1 Kings: The Idols of Old Men

A young friend asked me this week about growing older. I told him I was born to be old—these are the best years of my life. We get discounts, help with lifting luggage into overhead bins, respect, and a host of other advantages. But there’s a flip side to aging, especially for Boomers.

Neil Howe writes in “The Fourth Turning Is Here” that some of us will become increasingly pompous, intolerant, uncompromising, and demanding. The real question, he says, is whether this generation will restrain its latent ruthlessness—or be restrained by others. If not, he warns, Boomers could become “the worst nightmare that could happen to the world.”

Ruthlessness? Nightmare? Not exactly comforting.

Ironically, the aging Solomon did become ruthless—toward his own people—while also welcoming an infestation of foreign gods. Isolated from all but his court sycophants, his gift of wisdom failed. Every king before him had an active and outspoken prophet holding him accountable. Saul had Samuel. David had Nathan but his influence waned almost completely after David’s death. But Solomon? He had only himself—and the strange influences he loved dearly. He was disconnected from honest counsel and, over time, reality itself.

Deluded himself, he introduced to Israel three detestable false gods.

Astarte: The Idol of Independence

Astarte was a fierce warrior goddess, often associated with horses and chariots. While the surrounding kingdoms relied on these for battle, God had forbidden Israel from doing the same. They were to depend on Him alone for victory. Yet Solomon amassed 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses. He even built entire cities just to store them. This was not simple disobedience—it was a declaration of his own military and royal power. No wonder he was drawn to Astarte. She blessed his rebellion and anointed his self-will.

Moloch: The Idol of Depravity

The worship of Moloch is horrifying. Among other obscenities it required the sacrifice of infants and children—a form of idolatry so perverse that parents offered up their own offspring. How could Solomon have been so corrupted as to build an altar to such a god? Why was there no national uprising? Where were those, like Joseph Welch during the McCarthy hearings asking, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness.”

Winston Churchill once described Hitler in a way that mirrors this kind of descent into darkness:

“He had called from the depths of defeat the dark and savage furies latent in the most numerous, most serviceable, ruthless, contradictory, and ill-starred race in Europe. He had conjured up the fearful idol of an all-devouring Moloch, of which he was the priest and incarnation.”

Such deep deception does not happen all at once. It is gradual—until one day, the unthinkable becomes reality. As Voltaire put it:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Chemosh: The Idol of Nationalism

Chemosh was less a religious figure than a national and political idol. The nation itself had become a god. The Moabites were known as the people of Chemosh—no other group was identified so completely with a deity. But it was a deity with no scruples or honorable qualities.

During a war with the Moabites, Israel’s army was so horrified by their enemy’s depravity that they retreated, not out of military weakness, but out of sheer moral disgust. The Moabites had won, not just with weapons, but by overwhelming Israel’s remaining sense of decency.

What an irony: Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, willingly poisoned the future of his own people. He led them to worship foreign gods, then made them fear the people who served those same gods. He led the children of Israel astray, all while maintaining the appearance of faithfulness—offering sacrifices three times a year as if that could balance his treason. Like Gideon before him he caused all Israel to prostitute themselves. 

Who would question him? He was Solomon the Wise.

But in the end, he sabotaged Israel. He betrayed the nation. He built altars to gods that would one day erode the spirit and moral fiber of his own people. In time their hearts were stolen and then consumed by fear and despair. His legacy was a kind of spiritual leprosy that gradually numbed and then destroyed them.

The idols of an old man became the seeds of Israel’s destruction.

Even generations later, during King Josiah’s reforms, the damage could not be undone. Though Josiah did away with the idolatrous priests, tore down and burned the altars, and demolished the shrines, their influence had been woven permanently into Israel’s identity. There was reform but no permanent recovery from what a deluded Solomon had done. He had made them believe they could serve both God and idols.

God and country.

God and independence.

God and depravity.

But history proved otherwise.

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