Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 12:25

Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel.

25 33. Jeroboam sets up golden calves in Dan and Bethel, and thus makes Israel to Sin (Not in 2 Chron)

25. built Shechem ] i.e. Strengthened it by walls and made it thus fit to be the royal residence, ‘the political centre of a confederation whose military leader bore the title of king.’ It had in early days been a strong town with gates, but was overthrown by Abimelech (see Jdg 9:4-5). For ‘mount Ephraim’ here, we should rather read as elsewhere, with R.V., ‘ the hill country of Ephraim.’

Penuel ] This place was in the country of Gilead, on the east of the Jordan. When Gideon (Jdg 8:8) in his pursuit after the Midianites crossed from the west side to the east of the Jordan, the first place mentioned in his route is Succoth, and after that Penuel. It was important for Jeroboam to have a stronghold on both sides of the river, as his subjects lived on both sides, and this town, Penuel, was no doubt a post of consequence, as it was evidently near to the fords of the Jordan, so that a force stationed there would protect the land from invaders.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Built Shechem – In the sense of enlarged and fortified. See Dan 4:30. The first intention of Jeroboam seems to have been to make Shechem his capital, and therefore he immediately set about its fortification. So also he seems to have fortified Penuel for the better security of his Trans-Jordanic possessions (marginal reference).

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Jeroboam built Shechem, i.e. he repaired, and enlarged, and fortified it; for it had been ruined long since, Jdg 9:45. He might choose it as a place both auspicious, because here the foundation of his monarchy was laid; and commodious, as being near the frontiers of his kingdom.

Penuel; a place beyond Jordan; of which see Gen 32:30; Jdg 8:17; to secure that part of his dominions.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

25. Jeroboam built Shechemdestroyedby Abimelech (Jud 9:1-49).It was rebuilt, and perhaps fortified, by Jeroboam, as a royalresidence.

built Penuela ruinedcity with a tower (Jud 8:9), eastof Jordan, on the north bank of the Jabbok. It was an object ofimportance to restore this fortress (as it lay on the caravan roadfrom Gilead to Damascus and Palmyra) and to secure his frontier onthat quarter.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein,…. Not that this city had lain in ruins from the times of Abimelech, Jud 9:45 for then it would not have been a proper place for the convention of the people, 1Ki 12:1 but he repaired the walls of it, and fortified it, and built a palace in it for his residence:

and went out from thence, and built Penuel; a place on the other side Jordan, the tower of which was beaten down by Gideon, Jud 8:17 and might be now rebuilt, or at least the city was repaired by him, and anew fortified, perhaps for the better security of his dominions on that side Jordan; though Fortunatus Scacchus p is of opinion that this was an altar, the same as at Carmel, 1Ki 18:30, which Jeroboam built, and called by this name in testimony of the common religion of the Israelites and Jews.

p Elaeochrism. Myrothec. l. 2. c. 58. col. 593.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Founding of the Kingdom of Israel. – 1Ki 12:25. When Jeroboam had become king, it was his first care to give a firmer basis to his sovereignty by the fortification of Sichem and Pnuel. , to build, is used here in the sense of fortifying, because both cities had stood for a long time, and nothing is known of their having been destroyed under either Solomon or David, although the tower of Sichem had been burnt down by Abimelech (Jdg 9:49), and the tower of Pnuel had been destroyed by Gideon (Jdg 8:17). Sichem, a place well known from the time of Abraham downwards (Gen 12:6), was situated upon the mountains of Ephraim, between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and still exists under the name of Nabulus or Nabls, a name corrupted from Flavia Neapolis. Jeroboam dwelt therein, i.e., he chose it at first as his residence, though he afterwards resided in Thirza (see 1Ki 14:17). Pnuel was situated, according to Gen 32:31, on the other side of the Jordan, on the northern bank of the Jabbok (not the southern side, as Thenius supposes); and judging from Gen 32:22. and Jdg 8:8., it was on the caravan road, which led through Gilead to Damascus, and thence past Palmyra and along the Euphrates to Mesopotamia. It was probably on account of its situation that Jeroboam fortified it, to defend his sovereignty over Gilead against hostile attacks from the north-east and east.

1Ki 12:26-27

In order also to give internal strength to his kingdom, Jeroboam resolved to provide for his subjects a substitute for the sacrificial worship in the temple by establishing new sacra, and thus to take away all occasion for making festal journeys to Jerusalem, from which he apprehended, and that probably not without reason, a return of the people to the house of David and consequently further danger for his own life. “If this people go up to perform sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, their heart will turn to their lord, king Rehoboam,” etc.

1Ki 12:28-29

He therefore consulted, sc., with his counsellors, or the heads of the nation, who had helped him to the throne, and made two calves of gold. are young oxen, not of pure gold however, or cast in brass and gilded, but in all probability like the golden calf which Aaron had cast for the people at Sinai, made of a kernel of wood, which was then covered with gold plate (see the Comm. on Exo 32:4). That Jeroboam had in his mind not merely the Egyptian Apis -worship generally, but more especially the image-worship which Aaron introduced for the people at Sinai, is evident from the words borrowed from Exo 32:4, with which he studiously endeavoured to recommend his new form of worship to the people: “Behold, this is thy God, O Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” , it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem; not “let your going suffice,” because is not to be taken in a partitive sense here, as it is in Exo 9:28 and Eze 44:6. What Jeroboam meant to say by the words, “Behold thy God,” etc., was, “this is no new religion, but this was the form of worship which our fathers used in the desert, with Aaron himself leading the way” (Seb. Schmidt). And whilst the verbal allusion to that event at Sinai plainly shows that this worship was not actual idolatry, i.e., was not a worship of Egyptian idols, from which it is constantly distinguished in our books as well as in Hosea and Amos, but that Jehovah was worshipped under the image of the calves or young oxen; the choice of the places in which the golden calves were set up also shows that Jeroboam desired to adhere as closely as possible to ancient traditions. He did not select his own place of residence, but Bethel and Dan. Bethel, on the southern border of his kingdom, which properly belonged to the tribe of Benjamin (Jos 18:13 and Jos 18:22), the present Beitin, had already been consecrated as a divine seat by the vision of Jehovah which the patriarch Jacob received there in a dream (Gen 28:11, Gen 28:19), and Jacob gave it the name of Bethel, house of God, and afterwards built an altar there to the Lord (Gen 35:7). And Jeroboam may easily have fancied, and have tried to persuade others, that Jehovah would reveal Himself to the descendants of Jacob in this sacred place just as well as He had done to their forefather. – Dan, in the northern part of the kingdom, on the one source of the Jordan, formerly called Laish (Jdg 18:26.), was also consecrated as a place of worship by the image-worship established there by the Danites, at which even a grandson of Moses had officiated; and regard may also have been had to the convenience of the people, namely, that the tribes living in the north would not have to go a long distance to perform their worship.

1Ki 12:30-31

But this institution became a sin to Jeroboam, because it violated the fundamental law of the Old Testament religion, since this not only prohibited all worship of Jehovah under images and symbols (Exo 20:4), but had not even left the choice of the place of worship to the people themselves (Deu 12:5.). “And the people went before the one to Dan.” The expression “to Dan” can only be suitably explained by connecting it with : the people even to Dan, i.e., the people throughout the whole kingdom even to Dan. The southern boundary as the terminus a quo is not mentioned; not because it was for a long time in dispute, but because it was already given in the allusion to Bethel. is neither the golden calf at Dan nor (as I formerly thought) that at Bethel, but is to be interpreted according to the receding : one of the two, or actually both the one and the other (Thenius). The sin of which Jeroboam was guilty consisted in the fact that he no longer allowed the people to go to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, but induced or compelled them to worship Jehovah before one or the other of the calves which he had set up, or _(as it is expressed in 1Ki 12:31) made a house of high places, (see at 1Ki 3:2), instead of the house of God, which the Lord had sanctified as the place of worship by filling it with His gracious presence. The singular may be accounted for from the antithesis to , upon which it rests. There was no necessity to say expressly that there was a house of high places at Bethel and Dan, i.e., in two places, because it followed as a matter of course that the golden calves could not stand in the open air, but were placed in a temple, by which the sacrificial altar stood. These places of worship were houses of high places, Bamoth, because the ark of the covenant was wanting, and therewith the gracious presence of God, the Shechinah, for which no symbol invented by men could be a substitute. Moreover Jeroboam made “priests from the mass of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi.” , i.e., not of the poorest of the people (Luther and others), but from the last of the people onwards, that is to say, from the whole of the people any one without distinction even to the very last, instead of the priests chosen by God out of the tribe of Levi. For this meaning of see Gen 19:4 and Eze 33:2, also Lud. de Dieu on this passage. This innovation on the part of Jeroboam appears very surprising, if we consider how the Ephraimite Micah (Jdg 17:10.) rejoiced that he had obtained a Levite to act as priest for his image-worship, and can only be explained from the fact that the Levites did not consent to act as priests in the worship before the golden calves, but set their faces against it, and therefore, as is stated in 2Ch 11:13-14, were obliged to leave their district towns and possessions and emigrate into the kingdom of Judah.

1Ki 12:32-33

Jeroboam also transferred to the eighth month the feast which ought to have been kept in the seventh month (the feast of tabernacles, Lev 23:34.). The pretext for this arbitrary alteration of the law, which repeatedly describes the seventh month as the month appointed by the Lord (Lev 23:34, Lev 23:39, Lev 23:41), he may have found in the fact that in the northern portion of the kingdom the corn ripened a month later than in the more southern Judah (see my Bibl. Archol. ii. 118, Anm. 3, and 119, Anm. 2), since this feast of the ingathering of the produce of the threshing-floor and wine-press (Exo 23:16; Lev 23:39; Deu 16:13) was a feast of thanksgiving for the gathering in of all the fruits of the ground. But the true reason was to be found in his intention to make the separation in a religious point of view as complete as possible, although Jeroboam retained the day of the month, the fifteenth, for the sake of the weak who took offence at his innovations. For we may see very clearly that many beside the Levites were very discontented with these illegal institutions, from the notice in 2Ch 11:16, that out of all the tribes those who were devoted to the Lord from the heart went to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the God of the fathers there. “And he sacrificed upon the altar.” This clause is connected with the preceding one, in the sense of: he instituted the feast and offered sacrifices thereat. In 1Ki 12:32 (from onwards) and 1Ki 12:33, what has already been related concerning Jeroboam’s religious institutions is brought to a close by a comprehensive repetition of the leading points. “Thus did he in Bethel, (namely) to offer sacrifice to the calves; and there he appointed the priests of the high places which he had made, and offered sacrifice upon the altar which he had made at Bethel, on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, which he himself had devised, and so made a feast for the children of Israel and sacrificed upon the altar to turn.” signifies seorsum, by himself alone, i.e., in this connection, i.q. “from his own heart.” The Keri is therefore a correct explanation as to the fact; but it is a needless correction from Neh 6:8. The last clause, … , leads on to what follows, and it would be more correct to take it in connection with 1Ki 13:1 and render it thus: and when he was offering sacrifice upon the altar to burn, behold there came a man of God, etc. Thenius has rendered incorrectly, and he stood at the altar. This thought would have been expressed by , as in 1Ki 13:1. By we are not to understand the burning or offering of incense, but the burning of the sacrificial portions of the flesh upon the altar, as in Lev 1:9, Lev 1:13, Lev 1:17, etc.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

Jeroboam’s Idolatry.

B. C. 975.

      25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel.   26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David:   27 If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.   28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.   29 And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan.   30 And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.   31 And he made a house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.   32 And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Beth-el, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Beth-el the priests of the high places which he had made.   33 So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.

      We have here the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam. He built Shechem first and then Penuel–beautified and fortified them, and probably had a palace in each of them for himself (v. 25), the former in Ephraim, the latter in Gad, on the other side Jordan. This might be proper; but he formed another project for the establishing of his kingdom which was fatal to the interests of religion in it.

      I. That which he designed was by some effectual means to secure those to himself who had now chosen him for their king, and to prevent their return to the house of David, 1Ki 12:26; 1Ki 12:27. It seems, 1. He was jealous of the people, afraid that, some time or other, they would kill him and go again to Rehoboam. Many that have been advanced in one tumult have been hurled down in another. Jeroboam could not put any confidence in the affections of his people, though now they seemed extremely fond of him; for what is got by wrong and usurpation cannot be enjoyed nor kept with any security or satisfaction. 2. He was distrustful of the promise of God, could not take his word that, if he would keep close to his duty, God would build him a sure house (ch. xi. 38); but he would contrive ways and means, and sinful ones too, for his own safety. A practical disbelief of God’s all-sufficiency is at the bottom of all our treacherous departures from him.

      II. The way he took to do this was by keeping the people from going up to Jerusalem to worship. That was the place God had chosen, to put his name there. Solomon’s temple was there, which God had, in the sight of all Israel, and in the memory of many now living, taken solemn possession of in a cloud of glory. At the altar there the priest of the Lord attended, there all Israel were to keep the feasts, and thither they were to bring their sacrifices. Now,

      1. Jeroboam apprehended that, if the people continued to do this, they would in time return to the house of David, allured by the magnificence both of the court and of the temple. If they cleave to their old religion, they will go back to their old king. We may suppose, if he had treated with Rehoboam for the safe conduct of himself and his people to and from Jerusalem at the times appointed for their solemn feasts, it would not have been denied him; therefore he fears not their being driven back by force, but their going back voluntarily to Rehoboam.

      2. He therefore dissuaded them from going up to Jerusalem, pretending to consult their ease: “It is too much for you to go so far to worship God, v. 28. It is a heavy yoke, and it is time to shake it off; you have gone long enough to Jerusalem” (so some read it); “the temple, now that you are used to it, does not appear so glorious and sacred as it did at first” (sensible glories wither by degrees in men’s estimation); “you have greed yourselves from other burdens, free yourselves from this: why should we now be tied to one place any more than in Samuel’s time?”

      3. He provided for the assistance of their devotion at home. Upon consultation with some of his politicians, he came to this resolve, to set up two golden calves, as tokens or signs of the divine presence, and persuade the people that they might as well stay at home and offer sacrifice to those as go to Jerusalem to worship before the ark: and some are so charitable as to think they were made to represent the mercy-seat and the cherubim over the ark; but more probably he adopted the idolatry of the Egyptians, in whose land he had sojourned for some time and who worshipped their god Apis under the similitude of a bull or calf. (1.) He would not be at the charge of building a golden temple, as Solomon had done; two golden calves are the most that he can afford. (2.) He intended, no doubt, by these to represent, or rather make present, not any false god, as Moloch or Chemosh, but the true God only, the God of Israel, the God that brought them up out of the land of Egypt, as he declares, v. 28. So that it was no violation of the first commandment, but the second. And he chose thus to engage the people’s devotion because he knew there were many among them so in love with images that for the sake of the calves they would willingly quit God’s temple, where all images were forbidden. (3.) He set up two, by degrees to break people off from the belief of the unity of the godhead, which would pave the way to the polytheism of the Pagans. He set up these two at Dan and Beth-el (one the utmost border of his country northward), the other southward, as if they were the guardians and protectors of the kingdom. Beth-el lay close to Judah. He set up one there, to tempt those of Rehoboam’s subjects over to him who were inclined to image-worship, in lieu of those of his subjects that would continue to go to Jerusalem. He set up the other at Dan, for the convenience of those that lay most remote, and because Micah’s images had been set up there, and great veneration paid to them for many ages, Jdg 18:30; Jdg 18:31. Beth-el signifies the house of God, which gave some colour to the superstition; but the prophet called it Beth-aven, the house of vanity, or iniquity.

      4. The people complied with him herein, and were fond enough of the novelty: They went to worship before the one, even unto Dan (v. 30), to that at Dan first because it was first set up, or even to that at Dan, though it lay such a great way off. Those that thought it much to go to Jerusalem, to worship God according to his institution, made no difficulty of going twice as far, to Dan, to worship him according to their own inventions. Or they are said to go to one of the calves at Dan because Abijah, king of Judah, within twenty years, recovered Beth-el (2 Chron. xiii. 19), and it is likely removed the golden calf, or forbade the use of it, and then they had only that at Dan to go to. This became a sin; and a great sin it was, against the express letter of the second commandment. God had sometimes dispensed with the law concerning worshipping in one place, but never allowed the worship of him by images. Hereby they justified their fathers in making the calf at Horeb, though God had so fully shown his displeasure against them for it and threatened to visit for it in the day of visitation (Exod. xxxii. 34), so that it was as great a contempt of God’s wrath as it was of his law; and thus they added sin to sin. Bishop Patrick quotes a saying of the Jews, That till Jeroboam’s time the Israelites sucked but one calf, but from that time they sucked two.

      5. Having set up the gods, he fitted up accommodations for them; and wherein he varied from the divine appointment we are here told, which intimates that in other things he imitated what was done in Judah (v. 32) as well as he could. See how one error multiplied into many. (1.) He made a house of high-places, or of altars, one temple at Dan, we may suppose, and another at Beth-el (v. 31), and in each many altars, probably complaining of it as an inconvenience that in the temple at Jerusalem there was but one. The multiplying of altars passed with some for a piece of devotion, but God, by the prophet, puts another construction upon it, Hos. viii. 11. Ephraim has made many altars to sin. (2.) He made priests of the lowest of the people; and the lowest of the people were good enough to be priests to his calves, and too good. He made priests from the extremest parts of the people, that is, some out of every corner of the country, whom he ordered to reside among their neighbours, to instruct them in his appointments and reconcile them to them. Thus were they dispersed as the Levites, but were not of the sons of Levi. But the priests of the high-laces, or altars, he ordered to reside in Beth-el, as the priests at Jerusalem (v. 32), to attend the public service. (3.) The feast of tabernacles, which God had appointed on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, he adjourned to the fifteenth day of the eighth month (v. 32), the month which he devised of his own heart, to show his power in ecclesiastical matters, v. 33. The passover and pentecost he observed in their proper season, or did not observe them at all, or with little solemnity in comparison with this. (4.) He himself assuming a power to make priests, no marvel if he undertook to do the priests’ work with his own hands: He offered upon the altar. This is twice mentioned (1Ki 12:32; 1Ki 12:33), as also that he burnt incense. This was connived at in him because it was of a piece with the rest of his irregularities; but in king Uzziah it was immediately punished with the plague of leprosy. He did it himself, to make himself look great among the people and to get the reputation of a devout man, also to grace the solemnity of his new festival, with which, it is likely, at this time he joined the feast of the dedication of his altar. And thus, [1.] Jeroboam sinned himself, yet perhaps excused himself to the world and his own conscience with this, that he did not do so ill as Solomon did, who worshipped other gods. [2.] He made Israel to sin, drew them off from the worship of God and entailed idolatry upon their seed. And hereby they were punished for deserting the thrones of the house of David. The learned Mr. Whiston, in his chronology, for the adjusting of the annals of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, supposes that Jeroboam changed the calculation of the year and made it to contain but eleven months, and that by those years the reigns of the kings of Israel are measured till Jehu’s revolution and no longer, so that during this interval eleven years of the annals of Judah answer to twelve in those of Israel.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

1Ki 12:25-33 AND 2Ch 11:15-17

While Kings goes into some detail to tell how Jeroboam set up false religion in the northern kingdom, Chronicles gives a short account of the apostasy. Jeroboam built up the city of Shechem in his own tribe of Ephraim to be his capital and also fortified Penuel on the east side of the Jordan, in the land of Gilead. His lack of wealth, such as that enjoyed in Jerusalem, probably kept him from more extensive developments. Furthermore he wished to take measure to keep his people from reconsidering the situation and going back. to Rehoboam. He could see a major possibility of that event in the continued worship of his people in the temple at Jerusalem. Nominally all Israel were the people of the Lord God, and since He had made Jerusalem His meetingplace with Israel it would be logical for the people to continue to think of Jerusalem as the center of their worship.

In his reasoning Jeroboam considered that the people would eventually reunite with Judah, turn against him and kill him. The solution to this problem, he surmised, was to establish their religion along other lines that would keep them from Jerusalem and Judah. Consequently he decided to make two golden calves, probably taking his cue from the golden calf which Aaron constructed in the wilderness (Exo 32:1-6). He certainly should have known the Lord’s displeasure with such. His excuse for the people was that it was too inconvenient for them to go down to Jerusalem. How many people today still treat the matter of the Lord’s service as one of convenience only? True worship then, and now, requires sincerity of the worshipper (Jos 24:14; 2Co 2:17). Jeroboam did not purport to start a new religion, but in setting up the golden calves he referred to them as the god who brought Israel out of Egypt. It was simply meant to be the worship of Jehovah under the guise of a calf.

The calf was the standard of the camp of Ephraim in the wilderness, traditionally, and as such is one of the faces of the cherubim in the divine representation revealed to the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 1:10). One of the calves Jeroboam set up at Bethel, a desecration of that shrine where the Lord had appeared in vision to their forefather, Jacob, and vouchsafed to him the covenant of Abraham (Genesis, chap. 28). The other was set up in far northern Dan, which had been a place of idol worship from the beginning (Jdg 18:30-31). The people of these tribes, for the major part, fell in readily with this sin, some of them actually going to far off Dan to worship the calf there.

Jeroboam could not trust the Levitical priests of the Levites; who might have turned the people back to the right worship of the Lord. Therefore he ordained his own priesthood, taking from the “lowest” (commonest) of the people to be his priests. The popular feast of tabernacles which was held during the eighth month of the Hebrew year was another occasion for the gathering of the Israelites to the temple in Jerusalem. To offset this Jeroboam proclaimed his own feast in worship of the calves at the same time. In fact, he seems to have inaugurated his new system at the very time of this feast, at which time he sacrificed and offered incense to the calf of Bethel.

All of this was of Jeroboam’s own device and from his evil heart. The Chronicles account calls these shrines after the pagan terminology, high places and devil-worship. The word devils is literally “satyrs”, a demonic figure of paganism. Many of the good, God-fearing people of the northern tribes left their homes and emigrated along with the priests and Levites into Judah. This resulted in strengthening of Rehoboam and his kingdom for a period of three years, after which the intimation is they felt sure of themselves and were not as careful to seek the will of the Lord. Then the kingdom was weakened, as shall be seen.

Continuing comment, specifically on 2Ch 11:18-23. Included in 1st edition Hardbound Commentary under 1 Kings chapter 12.

House of Rehoboam, 2Ch 11:18-23

Rehoboam had some of the characteristics as his father, as indicated in the last statement of this passage, “And he desired many wives.” As a matter of fact he acquired many wives, though not nearly as many as Solomon. This was no doubt due to his far lesser fame as well as a depleting fortune. Yet eighteen wives and sixty concubines are an ample number to correspond with the statement of his desire.

Rehoboam married his cousins in three instances, princesses,

who seem to have been favored among the many. His first wife, Mahalath, was the daughter of David’s son, Jerimoth, about whom nothing more is known. Abihail, the second, was the daughter of Eliab, the elder brother of David, (though it is probable a grand-daughter is meant, since the time is several generations removed from that of Eliab). She was the mother of three of his sons. The third wife, and Rehoboam’s favorite, was Maachah, the daughter of Absalom. She was the mother of four of his sons, including Abijah, the crown prince. In all Rehoboam was the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.

Rehoboam also evidenced a trait of wisdom with regard to his sons. He dispersed them into the cities which he had fortified, evidently providing each of them with military training and preventing them from becoming play-boys as he had evidently been. Rehoboam made Abijah the chief of all his sons and groomed him to be king after him. Rehoboam gave them a good allowance, indicated by “victual in abundance.”

Lesson to be noted: 1) having a wise father does not always assure a wise son after him; 2) belligerence will not beget a congenial response; 3) there should never be resistance of the known will of the Lord; 4) God has one way of worship, and men change this to their own condemnation; 5) sons are more apt to adopt their fathers’ bad traits than his good.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.

1Ki. 12:26. Now shall the kingdom return to the house of DavidRecognizing the immediate peril of Israels visits to the temple, he sought to alienate their hearts from Jehovahs worship.

1Ki. 12:28. It is too much for youA specious plea that it would save them the costs and toils of a long journey. Two calves of goldEgyptian figures, Apis and Mnevis. These winged bulls, by their slight resemblance to the cherubim, might captivate their imagination and soothe their scruples.

1Ki. 12:30. The people went to DanBethel was at the southern extremity of the kingdom, and within sight of Jerusalem; but the people preferred to turn from all associations with the city of Judah, and went to Dan, on the far northern fronter.

1Ki. 12:30. Priests of the lowest of the peopleRather, of all classes. For the Levitea would not assist in his idolatry, and, moreover, Jeroboam wished to destroy all the sacred associations of Israels former life.

1Ki. 12:32. Ordained a feast in the eighth monthMost probably to divert the memories of the tribes from the Feast of Tabernacles, which fell on the 15th day of the seventh month, in order further to eradicate sacred memories. He had a plausible pretext for this change, in that the harvest ripened later in the northern districts.

1Ki. 12:33. He offered upon the altarsThus assuming to himself the functions of the high priest. Two reasons may have led to this act of usurpation: he had observed that the Egyptian king united in his person both the royal and sacerdotal offices; and he may have distrusted the prudence of vesting in a subject, at so critical an hour in Israels career, the power which a high priest possessed over a people so controllable by religious impulses.W. H. J.

HOMILETICS OF 1Ki. 12:25-33

A MAN-MADE RELIGION

THE genius of Jeroboam was equal to every emergency. He was in his element when fomenting rebellion. He was equally at home as ruler of the newly-formed state, and adopted prompt and vigorous measures for the establishment of his kingdom. He soon saw that his authority would be weakened if provision was not made for the religious instincts of his people. And here we get a glimpse at the bold, reckless daring of the mans nature. He quails not before the demand made upon him, but at once constructs a religion which was intended to serve his own crafty purposes, rather than to promote the piety of the people and the glory of God. In the system of worship thus established we have the leading characteristics of a man-made religion.

I. It is regarded as a necessary element in state-craft (1Ki. 12:25; 1Ki. 12:27). It may be that Jeroboam neither wished nor designed to introduce heathenish idolatry into his kingdom; the revolt by which he had reached the throne was brought about as the result of, and as a protest against, the abominations of such idolatry. He was apprehensive that if all his people went up to Jerusalem to worship, their hearts would be weaned from him and won over to the government of Rehoboam. He therefore instituted a new system of worship, not, perhaps, with the intention of countenancing idolatry, although in reality caring little about the result, but as a modification of the true worship of God demanded by the changed circumstances of the kingdom. His religious reform was dictated by a shrewd state-policy, not by the Word of God. There is a class of politicians who regard religion as an erratic and troublesome superstition, but a necessary part of state organization; and who maintain that the religion of a people is determined by the condition of their national life. Now this is inverting the order of things, as if a pyramid was intended to rest upon its apex rather than its base, or a tree to produce fruit by stretching its branches underground and its roots in the upper air. The fact is, religion is the mightiest force in a nation, and that which determines the conditions and development of national life. The government that trifles with the religion of a people cannot be permanent.

