Beyond What We Could Ever Ask

Solomon’s Rule Consolidated

3 Now Solomon formed a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem.² The people were still sacrificing on the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days.

³ Now Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he was sacrificing and burning incense on the high places. ⁴ And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, because that was the great high place; Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵ In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.”

Solomon’s Prayer

⁶ Then Solomon said, “You have shown great faithfulness to Your servant David my father, according as he walked before You in truth, righteousness, and uprightness of heart toward You; and You have reserved for him this great faithfulness, that You have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. ⁷ And now, Lord my God, You have made Your servant king in place of my father David, yet I am like a little boy; I do not know how to go out or come in. ⁸ And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen, a great people who are too many to be numbered or counted. ⁹ So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, to discern between good and evil. For who is capable of judging this great people of Yours?”

God’s Answer

¹⁰ Now it was pleasing in the sight of the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.¹¹ And God said to him, “Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself a long life, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the lives of your enemies, but have asked for yourself discernment to understand justice, ¹² behold, I have done according to your words. Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you. ¹³ I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all your days. ¹⁴ And if you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.”

¹⁵ Then Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and made peace offerings, and held a feast for all his servants.

Solomon Wisely Judges

¹⁶ Then two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.¹⁷ The one woman said, “Pardon me, my lord: this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. ¹⁸ And it happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. ¹⁹ Then this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him.²⁰ So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your servant was asleep, and she laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. ²¹ When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead! But when I examined him closely in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne!” ²² Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” So they spoke before the king.

²³ Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’” ²⁴ And the king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king. ²⁵ And the king said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” ²⁶ But the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son, and she said, “Pardon me, my lord! Give her the living child, and by no means kill him!” But the other woman was saying, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; cut him!” ²⁷ Then the king replied, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.” ²⁸ When all Israel heard about the judgment which the king had handed down, they feared the king, because they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice.

Solomon’s Officials

4 Now King Solomon was king over all Israel. ² These were his officials: Azariah the son of Zadok was the priest; ³ Elihoreph and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha werescribes; Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the secretary; ⁴ and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the army; and Zadok and Abiathar were priests; ⁵ and Azariah the son of Nathan was over the deputies; and Zabud the son of Nathan, a priest, was the king’s confidant; ⁶ and Ahishar was over the household; and Adoniram the son of Abda was over the forced labor.

⁷ Solomon had twelve deputies over all Israel, who provided food for the king and his household; each deputy had to provide food for a month in the year. ⁸ And these were their names: Ben-hur, in the hill country of Ephraim; ⁹ Ben-deker in Makaz and Shaalbim, and Beth-shemesh, and Elonbeth-hanan; ¹⁰ Ben-hesed in Arubboth (Socoh was his and all the land of Hepher); ¹¹ Ben-abinadab in all the hills of Dor (Taphath the daughter of Solomon was his wife); ¹² Baana the son of Ahilud in Taanach and Megiddo, and all Beth-shean which is beside Zarethan below Jezreel, from Beth-shean to Abel-meholah as far as the other side of Jokmeam; ¹³ Ben-geber in Ramoth-gilead (the villages of Jair, the son of Manasseh, which are in Gilead were his: the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, sixty great cities with walls and bronze bars were his); ¹⁴ Ahinadab the son of Iddo in Mahanaim; ¹⁵ Ahimaaz in Naphtali (he also married Basemath the daughter of Solomon); ¹⁶ Baana the son of Hushai in Asher and Bealoth; ¹⁷ Jehoshaphat the son of Paruah in Issachar; ¹⁸ Shimei the son of Ela in Benjamin; ¹⁹ Geber the son of Uri in the land of Gilead, the country of Sihon king of the Amorites and of Og king of Bashan; and he was the only deputy who was in the land.

Solomon’s Power, Wealth, and Wisdom

²⁰ Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance; they were eating, drinking, and rejoicing.

²¹ Now Solomon was ruling over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt; they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

²² Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty kors of fine flour and sixty kors of meal, ²³ ten fat oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, and a hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened geese. ²⁴ For he was ruling over everything west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah even to Gaza, over all the kings west of the River; and he had peace on all sides surrounding him. ²⁵ So Judah and Israel lived securely, everyone under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. ²⁶ Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. ²⁷ And those deputies provided food for King Solomon and all who came to King Solomon’s table, each in his month; they allowed nothing to be lacking. ²⁸ They also brought barley and straw for the war horses and baggage horses to the place where it was required, each deputy according to his duty.

²⁹ Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. ³⁰ Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. ³¹ For he was wiser than all other people, more than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations.³² He also told three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005. ³³ He told of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall; he told also of animals, birds, crawling things, and fish. ³⁴ People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

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