Believe it or not, I have been mulling over this subject for quite some time. I guess its a bit of a random thing for a busy mom of 4 to be contemplating, but that is how my brain works. The reason I am writing about it now is that I read an article recently on (sort of) the same subject and it didn’t sit right with me. (Here it is incase you want to check it out. Solomon article)
I just feel like Mr. Brueggmann got Solomon wrong. He was talking about King Solomon in the Bible. And, the seeming contradiction between Solomon’s opulent lifestyle and his supposed wisdom. We know from the Bible that Solomon lived his days surrounded by every lavish and luxuriant pleasure a good amount of money and monarchy could buy. Brueggmann, using Solomon’s story to talk about current political issues, says the “wisdom” of Solomon is better translated as “ listening heart”. Somehow this helps him make more sense of Solomon's story. I’m not entirely sure about the validity of that particular interpretation. But, I should say that my ideas about the “wisdom” of Solomon were made by taking that word at face value. Maybe I am about to get him wrong too. Who knows. He is a conundrum for sure. But, I thought I would put my theory out there anyway. It is mostly based on the book of Ecclesiastes (one of my favorites) which is supposed to have been written by the great king himself. I think it's a book that cannot be overlooked by anyone hoping to understand Solomon. The background story, for those who don’t know it, is found in 1 Kings 3:5-15. This is where God appears to Solomon and tells him to ask for whatever he wants. Solomon asks God for wisdom and God is so pleased that He gives it to him - along with wealth and a great many other things. 1Kings 4:29 says, “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.” The problem is, Solomon eventually accumulates so much stuff, servants, wives, concubines, children, animals etc. that he comes across as more of a spoiled brat than a man of great wisdom.
How does it all mesh? My theory is that Solomon was given two kinds of wisdom. One was given to him more immediately and it was what I will call a more “practical” wisdom. He made good judgement calls in disputes between people, he had the intelligence to multiply his wealth and the wealth of his kingdom, administrative and managerial skills... All of this gave him the ability to acquire anything and everything. There was no experience he could not have and nothing he could not buy.
The second kind of wisdom is the kind I think he had to spend a life time learning. It was the wisdom that taught him to say, “Everything is meaningless...utterly meaningless.” (Ecc 1:2) What better way to learn that there is nothing of value on this Earth, and no worthwhile wisdom apart from God, than to have everything handed to you to investigate? In Ecclesiastes, Solomon goes through the list of all the things he has pursued and gained and looked into: pleasure, beautiful homes filled with all the best things, people, silver, gold, sex, hard work... And, in the end, he is full of sorrow. He says,
I, the teacher, was king of Isreal, and I lived in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done in the world... So I worked hard to distinguish wisdom from foolishness But, now I realize that even this was like chasing the wind. For the greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow. (Ecc 1:12-13 &17-18)
Maybe it is that all of these things are of no lasting worth. They seem to satisfy us for a while, but in the end they are fleeting and absolutely perishable. The human appetite is insatiable. We all desperately want to be a part of something enduring and meaningful, yet we are set down on an ever changing and fragile planet where all our striving seems utterly wasted.
In 1990 a picture was taken by the Voyager 1 Space Craft as it headed out of our solar system. It’s a picture of Earth from 6 billion kilometers away. It is stunning and shocking and truthful in it’s depiction of our home - a tiny insignificant looking dot in the midst of a vast empty darkness.
Carl Sagan saw this picture and wrote the following:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Solomon says in chapter 4, verse 11, “He (God) has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” “Eternity in the heart” is what I have come to believe is responsible for all the passion and work and grasping we do here. It is also, evidence of the fact that we were made for something bigger and more than what we can find here. Solomon didn’t need a picture of our planet from billions of miles away. He asked for wisdom and God gave it. He saw the earth as the “pale blue dot” long before Carl Sagan saw that picture. In, the end, his conclusion is, “Remember your creator.” God, who is eternal and creator is the only lasting thing in which we can find more than fleeting significance and satisfaction. I do not believe the life of Solomon was contrary to the claims of his wisdom. Rather, his experience lends credibility to his conclusions on life. Would we take it from someone who never “had it all” that there is no satisfaction in Earthly fame or power or money? I don’t think so.
