1 Kings 9:10-10:27 - Solomon’s Big Brain

Well, welcome back to the Bible Bibles Podcast.

I'm your host, Bryon Self.

This is Carlos.

It is great to be back with you. I am very excited about today's episode. Lots of great thoughts.

So we're going to dive right into it. This week, we are looking at kind of Solomon's big brain. A lot of smart, intelligent things that he did.

A lot of great financial decisions he made. Some kind of underhanded financial decisions that he made. But also looking at some great dignitaries that came and visited him.

We've been going through all of this. Last week, we talked about Solomon building the temple. We talked about him building his house.

We talked about him building a house for his wife, who was one of the Pharaoh's daughters. And this week, we're looking at chapter 9, verse 10, kind of through chapter 10 and verse 27.

So, how this section starts off is an exchange for the lumber and the gold that Solomon had gotten from the king of Tyre. Solomon gave him 20 cities in the Galilean region of his country. And so this was, you know, that's kind of a cool trade.

If you go, okay, I'm going to give you tons of wood, lumber, all that stuff for all these houses. I'm going to give you tons of gold and I'll give you real estate.

You know, nowadays they say real estate is one of those things that will just kind of continually go up in value. Land is valuable. Buildings are valuable.

All that kind of stuff. So, you know, that's a pretty good deal. Wouldn't you say?

Yeah, I agree.

If, well, I guess this goes back to our thing from a couple of weeks ago.

You know, if someone gave you a house, you know, that'd be pretty nice. Someone gave you a city. That's really nice.

Yeah.

And and so Solomon had given the king of Tyre 20 cities.

So obviously, the king of Tyre is like, you know, I'll check this out. This was kind of near where that country of of Tyre and Lebanon was kind of around that area.

It wasn't like, oh, I'm going to give you these random cities from like way far away from where you are. It's pretty close. So the king of Tyre went.

He investigated, looked at inspect the cities and they were not up to par. It says that he was displeased. He hated it.

He was like, what in the world is this? And he complains to Solomon about the quality of the cities that he gave him. And I have occasionally given gifts that were less than ideal, particularly to my wife, Samantha.

The very first time, I think it was maybe the first Valentine's that we were together, maybe her, it could have also been for like a banquet or something at school. And she had mentioned that she liked dark chocolate.

Now, growing up, my mom liked milk chocolate more or less. So, you know, just simple things. So I was like, OK, dark chocolate.

I don't know much about dark chocolate. So I went to Walmart and I got what ended up being 90% cacao baking chocolate, which while dark, was not the kind of dark chocolate that she was looking for.

Another example would be the first time that I got her flowers. It was a flower that she had said was her favorite.

But being both young and poor and a college student at the time, I didn't really know much about flowers, so I got a rose bouquet and it wasn't all that great.

And then the next time, because I had heard from her friends, like, oh, he didn't get her roses. So then the next time I went to get her roses, and I thought I got her red roses, turns out they were orange.

And so it's really just been a learning process in trying to get good gifts. Do you have any experience either in receiving bad gifts or giving bad gifts?

I think the only time I purposely try to give a bad gift is maybe during a White Elephant game with family members. But I know that I would not like to receive a bad gift. So I try to give out good gifts as well.

Some people don't like getting gift cards, but I thoroughly enjoy getting gift cards.

Yes, definitely. Gift cards for me frees up so much of like now I feel like it's my choice, and so someone has enabled me to make personal decisions. I really like gift cards.

I think they're nice. But yeah, so Solomon here has given just a terrible gift to Hiram. Hiram's not very happy about it.

So even though Solomon was wise, he was not being particularly kind in this specific instance.

Probably intentional.

Yeah, very possibly intentional. You don't want to give, well, I guess he could have given, hey, you've given all this stuff to me. You've been a friend to my father.

I'm going to give you good cities, but he doesn't here. So, you know, little application. Give good gifts.

Give good gifts.

Another thing that happens in this section is that Pharaoh had conquered a Philistine city that was within, you know, the country of Israel, Giza, and had given the land of that city and any remaining buildings and everything to his daughter, who is

Solomon's wife. This gives a little bit of info on what we learned last week of why Solomon's building a house specifically for Pharaoh's daughter, his wife.