II. It is the suggestion of an unbelieving and wicked heart. The king took counsel (1Ki. 12:28), not with God, but with his own wicked heart (1Ki. 12:33), and with those whom he knew would support and carry out his views. Had Jeroboam believed in God, and been obedient to His commandments, his kingdom would have been established as Davids (chap. 1Ki. 11:38). But when God is ignored, the unbeliever is left to his own devices; and there is no possible folly and wickedness to which he may not have recourse. The infamy that Jeroboam heaped upon his name is a terrible example to all who would set up a religion irrespective of the Divine word and sanction. What is religion without faith, and what scope is there for faith in a religion in which the originator himself has no faith? Vain, empty, sinful man is in too sore need of supernatural help and grace to find either comfort or elevation in a religion that springs only from himself!

III. It is essentially idolatrous (1Ki. 12:28-30).

1. It is thus a violation of a specific Divine commandment (Exo. 20:4). The breaking of one commandment leads the way to the breaking of others. It is like the letting out of waters: the wider the breach, the more impetuous and overwhelming the deluge. A single fault in the foundation imperils the whole structure. Whatever is based on wrong-doing is unstable and perishable.

2. Its tendency is thus to insult and supplant the One True God (1Ki. 12:28). These calves were not set up to be worshipped as idols, any more than were the ark and cherubim, and other sacred shrines at Jerusalem, but were designed to be symbols of Jehovah. And yet the inevitable tendency was to lose sight of the invisible in the visible, as the subsequent history of Israel so painfully proved. What an enormity is it to liken the glory of the invisible God to an ox that eateth grass! Man creates his own idols, and falls down and worships them. Any creature, real or imaginary, which we invest with Divine properties is an idol; or, it may be the true God falsely conceived. Idolatry is a sin against which the most faithful warnings have been uttered in all ages, and on account of which the severest judgments have been inflicted; yet it is that to which humanity is most prone.

3. It is thus the occasion of great moral corruption. And this thing became a sin (1Ki. 12:30). It was not without reason that the Israelitish king was branded in sacred history as Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. That sin consisted in a one-sided construction and use of the facts of sacred history, and an arrogant assumption to improve the religious worship of the nation by most dangerous methods that had no proper sanction from Jehovah or His prophets. He may be regarded as a type of the Roman hierarchy, which, in its efforts to bind the people to St. Peters chair, has verily set up graven images in connection with its worship, and, assuming to represent the sanctities of a holy antiquity, has, in fact, reproduced the forms of heathen idolatry. Idolatry is the fruitful source of many other sins.

IV. It is not scrupulous as to the agents it employs (1Ki. 12:31). Not that the king selected priests from persons of low birth or infamous character. This would have brought his system of worship into contempt. The priesthood had hitherto been hereditary and confined to the tribe of Levi. But it is probable that the Levites opposed the unauthorised innovations, and refused to give their sanction to the new religion; indeed, they left their possessions and came to Jerusalem, where they found a more congenial sphere for their sacred functions (2Ch. 11:13-17). But, not to be foiled in his purpose, Jeroboam created a new priestly order, taken indiscriminately from the entire population, irrespective of rank or tribes. The wily schemer never lacks instruments to work out his designs.

V. It has all the outward seeming of a genuine institution (1Ki. 12:32-33). There was the Temple, the feast of dedication, the altar, the sacrifice, the priests. Nothing is more delusive than religious form and ceremony. There may be the most elaborate ritual, while the spirit of religion is extinct. The most gorgeous tapestry may hide a wall honey-combed with decay.

LESSONS:

1. A Man-Made Religion is deficient in fundamental truth.

2. In spiritual life.

3. In authority.

4. In practical morality.

5. In saving efficacy.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

1Ki. 12:25-33. The demoralizing influence of idolatry on national life.

1. It leads to a national enfeeblement, against which the strongest fortresses afford no protection (1Ki. 12:25).

2. It distorts the idea of God (1Ki. 12:28).

3. It loosens the bonds of morality (1Ki. 12:30).

4. It leaves the people an easy prey in the hands of a selfish and unscrupulous ruler.

5. It caricatures the solemnities of worship (1Ki. 12:31-33).

6. It issues in national extinction.

1Ki. 12:25. Shechem had been ruined and sowed with salt (Jdg. 9:45), it had been rebuilt (1Ki. 12:1), but now made a royal city, as being in meditullio regni, in the middle of the kingdom: as Constantinople, for its situation, is said to be a city fatally founded, to command a great part of the world.Trapp.

As soon as Jeroboam obtained the wish of his heart, namely, the rulership, he asked no longer about the condition under which it was promised to him, and with which it was bound up (chap. 1Ki. 11:38). How often we forget, when God has granted to us the desire of our hearts, to walk in His ways. He who obtains rulership by the path of rebellion, must always be in fear and anxiety lest he lose it again in the same way, for the populace which to-day cries, Hosanna! will on the morrow shout, Crucify! crucify! An evil conscience makes the most stout hearted and the strongest timid and anxious, so that he sees dangers where there are none, and then, to insure his own safety, devises wrong and evil instruments. One false step always requires another.Lange.

Humanly speaking, Jeroboams fear was, it must be confessed, well-founded. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that he gave way to the temptation of helping forward the plans of Providence by the crooked devices of a merely human policy. His measures for counteracting the tendency to reunion with Judah were cleverly devised, and proved him wise in his generation. The later history shows that they were effectual. Like all measures which involve a dereliction of principle, they brought certain evils in their train; and they drew down a Divine judgment on himself which he had not faith enough to anticipate. But they fully secured the object at which he aimed. They prevented all healing of the breach between the two kingdoms. They made the separation final. They produced the result that not only no reunion took place, but no symptoms of an inclination to re-unite ever manifested themselves during the whole period of the double kingdom.Speakers Comm.

1Ki. 12:28-33. The sin of Jeroboam wherewith he caused Israel to sin. I. He erected images of God against the supreme commandment of God (Exo. 20:4). II. He set aside the prescribed order of the servants of God, and made his own priests. III. He altered the feast, which was a reminder of the great deeds of God, and made it a mere nature-and-harvest feast. That is the greatest tyranny when the ruler of a land makes himself the master also of the faith and conscience of his subjects.

In the estimation of the people of the world this policy of Jeroboam is held to be proper, because they consider that religion is to be established, held, and altered as may be useful and good for the land and the people and the common interest, and that the regimen is not for the sake of the religion, but the religion for the regimen. Consequently Jeroboam acted well and wisely in the matter. But God says, on the other hand, all that I command you, that shall ye observe, ye shall not add thereto (Deu. 12:32). For godliness is not to be regulated by the common weal, but the common weal is to be regulated by godliness. Every government which employs religious instrumentalities, and interferes with the faith of the people, not for the sake of God and the salvation of souls, but for the attainment of political ends, shares the guilt of the sin of Jeroboam, and involves itself in heavy responsibilities.Cramer.

1Ki. 12:28. Whereupon the king took counsel. Compared with 1Ki. 12:26And Jeroboam said in his heart. The mental toils of the cunning.

1. A wicked, crooked policy involves far more anxiety and labour than a straightforward policy.
2. The sinful plotter is in a perpetual fever of fearhe is in antagonism with both God and man.
3. Many of the schemes of the cunning are too diabolical to be divulged; they must be hidden within one solitary breast. What a horrible picture is presented by such a mind to the eye of the Omniscient!
4. A temporary success intensifies the mental pressure.
5. The most complicated contrivances of the cunning end in humiliating defeat.

He invented a political religion, instituted feasts in his own times different from those appointed by the Lord, gave the people certain objects of devotion, and pretended to think it would be more inconvenient and oppressive to them to have to go up to Jerusalem to worship. This was not the last time that religion was made a state engine to serve political purposes. It is strange that in pointing out his calves to the people he should use the same words that Aaron used when he made the golden calf in the wilderness, when they must have heard what terrible judgments fell upon their fore fathers for this idolatry.
Oh, the mischief that comes of wicked infidelity! It was Gods prophet that had rent Jeroboams garment into twelve pieces, and had given ten of them to him, in token of his sharing the ten tribes; who, in the same breath, also told him that the cause of this distraction was their idolatry. Yet now will he institute an idolatrous service for the holding together of them whom their idolatry had rent from their true sovereign to him. He says not, God hath promised me this kingdom; God hath conferred it; God shall find means to maintain his own act; I will obey Him, let Him dispose of me. The God of Israel is wise and powerful enough to fetch about his own designs; but, as if the devices of men were stronger than Gods providence and ordination, he will be working out his own ends by profane policies. Jeroboam, being born an Israelite, and bred in the court of a Solomon, could not but know the express charge of God against the making of images, against the erection of any rival altars to that of Jerusalem; yet now that he sees both these may avail much to the advancing of his ambitious project, he sets up those images, those altars. Wicked men care not to make bold with God in cases of their own commodity. If the laws of their Maker lie in the way of their profit or promotion, they either spurn them out or tread upon them at pleasure. Aspiring minds will know no God but honour. Israel sojourned in Egypt, and brought home a golden calf; Jeroboam sojourns there, and brought home two. It is hard to dwell in Egypt untainted. Not to savour of the sins of the place we live in is no less strange than for wholesome liquor tunned up in a musty vessel not to smell of the cask. The best body may be infected in a contagious air. Let him beware of Egypt that would be free from idolatry.Bp. Hall.

To the perverted man, what he shall do for his God is forthwith too much. In matters of faith and of the homage due to God, we should not consider what is convenient and agreeable to the great mass, but should enquireire only for what God prescribes in His Word. He who conciliates the sensuonsness and the untutored ways of the masses, and flatters their unbelief or their superstition, belongs to the false prophets who make broad the way of life. Doctrines and institutions which depart from the revealed Word of God are often praised as progress and seasonable reforms, while in truth they are steps backward and corrupting innovations. In Christendom we pray no longer to wood and stone, and to golden calves, and think ourselves thereby raised far above a darkened heathenism, but, nevertheless, we often place the creature above the Creator, and abandon ourselves to it with all our love, and consideration, and service. Behold the things and persons thou lovest with thy whole heart and strength, these are thy gods. What use of typical representations in the worship of God is permitted, and what is forbidden?Calwer.

1Ki. 12:30. Idolatry a sin.

1. It is a violation of the Divine commandment (Exo. 20:4).

2. It ignores the claims of the Most High.
3. It is degrading to the votary.
4. It is pernicious in its example to others.
5. They who think to secure their safety by sin only hasten the ruin they would avoid.

As a great tree in a forest, when it falls drags down many others with it, so also are many others carried along by the bad example of those who rule when they fall away from their religion, or sin otherwise grossly against God.Starke.

Every accessory to sin is filthy, but the first authors of sin are abominable. How is Jeroboam branded in every of these sacred leaves. How do all ages ring of his fact with the accent of dishonour and indignation. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that made Israel to sin. It was a shame for Israel that it could be made to sin by a Jeroboam; but O, cursed name of Jeroboam, that would draw Israel to sin! The followers and abettors of evil are worthy of torment, but no hell is too deep for the leaders of public wickedness.Bp. Hall.

1Ki. 12:31. We have in the new covenant no Levitical priesthood, indeed, but a pastoral and preaching office which the Lord has instituted, so that thereby the body of Christ may be edified (Eph. 4:11). He who despises this office, and thinks that any one without distinction and without a lawful calling may exercise it, is a partaker in the sin of Jeroboam. No one, says the Augsburg Confession, shall teach or preach publicly in the church, or administer the sacrament, without due calling.

It is not the metal that makes their gods, but the worshipthe sacrifices. What sacrifices could there be without priests? No religion could ever want sucred masters of Divine ceremonies. Gods clergy was select and honourable, branches of the holy stem of Aaron. Jeroboam rakes up his priests out of the channel of the multitude: all tribes, all persons, were good enough to his spurious devotion. Leaden priests are well fitted for golden deities. Religion receives either much honour or blemish by the quality of those who serve at her altars. We are not worthy to profess ourselves servants of the true God if we do not hold his service worthy of the best.Bp. Hall.

1Ki. 12:32-33. The empty pretences of Ritualism.

1. Ritualism is not absolutely essential to spiritual religion.
2. Its highest function is only as a means, and that chiefly to the most rude and ignorant.
3. It may be altered according to the whim or wish of an irreligious sovereign.
4. It is most claborate and showy where the worship is most idolatrous.
5. It is disappointing to the sincere and spiritual worshipper.
6. All pretences to religious zeal, contrary to Gods revealed will, are but the devices of Satan, more fatally to delude mens souls.

We must not conceal from ourselves that there are many persons who, at the bottom of their hearts, will think that Jeroboam acted wisely in the course he took, and cannot see how he could have got over the difficulty in his path but by some such course as that which he adopted. How could he otherwise have managed? The answer is, he need not have managed at all. He had been appointed king under the Divine sanction. He held his crown under the condition of obedience, and on that condition the continuance of the crown to his house was pledged to him. Nothing was wanted on his part but unreserved faith in that promise. If Jeroboam had possessed that faith he would have been free from any anxiety on the subject, he would have felt that it was safer to incur an apparent danger in pursuing the career of duty and right doing, than to seek exemption from it by unlawful doing and tortuous policy. The Lord had given him every reason to trust in the sufficiency of His protection when He had compelled king Rehoboam to dismiss the forces with which he was prepared to fall upon him in his comparatively helpless condition. If it be asked how he was to be secured from the danger which stood so distinctly before him, we can only answer, We do not know. Nor had Jeroboam any need to know. God knew; and it was his clear course to do right, trusting all the rest to God.Kitto.

1Ki. 12:32. The Feast of Tabernacles, to be observed in the seventh month (Lev. 23:34), Jeroboam transferred to the eighth month. A plausible occasion for this arbitrary deviation from the law which repeatedly names the seventh month as the time appointed of the Lord (Lev. 23:34; Lev. 23:39; Lev. 23:41), might be found in the circumstance that in the northern districts of his kingdom the grain ripened at least a month later than in the southern Judah, as this festival was to be kept at the ingathering of the fruit of the land (the grain); the proper ground, however, lay in the design to make the separation also in a religious aspect as complete as possible, although he adhered to the day of the month on account of the weak, who might take offence at the innovations. For that there were many besides the priests and Levites who were highly dissatisfied with these illegal proceedings appears from the notice (2Ch. 13:16) that Israelites out of all the tribes devoted in heart to the Lord went to Jerusalem to sacrifice there to the God of their fathers. Still, not content with all this, with erecting sanctuaries and places of worship, instituting priests and changing feasts, Jeroboam himself offered sacrifice at the altar at Bethel, in order to prove himself to be the spiritual head of his kingdom.Keil.

The festivals which an entire people celebrate in remembrance of the great deeds of God for them are the support of their faith and of their life of fellowship. It is to destroy this life when, from prejudice and for the sake of outward worldly considerations, arbitrarily they are altered or abandoned.

1Ki. 12:33. As it is good and praiseworthy when kings and princes engage in the service of God along with their subjects, and set them a good example, so also is it blameworthy when they do it only to win the people over to themselves, and to secure their authority over them.Lange.

Which he had devised of his own heart. The entire system of Jeroboam receives its condemnation in these words. His main fault was, that he left a ritual and a worship where all was divinely authorized, for ceremonies and services which were wholly of his own devising. Not being a prophet, he had no authority to introduce religious innovations. Not having received any commission to establish new forms, he had no right to expect that any religious benefit would accrue from them. He was placed in difficult circumstances, but he met them with the arts of a politician, not with the single-mindedness of a saint. His arrangements had a certain cleverness, but they were not really wise measures; instead of securing and strengthening, they tended to corrupt, and so to weaken the nation.Speakers Comm.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

II. THE GREAT APOSTASY 12:2533

TRANSLATION

(25) And Jeroboam built Shechem in Mt. Ephraim, and dwelt in it. And he went out from there and built Penuel. (26) And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom will return to the house of David. (27) If this people go up to make sacrifices in the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, then the heart of this people shall turn unto their lord, unto Rehoboam the king of Judah. (28) So the king took counsel, and made two golden calves, and he said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. (29) And he placed one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan. (30) And this thing became a sin, for the people went before the one as far as Dan. (31) And he made houses on high places, and made priests from all classes of the people who were not from the house of Levi. (32) And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which was in Judah, and he went up to the altar! Thus he did in Bethel, offering sacrifices to the calves which he had made. And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. (33) And they went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month which he had devised from his own heart; and he made a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar to offer incense.

COMMENTS

Jeroboams first concern as king of Israel was to strengthen his position by fortifying his capital at Shechem. Shechem was the most prominent city in the North, and was ideally located in Mt. Ephraim, i.e., the mountain district of the tribe of Ephraim. Not long after he had completed the rebuilding or fortifying of Shechem, Jeroboam was forced to temporarily move the seat of government across the Jordan river to Penuel in the area of Gilead (1Ki. 12:25). This sudden shift was made necessary by the invasion of Pharaoh Shishak concerning which the sacred historian will have more to say in chapter 14.

Another urgent concern of Jeroboam was the creation of a cult in the North which would rival the divinely revealed religion practiced in the South. That Jeroboam was uneasy and insecure in his new role as king is the clear implication of 1Ki. 12:26. He realized that if his people continued to travel to Jerusalem three times each year to keep the prescribed feasts, the religious sentiment would soon reassert itself and sweep him and his new dynasty away (1Ki. 12:27). With one religion, one sanctuary, one priesthood, there could not long endure two kingdoms. Furthermore, many of the psalms sung in the Jerusalem Temple worship centered on the divine promises made to the house of David. Jeroboam simply could not afford to have his people thus indoctrinated. When Jeroboam saw that the priests and Levites who were in the North were emigrating to Judah (2Ch. 11:13; 2Ch. 11:16), he knew he could wait no longer, and he began to implement the plan upon which he had been meditating for some time.

After taking counsel of his closest advisers, Jeroboam determined that the new religion should center about the images of two golden calves which he erected in the shrines at Dan and Bethel (1Ki. 12:29). Propaganda poured forth from the palace in an attempt to persuade the people to change their religious affiliation. Jeroboam argued that it was inconvenient for the people to have to make the long walk to Jerusalem for worship. Besides, the golden calves which he had erected represented the divine personages who had led the nation out of Egypt (1Ki. 12:28). To further encourage the people to accept his counterfeit religion, Jeroboam placed his calves conveniently in Bethel in the southern part of his kingdom and at Dan in the north (1Ki. 12:29). Both of these cities were in some sense sanctuaries already. Bethel had been a holy place since the days when Jacob received his heavenly vision there (Gen. 28:11-19). A shrine had been set up at Dan during the days of the Judges by a grandson of Moses (Jdg. 18:31).

The establishment of the calf religion in the North was a sin, for it both set at nought the express prohibition of the decalogue (Exo. 20:4), and also disregarded the one sanctuary of Gods choice (Deu. 12:5). By thus establishing these calf centers, Jeroboam not only committed gross sin himself, but he provided an occasion for the people to sin (cf. 1Ki. 14:16; 1Ki. 15:26). The last clause of 1Ki. 12:30 is difficult, and there is no agreement among commentators as to its meaning. The people went to worship before the one even unto Dan is probably intended to convey the zeal with which the people pursued their new religion. If this interpretation is correct, the irony here becomes manifest. Ostensibly, Jerusalem had been rejected as a place of worship because of its distance; but the people became so addicted to the calf symbol that they willingly journeyed to distant Dan to engage in this worthless worship.

Further details of Jeroboams counterfeit religion are presented in 1Ki. 12:31-33.

1. He built a house of high places. Some take this to mean that he built such a house at both Bethel and Dan, i.e., he built two temples for his calves (Keil; Rawlinson). Others think that a shrine already existed at Dan, and that 1Ki. 12:31 alludes to the construction of a similar shrine at Bethel (Hammond).

2. Jeroboam made priests of all classes of the people (lit., from the ends of the people). He thus violated the divine scheme of things which restricted the priestly rights to the tribe of Levi (1Ki. 12:31). No doubt Jeroboam would have gladly retained the Levitical priests in that capacity had they been willing to serve. But they had refused to serve and had gone over to Rehoboam as a body (2Ch. 11:13-14).

3. Jeroboam ordered that a great religious festival be held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. This was a deliberate imitation of the God-ordained Feast of Tabernacles held in Judah on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The switch from the seventh to the eighth month would make this feast more convenient for the farmers in the North where the harvest or vintage was a month later than in Judah.[327] The fifteenth day was retained because in lunar months, the fifteenth was the day of the full moon.

[327] It is unlikely that Jeroboam altered the month of the harvest festival merely for the sake of creating a distinction between his religion and that of the South as maintained by Keil.

4. Jeroboam himself seems to have officiated in the sacrificial service at Bethel. It would seem that the harvest feast just mentioned was conducted only at Bethel.
5. Jeroboam stationed his newly ordained priests in Bethel. They are contemptuously referred to as priests of the high places (1Ki. 12:32). The omission of reference to the sanctuary at Dan is somewhat surprising. Probably the two shrines did not have equal status. While the sanctuary at Dan was estab lished for the convenience of those living in the far north, Bethel was regarded as the royal sanctuary (cf. Amo. 7:13).

The audacity of Jeroboams ministering at the altar in person is underscored by repetition in 1Ki. 12:33. The king was probably motivated by the desire to invest the newly ordained feast with regal splendor and also by the idea of encouraging his new priests to enter on their unauthorized functions without fear. Previous history supplied concrete illustration of the dangers which attended the presumptuous assumption of priestly prerogatives (Leviticus 10; Num. 16:40). The threats of the Law with respect to unlawful usurpation of priestly rights may have made Jeroboams priests hesitant. To allay their fears, the king undertook to offer the first sacrifices on the Bethel altar.

Every phase of the religion of the North was devised in Jeroboams own heart. Thus Jeroboam schemed to promote his own cause rather than the cause of God. In his religious innovations he went beyond Gods design for him as an instrument of divine judgment upon Davids house. Had Jeroboam trusted God and not tried to establish his own religion, God would have kept the promise made to him through Ahijah to give him an enduring dynasty.

The precise significance of the golden calves has been debated for years. At Mt. Sinai Aaron led the restless people in constructing a golden calf (Deu. 32:4-8). Just why the calf figure was chosen is uncertain; but the bull appears in the art and religious texts throughout the ancient Near East. Some authorities believe that the calf symbol was borrowed from Egyptian religion. Several calf cults are attested in Egypt.[328] The calf or bull was the symbol of fertility in nature, and of physical strength. Other authorities link the Sinai calf with the cult of the moon god Sin whose worship was widespread in the ancient Near East. The shape of the animals horns apparently symbolized the crescent of the moon.[329] In near-by Canaan, the calf was the animal of Baal or Hadad, god of storm, fertility, and vegetation. The gods of Syria are frequently represented standing upon a bull or calf.

[328] Kitchen, NBD, p. 180.
[329] Key, JBL, LXXIV (1965), pp. 2026.

It is obvious that Jeroboam intended to link his calves to that Sinai calf. The expression, These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you out of the land of Egypt is common to both the present narrative and the Sinai account. But just what was the purpose, function, or theological explanation of these images?

Jeroboams effort could hardly have succeeded if the calves erected at Bethel and Dan had been understood to be images of Yahweh;[330] the effort would have been absurd if Jeroboam had introduced the worship of Hadad-Rimmon, the Syrian deity, in the form of a bull. Possibly the calves represented pedestals or thrones upon which the invisible Yahweh was understood to be enthroned.[331] In such a case, the calves had virtually the same theological significance as the ark and Cherubim in the Jerusalem Temple.[332]

[330] The Semites never represented their gods zoomorphically.

[331] W. F. Albright, FSAC, pp. 299300. If Albright is correct in assuming that the Biblical Cherubim were winged bulls, then the correspondence with the bulls (calves) of Bethel and Dan would be even more striking. For a discussion of the appearance of the Cherubim, see comments on 1Ki. 6:23.

[332] According to 2Ki. 19:15, God dwelled between the Cherubim, the ark with its golden mercy seat apparently thought of as Gods earthly throne. See also Psa. 80:1; Psa. 99:1; Eze. 10:1.

Two negative results of the calf worship are attested in the history of Israel. First, the calf or bull was entirely too apt a symbol of fertility long to remain unrelated to the Canaanite fertility cult. The bulls at Bethel and Dan eventually led to syncretismthe adoption of pagan practices. Furthermore, the bulls could not long remain as a representation merely of Yahwehs pedestal or throne; they eventually became identified with Yahweh Himself in popular religious understanding. For this reason Hosea regarded the calves as idols (Hos. 13:2).

SPECIAL NOTE THE SCHISM OF 931 B.C.

It is not the place of a commentator to indulge in lengthy historical analysis. Nonetheless, the schism of 931 B.C. is so important in the history of Gods people that a brief note of this nature is in order. Three points regarding the revolt of the ten tribes need further treatment: (1) the causes of the secession; (2) the consequences of the secession; and (3) the conditions after the secession.

I. THE CAUSES OF THE SCHISM

A superficial reading of Kings might lead to the altogether unwarranted conclusion that it was Rehoboams foolish decision at Shechem that led to the rebellion of the ten tribes. However, a careful scrutiny of the Biblical materials reveals that there were multiple causes for the division. These may be grouped under the following seven headings:

A. THEOLOGICAL FACTORS

The Scripture makes it clear that the schism of 931 B.C. did not catch God by surprise. The sacred historian declares that the rebellion was a turn of events from the Lord (1Ki. 12:15). Through the mouth of the prophet Shemaiah the Lord declared: This thing has come from Me. Thus it was the will of God that there be a division at this time among the tribes of His people. As part of His grand plan of redemption, God saw fit to keep Judah, the tribe of destiny, isolated as much as possible from the degradating influences of the Northern tribes. Furthermore, the division of 931 B.C. was an act of divine judgment upon the house of David for the idolatry and excesses of Solomons reign (1Ki. 11:11-13; 1Ki. 11:33).

B. HISTORICAL FACTORS

As one reads the early chapters of the history of Israel, he can see the roots of the 931 B.C. schism. From the time of the Conquest, Ephraim constantly complained and created turmoil among the tribal confederacy. The Ephraimites complained to Joshua about their tribal allotment (Jos. 17:14), and to Gideon about not being included in the initial attack against Midian (Jdg. 8:1). Ephraim was involved in a civil war with the men of Gilead in the days of Jephthah (Jdg. 12:4). Ephraim gave allegiance to ill-fated bid of Ishbosheth to succeed his father Saul on the throne (2Sa. 2:10). Further, the Northern tribes revealed their jealousy of and hostility toward Judah following Davids victory over Absalom (2Sa. 19:41-43). Many men of the Northern tribes joined in Shebas rebellion against David (2Sa. 20:2). From all of this it would appear there had always been an intense rivalry between Judah and the Northern tribes, particularly Ephraim.

C. GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS

C. F. Kent indicates the great importance of geographical factors in the schism of 931 B.C. when he writes: Thus that great schism between north and south . . . found its primal cause in the physical characteristics that distinguish the land of Judah from that of Samaria.[333] Kent refers to the geographical isolation of Judah and the mountainous character of the land which made effective communication between Jerusalem and the Northern cities very difficult. Judah was in effect a mountain fortress with natural barriers on all sides. Ephraim, on the other hand, stood exposed to every invader. The barrenness of Judah made that land unattractive to foreign invaders; the fertile hills of Ephraim beckoned the adventuresome plunderer. The commercial highways which skirted Judah ran through the heart of Ephraim. Kent feels these very different geographical environments produced two very different types of people. The inhabitants of Judah were for the most part sturdy, brave, intensely loyal and durable. The inhabitants of Ephraim, on the other hand, were luxury-loving, carefree, tolerant, eager for foreign ideas, cults and customs. Thus geography played a role in producing the schism of 931 B.C.

[333] Kent, BGH, p. 44.

D. POLITICAL FACTORS

It would be to the distinct advantage of Egypt to bring about division of Solomons empire. Solomons enemies Hadad and Jeroboam both took refuge in Egypt (1Ki. 11:17; 1Ki. 11:40). The fact that Pharaoh Shishak invaded Palestine shortly after the division of the kingdom (1Ki. 14:25) suggests that he had been working toward this goal behind the scenes.

E. RELIGIOUS FACTORS

The religious bond that held the various tribes together was weakened by the introduction of pagan forms of worship under Solomon. Furthermore, the role of the prophets in the schism must not be overlooked. The prophets, who played such a key role in the reigns of Saul and David, disappeared during the reign of Solomon. No doubt the prophets resented the introduction of paganism into Israel by Solomon as well as the encroachments on tribal prerogatives and individual liberties which characterized that reign. In Ahijah of Shiloh and Shemaiah of Jerusalem the prophets reappeared, but only as antagonists of the crown pronouncing prophetic judgment upon the house of David.

F. ECONOMIC FACTORS

The extravagance of Solomon and his ambitious building program, particularly in Jerusalem, resulted in heavy taxation and forced labor. The Northern tribes had no particular interest in the further beatification and enlargement of Jerusalem. It was from this burdensome tax load that the Northern tribes demanded relief from Rehoboam (1Ki. 12:4).

G. PETTY FACTORS

Finally, one cannot overlook the shrewd and ambitious leadership of Jeroboam, nor Rehoboams foolish handling of the confrontation at Shechem as factors contributing to the schism.

II. CONSEQUENCES OF THE SCHISM

The schism of 931 B.C. had ramifications in three different areas: political, economic, and religious.

A. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

The first and most obvious consequence of the 931 B.C. schism was the break-up of the Solomonic empire. Signs of decay were present even during the closing years of Solomons reign. Damascus seems to have been the first vassal state to throw off the yoke of Jerusalem. As a result of the 931 schism, Ammon and Moab in Transjordan broke away from Israel. In the southeast, Edom gained independence. In the southwest, the Philistines for the most part seem to have regained their freedom. The once mighty empire was so weakened that Pharaoh Shishak met little resistance when he invaded the land in 926 B.C.

B. ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

Solomons wealth was derived mainly from his wide-ranging naval operations and from revenues derived from merchant caravans which traversed his land. With the schism of 931 B.C. the seaport at Ezion-geber was lost, and neither of the two miniature kingdoms was strong enough to control the major trade routes along the coast and in Transjordan. This lost revenue, plus the burden of now having to pay political bribes to foreign powers (1Ki. 14:26; 1Ki. 15:18), put a severe strain upon the economy of the two kingdoms. What little economic strength that was internally generated was dissipated in the forty or so years of intermittent warfare between Israel and Judah.

C. RELIGIOUS CONSEQUENCES

Growing directly out of the schism of 931 B.C. was the emergence of a counterfeit brand of Yahwism with shrines located in the North at Bethel and Dan. This watered-down version of revealed religion was not able to resist the energetic invasion of the worship of the Baal of Tyre in the days of Ahab. Furthermore, the state of hostilities between the two rival nations prevented thousands of people in the Northern Kingdom from attending the sacred festivals in Jerusalem. Many of the faithful in the North did emigrate to Judah. This population drain at one point became so severe that king Baasha attempted to blockade the main road to Jerusalem (1Ki. 15:17).

III. THE CONDITIONS AFTER THE SCHISM

Each new state had certain advantages and disadvantages after the disruption of 931 B.C.

A. THE ADVANTAGES OF ISRAEL OVER JUDAH

The Northern Kingdom had five times the territory and twice the population of Judah. Three popular and ancient sanctuaries (Bethel, Dan, and Gilgal) helped compensate for being cut off from the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Israel was a far more fertile and wealthy land than Judah. Throughout the parallel histories of the two kingdoms Israel was of much more political and military consequence than Judah could ever hope to be.[334]

[334] North, OTIH, p. 10.

B. THE ADVANTAGES OF JUDAH OVER ISRAEL

The advantages of Judah are five in number. First, Judah had a stable monarchy. Judah held unflinchingly to the succession of the house of David. Throughout the history of the Southern Kingdom, the throne passed on, for the most part without difficulty, to the kings eldest son. In the Northern Kingdom there was no orderly arrangement for the succession of kings. A future king would be proclaimed by a prophet, and then he would await his opportunity to seize the throne.
A second advantage lies in the fact that Judah had a royal city. Jerusalem remained the place of royal residence for kings of Judah until the end of that kingdom. Israel had no such city and the Northern capital moved from Shechem to Penuel to Tirzah and finally to Samaria. Even after Omri built Samaria, other cities (e.g., Jezreel) seem to have served as secondary capitals.
Thirdly, Judah had a genuine religious center and a magnificent Temple which contained the ancient sacred ark. That this was no small advantage is proved by Jeroboams determined effort to keep his subjects from making the trip southward to worship.
From one point of view Judahs geographical isolation may be counted as an advantage. Since none of the major highways passed through her, and since she was no great military prize, Judah was able to pursue her modest way of life for the most part without outside interference.[335]

[335] Ibid.

Finally, although Judahs population was smaller than that of Israel, it was -more homogenous. Many Canaanite enclaves existed in the North; but those living in Judah were for the most part of pure Israelite stock.

THE KINGDOMS CONTRASTED

ISRAEL

JUDAH

Northern Kingdom

Southern Kingdom

Ten Tribes

Two Tribes

First King: Jeroboam

First King: Rehoboam

Capitals: Shechem, Samaria

Capital: Jerusalem

Worship: at Dan, Bethel, Samaria

Worship: Jerusalem

Nine dynasties

One dynasty

Nineteen kings

Nineteen kings and one queen

All bad kings

Good and bad kings

Shorter reigns

Longer reigns

Lasted about 210 years

Lasted about 344 years

Kingdom fell in 722 B.C.

Kingdom fell in 587 B.C.

Taken into Assyria by Shalmaneser-Sargon

Taken into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar

Longest Reign: Jeroboam II – 41 years

Longest Reign: Manasseh – 55 years

Shortest Reign: Zimri – 7 days

Shortest Reign: Jehoahaz – 3 months

Last King: Hoshea

Last King: Zedekiah

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(25) Jeroboam built Shechem.Shechem had passed through many vicissitudes of fortune. It was already a city when Abraham entered the Promised Land (Gen. 12:6), and is from time to time mentioned in the patriarchal history (Gen. 33:18, Gen. 35:4, Gen. 37:12-13). At the Conquest it became a city of refuge (Jos. 20:7; Jos. 21:20-21), and the scene of the solemn recital of the blessings and curses of the Law (Jos. 8:33-35). From its proximity to Shiloh, and to the inheritance of Joshua, it assumed something of the character of a capital (Jos. 24:1; Jos. 24:32). Then it became the seat of the usurpation of Abimelech, which allied itself with the native inhabitants of the region; but rebelling afterwards against him, it was destroyed (Judges 9). We then hear nothing more of it till this chapter, when the tribes assemble at Shechem, under the shadow of the famous hills of Ebal and Gerizim, to meet Rehoboam. Jeroboam is said to have built it anew. This may be taken literally, as indicating that it had never recovered from its destruction by Abimelech, or it may simply mean that he fortified and enlarged it as his capital. Subsequently it gave way to Tirzan and Samaria; but its almost unrivalled position preserved it in importance among the Samaritans after the Captivity, even down to our Lords time, and under the name of Nablous (Neapolis) it has lasted to the present day, while many other cities once famous have passed away.

Penuel.See Gen. 32:30-31; Jdg. 8:8; Jdg. 8:17. It lay on or near the Jabbok, on the other side of Jordan, commanding the road from the east by Succoth to the fords of Jordan and Shechem. Jeroboam rebuilt itperhaps out of the ruin in which it had been left by Gideonas an outpost to his new capital, and a royal stronghold among the tribes on the east of Jordan.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

JEROBOAM’S WORKS AND IDOLATRY, 1Ki 12:25-33.

25. Built Shechem Enlarged and fortified it for a royal residence.

Dwelt therein Not exclusively, for in 1Ki 14:17, we find him dwelling at Tirzah.

Went out from thence That is, Shechem was the base of operations in the building and fortifying of other cities.

Penuel The place east of the Jordan, near the fords of the Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled with the angel, (Gen 32:30) and whose tower and inhabitants, in the time of the judges, Gideon had destroyed. Jdg 8:17. Jeroboam probably regarded it as an important position, commanding the great caravan road to the farther East, and accordingly fortified it for the security of his kingdom.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Instead Of Choosing Wholly To Follow YHWH On The Basis Of The Covenant Made With Him, Jeroboam The New King Of Israel Chooses The Way Of Disaster ( 1Ki 12:25-32 ).

But things were not going well in Israel, for sadly, on coming to the throne of Israel as YHWH had promised him through Ahijah, Jeroboam immediately forgot the covenant that YHWH had made with him promising him the establishment of his house (1Ki 11:35-38), and he did it in view of what he saw as the greatest threat to his kingship. For while there were a number of sanctuaries in Israel where true worship of YHWH could be carried out (1Ki 18:30; 1Ki 19:14), and we need not doubt that there were true priests and prophets who were ready to maintain them, that did not alter the fact that the Central Sanctuary to which the tribes had to gather three times a year for worship together was in Jerusalem, and that many of his people had got into the habit of looking to Jerusalem as the central place of worship. This concerned him so much that he set about establishing a new cult. It was based on old recognised but bastardised sanctuaries, which were the bain of Israel, but it was his hope that they would turn his people away from Jerusalem. Thus instead of seeking YHWH’s guidance through the prophets as to what he should do, he used the popular syncretistic sanctuaries which had grown up as the basis of a new approach to Yahwism.

We can understand the problem. Worship at Jerusalem as the Central Sanctuary which was intended to bind all Yahwists together, even though there were two nations, would depend on a peace treaty made with Rehoboam, and this, along with the loyalty of the current priesthood towards the Jerusalem Sanctuary, made him recognise that Israel could never fully be a separate nation while they acknowledged Jerusalem as the Central Sanctuary. Indeed his fear was that his people would be wooed back to serving Rehoboam. We do not know what would have resulted had the attempt been made, which was clearly YHWH’s intention, but Jeroboam was not up to taking the risk, and consequently he made himself the standard of what was seen as evil in the northern kingdom, by carrying out ‘the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat’.

This sin consisted of setting up twin central sanctuaries in Bethel and Dan, two ancient and well recognised, but syncretistic sanctuaries, at which images of bulls were erected, and establishing a non-levitical priesthood made up of people of his own choosing. At these sanctuaries he established temples, in which the images could be placed, which contained ‘high places’ at which the people could worship. True sanctuaries of YHWH were apparently at some stage torn down (1Ki 19:14), although we do not know how soon this happened. This undoubtedly pandered to the people, many of whom found syncretistic worship very acceptable, and its purpose was to stop them looking to Jerusalem.

The bulls were not intended to be seen as images of God, but were rather probably intended to replace the Ark as the place where YHWH would invisibly meet with His people, stood, as it were, on the back of the bull, for elsewhere gods were regularly depicted as standing on the backs of bulls. Theoretically it still recognised the invisibility of YHWH, but dangerously the images were also reminiscent of Baal worship, for Baal was regularly depicted by means of the image of a bull. It was thus a compromise, possibly partly with the hope of placating his Canaanite subjects and integrating them into Israel, and definitely with a view to turning his people’s thoughts away from Jerusalem. He also altered the timing of the popular Autumn festival, the time when all the harvests of the year were celebrated, which occurred prior to the coming of the rain in October/November. The result could only be a Yahwism that lost its purity, and became diluted and syncretised with Canaanite worship, bringing YHWH down to the level of other ‘gods’. This was ‘the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat’.

Analysis.

a Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and dwelt in it. And he went out from there, and built Penuel (1Ki 12:25).

b And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now will the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of YHWH at Jerusalem, then will the heart of this people turn again to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of Judah” (1Ki 12:26-27).

c Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other he placed in Dan (1Ki 12:28-29).

d And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even to Dan (1Ki 12:30).

c And he made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi (1Ki 12:31).

b And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah, and he went up to the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made.

a And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made (1Ki 12:32 b).

Note that in ‘a’ he fortified two fortresses in Israel, one on each side of the Jordan, probably with the aim of the focus of his people’s political thought being on them, and in the parallel he ‘fortified’ Bethel as a religious centre by providing it with a priesthood, hoping that it would become the central focus of their religious thought. In ‘b’ he was afraid that the people would observe the feasts and go and sacrifice in Jerusalem, and in the parallel he ordained a counter-feast, and himself went up to the altar and sacrificed in Bethel. In ‘c’ he established two main sanctuaries to rival the Central Sanctuary, setting up images within them, and in the parallel he established temples including high places in Bethel and Dan, and set up false priests within them. Centrally in ‘d’ what he did became a sin to the people.

1Ki 12:25

‘ Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and dwelt in it. And he went out from there, and built Penuel.’

Taking advantage of the short peace which had been granted as a result of YHWH’s intervention in Jerusalem, Jeroboam set up two political centres, one on each side of Jordan, the one in Shechem which had been at the very heart of the rebellion, and the other in Penuel. Both were seemingly fortified in order to act as political centres in their areas. He would, however, eventually establish his capital city at Tirzah (1Ki 14:17), but he knew that he would have to guard against the possibility of Rehoboam wooing the Israelites in Transjordan if they felt themselves cut off from any political influence.

Shechem, which was in the territory of Manasseh, but was geographically in ‘the hill country of Ephraim’, guarded the pass from east to west, and commanded the road through the hills of Manasseh to Bethshean. It was a crucial centre. Its refortification at this time is evidenced archaeologically. Penuel was in the east of Jordan, guarding a ford of the Jabbok, and possibly straddling the main trade route. It was no doubt established as a political centre in order to cement Israel’s unity with the Transjordanian tribes, and especially with Gilead. Within five years it would be listed by Shishak of Egypt as paying tribute on his expedition through Judah and Israel to interfere with the trade routes which had been so profitable for Solomon, and to obtain plunder and tribute throughout Judah and Israel, something which is evidenced by a relief in the temple of Amun in Thebes which names many Palestinian towns which were forced to pay tribute, and by a broken stele of his from Megiddo. It was an expedition which would have severely dented the military capacity of both nations, but only feasible because the empire had broken up.

The statement that there was continual war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam in 1Ki 14:30 is clearly only a general one indicating the state of belligerence that constantly existed between the two nations. It was something which would result in hostilities at various points in time. They were unable to become reconciled. It does not, however, prevent there having been a period of uneasy peace at the beginning of his reign, not be it noted as a result of any friendly intention by Rehoboam, but arising out of YHWH’s intervention and no doubt the fear that Rehoboam may well have had on reflection of what the result of such a civil war might be, especially with Egypt making threatening noises. Israel could after all call on a large number of conscripts. The invasion of Shishak of Egypt in Rehoboam’s fifth year (1Ki 14:25), reducing a number of the cities of Judah commencing with Gezer, and enforcing heavy tribute on Rehoboam, would undoubtedly later reduce his effective military capability, and would mean that he always had to be watching his back from then on. His folly at Shechem was reaping a bitter reward.

1Ki 12:26-27

‘ And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now will the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of YHWH at Jerusalem, then will the heart of this people turn again to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” ’

Along with his attempt to strengthen Israel’s ability to resist invasion, Jeroboam turned his thoughts to the religious position. He recognised the great danger that if Israelites continued their visits to the Temple in Jerusalem at one or other of the three great feasts (1Ki 9:25), and went up to offer sacrifices there, their hearts might be turned back to Rehoboam, who would no doubt be on the lookout for the opportunity. And the consequence would be that they would then kill him at Rehoboam’s request and return to the service of Rehoboam. He felt that it was something that he could not risk.

It is very possible that had he consulted Ahijah the prophet he might have found a satisfactory solution to his dilemma, especially as any Israelite would certainly have been hesitant about visiting Jerusalem with no guarantee of safe conduct. In the time of David it had been solved by having two central sanctuaries for a time, neither of which had contained the Ark. And there were a number of genuine sites in Israel where YHWH had recorded His Name where this might have been arranged. But instead he determined to take matters into his own hands.

1Ki 12:28-29

‘ Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set the one in Bethel, and the other he placed in Dan.’

Ignoring the prophets, and taking advice from his political advisers, Jeroboam set up two ‘calves of gold’, one in Bethel and the other in Dan, and called on Israel not to go up to Jerusalem but rather to worship at one of these two sanctuaries. ‘Calves’ was probably a derogatory description by the author of what were actually bulls, the description being based on the incident of Aaron and the molten calf. (Exo 32:4). The idea of the bulls was probably that they be seen as bases on which the invisible YHWH would be visualised, thus replacing the Ark. Gods like Hadad, perched on the backs of bulls, were a common feature of local nature religions. The words cited are mainly taken from Exo 32:4, indicating that that incident had suggested the idea to Jeroboam, but with ‘gods’ being in the plural because there were bull two bases, a plural which was no doubt also intended to be seen as a plural of intensity. Jeroboam, and the people, knew that there was only one YHWH, even though they were as it were, dividing Him into two on the two bases, a dangerous precedent.

Bethel and Dan had both been sanctuaries in the past, although the one in Dan very much had a reputation for unorthodoxy (Jdg 18:30-31). It had clearly then ceased for a period, but had probably been later revived out of local enthusiasm. It was thus a convenient site for Jeroboam to seize on, both because of its ancient respectability in northern Israel, and in its readiness not to stick to the norm. Bethel was an even more ancient sanctuary (Gen 12:8; Gen 13:3-4; Gen 28:19; Gen 35:1-7), and was also a place where YHWH had recorded His Name. It catered for the south of Israel. But the probability is that the genuine priests of Bethel would not cooperate with Jeroboam, especially once the golden bull had been placed there. To them it would smack of Baalism (Baal was depicted in the form of a bull) and of setting up a graven image. That no doubt was why in the end he had to appoint his own priests. He may well have intended by his bulls to also lure the many Canaanites in his country to participate in the worship, thus uniting the country, even if it did produce a watered down Yahwism.

1Ki 12:30

‘ And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even to Dan.’

The people began to flock to Dan, with its unorthodox and doubtful background, as their ‘central sanctuary’, something which ‘became a sin’ to them because it meant that they had turned away from orthodox Yahwism. This may well have been because there was already a regular annual pilgrimage to Dan which took place year by year around this time, which all now took advantage of, delighted to be freed from the old ties. Dan made no awkward demands on them. It must indeed be seen as probable that, with its syncretistic form of Yahwism, things went on in Dan that were very pleasing to the flesh, but not to YHWH. Dan had in fact been an alternative, but unorthodox, ‘central sanctuary’ in the days of the Judges (Jdg 18:30-31). It thus enjoyed a distinction that Bethel did not have. And as suggested, it may well be that a well established procession and pilgrimage, which had long taken place yearly, brought about this situation (encouraged by Jeroboam because it took them as far from Jerusalem as possible). Excavations in Dan have in fact revealed there a high place and enclosure erected in the time of Jeroboam.

1Ki 12:31

‘ And he made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi.’

In Bethel and Dan Jeroboam also set up ‘temples’ to house the bulls (houses of high places), which also contained ‘high places’ where the people could worship, reminiscent of Baal worship. And, presumably because he could not persuade orthodox priests to serve in them, he set up his own priesthood of non-Levites because the Levitical priests would not cooperate. (What he should have done, of course, was find something in which they would cooperate. But Solomon had encouraged diverse ‘high places’ and they had become popular with the people – 1Ki 3:2-3).

1Ki 12:32

‘ And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah, and he went up to the altar; so did he in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.’

In his thoroughgoing attempt to turn the people away from Jerusalem worship Jeroboam replaced the three great feasts of YHWH with a feast established in the eighth month, to celebrate the end of the harvests. This was aping the Feast of Tabernacles, which was, however, in the seventh month. He was aware that the only way in which he could achieve success was by weaning the people completely away from orthodox Yahwism. The people of Israel lived so far from Jerusalem that they had in the main probably only attended one great feast a year (compare 1Sa 1:3), and this was thus the alternative that he now gave them which he hoped would take their minds off the regular feasts. And he supported this by himself ‘going up’ to the altar in Bethel and offering the same kind of sacrifices (presumably through his new-fangled priests) as would be offered during the feast of Tabernacles, no doubt at the same time arranging for many other freewill offerings which would result in great feasting and celebration. He may well by this have been intending to make Bethel more popular, and it is possible that he arranged the festival fairly quickly in order to celebrate the establishment of his kingship at ‘a feast of YHWH’. (If the gathering at Shechem had been for the seven year reading of the Law, that assembly would have been in the seventh month – Deu 31:9-11).

But Jeroboam could not have accomplished all this unless the hearts of the people had been with him. It was clearly only possible because Solomon’s own behaviour had encouraged a diluted Yahwism. Loyalty to pure Yahwism had long grown dim, except among those who heeded the prophets.

We may end the passage by summing up ‘the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat which will have such prominence throughout Kings.

1). He set up two separate sanctuaries at which the people could worship, thus breaking their sense of unity. They no longer had a central sanctuary at which to gather, and seemingly no focus on the covenant (no Ark). Moreover both sanctuaries were syncretistic and included Canaanite features such as ‘high places’.

2). He set up two visible graven images that the people could look on in two separate places as they worshipped, each of which was supposed to be bearing the invisible God. Such graven images were contrary to God’s Law, and to have two figures which indicated the presence of God in two different places destroyed the idea of His essential unity, as the reference to ‘these are your gods’ emphasises. He was virtually making God like the gods of the nations.

3). He established a non-Levitical priesthood consisting of men of his own choosing, instead of those chosen and set apart by God.

4). He himself acted as king-priest by offering incense.

5). He instituted a feast of his own devising to replace the three feasts of YHWH which had commemorated the deliverance from Egypt.

He was thus basically rejecting the revealed religion of YHWH and shaping a pale copy of it to his own choosing. As a result he was misrepresenting the God of the Covenant of Sinai, and rejecting all His revealed requirements. He was turning the God of Sinai into a god like any other god, and removing the sense of awe and holiness that the Tabernacle had been designed to inculcate. Although he possibly did not realise it, it was an act of open rebellion against YHWH and His revelation of Himself.

We, too, can be in danger of the sin of Jeroboam, for whenever we fail to recognise our own responsibilities towards Jesus Christ as our Lord, and begin to shape our worship of God around things which are simply pleasing to ourselves, rather than around what encourages true worship, and begin to fit our ‘heavenly service’ into the shape of men’s earthly ideas instead of according to the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures, we become as guilty as Jeroboam. The sin of Jeroboam is responsible for much of the ‘worldliness’ which is in the church today.

Jeroboam, The False Altar, The Man Of God And The Old Prophet ( 1Ki 12:33 to 1Ki 13:34 ).

What follows may appear to be strange story with which to commence the reign of Jeroboam, but we must not take it out of context, and in context it is a cameo of the future of Israel. It is a story of contrasts and warnings against disobedience. On the one hand we have the downrightly disobedient Jeroboam who has basically turned away from true Yahwism, and received ample warning of what YHWH would do unless he repented. On the other, standing out in stark contrast, we have the fearless man of God, who came from Judah in total obedience, only for him also to turn out to be disobedient because he allowed himself to be persuaded by lies to go against YHWH’s word. He was a warning to the godly in Israel that they must stand firmly by the truth, and not be persuaded to waver by smooth tongues. And in the middle we have the wavering, and backslidden prophet who was unsure of both himself and the current situation. Unwilling to accept the man of God’s genuineness because of his readiness to compromise, he brought about his disobedience by subtlety, only to recognise too late that he was dealing with a true man of God, and that what he had brought was the truth. He was a warning to the compromisers in Israel, who were not happy with what Jeroboam was doing, but were not prepared to do anything about it, and as a consequence were in danger of also dragging down the true believers. It is thus a story of the unbelieving, the true believer and the doubter, a picture in miniature of the situation in Israel as it fought to cope with the new situation.

It is a remarkable story also in that it introduces a new period in which God will manifest Himself in a series of miracles, a series which will come to its head in Elijah and Elisha, as God encourages the faithful in the midst of apostasy. God was acting positively in the new situation as, humanly speaking, He fought to keep the believing in Israel faithful to Himself. It will be noted as we continue that most of what we know about Jeroboam revolves around, not his achievements, but his apostasy and his contact with men of God who pass judgment on him and seek to bring him to repentance. This was the story that the prophetic author wanted us to be aware of. How God dealt with the erring nation.

One of the problems that many find puzzling is as to why God allowed the faithful man of God to be deceived with the result that, having faithfully fulfilled his mission, he was struck down for disobedience. And we ask ourselves, ‘what got into the old prophet?’ But what happened to the man of God came as a stark and permanent warning to the believing in Israel to beware of itself being led into disobedience by false words. Like Samson who was similarly guilty of disobedience the man of God probably accomplished more in his death than he did in his life. And the behaviour of the false prophet is the all too familiar story of the path of compromise that often not only renders useless the ministry of those caught up in its ways, but can also undermine the faithful who are seeking to remain true to God. This is the story of Israel, and of the church.

We should recognise that while to us the man of God’s sin was not very heinous, it was not only an act of gross disobedience, but was also in Israel’s eyes a declaration that YHWH was at peace with Israel because the man of God accepted Israelite hospitality. The only thing that could annul that declaration was the death of the one who had made it. (Had the man of God still been alive he would have been the first to agree).

The first and last verses in the passage form an inclusio, with 1Ki 12:33 defining the crowning sin that brought the wrath of God down on Jeroboam, and 1Ki 13:33-34 indicating that in spite of that he did not turn from his sin, but continued in it so that his sin became sin to the whole house of Jeroboam resulting in it being cut off from the earth.

Within the inclusio are three subsections: the judgment of the man of God on the altar of Jeroboam (1Ki 12:33 to 1Ki 13:10), the dealings of the old prophet with the man of God (1Ki 13:11-32), the final conclusion about the house of Jeroboam (1Ki 13:33-34).

