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. 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 forever. 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 forever, as I promised David your father when I said, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’
After Solomon had begun his reign and built the temple and palace, 24 years had elapsed. We get this by noting the Solomon began the temple in the 4th year of his reign, remembering that the temple took 7 years to complete and the palace 13 (4 +7=13=24). This puts us in the year 946 BC. Back in 1 Kings 3:4-15 we get the story of the first encounter Solomon had with God.
Solomon was the human side of God’s plans. His building of the temple was what he needed to do to bring God’s plan to life. But the consecration of the temple is God’s part. Solomon not only prayed for the strength to build the temple but actually did it. Action accompanied his prayer. In that, God sanctified and consecrated Solomon’s work. He guaranteed that He would always be present at the temple.
But there is a condition to God’s presence. Solomon must follow God faithfully. It is a guarantee that God proffers throughout the book of Kings: if the king follows God and the people follow the king, there will be a blessing on the land and its people. God will establish the covenant of David throughout the various kings of Israel and Judah, but the covenant must be kept. God’s covenant is something attainable to Solomon: walk before me faithfully with integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did.
David wasn’t perfect, but he had a great heart for God and His commandments. When he strayed he uncovered the sin and confronted it, understood his weakness, dealt with the consequences and was restored by God. It isn’t unlike what the Israelites did collectively in the book of Judges hundreds of years prior. When they strayed from God and were oppressed (sin), they had to realize that their only true refuge was coming to God earnestly, honestly, humbly (authentically acknowledging their sin). Only then would God bring them a savior (restoration).
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, worshiping and serving them—that is why the Lord brought all this disaster on them.’”
This is the counterweight to verses 4 and 5. In 4 & 5, there is a great promise: if you serve God faithfully, there will be a blessing. In 6 through 9, the adverse effect is noted. If the kings and his people refused to follow God, then there would be stark and devastating results.
They will be cut off from the promised land: A disobedient Israel will not reap the promises of Israel itself. God will release them from the very land he had promised them before the exile from Egypt. Is this God relinquishing on a promise? Remember, this is a covenant. By definition, a convenient is an agreement between two parties. If one party breaks the agreement, then the covenant is ruined.
God will reject the temple: The very nature of their worship will be faulty. Like in Jeroboam’s story, the alternate religious sites he set up in Israel, to avoid his people going to the temple for proper worship, were rejected by God. In the same way, the temple would be rejected because the heart of the people aren’t with Him.
Israel will become a byword/ridicule: Israel was meant to be a people who exalted God’s name. They were meant to be God’s people, a beacon to the world. But if they refused to follow God, the opposite would happen. Their very name would lack prestige, their nature a joke to other nations.
Solomon’s Other Activities 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.
When we study the story of King Solomon, there is an interesting subtext that begins to emerge throughout. Solomon has done great things for God. He has built a great temple, sacrificed much to God, brought God’s land and people to the greatest peak it would ever have. Yet, there are cracks forming. The first crack seen is the building of his palace. It is larger than the temple and adorned with many gaudy artifacts. It also takes twice as long to build. It tells us something about Solomon’s mindset: there is pride and excess brewing. Chapter 10 will show us more.
But here we see something quite subtle. Hiram, the ruler of Tyre, who has been a friend to both David and Solomon, is awarded twenty towns in Israel to call his own. It seems like a shrewd deal, yet there is a problem with this. First, the land isn’t Solomon’s to give, especially to a man of polytheistic origins. The land was allotted to the Jews, by God, through Moses. It was fought for by Joshua and then the people.
Second, the land is of no consequence to Hiram. He isn’t pleased by the land. Solomon has in some way stiffed Hiram it seems, unloaded perhaps unusable land that Solomon didn’t want anyway. There is a sense that Solomon has given Hiram the raw part of the deal, yet Hiram takes it anyway, handing over 70 pounds of gold to Solomon.
15 Here is the account of the forced labor 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 labor, 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.
Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer were all powerful cities in Solomon’s time. Hazor was Solomon’s northern city which defended against northern invaders. Megiddo guarded mainly from the coast. Megiddo is also the location of the last great battle of good and evil (Armageddon). Gezer was once a massive Canaanite city in the south, but was destroyed and ultimately given as a wedding gift to Solomon.
This is important to note. Solomon is marrying an Egyptian. If Solomon knew the scripture (which he seems to have) he would have known that God forbade the Jewish people to marry outside their race. This was not a xenophobic rule but a Godly one. God understood that the people of Israel would fall away from Him if they sullied the bloodline with those who weren’t of God.
We see further slippage in verses 20-22. There were Canaanites still in the land, of which he conscripted into forced labor. This is a compromise of Solomon’s. God ordered the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites because their scourge would ultimately corrupt them (Judges 2:1-5). Here, Solomon further allows them a place in his society.
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. 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.
Solomon’s sacrifices were most likely for the three great festivals ordained by God: Festival of the Unleavened Bread, Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles (Exodus 23:14-17,2 Chronicles 8:13).
This set of verses shows us two perhaps competing elements in Solomon’s reign. First, there was a desire to serve and worship God. But there was also the desire of conquest. Did Solomon suffer split allegiance? If God is supposed to be first in his life, can we say with certainty that Solomon really believed that, or was he slowly drifting into a state of pride and consumption?