Q. Why Did God Bless Solomon?

How is it that the Lord blessed Solomon with wisdom. Yet Solomon led a sinful life by having wives and concubines.

Answer

Dear *****,

Thanks for your question. Let’s begin with a different question: “Why does God save anyone?” The answer is not because of our good works, but because of God’s grace in Christ. No one deserves salvation, and no one can achieve it by their works:

3 For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. 4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:3-7).

God blessed Abraham, even though he passed off his wife Sarai/Sarah as his sister, making her very vulnerable. God blessed Jacob, who cheated everybody he could. God’s blessings are not bestowed on us because we are so good, but because God is so gracious.

There is also a sense in which God blessed the offspring of David because of the intimate relationship between David and God:

This is what the Bible says about God’s blessing of Abijam:

3 He walked in all the sins of his father which he had committed before him; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, like the heart of his father David. 4 But for David's sake the LORD his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, to raise up his son after him and to establish Jerusalem; 5 because David did what was right in the sight of the LORD, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite. (1 Ki. 15:3-5 NAU)

Note that it does not say that David was sinless, but he did have a heart for God and he sought to walk in his ways. But David’s sin with Uriah and Bathsheba was worthy of death.

David also had many wives and concubines. The fact is that God blesses us in spite of our sin and because of His grace.

I hope this helps,

Bob Deffinbaugh

ps. My good friend Kevin also pointed out that when God blessed Solomon it was before all of those things occurred. It would seem that he (mis)used God's blessing to do them. When God blessed him he had humbled himself before God, was seeking Him wholeheartedly, and was depending on Him.