But first we must bring out the overall chiasmus which binds the passage as a unity. The passage can be analysed as follows:

a And he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart (1Ki 12:33 a).

b And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar, to burn incense (1Ki 12:33 b).

c And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of YHWH to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar by the word of YHWH, and said, “O altar, altar, thus says YHWH, Behold, a son will be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and on you will he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones will they burn on you.” And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign which YHWH has spoken, Behold, the altar shall be torn apart, and the ashes that are on it will be poured out.” And it came about, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, that Jeroboam put forth his hand from the altar, saying, “Lay hold on him.” And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back again to him. The altar also was torn apart, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of YHWH. And the king answered and said unto the man of God, “Entreat now the favour of YHWH your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.” And the man of God entreated YHWH, and the king’s hand was restored to him again, and became as it was before. And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” And the man of God said to the king, “If you will give me half your house, I will not go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place, for so it was charged me by the word of YHWH, saying, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, neither return by the way that you came.” So he went another way, and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel (1Ki 13:1-10).

d Now there dwelt an old prophet in Beth-el, and one of his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Beth-el. The words which he had spoken to the king, them also they told to their father (1Ki 13:11).

e And their father said to them, “What way did he go?” Now his sons had seen what way the man of God went, who came from Judah (1Ki 13:12).

f And he said to his sons, “Saddle for me the ass.” So they saddled the ass for him, and he rode on it (1Ki 13:13).

g And he went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak, and he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.” Then he said to him, “Come home with me, and eat bread” (1Ki 13:14-15).

h And he said, “I may not return with you, nor go in with you, nor will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, for it was said to me by the word of YHWH, “You shall eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way in which you came” (1Ki 13:16-17).

i And he said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of YHWH, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” But he lied to him (1Ki 13:18).

j So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house, and drank water (1Ki 13:19).

i And it came about, as they sat at the table, that the word of YHWH came to the prophet who brought him back, and he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says YHWH, Forasmuch as you have been disobedient to the mouth of YHWH, and have not kept the commandment which YHWH your God commanded you, but came back, and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, ‘Eat no bread, and drink no water,’ your body will not come to the sepulchre of your fathers’ ” (1Ki 13:20-22).

h And it came about, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom he had brought back, and when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him, and his body was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it. The lion also stood by the body (1Ki 13:23-24).

g And, behold, men passed by, and saw the body cast in the way, and the lion standing by the body, and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet dwelt. And when the prophet who brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the mouth of YHWH, therefore YHWH has delivered him to the lion, which has torn him, and slain him, according to the word of YHWH, which he spoke to him (1Ki 13:25-26).

f And he spoke to his sons, saying, “Saddle me the ass.” And they saddled it (1Ki 13:27).

e And he went and found his body cast in the way, and the ass and the lion standing by the body. The lion had not eaten the body, nor torn the ass. And the prophet took up the body of the man of God, and laid it on the ass, and brought it back, and he came to the city of the old prophet, to mourn, and to bury him. And he laid his body in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, “Alas, my brother!” (1Ki 13:28-30).

d And it came about, after he had buried him, that he spoke to his sons, saying, “When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre in which the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones” (1Ki 13:31).

c “For the saying which he cried by the word of YHWH against the altar in Beth-el, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely come about” (1Ki 13:32).

b After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again from among all the people priests of the high places, whoever would, he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places (1Ki 13:33).

a And this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth (1Ki 13:34).

Note that in ‘a’ Jeroboam goes to celebrate his self-appointed feast at Bethel, the false sanctuary that he has set up, and in the parallel ‘this thing’ became a sin to the house of Jeroboam, and resulted in it being cut off. In ‘b’ Jeroboam offered incense on the false altar, and in the parallel he did not return from his evil way but consecrated as priests whom he would. In ‘c’ the man of God cried against the altar and demonstrated its condemnation, prophesying its future defilement, and in the parallel the old prophet confirmed that the words of the man of God were true and that they would surely come about. In ‘d’ the old prophet learned what the man of God had said and done, and in the parallel, having sought him out, he buried him because he had accordingly led him astray. In ‘e’ the old prophet discovered the way that the man of God had taken, and in the parallel he went and found the man of God’s body cast in the way. In ‘f’ he called on his sons to saddle his ass, and in the parallel he did the same. In ‘g’ the old prophet found the man of God and invited him to eat with him, and in the parallel he declared that he was dead because he had done so. In ‘h’ the man of God declared that he must not eat or drink in Israel, and in the parallel he ate and drank, and died. In ‘i’ the old prophet declared a false prophecy to the man of God, and in the parallel he declared a true prophecy. Centrally in ‘j’ the man of God was disobedient to YHWH and ate and drank water in Israel.

Jeroboam Is Challenged By A Man Of God ( 1Ki 12:33 to 1Ki 13:10 ).

Jeroboam appears not only to have appointed his own priests, but also to have exalted himself by taking the position of king-priest, for he offered incense at the altar, thus making himself the centre of the cult, something for which in future days Uzziah would be struck with leprosy. But his enjoyment of his new position was somewhat tarnished by the arrival of a man of God from Judah at the very moment when he was offering incense, who, with all eyes upon him, denounced the altar at Bethel as a false altar, declared that it would one day be desecrated by the sacrificing on it of the very priests of the high places whom Jeroboam had appointed, and warned that as a sign that this would be so YHWH would that day tear the altar apart and spill out its ashes.

An infuriated Jeroboam then sought to have the interloper arrested, but to his horror, on stretching out it became withered, and it was only due to the compassionate intercession of the man of God that his hand was restored. Immediately thereafter the altar was duly torn apart and the ashes spilled out. YHWH was revealing His view of things in no uncertain terms. When Jeroboam then tried to persuade the man of God to partake of food with him, the man of God refused on the grounds that YHWH had forbidden him to either eat or drink until he had returned to Judah. This was a further sign of YHWH’s enmity towards Jeroboam because he had spurned the covenant of YHWH. He could no longer ‘eat before YHWH’ (Exo 24:11).

That the man of God came from Judah is itself significant. We know, for example that the prophet Ahijah lived at Shiloh, and we will soon discover that there was an old prophet who lived at Bethel. Why then did YHWH not send them to denounce Jeroboam? We can only assume that thereby it was YHWH’s purpose to emphasise that while the countries were operating separately they were to see themselves as still united in YHWH. Judah and Israel were still to be united by the covenant, and Judah therefore had an interest in Israel’s religious purity. (We must remember that the tribes of Israel had been able to maintain such a unity even when they had been divided up into separate groups under different Judges in the book of Judges, for it was a religious unity rather than a political one).

We should note that by this exhibition of His power and anger YHWH was actually giving Jeroboam an opportunity to repent (1Ki 13:33), but sadly the cry fell on deaf ears. Jeroboam had set himself on a path from which he would not turn aside.

Analysis.

And he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart (1Ki 12:33 a).

And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar, to burn incense (1Ki 12:33).

And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of YHWH to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar by the word of YHWH, and said, “O altar, altar, thus says YHWH, Behold, a son will be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and on you will he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones will they burn on you” (1Ki 13:1-2).

And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign which YHWH has spoken, Behold, the altar shall be torn apart, and the ashes that are on it will be poured out” (1Ki 13:3).

And it came about, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, that Jeroboam put forth his hand from the altar, saying, “Lay hold on him.” And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back again to him (1Ki 13:4).

The altar also was torn apart, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of YHWH (1Ki 13:5).

And the king answered and said unto the man of God, “Entreat now the favour of YHWH your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.” And the man of God entreated YHWH, and the king’s hand was restored to him again, and became as it was before (1Ki 13:6).

And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” And the man of God said to the king, “If you will give me half your house, I will not go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place, for so it was charged me by the word of YHWH, saying, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, neither return by the way that you came” (1Ki 13:7-9)

So he went another way, and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel (1Ki 13:10).

.

Note that in ‘a’ Jeroboam went up to Bethel for a feast that he himself had devised, and in the parallel the man of God left Bethel using a new way, and not the previous way that he had used. In ‘b’ Jeroboam ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and in the parallel the man of God refused to partake of Jeroboam’s food and water. In ‘c’ the man of God cried out against Jeroboam’s altar declaring it to be unfit, and that it would never be restored, and in the parallel Jeroboam had been rendered unfit by a withered hand, and the man of God restored it. In ‘d’ the man of God declared that the altar would be torn open and the ashes spilled out, and in the parallel that is what happened. Centrally in ‘e’ Jeroboam sought to have the man of God arrested and finished up with a withered hand which like the withered altar was unfit for use.

1Ki 12:33

‘ And he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart. And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar, to burn incense.’

Note the prophetic author’s emphasis on the fact that Jeroboam went up to the altar of his own devising (‘the altar which he had made’) in the month which ‘he had devised of his own heart’, and ordained a strange ‘feast for the children of Israel’, with himself acting as king-priest by offering incense. In other words he was seeking to rid Israel of all that God had required at Sinai, and replacing it with devices and ideas of his own. He had basically rejected the revelation at Sinai in favour of his own innovations. It was the grossest of sins.

1Ki 13:1

‘ And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of YHWH to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense.’

But as he stood at the altar ready to burn incense a man of God from Judah strode into the sanctuary in response to ‘the word of YHWH’ (compare Isa 9:8; Isa 55:11) and caught him in his act of sacrilege (compare 2Ki 15:5 along with 2Ch 26:19). It is probable that the man of God would have been distinctively dressed so that all knew that he was a prophet of YHWH.

1Ki 13:2

‘ And he cried against the altar by the word of YHWH, and said, “O altar, altar, thus says YHWH, Behold, a son will be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and on you will he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones will they burn on you.”

Before all the gathered people the man of God denounced the altar ‘by the word of YHWH’. ‘By the word of YHWH’ indicates that it was as a result of the word of YHWH being at work within him, in other words, he was under inspiration of the Spirit of God. He declared that a king named Josiah would arise in the house of David who would one day sacrifice on that very altar the priests of the high places who burned incense on it, and would burn dead men’s bones on it. (For the fulfilment of this see 2Ki 23:20).

It will be noted that he did not attack Jeroboam directly, only by implication. Instead he directly attacked the altar. He could not therefore be accused of insulting the king. The prophesying of a name belonging to someone who would arise in the future was unusual, and can be compared with Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming of Coresh (Cyrus) in Isa 44:28 to Isa 45:1. But the name Josiah means ‘YHWH has given.’ It was indicating that a future king would be ‘given by YHWH’ who would bring all this about. And if we compare this with 2Sa 12:25 we can see that the name may originally simply have been seen as declared by YHWH as a God-given name indicating His personal choice of that person without it necessarily being intended to be the person’s given name which was used of him (just as YHWH had given the name of Jedidiah to Solomon, a name which was not used of him but indicated that he was God’s chosen one). Thus the prophecy did not strictly require that a Josiah should be born under that name, only that one would be born whom God could call ‘Josiah’. In the event, however, as so often happens with God, it later turned out that the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter.

The importance of this is that we must not see this as simply a kind of ‘forecast ‘ that would then wonderfully happen so that we could say, ‘how wonderful’. It was a declaration of what God would give to His people in the future in His God-given chosen king. That God chose to combine the two and granted both adds to its wonder.

While some have suggested that the name slipped in later as a marginal note made by someone who knew who it was who had acted like this, and wanted to draw attention to it, there are no real grounds for denying its genuineness in context. After all if YHWH could not forecast the name of someone in the future He would not be the God of Scripture, and certainly not the God Who has already recorded the names of all His elect in the Lamb’s Book of Life from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8; Rev 17:8).

1Ki 13:3

‘ And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign which YHWH has spoken, Behold, the altar shall be torn apart, and the ashes that are on it will be poured out” ’

The man of God then gave a sign which would take place on ‘the same day’. He declared that that very day the altar would be torn apart and its ashes would pour out onto the ground. The ashes of the genuine altar were looked on as sacred and had normally to be disposed of in a ‘clean place’ (Lev 6:10-11). Thus the idea here was that these ashes would be defiled, and revealed as ‘common’ and not sacred, by being tossed on the ground, an indication that YHWH had rejected the altar and its contents. The tearing apart of the altar would further indicate that it too was rejected by YHWH. The covenant that it was supposed to represent had been ‘torn up’.

1Ki 13:4

‘ And it came about, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, that Jeroboam put forth his hand from the altar, saying, “Lay hold on him.” And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back again to him.’

Hearing what the man of Good had declared, and rapidly recovering from his surprise, the king ‘put forth his hand from the altar’ and called on his men to arrest the man of God, because of the words that he had spoken against the altar. But then to his horror he realised that the hand that he had put forth had become withered and dried up so that it was useless (it was thus not just nervous paralysis). Moreover he discovered that he could not draw it back again. He realised that he had reached out his hand against the servant of YHWH and had been smitten. In those times a dried up ‘hand’ would be seen as excluding him from any future participation in the priesthood and the cult. He would be seen as disfigured (compare Lev 21:16-21). It would also, of course, mean that he was maimed for life.

1Ki 13:5

‘ The altar also was torn apart, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of YHWH.

And then as all watched in horror the altar itself burst open, and its ashes poured out onto the ground, fulfilling the sign given by the man of God. The bursting open of the altar may have been caused by excessive heat within it, or even by an earth tremor, but the miracle was that it had happened just as the man of God had prophesied, and at the right time. It confirmed to all YHWH’s rejection of the altar.

1Ki 13:6

‘ And the king answered and said unto the man of God, “Entreat now the favour of YHWH your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.” And the man of God entreated YHWH, and the king’s hand was restored to him again, and became as it was before.’

Meanwhile the king was conscious of his own troubles. His hand was withered and useless. And recognising that this really must be a man of God who was before him, he called on him to have compassion on him and plead his case before YHWH. The man of God responded and entreated YHWH on his behalf, and his arm was restored to what it had been before

“Entreat now the favour of YHWH.” This literally means ‘soften the face of YHWH’. He was acknowledging his sin and recognising the need for propitiation.

1Ki 13:7

‘ And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” ’

No doubt very shaken and relieved the king now called on the man of God to come home with him and refresh himself after which he would give him a reward. He was hoping that, as a result of the man of God eating with him he would be able to know that he was no longer seen as YHWH’s enemy, and that he was forgiven. The laws of hospitality were such that to eat with someone was to declare goodwill towards them and indicate no evil intentions against them. And this would equally apply in the case of an official representative. Thus he was seeking to curry the man of God’s favour, and the favour of YHWH Himself.

1Ki 13:8-9

‘ And the man of God said to the king, “If you will give me half your house, I will not go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place, for so it was charged me by the word of YHWH, saying, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, neither return by the way that you came.”

But the man of God rejected both his offer of food, and of reward. Indeed, he declared, if Jeroboam were to offer him half his house he would not accept his hospitality, or eat or drink with him. For YHWH had strictly charged him not to eat or drink, or to return in the same way in which he had come.

This last was a further indication of YHWH’s firm judgment on the house of Jeroboam, and on Israel, for ‘not returning by the same way’ indicated that this was not a friendly visit. There was to be no peace between them and YHWH. Someone avoided taking the same way back when they suspected possible reprisals. Thus this was a further act of rejection and an indication of open hostility between Israel and YHWH.

1Ki 13:10

‘ So he went another way, and did not return not by the way that he came to Bethel.’

So the man of God left Bethel and took another way back to Judah, not returning by the way that he had come, thus openly confirming Jeroboam’s rejection by YHWH. Indeed the whole scene had been prophetically acted out for that purpose, as a final plea to Jeroboam to consider his ways (1Ki 13:33).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

EXPOSITION

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, AND THE SCHISM IN THE CHURCH.The historian, after describing the great rebellion of the Jewish people, proceeds, in the rest of this chapter, to relate the measures which the new king took to secure his position. These were both external and internal. The external means were the erection of fortresses; the internal, the provision of new sanctuaries, priests, and ordinances.

1Ki 12:25

Then Jeroboam built [i.e; rebuilt or fortified, naturally has both meanings] Shechem [see on 1Ki 12:1 and on 1Ki 14:1] in Mount Ephraim [The Har-Ephraim, or mountain district of Ephraim (in Jos 11:16 called the “Mountain of Israel;” cf. Jos 17:15-18; Jdg 4:5; Jdg 10:1; 1Sa 1:1), is “the central mass of the hills of Palestine, nearly equidistant from the northern and southern boundary of the whole country”, and the richest and most beautiful part of the land. “The tower of Sichem had been burnt down by Abimelech and the tower of Penuel had been destroyed by Gideon, Jdg 8:17” (Keil). The city of Shechem had been destroyed at the same time as the tower, but had no doubt been rebuilt, at least in part, otherwise it could hardly have been selected for Rehoboam’s coronation. It was naturally Jeroboam’s first care to strengthen his position by fortitying his capital, and the more so as this city would be particularly obnoxious to Rehoboam as the scene of the revolution; but why he should at the same time have rebuilt PenuelEwald thinks the seat of government was placed hereis not at first eight so obvious, as it lay beyond the Jordan (Gen 32:22, Gen 32:30; Gen 33:17) and was therefore presumably outside the circle of hostilities, should such arise. Probably it was because this was the gate to his Trans-Jordanic territory. A tower commanding the fords of the Jordan would secure Reuben, Gad, etc; against invasion from Judah. It is also not unlikely that Jeroboam. who was the great castle builder of that age, had some fears of “hostile attacks from the north and northeast” (Keil), or thought of “the caravan road which led over Gilead to Damascus” (Wordsworth), and of which he would wish, for the sake of his revenue, to retain the control], and dwelt therein [He made it his first residence and capital]; and went out from thence [i.e; when he had secured one fortified city. He could hardly be certain as yet which side some of the tribes would take. It is also possible that some of the workmen who had built Shechem were afterwards employed on the fortification of Penuel], and built Penuel. [Bhr says, “There is no doubt that he built these fortifications by tribute labour, like Solomon.” But is this quite so certain? The people after the revolt would naturally conclude that Rehoboam, of whose proud temper they had had such proof, would want to wreak his vengeance on the city which had rejected him, and the instinct of self-defence would lead them at once to rebuild their walls. And the newborn kingdom would also earnestly desire to possess a suitable capital. Thus their self-interest and enthusiasm alike would obviate the necessity for a conscription.]

1Ki 12:26

And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David [It needed much less prescience than Jeroboam seems to have possessed to perceive that fortresses and armies would be of no avail for the defence of his realm, so long as Jerusalem remained the one sanctuary of the land. He clearly foresaw that if the people went up thither, as in time past, three times a year, to keep the feasts, the religious sentiment would in time reassert itself and sweep him and his new dynasty away. With one religion, one sanctuary, one priesthood, there could not long be two kingdoms. People who had so much in common would, sooner or later, complete the unity of their national life under a common sovereign. And we find, indeed, that so powerful were the attractions of the temple, and the religious system of which it was the centre, that “the priests and Levites that were in all Israel,” together with the more devout laity, fell away to Rehoboam (2Ch 11:13, 2Ch 11:16), while the speech of Abijah on Mount Zemaraim (2Ch 13:11), proves that others as well as Jeroboam were well aware that the old religion and the new kingdom could hardly coexist.]

1Ki 12:27

If this people go up to do sacrifice [Heb. sacrifices] in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem [as the law of Moses ordained (Deu 12:11, Deu 12:14; Deu 16:6, Deu 16:11)], then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord [The Syriac omits this word. The LXX. has ], even unto Rehoboam king of Judah [When Wordsworth remarks that Jeroboam “here acknowledges Rehoboam as the ‘lord’ of the people,” he surely forgets that these are not the actual words of Jeroboam, but the thoughts which the historian supposes him to have had (verse 26) ], and they shall kill me [as they would do, if they wished to return to Rehoboam’s rule. Their first offering would be the head of the usurper, 2Sa 20:20, 2Sa 20:21; cf. 2Sa 4:7], and go again [lit; turn again, same word as above] to Rehoboam king of Judah.

1Ki 12:28

Whereupon the king took counsel [“With his counsellors, or the heads of the nation who had helped him to the throne” (Keil). Bhr understands, “he reflected about it alone” (et excogitato consilio, Vulgate), alleging that so important a circumstance as the concurrence of the heads of the people in changing the system of worship would not have been passed over in silence. But while the text does not perhaps imply any formal deliberation with the elders, it is reasonable to suppose that Jeroboam, who owed his position to popular election, and who was far too sagacious not to follow the example of Rehoboam (1Ki 12:6, 1Ki 12:9), would summon others to advise him as to this critical and momentous step. Wordsworth refers to Isa 30:1, and says that “Jeroboam is the image and pattern of Machiavellian politicians.” “Next to Ahithophel, I do not find that Israel yielded a craftier head than Jeroboam’s” (Hall)], and made two calves [It is generally held that these were in imitation of, or were suggested by, the “golden calf” of Aaron (Exo 32:2), and the close resemblance of Jeroboam’s words (below), in inaugurating this new cultus, to Aaron’s have been thought to prove it. But surely it has been overlooked that Jeroboam could hardly be so shortsighted and unwise as deliberately to reintroduce a worship which had provoked the “fierce wrath” (Isa 30:12) of God, and had nearly resulted in the extermination of the Jewish race. For of course neither Jeroboam nor his people could have forgotten the stern condemnation which Aaron’s calf worship had received. The molten image ground to powder, the ashes mixed in the drink of the people, the slaughter of three thousand worshippers, etc; would assuredly have lived in the memories of the nation. A more impolitic step, consequentlyone more certain to precipitate his ruin, by driving the whole nation into the arms of JudahJeroboam could not have taken, than to attempt any revival or imitation of the forbidden cultus of the desert. And it is as little likely that the worship of the calves was derived from the worship of Apis, as practised at Memphis, or of “Mnevis, the sacred calf of Heliopolis” (Stanley), though with both of these Jeroboam had recently been in contact. It would have been but a sorry recommendation in the eyes of Israel that the first act of the new king should be to introduce the hateful idolatry of Egypt into the land; and every consideration tends to show that the calf worship was not, and was not intended to be, idolatry, such as the worship of Egypt undoubtedly was. It is always carefully distinguished from idol worship by the historians and prophets. And the idea which Jeroboam wished to give his subjects was clearly this that, so far from introducing new gods or new sanctuaries, he was merely accommodating the old worship to the new state of things. He evidently felt that what he and his house had most to fear was, not the armies of Rehoboam but the ritual and religious associations of Jerusalem. His object, if he were wise, must therefore be to provide a substitute, a counterfeit worship. “I will give you,” he virtually says, “at Bethel and Dan, old sanctuaries of our race long before Jerusalem usurped their place, those visible emblems of the heavenly powers such as are now found only in the temple. You too shall possess those mysterious forms which symbolize the Invisible, but you shall have them nearer home and easier of access.” There can be little doubt, consequently, that the “calves” were imitations of the colossal cherubim of Solomon’s temple, in which the ox or calf was probably the forma praecipua (1Ki 6:23).] of gold [Hardly of solid gold. Possibly of. wood covered with gold plates, i.e; similar to the cherubim (1Ki 6:23-28); probably of molten brass (see 1Ki 14:9, and cf. Psa 106:19), overlaid with gold; such images, in fact, as are described in Isa 40:19], and said unto them, It is too much for you [This translation, pace Keil, cannot be maintained. Nor can it be said that “the exact meaning of the original is doubtful” (Rawlinson), for a study of the passages where this phrase, occurs (see, e.g; Deu 1:6; Deu 2:8; Deu 3:26; and cf. Gen 45:28; Exo 9:28; 2Sa 24:16; 1Ki 19:4) will convince the reader that it must be rendered here, “It is enough”i.e; “you have gone long enough to a city which only owes its present position to the ambition of the tribe of Judah, and which is a standing testimony to your own inferiority; henceforth, desist.” We have an exact parallel in Eze 44:6; where the Authorized Version renders, “Let it suffice you.” The LXX. supports this view by rendering throughout. Vulgate, nolite ultra ascendere, etc.] to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods [rather “god,” for Jeroboam had no idea of introducing polytheism. It is true he made two calves because of his two sanctuaries, but each was designed to represent the same objectthe one God of Israel. The word is translated, gods” in Exo 32:1, Exo 32:4, Exo 32:8, Exo 32:23, Exo 32:31; but as the reference is in every case to the one calf, it should be translated “god” there also. In Nehemiah’s citation of the words (Neh 9:18), the word is unmistakably singular. “This is thy god,” etc. The words are not “exactly the same as the people used when setting up the golden calf” (Bhr). Jeroboam says, “Behold,” etc.], O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. [It is at first sight somewhat difficult to resist the view, which is generally entertained, that Jeroboam, of set purpose, cited the ipsissima verba of the Israelites in the desert (Exo 32:4). But a little reflection will show that it is much more difficult to believe that a monarch, circumstanced as Jeroboam was, could at the very outset of his career have acted in the teeth of history, and have committed the gross blunder, not to say wanton outrage, of deliberately connecting his new cult with the calf worship of the desert. He can hardly have dared, that is, to say, “This is no new religion, for this very form of worship our fathers used formerly in the desert, under the guidance of Aaron himself” (Seb. Schmidt, followed by Keil, al.) unless both he and his people alikewhich is inconceivablewere ignorant of their nation’s history recorded in Exo 32:19-35. It has been argued by some that this action of Jeroboam and the ready compliance of the ten tribes, prove that the Pentateuch cannot then have been written. But, as Hengstenberg (cited by Wordsworth) rejoins, the same argument would lead to the conclusion that the Bible could not have been written in the dark ages, or, we might add, even at the present day. He can hardly have claimed, that is to say, to be reintroducing the calf worship, which God had so emphatically reprobated, unless he designed an open defiance of the Most High, and wished to shock all the religious instincts and convictions of his people. It is much more natural, consequently, to suppose, considering the very frequent recurrence, though sometimes in slightly different shapes, of the formula “the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt” (Exo 20:2; Exo 29:45, Exo 29:46; Le 19:36; 23:43; Exo 25:38; Exo 26:13, 45; Num 15:41; Num 16:13; Num 20:16; Deu 5:6, Deu 5:15; Deu 6:12; Deu 8:14; Deu 9:26; Jos 24:6, Jos 24:17; Jdg 6:8; 1Sa 8:8; 1Sa 10:18; 1Ki 8:21, etc.) that the correspondence is accidental, the more so as Jeroboam does not quote the exact words, and that he has used a phrase which was constantly in their ears, insisting thereby that his calves were emblems of the God of their race, the God whose great glory it was that He had taken their nation out of the midst of another nation, etc. (Deu 4:34), and delivered them from a thraldom with which, perhaps, the tyranny of Rehoboam is indirectly compared. Or it there was any reference to the golden calf, it must have been depreciatory, as if to say,” That was rank idolatry, and as such it was punished. That calf was an image of Apis. My calves are cherubic symbols, symbols such as He has Himself appointed, of the Great Deliverer of our race. Behold thy God, which really brought thee up,” etc.]

