Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. Rob Bell
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Another word for forced labor is, of course, slavery.
Solomon had slaves. Slaves who labored to build his temple, palace, and other buildings.
Wait.
The LORD’s temple?
This is the same LORD who sets slaves free, correct?
The defining event of Solomon’s ancestors was the exodus, right?
And now Solomon is building a temple for the God who sets slaves free . . . using slaves?
This is a major moment in the Bible.
In just a few generations, the oppressed have become the oppressors.
The ancestors of people who once cried out because of their bondage are now causing others to cry out.
The descendants of people who once longed for freedom from Egypt are now building another Egypt.
Solomon has created an empire of indifference. He has forgotten the story of his ancestors. He hasn’t remembered how Moses demanded that the people be set free, how they escaped from Pharaoh, how they were brought out on “eagles’ wings.”40
In a few generations these wandering former slaves who were newly rescued from an oppressive empire have become empire-builders themselves.
Solomon isn’t maintaining justice; he’s now perpetuating the very injustice his people once needed redemption from and, in the process, building a kingdom of comfort. He dines in his palace and strolls on terraces constructed by human suffering.
But it isn’t just his comfort and indifference that stand out; it’s what exactly he builds. In the section where we’re told he was using slaves to build God’s temple and his palace and the terraces, it also says that Solomon used these slaves to build “Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.”41
This is one of the many places in the Bible where it is easy to read through the lists of Hebrew names and miss what’s going on right below the surface. So what are Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer?
They’re military bases.42
Megiddo is in a valley in the north of Israel. It’s the valley where Africa, Europe, and Asia meet. It’s a strategic location, to say the least. Megiddo is where we get the English word Armageddon.
Solomon is using his massive resources and wealth to build military bases to protect his . . . massive resources and wealth.
His empire-building leads him to place a high priority on preservation. Protecting and maintaining all that has been accumulated is taking more and more resources as attention is given to homeland security.
Not only that, but later in the text we’re told that Solomon accumulated “fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.”43
Horses? Chariots?
Pharaoh’s soldiers rode on horses and in chariots as they chased the Hebrew slaves when they were escaping Egypt.
And the text goes on to say that Solomon imported them from Egypt!
Jerusalem is the new Egypt.
There’s a new Pharaoh on the scene, and his name is Solomon, the son of David.
Not only is he accumulating horses and chariots, which were the tanks and fighter planes of his day, but the scriptures add that Solomon and his leaders “imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.”44
Two words: import and export.
Solomon is buying horses and chariots, but he’s also selling them. Solomon has become an arms dealer. He’s now making money from violence. He’s discovered that war is profitable.
Is that maintaining justice and righteousness?
Is that hearing the cry of the oppressed?
Is that looking out for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner?
Shortly after this we read that Solomon “had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. . . . His wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God.”45
Seven hundred wives?
Three hundred concubines?
But the point for the storyteller is not the numbers; it’s how his wives affected Solomon. They turned him away from God, and “his heart was not fully devoted.”
This passage forms a significant contrast with what we learned earlier about the slaves and military bases. Those were systemic evils—Solomon creating an anti-kingdom—but now we learn about a different kind of failure, not a systemic one but the turning of an individual’s heart.
Solomon breaks covenant with God.
This goes back to the first of the Ten Commandments, the one about having no other gods. Sinai was a marriage covenant between God and the people, a coming together of the divine and the human. And so the first commandment was that the people couldn’t have other lovers. The relationship simply wouldn’t work if they were unfaithful. Solomon’s many wives and his infidelity to God are representative of the infidelity of all the people—they’ve turned from God. Tragically, Solomon’s people had been warned that this could happen.
Moses said earlier that the king “must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’ He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.”46
Did Solomon “acquire great numbers of horses”? Check.
Did he “take many wives”? Check.
Was his “heart led astray”? Check.
The text reads, “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents.”47 That’s about twenty-five tons of gold.
Did he “accumulate large amounts of silver and gold”? Check.
And that number 666, the weight of the talents of gold? That’s a very Jewish way of saying that something is evil, dark, wrong, and opposed to God.
Because it can go one of two ways in Jerusalem.
And with Solomon, the story takes a tragic turn.
Solomon goes “back that way again.”
Jerusalem is the new Egypt, Solomon is the new Pharaoh, and Sinai has been forgotten.
This puts God in an awkward place.
Remember, God is looking for a body, flesh and blood to show the world a proper marriage of the divine and human.
What happens when your body looks nothing like you?
What happens when your people become the embodiment of everything you are against?
What happens when you’re being given a bad name?
What happens when your people are unfaithful to the vow they made to you?
What happens when your people “go back that way again,” the way you rescued them from?
Babylon
The Hebrew scriptures have a very simple and direct message:
God