1 KINGS 12
Read 1 Kings 12:1-33
When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam succeeded him and immediately got himself into hot water. There was an assembly to crown him as the new king and Jeroboam, who had opposed his father, came in peace hoping for reconciliation. The people petitioned Rehoboam to make their life easier. It seems that Solomon, in his later years, made life hard for his people and the plea was that the new regime would be more restrained.
The new king took time to consider this. Firstly, he asked for counsel from his father’s advisors. The view of these wise old heads was that if Rehoboam made the lives of the people easier they would be grateful and serve him well. Rehoboam then asked for advice from his pals that he had grown up with and their view was that the king should be even harder and more intimidating to the people than his father was, show them who is boss. Rehoboam rejected the counsel of the wise elders and accepted that of the foolish young men, with tragic results. He announced his decision, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions” (v14). How to make friends and influence people!
The upshot of this was that although the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (to which Solomon and Rehoboam belonged) remained loyal to the new king, the remainder of the tribes (based in the north of the nation) rejected Rehoboam as king and adopted Jeroboam (who had returned from exile after rebelling against Solomon) as their leader. And so, the prophecy of Ahijah that we saw in the last chapter had come into being. The nation had split into two: in the south centred on Jerusalem, the new nation of Judah made up of two tribes and led by Rehoboam, and in the north, the new nation of Israel led by Jeroboam.
Now we could look at these events in a purely political and human way. Solomon’s cruel policies worsened by Rehoboam when he gained the throne caused the people, under the leadership of Jeroboam, to rebel against the king with the result that the nation split into two and came pretty close to civil war.
But the Bible makes it clear that this is all God’s work. Verse 24 spells it out, but it is clear that what we see here is the outworking of God’s judgement upon Solomon for his sin. The prophecy of Ahijah alerted us to what was going to happen and then we saw it take place in this chapter. Sometimes God carries out his will in a clear and spectacular way (the flood in Noah’s time, for example), but at other times he works quietly and in the background through the actions of people (and we saw that in the story of Ruth). We might get frustrated when God doesn’t seem to be doing anything but he often works quietly through what people say and do.