1 Kings11:1–8

The same three names, in the prophet's mouth verbal / quotation: confirmed

Twenty-five verses later, in Ahijah's oracle, the indictment of this unit is repeated in its own vocabulary: Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, Chemosh of Moab, Milcom of the Ammonites. The Verifier records three shared lexemes with 11:1-8, and two of them are among the rarest proper nouns in the Hebrew Bible. ⚙ The repetition is not decorative. The historian first reports the shrines as royal policy, then lets a prophet read the same list back as the legal ground of the kingdom's division, which is how Kings characteristically converts narrative into verdict.

1 Kings 11:33

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6253 ʻAshtôreth (in 3 vv, rare), H4445 Malkâm (in 4 vv, rare), H6722 Tsîydônîy (in 15 vv). Two lexemes occurring in three and four verses respectively across the whole Hebrew Bible make this a genuine verbal link within one chapter, not a shared motif.

Three hundred and fifty years later, Josiah pulls them down structural / thematic: confirmed

The high places of 11:7 were still standing when Josiah reformed Judah. Cambridge notes that this form of worship persisted "down to the reign of Josiah, by whom at length it appears to have been put down," and K&D uses 2 Kings 23:13 to fix their exact location on the southern peak of Olivet, the Mount of Corruption. Maclaren draws the harder inference about Solomon himself: "we learn from 2 Kings 23:13 that the shrines which he built stood till Josiah's time. If Solomon had ever abandoned his idolatry, he would not have left them standing." ⚙ K&D also records Movers' explanation for their long survival, that they served resident foreign merchants under treaty protection, which if true means the stones outlasted the marriages that raised them by three centuries.

2 Kings 23:13

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H8010 Shᵉlômôh (in 263 vv) and H6722 Tsîydônîy (in 15 vv). The lexemes are shared but H8010 is common, so this is recorded as a narrative and thematic link (the same shrines, named and destroyed) rather than a quotation.

Moab and Ammon at the door of the assembly structural / thematic: confirmed

The list of nations in 11:1 is not random: Moab and Ammon head it, and they are the two peoples Deuteronomy 23:3 excludes from the assembly of the LORD to the tenth generation. Pulpit makes the connection explicit, and K&D notes the graded severity, that the Edomites' third generation might be received while the Moabites and Ammonites could not be received at all. ⚙ The post-exilic community read the passage the same way: Ezra and Nehemiah apply the marriage prohibition to exactly these nations, and Ellicott, Barnes, Cambridge and K&D all cite Ezra 9 and Nehemiah 13 as the extension of the principle beyond its Canaanite letter. What Solomon did as diplomacy, the restored community treated as the archetypal sin.

Deuteronomy 23:3 · Ezra 9:1 · Nehemiah 13:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H4125 Môwʼâbîy (in 16 vv) and H5984 ʻAmmôwnîy (in 21 vv) with all three refs, plus H2850 Chittîy (in 47 vv) with Ezra 9:1. Shared national terms and a shared legal motif; no quotation is claimed in either direction.

Seven hundred princesses, and a city that was one structural / thematic: confirmed

שָׂרוֹת (sârâh, H8282) is a rare noun, and the Verifier finds it in only five verses of the Hebrew Bible. One of them is Lamentations 1:1, where Jerusalem, once śārātî among the provinces, has become a vassal; another is Isaiah 49:23, where foreign queens become nursing mothers to Zion. ⚙ We offer the juxtaposition as a reading, not as a demonstrated design: the word that counts Solomon's imported princesses is the word Lamentations uses for the city they helped to lose. The link is a rare-word resonance, and we decline to call it a quotation, because nothing in either text signals citation.

Lamentations 1:1 · Isaiah 49:23

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H8282 sârâh (in 5 vv). The lexeme is rare enough to license a verbal tier, but we downgrade deliberately: rarity alone is not quotation, and neither passage marks the other.

The time of old age, prayed against structural / thematic: confirmed

זִקְנָה (ziqnâh, H2209) occurs in only six verses. Two of them are the psalmist's petitions, "Cast me not off in the time of old age" (Psalm 71:9), and the plea of Psalm 71:18 that God not forsake him when he is old and grey headed. A third is God's own promise in Isaiah 46:4 to carry his people to their old age. ⚙ 1 Kings 11:4 uses the identical rare noun to date a collapse: at the time of the old age of Solomon, his wives bent his heart. The canon's other uses of the word are prayers and promises that precisely this should not happen. We record the contrast as a reading of the shared lexeme, not as an authorial cross-reference.

