Verses 6-9
I. In what sense, it may be asked, did David expect that his son's kingdom would be a Divine and spiritual one, in what sense an earthly and magnificent one? I answer, He looked for no earthly magnificence which was not the manifestation of an inward and spiritual dominion; he feared no earthly magnificence which was a manifestation of it. Solomon's own history will be the best solution of the riddle, if it is one.
II. Solomon beseeches God for an understanding heart. All his moral and spiritual desires are gathered up in that petition. He asks precisely what he feels to be necessary to his work; he wants nothing more. Consider what he felt that this work demanded. "He must discern between good and bad." This he perceives to be the characteristic function of a ruler. He must know right from wrong, must learn in complicated cases to see into the truth, to see it in spite of any falsehoods that might be invented to blacken it. To discern God first, that he might judge of evil by that; to have intense inward sympathy with the right, that he might hate and resolutely put down the wrong this was the gift which, in his conscious ignorance, he desired Him who possessed it to bestow.
III. Such a time as Solomon's, though a really great one, is a critical one for any nation. The idea of building a house which the Lord would fill with His glory was a recognition of God as eternally ruling over that people and over all people. Yet there lay close to it a tendency to make the invisible visible, to represent the holy presence as belonging to the building instead of the building as being hallowed and glorified by the presence. There was the seed of idolatry in Solomon, as there is in every man. That early prayer for an understanding heart was the prayer against it, and it was answered as fully as any prayer ever was. But there comes a moment when the king or the man ceases to desire that the light should enter into hint, should separate the good from the bad in him. Then the tempter appears and points the road to idolatry. And the sympathising king who sent his people away with gladness of heart, sure that God was the King and that they had a human king who felt towards them as He felt, would gradually become a tyrant. So even the wise king would prepare his subjects for rebellion and his kingdom for division.
F. D. Maurice, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, p. 74.
Reference: 1 Kings 3:7 , 1 Kings 3:9 . Old Testament Outlines, pp. 66, 67.
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