>> Jen: Well, good morning, faithful listeners, and welcome to the Bible Explained podcast, where today we're going to talk about how, uh, Solomon, right after he begins honoring child sacrifice idols, he starts having some serious problems in Israel. What a shocker. We'll be talking about that today. So I've got a cup of tea here with me today. This is a, let's see, this is a cranberry apple tea and it's very good. I really like it. This might be my new favorite non caffeinated tea that I
have. I really like this one. I'm a fan of fruity teas because they don't taste as bad as the normal black tea. I can't do English breakfast tea. I just can't do it. It is not tasty to me. Maybe my taste will change. I never expected to like, um, Earl Grey tea and now I do. So we'll see. Maybe I'll start liking English breakfast. Otherwise I am not a big fan of most teas. So tell me. I always ask you guys what your favorite coffee is or what your favorite tea is. Tell me what your least
favorite tea is. So contact me and tell me, what is your least favorite tea? My least favorite tea is anything with a licorice root. Oh, uh, I hate licorice. I hate licorice so much. I hate the smell of it, I hate the look of it, I hate the texture, I hate the taste of it. It is all bad. And there are very few foods that I hate that deeply. But licorice root, that's just one of them. I do not like anything with licorice and even
teas. If it even has the most mildest hint of licorice root in it, I can taste it immediately, I can smell it immediately, and I do not like it. So tell me what your least favorite tea is. I'd like to hear about that. And speaking of things that are distasteful, Solomon is going to be having some problems with some adversaries. We're going to be reading about this in First Kings 11:14 through 25. We're going to be talking about the first two adversaries that
Solomon has today. And both of these guys are causing some significant problems for Solomon in his later days. Let's go ahead and read this. So make sure to grab a cup of tea that you actually like, if that's possible, because tea is not that good or a delicious cup of coffee. And also the version of the Bible that you prefer to read out of. But I'll be reading this out of the web. This Morning, Yahweh raised up an adversary to Solomon. Hadad, the Edomite. He was one of the
king's offspring in Edom. For when David was in Edom and Joab, the captain of the army, had gone up to bury the slain. And had struck every male in Edom for Joab. And all Israel remained there six months. Until he had cut off every meal. In Edom, Hadad fled. He and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him to go into Egypt. When Hadad was still a little child. They arose out of Midian and came to
Paran. And they took men with them out of Paran. And they came to Egypt to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who gave him a house and appointed him food and gave him land. Hadad found great favor in the sight of Pharaoh. So that he gave him as wife the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tepenes, the queen. The sister of Tepenes bore him Genebath, his son, whom Tepenes weaned in Pharaoh's house. And Genebath was in Pharaoh's house among the sons of Pharaoh. When Hadad heard in Egypt that
David slept with his fathers. And that, uh, Joab, uh, the captain of the army, was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, let me depart, that I might go back to my own country. Then Pharaoh said to him, but what have you lacked with me that behold, you seek to go back to your own country. He answered, nothing, however, only let me depart. God raised up an adversary to him. Reason. The son of Eliada, who fled from his lord, Hadadezer, king of Zobah. He gathered men to himself and
became captain over a troop. When David killed them of Zobah, they went to Damascus and lived there and reigned in Damascus. He was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon. In addition to the mischief of Hadad, he abhorred Israel and reigned over Syria. Right after Solomon begins worshiping other gods, Suddenly all of these adversaries start popping up. And there's three that are going to be mentioned. We're talking about
the first two today. Now, it's pretty obvious why these adversaries start popping up right after Solomon begins building temples to Molech. Because God was angry with Solomon. Because God had appeared to Solomon twice, like God Himself, and told Solomon, do not worship other gods. If you don't worship other gods, I will bless you forever. The kingdom will be yours forever. But if you do worship other gods, then the kingdom will be
taken away from you. And somehow, Solomon forgot those two experiences he had meeting God And God telling him those things, and his heart was turned away from God, and he started worshiping all of these little G idols. Because Solomon had many wives, 1,000 to be exact. Actually 700 wives that were princesses. And then the other 300 were like common wives. So they were more like concubines. But Solomon basically had 1,000 women total. And these women were from countries that worshiped other
gods and didn't worship Yahweh. So of course, Solomon, to appease his wives, started building these temples for them. And that was causing Israel to fall astray, because the temple now wasn't the only house of worship. These other temples for Moloch and Milcom and BAAL and Ashtoreth were all over the place now, because Solomon was building these temples for his wives, and that's bad enough, but Solomon was going and worshiping with his wives as well.
