1 Kings 11:7, commentary and pictures

Solomon built shrines and altars for Chemosh of Moab and Molech of Ammon and other foreign gods near Jerusalem for the worship of his heathen wives. The hill before Jerusalem was the Mount of Olives, on its southern slopes opposite the temple of Jehovah on Mount Moriah across the Kidron, impiously confronting the house of God. Before those imposing unholy images degrading heathen rites were practiced, including licentious and cruel rites and the offering of children as living sacrifices. Those memorials of apostasy stood for more than three centuries as mute witnesses until Josiah destroyed them, and were called the Mount of Offense by the true-hearted in Israel. His fall was gradual, as pride, desire for political power and wealth, alliances with heathen nations, and polygamous marriages contrary to God's law led step by step to open idolatry, warning that even God-given wisdom cannot keep safe one who abandons principle and that watchfulness and separation from the world are needed to the end.

Place and Worship Described

Solomon built high places, shrines and altars for Chemosh of Moab and Molech of Ammon and for other gods near Jerusalem for the worship of his foreign wives. His political marriages drew him away from loyalty to God, corrupted his faith, and brought idolatry into his religious life until he turned from worship at God's temple to worship in groves prepared for idols. Though beloved of God and entrusted with building the temple, he allied himself with idolatrous nations contrary to the law against such marriages and reared places of worship for their idols.

The hill before Jerusalem where he built was the Mount of Olives, on its southern slopes and eminence opposite the temple of Jehovah on Mount Moriah. It crowned Olivet across the Kidron and the Jehoshaphat ravine, impiously confronting the temple of God. The shrines stood there to serve his foreign wives' worship, as evidence that one once devoted to God and renowned for wisdom had allowed pagan worship to corrupt his religion.

The shrines were imposing and unholy, set among groves of myrtle and olive with great, misshapen and gigantic unseemly images of wood and stone. Chemosh is the abomination of Moab and Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, and before their altars degrading heathen rites were practiced. Those rites were licentious and revolting, cruel and dishonoring to God, including human sacrifice in which children were offered as living sacrifices.

Solomon built them to please his idolatrous heathen wives, persuaded by them and failing to give God glory. Misled by them he mingled error with truth and betrayed sacred trusts, countenancing and sustaining paganism directly opposed to the law of Jehovah.

Long Standing Memorial

The images and shrines Solomon raised stood for upward of three centuries, for more than three centuries, as mute witnesses and signs of the apostasy of Israel's wisest king. They remained until Josiah removed and destroyed them, demolishing the buildings and images more than three centuries later. When they were broken down their fragments rolled down into the Kidron, leaving damaged debris and ruins behind.

The place was called the Mount of Offense, and by all the true-hearted in Israel. Though Solomon repented, the evil he had set up lived after him, remaining from generation to generation for hundreds of years to testify against him. The shrines thus outlived him far longer than he thought, showing the lasting effects of apostasy.

Great masses of ruins were still to be seen in the days of Christ, their ruins remaining visible even then. Shiloh when He came looked upon the melancholy sight as a sad testimony to the Messiah. Had Solomon foreseen that sight when rearing them, he would have started back in horror.

Steps Toward Apostasy

Solomon's departure from God was gradual after once walking uprightly with divine wisdom, losing sight of the need for full obedience and increasingly following the customs of surrounding nations, where one false step prepares the way for a second and a third. Encouraged by prosperity and high position, he was led onward step by step until open idolatry was reached. His earlier sacrificing in high places not made sacred by the Lord's presence but dedicated to idol worship mingled the sacred and the profane and removed something of the repulsion that should have been felt toward the horrible practices of idolaters. That first compromise led him to suppose the Lord was not particular about the worship of His people, and by it he was educating himself for still greater departures, until little by little his heathen wives led him to build altars for their gods.

Pride, self-sufficiency, self-exaltation, and desire for political power, self-aggrandizement, wealth and power led him to form alliances with heathen nations and to associate with idolaters, which corrupted his faith. Conformity to worldly customs and looking to heathen standards of right made him lose sight of God's law, sacrifice principle and integrity, and break down the barriers God had erected for the safety of His people. Prosperity and high position did not protect him but placed him in danger of self-exaltation and following his own desires, which weakened faith and harmed religious life, darkening a life that had begun with great promise, divine favor, worldwide fame for wisdom and uprightness, and honor brought to the God of Israel. His once pure and elevated character and God-given wise mind became marred, degraded, and weak in moral power, dishonoring himself, dishonoring Israel, and dishonoring God.

