Disintegration of the kingdom happens pretty quickly after Solomon's death. Rehoboam was made king but he followed very bad advice. The elders recognised that Solomon had put the people under hard labour and there was some resentment against this. They urged Rehoboam to lighten the load on the people and to serve the people. However, the young men whom Rehoboam had grown up with told him to be even harsher with the people. We can see this lack of respect for the advice of older people in our own society, and an ever increasing burden is being placed on people in all sorts of walks of life. This is the path of foolishness. We also need to beware of listening only to a certain group of people.
So Rehoboam refused to listen to the people and so they rebelled against him, thus fulfilling the word of Ahijah, and the kingdom was torn in two. Jereboam was made king of the northern kingdom. Rehoboam wanted to fight to get the kingdom back, but the Lord told him not to and at least he obeyed this word.
Although Jereboam was now king of most of the kingdom he felt far from secure. So he set up places of worship at Bethel and Dan. He tried to imitate the religious practices of Israel, but of course just set up idols. It is strange that Israel seems to have this predilection for worshipping golden calves.
So Israel and Judah were now on the road to their eventual conquest by other nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment