>> Jen: Hello and good morning, faithful listeners. Today we are going to be discussing how many wives Solomon had, and it is a crazy amount. No man should ever have this many wives. We'll be reading First Kings 11 today. All right, faithful listeners, let's go ahead and grab our cups of coffee or cups of tea, whatever you prefer drinking this morning. I've got a cup of Earl Grey tea. I have a new appreciation for Earl Grey. And you know what? I have to admit it.
I have to admit it. I'm not a crazy tea drinker yet. Not yet, but I haven't had a cup of coffee in probably three weeks, maybe a month, and I have been primarily drinking tea. That's because coffee just doesn't sit well with me. I would love for it to sit well every time I smell it, I crave it and I want it so bad, but it just does not sit well with me. So Earl Grey has been my substitute for coffee because it has a nice flavor and a nice
aroma. It's not as tasty as coffee. I'm going to say that right out. But I am enjoying Earl Grey instead of coffee recently. But for those of you crazy tea drinkers out there who prefer tea over coffee for some reason, go ahead and grab your favorite cup of tea and tell me what that is. Contact me and tell me what is your favorite cup of tea. Let's go ahead and read. First Kings 11:1 -13 today, and we're going to talk about Solomon's wives and how they turned his heart away from
Yahweh. I'll be reading from the web this morning. Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and the Hittites of the nations concerning which Yahweh said to the children of Israel, you shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon joined to these in love. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines.
His wives turned his heart away. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after their gods. And his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God, as the heart of David his father was. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did that which was evil in Yahweh's sight and didn't go fully after Yahweh, as David his father, did.
Then Solomon built A high place for Chemesh, the abomination of Moab on the mountain that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. So he did for all of his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. Yahweh was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods. But he didn't keep that which
Yahweh had commanded. Therefore Yahweh said to Solomon, because this is done by you, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for David, your father's sake, but I will tear it out of your
son's hand. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for David, my servant's sake and for Jerusalem's sake, which I have chosen. In spite of the fact that Solomon was the richest, most prosperous king of the Hebrews to date, he did not follow after God, even though God had appeared to him twice and told him to follow after him. The first time God appeared to him was way at
the beginning, when Solomon first became the king. god appeared to him and said, what do you want? Solomon said, wisdom. god gave him wisdom and then said, walk in my ways. The second time God appeared to Solomon was during the building of the temple. God said, solomon, if you and your children walk in my ways, then I will bless you forever. In spite of these two warnings straight from God's mouth. As Solomon gets older, he begins to stray away from God, even though
he had these warnings. It says, king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh. Women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and the Hittites, all of which were women from nations that Yahweh told Israel, do not make peace treaties with them. Do not have them live among you. Don't live among them, and do not intermarry with them because they are pagans. They are going to turn your hearts away from me. Don't do it.
And this is not to say that God is against interracial marriage, because he is not. He's against people being unequally yoked. I've explained this before, but what that means is a yoke was something that the people used to use to strap together Two animals to plow a field, and typically it would be oxen that were yoked in this yoke together. It would be very silly for somebody to take a yoke and strap in like a horse and a ox together, because the horse is a, uh, totally
different animal, a, ah, bigger animal. The yoke would be like, tilted sideways so it just wouldn't fit properly and nothing would get done. The horse and the ox would probably be fighting the whole time. They wouldn't be able to work well together. And the same goes for people. A marriage should be between two people that have the same beliefs, that are on the same
page with their beliefs. And that's not to say that you can't have different things that you like or something like that, but you have to have the same core fundamental beliefs, because if you don't, that marriage is going to be in a lot of trouble because you're just going to fight over everything. So when God tells the people in the Old Testament to not intermarry with people from the foreign nations, it wasn't because he was against
interracial marriage. It was because he was against his children, the Hebrews, marrying the pagans, and eventually having their hearts turned against God to go follow after these other pagan gods. Because these pagan gods are a temptation to everybody. They've been a temptation since the beginning of time and they still are to this day. False gods are always going to be a temptation. Why is that? Because we can control false gods. We can't control Yahweh. Yahweh does whatever
he wants to do. He knows every single outcome possible. And so he's going to choose the best possible way. And a lot of people aren't going to like that because they can't control Yahweh. But for these false idols, they can control those because they make them up. They make them up and they make up how to worship them. So Solomon ends up marrying all these women. It says he married 700 princesses and he also married 300 concubines. Now, concubines weren't exactly wives. They were kind of
like wife light, I guess. Uh, they didn't have the same standing as a wife of a king, but they had a lot of the same privileges. So that was what a concubine was. And apparently Solomon married 700 princesses, but for the women who weren't princesses that he just thought were beautiful or that he liked or something, he would make those women into concubines because their standing wasn't good enough to be a Wife of his. So he had a thousand women that he was technically married to.
