The book of 1 Kings was interesting for me to read in that I had heard so much about Solomon, Ahab and Jezebel even having grown up without any experience with scripture. There was a grain of familiarity throughout and it felt a little like a coming of age, like I was finding out the adult reasons why children are told the things they are told: "Be good or Santa won't bring you a toy", "if you make that face too long it will stick", "She's going to be the downfall of it all, that Jezebel".
1 Kings starts out with The beloved King David dies and his son Adonijah assumes he will be taking the throne as he is “technically” next in line. David, however, had once sworn by God to Bathsheba that her son would follow him as King of Israel. She and Nathan remind David of his oath and, because David would never break an oath to God, Solomon is anointed King of Israel while Adonijah’s celebration feast is in full swing. There is the usual humiliation followed by the swearing of allegiance and Solomon established his reign as any other King does, with bloodshed. It’s all very “by the book” (pun intended) including the rash execution of Adonijah for a relatively harmless ordeal with a woman. Adonijah tries to take the throne and is not punished in the least. After the fact, Adonijah asks to take David’s nurse/body warmer as his wife and Solomon flies off the handle and kills him. This is reminiscent of Abner defecting from the House of Saul over accusations around one of Saul’s concubines. Egos and underlying bitterness can make a hornet’s nest out of daily life.
In 1 Kings 3, Solomon marries the Pharaoh’s daughter, peace at last between Egypt and Israel? One can only hope…
God comes to Solomon in a dream and Solomon asks Him for wisdom so that he may rule fairly and for the good of his people. God grants Solomon’s wish and much more; God is pleased with Solomon because of his wish. I love this story because it shows us in such an elegant way that God wants us to be good, to serve one another and to strive for justice in our daily lives and in our community. I imagine God rejoicing at Solomon’s humble and true request, like a boy who is pleasantly surprised to find out that his beloved new puppy already knows how to fetch. Solomon’s wish is a profound demonstration of his love and obedience for God, and of how ready Solomon is to follow God’s will for his life and for Israel.
Solomon builds The House of God and his own palace. Solomon is the wisest of the wise and the richest of the rich, or so the bible tells me. The House of God is build because God comes to Solomon in a dream; he immediately sets to work to build a temple for God out of the cedars of Lebanon (sent by Hiram), gold leaf and expensive quarried marble. No expense was spared and the temple was complete with two gloriously giant cherubims standing wing to wing heralding the presence of the Holy. It took seven years to build The House of God, where finally after years and generations in the wilderness and beyond living in a tent, God stretches out and cares for His people from a house built on a foundation of rock. This is wonderful and from the description I can imagine the awe that would rush into a worshipper’s heart upon entering such a beautiful House of the Lord; it would seem that the Holy was that much closer. Having a designated space for a communal faith to grow and take on life is important for the spiritual health of a people, sacred places have always been made and kept by human beings. The thing that strikes me as a bit funny is that Solomon also builds his own house…. that is twice the size and takes 13 years to build. I do understand that a King needs a palace, but I wonder allegorically and literally what the implications of this are. In the mindset of the Old Testament, one might say that a truly God-fearing King would offer the larger house to God and take the smaller one for his own. One might say that if Solomon were genuinely pious, he would spend 13 years on the House of God and only 7 on the house of a man. Fast forwarding and jumping back into my own shoes and my own mindset I wonder if this is a sign that regardless of what a man might think, God wants what God wants and he ought to get it just so. Perhaps God loved His 7-year half-the-size-of-a-palace house and left the human beings to their greed and thirst for prestige. Maybe God is saying that His material needs are smaller than that of man’s, and that because human beings are of the earth that they might require more earthly reassurance, He understands this and it’s ok. When the Arc of the Covenant came into the smaller of the two houses, it filled with a cloud and the Glory of God descended. God did indeed stretch Himself to fill that house, it seems to me that if He wasn’t satisfied with it, He would not have shown up so well for His own housewarming.
