1 Kings 12

Butler

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1. AND Rehoboam went to Shechem : for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him 2 king. And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it, (for he was yet in Egypt, whither he had fled from the presence of king Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt, and they sent and called him ;) 3 that Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and spake unto Rehoboam, 4 saying, Thy father made our yoke grievous : now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will 5 serve thee. And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. 6 And the people departed. And king Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, that had stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, saying, What counsel give ye 7 me to return answer to this people ? And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will 8 be thy servants for ever. But he forsook the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and took counsel with the young men that were grown up with him, that 9 stood before him. And he said unto them, What counsel give ye, that we may return answer to this people, who have spoken to me, saying, Make the yoke that thy father 10 did put upon us lighter ? And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou say unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us ; thus shalt thou speak unto them, My little finger is thicker 11 than my father’s loins. And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke : my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise 12 you with scorpions. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king bade, saying, Come to me 13 again the third day. And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the counsel of the old men which they had 14 given him ; and spake to them after the

12 : 21 AND when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah, and the tribe of Benjamin, an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam the son of Solomon. But the word of God came unto Shemaiah the man of God, saying, Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel : return every man to his house ; for this thing is of me. So they hearkened unto the word of the LORD, and returned and went their way, according to the word of the LORD.

14 : 21 And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there : and his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess, And Judah did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD ; and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, above all that their fathers had done. For they also built them high places, and pillars, and Asherim, on every high hill, and under every green tree ; and there were also sodomites in the land : they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD drove out before the children of Israel. And it came to pass in the fifth year of king tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the LORD, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the LORD, the 17 God of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong, three years: for they walked three years in the way of David and Solomon. And Rehoboam took him a wife, Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, and of Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse; and she bare him sons; Jeush, and Shemariah, and Za- 20 ham. And after her he took Maacah the daughter of Absalom; and she bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith. 21 And Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines: (for he took eighteen wives, and threescore concubines, and begat twenty and eight sons and threescore daughters.) 22 And Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah to be chief, even the prince among his brethren: for he was minded to make 23 him king. And he dealt wisely, and dis-

Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt 26 came up against Jerusalem: and he took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all: and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had 27 made. And king Rehoboam made in their stead shields of brass, and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard, which kept the door of the king’s house. 28 And it was so, that as oft as the king went into the house of the LORD, the guard bare them, and brought them back into the 29 guard chamber. Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of 30 the kings of Judah? And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam contin- 31 ually. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David: and his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.

persed of all his sons throughout all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced city: and he gave them victual in abundance. And he sought for them many wives.

12:1 And it came to pass, when the kingdom of Rehoboam was established, and he was 2 strong, that he forsook the law of the LORD, and all Israel with him. And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, 3 because they had trespassed against the LORD, with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen: and the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt; 4 the Lubim, the Sukkim, and the Ethiopians. And he took the fenced cities which pertained 5 to Judah, and came unto Jerusalem. Now Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam, and to the princes of Judah, that were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said unto them, Thus saith the LORD, Ye have forsaken me, therefore have I also left you in the 6 hand of Shishak. Then the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they 7 said, The LORD is righteous. And when the LORD saw that they humbled themselves, the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying, They have humbled themselves; I will not destroy them: but I will grant them some deliverance, and my wrath shall not be poured out 8 upon Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak. Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they 9 may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries. So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house; he took all away: he took away also the shields of gold 10 which Solomon had made. And king Rehoboam made in their stead shields of brass, and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard, that kept the door of the king’s 11 house. And it was so, that as oft as the king entered into the house of the LORD, the guard 12 came and bare them, and brought them back into the guard chamber. And when he humbled himself, the wrath of the LORD turned from him, that he would not destroy him alto- 13 gether: and moreover in Judah there were good things found. So king Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned: for Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there: and his mother’s name was 14 Naamah the Ammonitess. And he did that which was evil, because he set not his heart to 15 seek the LORD. Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not written in the histories of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, after the manner of genealogies? And 16 there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David: and Abijah his son reigned in his stead.

Introductory. Having fully treated the separate history of Israel, we proceed to present a similar treatment of the remaining branch of the divided kingdom of Solomon. The history of the kingdom of Judah is most largely given in the Chronicles, which were probably written by Ezra soon after the return from the Captivity in Babylon. Then the newly gathered people, mainly Judahites or Jews, needed a fresh reminder of their entire history, with its many impressive lessons. In tracing the parallel progress of the two kingdoms, certain outline facts should be borne in mind from the outset. 1. They have the same starting-point—n.c. 975. 2. Israel lasts two hundred and fifty-four years and Judah three hundred and eighty-eight years. 3. Each kingdom has nineteen kings. 4. The kings of Israel came from eleven distinct families. 5. Those of Judah all belonged to the family of David, thus fulfilling God’s “pledge given as if by a covenant of salt, that the house of David should never perish.” B.

The kingdom of Judah lasted three hundred and eighty-eight years, n.c. 975-587. The history of the kingdom of Judah is the history of a dynasty rather than of a nation—of a city rather than of a country. Its title reveals to us its strength as well as its weakness. The tribe of Judah, the city of Jerusalem, the family of David, had acquired too much fame during the preceding reigns to be easily lost. The lamp or torch of David was always burning, although it seemed at times on the verge of extinction. There was a pledge given as if by a covenant of salt, that the house of David should never perish (2 Chron. 13: 5). Stanley.

In a religious point of view, the history of the kingdom of Judah may be divided into four periods, as indicated in the above table. It is remarkable how closely the religious character of the several periods corresponded to that of the monarchs who sat upon the throne. Under Rehoboam and Abijam, religion underwent a decline, from which it began to recover in the reign of Asa; while under Jehoshaphat the revival was decided and complete. A second decline commenced with the reign of Jehoram, the son-in-law of Ahab and Jezebel, and went on through a long succession of reigns—the spiritual thermometer falling lowest in that of Ahaz. The darkest hour of night, however, was succeeded by the dawn; under Hezekiah, the son and successor of Ahaz, the firmament brightened again. With Manasseh a new decline, more terrible than any that had preceded, began; followed, in the days of his grandson, Josiah, by a new and most interesting revival. The sons and successors of Josiah were not like-minded with himself; the old corruptions broke out afresh; and with the awful catastrophe of the Babylonian Captivity, the glory departed from the kingdom of Judah. W. G. B.

The history of the kingdom of Judah has a kingdom of Israel. Though much smaller, es- character essentially different from that of the pecially after Idumea, the only one of the mountainous districts which at the disruption fell to the share of Judah, had gained its independence, it was still superior to the kingdom of Israel in internal strength. This resulted partly from its possession of the genuine sanctuary with its legitimate worship, its influential priesthood, and Levitical orders; and partly from its royal house, which, unlike most of the dynasties of the neighboring kingdom, had not been raised to the throne by revolution, but possessed the sanction of legitimacy and a settled succession, and was especially consecrated by the memory of its illustrious ancestor David, and the Divine promises vouchsafed to his race. Moreover, among the nineteen monarchs (not counting Athaliah) who occupied the throne three hundred and eighty-seven years, from Rehoboam till the fall of the State, there were at least some individuals distinguished for high administrative talents, in whom the ideal of the theocratic kingship was revived, such as Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah. Thus the kingdom gained a moral strength that prevented the wild spirit of insurrection and discord, by which the other kingdom was disturbed, from attaining anything like the same proportions. The opposition, indeed, between the natural inclinations of the people and the moral strictness of Jehovah could not but lead to conflicts here also; nay, the contrast between the two was all the sharper, because a syncretistic intermingling of heathenism and Jehovah could not be so easily effected—a circumstance which explains the fact, that when the former did get the upper hand in Judah, it appeared in a still grosser form than in the kingdom of Israel. By reason, however, of the firm foundation which the continuance of the legitimate theocratic authorities afforded to Jehovah in the State, there was no need of bloody revolutions to reinstate the latter in its rights, but only of reformations, and these were effected not so much by the energetic efforts of the prophets as by the kings themselves. Besides, since the preservation of the theocratic ordinances did not devolve in Judah exclusively upon the prophets, their position was different from that which they occupied in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. At times their agency was exercised in perfect harmony with that of the two other theocratic powers; and reformations of worship being repeatedly undertaken by the kings, they were able to limit themselves to the ministry of the word. The prophets, finding in Judah the basis afforded by existing theocratic institutions, were not under the necessity of establishing new props; and there is no sort of evidence that schools of the prophets, or associations such as existed in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, were organized in Judah. In the historical notices of the kingdom of Judah we meet only with individual prophets, a succession of whom continues, with but inconsiderable gaps, down to the Captivity, and it was only around eminent prophets like Isaiah (cf. 8:16), and afterward Jeremiah, that small circles of disciples were gathered, in whom the word of God fell upon good ground, in the midst of a rebellious nation, and was transmitted to future generations. With respect to the course of events in the kingdom of Judah, a cursory glance presents a tolerably uniform alternation of apostasy from Jehovah and return to Him. Certain kings suffer idolatry to spring up; this finds support in the high places existing in different parts of the country, and such apostasy is followed by punishment in the calamities which then overtake the nation. Then arises again a pious king, who exerts himself to keep the people faithful to the legitimate sanctuary, and vindicates the authority of the legal worship, till at length, after repeated reformations, the apostasy and corruption becomes so great that judgment sets in without intermission. O.

2. Chron. 11:1-4.** Rehoboam’s preparation of a great army to recover the heritage of Solomon by conquest of the revolted tribes was countermanded by the word of the Lord at the mouth of the prophet Shemaiah, and the Divine command was instantly heeded by king and people. B.

4. The words of the prophet were addressed not only to the king but to the assembled warriors, and were imperative upon the latter—“Return every man to his house;” and, we are immediately told, “They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart.” There is no reason to suppose that they would have remained under arms after such a command, however much Rehoboam had wished them to do so. They obeyed the prophet, and he could not but do the same. Kitto.