1Ki 12:29

And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Daniel [Two considerations seem to have influenced Jeroboam in his choice of these sites. First, both these places were in some sort sanctuaries already. Bethel was already a makom, or holy place, in the days of Abraham; was consecrated by the visions and altar of Jacob (Gen 28:11-19; Gen 31:13; Gen 35:1, Gen 35:7, Gen 35:15), and by the ark having been there (Jdg 20:26-28, Hebrews; cf. Jos; Ant; 5.2. 10). And though Dan (Jos 19:47; Jdg 18:29; Jdg 20:1) can hardly have had as sacred a character as the “house of God and the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:17) had, still it had its shrine and its schismatic priesthood. A grandson of Moses (Jdg 18:13, true reading) had ministered there, and his sons were the priests of Dan still. Secondly, these localities would suit the convenience of his subjects, being respectively at the southern and northern extremities of the kingdom. And this, no doubt, was one reason why Dan was chosen in preference to other places, such as Shiloh, which, though more sacred, were less conveniently situated. A sanctuary at Dan would save the northern tribes many tedious journeys. It should be remarked that Bethel properly belonged to Benjamin (Jos 18:13, Jos 18:22), though it was also on the border of Ephraim; and it has been suggested that it was Jeroboam’s selection of this place as a seat of the calf worship decided the tribe of Benjamin to follow the lead of Judah. But the narrative seems to imply that their choice had been made at an earlier period (verse 21), and the city would seem to have been long in the possession of the house of Joseph (Jdg 1:22). It is now known as Beitin, and is one of the most naked and dreary spots in Palestine. “The place seems, as it were, turned to stone; and we can well imagine that the patriarch found nothing softer than a stone for his pillow.” Conder, p. 252, who suggests that from the time of Abraham Bethel was a , a sacred place merely (Gen 28:11), and distinct from the adjoining city of Luz (verse 19).]

1Ki 12:30

And this thing became a sin [It was in itself sinful, for it both set at nought the express prohibition of the Decalogue (Exo 20:4), and also disregarded the one sanctuary of God’s choice (Deu 12:5). And it led to other sins, e.g; the intrusion of a schismatic and irregular priesthood, and the performance of unauthorized rites, and to “an ever-deepening corruption of the national faith” (Ewald). Cf. Hos 8:5; Hos 13:2. But the meaning is, it became an occasion of sin to the people (“Quod fuit postea causa gravissimi peccati”Vatab.) Jeroboam “made Israel to sin“ (1Ki 14:16; 1Ki 15:26, etc.) It is difficult to conceive, in the face of these and similar words, how any one can seriously maintain that “the church of Israel was the national church” (Stanley, 2:264) ]: for the people went to worship before the one even unto Dan. [The people frequented both sanctuaries; why, then, is that at Dan especially mentioned? Some (Rawlinson, e.g.) have suggested that the text is here corrupt, and that we should read, “before the one to Bethel, and before the other to Dan.” According to others, “the one” () refers to the double (“the one,” “the other”); cf. verse 29. They would interpret, that is, “the people went to both, even to the distant Dan” (Bhr, Thenius). Keil would force the text and understand, “the people, even unto Dan,” i.e; the people throughout the whole kingdom. Similarly, Wordsworth. Ewald understands “before the one” to mean i.e; “as one,“ sc. man. On the whole it is better to take the words as they stand, literally. It is quite conceivable that, at first, the people resorted almost exclusively to the Danite sanctuary. Having been for long years a seat of worship, and having probably its “house of high places,” or temple (see below), already built, it would naturally be in a position to receive worshippers some time before Bethel was prepared for that purpose. Jeroboam’s offering in person at Bethel (verse 32) which marks the inauguration of his new ritual there, may have been partly designed to attract worshippers to a shrine, which, as being nearer Jerusalem, or for some other reason, was neglected. But the verse is patient of another interpretation. It may intend to convey that the rebellious tribes, in their defiant disregard of the old order of things, the order now represented by a hostile kingdom, went en masse to the opposite point of the compass, even to the unhallowed and hitherto despised sanctuary of the Danites. The LXX. (Vat.) addition here is noticeable, “And they forsook the house of the Lord.”]

1Ki 12:31

And he made an house of high places [See on 1Ki 3:2, and cf. 2Ki 17:29. It is often assumed (Keil, Rawlinson, al. after Josephus) that Jeroboam built two temples for his cherubim, and the statement of the text, that he built one, is explained on the ground that the historian contrasts the “house of high places” with the “house of the Lord.” Ewald, too, after 2Ki 17:29, 2Ki 17:32, understands the words as plural. But is it not more probable that a chapel or sanctuary already existed at Dan, where an irregular priesthood had ministered for more than four hundred years? This verse would then refer exclusively to Jeroboam’s procedure at Bethel (see next verse). There he built a temple and ordained a number of priests, but Dan had both already. We know that the Danite priests carried on the calf worship to the time of the captivity (Jdg 18:30). This “house of high places” has grown in Ewald’s pages into “a splendid temple in Canaanite style”], and made priests of the lowest of the people [Heb. “from the ends,“ i.e; from all classes, ex universe populo (Gesen.), and not, as the writer explains presently, from the tribe of Levi alone. Gen 19:4, Jdg 18:2, Eze 33:2, prove this to be the correct interpretation of the word. Rawlinson, who remarks that “Jeroboam could have no motive for specially selecting persons of low condition,” does not thereby dispose of the A.V. rendering, for the historian might mean that some of Jeroboam’s priests were of the lowest stamp, because he could find no others, or because he was so little scrupulous as to take them. “Leaden priests are well fitted to folder. deities” (Hall)], which were not of the sons of Levi. [Jeroboam would doubtless have been only too glad to have retained the services of the Levitical priests, but they went over in a body to Rehoboam (2Ch 11:13). The statement of Eze 33:14, that, “Jeroboam and his sons” had “cast them out,” suggests that they had refused to take part in his new cult and that thereupon he banished them, and, no doubt, confiscated their possessions. The idea of Stanley, that “following the precedent of the deposition of Abiathar by Solomon, he removed from their places the whole of the sacerdotal order,” is a wild conjecture for which Scripture affords not the slightest warrant.]

1Ki 12:32

And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah [i.e; the Feast of Tabernacles, which was held on the 15th of the seventh month (of. 1Ki 8:2). This was the great feast of the year, and, as the feast of harvest or ingathering, the most joyous. See on 1Ki 8:1. Had Jeroboam provided no counter attraction to this great festive gathering in Judah he might have found it a formidable temptation to his subjects. The reason usually given for the alteration of the timein defiance of the law, which expressly fixed it in the seventh month (Le 23:34, 39, 41)is that the eighth would be more generally convenient in the north, where the harvest or vintage was a month later (Then; Keil), as affording more time for the ingathering. In favour of this view is the consideration that the Jews not unfrequently had to intercalate a montha second Adarinto their year, because of the season being a late one. Some of the older commentators, e.g; Vatab; think this time was chosen as the anniversary of his secession, but this is pure conjecture, and such an association would be contrary to the genius of the Hebrew people. Keil maintains that Jeroboam’s design was to “make the separation, in a religious point of view, as complete as possible.” But we can hardly be expected to believe that he altered the month, for the sake of creating a distinction, but “retained the day of the month, the fifteenth, for the sake of the weak who took offence at his innovations” (Keil). The day was retained, as Bhr points out, because, the months being lunar, the fifteenth was the day of the full moon], and he offered [Heb. as marg; “and he went up,” i.e; ascended the altar; LXX. . the altar was always raised. It was probably approached by s slope, as Exo 20:26 forbade steps, though it is by no means certain that they were not used even in Solomon’s temple, and Jeroboam probably would have no scruples on such a minute point of ritual. It has been thought (Kitto, 4:147) that he was moved to officiate in person by the precedent of the Egyptian kings, who exercised priestly functions; but it is much more probable that he was guided by the example of Solomon at the dedication of the temple] upon [i.e; he stood upon the ledge or platform (called in the A.V. “compass,” Exo 27:5) in the middle of the altar] the altar. So did he in Bethel [i.e; the feast was held at one centre only, and at Bethel alone the king offered in person. But I venture to suggest that instead of , “so did he,” etc; we should read . The LXX. seem to have had this word before them . And not only does this slight change bring the Hebrew into harmony with the LXX; but it also simplifies the construction. “He went up upon the altar which he made to sacrifice unto the calves which he made.” The very tautology is instructive, as suggesting that altar, calves, and priests were all of Jeroboam’s making, not of God’s ordaining. The use of as a relative (= ) is strictly grammatical], sacrificing [marg; to sacrifice] unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel [Dan being already provided with its priesthood] the priests of the high places [i.e; of “the house of high places” (verse 31). Or it may be a contemptuous designation of Jeroboam’s irregular priests] which he had made.

1Ki 12:33

So he offered [Heb. went up, as before. This verse is really the introduction to the history of the next chapter] upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised [Josephus (Ant. 7.8. 5) seems unaware that this new feast was kept at a different date from the true Feast of Tabernacles. But these words are decisive] of his own heart [The Cethib has by which Maurer and Keil understand (“seoreum.” But qu.) But the Keri is every way to be preferred, So LXX; . Similarly, Neh 6:8]; and ordered [rather, kept, celebrated] a feast unto [Heb. for] the children of Israel: and he offered [went up] upon the altar, and burnt incense [Heb. to burn, etc. The context seems to imply that it was not incense, or not incense only, but the sacrifice, or sacrificial parts of the victim, that the king burned. See on 1Ki 13:3 (). And this meaning is justified by Le 1Ki 1:9, 1Ki 1:17; 1Sa 2:16; Amo 4:5, where the same word is used. It cannot be denied, however, that the word is generally used of incense, and it is very probable that both this and sacrifices were offered by Jeroboam on the same altar (cf. 1Ki 11:8). We may perhaps see in Jeroboam’s ministering in person, not only the design to invest the new ordinance with exceptional interest and splendour, but also the idea of encouraging his new priests to enter on their unauthorized functions with. out fear. The history, or even the traditions, of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:1-20.) and of Korah and his company (Num 16:40), and the threatenings of the law (Num 18:7, Num 18:22, cf. 2Ch 26:20), may well have made them hesitate. To allay their fears the king undertakes to offer the first of the sacrifices. And that their fears of a Divine interposition were not groundless the sequel shows.]

HOMILETICS

1Ki 12:30

The Sin of Jeroboam.

What was this sin, of which, from this time forward, the historian has so much to say? It is mentioned more than twenty times in Scripture. It casts its dark shadow across fifteen reigns of the kings of Israel. Its baleful influences were felt for more than two and a half centuries. It was the prime cause (2Ki 17:21-28) of that captivity from which the ten tribes have never returned. Surely we ought to know what it was. And as one help to a right conclusion, let us first clearly understand what it was not.

I. IT WAS NOT THE SIN OF REBELLION. There may have been sin in the way which the rupture with Judah was brought about (see 2Ch 13:6, 2Ch 13:7), though that is by no means certain (notes on 1Ki 12:19, 1Ki 12:20). But even if Israel was set upon rebellion, and even if Jeroboam had rudely and wickedly precipitated the revolt, that cannot be “the sin” of which he is here and elsewhere accused. For, in the first place, later kings could not be held responsible for Jeroboam’s conduct at the time of the disruption, i.e; they could not commit that sin of Jeroboam; and, secondly, the disruption itself was ordained of God (1Ki 11:31 sqq.; 1Ki 12:15; 2Ch 11:4). 1Ki 12:15, too, is decisive. “The cause was from the Lord.” Those who sate on Jeroboam’s throne, consequently, no less than the successors of Solomon, reigned de jure Divino. The former equally with the latter were the anointed of Heaven (2Ki 9:3, 2Ki 9:6). It was the Lord “raised up” (1Ki 14:14) Baasha (1Ki 15:28, 1Ki 15:29), Zimri (1Ki 16:12), Jehu (2Ki 9:6), and the rest.

II. IT WAS NOT THE SIN OF GOING AFTER OTHER GODS. If this were the sin referred to here it would probably have been called “the sin of Solomon,” for Solomon is twice charged with that sin (1Ki 11:4, 1Ki 11:10), whereas Jeroboam never went after Baal, or Ashtoreth, or Milcom. It is true the calves are once called “other gods” (1Ki 14:9), but they are only so called in derision, and in 1Ki 16:31 the sin of Jeroboam is expressly distinguished from the worship of other gods. It was probably Jeroboam’s boast (see note on 1Ki 16:28), not that he was instituting a new religion, or setting up a rival Deity, but that he was worshipping the one true God in a more rational and primitive way. See Jos; Ant. 8. 8.4. And that the calf. worship was not idolatry, properly so called, is clear from this consideration, that “the sin of Jeroboam” is confined to the kingdom of Israel. Not one of the kings of Judah is ever taxed with it. And yet it was in Judah, and not in Israel, that idolatry prevailed. Of the kings of Israel, only Ahab and his two sons were guilty of idolatry; whereas of the kings of Judah only five set their faces against it. Yet the non-idolatrous kings of Israel are constantly charged with Jeroboam’s sin, and the idolatrous kings of Judah never. Polytheism, therefore, it cannot have been.

III. IT WAS NOT THE SIN OF IMAGE WORSHIP. The calves were not made to be worshipped, any more than the cherubim of Solomon’s temple. Nor do we read that they received Divine worship. “The people went to worship before the one,” etc. The Scripture, it is true, calls them “molten images,” but Jeroboam doubtless said they were symbols of the heavenly powers, designed (like the images of the Roman Communion) to be helps to devotion, and they are nowhere called “idols,” or “horrors,” or “statues.” We entirely misconceive Jeroboam’s purpose, and discredit his sagacity, if we think that he had the worship of Apis or Mnevis or any similar idol in his mind. The last thing that would occur to him would be to set up a purely pagan system amongst such a people as the Jews. His was not the sin of idol worship. What, then, was it?

I. IT WAS THE SIN OF HERESY. For “heresy” in the original meaning of the word simply implied an arbitrary selection of doctrines or practices = a choosinginstead of dutifully accepting those which God has enjoined. This is precisely what Jeroboam did. Instead of taking and handing down to his successors, whole and undefiled, the “faith once delivered,” he presumed to modify it; to adapt it, as he thought, to the new order of things, etc. His heresy was threefold.

1. He chose his own places of worship. God had ordained that there should be one sanctuary for the whole nation. Both the law of Moses and the history of Israel alike taught that the religious centre of the nation should be one. From an early age it was predicted that God would choose Himself a place to put His name there (Deu 12:13, Deu 12:14; Deu 14:23). And this Divine choice had been recently and unmistakably made. He “chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved.” And He built His “sanctuary,” etc. (Psa 78:67-69; cf. Psa 132:18, Psa 132:14). At the dedication of this sanctuary this choice had been publicly proclaimed (1Ki 8:10, 1Ki 8:11; 2Ch 7:2, 2Ch 7:12, 2Ch 7:16). The whole nation then understood that God had “chosen Jerusalem to put His name there.” And Jeroboam was aware of this, and was also aware that the division of the kingdom was to make no difference as to the oneness or the position of the sanctuary. To prevent misconception he was twice reminded in the message of Ahijah, his charter to the crown, that Jerusalem was “the city which God had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel” (1Ki 11:32, 1Ki 11:33). It was to be in the future, as it had been in the past, the one place of incense and sacrifice. And that Jeroboam knew it, his own thoughts (1Ki 12:26, 1Ki 12:27) reveal to us. “If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem.” He is quite clear, thenindeed, he could not be otherwiseas to the place of God’s choice. But that place, he argues, will not do for him. Political considerations demand that he shall find a religious centre elsewhere. So he “takes counsel,” and decrees ex mero arbitrio that Israel shall have three holy places instead of one, and that Bethel and Dan shall henceforward divide the honours hitherto enjoyed by Jerusalem.

2. He chose his own modes of worship. Though the way in which God should be approached had been prescribed, though every detail of the Divine service had been ordered beforehand, and though he had been warned against adding aught to it or diminishing aught from it (Deu 4:2; Deu 12:1-32 :382), yet he decided otherwise. Perhaps he persuaded himself that he had good reasons for it; but all the same he chose otherwise than God had chosen. Though Exo 20:4, etc; forbade the making of graven images, yet he “made molten images” (1Ki 14:9). Though the law decreed that the sons of Aaron alone should offer sacrifice and burn incense, yet he determined to play the priest himself, and also “made him priests of the lowest of the people.” Sic volo, sic jubeo, etc.

3. He chose his own times of worship. Nothing could have been more positively fixed than the date of the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was to be “the fifteenth day of the seventh month” (Le 23:34, 39). But this was not the day of Jeroboam’s “choice.” He “devised” a month “of his own heart;” he consulted, perhaps he thought, his people’s convenience; but was there ever heretic yet that was not full of arguments, when all God asks is obedience?

“In religion

What dangerous error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament.”

II. IT WAS THE SIN OF SCHISM. It is not without reason that in the Litany heresy and schism are coupled together, for the latter springs out of the former. Jeroboam’s arbitrary choice led to a division in the Jewish Church. Let us briefly consider in what way the breach in the national unity, hitherto so close and conspicuous, was effected.

1. The one centre of unity gave place to three centres of division. Hitherto, three times a year (cf. 1Ki 9:25) all the males of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, had gathered round one altar. Thither, “the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord.” Now, instead of going, even from Dan, the people went to worship before the calves “even unto Daniel“ The ten tribes turned their backs on Jerusalem, and sought, some of them, a sanctuary at the opposite point of the compass. Nor did those who worshipped at Bethel afford a less striking proof of disintegration, for that sanctuary was within sight of the temple mount. The two pillars of smoke ascending day by day from rival altars, but twelve miles apart, proclaimed to all that there was a “schism in the body.”

2. The one priesthood of Aaron shared its ministry with the priests of Jeroboam. No longer were offerings brought exclusively to the sons of Levi, but “whosoever would” might burn the incense and sprinkle the blood. The schism was accentuated by the appointment of a new order of men, with vested interests in the perpetuation of division.

3. The one ritual of Divine obligation was travestied by rites and ceremonies of human appointment. If the breach was widened by the intrusive priesthood, it was deepened by the unauthorized and forbidden cultus of the calves. The stranger, who came out of a far country for God’s name’s sake (1Ki 8:41, 1Ki 8:42), to pray toward the house, found himself in the presence of rival systems, each claiming to be primitive and true, but differing so widely that he would go home to his own land, doubting whether both were not false. He would say, as others have said since, that before men compassed sea and land to make proselytes, they had better agree among themselves.

4. The one Feast of Tabernacles appointed of God was parodied by a Feast devised of man. That feast, the most joyous of the year, had once been the greatest manifestation of religious unity which Israel afforded. It was the very “dissidence of dissent” when the feast of the seventh month was straightway and ostentatiously followed by a feast of the eighth month, celebrated but a few miles distant. It was the culminating proof of .

III. THE SIN OF KORAH (Num 16:1-50.) This has been already twice referred to, as a part of the heresy and as a factor in the schism. But it may well stand by itself as a substantive part of the sin. It was just as great a violation of the Divine law to use the ministry of unauthorized persons as to worship at shrines of man’s choosing or with ordinances of man’s devising.

This, then, was “the sin of Jeroboam.” It was not rebellion, not idolatry, but the worship of the true God in unauthorized places, with unauthorized rites, and by unauthorized ministers. Nor did it make it less a sin that it seemed to prosper. The church of Jeroboam straightway became the church of the majority. At the time of the captivity it could boast of some antiquity (Jdg 18:30; 2Ki 17:16). But all the same God put His brand upon it. Three miracles (1Ki 13:1-34.) were wrought as a testimony against it. The voices of the prophets were raised to condemn it (Hosea, passim; Mic 6:16, etc.) But from year to year and reign to reign it flourished, and bore its baleful fruit, and then, after the schism had lasted two hundred and fifty years, while the kingdom of Judah, despite its idolatries, still retained for 185 years longer its place in the covenant land, the ten tribes were carried away to the cities of the Medes, were “scattered beyond the river” and disappeared from the page of history.

And has this sin no lessons? has its punishment no warnings for ourselves? If, as some seem to think, we may pick and choose our doctrines at pleasure; if the Scripture is of private interpretation; if we are at liberty each one to set up his own dogmas against the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus of the Catholic Church; or if there is no such thing as schism: if it is never mentioned or never reprobated in the New Testament; if the Babel of sectsthere are over one hundred of them in this England of oursis according to the plan and purpose of our Lord; or if, again, the “form of sound words,” the depositum fidei, the creeds of the undivided Church, have no authority: if they can be added to by the autocrat of Rome, or diminished from by any state, or sect, or teacher; or, finally, if there is no such thing as a “mission” of Christ’s ministers; if any man may take this honour to himself; if those who have never been sent themselves may nevertheless send othersthen this history is void of all meaning. But if, on the other hand, Christianity is the child of Judaism, and the Christian Church the inheritor of the principles of the Jewish; if that church is One and Catholic and Apostolic; if the faith was once for all () delivered to the saints; if our Lord Christ sent His apostles even as the Father had seat Him (Joh 20:21), if they in turn “ordained elders in every city” (Tit 1:5; cf. 2Ti 2:2), and by laying on of hands (Act 13:8); if the tactual succession is not a mere piece of priestly assumptionthen assuredly the history of Jeroboam’s sin is full of meaning, and “very necessary for these times.” And the prominence accorded to it in Scripture, the twenty references to its workingwe can understand it all when we remember that “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” and that the Spirit that moved the prophets foresaw the manifold heresies and schisms of Christendom.

HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD

1Ki 12:25-27

Jeroboam’s Despondency.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Jeroboam’s ambition was to be a king, and God gave him his desire. This was to punish Solomon and his house for their apostasy, and the men of Israel who had been led away in it. The sequel proved that the ambition of Jeroboam also brought its punishment, for he soon found his throne the reverse of a comfortable seat.

I. HIS FAITH IN HIS PEOPLE WAS SHAKEN.

1. They seem to have become resistive under his rule.

(1) This was likely to be the case. Their complaint against the house of David was the pressure of their burdens. But these could not be lightened when two kings had to be maintained instead of one; when a court had to be supported by a greatly diminished constituency.

(2) They had to create a capital worthy of the kingdom. So Jeroboam set about building Shechem, which was a ruin; for, two centuries before, it had been demolished by Abimelech (Jdg 9:45). The cost of this, including that of the palace there, appears to have been so disagreeable, that Jeroboam, for his tranquillity, shifted his court to Penuel, on the east of the Jordan.

(3) Penuel now stood in need of improvements. It had suffered at the hands of Gideon nearly three centuries before, when the tower was destroyed (Jdg 8:17). A second palace here was not likely to ease their burdens.

(4) Then their ability to pay taxes was reduced; for their commerce, created in the days of Solomon, seems to have declined. This would not improve their temper.

2. He therefore became gloomily apprehensive.

(1) He feared that, having now discovered that their burdens were no lighter, they might reflect that they had done wrong in throwing off allegiance to their legitimate sovereign, and that the “kingdom would return to the house of David.”

(2) Further, that this disposition must be encouraged by their visits to Jerusalem for religious purposes (Deu 16:16, Deu 16:17). They would then see that neither Shechem nor Penuel, as capitals, could compare with Jerusalem.

(3) And he feared that a counter revolution must imperil his life, for Rehoboam would demand this as a condition of their reconciliation. But the true cause of his despondency was that

II. HE HAD FORGOTTEN TO TRUST IN GOD.

1. Had he no assurance in the words of Ahijah?

(1) Did not Ahijah give him ten pieces of the rent garment? Did he not accompany the sign with assuring words? (Chronicles 1Ki 11:37.) Has not this part of the prophecy been fulfilled?

(2) Is it not, therefore, in the power of Jeroboam to perpetuate his throne by faithfully serving God? (1Ch 11:38.) The fulfilment of the former part of the prophecy surely pledges the latter.

(3) Ah, but this promise is conditional! So are all God’s promises. If we comply not with the conditions we shall infallibly forfeit the kingdom of heaven.

2. But he was moved by ambition feather than piety.

(1) Had he complied with the holy conditions, instead of apprehending mischief to his throne from the visits of his subjects to Jerusalem, it would be the other way. For the more they learnt to love and serve God, the more loyal must they be to a godly king.

(2) But he felt in his soul that he had not so complied: nor had he any disposition to repent; therefore, instead of seeking help in God, as he should have done, he trusted to his own wicked policy. There is no real happiness without God. The very pinnacle of human ambition is a throne: yet without God is there no happiness here. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”M.

1Ki 12:28

Jeroboam’s Calves.

Unbelief is the root of all mischief. Had the king of Israel believed God, he would have obeyed Him; then he would have been under no temptation to set up a spurious religion to the confusion of his family and people. But what did he mean by these calves?

I. THEY WERE INTENDED TO BE IMAGES OF THE GOD OF ISRAEL.

1. So he describes them in the text.

(1) “These are thy Elohim, O Israel.” Our English Bibles give the word “God” without the capital G, as though the purpose of Jeroboam were to lead the people away from the true God. This, indeed, was the effect, but that it was the design may well be doubted.

(2) He farther identifies the Elohim represented in them as having brought them up out of the land of Egypt. This expression is equivalent to saying that the Elohim he would remind them of in these figures was the same who wrought all the miracles of the Exodus.

(3) We must not be misled by the words, “Behold thy Elohim,” or “These airs thy Elohim,” as though he wished to impose these calves upon them as the very Elohim who wrought all the wonders of their miraculous history. For this is a Hebraism for similitudes (see Gen 41:27; Dan 2:38; 1Co 10:4). Note: Romanists impose their monstrous transubstantiation upon those who have not discerned this.

2. His error was a reproduction of Aaron’s.

(1) This will be clear from a comparison of the text with Exo 32:4.

(2) Aaron could not, under the very shadow of the Shekinah, and within hearing of the voice of thunder from Sinai, have intended to substitute his calf for the very Elohim.

(3) But that he only intended it as an emblem of the true God is placed very clearly before us in the words following (Exo 32:5, Exo 32:6), in which the feast celebrated before his calf is called a “feast of Jehovah”

3. Yet this was idolatry.

(1) Idolatry may consist of worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. This the Romanist does when he worships the wafer.

(2) Or it may be substituting some imagination of his heart for the God who has miraculously revealed Himself, and whose revelations concerning Himself are written in Holy Scripture. Such were the idealizations of the ancient (and also modern) heathen.

(3) Or it may consist in attempting to worship the true God through unauthorised images (see Exo 20:4). This was the case with Aaron, also with Jeroboam. It is likewise the case with the Romanist, who uses crucifixes, and images and pictures of the Persons of the Trinity.

II. BUT WHY DID HE MAKE CALVES?

1. He had the cherubim in his mind.

(1) These had the visage of a calf. They had, indeed, also the visages of a lion, of a man, and of an eagle. But the whole figure terminated in the foot of a calf (Eze 1:7).

