Several thousand years ago, during the Fall Feasts of YHVH, Solomon dedicated a lavish Temple to the Creator of the universe:
1 Kings 8:6 The cohanim brought the ark for the covenant of YHVH in to its place inside the sanctuary of the house, to the Especially Holy Place, under the wings of the k’ruvim. 7 For the k’ruvim spread out their wings over the place for the ark, covering the ark and its poles from above. 8 The poles were so long that their ends could be seen from the Holy Place in front of the sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside; they are there to this day. 9 There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone which Moshe put there at Horev, when YHVH made the covenant with the people of Isra’el at the time of their leaving the land of Egypt.
10 When the cohanim came out of the Holy Place, the cloud filled the house of YHVH, 11 so that, because of the cloud, the cohanim could not stand up to perform their service; for the glory of YHVH filled the house of YHVH.
12 Shlomo said, “YHVH said he would live in thick darkness. 13 But I have built you a magnificent house, a place where you can live forever.”
14 Then the king turned around and blessed the whole community of Isra’el. The whole community of Isra’el stood 15 as he said: “Blessed be YHVH, the God of Isra’el, who spoke to my father David with his mouth and fulfilled his promise with his hand. He said, 16 ‘Since the day I brought my people Isra’el out of Egypt, I chose no city from any of the tribes of Isra’el in which to build a house, so that my name might be there; but I did choose David to be over my people Isra’el.’ 17 Now it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of YHVH the God of Isra’el; 18 but YHVH said to David my father, ‘Although it was in your heart to build a house for my name, and you did well that it was in your heart, 19 nevertheless you will not build the house. Rather, you will father a son, and it will be he who will build the house for my name.’ 20 Now YHVH has fulfilled this spoken word of his; for I have succeeded my father and sit on the throne of Isra’el, as YHVH promised; and I have built the house for the name of YHVH the God of Isra’el. 21 And there I have made a place for the ark containing the covenant of YHVH, which he made with our ancestors when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.”
What a speech! Imagine the moment. Solomon had taken the dream of his own father David and brought it into real time and space. Amazing to say the least, but if we look closely at Solomon’s words, we see a seed that ultimately grew into a mighty tree filled with idolatry, many wives, and wealth no man on earth could even comprehend. A tree so horrible, in fact, that it prompted Solomon to record a dire message at the end of his days.
Ecclesiastes appears to be Solomon’s final testimony. It reads like the reflections of a man who chased every possible path -- wisdom, wealth, pleasure, achievement -- and found them all empty apart from God. At the end of his life, Solomon landed squarely in the reality of God.
There aren’t many examples in Scripture where we get to follow someone’s thoughts throughout their entire life. Solomon is one of those and I don’t think it is an accident that he got as much print space as he did. In fact, ~70-75 chapters of Scripture focused on Solomon or were written by him (roughly 1/6 of the entire Bible if measured by chapter count).
Why?
I think it is so we can see precisely what happens when you have all of the luxuries, power and money you think you’d ever want. Despite our incessant quest to amass these things, Solomon showcases for us exactly what can (and usually does) happen when we get them. Let’s let his life reflection in the Book of Ecclesiastes be our guide:
Here is a summary of Solomon’s journey, and I’d like for you to think about how well our own personal journey through life eerily mirrors his.
His “final testimony” is essentially: “I tried everything the world offers. Without God, it’s empty. It’s only with God, you find meaning.”
How did he get here? Let’s map his journey to find out what could make a man elevate himself and as a result, lower his God.
When Solomon dedicated the Temple, his words seemed reverent and grand. Yet a careful reading of 1 Kings 8:12–21 reveals something unsettling: the repeated emphasis on “I.”
At first glance, this may sound like nothing more than a king acknowledging his role in a monumental project. But within the biblical narrative, the repetition of “I” foreshadows something deeper -- the creeping pride that would eventually consume Solomon.
David, Solomon’s father, had also longed to build God a house. Yet David’s language was strikingly different:
David acknowledged both his longing and his limitation. God’s choice, not David’s ambition, determined the outcome.
Solomon, however, while recognizing God’s promises, placed stronger emphasis on his own achievement: “I have built.” This shift, subtle but significant, tells us something about his character.
