Chapter 12

At the end of Chapter 11, Solomon had died, and his son Rehoboam ascends to the throne in Jerusalem.  Rehoboam goes to Shechem where the people have gathered to make him king.  Jeroboam returns from Egypt, and comes with the northern tribes.  As spokesman, Jeroboam tells Rehoboam that Solomon's yoke was heavy - he was talking about service and taxes most likely - and that if Rehoboam will ease that yoke a little, they will all serve Rehoboam as king.  R sends them away for three days while he thinks it over. 

2021 - It is interesting that these people thought the wisest man who ever lived was ruling heavily over them, asking too much of them.  Silver was like stone in the kingdom of Solomon, so everyone was prosperous.  What was it that was such a heavy yoke?  Or was there perhaps some resentment on the part of these people in what they asked?  They most likely were not being 100% sincere.  And when Rehoboam tells them they haven't seen anything yet, perhaps Israel was just turning from a truly unique and special nation into a place like any other.  AND I note that it was Jeroboam, who had already been anointed King of the northern tribes, who acts as spokesman for them.  Surely there was some duplicity in his offer also.  I have always seen this exchange a Rehoboam's mistake.  And it was, but at the same time, the outcome would eventually have been the same.  The northern tribes were always going to revolt under Jeroboam.  God had already set that up.

R asks the old men, who had also advised Solomon, what he should do.  They tell him to do as J and the tribes have asked, because they will keep their word.  But then R asks the young men, his own friends, who'd grown up with him.  These young men advise R to lay an even greater burden on the people.  To really teach them a lesson - the lesson that there's a new sheriff in town who's not taking any back talk.  This is the advice that R takes.

(I'm thinking there's a good lesson here on whether or not we should elect appallingly young people to congress, or make them VP in business, and so on.  I think there might be a Biblical principal here about taking advice from those who have been around a while.  I would want to find corroboration, and not go strictly by this one verse, but I think the corroboration is in here.  Hmm...maybe best not to portray this as a principle, since it was more fundamentally a fulfillment of God's prophecy to divide Solomon's kingdom after his death, and to fulfill the prophecy of Ahijah.)

So Israel returns to their tents.  This phrase "To your tents, O Israel" was from Sheba's rebellion against David, per MSB.  Then R sends his chief of forced labor and taxation to negotiate with the north.  R is still in Shechem at this time.  The people stone the negotiator.  R takes off to Jerusalem to hide.  The result of all this was vs 19:

19 So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. [1Ki 12:19 ESV]...just as God had said.

Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to R.  (Not sure where Benjamin comes in, but I thought Benjamin stayed with Judah also.  Hence the 10 tribes of Israel.)(Ahh...should have read the next vs, which says R assembled an army from Judah and Benjamin.)

2021 - MSB says that Judah was the only tribe WHOLLY loyal to Rehoboam.  Benjamin was split, with the northern cities, notably Bethel, siding with the north.  Also, the tribe of Simeon, the territory of whom was originally in the south of Judah, seems to have migrated north, and become part of the northern kingdom also.

R put together an army of 180,000 men to bring the northern 10 tribes back into line.  But God forbade it, through Shemaiah, saying this division was God's doing, and they all went home peaceably.

Jeroboam sets up as king of the north.  He decides that if all of his people still go down to Jerusalem to the Temple of Solomon to worship, that they will eventually turn against him.  So he decides they need a place to worship in the north.  He makes two golden calves and tells his people to worship these, instead of going to the Temple, because these calves brought them out of Egypt.  Did they not know their own history at all!!!  (Oh my...I wrote the italicized last year.  This year it is far more meaningful, with all the statues being pulled down, the race riots and so on.  If you pull those statues down, then you will not know your history at all.  No historical perspective at all.  And you could end up making an appallingly stupid and inexcusable error because of it.  A destructive error.)  The calves were in Bethel and Dan, both very near the border of Israel and Judah.  He also appointed priests of these idols who were not Levites.  He builds high places.  He sets up a feast in the 8th month that did not correspond to any feast day God had instituted.  It was his own doing, and he sacrificed in Bethel to the golden calf that was there during this self-declared feast.  This certainly was all designed to steer the 10 tribes away from God.

2021 - Again, such a stupid thing.  When Ahijah had anointed Jeroboam, he was promised a kingdom and lineage comparable to David's, but ONLY IF he would worship God alone.  And almost the first thing he does is make these two calves.  The people could not have paid any attention to their history or they would have known what happened after the first calf that Aaron made.  And to worship something that the king commissioned?  This is what happens when we forget our history.  This happens when we don't teach our children how we got here and why, and instead try to just turn everything upside down.  I want to read about China's cultural revolution.  I think we may be going down that same road in this country.