As an aside, the Gezer Calendar is a kids book that teaches Israelite children how to farm and to read. This shows that Israel spoke Hebrew in Solomon’s day and were literate because of the scripture. They were cognizant of God’s Word and His values and purposes for them.
But in a word, Solomon’s kingdom shows that the promises leading up to this time are not hyperbole. It is a taste of God’s kingdom. The Gezer calendar is archaeological evidence that the people were engaged in reading and knowing about this because they knew God’s promises in scripture.
One of the first books of the Bible that a little child would learn was Leviticus where it says in the context of covenant blessings and cursings for disobedience:
I will place My residence among you, and I will not reject you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom.
Leviticus 26:11-13 Holman Christian Standard Bible
This was the goal. Israel was to be that kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God was using Israel to be just that. Contrary to what some would claim, which is a blogpost for another time, God did later divorce only a generation of Israel. But it was that generation, not that God permanently set aside Israel from that role. We see this in the Hebrew. We see later in the same book of Jeremiah the institution of the future new covenant, which is clearly dictated as belonging to Israel. But backing up somewhat, we see that Solomon’s kingdom proves the reality of the physical nature of God’s kingdom and its blessings.
Solomon’s Rise to Power
It starts with Adonijah’s treachery during David’s reign…Israel is not a monarchy. It is a theocracy. In the ancient near east, it was thought that if a man could not sleep with a woman, he was unfit to be king. So, they are testing David with young virgin. So Adonijah rises to replace David. It is actually stressed that David is old and weak. Nathan and Bathsheba tell David, and he doesn’t seem to act right away, but then he does. It shows that though David was weak, he became strong because Israel is not a monarchy. It is a theocracy. So, if God is in control, He can cause what appears strong to be made inverted or subordinated.
There is a prayer that Solomon’s kingdom would surpass David’s. Hence, You see the Davidic Covenant in Solomon even more. The key to how this works is obedience that comes from the heart. This is how the king should work and be judged.
Benaiah the son of Jehoiada answered the king and said, “Amen! Thus may the Lord, the God of my lord the king, say. As the Lord has been with my lord the king, so may He be with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord King David!”
— 1 Kings 1:36-37 ESV
Obedience requires some wisdom in order to know how to act. Oftentimes, we have a binary type of perspective with choices A and B. Adonijah wants to take Abishag the concubine which would make a threat to the throne. So, Solomon can either accept him or kill him. Then he has a choice between allowing Joab to live clinging to the altar or kill him and desecrate the altar. He kills him. Shimei was told not to go east of the Jordan, but he went west. Solomon could admit that he made a slip of the lip and allow him to live because what he really wanted was for him not to leave town, but he kills him anyway (choice B). Abiathar reminds us that there is a choice “C”:
Then to Abiathar the priest the king said, “Go to Anathoth to your own field, for you deserve to die; but I will not put you to death at this time, because you carried the ark of the Lord God before my father David, and because you were afflicted in everything with which my father was afflicted.” So Solomon dismissed Abiathar from being priest to the Lord, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord, which He had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.
— 1 Kings 2:26-27 ESV
Where Solomon keeps failing is that he is not doing justice the right way. It isn’t that he shouldn’t execute these men. It is that he needs to go about it the right way.
Solomon’s “Lev Shamea” mixed with failure
1 Kings 3 shows that Solomon marries an Egyptian princess. The idea is to form a good alliance. It was politically smart, but theologically dumb.
God asks Solomon what He should give to him. Solomon asks not for literal wisdom but for a “listening heart,” “Lev Shamea” in Hebrew. Solomon knew he needed the right heart. It was not just that you were smart, but that you listened to God. Wisdom is the skill to know God’s word so well that you live it out. This kind of wisdom is the ability to discern good and evil like Adam and Even originally were tempted by in the garden, but in Solomon’s case, how He could discern between the two.
In 1 Kings 3, Solomon demonstrates this wisdom in the case between the two women and their dispute over the baby. And in 1 King 4, God provides animals, regenerates the ground to provide the huge amounts of food that is listed. This all points back to Eden.
“For he had dominion over everything west of the River, from Tiphsah even to Gaza, over all the kings west of the River; and he had peace on all sides around about him.”
— 1 Kings 4:24 ESV
The word in the above verse, “dominion” shows that Solomon is ruling like Adam. And the word peace expressing his relationship with the surrounding nations shows that Solomon, whose name relates to the Hebrew word for peace is like Shiloh in Genesis 49 where Jacob blesses Judah and promises a kingly line that is consummate in Shiloh. But Solomon is like Adam also because he was uncommonly wise about nature:
“He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall; he spoke also of animals and birds and creeping things and fish.”
— 1 Kings 4:33 ESV
This kingdom is beautiful. He asked for a listening heart, and he has a proximity of that, but he doesn’t have the perfection of it. He failed and multiplied another of the three things (horses – 1 Kings 4:6) that Deuteronomy 17 says for kings not to multiply. But this is still a foretaste of what the true kingdom will be under the true Second Adam, who has not yet established His earthly reign.
Solomon’s kingdom is a New Covenant anticipation. It also shows that in order to bring this in, you have to have a listening heart. This place described in 1 Kings 4 and 5 is the definition of kingdom. We know that the OT brings an expectation of incredible harvests and peace, and prosperity. Only a second Adam can bring that.
The Temple and Solomon’s Palace
Solomon wants to build a temple because it is the beacon to all the world that this is Eden. Obviously, one can exaggerate the symbolism of the Temple, but it is still language that is real in that it reveals that this is Eden. Israel alone had the way back to Eden. The reason God had Solomon construct the temple was because it was the perfect time to witness a grand temple in this time of prosperity. If David had built it, it would have looked like a war trophy.
