The Saga of Solomon

Imagine God grants you more wisdom than anybody else on the face of the earth and, by the end of your incredibly successful career as third king of Israel, you wind up a marrying a bunch of heathen women and adopting their pagan-occultist ways and—in the process—become a type of the Antichrist in the Bible!

This is the sorted story of Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba, who began his 40-year reign in 967 BC (while David was still alive) and enjoyed an unparalleled era of security, prosperity, and international political and economic importance in a domain that stretched from Tipshah on the Euphrates to Gaza on the border of Egypt.

It’s absolutely fascinating how Solomon’s life—the good and the bad—is laid out in such explicit, unusual detail in the Old Testament. Through his own writings in the book of Ecclesiastes, which is more of a personal diary or journal, we are made privy to Solomon’s deepest insights at the time of his downward spiral.

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From I Kings 3, we know God first came to Solomon in a nighttime dream and asked him what he wanted as king. When Solomon humbly answered, “I’d like wisdom to rule over this people,” God was so pleased by the reply He made Solomon the smartest man alive, granting him untold riches and honor in the process.

I Kings 4:29 reports, “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore.
[30] And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.
[31] For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about.
[32] And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five.”
[33] And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.
[34] And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.”

Jordan explains, “He was wiser than all men; I mean, he was the wisest man on the planet. He spake three thousand proverbs. He codified his wisdom. He took that wisdom and put it into codes and instructions that people could learn by . . ."

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While in Proverbs, Solomon is God’s man with God’s wisdom for God’s people, he does a 360-degree turn in Ecclesiastes, giving readers a first-hand account of his futile pursuit of human viewpoint and in trusting in his own skills of observation and experience.

Solomon tells of all the places his heart goes in search of wisdom that turn out not to work, and by the last chapter, he concludes that wisdom can only be found in God’s commandments and in God’s Word.”

In Ecclesiastes 2, for example, Solomon recalls his party days, reflecting, “I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.[2] I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?
[3] I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life . . .

[8] I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.
[9] So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.
[10] And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy . . .”

Jordan explains, “Solomon’s looking for the supreme good and he says, ‘I’ll go out in pleasure and the party of life,’ but then, when he sees the futility of that, he turns to wisdom and goes to the academia of the world, then to religion. Chapter 5 starts out, ‘Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.’

“He’s saying, ‘I’ll consider religion.’ Imagine, here’s King Solomon whom God had already given all this wisdom to—he’s already written all these proverbs expounding on the value of wisdom and he’s had nine chapters (in Proverbs) that his daddy wrote him telling him how important wisdom was—and now he’s going to seek wisdom out there in the world as if he didn’t already have it in the Word of God!

“Now you can understand that, can’t you? You say, ‘Yeah, God, I know you said it, but I want to try . . .’ Most of us are not just satisfied to let the doctrine, let the verse . . . We want to go try it, experiment, and Solomon had the capacity that most of us don’t have and that is just to go everywhere and try everything.

“It’s like the old country song, ‘I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve breathed the mountain air . . . ’ Solomon could say that and the conclusion he finally came to was, ‘You might as well throw dust in the air; it isn’t worth anything.’

“The book of Psalms says that ‘man in his best state is altogether vanity,’ and Solomon didn’t have to do all this stuff in Ecclesiastes to figure that out! The Bible already told him that if he would have just believed it!

“He didn’t believe it, though, or he quit believing it, and he got seduced by the wisdom of the world. Ecclesiastes demonstrates that all the places people seek wisdom apart from divine revelation are useless. Now, it’s fascinating that it’s that way, isn’t it?”

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For his brilliantly written summation, Solomon advises in Ecclesiastes 12, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
[2] While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
[3] In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
[4] And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
[5] Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
[6] Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
[7] Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
[8] Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.
[9] And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.
[10] The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth.
[11] The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.
[12] And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
[13] Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
[14] For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

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Jordan explains, “Solomon’s warning is, ‘What you’re looking for ain’t out there! You’re going to find it from God!’ And when he says, ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,’ he’s not saying, ‘Be a creation scientist.’ You remember how God spoke to Job, saying, ‘Trust me as a faithful Creator. I made creation. Look at how I made it, Job. See what I did? I got a plan! Everything is done in a plan.’

