Day 143: Solomon Asks for Wisdom (2024)

This episode of "The Bible in a Year" podcast explores biblical narratives focusing on King Solomon’s accession to the throne and his request for wisdom from God.

1. The complex political and familial dynamics that influenced the succession of King Solomon.
2. Solomon’s wisdom, as highlighted by his request to God for the ability to govern wisely rather than for personal gain.
3. The theme of obedience to God’s commandments as a cornerstone of good leadership.
4. The spiritual and moral lessons applicable to everyday life derived from Solomon’s story.
5. Father Mike Schmitz’s reflections on the importance of using one’s gifts in accordance with God’s will.

1: Introduction and Background

Father Mike introduces the episode and provides background on the biblical texts being discussed. He sets the scene for the succession issues following King David’s reign. Father Mike Schmitz: "Today we are reading from One Kings, Chapter 1, and Second Chronicles, Chapter 1."

2: Solomon’s Ascension

This chapter covers the intricate palace intrigue and the eventual declaration of Solomon as king, emphasizing the narratives from 1 Kings. Father Mike Schmitz: "Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet play crucial roles in ensuring Solomon’s ascension to the throne."

3: Solomon’s Request for Wisdom

Solomon’s famed request for wisdom is detailed here, exploring his dialogue with God and the divine grant of wisdom, as narrated in 2 Chronicles. Father Mike Schmitz: "Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge to govern his people, which pleased God."

1. Seek wisdom in leadership roles, prioritizing the common good over personal gain.
2. Cultivate obedience and fidelity to moral principles in all decision-making processes.
3. Use personal talents and gifts in ways that align with ethical and spiritual values.
4. Reflect regularly on one’s actions and their alignment with broader spiritual teachings.
5. Embrace humility, recognizing the source of one’s abilities and the responsibility that accompanies them.

Fr. Mike starts to unpack the character of Solomon and explains how we can see the beginning of his downfall in today's readings. Although Solomon has been blessed with wisdom, he lacks obedience, which is much more important in maintaining a relationship with God. Today's readings are 1 Kings 1, 2 Chronicles 1, and Psalm 43.

People

Solomon, King David, Bathsheba, Nathan the Prophet, Adonijah

Content Warnings:

None

Father Mike Schmitz
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Bible in a year podcast where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a year podcast is brought to you by ascension using the great adventure Bible timeline. We'll read all the way from Genesis to revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story. Today we are on day 143 and we are reading from one kings, chapter 1, second chronicles, chapter one, and we're praying psalm 43. As always, the Bible translation that I am reading from is the revised standard version, the second catholic edition, and I am using the great Adventure Bible from Ascension.

If you want to download your own Bible in a year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com bibleinaear. And if you did, you would realize that we are on a new sheet of paper, which apparently I get very excited about. But I am getting very excited about it because it means that we are trekking through the scriptures and that is a gift. If you want to subscribe to this podcast, you can click on subscribe and you will be subscribed and subscribe. That's subscriptions abound.

As I said, today is day 143. We're reading from the first chapter of kings, one kings, and the first chapter of two chronicles. We're praying psalm 43, the first book of the kings, chapter one the struggle for succession to the throne. Now, king David was old and advanced in years, and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, let a young maiden be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait upon the king and be his nurse, and let her lie in your bosom, that my lord the king may be warm.

So they sought for a beautiful maiden throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the shunammite and brought her to the king. The maiden was very beautiful, and she became the king's nurse and ministered to him. But the king knew her not. Now Adonijah the son of Haggith, exalted himself, saying, I will be king. And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him.

His father had never at any time displeased him by asking, why have you done thus? And so he was also a very handsome man, and he was born next. After Absalom. He conferred with Joab, the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar the priest, and they followed Adonijah and helped him. But Zadok the priest and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and Nathan the prophet, and Shimei and Rei and David's mighty men were not with Adonijah.

Adonijah sacrificed sheep, oxen, and fatlings by the serpent's stone, which is beside en Rogel. And he invited all his brothers, the king's sons, and all the royal officials of Judah. But he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the mighty men or Solomon his brother. Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggath, has become king? And David our lord, does not know it.

Now, therefore, come, let me give you counsel that you may save your own life and the life of your son Solomon. Go in at once to King David and say to him, did you not, my lord, the king, swear to your maidservant, saying, Solomon, your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne. Why then, is Adonijah king? Then while you are still speaking with the king, I also will come in after you and confirm your words. So Bathsheba went to the king into his chamber.

