Divine Judgment: External and Internal Enemies. 1 Kings 11:14-19
This section is dealing with God's discipline on Solomon and on Israel because of leadership. The discipline is announced directly to Solomon, it is not mediated through a prophet. This distinguishes Solomon from all of the other kings—not that Solomon is not under the authority of a prophet but because of God's unique plan for Solomon and the unique way in which God blessed Solomon, Solomon had a direct revelation from God who appeared to him twice previously. In this chapter, even though it does not state that God appeared to him, God is directly revealing to him the discipline and the reasons for the discipline that He is bringing upon Solomon—because of his disobedience. Solomon's sin was really a sin of internationalism related to his unwillingness to trust in God to provide security for Israel. So at one level it is a challenge to the authority of God. Solomon is no longer looking to God as the ultimate authority and the one who provides security for the nation.
And even though we do not live in a nation that has a direct contract with God as Israel did we still recognise that in our lives and in the life of our nation we ultimately still look to God as the one who provides security and stability. Security and stability for us in terms of a nation in the church age always relates back to the divine institutions. That is really the foundation for thinking critically about anything going on in history. Whenever we look at history, whether we are talking about American history, Jewish history, or what is going on in Russia, these give us a universal framework for analysing and understanding and, to some degree, interpreting history.
With each of the divine institutions there is an authority, especially with the first three. In individual responsibility every individual is responsible to God. This was established at the beginning of creation when God placed Adam in the garden and said that he could eat anything in the garden except for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if he ate from that tree (disobedience to God) there would be consequences (spiritual death). So we have individual responsibility. That is the most fundamental issue in dealing with any kind of social relationship. Man is responsible for the decisions he makes, responsible for taking care of himself, providing for himself, and as part of this we have the development of the concept of private ownership of property, private responsibility for what one earns and makes. When there is an attempt to spread that responsibility out and get into various forms of collectivism this violates individual responsibility.
The second divine institution is marriage. Marriage defined in Scripture and defined by God is in terms of the marriage of one man and one woman. This excludes polygamy, any kind of marriage between members of the same sex, and it does away with any other situations where there is an attempt to do away with the core element on one man and one woman with the man in the leadership role. The man is the one who is responsible to God. It is the marriage itself that is the training ground for the next generation. It is the responsibility of the parents to train the children, not the government or the church. It is the responsibility of every parent to train the children. It is in the context of the real life situations and circumstances that every family faces that parents have the responsibility to communicate and to teach how the Word of God applies to every single situation in life. This is how the truth is passed on from one generation to another. Once there is anything else coming in to interfere with that it ultimately leads to a breakdown. So once we get away from the divine institution of marriage society will begin to break down.
The first three divine institutions are different from the next two because they are establishing principles before the fall, before there was ever any sin. There was this embedded authority in each of those institutions. By institution is meant something that was established by God that is necessary and that is embedded within the race and the way He makes man as a social creature. These institutions cannot be changed or there will be a complete breakdown of society, a disintegration of the national institution.
Each of these has an authority. Under individual responsibility is the authority of God. In marriage there is the husband, and in family the authority is the collective unity of the parents. We see a real breakdown in all of these areas. Notice that at the core of every one of these institutions is this concept of authority which always takes us back to the key issue in the angelic conflict, whether or not we are going to submit to the authority of God and take Him at His Word, that things should be done in His way. That deals with the first three divine institutions.
The next two we have talked about were established after the flood when there was a major shift in the way in which human history is conducted. The first has to do with the institution of human government, which comes out of the Noahic covenant. Human government is established and judicial authority is delegated to man, primarily in the area of capital punishment. This is the most difficult and extreme situation and responsibility that man has judicially, and so the establishment of that by a fortiori argument establishes all of the other types of judicial decision. So man is responsible now for adjudicating his own circumstances, situations and disagreements, as well as criminality. That comes out of the Noahic covenant, and that covenant applies to all human beings throughout all time. At the end of the Noahic covenant there was also a responsibility given, and that responsibility is the responsibility to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They were to scatter, to spread out, but man rejected that mandate from God and instead of obeying man unified in rebellion against God at the tower of Babel. The tower of Babel is not simply a political statement, it is also a religious statement. That is what hangs together all the way through various attempts of man toward various forms of internationalism to disobey God and to orient himself clearly within just a temporal framework. Man thinks that everything is within this closed system on the earth and that man can control his destiny and his future. This is indicated today at the United Nations. That is where Solomon breaks down because what he is trying to do is provide security and stability for Israel apart from God and by relying upon man.
