1 Kings 12
WHY Shechem (verse 1) was chosen for the place where Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was to be crowned, does not appear. It was however centrally located, about midway of the land in both directions. Sychar (John 4:55Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (John 4:5)) is a short distance to the east. The hundred or so of Samaritans who are left of that people today, live at Shechem which is now called Nablus.
Jeroboam, recalled from Egypt, led the people before Rehoboam to state their complaint regarding the burden of Solomon’s government, and Rehoboam asked for three days’ time to consider what they asked. The old men who had advised Solomon, gave his son good advice, but he would not follow it, and took the young men’s very bad advice, nevertheless God was in it (verse 15). The consequence was that the nation, except the tribe of Judah, with Benjamin added, revolted at once, and made Jeroboam king.
Rehoboam now proposed to make war on the rebellious tribes, but Shemaiah the man of God was directed to tell him there must be no fighting, for the thing that had happened was from God.
Jeroboam then built Shechem and lived there, and he built Penuel which Gideon had, destroyed (Judges 8:1717And he beat down the tower of Penuel, and slew the men of the city. (Judges 8:17)). Next, fearing that the people who had made him their leader, would return to their lawful king, because of Jerusalem’s being the city where God had chosen to set His name, Jeroboam made two calves of gold as idols; the one he set up in Bethel, some 10 miles north of Jerusalem, and the other in Dan, the most northerly city of Canaan. He made “an house of high places” with an altar on which sacrifices were made—not to God, but to the calves which he had made, and he made priests from all classes of the people (N. T.), not of the sons of Levi. He ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month (approximating our October). The feasts of the Lord (Leviticus 23) were in the first, third and seventh months of the 12 Comprising the sacred year, or approximately March-April-June and September.
All of this religious system we are told was devised of Jeroboam’s own heart, and through the counsel of his advisers. Jeroboam well knew that it was because of idolatry that the kingdom had been taken away from Solomon’s family (chapter 11, verse 33), and that if he should be allowed to keep it, he must walk in God’s ways as David had (chapter 11, verse 38).
Here was the beginning of the open apostasy of the ten tribes of Israel; it invited the judgment of God which was pronounced on Jeroboam in the fourteenth chapter, and executed in the fifteenth (verse 29). We may note that Jeroboam as the daring leader in idolatry, is mentioned in the two books of Kings after the fifteenth chapter of 1 Kings no less than twenty-one times. God does not forget, and would not have His people forget, the seriousness of sin, and the more responsible a person is, the more solemn is it for him to reject the authority of the Word of God.
ML 07/03/1927