In 1 Kings 11, Solomon falls prey to the second most popular damnable trend (just behind disobedient Israel groaning) in the old testament: building altars to the gods of seductive women (insert ominous dun, dun, duuuuunnnnn…). Although Solomon is praised for his wisdom, he still makes the fatal error of building altars in the high places for his 300 concubines of foreign origin. This angers God and He vows to take Israel away from Solomon, but not in his lifetime because of God’s promise to King David. God is still faithful to His servant David and the promises He made even after death and the straying of his sons. It comes to pass that Israel does desert the House of David (Solomon) for Jeroboam who sanctions idolatry with golden calves and encourages sacrifices on the altars built in the high places. God sends a man from Judah to warn Jeroboam about his wrongdoing, and Jeroboam stretches out his hand to command his guards to seize and kill God’s messenger. God shrivels Jeroboam’s hand and only after His messenger prays for the hand’s restoration is Jeroboam cured. Why does God shrivel Jeroboam’s hand? Practically, this works on many levels: it stops the command to kill the messenger, the outstretched hand of a ruler commands attention and it is not something easily hidden or overcome by the owner of the hand. In the same moment I wonder if it is a comment on how we as human beings create. Jeroboam used that same hand to sign decrees to permit and encourage idolatry, perhaps his hand had set itself to make sacrifices in the high places, and with a wave of that hand he could stop it all. Did God shrivel his hand to make Jeroboam aware of his mistakes? Aware of the power of the gestures of a King?
When this messenger of God refuses Jeroboam’s hospitality (by God’s instructions) and leaves to return to Judah, he is met and convinced by a man to stay and eat and drink in Jeroboam’s land. After he has enjoyed hospitality, the messenger leaves and is immediately torn apart by a lion who proceeds to stand next to the messenger’s body and his live donkey and not eat anything. This is presumably a message for all to see that even after good service and obedient worship, direct defiance of God’s will does not go unnoticed.
Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel come into the picture in 1 Kings. Elijah is established as a great prophet as he receives messages from God about drought and rain and raises a widow’s son from the dead. Ahab and Jezebel show themselves to be enemies of the Lord when they slaughter His prophets and set Israel to worshipping Baal. The juxtaposition of the hope and light that Elijah brings with the darkness and apparent depravity of Ahab and Jezebel is interesting here. Israel is a nation in peril of losing touch completely with their God and Father through the influence of King Ahab but Elijah stays true and his power that springs directly from God seems to grow as he works to let his light shine. With the help of Obadiah and his underground prophet railroad, the faith is kept alive until Elijah and Ahab have a back-alley style prophet rumble; they set out to prove the faithfulness of their God/gods in front of all the neighbourhood kids. The God of Israel answers and Baal is absent. The perseverance of Elijah acting on his faith and his own fiercely strong connection with God, combined with the solidarity of good faithful men is rewarded, God does not falter. The thing that piques my interest is the different tone with which the slaughter of the worshippers of Baal is written and/or received. God applauds the slaughter with rain to quench the drought. Each drop a pat on the back to his faithful. I do understand that in OT times that there was ever so much killing in the name of God (it still happens today, I suppose) and that idolatry and worshipping other gods is the greatest sin. I still haven’t gotten used to the bloodshed though. Even after so many blood-soaked books of God-fearing and God-loving warriors, I still wish they could have sat down and worked it all out without the warfare. That’s just my Canadian middle-class liberal sensibilities I guess.
The story of Jezebel is interesting, too, in that she has a presence in contemporary thought. I remember hearing the insult “Jezebel” hurled at women in old tv shows and books. I had always thought that the term had something to do with promiscuity or showing a little too much skin; but now I understand the term so differently. Jezebel was a woman not afraid to manipulate others to get what she wanted, often not even for the greater good but just because she wanted it. She had no qualms about shedding the blood of innocents and did not apologize. Now, considering that there are always two sides to the story, I am prepared to say that she was likely not all bad. Nevertheless, she was without scruples. What does this have to do with too-red lipstick and low-cut dresses? I don’t know. Maybe that the sexual liberation of women in the 60s and 70s lead to a fear of their empowerment; truly, Jezebel was an empowered woman even if it was to the wrong ends.
May the Lord guide us to His house, no matter how it appears to us, May we let our little lights shine out into the world and may we encourage our little girls so they grow up to be women empowered to do the work of God's will. Amen.
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