Is that fourth the last of the divine institutions? There seems to be something else. What we have in common in the divine institutions is that they have been established by God as integral societal working principles that are true for everyone, whether they are a believer or an unbeliever. That is important to understand because even unbelievers or societies that aren't built on the truth of God's Word or just have a minimal witness from the Scriptures or from the Old testament, if they have an understanding of individual responsibility, an understanding of marriage and family and government, and these things are working together, and they understand that God has established nations and national boundaries, then they can have a measure of stability and security because they recognise those things. So when we come to trying to identify a further divine institution in terms of the church or something distinctly Christian, something related to grace, and that somehow this has to be true for everyone, this has to come out of the Abrahamic covenant, because God said: "And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." So God instituted this distinction of Israel in the Old Testament and that it would be through Israel that God would communicate His Word to all mankind. So there is an establishment there of Israel as a unique and distinct people of God, and they are to be held distinct, and how the rest of humanity treats them is going to have an effect on how those nations survive, and whether they are stable or not. This fits the criteria that this applies to every nation, every people group, throughout all of history, that God is going to deal with them and their social stability and survival as a nation by how they relate to Israel, and by extension we could say how they relate to God's Word; because Israel, as we can see in the New Testament, is the custodian of God's Word and revelation.
This helps us to understand what is happening in 1 Kings 11, that Solomon has rejected God as the King of the nation, and by intermarrying with the daughters of the royal families and aristocracy in the surrounding nations he has opted for reliance upon man and human conventions for security. God is going to punish him because God is the head of the nation Israel. God had said, "You shall have no other gods before me," and this is both a political and a spiritual statement. By rejecting God and by intermarrying with the aristocratic households of the surrounding nations, and bringing their religions into Israel, what Solomon is doing is rejecting that revelation from God, that truth from God that His nation Israel is the custodian of. And it is not just that Solomon got involved in idolatry but the people followed his leadership. We see in this passage that the people have rejected God as well and have succumbed to idolatry with worship of all of these national gods from surrounding countries.
Divine discipline operates within two different spheres. One sphere is what we might identify as a sort of natural cause and effect relationship in terms of bad decisions—the reap what you sow principle. The consequences of the bad decisions we make are destructive and harmful. In discipline God can choose out of His grace to completely remove the punishment, or God decides to limit or minimize the discipline so that it is not as harsh as it could have been. We can see this with Solomon and with his father David. David committed at least two capital crimes where he, under the Mosaic Law, should have been given the death penalty. God commuted that sentence but in its place there was a fourfold discipline that came into David's life. Solomon also, introduced the worship of Moloch, which is specifically stated in Deuteronomy to be a capital crime, nevertheless God doesn't have him executed and minimizes the punishment out of grace and out of His care for David. This is spelled out in 1 Kings 11:12, 13. Twice he emphasises that the relationship with David is the reason that Solomon is not going to experience the division of the kingdom in his lifetime. The other sphere or category would be divine intervention such as the plagues of Egypt or the end-time judgments of the Tribulation period. This is where God enhances the judgment in ways that only God can do it, and it is very clear that these judgments are coming directly from God.
This divine discipline of Israel that is going to begin in this chapter is based on something else as well, and that is the legal conditions that are laid down in then Mosaic Law. In Leviticus 26:14 we see the beginning of the description of five stages or cycles of divine discipline on Israel. But this precedes that. What we see here is that God is going to raise up adversaries—specifically three enemies. God is going to use both external enemies and internal enemies to discipline Israel. The rise of these external enemies is specifically attributed to God. 1 Kings 11:14 NASB "Then the LORD raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was of the royal line in Edom.
What we see is that all of these three individuals all have some historic problems with the house of David—the way that David defeated Edom, the way that David defeated Zobah. There are historic problems here. But if Solomon had been obedient to God then God had promised him that it would be through his line that God would bring blessing. That was the condition, and a condition implies contingency. This is one of the great things to see in Scripture, that on the basis of or recognising the reality of human responsibility God's administration of His plan in history is of such grandeur that it is not limited by human decisions and by God having His own set plan, and only this one thing is going to happen. God has built into the history of mankind real contingencies based on human volition so that of man disobeys certain things happen, if man disobeys other things will happen. These are real contingencies and God in His omniscience knows all that can place and will take place.
1 Kings 11:15 NASB "For it came about, when David was in Edom, and Joab the commander of the army had gone up to bury the slain, and had struck down every male in Edom
Joab was an extremely blood-thirsty general and there were many times when he went outside of the law and killed when he should not have killed. Due to Joab's sinfulness and blood-thirstiness he creates this scenario that is eventually going to be used by God to bring discipline on Israel.
2 Samuel 8:3 NASB "Then David defeated Hadadezer, the son of Rehob king of Zobah, as he went to restore his rule at the River … [13, 14] So David made a name {for himself} when he returned from killing 18,000 Arameans* in the Valley of Salt.
This antagonism had gone on from a least the time of Saul. When Saul took the kingdom over he fought against all these enemies on every side, against Moab which is north of Edom, the sons of Ammon which is north of Moab, Edom, the kings of Zobar, and the Philistines. There has been historical antagonism between the Israelites and these nations who dominated the Trans-Jordan area.
1 Kings 11:18, 19 NASB "They arose from Midian and came to Paran; and they took men with them from Paran and came to Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave him a house and assigned him food and gave him land.
Illustrations