“Choose a Side”

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Most people know of Solomon, the wise king of Israel.  Not many are familiar with his son, Rehoboam, who inherited his throne; but his story, which is also the story of how and why Israel split into two kingdoms, has a valuable lesson to teach us.  It should be no surprise that Solomon was a tough act to follow.  Known for his wisdom and his wealth, he had inherited the kingdom from his father, David, and by God’s grace managed to multiply the power and glory of Israel and make its name recognized and respected throughout the known world.  Now that Solomon was being replaced by his inexperienced, half-Gentile son (cf. 1Ki 14.21), there was, naturally, some uncertainty about how this next phase would unfold.  Loyal servants of Solomon surely harbored doubts about Rehoboam, and many who had feared Solomon, but never loved him, saw their opening, now that the old king was out of the way.  This is the case in any royal succession, and was surely on Rehoboam’s mind, when one such man, Jeroboam, led a large group of Rehoboam’s new subjects in crashing his coronation party to make demands:

“Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.” He said to them, “Go away for three days, then come again to me.” So the people went away.

Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” (1 Kings 12.4-6)

So far, Rehoboam is handling this crisis well!  He successfully defused the situation for the moment, and took the prudent step of seeking advice from trustworthy sources. 
And they said to him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” (1 Kings 12.7)

But Rehoboam was still seeking advice, and next he went to his younger courtiers, who gave exactly the opposite answer, telling him to reply thus: 

“My little finger is thicker than my father's thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” (1 Kings 12.10-11)

Why were the young so harsh, and the old so soft?  It’s not really that simple.  Both groups were advising Rehoboam on how to cement his position at the head of the people, but they had very different methods of getting to that point, stemming from different views of the world and their place within it.  

It’s also not fair to attribute the entire difference to the wisdom of the old, and folly of the young.  That is a factor, but age does not necessarily equate to wisdom, nor youth to folly—as  Solomon observed, “Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice” (Ec 4.13).  In this case, however, the older advisors had specific experience that equipped them to give a better answer.  They had lived through Solomon’s reign, and remembered what it was like before!  They honored him, but not because he was gentle and permissive!  He spent the majority of his 40-year reign working on massive construction projects, involving hundreds of thousands of his subjects, most of whom were not given a choice whether to participate in this difficult and dangerous work that often took them from their homes and families!  They’d tolerated this for decades, for the sake of building a glorious temple for the Lord, a similarly majestic palace for Solomon himself, and the infrastructure and fortifications for many other Israelite cities, turning their kingdom into the principal economic power in the region, in addition to the military dominance inherited from David.  This all required untold sacrifice on the part of the citizenry, and now it was time to let them go back to normal.

But an important fact of politics is that almost nothing ever goes “back to normal.”  Born just one year before Solomon became king, Rehoboam never knew what it was like before, and so was afraid to loosen his grip, lest he lose his throne.  He took the bad advice of his peers, and held on so tightly that it slipped from his grasp.
And when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, “What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David.” (1 Kings 12.16)

This shouldn’t have been a great surprise.  In his later years, Solomon turned away from God, who told him,
“Since…you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom…out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.” (1 Kings 11.11-13)

We can’t blame Rehoboam for trying to avert this prediction; but we may notice that he didn’t go the route of dedicating himself and his reign to serving God, in the hope he would relent; instead, he only served himself, and fought against God, ultimately bringing about exactly what God had predicted—by means of his very attempt to avoid it!

This is a reminder that we can’t outsmart or outmaneuver God.  He’s just better at this than we are, and will win every time, regardless of what we may think is a clever plan to avoid it.  What falls to us is not to win or lose, but rather to choose whether to join the winning side and submit ourselves to its commander-in-chief.

Jeremy Nettles

Share