Psalm 71:9 · Psalm 71:18 · Isaiah 46:4

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2209 ziqnâh (in 6 vv). A rare shared noun used in opposite directions (verdict here, petition and promise there); the motif, not a citation, is what links them.

No one can serve two masters structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ This thread crosses the Testaments, so no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed. The structural match is with the failure named at 11:4 and 11:6: a heart that was not shalem, a following that never filled up. Jesus' saying about two masters denies exactly the arrangement Maclaren describes in Solomon, "trying to hold both at once," and the risen Christ's charge against Laodicea is the same fracture under a different image. JFB, reading 11:1, applies Revelation 3:17 to Solomon by name, alongside Galatians 3:3 and Isaiah 14:21; the two-masters saying is our own addition and carries no ancient authority here. We tier this structural rather than typological: it is a shared diagnosis of the divided heart, not a figure of Solomon fulfilled in Christ.

Matthew 6:24 · Revelation 3:17

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's lexemes are impossible by definition and no verbal tier is available. Basis is the shared structure of divided allegiance, plus JFB's own citation of Revelation 3:17 against Solomon at 1 Kings 11:1.

Threescore queens: the verse used to rewrite this one flagged: verify source

Song of Solomon 6:8 counts threescore queens and fourscore concubines, and that verse is repeatedly brought against the thousand of 1 Kings 11:3. Barnes and Ellicott use it as evidence of textual corruption here; Pulpit answers that "it is obvious that too much importance must not be attached to an obiter statement ... in a poetical book, too, and one descriptive of Solomon's youth"; K&D reconciles the two by reading Kings as a lifetime total and the Song as a single snapshot; Gill adds a further guess, that the Song's virgins without number may be the undefiled remainder of the thousand. ⚙ We flag this link rather than confirm it. The Verifier returns no shared lexeme, the connection is an inference of the commentators and not of the text, and it has been used to emend a Hebrew reading that no manuscript disputes. Readers should weigh the four positions and treat any harmonization as conjecture.

Song of Solomon 6:8

basis: No Verifier basis: the pair returns no shared Strong's lexeme and does not appear among the computed thread candidates. The link exists only in the commentary tradition (Barnes, Ellicott, Pulpit, K&D, Gill), where it is contested, and has been used to justify emending 1 Kings 11:3 against the Hebrew, LXX and Josephus.

A greater than Solomon is here ancient/widely-held

⚙ The Gospels make Solomon a measuring rod in two directions: the lilies outshine his glory, and the Queen of the South who came for his wisdom will rise in judgment against a generation that had more than Solomon in front of it. This unit supplies the reason the comparison can only ever be upward. The wisest son of David failed at the one thing the text names, a whole heart. K&D states the standard flatly of David, who "had indeed grievously sinned, but had not fallen into idolatry"; even David meets the standard only comparatively. That the line of David is being driven by its own failures toward a son whose heart is undivided is the church's long reading of the books of Kings; none of the twelve commentators in this brief states it at these verses, and we mark the application as ours while the comparison of Christ with Solomon is the Gospels' own. The lesson Kings teaches by subtraction the Gospels state by arrival.

Matthew 12:42 · Luke 11:31

The Mount of Offence novel

⚙ A reading we mark as ours. The location in 11:7 is sourced and not disputed: Ellicott, Barnes, Poole, Gill, Cambridge and K&D all identify the hill as the Mount of Olives, and K&D traces the church's name for its southern peak, Mons Offensionis, back through the Vulgate of 2 Kings 23:13. The same ridge is where Zechariah 14:4 sets the feet of the LORD, where Luke 22:39 sets Gethsemane, and where Acts 1:12 sets the ascension. The hill on which a king with a divided heart built shrines facing the temple is the hill on which a king with an undivided heart sweated and prayed "not my will," facing the same temple. We offer this as a figural reading of geography, not as a claim that any biblical writer drew the line. It is a novel juxtaposition, and it should be weighed as one.

Zechariah 14:4 · Luke 22:39 · Acts 1:12

The house preserved despite the king ancient/widely-held

⚙ Twice in eight verses the historian measures Solomon against David (11:4, 11:6), and both times David functions not as a moral exemplar but as the man to whom a promise was made. That is the redemptive-historical weight of the comparison: the covenant of 2 Samuel 7 is not annulled by the man who broke it, and the angel's word to Mary gives David's throne to a son whose reign has no end. Ellicott notes that this same polygamy was "inherited by Rehoboam" and probably by the kings after him, so the line that carries the promise is visibly unworthy of it from the first generation onward. The reading that the promise outlives its heirs is ancient and held across the tradition; the specific grounding of it in this unit's David comparisons is our own arrangement.

2 Samuel 7:12-16 · Luke 1:32-33