Now, the king was very old, and Abishaih the shunammite was ministering to the king. Bathsheba bowed and did obeisance to the king. And the king said, what do you desire? She said to him, my lord, you swore to your maidservant by the lord your God, saying, Solomon, your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne. And now, behold, Adonijah is king, although you, my lord the king, do not know it.

He has sacrificed oxen, fatlings and sheep in abundance and has invited all the sons of the king. Abiathar, the priest, and Joab, the commander of the army. But Solomon, your servant, he has not invited. And now, my lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are upon you to tell them who shall sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. Otherwise, it will come to pass when my lord the king sleeps with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be counted offenders.

While she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet came in and they told the king, here is Nathan the prophet. And when he came in before the king, he bowed before the king with his face to the ground. And Nathan said, my lord the king have you said, Adonijah shall reign after me and he shall sit upon my throne. For he has gone down this day and has sacrificed oxen, fatlings and sheep in abundance and has invited all the king's sons. Joab, the commander of the army and abiathar the priest.

And behold, they are eating and drinking before him and saying, long live King Adonijah. But me, your servant, and Zadok the priest and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And your servant Solomon, he has not invited. Has this thing been brought about by my lord the king? And you have not told your servants who should sit on the throne of my lord the king.

After him, Solomon is made king. Then king David said, call Bathsheba to me. So she came into the king's presence and stood before the king. And the king swore, saying, as the lord lives, who has redeemed my soul out of every adversity, as I swore to you by the lord the God of Israel, saying, Solomon, your son shall reign after me. And he shall sit upon my throne in my stead.

Even so, I will do this day. Then Bathsheba bowed with her face to the ground and did obeisance to the king and said, may my lord king David live forever. King David said, call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and benaiah the son of Jehoiada. So they came before the king. And the king said to them, take with you the servants of your lord.

And cause Solomon, my son, to ride on my own mule and bring him down to Gihon. And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet there anoint him king over Israel. Then blow the trumpet and say, long live King Solomon. You shall then come up after him, and he shall come and sit upon my throne. For he shall be king in my stead.

And I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and over Judah. And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, answered the king. Amen. May the lord, the God of my lord the king, say so, as the lord has been with my lord the king, even so may he be with Solomon and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord king David. So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and the Cherethites and the pelethites went down and caused Solomon to ride on King David's mule and brought him to Gihon.

There Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet. And all the people said, long live King Solomon. And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes and rejoicing with great joy so that the earth was split by their noise. Adonijah and all the guests who were with him heard it as they finished feasting.

And when Joab heard the sound of the trumpet, he said, what does this uproar in the city mean? While he was still speaking, behold, Jonathan the son of Abiathar the priest came, and Adonijah said, come in, for you are a worthy man and bring good news. Jonathan answered, Adonijah, no. For our lord king David has made Solomon king, and the king has sent with him Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and the Cherethites and the Pelethites, and they have caused him to ride on the king's mule. And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king at.

And they have gone up from their rejoicing so that the city is in an uproar. This is the noise that you have heard. Solomon sits upon the royal throne. Moreover, the king's servants came to congratulate our lord King David, saying, your God, make the name of Solomon more famous than yours and make his throne greater than your throne. And the king bowed himself upon the bed.

And the king also said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has granted one of my offspring to sit on my throne this day. My own eyes seeing it. Then all the guests of Adonijah trembled and rose, and each went his own way. And Adonijah feared Solomon. And he arose and went and caught hold of the horns of the altar.

And it was told, Solomon, behold, Adonijah fears King Solomon, for behold, he has laid hold of the horns of the altar, saying, let King Solomon swear to me first that he will not slay his servant with the sword. And Solomon said, if he proved to be a worthy man, not one of his hairs shall fall to the earth. But if wickedness is found in him, he shall die. So King Solomon sent, and they brought him down from the altar, and he came and did obeisance to King Solomon. And Solomon said to him, go to your house.

The second book of chronicles, chapter one. Solomon requests wisdom. Solomon, the son of David, established himself in his kingdom, and the Lord his God, was with him and made him exceedingly great. Solomon spoke to all Israel, to the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, to the judges, and to all the leaders in all Israel, the heads of fathers houses. And Solomon and.

And all the assembly with him went to the high place that was at gibeon for the tent of the meeting of God, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, had made in the wilderness was there. But David had brought up the ark of God. From Kiriath Jerim to the place that David had prepared for it, for he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem. Moreover, the bronze altar that Bezalel, the son of Uri, son of Hur, had made was there before the tabernacle of the Lord and Solomon. And the assembly sought the Lord.

