The Gift of Wisdom

Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt: he took Pharaoh’s daughter as his wife. He brought her to David’s city, and she stayed there until he had built his own palace, the Lord’s house, and the wall around Jerusalem.

But the people offered their sacrifices at the high places, because no house had been built yet for the Lord’s name. Solomon loved the Lord and lived by the laws of his father David, except for one thing: he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places.

The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice, because the great high place was there. On its altar Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings.

2 Chronicles tells more about that journey. Solomon spoke to all Israel’s leaders: the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, the judges, and the heads of families. Then he went with the whole assembly to the high place at Gibeon, because God’s Tent of Meeting was there, the tent the Lord’s servant Moses had made in the wilderness. God’s ark was not there: David had brought it up from Kiriath Jearim to a tent he had pitched for it in Jerusalem. But the bronze altar was at Gibeon. Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made it, and it stood in front of the Lord’s tent. Solomon and the assembly came there to seek guidance.

Solomon answered, “You showed my father David great loving kindness, because he was faithful to you and did what was right, with an honest heart. And you have kept up that great kindness to him: you have given him a son who sits on his throne today.

“Now, Lord my God, you have made me king in my father David’s place, and I am just a little child. I don’t know how to lead. And I am among the people you chose, a great people, more than anyone can count.

“So give me an understanding heart to judge your people and to tell good from evil. After all, who can judge this great people of yours?”

In 2 Chronicles, Solomon also asks the Lord God to keep his promise to David, since God has made Solomon king over a people as countless as the dust of the earth. And there he asks for wisdom and knowledge, so that he can lead this people.

What Solomon asked for pleased the Lord.

God said to him, “You did not ask for a long life, or for riches, or for your enemies to die. You asked for understanding, to know what is just. So I have done what you asked. I have given you a wise and understanding heart. No one before you has been like you, and no one after you will be like you.

“I have also given you riches and honor, which you did not ask for, so that as long as you live, no other king will be like you.

“And if you follow my ways and obey my laws and commandments, as your father David did, then I will let you live long.”

2 Chronicles tells God’s answer this way. Because this was what Solomon had in his heart, wisdom and knowledge were his. God would give him riches, wealth and honor too. No king before him had had so much, and no king after him would.

Then Solomon woke up. It had been a dream. He went back from Gibeon to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant. There he offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and he made a feast for all who served him. And he reigned over Israel.

“My lord,” said one of them, “this woman and I share a house. I gave birth to a baby there while she was in the house with me. Three days after my baby came, this woman had a baby too. We were by ourselves. No stranger was in the house with us, only the two of us.

“In the night she lay on her baby, and he died. At midnight, while I was asleep, she got up and took my son from beside me. She laid him next to her, and she laid her dead son next to me. When morning came, I got up to nurse my child, and he was dead! But when I took a good look at him that morning, he wasn’t my son, the baby I had given birth to.”

“No!” said the other woman. “The living one is my son, and the dead one is yours.”

“No!” said the first. “The dead one is yours, and the living one is mine.” They went on arguing like this in front of the king.

Then the king said, “One of you says, ‘This is my son, the one who is alive, and your son is the dead one.’ The other says, ‘No! Your son is the dead one, and mine is the one who is alive.’”

“Get me a sword,” said the king. So they brought the king a sword.

“Divide the living child in two,” he said. “Give one half to this woman and the other half to that one.”

Then the living child’s mother spoke to the king, because her heart went out to her son. “Oh, my lord,” she said, “give her the living child! Whatever you do, don’t kill him!”

But the other woman said, “He won’t be mine, and he won’t be yours. Divide him!”

Then the king answered. “Give the first woman the living child. Don’t kill him, whatever you do. She is his mother.”

When all Israel heard how the king had judged, they were in awe of the king. They saw that the wisdom of God was in him, so that he could do what is just.

Azariah son of Nathan was in charge of the officers, and Zabud son of Nathan was chief minister, the king’s friend. Ahishar ran the king’s household, and Adoniram son of Abda ran the forced labor, the men made to work for the king.

Solomon also had twelve officers over all Israel, who supplied food for the king and his household. Each of them had to provide it for one month of the year.

Each officer had his own district. One had the hill country of Ephraim. Others had towns such as Beth Shemesh, the heights of Dor, and Taanach, Megiddo and all Beth Shean, below Jezreel. Across the Jordan, one officer was in Ramoth Gilead, and he also had the region of Argob in Bashan, with sixty great cities that had walls and bronze bars on their gates.

Another had Mahanaim, and others had the lands of Naphtali, Asher, Issachar and Benjamin. Two of the officers were married to Solomon’s daughters: Ben Abinadab to Taphath, and Ahimaaz to Basemath. The last was Geber son of Uri. He had the land of Gilead, the country of Sihon king of the Amorites and of Og king of Bashan. He was the only officer in the land.

All the kingdoms between the Euphrates and the land of the Philistines, and on to Egypt’s border, were under Solomon’s rule. They brought him tribute, the payments they had to make to the king, and they served Solomon as long as he lived.

Solomon’s supplies for a single day were thirty cors of fine flour, about a hundred and eighty bushels, and sixty measures of meal. They also included ten fattened cattle, twenty cattle from the pastures and a hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks and fattened birds.

He ruled over everything on this side of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah all the way to Gaza, and over all the kings on this side of the river. He had peace on every side.

For as long as Solomon lived, Judah and Israel were safe, from Dan all the way to Beersheba. Each man lived under his own vine and under his own fig tree.

Solomon kept his chariot horses in forty thousand stalls, and he had twelve thousand horsemen. 2 Chronicles says that he gathered fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, and kept them in the chariot cities and with him in Jerusalem.

Each officer, in his own month, supplied food for King Solomon and for everyone who ate at the king’s table. They let nothing run short. They also brought barley and straw for the horses and the fast horses. Each man brought what he was assigned to the place where the officers were.

2 Chronicles also says that in Jerusalem the king made silver and gold as common as stones, and cedars as plentiful as the sycamore trees of the lowland.

Solomon’s horses came from Egypt and from Kue. The king’s merchants bought them in Kue. They brought chariots and horses out of Egypt and sold them again: a chariot for six hundred pieces of silver, about thirteen pounds, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They sold them to the Hittite kings and the kings of Syria too.

Solomon’s wisdom went beyond the wisdom of all the peoples of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. No one was as wise as he was: not Ethan the Ezrahite, and not Heman, Calcol or Darda, the sons of Mahol. His fame spread to all the nations around.

He spoke three thousand proverbs, short wise sayings, and his songs came to a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that grows in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of a wall. He spoke of animals and birds, of crawling creatures and of fish.

People came from every nation to hear Solomon’s wisdom. They were sent by all the kings of the earth who had heard how wise he was.