The Pinnacle of Solomon’s Wisdom

In 1 Kings 3, when God asked Solomon what he wanted, Solomon asked for wisdom and discernment. God was pleased with Solomon’s answer and replied, “Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you. I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all your days. If you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.” Therefore, most Christians will rightfully tell you that King Solomon was among the wisest people ever to live.

The remainder of First Kings and much of Second Chronicles is an account of King Solomon’s reign after God made this promise. In fact, Second Chronicles begins with the statement that “God was with him and exalted him greatly.” These two books indeed record a kingdom that, under Solomon’s leadership, grew into one the likes of which the world had never seen before. It was a time of incredible prosperity.

Unfortunately, this has planted the idea in the minds of many followers of Jesus that God gave Solomon his wisdom for the primary purpose of building a kingdom filled with “riches and honor.” As such, many people read the book of Proverbs and seek to apply its wisdom to build such a life for themselves, claiming they are building the Kingdom of God.

But what if that is not what God intended?

All Is Vanity

Many, if not most, Christians stop exploring the application of Solomon’s wisdom at the end of the book of Proverbs. This is a grave mistake.

Why?

Jesus did not live or teach that a kingdom characterized by “riches and honor” was what He came to give humanity. On the contrary, His teachings about the trappings of striving for riches and honor are clear. That alone should cause us to re-examine how we interpret God’s intended outcome for making his promise to Solomon.

What if, instead of granting Solomon supernatural wisdom in all matters, He granted him a life full of experiences that would lead him to the ultimate conclusion of what is produced by properly applied wisdom? If you turn the page after reaching the end of Proverbs 31 and read the very next words in the Bible, you find that there is much more to the story.

“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.'” Ecclesiastes 1:1-2

Wait, what?

Beginning in chapter 1, and continuing throughout the entire book of Ecclesiastes, is a record of King Solomon working through a massive case of cognitive dissonance. He lived nearly his entire life believing that the kingdom he built, filled with riches and honor, was the pinnacle of the application of the wisdom God granted to him. Yet as he came to the end of his life, he realized that it was all… vanity. This word, in Hebrew, means “emptiness, something transitory and unsatisfactory; a vapor, breath.”

You can see Solomon’s utter confusion in statements like those found in verses 16-18 of chapter 1:

“I said to myself, ‘Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”

He continues struggling to sort this out in chapter 2, verses 12-17:

“So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly; for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both. Then I said to myself, ‘As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then have I been extremely wise?’ So I said to myself, ‘This too is vanity.’ For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die! So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.”

So, can we conclude from these passages that all wisdom is vanity? No. As you read Ecclesiastes (and I encourage you to do so as soon as you can), you see Solomon working through the reality of the degree to which he misapplied wisdom in his life and the consequences it bore. He begins to separate what is truly important from what is not.

  • In chapter 5, he concludes that abundance, as measured by money, is vanity (v10).
  • Basic needs bring peace when you are satisfied by them (v12).
  • So does being productive and happy when laboring according to the portion of God’s image that He placed in you (v18-20).
  • His final conclusion is that all of this is available when you simply love God and obey His commandments (chapter 12).

Solomon’s life, studied and understood in the full context of his writings, serves as an indictment of Western culture’s misapplication of the wisdom contained in the book of Proverbs. Over the last one hundred years, in particular, Western schools have taught the rest of the world that the goal of any economic system is to build a kingdom/nation characterized by an abundance of material “riches” and “honor.” In reality, such a kingdom is no different than that built by Solomon – one that he himself concluded was vain and meaningless in the eyes of God.

At Regeneco, we seek to learn from Solomon, as we join God in His unfolding Great Restoration. Our responsibility is to understand value in the context of Scripture and how to create it in a way that will allow our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to build a Kingdom that truly represents the pinnacle of Solomon’s wisdom. A kingdom filled with people who are not concerned with “riches and honor“ but instead seek to build the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of others.

(This article was reprinted with permission of its author, Doug Tjaden, a member of the Rebuilers Network Core Team and founder of Regeneco. The original article and more from Doug can be found here.)

 

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