I Kings 11:9: “And the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel which had appeared unto him twice.”
Every modern translation I read uses the word angry in this passage. Well, I mean you can’t blame God for being angry with Solomon after pulling the stunts like he did. Here God gives to him all this wisdom, wealth and power and in return all He asks of Solomon is to keep a few commandments. What does Solomon do? He goes out and marries foreign women against the command of God, who then persuade him to build shrines on Mt. Olive for their gods Chemush and Milcom. The Septuagint gives this as Milcom but in the unpointed text it is mlk which could be Melek, a king, or Moloch, the notorious god who demanded human sacrifice. Even if not Moloch, there were occasions when the god Chemush demanded human sacrifice. Nonetheless, we know this planted the seeds for the people to actually offer human child sacrifice to God toward the end of the kingdom even though the prophets such as Micah (Micah 6:7) condemned such a thing. Nonetheless the people were desperate and because of this pagan influence on the Hebrew faith of these other religions the people felt that if they sacrificed their own children to God He would reward them with His favor. They somehow could not understand that God just wanted their faith and obedience, not their sacrifices as the prophets taught.
Look at what the text gives as the reason for God’s anger. It is because Solomon’s heart was turned from God. Solomon started out with a heart toward God. God appeared to Him and told him he could ask anything he wanted and God would give it to him. Solomon did not ask for wealth or power only wisdom to lead the people properly. God appeared a second time at the dedication of the temple, even though Solomon was beginning to fall into sin at this time. History calls this Solomon’s Temple and not God’s Temple. Solomon did not build the temple entirely according to God’s will; he built it on the backs of slaves, financed through heavy taxation and used bronze where he should have used gold and gold where he should have used silver. This was more a monument to himself as much as it was to God, yet God appeared and declared that his presence would reside in the temple so long as they follow certain rules, which they didn’t.
So, here we are now, Solomon has pushed God too far and now God is angry with Solomon. I don’t know about you, but this sort of frightens me. I mean if God is capable of being angry, then it is possible I could make Him angry. I know from having been in ministry for many years as a pastor and teacher that I will often say and do things that would make people angry even though I certainly never intended for that to happen. I wonder just how far we can push God before he finally responds with fire and brimstone.
I read in Exodus 32:7-14 where God flies into a rage over the people worshipping a golden calf and declares to Moses that he will destroy the people and make a great nation out of him. Moses has to jump into the fray and calm God down. “God, you’re upset, you don’t know what you’re saying: here sit down, relax, have a piece of my bagel, and think about you’re doing. What would Egypt say, what would the world say?” Finally it appears God’s cools down and says: “Moses, when you’re right, you’re right, I don’t know what came over me. I won’t destroy them.” At least that is the way it sounds in reading our English translations. When you read this you cannot help but get a picture of an irrational God who flies off the handle because people pay their respects to another god.
That word for anger in both these passages is the Hebrew is aneph which is found in a Hithpael perfect form. It is interesting to note that there is a Beth in front of the word Solomon. This Beth is the preposition in which would be more compatible with a Hithpael than the word with which the Beth could sometimes render. As this is in a Hithpael form it would suggest that God was aneph with himself and not Solomon. In other words because of what Solomon did God was aneph or angry with Himself. However, if we were to plug the English word anger into aneph that would not make much sense, that God was angry with Himself. This word aneph in its Semitic roots does not carry the idea of anger, but has its origins in the snorting of a camel. It even sounds like a camel’s snort. A camel will snort when it is in heat and when it is frustrated or angry.
Consider for a moment what our English word anger means. It is a strong emotion. The cause of this strong emotion might come from mere frustration to actual hate. Therein lays the problem with the English word anger being used for aneph. To us the English word for anger carries the idea of hate and irrationality. To the Bedouin, when his camel starts to snort, he does not interpret that as his camel hating him, or wanting to do him harm, he only sees it as the camel is frustrated. What is the cause of frustration? It is the feeling of helplessness. Someone is pushing you to do something that you have done your best to do but you just cannot accomplish the task. This is the proper use of the word aneph particularly when it is used in a Hithpael form.
Even the English word frustration falls short of the true nature of aneph. It is what you feel when you have done your best, but failed to accomplish your goal. This is a picture of a wife who has done everything she could to show her husband how much she loves him and then the husband walks out of the house and seeks comfort with another woman. What that wife feels is aneph. Yes, she will feel anger, but let’s not forget all the other emotions that play into this, there is also hurt, heartbreak, frustration, sadness, grief, rejection and fear. If she truly loves her husband, she wishes him no harm, but fears what that infidelity will do to him and what it will do to their children.
Thus, with our understanding of the English word anger, which carries the idea of wishing harm to someone, it would be wrong to use that word in this passage. God meant no harm to Solomon, he loved Solomon, and he appeared to him twice. The word appears is ra’ah used in a Niphal form which is to make himself known with his presence. He has made himself intimate with Solomon.
Thus, the word I would use here instead of anger is heartbreak. The Lord’s heart was broken in Solomon because Solomon’s heart was turned away from Him.
So we need not fear God being angry with us. However, there is something even greater to fear. When we end our journey to the heart of God, will we find it in shattered ruins because of our own spiritual infidelity? That thought alone is a much more fearful thought than having God angry with us.
Recent Comments