A few things to make us marvel in this chapter:

1) Man’s sinfulness and stupidity as seen in Solomon.

Here is a man who received untold blessing from the hand of the Lord and personal encouragement and exhortation from Him as well. Yet his heart strayed from a single-hearted devotion to the Lord. He ended up worshiping all sorts of gods. No doubt the worship of such false deities led him to do things that are horrible even to mention. Solomon was far gone and thus, serves as great evidence from the sinfulness and stupidity of man in general. For if we think we would be different from Solomon apart from a great work of God’s grace, we are fooling ourselves.

2) The fact that God raised up enemies for Solomon before Solomon was even on his throne.

If you notice in verse 9-40, various enemies are mentioned. Each of them, with the exception of Jeroboam, were enemies of Solomon’s because of something David did during his day. So we know that the Lord knew exactly what Solomon would do and used the desires of wicked men and David’s mistakes to raise up enemies for Solomon.

The case of Jeroboam is interesting to note as well, because from the narrative, it doesn’t seem like Jeroboam was anti-Solomon until the prophet sort of placed him at odds with the king. Jeroboam is certainly a clear case of God Himself obviously raising up an enemy for Solomon, for the Lord sent His prophet to Jeroboam in order to make his future plain.