And Solomon went up there to the bronze altar before the Lord, which was at the tent of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings upon it. In that night, God appeared to Solomon and said to him, ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said to God, you have shown great and merciful love to David my father, and have made me king in his stead. O Lord God, let your promise to David my father be now fulfilled, for you have made me king over a people as many as the dust of the earth. Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and to come in before this people.

For who can rule this, your people, that is so great? God answered Solomon, because this was in your heart. And you have not asked possessions, wealth, honor, or the life of those who hate you and have not even asked long life, but have asked wisdom and knowledge for yourself, that you may rule my people over whom I have made you king. Wisdom and knowledge are granted to you. I will also give you riches, possessions and honor, such as none of the kings had who were before you and none after you shall have alike.

So Solomon came from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting to Jerusalem, and he reigned over Israel, Solomon's acquisitions. Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen. He had 1400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. And the king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stone. And he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the shephalah.

And Solomon's import of horses was from Egypt, and Cu and the king's traders received them from Khu for a price. They imported a chariot from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver, and a horse for 150. Likewise through them these were exported to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria.

Psalm 43, prayer to God in time of trouble, vindicate me, o God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people from deceitful and unjust men. Deliver me, for you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you cast me off? Why do I go mourning? Because of the oppression of the enemy?

O send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the liar, O God. My God, why are you cast down, o my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my savior and my God father in heaven, we give you praise. We do give you glory and honor. And there is no reason, when you are with us, when you are near us, for our souls to be cast down. Yes, Lord God, we experience grief, we experience suffering, we experience loss in this life and in this world.

And so our hearts can be broken. But in all things, we can still have joy. We can still have this abiding and pervasive sense of well being, because we know who you are, we know your character, we know your heart, and we know your steadfast love for us. Because of that, Lord God, we can have that abiding and pervasive sense of well being. We can have joy in all circumstances that even when our hearts are broken, even when our souls are tormented, even when our bodies are wracked with pain and grief, that we do not have to be cast down.

Because you are with us and you are for us. And if you are for us, who can be against us? We give you praise, Lord God. So thank you. Thank you.

Help us bolster us up. I mean, strengthen us, Lord God, especially when, when the grief gets too big, when the suffering gets to become too much, when this day is overwhelming. Strengthen us and help us take one step forward. Help us take the next good step. In Jesus name we pray.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, so here we are taking this turn right. We're going one kings, chapter one, and two chronicles, chapter two. Now, keep this in mind, is that originally kings and chronicles were one book.

We already mentioned this, I think, at the beginning of Samuel, in talking about chronicles, is that Samuel was all one book. Chronicles is all one book. Kings is all one book. But they're very long books. It would be impractical, apparently, to have that one massively long scroll.

And so they divided them into one and two kings, into first and second chronicles. And so here we are starting in one kings, which indicates a transition, as we mentioned last couple days, at the end of two, Samuel, we're getting to the end of David's life. Remember, he had to be taken off of the field of battle because not only was he being targeted as the king, he was also weak as the aged king. And so he had to be brought off of the field of battle. And now here we have David, who is as old as he's going to get, and he's unable to stay warm.

And so what do they do? They bring in this young maiden, abisheg the shunammite. Now, she's going to be very important, not only because here she is with David, but also how they even note Abisheg the shunammite. She's beautiful. She's a young maiden, and David does not know her, essentially.

So she becomes essentially the king's concubine, but a, let's say a platonic concubine, if that's such a thing. But he did not know her in a sexual way. And that's going to be important because that's going to factor into the next piece. Now, this story is going to continue, right? Because we have another character in one kings, chapter one called Adonijah, who's another one of David's sons.

And Adonijah is saying, I will be king. And he not only prepared for himself chariots and horsemen with 50 men to run before him, but he also was born after Absalom. Remember Absalom? Handsome. Here's Adonijah, handsome.

And he gets Joab on his side and Abiathar, the priest, on his side and has a bunch of people on his side and basically, again, has them all acclaim him as the king. Now, this is going to be really important for the rest of this book of kings. We're going to hear stories of king after king, and almost every one of them is going to be worse than the one who came before him. Not exactly. There are a couple decent kings who show up, but they are few and far between.

