I find it interesting that Solomon known for his wisdom, and at the same time the author of Kings places heavy emphasis on the ways in which Solomon is the exact opposite of what God wants in a king:
The king must never own a large number of horses or make the people return to Egypt to get more horses. The LORD has told you, “You will never go back there again.“ The king must never have a large number of wives, or he will turn away [from God]. And he must never own a lot of gold and silver. (Dt. 17:16-17).
So these two things are set against one another: Solomon’s Wisdom, and obedience to the Lord. Wisdom in the Old Testament is a somewhat conflicted concept: on the one hand we have Proverbs, which paints wisdom in a very favorable light; and on the other we have Genesis 3 - you know, where is says “the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate.” - and Ecclesiastes - where it also says, “’What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?’ and I said to myself that this is also vanity.” I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is - or whether we need to try and “harmonize” these two streams. But it seems, at the very least, that the concept of wisdom in the Bible is not a simple one, and may need revisiting.
(On a more academic note: Old Testament Theology, as a discipline can never quite seem to synthesize the Wisdom literature together with the Law and the Prophets. And, in fact, if we took those books out - Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes - the Old Testament would be more amenable to synthesizing. Not that I am suggesting we take the Wisdom Literature out; I kinda like it when the text pushes back against our interpretations saying, “you’ve under-read me still.)
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