Marriage and the Bible - Part 22 - Solomon - Polygamist Unleashed

Now I don't know if at any one time Solomon could look at the house of women on his palace grounds and say: 'Holy crap, there are 1000 women in there and I am married to each one of them' but over the course of his whole life Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. I say: HOLY CRAP! It is really good to be king! Or really taxing -- remember it is Solomon who wrote Proverbs 25:24 - 'It is better to live in the corner of the roof, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.' Given that each woman in his harem (gives a whole new definition of this word doesn't it) could have been contentious at any time, I wonder how much time he spent on the roof?

The logistics alone are staggering. To provide for such a group of women and their children meant Solomon made Bill Gates look like a pauper. You had to have money to prove you could take care of a girl before a dad would give his consent and the fact is, kings of other countries were handing over their daughters to Solomon with eager hands. His palace was HUGE. Everyone of them had their own room. This is RICH on a scale very few would understand.

Then there is sex. Talk about a guy who, as he is preparing for bed, could dial up what he wanted for the evening. Blond, redhead, brunette, tall short, athletic build, busty, light skin, dark skin, etc. etc. Talking about the choices might have taken a few minutes. Solomon comments of this in Ecclesiastes 2:8 - "... I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of men - MANY Concubines." No kidding. The point is when it came to sex, Solomon had experienced it all by the end of his life. All of it legal too because he had a marriage contract with each and every one of these ladies. But there was no sexual activity with a woman he probably did not experience. In the end he calls it vanity and useless. Probably because all it ever was was sex.

The million dollar question (chump change for Solomon) is: "Did Solomon ever have a close, one-flesh, covenant relationship with any of these women?". I would say maybe one. The Shunamite maiden in the Song of Solomon is a possibility, but even there the language is one of erotic desire but there does seem to be a spiritual longing as well. However, with this maiden it is possible that even she was not Solomon's first wife, just maybe the only one he really had more feelings for than physical and emotional pleasure.

That said, the motivation for marriages for Solomon was multifaceted but few of them involved covenant. He married some for political alliance, some for financial gain and some because it seemed to be a good idea for whatever reason. Because of his already having many sons, his concubines really only have one use - sexual pleasure. In short, Solomon for all his wisdom and advice on letting the wife of your youth please you at all times, probably never really had a covenant one flesh relationship with any of his wives or concubines, at least not that we know of.

Polygamy my offer the man heightened chances at children and sexual pleasure, but it seems to deny a man the possibility of a close relationship with a woman. The more wives a man has, the more pronounced this is as Solomon, polygamist unleashed, demonstrates.

Next: Solomon's Marriage Wisdom