'They shall be his servants: that they may know My service, and the
service of the kingdoms of the countries.'--2 Chron. xii. 8.
Rehoboam was a self-willed, godless king who, like some other kings,
learned nothing by experience. His kingdom was nearly wrecked at the
very beginning of his reign, and was saved much more by the folly of
his rival than by his own wisdom. Jeroboam's religious revolution
drove all the worshippers of God among the northern kingdom into
flight. They might have endured the separate monarchy, but they could
not endure the separate Temple. So all priests and Levites in Israel,
and all the adherents of the ancestral worship in the Temple at
Jerusalem, withdrew to the southern kingdom and added much to its
strength.
Rehoboam's narrow escape taught him neither moderation nor devotion,
his new strength turned his head. He forsook the law of the Lord. The
dreary series, so often illustrated in the history of Israel, came
into operation. Prosperity produced irreligion; irreligion brought
chastisement; chastisement brought repentance; repentance brought the
removal of the invader--and then, like a spring released, back went
king and nation to their old sin.
So here--Rehoboam's sins take visible form in Sheshak's army. He has
sown the dragon's teeth and they spring up armed men. Shemaiah the
prophet, the first of the long series of noble men who curbed the
violence of Jewish monarchs, points the lesson of invasion in plain,
blunt words: 'Ye have forsaken Me.' Then follow penitence and
confession--and the promise that Jerusalem shall not be destroyed, but
at the same time they are to be left as vassals and tributaries of
Egypt--an anomalous position for them--and the reason is given in
these words of our text.