Solomon’s story is a particularly enigmatic one in the history of the kings. The story of David, even interlarded with his moral failures, had nonetheless been a hagiography. He begins as the ideal choice for king, lives as an attractively flawed hero, and ends his life revered.

The narrative of Solomon begins in a similar mood—even more so. Though we’re not entirely sure why—we may suspect David’s guilt—his father chooses Solomon as king in preference to his older brother. Solomon can be forgiven, we suspect, for the rocky transition to kingship in 1 Kings 1 and 2: New kings not infrequently had to eliminate rivals or avenge their fathers’ grudges.

Those troubles out of the way, Solomon hits what is perhaps a high point in Chapter 3 even for biblical heroes. When approached by God with a spiritual blank check—God offers to give him anything for which he asks—he asks simply for wisdom. We’re not sure of the process God uses to grant his request (whether it was bestowed instantly, or over time; with effort, or magically downloaded into his brain) but God clearly so approves of Solomon’s request that he gives him all of the shallow, materialistic things Solomon might have asked for and didn’t. He becomes not only a great king, but also a man of great wealth and power. On top of all, he is an artist, architect, musician, poet, scientist, and naturalist.

We also see him rise still farther in the esteem of the writer of the first ten chapters of 1 Kings when he builds a permanent temple in Jerusalem. With the assistance of Hiram, a monarchical friend in a neighboring kingdom, he constructs an edifice whose beauty and perfection the narrator can hardly find words to describe. The pinnacle of Solomon’s reign is the dedication of the temple and the humble and thoughtful prayer the king himself prays to induce the final divine consecration, which is then topped of by a message from God himself assuring Solomon of God’s complete support for his reign (9: 3–9).

In fact, with the exception of a brief dark warning against idolatry at the end of this revelation, there is nothing in the first ten chapters of 1 Kings that significantly mars the picture of Solomon. He is wise, righteous, wealthy, talented—like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. That is why Chapter 11 drops like a chunk of stone onto the picture. It sounds almost as if a second author had read Solomon’s story as written by his largely uncritical, hero-worshiping colleague, and decided to tell the rest of the story.

We ought not be entirely surprised too learn that Solomon is simply too good to be true. When someone seems too perfect, you immediately suspect there is more to the story than you’ve heard. Something dark must be happening behind the scenes. Somewhere there is someone who knows the story behind the story, and tells it.

Yet even this muckraker, this National Enquirer reporter of the Solomonic monarchy, cannot bring himself to blame Solomon unequivocally. It is not Solomon’s fault, he suggests, but the fault of his wives.

Feminists have not infrequently complained of sexism in parts of the biblical narrative, and their complaint is hard to deny. Perhaps this is one more example of the same. Though Solomon’s identified sin is worshiping his wives’ pagan gods, it is they who are assigned the blame, not Solomon (11: 3). Solomon’s fault is not spiritual hubris, but being too much in love (though with roughly a thousand women.)

Whether it has two authors, or only one, Chapter 11 clearly does a U-turn in its assessment of Solomon. The uncredited background for Chapter 11 has to be Deuteronomy 17: 14–20. This portion of the law prescribes kingly behavior (though God would actually have preferred that Israel not have a king at all). A king must be chosen by God; he must not be a foreigner; he must not "multiply horses for himself," or trade with Egypt for horses. And, significantly, "he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply for himself silver and gold" (vs. 17). If he meets these expectations, "he may continue long in his kingdom" (vs. 20)—implying, of course, that if he transgresses this rule his reign will suffer.

In Deuteronomy 17 the narrator of 1 Kings 11 finds the reason that the wisest, most perfect man in all of Israel’s history is the one responsible the destruction of national unity—and that after only three generations of monarchy.

The story leaves the reader with some ambiguities. Should not the God-granted wisdom that helped Solomon succeed through his life have saved him from such a bad end? Why did God give him those "extras" (money and success) if it was ultimately to his failure? Was that failure, then, entirely his fault? Why don’t we discern his spiritual decay before the end of the story?

Yet there is at least one simple lesson in Solomon’s life. You cannot, in the end, serve God and someone or something else. Divided spiritual loyalties are the kiss of death to spiritual success, and the quest of every spiritual life ought to be to remove that thing (even a hand or an eye according to Jesus’ formulation in Matthew 5: 29–30) that interferes with wholehearted devotion to God. The pernicious feature of spiritual deterioration highlighted in this story is that it may sneak up on us. It was decaying Solomon from within even while a biographer could write his story as one of almost unqualified success.

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