1 Kings, Chapter 2 (part 2) - The Kingdome Stands | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends, welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is part [music] two of First Kings chapter two. I'm Jeremy Gimpel here with my dear friend and study partner, my haveruta, Ari Abramowitz. And this series is brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. All right. Part one, we buried King David. We watched his son Solomon take the throne and his kingdom was firmly established. Vatekon malchut Tome Od. But a throne being inherited and a throne being secure are two different things. Solomon is young. His father just handed him a kingdom still full of old rivalries and unfinished business. And the rest of this chapter is the story of how the young king closes the accounts of the past and makes the throne truly his own. And it begins with his own brother. Verse 13, Adonijah, the brother who had already tried once to seize the crown, comes to Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, and he says, um, "Bishalom." In peace. And he makes a request that sounds sort of humble. He asks for her to go to on his behalf and request one thing, that he be given Abishag the Shunammite. Abishag a Shunammite. The young woman who had cared for King David in his old age as a wife. And Bathsheba agrees to bring it to her son. >> Now, Jeremy, before we get to Shlomo's reaction, which is explosive, we have to understand why this small request is anything but small. Because on the surface, it looks like a lonely man asking for a wife. But Abishag was no ordinary woman. She had belonged to the household of the king. She had lain in David's arms in his final days. And in the ancient world, taking possession of the previous king's women was a recognized way of claiming the throne itself. We saw this exact thing with Absalom, who publicly took David's concubines on the rooftop to declare himself king. So, when Adonijah asks for Abishag, he's not asking for a bride. He's making a second, quieter play for the kingdom. Testing whether he can establish a claim through the back door, using Solomon's own mother as the messenger to make it look innocent. And that's what makes it so cunning and so dangerous. He wraps a bid for the throne inside a sympathetic personal request and roots it through the queen mother, so Solomon will have a hard time refusing. Adonijah learned nothing from his first attempt except how to be more subtle. And Solomon, with the wisdom he's about to become famous for, sees straight through it in an instant. >> You know, he sees through it completely. Verse 22, Solomon erupts like, "Why are you asking Abishag for Adonijah? You might as well ask for the kingdom itself for him." And so, he recognizes immediately for what it is, a renewed grab for the throne. And Solomon swears an oath and has Benaiah strike Adonijah down that very day. The brother who reached for the crown twice, I'm sorry, you don't get a third chance. And before we go any further, I want to go back to that scene between and his mother Bathsheba cuz the Tanakh pauses on a single detail that's easy to race past, and it's one of the most beautiful and profound moments in the whole chapter. Watch what happens when Bathsheba enters the throne room, verse 19. Vayakam Hamelech Vayishtachula. And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her and sat down on his throne. He had a throne set for the king's mother and she sat at his right hand. The king stands up for his mother. The king bows to her. And then he has a second throne brought in and sets Bathsheba at his right hand. Friends, think about who this woman is. >> Right. And Jeremy, this is one of those details that once you see it, you can never really unsee it because of who Bathsheba is in the story of Israel. Right. Bathsheba is the woman at the very center of David's greatest sin. Her name for 3,000 years is inseparable from the darkest chapter in David's life, the rooftop, Uriah the Hittite, the cover-up, the prophet Nathan's "You are that man." Right. That is the association. And here is her son, the king, the wisest man who will ever live, and rather than hide her away, rather than bury the shame, he rises for her. He bows to her. And he seats her on a throne at his right hand in the most public place in the kingdom for all the court to see. Now, imagine being Solomon. If there was one person you might have been tempted to keep in the background out of the public eye, it would have been your mother. Solomon could have been embarrassed by her. He could have kept her out of sight. Instead, he does the opposite. He elevates her to the highest honor a woman held in the entire monarchy. And in doing so, he establishes something that will last for the rest of the Davidic kings, the position of the Gevirah, the queen mother, who from this point on sits enthroned beside the king. Look through the book of Kings and you'll see it. Reign after reign, the mother of the king is named, honored, and seated in power. And it starts here with Bathsheba. You know, Ari and I think it's such a profound statement cuz what it says about how Hashem works. You think about it, the woman from the story of the sin becomes the mother of the wisest king, the ancestress of the entire royal line, the ancestress of Mashiach himself. So, God doesn't erase the past, he redeems it. And so, the very place of David's deepest failure becomes the channel for Israel's greatest blessing. enthroning his mother is a declaration to the whole kingdom, we don't hide our