Uniting in marriage with worshipers of false gods corrupted his faith and led step by step to open idolatry, contrary to the law of Jehovah against such marriages. His political and polygamous alliances and marriages with Phoenicia, Egypt, Edom, Moab, Ammon and other nations that bowed at idolatrous shrines mingled error with truth and betrayed sacred trusts, countenancing and sustaining paganism with licentious and cruel rites dishonoring to God. Uncontrolled love of women and indulgence of lustful passion, appetite and passion separated him from God, cost him the strength and firmness of character received through divine wisdom, and made him corrupt, so that to please his foreign wives he built places of worship, high places, groves and idol shrines for Chemosh of Moab and Molech of Ammon and other gods on the hill before Jerusalem. Even God-given wisdom and strength cannot preserve one who abandons principle and yields to temptation, so that watchfulness and strength from God are needed to the end, and no one is safe without them, for even a small departure from integrity is dangerous.

Close contact through commerce with nations having no love for God lessened love for Him and deadened the sense of His high, holy character, leaving minds confused about true and false worship. Excessive wages encouraged luxury and extravagance, the rich oppressed the poor, and covetousness, greed, luxury, extravagance, oppression and corruption spread through the kingdom, weakening the spirit of self-sacrifice in God's service and helping bring the terrible apostasy. Relying on himself instead of God, his God-given wisdom was perverted when he sought wisdom from other sources, and his great abilities made him a more effective agent of Satan and of evil when he yielded to temptation. Even remarkable manifestations of God's power and precious knowledge of God's character did not keep him faithful when he turned from the temple he had built to worship idols. He began to depart from the Lord in order to gain something unclear, going to other nations to secure facilities and workmen for building the temple when he could have built it with the facilities God had provided, linking up with unbelievers and surrendering distinctiveness for advantage instead of remaining forever a peculiar people holding the beginning of confidence steadfast unto the end and standing true to principle.

Fall and National Effects

He who had been called Jedidiah, Beloved of the Lord, honored with remarkable tokens of divine favor, whose wisdom and uprightness gained worldwide fame and led others to honor the God of Israel, turned from the worship of Jehovah to bow before heathen idols. The king who had wisely restored a helpless babe to its unfortunate mother fell so low as to consent to the erection of an idol to whom children were offered as living sacrifices. The man endowed with discretion in youth, and inspired in strong manhood to write that a way seeming right ends in death, departed from purity to countenance the licentious, revolting rites connected with the worship of Chemosh and Ashtoreth. The king who at the dedication of the temple had prayed that the heart be perfect with the Lord denied his own words in heart and life, mistaking license for liberty and trying to unite light with darkness, Christ with Belial, purity with impurity, good with evil.

From being one of the greatest kings renowned throughout the world for wisdom he became a profligate, the tool and slave of others. His once noble and manly character became enervated and effeminate, his faith in the living God was shaken and supplanted by atheistic doubts, his happiness was marred by unbelief, his principles were weakened, his life was degraded, and his early justice and magnanimity were changed to despotism and tyranny. This shows how little can be done for men who lose their sense of dependence on God. Erecting altars to heathen gods taught him bitterly that these gods could not give rest to the spirit. He was troubled night and day by gloomy, soul-harassing thoughts, lost joy and peace of mind, and the future seemed dark with despair.

In years of apostasy he united his interests with satanic agencies, and that union caused steady spiritual decline in Israel. Through those agencies minds were confused about true and false worship, leaving Israel an easy prey, while close contact through commerce with nations having no love for God lessened Israel's love for Him and deadened their sense of His high, holy character. Refusing obedience, they transferred allegiance to the enemy of righteousness, and the pure religious service instituted by God was in some lives replaced by idolatry of the darkest hue. Intermarriage with idolaters became common practice, abhorrence of idol worship was rapidly lost, polygamy was countenanced, idolatrous mothers brought up children to observe heathen rites, and heathen customs spread until faith became confused and the nation fell into apostasy.

