What are We Clinging to?

Recently I was reading about the division between Israel and Judah, and tracked it back to the prophecy in 1 Kings 11:29-36, where God led Ahijah to perform a prophetic act of ripping a cloak into pieces, signifying the separation of the tribes of Israel and tearing the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand to give (most of) it to a new king – because Solomon had angered him with worshipping false Gods.

Sometimes we can read the Bible and still miss treasures that are hidden in it, and on this occasion I felt I had missed something: after all, wasn’t Solomon the wisest person in history who had pleased God by asking for wisdom instead of long life, health, wealth or any other selfish thing. And his father had been the greatest example of what God values most, calling him (David) a “man after God’s own heart”. I knew Solomon couldn’t have been perfect, but how could a person who lived with such a positive role-model and who had such extreme wisdom themselves make such a foolish mistake as to forsake God for foreign idols, just one generation after his Dad had excelled at devotion to God?

Because let’s be honest: if the wisest human who ever lived (according to 1 Kings 3:12) can make such a mistake, then none of us are immune! I needed to find out how it happened!
So I re-read 1 Kings to find out what caused Solomon to make such a catastrophic mistake, and found the answer in Ch 11: 1-4…

“But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites— from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David” (NKJV – emphasis mine)

I have heard it taught that Solomon’s failing was in the amount of women that he married or kept. But let’s face it, David wasn’t exactly monogamous. No, the problem was the fact that Solomon’s wives and concubines followed after other gods. God had clearly commanded Israel not to intermarry with those who worshipped false idols, but Solomon went ahead and did so. And the result of this was that by the end of his life his heart “was not loyal to the Lord his God”. How could he make such a mistake when he was supposedly so wise? The answers is found at the end of verse 2: “he clung to these in love”. Whoa.

I looked up the word translated as ‘clung’, and it’s the Hebrew word ‘dabaq‘ (Strongs 1692). It means to cling or adhere; figuratively, to catch by hard pursuit, to cleave fast together, to follow close, to be joined together.
In Genesis 2:24 where the Bible says “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh“, the phrase ‘be joined to’ is the same word ‘dabaq‘. It means a deliberate letting go of the former in favour of being united with the latter. Solomon deliberately let go of relationship with God in order to be united with the wives He loved, and their idols.

Solomon wasn’t just ‘unequally yoked’; it wasn’t that he tried to serve God while his wives went off and did their own thing, or even that he tried to be faithful to God but fell victim to the naughty temptresses in his household who led him astray – no this was a conscious choice to hold on to something that he knew was wrong. This was a deliberate clinging. He wasn’t foolishly deceived. He had more wisdom than any man – and he didn’t just choose, he pursued hard after what he knew to be wrong, because he loved it, and would not let go. And so he was disloyal to the Lord his God.

David also did stupid and wrong things – but one of the things that marked him as a “man after God’s own heart” was that he chased hard after God. Yes he made mistakes – as do we all – but his response when he realised he had done so was always to repent and seek restored relationship with God, doing everything possible to renew his devotion. Sadly Solomon did the opposite. David clung to and chased hard after God. Solomon clung to and chased hard after his women and their idols instead.

So if all the wisdom in the world cannot stop a person from choosing what is wrong, that has serious implications for us. We can pray for wisdom – and God’s Word encourages us to do so: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5 – NIV). But even once we have God’s wisdom, we need to check our hearts to see what we are clinging to. It may be human relationships, it may be idols such as sex, money, self-gratification or the favour of man – or we may even be compromising our relationship with God by also playing with false religions or the occult.

If there is anything that we are not prepared to lay down or let go of if God asks, then we are clinging to it. And ultimately that thing will end up tearing us away from Him. Do not be deceived that you can serve more than one god – Jesus was very clear about this in Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other”.

So let’s choose to be like David, a man after God’s own heart… or like Hezekiah who had it said of him in 2 Kings 18:5-6 that he “put his whole trust in the God of Israel. There was no king quite like him, either before or after. He held fast [*dabaq] to God—never loosened his grip—and obeyed to the letter everything God had commanded Moses. And God, for his part, held fast to him through all his adventures” (TPT)

Let’s ask God today to reveal our hearts to us: “Lord, show us if there is anything we are clinging to that displeases you? And give us strength to turn away from it today so that we can pursue and cling only to you. Amen”