Solomon and the Health Message

Before progressing too far into this chapter’s subject matter I wanted to establish a Bible study principle and then apply it to Solomon and The Health Message. In Matthew 19:3-9 Jesus is discussing the issue of divorce and Jesus is making His case by appealing to the principle of "from the beginning it was not so." V. 8 Jesus appealed to the fact that He, the Creator God, had established the primary facts of life when He laid out the ground rules of everything in the Creation.

In Mark 10:6-12 Jesus also talking about divorce describes the principle of marriage "But from the beginning of the Creation God made them male and female…so then they are not more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder..." Thus again the appeal to the Creation and what God originally did was the key to answering this question.

In Mark 2:23-28 Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees over His Sabbath activities. Again Jesus appeals to the Creation "And He said unto them, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Vs. 27-28 So again the principle is that what was established from the beginning is the rule by which all things should be compared, and if they do not square up the issue is probably a tradition. See Matthew 15:1-9
One last example of this principle is in II Peter 3:1-12. Here Peter is discussing the fact that scoffers will come to try to discourage people from waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. In II Peter 3:4 Peter, under the influence of the Holy Spirit states that even the scoffers appeal to the Creation as a standard of comparing the true things of God. He says "And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep (from the death of Adam) all things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation." Even the scoffers recognize that the Creation is the starting point of discussing all issues and needs to have its role to play in determining whether something will happen.

With the above in place I would now like to discuss Solomon and his views of The Health Message. In Deuteronomy 17:18-20 the king of Israel is commanded to read the Bible all the days of his life so that his heart is not lifted up above his brethren and that his days may be prolonged. To read the Bible frequently one would have to expose ones thinking to the principles, which established the kingdom of God in the beginning. This would include Jesus’ view of health and diet. So by reading the Bible Solomon should have known about what God’s health message was and how it should be applied to his life.

In I Kings 4:7-23 the Bible discusses his diet and the people who have the responsibility of providing the monthly allotments of food. In verses 22-23 we find that Solomon has not compared his dietary lifestyle to that of the beginning. In verses 22-23 we find that Solomon’s diet consisted of bread and flesh. This is significantly different from that which Jesus had directed in the beginning. In the beginning Jesus had commanded that man’s food should be "…every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Genesis 1:29 This command would be for all foods that come from trees – nuts and fruit – and all things that bear seed in itself – thus grains. Or bread, nuts and fruit. In the beginning there was to be no killing of animals to feed mankind. There was to be no killing or hurting in the kingdom of God. Isaiah 11:6-9 and 65:25. Not until sin had entered the world was there to be a death for sin brings death, not God.

After the flood was the first time that God explicitly gives permission to eat a dead animal, and that only because there was not God ordained food to eat because of the flood. But even the permission to eat animal flesh was to be guided by the clean and unclean laws of Genesis 7:2,8; 8:20; Leviticus 11; and Deuteronomy 14. In addition the fat and the blood were never to be eaten. Leviticus 17:10-14. All through Scripture the dietary laws are present and the righteous accept the commandments of God and the wicked choose to go contrary to the laws of God.
Solomon, in all of his wisdom, did not appear to find The Health Message to be a primary area of focus. However, Jesus, in His training of Israel, and His provisions for Israel saw these things differently. He withheld the giving of animal flesh to His people. It was no more difficult for God to give Israel animal flesh, as we see in Numbers 11, as it was to give manna. But God in His infinite wisdom felt that manna and water was better than manna, water, and animal flesh. Israel clamored for dead animal flesh and two times in the wilderness God gave them what their appetite asked for. Numbers 11 and Exodus 16:11-13. When they ate of the quail in Numbers 11 it was a sign of their rebellion and the people were punished by the loss of many people in the plague that came with the flesh. Numbers 11:33-35.

God’s purpose of giving The Health Message is what it always is, God wants us to be healthy and in our health to permit a closer understanding of God. III John 2; II Peter 1:6 – temperance; Exodus 15:26 no disease; Deuteronomy 8:1-4 miraculous preservation by God; and to be healthier and wiser than the people around them Daniel 1:8-20.

Solomon could have presented these truths about health to the people and they would have been blessed even more abundantly. But it appears that Solomon had other things on his mind. Oh, that Solomon would have read the Word of God and focused on the things from the beginning. It would have protected him from the errors he made during his reign. If he would have surrendered to these truths – if he had read the Word of God every day, if he would have not gone back to Egypt, if he had not married many wives, and if he had not accumulated gold and silver what a kingdom he would have had and how many more people he could have brought to a saving relationship with Jesus. Oh, that we might learn the lessons from Solomon’s life and be obedient to the truths from the beginning.