Two Houses

In 1 Kings 6-7 we read about the building of two houses: the Lord’s house and Solomon’s house.  We see that he spent “seven years in building” the Lord’s house and we get this description of the temple’s dimensions: “And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits” (1 Kings 6:2, 38).  So the temple was 60 x 20 x 30 cubits in size, which makes an enclosed space of 36,000 cubits cubed.  In the next chapter we have a description of the house that Solomon built for himself.   We read that “Solomon was building his own house thirteen years” and we have a similar description of the dimensions: “the length thereof was an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits” (1 Kings 7:1-2).  That means that his house was 100 x 50 x 30 cubits, making an enclosed space of 150,000 cubits cubed.  So Solomon’s personal house was over four times the space of the Lord’s house and took almost twice as long to build—something seems wrong with that picture!    

                Obviously we know that Solomon was not faithful until the end despite the incredible praise that he received from the Lord early on.  He was warned by the Lord right after the dedication of the temple in this language: “If ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them: Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them” (1 Kings 9:6-7).  He did eventually go after other gods, and perhaps part of his downfall was putting his own comfort before serving the Lord.  This reminds me of the words of two other scriptures.  The first is what we read in Haggai as the people who had recently returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon were trying to get the temple rebuilt.  But they were not moving very fast and Haggai condemned them saying, “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:4-5).  In other words, the people lived in nice homes themselves but the Lord had no home.  They had put their own comforts ahead of serving the Lord and building His home.  The second scripture that comes to mind is the description of Cain found in the Pearl of Great Price: “And Cain loved Satan more than God” (Moses 5:18).  The problem wasn’t that Cain hated God—it was that he loved Satan more than he did God.  Solomon seems to have had the same problem; he certainly served God to some extent, but in the end his love of self and other gods were more important to him.  I think the lesson from Solomon is summarized for us best by Elder Oaks: “We must never dilute our first priority—to have no other gods and to serve no other priorities ahead of God the Father and His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ” (see here).