Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Chronicles 11:1
And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen [men], which were warriors, to fight against Israel, that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam.
1. he gathered of] R.V. he assembled.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Ch. 2Ch 11:1-4 (= 1Ki 12:21-24). Shemaiah forbids Civil War
The Chronicler here omits the elevation of Jeroboam to be king over Israel (1Ki 12:20).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
2Ch 11:1-4
Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren.
The restraints of Divine providence
I. Restraints made unmistakably clear.
II. Restraints merciful in design.
III. Restraints timely made.
IV. Restraints implicitly heeded. (J. Wolfendale.)
Uninsured preparations
Pity it is that God seems to allow us to go to such costs and then stops us just at the last moment. “Ye shall not go up.” There is pity in the arrangement, but it is not on the side of God. It is a pity that we did not consult God before we called the enemy together. He will be consulted at one end. He wishes to be consulted at the beginning, but if we will not consult Him there, we must consult Him at the end. Our preparations amount to nothing if they are not inspired. All our education comes to smoke and wind if it be not an education derived from the altar and enriched with the wisdom of God. Send out a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men from academy and college and university, loaded with the blank cartridges of ten thousand certificates and testimonials; if the Lord is not in it He will send them all back again until He calls for their aid. (J. Parks, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XI
Rehoboam raises an array, purposing to reduce the ten tribes;
but is prevented by Shemaiah the prophet, 1-4.
He builds several cities of defense, and fortifies others,
5-12.
The priests and Levites being turned out by Jeroboam, come to
Rehoboam, 13, 14.
Jeroboam’s gross idolatry, 15.
The pious of the land join with Judah, and strengthen the
kingdom of Rehoboam, 16, 17.
His wives, concubines, and numerous issue, 18-21.
He places his own sons for governors in the different
provinces, 22, 23.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI
Verse 1. Gathered of the house of Judah] See this account 1Kg 12:21-24, and the notes there.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Of this verse, and verses 2-4, See Poole “1Ki 12:21“.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1-4. Rehoboam . . . gathered of thehouse of Judah and Benjamin . . . to fight against Israel(See1Ki 12:21-24).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Ver. 1-4. And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem,…. After he had been at Shechem, and had given his answer to the request of the men of Israel, upon which they revolted from him: this and the three following verses are the same with 1Ki 12:21.
[See comments on 1Ki 12:21].
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Rehoboam’s attitude to the ten rebel tribes. Cf. 1Ki 12:21-24. – Rehoboam’s purpose, to subdue these tribes by force of arms, and bring them again under his dominion, and the abandonment of this purpose in consequence of the command of the prophet Shemaiah, belong in a certain measure to the history of the revolt of the ten tribes from the house of David; for the revolt only became an accomplished fact when the prophet Shemaiah proclaimed in the name of the Lord that the matter was from the Lord. 2Ch 11:3. Of Jahve was the thing done; He had ordained the revolt as a chastisement of the seed of David for walking no more in His ways. Solomon had, by allowing himself to be seduced by his many foreign wives into departing from the Lord, exposed himself to the divine displeasure, and his successor Rehoboam increased the guilt by his impolitic treatment of the tribes dissatisfied with Solomon’s rule, and had, if not brought about the revolt, yet hastened it; but yet the conduct of these tribes was not thereby justified. Their demand that the burdens laid upon them by Solomon should be lightened, flowed from impure and godless motives, and at bottom had its root in discontent with the theocratic rule of the house of David (see on 1Ki 12:21.). The expression, “to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin,” is deeper than “the whole house of Judah and Benjamin and the remnant of the people,” i.e., those belonging to the other tribes who were dwelling in the tribal domains of Judah and Benjamin (1Ki 12:23); for it characterizes all who had remained true to the house of David as Israel, i.e., those who walked in the footsteps of their progenitor Israel (Jacob).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Rehoboam Forbidden to Make War. | B. C. 975. |
1 And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against Israel, that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam. 2 But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying, 3 Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, 4 Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren: return every man to his house: for this thing is done of me. And they obeyed the words of the LORD, and returned from going against Jeroboam. 5 And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defence in Judah. 6 He built even Beth-lehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, 7 And Beth-zur, and Shoco, and Adullam, 8 And Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, 9 And Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, 10 And Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin fenced cities. 11 And he fortified the strong holds, and put captains in them, and store of victual, and of oil and wine. 12 And in every several city he put shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong, having Judah and Benjamin on his side.
How the ten tribes deserted the house of David we read in the foregoing chapter. They had formerly sat loose to that family (2Sa 20:1; 2Sa 20:2), and now they quite threw it off, not considering how much it would weaken the common interest and take Israel down from that pitch of glory at which it had arrived in the last reign. But thus the kingdom must be corrected as well as the house of David. 1. Rehoboam at length, like a bold man, raises an army, with a design to reduce the revolters, v. 1. Judah and Benjamin were not only resolved to continue their allegiance to him, but ready to give him the best assistance they could for the recovery of his right. Judah was his own tribe, that owned him some years before the rest did; Benjamin was the tribe in which Jerusalem, or the greatest part of it, stood, which perhaps was one reason why that tribe clave to him. 2. Yet, like a conscientious man, when God forbade him to prosecute this design, in obedience to him he let it fall, either because he reverenced the divine authority or because he knew that he should not prosper if he should go contrary to God’s command, but instead of retrieving what was lost would be in danger of losing what he had. It is dangerous undertaking any thing, but especially undertaking a war, contrary to the will of God. God calls him (v. 3), Rehoboam the son of Solomon, to intimate that this was determined for the sin of Solomon, and it would be to no purpose to oppose a decree that had gone forth. They obeyed the words of the Lord; and though it looked mean, and would turn to their reproach among their neighbours, yet, because God would have it so, they laid down their arms. 3. Like a discreet man, he fortified his own country. He saw it was to no purpose to think of reducing those that had revolted. A few good words might have prevented their defection, but now all the forces of his kingdom cannot bring them back. The think is done, and so it must rest; it is his wisdom to make the best of it. Perhaps the same young counsellors that had advised him to answer them roughly urged him to fight them, notwithstanding the divine inhibition; but he had paid dearly enough for being advised by them, and therefore now, we may suppose, his aged and experienced counsellors were hearkened to, and they advised him to submit to the will of God concerning what was lost, and to make it his business to keep what he had. It was probably by their advice that, (1.) He fortified his frontiers, and many of the principal cities of his kingdom, which, in Solomon’s peaceable reign, no care had been taken for the defence of. (2.) He furnished them with good stores of victuals and arms, 2Ch 11:11; 2Ch 11:12. Because God forbade him to fight, he did not therefore sit down sullenly, and say that he would do nothing for the public safety if he might not do that, but prudently provided against an attack. Those that may not be conquerors, yet may be builders.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
See note on 1Ki 12:21
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES
IN discussing the First Book of Chronicles we called attention to the fact that according to Usshers chronology, the two Books, not reckoning the table of genealogy, covered a space of 468 years of history; the First Book only 41 of these, and this second, 427. As to the authorship of these Books, Ezra is commonly accepted.
The analysis of any book is largely the presentation of a personal view. One man divides this Second Book of Chronicles into two portions: The Reign of Solomon, chapters 1 to 9, and The Kings of Judah, chapters 10 to 36.
Scofield in his reference Bible, says of this Book: It falls into eighteen divisions, by reigns, from Solomon to the captivities; records the division of the kingdom of David under Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and is marked by an ever growing apostasy, broken temporarily by reformations under Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
It is our purpose to follow neither of these divisions, however natural they may be, but to discuss the volume under three heads: Solomon and the Temple; Rehoboam and the Division, and the History of Judah.
SOLOMON AND THE TEMPLE
The Book opens with a declaration concerning the new king, And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the Lord his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly (2Ch 1:1).
The history that follows gives occasion to say several things concerning this marvelous man of immortal reputation:
First, Solomons kingship enjoyed an auspicious beginning. The man who ascends the throne under the favor of the Lord necessarily begins a reign of promise. If, as in Solomons case, he sensibly recognizes his responsibility and seeks wisdom from the only sufficient source, he adds greater certainty to his success. When, in addition to this, his objectives are high and God-honoring, the glory of his kingdom advances accordingly. Certainly, Solomons preparation to build the temple was not only a noble objective, but one in line with his kingly fathers purpose and prayers, and the great Heavenly Fathers will for him.
The interesting history here of gathering materials and appointing men for this marvelous construction is made more interesting still by the kings personal supervision and spiritual interest. It takes some courage to conduct war, and we believe it takes almost more courage and even a clearer sense of God, to build sanctuaries, make their appointments according to the Divine pleasure, and call the people to worship within the spacious rooms of the same. Yet, when you have read but five chapters of this Book, you find such a work complete, and are not in the least amazed or even surprised to read, The glory of the Lord had filled the house of God (2Ch 5:14).
It is doubtful whether any company of men have done more for the establishment of spirituality in the earth and for the strengthening of the souls of their fellows, than have those who brought sanctuaries into existence and led congregations of people to a genuine worship of the most high God.
The on-going of this Book reveals Solomons conscious dependence. When the altar was erected he stood by it with outstretched hands (2Ch 6:12). That is the attitude of prayer and possibly of adoration. When his lips parted to speak, he says,
O Lord God of Israel, there is no God tike Thee in the heaven, nor in the earth; which keepest covenant, and shewest mercy unto Thy servants that walk before Thee with all their hearts:
Thou which hast kept with Thy servant David my father that which Thou hast promised him; and spakest with Thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with Thine hand, as it is this day.
Now therefore, O Lord God of Israel, keep with Thy servant David my father that which Thou hast promised him, saying, There shall not fail thee a man in My sight to sit upon the throne of Israel; yet so that thy children take heed to their way to walk in My Law, as Thou hast walked before Me (2Ch 6:14-16).
Now then, O Lord God of Israel, let Thy Word be verified, which Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant David (2Ch 6:17).
Then follows an appeal that Gods eyes should be open upon their house day and night; that His ears should hearken to the prayers made in that place, and if sin were committed, that forgiveness should be granted, and if the people fail before the face of the enemy because of sin that they also should be pardoned; that if heaven be shut up on the same ground, upon repentance the dearth should end.
Then he concludes in a more personal petition to Him:
Then what prayer or what supplication soever shall be made of any man, or of all Thy people Israel, when every one shall know his own sore and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in this house:
Then hear Thou from Heaven Thy dwelling place, and forgive (2Ch 6:29-30).
These are only samples of the long petition that followed the dedicatory sermon. They wind up with a sentence like this: O Lord God, turn not away the face of Thine anointed: remember the mercies of David Thy servant (2Ch 6:42). It is a model prayer; it is the petition of a sincere soul; it is the cry of one who knows that the mercy and love of God are the only grounds of hope.
The further text records Solomons fame and death. That fame was based upon Solomons wisdom, accentuated doubtless by the magnificence of the temple, but made more honorable still in the extent of his organization, the luxury of his court and the wealth of his treasury.
Evidently, among the rulers of the earth, the queen of Sheba held conspicuous place, and when the fame of Solomon reached her, she came to prove him with her questions, and impress him with her own riches and glory. The difficult questions were satisfactorily answered, the temple was adequately shown, the table of the king groaned with its good meats, the apparel of the servants was profoundly impressive, and the queen said to the king,
It was a true report which I heard in mine own land of thine acts, and of thy wisdom:
Howbeit I believed not their words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the one half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told me: for thou exceedest the fame that I heard.
Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, winch stand continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom.
Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy God (2Ch 9:5-8).
The compliment to the king is followed with a statement of Solomons annual income, the magnificence of his throne, the rich appointments of the palace, the extensive commercial importance of his kingdom, and the willing tributes of the earths lesser lords.
Then, as if the task of telling all was too great, we have this record,
Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the Prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?
And Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel forty years.
And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead (2Ch 9:29-31).
It is a surprising end, and yet strangely true to human history. How many men spend all their days in preparing to live, and when the preparation seems almost complete, proceed to die? The last enemy is no respecter of persons. His bow is drawn against the great as well as the humble, the rich as well as the poor, the wise as well as the ignorant. Death respects neither thrones nor kings; he holds the key to the palace room, and even to the throne room. Kings may command their humbler fellows, and even counsel their equals; but where death calls, they also obey.
REHOBOAM AND THE DIVISION
The emptying of a throne is forever fraught with perils. The eternal and pertinent question is this, Who shall come after the king? The tenth chapter answered that concerning the throne of Israel. The answer was an ill omen! Rehoboams tyrannical spirit split the kingdom. When Jeroboam and all Israel came to him, saying, Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude of thy father, and his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee (2Ch 10:4), they delicately referred to the increased taxation to which the luxurious court and the personal orgies of Solomon had given rise. They thought, as people commonly do, that the new rule would prove the peoples friend. Their hope was in vain.
The old men, former counselors of Solomon, advised kindness and compassion; but the young bloods, spoiled by their fellowship with royalty, counseled increased oppression; and under their influence he said,
My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add thereto: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions (2Ch 10:14).
It was enough. The war was on; and that war has never ended until this day, for Israel and Judah are not yet one. A man who divides brethren and sets them to battle, little understands the infinite reach of his mischief. The father of Modernism in America, when he fell asleep at a comparatively early age, little dreamed that he had set influences to work that would divide every denomination on the continent, destroy the fellowship of men who loved one another as twins are commonly supposed to love, wreck schools and churches by the thousand, and start a war that may easily exceed the famous Hundred Year War of history.
Israel and Judahblood brothersbecame the bitterest of enemies. For some reason Second Chronicles pays little attention to Israel, but proceeds to trace Judahs history to the year of Cyrus, king of Persia, or through a period of almost a half millennium. The family feud occasionally projects itself into the record, but for the most part, Israel is forgotten, and the doings of Judah are recorded in detail.
The explanation of this is found in the circumstance that Jeroboam rejected the worship of Jehovah (2Ch 11:14-15). When God is once put away, when Gods priest is disposed of, and His minister is heard no more, then degeneracy compels a declining record.
Unitarianism three quarters of a century ago denied the Lord. Its history has amounted to little; and if it were recorded, it would simply prove, as the Jeroboam movement, a breeding place of apostasy; and yet this record regards not one apostasy only, but two.
The man of many favors may forget God.
When Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and had strengthened himself, he forsook the Law of the Lord, and all Israel with him (2Ch 12:1).
What a sad commentary on the uncertainty and unstability of human nature! The explanation of Rehoboams failure has fitted thousands, yea millions of cases. He did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord (2Ch 12:14). Of all disappointments, none exceed thisto begin well and end badly; to give promise and create disappointment; to be the subject of Divine favor, and become the slave of Gods adversary.
THE HISTORY OF JUDAH
Chapters 11 to 36 contain the roster of kings. The fortunes of the country answer accurately and inevitably to the characters of their rulers. On the whole, the history is a down-grade. In that respect, it runs true to form. The doctrine of evolution may find an illustration in national life if it goes from the simple to the complex, but in so far as it contends for improvement, history fails to illustrate it. Degeneracy of nations has more often taken place than has social and moral progress.
The foundations of Judah were laid under David; the kingdoms glory appeared under Solomon. From that moment until this, one word expresses Judahs coursedecline.
Africa was once an advanced nation, now a heathen one; Italy once ruled the world, now she holds an inconspicuous place; Greece once represented the climax of physical and mental accomplishment, now she boasts neither. The reasons for decline are varied, but in Judah they were one the God who had made her great was too often forgotten, too willingly offended. When the nations neglect the source of their strength, weakness naturally ensues. Judahs strength was in the Lord, and when her kings forgot Him, despised His Word, entered into unholy alliances that were followed by the people, her fame declined, and her land fainted.
The mixed social condition manifested her sinfulness. We have a phrase, Like people, like priest. We can paraphrase that, Like princes, like people. The study of these kings results in no compliment to human nature. Some of them were utterly evil; most of them were a mixture of the good and bad; two or three of them were sound. Among the utterly evil ones, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Manasseh, Amon and Jehoiakin held first place. The ones that represent a mixture of good and bad were Jeroboam, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jehoiakim; while the truly good consisted of Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah. In all probability the reign of each of these good kings was profoundly affected and made spiritually fruitful by the ministry of Isaiah, the greatest preacher among Old Testament Prophets. It is perhaps a fact of history that no rulers have ever proven faithful to God without the stimulating and salutary influence of the Gospel ministry.
The judgments and mercies of Second Chronicles alike vindicate Jehovah. In this record wickedness does not go unpunished; and yet it is a marvelous revelation of Divine mercy.
There is never the least sign of penitence on the part of the ruler and the people without an immediate and generous response from Jehovah.
When Jehoshaphat declined in his loyalty and effected a sinful coalition with Ahab, judgment fell; but instantly upon his repentance, mercy was shown. Judgment is always and everywhere Gods strange work, the work in which He takes no pleasure. As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze 33:11).
Mercy is His nature, His essential character, for to the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy (Pro 28:13).
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.] Rehoboam forbidden to war (2Ch. 11:1-4). This section a repetition in abbreviated form of 1Ki. 12:21-24. Remainder of chapter new matter. Rehoboam fortifies many towns (2Ch. 11:5-12); receives accessions from Israel (2Ch. 11:13-17); and takes many wives and concubines (2Ch. 11:18-23).
2Ch. 11:1-4.The forbidden war. Fight to crush the rebellion. Fourscore thousand about one-third of Judahs number under Joabs levy (2Sa. 24:9). Shem. (1Ki. 12:22-24); all Israel in Judah and Benjamin now united together.
2Ch. 11:5-12.Defensive measures. Jerusalem, a judicious step, unlike northern kings, who shifted their capital. Built, repaired and fortified; fifteen given. Beth., Et., and Tek. near together, a little south of Jericho, on way to Hebron. 2Ch. 11:7. Beth-zur, a strong position about five miles north of Hebron, on route between that place and Jerusalem. It played an important part in the wars of the Maccabees (1Ma. 4:29-61; 1Ma. 6:7-26, &c.) [Speak. Com.]. Shoca, now Sumeikeh, three-and-a-half hours south-west of Jerusalem. Adul (Jos. 15:35). 2Ch. 11:8. Gath. Exact site not known. Mares. (Jos. 15:44). Its importance appears in the invasion of Zerah (ch. 2Ch. 14:9); and from 1Ma. 5:66; 2Ma. 12:35. Modern name Marash. Ziph. Two of this name in Judah (Jos. 15:24-55). This famous in Davids history (1Sa. 23:14-24; 1Sa. 26:2-25). Exact site appears to be the modern Til Zif, about three miles south of Hebron [Speak. Com.]. 2Ch. 11:9. Ador., Adora or Dora, now Dora, west of Hebron (Jos. 15:24). Lackish, now Um-Lakish. Azekah (Jos. 10:10). 2Ch. 11:10. Zor. (1Ch. 2:53), now Surah; and Aij., now Yalo, further north than other cities here mentioned. Both in territory originally assigned to Dan (Jos. 19:41-42), but afterwards absorbed into Judah [Speak. Com]. Judah and Benjamin, now the designation of southern kingdom (cf. 2Ch. 11:12; 2Ch. 11:23). 2Ch. 11:11. Oil, odoriferous; wine, sweet, used by ancient Jews and modern Arabs; healthy and useful in hot climates (cf. Psa. 104:15).
2Ch. 11:13-17.Accessions. Left, ejected from their office because they would not minister to Jeroboams calves, who appointed priests not Levites. Suburbs (cf. Num. 35:1-8). High places, i.e., Dan and Bethel (cf. 1Ki. 12:28-33); a kind of contemptuous description as not equal to temple at Jerusalem, only on a level with those in other parts. 2Ch. 11:15. Devils, a term sometimes used for idols in general (Lev. 17:7); here applied distinctively to the goat-deities, which were probably worshipped chiefly in the northern parts of the kingdom, where the heathen Canaanites still abounded [Jamieson]. 2Ch. 11:17. Strengthened by numbers and moral tone of excellent subjects; but sad change noted in king next chapter.
2Ch. 11:18-23. Rehoboams wives and children. Jerimoth not given among legitimate sons of David, hence son of concubine. Read David and of Abihail. Mother as well as father of Mah. is given. Daughter of E., probably grand-daughter, since an actual daughter of E. must have been too old to be a fit wife for Rehoboam. 2Ch. 11:20. Daughter, grand-daughter of Abs. (cf. ch. 2Ch. 13:2). 2Ch. 11:21. Threescore (cf. Son. 6:8 and 2Ch. 13:21). 2Ch. 11:22. Chief, though not eldest of his sons. Affection for M. led him to violate the law. Wisely, prudently with calculation (Exo. 1:10). Many wives. Rehoboam careful to please his sons by making them governors of fortresses, and sought for them a multitude of wives (marg.); perhaps from cities over which they were set. In Persia and Turkey, younger princes, until lately, were shut up in the harem during their fathers lifetime; and to prevent competition, were blinded or killed when their brother ascended the throne. In former country the old practice of dispersion through the country, like Rehoboam, has been again revived [Jamieson].
HOMILETICS
THE RESTRAINTS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.2Ch. 11:1-4
Events concerning kingdom of Judah chiefly given after revolt of ten tribes. Rehoboam determined to enter disaffected provinces; but divine decree gone forth, the army overawed, dispersed, and the king obliged to submit.
I. Restraints unmistakably clear. The word came to Shem., and was spoken unto Rehoboam. Prophets gave no uncertain sound in either kingdom. Divine interposition most clear. No visions, no voices now; but around and in us as we fight in life, a power above the wiles and schemes of men, secret, invisible influences, deep impressions, and mysterious thoughts, amounting almost to divine revelations, to check or prompt. Thou shalt not go up.
II. Restraints merciful in design. Nor fight against your brethren. Nations and tribes bound by natural ties; man-kinned (mankind) should help each other. Quarrel with your faults and not with our fellow-men, was the motto of Otho II., Emperor of Germany. Mans inhumanity to man is great. If Alexanders, Csars, and Napoleons were not restrained, the world would become a pandemonium. God careful of human life and human weal, prevents disgrace, mischief, and bloodshed. Men seek to destroy peace, injure reputation and property. Revenge is wild justice, says Bacon. Say not thou I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord and he shall save thee.
III. Restraints timely made. God times events and interpositions; permits much show and great progress, as in Jeroboams preparations. Why restrained when army assembled, everything ready and about to march with every prospect of success? Has God been consulted? Education, preparations, and enterprises of no avail, if not for him. A thousand forces may be enlisted, simply to be sent home again! We may form our programme, set an object in view, adapt our means and arrange time to attain it. Just when attainment near, lo! deprivation, disappointment. A mans heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
IV. Restraints implicitly heeded. The prophet represented God. The event could not be changed. They hearkened, disbanded, and went home. Another power beside Judah and Israel must be recognised. Folly to resist, to fight against God! Motives, arguments, to acquiesce in arrangements of Providence are unanswerable. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth, but woe unto him that striveth with his Maker.
DEFENSIVE MEASURES.2Ch. 11:5-12
Rehoboam forbidden to aggress, undertakes to defend the frontiers of his kingdom. He built cities for defence. The verb denotes fortification of cities; partly, says Hengstenberg, because in the case of a city already in existence, the building must necessarily have been restricted to the fortification of it, and partly because the term city, in its fullest extent, involves the idea of fortification.
I. He protected against great dangers.
1. From the attack of Israel. Disruption of tribal unity brought danger and enemies within. Israel restless and allied with Egypt.
