1 Kings 11:8

And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

Burnt incense, and sacrificed unto their gods. The first was considered a higher act of homage, and is often used as synonymous with worship (2 Kings 22:17; 2 Kings 23:5). Thus the wisdom of the uxorious monarch fell before the irresistible power of love. There is a difference between the religion of the heart and that of the head; and while David his father, amid his many great sins, never let his faith be extinguished, but, on repentance, returned with all the ardour of a first love to God as the chosen portion of his soul, Solomon cast off all homage to Yahweh as the covenanted God of Israel. It is impossible to believe that so acute and reflecting a mind as his could settle down into atheism. But into infidelity he did certainly fall; and whether, having indulged in philosophizing views of religion, he became a votary of nature-worship-a Pantheist-conceiving it was a matter of indifference in what mode or by what rites the Deity was worshipped, because under whatever name-`Jehovah, Jove, or Lord'-the same object of faith was present to the minds of the intelligent; or whether, as has been already observed, he was deluded, through the vitiating influence of sensuality, into absolute idolatry, it is certain that he renounced the faith of his fathers; or if he still adhered to it in external observance, he set before his subjects an attempt at the impossible union of the worship of idols with that of Him whose first command to Israel was, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Solomon's religious perversion, and the cause that produced it, are graphically described by Millon in these beautiful lines:

`Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon, Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;

In Zion not unsung, where stood at length Her temple on th' offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large, Reguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul.' (-`PARADISE LOST,' b. 1:)