That portion of the tribe of Dan which dwelt in their original lot (Josh. 19:40 sqq.), between Benjamin, Judah and Ephraim, belonged to Judah. A few Danite cities are mentioned (2 Chron. 11:10; 28:18) as pertaining to the kingdom of Judah; but since this tribe dwelt partly in the north, it may nevertheless be reckoned among the ten. Thus Rehoboam’s army may correctly be spoken of (1 K. 12:23) as “all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and the rest of the people.” Among the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah, mentioned (verse 17) as Rehoboam’s subjects, were probably included members of other tribes also. And when to these are added the numerous emigrations from the northern kingdom into that of Judah in succeeding centuries (cf. 2 Chron. 15: 9), it may well be said that among the Jews, which name now arose in the southern kingdom, all Israel was represented. The disruption of Israel was from this time irremediable; in a short time, not reckoning the reigns of Ahab and Jehoshaphat and their immediate successors, the separated kingdoms took hostile positions with respect to each other, and at last consumed their strength in sanguinary wars. The external glory of the kingdom was at an end; but prophecy never ceased to direct the expectation of the nation to the future reunion of the twelve tribes under one head of the house of David. Oehler.

11-17. Three years of peace followed. The only notable occurrence during this tranquil interval was the gradual exodus of the Levites from the northern kingdom, where they were subject to indignities, and their concentration within the territorial limits of Judah and Benjamin, where they were respected and honored. This exodus was followed by that of many pious Israelites, who disliked Jeroboam’s religious innovations, and were attached to the worship of Jehovah, as established by David and Solomon. The northern kingdom was thus continually weakened and the southern one strengthened (2 Chron. 11: 13-17). G. R.

Rehoboam’s policy drew almost all the priesthood into his dominions of the nation, and brought in large accessions of population from the territory of the revolted tribes; so that though his country, consisting only of the two southern tribes, was inferior in extent, and yet more in fertility and natural resources, it matched well the sister kingdom in the north, and during his reign and the reigns of his successors, he successfully warded off its enmity. “He fortified the strongholds and put captains in them, and store of victual, and of oil and wine. And in every several city he put shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong.” So much he did for external defence. And to preserve internal order and tranquillity, and to prevent contention among his numerous sons—for it is recorded of him that he had twenty-eight—as well as to avert the danger of a disputed succession after his death, he separated them, “and dispersed all his children throughout all the countries of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced city: and he gave them victual in abundance.” Surely, here was some good statesmanship and political sagacity. And thus it appears that Rehoboam, through the great folly with which he started in his public career, has left on his fame an indelible blot—was not altogether a simpleton or a trifler, nor altogether unworthy of his birth as the son of the wise King Solomon. R. Hallam.

16. To his new order of priests Jeroboam probably gave the consecrated lands and the right of tithes which the Levites had previously enjoyed, thus reducing the bulk of the old sacerdotal body to absolute penury. A fresh impetus was in this way given to the exodus which had already begun; and the example of their sacerdotal guides being followed by many of the more godly among the Israelites. Jeroboam found the number of his own subjects continually diminishing, and the number of his rival’s subjects increasing, through an emigration which it was almost impossible for him to stop, or even to confine within moderate limits by his own unassisted efforts. G. R.

12: 1. The effect of prosperity upon Rehoboam and his people. He occupies the first three years of his reign of seventeen in fortifying Jerusalem and fifteen walled cities; in reorganizing the government over the two tribes; and in assigning homes to the large number of priests and Levites, and of families, exiled from the Ten Tribes by Jeroboam for loyalty to the worship of Jehovah. With this establishment of his throne came a sense of power and security, shared alike by king and people. Indulgence naturally followed with the decline of religious feeling, soon reaching the point of utter disobedience to the law of the Lord. Groves, with their abominations, high places and images, with their idolatries, were the natural and speedy outcome of their apostasy. Although forty-one years old when he began to reign, Rehoboam seems to have been extremely self-ignorant and weak. His foolish response to the representatives of the Ten Tribes, by which he repelled them and divided the kingdom of Solomon, clearly shows this. So does his ready yielding to the idolatrous tendencies of all surrounding nations, though helped, doubtless, by his Ammonite mother’s training; while his replacement of the golden shields with those of brass, to be used in mere personal display of kingly state and authority, also indicated a vain, weak character. B.

2. Chron. 12: 1-12. The most important event in this history is told in fullest detail in the Book of Kings (14: 22-24); its punishment at the hand of God in the Book of Chronicles (12 : 2, 12). After the first three years of Rehoboam’s reign a great change seems to have come over the religious aspect of the country. Rehoboam and Judah did not, indeed, openly renounce the worship of Jehovah. On the contrary, we find that the king continued to attend the house of the Lord in royal state, and that after the incursion of Shishak there was even a partial religious revival (verses 11, 12). Still the general character of this period was, that “Rehoboam forsook the law of Jehovah, and all Israel with him;” that “he did evil in that he did not set his heart on seeking Jehovah” (verses 1, 14), and, lastly, that “Judah did the evil in the sight of Jehovah, and provoked Him to jealousy (viewing the relation between the Lord and Israel as one of marriage, Num. 5 : 14—more than anything which their fathers had done by their sins which they sinned” (1 K. 14 : 22). These sins consisted in building Bamoth, or “high places”—i.e., altars, on every high hill, and setting up in every grove Mazeeboth, or memorial-stones and pillars dedicated to Baal, and Asherim, or trunks of trees dedicated to Astarte (with all the vileness which their service implied). The Divine punishment was not long withheld. Once more it came in the course of natural causation, through the political motives which influenced Shishak, and led him to support Jeroboam. In the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign Shishak marched a large army of Egyptians, Lybians, Sukkim (“tent-dwellers”? Arabs?), and Ethiopians, with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horsemen, into Judea, and after taking the fenced cities along his route, advanced upon Jerusalem, where Rehoboam and his army were gathered. Once more the prophet Shemaiah averted a contest, which could only have ended in disaster. On showing them that the national danger, though apparently arising from political causes, was really due to their sin against Jehovah (verse 2), and that it was needless to fight, since, as they had been God-forsaking, they were now God-forsaken (verse 5), the king and his princes humbled themselves. Thereupon the Lord intimated through His prophet that He would “grant them deliverance for a little while,” on condition of their submitting to Shishak. The reason for this, “that they may know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries,” as well as the terms by which the promised deliverance was qualified, contained the most solemn warning of the ultimate consequences of apostasy. Yet the Divine forbearance continued other three hundred and seventy years before the threatened judgment burst upon the nation. But at this time Jerusalem was spared. Voluntary submission having been made, Shishak entered the city, and contented himself with carrying away the treasures of the Temple and of the palace, including among the latter the famous golden shields used by Solomon’s body-guard on state occasions, for which Rehoboam now substituted shields of brass. A. E.

It is to be carefully noted that, so long as king and people served the Lord, Shishak was held back from attacking them. Hence we understand why Judah receives earlier and greater stripes than Israel. It was Jeroboam made Israel to sin. It was Judah made Rehoboam to sin. The guilty people, accordingly, are punished by the invasion of their land and the spoliation of their treasure; the guilty king by the destruction of his house. And here again, let us observe, how significant that the chastisement should come from Egypt! Time was when God had punished the idolatries of Egypt through the instrumentality of the Jewish people (Ex. 7-14). Now the tables are turned, and Egypt is employed to avenge the idolatries of Judah. This was the first time that an Egyptian army had crossed their border—the first time, indeed, that the land had sustained the brunt of any invasion. It was the Sodomites and the like had drawn forth those swords from their scabbards. What a contrast between Exodus 14 and 1 Kings 14! Israel, who then “saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore,” now feels the grip of Pharaoh at his throat, and the iron of Pharaoh in his soul. Hammond.

2-4. God’s dealing with the transgressions of king and people.** Shishak, or Sheshonk, according to the monumental records inscribed upon the walls of the great temple of Karnak, was the first king of the twenty-second dynasty of Egypt. A list of one hundred and thirty-three countries, cities, and tribes ruled by or tributary to him, includes a large number of the cities of Palestine. Some of these were within the kingdom of Jeroboam, but they were cities of the Levites or old Caananites. But the supreme motive and ultimate impelling cause of this Egyptian invasion, lay in the mind of God. Like all human actions, there was connected with this of Shishak a double thread of motive and purpose—the one, superior and overruling, because Divine; the other (the human), free indeed, but overruled in its every detail of result. No clearer, more conclusive statement, in illustration of an inexplicable fact, can we find than this: “Shishak came up against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed against the Lord.” His army was a vast one, drawn from Egypt and the great countries on the west and south. And his progress was unhindered, his triumph complete. The cities that Rehoboam had walled for defence were taken almost as soon as their walls had been built. And Jerusalem itself was occupied by the Egyptian host. B.

When David founded his empire his two powerful neighbors, Egypt and Assyria, were both in a state of decline. Assyria had fallen into the hands of unwarlike kings, who were unable to retain the conquests of their predecessors, even upon their immediate frontiers; while Egypt was divided among rival dynasties and rent with civil wars. Egypt, however, was the first to recover her strength. The monarchs of the twenty-second dynasty once more united the country under one rule, and Shishak or Sheshonk I. turned his arms against the cities of Palestine. The brief account given in 1 K. 14: 25, 26, and the fuller history in these verses of his invasion of Judah and his capture of Jerusalem, are supplemented by his own record of it on the walls of the ruined temple of Karnak. Sayce.

In the Scriptures Shishak appears first in 1 K. 11: 40, as then the king of Egypt to whom Jeroboam fled for protection from Solomon. This fact indicates a decisive change in the policy of the Egyptian court since Solomon took to wife the daughter of the reigning monarch. It suggests another dynasty, of other, not to say opposite sympathies and policy. In harmony with this we find that Shishak (the Sheshonk of the Egyptian monuments) was the founder of a new dynasty, the twenty-second. He was not on the best terms with Solomon, and readily took Jeroboam into his confidence and friendship. Naturally, therefore, he only waited for the favorable moment to make this formidable military campaign into Palestine in the interests of his friend Jeroboam. H. C.