2. From Egyptian bondage. From this quarter greatest danger. Out of fifteen cities all but three, on southern or western frontier. And now, for the first time since the Exodus, Judah was once more threatened with an Egyptian bondage [Stanley].
II. He displayed great Wisdom
1. In retaining the capital. Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem (2Ch. 11:5). Unlike kings of Israel, who shifted their capital from place to place for convenience and policy, he perceived importance of retaining hold on the city of David. This central fortress surrounded by a chain of fortresses, in part to carry out the designs of his father, in part to increase his strength.
2. In fortifying the kingdom. Reduced by secession, he sought to keep what he possessed. He rebuilt, garrisoned, and provided with arms and stores to stand a siege. If we cannot attack, we can perhaps build; if not recover lost privileges, we may defend what we have. That good thing (goodly deposit) which was committed unto thee, keep (guard, cf. 1Ti. 6:20) by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us (2Ti. 1:14).
III. He illustrated great principles. Under these measures are hidden powerful principles in human life.
1. The power of conscience. Accused of doing wrong, he now fears further mischief. A guilty conscience gives timidity, creates a panic, and expects retaliation when no man pursueth. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
2. The tendency to aggressive war. Jeroboam took similar precautions to Rehoboam (1Ki. 12:25). Kings ambitious and plunge into war. He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife. Who can tell the strifes and wars thus created?
Towns turned to ashes, fanes involved in fire!
These deeds the guilt of rash ambition tell.
2. Lack of faith in God. This leads to self-sufficiency, mischievous enterprises and failure. In personal salvation and national deliverances, weak is an arm of flesh. Some remember (trust, glory in remembrance of) chariots, and some remember horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God (Psa. 20:7).
CONSCIENTIOUS SCRUPLES.2Ch. 11:13-17
Jeroboam, afraid of reunion of the tribes, took measures to make separation final. He introduced calf-worship in Bethel and Dan, two distinct places at opposite ends of his kingdom. He selected priests from the lowest of the people, thus weakened his kingdom and caused many worthy men to migrate to Judah, who, faithfully attached to the worship of Jehovah, could not conscientiously bow to idols.
I. In refusing to worship idols. They remembered the injunction, Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor worship them. Daniels companions were steadfast.
II. In braving the results of their conduct. The wrath of the king, and the ridicule of the tribes; ejection from their office, persecution and exile. The emperor commands thee to do sacrifice, said the Proconsul to Cyprian; therefore consult for thy welfare. I am a Christian, was the heroic reply; and I cannot sacrifice to your gods; do, therefore, what you are commanded; as for me, in so just a cause there needs no consultation.
III. In seeking to worship God according to conscience. They desired a purer worship and sought a more convenient place; left their suburbs and their possessions, and came to Judah and Jerusalem. (Pilgrim Fathers.) In the conduct of these priests and people we have
1. A conscience to acknowledge. Some in authority do not recognise it. Conscience the vicegerent of God, omnipotent, can never be crushed. Kings may control movements of body, but never alter convictions of soul. Neither fraud nor force can make good men disobey behests of conscience.
2. A precedent to follow. Men may urge customs of the people and fashions of the nation; expediency and personal obligations to superiors; the dangers of singularity and terrible penalty of our choice, but we must be faithful: Dare to do right. We ought to obey God rather than men.
THE STRENGTH AND ATTRACTION OF A KINGDOM.2Ch. 11:3; 2Ch. 11:13-17
I. In the unity of its Subjects. By blood Benjamin more closely related to Ephraim than Judah. All traditions of Benjamin antagonistic to Judah. Now estrangement and feud ceased. Religious and political capital established on border line. Two tribes unite, and prepare for defence. Danger unites all ranks together. (Elizabeth and Spanish Armada.)
II. In the purity of its worship. Benjamin attached to temple worship. Priests and Levites migrated in large numbers to the southern kingdom for purer worship and safety. Recognition of God greater security than armies and fleets; moral vigour more attractive than extensive trade.
III. In the righteousness of its rule. Wise to strengthen cities and defend forts; better to consolidate the throne in rectitude. Numbers give physical strength, but just concessions and righteous laws support and safeguard the nation. Jeroboams kingdom weakened, Rehoboams strengthened.
THE FAMILY AND DOMESTIC POLICY OF REHOBOAM.2Ch. 11:18-23
Danger past, indulgence began. The domestic policy of Rehoboam might be worldly wise, but it was sinful.
I. The family was founded in disobedience to God. The royal harem inferior to his fathers, equally in violation of the law.
1. In multiplying wives. (a) For himself; (b) For his sons. Wives not strangers, but daughters of Israel, and of family of David, yet forbidden. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself.
2. In choice of a favourite son. He set aside eldest son, preferred Abijah in fondness for his mother. Solomon had divine warrant, but in destining youngest for kingdom the king violated the law (Deu. 21:15-16). They have set up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, and I knew it not.
II. The family was governed by worldly policy. He dealt wiselyi.e., with deep and calculating policy (Exo. 1:10). Rehoboams wisdom was shown
1. In dispersing his other sons instead of allowing them to remain together in Jerusalem, where they might have joined in a plot against Abijah, as Adonijah and his brothers did against Solomon (1Ki. 1:5-10).
2. In giving his sons positions which might well content them, and prevent them from being jealous of Abijah [Speak. Com.]. Rivalry prevented, public peace and safety secured, not by worldly sagacity and bestowment of patronage. Trust in God and loyalty to his commands the best policy.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
2Ch. 11:13-16. The duty of Protestants. This will lead me to set before youI. The conduct of Protestants in that day.
1. In it they bore testimony against the reigning abominations;
2. They steadfastly adhered to the service of their God;
3. They renounced all for conscience sake. II. Our duty as Protestants at the present day.
1. We should realise our own religious principles;
2. We should show their superior efficacy to sanctify the heart and life. Address those
(1) Who are conforming to this world; and
(2) Those who are like the Israelites, setting their hearts fully to seek the Lord their God [C. Simeon].
2Ch. 11:16.
1. God the object of search. The sublimest and most needful in creation. The foundation of all religion and strength.
2. The search sincere. Heart, all the heart thrown into it.
3. The search steadfast. The heart fixed, determined, purposed. No hesitancy, wandering, and half-heartedness. Qui tradiderunt cor suum, who delivered up their hearts to seek the Lord; to run any hazard rather than violate conscience. Such were the English exiles in Queen Marys days, from whom Stephen Gardiner vowed so to stop sending of all supplies that for very hunger they should eat their own nails, and then feed on their fingers ends; but threatened folk live long, and before these banished men were brought to that bill of fare, the Bishop was eaten up of worms [Trapp].
These verses describe the condition of the northern kingdom in Jeroboams time.
1. Disgraced by calf-worship.
2. Lacking the principal thing. Seats of worship, no true sanctuaries, for the ark, the symbol of Gods presence wanting. Not the house of God, but a house of high places.
3. Weakened by emigration. Innovations drove the best from the country. The king went from bad to worse.
2Ch. 11:17. Three years, &c. Temporary Religion. This a brief description of the spirit of his reign. I. Period of profession. By apostasy of ten tribes, and the belief that the thing proceeded from God as a punishment for Solomons idolatry, the king brought to reflection and obedience. This only temporary. When kingdom sufficiently fortified, and he thought himself secure, he forsook the law of Jehovah, and all Israel with him (ch. 2Ch. 12:1). Many fall away, some before, and others after three years of profession. Ye did run well, who did hinder? II. The period of apostasy. In prosperity or security. When no dangers nigh. In heart unfaithful, though external worship undisturbed (ch. 2Ch. 29:28). High places, monumental stones and idols, disfigured the land. Apostasy more grievous than before. The first three years walked in the way of David; in the fourth year, decline which neutralised all advantages of immigration, and in the fifth year punishment by invasion and success of Shishak (2Ch. 12:2). Such the course of life!
2Ch. 11:18-22. A Family Record. In which we find
1. Kindred mixed together. All three wives of Davids family, and his own kindred.
2. Partiality displayed. Rehoboam loved Maachah (2Ch. 11:22) for beauty or conformity to his wicked practices.
3. Numbers in abundance. Eighteen wives and threescore concubines, and begat twenty-and-eight sons and threescore daughters. The family a divine institution, should be the best of kingdoms and a type of heaven.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
2Ch. 11:1-5. Ye shall not go. Little can we at the beginning of an action guess at Gods intention at the conclusion [Bishop Hall]. It is one of the greatest praises of Gods wisdom that he can turn the evil of men to his own glory [Ibid.].
2Ch. 11:13-15. Worship cast off. Whatever is morally wrong cannot be politically right [Burke]. We never do evil so thoroughly and cordially as when we are led to it by a false principle of conscience [Pascal].
Not thou, O Lord, from us, but we
Withdraw ourselves from thee
[French].
2Ch. 11:14-16. Left, &c. The good men in a kingdom counteract the tendency to anarchy and disruption. Righteousness exalteth a nation. The guarantee of a nations progress and stability is to be found, not in the invincibility of its armies, not in the vastness of its commerce, not in the genius, the learning, or the wealth of its citizens, but in the sound morality and religious sentiment of the people [Dr. Thomas].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
2. THE REIGN OF REHOBOAM (1112)
TEXT
2Ch. 11:1. And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled the house of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, that were warriors, to fight against Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam. 2. But the word of Jehovah came to Shemaiah the man of God saying, 3. Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, 4. Thus saith Jehovah, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren: return every man to his house; for this thing is of me. So they hearkened unto the words of Jehovah, and returned from going against Jeroboam.
And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defense in Judah. 6. He built Beth-lehem, and Etam, and Tekoa. 7. and Beth-zur, and Soco, and Adullam, 8. and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, 9. and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, 10. and Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin, fortified cities. 11. And he fortified the strongholds, and put captains in them, and stores of victuals, and oil and wine. 12. And in every city he put shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong. And Judah and Benjamin belonged to him.
13. And the priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to him out of all their border. 14. For the Levites left their suburbs and their possessions, and came to Judah and Jerusalem: for Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the priests office unto Jehovah; 15. and he appointed him priests for the high places, and for the he-goats, and for the calves which he had made. 16. And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek Jehovah, the God Of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto Jehovah, the God of their fathers. 17. 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.
18. 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; 19. and she bare him sons: Jeush, and Shemariah, and Zaham. 20. 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 him king. 23. And he dealt wisely, and dispersed of all his sons throughout all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fortified city: and he gave them victuals in abundance. And he sought for them many wives.
2Ch. 12:1. And it came to pass, when the kingdom of Rehoboam was established, and he was strong, that he forsook the law of Jehovah, and all Israel with him. 2. And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had trespassed against Jehovah, 3. with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen. And the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt: the Lubim, the Sukkiim, and the Ethiopians. 4. And he took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came unto Jerusalem. 5. 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 Jehovah, Ye have forsaken me, therefore have I also left you in the hand of Shishak. 6. Then the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, Jehovah is righteous. 7. And when Jehovah saw that they humbled themselves, the word of Jehovah 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 upon Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak. 8. Nevertheless they shall be his servants, that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.
9. So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah, and the treasures of the kings house; he took all away: he took away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made. 10. 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 kings house. 11. And it was so, that, as oft as the king entered into the house of Jehovah, the guard came and bare them, and brought them back into the guard-chamber. 12. And when he humbled himself, the wrath of Jehovah turned from him, so as not to destroy him altogether: and moreover in Judah there were good things found.
13. 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 Jehovah had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there: and his mothers name was Naamah the Ammonitess. 14. And he did that which was evil, because he set not his heart to seek Jehovah.
15. 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 there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. 16. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David: and Abijah his son reigned in his stead.
PARAPHRASE
2Ch. 11:1. Upon arrival at Jerusalem, Rehoboam mobilized the armies of Judah and Benjamin, 180,000 strong, and declared war against the rest of Israel in an attempt to reunite the kingdom. 2. But the Lord told Shemaiah the prophet, 3. Go and say to King Rehoboam of Judah, Solomons son, and to the people of Judah and of Benjamin: 4. The Lord says, Do not fight against your brothers. Go home, for I am behind their rebellion. So they obeyed the Lord and refused to fight against Jeroboam.
510. Rehoboam stayed in Jerusalem and fortified these cities of Judah with walls and gates to protect himself: Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa, Beth-zur, Soco, Adullam, Gath, Mareshah, Ziph, Adoraim, Lachish, Azekah, Zorah, Aijalon, and Hebron. 11. He also rebuilt and strengthened the forts, and manned them with companies of soldiers under their officers, and stored them with food, olive oil, and wine. 12. Shields and spears were placed in armories in every city as a further safety measure. For only Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to him.
13, 14. However, the priests and Levites from the other tribes now abandoned their homes and moved to Judah and Jerusalem, for King Jeroboam had fired them, telling them to stop being priests of the Lord. 15. He had appointed other priests instead who encouraged the people to worship idols instead of God, and to sacrifice to carved statues of goats and calves which he placed on the hills. 16. Laymen, too, from all over Israel began moving to Jerusalem where they could freely worship the Lord God of their fathers, and sacrifice to him. 17. This strengthened the kingdom of Judah, so King Rehoboam survived for three years without difficulty; for during those years there was an earnest effort to obey the Lord as King David and King Solomon had done.
18. Rehoboam married his cousin Mahalath. She was the daughter of Davids son, Jerimoth and of Abihail, the daughter of Davids brother Eliab. 19. Three sons were born from this marriageJeush, Shemariah, and Zaham. 20. Later he married Maacah, the daughter of Absalom. The children she bore him were Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith. 21. He loved Maacah more than any of his other wives and concubines (he had eighteen wives and sixty concubineswith twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters). 22. Maacahs son Abijah was his favorite, and he intended to make him the next king. 23. He very wisely scattered his other sons in the fortified cities throughout the land of Judah and Benjamin, and gave them large allowances and arranged for them to have several wives apiece.
2Ch. 12:1. But just when Rehoboam was at the height of his popularity and power he abandoned the Lord, and the people followed him in his sin. 2. As a result, King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem in the fifth year of King Rehoboams reign, 3. with twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand cavalrymen and an unnumbered host of infantrymenEgyptians, Libyans, Sukkiim, and Ethiopians. 4. He quickly conquered Judahs fortified cities and soon arrived at Jerusalem. 5. The prophet Shemaiah now met with Rehoboam and the Judean leaders from every part of the nation (they had fled to Jerusalem for safety), and told them, The Lord says, You have forsaken me, so I have forsaken you and abandoned you to Shishak. 6. Then the king and the leaders of Israel confessed their sins and exclaimed, The Lord is right in doing this to us! 7. And when the Lord saw them humble themselves he sent Shemaiah to tell them, Because you have humbled yourselves, I will not completely destroy you; some will escape. I will not use Shishak to pour out my anger upon Jerusalem. 8. But you must pay annual tribute to him. Then you will realize how much better it is to serve me than to serve him!
9. So King Shishak of Egypt conquered Jerusalem and took away all the treasures of the Temple and of the palace, also all of Solomons gold shields. 10. King Rehoboam replaced them with bronze shields and committed them to the care of the captain of his bodyguard. 11. Whenever the king went to the Temple, the guards would carry them, and afterwards return them to the armory. 12. When the king humbled himself, the Lords anger was turned aside and he didnt send total destruction; in fact, even after Shishaks invasion, the economy of Judah remained strong.
13. King Rehoboam reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city God had chosen as his residence after considering all the other cities of Israel. He had become king at the age of forty-one, and his mothers name was Naamah the Ammonitess. 14. But he was an evil king, for he never did decide really to please the Lord.
15. The complete biography of Rehoboam is recorded in the histories written by Shemaiah the prophet and by Iddo the seer, and in The Genealogical Register. There were continual wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. 16. When Rehoboam died he was buried in Jerusalem, and his son Abijah became the new king.
COMMENTARY
Rehoboam decided to use military power against the northern tribes to bring them under subjection. The murder of Hadoram was a defiant rejection of Rehoboams authority. One hundred and eighty thousand warriors out of the south were readied for this civil war between Judah and Israel. Jehovah had determined that the division between Judah and Israel should be accomplished at this time. Shemaiah is called a prophet and aman of God. There are references to many false prophets in the Old Testament; but one never meets a false man of God. In 2Ch. 12:5 Shemaiah declared the word of Jehovah to Rehoboam concerning Shishak and the Egyptians. Shemaiah also is credited with writing the history of the life and times of Rehoboam (2Ch. 12:15). When Rehoboam faced this crisis and was about to send this large army into Israel, Jehovah sent Shemaiah to the king of Judah and all the people who submitted to his reign. Jehovahs word was, Dismiss this army. The statement, This thing is of me, underscored the divine purpose. Rehoboam and his people obeyed Jehovah in this matter.
A brief summary of Rehoboams reign follows. Probably because he feared threats against the security of Judah especially from Egypt, he fortified several villages in Judah and Benjamin. The relative locations of the villages which concerned the king are indicated here.
BethlehemAbout five miles south of Jerusalem, EthamTen miles west of Hebron, TekoaSeven miles south east of Bethlehem, Beth-zurFive miles north of Hebron, SocoThirteen miles west of Bethlehem, AdullamFourteen miles north west of Hebron, GathTwenty miles north west of Hebron, MareshahFifteen miles north west of Hebron, ZiphFour miles south of Hebron, AdoraimFive miles west of Hebron, LachishTwenty miles west of Hebron, AzekahTen miles north west of Hebron, HebronTwenty miles south of Jerusalem, ZorahFifteen miles west of Jerusalem, AijalonThirteen miles north west of Jerusalem. The distances stated here are not measured with absolute accuracy. The key cities were Jerusalem and Hebron. All of these villages were equipped with soldiers, weapons, and food supplies.
2Ch. 11:13-17 describe the migration of priests and Levites into the southern kingdom. The primary reason for this development was Jeroboams rejection of Jehovah worship. Jeroboam was Jehovahs choice to be king of Israel. He certainly had the potential to become an effective leader. According to 1Ki. 11:26-28, Jeroboam had been a servant of Solomon. He had charge over the house of Joseph in the fortification of Jerusalem, working on the citadel of Millo. He was described as a very industrious person and as a mighty man of valor. He had the credentials to become a great king; but when the time came for his kingdom to be set up, he feared Rehoboam and his efforts to unify the kingdom. Jeroboam set up Baal worship in Bethel (southern border of his kingdom) and Dan (northern frontier of the kingdom). He determined to make religion convenient for his people. He did not want them to return to the Temple in Jerusalem. He made priests out of any who wanted to serve without regard to Levitical connection (1Ki. 12:28-33). He changed the date for the observance of the Feast of Tabernacles from the seventh month and the fifteenth day to the eighth month and the fifteenth day. He set up idolatry throughout his kingdom. Reacting to these developments, priests and Levites and a remnant of representatives from the northern tribes moved into Judah and the southern kingdom. This influx of Hebrews with deep religious convictions provided a certain stability to Rehoboams government for about three years. Even Rehoboam himself, ruled wisely through these fleeting months. The way of David and Solomon in this context refers to a genuine concern for Jehovahs will.
2Ch. 12:1 reports Rehoboams forsaking the law of Jehovah. His subjects made no attempt to put him off the throne. They followed his leadership. Rehoboam married Mahalath who was the daughter of Jerimoth, son of David. In the lists of Davids sons Jerimoth is not named. He could have been the son of one of Davids concubines. Jerimoth could have been another name for Ithream who is listed among Davids sons. Abihail was a second cousin to Mahalath and she was also Mahalaths mother. Eliab was Jesses eldest son. The sons of Rehoboam through Mahalath were Jeush, Shemariah, and Zaham. Rehoboam also married Maacah who was Absaloms grand-daughter. Maacahs mother was Tamar, Absaloms daughter. The relationships of son and daughter are not always used as exactly as we use them. They do indicate a direct lineal descent. Absalom was Davids rebel son. Rehoboams sons through Maacah were Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith. Rehoboam broke Jehovahs law respecting Hebrew kings and the multiplication of wives (Deu. 17:17). He went his own way. Eighteen wives, sixty concubines, twenty eight sons, and sixty daughters composed the kings harem and family. Of all the wives, he loved Maacah best. Her son, Abijah, was groomed by Rehoboam to be his successor of Judahs throne. Rehoboam demonstrated human wisdom in placing his sons in positions of trust throughout the kingdom and in making liberal material provisions for them. Rehoboam failed Jehovah and would have to suffer the consequences of his failures.
LESSON SEVENTEEN 1214
EGYPT INVADES ISRAEL, JEROBOAM, AND THE NORTHERN KINGDOM ASA AND THE ETHIOPIANS.
2. THE REIGN OF REHOBOAM-Continued (1112)
INTRODUCTION
The shields of gold were exchanged for shields of brass as Rehoboam had trouble with the Egyptians. Jeroboam set up the golden calves and led his people away from God. Asa, king of Judah, blessed by Jehovah, repulsed an Ethiopian attack.
TEXT
(Scripture text in Lesson Sixteen)
PARAPHRASE
(Scripture text in Lesson Sixteen)
COMMENTARY
Three chapters in this record describe the life and times of Rehoboam. His kingship covered a very critical period in Hebrew history. Solomons sins and Rehoboams foolishness brought Israel to a tragic turning point resulting in the division of the kingdom. In the early part of his reign Rehoboam showed some concern for the genuine Hebrew religion. The presence of the Temple in Jerusalem and the migration of priests and Levites into the borders of Judah were beneficial in this regard. Chapter 2Ch. 12:1 describes Rehoboams course of action. He established his kingdom, fortified numerous villages, set up an extensive harem, made expensive provisions for his children and forsook the law of Jehovah. If what he had done would have affected only himself, the results would not have been so serious. All of his people followed the leadership of the king. About 925 B.C. Jehovah allowed Shishak, king of Egypt, to come into Judah with a great army. Jeroboam, king of Israel, had found refuge in Egypt under Shishak (1Ki. 11:40). As the Egyptians came into Rehoboams territory at this time they intended to take Jerusalem. Rehoboam and his people Had trespassed against Jehovah (2Ch. 11:2). They had forsaken God (2Ch. 11:5). Shishak brought allies with him. The Lubim were the Libyan people who lived on the northern coast of Africa. The Sukkiim probably were Arabs living in North Africa. The Ethiopians lived within the limits of Shishaks territory as Ethiopia bordered Egypt on the south. The enemy came with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horsemen, and an army of foot soldiers that was not numbered. Without opposition Shishak took all of the villages in Judah (2Ch. 11:5-12) which had been fortified against such an invasion.
Again, the history of Judah was delicately balanced. Shemaiah, the prophet who had told Jeroboam that he would be a king, appeared before Rehoboam and his princes to charge them with forsaking Jehovah. Gods great mercy was exercised once more. Rehoboam and his counselors were convicted of their sins and confessed the righteousness of Jehovahs judgment. Jehovahs decision not to bring Judah to a full end was communicated to Shemaiah who, most likely, made this known to the king. However, Rehoboam and his people would have to pay tribute to Egypt and through this they should know that they were being judged for their sins against Jehovah. God did not grant permanent immunity to Jerusalem, He said that Shishak would not destroy the city. When Jehovahs people humble themselves, He forgives (2Ch. 7:14).
