a lion standing beside each of them. 20 Twelve lions stood on the six steps, one at either end of each step. Nothing like it had ever been made for any other kingdom. 21 All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s days. 22 The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.
23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. 24 The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. 25 Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift – articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules.
26 Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. 27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. 28 Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue – the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. 29 They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.
At this point I have to introduce the niggle that has been in my mind. This is the instruction that the Lord gave to the Israelites through Moses concerning their future Kings:
Read Deuteronomy 17:14-17
14 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’ 15 be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. 16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’ 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
More on this next time.
