King Solomon, the legendary ruler of Israel, had everything—wisdom, wealth, and power—but his inability to cherish true love led to his downfall. In today’s episode, we journey through the life of Solomon as captured in the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. What happens when a man loves many but respects none? Reflecting on his many tumultuous relationships and profound realizations, Solomon’s teachings continue to educate and warn us. Whether you’re seeking guidance on leadership, love, or life’s priorities, let Solomon’s wisdom resonate with you as we dissect his journey of power and passion, culminating in the timeless praise for
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
Poor King Solomon. He was a man with way too many women in his life. And the bad news is Solomon didn’t really like women. Oh, he loved them sexually. But that’s not the same. You know, I have never known of a womanizer who really liked women. Women are useful. Women are sex objects. They are things to satisfy his ego and his libido. And I sort of think ego is more important to the two. But women are not people that a womanizer really respects and cares about and, more important, cares for. The womanizer’s conversation among men about women is almost always degrading and insulting. In fact, the descriptive terms that men like this use about women, I can’t repeat them on the air. Sex for men like that is about dominance. It’s not about love. This is a disease of powerful men, of charismatic men who are used to having their own way. True love is a face-to-face thing. But for men whose desire is to dominate women, that’s not their preference. No, King Solomon did not like women. And I’m sorry to say, you would have to call Solomon a womanizer. 1 Kings 11, verse 1. But King Solomon loved many strange women. Together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, Edomites, Zidoans, Hittites, he sampled them all. Didn’t matter the color, didn’t matter the nationality, didn’t matter the facial features, except naturally, I’m sure they had to be beautiful. Of the nations concerning which the Lord said to the children of Israel, You don’t go into them, and they’re not to come in unto you, which is a euphemism for having sex with them or marrying them. For surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clave to these in love, and put the word love in quotes. Note, by the way, that God’s concern with them having affairs with women of these other nations was not racial. It was religious. He knew that they would turn away their hearts after other gods. Solomon had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. When you think about it, Solomon barely had time to have sex with all those women, much less show them any real love. And the competition in his harem must have been ferocious. None of these women felt loved by Solomon. To really love a woman is to prefer her above all others. And consequently, a man cannot truly love more than one woman. There never was a man so destined to win as Solomon was. Solomon loved God, and God loved him. In the first place, Solomon was David’s son, and consequently very special to God. God spoke to him early on in his career, and he told him that he could have anything he wanted, just ask for it. Now, that goes a little bit beyond anything a genie in a bottle really is capable of offering. But God loved this boy, and he thought, this is a king I can really relate to. I can make something out of him. And so Solomon, when God told him, what do you want? He said, this people, this great people, you know, no man can really judge these people or lead these people. I need the wisdom to be able to know what to tell them and which way to take them. And God listened to what he said, and he said, you know, because you haven’t asked for riches or for a long life, which a lot of men would have asked for, but you’ve really asked for the ability to lead this people, that I’m going to give you wisdom above that of any man who has ever lived. And that’s what he got. His wisdom was legendary. But in the end, it was his women that turned Solomon into a loser. They turned his brain to jelly and his wisdom to folly. It’s strange how that could happen to a man like that. But the truth is, Solomon never found a good woman. And there was a reason for it. Solomon was truly a charismatic man. He had enormous personal charm. You can put that together very quickly. And he could have all the women he wanted. But it never worked very well for him. Now, how can I say that Solomon didn’t like women? How do I know that? Well, he speaks of women some 32 times in the book of Proverbs. More than that, really. And in all but six of these, references are negative. The dominant view of the first third of the book of Proverbs is about strange women, whorish women, women who can in one way or another ruin a man’s life. I can only conclude that he knew whereof he spoke. For Solomon could look back over a long life and say that women were my downfall. Then there is this from Ecclesiastes, also by Solomon. He said in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 26, I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets and her hands like bands. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her. I don’t know exactly what Solomon is driving here at, but he obviously felt very much restricted by the women who were around him. He felt like he’d been snared and caught, felt like he was in bands. Behold, this have I found, said Solomon, counting one by one to find out the account which my soul seeks, but I don’t find it. One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found. You know, it’s sad to say, but Solomon’s life was a wreck when it came to women. He had 700 wives, 300 concubines, and among the whole lot of them, he could not find one woman that he really liked. But in the end, I think he came to understand that the failing was as much with him as it was with the women. I can see it when I read between the lines in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Take, for example, Proverbs 18, verse 22. He said, Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor of the Lord. A good thing? Yeah, he could see that. He could see that a man who had a wife, one woman, that he was bound to, was a good thing. Because a good man and a good woman together are a team of winners. You let a moment of carelessness involve either of them with the wrong person, and a life can be turned into misery. Solomon said also in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 25, I applied my heart to know and to search and to seek out wisdom. I wanted to know the reason behind things. I wanted to know what wickedness was and folly, and I wanted to know the foolishness and madness. And I find more bitter than death. the woman whose heart is snares and nets, the woman that had really trapped Solomon and took him the wrong way. In Proverbs 11, verse 16, he says, A gracious woman retains honor, and strong men retain riches. He could see that a woman who was truly gracious would be an honorable woman, would hold on to her honor. In Proverbs 12, verse 4, he says, A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that makes ashamed… It’s like rottenness in his bones. I really believe that these Proverbs reveal a lot about Solomon’s thinking. I think he realized the value of a good woman. He just had never found one. But you know, I suspect he probably had found one, but he had never given her a chance. It takes time, you know, for love to grow. It takes a little time to be gracious. It takes time for a man to know the quality of a woman and whether she is a good woman or whether she is not. Time, though, is something no woman of Solomon ever had, not with 999 other women in the house. So how did Solomon really feel about women? We’ll talk about that when I come back.
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SPEAKER 03 :
In all of his conversation about women, Solomon had a word of very good advice, even to leaders all the way down to the modern world. In Proverbs 31, verse 3, he said this, Give not your strength unto women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings. Now, if you recall some of the earlier programs in this series, I talked about the habit of Hebrew poetry of creating little couplets, that is, two phrases that say much the same thing. And what he is saying is that giving your strength unto women is that which will destroy kings. Men with enormous power can actually be ruined by women. Now, I think it’s also important to notice, he didn’t say don’t give your strength to a woman. He said, don’t give it to women. And I think he had reason to know what he was talking about. With 700 wives and 300 concubines, any of these modern people who’ve been divorced and remarried seven or eight or nine or ten times can all take a back seat. This man didn’t bother divorcing them. He just kept them all. Why not? He was the king. But in the process… An enormous amount of his strength went to these women, and ultimately these women destroyed him. But if you revise this just a little bit and you think in terms of one woman, it’s good for a man to share his strength with a woman, because in doing so, he becomes much stronger. But when he dissipates himself among women, sooner or later, it’s going to destroy him. Solomon went on to say in Proverbs 25, verse 24, he said, Solomon really liked this particular proverb. He repeated it twice. In Proverbs 21, verse 19, he says, Solomon said, Well, yes, I would agree with that. I would just as soon be in the corner of a housetop than down in a warm, snug house with a woman who wants to fight. And I’d just as soon be off in the desert somewhere as in a cool, air-conditioned house with a contentious and angry woman. Yeah. But on the other hand, when all you do is use them and abuse them, what do you expect? Surely, if a woman is angry, something has gone down. Of course, I would suggest to all the ladies listening to this that you give this a little thought as well, that a man might be a whole lot happier living somewhere else than in a house with a contentious and angry woman, but you guys are going to have to work that out between you. Solomon also said, As a jewel of gold in a pig’s nose, so is a fair woman who is without discretion. Well, he had a lot of beautiful women around him. I feel reasonably sure there was not one woman in his harem that was homely. But an awful lot of them had no discretion. He had plenty of opportunities to know what he was talking about. Because women will gossip, you know. And if the king behaved himself in a certain way in his bedchamber, you can’t imagine that the other ladies would not know about it, could you? You couldn’t imagine that they would jabber up and down the hallways about Solomon’s little peculiarities or his maybe slightly growing