“1 When King David was old and well advanced in years, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his servants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.”
3 Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The girl was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no intimate relations with her.
5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, “I will be king.” So he got chariots and horses ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never interfered with him by asking, “Why do you behave as you do?” He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.) 7 Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support. 8 But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei and David’s special guard did not join Adonijah. 9 Adonijah then sacrificed sheep, cattle and fattened calves at the Stone of Zoheleth near En Rogel. He invited all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the men of Judah who were royal officials, 10 but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon.
11 Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king without our lord David’s knowing it? 12 Now then, let me advise you how you can save your own life and the life of your son Solomon. 13 Go in to King David and say to him, ‘My lord the king, did you not swear to me your servant: “Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’ 14 While you are still there talking to the king, I will come in and confirm what you have said.” 15 So Bathsheba went to see the aged king in his room, where Abishag the Shunammite was attending him. 16 Bathsheba bowed low and knelt before the king. “What is it you want?” the king asked. 17 She said to him, “My lord, you yourself swore to me your servant by the LORD your God: ‘Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne.’ 18 But now Adonijah has become king, and you, my lord the king, do not know about it. 19 He has sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the king’s sons, Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army, but he has not invited Solomon your servant. 20 My lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. 21 Otherwise, as soon as my lord the king is laid to rest with his fathers, I and my son Solomon will be treated as criminals.” 22 While she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet arrived. 23 And they told the king, “Nathan the prophet is here.” So he went before the king and bowed with his face to the ground. 24 Nathan said, “Have you, my lord the king, declared that Adonijah shall be king after you, and that he will sit on your throne? 25 Today he has gone down and sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep. He has invited all the king’s sons, the commanders of the army and Abiathar the priest. Right now they are eating and drinking with him and saying, ‘Long live King Adonijah!’ 26But me your servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and your servant Solomon he did not invite. 27 Is this something my lord the king has done without letting his servants know who should sit on the throne of my lord the king after him?””
Naivety takes life as it should be. Life should be fair and so it must be. People shouldn’t sin and so we are shocked when they do. Naivety says that if everyone else did what was right, my life would be easy and so everyone else must do what is right.
To remain naïve, we must close our eyes and minds to much of life. We must avoid situations and particularly people which threaten our understanding. We then feel comfortable making judgments on anything and anyone gone wrong. We know our brother should not have gotten a divorce but not how it could have been avoided nor what he can do now. We know that lying is wrong but not what to do with a liar. That’s not the concern of naivety. Naivety is about keeping everything simple and straight forward. It’s main failing, of course, is that has no correspondence with life as a fallen person in a fallen world where little is as it should be.
Naivety avoids the gap between how things are and how they should be. The Bible doesn’t. The Bible is inflexible about how life ought to be and blatantly realistic about the way life is. It never traffics in naivety. It traffics in wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how to navigate between the way life ought to be and the way it is.
This evening we begin our study in 1 Kings. We are pairing this with the book of James in the morning to seek wisdom. We see tonight that the God works wisdom wisely. That’s the claim of this sermon: God works wisdom wisely.
We will study this in three points. First: David and Abishag. Second: Adonijah’s power grab. Third: the royal response. First, in verses 1-4, we see David and Abishag. Second, in verses 5-10, we see Adonijah’s power grab. Third, in verses 11-27, the royal response.
We see the situation in which wisdom is needed—and wisdom must always correspond to situations—in our first point: David and Abishag. As we move from 2 Samuel to 1 Kings, we move on from David; that’s verse 1’s, “When King David was old and well advanced in years.”
David is an aging leader not long for this world. Two years ago we had a presidential election between the two oldest candidates ever. Age was appropriately an issue. It takes vigor to lead and David found it harder and harder to hang on to that; that’s “he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him.” David’s vitality was slipping away and in the ancient near east as today, vitality and rule went hand in hand. That vitality is what’s behind verse 2-4’s, ‘So [David’s] servants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm. Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no intimate relations with her.’
That’s not an ethical comment at the end praising David for his restraint. It’s a sign that his vigor was failing him. The vigor to which this text alludes was connected with power in the ancient near east—hence a king’s large collection of wives. This turn of events was alarming for David; “one senses the vultures around the court, circling for the kill,” as one commentator put it.
There is more to this though. We will see Abishag again. We don’t as of yet know her full role in the story and the narrator leaves it that way for a while because that’s how life works. Sometimes you don’t see the point of an experience until years later. Connections are not straightforward nor predictable nor controllable. They can’t be understood by naivety.
