empire-building leads him to place a high priority on preservation. Protecting and maintaining all that has been accumulated is taking more and more resources as attention is given to homeland security.
Not only that, but later in the text we’re told that Solomon accumulated “fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.”43
Horses? Chariots?
Pharaoh’s soldiers rode on horses and in chariots as they chased the Hebrew slaves when they were escaping Egypt.
And the text goes on to say that Solomon imported them from Egypt!
Jerusalem is the new Egypt.
There’s a new Pharaoh on the scene, and his name is Solomon, the son of David.
Not only is he accumulating horses and chariots, which were the tanks and fighter planes of his day, but the scriptures add that Solomon and his leaders “imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.”44
Two words: import and export.
Solomon is buying horses and chariots, but he’s also selling them. Solomon has become an arms dealer. He’s now making money from violence. He’s discovered that war is profitable.
Is that maintaining justice and righteousness?
Is that hearing the cry of the oppressed?
Is that looking out for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner?
Shortly after this we read that Solomon “had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. . . . His wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God.”45
Seven hundred wives?
Three hundred concubines?
But the point for the storyteller is not the numbers; it’s how his wives affected Solomon. They turned him away from God, and “his heart was not fully devoted.”
This passage forms a significant contrast with what we learned earlier about the slaves and military bases. Those were systemic evils—Solomon creating an anti-kingdom—but now we learn about a different kind of failure, not a systemic one but the turning of an individual’s heart.
Solomon breaks covenant with God.
This goes back to the first of the Ten Commandments, the one about having no other gods. Sinai was a marriage covenant between God and the people, a coming together of the divine and the human. And so the first commandment was that the people couldn’t have other lovers. The relationship simply wouldn’t work if they were unfaithful. Solomon’s many wives and his infidelity to God are representative of the infidelity of all the people—they’ve turned from God. Tragically, Solomon’s people had been warned that this could happen.
Moses said earlier that the king “must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’ He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.”46
Did Solomon “acquire great numbers of horses”? Check.
Did he “take many wives”? Check.
Was his “heart led astray”? Check.
The text reads, “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents.”47 That’s about twenty-five tons of gold.
Did he “accumulate large amounts of silver and gold”? Check.
And that number 666, the weight of the talents of gold? That’s a very Jewish way of saying that something is evil, dark, wrong, and opposed to God.
Because it can go one of two ways in Jerusalem.
And with Solomon, the story takes a tragic turn.
Solomon goes “back that way again.”
Jerusalem is the new Egypt, Solomon is the new Pharaoh, and Sinai has been forgotten.
This puts God in an awkward place.
Remember, God is looking for a body, flesh and blood to show the world a proper marriage of the divine and human.
What happens when your body looks nothing like you?
What happens when your people become the embodiment of everything you are against?
What happens when you’re being given a bad name?
What happens when your people are unfaithful to the vow they made to you?
What happens when your people “go back that way again,” the way you rescued them from?
Babylon
The Hebrew scriptures have a very simple and direct message:
God always hears the cry of the oppressed;
God cares about human suffering and the conditions that cause it.
God is searching for a body, a community of people to care for the things God cares about.
God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them.
This is what God is like. This is what God is about. This is who God is.
To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God has in mind.
At the height of their power, the Israelites misconstrued God’s blessings as favoritism and entitlement. They became indifferent to God and to their priestly calling to bring liberation to others.
There’s a word for this. A word for what happens when you still have the power and the wealth and the influence, and yet in some profound way you’ve blown it because you’ve forgotten why you were given it in the first place.
The word is exile.
Exile is when you forget your story.
Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.
Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.
Exile is when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God.
And it’s at this time that we meet the prophets, powerful voices who warned of the inevitable consequences of Israel’s infidelity.48
