Oh, by the way…
This story of Solomon’s dream reminds me a bit of a genie situation. The LORD appears to Solomon, saying, “Ask what I should give you.” How would you respond? Solomon’s reply seems commendable: He begins by humbly acknowledging his weaknesses, then requests that he be given “an understanding mind . . . able to discern between good and evil.” He knows he will be ruling over a kingdom of many people, and wants to exercise good judgment. The LORD is pleased by his choice, and not only grants his wish for wisdom and discernment, but throws in riches, honor, and a long life for good measure.
Solomon’s rule is a high point in the history of the Jewish people, and is referred to as such on multiple occasions in later Hebrew scripture. David had reportedly ruled for 40 years, and his son Solomon was his successor. The Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom were united under one monarch, and the foreign invasions that would devastate those kingdoms were still centuries away. Later, after the Assyrians brutally conquered Israel and the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, Hebrew writers would yearn for the restoration of this chapter of their history. As Bible scholar Robert Alter writes, “Solomon is the embodiment of the regal grandeur of Israel’s divinely elected monarchy, and as such great attention is lavished on his wealth, his grand royal enterprises, and his wisdom.” (Alter, 2811)
Solomon’s rule began around 960 BCE, but much time passed before it was documented as we read it. Bible scholars believe the finalized version of the history of his rule as we find it in 1 Kings was not put together until “the early decades after the destruction of Judah” (Alter, 2803), around 400 years later. And “history” is perhaps a misnomer when describing the book of 1 Kings, even though Christians often refer to it as such.
In writing about Kings, which is a single book in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish scholar Ziony Zevit says
“Kings is not a history in the contemporary sense, that is, a factual description of past events and an explanation for their occurrence. It is, in the main, an extended theological essay written by a person or persons with passionately held beliefs, convinced that the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and the fall of the southern one were due to the misguided policies of their kings. . . . The author maintained that the LORD, the God of history, made His will known to Israel with regard to specific key issues, that punishments are preceded by warnings through prophets, and that people are responsible for the consequences of their choices. He further maintained that kings were responsible for the fate of their people.” (Zevit, 653–654)
So if Kings was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, the authors, sometimes referred to as the Deuteronomists, already possessed the long view of the rule of the kings of Israel and Judah. Their interpretation of that history was an attempt to explain the reasons behind the fall of those kingdoms.
Looking at today’s scripture passage, we see evidence of this judgment by the authors. On the positive side, Solomon makes a good choice when he requests wisdom from the LORD. As a result, not only is that request granted, but he also gains wealth, honor, and a long life.
But the authors also point out another tendency with Solomon that would prove to be a significant issue: He “sacrificed and offered incense at the high places.” Why is this a problem? The Deuteronomists believed worship should only take place in Jerusalem, which is where the Ark of the Covenant, “the very symbol of the Lord’s presence,” resided. (Seow, 656) Solomon instead chose to sacrifice in a space where gods from other religions were represented, a common practice in many cultures of the time, but not one with which the God of the Bible was keen. And, as we’ll see when we look between the lines of today’s lectionary reading, this was only one of Solomon’s shortcomings.
I never thought much about the concept of wisdom until I encountered Dungeons & Dragons in middle school. When you begin playing that game, which is commonly referred to as “D&D,” you first create a character. Each character has different ability scores, and you roll dice to determine each of those scores, which include strength, wisdom, dexterity, intelligence, constitution, and charisma. Once you know your character’s scores, you can determine what type of character they will be; for instance, intelligence lends itself to wizardry while strength lends itself to hand-to-hand fighting.
I was fascinated by the game, and spent many hours poring over the player manual and other books. One thing that struck me was the descriptions of the various abilities, especially the difference between wisdom and intelligence. I believe I had conflated them before that point, but at least for purposes of the game, intelligence refers to “a character’s memory and mental acuity” while wisdom refers to their “perception and insight.” (Legends of Avantris) In short, intelligence tells you what something is, while wisdom tells you how to act on situations.
In the years since I began pondering the distinct qualities of intelligence and wisdom, I’ve seen how they don’t always coexist. Folks described as “smart” don’t always make good decisions, and I’ve run across wisdom to live by in places as diverse as used car lots and bars. Intelligence and wisdom are simply different qualities; D&D is definitely on-point with that.
The Bible speaks far more frequently of the latter than the former. And when it does, Bible scholar Choon-Leong Seow suggests that “the Hebrew word [for] ‘wisdom’ . . . is used much more broadly than the English implies. It may be used of any skill one may have, including skill in magic, divination, interpretation of dreams, handicrafts, social etiquette, sailing, military maneuvers, diplomacy, political craft, survival instincts, or even duplicity and wickedness in general.” (Seow, 648)
Solomon’s request supports that assertion, because it is not for general knowledge; rather, his specific wish is for “an understanding mind . . . able to discern between good and evil.” You might say it required a fair amount of wisdom to respond the way he did in the first place.
I’ve recently been reading some of the journals I wrote back in college, and I’ve noticed that I spent a fair amount of time back then agonizing over making the right decisions. The better path is not always clear when it comes to relationships and jobs, for instance. But when you settle on one, it can bring peace, among other benefits. So while we might commend Solomon for choosing wisdom as his blessing of choice, it might be more obvious than we first thought, yielding more wealth and a longer life simply because one makes better decisions along the way.
But oh, by the way . . . there’s more to today’s story. You might have noticed that the selected reading for today skips over a number of verses. The lectionary, which is a schedule of readings some churches uses to select scripture passages each week, cuts out 36 verses. Sometimes it does this for brevity, and sometimes to eliminate passages that are dull. That’s not the case today, though. A lot happens in those verses, and I’ll try to cover the highlights here.
