Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 11-12.

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In yesterday’s passage we saw that Solomon built a trade empire.  In today’s passage we see that Solomon used his trade empire to acquire many wives.  He probably used his economic might to convince many powerful people to form alliances with him by giving him their beautiful daughters to be among his wives.  In doing so, he broke God’s commands about forming alliances with these peoples.  Specifically, God’s command not to marry their daughters.  I am sure that Solomon justified doing this as necessary to secure trade agreements and maintain the security of the kingdom of Israel.  We get the impression that initially, Solomon built a temple for the daughter of Pharaoh to worship her gods, but that he did not, at least initially, join her in that worship.  He probably justified that by telling himself that Pharaoh was too powerful to offend, that he needed to do this to keep Pharaoh’s daughter happy.  Unfortunately, that started him down the path which ended with him joining his wives in their worship of their gods.  Worship which likely appealed to the hedonism he had begun practicing by taking so many wives.  Solomon did this despite the fact that God had appeared to him twice.  We must be careful not to follow Solomon’s example.  It is entirely too easy to forget God’s presence in our life and allow ourselves to little by little fall into idolatry.

We see something similar with Jeroboam.  Reading between the lines in this passage, it seems likely that Jeroboam saw that Solomon was demanding too much of the people.  He would have opportunity to do so as the head over the forced labor of the house of Joseph for Solomon.  When he started to speak on behalf of the people, Solomon sought to have him killed.  Before that happened God spoke to Jeroboam and told him that He would make him king over the northern ten tribes.  While doing that, God warned Jeroboam not to make the mistake of falling into idolatry which Solomon had made.  Despite that warning, almost the first thing Jeroboam did was to set up two idols for the people to worship in place of God.  Jeroboam justified this sin to himself as necessary to keep the people from killing him and turning back to Rehoboam.

At the root of their failure to be faithful to God both Solomon and Jeroboam made the same mistake.  Solomon thought that he needed to take many wives in order to secure his political situation.  Jeroboam thought that he needed to prevent his people from going to Jerusalem to worship God in order to secure his political position.  Both of them failed to trust that God would secure their position if they put their faith in Him and faithfully followed His commands.  Ultimately, we sin most often because we do not trust God to care for us.  We think that we must secure our position.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 9-10.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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At several points while I was reading this I debated interjecting a minor thought, but I decided to wait until I was done reading to include those thoughts here.   Hopefully I will remember all of those thoughts because I think they better understanding of Scripture.  The first thing I noted was the phrase, “All the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the people of Israel…”  My first thought when I read that was that it said that there were people who were left of those groups who had become part of the people of Israel.  Perhaps, that is not the correct.  When I thought more about it, I realized that it could also be interpreted as saying that the people listed were not of the people of Israel.  Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the writer is suggesting that many of the peoples of the land assimilated into the people of Israel.  I would even say that Solomon’s practice of enslaving those peoples who did not do so accelerated that process.

Then I noticed that the account about the queen of Sheba hearing about Solomon and coming to Jerusalem to investigate comes immediately after it mentions that Solomon built a fleet of trade ships on the shore of the Red Sea which brought back gold from Ophir.  That led me to conclude that the queen of Sheba heard about Solomon because of those trade ships.  A little bit of investigation showed me that Sheba was about where Yemen is now and that it was a civilization which traded by sea with India and East Africa.  In fact, it seems to me that Sheba filled a role in the Arabian Sea similar to the role Tyre filled in the Mediterranean Sea.  So, when a new power began trading in her area of influence, the queen of Sheba went to check them out.  The queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon was that of the head of one trading empire checking out a competitor.  She appears to have concluded that attempting to destroy this competitor was futile.  Fortunately for Sheba, Solomon’s son did not have the wisdom to successfully continue his trade practices into the next generation.  I am sorry that I have no spiritual insights for today.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 4-6.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Also, here is the link for my Patreon page

Wow, that was a tough read, reading some of those names out loud really challenged me.  On the other hand, as I said shortly after I started making a video of me reading the Scripture for my Bible study every day, reading it out loud really helps me pay attention on parts which I generally find little of interest in, such as the detailed description of who Solomon’s officials were.  It says here that Zadok and Abiathar were priests.  Yet in yesterday’s passage it tells us that Solomon expelled Abiathar from being a priest.  Hopefully you can understand that this is not a contradiction.  Because in that same list of Solomon’s officials it says that Azariah the son of Zadok was the priest, and that Zabud the son of Nathan was priest.  That means that at the beginning of Solomon’s reign Zadok and Abiathar were the priests.  At a later point in Solomon’s reign, Zadok’s son was priest and Nathan’s son was also the priest.  I do not think we can tell whether Abiathar’s son and Nathan’s son were priests at the same time or not.  It would certainly be consistent to believe that Zabud, Nathan’s son became priest alongside Zadok when Abiathar was expelled from the priesthood, and then continued to serve as priest when Ahaziah, Zadok’s son, succeeded his father as priest.  I mention this because there are other places in the Bible where someone is mentioned as having a role which seems to contradict what is said elsewhere about who had that role.

