Scooper Spirituality: Did God Approve For Solomon To Marry Many?

Scooper Spirituality: Did God Approve For Solomon To Marry Many?

Scooper Spirituality

This week this photograph of a pastor promoting polygamy trended. This is not the first time many preachers have endorsed polygamy. 

They insist that because God allowed Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon to marry many wives, he doesn't have any problem with it.

One says, "The Bible I have read cover to cover is silent in judgement against polygamy.  There's no one that will lose heaven because they married more than one wife. 

You could advise a person not to marry more wives due to the economy or for the fact that his wife may be sad."

Many have also insisted that it is a white's man belief.

This is not only wrong, it is unscriptural. 

Using Solomon as a case study. The fact that  God allowed Solomon to make the choice to many wives doesn't mean that God approved. Permission is definitely NOT approval and indeed Solomon’s choices brought inevitable consequences.

This was God's command long before Solomon came to being or even became King. After the children of Israel had left Egypt, God gave them this command.

Deuteronomy 17:14‭-‬17

"When you come to the land which the Lord your God gives you and you possess it and live there, and then say, We will set a king over us like all the nations that are about us, You shall surely set as king over you him whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner, who is not your brother, over you. But he shall not multiply horses to himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses, since the Lord said to you, You shall never return that way. And he shall not multiply wives to himself, that his [mind and] heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold."

However during Solomon's reign he flaunted those laws.

 

1Kings 11

Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides the daughter of the king of Egypt he married Hittite women and women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Sidon. 2 He married them even though the Lord had commanded the Israelites not to intermarry with these people, because they would cause the Israelites to give their loyalty to other gods. 3 Solomon married seven hundred princesses and also had three hundred concubines. 

Verse 11

Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, Because you are doing this and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely rend the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant!

Solomon was not a puppet king. God did not force him to do what was right. Rather, God laid out His will, blessed Solomon with wisdom, and expected the king to obey. In his later years, Solomon chose to disobey, and he was held accountable for his decisions.

It is instructive to note that  toward the end of Solomon’s life in The book of Ecclesiastes, God used him to write the rest of the story. 

Throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us everything he tried in order to find fulfillment apart from God in this world, or “under the sun.” 

He says in Ecclesiastes 2:8 “I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired . . . a harem as well–the delights of the heart of man 

But his harem did not bring happiness. Instead, “Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (verse 11).

“Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man” (12:13).”

By Esem