1 Kings 2:13-46 - King Solomon Is Taking Care Of Business

Welcome back to the Bible Babbles Podcast.

My name is Bryon and I'm here with my coworker and friend Carlos Farias. And last week we learned about David's death and Solomon's ascension to the throne. And if you want to follow along in your Bibles, you can do so.

We're going to be covering the story of 1 Kings 2 verse 13 through the end of the chapter if you want to kind of follow along. But Carlos, why don't you start us off today and talk about this first section of what we're talking about today?

Yeah, so we know in the last story that we went over about Adonijah and his attempt to try to take over the throne. That was Riley Solomon's. And we remember that he tried to kill fatted calves and have a big party and invite all these people over.

And he was definitely in the wrong for trying to take over the throne that wasn't his. And surprisingly enough, Solomon, when he found out about that, he spared his life. And he didn't have to because he did try to betray Solomon.

So we saw Solomon gave him another chance, which is just God's grace for Adonijah. And then we get into this chapter and foolishly enough, Adonijah, he goes to Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, and he asks if he can marry Abishag, a Shunammite woman.

And he's like, or Adonijah tells Bathsheba, he won't turn you down, so please just ask this for me.

He told her, I was going to be the king, and it got taken from me, so maybe just this one thing would repay me, because I was going to be the king, but Solomon had taken the throne.

So he phrases marrying Abishag as a miniscule consolation prize since Solomon stole the throne from him.

So she agrees to go to Solomon for him, and Bathsheba comes to Solomon with Adonijah's request, and in this story, we're going to find out what Solomon's response is for that story.

So Bryon, what do you think about Adonijah trying to subtly take a shot at his throne again?

Yeah, it's crazy. If you'll remember from the beginning of last week, Abishag was the person that David's servants were like, hey, you know, David can't create his own body heat, or at least not enough to keep him well.

So Abishag is basically going to be a human blanket and not a very noble job. And here again, she's just really kind of being used as a pawn by Adonijah. Adonijah wants to go, okay, this person was David's.

And especially back in Hebrew times, you had, you know, all the stuff with the kinsman redeemer of close family members. When one died, the other one would have the responsibility of marrying the dead sibling's spouse.

And then their inheritance was counted as the dead person's inheritance. So what Adonijah is trying to do here is I'm going to make it so that what was David's is now mine.

And so now I have a better thing to the throne because I'm the older sibling and all of that. I think it's crazy. It's obvious that Adonijah didn't think that much of Abishag because he's like, oh yeah, this is my, you know, consolation prize.

All Israel thought I was going to be king. If all Israel thought he was going to be king, Solomon's claim to the throne would have been dismissed.

But it was clear because of David's command and what God had done and ordained in that Solomon was going to be the king. So Adonijah tries this, but she becomes to Solomon with this request.

She doesn't understand any of what Adonijah is trying to do, but Solomon sees exactly what Adonijah is trying to do, and he calls out his mother for her lack of discernment.

And then Solomon sends Baniah to eliminate Adonijah for attempting a second coup after he spared his life for the first one.

And we'll see a lot of Baniah in these coming verses, but Baniah is an awesome, I think when we talked before, you called him a hit man.

Yeah.

Yeah. He was one that was super loyal to Solomon. And again and again in here, in this passage, you can see times that he really helped out Solomon and did what was right in a lot of this.

So after Solomon sends Baniah takes out Adonijah, he starts working on the last wishes of his father that we learned about at the very end of what we talked about last week. So he talked about a couple of different people. He talked about Joab.

He talked about Shimei. He also talked about some people as well that had done good things that he wanted Solomon to remember. But in this next section, why don't you talk about what Solomon did as far as Abiathar the priest?

So, well, for Abiathar, Solomon sent him back to a Levitical city in Anhofe, stripping him of his priestly position and instituting a more loyal Zadok.

Abiathar was also a descendant of Eli, who the Lord had promised he would take the priesthood from.

