Solomon: Wise Man, or Wise Guy?

What is wisdom?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines wisdom as one's "ability to discern inner qualities and relationships", "good sense", or "accumulated philosophical or scientific learning". The word “wisdom” is interchangeable with synonyms like "insight", "judgment", and "knowledge". With these definitions, we must raise another question: who has the wisdom to decide what judgments are good and sound and wise?

As followers of Christ, we believe that the Bible is God's Word to us, and this makes His Word the definitive line of what true wisdom is. While we can look out at the created world and see evidence that there is a Creator (Rom. 1:20), we can only learn who this Creator is and how He desires us to live by hearing the words of Scripture He's given us to learn and live by (Rom. 10:17).

But how do we gain wisdom? James writes that God gives wisdom to all who ask Him for it (Jam. 1:5), and Proverbs reveals that wisdom is something that we must seek after and pursue (Prov. 8:17). We gain wisdom by allowing God to teach us through the applied understanding of His Word, and rightly discerning between the people and influences that vie for our lives.

In the book of 1 Kings, we find a man whose life is marked both by incredible insight, and incredible folly. Solomon is the son of David and Bathsheba, their second child, after their first child dies in consequence of David’s murder of Uriah, and his adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:14). Despite the messy origin of his heritage, God loves Solomon from his birth (2 Sam. 12:24-25), and is chosen by God, from among his many brothers, to stand as one of the forefathers of the Christ.

Even as a young ruler Solomon seems to understand how God desires him to rule as king over Israel, and these desires of God seem to be the genuine desire of Solomon’s heart as well. When approached by God in a dream and directed to ask of Him anything he wants, Solomon turns away from riches and horses and strength, and asks for wisdom, knowing that he needs wisdom from God Himself if he wishes to rule Israel well. And God pours this wisdom into Solomon’s heart, even as He blesses him with every treasure Solomon chose not to ask for (1 Kings 3).

But while Solomon starts off well, his ending serves as a sharp warning to every reader, and is, perhaps, an even greater warning to the consequence of neglecting the pursuit of God and His wisdom than every word he wrote on the matter. While Solomon first chooses God over the treasures of worldly kings, we find him living no different than the rest of the world by the time God tears the kingdom of Israel from his hands near the end of his life. He has accumulated chariots, wealth, and wives he loves more than God. He has turned his eyes back to Egypt, and to the worship of foreign gods. He has disobeyed every word God had written about what Israel’s king should be like. Rather than rule with a heart like his father David’s, Solomon leaves life with a heart divided between the wisdom of God, which is foolishness to the world, and the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God (1 Kings 9-11).

And this tension between wisdom and folly has not changed, from the time of Solomon to our world today, except in one way: God has revealed Himself to the world through the man Jesus Christ – descended from David and Solomon, but a better king, in every way – and He has declared Him both God and Saviour, and our only hope for reconciliation and peace with God (Matt. 17:5; John 3:16; 1 Tim. 2:5; Rom. 5:10-11; Col. 1:20-23).

Will our confidence in Christ be seen as folly to those who do not believe? Absolutely! But Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, “has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

By stepping in faith in the knowledge of the God we know but cannot yet see (Heb. 11:1), we preach the life, death, and resurrection of Christ with confidence, knowing that He is both the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and the only One who is worthy to be followed with an undivided heart.