March 20, 2020: Day 48 – I Kings 12

Things start to go from bad to worse.  I forgot to mention that Solomon dies in the end of the last chapter, and in his death we see that his son, Rehoboam,  takes over the reigns. The first thing that Jeroboam does, I told you to remember his name, was to ask for an audience with the king, now Rehoboam, to ask for a lightening of the load upon them.  He has an audience with the king and asks basically that he would lower the taxes and lower the amount of work that was expected of them.

Rehoboam does the smart thing and takes counsel.  He asks his elderly counselors what he should do, and they tell him to lighten the load.  He asks his school buddies what he should do and they tell him to make the load harder on those who were complaining.  He doesn’t listen to the wizened folks and so increases the suffering of his people, the people of Israel.  How important it is to not only have counselors around you, but counselors who have wisdom and to whom you will listen.  

The kingdom of Israel is taken from Rehoboam and Jeroboam takes over the 10 tribes that weren’t directly located in Judah, that would be Jerusalem and the surrounding areas.  But things don’t stay right with Jeroboam.  He is jealous of Jerusalem’s religious preeminence and so he builds  two golden calves, sound familiar?, in order for the ten tribes to have an opportunity to worship.  But they become false gods and Jeroboam and the people turn away from the God of Israel.  Now things are going to start to break apart.

Just as a summary: you now have two kingdoms – one ruled by the son of Solomon which is tiny and basically located around Jerusalem, and the other ruled by Jeroboam which comprised of the remaining 10 tribes.  The one ruled by Solomon’s son is the southern kingdom.  The one ruled by Jeroboam is called the northern kingdom.