Week 18 1 Kings 3-4
This is the famous story about the time the Lord offered Solomon his pick of any gift: what do you want? Ask, and I will give it to you (it was a kind of Aladdin’s Lamp but in real life).
Solomon’s answer was: give me an understanding mind so that I can govern your people well and know the difference between right and wrong.
The rest of chapter three and all of chapter four describe what happened. There are Four Big Domains where Solomon’s Understanding Mind showed up. Solomon set up:
A fair justice system
An organized state bureaucracy
A rational & profitable economic system
Plus…Solomon personally had outrageous intellectual capacity & encyclopedic knowledge.
So Wisdom – a pretty intangible quality – affected Solomon’s real world of hard concrete tangible visible things and benefitted the whole state of Israel.
Every king makes Big Decisions. The key question he needs to ask is: Are My Big Decisions Stupid or Wise?
Solomon’s reign proved the rule that Wise Leaders Guarantee National Success. Unfortunately I know that soon enough I’m going to find examples of the other rule: Unwise Leaders Guarantee Failed States.
Note: quotes from 1 Kings 3:5 & 9 (NLT). The four domains are in 1 Kings 3:16-28 4:1-19 4:20-28 & 4:29-34 (I think it would be a good idea to collect the four into one chapter). End of April reading report: 35% of the bible read in 33% of the year (so my head is still above-water).