1 Kings
The Lord continued David’s dynasty over Israel, but the sin of most of the kings who followed him eventually caused Israel’s downfall.
1 Kings Chapter 1
When David was old, he couldn’t keep warm, so his attendants appointed a young woman named Abishag to sleep with him and keep him warm. David did not have sexual relations with her.
David’s son Adonijah proclaimed himself to be king without David’s knowledge. Joab and Abiathar the priest supported Adonijah. Nathan the prophet told Bathsheba about it, knowing that David had intended for her son Solomon to be the next king.
David then ordered Nathan the prophet, Zadok the priest, and army commander Benaiah to anoint Solomon as king and have him sit on David’s throne.
Jonathan, son of Abiathar the priest went and told Adonijah that David had made Solomon king, and Adonijah and his supporters became afraid. Adonijah went to the Tent of Meeting and took hold of the horns of the altar until Solomon promised not to put him to death.
1 Kings 2
Before David died, he charged Solomon to obey the Lord, to execute Joab for the murders he had committed, to treat the sons of Barzillai well, and to execute Shemei for cursing him. Then David died, having been king for 40 years.
Adonijah then came and asked Bathsheba to ask Solomon to give him Abishag as his wife. Seeing this as another move for Adonijah to try to take his father’s place, Solomon ordered Benaiah to kill Adonijah. Solomon then removed Abiathar from the priesthood but did not kill him. Joab took refuge in the Tent of Meeting, and Solomon ordered Benaiah to kill him there.
Solomon ordered Shemei not to leave Jerusalem. If he did, he would be put to death. Three years later, Shimei left Jerusalem to look for two of his slaves who had escaped. When returned, Solomon ordered Benaiah to kill him.
1 Kings 3
Solomon made an alliance with the Pharaoh of Egypt and married his daughter.
Solomon obeyed the Lord except for the fact that he offered sacrifices and burnt incense other places besides the Tent of Meeting. After he had sacrificed at one of these altars…
The Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said,
“Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
- 1 Kings 3:5
Solomon thanked the Lord for blessing David and now him, then said:
Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David.
But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.
Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people,
too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart
to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.
For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him,
“Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself,
nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice,
I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart,
so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.
Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—
so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.
And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands
as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”
- 1 Kings 3:7-14
Solomon then woke up and returned to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the Tent of Meeting.
Later, two prostitutes came to Solomon asked for his ruling. The two women had both given birth to sons, but one of the women rolled over during night and killed her son. Then she switched the two babies. Both accused the other and claimed the living child as their own. Solomon ordered the living baby to be cut in half and divided between the two women. At this, the mother of the child asked that the child be given to the other woman, and Solomon knew she was his real mother.
1 Kings 4
Solomon appointed officials over the kingdom and enjoyed peace. The governors of each district took turns collecting and sending provisions for the king’s court.
Solomon was wiser than any other person, and he became famous among the nations. He wrote proverbs and sang songs and even taught about the natural world. Kings would send emissaries to learn from him.
1 Kings 5
Solomon paid Hiram, King of Tyre, to cut down trees and send them down the river to Israel to use in building a Temple for the Lord. It was a massive undertaking to build the Temple, involving more than 180,000 workers.
1 Kings 6
Solomon began to build the Temple 480 years after the Israelites came up out of Egypt. The Lord promised to live among the Israelites in the Temple if Solomon continued to obey Him. The Temple was finished seven years later, and was very ornate, made out of carved stone and wood and much of it plated in gold.
1 Kings 7
It took Solomon thirteen years, however, to complete the construction of his palace.
- 1 Kings 7:1
Solomon also built a palace for his wife, Pharaoh’s daughter.
Solomon also hired Huram, a half-Israeli, to make decorations in bronze for the Temple.
1 Kings 8
Solomon assembled all the elders of Israel to Jerusalem and had the Levites carry the Ark of the Covenant and the furnishings from the Tent of Meeting into the Temple.
and King Solomon and the entire assembly of Israel
that had gathered about him were before the ark,
sacrificing so many sheep and cattle
that they could not be recorded or counted.
- 1 Kings 8:5
When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place,
the cloud filled the temple of the Lord.
And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud,
for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.
- 1 Kings 8:10-11
King Solomon then kneeled down in front of the altar and prayed with his hands spread out toward heaven, thanking the Lord for fulfilling His promises to David and making Solomon the next king.
“But will God really dwell on earth?
