King Solomon
First Kings 1:1 to 11:28
1:1 King David was getting very old and feeble. He even had trouble staying warm so the country was searched for the perfect beautiful young virgin girl to cuddle with him. She was found and tended to the old king's physical needs but he didn't have sex with her or anything creepy like that.
1:5 With the future kingship up for grabs pretenders began attempting to consolidate their power. Meanwhile Solomon's mother, Bathsheba, joined with the prophet Nathan and convinced the aging David to make Solomon king right away. After much fanfare and a few speeches, David was dead and Solomon was king.
2:13 Solomon's brother asked if it would be OK if he married a certain sex slave that was in the royal harem. Solomon wasted no time killing the brother and also an old general and an old priest and replaced them all with his younger friends.
3:1 Solomon made friends with the Pharaoh of Egypt and sealed the deal by adding one of Pharaoh's daughters to his wife collection. She came complete with a city of Canaanites her father had conquered and given to her as a dowry.
3:3 Solomon did a lot of killing and burning of animals for the Lord. After more than a thousand sacrifices and a long speech by the king, the Lord made Solomon into a wise guy. Suddenly Solomon woke up and realized it had all been just a dream. So he went to the Ark of the Covenant and killed a bunch of animals for real.
3:16 Two feuding prostitutes had a minor domestic family dispute which for some odd reason was brought before the king of the whole country for arbitration. One of the women testified "I share a small apartment with this other woman here and we both recently had babies. During the night while we were asleep she accidentally rolled over and smothered her own baby and then the bitch snuck in and switched it with my baby. When I awoke and offered my kid something to suck, it was dead." The other woman said “Oh no you di’int. You were the slut who did the switching, not me. She’s lying”
Solomon said "Alright calm down, I've heard the testimony and I've read your briefs. Here’s how I'm going to solve this. Bailiff, bring me my sword. I'll slice the baby straight down the middle and give each whore a half. Fair is fair" The real mother of course shouted "No no, please, are you crazy? That would most likely kill the baby. So just give it to her!" But the bogus mother said "Yes, yes, kill it, KILL IT!" So Solomon gave the whole child to the real mother and all of Israel thought the Lord's infinite wisdom must surely be helping the king perform such amazingly clever courtroom pranks.
4:1 Solomon's control over his kingdom was great and his princes were many. Solomon was wise, yes very wise, yes very very wise. Wise that is, by some hard to understand definition of the word. Meanwhile he was certainly clever. And he was smart. He could talk intelligently about everything from trees to fish.
5:1 With the some of the neighboring kings giving him materials, and skilled labor, and lots of credit, Solomon built a big temple and a brand new palace. He forced people to work on the projects. The structures were extremely fancy and expensive. After the temple was finished there was much sacrificing and the Lord appeared as so much smoke it ran everyone out coughing and choking. Solomon gave a long prayer and the Lord replied with a long one of his own. Solomon had to give one creditor twenty cities just to pay for the materials for the temple.
10:1 The Queen of Sheba came by one day to visit and brought some tough questions for the mighty king and his world famous wisdom. Solomon answered all her questions and she awarded him with valuable prizes. Sol was smitten with her and gave her whatever she wanted. He pretty much let her have the run of the place. Perhaps he was intrigued by a woman who had the mysterious ability to express her own thoughts.
Meanwhile King Solomon lived in magnificent luxury.
11:1 Solomon liked strange women. He accumulated 700 wives and 300 sex slaves. Some of these women were foreigners and they had a fair amount of sway over him. The women encouraged Solomon to begin fostering religious freedom and cultural tolerance with his subjects and eventually he even built a high place for Chemosh, which was the favorite god of his Moabite wives.
The Lord warned Solomon to stop respecting differences of opinion and catering to cultural sensitivity. But for the wisest man ever, Solomon sure ignored the Lord a lot.
The Lord even threatened to kill Solomon's son. Then he stirred up a military adversary to pester and annoy Solomon's army. These things the Lord did had very little effect on Solomon's behavior.