In the days of David and Solomon the treasures of the nations poured into Jerusalem. This happy circumstance was reversed in the days of Rehoboam. Shishak would have taken Jerusalem at this time if Jehovah had allowed him to do so and if the Hebrew leaders had not been able to buy temporary freedom with the treasures. Some of the precious things were brought out of the Temple and some out of other buildings where they were housed. The diminishing glory of the kingdom is most graphically described in the exchange of shields of gold for shields of brass. Solomon had fashioned the golden shields (2Ch. 9:15-16) to demonstrate the wealth and splendor of his kingdom. Those who knew this former glory surely were heart broken when they had to look upon Rehoboams shields of brass. The glory had departed. The self-humiliation of the king was the only redeeming consideration. There were still some people in Judah who loved God; but the spiritual climate was far from ideal.
Rehoboam was more concerned about making a name for himself as a king than he was about being a spiritual leader for his people. His reign of seventeen years offered many opportunities for him to strive for the ideal established in Deu. 17:14-20. He was forty one years old when he became king. He had a remarkable heritage. In large measure Rehoboam failed. He did not set his heart to seek Jehovah.
Shemaiah and Iddo prepared written accounts of Rehoboams reign. There was constant civil strife between the southern and the northern kingdoms. Rehoboam was buried in the royal cemetery established in Davids day. He was succeeded on the throne by his son, Abijah.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XI.
(1) And when Rehoboam.And Rehoboam came . . . and he gathered. The chronicler omits 1Ki. 12:20, which relates the call of Jeroboam to the throne of Israel. The present verse is a slightly abridged form of 1Ki. 12:21.
The kingdom.Mamlkh. Kings, mlkh.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2Ch 11:21-22 Comments – Abijah, the son of Maachah, Rehoboam’s favourite wife, did in fact become the next king in 2Ch 13:1.
2Ch 13:1, “Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign over Judah.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Rehoboam’s Army and Forts
v. 1. And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, v. 2. But the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, the man of God, saying,
v. 3. Speak unto Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, v. 4. Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up nor fight against your brethren, v. 5. And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, v. 6. He built even Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, v. 7. and Beth-zur, and Shoco, and Adullam,
v. 8. and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph,
v. 9. and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, v. 10. and Zorah, and Aijalon, v. 11. And he fortified the strong holds, v. 12. And in every several city he put shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
The first four verses of this chapter would have been better placed as the conclusion of the previous chapter. They correspond with 1Ki 12:21-24; and they tell how Rehoboam was restrained from making bad worse, in a hopeless attempt to recover the seceding ten tribes, by war that would have been as bloody as foredoomed to failure. “The word of the Lord” to this intent came to the Prophet Shemaiah, and through him to Rehoboam. The remaining verses of the chapter are new matter, and belong to Chronicles alone. They tell how Rehoboam set to work to fortify his towns, or rather many of them (1Ki 12:5-12); how he received priests and others from the kingdom of the ten tribes (1Ki 12:13-17); and, last and worst, of the wives and concubines he took (1Ki 12:18-23).
2Ch 11:1
He gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin. The parallel (1Ki 12:21) says more distinctly, “The house of Judah with the tribe of Benjamin.” They of Jeroboam (2Ch 10:16) had flung it at Judah: “Now, David, see to thine own house.” Rehoboam, of course, does this very thing. For the first time,formally, Benjamin is now introduced as throwing in its lot with Judah, and the acted prophecy of Ahijah is seen fulfilled; the chiefest of the tribes, and the tribe that came of the youngest and most petted of old Jacob’s sons, are now wedded to the end. The tribe of Benjamin lay hemmed in between Ephraim, to which it had once much leaned, and to which (as Benjamin was the blood-uncle of Ephraim) it was more closely related, and Judah, with which it had once been at variance (2Sa 2:12-32; 2Sa 3:1-27; 2Sa 20:1). But exactly on the border-line of Judah and Benjamin rose the city Jerusalem and the temple (Jos 15:8; Jos 18:16; Jer 20:2); and, beyond doubt, this fact had helped to bring about the much more friendly feeling, if not absolutely close union, that now for some time had existed between these two tribes in their contiguous allotments. A hundred and four-score thousand chosen men, which were warriors. According to Joab, in David’s time the men able to bear arms of Judah alone were five hundred thousand (2Sa 24:9). Compare the numbers in the next reign (2Ch 13:3), and, later on still, in Jehoshaphat’s (2Ch 17:14-18). Both of these show that Abijah and Jehoshaphat respectively had improved the time given to training much larger armies, whereas now Rehoboam was taken by surprise.
2Ch 11:2
Shemaiah the man of God. This is the first historical mention (1Ki 12:22) of Shemaiah. The second is found in 2Ch 12:5, 2Ch 12:7, on occasion of the invasion of Judah and Jerusalem by Shishak King of Egypt; anti the third, in the same chapter, 2Ch 12:15, that he wrote a book respecting the acts of Rehoboam. The expression, “man of God,” owns to a somewhat unexplained history. It is first found in the added part of Deuteronomy (Deu 33:1), where it is applied to Moses. It occurs once in Joshua (Jos 14:6); twice in Judges (Jdg 13:6, Jdg 13:8); four times in Samuel (1Sa 2:27; 1Sa 9:6-8); twenty-nine times in Kings; six times in Chronicles; once each in Ezra, Nehemiah and Jeremiah.
2Ch 11:3
To all Israel in Judah and Benjamin. There is difference of opinion as to who are intended in the expression, “all Israel,” already confessedly ambiguous in two other passages. When we consider the mention of Rehoboam personally in the former clause of the verse, it would seem most probable that the meaning is all the people of the nation, resident in the Judah and Benjamin allotments, i.e. the nation called collectively Israel. This will include “the remnant” spoken of in the parallel (1Ki 12:23, compared with 17).
2Ch 11:4
This thing is from me; i.e. the punishing disruption; not the precedent causes with the entirety of historical events; this punishing and Wither, sing disruption is not to be “lightly healed” The man who did what caused it, the men who did what caused it, cannot thus each undo what they have doneleast of all undo it by the appeal of war. They and theirs will have, long as life lasts, as lives last, to go through the baptism of bitter suffering, and leave a heritage of the same for others.
2Ch 11:5-12
These eight verses tell how Rehoboam, relieved of the responsibility of attempting to reconquer the revolted, wisely betakes himself to strengthening and defending what was left to him. He builds fifteen “fenced cities,” or “cities for defence,” twelve of them south and west of Jerusalem, for lear of Egypt; he fortifies certain strongholds, officering them, provisioning them, and supplying to them and “every several city” the necessary weapons of warfare and shields.
2Ch 11:6
Bethlehem. This was a case not of actual new building of a city, but of restoring and strengthening it. Bethlehem, originally Ephrath (Gen 35:16; Gen 48:7), was one of the very oldest towns existent in Jacob’s time. It was not called Bethlehem till long after the settlement of the tribes. It was six miles from Jerusalem, on the east of the road to Hebron. Etam. A place near Bethlehem; possibly the resort of Samson after his revenge on the Philistines (Jdg 15:8, Jdg 15:11). It was not the Etam mentioned as belonging to Simeon (1Ch 4:32). Tekoa. According to Jerome, as also Eusebius, six Roman miles from Bethlehem, and nine from Jerusalem, or else, possibly by another road, twelve (Jerome’s ‘Pro-oemium in Amos,’ and his ‘Onomasticon’). It is absent from the Hebrew catalogue of Judah towns (Jos 15:49), but is in the Septuagint Version of it. It was the place of the “wise woman” of 2Sa 14:2.
2Ch 11:7
Beth-zur. About five miles north of Hebron (see Jos 15:58; 1Ch 2:45; Neh 3:16). Shoco; properly, Socoh, in the Shefelah (Jos 15:35). According to Jerome and Eusebius, it was about nine miles from Eleutheropolis, on the road to Jerusalem (see also 1Sa 17:1). Adullam. In the Shefelah (Jos 15:35). It was an ancient place (Gen 38:1, Gen 38:12, Gen 38:20; Jos 12:15; Neh 11:30). See also the familiar passages (1Sa 22:1; 2Sa 23:13; 1Ch 11:15).
2Ch 11:8
Gath. Site still unknown. Some think it may be the Gath-rimmon of Dan (Jos 19:45). Otherwise it is Gath of the Philistines (Jos 13:3; 1Sa 6:17), and of Goliath (1Sa 17:4, 1Sa 17:23). I.L.P; in Dr. Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary,’ 1.656, wishes to find it on a hill now called Tel-es-Safleh, on one side of the Plain of Philistia, about ten miles east of Ashdod and southeast of Ekron. See also “Topographical Index,” p. 411, in Conder’s ‘ andbook to the Bible,’ 2nd edit. Other interesting references are 1Sa 17:1, 1Sa 17:52; 1Sa 21:10; 1Ch 18:1; 2Ch 26:6; 1Ki 2:39; 2Ki 12:17; Amo 6:2. Mareshah. In the Shefelah (Jos 15:44), now Marash, a short distance south of Eleutheropolis. Zerah the Cushite came here when he was invading Judaea (ch. 14:9. See also ch. 20:37; Mic 1:15). It was taken by John Hyreanus, B.C. 110, and was demolished by the Parthians, B.C. 39. Ziph. Probably the present Tel-Lif, a little south-east of Hebron (Jos 15:55; see also 24. See also 1Sa 23:14-24; 1Sa 26:2).
2Ch 11:9
Adoraim. This name is not found anywhere else. The meaning of the word is “two heaps,” and very probably describes the physical features of the site. It is probably the modern Dura. Its site is otherwise unknown. Lachish (see Jos 15:39; also Jos 10:3; Jos 12:11); probably the modern Um Lakis, that lies on the road to Gaza. Other interesting references are 2Ki 14:19; 2Ki 18:14-17; 2Ki 19:8; Neh 11:30; Mic 1:13. Azekha (see Jos 15:35; also Jos 10:10); it was in the Shefelah (see also 1Sa 17:1; Neh 11:30; Jer 34:7). The site of it is not identified.
2Ch 11:10
Zorah. The people of Zorah, or Zoreah, were the Zareathites of 1Ch 2:53; it was the home of Manoah, and the native place of Samson (see Jos 15:33; Jos 19:41. Other interesting references are Jdg 13:25; Jdg 16:31; Jdg 18:2-11; Neh 11:29). It belonged to the original allotment of Dan, and is constantly named in company with Eshtaol. Aijalon. The modern Jalo; also originally belonged to allotment of Dan (Jos 10:12; Jos 19:42; Jos 21:24. Other interesting references are Jdg 1:35; 1Sa 14:31; 1Ki 14:30; 1Ch 6:66, 1Ch 6:69, 2Ch 28:18). Hebron. One of the most ancient of cities still lasting, rivalling in this respect Damascus. It belonged to Judah and to its hill country (Jos 15:54; Jos 20:7); it was about twenty Roman miles south of Jerusalem. Its original name was Kirjath Arba. In Num 13:22 it is said that it was built “seven years before Zoan in Egypt,” but it is not said when Zoan was built. It now contains about five thousand population, but scarcely a tithe of them Jews. Its long stretch of history is full of incidents of interest, and is partially illustrated by the references that follow: Gen 13:18; Gen 23:2-19, Gen 23:20; Gen 35:27; Gen 37:14; Num 13:22, Num 13:23; Jos 10:36; Jos 14:6-15; Jos 15:13, Jos 15:14; Jos 21:11-13; 2Sa 4:12; 2Sa 5:5; Neh 11:25.
2Ch 11:12
Having Judah and Benjamin on his side. The mention of both tribes just serves to point for us the fact that Benjamin’s existence and value were not absolutely ignored, but were for a short while quoted before the kingdom of Rehoboam became called by the name of Judah simply.
2Ch 11:13
The priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to him out of all their coasts. The emphasis thrown into the contents of this verse is evident and agreeable; the ecclesiastical party acted worthily of itself. The priests and Levites could not bring themselves to offer sacrifice and service to the calves, or to forsake Jerusalem and the temple and the true altar. No doubt a stirring, throbbing history underlay the few hut suggestive words which point here the conduct of the priests and Levites. These would not content to stand shoulder to shoulder with priests made not from the tribe of Levi (1Ki 12:31).
2Ch 11:14
Left their suburbs (so Le 25:34; Num 35:1, Num 35:3, Num 35:7; Jos 14:4; Jos 21:12). Jeroboam had east them off. This glimpse reveals to us, with exceeding probability, that there had been some struggle on the solemn matter; we may readily imagine that Jeroboam had either tried it on in vain with the true priests and Levites, or had learned very conclusively beforehand that it would be vain to try it on (2Ch 13:9).
2Ch 11:15
The high places; i.e. Dan and Bethel (1Ki 12:28-33). For the devils; i.e. for the “hairy ones” (). Reference is intended to the idolatrous wore ship of the “he-goats” by the Hebrews, after the example of Egypt, and the reference here is either literal or derived (Le 2Ch 17:7). For the calves (see 1Ki 12:28).
2Ch 11:16
shows a good example on the part of the clergy, effectual, and followed by the people.
2Ch 11:17
Strengthened three years. “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but,” etc. (Pro 14:34; Isa 33:6). The sad knell is sounded all too soon; see first verso of next chapter. Three years’ strength will soon become weakness, and three years’ goodness will save no soul.
2Ch 11:18
The ‘Speaker’s Commentary’ opportunely suggests the probability that we may be indebted here to Iddo’s “genealogies” (2Ch 12:15). The word daughter here is a correction of the Keri, the Chethiv having been “son,” This Jerimoth is the seventh out of a list of eight men of the same name mentioned in the two books of Chronicles. He is not given as one of the children of David’s proper wives in either 1Ch 3:1-8 or 1Ch 14:4-7; Jerome says it was the Jewish tradition that he was the son of a concubine of David. It is just possible that Jerimoth and Ithream were two names of the same person. Abihail was second cousin of Mahalath. It is not quite clear whether Abihail were wife of Jerimoth and mother of Mahalath, or a second wife now mentioned of Rehoboam. The contents of the next verse not differencing the children there mentioned, and assigning her own to each wife of Rehoboam, if these were two wives of his, favours the former supposition (our Hebrew text being “and she bare,“ not “which bare”). When it is said that Abthail was the daughter of Eliab, the meaning probably is, as again in verse 20, granddaughter. (For Eiiab, see 1Sa 16:6; 1Sa 17:13; 1Ch 2:13.)
2Ch 11:19
(See last note.) If previous verse speaks of two wives of Rehoboam, of which wife (our Hebrew text being not “which bare,” but “and she bare”) were Jeush, Shamariah, and Zaham the children? or of which respectively, if they express the children of both? As the words now stand, it can only be supposed, with all lexicons, that Abihail is mother of the three children on the two-wife supposition.
2Ch 11:20
Maachah was the granddaughter of Absalom by his daughter Tamar, wife of Uriel (2Ch 13:2; 11Ki 2Ch 15:2).
2Ch 11:21
Rehoboam was clearly wrong by Deu 17:17 (note Solomon’s Son 6:8).
2Ch 11:22
Cancel in this verse the italics “to be.” Rehoboam again offends against the “Law” (see Deu 21:15-17). He cannot justly plead as a precedent the instance of David and Solomon, as in 1Ch 23:1; for this was only justified by the express Divine ordinance, as in 1Ch 23:9; 1Ch 29:1.
2Ch 11:23
The wise dealing of Rehoboam, fourfold, will not, though it were forty-fold, avail to cover his “despising” of the “Law.” Rather his wise dealing is an indication that his conscience was not quite at ease, and that he knew he was wrong. Nothing is so liable to blind judgment as personal affection.
HOMILETICS
2Ch 11:1-4, 2Ch 11:5-17, and 2Ch 11:23
The discipline that resulted in obedience, accompanied with right and earnest endeavour.
The homiletic treatment of this chapter centres round two suggestions.
I. THE SIMPLE AND PROMPT OBEDIENCE OF REHOBOAM, IN CERTAIN RESPECTS, TO THE DIVINE MESSAGE OF PROHIBITION. Of which obedience on the part of Rehoboam we may notice:
1. That it compared favourably with the conduct of those who, being bidden and encouraged in every way to go up to war, and to possess a certain goodly land, refused; and, being commanded not to go up, insisted on going (Deu 1:26, Deu 1:43), to their discomfiture and defeat.
2. That the mere pride of war must have gone far to make such obedience difficult.
3. That the somewhat juster pride of earnest desire to undo, if possible, his own mischievous doing, and to restore a united nation, must have contributed still further to the difficulty of that obedience.
4. And it is very possible that a sensitive shame in the presence of those young counsellors who had helped to mislead him, but who for certain never offered to help bear the blame of the consequences, may have added some contribution to the difficulty of obedience. Yet Rehoboam’s obedience was apparently prompt and unquestioning. Terrible recent experience had not been thrown away, but had so far gained some wisdom for him. And the prophet’s distinct announcement that the Lord had recognized and adopted the situation as one for his intervening and overruling providence, must have lent consolation to a truly penitent disposition, saved from remorse had there been tendency thereto, while in no way palliating the sin of either king or people.
II. THE EARNEST AND RIGHT ENDEAVOURS OF REHOBOAM TO SHEPHERD ALL THE BETTER HIS LESSER FLOCK, HIS REDUCED KINGDOM. This was witnessed to in three leading and typical directions.
1. Rehoboam uses all the means o/an outward kind that may “strengthen the things that remain.“ Cities, and fences, and strongholds, and forts, and stores of food, and all armour are seen to and supplied.
2. It was of deeper significance that he received only too gladly, welcomed out of a true faith then at least, all the priests and Levites who found indeed that Israel was not the place and Jeroboam not the master for them. To have the recognition of religion, the faith of religion, the presence of the practical ministries and ministers of religion, is the salt of the earth, the health of a people, the conserving of the soundness of civil society. Sin, and a grievous tale of it, were the woe of even Judah; but its core was never quite unsound, and its perpetuity was never broken; while rottenness was the very core of Israel, and Jeroboam and their staff was to be broken absolutely.
3. The true, the devout, the pious of the country, those who “set their hearts to seek the Lord God,“ were likewise received and welcomed at the true altar, at Jerusalem the city of the great King, with their sacrifices and offerings, renewing in the steps of their priests and ministers. We can imagine them pouring up to the city of their solemnities, like the regular health-bringing waters of some tidal river for Judah, who often mourned and was desolate and bereaved; but for themselves, to the drawing of fresh spiritual life, deeper faith, added strength of hope, kindled joy and love, as they offered their sacrifices, paid their vows, and frequented their temple. People and king were strengthened, as thus “they walked in the way of David and Solomon.” We could wish it were written without the ominous, ill-sounding qualification of” three years.” These things are certainly very observable of Rehoboam at this time, that a remarkable change had come over, not the spirit of his dream, but of his real working life. We hear no more of his young counsellors. They had been found out, and now were no longer clung to, even as “favourites” to whom royalty iniquitously insisted on showing partiality. We recognize no further indications of the hectoring and insolent spirit in which Rehoboam had allowed himself to answer the not unreasonable representations of those who had addressed him on the subject of lightening their acknowledged burdens. We learn of his desire and the beginning of his preparation to attempt to recover the nevertheless irrecoverable. He is divinely prohibited, and that, no doubt, to the saving of greater harm. He acquiesces in the prohibition, and with intensified zeal applies himself to the care of his diminished dominions. He would defend them from outer assault; and they are also the resort and the refuge and the religious home they should be, for all the upright in all the land. From our sight in this one chapter Rehoboam vanishes, emulating steadily for three years the best portions of the examples of his fathers David and Solomon. Unhappily, the end was not yet.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
2Ch 11:1-4
Fighting against brethren.
Rehoboam might have alleged some very strong reasons in defence of the proposed war (2Ch 11:1). He might have pleaded that the tribes had no constitutional or moral right to revolt and secede, and that their secession would seriously and even fatally weaken Israel, and expose it to the mercy of her powerful and unscrupulous neighbours. But the word of the Lord came authoritatively to him, “Ye shall not go up,” etc; and the strife was stayed. These words may teach or remind us of.
I. THE UNSEEMLINESS OF DOMESTIC STRIFE. It is not only such murderous violence as darkened the history of the first human family, and such bitter strife as that which too often divides brothers and sisters into plaintiffs and defendants; it is also the unforgiven offence, or the interminable dispute, which keeps their lives apart, or makes cold the hearts that should be warm with love; and it is also the daily bickerings, accusations, contentions, which come beneath the Divine displeasure. It is not only the presence of strife, it is the absence of love; it is the want of kindness, considerateness, charity, sweetness of look and of tone, which gives dissatisfaction to him who is ever saying, “As I have loved you, love one another.”
II. THE PAINFUL INCONGRUITY OF CHURCH DISSENSIONS. Apart from all ecclesiastical controversy, in regard to which there may be honest difference of opinion and of action without any real bitterness of heart, there is often found within the borders of the same Christian community a difference which hardens into a dissension. It is here that the strong, decisive command, against which is no appeal, should be heard, “Ye shall not fight against your brethren.” We may not be able to define in language the exact difference between allowable and honourable and even commendable defence of the true and wise in Christian thought and method on the one hand, and a reprehensible and unchristian dissension on the other hand. But if” our eye be single,” and our Master’s cause be dearer to our heart than our own preferences, we shall know where the difference lies, and we shall heed the prohibition of the text, and the injunction of the apostle, “Be at peace among yourselves” (1Th 5:13).
III. THE PECULIAR INIQUITY OF FRATRICIDAL WAR. How pitiful the sight of the armies of Judah arrayed against the armies of Israel; the children of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob seeking one another’s life, shedding one another’s blood! The people of God turning their weapons against each other, weakening the forces of righteousness, helping to extinguish the light that was in the world. Well might the prophetic word be uttered, “Ye shall not fight,” etc. The Divine Father of the human family has, since then, looked down on many a sad and shameful fratricidal warwars in which father and son, brother and brother, have met in deadly contest on the battlefield; wars in which the hearts of those united by the strongest bonds have been inflamed against one another by the fiercest passions. Surely negotiation and concession should be carried to the very last conceivable point before men “go up and fight against their brethren.” But it may be said that the words point to
IV. THE WRONGNESS OF ALL WAR THAT IS ANYWISE AVOIDABLE. And so, indeed, they do. For are we not all brethren? are we not all “members one of another”? Are we not, whatever our nationality may he, children of the same heavenly Father, possessors of the same spiritual nature, fellow-sufferers from the same great spiritual malady, fellow-strugglers against the same spiritual foes, fellow-travellers to the same solemn future? May we not all be the redeemed of the same Divine Saviour, workers in the same holy fields of usefulness, occupants of the same heavenly home? Is it well that we who are brethren, that we who, beneath our superficial distinctions, are so closely and deeply united to one another, that we should be planning one another’s destruction, be rejoicing in one another’s discomfiture, be exercising our utmost art and putting forth our utmost skill to shed one another’s blood? To all those who would enter lightly or needlessly into war, comes the strong and solemn prohibition, “Ye shall not fight against your brethren.”C.
2Ch 11:4
Wrought of God.