(2) Jeroboam’s calf probably had also associated with it the other visages of the cherubim; so probably had Aaron’s, for they respectively call their image by the plural name Elohim (). The single image at Bethel is also called calves () in the plural, which suggests a plurality of visages, though not necessarily visages of calves, for the whole emblem appears to have been designated by this name.

2. But the cherubim were emblems of the Holy Trinity.

(1) The calf or young bull, which by the ancients was taken for an emblem of fire, stood here for the first Person of the Godhead. (See Bato’s “Critica Hebraea,” under and ; also his learned “Inquiry into the Occasional and Standing Similitudes of the Lord God in the Old and New Testaments.”)

(2) The lion was the symbol of light, and stood for the second Person. With the face of the lion that of the man was constantly associated, foreshadowing the assumption of the manhood into the Godhead by that blessed Person.

(3) And the eagle, the emblem of air, stood for the Holy Spirit.

(4) These, therefore, are called the cherubim, or similitudes of the Great Ones, from Great Ones, and like.

3. Micah’s teraphim were like Jeroboam’s calves.

(1) They were a compound or plural image like the cherubim, and used like them (see Jdg 17:5, Jdg 18:5).

(2) Michael was a worshipper of the true God, and so was Laban, who also used teraphim (see Gen 31:19, Gen 31:30, Gen 31:37, Gen 31:49),

(3) Compare also 1Sa 19:13; Eze 21:21; Hos 3:4.

(4) The cerberus of the pagans, with its plurality of heads, was a corruption, and the name of that monster keeps up the sound, of the original Hebrew cherubim. How subtle is the spirit of idolatry! We cannot keep too close to God’s Word.M.

1Ki 12:28-33

Jeroboam’s Sin.

The king of Israel, moved by personal ambition instead of zeal for God, fearing lest his people, in going to Jerusalem to worship, should see reason to regret having rent the kingdom, took counsel to prevent this. The result was the development of the policy described in the text. It was cunning

I. IN THE KIND OF WORSHIP IMPOSED.

1. As to its objects.

(1) It purported to be the worship of the God of Israel Essentially the same with the worship at Jerusalem. Thus it conciliated favour. Had it been the worship of any god of the nations, opposition would have been provoked.

(2) Yet was it idolatry. So in like manner is much of the worship of modern times which passes under the name of Christianity. Satan does not lose his identity by transforming himself into an angel of light.

2. As to its modes.

(2) Its images were imitations of the cherubim. Such also were the teraphim. And as God was said to dwell in, not “between” ( is to inhabit), the cherubim, so Jeroboam directed his dupes to seek the God of Israel in his calves.

(2) With these were associated altars, for sacrifice and incense, like those in the temple; and the victims would be clean animals proper for sacrifice; the incense also would be similar to that burnt in Jerusalem.

(3) He had a Feast of Tabernacles, which is described in the text as “like unto the feast that is in Judah.” Only that he altered the date as well as the place from the fifteenth day of the seventh month to the corresponding day of the month following. It is significantly noted, “which he had devised of his own heart” (see Num 15:1-41 :89). He was a forerunner of another character who has not hesitated to “change times and laws” (Dan 7:25).

3. As to its ministers.

(1) His priests were Levites, where he could get them. In this he seems to have succeeded at Daniel For the descendants of Jonathan, who was of the family of Aaron, appear to have fallen in with his designs (see Jdg 18:30).

(2) But it was different at Bethel. Here the Levites, it is to be hoped, had too much principle to serve his calves. So “he made priests of the lowest of the people.”

(3) Amongst these he officiated himself. Morally he was indeed amongst the lowest of the people, notwithstanding his position as king. This, unhappily, was not sufficiently discerned. The wicked do not understand (Dan 12:10).

II. IN THE PLACES CHOSEN FOR THAT WORSHIP.

1. Dan was chosen with sagacity.

(1) This was a city in the north, whose Canaanitish name was Laish, but which, when conquered by the Danites, received the name of their father (Jdg 18:29-31). This would be convenient to the people living so distant from Jerusalem.

(2) Besides, from its founding, this city was sacred to the worship of God through the medium of teraphim. This was about the time of Joshua’s death when Phinehas ministered at the tabernacle at Shiloh (compare Jdg 20:27, Jdg 20:28). From these very teraphim, when they were in the house of Micah, God gave responses to Jonathan the priest.

(3) For the teraphim of Micah, which were carved blocks covered with silver Jeroboam substituted one of his calves, which was covered with gold; otherwise there does not appear to have been any material change in the worship there. So the prejudices of the people would not be shocked.

2. Bethel also was chosen with sagacity.

(1) This was in the southern part of the kingdom, to accommodate those who might otherwise go to Jerusalem through convenience of distance. How adroitly do the wicked place their snares!

(2) This place, too, had a memorable history. It was the scene of the vision of the ladder and renewal of the covenant with Jacob, in token of which the patriarch vowed to the Lord, anointed a pillar, and built an altar (Gen 28:19, Gen 28:20; Gen 31:13; Gen 35:1, Gen 35:7). It was one of the stations of Samuel, and a place to which, in his days, the people were accustomed to go up to worship (1Sa 7:16; 1Sa 10:3).

(3) Here, accordingly, Jeroboam fixed his headquarters, and built a pretentious temple, or “house of high places” (verse 31).

Thus practically did Jeroboam say, with another purpose in his heart, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.” Beware of religion made easy; it may laud you in perdition. Beware of imitations of Divine things. Keep rigidly to the Word of God.M.

HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND

1Ki 12:26-28

The Sin of Jeroboam.

This passage describes the act which is so often referred to with horror, in the books of Kings and Chronicles, as “the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.” To an irreligious man like himself, nothing would appear more natural or politic than this conduct. He had been driven into Egypt by Solomon, had there married Pharaoh’s daughter, and become familiar with the worship of Apis and Mnevis. Now he had returned, and found himself the ruler of the ten tribes, the first king of the separate “kingdom of Israel.” Recognizing as he did the religious tendencies and memories of his people, he saw that the national assemblies for worship in the temple at Jerusalem would, sooner or later, unite the tribes again under one king. Hence his action. Looking at his conduct

(1) from the earthward, and

(2) from the heavenward side, we see that his policy was at once shrewd and sinful.

I. THE SHREWDNESS OF JEROBOAM‘S POLICY.

(1) It was an appeal to tribal independence. In effect he said, “Why should you men of Ephraim be dependent for your worship on Judah? Why should your tribute go to support their temple? Let us have a place of our own.” This argument has been repeated by demagogues in every land and age. Class has been set against class, nation against nation, Church against Church, by this spirit. Show some of the advantages of recognizing our interdependence.

(2) It was an appeal to self-indulgence. “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.” Point out instances in which religious teachers have condescended to such base suggestions as this; e.g; the theology that declares self-conquest nothing, that makes faith the executioner, instead of the sustainer of morality; the teaching that will offer “indulgences” to those of sinful habit; the worship that pleases a sensuous taste, but demands no intelligent thought, etc.

3. It was an appeal to former memories. He made Shechem his capital, a place associated with Abraham and Jacob, and afterwards assigned to the Levites, and made a free city. He erected one of the calves at Bethel, a holy place on the borders of Benjamin and Ephraim (see Gen 32:1-32.). No doubt his design was to conciliate those who were proud of past history.

4. It was a bold attempt to deceive the devout. He pretended that it was the old worship reestablished; that Jehovah was really represented by the calves: “These be thy gods (the old gods) that brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” Not the first or last time in which the prince of darkness has appeared as an angel of light Shrewd as was the policy, it was not perfectly successful even during his reign. The best people emigrated to Judah (like the Huguenots to England), to enrich another kingdom by work and wealth; and the prophets and many of the priests were roused to hostility. Even had it succeeded, however, such policy deserved to be branded with infamy. Principle must never be sacrificed to expediency. Success never condones wrong doing with God.

II. THE SINFULNESS OF JEROBOAM‘S POLICY.

1. It revealed his utter distrust of God. See the promise that had been given him (1Ki 11:38): “I will build thee a sure house.” He could not believe it. He would trust his own skill rather than God’s favour. So had it been with Saul and Solomon. The path of simple obedience is strait and narrow, and few there be that find it.” “Do My will and trust Me,” is the lesson of life, but we are slow to learn it. Many professing Christians consider religion inappropriate to business competition and to political movements. In this they resemble the son of Nebat.

2. It violated the fundamental law of the Decalogue. If the first command was not actually broken, the second was, necessarily. Had these calves merely been the outward symbols of Jehovah, they were amongst the forbidden “images.” Jeroboam knew this. He remembered the calf Aaron made, for his words were an echo of those of the first high priest. He knew that only the intercession of Moses then saved the people from destruction, yet again he defiantly disobeyed. Show the peril of allowing images, crucifixes, banners, the elements in the sacrament, etc; to take a false position in Christian worship. Even if the initiated worship God through these, they break (in spirit) the second command; while the more ignorant are with equal certainty led to the violation of the first.

3. It involved and necessitated other sins.

(1) The people worshipped in the place God had not chosen, as He had chosen the temple.

(2) They had no ark of the covenant on which rested, and because of which was promised, the real presence of God.

(3) The priests were chosen by the king in opposition to the ordinance of God (1Ki 12:31, etc; ex universo populo.

(4) The national feast of tabernacles was changed from the seventh month (Le 23:34) to the eighth, not only because the harvest was later in the north than in the south of Judah, but to widen insidiously the breach between the kingdoms. So in all ages and in all spheres one sin leads to another. It would be better to die as Abigail (1Ki 14:13) than to reign as Jeroboam.A.R.

HOMILIES BY J. WAITE

1Ki 12:26-30

The Golden Calves.

Jeroboam here earns for himself that name of evil repute”the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” As the leader in the revolt of the ten tribes he was simply fulfilling a Divine purpose. “The thing was from the Lord,”the ordained penalty of Solomon’s transgression (1Ki 11:31, 1Ki 11:38). But this setting up of the golden calves, this only too successful attempt to sever the sacred bond that bound the people of the whole land in one common allegiance to the temple and the great invisible King who sat enthroned there, bore a widely different character. This was not “from the Lord.” It was wholly evil. “The thing became a sin,” and the sin of Jeroboam Became the prolific source of sin in Israel through all succeeding generations (see 1Ki 14:7-16). This transaction illustrates

I. THE FATAL PERVERSITY OF A LAWLESS AMBITION. This was Jeroboam’s ruin. God, by the prophet Ahijah, had promised to establish him in the kingdom on certain conditions (1Ki 11:38). There was no wrong in the mere fact of his seeking to verify this prediction. His sin lay in the nature of the means he adopted. He thought it needful in order to his having a “sure house” that the people should be kept from going up to sacrifice at Jerusalem. In other words, he would strengthen his house at the expense of doing deep dishonour to the “House of the Lord.” His own petty kingship was more to him than the infinite Majesty of Jehovah. Thus we see how a carnal ambition

(1) is subject to needless fears;

(2) trifles with or defies a power that it finds to be infinitely stronger than itself;

(3) thinks to secure its ends by means that actually defeat them;

(4) is deceived by its seeming successes.

History is full of examples of the way in which men have sought power for themselves, either by the abuse or the degradation of things sacred, or have thought to serve ends right in themselves by unrighteous means. This was one form of Satanic temptation to which our blessed Lord was subject. “All these things will I give thee,” etc. (Mat 4:8, Mat 4:9), and his professed followers have too often fallen before it,

II. THE ARTIFICE OF A WICKED PURPOSE. This is seen in the way in which Jeroboam practised craftily, upon the religious sentiment of the people in the service of his own ambitious designs.

(1) He pandered to their idolatrous propensities. The “golden calves” may have been intended as a memorial rather than a representation of the Deity. But they were too suggestive of the base, sensuous worship of Egypt, and violated the second commandment if not the first.

(2) He made pretence of consulting their ease and convenience. “It is too much for you,” etc.

(3) He took advantage of the sacred associations of Bethel and Dan, as if the place would hallow the proceeding.

(4) He instituted a priestly order as a substitute for the Levites.

(5) He ordained festivals that should rival those of Judah and Jerusalem. In all this, while affecting to do honour to the traditions of religion, he struck a fatal blow at the religious unity and integrity of the nation, turning the highest sanctities of its life into an occasion of sin. How forcibly are we reminded that iniquity assumes its most hateful form when it prostitutes to its own ends things sacred and Divine. Satan is never so Satanic as when he wears the garb of “an angel of light.” The most detestable of all vices is hypocrisy. More deadly injury has been done to the cause of religion by its false friends than its bitterest enemies could ever inflict.

III. THE DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES. Jeroboam’s wicked policy perpetuated and multiplied in Israel the evils of which the rending of the kingdom at first had been the penalty. With few exceptions all the kings that followed him “did evil in the sight of the Lord,” and the record of their reigns is little else than a story of crime and bloodshed and misery. Moreover the leprosy of idolatry spread from the throne down through all classes of the people until the kingdom of Israel was completely overthrown and the ten tribes were carried captive into Assyria. Such are the woes that fall on a land when its princes are corrupt and reprobate. So true is it that “they that sow to the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”W.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

1Ki 12:25. Jeroboam built Shechem 1:e. Rebuilt, enlarged, and beautified it, and made it a royal city.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

B.The establishment of the kingdom of Israel by Jeroboam

1Ki 12:25-33

25Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel. 26And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: 27if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord [Jehovah] at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord,11 even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah. 28Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you12 to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods,13 O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 29And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. 30And this thing became [was14] a sin: for the people went to worship before the one,15 even unto Dan.16 31And he made a house17 of high places, and made priests of the lowest [mass18] of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. 32And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered19 upon the altar. So20 did he in Beth-el, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Beth-el the priests of the high places which he had made. 33So he offered9 upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart21; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered9 upon the altar, and burnt incense.

Exegetical and Critical

1Ki 12:25.Then Jeroboam built Shechem. The first thing which Jeroboam undertook after his accession was the building of fortresses to protect his realm. means fortified here, as Shechem and Penuel were built long before. He chose Shechem immediately as his residence (), no doubt, for the same reason that the ten tribes had assembled there (see on 1Ki 12:1). It does not follow from , that he at once removed to Penuel (Ewald, Thenius), for it only says: he built, and it is not added that he lived there. Penuel, too, did not belong to the tribe of Ephraim, but was in Gad, beyond Jordan, according to some, northward, and others, southward of Jabbok. There was a tower there formerly, which Gideon destroyed (Jdg 8:17). Jeroboam can scarcely be supposed to have fortified the place on account of the caravan road to Damascus passing by it (Keil), or to subdue the Ammonites and Moabites again (Duncker), but to secure the territory beyond Jordan against any attacks from Judah. There is no doubt that he built these fortifications by tribute-labor, like Solomon (1Ki 9:15 sq.); the grievous service (1Ki 12:4) did not, therefore, cease under him, and the complaint against Rehoboam appears all the more like a pretext.

1Ki 12:26-28. And Jeroboam said in his heart, &c. 1Ki 12:26. Jeroboam did not seek to establish his kingdom outwardly only, but also inwardly; and to attach the people permanently to himself. The political union with Judah was indeed broken, but the religious one still remained. The people still went up to the yearly feasts at the central place of worship in Jerusalem; this practice seems, from 2Ch 11:16 sq., to have extended even, so that Jeroboam became anxious lest his people should turn to Rehoboam and dethrone him. He therefore sought to break this bond also. We can scarcely admit that 1Ki 12:28 ought to be supplemented thus: With his counsellors or the heads of the people, who had helped to make him king (Keil), for the text would certainly not have passed over so important a circumstance as that the representatives of the people concurred with him in changing the place of worship. He reflected about it alone, and came to the following resolutionVulgate: Et excogitato consilio fecit duos vitulos; Dereser: it occurred to him to make two golden calves. Two golden calves, i.e., young bulls, as appears from Psa 106:19 sq.; they were molten (1Ki 14:9), probably of brass, and then overlaid with gold (Isa 40:19). The expression is never used in the sense of: it is desiring too much from you; i.e. it is too hard for you, but: it is (now) enough, i. e. you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough, cease doing so. The Sept. translates , the Vulgate has: Nolite ultra adscendere in Jerusalem. Cf. Deu 1:6; Deu 2:3; Eze 44:6; 1Ki 19:4; 2Sa 24:16. The words, Behold thy god(s) which, &c., are exactly the same as the people used when setting up the golden calf in the wilderness (Exo 32:4-8) and refer unmistakably to them. They are not plural (thy gods which, &c.) any more than when used in the former case, for they only refer to one calf, and Nehemiah (1Ki 9:18) uses them in the singular; , moreover, is construed with the plural of the predicate (cf.2 Sam. 1Ki 7:23 with 1Ch 17:21). It is certain that Jeroboam did not wish to introduce the worship of two or more gods; but the plural being used in this place may indicate that the knowledge of the unity of God is lost in every form of nature-worship (Von Gerlach), and that image-worship is closely related to polytheism (Ewald). The bringing them up out of Egypt was Gods act, by which he made Israel a separate nation, creating it, as it were, and choosing it at the same time for his own, from out all peoples. This was the real historical proof that the Almighty God, who has no equal either in heaven or earth, was Israels God; therefore the God who brought Israel out of Egypt is contrasted, as the only true God, with the vain gods of the heathens (Jos 24:17; Jdg 2:1; Jdg 2:12; Jdg 6:13). The people Israel only knew him to be God who brought them out of Egypt; and should they worship the golden calf as their God, they must, as Aaron and Jeroboam did, before everything else, attribute to it the deliverance out of Egypt. We cannot endorse the ordinary explanation, that Jeroboam meant to say: Non est nova religio, hoc cultu jam olim patres nostri in deserto usi sunt auctore ipso Aharone (Seb. Schmidt); for if the history of the golden calf were known to the people, and Jeroboam reminded them of it, he must also have known that Jehovahs wrath waxed hot on account of that sin, that Moses ground the calf to powder, and that all the worshippers were destroyed (Ex. 32:10; 20:28). Nothing could be more ill-advised than an appeal to this event, and it would have been the direct opposite of any recommendation of the new worship. It appears rather that the narrative, giving as it does Jeroboams praise of the golden calves in the words the people had used at the sight of the golden calves in the wilderness, wishes to convey the idea that those images were a renewal of the sin committed in the wilderness, and that, therefore, Jeroboams undertaking would, sooner or later, have a similar end. 1Ki 12:30 also implies this, and 2Ki 17:7 sq. expressly declares it.

1Ki 12:29-30. And he set the one in Bethel, &c., 1Ki 12:29. Bethel was on the southern, and Dan on the northern boundary of the kingdom. The situation of these places explains why Jeroboam chose them. He wished to make things easy for the people; the northern tribes could readily reach one place of worship, and the southern tribes the other, and they would so much the sooner become habituated to the new regulation. At the same time also it was in opposition to the Judah-centralizing of worship. This was another reason for having two calves instead of one. It is generally thought that he chose both places, because they had been regarded before as sacred places for worship. This may have influenced him in choosing Bethel, but scarcely in respect of Dan, for the narrative in Judges 18. by no means proves that the latter place was looked on with respect by the people as a place of worship. Had Jeroboam sought only sacred places, there were several (e. g. Shiloh) that were much more esteemed as such than Dan. This thing became a sin, 1Ki 12:30. Jeroboam was guilty of great sin in making images of oxen, contrary to the fundamental law, and in setting them up in two places remote from each other, and thus destroying the unity of worship which has been the bond of union for the whole people. The text means what is afterwards always spoken of as the sin of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin (1Ki 14:16; 1Ki 15:26; 1Ki 15:30; 1Ki 15:34; 1Ki 16:2; 1Ki 16:19; 1Ki 16:26; 1Ki 16:31; 1Ki 21:22; 1Ki 22:53; 2Ki 3:3; 2Ki 10:29; 2Ki 10:31; 2Ki 13:2; 2Ki 13:6; 2Ki 13:11; 2Ki 14:24; 2Ki 15:9; 2Ki 15:18; 2Ki 15:24; 2Ki 15:28; 2Ki 17:21-22; 2Ki 23:15). The people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. clearly refers to the twice repeated in 1Ki 12:29, and cannot therefore be translated as Ewald gives it: the people, as it were one man: neither does it mean that the people only went to one image, that at Dan, 1Ki 13:1. Unto Dan, moreover, cannot be joined to and translated, the people unto Dan; i.e., the people in the whole kingdom as far as Dan (Keil). The sentence is evidently abbreviated, and is only put once instead of twice, because the repetition after the double in 1Ki 12:29 is understood; is alter here in the sense of alteruter (Cassel). The people went to both, even to the distant Dan. Vulgate: ibat enim populus ad adorandum vitulum usque in Dan.

1Ki 12:31-32. And he made an house of high places, &c., 1Ki 12:31. For the so-called high places, see above on 1Ki 3:2. As the high places in 2Ki 23:15 is simply , and the high places are contrasted with Jehovahs house in 1Ki 3:1-2, the word here certainly does not mean a temple, properly speaking, but probably a kind of cell for the image. Ewald makes it out a splendid temple, and says: this temple evidently lasted many years and probably rivalled that at Jerusalem; later too, this temple was regarded as the great sanctuary of the kingdom. We find not a single word of all this in the Scripture, however. Jeroboam made priests of the of the people; this does not mean, from the lowest of the people (Luther), but, from all classes of them (Gen 19:4; Eze 33:2; Jer 51:31); he made any one that wished a priest. Thus he broke the law which gave the right to the tribe of Levi alone (Numbers 16). He did this either because he wanted to abolish the institution of the Levitical priesthood, or because the Levites and priests, not willing to participate in the service of the golden calves, left the kingdom (2Ch 11:13). And Jeroboam ordained a feast, 1Ki 12:32. alone, or signifies the feast of tabernacles, because it was the greatest and most frequented of the yearly feasts (the feast of harvest, cf. on 1Ki 8:2). This feast fell on the seventh month, as the law commanded (Lev. 23:34; 34:41). Jeroboam changed the time to prevent the ten tribes meeting the other two, or having any intercourse with them. He fixed it in the eighth month, because the northern and more distant tribes would thus have time to complete their harvest, and could more easily take the journey to Bethel, where he himself also kept the feast (we need not say that the harvest was later in the northern than the southern parts; see Thenius on the place). The feasts were always announced beforehand (Lev 23:4); if this were done after the feast at Jerusalem was over, it could not possibly be celebrated there. Jeroboam did not observe the same day of the month, the 15th, on account of the weak, who were offended at his innovations (Keil), for in that case he would have kept it a month sooner, but he did so because the months and weeks were counted by the new and full moons, and the 15th was the day of the full moon. Thus there was simply a reason derived from the calendar why that day was retained.

1Ki 12:33. And he offered upon the altar, &c. three times in 1Ki 12:32-33 cannot be translated (as Thenius gives them) once (1Ki 12:32) by: he sacrificed upon the altar, and two other times (1Ki 12:33) by: he went to the altar; they must mean the same each time. means here, as usual, to go up, to mount; the Sept. correctly gives three times, the Vulgate has ascendens 1Ki 12:32, and ascendit twice, 1Ki 12:33. The altar had a raised part in the middle, to which an ascent [incline?E. H.] led up (Sym. des Mos. Kult. I. s. 480). It is clear that cannot be translated every time, as Luther, De Wette, and Keil give it, he sacrificed, for in 1Ki 12:32 it is distinctly distinguished from , and in 1Ki 12:33 is added at the end; this does not mean: and he offered incense (De Wette), or while he offered incense (Philippson), but only to offer incense; there is no sense in: he sacrificed to offer incense. The first , 1Ki 12:32, means, that Jeroboam took part in the feast; the second signifies especially his presence at the first feast in Bethel, and the third is only to be connected with the second, on account of the long intermediary clause in 1Ki 12:33, joining with it, and so leading on to 1Ki 13:1. In fact 1Ki 12:33 forms the transition to the next section chap. 13., which is evidently derived from another source, and relates what happened at the celebration of the festival at Bethel. Jeroboam ascended the altar to burn sacrifice, and just as he was about to do so, a man of God came, &c. (1Ki 13:1). What 1Ki 12:33 repeats from 1Ki 12:32, as well as the words, which he had devised of his own heart, shows the writers intention, i.e., to display the arbitrary nature of Jeroboams proceedings, which called forth the occurrence of chap, 1Ki 13:1 sq.

Historical and Ethical

1. The religious institutions which, next to the fortifications, served to establish Jeroboams kingdom are of the greatest importance, for they formed the real and lasting wall of separation between the two kingdoms Israel and Judah, that existed side by side for hundreds of years. Through these institutions the division mentioned in the above section became an incurable schism for all future generations, thus determining the whole of the after-history of the people. To understand it thoroughly in all its bearings, we must, at the outset, take into consideration Jeroboams point of view, and the motives which impelled him. The history makes him utter these himself clearly enough in 1Ki 12:26-27; they were of a purely political nature. He took those measures from no religious convictions, not to do away with abuses, in short, not for the sake of God and conscience, but to secure to himself and his dynasty the dominion over the newly founded kingdom, and to withdraw it forever from the house of David. He well knew that a political separation without a religious one too would not be lasting with a people whose distinct existence from other nations only depended on their common religious basis. To introduce a completely new religion, which should displace the faith of their fathers, would have been very dangerous to his dominion; so he thought of modifying it in such particulars as he was sure would be agreeable to the people, who were disposed to build a strong, impregnable wall of separation between Israel and Judah. All the kings of Israel inherited the principle on which Jeroboam acted, however much the dynasty changed, until the dissolution of the kingdom. We have here, then, the type of that political absolutism which makes the national religion subservient to the interests of a dynasty, which holds that the secular power is justified in prescribing the faith and form of worship for the subjects. This absolutism is found not only in monarchies but in republicsamong crowned heads as among democratsit can be traced through the entire history of the world, and has appeared in Christendom as Csaro-papism. In Israel the prophets opposed it, and as it was firmly adhered to from the beginning in that kingdom, we find, accordingly, the prophets were engaged in a perpetual struggle with it.