Shishak, called Sheshonk or Sheshonk on the monuments, and Sesonchis or Sesonchosis by Manetho, ascended the Egyptian throne about B.C. 980 or a little earlier, according to calculations based upon exclusively Egyptian data. He reigned twenty-one years, and toward the close of his reign made an expedition, which he has commemorated on the external wall of the great temple at Karnak. The mode of commemoration is by a representation of himself, and a list of the various cities, countries, and tribes conquered by him, or made tributary, during the expedition. The number of the names was originally one hundred and thirty-three; but of these thirty-two are wholly and fourteen others partly illegible. Of the remaining eighty-seven, about fifty-five had been identified with more or less of probability, while above thirty still defy the comparative geographer. From the fifty-five identifications, many of which are quite certain, it appears that the list contains three classes of names, mainly grouped together—(1) Levitical and Canaanite cities of Israel; (2) cities of Judah; (3) Arab tribes lying to the south of Palestine. According to Mr. R.S. Poole’s analysis of the inscription of Sheshonk at Karnak, it appears that the expedition was directed not only against the dominions of Rehoboam, but also against a number of Levitical and Canaanite cities within the territory of Jeroboam himself, and further against certain Arab tribes of the vicinity. The inference is, that Jeroboam obtained Sheshonk’s aid in reducing Israelite cities that had declined to submit to him, and also in chastising Arab tribes on his borders which had given him trouble. G. R.

On the 14th of February, 1867, the writer and some friends, in one of their visits to Karnak, sought out this sculptured scene and record. Passing from the interior of the great Columnar Hall through a break in the south wall, the sculptures were found near the southwest corner. There were the colossal figures of a conqueror and of a divinity, and the Liliputian figures of a multitude of captives, sculptured in intaglio on the exterior surface of the wall. Accompanying these was an explanatory record, containing the name of the king and the names of the various countries which he had subdued. No doubt exists concerning this representation, so far as is needful to identify it with King Shishak and his Syrian expedition mentioned in the Scriptures; and, although the hour of our visit was oppressively warm, it was no hardship to stand amid the fiery reflections of the sun from the temple wall and surrounding débris, before an inscription which must be accounted one of the most suggestive ever written by the finger of man. N. C. Burt.

5, 6. God’s admonitory message, and the responsive humiliation of the king and princes. By the same prophet (Shemaiah) who had five years before forbidden Rehoboam to reconquer the ten rebelling tribes, the word of Jehovah is uttered to the king and chief men of Judah. The message is brief and pointed. Their sin was the cause of their calamities, and this was their sin; that they had turned away from God

—from His worship and His law. And this is the substance of all sin, the essence of transgression in every age and generation: turning away from God, disregarding His worship, disobeying His law! The charge uttered by the prophet is not denied. The conscience of the leaders and people acknowledged its truth. And the calamities which were already fallen upon them helped to make the voice of conscience clearer and its sting the sharper. So they humbled themselves in acknowledgment as brief and pointed as the charge: The Lord is righteous! As their sin relates solely to God, so their penitence refers only to Him. David’s words of confession fitly express their meaning: Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned; that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest. This, too, is the substance of all true repentance in every age and generation: the return to God with self-accusation for disobedience, and full justification of God’s right and merciful dealing.

7, 8. Why and how God’s yet severer discipline was withheld. His wrath was not fully “poured out upon Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak.” By the same prophet they learned that God’s mercy was interposed on account of their thus penitently humbling themselves before Him. But God would grave the lesson deeper on their souls, as we know they sadly needed. Therefore He left the nation subject to Shishak, and king and people were compelled to pay heavy tribute, even after the loss of all the treasures gathered by David and Solomon, stored in the Temple and palaces of Jerusalem.

A point of special instruction is suggested in the reason assigned by the Lord for Judah’s enslavement to Shishak. It is that Judah may learn by actual experience whose is the easier, most desirable service—God’s or the Egyptian monarch’s. It was God’s way, under the old and severer Covenant, of saying to Judah, “Return unto Me and take My yoke upon you, for it is easy; and My burden, for it is light!” Through experience only, of the contrast between sore bondage to a foreign tyrant and glad service willingly given to Himself, they would learn that obedience to God was far better. And thus Christ says to all, who have had enough of the sad experience of bondage to sinful self-indulgence, “Come unto Me, and exchange the burdening, wearing yoke of reigning sin for My light burdens and easy restraints!” B.

7. They have humbled themselves; therefore I will not destroy them.**

Compare the repentance of Ahab (1 K. 21: 27-29) and that of the Ninevites (Jonah 2: 5-10), which produced similar revocations of Divine decrees that had been pronounced by the mouth of a prophet. B. C.

8. May know My service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.** The history of life is made up of different services. Every man serves something. “Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?” In the service of the world you are always dealing with uncertainties. The things of God are sure and forever. He who gives is the unchangeable Jehovah, who never recalls a gift, and all His gifts have in them eternity. In the service of the world nothing ever thoroughly satisfies; nothing meets all the aspirations of a man. In God’s service a man has just what his soul wants. The Christian service of religion does not work up to get its great objects. It has them. It does not work for wages, for it has received what it wants as a gift. It works out a salvation which it has. The one service is a service of freedom, the other of bondage. It is bondage to serve where there is no affection. It is bondage to work for what you can get, and not even to be sure that you shall ever get it. But to feel that you are your Father’s child, that His eye is looking at you and His hand holding you while you work—that is liberty. It is the same service with that of those servants who serve Him indeed in heaven. J. Vaughan.

9-11. What Shishak took away, and Rehoboam substituted. Five hundred shields of wood overlaid with gold, made under Solomon’s direction, together with all the treasures gathered in the house of the Lord and in the king’s house, were carried to Egypt. The shields were used for display on state occasions; and it would seem that the treasures were kept or used more for show than for actual advantage to the nation. So that the shame of the loss would be felt more than their deprivation of the treasure. For the shields, as they were required upon the occasional parade visitation of Rehoboam to the Lord’s house, he had counterfeits made of brass, which answered the purpose quite as well.

12. The sum of this story. The outward form of humility, and the sincere though constrained confession and repentance of king and people, for the time turned away the severer visitations of God’s righteous indignation. For David’s sake, and His promise’s sake, the Lord “would not destroy Rehoboam altogether.”

And also, another equally strong good reason for God’s forbearance, there were good things in Judah! There remained a true spiritual seed—many loyal souls were dispersed among the two tribes. All through the history of God’s ancient people we see this fact outstanding, first announced in principle to Abraham pleading for the cities of the plain. And ever since the call of the Gentiles the evidence is as marked. And this is the fact that magnifies God’s personal love to men: that multitudes of the hardened and guilty receive tokens of His prolonged forbearance by reason of the few godly souls that witness for Him, and seek the coming of His kingdom upon earth. B.

13-16. The lesson seems not to have been lost on Rehoboam and his people. “There were yet good things in Judah;” but the sum of the king’s character is this: “He did evil, because he fixed not his heart to seek Jehovah” (verse 14). He died after a reign of seventeen years (verse 13), and was buried in the city of David. His acts were recorded by the prophet Shemaiah, by the seer Iddo, in his book of genealogies, and in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah. P. S.

Rehoboam’s reign, after the retirement of Sheshonk, was uneventful. He continued to occupy the throne for twelve more years, and during this time was engaged in frequent if not in continual hostilities with Jeroboam (1 K. 14: 30; 2 Chron. 12: 15), but no important results followed, and it can only be said that the two kingdoms maintained their relative positions. In military strength they were not ill-matched, since, if Israel could bring more men into the field, the narrower limits of Judah made her able to concentrate her troops more rapidly, while the personal qualities of the men of Judah and Benjamin placed them in the front rank of Hebrew warriors. Thus, notwithstanding the invasion of Sheshonk, and the loss of strength which it must have occasioned, the southern kingdom held its ground firmly, though it can scarcely have continued to maintain any hold over the alien States upon its borders, such as Philistia and Edom, which David had subjugated, but which, probably from the date of Sheshonk’s invasion, recovered their independence.

Rehoboam, remembering the dreariness of his own idle youth, was careful to give his sons active employment. As they grew to manhood, he dispersed them among the various provincial towns, assigning to each a charge, and at the same time an establishment. The writer of Chronicles considers that, in so doing, he acted wisely (chap. 11: 23). The system which he adopted was certainly calculated to prevent, or minimize, jealousies among the princes, and to benefit their characters by giving them duties to perform, instead of making them idle hangers-on upon a court. Maachah survived her husband, and was queen-mother during the next two reigns. Her influence over the kingdom was altogether for evil, and we may, perhaps, ascribe much of the wrong conduct of Rehoboam to the sway which she exercised over him. Her leanings were altogether toward idolatry. Rehoboam’s character was weak and irresolute. He seems to have had warm affections, and to have been capable of making good resolutions under good advice (11: 4; 12: 6); but he had no stability of purpose, and his last counsellor generally determined his actions. We are told that “he did evil, because he fixed not his heart to seek the Lord” (12: 14). G. R.

18th to 21st of Jeroboam, of Israel.

12:25 THEN Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and dwelt therein; 26 and he went out from thence, and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall 27 the kingdom return to the house of David: if this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah; and they shall kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of 28 Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought 29 thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in

30. Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto 31 Dan. And he made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, 32 which were not of the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he went up unto the altar; so did he in Beth-el, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in 33 Beth-el the priests of the high places which he had made. And he went up unto the altar which he had made in Beth-el on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart: and he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up unto the altar, to burn incense.

13:1 And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the LORD unto 2 Beth-el: and Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Jesiah by name; and upon thee shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall they burn upon 3 thee. And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the LORD hath spoken: Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out. 4 And it came to pass, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Beth-el, that Jeroboam put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not 5 draw it back again to him. The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar, 6 according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the LORD. And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Intreat now the favour of the LORD thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again. And the man of God intreated 7 the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored him again, and became as it was before. And the king said unto the man of God, Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give 8 thee a reward. And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half thine 9 house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: for so was it charged me by the word of the LORD, saying, Thou shalt eat no bread, nor drink 10 water, neither return by the way that thou camest. So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Beth-el. 11 Now there dwelt an old prophet in Beth-el; and one of his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Beth-el: the words which he had spoken 12 unto the king, them also they told unto their father. And their father said unto them, What way went he? Now his sons had seen what way the man of God went, which came from 13 Judah. And he said unto his sons, Saddle me the ass. So they saddled him the ass: and 14 he rode thereon. And he went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak: and he said unto him, Art thou the man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am. 15 Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread. And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in 16 this place: for it was said to me by the word of the LORD, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest. And he said unto him, I also 17 am a prophet as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he 18 lied unto him. So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water. 19 And it came to pass, as they sat at the table, that the word of the LORD came unto the prophet that brought him back: and he cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast been disobedient unto the mouth of the 20 LORD, and hast not kept the commandment which the LORD thy God commanded thee, but carnest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place of the which he said to thee, Eat no bread, and drink no water; thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of thy 21 fathers. And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he sad- dled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom he had brought back. And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him: and his carcase was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it; the lion also stood by the carcase. And, behold, men passed by, and saw the carcase cast in the way, and the lion standing by the carcase: and they came and told it in 22 the city where the old prophet dwelt. And when the prophet that brought him back from the way heard thereof, he said, It is the man of God, who was disobedient unto the mouth of the LORD: therefore the LORD hath delivered him unto the lion, which hath torn him, and slain 23 him, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake unto him. And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled it. And he went and found his carcase cast in the way, and the ass and the lion standing by the carcase: the lion had not eaten the carcase, nor torn the ass. And the prophet took up the carcase of the man of God, and laid it upon the ass, and brought it back: and he came to the city of the old prophet, to mourn, 24 and to bury him. And he laid his carcase in his own grave; and they mourned over him, 25 saying, Alas, my brother! And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is 26 buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the saying which he cried by the word of the LORD against the altar in Beth-el, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.

33. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again from among all the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places. And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth.

14:1 2 At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick. And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam: and get thee to Shiloh; behold, there is Abijah the prophet, which spake concerning me that I should be king over this people. And take with thee ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse (or bottle) of honey, and go to him: he shall tell thee what shall become of the child. And Jeroboam’s wife did so, and arose, and went to Shiloh, and came to the house of Abijah. Now Abijah could not see: for his eyes were set by reason of his age. And the LORD said unto Abijah, Behold, the wife of Jeroboam cometh to inquire of thee concerning her son; for he is sick: thus and thus shalt thou say unto her: for it shall be, when she cometh in, that she shall feign herself to be another woman. And it was so, when Abijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why I edgnerst thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in mine eyes; but hast done evil above all that were before thee, and hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back: therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every man child, him that is shut up and him that is left at large in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweepeth away dung, till it be all gone. Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat: for the LORD hath spoken it. Arise thou therefore, get thee to thine house: and when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him, and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave: because in him there is found some good thing toward the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. Moreover the LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: but what? even now. For the LORD shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the River; because they have made their Asherim, provoking the LORD to anger. And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he hath sinned, and wherewith he hath made Israel to sin. And Jeroboam’s wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: and as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. And all Israel buried him, and mourned for him; according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by the hand of his servant Abijah the prophet. And the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warned, and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. And the days which Jeroboam reigned were two and twenty years: and he slept with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his stead.

The new kingdom was called “Israel;” and, with the national name, it seemed, in many respects, the true representative of the nation. It included an overwhelming majority of the tribes. It possessed the chief portion of the territory. Yet Judah possessed Jerusalem, with its Temple, its Ark of the Covenant, and its God-appointed worship. In Judah, too, was the throne of David, and the line of succession from the monarch who had received God’s promises in behalf of his posterity. To Judah, moreover, clung the true priesthood of Aaron and the tribe of Levi. And thus, when the new kingdom of Israel, setting up for itself, organized an independent and idolatrous worship, and then, notwithstanding the remonstrances of God-ordained prophets, went on from bad to worse, substituting at length the unmitigated idolatry of Baal-worship for the worship of God by images, it established its character as an apostate kingdom. About two hundred and fifty years this kingdom lasted; and it is especially worthy of note that very nearly contemporaneous with it—rising to view shortly after it rose and falling just before it fell—was the kingdom of Syria, having the city of Damascus as its capital, and a succession of Benhadads as its principal kings. Syria on the northeast and Judah on the south were the rivals of Israel; and, among the three, alliances were frequently formed by some two against the third. Phoenicia, on the sea-coast to the northwest, was commonly friendly to Israel; and King Ahab obtained thence his detestable wife Jezebel, who brought with her the worship of her national gods Baal and Astarte, and well-nigh succeeded in corrupting the whole kingdom with her idolatry. The new kingdom of Israel was characterized by frequent changes of its dynasty. N. C. B.—In this kingdom there was no conservative principle. A love of novelty and change, under the specious name of reform, was the chief characteristic of the powerful house of Joseph. The kingdom, originating in rebellion, was ruled by a succession of adventurers, who built sumptuous palaces and selected pleasant residences to gratify their own tastes for luxury and show, without a thought of the public good. J. L. Porter.

The history of the kingdom of Israel is mainly the history of the tribe of Ephraim; and some of the prophets call attention to this fact by calling the kingdom not “Israel,” or “Jacob,” or even “Joseph,” but simply “Ephraim.” The kingdom of Israel had a grand opportunity of justifying the secession. It might resolutely have set to work to avoid and to remedy the grievous errors which had disfigured the latter part of the reign of Solomon. The fatal mistake consisted in supposing that these could be avoided by mere severance from the house of David, and that no remedy was needed. Had Jeroboam and his successors honestly labored to abolish idolatry, to moderate taxation, and to strengthen the frontier, they would have retained the alliance of the prophets, the most powerful moral force of the age, and would have won the respect and lasting affection of the tribes. But they cared for their own dynasty much more than for the true religion, and to surpass Judah much more than to put down and thrust back the heathen. Thus even in the first period (from Jeroboam to Ahab, B.C. 975-900), which is one of hostility between the kingdoms, although Israel gains considerable advantages over Judah, yet what advance is made is wholly in the southern kingdom, while the northern simply goes back. Jeroboam, in order to make the break with the capital of Judah as decided as possible, made a clean sweep of all that could remind his subjects of the glory of David and Solomon, and with it of a large portion of the existing civilization. Thus his kingdom was at once sent back to the rudeness of the age of Saul; and before long was plunged in the anarchy and consequent weakness which had distinguished the age of the Judges. Hence in the kingdom of Israel there seems to be nothing to compensate for the evil of division. For the evil of division in an empire is by no means necessarily unmixed. Sometimes the several portions develop all the more healthily for being independent, if only they have sufficient internal force and sufficient scope for action. The kingdom of Israel was deficient in both; and the force which it possessed was misdirected, so that what scope it had was thrown away. P. C.

The history of the Northern kingdom, called, as the basis of the nation, the kingdom of Israel, or, after its chief tribe, that of Ephraim, comes chiefly under the consideration of biblical theology, as exhibiting in the conflict waged against the apostate realm by the prophetic order the powerful agency of the latter, and as manifesting in the whole course of the events which befell it the serious nature of Divine retribution. Nine dynasties, including nineteen kings (not reckoning Tibni), succeeded each other in the two centuries and a half during which the kingdom existed, and only two, those of Omri and Jehu, possessed the throne for any length of time. The history is full of conspiracies, regicides, and civil wars; it is a continuous testimony to the fact that when once the divinely appointed path is forsaken sin is ever producing fresh sin, and that the punishment of one crime is inflicted by another. O.

The kingdom of Israel lasted two hundred and fifty-four years, from B.C. 975 to B.C. 721, about two-thirds of the duration of its more compact neighbor, Judah. But it may be doubted whether the division into two kingdoms greatly shortened the independent existence of the Hebrew race, or interfered with the purposes which, it is thought, may be traced in the establishment of David’s monarchy. The detailed history of the kingdom of Israel will be found under the names of its nineteen kings. A summary view may be taken in four periods: 1. B.C. 975-929. Jeroboam had not sufficient force of character in himself to make a lasting impression on his people. A king, but not a founder of a dynasty, he aimed at nothing beyond securing his present elevation. The army soon learned its power to dictate to the isolated monarch and disunited people. Baasha, in the midst of the army at Gibbethon, slew the son and successor of Jeroboam; Zimri, a captain of chariots, slew the son and successor of Baasha; Omri, the captain of the host, was chosen to punish Zimri; and after a civil war of four years he prevailed over Tibni, the choice of half the people. 2. B.C. 929-884. For forty-five years Israel was governed by the house of Omri. That sagacious king pitched on the strong hill of Samaria as the site of his capital. The princes of his house cultivated an alliance with the kings of Judah, which was cemented by the marriage of Jehoram and Athaliah. The adoption of Baal-worship led to a reaction in the nation, to the moral triumph of the prophets in the person of ELIJAH, and to the extinction of the house of Ahab in obedience to the bidding of ELISHA. 3. B.C. 884-772. Unparalleled triumphs, but deeper humiliation, awaited the kingdom of Israel under the dynasty of Jehu. Hazael, the ablest king of Damascus, reduced Jehoahaz to the condition of a vassal, and triumphed for a time over both the disunited Hebrew kingdoms. Almost the first sign of the restoration of their strength was a war between them; and Jehoash, the grandson of Jehu, entered Jerusalem as the conqueror of Amaziah. Jehoash also turned the tide of war against the Syrians; and Jeroboam II., the most powerful of all the kings of Israel, captured Damascus, and recovered the whole ancient frontier from Hamath to the Dead Sea. This short-lived greatness expired with the last king of Jehu’s line. 4. n.c. 772-721. Military violence, it would seem, broke off the hereditary succession after the obscure and probably convulsed reign of Zachariah. An unsuccessful usurper, Shallum, is followed by the cruel Menahem, who, being unable to make head against the first attack of Assyria under Pul, became the agent of that monarch for the oppressive taxation of his subjects. Yet his power at home was sufficient to insure for himself a ten years’ reign, his son and successor, Pekahiah, being cut off after two years by a bold usurper, Pekah. Abandoning the northern and trans-Jordanic regions to the encroaching power of Assyria under Tiglath-pileser, he was very near subjugating Judah, with the help of Damascus, now the coequal ally of Israel. But Assyria interposing summarily put an end to the independence of Damascus, and perhaps was the indirect cause of the assassination of the baffled Pekah. The irresolute Hoshea, the next and last usurper, became tributary to his invader, Shalmaneser, betrayed the Assyrian to the rival monarchy of Egypt, and was punished by the loss of his liberty, and by the capture, after a three years’ siege, of his strong capital, Samaria. Some gleanings of the ten tribes remained in the land after so many years of religious decline, moral debasement, national degradation, anarchy, bloodshed, and deportation. Even these were gathered up by the conqueror and carried to Assyria, never again, as a distinct people, to occupy their portion of that goodly and pleasant land which their forefathers won under Joshua from the heathen. Dic. B.

There were four leading periods in the history of the kingdom of Israel: in the first, the most prominent king was Jeroboam; in the second, Ahab; in the third, Jehu; and in the fourth, Pekah. During the first period, idolatry took root; during the second, it was in full blow; during the third, it was somewhat checked through the influence of the prophets; and during the fourth, it produced its natural fruit, in the utter destruction of the kingdom.