“For this thing is done of me.” How much has God to do with the events and issues of our life? Speaking in the idiom of the ancient Hebrew writers, we should sayEverything. Speaking after our modern fashion, we should sayMuch; and so much that we are altogether wrong and foolish if we do not take it into account. The words of the text, together with the context, suggest
I. THAT GOD DOES MANY THINGS WHICH, ANTECEDENTLY, WE SHOULD NOT EXPECT HE WOULD DO. Who would have expected, apart from his own warnings, that he would bring about the rupture in the kingdom of Israel? How very preferable, in many ways, does it seem to us that that little kingdom should remain united and strong instead of becoming divided and weak! We should have thought that the Divine wisdom would devise some other punishment for Solomon’s vain-gloriousness and defection, for Rehoboam’s childish folly, than that which the text tells us was wrought of him; there might have been, we should say, some personal humiliation or some temporary national calamity from which it would soon have revived. But so it was not to be. And though it may yet remain inexplicable, it is certain that this rending of the kingdom in twain was “of God.” In the history of our race, in the course of Christianity, we have witnessed or have read of the same thing. Sometimes it has been in the fate of institutions. God has let some prosper that we should have expected him to bring to ruin, and others he has allowed to perish that we should have expected his interposition to save. And many times it has been the lives of men How often have we wondered that the bad and baneful life has not been shortened, that the noble and valuable life has not been spared! How difficult it has been to believe that this thing and that thing were “done of him”! Yet we know that the guilty do not live one day longer than he permits, and we know that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” We believe, though we cannot see, that God’s hand is on all the springs of human life, that he is directing everything, and that those issues which at the time, or long after the time, seemed strange and deplorable, will prove to have been kind and wise and just.
II. THAT THE GUILTY SHOULD ASCRIBE TO HIM THE ISSUES OF THEIR FOLLY. Rehoboam’s senseless behaviour at Shechem had obviously much to do with the political disaster that followed. Yet Divine righteousness had so much to do with it that God said,” This thing is done of me.” Crime, vice, folly, sin, work out their issues in poverty, shame, sorrow, death. The moralist stands over the fallen culprit and says, not untruly, “You have brought this upon yourself; it is your own guilty hand that has brought you to the ground.” Yet, with equal truth, and perhaps with greater wisdom and kindness, the prophet of the Lord comes to him and says, “This end of evil is of God; he has brought it about; it is the mark of his Divine displeasure; it is a summons to another and a better course.” Conversely, we may add
III. THAT THE GOOD SHOULD, AND DO, ATTRIBUTE TO HIM THE RESULTS OF THEIR ENDEAVOURS. If it is the action of God’s righteous laws, and in that way the working of his hand, that sin ends in misery and ruin, so is it on the other side. It is the outworking of Divine beneficence, it is the result of his wisdom and goodness, it is the consequence of his action, direct and indirect, that the fields are white unto the harvest, that the trees in the Master’s vineyard are bringing forth fruit, that the young people are growing up into wisdom and spiritual comeliness, that character is ripening for the heavenly garner, that life is opening out into immortality. “This thing,” also, “is of him.”C.
2Ch 11:13-18
Fidelity to conscience.
This migration of priests and people from the other tribes of Israel to Judah and Jerusalem was a serious event in the history of the people of God, and it presents a striking and suggestive spectacle to all time. It is an early illustration of fidelity to conscience.
I. THE SEVERITY OF THE STRUGGLE. These servants of Jehovah, priests and people, had to triumph over great obstacles in order to take the step on which they decided. They had:
1. To set at nought the commandments of the king. This was a more serious thing then than it would be now; it meant more rebelliousness in action, and it involved more danger to the person.
2. To cut themselves adrift from old and sacred associations. They had to forsake their neighbours and (many of them, no doubt) their relatives; many had to leave their vocation or, at any rate, its exercise in familiar spots and among old and early acquaintances; they had to make little of those sentiments of which it is in our human heart to make much.
3. To sacrifice material advantages. Of the Levites we read that they “left their suburbs and their possession” (2Ch 11:14); and we may be sure that those who were not Levites, and who, consequently, would have a much greater interest in the occupancy and holding of the land (Deu 10:9), made still greater sacrifices than they. The families must have gone forth “not knowing the things that would befall them,” but knowing that they would encounter serious loss and discomfort, and would miss much which they had been accustomed to possess and to enjoy.
II. THE WISDOM OF THEIR CHOICE.
1. They pleased God. God would accept and honour their fidelity, which was an act of faithfulness and obedience to himself.
2. They retained their self-respect. This they would not have done if they had conformed to the false rites which Jeroboam had instituted and on which he was insisting; in that case they would have sunk far and fast spiritually, and would soon have lost all hold upon the truth. For we cannot dishonour the truth in the eyes of men and retain our own appreciation of it.
3. They took a course which ennobled thema course by which they not only became entitled to the honour of their countrymen, but by which they committed themselves definitely to the service of God and confirmed their own faith in him. They did that for which their children and their children’s children would “call them blessed” and noble.
4. They added materially to the strength of the kingdom which bore witness to the truth (2Ch 11:17), and helped to make durable its godly institutions.
5. They became located where they could take part in the worship of God according to the requirements of their own conscience. Setting their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel, they came where they could “sacrifice unto the Lord God of their fathers” (2Ch 11:16). They lost much temporal, but they gained much spiritual advantage. They sowed “not to the flesh, but to the Spirit.” They left houses of brick behind them, but they came where they could build up the house of a holy character, of a noble and useful life. There are those in Christian lands who do not likewise, but otherwise. For some temporal considerations they leave the home where there is everything to illumine the mind and enlarge the spirit and enrich the soul, and go where all this is absent. Doubtless the removal from one town to another is an action in which many motives may and should have their force, but let spiritual considerations have a great weight in the balance.C.
2Ch 11:18-23
Spiritual admixture.
After reading the first fourteen verses of the last chapter (2Ch 10:1-19.), we hardly expect to come across the words, concerning Rehoboam, and he dealt wisely (2Ch 11:23). But this king, though he could certainly be very foolish, was not all folly; like most men, he was a spiritual admixture. We look at
I. THE SINGULAR SPIRITUAL ADMIXTURE WE FIND IN HIM. The account we have of him is not a long one; it is contained in two or three short chapters, but in these we count seven wise and four foolish actions. We find him (see above)very wise in taking time and in consulting others before giving an important decision on a critical occasion; most foolish in heeding the counsel of the young men; foolish in sending his minister that “was over the tribute” amongst those who were complaining bitterly of their taxation (2Ch 10:18); wise in hearkening to and heeding the Divine prohibition of war (2Ch 11:4); wise in fortifying and storing the strongholds on the frontier (2Ch 11:5-12); wise in welcoming to Judah the priests and people whom Jeroboam had driven away; very foolish indeed in “desiring many wives” (2Ch 11:23) and in establishing so large a harem (2Ch 11:21); wise in choosing so many from the stock of David and in dispersing his sons about his small kingdom, where they could not quarrel among themselves, but be of some service to him; wise in “walking in the way of David” (2Ch 11:17); foolish in departing therefrom after three years of obedience.
II. THE SPIRITUAL ADMIXTURE THERE IS IN US. We find that good men have:
1. Those virtues and failings which seem to go together. They have, as we say, “the faults of their virtues.” With much strength and earnestness goes severity in the judgment of other people; with much meekness goes inactivity; with much vivacity and picturesqueness of style goes laxity, if not unveraciousness; with much good-naturedness goes carelessness, etc.
2. Failings which do not naturally accompany virtues. Of some good man whose general integrity we cordially acknowledge, whose excellency and usefulness (perhaps) we even admire, we have to admit reluctantly that he is very vain, or very proud, or very blunt, or very careless; or we have to confess that there is some other defect in his character, perhaps more than one shortcoming. In truth, we have to confront the truths, viz.:
1. That Christian character is an admixture. It is good not unmarked with evil; it is rectitude not without some occasional swerving to the right hand or to the left; it is rather an earnest aspiration or an honest and devout endeavour than a complete attainment; it is a battle that will end in victory, but it is not (yet) the victory; it is a race, and not the runner clasping the goal and receiving the prize.
2. That it behoves us to take heed how we judge. One failing does not unchristianize a character; it is what is in the depth, and not what is on the surface, that decides our position; the “spirit we are of,” and not the proprieties of behaviour.
3. That we do well to consider how much alloy is mixed with the pure gold of our own character.C.
HOMILIES BY T. WHITELAW
2Ch 11:1-4
A warlike expedition hindered.
I. THE KING‘S ARMY.
1. Whence collected. From Judah and Benjamin, or that portion of the latter which adhered to Judah.
2. Its place of rendezvous. Jerusalem, the metropolis of the southern kingdom. It was intended that the king’s forces should proceed from the capital.
3. The number of its force. A hundred and eighty thousand mena contingent of the army of Judah.
4. The character of its soldiers. “Chosen men, which were warriors;” picked veterans, because of the importance and difficulty of the expedition upon which they were about to be despatched.
5. The work for which it was designed. “To fight against Israel “against the ten or nine and a half northern tribes who had lately belonged to the same empire with them, and were still of the same race.
6. The ultimate aim of the expedition. To reduce Israel to subjection. Politically viewed, it was not wrong to aim at the conquest of Israel; only Rehoboam would have done well had he sat down calmly and considered whether he was able, with the help of one or two tribes at most, to overcome ten, with a population vastly larger and equally inured to war with those acknowledging his sway (Luk 14:32). Religiously examined, it is not so certain Rehoboam was pursuing a legitimate aim, seeing that under him, no less than under his father, the unbroken empire had forsaken Jehovah and declined into idolatries, which declension, besides, was the primal cause of the disruption that had taken place.
II. JEHOVAH‘S INTERDICT.
1. Through whom conveyed. “Shemaiah the man of God.” This prophet appears to have belonged to Judah (2Ch 12:15), and resided in Jerusalem; unlike Ahijah, whose home was in Ephraim (1Ki 11:29).
2. To whom delivered. “Rehoboam King of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin.” The Divine message was no doubt spoken in the palace to the king and his pnnces, and through them published to the assembled warriors.
3. In what terms issued.
(1) A prohibition: “Ye shall not go up” upon this expedition, “nor fight against your brethren;
(2) a command: “Return every man to his house;” and
(3) a reason: “For this thing is done of me,” saith the Lord. Thus to Rehoboam by Shemaiah, as to Jeroboam through Ahijah, was the intimation given that the disruption of the kingdom exactly accorded with the Divine purpose.
4. How received. In sub-minion and with obedience. Whether this prompt compliance with Heaven’s will was due, on the part of Rehoboam, his princes, and his army, to religion, humanity, or worldly policy, is not said by the Chronicler. They may have felt it would be dangerous to fight against God; or been touched by the consideration that the Israelites were, after all, their brethren; or calculated that prudence would be the better part of valour, seeing it was not self-evident they would succeed in their enterprise.
LESSONS.
1. The sinfulness of war, especially of civil war.
2. The paramount authority of God in civil and political, no less than in private and religious, affairs.
3. The presence of God’s finger in all social and national movements, in the establishment and overthrow of kings, in the permitting or hindering (as his wisdom determines) of civil strife, etc.
4. The wisdom of obeying God.W.
2Ch 11:5-17
The strengthening of a kingdom.
I. THE ERECTION OF FORTRESSES. (2Ch 11:5-12.)
1. Their object. To defend the frontiers of the kingdom, against both Israel on the north and Egypt on the south, for which last special need existed, considering the friendly relations which had subsisted between Jeroboam and Shishak. Shishak’s invasion, which soon followed, showed Rehoboam’s apprehensions not to have been baseless. Though wars are seldom justifiable, it is never wrong or unwise on the part of a prudent monarch to consult for the protection of his country and people.
2. Their names.
(1) In the land of Judah.
(a) On the southern frontier: Bethlehem, mentioned in Jacob’s time (Gen 35:19), two hours south of Jerusalem, the birthplace of David and of Christ (1Sa 16:1; Mic 5:1; Mat 2:5, Mat 2:11), now Beit-Lahm. Etam, a town probably between Bethlehem and Tekoa, the present village Urtas, south of Bethlehem, near which is the spring called ‘Ain Atan. Tekoa, now Tekua, “on the summit of a hill covered with ancient ruins, two hours south of Bethlehem” (Keil). Beth-zur (Jos 15:58), a town on the watershed, identified with the modern Beth-sur, a ruin midway between Urtas and Hebron.
(b) On the western boundary towards the Philistines: Soco (Jos 15:35), the present Shuweike in Wady Sumt, three hours and a half south-west from Jerusalem. Adullam (Jos 15:35), a very old Canaanitish town, that lay in the so-called Shephelah, or lowland, of Judah, probably to be identified with the present Deir Dubban, two hours north of Eleutheropolis. Gath one of the five chief towns of the Philistines (Jos 13:3), first subjected to the Israelites by David (1Ch 18:1), and under Solomon ruled by its own king, who paid tribute to the Israelitish throne (1Ki 2:39); according to the ‘Onomasticon,’ situated five Roman miles from Eleutheropolis, on the road to Dios-polis; otherwise not yet identified, though Conder looks for it in the direction of Tell-es-Safi. Mareshah (Jos 15:44), near to which Asa defeated the Ethiopian king Zemh (2Ch 14:9), according to Eusebius, lay two Roman miles from, and in all probability is to be sought for in, the ruin Merash, twenty-four minutes south of Beit Jibrin (Eleu-theropolis). Adoram, shortened into Dora (Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ 14.5. 3), is the present-day Dura, a village seven miles and a half west of Hebron, surrounded by olive-groves and corn-fields (Robinson). Lachish, in the lowland of Judah (Jos 15:39), is probably the present ruin Lakis, three miles west-south-west from Beit Jibrin, situated “on a circular height covered with ancient walls and marble fragments, and overgrown with thistles and bushes” (Robinson, Ritter, Keil; Pressel in Herzog, 8.157; Reihm, 1.876), though Conder prefers to find it in Tell-el-hesy, near Egion. Azekah (Jos 15:35), east of Ephes-dammim (1Sa 17:1), has not been discovered.
(c) On the border of the Edomites: Hebron, originally Kirjath-arba, i.e. the city of Arba, “a great man among the Anakims” (Jos 14:15; Jos 15:13; Jos 21:11), afterwards a settlement of the patriarchs (Gen 23:2; Gen 35:27), now called El-Khalil, “the friend of God,” in the hill country of Judah, seven hours from Jerusalem, one of the oldest towns of which we possess knowledge, having been “built seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Num 13:22). Ziph, probably in the hill country of Judah (Jos 15:55), to be looked for in the present ruin Tall Ziph, an hour and a quarter south-east of Hebron.
(2) In the land of Benjamin, as a protection against the north. Zorah (Jos 15:33), not Samson’s birthplace (Jdg 13:2), represented by the ruin Sura, ten Roman miles from Eleutheropolis, on the road to Nicopolis, but a place lying on a high peak of the northern slope of the Wadi-Serar. Aijalon, the present village of Jalo, on the verge of the plain Merj-ibn-Omeir, four leagues west of Gibeon. These last-named towns belonged originally to Dan, but after the disruption of the kingdom they appear to have fallen to the tribe of Benjamin.
3. The equipment of these strongholds. Captains were appointed, provisions laid up, and shields and spears stored up in every city (2Ch 11:11).
II. THE REFORMATION OF RELIGION. (2Ch 11:13-17.)
1. The priests and Levites out of all Israel returned to the temple. The occasion of this falling away from Jeroboam was that he and his sons had practically renounced the religion of Jehovah, had set up “high places” of his own in Dan and Bethel, where Jehovah was worshipped in the form of two ox-images, or golden calves, in imitation, most likely, of the images of Apis and Mnevis in Egypt, or of the “calf” made by Aaron in the wilderness, the notion of which doubtless was also borrowed from Egypt (1Ki 12:28). These calves and other images of animals the Chronicler calls she’erim (Hebrew), “devils” (Authorized Version), “he-goats” or “satyrs” (Revised Version), after which the Israelites had gone a-whoring in Egypt (Jos 24:14), and even in the wilderness (Le 2Ch 17:7; Amo 5:25, Amo 5:26). “In later times they appear to have connected with it [this worship] notions of goblins, in the form of goats, who haunted the wilderness and laid in wait for women” (Gerlach). Jeroboam, then, having set up this rival form of worship, had no further use for the regularly ordained priests and Levites, unless they would conform to the new cultus; and because they would not, he cast them out from their offices and would no more allow them “to sacrifice unto the Lord.” It says a good deal for their conscientiousness and courage that, rather than renounce what they believed to be the true religion, or worship God otherwise than according to their consciences, they cheerfully abandoned “their suburbs and possession”in modern phraseology, their residences and emoluments; Scottice, their manses and glebes. They were the first nonconformists in the northern kingdom.
2. The pious worshippers of Jehovah out o/ all Israel returned to Jerusalem. These are described:
(1) By their characters. “Such as set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel.” The essence of all religion is “to seek the Lord God of Israel,” in whose favour is life, and whose “loving-kindness is better than life” (Psa 30:5; Psa 63:3), the knowledge of whom is also life eternal (Joh 17:2). Nor can God be sought unless with the heart as distinguished from the mind, and with the whole as contrasted with a divided heart (2Ch 15:12; Psa 119:2, Psa 119:10; Jer 29:13). And even this is impossible without determination, energy, and perseverance on the part of him who desires to be religious (Psa 9:1; 2Ki 10:31; Act 11:1-30 :33).
(2) By their worship. They “came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord God of their fathers.” True religion cannot subsist alongside of false worship. A serious mistake it is to suppose that any form of expression will suffice as an outlet for pious feeling. God must be approached and served in the way and through the forms he has himself prescribed.
3. Rehoboam and his princes returned to the service of Jehovah.
(1) Their reformation was probably sincere so far as it went. But
(2) it did not go far enough. They did not abandon entirely the idol-worship of Solomon, but conjoined with it the service of Jehovah. And
(3) it was of short duration, lasting only three years (2Ch 11:17), i.e. so long as the fright of invasion was on them, but disappearing when all fear on that score was at an end (2Ch 12:1).
Learn:
1. The worthlessness to a kingdom of fortresses without religion.
2. The worthlessness to a person of religion without sincerity and truth.
3. The worthlessness to a state of a king without a God.
4. The worthlessness to either state or individual of goodness that is not permanent.W.
2Ch 11:18-23
A royal polygamist.
I. REHOBOAM‘S WIVES.
1. The number of them. In all eighteen wives and sixty concubines. Solomon had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines (1Ki 11:3). David even had more wives and concubines than was good for him (2Sa 3:2-5; 2Sa 5:13; 2Sa 12:8). Oriental monarchs generally had well-filled harems. Rameses II. had a hundred and nineteen children (sixty sons and fifty-nine daughters), “which gives ground for supposing a great number of concubines, besides his lawful wives”. Poly- gamy was also permitted to, and practised by, the monarchs of Assyria, whose palaces accordingly were guarded by a whole army of eunuchs Sayce, ‘Assyria, its Princes, Priests, and People,’ p. 129).
2. The chief of them.
(1) “Mahalath, the daughter of David’s son Jerimoth,” who was probably a son of one of David’s concubines, as Jerimoth is wanting in the list of David’s sons (1Ch 3:1-8); “Abihail, the daughter of Eliab, the son of Jesse” (1Ch 2:13), is not a second wife of Rehoboam’s (LXX.) as the words “which bare” (2Ch 11:19) and “after her” (2Ch 11:20) show, but Mahalath’s mother, who was thus David’s niece, as Mahalath’s father was David’s grandson. Mahalath was probably the first wedded of Rehoboam’s spouses.
(2) “Maachah, the daughter of Absalom.” Called also “Micaiah, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah” (2Ch 13:2), or of Abishalom (1Ki 15:2), Maachah was probably the daughter of Tamar, whose husband was the above Uriel or Abishalom, and whose father was Absalom (2Sa 14:27). If Mahalath was the first of Rehoboam’s wives, Maachah was the favourite, probably on account of beauty and fascinating manners inherited from her grandfather (2Sa 14:25; 2Sa 15:6).
II. REHOBOAM‘S CHILDREN.
1. The number of his sons. Twenty-eight, among whom were
(1) the sons of Mahalath, nowhere else mentioned, “Jeush, Shamariah, and Zaham,” men not distinguished for their own sakes, and hardly worthy of further notice for their father’s sake; and
(2) the sons of Maachah, “Abijah, or Abijam (1Ki 15:1), and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith,” of whom only the first emerged from obscurity. Rehoboam’s daughters are not named, but only numbered. In those days woman had not attained the place which was her due, and which has since been assigned her by Christianity.
2. The favourite amongst his sons. Abijah. Though not the firstborn, Rehoboam designated him as successor to the throne, no doubt to the injury and displeasure of the firstborn; but in doing so, if he obeyed not the Law (Deu 21:16), he at least followed the example of David, who preferred Bathsheba’s son Solomon to the throne, instead of his firstborn, Amnon the son of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess. He also made Abijah ruler among his brethren, set him at their head, appointed him as governor over them in the various state offices they held, and entrusted to him the crown treasures and the strongest cities (Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ 8.10. 1).
3. The treatment of his other sons. He “dealt wisely” with them.
(1) He dispersed them abroad among the different garrison cities, giving them commands in these, so that by their separation from one another and their occupation with military duties they might have neither time nor opportunity to conspire with Jeroboam, or any other monarch, against Abijah or himself.
(2) He provided for them abundant maintenance, i.e. a living suitable to their princely rank, so that no temptation to discontent might assail them. Rehoboam probably knew that if his sons had their bellies well filled their souls would be at ease.
(3) He sought for them many wives. Whether these were chosen out of the different districts where the sons held commands, in order to bring his sons into closer connection with the inhabitants of the same, the certainty is that the practice of polygamy in which he encouraged them would not tend to increase their warlike energy.
LESSONS.
1. The misery as well as sin of polygamy, leading as it does to divided affections and unjustifiable partialities.
2. The duty of dealing wisely with children, but not after the fashion of Rehoboam.W.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
3. THE KINGS OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH FROM REHOBOAM TO ZEDEKIAH.Ch. 1036
a. Rehoboam. The Prophet Shemaiah.Ch. 1012
. Revolt of the Ten Tribes from the House of David: 2Ch 10:1 to 2Ch 11:4
2Ch 10:1.And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for to Shechem was all Israel come to 2make him king. And when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard it, and he in Egypt, whither he had fled from the presence of Solomon the king, then Jeroboam returned out of Egypt. 3And they sent and called him: and Jeroboam and all Israel came; and they spake to Rehoboam, saying, 4Thy father made our yoke grievous: and now ease thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee. 5And he said unto them, Yet three days hence return unto me: and the people departed.
6And King Rehoboam took counsel with the elders that stood before Solomon his father when he was living, saying, How do you advise me to return answer to this people. 7And they spake unto him, saying, If thou be kind to this people, and please them, and speak good words to them, they 8will serve thee all thy days. And he forsook the counsel of the old men which they gave, and took counsel of the young men that grew up with him, who stood before him. 9And he said unto them, What do ye advise, that we may return answer to this people, who have spoken to me, saying, Ease thou the yoke which thy father put upon us? 10And the young men that grew up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou say unto the people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but do thou ease our yoke: thus shalt thou say to them, My little finger is thicker than my 11fathers thighs. And now my father laid a heavy yoke upon you, but I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
12And Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king had spoken, saying, Come again to me on the third day. 13And the king answered them roughly: and King Rehoboam forsook the counsel of 14the old men. And he spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy,1 but I will add thereto: my father 15chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. And the king hearkened not to the people; for the cause was of God, that the Lord might accomplish His word, which He spake by Ahijah of Shiloh to Jeroboam 16the son of Nebat. And all Israel saw2 that the king hearkened not unto them: the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; every man to your tents, O Israel: now look to thy house, David. And all Israel went to his tents. 17And the children of Israel that dwelt in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned 18over them. And King Rehoboam sent Hadoram,3 who was over the socage; and the sons of Israel stoned him with stones, that he died: and King 19Rehoboam hastened to get up into his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. And Israel revolted from the house of David unto this day.