For the murderers and conniving Joab, Solomon sent Benaiah to execute him for his treasury, but Joab was holding on to the horns of the altar, which was a position reserved for those who had accidentally killed someone, not for those who executed

military leaders in times of peace. Joab tells Benaiah he'll have to kill him on the altar, which he does. For the blasphemous scheming Shimei, Solomon gave him the ultimate trap, a simple command to obey authority.

And Shimei manages to follow the rule for three years. He was told all he had to do was stay in his house, and he can't cross the line.

And then so eventually he finds out that some of his servants are in Gath, and he's not allowed to leave his house simply. And if he leaves his house and crosses the line, then he is going to die.

And it just it's just surprising to me that he would just disobey what Solomon told him. And then he goes to get his servants. And then because of that, he has to pay the ultimate price, which is which is his life.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting in the passage of, you know, he has his house that Solomon says, hey, you know, you're going to have a house that's going to be here in Jerusalem and and you can stay really in Jerusalem.

You can't cross the the brook. I think it's Kidron, if I remember correctly from the passage, he says, you know, you can be here. You just can't pass this river.

If you pass this river, the day you do it, your your life's going to be forfeit. You're going to die. And I like what you said there about it was kind of almost a trap.

I'm putting air quotes there. You can't see me, but I'm putting air quotes on trap that Solomon lays out for Shimei because Shimei was the one that during Absalom's attempted takeover of the kingdom.

As David and his entourage are leaving Jerusalem, they're being attacked, they're hunted. Shimei is the one that starts cursing David. Shimei is related to Saul.

And so he's saying, oh, David, you did this and this and this to Saul, and this is God getting you back and cursing him when obviously we would know from the story that it was Saul that did terrible things to David, not vice versa.

So for this, for Shimei, it was he has had a problem really with authority and with God given authority for all of these years.

And so Solomon then lays this out for him of, OK, I'm going to let you live, but you have to obey this rule that authority is giving you. And he couldn't do it. And here it is, his servants, his slaves had run off to Gath.

He goes, gets them, brings them back. And then only after that, Solomon calls him in and goes, hey, didn't I only give you one rule to follow? And you broke it.

So now you're going to have to die.

And there you have Solomon fulfilling David's wish of, hey, Shimei has done these bad things, but because of the promise that I made, I couldn't take any action against him, but I'm committing to you that you have to take care of this problem.

And he does there. And then, yeah, for Joab especially, I do find it funny that he tries to take advantage of something that he didn't allow other people to do. I forget which leader in particular it was that he killed.

He killed a couple of Israel's army generals back during the kind of civil war that they had had, but one of them had gone into a city of peace where, according to the law, if you had accidentally killed someone, you were able to go to and have

refuge there and they couldn't kill you there, and Joab had tricked the guy and had eliminated them there. So now Joab's trying to do a thing where he's going to the horns of the altar in the tabernacle and hold on and be like, no, you can't kill me.

I have safety here. The exact same thing he didn't afford to the general of Israel.

But now, as outlined in the law in Exodus 21 verses 12 through 14, he says, oh no, you're going to have to kill me on the altar, which the law allowed for if someone genuinely killed someone and it wasn't an accident.

And so Benaiah brings the word back to Solomon. He's like, hey, Joab said, you're going to have to kill me on the altar. And Solomon's like, great, do just what he said.

Kill him on the altar. And so he did. And for a man that spent a lot of his life doing violence and hurting people and things like that, it was a very fitting end for Joab.

And again, fulfilling David's commitment to Solomon that, hey, you need to take care of Joab because he's been a bloody man and he's been an evil man in a lot of ways. But because of my commitments, I couldn't do it. But I am committing to you this.

One of the things that I love seeing from Solomon is, even though he had to send out orders to kill these men, it wasn't his very first thing that he wanted to do.