25. Jeroboam. He was the son of Nebat, of the tribe of Ephraim. Solomon, long before, had appointed him as overseer of that tribe. An able and ambitious man, skilful and successful in the construction of various works, withal popular among his own and the other already disaffected tribes, he soon aspired to royal state. His aspirations were confirmed by the symbolic act and declaration of the prophet Ahijah, recorded in 1 K. 11:29-39. His designs being discovered by Solomon, he fled to Egypt, where he remained until the king’s death. At the call of the disaffected tribes upon the death of Solomon, he came, and acted as their spokesman in their conference with Rehoboam. And now, these tribes elect and establish him as king over Israel. B.

Jeroboam, the son of Nebat and Zeruah, was

“an Ephrathite (or Ephraimite) of Zereda” (1 K. 11 : 26), and was born a subject of King Solomon. Nebat, Jeroboam’s father, seems to have died while Jeroboam was still a child, and he was brought up by his mother, “a widow woman,” of whom nothing more is told us. He was among the men of Ephraim impressed by Solomon to aid in constructing the fortifications by which he was seeking to render Jerusalem an impregnable fortress. On one occasion, when Solomon was inspecting the progress of the fortification of Milo, which was situated between the Temple hill and the modern Zion, he specially attracted the attention of the monarch, who, noting his vigor and activity, promoted him to the position of head-overser over the services due to the crown from the house of Joseph. We know nothing of Jeroboam’s life between his promotion by Solomon and his flight into Egypt, except that, apparently without any scheming of his own, he was the subject of a prophetic announcement, which provoked the anger of Solomon, and led him to seek the life of his too distinguished servant and subject (1 K. 11 : 40). Occupied in observing Egyptian institutions, and in obtaining influence over the Egyptian monarch, Jeroboam passed some years. The time for a fresh movement came only when news reached Egypt of the death of Solomon, and simultaneously of a desire on the part of his friends in Palestine that Jeroboam should return to his native land, and be ready at hand in case the course of events should be such as to call for his intervention. Jeroboam responded to the call. When the rebellion broke out the ten tribes in a formal assembly (verse 20) made Jeroboam their king. The sovereignty over Israel, as distinct from Judah, passed once more to Ephraim, and the blessing of Moses upon Joseph (De. 33 : 13-17) seemed to obtain a fresh accomplishment. G. R.

The fact may be noted here, in passing, that immediately upon the revolt of the ten tribes, Rehoboam made great preparations to enforce their return to allegiance. But by the prophet Shemaiah, God forbade the gathered host of Judah to fight against their brethren of Israel. For this thing is from me, He said. And the king and people instantly obeyed “the word of the Lord.” B.

Jeroboam rebuilds and fortifies a capital on either side of Jordan. This was his first scheme to establish his power. As the seat and centre of his influence among the tribes west of the Jordan, he builds Shechem in the territory of Ephraim. A corresponding centre of power among the Eastern tribes he establishes at Penuel in the tribe of Gad. This double capital also afforded a place of retreat and rallying point in the event of defeat on either side of Jordan. In this scheme there was forethought and shrewdness, and no evil. B.—He enlarged and beautified both Shechem and Penuel for his own residence, either out of love for variety and grandeur, the very fault upon which he was wont to raise his insinuations against his master Solomon; or else to the end that, by fortifying these two places, one in the east and the other in the west part of his dominions, he might keep his subjects in better control. Pyle.—Shechem was the first capital of the new kingdom, venerable for its traditions, and beautiful in its situation. Subsequently Tirzah became the royal residence, if not the capital, of Jeroboam (14 : 17) and of his successors. Samaria, uniting in itself the qualities of beauty and fertility, and a commanding position, was chosen by Omri (16 : 24), and remained the capital of the kingdom, until it had given the last proof of its strength by sustaining for three years the onset of the hosts of Assyria. Jezreel was probably only a royal residence of some of the Israelitish kings. Dic. B.

26. His natural but sinful distrust respecting the continuance of his kingdom. The thought and fear of his heart was that a revived spirit of worship, in connection with the Temple and its sacrifices, might reverse the present current of hostile feeling, and win the tribes back again to the family of David. This thought and fear were both natural. But his actual distrust on this account was wholly sinful, and the root of all his subsequent fearful iniquity. For God had first singled him out, placed him on the throne, prevented Rehoboam’s intended and probably successful attack, promised him a secure reign and the permanent establishment of his dynasty over Israel, upon the single condition of an obedient and upright rule. The same promises, conditioned upon the same regard to God’s mandates, that had been made to Saul, to David, and to Solomon, were solemnly pledged to Jeroboam. Therefore his distrust was his sin. It was distrust, not of Judah, not directly of Israel, but of God. He disbelieves God’s promises, counts Him false and impotent, and with an utterly self dependent spirit undertakes to secure his own power, as if there were no Jehovah in Israel. B.—He had been appointed king under the Divine sanction. He held his crown under the condition of obedience; and on that condition the continuance of the crown to his house was pledged to him. Nothing was wanted on his part but unreserved faith in that promise. If Jeroboam had that faith, he would have been free from any anxiety on the subject; he would have felt that it was safer to incur an apparent danger in the career of duty and right-doing, than to seek exemption from it by unlawful doings and tortuous policy. The Lord had given him every reason to trust in the sufficiency of His protection, when He had compelled King Rehoboam to dismiss the forces with which he was prepared to fall upon him in his comparatively helpless condition. If it be asked how he was to be secured from the danger which stood so distinctly before him, we can only answer, “We do not know.” Jeroboam had no need to know. God knew; and it was his clear course to do right, trusting all the rest to God. Kitto.

27. Some plan had to be devised whereby the tendency to resort to Jerusalem for purposes of worship should be checked, and the subjects of the northern kingdom should find their religious aspirations met and satisfied within their own borders. It was with these objects in view that Jeroboam “resolved on creating two new seats of the national worship, which should rival the great Temple of the rival dynasty.” He fixed on Dan and Bethel as his two holy sites—on Bethel as possessing the prestige of an ancient patriarchal sanctuary, revered from a most remote antiquity, and as convenient for his southern subjects; on Dan, as suitable for his subjects in the north. At both places he erected sacred buildings of some architectural pretensions, rivals to the Temple on Mount Zion, and at both he established a ritual and ceremonies, designed as substitutes for the ritual and ceremonies which David and Solomon had under Divine guidance instituted and established at Jerusalem. He placed in his sanctuaries of Dan and Bethel two golden images of bull-calves, as symbols of the Divine Presence, which watched over the land from one extremity to the other. These images very soon became the objects of an idolatrous worship; the creature superseded the creator in men’s thoughts; and, while bowing down to “the calves of Beth-aven” (Hos. 10: 5), Israel “forgot his Maker” (8: 14). G. R.

God’s prophet, who had rent Jeroboam’s garment into twelve pieces, and had given ten of them to him in token of his sharing the ten tribes, with the same breath also told him that the cause of this distraction was their idolatry: yet now will he institute an idolatrous service, for the holding together of them whom their idolatry had rent from their true sovereign to him. He says not, “God hath promised me this kingdom; God hath conferred it; God shall find means to maintain His own act: I will obey Him; let Him dispose of me: the God of Israel is wise and powerful enough to fetch about His own designs;” but, as if the devices of men were stronger than God’s providence and ordination, he will be working out his own ends by profane policies. Bp. H.

28-33. His impious scheme, its evil aggravated and broadened by every detail, and its successful execution. He shows consummate forethought and skill in his vast, radical and perpetuated iniquity. Like himself alone in all history, sacred and secular, in its planning and perfection he manifests a Satanic coolness of deliberation, an utter selfish recklessness of consequences, and a daring defiance of God. For, be it noted, the heart of his scheme, the subject-matter of his iniquity, turns upon the vital interest and supreme concern of man’s accountable life, the worship and service of God. He, an Israelite, not an Egyptian or blinded heathen, dares to be the first knowingly to introduce a counterfeit system of worship in place of the true. Directly in face of the true, established and maintained by God himself with amazing splendor of miracle, he dares take the very details prescribed by God, and pervert them to the uses of a blasphemous worship. Two centres of worship he establishes, with many altars for sacrifice. His purpose is partly to divert the people from the place so long associated with the gathering of all the tribes thrice a year for Jehovah’s worship, partly to detach them from the old memories of Jerusalem as the centre of historic significance during the wondrous period of the nation’s imperial greatness, and partly that those who still cherished the instinct or habit of worship might be spared the toil and expense of a long journey. For these reasons, to break up the force of past associations and to make it easier for the people to gratify their religious instincts, and at the same time to establish new foundations and bonds of interest, Jeroboam shrewdly places these two centres of worship at either limit of the land, at Bethel and Dan. In each centre he sets up a golden calf, in place of the shining symbol of the Divine Presence. By the very image erected in the wilderness, and in the same spirit of turning away from God, nay, of supplanting Him, which God had then so fearfully punished, he now defies God and prepares for the return of Divine judgments. A priesthood, too, for his temples and his image gods, he impiously selects out of every tribe and from all classes of the people; after casting out God’s ministers, the sons of Levi, from his territory. Further, “in his own heart he devised” a change in the time (which God had solemnly designated) of the autumn festival of ingathering. And as the crowning act of his bold impiety, he introduced this blasphemous worship by himself offering sacrifice and burning incense before “the calves that he had made.” All this was deliberate, daring defiance of Jehovah. This complete organization of idolatrous worship, this direct substitution of a counterfeit system for the true, Jeroboam undertook in the face of his own yet existing belief in the God of Israel, in bold disregard of God’s explicit commands, in impious scorn of His specific warnings. And the Divine punishment upon his family was meted, in its terribleness, to the enormity of his crime.

