'And Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon's
servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted
up his hand against the king. 27. And this was the cause that he lifted
up his hand against the king: Solomon built Millo, and repaired the
breaches of the city of David his father. 28. And the man Jeroboam was
a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was
industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of
Joseph. 29. And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of
Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way;
and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in
the field: 30. And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and
rent it in twelve pieces: 31. And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten
pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend
the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to
thee: 32. (But he shall have one tribe for My servant David's sake, and
for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the
tribes of Israel:) 33. Because that they have forsaken Me, and have
worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of
the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not
walked in My ways, to do that which is right in Mine eyes, and to keep
My statutes and My judgments, as did David his father. 34. Howbeit I
will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I will make him
prince all the days of his life for David My servant's sake, whom I
chose because he kept My commandments and My statutes: 35. But I will
take the kingdom out of his ion's hand, and will give it unto thee,
even ten tribes. 36. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David
My servant may have a light alway before Me in Jerusalem, the city
which I have chosen Me to put My name there. 37. And I will take thee,
and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and shalt
be king over Israel. 38. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all
that I command thee, and wilt walk in My ways, and do that is right in
My sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments, as David My servant
did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built
for David, and will give Israel unto thee. 39. And I will for this
afflict the seed of David, but not for ever. 40. Solomon sought
therefore to kill Jeroboam. And Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt,
unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of
Solomon. 41. And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did,
and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of
Solomon? 42. And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all
Israel was forty years. 43. And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was
buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in
his stead.'--1 KINGS xi. 26-43.
Solomon falls into the background in the last part of the story of his
reign, and his enemies are more prominent than himself. So long as he
walked with God, he was of importance for the historian; but as soon as
he forsook God, and was consequently forsaken of His wisdom, he becomes
as insignificant as an empty vessel which has once held sweet perfume,
or a piece of carbon through which the electric current has ceased to
flow. The sunbeam has left that peak, and shines on other summits.
Never was there a sadder eclipse.
We are here told first how the instrument for shattering Solomon's
kingdom was shaped by himself. It is the old story of a young man of
mark, attracting the eyes of the king, being promoted to offices of
trust, which at once stir ambition, and give prominence and influence
which seem to afford a possibility of gratifying it. The passion for
building, so common in Eastern kings, and the cause of so much misery
to their subjects, had grown on Solomon; and as his later days were
harassed by war, and he had lost the safe defence of God's arm,
Jerusalem had to be enclosed by a wall. His father had been able to
leave a 'breach' because the Lord was a wall round him and his city;
and if Solomon had kept in his paths, he would have had no need to add
to the fortifications. The preservation of ancestral piety is for
nations and individuals a surer protection than the improvement of
ancestral outward defences. Jeroboam made himself conspicuous by his
energy (for that rather than 'valour' must be the meaning of the word),
and so got promotion. It was natural, but at the same time dangerous,
to put him in command of the forced labour of his own tribe, as the
narrative shows us was done; for 'the house of Joseph' is the tribe of
Ephraim, to which, according to the correct translation of verse 26, he
belonged. In such an office he would be thrown among his kinsmen, and
would at once gain influence and learn to sympathise with their
discontent, or, at any rate, to know where the sore places were, if he
ever wanted to inflame them. One can easily fancy the grumblings of the
Ephraimites dragged up to Jerusalem to the hated labour, which Samuel
had predicted (1 Samuel viii. 16), and how facile it would be for the
officer in charge to fan discontent or to win friends by judicious
indulgence. How long this went on we do not know, but the fire had
smouldered for some time under the unconscious king's very eyes, when
it was fanned into a flame by Ahijah's breath.
That is the second stage in the story,--the spark on the tinder. We
have heard nothing of prophets during Solomon's reign; but now this man
from Shiloh, the ancient seat of the Tabernacle, meets the ambitious
young officer in some solitary spot, with the message which answered to
his secret thoughts and made his heart beat fast. The symbolic action
preceding the spoken word, as usual, supplied the text, of which the
word was the explanation and expansion. How pathetic is the newness of
the garment! Unworn, strong, and fresh, it yet is rent in pieces. So
the kingdom is so recent, with such possibilities of duration, and yet
it must be shattered! Thus quickly has the experiment broken down! It
is little more than a century since Saul's anointing, little more than
seventy years since the choice of David, and already the fabric, which
had such fair promise of perpetuity, is ready to vanish away. If we may
say so, that 'new garment' represents the divine disappointment and
sorrow over the swift corruption of the kingdom. It was probably merely
some loose square of cloth which Ahijah tore, with violence
proportioned to its newness, into twelve pieces, ten of which he thrust
into the astonished Jeroboam's hands. The commentary followed.
Ahijah's prophecy is substantially the same as the previous
threatenings to Solomon, which had done no good. Their incipient
fulfilment in the wars with Edom and Syria had been equally futile; and
therefore God, who never strikes without warning, and never warns
without striking if men do not heed, now drops the message into ears
that were only too ready to hear. The seed fell on prepared soil, and
Jeroboam's half-formed plans would be consolidated and fixed. The scene
is like that in which the witches foretell to Macbeth his dignity.
Slumbering ambitions are stirred, and a half-inclined will is finally
determined by the glimpse into the future. How easily men are persuaded
that God speaks, and how willing they are to obey, when their
inclinations jump with Heaven's commandments! The prophet's message
makes the separation of the kingdoms a direct divine act, and yet it
was the breaking up of a divine institution. God's dealings have to be
shaped according to facts, and He changes His methods, and lets the
feebleness of His creatures and their sins mould His august procedure.
