What’s written on Solomon’s Epitaph?
It’s quite a thing to capture the essence of someone’s life on a gravestone isn’t it? Literally meaning a ‘last word’, an epitaph is that pithy summary of a life lived, a word or two to remember them by, as the generations come and go.
Solomon himself doesn’t lack words, as we all know. Whether it’s one of his many proverbs, or one of his goading sayings in Ecclesiastes, he was no stranger to summarising the essence of life. But his own life? It feels a little harder as we’ve witnessed the strident sunbeams continually jostling alongside the dark shadows. Over the last eleven chapters, we’ve seen unrivalled highs. And we’ve witnessed the calamitous fall, as the grandeur and glory of his reign have crumbled into disarray.
Ultimately, as we consider a ‘last word’ on Solomon’s life, we’re reminded that even needing an epitaph shows us his limits. For all the covenant promises fulfilled during his lifetime, this was not the king to bear them for all eternity. Death is the starkest full stop, even to the most prominent in power.
And yet, as we know, there is One for whom death was simply a comma in his unfinished story. Death could not cling onto him, it’s grip forever loosened days later. Those there barely had time to prepare his body for burial, let alone carve an epitaph. For in triumphant glory, as he walks out of the tomb, the risen Christ shows us that only he could truly fulfil all that was promised to David, hundreds of years before. Only he could confidently declare that ‘something greater than Solomon is here’.
Did Solomon reach his final days clamouring for this future King? I’d like to think so. But what about us? May the Lord enable us to continue pressing on in faith, so that as our days dwindle, the greater Solomon would come into ever-sharpening focus, as we chime with all of heaven:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