The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you.
How much less this temple I have built!”
- 1 Kings 8:27
Yet, Solomon trusted that God had chosen the Temple as the Place and would pay special attention when people prayed toward the Temple. In his prayer, he listed God possibly punishing Israel with:
Defeat from their enemies
Captivity in other lands
Drought
Famine
Plague
Blight
Insects
He prayed that when God punished Israel with any of these events, but then they repented and prayed toward the Temple, that God would hear and forgive them.
Solomon then offered more sacrifices: 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats.
1 Kings 9
Later, the Lord appeared to Solomon and promised to keep His eyes and His heart toward the Temple and to preserve Solomon’s line as kings of Israel if they continued to obey Him. But if Israel turned away from God, He would send them away from the land and reject the Temple.
After the Temple and palace were finished, Solomon gave 20 towns in Galilee to Hiram, but Hiram thought they were “good for nothing.”
Solomon had forced the Canaanites still living in Israel to be his workforce for building the Temple and his palace. Israelites served as his hired officials and army commanders.
Solomon and Hiram also built a fleet of merchant ships together.
1 Kings 10
The Queen of Sheba heard about Solomon’s wisdom and brought a caravan to Israel to test him. He was able to answer all her questions, and she was overwhelmed with his wealth. She then gave Solomon gold and a large quantity of spices.
Hiram and Solomon’s merchant ships also brought in rarities.
The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents…
- 1 Kings 10:14
Everything in Solomon’s palace was made out of gold. He made Israel so prosperous that silver was not very valuable in those days. He imported horses from Egypt and had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses.
1 Kings 11
Solomon took many foreign wives, including those from the Canaanites, which was against God’s command. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods,
and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God,
as the heart of David his father had been.
- 1 Kings 11:4
Solomon even built altars for all their foreign gods. The Lord then told Solomon He would take the kingdom from him but not during his lifetime, for the sake of David, Solomon’s father. God would also not take the kingdom completely away from David’s line, for the sake of David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city God chose as the Place.
The Lord then sent foreign armies to trouble Solomon. God also raised up Jeroboam against Solomon. Jeroboam was an Israelite in charge of Solomon’s workforce. One day, the prophet Ahijah told Jeroboam that God would give him ten tribes of Israel because Solomon had sinned. Jeroboam would have a great dynasty, like that of David, if he continued to obey the Lord. Solomon then to have Jeroboam killed, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt and stayed there until Solomon died.
Solomon was king for 40 years, and his son Rehoboam succeeded him.
1 Kings 12
When Rehoboam was being made king, Jeroboam returned from Egypt and led the people in asking Rehoboam to lighten load of labor Solomon had put on them. After consulting with his friends, Rehoboam answered:
“My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist.
My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier.
My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”
- 1 Kings 12:10-11
Most of Israel then followed Jeroboam. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin stayed loyal to Rehoboam. King Rehoboam wanted to send the army to fight against the other tribes and bring them back into his kingdom, but the Lord sent the prophet Shemaiah to tell Rehoboam not to go to war because the splitting of the kingdom was from the Lord.
Jeroboam set up his capital in Shechem in the territory of Ephraim. He was afraid that if the people kept going to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices at the Temple, they would eventually revert to following the line of David, so he set up two golden calves – one in Bethel in Ephraim and one in the territory of Dan – for the people to worship the Lord. This was a sin. He also chose non-Levites to be priests and created his own religious festivals.
1 Kings 13
A prophet from Judah prophesied that a descendant of David named Josiah would sacrifice the illegitimate priests on the altar at Bethel. He declared that the altar would split apart and that the ashes on it would be poured out.
Jeroboam pointed at the prophet and ordered that he be arrested, but his arm shriveled up, and the altar split as the prophet had said. Then Jeroboam asked the prophet to pray for him, which he did, and Jeroboam’s arm was restored.
Jeroboam invited the prophet to come eat with him, but the prophet refused, saying the Lord had commanded him not to eat or drink or return the same he had come.
When an old prophet heard about what happened, he hurried after the prophet and, lying, told him that an angel had sent him to bring the prophet back and feed him. The prophet agreed, and as they were eating, the word of the Lord came to the older prophet, saying the prophet had disobeyed God’s commands and therefore would not be buried in his family tomb.
On the way back to his own home, the prophet was killed by a lion. The old prophet buried the prophet in his own tomb and told his sons to bury him next to the prophet.