2Ch 11:1 And Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, and assembled the house of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand chosen warriors, to fight with 2Israel, to bring back the kingdom to Rehoboam. And the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying, 3Speak unto Rehoboam son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, 4Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight with your brethren: return every man to his house; for this thing is come from me: and they hearkened to the words of the Lord, and returned from going against Jeroboam.
. Reign of Rehoboam: 2Ch 11:5 to 2Ch 12:16
5And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defence in Judah. 6, 7And he built Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa. And Beth-zur, and Socho, 8and Adullam. And Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph. 9And Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah. 10And Zorah, and Ajalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and Benjamin, fenced cities. 11And he fortified the strongholds, and put captains in them, and stores of food, and oil, and wine. 12And in every several city shields and spears, and made them very strong: and he had Judah and Benjamin.
13And the priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to him out of all their border. 14For the Levites left their suburbs, and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem: for Jeroboam and his sons had cast them off from executing the priests office unto the Lord. 15And he ordained him priests for the high places, and for the he-goats, and for the calves which he made. 16And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their heart to seek the Lord God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the 17Lord God of their fathers. And they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and upheld Rehoboam son of Solomon three years; for they walked three years in the way of David and Solomon.
18And Rehoboam took him to wife Mahalath, daughter4 of Jerimoth son of 19David, and of Abihail5 daughter of Eliab son of Jesse. And she bare him sons: Jeush, and Shemariah, and Zaham. 20And after her he took Maachah daughter of Absalom, and she bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith. 21And Rehoboam loved Maachah the daughter of Absalom more than all his wives and concubines: for he took eighteen wives and sixty6 concubines; and begat twenty and eight sons, and sixty daughters. 22And Rehoboam made Abijah son of Maachah the chief, to be ruler over his brethren: for he thought to make him king. 23And he dealt wisely, and distributed of all his sons in all the countries of Judah and Benjamin, unto all fenced cities; and gave them victual in abundance: and he desired for them many wives.
2Ch 12:1.And it came to pass, when Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and strengthened himself, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him. 2And it came to pass in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed against the Lord. 3With twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand riders: and the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt; Lubites, Succites, and Cushites. 4And he took the fenced cities which pertained 5to Judah, and came to Jerusalem. And Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam, and the princes of Judah that were gathered into Jerusalem before Shishak, and said unto them, Thus saith the Lord, Ye have forsaken 6me, and I also have forsaken you in the hand of Shishak. And the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves, and said, The Lord is righteous. 7And 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 soon grant them deliverance; and my wrath shall 8not be poured out upon Jerusalem by Shishak. But they shall be his servants: that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the lands.
9And Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the kings house; he took the whole; and he took the shields of gold which Solomon had made. 10And instead of them King Rehoboam made shields of brass, and committed them into the hand of the captains of the runners, who kept the entrance of the kings house. 11And when the king entered into the house of the Lord, the runners came and carried them, and brought them again into the chamber of the runners. 12And when he humbled himself, the anger of the Lord turned from him, and he would not destroy him altogether: and in Judah also there were good things.
13And King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned; for Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen to put His name there out of all the tribes of Israel: and his mothers name was Naamah the Ammonitess. 14And he did evil; for he did not direct his heart to seek the Lord.
15And the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not written in the words of Shemaiah the prophet, and of Iddo the seer for the register? and the wars of Rehoboam and Jeroboam were continual. 16And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David: and Abijah reigned in his stead.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark.The Chronist presents only the first section of the history of Rehoboam, relating to the revolt of the ten tribes and the division of the kingdom, in exact, mostly literal, agreement with the account of the books of Kings (comp. 2Ch 10:1 to 2Ch 11:4 with 1Ki 12:1-24). The proper history of his reign he treats with considerable enlargement, by the addition of several statements, wanting in the parallel text, concerning his building of forts, reception of the priests and Levites from the northern kingdom, and his family affairs (2Ch 11:5-23). He also reports at length the history of the invasion of Shishak, and the subjection of Rehoboam, and records the words spoken by the prophet Shemaiah at the divine command (2Ch 12:1-12; comp. 1Ki 14:25-28). He refers even to the notes of this Shemaiah as his source for this enlarged account (2Ch 12:15).
1. The Revolt of the Ten Tribes: 2 Chronicles 10; comp. the explanations of Bhr on 1 Kings 12 Here we have only to remark some deviations from the text of Kings.
2Ch 10:2.And when Jeroboam . . . and he in Egypt. 1 Kings: and he was yet in Egypt ( our narrator omits, because he had related nothing of Jeroboams flight from Solomon into Egypt; comp. 1Ki 11:26-40).
2Ch 10:5. Yet three days (wait). 1 Kings: Go () yet three days.
2Ch 10:14. On the reading deviating from 1 Kings, see the Crit. Note.
2Ch 10:15. For the cause was of God, literally, for it was a decree (turning) of God. Both and its parallel in 1 Kings are .
2Ch 10:16. And all Israel saw. If were to be cast out of the text, according to most ancient testimonies (see Crit. Note), it must be translated: and all Israel (or as to all Israel), when the king hearkened not unto them, the people answered.What portion have we in David? What have we to do with the house of David ? it may take care of itself. See again the fourth line of the strophically – arranged speech.
2Ch 10:18. On the probable identity of the taskmaster (Luther: receiver of rents) Adoram, or, as our author writes, Hadoram, with the Adoniram of 1Ki 4:6, see Bhr on 1Ki 12:18.
2Ch 10:19. Unto this day; comp. 1Ch 4:41; 1Ch 4:43; 1Ch 5:26, and the remarks in the Introd. 5, I. p. 16.
2. Prevention of the War of Rehoboam with Jeroboam by the Prophet Shemaiah: 2Ch 11:1-4. This incident also, that belongs to the history of the revolt of the ten tribes, is recorded by our author in substantial agreement with the author of 1 Kings; comp. 1Ki 12:21-24, and Bhr on the passage. Only to 1Ki 12:20 (Jeroboam is raised by the ten tribes, in solemn assembly, to the throne of the northern kingdom) no parallel is found in our text, because the Chronist sedulously avoids all particulars concerning the history of the kingdom of Israel.
2Ch 11:3. Speak unto Rehoboam . . . and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin. Observe the peculiar depth, almost New Testament (reminding us of Gal 6:16; Rom 2:29; Rom 4:12) depth of the sense which our author here attaches to the name Israel. It is otherwise, certainly, 2Ch 11:1, and again 2Ch 11:16 a, where he specially designates the northern kingdom by Israel; yet in 2Ch 11:16 follows immediately after the name Israel, again in that evangelical, deeper, and more universal sense; so 2Ch 12:1.
2Ch 11:4. For this thing is come from me, I have decreed the revolt of the disloyal tribes as a punishment for the disobedience of the house of David; comp. 2Ch 10:15. The there mentioned revelation by Ahijah the prophet of Jeroboam is here confirmed by Shemaiah the prophet of Rehoboam.And returned from going against Jeroboam. For this 1Ki 12:24 has: and turned home, according to the word of the Lord, a deviation arising perhaps from a mere omission in writing. Our text has probably the original; for the twofold mention of the word of Jehovah shortly after one another is somewhat drawling, leading us to suspect a corruption of the text.
3. Building of Forts by Rehoboam: 2Ch 11:5-12 (without parallel in Kings).And built cities for defence in Judah,, for a fort. Judah is here the name, not of the tribe (2Ch 11:10), but of the whole southern kingdom; for a part of the fifteen forts now to be named lay in Benjamin.
2Ch 11:6. And he built Bethlehem and Etam. That Bethlehem was a fort, for which it was fitted by its tolerably high situation on a rocky eminence, we learn only from this passage. On the here mentioned Etam, as different from the more southern one in the tribe of Simeon, see on 4:32. Tobler (Dritte Wanderung, etc., p. 89) has again pointed out our Etam in the Ain Attn, a side glen south-west of Urts, or Arts, the well-known starting-point of Solomons aqueduct for Jerusalem. For Tekoa, now Tekua, a hilltop covered with ruins, two hours south of Bethlehem, see the Expl. on Jos 15:59 and on Amo 1:1.
2Ch 11:7. For Beth-zur (now Beit-Sur, between Urts and Hebron), comp. Fay on Jos 15:58; for Socho (now Shuweike, three and a half hours south-west of Jerusalem) and Adullam (perhaps = Dula, six miles east of Beit-jibrin), see the same on Jos 15:35.
2Ch 11:8. Gath (comp. 1Ch 18:1; 1Ki 2:39); its situation is not yet exactly ascertained; it is perhaps near Ascalon, where is now found a Wady el Gat, north of the ruins of this city (K. Furrer, Wanderungen, etc., 1865, p. 133); according to others (for example, C. Schick) = the conical hill Tel Safieh in the Shephelah west of Ascalon.Mareshah = the later Marissa (between Hebron and Philistia) and the present Marash, a ruin twenty-four minutes south of Beit-jibrin or Eleutheropolis; comp. Fay on Jos 15:44; and for Ziph (on the hills of Judah, one and a quarter hour south-east of Hebron), comp. the same on Jos 15:24; Jos 15:55.
2Ch 11:9. Adoraim = the Iduman city , 1Ma 13:20, or , Josephus, Antiq.xiii. 15. 4, now Dura, two and a half hours west of Hebron (Robinson, iii. 209).Lachish = Um Lakish, on the road from Gaza to Hebron; comp. on Jos 10:3; Jos 15:39.Azekah, according to 1Sa 17:1, Jos 10:10, not far from Socho, but not yet fully ascertained.
2Ch 11:10. And Zorah and Ajalon, both originally (Jos 19:41) cities belonging to the tribe of Dan, which afterwards, on the migration of the Danites to North Palestine (Jdg 18:1), were probably occupied by the Benjamites, and thenceforth reckoned to the tribe of Benjamin. For the situation of Zorah, see on 1Ch 2:53; for Ajalon (now Jalo), the expositors on Jos 10:12. These two Benjamite cities are perhaps the most northerly of the fifteen cities fortified by Rehoboam. All the others, including Hebron, which closes the list (formerly Kiriath-arba, now el-Khalil, the ancient patriarchal city), lie south or south-west of Jerusalem, in the middle or south of the tribe of Judah. It follows, perhaps, from this position of the line of forts on the south border of the kingdom of Judah, and thus in the main directed toward Egypt, that Rehoboam began to establish them after the invasion of Shishak (Keil). So far as the arrangement of our section follows a material rather than a chronological principle of division, nothing seems to stand in the way of this assumption; but it can scarcely be reconciled with 2Ch 7:4; see on this passage.
2Ch 11:11. And he fortified the strongholds, put them in a good state of defence by nominating captains (), properly, princes, leaders), provisioning them and (2Ch 11:12) arming them properly.And he had Judah and Benjamin. This notice, forming the close of the statement concerning the measures of Rehoboam for the security of his kingdom, leads directly to the following section, which describes the Levitical and priestly followers of Rehoboam as flowing not merely from Judah and Benjamin, but from the whole kingdom.
4. Adhesion of the Levites out of all Israel to the Kingdom of Rehoboam: 2Ch 11:13-17as is to be expected, a notice peculiar to the Chronist, to which, however, the author of 1 Kings affords an indirect confirmation, in so far as he twice refers to the institution of a new non-Levitical priest-hood on the part of Jeroboam, 1Ki 12:31; 1Ki 13:33 f.And the priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to him, placed themselves before him to receive his commands, placed themselves at his disposal; comp. Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Zec 6:5.
2Ch 11:14. For the Levites left their suburbs, their commons or pasture grounds as in 2Ch 6:40 ff; 2Ch 13:2; Num 35:2-8).For Jeroboam and his sons had cast them off from executing the priests office. See the fuller account of the erection of the impure worship of Jehovah with a new non-Levitical priesthood in the kingdom of Jeroboam, 1Ki 12:26-31. By the sons of Jeroboam our passage naturally means his successors, none of whom rejected the impure worship which he had introduced. They were also in so far his sons in a spiritual sense, although, with the exception of his immediate successor Nadab, they belonged to other dynasties.
2Ch 11:15. And he ordained him priests. This continues the proof begun with the second in 2Ch 11:14.For the high places (in Dan and Bethel, 1 Kings12:), and the he-goats, etc., the idols of the form of he-goats, after the pattern of the Egyptian Pan, to whom, though not Jeroboam himself, yet his later successors, sinking into a still grosser idolatry, offered sacrifice; comp. Lev 17:7, whence the term is taken. The calves named in the third place are the representatives of Jehovah under the form of a calf, as Jeroboam (after the example of Aaron, Exodus 32) had made them, 1Ki 12:28, and as they retained their places of worship during the whole period of the northern kingdom in Dan, Bethel, and perhaps elsewhere. According to this state of things, the calves should properly have been named before the he-goats. That the author makes no note of the gradual sinking into grosser idolatry in the development of the northern kingdom, is explained by his theocratic zealous abhorrence of idolatry in general, the various forms and steps of which appear to him all equally bad.
2Ch 11:16. And after them such as set their heart, etc. On , comp. 1Ch 22:19. What is here related of the emigration of theocratic pious Israelites from the other tribes to Judah and Benjamin is repeated afterwards under Asa (2Ch 15:9) and Hezekiah (2Ch 30:11). That, moreover, the time during which the reign of Rehoboam gathered and attracted the true worshippers of Jehovah in other tribes amounted only to three years, and afterwards made way for an inclination to foreign and idolatrous customs (on which that accession of pious Israelites from the neighbouring kingdom ceased), is manifest from 2Ch 11:17; comp. with 2Ch 12:1 ff.
5. Domestic Affairs of Rehoboam: 2Ch 11:18-23; again without parallel in the books of Kings, and wanting also in the Syr. version of Chronicles (which arises merely from an oversight).Mahalath, daughter of Jerimoth. The name of the father-in-law of Rehoboam is wanting in the list of the sons of David (1Ch 3:1-8). might possibly be corrupted from , or be a by-form of this name; it is easier to suppose that he was one of the many sons of David by the concubines.And of Abihail daughter of Eliab son of Jesse. As necessary as the supply of the wanting before (see Crit. Note) is the taking of this name as the genitive, thus (contrary to the Sept. and Vulg., which rather make her a second wife of Rehoboam) as the name of the mother of Mahalath. For1. 2Ch 11:19 shows that only one wife of Rehoboam, the mother of the three there named otherwise unknown sons, should be named; 2. Along with the obscure father of Mahalath we expect the name of her mother, who is more celebrated, because she descends from Eliab the brother of David; 3. A daughter of Eliab the eldest brother of David (1Ch 2:13; 1Sa 17:13) could scarcely have been a wife of Rehoboam the grandson of David; even as granddaughter of Eliab (comp. 2Ch 11:20), Abihail suited better in age a son of David than a son and successor of Solomon.
2Ch 11:20. And after her he took Maachah daughter of Absalom. This second wife of Rehoboam is perhaps to be regarded, not strictly as the daughter, but the granddaughter of Absalom, the daughter of Tamar, the only daughter, and perhaps only child, of this unlucky prince; comp. 2Sa 14:27; 2Sa 18:18, and Josephus, Antiq.viii. 10. 1, as well as 2Ch 13:2 of our book.And she bare him Abijah. Only this first-born of Maachah, whose name, moreover, is constantly written Abijam () in 1 Kings, is more particularly known to us as the successor of Rehoboam; the three younger sons, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith, do not occur elsewhere.
2Ch 11:21. For he took eighteen wives (, as in 2Ch 13:21) and sixty concubines. On account of the number of daughters immediately after given as sixty, it is not improbable that Josephus, who tells only of thirty concubines, deserves the preference; comp. Crit. Note.
2Ch 11:22. To be ruler among his brethren; to this explanatory apposition to is added the following , as a further determination of that which the king meant by Abijahs elevation to be chief. On the breviloquence here, comp. Ew. 351, c.
2Ch 11:23. And he dealt wisely, and distributed of all his sons in all the countries of Judah and Benjamin; he showed his prudence as sovereign and as father by appointing his numerous sons as captains in the several forts of his kingdom, employing them usefully, and separating them from one another, to prevent any attempts at rebellion among them.And he desired for them many wives, made many marriages between them and the daughters of the land, both to make them contented and to make firmer connections between his house and the inhabitants of the land. The desiring or asking () of wives for his sons became him as their father and natural guardian: the author will scarcely charge him with an immoral, pimp-like gratification of the lusts of his sons.
6. The Invasion of Shishak: 2Ch 12:1-12; comp. the briefer narrative of 1Ki 14:25-28.And it came to pass, when Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and strengthened himself, literally, at the time of the establishing (, inf. act. with indefinite subject), and on the strengthening of him or it (, from the nom. verbale, strengthening; comp. 2Ch 26:16; Dan 11:2).He forsook the law of the Lord (by a partial falling into idolatry; comp. 1Ki 14:22 ff.), and all Israel with him, all the inhabitants of the southern kingdom, who are here, somewhat to their shame, designated Israelites; comp. 2Ch 12:6 and 2Ch 11:3.
2Ch 12:2. And it came to pass in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, thus soon but not immediately after his apostasy from the Lord. Concerning Shishak (= Sheshonk, Sesonchis, the first king of the 22d dynasty of Manetho), and the relievo proceeding from him, celebrating the present campaign against the Jews, and victory over Rehoboam, that probably exhibits Rehoboam himself among his captives, see Thenius on 1Ki 11:40, and Bhr on 1Ki 14:25.
2Ch 12:3. With twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand riders. In 1 Kings these data concerning the strength of the Egyptian army are wanting, though they are by no means incredible. Of the auxiliaries of Shishak, the Lubites () are certainly those Egyptian Libyans (the Libygyptii of the ancients) who are also named with the Egyptians in 2Ch 16:8, Nah 3:9, Dan 11:43, and from whom the Lehabim of the Mosaic table of nations are perhaps not different; comp. Knobel on Gen 10:13. The Succites () are, according to the Sept. and Vulg., troglodyt, cavedwellers, to which the Hebrew etymon seems to point, dwellers in holes of the earth, probably of Ethiopian origin, and inhabiting the mountains of Eastern Egypt. The Cushites are probably inhabitants of Ethiopia proper, that is, Abyssinia, as they are also named, Nah 3:9, as allies of Egypt (along with Put and Lubim).
2Ch 12:4. And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah; comp. 2Ch 11:5 ff. These may not yet have been very strong, or their works proved insufficient against the military force of Egypt; comp. on 2Ch 11:10.
2Ch 12:5-8. The Prophetic Mission of Shemaiah, and the consequent Submission of the Jews and Mitigation of their Punishment,a section quite wanting in 1 Kings.But I will soon grant them deliverance. , properly, for a little, that is, in, a short time, soon; comp. Ezr 9:8 (rightly Berth., Keil, etc., against Kamph., who translates: a small deliverance).And my wrath shall not be poured out upon Jerusalem by Shishak. No judgment of full extirpation shall overtake the capital; comp. 2Ch 34:25.That they may know my service and the service of the kings of the lands; that they may experience what a difference there is between the government of the Lord in the theocracy of Israel, and the so much more oppressive rule of heathen kings.On 2Ch 12:9-11, comp. Bhrs remarks on 1Ki 14:26-28.
2Ch 12:12. And when he humbled himself, literally, and in his self-humiliation. On the following elliptical phrase: , and not to destroy (did Jehovahs wrath turn itself), comp. the like breviloquence in 2Ch 11:12, and the passage there quoted from Ew.And in Judah also there were good things. This was a further motive to the Lord to restrain his wrath, in addition to the first motive, consisting in the repentance of Rehoboam.
7. Close of the History of Rehoboam: 2Ch 12:13-16 (comp. 1Ki 14:21-22; 1Ki 14:29-31).And King Rehoboam strengthened himself; comp. 2Ch 1:1; 2Ch 13:21; concerning the following note of age, which it seems necessary to change into twenty-one years, comp. Bhr on 1Ki 14:21.Naamah the Ammonitess, the daughter of the Ammonite King Nahash (1Ch 19:1), according to a probable note of the Sept. after 1Ki 12:24.
2Ch 12:14. For he did not direct his heart. For this phrase, comp. 2Ch 19:3; 2Ch 30:19; Ezr 7:10.
2Ch 12:15. Are they not written in the words of Shemaiah the prophet. On this quotation, and especially on the obscure phrase for the register (), see Introd. 5, II.And the wars of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, their smaller dealings and disputes, in which their continued hostile disposition showed itself; see Bhr on 1Ki 14:30.
EVANGELICAL AND MORAL REFLECTIONS ON CH. 1012
1. In the reign of Rehoboam, as the Chronist represents it, is signalized above all the tendency to keep the kingly ideal of David and Solomon pure from the dark stains of untheocratic opinion and destructive apostasy into idolatry. Some time after the beginning of his reign, this corrupt influence comes out distinctly and clearly, accompanied with divine punishments as its evil effect (2Ch 12:1 ff.), though in the first three years Rehoboam and his subjects walked in the way of David and Solomon (2Ch 11:17). Yet in the first half of the section, the account of the secession of the ten tribes under Jeroboam, several expressions betray the acquaintance of the author with the fact that corruption had begun already under Solomon. The polygamy and idolatry of this glorious king, and the consequent divine corrections and threatenings of punishment, he had not mentioned in his representation of the history of Solomon (comp. the Evangelical and Ethical Reflections on 2 Chronicles 1-9.). But now in Rehoboam there is express reference to that which had been prophesied on account of those errors of Solomon by Ahijah the Shilonite against him, and in favour of Jeroboam (2Ch 10:15; comp. 1Ki 11:29-39). And this part of our authors narrative indicates that his religious and moral fall had already been productive of many immediate evils in his kingdom, that his government had become latterly quite a misgovernment (comp. 1Ki 11:14 ff.), by the mention of the repeated request of the dissatisfied people: lighten the heavy yoke which thy father laid on us (2Ch 10:4; 2Ch 10:9-10; comp. 2Ch 12:15), and by the report of the words of the ten tribes betraying an already deepseated dissatisfaction with the previous government; What portion have we in David ? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse (2Ch 12:16). Thus, according to our author, the ideal time of David and Solomon closes with this, that it presents at last the germs of a growing and grasping corruption, while that which had to be recorded concerning it is first introduced in the section belonging to Rehoboam, and therefore chiefly in the form of an appendix to the already concluded history of Solomon. Indeed, to our author, the evangelical result of the reign of Solomon is simply that which is brought forward in 1 Kings 11. Along with a great outgrowth of public prosperity, we observe a gangrene commencing, that gnaws unceasingly, and destroys the religion of the people, the condition of their salvation, and this salvation itself. It becomes manifest that the peace, which a merely human ruler can give, bears in itself the germ of decay, that it brings with it temptations, which a lesser anointed of the Lord (like David or Solomon) cannot give the power to withstand. The result of the whole brilliant period is a Kyrie Eleison and an: O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down! (Hengstenberg, Gesch. des Reiches Gottes unter dem Alten Bunde, ii. 2, 146 f.)
