He built the Temple. He wrote three books of the Hebrew Bible. He ruled over an empire so vast that the Queen of Sheba traveled months just to test whether his fame was real. God spoke to Solomon twice. And yet this man — Shlomo HaMelech, King Solomon, the wisest human being in recorded history — died having presided over the construction of idolatrous shrines in the hills surrounding Jerusalem. In his two-part series on Solomon’s rise and fall, Rabbi Elie Mischel asks the question that haunts this story: how is it possible? The answer is not just ancient tragedy. It is a warning for every person who has ever trusted their own intelligence a little too much.
The Hebrew Bible does not soften what happened.
Seven hundred wives. Three hundred concubines. And they came from the exact nations God had explicitly forbidden Israel to intermarry with. How did the wisest man alive justify this to himself? The answer is more surprising — and more unsettling — than you might expect.
Here is where it gets complicated. The rabbis debate whether Solomon’s marriages were even permitted in the first place. Some argue that conversion removes the prohibition entirely — and Solomon carefully converted each wife before marriage. Others argue that for Egyptians specifically, even conversion is not enough: the Torah requires three generations before an Egyptian convert’s descendants may fully enter the community of Israel. If that view is correct, Solomon knew exactly what the law said — and married Pharaoh’s daughter anyway, weighing the diplomatic benefits against what he considered a technical violation. The wisest man alive was already making dangerous calculations.
But Solomon’s motivations were not simply political. The commentators identify two genuinely holy goals driving his marriages. He believed that alliances with foreign nations would protect Israel from war — and he was right; Israel enjoyed peace throughout his reign. And he believed that by drawing foreign princesses into his court, teaching them, exposing their nations to the God of Israel, he could spread divine truth across the world. His dream was Jerusalem as a light to every nation on earth. It was a breathtaking vision. And it failed completely.
The influence went in the wrong direction. The Torah contains a specific law for Israelite kings: do not multiply horses, do not accumulate excessive wealth, and above all, do not multiply wives
The Torah gives the reason for the law right there in the text. And Solomon, understanding that reason perfectly, made a fatal calculation: I am wise enough to be the exception. The Talmud records that this is precisely why God concealed the rationales behind most commandments — because Solomon saw the reason, trusted his own wisdom over the instruction, and fell.
What exactly did that falling look like? This is where the story becomes genuinely strange. The rabbis are emphatic that Solomon did not personally worship idols. So what did he do? And why does the text say he did evil? The answer involves a dramatic confrontation between two loves — the Temple and Pharaoh’s daughter — that comes to a head on a single night, with consequences that echo through the rest of his reign. It involves a creeping tolerance that started as diplomacy and curdled into something far worse. And it involves a pattern that the rabbis compare to one of the most famous failures in all of priestly history.
At the end of his life, Solomon wrote what may be the most searingly honest line in all of his writings:
This is not philosophy. This is confession. The full story of how the wisest man in history got there — the calculations he made, the compromises he permitted, the moment everything began to unravel — is exactly what Rabbi Elie Mischel unpacks in part two of his Solomon series, now available on Bible Plus.
Bible Plus is The Israel Bible’s premium Bible study platform — hundreds of videos taught by Israel-based rabbis and scholars, as low as $5 a month when you subscribe annually. If you thought you knew the story of Solomon’s fall, this class will surprise you. Start learning today!