To be clear, Solomon’s early years were marked by humility. He prayed for wisdom rather than wealth (1 Kings 3), and God blessed him richly. His building of the Temple was the pinnacle of Israel’s spiritual and national life. When the Ark was set in place, “the glory of YHVH filled the house” (1 Kings 8:10–11), just as it had filled the Tabernacle in Moses’ day.
But here, at the very height of success, the seeds of downfall were sown. The Temple was indeed magnificent, yet Solomon’s focus subtly shifted from “You, O LORD” to “I have built.”
Principle: Pride often begins not in failure, but at the crest of achievement.
Why did Solomon’s ego inflate? Several possibilities emerge:
Solomon’s accomplishments were staggering: the Temple, palaces, cities, fleets, and trade networks. Wealth poured into Jerusalem; gold became as common as stones. The temptation to believe “my power and the strength of my hand have made me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17) grew irresistible.
Perhaps, as with Pharaoh, YHVH “strengthened” Solomon, not to destroy him, but to expose what was in his heart. Deuteronomy 8:2 says God tested Israel “to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commands or not.” By granting Solomon unmatched wisdom, wealth, and opportunity, God allowed his true inner loyalties to surface.
Though Solomon knew YHVH, he began to treat Him like the gods of surrounding nations, one among many. This is evident when he built high places for Chemosh, Molech, and Ashtoreth at the urging of his foreign wives (1 Kings 11:4–8). His devotion to YHVH became diluted, as if God were negotiable, rather than holy.
Pharaoh hardened his heart when confronted by God’s power, boasting “Who is YHVH, that I should obey him?” (Exod. 5:2). Solomon’s later “I built” language echoes that same spirit of self-exaltation. He may not have spoken the words outright, but his actions declared them.
Deuteronomy 17:14–20 gave Israel’s kings a clear blueprint:
Solomon systematically broke each one:
The very safeguards meant to keep him humble became the markers of his downfall. I mean, if he recorded a copy of the Torah for himself, and he was as wise as we assume, then shouldn’t he have plainly seen that YHVH specifically addressed these exact issues? It’s as if Solomon read Deuteronomy 17 and chose to do the exact opposite.
Now, I personally don’t think this was the case. I think Solomon’s drifting was slow and subtle, much like the drifting we experience at certain points in our own life.
But that doesn’t negate the effects of our decisions.
By the end of his life, Solomon’s kingdom was prosperous but rotting at the core. His forced labor and heavy taxation bred resentment. His idolatry brought divine anger. YHVH declared that the kingdom would be torn from his son’s hand, leaving only Judah for David’s sake (1 Kings 11:11–13). The once-golden kingdom fractured soon after his death.
Although not explicitly mentioned, it is commonly believed that Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon in his later years. The evidence of language and principles most closely aligns itself with the life of Solomon. As such, this reads as his final testimony:
Here the “I built” king finally confesses: all his wealth, wisdom, and works could not satisfy. His concluding words stand in sharp contrast to his earlier pride:
Ecclesiastes 12:13 Here is the final conclusion, now that you have heard everything: fear God, and keep his mitzvot; this is what being human is all about.
The man who once said “I have built” ends by saying, “Only God matters.”
So what does this mean for us?
There are a few things we can most certainly learn from Solomon:
The true conclusion of life is simple. Fear God. Keep His commands. Everything else is vapor.
Solomon’s story warns us that even the wisest, most gifted person can drift into pride when God becomes common and “I” becomes central. But it also comforts us with this truth: no matter how far we drift, the way back is always the same: reverence, obedience, and humility before the living God.
We all want to live a blessed life. In fact, the pursuit of these blessings is what usually gets us out of bed each and every day. This pursuit is also what brings a tremendous amount of stress, striving and disappointment into our lives.
We pray and pray some more for Abba to unlock whatever it is He has stored up for us. We claim to want to use those things to bring honor to His Name. But boy, is this a sticky place to be. It’s hard to know what He has given to us for our own enjoyment, and what He has given so that we can take care of others.
Going back to the dedication speech and sacrifices, let’s now look at what YHVH says to Solomon at the close of it all:
2 Chronicles 7:11 Thus Shlomo finished the house of YHVH and the royal palace. Everything that Shlomo had set his heart on making in the house of YHVH and in his own palace he accomplished successfully.
12 YHVH appeared to Shlomo by night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 If I shut up the sky, so that there is no rain; or if I order locusts to devour the land; or if I send an epidemic of sickness among my people; 14 then, if my people, who bear my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears will pay attention to the prayer made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and consecrated this house, so that my name can be there forever; my eyes and heart will always be there.
