Solomon's Old Age, the Warning of Division, and His Death
Many foreign wives, alien altars on the hills—and the verdict: the kingdom will be torn away, though not in your lifetime. The prophet Ahijah tears a garment into twelve pieces and gives ten to Jeroboam.
The Torah warned the future king of three dangers: do not multiply horses, silver and gold, or wives, "lest his heart turn away." Solomon had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines—half of these marriages were diplomacy. And it is written: "When Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods." He did not serve them himself, but he built shrines for his wives east of Jerusalem—for Chemosh of Moab, for Molech of Ammon—and did not stop them.
God told him: because you have not kept My covenant, I will tear the kingdom away and give it to your servant. But not in your days, for the sake of David your father; and one tribe I will leave your son for the sake of Jerusalem. Adversaries appeared—Hadad the Edomite, Rezon in Damascus—and Jeroboam son of Nebat, the official over the labour levy of the house of Joseph. Ahijah the prophet from Shiloh met him in a field, tore his new garment into twelve pieces and said: take ten.
Solomon reigned forty years and died in 2964. His son Rehoboam answered the people's plea for lighter burdens with "my father chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scorpions." Ten tribes walked away.
How we know
On the chronology
Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.
Sources
Tanakh
- Melachim I 11 — the wives, the shrines, the decree, and Achiyah’s prophecy with the torn garment
- Melachim I 12 — the decree carried out in the days of Rechavam
- Devarim 17:16–17 — the three prohibitions on a king: horses, gold, wives
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Shabbat 56b — “whoever says Shlomo sinned is mistaken”: what his fault actually was
- Sanhedrin 21b — “I shall have many and not turn aside”: why the Torah did not conceal the reasons
- Seder Olam Rabbah 15 — the year of his death, 2964
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
King Solomon · Jeroboam son of Nebat · Proverbs · Ecclesiastes · Rehoboam