1 Kings 11:43

43. Was buried in the city of David See note on 1 Kings 2:10. The precedent of burying David in the holy city was followed in the burial of his descendants. Compare 1 Kings 14:31; 1 Kings 15:8, etc.

Rehoboam his son Apparently his only son. He was forty-one years old at the beginning of his reign, so he must have been born the year before Solomon’s enthronement. His mother was Naamah, an Ammonitess, who probably died before Solomon’s marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter. Compare 1 Kings 14:21. “Many a poor man,” says Hall, “hath a houseful of children by one wife, whereas this great king hath only one son by many housefuls of wives.”

Stanley says, “As Bacon is in English history ‘the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind,’ so is Solomon in Jewish and in sacred history.” His character, as drawn in the Scriptures, is surely many-sided. The simple, unpretending child; the darling of Jehovah, (2 Samuel 12:25;) the chosen king; the seeker after wisdom, choosing her above all other things; the wise and sagacious judge; the powerful ruler and glorious sovereign, surpassing in many ways all the kings of the nations round about him; his navies traversing many a sea, and kings and princes from afar bringing and laying at his feet their gifts. But in his old age a despot, (1 Kings 12:4,) a polygamist, and an idolater. These last were doubtless the immediate causes of his own decline, and of the subsequent misfortunes of the nation.

In his reign the Israelitish monarchy reached the highest pitch of worldly splendour, the memory of which is still preserved in many an Oriental legend and tradition. But that very splendour seemed to pervert the nation’s heart, and cause the cloud of Jehovah’s glory to depart from his people and his holy habitation. The outer splendour of his court and empire, the magnificence of his buildings, and his commerce with foreign nations, were, perhaps, not in themselves wrong. They might have been made the means of leading other nations to the knowledge of the one true God. But they were fraught with danger. Worldly glory has ever had the tendency to take away the heart from the pure and the good rather than to win it to the worship of God. So it was with Solomon, and so it ever has been. “How hardly shall a rich man enter the kingdom of God!” The thing is not impossible with God; but the dangers of wealth and worldly splendour far surpass their probable advantages to their possessor. And so the Church, whenever she has sought to increase her strength by a showing of worldly forces, has become shorn of her spiritual power.

Viewed from the theocratic standpoint, Solomon’s reign was a grand failure. It corresponded largely with the sad failure of Saul, the first king of Israel. Saul’s misfortunes, however, were largely owing to his incapacity for government, as well as to moral obliquity. He was unequal to the exigencies of his age, and the task of successfully moulding into a monarchy the nation so long ruled by judges exceeded his powers. But with Solomon there was no lack of ability. His wisdom, sagacity, and power were equal to any possible emergency. But his grievous sins and neglect of God’s law brought on his ruin. His greatness and glory weaned his heart from God, and his wives led him into idolatry. Speculation as to his probable repentance and final salvation is idle and fruitless, and will always be governed by preconceived opinions. The sacred writers pass it over in utter silence, and give no shadow of intimation that he ever turned from his idolatry. The assumption that he repented of his sins, and afterwards composed the Book of Ecclesiastes as a record of his sad but profound experiences, is destitute of any valid or controlling proof; and the authorship of Ecclesiastes is altogether a matter of uncertainty. A mighty shadow clouds his latter days; and there, in Holy Writ, he stands depicted; one part of his life and character in strangest contrast with the other the grandest and saddest personage of sacred history.