It says he didn't follow Yahweh completely. He was worshiping other gods. So immediately God gets really angry and he appears to Solomon the third time and he says, solomon, why are you doing this? I told you, if you start worshiping other gods, I'm going to take the kingdom from you. So now it's going to happen. And, you know, you have to think about God's timeline as
well. God waited until these temples were already built, until Solomon was physically going with his wives to worship these other gods, until he appeared to him. So God is very patient and very merciful, and he always gives people many chances to turn back to him before he punishes them. So this was probably years in the making of Solomon building these temples and going and worshiping these other gods before god finally appeared to him and said,
hey, now I'm taking the kingdom from you. And immediately like that, these adversaries rise up against Solomon. The first one was named Hadad the Edomite. He was one of the king's offspring in Edom. So he was one of the sons of the king of Edom. So if you remember anything about Edom, Edom was a close relative to Israel. The Edomites were technically brothers of the Israelites because Israel came from Jacob. And Jacob's brother Esau was the father of the
Edomites. So they were always fighting with each other, Edom and Israel. god was initially very kind to Edom, even though Edom was, uh, very cruel to Israel. God was kind to them because they were such close relatives to Israel and because they were one of Abraham's sons. But later on, once the Edomites just kept being so cruel to the Israelites, over and over, God started saying, all right, enough. One of those times was with
David. So David had actually gone into Edom, um, and basically destroyed their entire army. It says, for when David was in Edom and Joab, the captain of the army, had gone up to bury the slain and had struck every male in Edom for Joab, and all of Israel remained there six months until he had cut off
every male in Edom. Um, now this story is briefly talked about in two Samuel chapter 8, where it says in verse 13, and David became famous after he returned from striking down 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. So that would have basically been the Edomites entire army that was struck down by David, by Joab, and also by Abishai. But one of the kids that escaped during this war that David waged against the Edomites was named Hadad. And he escaped when
he was very young. And he was the son of the king of the Edomites. It says Hadad fled, he and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him to go into Egypt when Hadad was still a little child. So Hadad was a young boy when David came in with his army and killed all these Edomite men. The servants of the king took Hadad and fled to Egypt. So once little Hadad gets into Egypt, the pharaoh actually took, uh, good care of Hadad, because Hadad probably was the next in line on the throne
for the Edomites. So Pharaoh takes Hadad in, it says he gives him shelter, he gives him his own house, he gives him food, he gave him his own land. And as Hadad is growing up, the pharaoh really likes him. It says Hadad found great favor in the eyes of Pharaoh, so that he gave him as wife the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tepaniz, the queen. So the queen of Egypt was named Tepaniz, and she had a sister. And because Pharaoh liked Hadad so much, he offered his sister in law as wife to
Hadad. And so Hadad and Teppaniza's sister get married and they have a little boy named Genebath. And Genebath actually gets raised by Tepanes almost as if he's one of Tepanese's own children. He's weaned by Tepanese in Pharaoh's own house. So basically, Genebath became like Pharaoh's own son. That is how close Hadad, huh? And Pharaoh became during this time while all this is taking place and Hadad is
living a very good life. In Egypt, he hears that King David dies and that, uh, Solomon has ascended to the throne. So this is just eating him up inside. It's eating him up because his own father was killed by King David. And he has all this bitterness and resentment for David. He is so irritated and sick about it that when he hears that David dies, he decides he's going to go back home, become the king of the Edomites once again and cause trouble for Israel and, uh, Solomon
on the throne. So he decides to leave Pharaoh and all of Pharaoh's household and all the good things he has in Egypt to go home and wage war, basically against Israel. So he tells the pharaoh, hey, I'd like to go home. And the pharaoh gets kind of offended. He says, what am I not giving you? Why do you want to go back home? Like, don't you have everything you could possibly want here in Egypt? Hadad says, look, I lack nothing here in Egypt.