17 As for you, if you will live in my presence, as did David your father, doing everything I have ordered you to do, and keeping my laws and rulings; 18 then I will establish the throne of your rulership, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, ‘You will never lack a man to be ruler in Isra’el.’
19 But if you turn away and abandon my regulations and mitzvot which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, worshipping them; 20 then I will pull them up by the roots out of the land I have given them. This house, which I consecrated for my name, I will eject from my sight; and I will make it an example to avoid and an object of scorn among all peoples. 21 This house, now so exalted — everyone passing by will be shocked at the sight of it and will ask, ‘Why has YHVH done this to this land and to this house?’ 22 But the answer will be, ‘It’s because they abandoned YHVH the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and took hold of other gods, worshipping and serving them; this is why [YHVH] brought all these calamities on them.’”
And what did we see? Well…here we go:
When Solomon stood before Israel during the Fall Feasts and dedicated the Temple, the glory of YHVH descended with such force that the priests could not even stand to minister. It was the closest Israel had been to Eden since Eden. God Himself took up residence in their midst. Solomon’s speech, recorded here, marked the spiritual peak of Israel’s story. Yet even in that exalted moment, a seed of pride had already taken root. That seed would grow silently across four centuries until it strangled an entire nation and reduced the very House of God to ashes.
God’s words to Solomon that night were not symbolic or vague; they were painfully specific. He laid before the king a clear fork in the road: If you walk with Me, the throne will stand forever; if you turn aside, I will uproot you from the land, and this house will become a horror and a proverb among the nations. The warning came immediately after blessing, because Abba knows that the human heart is weakest not in suffering, but at the height of success. And success was exactly where Solomon stood, full of wealth, wisdom, influence, peace, glory. Precisely the moment when reverence should have been deepest was the moment pride began whispering.
Solomon did not fall in a single day. His decline began in small, almost invisible ways: foreign wives, political marriages, massive building projects, accumulating wealth and horses, the slow erosion of Torah’s safeguards. By the time he died, the kingdom still glittered on the surface, but its foundations were already compromised. Rehoboam inherited a golden empire but wielded it with arrogance, inflaming old resentments and provoking a civil split that divided Israel into two kingdoms. The “uprooting” began long before Babylon ever marched toward Jerusalem; it began in the heart of a king who believed he could manage compromise.
For three centuries after Solomon, God sent wave after wave of prophets: Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Their message was always the same: Return. Tear down the idols. Stop the oppression. Seek YHVH. Walk humbly. Yet Israel mistook God’s patience for His approval. Because judgment didn’t fall immediately, they assumed it never would. This is the deception of delayed consequences: when life continues smoothly despite sin, we convince ourselves the warnings are exaggerated.
But they aren’t.
Eventually, the northern kingdom fell to Assyria in ~722 BCE. Entire tribes were dragged away, just as God had said would happen if they abandoned His covenant. It was a horrifying preview of Solomon’s warning and the land was beginning to spit out its inhabitants. Judah watched this calamity unfold before their eyes, yet even the destruction of their brothers did not bring about deep repentance.
In Judah, a brief revival under Josiah flickered for a moment but was quickly swallowed by renewed idolatry and injustice. Altars to foreign gods were erected in the very courts of the Temple. Children were sacrificed in the Valley of Hinnom. The poor were crushed. The widow and orphan were ignored. Worship continued in name, but it was worship blended with the same comforts, pleasures, and idols Solomon once entertained. The nation had not invented new sins; they merely walked the path their fathers had begun.
Roughly 117 years after the Northern Kingdom went into Assyrian captivity, Jeremiah appealed to the king of Judah to “Do what is right and just” and if not, ruin will come. And then,
Jeremiah 22:8 “Many nations will pass by this city, and they will say to one another, ‘Why has Adonai done such a thing to this great city?’ 9 The answer will be, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of Adonai their God and worshipped other gods, serving them.’”
They saw their brothers get swept away and even that was not enough to get them to repent.
Finally, ~20 years after Jeremiah spoke these words, in ~586 BCE, the warnings of God met the reality of history. Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem, broke down its walls, burned the Temple, and carried the people into exile. The very House that had once been filled with the cloud of God’s glory now smoldered in ruins just as Abba had warned.
