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Home > Bible on Money > Major Themes > 1 and 2 Kings
Accumulation of Wealth
By Jason Hood
with assistance from Generous Giving staff
Since prosperity is a gift from God, being wealthy is not a sin. But King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, was brought to ruin because his accumulated goods turned his heart away from God.
The writer of 1 and 2 Kings wants us to see this remarkable tension in his presentation of Solomon’s wealth. On the one hand, it was good for Solomon to be prosperous. God blessed Solomon and his kingdom with great wealth (1 Kings 10:1-13, 23-25) because of the king’s wisdom and pursuit of justice and righteousness. We see this especially in the beginning of his reign, when prosperity and peace spread to the people (1 Kings 4:20, 25) and Solomon led in “justice and righteousness” (1 Kings 10:8-9; see also Genesis 18:17-18).
On the other hand, Solomon’s unrestrained enjoyment of prosperity and his use of riches to obtain great power caused him to forget God—or think he could get along just fine without him. His accumulation of possessions (1 Kings 10:14-25), power (chariots and horses, particularly from Egypt, 10:26-29) and pleasure (wives, especially “imports,” 11:1ff) explicitly violated the limitation on wealth that God had placed on the leader of his people (see Deuteronomy 17:14-17; 1 Kings 2:1-4; 9:4-5 and elsewhere).
While readers in the Western world usually know that heaping up wives is not a good thing, we tend to have few scruples about Solomon’s heaping up wealth. We prefer to think of his wealth only as a sign of God’s blessing in fulfillment of his promises (1 Kings 3:10-14). But those same promises required Solomon to obey God’s law (1 Kings 3:14), which particularly included laws about the king and his role. Readers cannot be blamed completely for not connecting the commands in Deuteronomy 17 to Solomon’s accumulation. Much of the problem lies in an unhelpful chapter division between 1 Kings 10 (“Solomon’s Splendor”) and 1 Kings 11:1 (“Solomon’s Wives”), implying a big change away from “good times” to “bad times.” Poor English translations only make it worse, reinforcing this unnecessary separation between chapter 10 and what follows in 11:1. These translations and the poor chapter division serve to obscure Solomon’s very subtle slide pattern of unfaithfulness to God’s word. It wasn’t just the pleasurable women—it was also the power and the possessions which led Solomon deeper into physical comfort and power and away from God.
The New Testament warns against the pursuit of possessions and calls us to contentment, trust (1 Timothy 6:9-10) and generosity rather than unchecked accumulation, which neglects the needs of those around us (Luke 12:15-34; 16:19-31). God’s true Son one day will lead us to true prosperity and peace, when the sin that uses wealth and pleasure to pull our hearts away from God no longer ensnares. When that day comes, our wealth will far surpass that of Solomon, and we will enjoy all things in the fullness of a perfect relationship with God.
Related Passages: Deuteronomy 6:10-12; 8:13-18; 17:14-17; Esther 1:3-8; Ezekiel 16:48-50; Matthew 19:21-23; Luke 6:25; 12:15-34; 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:9-10; 2 Peter 2:20-22; Revelation 3:17-18
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