By Ife J. Ibitayo
As I said in Part 1, “Like Father, Like Son”, King David was a truly epic king. He was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known, but he also committed one of the gravest sins recorded in the Bible. He slept with the wife of one of his most valiant warriors. Then he murdered the man, so he could make the woman his own (2 Samuel 11). These acts plummeted the last years of King David’s life into familial catastrophe containing incest (2 Samuel 13:1-14) and the death of three of his sons (2 Samuel 12:15-18; 2 Samuel 13:23-29; 2 Samuel 14-17:18) .
Lessons Learned
King David regretted these sins for the rest of his life, and he taught his son Solomon not to follow in his footsteps. The beginning of the book of Proverbs—chapters 1 to 9—is the wisdom Solomon gained from his father. King Solomon dedicated nearly 75 verses to the warnings his father gave him about women alone (Proverbs 2:16-19; 5:1-23; 6:20-35; 7:1-27). Words such as, “The lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is as bitter as poison, as dangerous as a double-edged sword” (Proverbs 5:3-4 NLT) must have been seared into Solomon’s soul by the time he became king.
And Solomon was an amazing king. He established the Israeli-equivalent of the Pax Romana, forty years of uninterrupted commercial success, martial stability, and technological advancement (1 Kings 10:14-29). He brokered piece with Egypt (1 Kings 3:1) and Ethiopia (1 Kings 10:1-13). And he was the wisest men who ever lived (1 Kings 4:29-31).
Lessons Spurned
Yet Solomon too had a demon he couldn’t slay: his insatiable appetite for the ladies. He married 1,000 women (1 Kings 11:3)! To put that into perspective, he could sleep with a different beautiful lady each night for nearly three years without coming to the same woman again!
Many commentaries mention that politics motivated these marriage alliances. But these alliances caused Solomon to not only make peace with these foreign nations but also with their foreign gods. “So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods” (1 Kings 11:6-8 NIV).
As punishment for his lustful passion, the LORD raised up several powerful adversaries against Solomon (1 Kings 11:14-40). And his heir, King Rehaboam, lost control of most of the Israelite empire (1 Kings 11:11-13).
Conclusion
King Solomon heard all the words his father said about chasing after women, but as the old adage goes, actions speak louder than proverbs. He emulated the iniquity his father committed rather than the wise words he preached. Just as Solomon’s success was catalyzed by his father, so was his failure.
“You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?”
(Romans 2:21-22 NIV)