Fri 4th Feb 2022 - Daily Reading:
1 Kings 3:1-15
An Unlikely Marriage
The story of Solomon seeking wisdom from the Lord is a well-known one. When he was offered all the blessings in the Lord’s hand, he chose the thing he needed most to rule Israel well and the Lord, honouring Solomon’s choice, promised not only to give him wisdom but to bless him in many other ways as well.
However, just before this takes place, the writer of Kings tells us that Solomon took the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh as his wife. This little detail is more interesting than it might first appear.
Although Solomon was no doubt faithful to God in general, he was not a perfect man. He already had a wife when he married Pharaoh’s daughter, and this marriage was part of a weakness of Solomon’s – later in 1 Kings we will see that Solomon fell in love with many women from different nations, despite the Lord commanding his people not to make alliances with them. As Solomon grew old, he was drawn into worshipping the gods of his wives, just as the Lord had warned and, because of this, the Lord did not allow Solomon’s son to become king after him.
When God gives us a command, it is because he knows what he is doing. However wise Solomon may have been, he was foolish to ignore the Lord’s warning about this. Even if we do not understand all of God’s purposes, we will always do better if we put our trust in him rather than relying on our own understanding.
However, this marriage tells us something else. In the ancient world, rulers would give their daughters in marriage to powerful nations to secure peace between them. In Moses’ time, Egypt had been one of the most powerful nations in the world, and the Israelites had been their slaves. Now, a few hundred years later, the tables have turned. Egypt is weak and Solomon rules one of the most powerful nations – so powerful that the Pharaoh of Egypt wishes to make sure there is peace by marrying his daughter to the King of Israel. Moses could hardly have imagined as he led his people out of slavery that one day Israel would be more mighty that Egypt, but God knew. God knows it all, from the beginning to the end – we can certainly put our whole trust in him!