One throne, and the King upon it

The Throne of Solomon

When the queen of Sheba came to test Solomon with hard questions, the book of Kings pauses to describe the things that took her breath away, and among them was the king's throne. It was a work of ivory overlaid with the finest gold, raised on six steps, flanked by lions, unlike anything made in any kingdom. The chronicler lingers over it because it was the visible sign of a reign at its height, a nation at peace, a wisdom that drew rulers from far away, a glory that seemed almost to touch heaven. And yet the same book that praises the throne also records its shadow. The reign that began in wisdom drifted into excess and idolatry, and after Solomon the kingdom tore in two. The great ivory throne is therefore a double lesson. It shows us how magnificent an earthly throne can be, and it shows us the limit of every earthly throne. Splendor is not the same as endurance. A greater than Solomon was still to come, and Jesus would say so in as many words.

“Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.”1 Kings 10:18

The throne in Scripture

The tenth chapter of the first book of Kings sets Solomon's throne within a larger portrait of overwhelming abundance. The queen of Sheba arrives with camels bearing spices, gold, and precious stones, and after Solomon answers all her questions and she sees his house, his table, his servants, and his ascent to the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. The throne is one exhibit among many in a chapter about a wealth so great that silver was reckoned as nothing in the days of Solomon. The description of the throne itself, in verses eighteen through twenty, is precise. The king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with the best gold. It had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind, with armrests on either side of the seat, and two lions standing beside the arms. Twelve more lions stood on the six steps, one at each end of every step. The chronicler states plainly that nothing like it had been made in any kingdom, a claim of unrivaled splendor. The details carry weight. Ivory and gold were the costliest materials of the ancient world, and to combine them on a single seat was a statement of surpassing wealth. The six steps lifted the king above all who approached, so that to come before Solomon was to climb toward him. The lions, fourteen in all, spoke the language of royal courage and strength, an image later readers connected with the tribe of Judah, whose emblem was the lion, and from which the royal line descended. The surrounding chapter reports fleets returning with gold, a great navy in partnership with Hiram of Tyre, and kings of the earth seeking Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. All of it converges on the throne as the seat of a wisdom and majesty granted from above. But the account does not stop at chapter ten. The very next chapter tells how Solomon's heart turned after other gods through the influence of many foreign wives, and how the Lord announced that the kingdom would be divided. The throne of unmatched splendor sat at the hinge of a reign about to fracture.

What it comes to mean

The first thing to see is that the splendor was real and God-given. Scripture does not sneer at Solomon's throne or treat its beauty as sin. The wisdom that built it came from the Lord, who had invited the young king to ask for anything and was pleased that he asked for an understanding heart. The abundance of the reign was, in part, the answer to that prayer. There is a place for magnificence in the worship and governance of God's people, and the throne stood as a sign that a nation living wisely under God can flourish. The second thing to see is the limit written into the same story. The throne was built by hands, of materials taken from creatures and the earth, and it belonged to a man who would die and to a kingdom that would divide. However high the six steps rose, they could not lift the king above his own heart, which turned away in the end. The book of Kings is unsparingly honest about this. It gives us the glory and the failure in adjacent chapters, refusing to let us admire the throne without remembering the fall. There is a sober warning here about the seduction of splendor. The same chapter that praises Solomon's gold quietly notes the multiplying of horses, wealth, and foreign alliances, the very things the law of the king in Deuteronomy had warned against. Magnificence can drift into the accumulation that hardens a heart. The throne that drew the queen of Sheba was also part of a system of prestige that, unchecked, pulled the king away from single-hearted devotion. So the meaning of Solomon's throne is finally a pointing forward. It shows what an earthly kingdom can achieve at its very best, and by its limits it teaches us to long for something the best earthly kingdom cannot give: a throne not made with hands, a king whose heart does not turn, a dominion that does not fracture into rival halves. The ivory throne is a magnificent signpost, and like every true signpost it directs our gaze beyond itself.