abdomen that, as he got a little older, got big and a little bit sloppy somewhere along the way. And all the things that happened, you know, women will talk. And Solomon didn’t appreciate that. But sooner or later, a wise man’s got to realize the realities are that women will talk. And I would agree that a fair woman with no discretion is like a jewel of gold in a pig’s nose. But a wise man who doesn’t have the wisdom to know how to behave himself among women or which women he ought to trust and which ones he ought not to trust, I don’t think I need to say any more about that. But in the end, Solomon really did know that there was such a thing as a virtuous woman. He really did. I don’t know where exactly he came to know it, whether it was in his mother or perhaps in his nannies as he was growing up. But he did know this because probably the crowning thing of Proverbs, the very end of Proverbs, the dominant theme of the close of this great book. begins in chapter 31, verse 10, with these words, Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is far above rubies? Here was a wealthy man, and a man who in the book of Ecclesiastes expands all of the stuff that he learned about the futility of life, and who even at the end of his life understood fully how much better it was to live joyfully with the wife of your youth. And what he means by that is your first wife. To stick with this woman, a virtuous woman, her price is more valuable than I can ever tell you. Why? Well, he continues to develop this theme, and it’s a beautiful theme. He said the heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. You know, to be able to really trust your wife, to always do good, to never do anything to hurt you, to never stab you in the back, a woman you can absolutely depend on, who will always tell you the truth, who will always sugarcoat the truth a little bit so she doesn’t hurt you too bad with it, but a woman you can depend on to tell you. How valuable is that? He continues to discuss how this woman performs. And it’s really striking to realize what a liberated woman this was. You get this impression in the ancient world women were like chattel. The men almost bought them and sold them or traded them off or something like that. But Solomon didn’t see it that way. And in fact, in Israel of old, it was not that way. He describes what she does. He said she seeks wool and flax and works willingly with her hands. What she means by this is she makes clothes. She’s like the merchant ships. She brings her food from afar. I know women like that. I mean, they’d drive halfway across Los Angeles to find a farmer’s market where they could get better vegetables and better food of all kinds. Partly it’s a matter of saving money because women are great shoppers. I mean, they will go all over town looking at everything to be sure that they have got, A, the best price, and B, the best quality. They want what they want. And when it comes to getting food and clothing for her family, a good woman works hard at it. She rises also while it is yet night and gives meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. Whoa, this woman is doing pretty well. She’s got maidens of her own, but she gets up while it’s still dark in the morning to see to it that her family gets a good breakfast and even takes care of her servants. She considers a field and buys it. Oh, here’s a woman who either has got money of her own or else her husband trusts her so much that she can spend his money. She considers a field. She weighs it up. She buys it. This woman, folks, is in business. Now, she runs that business out of her home, I have little doubt. And her children, I’m sure, are well taken care of. But she considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. Oh, that’s great. You get fruit out of that vineyard at a certain time of the year. But you get more than that. You get grape juice, and out of the grape juice you make wine, and wine you can sell. She girds her loins with strength and strengthens her arms. That means this woman’s working. Her legs, her arms are strong. She perceives that her merchandise is good. You see what I mean about her selling the wine, the different things that she does? She’s got merchandise. She is in business. Now, you talk about when Solomon said, who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies? He was talking, of course, I think in terms of human value, but this indicates she’s got monetary value as well. It says her candle doesn’t go out at night. I’m not sure what he means by that, whether he means that she doesn’t blow it out because she’s working late or whether she makes a good candle and doesn’t go out on you. She lays her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. That means that she’s making stuff, making clothes for her family, and because it speaks of her merchandise, I have to conclude, some of her stuff made it to the market. This I also like in verse 20. She stretches out her hand to the poor, yea, she reaches forth her hands to the needy. You know, this is a fundamental value in Israel among Hebrew people, is the care of the poor and the needy, the people who are helpless, the people who can’t take care of themselves. You’ve got a woman here who not only takes care of her family, but has her eyes out beyond her family to the community around her and who really cares about people who are downtrodden, who are poor, and who are needy. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. It’s wool. It’s really warm. She makes herself coverings of tapestry. Her clothing is silk and purple. Purple, by the way, was a singularly expensive dye. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. Now, I want you to think about something here. Here is a man who is able to make himself or put himself into a position of government. He is a man who becomes well-known in that position. He’s a man of some power. His woman is a very important part of that power. His woman, singular. For unless she is his woman, singular, he will never really have her support, her strength, and will never be able to really call it his own. She makes fine linen and sells it and delivers girdles to the merchant. Strength and honor are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom. In her tongue is the law of kindness. I wish all of us could get the law of kindness. By that I mean that we should obey the law of kindness when we open our mouth and when we speak. She looks well to the ways of her household and eats not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her. You know what’s interesting about this is that a lot of research has been done that indicates that men in corporate life who are married, earn more money, are promoted faster, and are more valuable to a corporation than single men. It’s not hard to figure. The man’s got lots of support at home. Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but you, you excel them all. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain. But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates. She will be known, even in public life, because of the caliber of woman that she is. Stick around.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ll be back with more after these words. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled Making Life Work, number 24. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station. This program is part of a series called Making Life Work.
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And our premise in this series is that there are things that we do, there are choices that we make, that make all the difference in the world in whether our lives work or whether our lives come unstuck. Our behavior, our choices make all the difference in whether we are winners in the game of life or whether we are losers. And the one thing that seems clear to me in the Bible is that God really wants man, He wants His children to be winners. Too many times in the Bible, the word overcome is found. God says to the overcomers, well, I give. And then He talks about all the wonderful things He will give to the overcomers. Well, the overcomers are the people who face adversity and win, who face challenges and win. They are winners. And the choice we make of a mate for life is surely one of the most important we will ever make. When God made man, he said right from the beginning, it’s not good for a man to be alone. And he said, I’ll make a help for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman also. and brought her to the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore, says God, shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. From the beginning, man and woman were made for each other. They were made to be intimate with one another. They were made to add strength to one another. Together, they make a winning team. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 4 and verse 7, Then I returned and I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone without a second. It really is tragedy. Man was not meant to be alone, and a man who is by himself is at a disadvantage in the world. Yea, he has neither child nor brother, yet is there no end of all his labor? His eye is not satisfied with riches, and neither says he, What am I working for? What am I giving up things for? This is all so vanity. Yea, it’s a sore travail. Two, said Solomon, are better than one. He might have said, let’s take into consideration what he didn’t say. He didn’t say a thousand and one are better than one, with all of his thousand wives plus him. He said two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he has not another to help him up. And I think of how desperate it would be to be sick and alone in the world and have no one to help you. And remember the times when I’ve been in hospital and my wife has been there, or she’s been in the hospital and I have been there. Nowhere are Solomon’s words more apparent than in the family. And the presence of both mother and father in the home is the difference between losing and winning for a lot of kids. This is not to say that you can’t make it alone, but you will have a devil of a time winning alone. I feel sorry for men who don’t like women, and I feel even sorrier for women who are stuck with one of those men. Watch out for men like these girls. They’re losers, and they’ll turn you into a loser at the same time. We’ll be right back. If you write or call, we know you’re listening. So protect your station. Give us a call or drop us a line. Our phone number is 1-888-BIBLE44. That’s 1-888-242-5344. Our mailing address is Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791.
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So until next time, I’m Ronald Dart. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791 you may call us toll free at 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
