This message is a concluding word of the life-study of the history of the kings among Israel.
There were altogether forty-one kings in the history of Israel. The first three, Saul, David, and Solomon, reigned over the entire people of Israel. Nineteen kings, from Rehoboam to Zedekiah, reigned over Judah in the south, and nineteen, from Jeroboam to Hoshea, reigned over Israel in the north.
Among these forty-one kings, nine, including David, were comparatively good in the eyes of God. Thirty, including Saul, were evil in the sight of God. Two, Solomon and Jehu, were partly good and partly evil.
In Saul's behavior, his performed humility in pretense, his self-interest seeking, and his ambition for the kingship not only for himself but also for his descendants were all exposed and showed that he was not building the kingdom of God but a monarchy for himself and his descendants. This seduced him to forget about God and to contact a medium, a witch, concerning his fate.
David behaved himself as a man according to God's heart for God's delight, yet he committed an awful sin in indulging himself in sexual lust, offending God to the uttermost, so that in His Holy Word this evil is mentioned a few times (1 Kings 15:5; Matt. 1:6). He made himself a very negative example in indulging in lust and in marrying a Gentile wife. This first influenced Solomon in his indulging of lust and in the taking of heathen women as his wives, which seduced him into idolatry, causing the loss of a great part of David's God-given kingdom, and continually influenced most of the kings in the indulgence of lust and in idolatry.
Solomon, on the one hand, was very good in expressing the wisdom of God and in building the temple for God, but, on the other hand, he was evil in the indulgence of lust, taking seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, most of whom were heathen, and in idolatry in building high places with temples of idol worship for many heathen idols.