2. The germ of all the changes Jeroboam wrought was the erection of two golden calves. They were not actual idols, i.e., images that were supposed to have real connection with the divinity they represented, as among the heathens (cf. my treatise, Der Salomonische Tempel, s. 270 sq.), but symbols of Jehovah, the God of Israel; the whole history of Israel shows that Jeroboam did not intend to introduce idolatry or polytheism. The God who had brought Israel out of Egypt, thus showing Himself to be the true God (cf. Cassel, Knig Jeroboam, s. 6), was to remain, but he did not wish Him to appear to have His throne and dwelling-place in Jerusalem alone, but also in the new kingdom, and to be visibly present there. He wishes to attach the people to his kingdom by a visible representation of Jehovah. But this visible representation was in direct opposition to the fundamental Mosaic law, which just as expressly forbids the making an image of Jehovah, as the worshipping of other gods beside Him (Exo 20:3-4). If God be one, and everything in heaven and earth, and in the water under the earth, only his creature, it follows necessarily that He can have no similitude; nothing out of Him can represent Him. Every image is a practical denial of his incomparable and therefore invisible being, an untruth which, as such, can never make Him known, but, on the contrary, destroys the knowledge of Him and leads to idolatry. For the nearer man comes to the life of nature the less power he has to abstract himself from the natural and visible, and to comprehend the spiritual and invisible by itself, i.e., to distinguish the sign from the thing signified. If God be worshipped in an image, it is scarcely possible to avoid worshipping the image itself as God, hence there is but a short step from a representation of God to idolatry, which again, in spite of everything, leads to polytheism (Rom 1:23). This is why the Mosaic fundamental law places the prohibition of every likeness of God in immediate juxtaposition against that of idolatry. To violate this command was to lay the axe at the root of the tree of spiritual life planted in the chosen people. This was the sin of Jeroboam, wherewith he made Israel to sin. When he sought to give his kingdom durability by erecting images, contrary to the condition so emphatically laid before him by Ahijah, namely, keeping Jehovahs laws (1Ki 11:38), he brought this very germ of destruction and dissolution into it; this our writer expressly notices in his account of the fall of the kingdom of Israel (2Ki 17:7 sq.). The question whether the Old-Testament law against every representation of God extends unconditionally to the New-Testament economy, has, as is well known, been answered variously. While the reformed church stretches the Old-Testament law still further, and in contradiction with the Mosaic worship, which consisted wholly in symbols, rejects every symbol and representation in the churches, the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches not only allow representations of Him who walked on earth in the form of a servant, but of God himself, only claiming that they be not worshipped or prayed to. Though we do not approve of an exaggerated spiritualism, yet the representations of God as an invisible being are of very questionable worth, and should at least not be placed in buildings for public worship. Cf. Isa 40:18; 1Ti 6:16.

3. It is almost universally acknowledged that Jeroboams long residence in Egypt (1Ki 11:40; 1Ki 12:2) led him to choose images of bulls to represent Jehovah, and that there was reference to the Egyptian cultus of Apis and Mnevis. But we have the clearest evidence of the contrary. The images were to represent (according to 1Ki 12:28), that God who brought Israel out of Egypt, i.e., out of the house of bondage, from service to an idolatrous people, by great judgments on the latter, even the destruction of their entire army, and had separated them as from all nations, so especially from Egypt (Exo 6:6; Exo 7:5; 1Ki 8:51-53). To choose a specifically Egyptian divinity in order to represent this God would have been the greatest contradiction; for it would have meant so much as: the God who overthrew the Egyptians and brought you out of Egypt was an Egyptian deity; but the clause, who brought thee out of Egypt, contains the most emphatic opposition to any Egyptian idol. Had the bull-images of Jeroboam been borrowed from Egypt, we should find other traces of Egyptian worship in that of the ten tribes, but none are to be found. All the gods that were worshipped by them, or afterwards by Judah, were without exception those of anterior Asia. Besides this, Apis and Mnevis were different gods, while Jeroboam wished to make symbols of one and the same deity; and, moreover, they were not images, but living idols, belonging to the Egyptian animal worship, which had always been despised in Israel, and looked on as an abomination (Exo 8:26). The material and the workmanship of the golden calves remind us of anterior Asia, not of Egypt; for the Egyptians had only stone images; they had no images that were cast, golden, or overlaid with gold. There is no necessity for seeking the original of Jeroboams golden calves in any particular ancient nation. The bull was, according to the view common to all ancient peoples, especially to those who were agricultural, a symbol of the creative power, and consequently of the highest divinity, from which all life and being emanated. There was no type of divinity so universal in the ancient world as the bull (cf. Creuzer, Symbolik I. s. 318, 505, 747; iv. s. 128, 240; Baur, Symbolik I. s. 177 sq.; Movers, Relig. der Phoniz. s. 373 sq.). If Jeroboam wanted to give an intelligible and acceptable symbol of Jehovah to the people, he could have scarcely chosen anything but the bull, especially as the God who had brought Israel out of Egypt, and thus chosen them as His own (Isa 43:15-17), was adored by them as the Creator of heaven and earth. (The command that refers to the Sabbath day in the decalogue is founded upon the creation in Exo 20:11, and upon the exodus in Deu 5:15). That which is true of Jeroboams image is also true of Aarons (Exo 32:4), which was much nearer the time of the Exodus from Egypt, and therefore was still less likely to be an imitation of the Egyptian idols.

4. All the changes that Jeroboam made in the worship were calculated, on one hand, to serve his political ends, and likewise, on the other, to be agreeable and desirable to the people of the ten tribes. By setting up images of the deity he gratified the deep-seated instincts of this portion of the people, who, more inclined to nature-life (see the Hist, and Ethic. on above section), in their rudeness and sensuousness, even in the wilderness were not satisfied with an invisible God, but wanted one they could see. He drew the people from the imageless temple at Jerusalem by the erection of two images, and at each extremity of the kingdom; and he not only withdrew them from the one central point of worship which was necessary to the theocratic unity of the people, but he made it easier for the people to attend the new places of worship. By giving the priesthood to any one, not confining himself to the priestly tribe, he destroyed this sacred institution of a tribe of priests, who, being dispersed among all the tribes, were the guardians of the divine law, and of spiritual and religious culture. At the same time he flattered the people thereby, because any one could aspire to the dignity of the priesthood and obtain its emoluments. These he may have lessened in the interests of the people. There would scarcely have been a surer method of destroying the organization of a kingdom of priests (Exo 19:6), which had, as such, its central point in the priestly tribe, than this procedure of the king. He retained the feast of tabernacles because it was the most liked and the most frequented, and he held it necessary for the separated tribes to gather regularly around him as their lord, and unite in a common attitude over against Judah. To make this meeting, however, as easy as possible, he fixed on a later month, and thus broke the order of the feast-cycle, arranged according to the number 7. This, then, was the supposed deliverer of his country who, once he had the reins in his hands, was not content with controlling secular things, but so altered the religion of his people as to serve his own political ends, and introduced what he had devised of his own heart as the State religion. What was the alleged disposition of Solomon, from which he pretended to free the people, compared with this for which Jeroboam overthrew the fundamental law of the entire nation? This, remarks Vilmar (s. 191), is the way with demagogues and Csaro-papalists, who have in all times said, and are still at it, so many criminal and senseless things, now of their care for the people, then of the rights of the community, just as Jeroboam here; and he remarks before (s. 189): the departure (from political motives) from spiritual principles, which surely leads to destruction, is here portrayed for all times.

5. The modern historical presentation of the elevation and ordinances of Jeroboam sketches quite another picture from that of the bibilical history. Duncker (Gesch. des Alterthums, I. s. 404) thinks the rebellion of the ten tribes in Shechem was not separation from Judah, but the reverse: they perpetuated the kingdom and name of Israel, while one single tribe in the south separated themselves from the whole body. As soon as Jerusalem ceased to be the capital of the State, the Temple ceased to be the place of worship for all the tribes. Jeroboam dedicated anew the old places of sacrifice at Bethel and Dan, and placed priests at both. He built a temple on the height at Bethel, which temple was to be instead of that at Jerusalem for his kingdom. Those beginnings of image-worship of Jehovah, which we may observe in the preceding period of the kingdom, and which continued in Davids time, were now universally and officially recognized. Jeroboam set up a golden bull-image to Jehovah in Dan and Bethel. In this restoration of the Jehovah worship we may also perceive a national reaction against the foreign worship that Solomon introduced in the last years of his reign. Menzel takes the same view (Staats- und Rel.-Geschichte der Knigreiche Israel und Juda, s. 156 sq.): In the deliberation of Jeroboam in respect of the institutions of public worship, there seemed, doubtless, a right to restore its sacred character to the old national sanctuary (of Bethel) which the new Temple-service at Jerusalem had deprived it of, or at least lessened. This restoration, strictly speaking, took place at Bethel only. That the people worshipped images is said to have no other proof than the eloquent representation of the foes of image-worship, who in all ages have tried pretty much in the same way to enforce their views (colored by their own feelings) against the representation of what is thought, as, for instance, the prophet Hosea (Hos 8:6). According to this, there can indeed be no sin of Jeroboam, wherewith he made Israel to sin; he seems rather to have done a service to his people; so far from breaking the law, he was rather a reactionist and restorer. And when all the prophets denounced Jeroboams form of worship, they only spoke from their peculiar, subjective manner of feeling, for Israel always had images of the Deity, and even David carried the image of Jehovah about with him in his marches (Duncker, s. 408). We need no proof to show that this is turning the history upside down; it is an example of the unwarrantable style of writing history, which, under the semblance of scientific criticism, utterly ignores the text of the only historical source we have.

Homiletical and Practical

1Ki 12:25-33. How Jeroboam sought to establish his sway, (a) outwardly, by the erection of fortifications; but these alone do not protect and guard a kingdom. A mountain fastness is our God (Psa 71:3; Psa 127:1); (b) inwardly, by ordinances for public worship, which can protect a kingdom only when they are conformable with the word and command of God and are not designed to subserve selfish purposes. [Jeroboam king of Israel, to the destruction of him and his, did change the ceremonies which God had ordained, into his own, that is, into mens inventions and detestable blasphemies. Bullinger.E. H.].Wrt. Summ.: We should trust ourselves not to fastnesses, but to God, and God wills not to be served otherwise than as He has commanded in His revealed word; our worship and service, therefore, must proceed from faith, and we shall be blessed of Him.

1Ki 12:26. As soon as Jeroboam obtained the wish of his heart, namely, the rulership, he asked no longer about the condition under which it was promised to him and with which it was bound up (1Ki 11:38). How often we forget, when God has granted to us the desire of our hearts, to walk in His ways. He who obtains rulership by the path of rebellion, must always be in fear and anxiety lest he lose it again in the same way, for the populace which today cries Hosanna will, on the morrow, shout crucify, crucify! An evil conscience makes the most stout-hearted and the strongest timid and anxious, so that he sees dangers where there are none, and then to insure his own safety devises wrong and evil instruments. One false step always requires another.

1Ki 12:28-33. The sin of Jeroboam wherewith he caused Israel to sin. (a) He erected images of God against the supreme commandment of God (Exo 20:4). (b) He set aside the prescribed order of the servants of God, and made his own priests, (c) He altered the feast which was a reminder of the great deeds of God, and made it a mere nature-and-harvest feast. That is the greatest tyranny when the ruler of a land makes himself the master also of the faith and conscience of his subjects.Cramer: In the estimation of the people of the world this policy of Jeroboam is held to be proper, because they consider that religion is to be established, held, and altered, as may be useful and good for the land and the people and the common interest, and that the regimen is not for the sake of the religion, but the religion for the regimen. Consequently Jeroboam acted well and wisely in the matter. But God says, on the other hand, All that I command you, that shall ye observe, ye shall not add thereto (Deu 12:32). For Godliness is not to be regulated by the common weal, but the common weal is to be regulated by Godliness. Every government which employs religious instrumentalities, and interferes with the faith of the people, not for the sake of God and the salvation of souls, but for the attainment of political ends, shares the guilt of the sin of Jeroboam, and involves itself in heavy responsibilities.

1Ki 12:28. Calw. B.: To the perverted man, what he shall do for his God is forthwith too much. In matters of faith and of the homage due to God we should not consider what is convenient and agreeable to the great mass, but should inquire only for what God prescribes in His word. He who conciliates the sensuousness and the untutored ways of the masses, and flatters their unbelief or their superstition, belongs to the false prophets who make broad the way of life. Doctrines, and institutions which depart from the revealed word of God are often praised as progress and seasonable reforms, while in truth they are steps backward, and corrupting innovations. In Christendom we pray no longer to wood and stone, and to golden calves, and think ourselves thereby raised far above a darkened heathenism, but, nevertheless, we often place the creature above the Creator, and abandon ourselves to it with all our love and consideration and service. Behold, the things and persons thou lovest with thy whole heart and strength, these are thy gods. What use of typical representations in the worship of God is permitted, and what is forbidden?

1Ki 12:30. Starke: As a great tree in a forest, when it falls drags down many others with it, so also are many others carried along by the bad example of those who rule, when they fall away from their religion, or sin otherwise grossly against God.

1Ki 12:31. We have in the new covenant no Levitical priesthood indeed, but a pastoral and preaching office which the Lord has instituted, so that, thereby, the body of Christ may be edified (Eph 4:11). He who despises this office, and thinks that any one without distinction and without a lawful calling may exercise it, is a partaker in the sin of Jeroboam. No one, says the Augsburg Confession, shall teach or preach publicly in the church, or administer the sacraments, without due calling.

1Ki 12:32. The festivals which an entire people celebrate in remembrance of the great deeds of God for them, are the support of their faith and of their life of fellowship. It is to destroy this life when, from prejudice and for the sake of outward wordly considerations, arbitrarily they are altered or abandoned.

1Ki 12:33. As it is good and praise-worthy when kings and princes engage in the service of God along with their subjects, and set them a good example, so also is it blameworthy when they do it only to win the people over to themselves, and to secure their authority over them.

Footnotes:

[11]1Ki 12:27.[The Sept. has to the Lord and (or even) to their lord. The Syr. omits this word Lord altogether. The Vat. Sept. omits the last clause of the verse.

[12]1Ki 12:28.[Our author prefers the sense of the Sept., Chald., and Vulg., let it suffice you, do not any longer go up. Keil argues that the Heb. cannot be so translated, and prefers the sense of the A. V.

[13]1Ki 12:28.[The Heb. may be taken either in the plural, as in the A.V. and the ancient VV. generally, or in the singular, as in our authors translation, according to the common Heb. usage. For reasons for the latter see the Exeg. Com.

[14]1Ki 12:30.[The translation of became may seem to ignore the fact that Jeroboams deed already was a sin in itself.

[15]1Ki 12:30.[Our authors translation inserts in brackets or the other. See Exeg. Com.

[16]1Ki 12:30.[The Vat. Sept. adds, and forsook the house of the Lord.

[17]1Ki 12:31.[ correctly rendered in the A. V. in the singular, since the contrast is with the at Jerusalem. The Sept. in translating , and the Vulg. fana in excelsis, have overlooked the point.

[18]1Ki 12:31.[The Heb. does not mean so much from the lowest of the people as, from all classes, from the mass of the people promiscuously, in contradistinction to the especial Levitical family. Cf. Gen 47:2; Eze 33:2, and see Exeg. Com. The A. V. is sustained by the Vulg. alone among the ancient VV.

[19]1Ki 12:32.[The A. V. is here sustained by the Vulg. and Arab. The other VV. give the sense preferred by our author in the Exeg. Com. Went up to, or upon (i.e. upon the approach to) the altar, thus translating the last words of 1Ki 12:33, to burn incense.

[20]1Ki 12:32.[The Sept. must have read instead of since it translatesthe altar which he made in Bethel.

[21]1Ki 12:33.Neh 6:8 clearly shows that the kri is the true reading. All the translations are in accordance with this. The ktib gives no sense, since it does not mean seorsum sc. a Judis (Maurer, Keil); but except, beside. [Keil takes the opposite view of the meaning, and denies the necessity of the change.F. G.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

(25) Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel. (26) And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: (27) If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah. (28) Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (29) And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. (30) And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. (31) And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. (32) And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. (33) So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.

The awful character of Jeroboam, which the Holy Ghost in after ages marked with such peculiar spots of infamy, can hardly be contemplated but with horror. His daring impiety in setting up those golden calves, seems to have been intended, not only to lead the minds of the then generation from the Lord; but also by way of approbation of the idolatry of their fathers in Horeb, which Moses recorded, and the psalmist so pathetically mourned over. Exo 32:4 ; Psa 106:19-20 . His contempt of the priesthood also was manifested in taking for priests of the lowest of the people. His contempt of the temple itself in setting up a place of his own. And his contempt of the solemn seasons which the Lord had enjoined in altering the very day of the month. And add to all, his invading the sacred office in himself, consecrating his creatures, in the priestly office. So that among all the characters we meet with in history of daring, unblushing impiety, Jeroboam stands foremost. And especially, if we recollect how all the appointments in the service of the temple were considered as shadows of a better dispensation, and had an eye to Christ, here his conduct riseth to the highest possible pitch of blasphemy as well as profaneness! But if in those remote ages the Lord regarded with such anger the despisers who treated the symbols of his sanctuary with disregard; what an awful state are those gospel despisers in, who set up the idols of their own imaginations in their hearts, and refuse both him that spake from earth, and now speaketh from heaven. From all hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word and commandment, good Lord deliver us!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

III

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE TWO KINGDOMS

1Ki 12:25-15:8 ; 2Ch 11:5-13:22

The theme of this section is the beginnings of the two rival kingdoms, or the measures adopted by the rival kings to establish their respective kingdoms. This is a period of twenty-four years and covers the reigns of Jeroboam and his son Nadab) kings of Israel, and of Rehoboam and his son Abijah, kings of Judah.

The initial measure adopted by Jeroboam to establish his kingdom was as follows: First, he built a city at Shechem, where the great popular assembly was held, and which was and had been since Jacob’s time, a holy place. That, he made his capital. Second, as a large part of his territory, including two and a half tribes, was across the Jordan, he built another city and fortified it at Penuel, so as to command the fords of the Jordan, and this secured his kingdom on both sides of this river. Third, he established his residence at Tirzah, first mentioned in the book of Joshua, and in Solomon’s Song we have the expression: “As beautiful as Tirzah.” It was also in the hill country of Ephraim, and it was a beautiful mountain palace.

The initial measure of Rehoboam was to fortify and supply with provisions, garrisons, and munitions of war, fifteen cities on the southern and western frontiers, for a defense mainly against Egypt. A new dynasty had come to the front in Egypt. Shishak was a very formidable and vigorous opponent, not to be compared with the weak dynasty with which Solomon made an alliance by marriage. This Shishak was really a great man. Egypt was the power that Rehoboam and Judah feared.

Other measures of Jeroboam were political expedients in, order to keep the ten tribes from going to Jerusalem to the great feasts. He saw what had been the great power of Jerusalem and its Temple and worship as a unifying force, and he said to himself, “If my people go every year to Jerusalem they will imbibe its spirit, and the result will be that they will ultimately turn back to Rehoboam the king of Judah and will kill me. Now, how am I to stop this annual pilgrimage of my people to Jerusalem?” And these were the expedients that he devised: First, he established calf worship. He had two molten calves put up, viz: one at Dan, in the extreme upper part of his territory and one at Bethel, the place where Jacob was converted and a holy place. It will be remembered that when the tribe of Dan left the territory allotted to them, they migrated to the very northern part of the country, captured the places there, and worshiped the images they had taken there from Micah. There had been, then, ever since the times of the judges, a place of worship at Dan, but it was an image worship.

Second, he established a new order of priesthood. He refused to permit the Levites and their priests, left in the citiesin his territory, to minister for him; he was afraid of them. And so he created a new order of priesthood by taking any man from any tribe that pleased him and making him a priest. Third, he made a new feast to take the place of the Feast of Tabernacles. That feast the Jews generally attended, and millions would go every year, and they would dwell in tents. Now, he determined to have a feast to take the place of the Feast of Tabernacles, and as the season of the year was later in the northern part of the country, he made his feast just one month later than that of Tabernacles, as the record tells us: “He ordained a feast devised in his own heart.” The Feast of Tabernacles was on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and he put his feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, just a month later.

Fourth, he established high places for worship of wooden images. In the book of Judges we learn how Gideon cut down the groves, that is, the forest of images. However, Jeroboam established what is called in the Revised Version, “he-goat worship.” What is meant by it? Among the Greeks it was the worship of Pan. Pan is an image with a man’s face and the form of a goat; these he-goats are sometimes called satyrs. These are heathen minor deities, and allusion is made to them in the book of Leviticus. They are sometimes called devils, and that is what they really were, i. e., demons: it was a kind of demon worship. Now, for his priesthood he made houses at Dan and at Bethel, and in all of these high places, and there this he-goat, or demon worship, was carried on. These were his political expedients.

The calf worship that he established was a mixture of calf and Jehovah worship. When Moses stayed up in the mountain so long, the people asked Aaron to mold a calf for them to worship, as a symbol of Jehovah. It was not an entire abandonment of Jehovah worship, but it was the worship of Jehovah under the symbol of a calf, and they said of that calf that Aaron made, “Behold the god that brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” That was an express violation of the commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven or molten image, in the likeness of anything in the heaven above or the earth beneath, and bow down and worship before it.”

This fundamental innovation in religion weakened his kingdom and strengthened Judah. Now, 2Ch 11:16-17 tells us as follows: “And after them, out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek the Lord, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord, the God of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, strong, three years: for they walked three years in the way of David and Solomon.”

The priests and the Levites were the teaching forces, as well as the guides in religion. When they banish religious teachers from a kingdom, or expatriate its best men, they do a great harm to that kingdom; they take away those who have the power to keep up the religious idea. That was a tremendous loss to the nation of Israel. These were laymen, too, the best people of the land. As I have already said, one of the peculiarities of the book of Chronicles is to record every secession from Israel back to Judah, and we will come to many a one before we get through, and thus we will see that a remnant of the ten tribes was saved.

Now, it weakened Jeroboam in the following ways: It completely separated his people from God; second, it perpetuated a sin for 253 years that readily ate out the heart of the religious nature of the people and caused their ultimate downfall. Two passages of Scripture show how far-reaching the effect of this sin was. 1Ki 14 , commencing at 1Ki 14:15 reads as follows: “The Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers. . . . And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he hath sinned, and wherewith he has made Israel to sin.” Now, when we come to the end of the period of the divided kingdom, we will find the other passage, 2Ki 17:21-23 . This passage accounts for the downfall of the ten tribes. Commencing at 1Ki 14:21 : “For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam, the son of Nabat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin. And the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight. . . . So Israel was carried away out of their own land to Assyria, unto this day.” Now, we cannot overemphasize the magnitude of a sin that destroys a nation, and I do not know any sin but the sin of Adam more far-reaching in its consequences than the sin of Jeroboam.

How often at the end of a reign of an Israelitish king does this refrain come: “He did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin”? We may say that this was the inscription on the tomb of every Israelitish king, not one of them a good man. I used to say that sin is like Bermuda grass, indestructible, and that no man can commit a single sin; that it is a great breeder, it makes other sins. I have used this illustration: A hunter may think that he sees just one quail, but when he flushes him there is always a pair or a covey. And I have used this passage from Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” to show the multiplying power of sin: Never swoops the soaring vulture Oil his quarry in the desert, on some Sick or wounded bison, but another vulture watching From his high aerial lockout Sees the downward plunge and follows. And a third pursues the second; Coming from the invisible ether, first a speck, And then a vulture, till the air is dark with pinions.

All have witnessed the way in which buzzards flock to a car-cass. From these illustrations we get some conception of this multiplying power of sin. And I repeat that aside from the sin of Adam, no sin described in the Bible as I can now recall, has such a long fearful sweep as the sin of Jeroboam. Jehovah announced his displeasure by sending a man out of Judah, a man of God, it does not give his name and he came to Bethel on the day that the worship of the calf was to commence, and came into the presence of Jeroboam who was about to officiate as high priest and used these words (what solemn words they are): “Oh, Altar, Altar, Thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall they burn upon thee. And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken: Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.” How long before that was fulfilled? We have to turn forward to the reign of Josiah to find an exact fulfilment of it.

Let us see how Jeroboam received this announcement of the prophet of God. In 1Ki 13:4 we have these words: “And it came to pass, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar at Beth-el, that Jeroboam put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him.” And his hand which he put forth toward the prophet became rigid (he could not move it) and it dried up. There he stood with that dried up, shriveled arm. He then begged the prophet to pray for him, and the prophet prayed for him and the hand was healed.

The tragic end of the nameless prophet was as follows: Jeroboam asked this prophet to be his guest. He declined because God had told him not to go into anybody’s house, and not to tarry in that place, but to come straight back when he had delivered his message. The prophet refused to accept the invitation of Jeroboam. But there was an old man in Bethel, who was himself a prophet, there were schools of the prophets established over the land. Now, this prophet heard of the miracles performed by the prophet from Judah and sent after the man of God, urging him to come back and take bread with him. The nameless prophet said, “I have been commanded not to do that.” The other said, “I also am a prophet, and bid you to come back,” and he went back, and then came the warning to him that he should die. On leaving the house a lion met him and smote him from the ass upon which he was riding and killed him. The lion did not eat him he was not mangled but the people found his dead body there.

I shall never forget that when I was a little bit of a child this was the Sunday school lesson, “The Fate of the Disobedient Prophet.” There was a picture of it in the Sunday school book. The old prophet that lived there at Bethel took him and buried him in a secret place, that his bones should not fall under the denunciation he had himself given. The old prophet said to his children, “When I die, bury me by the side of this man of God; I do not want my bones taken up and burned on that altar.”

Jeroboam did not relent in his purpose on the announcement of this prophecy and its marvelous sign, for that very day the altar split wide open and the ashes fell out; and then there was the miracle of staying his hand, but he did not repent and give up his evil purpose. The record says, “After this thing Jeroboam returned not away from his evil ways, but made again from among all the people priests of the high places; whosoever would, he consecrated him that there might be priests of the high places. And this thing became a sin unto the house of Jeroboam,” and he destroyed it off the face of the earth. So this sin not only destroyed the people ultimately, but it destroyed him and all of his house. His policy in the main accompanied his object. The record tells us that the people, the main body of them, quit going to Jerusalem, but joined in this idolatrous worship that Jeroboam had prescribed. The effect on Jeroboam himself was destructive. The record says that the Lord smote him and all of his house perished not a man, woman, or child was left. This is voiced by Jehovah himself, and the occasion of it was that his son was sick, and he told his wife to go to the prophet, Ahijah, who had announced to him that he would get ten tribes in the division of the kingdom. He told his wife to disguise herself, and take presents with her, and go and ask that prophet that the child might live. But the Spirit of God informed the prophet of the disguise before the woman got there, and he met her with this terrible announcement: “And it was so, when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Go, tell Jeroboam, that because of this evil I will cut off every man child, him that is shut up and him that is left out, and I will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweepest away refuse, and him that dieth in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the fields shall the fowls eat. The Lord hath spoken. Rise and get thee to thine own house, and when thy feet enter into the city the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him, for he alone of Jeroboam’s family shall come to the grave.” He is the only one of the family that shall ever receive burial. And then he goes on to say that this sin would destroy the entire nation. This is one of the most solemn utterances in the Bible.

The next measure adopted by Jeroboam to establish himself was an alliance with Shishak. It will be remembered that he fled to Egypt in the days of Solomon, and married into the family of this very Shishak. He made an alliance with Shishak to invade Judah, of which we will speak presently. Jeroboam himself reigned twenty-two years; his son reigned after him two years; his dynasty, therefore, lasted twenty-four years. Rehoboam and his son Abijah, and his son Asa, came to the throne before Jeroboam died. The attitude of the two kingdoms toward each other was war continually, all the days of Jeroboam’s life and the life of his son. But Rehoboam prospered three years just as long as the people remained faithful unto God. His sin and the sin of his people we find in 1Ki 14:22-24 , and some of it is awful. Let us look at it: “And Judah did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord;… For they also built them high places on every high hill and under every green tree; and there were also Sodomites in the land: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drove out before the children of Israel.”

