Solomon's 700 Wives and 300 Concubines Turn His Heart to False Gods

Solomon, the wisest man alive and builder of God's temple, takes seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines — many of them from the forbidden nations whose gods God had explicitly warned against. In his old age they turn his heart. He builds high places for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, and for the gods of all his foreign wives. The man who dedicated the Temple now tends the shrines of child-sacrifice gods. God's anger burns: 'I will surely tear the kingdom from you.'