Commentaria in III Regum
“Fine clothes, jest, drink, food, ease, sleep, unnerve the mind and foster lust.”
AND THE WOMEN TURNED AWAY HIS HEART;—they bent his mind and will from the true God to idols.
4. AND WHEN HE WAS NOW OLD, HIS HEART WAS TURNED AWAY BY WOMEN TO FOLLOW STRANGE GODS.—Hence it is plain that Solomon truly worshipped idols, wherefore it is strange that Robert Stephen here denies this. For St. Irenaeus affirms it, book 4, chapter 45, Justin in his dialogue Against Trypho, Tertullian, book 5 Against Marcion, St. Basil, epistle to Chelidonius, St. Augustine, book 14 City of God, chapter 11. But he adored them not because he thought there was anything of divinity in them, but to humour his concubines. Hear St. Augustine, book 11 On Genesis according to the Letter, chapter 42: “So Solomon, a man of such great wisdom, is it to be believed that he believed there was any usefulness in the worship of images? But he could not resist the love of women drawing him to this evil, doing what he knew should not be done, lest he should grieve their deadly delights, for whom he was pining and melting away.” He confirms the same by the example of Adam, when he adds: “So also Adam, after the woman, seduced, ate of the forbidden tree, and gave to him that they might eat together, was unwilling that she should be grieved, whom he believed could waste away without his consolation, if she were alienated from his mind, and perish altogether in that discord. Not indeed overcome by the concupiscence of the flesh, which he had not yet felt resisting the law of his mind: but by a certain friendly benevolence, by which it very often happens that God is offended, lest a man from a friend become an enemy; which that he ought not to have done, the just outcome of the divine sentence declared.”
5. BUT SOLOMON WORSHIPPED ASTARTHE THE GODDESS OF THE SIDONIANS.—This was the Venus of whom I spoke on Judges.
AND MOLOCH,—or “Melchom,” to whom they sacrificed by burning their sons, of whom I spoke on Leviticus 18:21. Whence Pineda and Salianus think that Solomon too sacrificed and burnt his son or sons to him.
7. THEN SOLOMON BUILT A TEMPLE FOR CHAMOS.—“Chamos” is komos, the god of drunkenness, namely Bacchus; whence revelry is called from him. See what is said on Romans 13:13, on that: “Not in revelling.”
The cause of so great a fall was Solomon’s excessive prosperity, opulence, delights and lusts. The proximate cause was the wives whom he loved most ardently: for these made him mad, according to that: “Wine and women make wise men fall away.”
Learn here how much women are to be avoided; for love of them is unconquerable, and wrings from lovers anything however precious and wicked: flee them, therefore, because you are neither wiser than Solomon, nor stronger than Samson, nor holier than David, who all fell through women. Wisely Eucherius here: “Those are to be warned,” he says, “to whom this age is prosperous, who are struck by no adversities of this world, that Solomon after receiving wisdom is described as having fallen even to idolatry, because before he fell he is recorded to have had no adversity in this world: but the wisdom granted utterly forsook him, because not even the least discipline of tribulation guarded him, until after he had forsaken God and knew that he was forsaken by God.” And St. Bernard, epistle 129 to Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, near the end:
“Observe,” he says, “how rare it has always been to find one who has not, even a little, in prosperity relaxed his mind from its own keeping and discipline. When was prosperity to the incautious not what fire is to wax, what the ray of the sun is to snow or ice? David was wise, Solomon was wise: but, with prosperity flattering them too much, the one in part, the other wholly, lost his wits. Great is he who, falling into adversity, falls not away, or little, from wisdom. Nor is he less great whom present felicity smiled upon, and did not deceive. Although you will more easily find those who have kept wisdom with fortune against them than those who have not lost it with fortune kind.”
11. BECAUSE THOU HAST DONE THIS,—because thou hast brought thyself to apostatize from me and to worship idols. Or, because the crime of apostasy and idolatry has been found in thee.
I WILL REND THY KINGDOM (in two; namely into the kingdom of Juda and of Israel, or of the ten tribes); AND WILL GIVE IT TO THY SERVANT.—Jeroboam, whom I will make king of Israel, chapter 12.
