Living Before the World

¹¹ Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts ^(A)which war against the soul,

^26 (A)Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, ^(B)who was beloved of his God; and God made him king over all Israel. ^(C)Nevertheless pagan women caused even him to sin.

²¹ lest, when I come again, my God ^(A)will humble me among you, and I shall mourn for many ^(B)who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness, ^(C)fornication, and lewdness which they have practiced.

^8 (A)Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as ^(B)some of them did, and ^(C)in one day twenty-three thousand fell;

Solomon’s Heart Turns from the Lord

11 But ^(A)King Solomon loved ^(B)many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites— ² from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, ^(C)“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.

^9 (A)Why have you ^(B)despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? ^(C)You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. ¹⁰ Now therefore, ^(D)the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ ¹¹ Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will ^(E)take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.

²⁷ Now when Abner had returned to Hebron, Joab ^(A)took him aside in the gate to speak with him privately, and there ^[a]stabbed him ^(B)in the stomach, so that he died for the blood of ^(C)Asahel his brother.