The divine Potter, like mere human artisans, has His spoiled pieces of
work, and, with infinite resource and patience as infinite, re-shapes
the clay into other forms. The separation of the kingdoms was a divine
act, and yet it is treated often in the later books as a crime and
rebellion. God works out His purposes through men's deeds, and their
motives determine whether their acts are sins or obedience. A man may
be a rebel while he is doing the will of God, if what he does be done
at the bidding of his own selfishness. The separation of the kingdoms
was God's doing, but it was brought about by the free action of men
obeying most secular impulses of political discontent, and led by a
cunning, self-seeking schemer.
Note that the prophecy is in three parts. First, verses 31-33 announce
the punishment, with the reservation of a dwindled dominion to the
Davidic house, for the sake of their great ancestor and of God's choice
of Jerusalem, and solemnly charge on the people the idolatry which the
king had introduced. The second part (verses 34-36) postpones the
execution of the sentence till after Solomon's death, and assigns the
same two reasons for this further forbearance. The third part (verses
37-39) promises Jeroboam the kingdom, and lays down the conditions on
which the favours promised to David and his house may be his. The whole
closes with the assurance that the affliction of the seed of David is
not to be for ever.
The punishment was heavy; for the disruption of the kingdom meant the
wreck of all the prosperity of Solomon's earlier days, the hopeless
weakness of the divided tribes as against the formidable powers that
pressed in on them from north and south, frequent intestine wars,
bitter hatred instead of amity. Yet there was another side to it; for
the very failure of the human kings made the Messianic hope the more
bright, like a light glowing in the deepening darkness, and tumult and
oppression might teach those whom prosperity and peace had only
corrupted. The great lesson for us is the ruin which follows on
departure from God. We do not see national sins followed with equal
plainness or swiftness by national judgments; but the history of Israel
is meant to show on a large scale what is always true, in the long run,
both for nations and for individuals, that 'it is an evil thing and a
bitter' to depart from the living God.
Mark, too, that the judgment is wrought out by perfectly natural
causes. The separation follows old lines of cleavage. The strength of
David's kingdom lay in the south; and Ephraim was too powerful a tribe
and too proud of its ancient glories, to acquiesce cheerfully in the
pre-eminence of Judah. The oppression of forced labour and heavy
taxation was put forward as the reason for the revolt, and, no doubt,
was the reason for the readiness with which the ten tribes rallied to
Jeroboam's flag. There are two ways of writing history. You can either
leave God out, or trace all to Him. The former way calls itself
'scientific' and 'positive.' The latter is the Bible way. Perhaps, if
modern history were written on the same principles as the Books of
Kings, the divine hand would be as plainly visible,--only it requires
an inspired historian to do it. The way of bringing about the judgment
for departing from God has changed, but the judgment remains the same
to-day as when Ahijah rent his garment.
Between verses 39 and 40 we must suppose an attempt at armed rebellion
by Jeroboam. That is implied by the expression that he 'lifted his hand
against the king' (verses 26, 27). That attempt must have been put down
by Solomon. And that it should have been made shows how little Jeroboam
was influenced by religious motives. The prophet's words had set him
all afire with ambitious hopes, and he paid no heed to the distinct
assurance that Solomon was to be 'prince all the days of his life.' He
stretched out a rash, self-willed hand to snatch the promised crown,
and broke God's commandment even while he pretended to be keeping it.
How different David's conduct in like circumstances! He took no steps
to bring about the fulfilment of Samuel's promise at his anointing, but
patiently waited for God to do as He had said, in His own time, and
meantime continued his lowly work. God's time is the best time; and he
who greedily grasps at a premature fulfilment of promised good will
have to pay for it by defeat and exile from the modest good that he had.
Jeroboam's flight to Egypt brings that ill-omened name on the page for
the first time since the Exodus. It has given occasion to an
extraordinary addition to the Septuagint, professing to tell his
adventures there,--how he was high in Shishak's favour, and married a
princess. That is apparently pure legend; but his residence there was
important, as the beginning of Egypt's interference in Israel's
affairs. It is an old trick of aggressive nations to side with a
pretender to the throne of a country which they covet, and benevolently
to strengthen him that he may weaken it. No doubt it was as Jeroboam's
ally that Shishak invaded Judah in the fifth year of Rehoboam, and
plundered the Temple and the palace. It was a bad beginning for a king
of Israel to be a pensioner of Egypt.
The narrative closes with the sad, reticent formula which ends each
reign, and in Solomon's case hides so much that is tragic and dark.
This was all that could be said about the end of a career that had
begun so nobly. If more had been said, the record would have been
sadder; and so the pitying narrative casts the veil of the stereotyped
summary over the miserable story. There are many instances in history
of lives of genius and enthusiasm, of high promise and partial
accomplishment, marred and flung away, but none which present the great
tragedy of wasted gifts, and blossoms never fruited, in a sharper, more
striking form than the life of the wise king of Israel, who 'in his
latter days' was 'a fool.' The goodliest vessel may be shipwrecked in
sight of port. Solomon was not an old man, as we count age, when he
died; for he reigned forty years, and was somewhere about twenty when
he became king. But it was 'when he was old' that he fell, and that
through passion which should have been well under control long before.
The sun went down in a thick bank of clouds, which rose from undrained
marshes in his soul, and stretched high up in the western horizon. His
career, in its glory and its shame, preaches the great lesson which the
Book of Ecclesiastes puts into his mouth as 'the conclusion of the
whole matter': 'Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the
whole duty of man.'