This business with Abishag does brings up uncomfortable realities, though. David had many wives. In our third point we will see David’s wife Bathsheba speak with him while Abishag is present. We can close our eyes to the unenviable state of affairs for everyone involved or we can get down to the pondering David—a flawed man after God’s unflawed heart. Maybe if we can see David as he is, we can begin to see ourselves as we are. We can throw off naivety as see in ourselves what we’d rather not see, what God sees.
Adonijah sees something too. He sees his father’s weakness, which leads to our second point: Adonijah’s power grab. What Adonijah sees in his father is a lion who can no longer roar; that’s what leads to verse 5, ‘Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, “I will be king.”’ Yet again the narrator reminds us that David had multiple wives. Adonijah was the son of David and Haggith. Adonijah was the oldest son now. It makes dynastic sense that he will become king, but, as Paul House asks, “what kind of man cannot wait for his father to die before seeking power?”
Adonijah is giving himself away. We all give something in ourselves away with all our actions. What Adonijah is giving away is pride and as we are seeing with James pride always walks hand in hand with foolishness. Adonijah is no Solomon. He is not wise.
He doesn’t wait for a prophetic anointing like his father or Saul. He behaves like someone else who tried to take his father’s throne; “So he got chariots and horses ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him.” He behaves like Absolom. Adonijah and Absolom are all about optics—give the people a show of power. Adonijah is running for office by sending these fifty men running ahead of him. Adonijah is trying to present a picture of vigor to contrast his enfeebled father. The author shows the parallels between that and Absolom’s plan to tell you that this is not going to end well.
David has much to regret in this too as we read in verse 6, ‘His father had never interfered with him by asking, “Why do you behave as you do?” He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.’ Over the years, David didn’t correct Adonijah’s pride and foolishness. “Good looks and a favored status, coupled with parental indulgence, rarely build strong character,” as one author tells us about Adonijah. Don’t fall for the show of Adonijah. Don’t fall for those for whom the world falls.
David is faulted for not correcting Adonijah vainglory. Children are given to parents in part to be corrected. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,” as Proverbs 22:15 puts it. Foolishness is to be corrected lovingly out of love so children don’t wind up like Adonijah. David failed to do that. David also was a remarkably forgiving man. David also took a wife who wasn’t his. David also was one of the most courageous people you could hope to meet. David was a mixed bag. People are like that and you and I are part of that group.
Adonijah had been plotting this move against his father. “Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support,” as verse 7 tells us. The list of Adonijah’s allies starts with David’s general Joab. Joab is a force with whom to be reckoned. He is a dangerous enemy and a dangerous ally. Adonijah doesn’t see that yet because, of course, foolishness doesn’t see. Adonijah does have a lot of support, but not everyone; “Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei and David’s special guard did not join Adonijah.” Not everyone is all that wild about Adonijah. Not everyone has buried David before he died.
Adonijah invites his brothers and step-brothers to the party so they can acknowledge him and not themselves as the chosen successor. He doesn’t invite one brother, though; “he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon.” He intentionally excluded Solomon. That’s likely because he knows what we are about to consider, which is that many expected Solomon to become king. That makes his plotting all the more pungent. He knows he’s defying his father. He wants power more than he wants to honor his father. He wouldn’t be a commandment keeping sort of king.
When it comes to Adonijah, though, we’d be wise to see how much we are like him. We try to seize the throne not just of Israel but of all existence. Something in us really does think that if only we could make life go as we think it should, then all would be right. We, like Adam and Eve, think we have it in us to judge good and evil. All of us can think of dozens of times this past week in which we’ve tried to usurp a throne meant for Jesus and would be wise to spend more time confessing our sins than condemning Adonijah’s. Someone else will respond to Adonijah and we see that in our final point: the royal response.
In this point we see two people I never thought we’d see together again—Bathsheba and Nathan, the woman David killed over and the prophet who brought him to conviction over killing. This is a reminder that life is unfolds more with more complications than we can begin to predict. It’s also a sign of David’s integrity that Nathan remained in his inner circle with access to Bathsheba to the end of David’s days. ‘Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king without our lord David’s knowing it?”’
Not only have Nathan and Solomon been excluded from Adonijah’s plan, but David has as well. The king has been excluded. Nathan understands that this means that they are all in peril and so tells Bathsheba, “Now then, let me advise you how you can save your own life and the life of your son Solomon.”