Solomon himself is the one who's going to be exalted to be the king. Actually, in chapter one here of one kings, he's exalted. What happens? BATHSHeba, Solomon's mom, one of David's wives, comes in and she does obeisance to David and says, you know, you promised that Solomon, my son, would be king, but Adonijah has made himself the king. Didn't you not know about this?

And this is the 100% key for what's happening now in kings. Here is David, an incredible warrior. Here is David, an incredible leader in battle. Here's David, who amasses this insane fortune to be able to build the temple. Here's David, who also writes incredible psalms and writes incredible songs.

David is massively talented. He's anointed. He's gifted by God. And yet he doesn't know what's happening in his own family. We mentioned this in two Samuel, but this is going to play out in one kings and second kings in this horrible, horrible way.

David is a success in almost every area of his life, except when it comes to his own family, when it comes to being a dad. How do we see this in chapter one? How we see this is he doesn't even know what his kids are doing. Remember back when Absalom, David didn't even call him my son. He called him the young man Absalom until after Absalom had died, you would think.

One would think. Or even that horrible story of Absalom's. Absalom's sister Tamar being raped by her brother, and David doing nothing about this. What we have here is Adonijah making himself king. And David, he knows nothing about this.

What has to happen here then is that Bathsheba and Nathan have to kind of basically plot to get David to do the right thing, to announce Solomon as the king. Now, again, if he was paying attention to his family, David would have seen this coming. So what happens? What happens is he announces he does the right thing, but he has to be brought to that place, because for as gifted as David is, as anointed as David is, when it comes to being a dad, when it comes to being a father, he, in many ways, is a failure. He doesn't know what's happening in his own home.

And this is going to play out in the next number of chapters as we see Solomon now, here we have Solomon in one kings, one. And he's just beginning. He's just going to start in this whole thing. But in two chronicles, chapter one, we have this big moment we're not going to get to in one kings until chapter three. But here we have two chronicles, chapter one, where God asks Solomon, what do you want me to do for you?

And Solomon asks for wisdom, and God gives him wisdom. People will ask oftentimes, how is it that Solomon could be one of the wisest people at the beginning and is a great fool at the end? Well, what we see is he doesn't even start out incredibly wise, at least when it comes to second chronicles. What does he do immediately? In two chronicles, Solomon gets wisdom, and then he begins to amass treasures.

He begins to amass even this. It's a small point, but it's a pretty critical point. At the end of chapter one, it says that Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and coup. Now, remember that this is in direct disobedience to deuteronomy, chapter 17, verse 16, where it said about the king of Israel, he shall not multiply horses for himself nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses. For the Lord has said to you, you shall not return that way again.

And yet here is Solomon, who right after he has been prayed for the gift of wisdom and been given the gift of wisdom is not good. You can be wise and disobedient. It's one of the reasons why wisdom is a great gift. Wisdom is a great virtue. But obedience is even more powerful.

And this is what's going to happen. This is going to be the undoing of Solomon. He will have great wisdom, and there will be a number of times when he can demonstrate that wisdom on the stage. But he is wise and not obedient. He can be wise and not good.

We realize this, like, even think of Satan. Here's Lucifer, Lucifer, who is one of the most powerful, most beautiful, most intelligent of all of the angels. And what does he do? He turns away from the Lord. It's possible to be wise, but not good.

It's possible to be beautiful but not good. It's possible to be strong and courageous, but not good. And here is Solomon, who at the very beginning of two chronicles reveals himself. Yes, he's been blessed by the Lord with wisdom, but he already shows a streak of disobedience, and this is what's going to play out for the rest of his life. Yes, there are moments of wisdom that is a gift so good, but also there is a streak of disobedience and a streak where Solomon does not do the right.

And so one of the things we always have to say is, okay, Lord, we've all been given gifts. We've all been given these opportunities to exercise the gifts that God has given to us. And yet we all also have to recognize that in the midst of all the gifts you've given me, Lord, they don't mean anything unless I exercise them in accordance with your will, that all the power I might have, all the wealth I might have, the health or beauty or strength or wisdom that I might have, they can all lead me somewhere to a dark place if I don't use them to accomplish your will. This is one of the keys of scripture, is that God says, I desire obedience, not sacrifice. So in all things, we've been gifted, you've been gifted, you've been gifted, you've been blessed by the Lord.

And now we say, okay, God, how do you want me to use your blessings to serve you and to help the people around me. We got to pray for that, because without God's grace, we can't do it. And so, please pray for each other. I am praying for you. Please pray for me.

My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. It God bless.