Let me begin by reminding me and you that, despite the story of King Solomon asking for a sword to be brought when two women came before him with one infant child, each claiming the child as her own, and despite his building of the temple and his great wealth, not only was Solomon not wise, but he was unfaithful. In the First Book of the Kings we read that he had seven hundred wives, who were princesses, and three hundred concubines.[1] And the wives are blamed, of course, for seducing him away from the Lord: “Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.”[2] He notoriously oppressed his people, and when his son proclaimed he would follow in his father’s footsteps, he lost all of the kingdom except Judah and Jerusalem.[3] If our first lesson were picked because of its relationship to the gospel lesson, I am mystified by the attempt to link Jesus with Solomon. For with Matthew’s Jesus, to obey God is what life and eternal life are all about.
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