2. Thus the Chronist partly only places Rehoboam, with respect to the beginning of his reign, in an unfavourable contrast with the brilliant reign of his father Solomon. In a certain respect (particularly with regard to the tendency to tyrannical cruelty and domineering pride; see 2Ch 10:10; 2Ch 10:14) he puts them on a par, and makes the son only gradually different from the father, by descending a step lower. So with regard to the further course of Rehoboams reign. At first Rehoboam continues the effort of his father, if not to enlarge, at least to establish the kingdom (comp. 2Ch 11:5-12 with 2Ch 1:14 ff., 2Ch 8:1-10, 2Ch 9:25-28). But certainly his fortifications are of no avail to ward off the war-storm bursting on the country from Egypt, no more than his defiant threat of a warlike attack could have hindered the dismemberment of the kingdom that still held together under his father (comp. 2Ch 10:15 ff., 2Ch 11:1 ff.). He likewise applied himself during the first three years of his reign to the theocratically pure and correct principles of government which were followed by his father, if not to the last yet during the greater part of his reign, with so much blessing to himself and his people. He thereby makes Jerusalem and the southern kingdom for a time the refuge and gathering-place of the pious worshippers of the Lord of priestly and non-priestly descent from the whole kingdom, and, so to speak, effects the transfer of the tribe of Levi to his sway, so far only as those of them who were scattered among all the tribes can find a settlement in Judah and Benjamin. But this attractive power in the sense of forming and consolidating a theocracy (2Ch 11:13-17) did not last long. After three years, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him (2Ch 12:1). What Solomon was able to do during at least two-thirds of his reign of forty years, to maintain the hearing heart and the true wisdom with which the Lord had endowed him, this Rehoboam was scarcely able to do during a sixth part of his reign of seventeen years. In this also he resembles his father; but he behaves much worse, and seems to surpass him in a bad sense. Hence he has to endure much greater shame and humiliation; for if the Lord had only to threaten Solomon thus: I will humble the seed of David, but not for ever (1Ki 11:39), this prophetic threat pronounced by Ahijah is now fulfilled in bitter earnest on him and his people (2Ch 12:2 ff.); and what the prophetic interpreter says in behalf of a right understanding of the misfortune that had befallen them (2Ch 12:7-8) is certainly not altogether comfortless, but at the same time not unconditionally promising. The punishment shall be mild, not of long endurance; but for a time its bitterness shall be required, that they may understand what it is to prefer the rule of a heathen king to the mild sway of God.
3. There is something peculiar in the position which the Chronist gives to the family history of Rehoboam (2Ch 11:18-23). He tells of his eighteen wives and sixty (or, if the number is to be reduced according to Josephus, thirty) concubines with objective candour, without adding a judgment unfavourable to the moral character of the king. While he passes with significant silence over the extravagant polygamy of the latter years of Solomon, to spare the great and wise king, and even thereby indicates the un-theocratic and immoral character of an immoderate harem, he seems to find the married life of Rehoboam not more offensive than that of David, of whom he expressly named at least seven lawful wives, and mentioned besides the possession of an indefinite number of concubines, without expressing any disapprobation. The manner also in which Rehoboam procured for his sons many wives from the daughters of the land (2Ch 11:23), he adduces merely as a proof of his prudent dealing, not in the tone of serious blame or moral disapprobation. He places this statement also before the account of his fall into idolatry, without noticing in the way of censure the manifest connection of the two things, the polygamy of himself and his sons, and his giving way to the worship of foreign gods. He almost appears, indeed, as afterwards in the case of Abijahs fourteen wives and thirty-eight children (2Ch 13:21), to have regarded the taking of many wives and begetting of numerous children as something laudable, serving to multiply and perpetuate the house of David. This manner of thinking is characteristic of the strict theocrats of the later times, that form the transition to the Pharisaic orthodoxy of the New Testament epoch (comp. Introd. 6). Because the law does not directly forbid polygamy, he readily allows on this point an almost unlimited compliance with the lusts of the flesh, while he censures with strictness the as it were only theocratic error of which the same king becomes guilty by falling into idolatry in the fourth year of his reign, as he had before shown his abhorrence of that still greater idolatrous error of the king and subjects of the northern kingdom in the strongest, indeed almost hyperbolical, terms (2Ch 11:15). We meet here the same rather externally orthodox than morally strict tendency, which our author discovers also in many other points. It is the ethically imperfect and crude, not yet evangelically consecrated and glorified, stage of the legal standpoint of the Old Testament, which is expressed in this lax position of the Chronist with regard to the custom of polygamy. New Testament statements, such as those relating to Moses regard to the hard-heartedness of the Jews, to the killing power of the letter of the law, to the shadowy and not essential character, to the weakness and impotence of the law (Mat 19:8; 2Co 3:6; Rom 8:3; Col 2:17; Heb 10:1, etc.), first receive their full light and deeper meaning by a phenomenon like this (comp. also Joh 1:17; Gal 2:16 ff; Gal 3:10 ff; Gal 4:3; Gal 4:9 ff.).
Footnotes:
[1]For , my father made heavy (so also 1Ki 12:14), the best mss. and some old prints (1 Soncin., Complut.): , I will make heavy your yoke, and will now add to it. Nordi, Berth., etc., give the latter reading the preference.
[2] is certainly wanting in most mss., in the old translations (Sept., Vulg, Chald., though not Syr. and Arab.), and in the older polyglots, but can scarcely be spared.
[3]For 1Ki 12:18 presents (comp. 2Sa 20:24). So also Sept. cod. Al. in our passage, whereas cod Vat. writes (comp. 1Ki 4:6), probably correct as to the fact; see Exeg. Expl.
[4]With the Keri, which alters into , agree several mss., as well as the Sept. and Vulg. (in the Syr. version the passage 2Ch 11:18-23 is altogether wanting).
[5]The before is certainly wanting in all copies of the Hebrew text, but was read by the Sept., and cannot be dispensed with.
[6]All the mss. and versions certainly testify to the number sixty; but internal grounds of probability speak for the number, given by Josephus, Antiq. viii. 10. 1, of only thirty concubines; comp. the Exeg. Expl.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This chapter is the continuation of the history of Rehoboam. He raiseth an army to subdue Israel. Is forbidden to go to war by Shemaiah. An account of his wives and children.
2Ch 11:1
From small beginnings what large things follow! Rehoboam’s preferring the counsel of young men to the old, laid the foundation of the revolt of the ten tribes of Israel from the house of David.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Divine Interposition
2Ch 11
HERE is a king who has made all his arrangements with regard to a certain issue, and as he stands in full equipment for his work it will be instructive to look upon the figure which he makes in history.
“And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against Israel [a number which does not appear too large according to 2Sa 24:9 ], that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam” ( 2Ch 11:1 ).
Everything is thus set in order, and if heaven helps men who help themselves, there can be no doubt as to the issue of this costly and portentous arrangement. Why does he lose time? With a hundred and eighty thousand chosen men at his command, why does he halt? He might strike, and in one blow win the victory: why does he not uplift his arm, and deliver the fatal and successful blow? Are there some things in life that are not seen? Are there forces that have no definite presence to the naked eye? Are there misgivings of heart? Are there spiritual impressions amounting almost to revelations? There must be: and all these spectral influences have had a wonderful effect upon human action, and upon the whole circle and movement of human progress. Let us call them impressions, curious feelings, incalculable forces; let us strip them of every taint of religious appearance and significance; still, there they are, and they must be accounted for, or left foolishly without any account or exposition. The Bible does not hesitate about the matter. With the frankness of honesty it tells the whole tale. The Bible is never afraid to mention the name of God. Truly it would appear as if it were the only book where he was at home. Other books apologise for him: introduce him with pomp that cannot be real; revere him with worship that must be artificial: but within the sanctuary of the inspired volume God comes and goes and moves with familiarity, with condescension, and yet ever so as to make men think more than they can say.
The explanation, therefore, is to be found in the second verse,
“But the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah [a prophet who is not mentioned again] the man of God, saying,… Ye shall not go up” ( 2Ch 11:2 , 2Ch 11:4 ).
Pity it is that God seems to allow us to go to such lengths, and then stops us just at the last moment. Everything has been completed, every sword has been whetted, every bayonet has been pointed, every ounce of powder has been flasked; and then he says, Stand still: return to your homes: this is a warfare not appointed in heaven, this is a controversy not signed by the name divine: return, and in silence repent of your folly. It is not a pity that such should be the case, although we have so said as a point of introduction. There is a pity in the arrangement, but it is not on the side of God. It is a pity that we did not consult God before we called the army together. He will be consulted at one end; he wishes to be consulted at the beginning, but if we will not consult him there we must consult him at the end. It is impossible but that the divine will must prevail. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths:” not, Mark out thy path, create for thyself a way, and when thou hast walked every mile of it ask his approbation upon it, be not surprised if then he turn suddenly round, and say in the stunned ear, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Our preparations amount to nothing if they are not inspired. All our education comes to smoke and wind if it be not an education derived from the altar and enriched with the wisdom of God. Send out a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men from academy and college and university, loaded with the blank cartridges of ten thousand certificates and testimonials: if the Lord is not in it he will send them all back again until he calls for their aid. Go not a-warfare at your own charges; run not the race in your own strength; take unto you the whole panoply of God, and gird yourselves in God’s presence before running one step professedly on God’s business. These great rebukes help us to understand a good deal of the solemnity of life. If the rebukes were little the lessons would be superficial. God allows us therefore to build the tower a long way up. If he overturned the first line or two of bricks we should think nothing of it: he permits us to rear the scaffold and to build quite up in the air, and to really begin to think that we may land in heaven; and then he throws down tower and scaffold and builders, and makes the men who thought themselves wise babble in foreign tongues. It is when he allows us to go a long way on the road, and then turns us back, that we begin to think happy we if we begin to pray.
“Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren” ( 2Ch 11:4 ).
Accommodating this expression, we may profitably reflect upon the impiety and the crime of brother fighting with brother in any of the relations of life. This is not a mere question of controversy, interchange of opinion, or conflict of judgment; all this is permissible between the dearest friends; the fighting that is meant is a fight of the soul, a mutual hatred, a deadly animosity, a thirst for each other’s blood. We see the vividness of this exhortation when we limit it to two brothers according to the flesh; then how horrible the fratricidal war, how detestable is the spirit that tears one heart out of the embrace of another; thus through the individual we proceed to the race, and through the race even in its social relations we proceed to that higher brotherhood which is independent of place and time and which best represents God’s idea of humanity. It is the province of Christ to show that all men are brethren; terms that have been belittled or narrowed or confined within their easily measurable bounds are taken up by Christ and amplified into their proper meaning and responsibility. Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. Jesus Christ does not come to make little narrow relations of human nature; all these he regards in their proper magnitude and at their proper value, but he seeks to extend the meaning of that which is eternal and local so as to include that which belongs to the whole race and to all lands and times. The first murder was fratricidal. Murder is always a supreme wickedness against God, but when it is the murder of brother by brother it reaches a height of aggravation and perfidy, for which there are no adequate words. The exhortation against fratricidal conflict in a natural or political sense acquires additional significance and pathos in all its moral and spiritual applications. How pitiable is the aspect presented to outsiders when one Christian communion is in conflict with another, and especially when the conflict arises out of differences which are comparatively microscopic and trivial. We are continually exhorted to love as brethren. Jesus Christ makes our mutual love into an argument or a persuasive, desiring in his intercessory prayer that all his disciples might be one, in order that the world seeing their unity might glorify the God of all. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” When the observing world sees the love manifested by the Church of Christ, it may not be able to understand metaphysical theology, or to accept formulated opinion and dogma, but it will be constrained to say, See how these Christians love one another: these men have been with Christ, and have learned of him. Thus it lies within the power of all men to contribute somewhat to the practical and persuasive argument of Christianity.
“So they strengthened the kingdom [not only in an addition of physical strength to the southern kingdom, but in an increase to its moral vigour] of Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong, three years [i.e. during the first three years of Rehoboam’s reign. In the fourth year an apostacy took place, which neutralised all the advantages of the immigration (see chap. 2Ch 12:1 ). In the fifth the apostacy was punished by the invasion and success of Shishak ( 2Ch 12:2 )]; for three years they walked in the way of David and Solomon” ( 2Ch 11:17 ).
Is it about that time that men’s strength gives way, and they begin to long for some other path? Is there about a three-years’ staying power in the strongest of us? Does the strength give out then? and do apostles who watch us say, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you? “For three little years they walked in the way of David and Solomon. We do not despise the three years, but we are tempted to wonder at the men who could have three years’ approximate good character, and then turn away again. We wonder at the man who can abstain three years from drinking “liquid damnation,” and then can begin again his evil course. We do wonder at a man who can read and think and study three years, and then run and join the weltering society of fools. How is it with the soul in this matter of three years? The first year was difficult, the second less difficult, the third was comparatively without difficulty: was it when the difficulty ceased that the old desire returned? Was it when we were about to master the pain of discipline and enter into the liberty of franchise that we bethought us of the flesh-pots of Egypt, and yearned and hungered and thirsted for things forbidden? We thought surely that three years would see an end of the devil within us. Is he dead or only sleeping? Are we just as corrupt as we ever were, only the varnish is thicker? Better be severe and real in our inquiry, and get at facts, than look only at the polish, and not understand the nature of the heart which is thus bedizened and befooled.
There is such a thing as temporary good behaviour; but by temporary good behaviour many men have attained to good conduct that has been permanent. There have been trembling men who have taken some holy pledge for three months. They were not to be sneered at, but to be encouraged. Had we driven them to take the pledge for life, they could not have signed the oath, but they crawled and crept before they stood up to walk: at the end of the three months, friends have said, Why not renew the pledge, say for six months? and the temporariness of the bond has been the success of the appeal. Have not some parents said to sons, Promise to attend the church for one twelve months? Have we not heard a godly parent say, My son has promised to attend the Christian service for one year? and has not the parental countenance beamed with sacred radiance as the promise has been announced? We are, therefore, to conduct ourselves with moderateness and great delicacy of feeling towards men who have said they would try the way to heaven for a year. Who can tell what may happen in that sunny year? Who knows what flowers may be found by the roadside, what birds may sing in the balmy air, what new friendships may be made, what new desires may be inspired and consolidated? Let us have hope in those who have taken a pledge to be better, though in some mechanical way only for three days, three months, three years. A critical time it is no doubt when the last day has come of the allotted space. How hearts at home have quaked, lest that last day should be the farewell of household peace and love and trust! The case has been so delicate that not a word could be said regarding the lapse of time: perhaps the man who took the solemn oath does not know it is the last day, and who would tell him that his time is about expiring? for he is not a prisoner longing to be released, but a free man afraid that his liberty may be violated or abridged. How many poor hearts have sunk in deadly fear lest when the pledge be it what it may having been honourably fulfilled as to time, may be abandoned as to discipline! Three years of experimental goodness ought to be three years of personal consolidation. To get three years ahead of the enemy ought to be a great advantage. The doctors say that it requires three years to get drink really out of a man’s system, and no man is safe until he has quite passed the line of three years; then the last flickering ember may have died; then the angels may say, Another free man! Are we nearing the lapse of our holy pledge? Is any parent afraid lest tomorrow may see his eldest son, his firstborn child, going back to bondage! These critical times in life are the making of life when they are really seized aright as to their spirit and highest significance. Sometimes we have to share the burden of those whom we encourage in temporary goodness. Have we not heard a friend say joyously, that if we promised to take the pledge along with him he would take it? But the friend had no need of pledges a strong, wise, clear-headed man, who knew exactly the measure and reckoning of things; yet he said, I will be a kind of surety for him; it may be that my sacrifice will have an influence upon his probity, and thus a weak man may be nursed into a strong one. “By all means save some;” by no means ever sneer at a man who wants to be better if even for twenty-four hours.
Prayer
Thy will be done. Death is not in thee, thou living One. There is no grave in heaven; there is no night there much less death; even the first shadow is not allowed to darken the land, how, then, shall the great death-gloom spread over it, and fill it with sevenfold night? In thy land of rest there is no night, no death, no sin, no sea, no need of the candle, no need of the sun nor of the moon: for the Lamb is the light thereof. He said, “I am the light of the world.” He is the light of all worlds, and the light of all ages, and in him is no darkness at all. We call him, Lord, Saviour, Son of man, Son of God, God the Son, the express image of that which is to us invisible. We desire that thou, Father of us all, wouldst take into thy care all our life. We mismanage all things: we kill the flowers that we pluck; it is in God only to do that which is for ever good and right. Not our will, but thine, be done: put us upon the mountain, or locate us in the vale, where thou wilt, thou knowest our number upon thine own register: thou knowest where to find us: how to send the angels to us, and how to increase the light as our vision is able to bear it. We would live and move and have our being in God. The Lord hear us at the cross; and to our poor speech, full of sin and need, and always of supplication for something more, do thou listen in the name of Jesus, and answer in the mystery of the love of his cross; so that, where our prayer fails, thine answer may be multiplied; and where speech and song and adoration abound, may thy reply much more abound. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
II
THE DISRUPTION AND SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
1Ki 12:1-24
At the close of the introductory chapter we were considering the causes of the division, remote and near. I had not quite concluded that subject. The one man most to blame for this division was Solomon. The overruling cause was God. This was announced to Solomon, 1Ki 11:9-13 , as follows: “And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from the Lord, God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice. And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he kept not that which the Lord commanded. Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but I will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen.” Mark that one tribe.
God’s purpose was announced to Jeroboam with the conditions, 1Ki 11:27-40 , “And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon saw the young man that he was industrious, and he gave him charge over all the labor of the house of Joseph. And this was the cause that he lifted up his hand against the king. And it came to pass at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; now Ahijah had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in the field. And Ahijah laid hold of the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces [mark the 12 pieces]. And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee: (but he shall have one tribe, for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel) because that they have forsaken me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the God of Moab, and Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon; and they have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father. Howbeit I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I will make him prince all the days of his life, for David my servant’s sake, whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes: but I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand, and give it unto thee, even ten tribes. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen me to put my name there. And I will take thee, and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and shalt be king over Israel.”
Now mark the conditions: “And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that which is right in mine eyes, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I will be with thee, and will build thee a sure house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee. And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not forever. Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam; but Jeroboam arose and fled into Egypt, unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon.”
In pursuance of this overruling of God, an enemy did he raise up from the south against Solomon, 1Ki 11:14 ; 1Ki 11:21-22 : “And the Lord raised up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was of the king’s seed in Edom. And when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers, and that Joab the captain of the host was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country. Then Pharaoh said unto him, But what hast thou lacked with me, that, behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country? And he answered, Nothing: howbeit let me depart in any wise.” When Joab made war on Edom and almost extirpated the nation, one little boy this boy Hadad was saved. His mother and some friends got him into Egypt, and there he wag raised up. Now, that is enemy number two; Jeroboam was the first.
An enemy was also raised up from the north by the Lord. In 1Ki 11:23 ; 1Ki 11:25 we read: “And God raised up another adversary unto him, Rezon the son of Eliada, which had fled from his lord Hadadezer king of Zobah. And he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon, beside the mischief that Hadad did: and he abhorred Israel and reigned over Syria.” Mark the rise of the Syrian government on the north; we will have a good deal to do with it in the history in connection with this man Rezon and his successors. Now, here are three men, and when a man has three deadly enemies he must walk prudently. From this northern enemy arose the Syrians.
The immediate occasion of the division was a great popular assembly of the whole nation, called to meet at Shechem, one of the holy places in the tribe of Ephraim, to consider the question of the kingdom; the immediate cause of the disruption took place at that popular assembly, which we will bring out more particularly. The law of selecting kings was as follows: First, God must appoint him. Second, the people in popular assembly must approve. That was not an absolute monarchy: it was both a monarchy and a democracy. The great congregation of Israel, the Jewish ecclesia or church, had a potential voice in public affairs. The proof of this is seen in the fact that the popular assembly approved Saul, David and Solomon, after God had appointed them. The reader will find that a great popular assembly met at Mizpeh (1Sa 10:17-21 ), and in that assembly the people ratified God’s choice of Saul as king. Then when God made David king a great popular assembly came together at Hebron (2Sa 5:1-3 ; 1Ch 2:1-3 ) and ratified the divine choice. When Solomon was made king this popular assembly was held at Gihon (1Ki 1:38-40 ). So we see that these assemblies were customary in order to commit the people by voluntary act to God’s appointment. We find in Exo 19 that the popular assembly voted to enter into covenant with God. So we must not consider this convocation at Shechem as an irregular or unusual proceeding. Shechem, the place of the assembly, was a notable place in Jacob’s time, and long after Jacob. It has long been a holy place and was situated in the hill country of Ephraim.
When Solomon died the tribes sent to Egypt for Jeroboam to come back. I have showed the great capacity and industry of this spokesman. He belonged to the tribe of Ephraim; and the prophet of the tribe of Ephraim at Shiloh had announced to him that he would be king of the ten tribes. Inasmuch as he had been assessor and collector over Ephraim and Manasseh, he had ample opportunity to get acquainted with the people, to know exactly what their burdens were under the Solomon rule, and they admired him very much. So it was quite natural that when this great assembly was held in the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, Jeroboam should be brought back to be the spokesman. And I am surprised in view of the prophecy made by Ahijah that the tribes were so temperate in that public meeting.
The proposition of the tribes to Rehoboam was as follows: “If you will lighten somewhat the burdens put on us by your father, we will serve you and will ratify your divine nomination as king.” They had a real grievance; Solomon had imposed onerous taxes for the purpose of luxury) vainglory, and to pamper his heathen wives. It was a very just grievance; and they proposed only that the burden be lightened somewhat. Now, we may not expect a popular assembly to consent to being governed by a man who disregards their interests. Rehoboam said, “I will take it under advisement three days.” That was a very wise thing to do. So he utilized the three days in seeking advice. First, he applied to the old men, the counsellors of his father. That also was a thoughtful thing to do. Action belongs to young men, but counsel belongs to old men; old men have more experience, and they are not apt to think that they have the world in a sling as young men are wont to do.
The parallel texts show a verbal difference in the counsel of the old men. 1Ki 12:7 says, “If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and will serve them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants forever.” That is, the old men counseled reciprocal service; the king must serve the people if he wants the people to serve him. Now the idea of serving does not appear in the Chronicles’ account, but the “good words” does; about the serving 2Ch 10:7 says, “If thou be kind unto these people, and please them, and speak good words then they will be thy servants,” but I stand upon what is said in Kings. No man need expect to be a ruler of a free people in a tyrannical sense; he is not there for his own good: he is there to serve the people, and whether he be a policeman, a constable, a judge, a legislator, a governor, or president, if he does not render equitable service to the people, he is not entitled to the respect of the people. That goes with all offices; that is the principle, and those were wise old men who gave that advice.
Now, if he had said to those people, “It is evident that these burdens on you are too heavy, and that the kingdom is not carried on sufficiently in your interest, and you have as much right to the protection of the king as he has to expect your cooperation,” the matter would have been ended. But Rehoboam, raised up in that cosmopolitan, luxurious court of his father, in which the very air of the foreigner was breathed, and imbued with the ideas of Oriental despotism absorbed even in his youth, turned away from these old men and went to the young courtiers, the young fellows brought up with him, and said, “What do you say that I should reply to this popular assembly?” If ever on earth the folly of youth appears, it is in the suggestion of these young men. They looked on a king as a despot, as absolutely owning the people under him. Their counsel virtually was this: “Do not commence your reign with compromise and weak conciliation. Be a master. Speak roughly. Tell them plainly you will add to, instead of lightening, their yokes; that your little finger will be heavier than your father’s loins, and whereas he chastized them with whips you will chastize them with scorpions.”
