1 Kings 11:12, commentary and pictures

The word came to Solomon through a prophet as a startling message and terrible denunciation. The denunciation came because he had broken his covenant with God by not keeping His covenant and statutes but going after other gods. That apostasy grew from political ambition and alliances with heathen nations and wives that corrupted his faith. His wives turned his heart to other gods, and he turned to the worship of false gods, dishonoring himself and Israel and God, and his idolatry brought chastisement upon him.

Although his unfaithfulness and apostasy brought God's decree and sentence that the kingdom would be torn and taken from him, it would not be carried out in his days and lifetime for David his father's sake. The division was delayed until after his reign, with the kingdom left in his hands during his lifetime and then rent out of the hand of his son. Along with the sentence came painful judgments through adversaries permitted to harass and weaken him — Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam — to make him realize the sinfulness of sin.

Although the sin brought judgment on his house, he was not utterly cut off, and the sentence left him a ray of hope that God stood ready to deliver him from the cruel bondage of sin from which he could not free himself. Hearing the sentence awakened him as from a dream and opened his eyes to his folly and to the emptiness of a life seeking its highest good in earthly things and heathen worship. The discipline of suffering at last brought him in his later years to repentance and back to drink at the fountain of life. Yet his late repentance, though genuine, could not avert the consequences of the wrongdoing whose effects he had set in motion.

His history in this verse warns that turning from truth toward error brings harm. His idolatry warns not to cherish or introduce false teaching, because it can corrupt simple faith and damage the landmarks of truth.