Even after what happened, however, Jeroboam did not repent.
1 Kings 14
Jeroboam’s son became ill, and he told his wife to disguise herself and go ask the prophet Ahijah what would happen. Ahijah was blind, but the Lord told him who was coming to see him and gave Ahijah the answer he was to give. The Lord said He was going to destroy the family of Jeroboam as a punishment for turning against Him. Jeroboam’s son would die, and he would be the only member of the family to be buried. The others would die and be eaten by dogs and birds.
Ahijah also prophesied that the Lord would scatter Israel beyond the Euphrates River because they followed Jeroboam in worshipping idols.
Back in Judah, Rehoboam son of Solomon reigned for 17 years. He continued to allow idol worship. Five years into his reign, Egypt attacked Judah and plundered all the treasures in the Temple and in the royal palace. Rehoboam had to replace his father’s gold decorations with bronze replicas.
1 Kings 15
Rehoboam’s son Abijah succeeded him and reigned for 3 years. He continued in sin. Then his son Asa succeeded him. Asa followed the Lord and rid the land of idols. He even deposed his grandmother from her position as queen mother because she worshipped idols. He was successful in creating alliances with neighboring countries and fighting against Israel. When he was old, however, his feet became diseased. He reigned 41 years.
Jeroboam’s son Nadab succeeded him and reigned in Israel for 2 years. He continued in sin, and Baasha from the tribe of Issachar killed him and took over as king. Baasha killed everyone in Jeroboam’s family, just as the prophet Ahijah had said would happen.
Baasha reigned 24 years, and continued in the sin of worshipping idols.
1 Kings 16
The Lord sent the prophet Jehu to tell Baasha God was bringing his reign to an end and would kill his whole family because of Baasha’s sin. His son Elah reigned for 2 years before one of his commanders, Zimri, killed him and became king. Zimri killed all of Baasha’s family.
Zimri reigned 27 days, until the army heard he had killed Elah and instead proclaimed commander Omri to be king. When Zimri saw that the army had not supported him, he burned himself to death inside the palace.
Omri became king and reigned for 12 years and moved the capital of Israel to Samaria. Omri continued in idol-worship.
Omri’s son Ahab succeeded him. He reigned for 22 years. Ahab continued in worshipping idols.
During Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. In the process, he both his oldest and youngest sons died, in accordance with the curse God placed on Jericho through Joshua.
1 Kings 17
The prophet Elijah announced to King Ahab that it would not rain or produce dew for the next years, until Elijah called for rain again.
The Lord then told Elijah to hide from Ahab near a brook, and the Lord sent ravens to bring him bread and meat. When the brook dried up, the Lord told Elijah told him to go to a town called Zarephath in the neighboring country of Sidon. He met a widow there and asked for a drink and some food. The widow said she had only enough flour and oil to make her and son’s last meal; then they go hungry because they were so poor.
The Lord then told the woman through Elijah that her ingredients would not run empty until the Lord sent rain on the land. Everyday, there was food for Elijah and the widow and her son.
Later, the woman’s son became ill and died. She thought it was a punishment for her previous sins, but Elijah prayed for the child and stretched himself out on top of the boy three times, and the boy came back to life.
1 Kings 18
Three years after Elijah announced the drought, the Lord sent him back to Ahab. Obadiah, Ahab’s palace administrator, was a devout believer in the Lord. When Ahab’s queen, Jezebel, had decided to kill the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah had hidden 100 prophets in caves to keep them safe.
Ahab had been looking for Elijah to kill him, and had even sent messengers to the neighboring countries to find him. Elijah approached Obadiah and told him he was there to meet with Ahab. Obadiah was afraid the Lord would take Elijah away again, and Ahab would kill Obadiah in anger.
When Ahab came to meet him, Elijah challenged him to bring the 850 prophets of the false gods to Mount Carmel to see who would answer prayer and send fire down to burn up their sacrifice, God or the false gods. He then set up two altars and sacrificed a bull on each. He allowed the false prophets to pray to their god first. The false prophets prayed for hours, and even cut themselves to get their god’s attention, but nothing happened.
Then Elijah ordered his sacrifice to be completely drenched in water and for a trough of water to be dug around his altar. When he prayed, the Lord sent fire down from the sky and consumed the sacrifice and the water in the trough. Elijah then ordered the people looking on to kill the false prophets.
