The life of King Solomon is one of my favorite wells to soak in inspiration and wisdom. It’s easy to gloss over the complexities when you read the Scriptures, but there’s so many layers to unpack. It’s a story of lust, strategy, triumph, and tragedy. Not to mention, captivating. Makes “Game of Thrones” look like child’s play.
When it comes to Solomon, we’re a talking about the son of one of the most powerful kings who ever lived, whose mother was seduced, and her first husband was sent to his death. We’re talking about a man who witnessed as his family turned on each other for the sake of greed or revenge. A man whose sister was raped by a half-brother. A man who received the greatest wisdom and wealth ever bestowed…and yet he threw it all away by putting the love of women before his love of God.
So, let’s back it up and really dive into who he was and what he saw as a young child that shaped the king he’d grow up to be.
The Adultery of David and Bathsheba
King David…Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. It’s a childhood classic. The smaller, younger David defeated the 9-foot giant of a man in Goliath by slinging a stone to the Philistine’s head. Of course, it wasn’t David acting on his own. God (Jehovah) was with him. It was God who guided the stone that killed Goliath.
But even before he killed Goliath, hahaha! You get a sense of David’s zeal when he visited his older brothers on the battlelines and saw Goliath taunting the Israelites to combat.
Young David’s response in 1st Samuel 17:26 was “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
