People of the Bible

Solomon

Leaders of Israel · Around 970 BC (traditional) · Appears in 1 Kings 1 to 11

Solomon is the son of David and king of Israel at the height of its glory, famous for the wisdom God gave him when he asked not for riches but for an understanding heart. He built the temple in Jerusalem, wrote proverbs and songs, and yet in his later years his many foreign wives turned his heart to other gods.

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?1 Kings 3:9 (KJV)

A young king's prayer for wisdom

Solomon came to the throne as a young man, chosen by his father David and by God to succeed him, over the claims of older brothers. Early in his reign the LORD appeared to him in a dream at Gibeon and offered him whatever he would ask. Solomon might have asked for long life, riches, or the death of his enemies, but instead he confessed that he was but a little child who did not know how to go out or come in, and he asked for an understanding heart to judge God's great people and to discern between good and bad.

The request pleased God so much that he gave Solomon not only wisdom beyond any before or after him, but also the riches and honor he had not asked for. The gift was tested at once in the famous case of two women who claimed the same living child. Solomon called for a sword to divide the baby in two, and when the true mother cried out to spare the child even if it went to the other woman, he knew her by her love and gave her the child. All Israel heard the judgment and feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him.

The temple in Jerusalem

Solomon's crowning work was the temple, the house for the name of the LORD that his father David had longed to build but was not permitted to. For seven years Solomon labored on it, with cedar from Lebanon, hewn stone, and overlaid gold, and skilled craftsmen shaped every detail according to the pattern. It was a place of unmatched beauty, built to be the center of Israel's worship and the dwelling of God's presence among his people.

At its dedication Solomon stood before the whole assembly, spread out his hands to heaven, and prayed one of the great prayers of the Bible, asking that God would hear his people whenever they turned and prayed toward this house, and even the foreigner who came from far to seek him. He confessed that the heaven of heavens could not contain God, much less this house, yet asked that God's eyes would be open toward it. When he finished, fire came down and the glory of the LORD filled the temple, and Israel worshiped.

Glory, wisdom, and wealth

Under Solomon the kingdom reached its golden age, a time of peace and prosperity when Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and fig tree. His wisdom became famous throughout the world; he spoke thousands of proverbs and songs, understood trees and beasts and birds, and settled hard questions with insight that drew people from every nation. To him are attributed much of the book of Proverbs, the searching reflections of Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.

Kings and queens came from far to hear him, none more famous than the queen of Sheba, who traveled a great distance with hard questions and rich gifts. When she had seen his wisdom, his house, and the order of his court, there was no more spirit in her, and she confessed that the half had not been told her, and blessed the LORD who had set him on the throne. Silver was as common as stones in Jerusalem in those days, and the fame of Israel's God spread with the fame of its king.

The slow drift of his heart

Scripture tells the end of Solomon's story with unflinching honesty. Against God's clear command, Solomon loved many foreign women and took hundreds of wives and concubines from the surrounding nations. In his old age these wives turned his heart after their gods, and he built high places for their idols on the hills around Jerusalem, even for the detestable gods of Moab and Ammon. The wisest of men, who had prayed so humbly at the start and built the temple of the true God, ended by dividing his own heart in idolatry.

Because of this, the LORD was angry and declared that the kingdom would be torn from Solomon's son, though for David's sake not in Solomon's own days. And so it came to pass: after Solomon died, the nation split in two, and the golden age gave way to centuries of decline. His life stands as a sober warning that wisdom received is not the same as wisdom kept, and that the greatest gifts and the highest privileges can be squandered by a heart that slowly drifts from God.

The Preacher and the search under the sun

The book of Ecclesiastes, attributed to Solomon as the Preacher, the son of David, records a searching reflection that could only come from a man who had everything. He tried wisdom, pleasure, wealth, great works, and every accomplishment under the sun, and found them all, apart from God, to be vanity of vanities, a chasing after the wind. No amount of gain could satisfy the human heart or answer the shadow of death that falls alike on the wise and the foolish.

Yet the search does not end in despair but in hard-won wisdom. The Preacher counsels his readers to receive daily bread and honest work as gifts from God's hand, to fear God, and to remember their Creator in the days of their youth. His conclusion is simple and profound: Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Solomon, who had tasted every earthly thing, testified that only God can fill the emptiness that no gift under the sun can ever reach.

His significance and where he points to Christ

Solomon presides over the golden age of Israel, and his temple became the center of the nation's worship for centuries and the focus of its hope. His wisdom writings still shape how the people of God think about work, wealth, folly, love, and the fear of the LORD that is the beginning of wisdom. His reign is both the peak of the kingdom and the beginning of its unraveling, a lesson written large across the rest of the Old Testament.

Solomon built a temple of stone, but Jesus spoke of a greater temple, his own body, raised in three days, now the meeting place of God and man, and in Christ his people themselves become the temple where God dwells. Jesus said the queen of the south came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, but a greater than Solomon is here. Solomon was the son of David whose reign brought peace and wisdom, yet only for a time and marred at the end; Jesus is the Son of David whose wisdom never fails, whose peace never ends, and whose kingdom will never be divided.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: David · Nehemiah · All the people of the Bible