And the reason for that is because Pharaoh had conquered the city, which, just a side note, if you remember from the Book of Judges and everything, who was supposed to be conquering the Philistines and all of the other Aites, Jebusites, Hittites,

Hivites, all of those. Who was supposed to be, yeah, the Gibeon. Yep.

Gibeon. What? Not Gibeon.

Actually, the Gibeonites were one of the peoples that were supposed to be driven out of the land.

But the children of Israel were supposed to be the ones that were taking care of the Philistines, all of these foreign nations that had invaded the land that God had promised to Abraham.

And to this end, then now you even have Egypt is doing actively what the Israelites were supposed to do hundreds of years before. And it kind of goes back to the thing of God has a way of making his plan work out even when we aren't part of it.

And it would be so much better for us if we were doing what God wanted us to do and we were, you know, maybe in the political world or something. God will do whatever he wants to do.

But if we're able to partner with God and to do with God what he wants us to do, it's just so much better for us. So Pharaoh conquers this Philistine city, gives the land to his daughter.

Solomon builds a house on that land and also builds the rest of the city there. He builds several other cities as well.

Particularly when they're talking about building cities, you would build walls and stuff around the cities because that way no one can just come in, you know, toss a couple, you know, matches or torches and your whole city is destroyed.

A wall gives a little bit of protection. You can't have armies just run into your city, stuff like that. So Solomon's doing a lot of this building and all of that.

He also made the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites that were left in the land. He made them slaves or bond slaves.

These had been ordered to be wiped or driven out when Joshua entered the land hundreds of years before, but Israel had it.

And if you read the Book of Judges, you can read a lot of why, well, really, judges and Leviticus and Deuteronomy, of why God had wanted these people to be driven out of the land. They had been incredibly immoral and sin has a cost.

When we sin, it's not just something that, you know, is like, oh, that was bad, but, you know, it was just bad. That's it, because God is just, there is a punishment that has to happen for sin.

And so the sin had a cost on these nations, these people groups that were sinning just terribly, and they were worshiping false gods, they were killing their children, they were doing all sorts of just terrible things that really I wouldn't want to

bring up on the podcast. You can read about them in scripture, just awful things. And so God knew, hey, sin has a cost, but I also see God's mercy in a lot of this.

All throughout really those first couple books of history from Judges all the way through Nehemiah, really the end of the Minor Prophets and all of that, God still had mercy on these people.

You think of Rahab the harlot and her family, who were all Philistines, that God wanted them to be saved just as much as anyone else. You think of the people of Gibeon, and the story there in, I think it's Joshua chapter 6, maybe?

I think I might be a little bit late in the book for that. But you have the Gibeonites that were saved, that were rescued, that God worked in that. You think of Uriah the Hittite, who was married to Bathsheba, and God wanted the Hittites to be saved.

And we can see Uriah was a great man of God. You think of even the Ammonites and the Moabites. You think of the story of Ruth.

And really, all through the Old Testament is, even though these nations, these people groups had sin that had to be judged, for anyone that wanted to follow God, there was all of that mercy and that grace that was there, and God welcomed them.

And I think that's awesome. The other thought here with some of this is where Solomon has put now these people to work. There's a lot of complications that arise from all of these nations still being in the land and worshiping their own gods.

We'll see that next time. But this was something that Solomon had done of, okay, well, there's all of these people here. You know, they might try and attack us.

They might try and whatever. So I'm going to instead put them kind of into a labor force that the passages mention, hey, he didn't put any of the Children of Israel into these specific things.

The Children of Israel had, you know, more noble positions, captains, things of that nature, whereas most of the grunt work was done by these people that were left in the land.

Yeah, it's definitely a less than ideal situation, especially as we'll see next week. There were some big consequences that came about because of some of Solomon's actions.

But let's go now into Chapter 10, talking about the Queen of Sheba and some of that stuff. Carlos, why don't you talk us through that?

Yeah, so in the beginning of this chapter, it says that the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon, and this is someone who is of very high profile and someone who wasn't necessarily making a friendly visit, but in her mind, she needed to just find out, you

know, what is the truth about this guy, Solomon, because even though she's a thousand plus miles away, she's heard about Solomon and his kingdom and all the things that he's been able to accomplish, and stuff like that is just amazing how it gets

around. You know, he wasn't being broadcasted on Facebook Live or Instagram, but somehow he was able to be known throughout all the land. And so she comes and visits, and her main intent is to test him, to ask him really hard questions, because she

must have heard that he is super smart and has all this wisdom. So she tried to probably try to see if she can trip him up, maybe, and see that if he had any ability to get something wrong. So she goes there.