That's too many women for anybody. Solomon wouldn't even be able to see all of these women in a year. There's no possible way that he could see every single woman in a year. So all these women are turning his heart away. It says that he held fast to them in love. Solomon joined to these in love. So Solomon begins rejecting Yahweh, who is the source of love and fulfillment, and finding his fulfillment with all of these women. And you might wonder, how can somebody as wise as Solomon make such a
silly mistake? How can the man who wrote Proverbs chapter five, which I'm going to read here, how could this man make such a mistake? Let's read Proverbs 5:15 through 23. This was written by Solomon. This is from the NLT version. Drink water from your own well. Share your love only with your wife. Why spill the water of your springs in the streets? Having sex with just anyone, you should reserve it for yourselves. Never share it with strangers. Let your wife be a fountain
of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love. Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman? Or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman? For the LORD sees clearly what a man does, examining every path he takes. An evil man is held captive by his own sins. They are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self control. He will be lost
because of his great foolishness. So, I mean, right there, Solomon understood what it meant to marry multiple women. He understood what it meant because he saw other people making that mistake. Because having multiple wives in Solomon's time period was very common. And of course, Solomon would see what would happen to these other men who married multiple wives. So Solomon in theory was like, yeah, having one
wife is good. Don't go out and marry a whole bunch of women because that's not a good thing to do. So rejoice in one woman is what Solomon writes down here. In fact, at the very end of that proverb, he says, an evil man is held captive by his sins. They are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self control. He will be lost because of his great foolishness. Solomon considers it a, ah, great foolishness to let lust control you. So what happened to him?
How could he write something like this and live in a way completely opposite to It. It was like he was in cognitive dissonance. So two things I can think of, why Solomon could understand that it was good to have one wife, but then go and marry other women. First and foremost, Solomon was extremely wise, and he knew he was extremely wise. Wisdom often makes people arrogant. Solomon was probably very arrogant and
thought, well, you know, I'm the wisest person on the planet. I can certainly handle having multiple wives. I can certainly handle it. If anybody can handle it, it would be me. That's probably the first thing Solomon was thinking. And the second thing is that he was taught by his own father. He probably thought, well, you know, God loved my father, David so much. And, you know, David had so many problems with all of these women. But, you know, in the end, his heart never left Yahweh. So my heart
won't ever leave Yahweh. It was fine for my dad. It'll be fine for me. So there's probably multiple things going on in Solomon's mind where he's just in denial that these problems could ever happen to him. On top of this, once Solomon took one other wife, other than the daughter of Pharaoh, who he supposedly married first, after he took another wife, he probably thought, oh, uh, this wasn't so hard. You know, I don't see any
problems with this. It's kind of nice having two wives, you know, to gratify me when I need it. So maybe I could just get another one and another one and another one. Once you do it once, it's much easier to do it again. Once you sin once, it is so much easier to do it again. So Solomon started almost worshiping this relationship he had with these women. He was rejecting the true source of love and happiness and fulfillment and trying to get it from all of these women. Solomon, it says, had
1,000 women. It says his wives turned his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God. as the heart of David, his father was. So that's another question here. How could David's heart have been perfect with God even though David had so many problems with women as well? Well, the difference with David is that even though David did not do many times what God told him to do, and he disobeyed quite a bit, the one thing David always did was seek after Yahweh.