But great as was his sin in itself, and grievous as were its consequences to himself and his house, it was vastly greater and more grievous in its effects upon the people of Israel, and its ultimate bearing upon their sad history. He made Israel to sin, is the fearful record of almost every after reference to Jeroboam. The point of this reference is twofold: the breadth of the evil he wrought in leading to sin and destruction a great people; and the character of the people so deluded and destroyed, the chosen people of God. Simply with the small, selfish aim of making sure his own kingly power, this bold, bad man planned and persistently executed the utter overthrow and destruction of a nation signally distinguished by God’s choice and blessing. For this end he perverted the moral life of the people by giving it false direction and tone. By his studied imitation of God’s appointed worship he diverted the feeble current of their religious life from its true source and its only vital channels. By the pretence of worshipping Jehovah under the form of an image, he first effectually neutralized their small remnant of faith, and then easily annihilated it. By such impious mockery and reversal of the Divine institutes of religion and law, he severed Israel from Judah and from God. He introduced idolatrous principles and practices which were soon developed into every form and measure of iniquity. So Jeroboam made Israel to sin, and so prepared he the way for the utter ruin and extinction of the ten tribes.

To himself the result was: the loss of his favorite son, defeat by Judah and loss of considerable territory, a foreknowledge of the slaughter of his entire family soon after his own death, a keen sense of the failure of his selfish plans, and a terrible foreboding of certain judgment unto doom. And concerning all these events abundant and kindly warning was directly given him, with ample opportunities for change of purpose, if he would. To realize this wondrous patience and mercy of God in the case of Jeroboam, and of every other like ingrate against Him, we have but thoughtfully to read the record. To learn how this man was dealt with through his prolonged life of evil, ponder the thrilling incidents of the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters following. These will show how well he knew that he had perverted every blessing, used every endowment and trust for evil, and so forfeited God’s every promise and incurred His every threatening. And the history declares that two years after his remorseful death, his reigning son and all that remained of his house were ruthlessly slain, their bodies dishonored and destroyed without burial. B.

33. The worship at Bethel was inaugurated by a great festival, in which Jeroboam was as much the central and conspicuous figure as was Solomon at the dedication of the Temple on Moriah. The prophet Amos (5: 21-23) describes the worship in terms which suggest an imposing and gorgeous ritual; mentioning feast-days and solemn assemblies and various offerings, and the noise of songs and the melody of viols. From the prevalence of idolatry at Bethel, changing its former hallowed character, the prophets substituted for its old and honored name that of Beth-aven, or “house of idols,” which before had been borne by a neighboring locality (Hos. 10: 5). During the reign in Israel of the house of Ahab, the worship of Baal superseded the calf-worship to such an extent that Bethel became a residence of the sons of the prophets, and the great Elijah passed among them, on his way to Jericho and the Jordan, when he was about to be translated. On the restoration of the calf-worship by Jehu, Bethel became more unhappily renowned than ever; the worship receiving that development of splendor and that accompaniment of royal, luxurious life which prompted the descriptions and characterized the denunciations of the prophets (Amos 2-6). The fall of the northern kingdom was, of course, the fall of Bethel; yet not until the time of King Josiah was the presence of the old sanctuary relieved of the defilements of idolatry. N. C. B.

Chap. 13:1-10. The man of God from Judah: his prophecy concerning Jeroboam’s altar in Bethel; his sign fulfilled; Jeroboam’s withered hand restored at his prayer; his refusal of refreshment and reward, and his departure homeward.

A more daring attempt against that God-ordained symbolical religion, the maintenance of which was the ultimate reason for Israel’s call and existence—so to speak, Israel’s very raison d’être—could not be conceived. It was not only an act of gross disobedience, but, as the sacred text repeatedly notes, a system devised out of Jeroboam’s own heart, when every religious institution in Israel had been God-appointed, symbolical, and forming a unity of which no part could be touched without impairing the whole. It was a movement which, if we may venture so to say, called for immediate and unmistakable interposition from on high. Here, then, if anywhere, we may look for the miraculous, and that in its most startling manifestation. Nor was it long deferred. A. E.

1. If Israel afford not a bold reprover of Jeroboam, Judah shall. When the king of Israel is in all the height, both of his state and superstition, honoring his solemn day with his richest devotion, steps forth a prophet of God and interrupts that glorious service with a loud inclination of judgment. Bp. II.

2. Behold, a child shall be born, Josiah by name.** This is one of the most remarkable prophecies that we have in Scripture. It foretells an action that exactly came to pass above three hundred years afterward. It describes the circumstances of the action, and specifies the name of the person that was to do it; and, therefore, every Jew who lived in the time of its accomplishment must have been convinced of the Divine authority of a religion founded on such prophecies as this, since none but God could foresee, and consequently none but God could foretell, events at a distance. Stackhouse.—It is worthy of note how completely this brief protest proclaimed to Jeroboam the utter and shameful overthrow, both of his political and religious systems. A child of the rival house of David should stand where he then stood, his successors extinct or powerless to prevent him, and should cover this new cultus with disgrace and contempt. The man of God, he must have felt, has proclaimed in few words the fall of his dynasty, the triumph of his rival, and the failure of all his schemes. Pul. Com.

2,3. He that knows what names we shall have before we or the world have a being, doth not often reveal this piece of His knowledge to

His creature: here He doth; naming the man that should be three hundred years after; for more assurance of the event, that Israel may say, “This man speaks from a God who knows what shall be.” There cannot be a more sure evidence of a true Godhead than the foreknowledge of those things whose causes have yet no hope of being. But because the proof of this prediction was no more certain than remote, a present demonstration shall convince the future: “The altar shall rend in pieces, the ashes shall be scattered.” What are some centuries of years to the Ancient of Days? How slow, and yet how sure, is the pace of God’s revenge! It is not in the power of time to frustrate God’s determinations. There is no less justice nor severity in a delayed punishment. Bp. II.

4. He put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him.** Jeroboam was not content with his invasion of the ministerial function; but while he was busy in his work, and a prophet, immediately sent by God, declared against his idolatry, he endeavors to seize upon and commit him. Thus we have him completing his sin, and persecuting the true prophets, as well as ordaining false. But it was a natural transition; and no way wonderful to see him, who stood affronting God with false incense in the right hand, persecuting with the left; and abetting the idolatry of one arm with the violence of the other. South.

4-6. The arm outstretched in eager, wrathful command to arrest the man of God is withered in the very attitude. It was the emblem of his house and of his people; they were withered in the attitude of rebellion against God. The prophet needed none to shield him. God protects all those who serve Him. Jeroboam turns from idol and altar and priests, and requests the prophet’s intercession with Jehovah. His arm is restored at the prophet’s request, and he thus bears in his person another token that the word he has heard is from God. It is the story of God’s contest with darkness and wrong to-day. Pul. Com.

And the man of God besought the Lord. In the prophet’s ready intercession for Jeroboam we see the spirit of a true “man of God;” and how very different it is from that of the wicked, or the men of the world. A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men are to their friends. He prays for his persecutor, and entreats for the hand that was stretched out for his ruin. Wogan.

11-32. The disobedience and death of the man of God. The seduction of the man of God, who has borne such fearless witness against Jeroboam’s ecclesiastical policy, and his tragical end, are now narrated, partly because of the deep impression the story made at the time, but principally because these events were in themselves an eloquent testimony against the worship of the calves and the whole ecclesiastical policy of Jeroboam, and a solemn warning for all time against any, the slightest, departure from the commandments of God. The very unfaithfulness of this accredited messenger of the Most High, and the instant punishment it provoked, became part of the Divine protest against the new régime, against the unfaithfulness of Israel; while the remarkable manner in which these occurrences were recalled to the nation’s memory in the reign of Josiah (2 K. 23 : 17, 18) made it impossible for the historian of the theocracy to pass them over without notice. Pul. Com.

So far this prophet is true to his commission, and all has passed off well. The moral trial under which he fell now opens—on this wise: There lived an old prophet at Bethel (was he ever a good man?) whose sons seem to have witnessed the scene at the Bethel altar. Returning home they rehearse the story to their father. Forthwith he orders his ass saddled, pursues and overtakes the old prophet of Judah, and invites him to his own home to eat bread. The prophet answers, “No; my orders explicitly forbid it.” “But,” rejoins the old man of Bethel, “I am a prophet as thou art, and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with thee into thine house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” “But” (adds the record) “he lied unto him.” This was the point of stern temptation. He is weary, we may presume, and hungry; so, with quite too little thought, he concludes that, perhaps, the Lord had changed His mind and given His consent that His prophet might take some refreshment even in this wicked Bethel. While they sat at the table a message really from the Lord (not a lie as the former) came to this Bethel prophet for his guest: “Thou hast disobeyed the word of the Lord to thee; thy carcass shall never go to the grave of thy fathers.” The prophet of Judah started for his home; a lion met him in the way and slew him.

These are the staple facts of the record: what is their explanation, and what are the lessons they were intended to teach? An era of proprophetic missions to the ten tribes in revolt was now opening. The reception given to this prophet from Judah by Jeroboam was quite in point to show how delicate and critical such prophetic missions were likely to be, and how vital to their success it was that the prophets should not only understand their messages, but have supreme, unlimited confidence that the messages given them were really from God. For all along through this era of prophetic missions in Israel the devil would be working his system of false, lying prophets to counteract as best he could the influence of God’s true prophets. It was vital, therefore, to forewarn God’s prophets to be on their guard against the devil’s prophets and against his lies. Jeremiah had this fearful battle to fight to the bitter end. No prophet whose history is known to us came into contact with false prophets so often and so fiercely as he. Such a case as this in 1 Kings 13 finds a place naturally, therefore, in this history, assuming it to have been written by Jeremiah. As to the moral character of this old prophet of Bethel, it is not perhaps competent for us to pass upon it absolutely. The only point of difficulty is this: how, if he were a prophet of God, he could lie so to the prophet of Judah, and, on the other hand, how, if he were a prophet of the devil, the Lord should have spoken through his lips there at the table, dining with his guest. Perhaps it may relieve us on either horn of this dilemma if we consider, (a) That a man, normally good, may sometimes sin—as in this case, may be left of God to lie; and (b) that a bad man may be used of God, as Balaam was, to make prophetic communications, though only in rare, exceptional cases. Recurring to the moral purpose of God in permitting such a trial to come upon one of his prophets and really seduce him into sin, to his sad but exemplary death, we may suggest that it was supplemented not long after by the case of Jonah, which, being put on permanent record by his own pen, bears a similar warning to all prophets of the Lord to execute with unswerving fidelity their Divine commission. These prophets were human; only mere men of flesh and blood, and accessible, therefore, to those various temptations which more or less encompass all the saints of God in their earthly life. The solemn functions of the prophet brought his soul into peculiarly near relations to the Great God; but even this did not lift him above all approaches of temptation, did not quench utterly those susceptibilities upon which temptation works—to the result sometimes of sorrowful sinning. C.

