Year 6, Day 308: 2 Chronicles 8

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition

• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

Solomon’s reign usually saddens me.  Here is a man whose reign was established for him before he ever took the throne.  He had a great model in his father, who was not perfect in any sense but who was absolutely repentant in every sense of the word.  But we see Solomon beginning to chase the wrong things so quickly after he becomes king.

Look at the clues in the text before us.  First, we see Solomon beginning to draft the non-Hebrew people into forced labor.  Do you wonder what God thinks about this?  Didn’t God say to get rid of the native people in the land because they would lead the Hebrew people astray?  The exception to this would be any native person who desires to become a God-fearing person.  But Solomon doesn’t seem to care about this.  As Solomon acquires more influence and more land for the kingdom, he allows the people to stay and drafts them into forced labor.  Because of his ambition, Solomon opens the door for the religious subversion of himself and his own people.

Then we hear about Solomon’s wife.  Solomon brings up a wife from Egypt.  God warned the Hebrew people about intermarriage, especially for the sake of political reasons.  God warned them that the practice of marrying people who did not follow God would lead them astray into idolatry.  {See Exodus 34:16, Deuteronomy 7:3, and for references around the time of the chronicler see Nehemiah 10:30 and almost all of Ezra 10.}  Furthermore, there was a special warning against dealing with Egypt for fear of the Hebrew people returning to the ways of Egypt.  {See Deuteronomy 17:16-17.}  What we see here is that Solomon sees to extend his influence and make alliances.  He is trusting more on his own political prowess than upon God’s protection.  His ambition is slowly pulling him away from God.

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