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Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Most of them were foreign. He had wives from Moab (S-E of Israel), Ammon (east of Israel), Edom (S-E of Israel), Sidon (N-W of Israel), and Hittites (north of Israel). In a distant way, they all were relatives. The Moabites were descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew. The Amminites were also descendants of Lot. The Edomites were descendants of Esau. The Sidonians were descendants of Canaan, grandson of Noah and the Hittites were descendants of Heth, grandson of Ham, son of Noah.
The Lord clearly told His people not to marry foreign wives, but Solomon disobeyed. What this caused was the institution of foreign religions. Solomon built, for his foreign wives, temples for the worship of their foreign gods. He built temples to Ash-to-reth, the goddess of the Sidonians, to Mil-com, the horrible god of the Ammonites, to Che-mosh, the depraved god of Moab which he built on the Mt. of Olives and to Mo-lech, the utterly vile god of the Ammonites. Solomon, himself, even worshipped at these pagan temples.
Now because of this, the Lord God became very angry and told Solomon that sense he had failed to obey Him, He was going to take the Kingdom of Israel away from his ancestors, but, that He would not do that as long as Solomon lived for the sake of David, Solomon's father. Even though Solomon had a 1,000 wives, he had only one son. His name was Rehoboam and the Lord told Solomon that He would allow Rehoboam to become king but only of one tribe. Many speculate that it was God's judgment that Solomon would have only one son because of his sin. We will see that with the death of Solomon that the kingdom will divide and that Rehoboam will become king of Judah.
Because of the sin of Solomon, the Lord raised up adversaries against him. The first was a man by the name of Hadad, an Edomite. If Solomon had not made God his enemy, what could a man like Hadad possibly have done to one so powerful. Matthew Henry says, "If God is against us, even a grasshopper becomes a burden." In Second Samuel the eight chapter, David conquered Edom. Joab, David's commander, killed all the Edomite males by the sword. Remember the Edomites were descendants of Esau and the Israelites were descendants of Jacob, thus this enmity had continued for over 800 years. Joab killed so many that the Israelites had to bury the dead. At that time, Hadad was a member of the Royal Family, but was only a child. He was taken by some of his father's servants to Egypt. According to the story, they stopped off on the way at Midian and Paran to gather to themselves a group of people fitting for the son of a king, and then they continued on to Egypt.
He grew up in the Pharaoh's Palace and married the Pharaoh's sister and they had a child that was raised with Pharaoh's children. He returned quietly to his own country only after Pharaoh did all he could to keep him in Egypt, and quietly built up the nation of Edom and became a power to be dealt with.
Now, how did he do this without Solomon's knowledge? While Solomon remained obedient to the Lord, he continued to be wise and watchful for the nations good, but, as Matthew Henry puts it, "Solomon sinned away his kingdom like Sampson sinned away his strength."
God raised up a second adversary to Solomon. This man was Re-zon, a Syrian. When David defeated the Syrians, Re-zon took command of the few remaining Syrians and lived by ravaging the countryside until they eventually grew in strength and took over the city of Damascus (N-W of Mt. Hermon). It wasn't till Solomon's sin that he became any threat to Israel. Both of these adversaries hated Israel because of what David had done to them.
Another adversary came from his own people, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat an Ephraimite. He was industrious and a good worker. Solomon recognized his qualities and put him in charge of his labor battalions from the Tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. One day when Jeroboam was in Jerusalem, the Prophet A-hi-jah, took him aside and talked to him. He told Jeroboam that the Lord had decreed that he would reign over all that his soul desired and that he would be king over Israel. This prophesied the final break-up of the Nation of Israel. The Prophet took his robe and tore in into 12 pieces, 10 of those pieces was given to Jeroboam and would become the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Two of the pieces would remain with Solomon and would become the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
At Solomon's death, his son Rehoboam, would become King of Judah so that the descendants of David would continue to reign in Jerusalem. Notice that God had chosen Jerusalem to be the place in which His name would be enshrined.
Notice the prophecy here in verse 39, "Because of Solomon's sin, I will punish the descendants of David, but not forever." Why? Because out of the descendants of David would come the Messiah.
When Solomon heard that Jeroboam would become the King of the northern 10 tribes, he tried to kill him but Jeroboam fled to Egypt and stayed there until Solomon's death. Solomon ruled Israel almost 40 years. He died in 926 BC (931 BC) at the age of 63. and his son Rehoboam became King of Israel. Rehoboam's mother was Naamah who was probably an Ammonite Princess.
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