1 Kings 11-14 Wash, Rinse Repeat

1 Kings 11-14
Turns out Solomon is a slut.
All his whoring turns him away from The LORD, which makes The LORD mad (talk about a steep learning curve).  Solomon dies.  God abandons Israel and bad things happen.

Good God!  Again?!?!  Does every story in the OT end with the leader or the people turning against God?
Is this storyline going to run through the rest of the books?
When will these dense Israelites get it?

Then we get the idiot plot of Jeroboam.
How many bad choices can one man make?
This guy reminds me of Todd Stroger, former president of Cook County, Illinois.
His father,  John Stroger was the president  for many years and well liked until he passed away from a stroke.  The younger Stroger was elected to replace him  and seemingly did everything he could to screw up what his father had accomplished.

But I digress.

Jeroboam and his brother rule their respective parts and then die.

1 Kings 8-10 Politics-The more things change...

1 Kings 8-10

Solomon proves himself to be quite the politician.  He would have done well in Chicago.

The ark is brought to the temple and God unleashes his "cloud" immediately (insert fart joke here).

At the dedication of the new temple, Solomon rededicates the Israelites to The Lord.
This came off (to me) as a politician making a speech.

The Queen of Sheba shows up because she doesn't believe how great Solomon is (?).   When she sees his greatness he gives him a shitload of gold.  Could political favors be far behind?

1 Kings 1-3 Solomon Moves In and Cleans House

1 Kings 1-3

When I read chapter one, when Adonijah assumed he was getting the throne, this popped into my head.

I had surgery to repair a hernia last friday.  All is well but the Vicodin is making it near impossible to read more then two sentences without completely zoning out.

What was I saying?

Anyway, Let's start on Kings so we don't get any further behind.  It stars Solomon, a very wise man who liked to chop up babies.