I don't feel like he really wanted to, his first desire was to just kill these guys, but trying to give them a chance and give them second chances. And yet they didn't take those chances. And they just, they were full of pride, honestly.

And they let the pride just take over them. And, you know, Adonai knew in his heart, probably, that he was never going to be king. And all these men who sided with him, they just did it.

They didn't really think about it. They just, they probably wanted to just do what was, you know, cool to them. Or I feel like they knew that what they were doing wasn't going to work out.

And they, since they were so deep into it, they was like, well, we're just going to stick it out then. You know, and it costed them their life.

But I just love that Solomon, you know, his first intent wasn't just to go have these guys killed, but he really tried to give them another chance.

Yeah. And I think that's great. I think we talked about it a little bit last time, too, of just what's our first reaction?

Is our first reaction, all of them are dead. We're going to kill everyone that does this wrong. Or are we going to be like Solomon and go, okay, no, I'm going to give chances.

I even think with Shimei in this chapter, the fact that Solomon gives him the opportunity to do right where he had done wrong. Of, okay, if you just now respect and obey your authority instead of bucking against it, you're going to be fine.

You're living in the capital of this country. You have your own house. You're just told, hey, don't cross this line and you're fine.

And I think that's something we can definitely do in the lives of those around us of not always having bitterness and like really wanting revenge, but just being able to give opportunities to people to be able to do right, to have forgiveness towards

others, all of that.

Yeah, I think Satan definitely tries to plant in our mind that people are our enemies.

Yeah.

And turn them turn us against each other.

Really, in reality, Satan is our enemy. And, you know, we might have differences with people, but they have a soul and they all need Jesus.

So I feel like a lot of times Satan tries to plant in our mind that, you know, that person who doesn't agree with me, who doesn't feel the same way as me is my enemy. So I should not spend my time on them or I should just be done with them.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I love that thought of people aren't our enemy.

Sometimes we can look at maybe people with different politics or people in a different religion or people of whatever and go, okay, this person's my enemy and I have to defeat them in order for God to prevail.

But really God wants the hearts of every person. So every person that we interact with is someone that God deeply cares about.

And so we should have that heart of love and forgiveness for those that are different from us, that are in different places than us, knowing that God loves them and God's forgiven them. So we should love them and we should forgive them as well.

Do you have any other thoughts just on the passage in general? Anything that stuck out to you?

Definitely God has a certain plan for people and he has a way that he will get things done. So it's just better for people to be on the better end of that and try not to overthrow what God has planned.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think that's great.

The other thought I had with this passage is just the fact that God is just and sometimes we get so focused on God's love and forgiveness that we can forget, okay, if he's holy, if he's perfect in everything he does, then that means that things that

are wrong do have a consequence and they do have a punishment. And so we can see a lot of that in the passage of Baniah, who he was one of David's top six men. So he had a top three of his 30 mighty men.

And then there was a secondary top three under the first top three. And Baniah was in that one. You can read about that.

I believe it's the end of 2 Samuel. And in those passages, it details some of his awesome conquests he had. He took down a lion.

He took down a couple huge warriors of Moab. It was just awesome things that he did. And he was really how God brought about a lot of justice during this time.

But I think the admonition to us, the application would be, don't worry too much about current events, current problems in your life, because God is just and he will always bring justice. No one's going to get away with anything.

I think of the verse in the Old Testament, be sure your sin will find you out. And I just think that's a great encouragement for us. Sometimes we can get scared, but we can rest in the fact that God is just, and his will will be performed.

All right, I think that's all I got for today. Anything else for you?

I think that's it.

Awesome. Well, if you're enjoying the podcast, if you want to talk about anything, you can DMS or PM us on Instagram at Bible Babels or at Bible Babels Podcast as well as on Facebook. You can also email us at BibleBabelsPodcast at gmail.com.

And we'd love to hear from you. I'm Bryon Self, this is Carlos.

Thanks for joining us. Bye bye.