One example of this is Mark 2:26 (I have linked to the entire story so you can see the context) where Jesus refers to when David was fleeing King Saul and came to Ahimelech.  In that passage Jesus says that David “entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest.”  Some people say, “But the high priest in that story was Ahimelech, Abiathar’s father.  How can Jesus be God if He mistakes Abiathar for Ahimelech?”  My answer to that is this.  Abiathar was alive when David did that, which means that it was in the time of Abiathar.  Abiathar was also later the high priest.  We often speak in this manner.  We might say, “When President George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot.”  When George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot, someone else was the President of the United States, but no one would say I was wrong for saying what I wrote about him.  So, Jesus was not wrong, David ate the bread of the presence in the time of Abiathar.  I am just using this story as an example of ways in which a biblical passage might refer to things which a casual reader might think was a contradiction, but is not.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 2-3.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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I am going to start writing about Solomon’s judgement in the case of which woman was the mother of the child.  When I was first exposed to Solomon’s judgement in this passage it was explained to me that Solomon made this decision because he understood that the child’s biological mother would do anything to save her child, even giving it up to be raised as another woman’s son.  However, as I have gotten older I have realized that this is not necessarily true.  I have known several mothers who were willing to sacrifice the well-being of their child in order to satisfy their desires.  Further, I have heard and read of many more such situations.  And that is when I realized that Solomon’s wisdom far exceeded what was attributed to him by that first explanation I was given.  When Solomon said that the woman who was willing to give up the child in order to save the child’s life was the mother, he was saying that she was the woman who demonstrated motherly love towards the child.  Solomon did not give two tosses for who the child’s biological mother was.  He made his judgement based on who would look out for the child’s best interests, an who would raise the child best.  Solomon’s decision was not based on deciding who was the child’s actual biological mother.  It was based on determining which woman would sacrifice her desires in order to achieve what she believed in her heart was in the best interest of the child.  I want to note that even though Solomon’s judgement did not determine which of the women was the biological mother, most of the time the woman who chooses to sacrifice her interests for the sake of the child will be the biological mother.

I want to note that the child’s true parents, in the sense of the above commentary, may not do what you or I think is in the best interest of the child, but they will do what they believe in their heart is in the best interest of their children.

When I started writing I was debating whether I would go back and review other parts of this passage.  I have decided that I will conclude here.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 18-19.

I have always loved the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.  A few years ago I realized what a show Elijah put on here.  Today, as I was reading the passage my attention was drawn to the prophets of Baal.  My first thought was, “What did the prophets of Baal expect to happen?”  Did they expect Baal to send fire to light their offerings on the altar?  Or, did they think that neither Baal, nor God, would send fire, and their “show” would attract more people?  Or, perhaps they thought that the support they had from the royal family would make it not matter what results happened?  Then, I read further and realized that the priests of Baal routinely put on a show as part of their sacrifices.  First, they shouted and danced.  Then they cut themselves with swords and spears, which the writer tells us was their custom.  All of that excitement an energy made an effective contrast to Elijah’s calm. almost pedestrian, approach.  After the priests of Baal had spent most of the day exuberantly calling on Baal, Elijah called the people to his worship, where he calmly dug a trench around the altar he had built and carefully laid the sacrifice upon the altar while the people watched.  Then he got the “audience” involved by having them bring water to soak the altar.  Finally, again in contrast to the priests of Baal, he calmly prayed for God to reveal Himself to the people.  We can learn a valuable lesson about preaching the Gospel today.  While Elijah was a bit of a showman, he knew that he wasn’t the show.  God was the “show”.  If it was just Elijah vs the prophets of Baal, the prophets of Baal had the better show.  None of Elijah’s showman techniques mean anything if the fire of the Lord doesn’t fall upon the altar and burn up the sacrifice.  So, when our worship teams lead worship, when our speakers give their oration, whatever else we have going on to bring people to God, we, and they, need to remember that without God, none of it means anything and none of it will move the dial.  The show is God’s.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 15-17.

I found it interesting that the Scripture tells us that Asa, grandson of Rehoboam, “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. ”  A couple of sentences later it says that his heart was fully committed to the Lord all of his life, even though he did not remove the high places.  Over the forty-one years which the passage tells us that Asa ruled in Jerusalem, the Northern Kingdom had six kings (not counting Jeroboam, who as king when Asa took the throne, or Tibni, who fought Omri for the throne after the death of Zimri) from four dynasties.  I am convinced that there is a connection between the faithfulness of Asa and the sinfulness of the Northern kings and the stability, or lack thereof, of their kingdoms.

I also want to write about the account of Elijah and the widow.  We can really learn a lot about faith from the widow.  When Elijah first came to her, she was about to use the last of her supplies to make a final meal for her son and herself, after which she thought they would die.  Elijah told her to go ahead and do so, but first to make him something to eat because her supplies would not be used up until the Lord sent rain.  She did as he said and his prophecy came true.  We look at that and think, “This woman had faith and acted in that faith.”  We are correct when we think that, and if that was all that we had about her, she would be someone for us to seek to emulate.  Yet we do have more, when her son died she was heartbroken and angry.  Then when Elijah raised her son from death, she declared “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”  She acted on faith before that, and even the miracle of her food supplies not running out did not fully cement her faith.  It was only after she served God for some time that He completely removed her doubt.  Let us similarly act on faith, despite our doubts.  And we should not let our doubts make us stop acting in faith, when the time is right, God will give us certainty.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 13-14.

Every year when I read this I am struck by two aspects about it: the old prophet who deceived the “man of God”, and the “man of God” taking the old prophet’s word about God telling him to contradict what God had told the “man of God”.  Their interaction reminds me of a tweet from Christianity Today on Easter this year where they said that the Bible does not say that Jesus was nailed to the cross.  Many people pointed out that the Gospel of John explicitly quotes Thomas as saying that he would not believe unless he saw the imprint of the nails and put his fingers where the nails had been.  The important point is that a voice which purports to speak on behalf of God directly contradicted the Bible.  Other men and women who have in the past spoken the word of God have lied to God’s people about what God’s message to them is.  We must be careful to not make the mistake which the man of God in this passage made.  We must not allow ourselves to be tricked into violating the commands which God has given us by those who lie abut what God has told them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.