I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:
“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards” records Solomon’s deliberate undertaking of great building projects and planting of vineyards as part of his search for satisfaction and his highest good in earthly pleasure, achievement, prosperity, and the pleasures of sense. Those great works included fortified cities, store cities, and other works throughout his kingdom. The houses and vineyards belonged to a larger pursuit of whatever his heart desired, with silver and gold, servants and singers and every desire indulged, by which he became great and increased beyond all before him in Jerusalem.
His ambition to surpass other nations in grandeur led him to prize outward display over godly character and to sacrifice right principles. The pride of his prosperity separated him from God, turning him from the joy of divine communion to seek satisfaction elsewhere. The works brought no lasting profit or fulfillment, and he judged his labor to be vanity and vexation of spirit with no profit under the sun, until he hated his labor and hated life. His erecting of altars to heathen gods to find rest of soul proved equally vain in its promise.
The resulting wealth and power became a curse and burdened the poor with heavy taxes. Wearied and thirsting, he turned at last from earth’s broken cisterns to drink again at the fountain of life, and by inspiration recorded the history of his wasted years as a warning for later generations. Although his people reaped harvests of evil from the seed he sowed, his life-work was not wholly lost because the discipline of suffering at last accomplished its work in him.
“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards” records Solomon’s deliberate undertaking of great building projects and planting of vineyards as part of his search for satisfaction and his highest good in earthly pleasure, achievement, prosperity, and the pleasures of sense. Those great works included fortified cities, store cities, and other works throughout his kingdom. The houses and vineyards belonged to a larger pursuit of whatever his heart desired, with silver and gold, servants and singers and every desire indulged, by which he became great and increased beyond all before him in Jerusalem.
His ambition to surpass other nations in grandeur led him to prize outward display over godly character and to sacrifice right principles. The pride of his prosperity separated him from God, turning him from the joy of divine communion to seek satisfaction elsewhere. The works brought no lasting profit or fulfillment, and he judged his labor to be vanity and vexation of spirit with no profit under the sun, until he hated his labor and hated life. His erecting of altars to heathen gods to find rest of soul proved equally vain in its promise.
The resulting wealth and power became a curse and burdened the poor with heavy taxes. Wearied and thirsting, he turned at last from earth’s broken cisterns to drink again at the fountain of life, and by inspiration recorded the history of his wasted years as a warning for later generations. Although his people reaped harvests of evil from the seed he sowed, his life-work was not wholly lost because the discipline of suffering at last accomplished its work in him.