story, we don't pretend our origins were spotless. We take even the broken places and we lift them up in honor. Because exactly where we fall, that's where God brought forth the king. The throne of the Gevirah beside Solomon is David's sin transformed into Israel's crown. And so, with that, Solomon turns to close the remaining accounts of his father's reign. First, Abiathar the priest, who backed Adonijah. Verses 26 and 27, Solomon banishes him from the priesthood and sends him home to his fields. He spares his life out of respect for the fact that Abiathar had carried the ark before David and shared in all his suffering, but the priesthood is stripped from him. And the Tanakh tells us something that really completes the picture. This fulfilled the word of the Lord which had spoken concerning the house of Eli. >> Right, and Jeremy, that little line about the house of Eli is the Tanakh reaching all the way back across two entire books to close a circle. And it tells us something deeply insightful about Hashem's word works throughout history. Right, go back to the very very beginning of the book of Samuel. Eli was the high priest, um and and his sons corrupted the priesthood, and a prophet came and told Eli that God would one day cut off his family line from serving as priests. That prophecy sat there unfulfilled for generations through the whole rise of Samuel, through Saul, through all of David's reign, and now in a single administrative act, Solomon dismisses one priest who backed the wrong prince, that ancient word quietly comes true. Abiathar was a descendant of Eli. When he's removed, the doom pronounced generations earlier is complete, and the priesthood passes for good to Zadok's line. And I find that really powerful because because it means God's word is always alive. A prophecy spoken in one generation may wait a hundred years for its moment, but it never dies. It waits until history itself bends around it, right? Often through events that look on the surface like ordinary politics. Solomon thought he was securing his throne. God was, however, fulfilling a promise. That's the hidden architecture of the Tanakh. History doesn't determine God's word. God's word determines history. >> Well, that's beautifully said. And so, we hear the last two accounts. Joab, hearing what's happened, Joab flees to the Mishkan, to the tent of Hashem, grabs hold of the horns of the altar, begging for sanctuary. And Solomon, on David's charge, sends Benayahu, and Joab is struck down right there at the altar. The blood of Abner and Amasa, unavenged for so long, finally answered. And Shimei, verses 36 to 46, Solomon shows him mercy with a condition. Build a house in Jerusalem and never leave this place. The day you cross the Kidron Valley, you die. And for 3 years, Shimei keeps the terms, but then two of his servants run off, and Shimei chases them across the border, and Solomon holds him to his word. Every open account of David's reign is closed, and the chapter ends with one clean, quiet sentence. Verse 46, "Vatemal lachon nichona biad Shlomo." And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon. And friends, that's what chapter two teaches us in two directions at once. First, for our own lives. This chapter is about what it takes to build something secure and lasting. It holds up two very different tools. On one hand, the clear-eyed wisdom to close the past honestly, to deal with what's broken rather than to just leave it to fester. And on the other hand, and this is the deeper lesson, it's the courage not to hide our broken places, but to lift them up. Solomon didn't bury his mother's story. He enthroned it. And every one of us has a Bathsheba throne, some part of our story, our family, our past that we're tempted to kind of keep out of sight. This chapter tells us that God's greatest works often come exactly through those places, and that redemption isn't erasing where we came from, it's transforming it into honor. And second, for Israel today. Friends, this whole chapter is like points really to one phrase, "The kingdom was established." After all the rivalry, the blood, all the unfinished business of David's house, the throne stands firm in the promise of an eternal Davidic dynasty is intact and moving forward. And that dynasty carries with it the whole hope of our people right down to today cuz the throne of David isn't gone. It's waiting. Every one of these kings secure on the throne of Jerusalem is another link in a chain that reaches toward the final king, Messiah. And from the house of David, the kingdom was established and it's truly never been undone. And we may be the generation that sees it restored in its fullness. So, chazak u'baruch my friends, we're almost there. But before we go, I want to encourage all of you. If these teachings are meaningful for you, if you find them uplifting, you find them connecting you to words of the prophets, to the land of Israel, it takes a lot of work to bring this to so many people in so many countries, to keep it free, to keep it open to everyone. And you can be a part of the engine that makes it happens. So, please dedicate a chapter, a book, send a blessing and honor in memory of someone that you love and have their name intertwined with the eternal words of the prophets that's being learned now by people from all around the world. So, to sponsor, dedicate, just click on the link below or go to the land of israel.com. We [music] would love to partner with you. And so, b'ezrat Hashem, we'll see you tomorrow for 1 Kings chapter 3. Shalom.