Scarcely is the throne inaugurated before elements hostile and foreign to the kingdom manifest themselves; but it is the character of the kingdom of righteousness to reprove all that is not in harmony with itself. In Solomon’s presence the flesh can no longer push itself forward nor freely follow its bent.
Adonijah addresses himself to Bathsheba, that she may present his request to the king, her son. “Comest thou peaceably?” asks this pious woman who stands in doubt of the son of Haggith. She knew in effect that if he would have succeeded in his projects, she and her “son Solomon should be counted offenders” (1 Kings 1:21). This man though outwardly broken is nevertheless far from being so in his heart. “Thou knowest,” he says, “that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign” (1 Kings 2:15). How could such pretensions fail to raise the indignation of the true king? He — Adonijah — to have all the rights of succession to the crown and to the people of David! His words alone betoken an embittered heart, a bitterness long suppressed now manifesting itself because he had not judged himself in the least. To be sure, he also adds: “The kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s: for it was his from the Lord,” but is this a true recognition of the will of God, a true submission to the throne of righteousness? Adonijah accepts this because he cannot do otherwise. Certainly he does not belong to the “willing people” in the day of the power of the son of David. To his mind Solomon is an intruder, and this being the case, what must be the Lord who had established Solomon therefore be to Adonijah?
“And now,” he says, “I ask one petition of thee, deny me not... that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to wife” (1 Kings 2:16-17). Abishag! — that young maiden who had served David and had tenderly cared for him, who had lived in the intimacy of the king of grace, to be given to this rebellious man whom only the patience of Solomon had spared to this moment! How little he knew both David and Solomon! To give Abishag to him would be to admit to him some right to his father’s succession, some contact with the kingdom which he might be able to assert at some favorable occasion; it would be to accept his pretensions and the revolt led by Joab and Abiathar (1 Kings 2:22) as legitimate. Should the woman who as a chaste virgin had served David be given to this profane man?
It will be the same with regard to the Church. Will the King of Glory ever consent to yield to another the bride He has chosen for Himself as King of Grace? The Antichrist, the man of sin, may hope to rob Christ of His bride by seizing apostate Christendom, become Babylon the Great at the end; but his efforts to substitute himself for Christ, to take possession of His bride, and to seize the kingdom will end for both the harlot and for himself in the lake of fire and brimstone. Here judgment did not have to wait: the very same day Adonijah is put to death.
The leader of the conspiracy, the false king, having met his fate, Solomon’s righteousness catches up with the priest (1 Kings 2:26-27) who had been supported for a long while by David, but whose sentence the Lord had already spoken to the ears of Eli (1 Sam. 2:35). Here we find the principle that is expressed in the words “I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau” (Mal. 1:2-3) pronounced thirteen centuries after He had said, “The elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). It was the Lord’s free choice, but the sentence is pronounced only after Esau had manifested himself to be the irreconcilable enemy of God and of His people. It is the same with regard to Abiathar. One hundred thirty-five years after the judgment is announced, he is cut off from the priesthood, after having first furnished a reason for his judgment by his alliance with the rebel.
Thus the reign of righteousness commences with the judgment of all those who when placed under the grace and longsuffering of God had not availed themselves of this to reconcile their hearts and their actions to this rule. Abiathar was all the more guilty in that he had borne the ark of the Lord before David, and that he had also shared in his afflictions from the beginning (1 Sam. 22:20). Thus he had had part in the testimony of the Lord’s anointed and had suffered. Solomon recognizes this, but in the only case where Abiathar’s faithfulness is put to the test and where it is a matter of the glory of the son of David, he makes shipwreck and abandons his master. The word of the Lord, long suspended, is fulfilled: Abiathar is rejected.
Joab comes next. Of him it is expressly said that he had not turned after Absalom (1 Kings 2:28), whatever may have been his feeling in this, as we have seen in the Second Book of Samuel. But it was a far more serious thing to turn away from the reign of righteousness at its beginning, for this denoted an absolute lack of fear in the presence of him who was destined to sit as glorious king upon his throne.
Joab flees to the tabernacle and takes hold of the horns of the altar. That cannot save him. The Word of God is against him: “If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from my altar, that he may die” (Ex. 21:14). Solomon remembers this. When Joab’s judgment is determined it is too late for the altar to shelter him. Vengeance must be executed upon him in order that “upon David, and upon his seed, and upon his house, and upon his throne, shall there be peace forever from the Lord” (1 Kings 2:33), for without vengeance, blood would have remained upon the house of David. Judgment was necessary for his glory.
Lastly comes Shimei (1 Kings 2:36-46). Solomon places him on the footing of responsibility and he accepts this. He thus reveals his pure ignorance of his state of sin and consequently of his incapacity to obey. Had not Israel spoken the very same words when the law was proposed? “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Ex. 19:8). And so Shimei: “The saying is good: as my lord the king hath said, so will thy servant do” (1 Kings 2:38). He knows, wretched man, that to disobey means death for him and that his blood will be upon his own head and nevertheless he is unable to do aught but disobey. He is unable to surrender two runaway slaves. In order to regain possession of them for a day, he sacrifices his own life! What a picture of the world which knows the law of God and which will not and cannot submit to it once a passing interest comes between the will of God and itself. He is judged by his own word: “The word that I have heard is good” (1 Kings 2:42). The man who is placed under responsibility and who accepts this and fails, cannot be tolerated under the reign of righteousness.