1 Kings 11:1-8
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Chapter 11
The End of Solomon’s Reign.[a] 1 (A)King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of Pharaoh—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, Hittites— 2 (B)from nations of which the Lord had said to the Israelites: You shall not join with them and they shall not join with you, lest they turn your hearts to their gods. But Solomon held them[b] close in love. 3 He had as wives seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines, and they turned his heart.
4 When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to follow other gods, and his heart was not entirely with the Lord, his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 Solomon followed Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he did not follow the Lord unreservedly as David his father had done. 7 Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and to Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain opposite Jerusalem. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 11:1–13 The next major unit of the Solomon story corresponds to 3:1–15. Like the earlier passage it includes the narrator’s remarks about Solomon’s foreign wives and his building projects, and a divine word commenting on Solomon’s conduct. However, where 3:1–15 is generally positive toward Solomon, the present passage is unrelievedly negative. Chronicles has no parallel to this material.
- 11:2 Them: both the nations and their gods.
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