What is the meaning of “chastize with scorpions”? There were two kinds of whipping: one with scourges, generally made with twisted leather or rods. The other was a stiff handle with ten or twelve leather thongs attached to it, pointed with pieces of wire crooked like fish hooks at the end of each piece of leather, like the “cat-o’-nine-tails” in the navy, or the Russian Knout. To strip a man and bring that iron-pointed whiplash down on his naked back, every stroke would cut into his flesh in ten or twelve places. That is whipping with a scorpion.
The reply of the ten tribes when that scorpion whip was held up was the very war cry of Sheba’s rebellion: “What portion have we in David? Neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents O Israel: now see to thine own house, David.” Well, that is a very natural response. Any popular assembly would have responded like that. Patrick Henry said that the colonies had exhausted every method of seeking redress of grievances; that they had prostrated themselves at the foot of the throne; that they had tried petition and argument, and in response to their petitions they had been spurned from the foot of the throne; instead of favors, fleets and armies had been sent to darken the waters and overshadow the land. What was their reply to a tyrannical throne? It was an appeal to arms from New England to Georgia. So Israel departed to their own tents.
The first attempt to enforce union was when Rehoboam sent his deputy, Hadoram, to go right on and collect the tribute, and when this collector came to enforce collections, they simply stoned him to death; that was their reply. The second attempt was when Rehoboam assembled an army of 180,000 men like England assembled her armies but before the battle commenced God’s prophet, Shemaiah, came and forbade this war against their brethren, and announced that this division was of the Lord; that he overruled it. Thus the voice of God prevented an attempt to coerce a union.
The revolting ten tribes were Ephraim, Manasseh, Reuben, Gad, Dan, Issachar, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Benjamin. Now doubtless some one will come back at me with the question: How is that? Benjamin was a part of the army Rehoboam raised. Yes, part of Benjamin was living in Judean cities a small part of the tribe lived in Jerusalem but the bulk of the tribe of Benjamin went with the ten tribes. Now there is Judah on one side and those ten tribes on the other side; that makes eleven tribes. Where is the twelfth tribe, Simeon? My answer is that his territory was inside of the territory of Judah, and when we say Judah we mean Judah and Simeon. How, then, does the division go? On one side is Judah including Simeon and a part of Benjamin, the city of Jerusalem and five miles around it to the north, including such of the ten tribes as dwelt in the territory of Judah. They came down to the Temple service, and finding it convenient, made their homes there. The record says in 2Ch 10:17 , “But as for the children of Israel that dwelt in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them.” So there were two tribes and certain parts of tribes in Judah.
Now, that still does not account for one tribe. There were originally thirteen tribes, but God took the tribe of Levi to himself and made up the original number of twelve tribes by giving Joseph two tribes Ephraim and Manasseh. What about the tribe of Levi? My answer is that the tribe of Levi was distributed in the Levitical cities all over the whole territory. That was God’s tribe, and we will learn in the next chapter that the Levites went with the tribe of Judah, solid. Indeed we learn a remarkable piece of Judaic history in the next chapter with reference to these Levitical cities. When Jeroboam established his government and worship and created a priesthood out of the common people anybody the Levites who were distributed in all the cities all over the country, abandoned the ten tribes and sided with Judah forever. So now we have Judah, Levi, Simeon, a part of Benjamin and a resident part of the population of Israel living in Judah. In the following history we will see large secessions from Israel to Judah.
The ten tribes got all of that big territory east of the river Jordan, including Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh; then they got from the northern point of the Dead Sea straight across the Mediterranean Sea, allowing Judah about five miles north of Jerusalem. Even Jericho fell to the ten tribes. There remained to Judah a little bit of a county affair; it was only five miles from Jerusalem to the northern line, and only about twenty miles in any other direction that they were enabled to hold. Rehoboam’s circuit of fifteen fortified cities really delimited on the south and west. Most of the schools of the prophets were in the Northern Kingdom. But all through this history we will see that there is a steady stream of the ten tribes coming back to Judah. That is one of the things that Chronicles particularly notices.
The period of the divided kingdom was about 253 years. Only one dynasty reigned in Judah, the line of David; there were never any changes. There were nine dynasties in Israel. The ten tribes were always changing. They commenced with Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and his son, and then all his family was killed. The second was Baasha and his son, Elah, and they were all killed; third, Zimri, and he was killed; fourth, Omri; there were two claimants, a man named Tibni contested with Omri. Omri had three successors in his family, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram. The fifth dynasty was Jehu. He killed every man, woman, and child that belonged to the family of Omri. Jehu had the longest dynasty of any of the northern kings: Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II and Zechariah. The sixth dynasty was Shallum. He held the fort but one month. The seventh dynasty was Manahem and his son Pekahiah, succeeded him. The eighth dynasty was Pekah: he was killed. The ninth dynasty, and the last, was Soshea, and he was led away into captivity. Note the great difference: there was no settled government of the ten tribes throughout the period of all the 253 years, and not a good king. There were only three dynasties of the Northern Kingdom which were history makers: the dynasties of Jeroboam I, Omri, and Jehu. We will have a great deal to do with those three dynasties.
Certain prophets are named, some of whom wrote canonical books of the Bible. In the Northern Kingdom the following prophets are named: Ahijah, Jehu, Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Oded. Three of them wrote Bible books: Jonah, Amos, and Hosea. Some of the prophets north and south are unnamed. The prophets of the Southern Kingdom before the fall of Israel, who are named, were Shemaiah, Iddo, Azariah, Hanani, Jehu, Jahaziel, Eliezer, Obadiah, Joel, Zechariah (not the postexilian prophet), Isaiah, and Micah. Of these four wrote canonical books: Obadiah, Joel, Isaiah, Micah. In Israel where were the schools of the prophets they far exceeded by the hundreds. In both kingdoms they were the very life of the nation. They were the historians, poets, orators, reformers the very voice of God to the conscience of king and people.
The difference in the attitude of the prophets in the two kingdoms toward the kings is very marked. In the Northern Kingdom every prophet was against the kings, except one and he only a part of the time. The Northern Kingdom was always against God, and the prophets were always for God, and we see a fight between the prophets and the kings. Now, in the Southern Kingdom, four-fifths of the time the prophets and the kings worked together. That is a remarkable difference. The one notable exception in the Northern Kingdom was Elisha. Of the prophets named Jonah was a foreign missionary. Here the question of the ten tribes comes up. Were the ten tribes lost and what is the proof? I say the proof is found in the secessions from Israel to Judah and the later references to the several tribes. Hosea and Amos of the Northern Kingdom foretold the recovery of the ten tribes. See Hos 1:10-11 ; Hos 3:4-5 ; Amo 9:7-15 .
One comment closes the record of most of the northern kings: “And he walked in the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he caused Israel to sin.” We will find a sin bigger than the sin of Jeroboam after a while in the Northern Kingdom.
Judah had great advantages. First, it had the Temple and its services and its feasts. Second, it had the priests and Levites, we may say, the teachers; they were the great scholars. Third, it had the undying promise of God that the line of David should never fail.
QUESTIONS
1. What one man was most to blame for the division of the Kingdom?
2. What was the overruling cause?
3. How was this announced to Solomon?
4. How was God’s purpose announced to Jeroboam, and what conditions thus stated?
5. In pursuance of this overruling of God, what enemy did he raise up from the south against Solomon and what of his history?
6. What enemy was raised up from the north by the Lord?
7. What nation arose from this northern enemy?
8. What was the immediate occasion of the division?
9. What law of selecting kings?
10. What proof that this was the law of selecting kings?
11. Who was the spokesman of the ten tribes in this popular assembly and what his special qualifications for this duty?
12. What proposition of the ten tribes to Rehoboam, what his immediate answer and what the wisdom of such a course?
13. What counsel of the old men and what its merits?
14. How did Rehoboam regard this counsel and what course did he pursue?
15. What is meant by “chastize with scorpions”?
16. What was the reply of the ten tribes to the threat of chastisement with scorpions and what example in modern history?
17. What was Rehoboam’s first attempt to enforce union and what was the result?
18. What was his second attempt and what its result?
19. What the revolting tribes and of what did Judah consist? Explain fully.
20. What were the geographical limits of the two divisions?
21. To which side were adherents always coming from the other side?
22. How long the period of the divided kingdom?
23. How many and what dynasties in Judah?
24. How many and what dynasties in Israel?
25. What three dynasties of Israel were history makers?
26. What prophets are named in each kingdom and who of them wrote canonical books of the Bible?
27. What difference in the attitude of the prophets in the two kingdoms towards the kings?
28. What one notable exception in the Northern Kingdom?
29. Which of the prophets named was a foreign missionary?
30. Were the ten tribes lost and what the line of argument?
31. What prophets of the Northern Kingdom foretold the recovery of the ten tribes and what the passages?
32. What one comment closes the record of most of the northern kings?
33. What great advantages had Judah?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
2Ch 11:1 And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen [men], which were warriors, to fight against Israel, that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam.
Ver. 1-4. See on 1Ki 12:21-24 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2 Chronicles Chapter 11
Rehoboam would fight (2Ch 11 ), but God hinders him. It was his fault, and it did not become him to fight. God never hindered the other kings, that I recollect, from fighting with Israel similarly; but Rehoboam must not fight. He that is guilty of a fault is not the man that can well or righteously reprove another. At any rate, he must be thoroughly brought down about his own fault before he is in a moral condition to do it. Rehoboam was, therefore, disciplined of the Lord in that his hands were tied and he was not permitted even to punish his rebellious subjects; but he has the sorrow of seeing his people leaving him, although there were the priests and Levites for a while, and faithful Israelites, who still resorted to Jerusalem to sacrifice there.
He was not left without some consolation from hearts in whom allegiance to the king shall not die away. “He loved Maachah,” it is said, “the daughter of Absalom, above all his wives and his concubines: (for he took eighteen wives, and three-score concubines; and begat twenty and eight sons and three-score daughters. And Rehoboam made Abijah, the son of Maachah, the chief, [to be] ruler among his brethren: for [he thought] to make him king. And he dealt wisely, and dispersed of all his children throughout all the countries of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced city: and he gave them victual in abundance. And he desired many wives.” vv. 21-23.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Benjamin. See 1Ki 11:36.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Let us read, for our instruction, part of the story of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.
2Ch 11:1-4. And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and Benjamin an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against Israel, that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam. But the word of the LORD came to Sheniuiah the man of God, saying, Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren: return every man to his house: for this thing is done of me. And they obeyed the words of the LORD, and returned from going against Jeroboam.
So far, so good. There was some degree of the fear of God in the minds of men when, at the bidding of a single prophet, a king would disband his troops, and cease from war.
2Ch 11:5-15. And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defense in Judah. He built even Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, and Bethzur, and Shoco, and Adullam, and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, and Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin fenced cities. And he fortified the strong holds, 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, having Judah and Benjamin on his side. And the priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to him out of all their coasts. For the Levites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem: for Jeroboam and his sons had cast them off from executing the priests once unto the LORD; and he ordained him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made.
No wonder, therefore, that Rehoboams kingdom was strengthened by the advent of these men, who were, doubtless, the best men in the whole country, men who feared the Lord,-men who knew the law, and who knew how to teach the people what they should do.
2Ch 11:16. And after them out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came to Jerusalem, to sacrifice unto the LORD God of their fathers.
Birds of a feather flock together, so those in Israel who feared the Lord went where their ministers had gone; this movement would bring about an emigration of some of the best of the population, to reside near to the sacred shrine where Jehovah was worshipped; and it must have tended still further to the strengthening of Rehoboams little kingdom.
2Ch 11:17. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong, three year: for three year they walked in the way of David and Solomon.
That was well while it lasted; but, alas! it did not continue long.
This exposition consisted of readings from 2Ch 11:1-17; 2 Chronicles 12.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
2Ch 11:1-4
2Ch 11:1-4
THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF REHOBOAM’S REIGN;
REHOBOAM PREPARES FOR WAR
“And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled the house of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, that were warriors, to fight against Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam. But the word of Jehovah came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying, Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren: return every man to his house; for this thing is of me. So they hearkened unto the words of Jehovah, and refrained from going against Jeroboam.”
It was impossible for Rehoboam to recover from the stupid blunder he had already made. If he had proceeded against Jeroboam, the strong probability is that Jeroboam would have defeated him and brought an even greater disaster upon Rehoboam and Jerusalem. See the parallel account in 1Ki 12:21-24.
REHOBOAM’S BUILDING PROGRAM
The Chronicler accepted the renunciation of Northern Israel regarding their having “no inheritance in the son of Jesse” (2Ch 10:16), and proceeded to ignore the northern kingdom altogether, except where their history involved Judah. He turned his attention to recording the progression of the southern kingdom’s rulers, in some instances, giving a more complete report than we found in Kings. Examples of this are in this chapter.
E.M. Zerr:
2Ch 11:1. It seems that Rehoboam had not yet learned his lesson. The disastrous experience of his treasurer should have made him know that the 10 tribes were lost to him. He did not realize it though, and made preparations for war with a view of forcing the tribes back under his rule.
2Ch 11:2-4. Man of God was one of the special names for a prophet. Instead of speaking directly to Rehoboam, God spoke to him by this prophet. (Heb 1:1.) The division of the nation into separate kingdoms was ordained by the Lord as a punishment for the sin of idolatry, according to the prediction of Ahijah. (1Ki 11:30-35.)
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Then God interfered. No human folly has even been permitted to continue long enough to thwart His purpose. Shemaiah, a prophet of God, declared to Rehoboam that the revolt was in the divine plan. Rehoboam immediately obeyed, and the period of the two kingdoms commenced.
This section of the book contains the story of the reign of Rehoboam in Judah. Jeroboam as king of Israel turned the people from Jehovah by his idolatrous practices. The result was that the Levites and those who set their hearts to seek the Lord passed over to Judah, and thus, in the best way, the kingdom was strengthened by the accession of faithful souls. Meanwhile, Rehoboam strengthened his position by building fenced cities throughout his dominions. He was, however, the son of his father; and, even in the years of peace and prosperity, the animal nature came out in the multiplicity of his wives and concubines, until he had practically established, as did his father, a harem on the pattern of the corrupt kings around him.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
III. THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH:EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CAPTIVITY
1. Decline and Apostasy under Rehoboam, Abijah and Asa
CHAPTER 11 Rehoboams Reign
1. The forbidden war (2Ch 11:1-4)
2. The national defence (2Ch 11:5-12)
3. Jeroboams wickedness and Rehoboams strength (2Ch 11:13-17)
4. Rehoboams family (2Ch 11:18-23)
The provocation to go to war with the tribes which had revolted was great. Rehoboam was ready to start the civil war. He gathered 180,000 men of Judah and Benjamin to fight against Israel and to restore the tribes to his kingdom. Shemaiah, the man of God, the prophet in Judah, received a message from the LORD, which he faithfully delivered. Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren; return every man to his house, for this thing is done of me. It required courage to deliver such a message in the midst of the great preparations for war. Rehoboam and the people obeyed and did not go to war. They must have realized that if they disobeyed they would have fought against God. And the LORD also blessed the king and his people for believing the Word and being obedient. He always blesses when there is obedience. He built and fortified fifteen cities. He fortified the strongholds, and put captains in them and store of victuals and of oil and wine. In several places he put shields and spears. Thus he made ready for a possible invasion from the side of Egypt, for Jeroboam, his rival, had been there. Rehoboams fears were well founded, as we shall find in the next chapter.
Then there was a great exodus of priests and Levites from the domain of Jeroboam. As we learned from 1Ki 12:25-33, Jeroboam established a wicked worship, setting up two golden calves at Beth-el and Dan. The priests he made were taken, not from the sons of Levi, but from the lowest of the people (1Ki 12:31). The true priest and Levites who had remained with him were cast off from executing their holy and God-given office. He also had priests for the devils. The Hebrew word translated devils means hairy ones and goats. In Egypt the sacred goat was worshipped and Jeroboams worship was patterned. The priests and Levites who were driven away by Jeroboam strengthened the Kingdom of Judah. They had a wholesome influence upon the otherwise weak son of Solomon. They made Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, strong. They all walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years. Most likely fear had much to do with it. We read nothing of turning to the LORD and seeking His face.
His family record is given. Mahalath is mentioned as his wife, a daughter of Jerimoth, probably the son of one of Davids concubines (1Ch 3:9). Then he took Maacah, a granddaughter of Absalom. According to Josephus, Maacahs mother was Tamar, the daughter of Absalom (2Sa 14:27). He had many wives and concubines. The polygamous tendencies of his father and grandfather were thus indulged by him, and in all probability his apostasy started from this sin. But he acted wisely and dispersed all his children throughout the whole country. Having twenty-eight sons and many more daughters, there were great possibilities of conspiracies, which he avoided by scattering them in different directions.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
when Rehoboam: 1Ki 12:21
an hundred: Psa 33:10, Psa 33:16, Pro 21:30, Pro 21:31
Reciprocal: Deu 33:12 – The beloved 2Ch 10:17 – But as for 2Ch 11:12 – having Judah 2Ch 13:3 – four hundred 2Ch 13:7 – could not 2Ch 14:8 – out of Judah 2Ch 17:14 – three hundred 2Ch 25:5 – three 2Ch 26:13 – three hundred
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Ch 11:15. For the devils. sherim, the hairy ones. The goat was worshipped in Egypt as well as the calf.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2Ch 11:1-4. Shemaiah Restrains Rehoboam from Attacking Jeroboam (see notes on 1Ki 12:21-24).The variations between the two records are unimportant.
2Ch 11:5-23. Rehoboam Establishes himself in Jerusalem.There is nothing corresponding to this section in 1 K.
2Ch 11:5-12. Rehoboams cities of defence. Although these are not enumerated in 1 K. there is no reason to doubt that the Chronicler got the list of them from an authentic source.
2Ch 11:13-17. This account of how the priests and Levites joined Rehoboam was probably inserted by the Chronicler, who would naturally assume that Yahwehs ministers would follow Rehoboam as king of Judah.
2Ch 11:18-23. These details of Rehoboams wives and family probably come from some reliable source; they are not given in 1 K.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
GOD FORBIDS REHOBOAM TO ATTACK ISRAEL
(vv.1-4)
When Rehoboam saw his kingdom so largely torn away from him, he assembled an army of 180,000 warriors of Judah and Benjamin (for Benjamin remained with Judah) with the object of forcing the ten tribes back into subjection to him (v.1). What suffering and desolation this would cause, with no good result!
But Rehoboam was spared the humiliation of a great defeat, for God intervened by sending the prophet Shemiah to tell the people, “Thus says the Lord, You shall not go up or fight against your brethren!”(v.4).
Rather, all were commanded to return to their homes, because, as God said, “this thing is from me.” Though the rupture was occasioned by the folly of Rehoboam, yet God was behind it to expose the disunity that already existed in Israel, just as God often exposes similar evil in the Church of God, evil that is sought to be covered up, but eventually causes public divisions. This is certainty to our shame, but God is perfectly righteous to manifest any condition for what it really is.
At least Rehoboam had enough sense to obey the Word of the Lord at this time.
PREPARING DEFENSES
(vv.5-12)
Being preserved from the folly of attacking the ten tribes, Rehoboam then concentrated on the strategy of defence, building fifteen Cities in Judah and Benjamin for strongholds, with military officers over them and the cities stored with provisions of food, oil and wine. He realised now he was in danger from attack, not only from foreign nations, but from his own nation Israel. How sadly this condition has been repeated in the Church of God, where believers find themselves in danger from the attacks of other professing Christians. For this we need the preparation of the nourishing and refreshing of the Word of God. We should certainly store this in our hearts, with the ministry of the Spirit of God (the oil).
Shields and spears were also provided in every city (v.2). We are thus reminded of “the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one” (Eph 6:16). The spear is the only offensive weapon mentioned, but it reminds us of “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Eph 6:17). How much wiser it was for Rehoboam to make these preparations than it would have been for him to seek to force the ten tribes back under his control!
PRIESTS AND LEVITES MOVE TO JERUSALEM
(vv.13-17)
God had appointed the family of Aaron as priests, and the Levites to serve them. But Jereboam refused this claim and appointed priests of his own choosing for worship of idols in high places (v.15). Therefore the priests and Levites moved to Judah, leaving the lands that had been given them among the ten tribes (vv.13-14). What else could they do? Jereboam’s idolatry had left no room for priests of the Lord.
The priests and Levites who came to Judah from the ten tribes strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and for three years it appeared that Rehoboam promised to prove a faithful king, “because they walked in the way of David and Solomon.” Sad to say, however, though Rehoboam had a relatively good beginning, it was not long before he spoiled it.
REHOBOAM’S WIVES AND CHILDREN
(vv.18-23)
Outwardly, Rehoboam was more careful as to the wives he took, than was Solomon, for he first took Mahalath, the granddaughter of David, and he added also Maachah the granddaughter of Absalom. But outward orthodoxy does not guarantee godliness, and besides, it was no more right for Rehoboam to have 18 wives and sixty concubines than it was for Solomon to have his large harem of wives and concubines (v.21). Of course a man will be greatly affected by such relationships.
Though Rehoboam’s first wife bore him sons, he set those aside in favour of Abijah the son of Maachah, whom he preferred above Mahalath. Deu 21:15-17 had warned against such an arrangement, saying that a man “must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn.” Perhaps Rehoboam did not know this scripture, but he ought to have, for a king in Israel was responsible to provide himself with a copy of the law and read it all the days of his life (Deu 17:18-19). Nevertheless, the grace of God transcended the failure of Rehoboam, for Abijah is confirmed in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus in Mat 1:7.
In spite of Rehoboam’s great lack of wisdom in causing the revolt of the ten tribes, he showed more wisdom in the administration of the kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, appointing some of his sons to be dispersed throughout his territories and giving abundant provision. This was far more wise than threatening to chastise them with scourges, as he did with the ten tribes. It seems strange that he could be so cruel in the one case and so generous in the other. But perhaps the latter was because his own family was involved. In fact, his generosity went beyond proper bounds, for he sought many wives for his sons! How true it is that one who goes to extremes in one direction is likely to also go to extremes in the opposite direction! Only true faith in the Lord Jesus can enable us to maintain a proper balance.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
11:1 And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house of Judah and {a} Benjamin an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen [men], which were warriors, to fight against {b} Israel, that he might bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam.
(a) That is, the half tribe of Benjamin for the other half went after Jeroboam.
(b) Meaning the ten tribes who rebelled.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. Rehoboam’s kingdom ch. 11
This chapter is unique to Chronicles. It contains an evaluation of both Northern and Southern Kingdoms. Israel set up a humanly devised form of worship (2Ch 11:15). This resulted in many of the faithful followers of Yahweh traveling from Israel to Judah so they could continue to worship God as He had specified (2Ch 11:16). Many faithful worshippers of Yahweh thus populated Judah. The true Israel was now in Judah (cf. 2Ch 11:3; 2Ch 12:1). [Note: Cf. Williamson, 1 and 2 . . ., p. 238.] The faithfulness of these northern Yahweh worshippers lasted only three years, however (2Ch 11:17). Rehoboam, like Solomon, was not entirely faithful.