She gets there with a lot of stuff on camels, spices. She is no stranger to a luxurious lifestyle. So she has all this stuff with her.

And they travel about 1,500 miles. And that is a journey right there, just to go and talk to someone, to ask some questions, to find out who they are.

And what she saw is, when she came to visit, she came with, you know, all this stuff, and she was going to ask some of these questions, maybe riddles or some kind of really hard questions about, you know, what he does.

And what happened is, he says to her that nothing is hid from the king. He says that he was able to answer all her questions with ease, and it just showed her how smart he really is.

And it said in the Bible that she hadn't even heard half of what is true, really, about Solomon and his kingdom. She was literally just blown away.

Her breath was taken away by the fact of how smart he was, and how easy it was for him to answer all her questions. And when she's seen how smart he was, she said that, man, how great it must be for your servants to serve under a king as yourself.

And what she did, how she reacted was, she, after she told them, you know, man, it should be awesome. It should be awesome for your people to serve you.

And she told them, blessed be the Lord thy God, which I find interesting because it doesn't, it's not really saying that she believed in Solomon's God.

She's, but it is a testament to how great God is for someone like the Queen of Sheba to say something like that.

Yeah.

And we don't really know if she accepted Solomon's God, but she said that, man, blessed be the Lord, your God, Solomon.

And Solomon must have been blown back a little bit from that statement because, you know, God told them that if you're, if you're following my commandments, if you're, if you're doing what you know to do, then I will bless you.

And it seems like all the children of Israel know that. And Solomon was no stranger to God blessing. And he knows how to obey God and do what's right.

But once they stop doing that, you know, it's not going to be a cakewalk. You know, God, God is going to deal with his people in such a way as he sees fit.

And just, just because they've done right, doesn't mean they have the, you know, they have the right to do wrong.

And I just love that God, you know, keeps his promises, but he's not just going to bless people who are living, you know, away or away from him.

Yeah. I think it's awesome to the fact that she said anything about his God makes me think that Solomon probably brought up, hey, this wisdom doesn't just come from me, like it comes from God.

And here we can see Solomon at this point in his life realizes that everything that he's been given is from God.

And so when someone comes, asks him hard questions, sees all of the wealth, sees the great temple, Solomon's not attributing it all to himself. Instead, he's saying, hey, this comes from God. This is for God.

And so then when the Queen of Sheba comes and hears all of this, sees all of this, her response is, blessed be your God and all that. I think that's awesome. I also love the thought you brought up.

You don't earn points to cover up wrongdoing by all of the good things you have done. It's just, hey, I gotta follow God. I gotta worship him.

I gotta follow him. And doing good things doesn't then mean that you can go, oh, I've earned up enough points that I can spend them on some bad deeds now.

Yeah, I love that. It's really easy for us, as Christians, to kind of think of ourselves as, think of our good works as brownie points with God.

And the only reason that, the reason that God wants us to serve him is out of a heart of love and a humble spirit.

It's not because we're so great or that we have, our talents are necessary for God to work, but God gives us that privilege and honor to be able to work for him.

And, you know, he's chosen all of his, all Christians to do something for him, whether that's serving in your local church, being a part of a church staff. There's something that everyone can do.

Yeah, definitely. I think that's awesome. Anything else from, from chapter 10?

I know after the Queen of Sheba leaves, she gives Solomon a few gifts. Do you want to mention maybe some of those?

Yeah, they came from a land with many spices, and and stuff like that. So she gave him all these gifts, and she gave him a tons of, I think it actually came out to like tons of, was it gold? Did she give him any gold or?

Yeah, I think there was gold.

Looking here at the list are spices, precious stones. It says, almond trees, more precious stones, harps, salt trees. Yeah, tons of gold, spice.

Tons of people from all around gave him stuff. 200 targets of beaten gold, 600 shackles of gold, 300 shields of beaten gold, three pounds of gold to one shield. That's a heavy shield.

Yeah, and he made all these shields, and they can't even be used in battle, so he's just displaying how wealthy he is.