13. I WILL GIVE ONE TRIBE TO THY SON,—“one,” namely besides his own, as if to say: Besides the tribe of Juda, which, because David sprang from it, is accounted the proper tribe of his descendants, I will add one other tribe, namely Benjamin. So Abulensis, or, as Cajetan, the tribes of Juda and Benjamin were counted as one and the same, and were called “the kingdom of Juda.”
Moreover Abulensis, Tornielli and Salianus think that God said this to Solomon, not by himself nor by an Angel, because Solomon was unworthy of it, but by Ahias the Silonite, of whom verse 29. Pineda, however, book 3, chapter 3, number 5, thinks that God here appeared by himself a third time to Solomon; for the words signify this simply, when it is said in verse 11: “The Lord therefore said to Solomon.” Finally, Solomon answered nothing to God, whence he seems to have persisted in his crime.
You will ask whether Solomon was damned or saved? This problem is ancient. Tertullian, book 2 On Prescription, chapter 15, Cyprian, epistle 7, St. Augustine, book 17 City of God, chapters 7 and 20, St. Chrysostom, sermon On Penance, Bede on book 3 of Kings chapter 6, Rabanus on 4 Kings chapter 23, Isidore, On the Life and Death of the Prophets, chapter 24, Lyranus, Abulensis, and others here think him damned.
The first reason is that Scripture, recording his so grave fall, does not add his penance, as it adds in the fall of David. Secondly, because he did not himself destroy the shrines built by him for idols: for Josias at length destroyed them. Some answer that he shut them up, or destroyed them down to rubble, which, rebuilt by the impious, are called “the high places of Solomon”; but they say this, they do not prove it. Thirdly, because for this reason God seems to have heaped upon Solomon all goods in this life, that he might reward his merits in this life and punish his crimes in the future, according to that of Abraham to the rich glutton: “Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” Fourthly, because the burning love of women, strengthened by long custom, is almost unconquerable: and such was Solomon’s, who was on every side surrounded by so many mistresses desperately loved, that even if he wished to repent, he could not. To this belongs what happened a few years ago in Italy to one of our Society. He was called to be present at the death of a certain man who kept a concubine. He was present, and with all his strength exhorted him to penance, to bid farewell to illicit loves, now coaxing, now threatening the impending judgment of God and hell. But the concubine too, weeping, begged him to repent, and in dying to take thought for the salvation of his soul: all in vain they sang to a deaf man. For he said that he neither would nor could cast off a friend so long loved. Wherefore, impenitent, he breathed out his wretched soul.
On the contrary, the old Rabbis think that he repented and was saved, and among them St. Jerome, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Rupert, Pineda, Salianus, Barradius, Serarius, Sanchez, Delrio and others, who assert that after his fall he wrote Ecclesiastes, in which, as a penitent, he cries out that he had given himself to vain loves and idols: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.” This argument would be strong if it were certain that Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon after his fall, not before, on which I spoke in the preface to Ecclesiastes: for his sayings and writings are reviewed at the beginning of this book, chapters 4 and 5, before the fall: but his fall in old age is at last narrated in this chapter 11. They prove first, because God, 2 Kings 7, had promised David that if Solomon sinned he would correct him “with the rod of men,” with which men are wont to be chastised that they may amend.
Secondly, because in Proverbs chapter 24, 32, the Septuagint add: At last I also did penance, and looked that I might choose discipline.
Thirdly, because Solomon was Jedidiah, that is, beloved of God, a type of Christ, and the canonical writer of so many sacred books. Pineda proves this at length, book 8 On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 1, section 6. I have opened my opinion on Ecclesiasticus 47:22, on that: “Thou hast given a stain to thy glory.” At Rome a certain distinguished preacher publicly asserted in the course of a sermon that it had lately been revealed to a certain holy person that Solomon had until these times undergone sharp pains in purgatory, but had now been absolved from them and gone to heaven. But these revelations are to be examined, nor are women who assert them easily to be believed.
14. AND THE LORD RAISED UP AN ADVERSARY TO SOLOMON, ADAD THE EDOMITE,—from the South, as from the North Razon was raised up against him as enemy, verse 23. This punishment was inflicted by God on Solomon while still living; the former, namely the rending of the kingdom, was inflicted upon him after death.
How God raises up enemies against Israel and the faithful I explained on Judges 3:8.