Only let me depart. So Hadad departs to become the avenger of blood. If you don't know what that means, that was something that was very common back in ancient days where if somebody was murdered or killed even accidentally by somebody else, the family would appoint an avenger of blood to go out and kill the person who either murdered or accidentally killed the family member who had died. Hadad decides to become the avenger of blood and go after Solomon and all of Israel for what they did to the
Edomites. So that's the first adversary that comes against Solomon, Hadad. And he would have been in the south, but that's not it. Solomon now also has an adversary in the north. It says God raised up another adversary to him, Rezin the son of Eliadah, who had fled from his lord Hedadezer, the king of Zobah. Once again, this story is also Talked about in 2 Samuel chapter 8, where David went and defeated Hadadezer, the
king of Zobah. So let's read this story. This is 2 Samuel 8, 3 through, we'll just say 10. Moreover, David defeated Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah. When he went to restore his monument at the Euphrates River, David captured a thousand of his chariots, 7,000 charioteers and 20,000 foot soldiers. He hamstrung all but 100 of the chariot horses. When the Arameans of Damascus came to help Hadadezer king Azobah, David struck down
22,000 of them. He put garrisons in the Aramean kingdom of Damascus, and the Arameans became subject to him and brought tribute. The LORD gave David victory wherever he went. David took the gold shields that belonged to the officers of Hadadezer and brought them to Jerusalem from Taba and Berethai, towns that belonged to Hadadezer. King David took great quantity of
bronze. When Tau, the king of Hamath, heard that David had defeated the entire army of Hadadezer, he sent his son Joram to King David to greet him and congratulate him on his victory. Battle over Hadadezer who had been at war with Tau. Joram brought with him articles of silver, gold and bronze. So David had defeated Hadadezer actually very early on in his reign. And Hadadezer was the king of Zobah. And he had this servant who was mentioned here in 1 Kings 11. This servant was named
Raisin. And Rezin fled from Hadadezer, the king of Zobah. And when David came in, it gave him the perfect opportunity to split. So he runs away and becomes a leader in his own right. He gathered men to himself and became captain over a troop when David killed them of Zobah. So they went to Damascus and lived there and reigned in Damascus. He was an adversary to all of Israel all the days of Solomon. In addition to the mischief of Hadad, he, huh, abhorred
Israel and reigned over Syria. So Solomon in the latter days of his life has some serious problems. And it looks like these men were always kind of causing trouble for Solomon, even when Solomon was younger. But it was less of a problem for Solomon back in those days because Israel had complete and total peace and this Hadad guy in the south couldn't do anything. And then also this Raisin guy in the north also couldn't do anything.
It wasn't until Solomon started to become weak that they were able to cause more problems. In fact, Rezin the adversary of the north became so powerful that he got as close as Damascus during the later years of Solomon. And Damascus is located in Syria, which is pretty close to Israel. But interestingly enough, Solomon had at one point made a fortified city in Tadmor, Syria earlier on in his life, which is now called Palmyra, Syria, which is in like right almost smack dab in
the middle of Syria. And Damascus is on the very southwestern portion of Syria. So at some point in his early reign, Solomon had gone into Syria and made fortified cities in Syria and probably had no trouble in Damascus until later on when Raisin goes in during the later years of Solomon and is able to take Damascus, live there, and rule Syria from Damascus, just very, very close to where Israel's border was so it sounds like Solomon did have some battles in his time, but he's not known for that
so much. He's more known for all of the architecture and the building of wealth that he did for Israel. I was reading some Josephus the other day to learn more about Solomon and he did a lot. He built roads, he built infrastructure. He had so much going on in Israel that that's what he's known for, just creating and building wealth in
Israel. He also apparently did have some problems as king with both Hadad and Raisin, because it does say that both these men caused trouble for Solomon pretty early on and were constant irritations to him. But they never were able to do much. Not until God allowed these two men to do more damage were they able to really do anything. So now Rezin is getting as close as Damascus and reigning in Damascus and causing a lot of
trouble for Israel. But these are two of the less problematic adversaries that Solomon has. On Wednesday, we're going to talk about the third and final adversary, and this particular adversary changes the entire nature of Israel from this day forward. Well, faithful listeners, make sure to tune in on Wednesday
for the completion of this story. We're going to learn about the third adversary that Solomon has and how this particular adversary completely changes how Israel is going to be run in the future. Anyway, faithful listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode and that you tune in tomorrow, 6am or whenever you choose to wake up for an episode from First uh, Corinthians. We're going to be talking about. We're going to be in First uh, Corinthians
12 tomorrow. I don't know what we're talking about yet. We'll see tomorrow anyway, guys, I'll see you then. Happy listening and God bless.