The tragedy is not simply that judgment came, it is that it came exactly as God had warned. Nothing was unexpected. Nothing was arbitrary. Judgment followed the path Solomon had been shown on the night of the dedication.
Why did it take so long for this judgment to come?
Because sin rarely destroys only the one who commits it. It destroys children, homes, communities, and futures. Solomon’s pride led to Rehoboam’s harshness. Rehoboam’s harshness led to division. Division led to idolatry. Idolatry led to injustice. Injustice led to exile. Exile led to the destruction of the Temple. One man’s private drift became a nation’s public downfall.
But every generation has a choice. Every generation can repent.
This is the pattern Scripture desperately wants us to see: our choices today echo for generations. Faithfulness blesses descendants we will never meet. Compromise curses them. Solomon’s life is not merely the story of one man who lost his way; it is the story of how thousands of unnamed lives were altered because a king who began in humility ended in divided devotion.
Although Ecclesiastes reads like the journal of a man awakening to the futility of his own pride, indulgence, and idolatry, Scripture never explicitly tells us Solomon repented. What we have is a man who finally sees the truth, but sees it too late. He can articulate wisdom, but cannot unwind what his life has already set in motion.
This is the tension that makes Solomon’s story so tragic. His proverbs and reflections show clarity, but his actions in 1 Kings 11 show a heart that had already drifted beyond return. He knew the right path; he simply didn’t walk it early enough for it to save the next generation.
So it does seem as if Solomon recognized the errors of his ways, but the rock had already been pushed down the hill.
By the time Solomon reached the reflective tone of Ecclesiastes, the consequences of his earlier decisions were already cascading down through history. The momentum of his compromise had become greater than the remorse of his old age. Even if he personally regained clarity, the structures he built, the influence he normalized, and the spiritual climate he tolerated were already shaping the generation after him.
And this is where Solomon’s life presses its weight upon ours. Because the truth is, most of us never intend to lead our families or communities toward destruction. Like Solomon, we begin with sincerity. We pray for wisdom. We want to honor God. But somewhere along the way, small compromises begin to feel manageable. We convince ourselves we can handle divided devotion — that we can flirt with idols and somehow shield the people we love from their fallout. Yet the story of Solomon stands as a witness against this illusion: our compromises rarely end with us. They seep into the soil of our homes, our habits, our children’s expectations, and eventually the destiny of generations.
But Scripture’s warning is never without hope.
If one man’s drift can wound a nation, then one generation’s repentance can heal it. That’s the beauty of the prophetic pattern. When Jeremiah warned Judah, he did so within living memory of Israel’s fall and within a single lifetime of Judah’s coming collapse -- yet he still begged them to turn. He still believed it wasn’t too late. The rock may have been rolling downhill, but repentance could still interrupt its path. It may not undo all the consequences, but it can transform the direction of the future. Every generation inherits momentum, but every generation can choose whether to accelerate it or resist it.
Solomon could not undo the damage of his divided heart, but we are not bound to repeat his ending. The wisdom he offers at the close of Ecclesiastes is not the bitter regret of a hopeless man. It is the invitation of someone who learned too slowly urging us to learn quickly: fear God, keep His commands, anchor your life in Him while you still can.
The tragedy of Solomon is that he discovered the truth at the end of his life, when his influence had already shaped the next generation in another direction. The mercy for us is that we can discover it now, while our choices still have the power to bless rather than break.
So Solomon’s story stands not simply as a cautionary tale but as a crossroads. It asks us whether we will pass down a legacy of compromise or a legacy of faithfulness. Whether our children will inherit the weight of our sins or the strength of our obedience. Whether our future will look more like the fractured kingdom Rehoboam inherited or like the restored kingdom promised when God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from their ways. The rock may be rolling, but the God who warned Solomon is the same God who restores, who rebuilds, and who meets repentant hearts with mercy.
In the end, Solomon teaches us what he learned too late: that nothing we build -- no kingdom, no career, no legacy -- can stand apart from wholehearted devotion to YHVH. Our lives ripple forward into generations we will never meet. And the choice before us is simple: Will those ripples carry blessing or brokenness?
2 Chronicles 7:13 “If I shut up the sky, so that there is no rain; or if I order locusts to devour the land; or if I send an epidemic of sickness among my people; 14 then, if my people, who bear my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Are you ready for this?