Yep, and it also mentions there's, in Solomon's throne room and stuff, there was a ton of carved lions and things that were there, which I think would be pretty cool.

If I had some carved lions or some stone lions or some gold lions out in front of my house, I feel like that would, well, I don't know that nowadays people would be very scared, but I think back in those days, they think that would be pretty

impressive.

Might be a $20 million line.

I know, for real.

Yeah, I think that's great.

And he has 500 shields that he can't use.

I know, it's ridiculous.

You know, gold was definitely not the best metal for defense. So, you know, more power to him for being able to make 500 gold shields that he can't use.

Yeah, definitely. It also mentions all of his cups were all gold.

You know, I wonder what it would be like for the servants to wash all those.

Oh, yeah, it had to be ridiculous.

You got to wash it and then polish it, you know, so it stays shiny.

Oh, yeah. I like how it mentions, if you're looking at your Bible, chapter 10, verse 21, all King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver.

If you have to specify, oh, yeah, I don't even own silver. That's for the poor people. The poor people own silver.

You know, I've got a lot of plastic cups at my house, maybe some, maybe some, you know, glass ones, not fancy glass ones. I've got like a mug, but I don't even have any silver things.

And I love how it mentions, oh, yeah, and there were no silver cups in all of King Solomon's house and all of that. It's crazy.

Yeah, he has surpassed every king ever in his riches. And the thing that we talked about before is that he only asks God for wisdom.

Yeah.

Yet, God bless him with riches and fame.

Yep. So just pray, ask God for wisdom, and you too can be as rich as Solomon. Just kidding.

Disclaimer.

No.

Disclaimer. The opinions expressed are solely those of heretics. No.

On a serious note, though, when we ask God for wisdom, when we ask God for grace, we can realize that as God's children, God, God wants to bless us.

It may very rarely be, you know, something that might be monetary, but you can know that God has your good and his glory in mind.

And for all of these things that we're talking about, that Solomon had, I didn't even get to, he also had ivory, which would come from elephant tusks. Very, very difficult to get.

And he also had apes and peacocks, you know, all sorts of crazy, exotic animals. For all of this, the point that even the Queen of Sheba made is all of this goes to the testimony of God, that blessed be the Lord your God for all of these things.

And I love verse 24 of Chapter 10. All of the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.

And all of this just goes back to the fact of, yes, Solomon was incredibly wealthy, Solomon was incredibly wise, but all of it comes back to all the glory has to go to God.

And we'll see next week some of the problems that came when Solomon started to focus on himself. And, you know, maybe some of the excesses of this current moment of, you know, how many did you say, 300, 500 shields of gold?

500.

Yeah, 500 shields of gold, completely unusable in battle. But all of these excesses, we can see him start to even go beyond in some areas next week.

But for this, for these couple of chapters, we can see some of the things that he did, trade deals he made, cities he built, all of his wealth, all of his wisdom. And we have to remember, wisdom comes from God. Wealth comes from God.

People may be rich, they might be poor, but all of it goes to, hey, only God has given, God can take away, so don't put your trust in your riches, don't put your trust in anything except for God.

Any thoughts about the passages, the chapters, wealth, wisdom, anything?

I think, annually, Solomon got around like 20 to 25 tons of gold, and that is just what he gets without people giving him stuff. So, everyone's coming from everywhere to give Solomon gold and all kinds of stuff.

And he is just flowing in an abundance of gold. And it's just crazy to think that he made so much money, so much gold and resources that he had too much.

He did, he did. Yup, and I think going back to what we said at the beginning of Chapter 9 with the terrible cities that he gave to Hiram King of Tyre, when God gives to us, we should be generous to others.

If God has given us, you know, an abundance of time, we should use our time to help others. We shouldn't just use it to live around. If God's given us money, we should be generous to others and help people out when they need it.

If God's given us talents, we need to use those gifts and abilities to help others. We have not been given what we've been given in anything just for us. What we've been given, we're supposed to give to other people.

Well, have any other thoughts?

No, but I think we got it. All right.

Well, look forward to being with you guys next week. As always, if you have any questions, any thoughts, any whatever, you can message us, DM us, PM us, whatever it is on Instagram with the at Bible Babels Handle.

We had several people that started following the Instagram page last week, and we'll try and get, I don't know, some quotes or clips or something on that page. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Bryon.

This is Kyle.

Thanks for joining us.