This sin was punished. The record tells us that Shishak, the king of Egypt, invaded the land with a vast army, with much cavalry and many chariots of war. He easily broke through those fifteen cities of defense and came up to Jerusalem, and as his armies surrounded Jerusalem Rehoboam and all the peopie prayed to God and repented of their sins. Mark this difference between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. And God delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. But Shishak carried away all of those rich treasures that had been gathered by Solomon; the golden shields he took away with him, and made the land tributary to Egypt.

Archeology throws some light on this invasion of Shishak. Not a great while ago, in uncovering the ruins of the temple of Karnak on the Nile, there was found the inscription of Shishak on his return from this invasion. It shows what cities he captured, and how he had taken away the treasures from Jerusalem. But the important light that it throws on the period is this: Among the cities captured it gives the names of the Levitical cities in Israel. He did not destroy any of the cities of Jeroboam, but all the Levitical or Canaanite cities that remained faithful to Judah he captured. That is shown in the inscriptions such of them as are discernible. Is it not strange that after thousands of years the spade keeps turning up proof of the truth of the Bible? When archeology first commenced the radical critics said that it would destroy the Bible. Inscriptions on monuments, deep carvings in rock that the dust of centuries has settled upon, are brought to light and demonstrate that this book does not deal in lies. We need to fear nothing as having the power to destroy the testimony of this book.

The length of Rehoboam’s reign was seventeen years; that of his son was three years. The great event in Abijah’s reign was the war with Jeroboam. He raised an army of 4,000,000 men and went into Ephraim and met Jeroboam with 8,000,000 men, and Jeroboam divided his forces into two parts, to take them on two sides. But before the battle commenced there was a prelude that to me has always been interesting. We find it in 2Ch 13:4-12 , as follows: “And Abijah stood up upon Mount Zemaraim, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, and said, Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel; ought ye not to know that Jehovah the God of Israel, gave the kingdom over Israel to David forever, even to him and his sons by a covenant of salt? Yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon the son of David, rose up, and rebelled against his Lord. And there were gathered unto him worthless men, base fellows, that strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was young and tenderhearted, and could not withstand them. And now ye think to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah in the land of the sons of David; and ye are a great multitude) and there are with you the golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods. Have ye not driven out the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and have made you priests after the manner of the people of other lands? so that whosoever cometh to consecrate himself with a young bullock and seven rams, the same may be 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 ministering unto Jehovah, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites in their work; and they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt offerings and sweet incense: the shewbread also they set in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening: for we keep the charge 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.”

That was a very hard message, and in the battle which followed Abijah’s army killed more Israelites than there were in his own army he had only 40,000 men and he killed half a million. The effect of this battle was terrific. The record tells us that Jeroboam never recovered from that battle. But Abijah was a very strong man, yet not as faithful to Jehovah as he boasts to Jeroboam.

The state of affairs at the end of the twenty-four years was as follows: Jeroboam was dead, smitten of God; his son, after an inglorious reign of two years, was murdered by Baasha, and only one of the family of Jeroboam ever received burial; Baasha killed every one of them that was alive. Now, in the other kingdom, Asa, one of the greatest of the kings of Judah, had come to the throne, and that is the way they stand at the end of the twenty-four years.

QUESTIONS

1. What was the time period of this chapter, who were the kings of Israel and Judah and the time each reigned respectively?

2. What were the initial measures adopted by Jeroboam to establish his kingdom?

3. What was the initial measure of Rehoboam and why this particular measure?

4. What other measures, or political expedients, adopted by Jeroboam?

5. What was the calf worship which he established?

6. What was the effect of this fundamental innovation and how do you account for it?

7. What was the sad refrain at the end of the reign of each of the Israelitish kings? Illustrate.

8. How did Jehovah show his displeasure and what was the fulfilment of the prophecy of the “nameless prophet”?

9. How did Jeroboam receive the message and what the result?

10. Relate the tragic story of the nameless prophet.

11. What was the effect of this great demonstration on Jeroboam?

12. Did his policy in the main accomplish his object?

13. What was the effect on Jeroboam himself?

14. How was this voiced by Jehovah and what the occasion of it?

15. What was the next measure adopted by Jeroboam to establish himself?

16. How long did Jeroboam reign, how many kings of Judah during his reign, how long his dynasty and what its end?

17. What was the attitude of the two kingdoms toward each other?

18. How long did Rehoboam prosper?

19. What was his sin and the sin of his people?

20. How was this sin punished?

21. What light does archeology throw on the invasion of Shishak?

22. What was the length of Rehoboam’s reign, how long his son’s reign and what great event of Abijah’s reign?

23. What was the effect of the battle between Abijah and Jeroboam?

24. What were the characteristics of Abijah?

25. What was the state of affairs in each kingdom, respectively, at the end of twenty-four years?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

1Ki 12:25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel.

Ver. 25. Then Jeroboam built Shechem. ] Shechem had been ruined and sowed with salt, Jdg 9:45 it had been rebuilt, 1Ki 12:1 but now made a royal city, as being in meditullio regni, in the middle of the kingdom: as Constantinople, for its situation, is said to be a city fatally founded, to command a great part of the world. a

And built Penuel. ] Beyond Jordan, to be a bulwark there.

a Turk. Hist.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

1 Kings

POLITICAL RELIGION

1Ki 12:25 – 1Ki 12:33 .

The details of this section need no long elucidation; for the one fact which it records, namely, the establishment of the calf worship in Israel, is the main point to consider. As for details, we need touch them lightly. The ‘building’ of Shechem and Penuel is probably to be understood as ‘fortifying’; for, in regard to the former town, we know from the preceding section that it was a town before the disruption, and the same is probably true of the latter. Two fortresses, one in the heart of his kingdom, one on the eastern border, where attack might be expected, were Jeroboam’s first care.

In estimating his conduct, the fact must be remembered that Ahijah had promised him God’s protection and the establishment of his kingdom in his family, on the sole condition of obedience. If he had believed the prophet, something else than building strongholds would have been his prime aim. But he evidently thought that promises were all very well, but thick walls were better. The two things recorded of him are quite of a piece; and the writer seems, by putting them thus side by side, to wish us to note their identity of motive and similarity in character.

The establishment of the calf worship was entirely due, according to this historian, to dread that religious unity would heal the schism of political duality, and that Jeroboam’s kingdom and life would be sacrificed to the magnetism which would draw the revolted northern tribes back to render allegiance, where they went up to worship. The calculation was reasonable: but why, in estimating chances, did Jeroboam leave out God’s promise? That should have kept him at ease. The calves and the castles were signs of fear and of slight regard to the prophet’s word. No doubt, when it suited him, he could vindicate rebellion on the plea of obeying God. The plea would have sounded more genuine if he had shown that he trusted God.

The calves were probably suggested by his Egyptian experiences, where he had seen sacred bulls worshipped living, and mummied dead. But the remembrance of Aaron and the golden calf was evidently present to him, as the almost verbal quotation of Aaron’s words shows. If so, the whole transaction is still more accentuated as a revolt against the ritual of the central sanctuary. ‘The much-calumniated Aaron is our example. He was mastered by his brother, but he was right, and we go back to the old original worship of our fathers.’

Jeroboam was among the first to employ the expedient, so often resorted to since, of white-washing old-world criminals, in order to provide an ancestry for modern heresies. The calves seem to have been doubled simply as a matter of convenience. When once the principle of saving trouble comes in, in religion, it generally plays a great part. If it were too much to go to Jerusalem, it would soon be too much to go to Bethel, and so Dan must be provided for the north. The calves were symbols of Jehovah, not of other gods, as must be carefully noted. The making of them implied all that followed; for a god must have shrine and priesthood and sacrifice and festivals. The Levites refusing to serve, and probably losing their inheritance, fled to Judah, and a new priesthood was made ‘from among all the people’ Rev. Ver., The Feast of Tabernacles was retained but its date shifted forward a month, perhaps because the harvest, which it closed, was later in the north, but evidently with the design of, as it were, underscoring the religious separation.

The latter part of this passage should perhaps be attached more closely to the next chapter, and understood as describing the one instance of Jeroboam’s sacrificing which was so grimly interrupted by the denunciation by the anonymous prophet from Judah. Such are the outlines of the facts. What are the lessons taught by them?

I. There is that one already mentioned,-the folly and sin of seeking to help God to fulfil His promises by our poor efforts at making their fulfilment sure to sense. No doubt many of His promises are contingent on our activity in material things; and no man has a right to expect that’ his bread shall be given him,’ for instance, unless he contributes the ‘sweat of his brow’ towards it. But Jeroboam had had the conditions of safety and stability clearly laid down. They were, obedience after the pattern of David 1Ki 11:38. So there was no need for building Shechem and Penuel, nor for casting calves and serving them. The heavens will stand without our rearing brickwork pillars to hold them up. But it takes much faith to trust God’s bare word, and we are all apt to feel safer if we have something for sense to grasp. On the open plain, God guards those who trust Him more securely than if they lay in cities ‘fenced up to heaven. ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls. . . . For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about.’

II. Another lesson taught here is the sin of degrading religion to be a mere instrument for securing personal ends. Jeroboam has had many followers among politicians, The average ‘statesman’ looks on all religions as equally true or untrue, and is ready to be polite to any of them, if he can carry his measures thereby. The long history of the relations of Church and State in the Old World has been little else than the State’s hiring and muzzling the Church for its own advantage, and the protests of a faithful few against the degradation of State patronage and consequent control.

In England, Jeroboam and his calves used to be the favourite shocking example of the sin of schism, with which High Church orators were fond of pelting Nonconformists. The true lesson from him and them is precisely the opposite one; namely, the weakening of religion, when it is favoured and endowed by the civil power. The priests of Bethel, who were the creatures of Jeroboam, were not likely to be his or his successors rebukers. When Amos the prophet spoke bold words against a king, it was Amaziah the priest who gave the shameful counsel, ‘O thou seer, flee into the land of Judah, and prophesy there; but prophesy no more at Bethel: for it is the king’s sanctuary.’ Is there no such thing known as a flaming profession of religion, because it is respectable, or opens the way to some good position? Does nobody pose in public, especially about election times, as a liberal supporter of Churches and a devout Church-member, with an eye mainly to votes? Do political parties think it a good thing to get the religious people to go for their ticket? Or, to take less base instances, is there not a whole school who estimate Christianity mainly as valuable as a social force, and, without any deep personal recognition of its loftier aspects, think it well that it should be generally accepted, especially by other people, as it makes them easier to govern, and cements the social fabric?

Christianity is something more than social cement. Jeroboam’s policy was a great success, as policy. It both united his kingdom and definitively separated it from Judah. But it was a success purchased at the price of degrading religion into the lackey of a court. Samson went to sleep on Delilah’s lap, and she cut off the clustering locks in which his strength lay.

III. The true nature of idolatry is brought out in the incident. Jeroboam did not draw Israel away to worship other gods. No charge of that sort is ever made against the calf worship. The images were meant, just as Aaron’s, of which they were a reproduction, was meant, to be symbols of Jehovah. The true object of worship was worshipped in a false way. No matter though the image represented Him, its worship was idol worship. There is no ground in the narrative for the surmise of Stanley,-who in this, as usual, simply says ditto to Ewald,-that Jeroboam’s motive was the desire to prevent Israel’s adopting false gods, and that the calves were a compromise by which he hoped to stem the tide of apostasy to Baal worship. The single motive stated in the text is policy inspired by fear. Jeroboam did not care enough about the worship of Jehovah to mould his statecraft with the view of conserving it. If he had so cared, he could not have set up the calves. His doing so is uniformly regarded in Scripture as idolatry pure and simple; and though it is clearly distinguished from the worship of false gods, it is none the less branded as rebellion against Jehovah.

A visible representation of Jehovah was as much an idol as a similar one of Baal would have been. It necessarily degraded the conception of Him. It brought sense into dangerous prominence as an aid to worship. The symbol might at first, and to the more devout, be a mere symbol, and transparent; but it would soon become opaque, and from symbol turn embodiment, and thence pass to being the very deity represented. It is a feat of abstraction impossible for the ordinary man, to worship before an idol, and not to worship the idol. The strange, awful fascination which idolatry exercised is perhaps gone now from the civilised world. But the lesson remains ever in season, that it is dangerous work to bring in sense as an ally of devotion, because outward things, which at first may be only symbols and helps, are almost certain to become something more.

IV. Jeroboam may stand, finally, as a type of the men who suppose themselves to be worshipping God when they are only following their own wills. All his ceremonial had this damning characteristic, that it was ‘devised of his own heart’; and so it was himself that was enshrined in his new house of the high places, and himself to whom the sacrifices were offered. Absolute obedience to God’s will, whatever perils may seem to attend it, is true worship. Wherever apparent devotion to Him is mingled with burning incense to our own net, the mixture ruins the devotion. ‘Obedience is better than sacrifice.’ Temptations to take our own way will often appear as the dictates of sound policy, and to neglect them as culpable carelessness. But such paltering with plain commandments is as ruinous as sinful, and is not to be atoned for by outward worship.

What did Jeroboam win by his intrusion of self-will into the region which ought to be sacred to perfect obedience? A troubled reign and the destruction of his house after one generation. One more thing he won; namely, that terrible epithet, which becomes almost a part of his name, ‘Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.’ What a title to be branded on a man’s forehead for ever! It is always a mistake to disobey God. Every sin is a blunder as well as a crime. This only is the safe motto for churches and individuals, in all the details of worship and of life: ‘Lo, I come to do Thy will, O Lord, and Thy law is within my heart.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

built = rebuilt, or repaired. This doubtless included increased fortification (2Ch 11:11).

mount = hill-country.

Penuel. On east of Jordan (Gen 32:30. Jdg 8:8),

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Man-made Religion

1Ki 12:25-33

Jeroboam knew better than to make these two calves. The prophet had clearly told him that the stability of his throne was contingent upon his obedience, 1Ki 11:38. It was definitely promised that if he would hearken to do all that was commanded him, God would be with him and build him a sure house. But he was not content with this.

Fearing that if his people went up to the annual feasts at Jerusalem, they would return to their ancient loyalty to Davids throne and kill him, Jeroboam set up the worship of Jehovah under the semblance of these two calves. He thus broke not the First but the Second Commandment, and sowed seeds from which his descendants were destined to reap a succession of bitter harvests. He was like the foolish man of our Lords parable, who heard and did not; and whose house, however carefully it might have been constructed, was sapped by the rising waters. Expediency always deceives those who turn from God and rely on the devices of their own hearts. It seems that Jeroboam constituted himself priest as well as king. There is no knowing to what lengths men may drift, when they lose their moorings in God.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

built: 1Ki 9:15, 1Ki 9:17, 1Ki 9:18, 1Ki 15:17, 1Ki 16:24, 2Ch 11:5-12

Shechem: 1Ki 12:1, Jdg 9:1, Jdg 9:45-49

Penuel: Gen 32:30, Gen 32:31, Jdg 8:8, Jdg 8:17

Reciprocal: Jos 17:7 – Shechem Jdg 9:6 – plain 2Sa 19:20 – Joseph Jer 41:5 – Shechem Hos 6:9 – by consent Hos 13:1 – exalted

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

1Ki 12:25. Jeroboam built Shechem He repaired, enlarged, and fortified it; for it had been ruined long since, Jdg 9:45. He might choose it as a place both auspicious, because here the foundation of his monarchy was laid; and commodious, as being near the frontiers of his kingdom. And built Penuel A place beyond Jordan; to secure that part of his dominions.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Ki 12:25 to 1Ki 13:34. The Sin of Jeroboam. The Prophet at Bethel.The sources cannot be exactly determined. Some (see Cent.B) may belong to the annals of the northern kingdom, but the tone is decidedly Deuteronomic. The prophets message to Jeroboam is certainly late.

Jeroboams first act as recorded was to build or fortify Shechem (1Ki 12:25). Then for some reason he transferred his seat of government to the E. of Jordan to Penuel. Possibly he was hard pressed by his former patron Shishak, who invaded Israel in his reign (1Ki 14:25-28). There is no proof of this; but Abner after Sauls death set up Ishbosheth as king of Israel in the same district at Mahanaim (2Sa 2:8 f.). Jeroboam may have established himself at Penuel in anticipation of a Syrian invasion. 2Sa 2:26 f. tells of his apostasy. Fearing lest the Israelites would return to the house of David if they continued to visit Jerusalem, he built two sanctuaries, at Bethel in the S. and Dan in the N.

As Kings attributes Israels spiritual ruin to his sin we must state what is here said to have been its features. (a) Dissuading the people from going up to Jerusalem; (b) setting up Bethel and Dan as sanctuaries; (c) making houses of high places; (d) ordaining priests who were not Levites; (e) keeping a feast in the eighth instead of the seventh month. The question is whether any of those offences could have been considered acts of apostasy in the days of Jeroboam, as they were undoubtedly in the reign of Josiah three centuries later. (f) The calf worship.

(a) Jerusalem was certainly not considered to be the one legal sanctuary. In the days of the Judges it was regarded as a heathen town to be avoided by Israelites (Jdg 19:11 f.). Even the prophets shortly before the fall of Samaria never reproach the people for the sin of schism in deserting Yahwehs Judan Temple. (b) Bethel, connected with Jacob, was an ancient and honoured holy place (Gen 28:19, 1Sa 10:3), and Dan was served by a priesthood which was descended perhaps from a descendant of Moses himself (Jdg 18:30). (c) The high places or local sanctuaries had existed from the days of the patriarchs, and were part of the worship of ancient Israel (2Ki 3:3*). Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, made use of them for solemn sacrifices. (d) The Levitical priesthood was preferred to any other (Jdg 17:9-13); but in early Israel the priestly office was certainly not confined to a tribe. In 2Ch 11:13, the Levites are said to have deserted Jeroboams kingdom and settled in Judah, but this is a very late view of the affair. (e) The feast in the eighth month is said to be the vintage festival or Feast of Tabernacles. In Neh 8:17, it is said to have been kept in accordance with the Law, but that it had never been kept since the days of Joshua. (f) The only point remaining for discussion is the calves. The following points must be borne in mind: (i.) the second commandment was not at this time strictly interpreted, or cherubim, lions, and bulls would not have been allowed in Solomons Temple and palace; (ii.) the bullfor calf is not used in a contemptuous sensewas the special symbol of the Joseph tribes (Deu 33:17), and even of Yahweh (Exo 32:5); (iii.) calf-worship had existed even in the wilderness, and in Exodus 32, when Aaron made the golden calf, he proclaimed a feast to Yahweh. Indeed the whole story in Exodus has a remarkable affinity to that here related. (iv.) As Jeroboam was not an innovator in setting up altars at Bethel and Dan, he may here not have introduced a new worship, but one which was already common in Israel. He may have imitated an Egyptian form of worship; but this is highly improbable. The ceremony of kissing the calves is alluded to just before the fall of Samaria (Hos 13:2). Calf-worship apparently never infected Judah.

The story of the prophets visit to Jeroboam has been called one of the strangest in the OT (Cent.B). The prophet, who is not named, predicts the destruction of the altar of Bethel by a king of Judah named Josiah. The definiteness of this prediction would not necessarily render it impossible, any more than the mention of Cyrus, nearly two centuries before his birth, attributed to Isaiah (Isa 44:26). But the whole tone of this story, as of that of Isaiah 40 ff., forbids us to accept it as contemporary. To take but one instance, the allusion to the cities of Samaria (1Ki 13:32) is a patent anachronism (1Ki 16:24). That the tradition of a prophets visit to Jeroboam was current may be witnessed to by 2Ki 23:16. The prophet or man of God, as he is consistently called (except in 1Ki 13:23, where the reference to the prophet is an obvious interpolation), in contrast with the old prophet, does not denounce Jeroboam but curses the altar. Apparently the punishment of the man of God, who was very excusably deceived, is intended to emphasize the extreme wickedness of rebellion against God. The story throughout is intentionally miraculous; the withering of the kings hand, the death of the prophet by a lion who refused to touch the corpse or to injure the ass, cannot be explained by any attempt to rationalise the story.

1Ki 13:33. consecrated: lit. filled the hand (Leviticus 8*, Num 3:3*, 1Ch 29:5*) of each new priest. This term (found also in Assyrian) is used of regular consecration, e.g. Aarons (Exo 28:41), and irregular, e.g. Micahs Levite (Jdg 17:5). It probably means to put him in possession of the office.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Jeroboam’s idolatry 12:25-33

During its history the Northern Kingdom had three capitals: first Shechem (1Ki 12:25), later Tirzah (1Ki 14:17; 1Ki 15:33), and finally Samaria (1Ki 16:23-24). Perhaps the king strengthened Penuel in west-central Gilead as a transjordanian provincial center. Like Shechem, Penuel (Peniel) was an important site in patriarchal times (Gen 32:30). By strengthening these sites, Jeroboam appears to have been trying to get the residents of his kingdom to view their nation as the continuation of what God had begun in patriarchal days. One writer suggested that Jeroboam may have abandoned Shechem and moved to Penuel because Shechem was a divided city. Levitical priests who would have opposed his religious reforms lived there. [Note: Nigel Allen, "Jeroboam and Shechem," Vetus Testamentum 24:3 (July 1974):353-57.] Jeroboam’s fears that his subjects would kill him and return to Rehoboam (1Ki 12:27) were due to disbelief in God’s promises that the prophet Ahijah had announced to him (1Ki 11:31; 1Ki 11:37-38).

Jeroboam seems to have designed his substitute religious system (1Ki 12:28-33) to offer the Israelites convenient "improvements" in the Mosaic system that tied in with certain events in their history. The golden calves, for instance, recall the golden calf in the wilderness. The apis bull was a common religious symbol in Egypt. The golden calf in the wilderness and these calves may have been similar symbols. There is some question among scholars whether the people regarded calves of this type as idols or as pedestals on which the gods stood. [Note: William Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, pp. 197-98; Stephen Von Wyrick, "Israel’s Golden Calves," Biblical Illustrator 13:1 (Fall 1986):3, 9-12.] One writer made a good case for their being idols (cf. 1Ki 14:9). [Note: John Oswalt, "The Golden Calves and the Egyptian Concept of Deity," Evangelical Quarterly 45 (1973):13-20.] They certainly became idols to the Israelites in the North. However it seems more likely that Jeroboam conceived of them as the symbols and supporters of Yahweh. [Note: See Bright, p. 218; and Merrill, "1 Kings," p. 260.] Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a high place at Dan that they date from the time of Jeroboam I. [Note: See Wiseman, p. 144..]

"With the division of the kingdom, the chief symbol of God’s presence, the ark and the cherubim, was left to Judah. Needing a comparable symbol for his new state, Jeroboam chose the bull, universally admired for its strength and procreative power (Deu 33:17; Isa 10:13 [sic]; Isa 34:7; Psa 68:30; 1Ki 7:25). It is probable that Jeroboam meant the bull to serve the same function as the ark and cherubim, that is, as the throne or footstool of the invisibly present God.

"The adoption of the bull as a cult object may have been an effort to adapt the ark and cherubim to the culture of the northern tribes, especially since the bull was an indigenous symbol to the Canaanite element of the population. Archaeological finds in Palestine-Syria of statues depicting a god astride a bull point to a function for the bull similar to that of the ark and cherubim (ANEP [The Ancient Near East in Pictures, ed. James B. Pritchard], nos. 470-501, 522-538)." [Note: Rice, pp. 106, 107.]

After making the calves, Jeroboam said exactly the same thing Aaron had said (1Ki 12:28; cf. Exo 32:4). Jeroboam also followed up the making of the calves with a feast similar to the one at Sinai (1Ki 12:32-33; cf. Exo 32:5). Furthermore, Jeroboam followed Aaron’s example of setting himself up as covenant mediator, in Moses’ absence, and as head of the cult (formal worship). In this he was quite clearly identifying his cult with the Exodus. [Note: Baruch Halpern, "Levitic Participation in the Reform Cult of Jeroboam I," Journal of Biblical Literature 95:1 (1976):39-40.] Jeroboam also assumed the role of the Davidic monarch who was the Lord’s anointed and, as such, both the political and the religious leader of Israel. [Note: See Gray, pp. 315-18.]

How could Jeroboam have hoped to win the support of the Israelites since he revived the practice of worshipping a calf?

"I suggest that the motivation behind Jeroboam’s action may have been an intense animosity toward the Levites. It was the Levites who had taken sword in hand to slay the worshippers of Aaron’s golden calves. Jeroboam now bypassed the Levites by appointing his own priests and, in a supreme irony, manufactured his own golden calves as a symbol of his disdain for the Levitical priesthood. Had not Moses’ own grandson, Jonathan, anticipated Jeroboam by serving as the first priest of the competing shrine at Dan [Judges 17-18]? Besides according a measure of legitimacy to Dan, this story revealed that even within Moses’ family there was room for diversity in religious practice. How could Jeroboam be faulted for his golden calves when Moses’ own grandson had officiated over a cult at Dan which worshipped idols having no connection at all with the exodus?" [Note: Merrill, Kingdom of . . ., p. 328.]

This may also explain Jeroboam’s choice of Dan as one of his cultic centers. But why did he select Bethel? Jacob had met God at Bethel twice (Gen 28:10-22; Gen 35:1-7). Perhaps Jeroboam promoted it as the birthplace of Israel’s faith. Geographically, Bethel stood on the main highway that led into Judah just north of the border. It was a convenient gathering place for Israelites who lived in the southern and central parts of the Northern Kingdom. Since they would have had to pass through Bethel if they wanted to go south to worship in Jerusalem, Jeroboam’s priests could have discouraged them from doing so there.

The feast Jeroboam set up (1Ki 12:32) took place one month later than the Day of Atonement when the Levitical priests offered sacrifice to atone for the sins of the nation for the past year (Leviticus 16). Thus it seems that Jeroboam had no regard for the will of God as expressed in the commands of the Mosaic Covenant. He viewed himself as a king like all the other kings of the ancient Near East. To establish himself and the Northern Kingdom as independent from Judah, he combined commonly accepted religious concepts that the surrounding pagan nations held with elements from Israel’s history. [Note: For further discussion, see Eva Danelius, "The Sins of Jeroboam Ben-Nebat," Jewish Quarterly Review 58 (1967-68):95-114 and 204-23.]

". . . Jeroboam’s sins are so far-reaching and repulsive that the author uses him as the example of how to define a morally deficient king (cf. 1Ki 16:7; 1Ki 16:9 [sic 19], 26)." [Note: House, p. 178.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

2. Jeroboam’s evil reign in Israel 12:25-14:20

Jeroboam was the first of 20 kings who ruled the Northern Kingdom during its 209-year history. He reigned for 22 years (931-910 B.C.). Not one of the kings of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, turned the people to a serious recommitment to the Mosaic Covenant. Consequently the writer judged all of them evil.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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