“Solomon’s conclusion is that the wisdom of God is what you better remember and get involved in. And so he warns the people—those in Israel who have an ear to hear—‘This isn’t where wisdom is.’

“Now, the wise of the world have gone and taken out of his book all kinds of things and made hay with it, and the 10,000 greatest brains that ever lived have taken the wisdom of Solomon there—human viewpoint—and they’ve just made a dung heap.

“The wisdom of God’s in a Book and when Solomon gets through he says, ‘You know what you need to do—just go back to the Book and remember what God sent down off the drawing board of heaven and forget your own ideas.’ ”

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King Solomon lived in such over-the-top opulence even the cup he used to rinse his teeth out at night after brushing was made of gold. Just look at this passage from I Kings:

“And all king Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver: it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon.
[22] For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
[23] So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom.
[24] And all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.
[25] And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and garments, and armour, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year.
[26] And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at Jerusalem.
[27] And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycomore trees that are in the vale, for abundance.
[28] And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price.
[29] And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an hundred and fifty: and so for all the kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did they bring them out by their means.

Jordan observes, “Can you imagine cedars as plentiful as just old scrub brush? Ever been in a cedar forest? You ever smelled a cedar chest? You know how fresh it makes everything smell? The environment around this guy was perfumed with the fragrance of a prosperous creation. . .

“Year by year, he was given horses and chariots. Everybody knew how wise this guy was so they’d bring him presents; they’d bless him in order to get the benefit of his wisdom and benefit of his counsel. It was just everywhere—the wealth, the grandeur.”

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Of course, it was in the midst of this unparalleled blessing Solomon got it in his head to go after “outlandish women,” as Nehemiah defines them, and “had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.” (I Kings 11:3)

I Kings 11 explains, “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.
 [5] For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
[6] And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father.
[7] Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon.
[8] And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.”

The primary distinction between Solomon and his father, as verse 4 clearly tells, is Solomon’s “heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.”

Jordan explains, “David was an adulterer, a philanderer, a murderer. He’s a guy who would have been a good senator from Massachusetts. He commits adultery, covers it up with murder and destroys the integrity of his own army and commanding staff by doing  so. He makes them complicit with it and brings judgment on his nation.

“He’s a lousy father. He raised some of the biggest brats you’ll ever want to know who destroyed his nation, his kingdom. One of his boys raped his own sister. I mean this is not a happy home and yet King David is a great man in the Bible; a sainted man—the man God made a covenant with and said, ‘I’m going to bless him.’

“God had said of David, ‘He’s a man after my own heart.’ David got caught up in a lot of the sins of the flesh but his heart never left the Lord; he never went out and worshipped idols. Solomon did, and in doing so, he forsook the wisdom of God and sought after the wisdom of man.”

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In a classic macro code tucked into the Old Testament, pointing to Solomon as a type of the Antichrist, I Kings 10 lists the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year as “six hundred threescore and six talents of gold”! That’s 666!

I Kings 10:16-19 further reveals, “And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six hundred shekels of gold went to one target.
[17] And he made three hundred shields of beaten gold; three pound of gold went to one shield: and the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon.
[18] Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.
[19] The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two.”

Jordan observes, “You notice in Solomon’s life from this point on there becomes a fixation; a downward spiraling fixation with sixes. In verse 18, he’s got six steps, six lions, six steps. He does that in the architecture. Now do you think when he sought wisdom from God, God divided the architecture like that? No! He did that from human viewpoint, and as you go on in Solomon’s ministry life, you see Solomon just slowly drifting, falling down and it’s at this point in his life somewhere along in here that Ecclesiastes is written.

“It’s in these books (Job through Song of Solomon), by the way, that there’s demonstration to Israel for when they’re in exactly the same situation; when there’s the temptation and the draw to be pulled into the 666 system.”

(sorry for long absence--new article tomorrow)