Solomon’s Repentance
47
By his own bitter experience, Solomon learned the emptiness of
a life that seeks in earthly things its highest good. He erected altars
to heathen gods, only to learn how vain is their promise of rest to the
spirit. Gloomy and soul-harassing thoughts troubled him night and
day. For him there was no longer any joy of life or peace of mind, and
the future was dark with despair.
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Yet the Lord forsook him not. By messages of reproof and by
severe judgments, He sought to arouse the king to a realization of the
sinfulness of his course. He removed His protecting care and permitted
adversaries to harass and weaken the kingdom. “The Lord stirred up an
adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.... And God stirred him
up another adversary, Rezon, ... captain over a band,” who “abhorred
Israel, and reigned over Syria. And Jeroboam, ... Solomon’s servant,”
“a mighty man of valor,” “even he lifted up his hand against the king.”
1 Kings 11:14-28
.
At last the Lord, through a prophet, delivered to Solomon the
startling message: “Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast
not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee,
I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.
Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s sake:
but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.”
Verses 11, 12
.
Awakened as from a dream by this sentence of judgment pro-
nounced against him and his house, Solomon with quickened con-
science began to see his folly in its true light. Chastened in spirit, with
mind and body enfeebled, he turned wearied and thirsting from earth’s
broken cisterns, to drink once more at the fountain of life. For him at
last the discipline of suffering had accomplished its work. Long had
he been harassed by the fear of utter ruin because of inability to turn
from folly; but now he discerned in the message given him a ray of
hope. God had not utterly cut him off, but stood ready to deliver him
from a bondage more cruel than the grave, and from which he had had
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no power to free himself.
In gratitude Solomon acknowledged the power and the loving-
kindness of the One who is “higher than the highest” (
Ecclesiastes
5:8
); in penitence he began to retrace his steps toward the exalted plane
of purity and holiness from whence he had fallen so far. He could
never hope to escape the blasting results of sin, he could never free his
mind from all remembrance of the self-indulgent course he had been