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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 1.

I find that the NIV translation of this passage makes it clearer what happened when David’s son Adonijah decided to make himself king.  In the NLT, it seems as if the story about King David and Abishag is a story about David.  In the NIV, you can see that it is included because it explains why Joab and Abiathar thought that Adonijah should take the throne.  What is not clear is why David’s other advisers opposed Adonijah becoming king.  This is not because we cannot read the passage and think of many good reasons for them to do so.  Rather it is because the passage gives us little insight into their reasons.  However, there is one telling point which allows us to believe that their reasons were not selfish.  When Adonijah made his move he invited all of David’s other sons to join him, except Solomon.  This suggests that David had already made it clear that Solomon was his choice as a successor.  The fact that Nathan the prophet pulled the strings to get David to have Solomon crowned suggests that Solomon was God’s choice as well.

I started out thinking that this story had little to give us a lesson today.  Yet, when I finished writing the previous paragraph I realized that was not true.  This situation arose because David failed to turn over authority to a chosen successor when he became unable to truly exercise that authority himself.  If David had appointed Solomon as his successor sooner, Adonijah would never have tried to seize the throne.  We need to recognize when it is time to pass our responsibilities on to someone else.  This is the flip side of the lesson we learn from the story of Caleb in the Book of Joshua.  That lesson was that we are never too old to do the tasks to which God has called us.  This lesson is that sometimes those tasks are to hand our life’s missions on to the next generation.