Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things?
Solomon
1. It may appear remarkable that one who fell so grievously should contribute at all to the Book of God, nor is there any other instance of the kind; but his sad history adds a peculiar weight of warning to his words; nor are there any books more strongly marked by the finger of God.
2. Solomon was chosen of God, and afterwards rejected as Saul had been; he was full of wisdom and understanding, and what is far more, of holiness and goodness. There is perhaps no one ofwhom the early promise of good seemed so decisive.
3. It has been said, as by St. Augustine, that Solomon was more injured by prosperity than profited by wisdom. Yet we may observe that his falling away is not attributed in Scripture to his wealth, his power and honour.
4. We cannot conclude that Solomon himself did not at last repent, but this has always been considered by the Church as very doubtful, to say the least. All we know is that Scripture has fully made known to us his falling away from God, but has said nothing of his repentance. The very silence is awful and impressive.
5. What more melancholy than the fall of one so great--so wise! What words could have been spoken to him more powerful than his own! What eloquence could describe his fall with more feeling and beauty than his own words! What could more powerfully paint the loveliness of that holiness from which he fell? what the overpowering sweetness of that Divine love which he has consented to give up to feed on ashes! Who can describe the temptations to those very sins by which he was ensnared in a more searching manner than he has done? It is very awful to think how God may use men as instruments of good that His Spirit may teach them, and through them teach others, and guide them to the fountain of living waters, yet they themselves at last fail of the prize of their high calling. What a warning for fear! (Isaac Williams.)
Solomon’s restoration
I.The wanderings of an erring spirit. “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things?”
1. That which lay at the bottom of all Solomon’s transgressions was his intimate partnership with foreigners. “Didnot Solomon sin by these things?”--that is, if we look to the context, marriage with foreign wives. The history of the text is this--Nehemiah discovered that the nobles of Judah, during the captivity, when law and religious customs had been relaxed, had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab; and then, in his passionate expostulation with them, he reminds them that it was this very transgression which led to the fall of the monarch who had been most distinguished for God’s favour. Exclusiveness was the principle on which Judaism was built. Everything was to be distinct--as distinct as God’s service and the world’s. And it was this principle which Solomon transgressed. The Jewish law, shadowed out an everlasting truth. God’s people are an exclusive nation; God’s Church is for ever separated from the world. This is her charter, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate,” etc. We are to be separate from the world. Mistake not the meaning of that word. The world changes its complexion in every age. Solomon’s world was the nations of idolatry lying round Israel. Our world is not that. The world is that collection of men in every age who live only according to the maxims of their time. The world may be a profligate world, or it may be a moral world. All that is a matter of accident. Our world is a moral world. The sons of our world are not idolaters, they are not profligate; they are, it may be, among the most fascinating of mankind. No marvel if a young and ardent heart feels the spell of the fascination. No wonder if it feels a relief in turning away from the dulness and the monotony of home life to the sparkling brilliancy of the world’s society. The brilliant, dazzling, accomplished world--what Christian with a mind polished like Solomon’s does not own its charms? And yet now, pause. Is it in wise Egypt that our highest blessedness lies? Is it in busy, restless Sidon? Is it in luxurious Moab? No. The Christian must leave the world alone. His blessedness lies in quiet work with the Israel of God.
2. The second step of Solomon’s wandering was the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. And a men like Solomon cannot do anything by helves. No man ever more heartily and systematically gave himself up to the pursuit. There are some men who are prudent in their epicuresnism. They put gaiety aside when they begin to get palled with it, and then return to it moderately again. Mere like Solomon cannot do that. No earnest man can. No! if blessedness lies in pleasure, he will drink the cup to the dregs. But let us mark the wanderings of an immortal soul infinite in its vastness. There is a moral to be learnt from the wildest worldliness. When we look on the madness of life, and are marvelling at the terrible career of dissipation, let there be no contempt felt. It is an immortal spirit marring itself. It is an infinite soul, which nothing short of the Infinite can satisfy, plunging down to ruin and disappointment. That unquenched impetuosity within you might have led you up to God. You have chosen instead that your heart shall try to satisfy itself upon husks. There was another form of Solomon’s worldliness.
