Ecclesiastes 1: Did Solomon ask for this?
When I was a boy, I always felt the presence of God with me. I thank my parents for providing a lifestyle for me that taught me to listen for God. From an early age (11) I knew that he wanted me to follow him. One Sunday School lessons that impacted me as a child was God's offer to Solomon to give him anything he wanted. This is comparable to finding a genie in a lamp, and who hasn't dreamed about having those three wishes? I wondered what I would say if God made that offer to me? I remember reading 1 Kings 3:1-15. God comes to Solomon in a dream and says "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." Now there's a blank check.
Solomon humbly considers the offer and asks for a discerning heart (3:9) so that he can govern God's people. So his initial request comes from a heart that is humble, and his motivation is to shepherd God's people.
1 Kings 3:10 says "The Lord was pleased that Solomon asked for this." Then God went on to offer Solomon wealth and prosperity as well. He got every man's desire because he did not ask for it. "Seek first God's kingdom, and all these things will be added to you." This prayer so inspired me that I prayed it as written in the KJV at the age of 11, and many other times as well. If God was pleased by the prayer, then I wanted to pray it over and over again.
So, Solomon got brains, power, wealth--and a kingdom at peace after decades of war. Not a bad set up, if you ask me.
When I was young, it all sounded so simple. Now that I'm older, my first question would be, "What is the catch?" It is never that easy.
Here it is: 1 Kings 3:14 "If you will walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you long life." See also 9:4-7: "As for you, if you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you and will keep My statutes and My ordinances, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. But if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and the house which I have consecrated for My name, I will cast out of My sight. So Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples."
Follow my ways. Listen to the life and testimony of your father. Teach your children to follow my ways. This is the catch.
And if you have any knowledge at all of God's people, then you know they wouldn't be able to sustain their commitment for long.
So, Solomon receives wisdom, and he also gains notoriety, power, and great wealth.
And somewhere along the way he compromised his commitment to God's ways, which compromised his governing of the people. In the end, his kids didn't listen to him.
Thus, I enter Ecclesiastes 1, and I see a king who knows via the wisdom of God what is expected of his people. And I see a king who is frustrated because everything he knows is not being adopted by his people. Why is this? His own indiscretions with his wives and concubines and their gods? His lack of focus on the daily activities of governing? Too smart for his own good?
Simple answers may be too much to hope for. However, Solomon made a long journey from the young man who pleased God to the tired old man who saw everything as meaningless in Ecclesiastes 1.
I can't help but wonder: Did Solomon wake up one day and say to God "Did I ask for this? I don't remember asking for THIS!!!"
I prayed this prayer when I was young as well. Now, I want to have God's wisdom, but I want to avoid Solomon's failures, if it is possible to avoid failure. At the end of my days, I want to rejoice in the Lord, not to lament the darkness of the days. Can Ecclesiastes teach me anything about this? I HOPE (and believe) so.
Solomon humbly considers the offer and asks for a discerning heart (3:9) so that he can govern God's people. So his initial request comes from a heart that is humble, and his motivation is to shepherd God's people.
1 Kings 3:10 says "The Lord was pleased that Solomon asked for this." Then God went on to offer Solomon wealth and prosperity as well. He got every man's desire because he did not ask for it. "Seek first God's kingdom, and all these things will be added to you." This prayer so inspired me that I prayed it as written in the KJV at the age of 11, and many other times as well. If God was pleased by the prayer, then I wanted to pray it over and over again.
So, Solomon got brains, power, wealth--and a kingdom at peace after decades of war. Not a bad set up, if you ask me.
When I was young, it all sounded so simple. Now that I'm older, my first question would be, "What is the catch?" It is never that easy.
Here it is: 1 Kings 3:14 "If you will walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you long life." See also 9:4-7: "As for you, if you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you and will keep My statutes and My ordinances, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. But if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and the house which I have consecrated for My name, I will cast out of My sight. So Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples."
Follow my ways. Listen to the life and testimony of your father. Teach your children to follow my ways. This is the catch.
And if you have any knowledge at all of God's people, then you know they wouldn't be able to sustain their commitment for long.
So, Solomon receives wisdom, and he also gains notoriety, power, and great wealth.
And somewhere along the way he compromised his commitment to God's ways, which compromised his governing of the people. In the end, his kids didn't listen to him.
Thus, I enter Ecclesiastes 1, and I see a king who knows via the wisdom of God what is expected of his people. And I see a king who is frustrated because everything he knows is not being adopted by his people. Why is this? His own indiscretions with his wives and concubines and their gods? His lack of focus on the daily activities of governing? Too smart for his own good?
Simple answers may be too much to hope for. However, Solomon made a long journey from the young man who pleased God to the tired old man who saw everything as meaningless in Ecclesiastes 1.
I can't help but wonder: Did Solomon wake up one day and say to God "Did I ask for this? I don't remember asking for THIS!!!"
I prayed this prayer when I was young as well. Now, I want to have God's wisdom, but I want to avoid Solomon's failures, if it is possible to avoid failure. At the end of my days, I want to rejoice in the Lord, not to lament the darkness of the days. Can Ecclesiastes teach me anything about this? I HOPE (and believe) so.
Labels: Ecclesiastes, First Kings, hope, Solomon
posted by Randy Rogers at
9:38 AM
2 Comments:
"9 So give Your servant an obedient heart to judge (U) Your people and to discern between good and evil."
One of the first things I note without really understanding it is that Solomon asks for(and in asking pleases God) and receives the very thing that God had commanded Adam and Eve to avoid--the knowledge of good and evil.
I also note that Solomon is looking at everything from the perspective of his own effort and accomplishment with very little acknowledgement of God's role in the life he has lived. This is in contrast to the Song Of Solomon which although not mentioning God by name seems to be a conversation between God and His People.
So, perhaps it is that this knowledge is such that 1)man is tempted and often yields to think in far grander terms toward himself than is real and that 2)God in his own time will reveal the benefice of that 'forbidden tree' to man in terms and degrees He sees as fitting.
Even Solomon, as wise, powerful, wealthy and otherwise blessed as he was, turns bitter from the onus of his perspective and finds relief only in the Grace of God.
Robert,
Thanks for your insight here. Well said!! I did not make the connection between Solomon's request and Adam and Eve's folly. I like your thought that this may be God's way of further revealing the great power of the knowledge of good and evil.
His knowledge that he gained seems to have overwhelmed him. However, it appears to me, reading between some of the lines here, that he mixed in some arrogance into the knowledge he had obtained. I don't know which came first--the knowledge or the arrogance. They most likely built on each other.
Finding the grace of God is difficult because of the pessimism I sense. However, he seems to find one theme over and over again: be happy with the basic gifts of God: work, life, food, provision. Don't over-reach. Be satisfied with what God intends for you to have. If I were to summarize the truth of the book so far, that would be it.
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