In I Kings 3:3 it says that Solomon showed his love for the Lord\u00a0except<\/strong>\u00a0that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 12:4-5 God says you must not worship the Lord your God in their way, but you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put His Name there for his dwelling. To\u00a0that<\/em> place you must go.\u00a0 Am I correct to understand that even at this point Solomon was already sinning?\u00a0 Was he sinning from lack of knowledge or was he sinning from disobedience?\u00a0 What follows in I Kings 3 is what confuses me.\u00a0 If Solomon was already doing things against God’s commands, then why does the passage sound like he was so wonderful, and God went out of His way to bless him? As a parent if I don’t bring it to my children’s attention when I first see that they’re doing wrong, then it’s likely they wouldn’t see what they’re doing is wrong and would continue in their course.\u00a0 If God didn’t bring it to Solomon’s attention that he was sacrificing to the Lord in the wrong way no wonder Solomon, later on, had no problem building high places for his many wives to worship their gods.<\/p>\n\t “Meanwhile the people sacrificed at the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the LORD until those days. And Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. Now the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place: Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar<\/em>” (I Kings 3:2-4).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At this point in time, the temple had not been build. God did say “But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go<\/em>” (Deuteronomy 12:5), but this hasn’t happened yet. What had happened over the years is that Israel had been making offerings to God, but using the old high places instead of going wherever the Tabernacle was currently located.<\/p>\n This isn’t what God wanted, but He had been tolerating it before the Temple was built. The passage tells us that Solomon did the same thing. It hints that God didn’t like the location Solomon chose, but He put up with it. It should have been known that even in the days of the Tabernacle they were not to use the sites of idol worship for offerings to God. “Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see; but in the place which the LORD chooses, in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you<\/em>” (Deuteronomy 12:13-14).<\/p>\n But you are correct that it does give us a hint as to what happened to Solomon later in life. “For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David<\/em>” (I Kings 11:4). It is the nature of sin to be progressive. Solomon had compromised a bit altering the location of where he offered sacrifices to God. Thus, when his wives pressured him later, he eventually changed to whom he was making those offerings. Thus sin over time becomes utterly sinful (Romans 7:13).<\/p>\n What this continues to show is that even the great names in the Bible were not without their flaws, yet God made use of them to accomplish His purpose.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: In I Kings 3:3 it says that Solomon showed his love for the Lord\u00a0except\u00a0that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 12:4-5 God says you must not worship the Lord your God in their way, but you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[786],"class_list":["post-30294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-solomon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":68450,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/a-fathers-helpful-words-to-his-son\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":0},"title":"A Father\u2019s Helpful Words to His Son","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 19, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Gregory Roark \"Now the days of David drew near that he should die, and he charged Solomon his son, saying: 'I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. And keep the charge of the Lord your God: to walk in His\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":53994,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/solomon-failure-of-the-worlds-wisest-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":1},"title":"Solomon: Failure of the World’s Wisest Man","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 22, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"by Max Dawson In my mind, it is one of the most difficult things to reconcile. How did it happen? How could it possibly happen? I am talking about King Solomon. How did the wisest man in the world mess up so badly? How did a man with such a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25273,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/can-you-explain-some-of-the-prophecies-about-christ\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":2},"title":"Can you explain some of the prophecies about Christ?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: The Bible says that Jesus committed mistakes; it's in II Samuel 7:12-17. I'm guessing it was like, in the day that Jesus, when he was 12, went to the place to discuss with the wise men. His parents noticed He was missing when they were going back home already.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29079,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/who-is-the-one-man-among-a-thousand-and-why-couldnt-a-woman-be-found\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":3},"title":"Who is the one man among a thousand and why couldn’t a woman be found?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: What does Ecclesiastes 7:28 mean? Who did Solomon refer to as the one upright man? Was it himself? Did Solomon manage to find a good wife, as some verses from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes seem to suggest not? If yes, how could he love them but not seem to trust\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16176,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-was-the-kingdom-divided-in-the-old-testament\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":4},"title":"Why was the kingdom divided in the Old Testament?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Why was the kingdom divided in the Old Testament? Answer: \"But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites- from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, \"You shall\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35985,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-solomon-miss-out-on-heaven\/","url_meta":{"origin":30294,"position":5},"title":"Did Solomon miss out on heaven?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Jeffrey, Another question that I realize we probably can't really answer. However, since I've been curious about it for some time, I thought I'd ask anyway. In the Old Testament, we read of Solomon letting his wives turn his heart from God. \"For it came to pass, when Solomon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Answer:<\/h2>\n