1 Kings 3:5-15
Ask what I shall give you
He says he is a little child who does not know how to go out or come in. He asks for a hearing heart to discern between good and evil, and is given wisdom, riches and honour on top of it.
People of the Bible
Solomon
Asked for a listening heart instead of long life or riches, got all three, and lost the plot at the end.
Solomon comes to the throne through a palace manoeuvre and secures it with a series of executions his father recommended. Then at Gibeon he is offered anything and asks for an understanding heart to judge a people too numerous to count, and the request itself is what pleases God. What follows is forty years of almost unbroken success: the temple built and filled with glory, a navy, a reputation that brings rulers across deserts to hear him, three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs. And then seven hundred wives, and high places for their gods on the hill facing Jerusalem.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Solomon
- 01
- 02
1 Kings 3:16-28
Divide the living child
Two women, one living baby and no witnesses. He calls for a sword, and the verdict is decided by which of them flinches. All Israel hears of it and is afraid of him.
- 03
1 Kings 6:1-38
Seven years to build it
Stone finished at the quarry so that no hammer or axe is heard in the house while it is going up. Cedar, gold, cherubim, and a date given to the year and the month.
- 04
1 Kings 8:22-53
Will God indeed dwell on the earth
He kneels with his hands spread to heaven and says heaven itself cannot contain God, let alone this house. Then he asks that the foreigner who comes and prays towards it be heard.
- 05
1 Kings 10:1-13
The half was not told me
The queen of Sheba arrives with hard questions and there is nothing he cannot answer. She says the report she heard was true and not even half of it.
- 06
1 Kings 11:1-13
When Solomon was old
Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and high places built on the mountain east of Jerusalem. The kingdom is not taken from him but from his son, for David’s sake.
Why it matters
Solomon is the peak of the monarchy and the explanation of its collapse in one life. The temple is his, the wisdom literature is largely his, and the prayer at the dedication is the widest thing anyone in the Old Testament says about foreigners praying towards that house. The account then states the cause of the split plainly: his heart was turned away, and the kingdom is torn in two in the reign of his son. His father sinned worse and repented; he drifted, and did not.
16 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
