“For when Shlomo became old, his wives turned his heart away toward other gods; so that he was not wholehearted with Adonai his God, as David his father had been.” – 1 Kings 11:4
I wanna take a good look at verse 4 in 1st Kings Chapter 11.
It says the difference between Solomon and his father David is that Solomon did not remain wholehearted towards the Lord.
Verse 6 puts it even more sharply.
In Hebrew, it reads:
שְׁלֹמֹה לֹא מִלֵּא אַחֲרֵי יְהוָה
SHLOMO LO MILLE ACHAREI ADONAI
This literally means that…
“Solomon did not fully follow the LORD.”
This is referring to wholehearted loyalty towards the Lord.
David committed horrible sins, from murder to adultery.
But one thing he did not do was worship other gods.
He remained loyal to the Lord even in the midst of committing horrific sins.
Solomon, on the other hand, does not appear to have committed adultery (at least as defined in those days, taking another man’s wife).
And while he ordered several political executions to secure his throne, he did not commit a secret, self-serving murder like David’s killing of Uriah.
However, under the influence of his many gentile wives, he tragically fell into idolatry in his old age, and openly worshipped other gods.
I hope you’re catching the key difference here.
The sins David committed were against men.
However, the sins Solomon committed were against the Lord Himself.
Tom Bradford, in his awesome Torah class, says this gives us a hint of the true meaning of blaspheming the Holy Spirit when Yeshua said:
“Wherefore I say unto you,
All manner of sin and blasphemy
shall be forgiven unto men:
but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost
shall not be forgiven unto men.
And whosoever speaketh a word
against the Son of man,
it shall be forgiven him: but
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost,
it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this
world, neither in the world to come.”
– Matthew 12:31-32
Bradford reads these verses as a distinction between sins committed against men and sins committed against HaShem.
In his view, crimes against other humans outlined in the Mosaic Law, such as lying or slandering, can be forgiven.
But blaspheming the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven.
Bradford seems to be putting David in the first camp and Solomon in the second.
In his words, David committed crimes against humans but stayed loyal to the Lord.
Solomon, on the other hand, “generally did not blaspheme humans or commit crimes against them but did blaspheme God (by committing idolatry).”
He then goes on to explain that…
“David’s punishment for his many sins against other men was to be barred by the Lord from building the Temple. Solomon’s punishment for his sin against God (idolatry) was that God would yank Israel from his grasp (in reality, from Solomon’s son’s grasp).”
Now, Bradford is right about something important.
The book of Kings measures every king by his loyalty to the Lord, and David is the standard.
And the Torah does contain commandments that deal with human-to-human behavior, and others that deal with human-to-God behavior.
But where I part ways with him is the link to Matthew 12.
For starters, I think it might be a stretch to characterize Solomon as one who never committed crimes against men.
Solomon had Adonijah, Joab, and Shimei killed (1 Kings 2), conscripted forced labor, and multiplied wives, horses, and gold, all of which Deuteronomy 17 forbids for a king.
You can argue the executions were legitimate.
But when Bradford asserts that Solomon “generally did not commit crimes against humans,” I think that’s overstating things.
Ya feel me here?
Also, the Bible never says David was barred from building the Temple as punishment for Bathsheba and Uriah.
The stated reason is that he was a warrior who shed much blood (1 Chronicles 22:8, 28:3).
His actual punishment for the Bathsheba affair was the death of the child and “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12).
And here’s the kicker.
The Bible itself rejects the idea that David’s sins were only against men.
When the prophet Nathan confronted David, he told him he had “despised the word of the LORD,” and that the Lord said, “you have despised me” (2 Samuel 12:9-10).
Nathan even said David’s deed gave the enemies of the LORD occasion to blaspheme (2 Samuel 12:14).
And David himself agreed.
In Psalm 51, about the Bathsheba affair, he says, “Against you, you only, have I sinned.”
The Bible treats sins against people as direct offenses against God.
The two tables of the Ten Commandments are useful categories, not a ranking of forgivable and unforgivable.
Onward.
Bradford’s conclusion is…
“…idolatry is by definition ‘blaspheming the Holy Spirit.'”
But if that’s the case, then according to what Yeshua said about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, such a sin is unforgivable.
Really?
Idolatry is forgiven again and again in Scripture.
Manasseh was about as idolatrous as any king of Judah, yet he repented, and God restored him (2 Chronicles 33:12-13).
Paul lists idolaters among the people who were “washed” and “justified” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
If idolatry were by definition the unforgivable sin, those passages couldn’t be true.
And the text never says Solomon was beyond forgiveness.
God kept one tribe for the house of David, and 2 Samuel 7:14-15 promised His steadfast love would not depart from David’s son.
So this brings us to the question…
What exactly is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?
Idolatry and blaspheming the Spirit can look similar on the surface.
But idolatry is forgivable.
The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not.
So they cannot be the same.
Let’s take a look at the context when Yeshua said those words.
The Pharisees had just watched Yeshua cast out a demon by the Spirit of God and said he did it by Beelzebul (Matthew 12:24, 28).
Mark 3:30 spells it out:
Yeshua said this “because they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”
The blasphemy against the Spirit was looking at the Spirit’s plain work and calling it Satan’s.
Oh, another thing, homie.
Yeshua actually says blasphemy against God can be forgiven.
The statement “All manner of sin and blasphemy” is broad.
The Greek blasphemia also covers speech against God!
Not just slander of people.
So Yeshua’s own words undercut the split that…
“Sins against men are forgivable, sins against God are not.”
Only one specific blasphemy is excluded.
And that specific blasphemy is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Let’s use our brains here, people.
The Lord and His Messiah are not illogical.
So here’s my take.
And when I say my take…
I mean MY take.
I ain’t gonna be dogmatic about this.
I could very well be wrong, and I heartily welcome other interpretations.
Alrighty, so here goes:
My understanding is that the Holy Spirit is one of the ways the Lord works on our mind and conscience.
Yeshua said the Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin” (John 16:8).
For example, when a hardened atheist hears the gospel and comes to faith in the Lord, I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit.
However, what was happening with the group of Pharisees who were accused of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is that they saw the good works of Yeshua but attributed them to the power of Satan.
In other words, what they committed was a hardened rejection of God’s own testimony, not idolatry.
If your conscience is so seared to the point where your own heart cannot recognize the good works of the Lord, is that not, in a sense, blaspheming the Holy Spirit?
In other words, you are rejecting the very way the Lord reaches your conscience.
When you do that, you are cutting the cord that connects your heart to being able to accept the gospel.
So, in a sense, it’s not so much that you won’t be forgiven.
It’s more like you can’t be forgiven.
Because you are cutting off the power source that leads to one having a repentant heart.
Does that make sense?
So my understanding is that to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to have such a hardened heart against the Holy Spirit that you’ve reached the point where you look at good and call it evil or look at evil and call it good.
The prophet Isaiah warned about this very thing:
“Woe unto them
that call evil good,
and good evil”
– Isaiah 5:20
And here’s some good news.
If you’re worried that you’ve committed this sin, that worry itself is a sign your heart isn’t hardened.
A seared conscience doesn’t lose sleep over offending God.
By the way, I believe this is exactly the state of those wicked Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities against the Israeli people and called the crimes they committed good.
And if you are one of those people who side with Hamas, I do believe your mind is warped, and you are in a very dangerous place with God spiritually.
Anyway, I’m gonna finish here.
But I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What do you think is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?
Leave a Reply