Morning
Check out Deuteronomy 17, copied below:
14 “You are about to enter the land the Lord your God is giving you. When you take it over and settle there, you may think, ‘We should select a king to rule over us like the other nations around us.’ 15 If this happens, be sure to select as king the man the Lord your God chooses. You must appoint a fellow Israelite; he may not be a foreigner.
16 “The king must not build up a large stable of horses for himself or send his people to Egypt to buy horses, for the Lord has told you, ‘You must never return to Egypt.’ 17 The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the Lord. And he must not accumulate large amounts of wealth in silver and gold for himself.
I celebrate Solomon’s wisdom, I really do. I know that his great wealth was a gift from God, because the Lord himself said He would make Solomon rich. I wonder though…did God mean to make him rich by violating a command He had already given? That’s impossible…by the way….and even if we thought it could happen, the fact that Moses wrote to the people “for a time when they would have a king” is just too coincidental to be a mistake. Remember yesterday when I said that I was looking to see where Solomon went wrong, and the kingdom became “tainted”? This could be a clue…
Do you think the people who had the Law knew that the king should not “return to Egypt” for any reason? Of course they did. By the way, Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter! Talk about violating the command! He brought Egypt right into his own home, and as we will see later in the book, exactly what God (through Moses) said would happen becomes reality.
When David did what was wrong (Bathsheeba, Census, etc.) a prophet always came to tell him. I don’t see mention of a prophet telling Solomon not to do this. Was it scrubbed from the record? Did the “wisest man to ever live” forget this passage? Could he have been unaware of the command to steer clear of Egypt? Hey, David never purchased any horses from there….did Egypt just now go into the horse selling business? Maybe the new wife opened up new opportunities for Solomon….new opportunities to make mistakes…
Beyond the idea that “gold was a plentiful as stone” in Jerusalem is the sad feeling that we have turned a corner here, and possibly set a downward angle. So what if there is lots of gold? What difference does it make if you obtained it by thumbing your nose at God?
Leadership note: Great wisdom and wise decisions are two very different things. Solomon didn’t appear to be greedy….he asked for wisdom not wealth. But the allure of wealth seems to have tripped him up, and his wisdom hasn’t helped him any. He was much smarter than his Dad, but David never made this mistake. What tempts me? My temptations could lead me where my wisdom knows I shouldn’t go…
Solomon loved the Lord, that’s what these last couple of passages say….I wonder why he did this?
“Lord, I am unsettled as I read this. Solomon loved You, and made a request that pleased You, and yet he seems to have stumbled in spite of it. You know that I love You, and I hope my requests please You as well. Please protect me from making Solomon’s error! I want my obedience to be more important than anything else. Help me to know when I am breaking your Law, and making you sad”.
Faithfully,
PR