God had given His messenger express command, neither to eat bread nor to drink water in that place, nor even to return by the way that he had come. These directions had, of course, a much deeper and symbolical meaning. They indicated that Bethel lay under the ban; that no fellowship of any kind was to be held with it; and that even the way by which the messenger of God had come was to be regarded as consecrated, and not to be retraced. In the discharge of the commission entrusted to him, the “man of God,” who had “come in the word of Jehovah,” was to consider himself as an impersonal being—till he was beyond the place to which and the road by which he had been sent. A. E.—The beguiled prophet, being himself in the direct receipt of Divine intimations, had no right to act upon a contradiction to the mandate imparted to himself on any less direct authority than that from which he had received it; and his easy credulity had brought discredit upon the high mission entrusted to him, and marred much of the good effect it might have produced upon the minds of the king and people. For this he must die, while the guiltier man incurs no punishment, even as a soldier on high and responsible duty suffers death for offences which would scarcely incur blame at another time, and in other men. It is the responsibility, the breach of duty, less than the act, which constitutes the crime. Kitto.

The violation of the least charge of a God is mortal. No pretences can warrant the transgression of a Divine command. A word from God is pleaded on both sides: the one was received immediately from God; the other related mediately by man: one, the prophet was sure of; the other was questionable. A sure word of God may not be left for an uncertain. An express charge of the Almighty admitting not of any check. Doubtless this prophet was a man of great holiness, of singular fidelity, else he durst not have been God’s herald to carry a message of defiance to Jeroboam, king of Israel, in the midst of his royal magnificence; yet now for varying from but a circumstance of God’s command, though upon the suggestion of a Divine warrant, is given for a prey to the lion. I cannot think but this prophet died in the favor of God, though by the teeth of the lion. His life was forfeited for example; his soul was safe. Violent events do not always argue the anger of God. Even death itself is to his servants a fatherly castigation. But oh, the unsearchable ways of the Almighty! the man of God sins and dies speedily; the lying prophet that seduced him survives: yea, wicked Jeroboam enjoys his idolatry and treads upon the grave of his reprover. There is neither favor in the delay of stripes nor displeasure in the haste: rather, whom God loves he chastises, as sharply so speedily, while the rest prosper to condemnation. Bp. H.

26-32. When the rumor reached the “old prophet,” he immediately understood the meaning of all. Riding to the spot, he reverently carried home with him the dead body of the “man of God,” mourned over, and buried him in his own sepulchre, marking the place by a monumental pillar to distinguish this from other tombs, and to keep the event in perpetual remembrance. But to his sons he gave solemn direction to lay him in the same tomb—in the rock-niche by the side of that in which the “man of God” rested. This was to be a dying testimony to “the man of God:” that his embassy of God had been real, and that surely the “thing would be” (that it would happen) “which he had cried in the word of Jehovah against the altar which (was) at Bethel, and against all the Bamoth-houses which (are) in the cities of Samaria.” A. E.—This old seducer hath so much truth as both to give a right commentary upon God’s intention in this act for the terror of the disobedient, and to give his voice to the certainty of that future judgment which his late guest had threatened to Israel. Withal, he hath so much faith and courage as to fetch that carcass from the lion; so much pity and compassion as to weep for the man of God, to inter him in his own sepulchre; so much love as to wish himself joined in death to that body which he had hastened unto death. Bp. H.

29. Is there not written, as in a legend of fire, on this nameless tomb the glory or the shame which must be the portion of every prophet of the Lord? How great are his ventures, how grand his triumphs, how irresistible his strength, how strict his account! Let us watch especially after successes. Let us beware of resting under wayside trees. Let us press on and cry mightily for God’s grace. Bp. Mackarness.

32. More than three hundred years later, and nearly a century had passed since the children of Israel had been carried away from their homes. Then it was that what, centuries before, the “man of God” had foretold became literally true (2 K. 23: 15-18). The idol-temple, in which Jeroboam had stood in his power and glory on that opening day, was burned by Josiah; the Bamoth were cast down; and on that altar, to defile it, they gathered from the neighboring sepulchres the bones of its former worshippers and burned them there. Yet in their terrible search of vengeance one monument arrested their attention. They asked of them at Bethel. It marked the spot where the bones of “the man of God” and of his host the “old prophet” of Samaria lay. And they reverently left the bones in their resting-places, side by side—as in life, death and burial, so still and for aye witnesses to Jehovah; and safe in their witness-bearing. But three centuries and more between the prediction and the final fulfilment: and in that time symbolic rending of the altar, changes, wars, final ruin, and desolation! And still the word seemed to slumber all those centuries of silence before it was literally fulfilled. There is something absolutely overawing in this absence of all haste on the part of God, in this certainty of the final event with apparent utter unconcern of what may happen during the long centuries that intervene, which makes us tremble as we realize how much of buried seed of warning or of promise may sleep in the ground, and how unexpectedly, but how certainly, it will ripen as in one day into a harvest of judgment or of mercy. A. E.

The yielding of the prophet to the temptation of the old prophet to eat bread with him teaches us that even a true prophet, a prophet of God, might be deceived, and that he must be deceived if he yielded to any pretences of inspiration on the part of any man when what he said went against a sure witness and conviction as to his own duty; that a prophet not habitually a deceiver might on a certain occasion wilfully deceive, in the plain language of Holy Writ might lie. The characteristic quality of the prophet when he is true is obedience. If he once forgets the invisible Ruler and Lawgiver, no one will commit such flagrant errors, such falsehood, such blasphemy. Maurice.

It seemed a small offence to go home with a brother prophet; but observe that he was in no doubt as to the will of God. He knew that he was forbidden to enter any house and that the reason for that inhibition was weighty: he knew further that God would not contradict Himself or alter His command, yet his sensuous wish for food and rest prevailed. An act may seem trifling, but the principle involved in it may be momentous. So it was in Eden. A. R.—His offence was great, and it would by no means justify him that he was drawn into it by a lie; he could not be so certain of the countermand sent by another as he was of the command given to himself; nor had he any ground to think that the command would be recalled when the reason of it remained in force, which was that he might testify his detestation of the wickedness of that place. He had great reason to suspect the honesty of this old prophet who did not himself bear His testimony, nor did God think fit to make use of him as a witness against the idolatry of the city he lived in; however, he should have taken time to beg direction from God, and not have complied so soon. God is displeased at the sins of His own people, and no man shall be protected in disobedience by the sanctity of his profession, the dignity of his office, his nearness to God, or any good services he has done for Him. H.

By his own testimony he had received express and unmistakable command of God, which Scripture again and again repeats, for the sake of emphasis; and his conduct should have been guided on the plain principle that an obvious and known duty can never be set aside by another seeming duty. Besides, what evidence had he that an angel had really spoken to the “old prophet;” or even that his tempter was a “prophet” at all, or, if a prophet, acted in the prophetic spirit? All these points are so obvious, that the conduct of the “man of God” would seem almost incredible, if we did not recall how often in every-day life we are tempted to turn aside from the plain demands of right and duty by a false call in contravention to it. In all moral and spiritual questions it is ever most dangerous to reason: simple obedience and not argument is the only safe path (comp. here Gal. 1:8). One duty can never contravene another—and the plainly known and clear command of God must silence all side-questions. Viewing the conduct of the “man of God” as a fall and a sin, all becomes plain. He had publicly announced his duty, and he had publicly contravened it; and his punishment was, through the remarkable though not miraculous circumstances under which it overtook him, equally publicly known. Throughout the whole history there is, so to speak, a remarkable equipoise in the circumstances of his sin and of his punishment, as also in the vindication of God’s authority. A. E.

To this must be added that the man of God did not die merely or principally because of his sin, but “that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” His death was necessary in order that his mission might not be altogether invalidated. His miserable end—as it must have seemed to them—would surely speak to the inhabitants of Bethel and to all Israel and Judah, for long years to come, as to the sure vengeance awaiting the disobedient, whether king, prophet, priest, or people. Though dead “he cried against the altar of Bethel.” And the sacred narrative affords us some ground for hoping that the “old prophet” became penitent for his sin. It is noteworthy that he joins his testimony to that of the man of God. Thus, this tragedy extorted even from him a warning against disobedience (verse 26), and a confirmation of the prophecy against the altar of Bethel (verse 32). Hammond.

13:32. Which are in the cities of Samaria. The city of Samaria was not built at this time, nor had the separate kingdom of Jeroboam yet obtained that name; so that the author or compiler of this book, who lived later, writes of places and things by the names which they bore in his days, in order to make himself more intelligible to his readers. Calmet.

33. The warning, intended to turn the misguided king from his wrong-doing, was lost upon him. “After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again priests of the high places from the ends of the people; whosoever would he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.” In fact, he persisted in the course which he had marked out for himself, maintained the new altars and shrines, the self-invented feasts and rites, the idolatrous worship and the unauthorized priests, and the entire system whereof he had been the originator. Hereupon (chap. 14) he was visited, not in warning, but in judgment. G. R.

Chap. 14:1-20. Fatal sickness of Jeroboam’s son Abijah; journey of the mother to Abijah at Shiloh; the prophet’s message of coming down to the king; the child’s death and sorrow of all Israel; Jeroboam’s death.

The protest of the prophet of Judah, the signs which supported it, and, above all, the solemn visitation, with its strange portents, which straightway followed it, having alike failed to arrest Jeroboam in his high-handed and shameless depravation of the true religion, we now read of the retribution which came upon his family, and which began with the sickness and death of his favorite son. The narrative distinctly conveys the impression that Jeroboam’s day of grace was past, and that judgment was already begun. These events would seem to belong to a later period than that of which the preceding chapter treats—a period not far distant from the close of Jeroboam’s reign. He then heard, as was fitting, from the venerable prophet who had been God’s messenger to announce to him his future reign over the ten tribes, that the death of the youth whom he had destined to succeed him was but the beginning of sorrows, and foreshadowed the shameful extinction of his family (verse 14). He too, like Solomon, has sown to the wind and now reaps to the whirlwind. P. C.