1 Kings 6:1 says that these things took place 480 years since the exodus from Egypt took place. The reason that it mentions this is because the kingdom isn’t here until the kingdom is inaugurated. This is the same reason why there is a second Exodus and we are not there yet even today. The bottom line is that in the Bible you are not delivered until you are literally delivered, and you are not delivered until you have the kingdom. In the mean time, we today, are in exile along with Israel from the promised kingdom (1 Peter 1:1; 2:11; 5:13)
The temple is shaped like an altar. Inside, there are cedar panels to remind you of the trees of Eden. There are no stones because you remove them from your garden so that it is fruitful.
Inside there are cherubim which ride with God on His chariot throne, and they guard God’s presence. Their presence means that God can dwell with His people in His full splendor again. This is a beacon of hope to the whole world. Then, there is a weird interruption in chapter 7:
It is all about Solomon’s palace. Why would you put Solomon’s palace and home in the midst of a talk about the Temple? It is because Solomon’s priorities are misplaced. Solomon has too much focus on himself. He is therefore not the guy to get the job done as the king.
7:13ff. There are two pillars at the Temple: Boaz (my strength is in Him) and Jachin (God establishes). But if you think this is all just about Israel: On the outside of the temple, there was a huge bronze bowl with twelve oxen underneath holding it up. The bowl reminds you of the world, and the 12 oxen are the twelve tribes as they are leading them to the Davidic and true King.
This and other cleaning stations and tools described also in chapter 7 show how you can only gain access to God through holiness and cleansing. All this finds its consummation in the dedication of the temple:
When Solomon finished praying, fire descended from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests were not able to enter the Lord’s temple because the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. All the Israelites were watching when the fire descended and the glory of the Lord came on the temple. They bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground. They worshiped and praised the Lord:
For He is good,
2 Chronicles 7:1-3 – Holman Christian Standard Version
for His faithful love endures forever.
But just because Israel has a leading role in worship, does not mean that other nations do not worship. They are like the worship team in a church setting. That is why the church is such a surprise. We have equal access of closeness to God. And yet these building codes for the temple and its artifacts are worshipful and deep.
For example, the golden table of the bread of the presence shows that God is present and provides bread. The lampstand is to be always lit because His presence is always with you and always provides. Solomon’s kingdom is a light to the world that God is present and able to provide. And that is witnessed above in the radical amounts of plenty that God supplied richly to Israel during Solomon’s reign.
All of these artifacts of the Temple and its very structure, even its physical location and the priesthood are indicative of kingdom. All of it points to Eden and God’s universal restoration of humanity. Solomon’s kingdom proves that this is not just hyperbole or exaggeration that winds up being fulfilled spiritually as if the church in our day supersedes all this final expectation. G.K. Beale recognizes the deep symbolism as well, though I disagree with his conclusions about what kingdom is.
God has dwelled with his people from the very beginning in various forms of temple dwellings. Eden was the first sanctuary, where Adam was to expand God’s presence throughout the earth but failed. At that time Adam and Eve were cast outside the immediate presence of God in his temple. Temple reestablishment began formally again with Noah and the patriarchs, with the latter building altars in garden settings on mountains in the promised land to replicate that of the primeval temple and to point forward to God’s dwelling in the big temple in Jerusalem. Even with the establishment of the large temple in Jerusalem, only the high priest could stand in God’s immediate presence once a year on the Day of Atonement. The temple was dominated by sacrifices for the forgiveness of people’s sin, which separated them from their God, whose glorious revelatory presence was sequestered in the back room of the temple in the holy of holies.
The Jerusalem temple itself was symbolic of the invisible and visible heavens and the earth. This cosmic symbolism of the temple pointed forward to the eschatological heaven and earth, which would become God’s cosmic temple, where his immediate revelatory presence would dwell universally. Other prophecies also looked forward to God’s final temple in the new creation (e.g., Ezek. 40–48). The cosmic symbolism of the temple included the notion that some in Israel should have been cognizant that God purposed to extend his tabernacling presence over the whole earth. Accordingly, they should have been aware that they were designed to be agents in this extension of the temple and thus motivated to be a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6), mediating between the nations and God, moving outward to spread the divine temple presence over the nations. Therefore, the cosmic symbolism of the temple represented Israel’s mission to the world. The repeated attempts to build God’s temple ended in failure and became typological adumbrations of the true eschatological temple to come in the future.
G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 912.
The whole point of this deep intertextual building up of symbols and metaphors is not just the end of all that anticipation. It isn’t glorified hyperbole. This is a real physical kingdom described under Solomon, but it is not the fullness of it because it awaits the true King who can fulfill God’s requirements.
Just like God’s glory filled the earth in Isaiah 6, God’s glory fills the Temple here at Solomon’s temple. As seen in 2 Chronicles above, everyone has to leave the holy place. The reason is because we still have a vertical problem as we relate to God. But in the end, Jesus, as the final and full second Adam, succeeds where Solomon and the first Adam failed.
He will establish His kingdom, and it is not a spiritual kingdom from Heaven. It will be an earthly kingdom that we anticipate because of all these connections and so many more (see also Isaiah 65; Zechariah 14; and Psalm 72). The temple itself will have a real and perfected edition per Ezekiel 40-48. And the book of Revelation establishes the timeframe only. That is the only additional bit of information that premillennialism gains from that passage. In the Old Testament, we already know it will happen, but Revelation says it will last 1000 years (Revelation 20:1-5).
Leave a Reply