According to Deuteronomy 17:14-17, there are a couple of rules a king should follow. From the NKJV:
14 “When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’ 17 Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.
Which roughly boils down to:
- he must be chosen by the LORD
- he can not be a foreigner
- he must not acquire a great number of horses for himself
- he must not return his people to Egypt
- he must not have multiple wives
- he must not acquire a lot of silver and gold
Solomon, a king considered among the wisest man in the Old Testament, appears to have violated at least 3 of those rules.
He had an awful lot of wives (700 plus 300 concubines, 1 Kings 11).
He had an awful lot of horses (40.000 stalls of horses (1 Kings 4) of which only 4.000 for military purposes (2 Chronicles 9).
He had an awful lot of gold (666 talents of gold each year, 1 Kings 10).
And still, he's considered one of wisest man in the history of Israel.
The rules of Deuteronomy are old. Solomon must've known them (Deuteronomy 17:18-20 is quite explicit about this). So how is a man like that considered one of the wisest if he's led astray by his women for which he is explicitly warned every day of his kingship? Even, Israel was torn apart by the sins of Salomon (1 Kings 11).
Still, In Luke 11, Jesus is considered greater than Solomon. Jesus being greater than anyone isn't a surprise, but Solomon being mentioned here as the next-best-thing despite his foolishness is.
How was Solomon still considered in such a high regard during the time of Jesus, a point at which I expect the Israelites to know of Solomon's foolishness?
I'm explicitly looking for a protestant-bible point-of-view.