3. It was not worldliness in pleasure, but worldliness in occupation. He had entered deeply into commercial speculations. He had alternate fears and hopes about the return of his merchant ships on their perilous three-years’ voyage to India end to Spain. He had his mind occupied with plans for building. The architecture of the temple, his own palace, the forts and towns of his now magnificent empire, all this filled for a time his soul. He had begun a system of national debt end ruinous taxation. Much of this was not wrong; but all of it was dangerous. It is a strange thing how business dulls the sharpness of the spiritual affections. It is strange how the harass of perpetual occupation shuts God out. There are writers who have said that in this matter Solomon was in advance of his age enlightened beyond the narrowness of Judaism, and that this permission of idolatry was the earliest exhibition of that spirit which in modern times we call religious toleration. But Solomon went far beyond toleration. The truth seems to be, Solomon was getting indifferent about religion. He had got into light and worldly society, and the libertinism of his associations was beginning to make its impression upon him. He was beginning to ask, “Is not one religion as good as another, so long as each man believes his own in earnest?” There are few signs in a soul’s state more alarming than that of religious indifference; that is, the spirit of thinking ell religions equally true, the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false.
II. God’s loving guidance of Solomon in the midst of all his apostasy. In the darkest, wildest wanderings a man to whom God has shown His love in Christ is conscious still of the better way. In the very gloom of his remorse, there is an instinctive turning back to God. It is enumerated among the gifts that God bestowed upon Solomon that He granted to him “largeness of heart.” Now that largeness of heart which we call thoughtfulness and sensibility, generosity, high feeling, marks out for the man who has it a peculiar life. You look to the life of Solomon, and there are no outward reverses there to speak of. His reign was a type of a reign of the power of peace. No war, no national disaster, interrupted the even flow of the current of his days. No loss of a child, like David’s, pouring cold desolation into his soul--no pestilences nor famines. Prosperity and riches, and the internal development of the nation’s life--that was the reign of Solomon. And yet, with all this, was Solomon happy? Is there no way that God has of making the heart grey and old before its time without sending bereavement, or loss, or sickness? Has the Eternal Justice no mode of withering and drying up the inner springs of happiness while all is green, and wild, and fresh outwardly? We look to the history of Solomon for the answer. The first way in which his aberration from God treasured up for him chastisement was by that weariness of existence which breathes through the whole Book of Ecclesiastes. Another part of Solomon’s chastisement was doubt. Once more turn to the Book of Ecclesiastes. “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.” In this you will observe the querulous complaint of a man who has ceased to feel that God is the ruler of this world. A blind chance, or a dark destiny, seems to rule all earthly things. And that is the penalty of leaving God’s narrow path for sin’s wider and more flowery one. But the love of God brought Solomon through all this to spiritual manhood. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” In this we have the evidence of his victory. Doubt, and imprisonment, and worldliness have passed away, and clear activity, belief, freedom, have taken their place. It was terrible discipline, but God had made that discipline successful. I speak to those who know something about what the world is worth, who have tasted its fruits, and found them like the Dead Sea apples--hollowness and ashes. By those foretastes of coming misery which God has already given you, those lonely feelings of utter wretchedness and disappointment when you have returned home palled and satiated from the gaudy entertainment, and the truth has pressed itself icy cold upon your heart, “Vanity of vanities--is this worth living for? By all that, be warned. Be true to your convictions. Be honest with yourselves. Learn from the very greatness of your souls, which have a capacity for infinite agony, that you m in this world for a grander destiny than that of frittering away life in usefulness. Lastly, let us learn from this subject the covenant love of God. There is such a thing as love which rebellion cannot weary, which ingratitude cannot cool (W. F. Robertson, M. A.)
