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

Solomon took many wives, and many of them were from nations from whom God had warned the Israelites against taking wives.  God’s specific warning was that wives from those nations would turn the hearts of the men who married them away from God to the gods of those nations.  So, despite the fact that God had appeared to Solomon twice, he married women who worshiped other gods, and joined them in their worship.  Not only did he worship those gods, he built shrines to them just outside of Jerusalem.  The writer tells us that as a result of this, God raised up Hadad the Edomite to be a thorn in Solomon’s side in Edom.  David had conquered Edom and had all of the men of Edom destroyed, but Hadad, the son of Edom’s king, had escaped to Egypt with some of his father’s officials. The Pharaoh had arranged for his sister-in-law to marry Hadad and provided shelter for Hadad.  Later, Pharaoh provided support to Hadad when he wanted to return to Edom to cause problems for Solomon.  Pharaoh did this despite Solomon being his son-in-law.  Or, perhaps the writer is suggesting that Pharaoh supported Hadad because Solomon had so many wives in addition to his daughter.  I suspect that the writer was partially saying this second interpretation as a way to further condemn Solomon taking multiple wives.

The writer goes on to tell us the story of Jeroboam.  While Solomon was still king a prophet came to Jeroboam and told him that God would take 10 tribes of Israel from Solomon’s son and give them to Jeroboam.  Further the prophet told Jeroboam that if he did what was right in God’s eyes by obeying his commands, God would establish his dynasty.  Yet almost his first act after becoming king of the Northern Tribes was to set up a shrine to an idol in two separate locations in his new kingdom.  In addition, he set up shrines throughout his kingdom and appointed priests who were not Levites.

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