One of his sons, a favorite child as it would seem, was suddenly smitten with a dangerous sickness. The king was greatly alarmed and intensely anxious to know the result. One way only of learning the future seemed possible. Abijah, the Shilonite, the prophet of the northern kingdom, was still living at Shiloh, and might at any rate be consulted, and would perhaps be allowed to reveal the future. Jeroboam resolved to consult him. But he feared to do so openly lest he should bring down upon himself the denunciation of woe which he knew that he deserved. He therefore caused his wife to disguise herself as a poor country woman, and sent her to Shiloh to make inquiry of the dim-sighted prophet. But the disguise proved of no avail. Abijah, warned beforehand who his visitor would be, made the denunciation which Jeroboam feared. The child, he said, would die as the queen set foot on her palace threshold; and not only so, but the whole house of Jeroboam would, in a little time, be cut off. God had exalted Jeroboam and made him prince over his people, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David and given it to him; but he had not followed the example of David; on the contrary he had done evil above all those who had preceded him, had made other gods and molten images and had provoked Jehovah to anger and cast him behind his back. Therefore woe was denounced against Jeroboam and against his house. G. R.

1,2. His son is sick, he is sorrowful; but as an amazed man seeks to go forth at the wrong door, his distraction sends him to a false help. He thinks not of God; he thinks of His prophet; he thinks of the prophet that had foretold him he should be a king; he thinks not of the God of that prophet who made him a king. Why should Jeroboam send so far to an Abijah? Certainly his heart despised those base priests of his high places; neither could he trust either to the gods or the clergy of his own making. His conscience rests upon the fidelity of that man whose doctrine he had forsaken. How did this idolater strive against his own heart, while he inwardly despised those whom he professed to honor. Bp. H.

2. In sending his wife to consult the prophet, Jeroboam wished the proceeding to be completely secret; for had it been publicly known that he himself had no confidence in his own senseless idols, and that in any matter of importance he applied to the prophet of the true God, the confidence of his subjects in his government would have been materially shaken, and they would have returned to the worship of that true God whom they had imprudently forsaken. His wife was the only person in whom he could confide; he knew that as a mother she would be diligent in her inquiry, and as a wife faithful in her report. Stack-house.

6-18. He idly calculated that the prophet, whose view could extend into the future, hid in the counsels of God, could not see through a present matter wrapped up only in the thin cover of a woman’s hood. “There was never,” says Dr. Hall, “a wicked man who was not infatuate, and in nothing more than in those things wherein he hoped most to transcend the reach of others.” All this fine contrivance was blown to pieces the moment the wife of Jeroboam crossed Ahijah’s threshold; for then she heard the voice of the blind prophet—“Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings.” He then broke forth in a strong tide of denunciation against Jeroboam, because he had sinned and made Israel to sin; and the voice which had proclaimed his rise from a low estate to royal power, now, with still stronger tone, proclaimed the downfall and ruin of his house—quenched in blood—its members to find tombs only in the bowels of beasts and birds. There was one exception—only one. The youth of whom she came to inquire—he only should come to his grave in peace, by dying of his present disease, because in him only was “found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.” Woful tidings these for a mother’s heart. Here was beginning of judgment upon Jeroboam, and upon her, because she was his. Judgment in taking away the only well-conditioned and worthy son, and judgment stored up in and for the ill-conditioned ones who were suffered to remain. God, when it suits the purposes of His wisdom and His justice, can afflict no less by what He spares than by what He takes. Yet there was mercy in this judgment; ment; mercy, strange as it seems to say, to him on whom the sentence of death was passed. It is so stated; and it is more intelligible than it seems. It was because there was some good thing found in him that he should die. Death was to be for him a reward, a blessing, a deliverance. He should die peaceably upon his bed; for him all Israel should mourn; for him many tears be shed; and he should be brought with honor to his tomb. More than all, he would be taken from his part in the evil that hung over his house; and the Lord’s vindicatory justice would thus be spared the seeming harshness of bringing ruin upon a righteous king for his father’s crimes. Alas! how little do we know the real objects of the various incidents of life and death—of mercy, of punishment, and of trial! In this case the motives were disclosed; and we are suffered to glance upon some of the great secrets of death, which form the trying mysteries of life. Having the instance, we can find the parallels of lives, full of hope and promise, prematurely taken, and that in mercy, as we can judge, to those who depart. The heavenly Husbandman often gathers for His garner the fruit that early ripens, without suffering it to hang needlessly long, beaten by storms, upon the tree. Oh, how often, as many a grieved heart can tell, do the Lord’s best beloved die betimes—taken from the evil to come—while the unripe, the evil, the injurious, live long for mischief to themselves and others! Roses and lilies wither far sooner than thorns and thistles. Kitto.

12. The child shall die.** What a mixture is here of severity and favor in one act; favor to the son, severity to the father. Sometimes God strikes in favor, but more often forbears out of severity. The best are fittest for heaven, the earth is fittest for the worst. This is the region of sin and misery, that of immortality. It is no argument of disfavor to be taken early from a well-spent life; as it is no proof of approbation to be permitted to live to advanced years in sin. Bp. H.

13. Because in him there is found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.** Such was the testimony which the Lord gave, by His prophet, of young Abijah, the son of wicked Jeroboam. The father was branded, even to a proverb, for his abominable wickedness. The son is recorded by the Lord for his goodness; singled out from the whole house of his father to be blessed of his God and come to his grave in peace. W. Mason.—Even a young and brief life may be fruitful in blessing. Young as Abijah was, the whole nation mourned for him. The length of life is not to be judged by the number of its years. That life is the longest in which God has been best served and the world most benefited. Piety in life is the only guarantee of peace in death. An early departure from this world is not a thing to be dreaded provided our heart is right with God. If you would come to your grave in peace, be it sooner or be it later, there must be found in you “some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel.” J. Thain Davidson.

19. The rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred, are written in the Chronicles.** In the 13th chapter of 2 Chronicles we find an account of the war between Abijah (king of Judah and son of Rehoboam) and Jeroboam. In a great battle, with an immense array of forces on either side, it is said (verses 15-20) that “God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and all Judah. And Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter.” “Neither did Jeroboam recover strength again; and the Lord struck him, and he died.” (See reign of Abijah, king of Judah.) B.

If we lay together all the particulars that have been enumerated concerning Jeroboam, and consider the parts, rise, and degrees of his sin, we shall find that it was not for nothing that the Spirit of God so frequently and bitterly, in Scripture, stigmatizes this person; for it represents him first encroaching upon the civil government, thence changing the religion of his country, debasing the office that God had made sacred, introducing a false way of worship and destroying the true. And in this we have a full and fair description of a foul king; that is, of an usurper and an impostor; or, to use one word more comprehensive than both, of “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” South.—For two hundred and fifty-seven years this terrible indictment, “he made Israel to sin,” follows Jeroboam and his kingdom through all the pages of this sacred record, until the kingdom was utterly destroyed and the ten tribes blotted from the map of human history, even as Moses and the prophets had predicted (De. 28:36; 1 K. 14:15; Hos. 9; Amos 5). The establishment of idolatry absolutely controlled and determined the development of Israel’s history until its utter extermination by the Assyrians seven hundred and twenty-one years before the birth of our Lord. A. W. Pitzer.—In the strong language of the sacred writer, he “drave Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin” (2 K. 17:21). As king after king is noted for his wickedness, it is with the words that he “departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin.” For a period of two centuries and a half, down to the time of the Assyrian invasion, when Israel ceased to be a nation, the same direful language is continued. Jeroboam’s evil example was the type and instigation of nearly all the faithlessness that followed it. He gave, indeed, a new departure to the history of Israel. Thenceforward idolatry never ceased to contend with the ancient faith until it was at last purged out by the wholesome though painful discipline of the Captivity. Milligan.

The history of the Jews during this period presents the aspect of one long judgment of God, in which sin brings forth death, and thus becomes its own punishment. This is true also in the history of individuals; and we have in this fact one of the strongest evidences that we are under the government of a holy God. Let us never forget that His holiness is at the same time love, and that through all the dark and sorrowful vicissitudes of our life He is carrying out His plan of mercy. In spite of all its falls, its wanderings and its woes, Israel did fulfil its preparatory mission. If in the end the theocracy tottered to its fall, this failure also entered into the conditions of the Divine plan. Israel was never treated by God, however, as a mere passive instrument. God gave it repeated warnings, as by the mouth of the unknown prophet who was sent to Jeroboam to declare to him the judgments of God. E. de P.

Three suggestions touching Jeroboam’s reign. The first respects God’s principles of dealing with rulers and nations. Although he has now divided the domains of David, and maintains his announced purpose in reference to each kingdom throughout its history, yet he deals with every king and his people according to their conduct. Every reign is prospered or punished according to the obedience or disobedience of its ruler and subjects to His commands. The second is hinted at in chap. 14:16. It is explicitly stated in Eccl. 9:18, One sinner destroyeth much good. In the continuance of David’s house, notwithstanding Solomon’s sin, we learn the power of a consecrated man for good and for perpetuating good to children’s children. Here we behold a like power for evil of a self-willed, self-seeking man. How clearly it stands out in this and the whole after record! Through his device of a false worship, the whole nation is turned hopelessly away from the God of their fathers. And in the effects of his one transgression are involved the steadily increasing guilt and common doom of all succeeding kings and generations of Israel. Third. Jeroboam’s spirit and course simply outlines the aims and the course of every self-seeker, and his fearful experience only illustrates the invariable result. He doubted God’s word and disbelieved His promise. All sin originates in doubt and disbelief of God. Under the influence of his disbelief, he planned for his own safety and continuance in power. His methods involved direct and flagrant disobedience to Jehovah, and issued in every form of impiety. The result of his sin was death. And always “the wages of sin is death.” “When it is finished (full grown and matured) sin bringeth forth death!” B.

The Bible-Work

John George Butler's Bible-Work, published in 1892. Rather than a single commentator's voice, Butler gathered the best comment he could find on every passage and set it side by side, each note signed by whoever wrote it. The result reads as a conversation between scholars and preachers across the …

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Old Testament

GEN EXO LEV NUM DEU JOS JDG RUT 1SA 2SA 1KI 2KI 1CH 2CH EZR NEH EST JOB PSA PRO ECC SNG ISA JER LAM EZK DAN HOS JOL AMO OBA JON MIC NAM HAB ZEP HAG ZEC MAL

New Testament

MAT MRK LUK JHN ACT ROM 1CO 2CO GAL EPH PHP COL 1TH 2TH 1TI 2TI TIT PHM HEB JAS 1PE 2PE 1JN 2JN 3JN JUD REV

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