Adonijah thought he was wise. He collected the commitments of some very powerful men. The question now becomes is Nathan wiser? He knew how to speak with David about his sin with Bathsheba. His plan now is to again appeal to David’s integrity. ‘Go in to King David and say to him, “My lord the king, did you not swear to me your servant: Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’ David had publicly promised Solomon would be king. In 1 Chronicles 28:5, he told all his officers, “Of all my sons—and the Lord has given me many—He has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.”
Nathan’s plan is for Bathsheba is to hold David to that vow. She goes in to see the king and remember David is king. He’s not just a man who sinned against her. He’s not just her husband. He is the king and has killed many men and is remarkably dangerous, much more dangerous than Adonijah assumes. Bathsheba goes to King David. She reminds him of his promise regarding Solomon and then says, “now Adonijah has become king, and you, my lord the king, do not know about it.”
That’s got a sting to it. The king doesn’t know what’s happening in his kingdom. “Where has the king’s focus been?” Bathsheba wonders aloud as Abishag sits there and then she presses the point. “My lord, the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. Otherwise, as soon as my lord the king is laid to rest with his fathers, I and my son Solomon will be treated as criminals.” In other words, “perhaps it is time for the king to be king. That’s the way back to the vigor that really matters. My life depends on it. Solomon’s life depends on it. Your life depends on it.” And it did. Adonijah would have Bathsheba and Solomon killed and David if needed. That, after all, was Absolom’s plan to become king and now David is far weaker before Adonijah.
That’s Bathsheba’s part in Nathan’s plan. Now comes Nathan’s part. “While she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet arrived.” Nathan is coming to independently confirm what David just heard. Nathan is much more formal with the king. Even as an advisor, he cannot speak with the familiarity of a wife. Each has their place and wisdom is knowing that. Wisdom is knowing how to work with the grain of life. Naivety wants the grain of life to conform to the way we think it should go. Wisdom learns to work with the grain of how it is whether we like or not. It learns to work with this child as she is not as you think she ought to be and not as she is compared with her brother or, more to the point, compared to you. That takes work, which is one of the reasons we fail to do it. Pressing everything into the mold to which we want it to conform is just easier even though it doesn’t accomplish anything. That’s not wisdom. Wisdom is what you see here with Nathan and Bathsheba—taking life as it is and working with its grain.
Whereas Bathsheba told it like it is, Nathan lets David do the interpreting. He tells David what happened and then asks, “Have you, my lord the king, declared that Adonijah shall be king after you, and that he will sit on your throne?” Nathan tells David more about what Adonijah has done and then asks, “Is this something my lord the king has done without letting his servants know who should sit on the throne of my lord the king after him?” Nathan is leaving unstated what Bathsheba stated—“be the king, David. Take action. Now. My lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him.” This reminds David of his agency.
Nathan and Bathsheba act wisely with here to helpful effect. Wisdom matters. Foolishness matters. Our choices matter. What you will do with your children matters. What you will do with your job matters. There will be consequences. The Lord, however, determines those. It is His plan—not Adonijah’s or Nathan’s, Bathsheba’s, or even David’s—that will win the day as it always does. His plan is for Solomon to sit on the throne and He is working this plan out, in part, through Nathan and Bathsheba’s wisdom. They are working with the grain of life. God is conforming that to the grain of His plan. God works wisdom wisely.
The question one level is who is wiser—Adonijah or Nathan? On another level, though, that’s not the question at all. On that level, it’s all about God’s wisdom and no one is wiser than Him. He put Saul on the throne for His reasons and took him off for His reasons. He put David on for His reasons and will put Solomon on for His reasons. Humanly speaking the kingdom seemed almost lost to Adonijah but divinely speaking, the kingdom is always in good hands. We’d be wise, to use that word yet again, to keep that in perspective in this life. The conundrums of is and ought are in many ways, God’s problems to handle.
God has chosen Solomon. Solomon is, like Isaac and Jacob, not the oldest nor the expected. God does not choose who we’d expect and so we’d be very wise, unlike Adonijah, to not expect ourselves. We are to learn to trust the Lord’s wisdom and plan even when it is not as we’d expect. The true king is not as we’d expect. He’s no Adonijah. He’s no me. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.” That’s King Jesus.
Establishing the way things ought to be is King Jesus’ responsibility, not mine, not yours and so wisdom would be getting over our naivety and getting onboard with Jesus’ wisdom. Choosing Adonijah over Jesus would be foolish. Choosing yourself over Jesus would be foolish. Don’t be foolish. Learn to live wisely as a fallen person in a fallen world where little other than Jesus is as it should be. Amen.