Adonijah, one of David’s other sons who wanted the throne for himself, approaches Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, with a request: He wants her to ask Solomon to take Abishag the Shunammite as his wife. Who was Abishag, you might ask. She was reportedly a young beautiful virgin who was brought to keep David warm (in a chastely literal sense) during his final days. I’ll skip the problematic aspects of that situation to tell you that Bathsheba does take Adonijah’s request to Solomon. He does not react well, interpreting this as a threat to his throne since Abishag was associated with King David. He sends his man Benaiah to kill Adonijah.
That’s not the only business to which Solomon devotes himself, however. When he was on his deathbed, his father had left him with some outstanding grievances to address. Robert Alter writes of its resemblance to “a last will and testament worthy of a dying mafia [boss]: be strong and be a man, and use your savvy to pay off all my old scores with my enemies. (Alter, 2836) One ask was to kill Joab, the head of his army, and another was to sentence a man named Shimei to the 10th century equivalent of house arrest. Joab hears of this plan and clings to the altar in the tent of the LORD with the hope he would be spared, but Solomon encourages Benaiah to execute him anyway. Then he summons Shimei and pronounces his sentence. Shimei agrees to stay in his home, but violates the agreement three years later when he pursues some escaped slaves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Solomon has him killed.
If these actions differ from what you would expect from a Biblical hero, you’re not alone. Seow writes that “from a moral viewpoint, the passage is difficult to appropriate. Herein one finds attitudes and actions that are utterly deplorable. We see examples of human cunning, vindictiveness, pettiness, insecurity, and sheer dishonesty.” (Seow, 653)
Then at the beginning of chapter 3 we encounter another instance of foreshadowing from the writers. Solomon makes a marriage alliance with the king of Egypt, adding the pharaoh’s daughter to his harem. Like offering sacrifices outside of Jerusalem, marrying foreign women was on the Deuteronomists’ list of violations, and this proved to be just one of many such marriages for Solomon.
Just because one is blessed with wisdom doesn’t mean he always follows it. Seow suggests that “the salutary character and actions of Solomon are colored by the unsavory effects of his decisions. He built the Temple to be sure, but not before he had brought a foreign wife into the City of David, in contravention of deuteronomic law. He planned to construct the Lord’s house only after he had built his own, and, in the meantime, his people burned incense and offered sacrifices at the local cultic installations.” (Seow, 658) Alter adds that “at the end of his story, he is seen falling away from his high calling, thus providing a rationale for the dividing of the kingdom and, ultimately, for its destruction.” (Alter, 2811) Such is the judgment offered by the authors of 1 Kings.
The Bible is a big space. Even if you consider only the portions that cover documented history, over a millennium of time is represented. Authors and editors from very different contexts appear in the collection of books, and sometimes their theologies differ.
Because of this, the practice of highlighting specific verses should be undertaken with caution. As Seow writes, “one may accept the theological mandate of the text without necessarily agreeing with the culturally conditioned application of it. . . . The Christian believer has to honor the ‘letter of the law’ in ways that are always true to the ‘spirit of the law.’” (Seow, 654)
For instance, if one were to pay attention only to the lectionary’s selections from 1 Kings 2 and 3, you could come away with some good lessons. One is that the worship of God should not be combined with the worship of other gods, and another is the value of wisdom. And you could argue that those lessons do indeed fit with the spirit of what you’d find in other books of the Bible. Much of the Torah, or law, found in other scripture frowns heavily on worship of other gods, which was common practice in many religious traditions of the time. And there are entire books of the Bible that speak of the value of wisdom and how to pursue it. So these passages fit with the letter and spirit of scripture.
What if one were to read between the lines of today’s lectionary reading, though, latching on to Solomon’s efforts to exact vengeance on his father’s enemies as well as those who threatened his throne? Whether you examine these passages within context or without, they are still “deplorable.” Taken to an extreme, you could use them to suggest that the actions of the mafioso in the Godfather movies was “biblical.”
“Bible Bible Bible.” That was a refrain I heard several times a few weeks ago while working as a Silent Witness Peacekeeper at Harrisburg’s PrideFest. The man saying those words over his megaphone was doing so with the implication that the Bible collectively has something to say about the way those attending PrideFest live their lives. He and his colleagues were attempting to disrupt a happy occasion with the message that God disapproves of LGBTQ people.
Are there a few passages in the Bible referring to sexual acts? Sure, but they are rare and, like much of scripture, highly contextual. One must perform a very selective, “letter of the law” reading of the Bible to come away with them as a point of emphasis.
Just because someone reads the Bible (or claims to) doesn’t mean they follow it. One thing my Bible professors in seminary taught me was that one of the most radical things a person can do is to actually read the Bible. When you do, you run across the good, bad, and ugly passages, but over time you can recognize the overall themes — such as love and justice — that are repeated across these ancient writings. You can push back against customs and stories that are harmful and don’t reconcile with a God who is love. And you can better uphold the “spirit of the law” when it is threatened by the “letter of the law.”
And by the way, you don’t have to do it alone. One thing I’m reminded of when we meet for Bible study is the value of hearing other perspectives when reading scripture. Come to think of it, many aspects of our respective faith journeys are enriched when we pursue them in community. We might not all have Solomon’s wisdom, but we can look to one another and our collective abilities to guide us down the path of peace.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Works Referenced
Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. New York City: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2019, Kindle edition.
Legends of Avantris and Glenn Carreau. “How to Roll Stats: Best Ways to Generate Ability Scores in D&D 5e.” WikiHow, accessed August 17, 2024. https://www.wikihow.com/Roll-for-Stats-5e.
Seow, Choon-Leong. “The First and Second Books of Kings.” In New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume II. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Zevit, Ziony. “1 Kings.” In The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
