My name is Jeroboam, the son of Nebat from the tribe of Ephraim.  I am one of King Solomon’s construction managers, supervising the indentured workers from Ephraim.  A while ago, we finished a big job closing up the gaps in the internal and external walls of Jerusalem.  The city had grown so much under the reigns of David and Solomon that the original defensive walls of the old Jebusite city were not much use any more.  Thanks to our combined efforts, though, we now have a complete wall around the city, as well as various internal walls designed to help with the defence of the city should any breaches be made in the outer walls.  The city is now without any obvious places to attack.  I know that if I was considering attacking Jerusalem, I wouldn’t bother!

But I don’t want to talk any more about that.

Instead, although it’s not really safe to do so – as quite a few people have found – I’m going to criticise King Solomon’s latest behaviour.

You wouldn’t believe what he is doing today.

Three more!

Already he has 722, but apparently that’s not enough for him.  Egyptian, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, as well as lots of Israelite women too.  At times, the whole city seems to be full of King Solomon’s women, and it made the construction work very difficult at times.  It was hard to get the workmen to concentrate on the work – they were too busy watching the parading divas in their exotic clothes.

The problem started early in his life, but it started quite slowly – comparatively.  I believe that Solomon only had a few wives when King David died, and Rehoboam his oldest son was born about a year before King David died.  Of course, no-one grudges a king a few wives, and 5 or 10 or even 20 would have been alright, but once he started collecting them outright there was no stopping him.

Princesses were married to form political alliances.  Some were almost taken as payment of debts and a form of tribute.  Neighbouring kingdoms trying to ingratiate themselves with the wise young king were eager to throw their most beautiful girls in his face.

Even Pharaoh joined the mad rush to make a marriage alliance with Solomon, though he was in a more powerful negotiating position than most and had various requirements which Solomon had to meet before he handed over the prize.  Solomon even had to commit to building a special palace for Pharaoh’s daughter – but I suspect that there was also a preference there anyway.  Of all his wives, I think she might be the one that Solomon likes best, although it’s hard to be sure since he does his best to treat them all fairly equally – he has to, to keep their powerful relatives happy.

But thus far in his wife-collecting spree, Solomon has at least married them one at a time. This time, though, it’s three.  Three wives, all married at the same time.  If you are a woman reading this, how would you like to be treated with that level of respect?

725 by nightfall today.  But where will it all end?  Nowadays, many a hard-working Israelite man can’t find a good wife because their benevolent king has taken them all!

Solomon was a great king, but that was in the past.  When he became king, it seems that he was amazingly wise and faithful to God.  He even built the palace for Pharaoh’s daughter outside the city of David because he said that the places where the ark of God had been were holy.  I don’t know what that says about Pharaoh’s daughter!

Nowadays he is just wise, and it’s a fairly crafty wisdom.  Unfortunately, the dynasty of the house of David has become corrupt and cruel.

God gave us many laws, and some of them related directly to the king.  Now I can understand that a king won’t always want to be constrained by rules when he has a kingdom to run, but Solomon should have known better.

Let me just quote you the words Moses wrote about what a king should do, or more importantly, not do:

“…he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt

in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you,

‘You shall never return that way again.’

And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away,

nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”[1]

You couldn’t get much clearer than that, could you?  If I were king, I certainly wouldn’t do what Solomon is doing.  Each one of those rules he is breaking.

Horses: Solomon imports horses from Egypt.  Hundreds and thousands of them.  Do you know how many horses he has?  He has stalls for 40,000 horses.  Would you call that “many horses”?  I certainly would.  Now, I just wouldn’t do that.  It’s wrong.

Many wives?  Would you call 725 “many”?  Sometimes he uses the distinction of “wives” and “concubines” so that it looks like he doesn’t have quite so many.  For a while, it worked to keep the number under 500 wives, but really: 508 wives and 217 concubines still adds up to 725.  And it adds up to breaking God’s laws.

Excessive silver and gold?  Solomon has more silver and gold than everybody else in Israel put together, I think.  Honestly, for him, silver is just like the stones that you might find lying around in a field.  And every year, he gets 23 tonnes of gold.  23 tonnes!  I suppose he needs to give all of those women lots of jewellery to keep them happy, but 23 tonnes is ridiculous.  Some gold, carefully used to show the wealth and power of a kingdom and to help with religious ceremonies: that makes sense.  But God’s people Israel are not meant to measure their importance in gold.  When Solomon started this massive collection, much of it was used to glorify Yahweh in his temple, but that need is long gone.  Now the gold is all for him – and his wives.

Most of Solomon’s enthusiasm for construction now seems to be focused on building high places and other places of worship for his multitude of wives.  In Israel we now have places of worship for every god you’ve ever heard of.  Solomon has wives from all around, and so now we have places to worship each of the gods from our neighbours all around.  If you look out from Yahweh’s temple across the Kidron Valley, you see a hill adorned with high places for Chemosh, Molech, Ashtoreth, Milcom and all the rest.  I hear that Solomon spends quite a lot of time there now, and he’s leading a lot of people away with him.

It’s just not right, bringing in all those foreign influences.  All those foreign women virtually run the place!  Israel should be for the Israelites.  Israelite men and Israelite women.  And our worship should be the worship of Yahweh, the God of our fathers.  Maybe people are right when they say we should spice it up a bit.  Many find the worship of these other gods a bit more exciting, so we have to make sure we don’t lose the hearts of the people.  We’ll have to see about that.  But our worship should be the worship of Yahweh.

You may wonder why I am bringing all of this up now, when I am one of Solomon’s favourite supervisors.  Well, it’s like this: I am going to be the next king.  I’m going to take over from Solomon instead of letting his foolish son Rehoboam lead us all to disaster.

How do I know that?  Just last week, I was walking by myself on a road near Jerusalem, when a prophet of God called Ahijah came up to me.  I’m not sure how he knew me, but I suppose I am quite famous because of my successful work.  Anyway, he stopped me.  He was wearing a garment that was obviously new, but he took it off and started to tear it into pieces.  In the end, there were 12 pieces of material lying on the road, and he told me to take 10 of them because I was going to become king over 10 of the tribes of Israel.  Since then, I have been thinking a lot about what he said, including his statement that the house of David had gone after other gods, and I have seen that it is clearly true.  Not only that, but this repulsive collecting of wives is really at the root of the problem for Israel.

So, I’ve got to start getting ready to take over from King Solomon.  I wonder what would be the best thing to do with all of those women?

At this rate, if Solomon reigns as long as his father David, he will end up with almost 1,000 wives and concubines!  It’s ridiculous.  Shameful.  Destructive.

[1] Deuteronomy 17:16-17