Even when he sinned, he would always apologize to Yahweh. He would have a humble heart. He would say, Yahweh, I did this. I was wrong. I am sorry. And he never had his heart turned towards other gods. In fact, David, throughout all of the psalms, you'll see that David's heart was always worshiping Yahweh, not other gods, but
Yahweh. So David never turned towards other gods, even though he had multiple women, shockingly enough, which kind of shows the level of dedication that David did have towards Yahweh. But Solomon, you know, he probably thought, oh, if David could do it, I could do it. But Solomon did in fact have his heart turned towards other gods. And his heart was not seeking after God like David his
father's was. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did that which was evil in Yahweh's sight and didn't go fully after Yahweh as David his father So Solomon then built a high place for Chemish, the abomination of Moab. Now we're going to see Chemish, actually, we're going to see all these gods come up quite a bit. This is sort of the first ish mention of a lot of these gods. I think Chemish, we haven't
seen that one yet before. But Ashtoreth, we've seen Ashtoreth from the very beginning. Basically, Ashtoreth was always worshiped. She was the god of fertility that the Israelites were always, you know, being tempted by because a lot of like, sexual things went into the worship of Ashtoreth. But it mentions Chemish here and then it also mentions M. Molech. We're going to see Molech come up a lot because Molech was the child sacrifice god. Chemish on the other hand, was a god that demanded human
sacrifice. So Chemish and Molech so far were, were human sacrifice gods. And Solomon is now beginning to worship these gods as well as worshiping Yahweh. I mean, I'm sure Solomon was still going to the temple and still sacrificing, but then he's going to these other temples that he's building for his wives and worshiping with them, going with his wives and burning incense to a child sacrifice god.
And not only this, Solomon was building these temples, putting money and resources into these beautiful temples for these fake gods that ultimately are just demon worship. So he did all this for his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to these gods. So you can imagine why Yahweh was so angry with Solomon. It says because his heart had turned away from Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this very thing. So God knew the future.
God knew that Solomon was not going to worship him toward the end of his life. God knew all this and warned Solomon ahead of time, twice. But Solomon refused to listen to God's very own voice. So Yahweh now appears to Solomon one more time, and he says, because you have done this and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and I will give it to your servant.
Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for David your father's sake, but I will tear it out of your son's hand. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for David, my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, which I have chosen.
So God appears to Solomon and he says, because you are now worshiping these other gods and making temples for them and marrying all these women and doing basically everything I told you not to do back in Deuteronomy 17, because you're doing all this, I am going to rip the kingdom out of your hand. He says, I'm going to take it from your son and give it to your servant. Your son will still have control of one tribe, just one, not the other
11 one tribe. But the rest of the tribes of Israel are going to go to somebody else. But I really enjoy the reason why god says he's not going to immediately tear it out of Solomon's hands. I will not do it in your days, Solomon, for David your father's sake. God is speaking here as if David is still alive. And in a way, David is alive. In fact, every single time we see God talk about those who had died, he always talks as if they are still alive. And he's doing the same thing here with
David. He's saying, I'm not going to do it in your days for David, your father's sake. Now, if David was dead and that was just the end of David's life, why would this matter? Why would it matter if God took the kingdom out of Solomon's hands or not? Because David's dead. What is David gonna know about it? It's because David is not dead. Because there is a life after death, and God knows the reality of life after death
far more than we do. So David is alive, his soul is alive, and God is saying that David's soul is alive, and God is not going to do this to Solomon for the sake of David. So that's a Very comforting thought, because God Himself is showing that there is a reality of life after death. But to finish out here, God says that he is going to take the kingdom from Solomon and give it to Solomon's servant. So the days of Israel being one unified nation,
are pretty much done. And Solomon was the one who unfortunately destroyed pretty much everything by worshiping all of these other gods. That is how quickly this happens. That is how quickly your sin starts to destroy things. It might be fun at first, you know, Solomon might have enjoyed all of these women at first, but in the end of his life, he was miserable. He was miserable because we're going to see what Solomon writes at the end
of his life. When we get to the book of Ecclesiastes that was written when Solomon was an old man and he was miserable, you could tell how depressed he was because he was writing to us saying, don't make the same mistakes I made. But even so, Solomon never turned his heart back to Yahweh. So once again, Scripture is proving that it's all about the heart. The heart is the only thing that really matters to god, looks at our hearts. And so we want our hearts to be, uh, dedicated
to God. We don't want to make the same mistakes that Solomon made. Even though, uh, polygamy is not as common as it was back in Solomon's day, shockingly enough, it is back on the rise. I just read a statistic that said 20% of people actually think polygamy is okay, which is why my sister and I talk about it in our upcoming episode of Discussions. We're going to be talking about Rob, um, the
Christian polygamist guy. My sister and I went through his video and reviewed it and also noticed something real weird, real weird, where my sister and I started, like, screaming when we saw it. We were like, oh, my gosh, you gotta be kidding me. You're gonna want to check that one out. But you can only view it if you are a Ko Fi member. So go down to the description of this episode and click on the Ko Fi link and become a tea or coffee tier member in order to gain
access to the discussion episodes. Faithful listeners, have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your day. Happy listening and God bless.