Then Elijah told King Ahab to go back to the palace because it was about to rain. The Lord then empowered Elijah to run faster than the horses could pull Ahab’s chariot, and he ran in front of Ahab all the way back to the city.
1 Kings 19
King Ahab told Queen Jezebel about how Elijah had killed all the false prophets, so she sent a message to Elijah threatening to kill him. Elijah ran for his life into the desert and prayed to die. Then he fell asleep. An angel brought him food and water. Elijah ate it and went back to sleep. The angel of the Lord brought him food again, and he ate, then traveled to 40 days and 40 nights until he arrived at Mount Horeb and went in to spend the night in a cave.
The Lord asked Elijah what he was doing there, and Elijah said he was the only prophet left and was afraid for his life.
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord,
for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart
and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake,
but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face
and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
- 1 Kings 19:11-13
The Lord then sent Elijah to anoint a king of Aram, a new king of Israel, and Elisha to be a prophet. All three of them would punish Israel, the Lord said.
“Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal
and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
- 1 Kings 19:18
Elijah then found Elisha, who was plowing his field. Elijah put his own cloak on Elisha. Elisha slaughtered his oxen and gave the meat to the people to eat, then followed Elijah.
1 Kings 20
The king of Aram took an alliance of 32 kings to attack Israel’s capital of Samaria. A prophet told King Ahab how to win the battle and make the Arameans and allies flee to show Ahab that God was real.
The next year, the Arameans came to fight Israel again. They thought that if they chose a different location – the valley instead of the hills – the Lord could not help Israel win, thinking that God was only “a god of the hills.” Again the prophet told Ahab that the Lord would help him win against the larger army to prove Himself.
When it was clear Israel was going to win the battle, the king of Aram asked for mercy, and Ahab made a peace treaty with him.
Then a prophet asked another prophet to strike him with a sword. The second prophet refused, so the first prophet predicted the second prophet would be eaten by a lion soon afterward, which is what happened.
The prophet asked someone else to strike him, and the person struck him and wounded him. Then the prophet went to meet King Ahab and said he had been put in charge of guarding a prisoner but had not been paying attention and let the prisoner escape. Ahab’s sentence was that the man should be put to death for letting his prisoner escape. The prophet then turned the story around on Ahab and said that God had wanted Ahab to kill the king of Aram, but Ahab had let him live, so God was going to kill Ahab.
1 Kings 21
Later, King Ahab offered to buy the vineyard that belonged to a man named Naboth. Naboth refused, unwilling to sell his ancestral inheritance.
Ahab then complained to Queen Jezebel, and Jezebel ordered the elders of Naboth’s town to have two people falsely accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king and then to stone him to death. When it was done, Ahab took possession of Naboth’s vineyard.
Then the Lord told Elijah to tell Ahab that Ahab would die at the same place Naboth had and that dogs would lick up his blood. The Lord would wipe out Ahab’s descendants. He also said that dogs would devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.
When Ahab heard the pronouncement, he repented, so the Lord said He would not bring punishment in Ahab’s time but would do it when his son succeeded him.
1 Kings 22
King Ahab of Israel then asked King Jehoshaphat to ally with him to retake land from the king of Aram. Jehoshaphat agreed but asked that they consult the Lord first. All the prophets predicted success for the kings, but one named Micaiah predicted that Israel would lose the battle.
Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord:
I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven
standing around him on his right and on his left.
And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead
and going to his death there?’
“One suggested this, and another that.
Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’
“‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’
“So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours.
The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”
- 1 Kings 22:19-23
One of the prophets came up and slapped Micaiah and asked:
“Which way did the spirit from the Lord go when he went from me to speak to you?”
- 1 Kings 22:24
Micaiah answered the prophet would find out when he went to hide. Ahab then had Micaiah put in prison.
Ahab did not wear his royal robes when he went to the battle, thinking to disguise himself and keep from being a target.
But someone drew his bow at random and hit the king of Israel between the sections of his armor.
- 1 Kings 22:34
Ahab bled to death, and they washed the chariot in Samaria where the prostitutes bathed and dogs came and licked up his blood, as Elijah had said would happen.
Jehoshaphat was king of Judah after his father Asa and reigned 25 years. He followed the Lord, just as Asa had. The one problem was that he allowed the people to sacrifice at other places besides the Temple.
Ahab’s son Ahaziah succeeded him as king and reigned for 2 years. He continued in the sin of worshipping idols.
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