"Each of the three short paragraphs which make up this section [2Ch 11:5-23] uses a motif (building; defection of the faithful from the north to the south; large family) which the Chronicler regularly uses to demonstrate God’s reward for faithfulness." [Note: Ibid., p. 240.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
REHOBOAM AND ABIJAH: THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL
2Ch 10:1-19; 2Ch 11:1-23; 2Ch 12:1-16; 2Ch 13:1-22
THE transition from Solomon to Rehoboam brings to light a serious drawback of the chroniclers principle of selection. In the history of Solomon we read of nothing but wealth, splendor, unchallenged dominion, and superhuman wisdom; and yet the breath is hardly out of the body of the wisest and greatest king of Israel before his empire falls to pieces. We are told, as in the book of Kings, that the people met Rehoboam with a demand for release from “the grievous service of thy father,” and yet we were expressly told only two chapters before that “of the children of Israel did Solomon make no servants for his work; but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen.” (2Ch 8:9) Rehoboam apparently had been left by the wisdom of his father to the companionship of headstrong and featherbrained youths; he followed their advice rather than that of Solomons grey-headed counselors, with the result that the ten tribes successfully revolted and chose Jeroboam for their king. Rehoboam assembled an army to re-conquer his lost territory, but Jehovah through the prophet Shemaiah forbade him to make war against Jeroboam.
The chronicler here and elsewhere shows his anxiety not to perplex simple minds with unnecessary difficulties. They might be harassed and disturbed by the discovery that the king, who built the Temple and was specially endowed with Divine wisdom, had fallen into grievous sin and been visited with condign punishment. Accordingly everything that discredits Solomon and detracts from his glory is omitted. The general principle is sound; an earnest teacher, alive to his responsibilities, will not wantonly obtrude difficulties upon his hearers; when silence does not involve disloyalty to truth, he will be willing that they should remain in ignorance of some of the more mysterious dealings of God in nature and history. But silence was more possible and less dangerous in the chroniclers time than in the nineteenth century. He could count upon a docile and submissive spirit in his readers; they would not inquire beyond what they were told: they would not discover the difficulties for themselves. Jewish youths were not exposed to the attacks of eager and militant skeptics, who would force these difficulties upon their notice in an exaggerated form, and at once demand that they should cease to believe in anything human or Divine.
And yet, though the chronicler had great advantages in this matter, his own narrative illustrates the narrow limits within which the principle of the suppression of difficulties can be safely applied. His silence as to Solomons sins and misfortunes makes the revolt of the ten tribes utterly inexplicable. After the account of the perfect wisdom, peace, and prosperity of Solomons reign, the revolt comes upon an intelligent reader with a shock of surprise and almost of incredulity. If he could not test the chronicles narrative by that of the book of Kings and it was no part of the chroniclers purpose that his history should be thus tested-the violent transition from Solomons unbroken prosperity to the catastrophe of the disruption would leave the reader quite uncertain as to the general credibility of Chronicles. In avoiding Scylla, our author has fallen into Charybdis; he has suppressed one set of difficulties only to create others. If we wish to help intelligent inquirers and to aid them to form an independent judgment, our safest plan will often be to tell them all we know ourselves and to believe that difficulties, which have no way marred our spiritual life, will not destroy their faith.
In the next section the chronicler tells how for three years Rehoboam administered his diminished kingdom with wisdom and success; he and his people walked in the way of David and Solomon, and his kingdom was established, and he was strong. He fortified fifteen cities in Judah and Benjamin, and put captains in them, and store of victuals, and oil and wine, and shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong. Rehoboam was further strengthened by deserters from the Northern Kingdom. Though the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua assigned to the priests and Levites cities in the territory held by Jeroboam, yet their intimate association with the Temple rendered it impossible for them to remain citizens of a state hostile to Jerusalem. The chronicler indeed tells us that “Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the priests office unto Jehovah, and appointed others to be priests for the high places and the he-goats and for the calves which he had.” It is difficult to understand what the chronicler means by this statement. On the face of it, we should suppose that Jeroboam refused to employ the house of Aaron and the tribe of Levi for the worship of his he-goats and calves, but the chronicler could not describe such action as casting “them off that they should not execute the priests office unto Jehovah.” The passage has been explained to mean that Jeroboam sought to hinder them from exercising their functions at the Temple by preventing them from visiting Judah; but to confine the priests and Levites to his own kingdom would have been a. strange way of casting them off. However, whether driven out by Jeroboam or escaping from him, they came to Jerusalem and brought with them from among the ten tribes other pious Israelites, who were attached to the worship of the Temple. Judah and Jerusalem became the home of all true worshippers of Jehovah; and those who remained in the Northern Kingdom were given up to idolatry or the degenerate and corrupt worship of the high places. The chronicler then gives us some account of Rehoboams harem and children, and tells that he dealt wisely, and dispersed his twenty-eight sons “throughout all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced city.” He gave them the means of maintaining a luxurious table, and provided them with numerous wives, and trusted that, being thus happily circumstanced, they would lack leisure, energy, and ambition to imitate Absalom and Adonijah.
Prosperity and security turned the head of Rehoboam as they had done that of David: “He forsook the law of Jehovah, and all Israel with him.” “All Israel” means all the subjects of Rehoboam; the chronicler treats the ten tribes as cut off from Israel. The faithful worshippers of Jehovah in Judah had been reinforced by the priests, Levites, and all other pious Israelites from the Northern Kingdom; and yet in three years they forsook the cause for which they had left their country and their fathers house. Punishment was not long delayed, for Shishak, king of Egypt, invaded Judah with an immense host and took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah and of the kings house.
The chronicler explains why Rehoboam was not more severely punished. Shishak appeared before Jerusalem with his immense host: Ethiopians, Lubim or Lybians, and Sukiim, a mysterious people only mentioned here. The LXX and Vulgate translate Sukiim “Troglodytes,” apparently identifying them with the cave-dwellers on the western or Ethiopian coast of the Red Sea. In order to find safety from these strange and barbarous enemies, Rehoboam and his princes were gathered together in Jerusalem. Shemaiah the prophet appeared before them and declared that the invasion was Jehovahs punishment for their sin, whereupon they humbled themselves, and Jehovah accepted their penitent submission. He would not destroy Jerusalem, but the Jews should serve Shishak, “that they may know My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” When they threw off the yoke of Jehovah, they sold themselves into a worse bondage. There is no freedom to be gained by repudiating the restraints of morality and religion. If we do not choose to be the servants of obedience unto righteousness, our only alternative is to become the slaves “of sin unto death.” The repentant sinner may return to his true allegiance, and yet he may still be allowed to taste something of the bitterness and humiliation of the bondage of sin. His Shishak may be some evil habit or propensity or special liability to temptation, that is permitted to harass him without destroying his spiritual life. In time the chastening of the Lord works out the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and the Christian is weaned forever from the unprofitable service of sin.
Unhappily the repentance inspired by trouble and distress is not always real and permanent. Many will humble themselves before the Lord in order to avert imminent ruin, and will forsake Him when the danger has passed away. Apparently Rehoboam soon fell away again into sin, for the final judgment upon him is, “He did that which was evil, because he set not his heart to seek Jehovah.” David in his last prayer had asked for a “perfect heart” for Solomon, but he had not been able to secure this blessing for his grandson, and Rehoboam was “the foolishness of the people, one that had no understanding, who turned away the people through his counsel.” (Sir 47:23)
Rehoboam was succeeded by his son Abijah, concerning whom we are told in the book of Kings that “he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him; and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as the heart of David his father.” The chronicler omits this unfavorable verdict; he does not indeed classify Abijah among the good kings by the usual formal statement that “he did that which was good and right in the eyes of Jehovah,” but Abijah delivers a hortatory speech and by Divine assistance obtains a great victory over Jeroboam. There is not a suggestion of any evil-doing on the part of Abijah; and yet we gather from the history of Asa that in Abijahs reign the cities of Judah were given up to idolatry, with all its paraphernalia of “strange altars, high places, Asherim, and sun-images.” As in the case of Solomon, so here, the chronicler has sacrificed even the consistency of his own narrative to his care for the reputation of the house of David. How the verdict of ancient history upon Abijah came to be set aside we do not know. The charitable work of whitewashing the bad characters of history has always had an attraction for enterprising annalists; and Abijah was a more promising subject than Nero, Tiberius, or Henry VIII The chronicler would rejoice to discover one more good king of Judah; but yet why should the record of Abijahs sins be expunged, while Ahaziah and Amon were still held up to the execration of posterity?
Probably the chronicler was anxious that nothing should mar the effect of his narrative of Abijahs victory. If his later sources had recorded anything equally creditable of Ahaziah and Amon, be might have ignored the judgment of the book of Kings in their case also.
The section to which the chronicler attaches so much importance describes a striking episode in the chronic warfare between Judah and Israel. Here Israel is used, as in the older history, to mean the Northern Kingdom, and does not denote the spiritual Israel-i.e., Judah-as in the previous chapter. This perplexing variation in the use of the term “Israel” shows how far Chronicles has departed from the religious ideas of the book of Kings, and reminds us that the chronicler has only partially and imperfectly assimilated his older material.
Abijah and Jeroboam had each gathered an immense army, but the army of Israel was twice as large as that of Judah: Jeroboam had eight hundred thousand to Abijahs four hundred thousand. Jeroboam advanced, confident in his overwhelming superiority and happy in the belief that Providence sides with the strongest battalions. Abijah, however, was nothing dismayed by the odds against him; his confidence was m Jehovah. The two armies met in the neighborhood of Mount Zemaraim, upon which Abijah fixed his camp. Mount Zemaraim was in the hill-country of Ephraim, but its position cannot be determined with certainty; it was probably near the border of the two kingdoms. Possibly it was the site of the Benjamite city of the same name mentioned in the book of Joshua in close connection with Bethel. {Jos 18:22} If so, we should look for it in the neighborhood of Bethel, a position which would suit the few indications of place given by the narrative.
Before the battle, Abijah made an effort to induce his enemies to depart in peace. From the vantage-ground of his mountain camp he addressed Jeroboam and his army as Jotham had addressed the men of Shechem from Mount Gerizim. {Jdg 9:8} Abijah reminded the rebels-for as such he regarded them-that Jehovah, the God of Israel, had given the kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him and to his sons, by a covenant of salt, by a charter as solemn and unalterable as that by which the heave-offerings had been given to the sons of Aaron. {Num 18:19} The obligation of an Arab host to the guest who had sat at meat with him and eaten of his salt was not more binding than the Divine decree which had given the throne of Israel to the house of David. And yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat had dared to infringe the sacred rights of the elect dynasty. He, the slave of Solomon, had risen up and rebelled against his master.
The indignant prince of the house of David not unnaturally forgets that the disruption was Jehovahs own work, and that Jeroboam rose up against his master, not at the instigation of Satan, but by the command of the prophet Abijah. {2Ch 10:15} The advocates of sacred causes even in inspired moments are apt to be one-sided in their statements of fact.
While Abijah is severe upon Jeroboam and his accomplices and calls them “vain men, sons of Belial,” he shows a filial tenderness for the memory of Rehoboam. That unfortunate king had been taken at a disadvantage, when he was young and tender-hearted and unable to deal sternly with rebels. The tenderness which could threaten to chastise his people with scorpions must have been of the kind-
“That dared to look on torture and could not look on war”;
it only appears in the history in Rehoboams headlong flight to Jerusalem. No one, however, will censure Abijah for taking an unduly favorable view of his fathers character.
But whatever advantage Jeroboam may have found in his first revolt, Abijah warns him that now he need not think to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah in the hands of the sons of David. He is no longer opposed to an unseasoned youth, but to men who know their overwhelming advantage. Jeroboam need not think to supplement and complete his former achievements by adding Judah and Benjamin to his kingdom. Against his superiority of four hundred thousand soldiers Abijah can set a Divine alliance, attested by the presence of priests and Levites and the regular performance of the pentateuchal ritual, whilst the alienation of Israel from Jehovah is clearly shown by the irregular orders of their priests. But let Abijah speak for himself:
“Ye be a great multitude, and there are with you the golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods.” Possibly Abijah was able to point to Bethel, where the royal sanctuary of the golden calf was visible to both armies: “Have ye not driven out the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests in heathen fashion? When any one comes to consecrate himself with a young bullock and seven rams, ye make him a priest of them that are no gods. But as for us, Jehovah is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and we have priests, the sons of Aaron, ministering unto Jehovah, and the Levites, doing their appointed work: and they burn unto Jehovah morning and evening burnt offerings and sweet incense: the shewbread also they set in order upon the table that is kept free from all uncleanness; and we have the candlestick of gold, with its lamps, to burn every evening; for we observe the ordinances of Jehovah our God; but ye have forsaken Him. And, behold, God is with us at our head, and His priests, with the trumpets of alarm, to sound an alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against Jehovah, the God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”
This speech, we are told, “has been much admired. It was well suited to its object, and exhibits correct notions of the theocratical institutions.” But like much other admirable eloquence, in the House of Commons and elsewhere, Abijahs speech had no effect upon those to whom it was addressed. Jeroboam apparently utilized the interval to plant an ambush in the rear of the Jewish army.
Abijahs speech is unique. There have been other instances in which commanders have tried to make oratory take the place of arms, and, like Abijah, they have mostly been unsuccessful; but they have usually appealed to lower motives. Sennacheribs envoys tried ineffectually to seduce the garrison of Jerusalem from their allegiance to Hezekiah, but they relied on threats of destruction and promises of “a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and honey.” There is, however, a parallel instance of more successful persuasion. When Octavian was at war with his fellow-triumvir Lepidus, he made a daring attempt to win over his enemys army. He did not address them from the safe elevation of a neighboring mountain, but rode openly into the hostile camp. He appealed to the soldiers by motives as lofty as those urged by Abijah, and called upon them to save their country from civil war by deserting Lepidus. At the moment his appeal failed, and he only escaped with a wound in his breast; but after a while his enemys soldiers came over to him in detachments, and eventually Lepidus was compelled to surrender to his rival. But the deserters were not altogether influenced by pure patriotism. Octavian had carefully prepared the way for his dramatic appearance in the camp of Lepidus, and had used grosser means of persuasion than arguments addressed to patriotic feeling.
Another instance of a successful appeal to a hostile force is found in the history of the first Napoleon, when he was marching on Paris after his return from Elba. Near Grenoble he was met by a body of royal troops. He at once advanced to the front, and exposing his breast, exclaiming to the opposing ranks, “Here is your emperor; if any one would kill me, let him fire.” The detachment, which had been sent to arrest his progress, at once deserted to their old commander. Abijahs task was less hopeful: the soldiers whom Octavian and Napoleon won over had known these generals as lawful commanders of Roman and French armies respectively, but Abijah could not appeal to any old associations in the minds of Jeroboams army; the Israelites were animated by ancient tribal jealousies, and Jeroboam was made of sterner stuff than Lepidus or Louis XVIII Abijahs appeal is a monument of his humanity, faith, and devotion; and if it failed to influence the enemy, doubtless served to inspirit his own army.
At first, however, things went badly with Judah. They were outgeneraled as well as outnumbered: Jeroboams main body attacked them in front, and the ambush assailed their rear. Like the men of Ai, “when Judah looked back, behold, the battle was before and behind them.” But Jehovah, who fought against Ai, was fighting for Judah, and they cried unto Jehovah; and then, as at Jericho, “the men of Judah gave a shout, and when they shouted, God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.” The rout was complete, and was accompanied by terrible slaughter. No fewer than five hundred thousand Israelites were slain by the men of Judah. The latter pressed their advantage, and took the neighboring city of Bethel and other Israelite towns. For the time Israel was “brought under,” and did not recover from its tremendous losses during the three years of Abijahs reign. As for Jeroboam, Jehovah smote him, and he died; but “Abijah waxed mighty, and took unto himself fourteen wives, and begat twenty-and-two sons and sixteen daughters.” His history closes with the record of these proofs of Divine favor, and he “slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David, and Asa his son reigned in his stead.”
The lesson which the chronicler intends to teach by his narrative is obviously the importance of ritual, not the importance of ritual apart from the worship of the true God; he emphasizes the presence of Jehovah with Judah, in contrast to the Israelite worship of calves and those that are no gods. The chronicler dwells upon the maintenance of the legitimate priesthood and the prescribed ritual as the natural expression and clear proof of the devotion of the men of Judah to their God.
It may help us to realize the significance of Abijahs speech, if we try to construct an appeal in the same spirit for a Catholic general in the Thirty Years War addressing a hostile Protestant army. Imagine Wallenstein or Tilly, moved by some unwonted spirit of pious oratory, addressing the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus:-
“We have a pope who sits in Peters chair, bishops and priests ministering unto the Lord, in the true apostolical succession. The sacrifice of the Mass is daily offered; matins, lauds, vespers; and compline are all duly celebrated; our churches are fragrant with incense and glorious with stained glass and images; we have crucifixes, and lamps, and candles; and our priests are fitly clothed in ecclesiastical vestments; for we observe the traditions of the Church, but ye have forsaken the Divine order. Behold, God is with us at our head; and we have banners blessed by the Pope. O ye Swedes, ye fight against God; ye shall not prosper.”
As Protestants we may find it difficult to sympathies with the feelings of a devout Romanist or even with those of a faithful observer of the complicated Mosaic ritual. We could not construct so close a parallel to Abijahs speech in terms of any Protestant order of service, and yet the objections which any modern denomination feels to departures from its own forms of worship rest on the same principles as those of Abijah. In the abstract the speech teaches two main lessons: the importance of an official and duly accredited ministry and of a suitable and authoritative ritual. These principles are perfectly general, and are not confined to what is usually known as sacerdotalism and ritualism. Every Church has in practice some official ministry, even those Churches that profess to owe their separate existence to the necessity for protesting against an official ministry. Men whose chief occupation is to denounce priestcraft may themselves be saturated with the sacerdotal spirit. Every Church too, has its ritual. The silence of a Friends meeting is as much a rite as the most elaborate genuflection before a highly ornamented altar. To regard either the absence or presence of rites as essential is equally ritualistic. The man who leaves his wonted place of worship because “Amen” is sung at the end of a hymn is as bigoted a ritualist as his brother who dare not pass an altar without crossing himself. Let us then consider the chroniclers two principles in this broad sense. The official ministry of Israel consisted of the priests and Levites, and the chronicler counted it a proof of the piety of the Jews that they adhered to this ministry and did not admit to the priesthood any one who could bring a young bullock and seven rams. The alternative was not between a hereditary priesthood and one open to any aspirant with special spiritual qualifications, but between a duly trained and qualified ministry on the one hand and a motley crew of the forerunners of Simon Magus on the other. It is impossible not to sympathies with the chronicler. To begin with, the property qualification was too low. If livings are to be purchased at all, they should bear a price commensurate with the dignity and responsibility of the sacred office. A mere entrance fee, so to speak, of a young bullock and seven rams must have flooded Jeroboams priesthood with a host of adventurers, to whom the assumption of the office was a matter of social or commercial speculation. The private adventure system of providing for the ministry of the word scarcely tends to either the dignity or the efficiency of the Church. But, in any case, it is not desirable that mere worldly gifts, money, social position, or even intellect should be made the sole passports to Christian service; even the traditions and education of a hereditary priesthood would be more probable channels of spiritual qualifications.
Another point that the chronicler objects to in Jeroboams priests is the want of any other than a property qualification. Any one who chose could be a priest. Such a system combined what might seem opposite vices. It preserved an artificial ministry; these self-appointed priests formed a clerical order; and yet it gave no guarantee whatever of either fitness or devotion. The chronicler, on the other hand, by the importance he attaches to the Levitical priesthood, recognizes the necessity of an official ministry, but is anxious that it should be guarded with jealous care against the intrusion of unsuitable persons. A conclusive argument for an official ministry is to be found in its formal adoption by most Churches and its uninvited appearance in the rest. We should not now be contented with the safeguards against unsuitable ministers to be found in hereditary succession; the system of the Pentateuch would be neither acceptable nor possible in the nineteenth century: and yet, if it had been perfectly administered, the Jewish priesthood would have been worthy of its high office, nor were the times ripe for the substitution of any better system. Many of the considerations which justify hereditary succession in a constitutional monarchy might be adduced in defense of a hereditary priesthood. Even now, without any pressure of law or custom, there is a certain tendency towards hereditary succession in the ministerial office. It would be easy to name distinguished ministers who were inspired for the high calling by their fathers devoted service, and who received an invaluable preparation for their life-work from the Christian enthusiasm of a clerical household. The clerical ancestry of the Wesleys is only one among many illustrations of an inherited genius for the ministry.
But though the best method of obtaining a suitable ministry varies with changing circumstances, the chroniclers main principle is of permanent and universal application. The Church has always felt a just concern that the official representatives of its faith and order should commend themselves to every mans conscience in the sight of God. The prophet needs neither testimonials nor official status: the word of the Lord can have free course without either; but the appointment or election to ecclesiastical office entrusts the official with the honor of the Church and in a measure of its Master.
The chroniclers other principle is the importance of a suitable and authoritative ritual. We have already noticed that any order of service that is fixed by the constitution or custom of a Church involves the principle of ritual. Abijahs speech does not insist that only the established ritual should be tolerated; such questions had not come within the chroniclers horizon. The merit of Judah lay in possessing and practicing a legitimate ritual, that is to say in observing the Pauline injunction to do all things decently and in order: The present generation is not inclined to enforce any very stringent obedience to Pauls teaching, and finds it difficult to sympathize with Abijahs enthusiasm for the symbolism of worship. But men today are not radically different from the chroniclers contemporaries, and it is as legitimate to appeal to spiritual sensibility through the eye as through the ear; architecture and decoration are neither more nor less spiritual than an attractive voice and impressive elocution. Novelty and variety have, or should have, their legitimate place in public worship; but the Church has its obligations to those who have more regular spiritual wants. Most of us find much of the helpfulness of public worship in the influence of old and familiar spiritual associations, which can only be maintained by a measure of permanence and fixity in Divine service. The symbolism of the Lords Supper never loses its freshness, and yet it is restful because familiar and impressive because ancient. On the other hand, the maintenance of this ritual is a constant testimony to the continuity of Christian life and faith. Moreover, in this rite the great bulk of Christendom finds the outward and visible sign of its unity.
Ritual, too, has its negative value. By observing the Levitical ordinances the Jews were protected from the vagaries of any ambitious owner of a young bullock and seven rams. While we grant liberty to all to use the form of worship in which they find most spiritual profit, we need to have Churches whose ritual will be comparatively fixed. Christians who find themselves most helped by the more quiet and regular methods of devotion naturally look to a settled order of service to protect them from undue and distracting excitement.
In spite of the wide interval that separates the modern Church from Judaism, we can still discern a unity of principle, and are glad to confirm the judgment of Christian experience from the lessons of an older and different dispensation. But we should do injustice to the chroniclers teaching if we forgot that for his own times his teaching was capable of much more definite and forcible application. Christianity and Islam have purified religious worship throughout Europe, America, and a large portion of Asia. We are no longer tempted by the cruel, loathsome rites of heathenism. The Jews knew the wild extravagance, gross immorality, and ruthless cruelty of Phoenician and Syrian worship. If we had lived in the chroniclers age and had shared his experience of idolatrous rites, we should have also shared his enthusiasm for the pure and lofty ritual of the Pentateuch. We should have regarded it as a Divine barrier between Israel and the abominations of heathenism, and should have been jealous for its strict observance.