Idolatry entered Israel through those alliances with heathen nations, and turning from God's ways to heathen worship led many to violate God's law. It replaced the worship God had instituted, with pagan practices including human sacrifice and licentious rites. Building idol shrines for foreign wives near Jerusalem in direct opposition to the temple he had dedicated to God embodied his apostasy: instead of leading the heathen to truth, he let pagan beliefs become part of his religion and turned from God as the only true and living God. In his later years, under the influence of heathen wives, his alliances and marriages led him away from worship at God's temple toward worship in groves he had prepared for their idols, turning from God's temple to prepare places for their idols. Its effects continued in Rehoboam, whose Ammonite mother influenced his vacillating character, and he eventually turned from God.

The plain, unvarnished record of one so favored and entrusted with great responsibility being overcome by temptation into idolatrous sin is required by justice and given for benefit and warning. It teaches that disobedience brings retribution, that the wages of sin is death, that retributive justice never fails, and that strict regard for the commandments is exacted. It gives no excuse for sin, but shows that men then as now strive, waver and fall into error and need pardoning mercy. It encourages that through grace the fallen can gain fresh vigor to rise above evil nature, renew the conflict, recover ground and be blessed, for crime is faithfully punished yet the repenting sinner is pitied and forgiven.

Warning for Later Generations

Solomon's gradual fall ends in building high places for Chemosh and Molech, and it stands as a warning not to mingle pagan error with true religion or to cherish the errors of the world. Exalted to sacred trust, he at first brought glory to the God of Israel, but pride, self-sufficiency, self-exaltation and desire for political power and self-aggrandizement led him to form alliances with heathen nations, to associate with idolaters, to conform to worldly customs and to look to heathen standards of right until he lost sight of God's law. Uniting in marriage with worshipers of false gods led him step by step to open idolatry, breaking down the barriers God had erected for the safety of His people, and his once pure and elevated character and God-given wise mind became marred, degraded and weak in moral power, dishonoring himself, dishonoring Israel and dishonoring God. His political alliances and polygamous marriages with Phoenicia, Egypt, Edom, Moab, Ammon and other nations bowed at idolatrous shrines with licentious and cruel rites dishonoring to God and directly opposed to the law of Jehovah, so that he mingled error with truth, betrayed sacred trusts, and countenanced and sustained paganism. That history portrays the result of separation from God, where one false step prepares the way for a second and a third, and it is left on record to warn all who know the word of God not to cherish error alongside truth, for Satan presents worldly error in attractive style to deceive, to destroy simplicity of faith and to mar the precious landmarks of truth.

Followers of Christ must therefore refuse conformity to the world's standard of right, keep Holy Writ as the standard of right, and guard against every worldly influence that weakens moral power. Solomon's alliances with idolatrous nations and his yielding to corrupting influences carried him from faithfulness to the worship of false gods, teaching that breaking down God's safeguards through one wrong step leads to further compromise and moral decline. His fall teaches that no one is safe from temptation without strength from God, and that even a small departure from integrity is dangerous. His love of women became an uncontrolled passion and his failure to control lustful passion separated him from God, for his many wives from heathen nations led him into idolatry and cost him the strength and firmness of character he had received through divine wisdom, with the building of places of worship for the gods of his foreign wives as the outcome of his departure from principle.

Even God-given wisdom and strength cannot preserve a person who abandons principle and yields to temptation, so watchfulness and strength from God are needed to the end. God had promised to bless Solomon with wisdom, riches and honor on condition that he walk in the ways of the Lord and keep His statutes and His judgments, but Solomon departed from the right by marrying idolatrous women and by going to other nations to secure facilities and workmen for building the temple when he could have built it with the facilities the Lord had provided. That idolatrous connection with the world greatly displeased God. While Solomon kept separate from the world he was blessed, and the same blessing comes from remaining a distinct people separate from the world.

The Lord ever desires to encircle His people with His protecting arm, blessing them above all other people and preserving them in all purity if they remain closely connected with Him, but if they depart from Him they will share the sorrows of Solomon that come from departing from God. God puts His blessing and signature upon work done in accordance with the light He gives while workers look steadfastly to Him as teacher and example and walk with Him, but He cannot cooperate with those who turn aside as Solomon did to work contrary to God's designs. Those whom the Lord has assigned, blessed and set His signature upon in their work stand under the same rule: if they turn aside as Solomon did, the Lord cannot cooperate with them. Solomon stood in refusal of the testimonies God sent him by following a course of action God had forbidden in building high places for false gods, and that same standing is taken by one who will not receive the testimonies sent by God.