How many children did King Solomon had in the Bible?

Scripture names three children of King Solomon: one son, Rehoboam, and two daughters, Taphath and Basemath. It gives no total. Nowhere does the Bible count, estimate or sum Solomon’s children, so the totals that circulate on this question, such as 72 or 700, come from somewhere other than the text.

The three children the Bible names

1. Rehoboam, who succeeded him as king of Judah.
   

   And Solomon rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of his father David. And his son Rehoboam reigned in his place.

2. Taphath, a daughter, named in a list of the twelve district governors who supplied Solomon’s household.
   

   Ben-abinadab in Naphath-dor (Taphath, a daughter of Solomon, was his wife);

3. Basemath, a second daughter, four verses later in the same list.
   

   Ahimaaz in Naphtali (he had married Basemath, a daughter of Solomon);

That is the complete set. Search the whole Bible and no other person is called a son or a daughter of Solomon. Both daughters are easy to miss, because neither verse is about them. They appear inside an administrative roster, mentioned only to explain who two of the governors had married.

One named son, a thousand women

This is the part of the question that sends most people looking, and Google’s own suggestions show it: people search for how many children Solomon had with his seven hundred wives. The text gives the wives a number.

He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines—and his wives turned his heart away.

Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and three children named. The Bible does not explain the gap. It records both figures and moves on. Anything that fills the space between them, whether a low count or a high one, is being supplied from outside the text.

What the numbers in the text do tell you

Two figures sit close enough to be worth subtracting. Solomon reigned forty years.

Thus the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years.

Rehoboam was forty-one when he took the throne, which he did at Solomon’s death.

Thus King Rehoboam established himself in Jerusalem and reigned. He was forty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city the LORD had chosen from all the tribes of Israel in which to put His Name. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite.

Forty-one minus forty leaves one. On the numbers as the text gives them, the only son scripture names was born roughly a year before Solomon became king. The heir was already alive before the reign began. The same chapter that counts the wives places their influence late, saying that Solomon’s heart turned when he grew old.

That arithmetic does not tell you how many other children there were. It tells you the succession was settled by a son born before any of it.

Three mistakes this question collects

The four names from 2 Samuel 5 are David’s sons

Lists of Solomon’s sons often begin Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon. Those are not his children. They are his brothers, and the passage says whose they are in the verse before.

After he had arrived from Hebron, David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him.

These are the names of the children born to him in Jerusalem: Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon,

Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia,

Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet.

David is the subject. Those three verses list eleven sons born to him in Jerusalem, and Solomon is the fourth name on the list.

Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah, not Pharaoh’s daughter

Solomon did marry an Egyptian princess, and 1 Kings 3:1 records it. That verse never says she bore him a child. Two separate passages name Rehoboam’s mother, and both give the same answer: Naamah the Ammonite, in 2 Chronicles 12:13 above and again in 1 Kings 14:21.

The number 700 counts wives, not children

The seven hundred in 1 Kings 11:3 is a count of marriages. Reading it as a count of offspring turns one verse into a figure the Bible never states.

What nobody can tell you

How many children Solomon actually had is not recoverable from the Bible. He may have had many. The text names three, records a thousand women in his household, and leaves the two facts sitting side by side without reconciling them.

Every verse above can be checked in a few minutes. The two daughters are in 1 Kings 4, and the list that causes most of the confusion is in 2 Samuel 5.