Solomon Is Born

²⁴ Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba. He had intercourse with her, and she bore a son, whom David named Solomon. The Lord loved the boy ²⁵ and commanded the prophet Nathan to name the boy Jedidiah,^[a] because the Lord loved him.

^26 (A)I told them, “It was foreign women that made King Solomon sin. Here was a man who was greater than any of the kings of other nations. God loved him and made him king over all of Israel, and yet he fell into this sin.

Solomon Turns Away from God

11 ^(A)Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides the daughter of the king of Egypt he married Hittite women and women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Sidon. ^2 (B)He married them even though the Lord had commanded the Israelites not to intermarry with these people, because they would cause the Israelites to give their loyalty to other gods. ³ Solomon married seven hundred princesses and also had three hundred concubines. They made him turn away from God, ⁴ and by the time he was old they had led him into the worship of foreign gods. He was not faithful to the Lord his God, as his father David had been. ⁵ He worshiped Astarte, the goddess of Sidon, and Molech, the disgusting god of Ammon. ⁶ He sinned against the Lord and was not true to him as his father David had been. ⁷ On the mountain east of Jerusalem he built a place to worship Chemosh, the disgusting god of Moab, and a place to worship Molech, the disgusting god of Ammon. ⁸ He also built places of worship where all his foreign wives could burn incense and offer sacrifices to their own gods.