Bible Commentaries

1 Kings 12:21-24

I. We must not suppose that the sentence which affirms that this great calamity of the rending of the kingdom was from the Lord is an isolated one, or that it can be explained into some general notion that all men's doings, good or evil, may be attributed to an omnipotent Ruler. In chap. xi. we are distinctly told that a prophet stirred up those thoughts in the mind of Jeroboam which led him to rise against Solomon. The prophet is a true witness for the Lord God of Israel. He announces an eternal, unchangeable law. It had been declared that idolatry must produce degradation and division in the land. Solomon had introduced the worship of visible things. The very ground of the unity of the nation had been taken away, its acknowledgment of one Lord. A perpetual growth of internal corruption, of internal division, would follow, falsehood spreading in the vitals of the people, with nothing to remind them that it was falsehood. Such a state of things is incon ceivable if we suppose that human beings are as much under a Divine order as natural things are. That order must vindicate itself, must show what it is; the punishment of the transgression must be the way of proclaiming the principle which has been transgressed.

II. The charge which is brought against Jeroboam of making Israel to sin is scarcely intelligible if we forget that his kingdom stood like that which was in Jerusalem: upon the promise and covenant of God. He had a right to believe that the God of Abraham and of Isaac, of David and of Solomon, would be with him, and would establish for him a sure house. He had a right to live and act upon this conviction. His sin was that he did not act upon it. He did not trust the living God. He thought, not that his kingdom stood on a Divine foundation, but that it was to be upheld by certain Divine props and sanctions. He wanted a god as the support of his authority; what god he cared very little. His thoughts were very natural and very sagacious. Jerusalem was not merely the capital of Rehoboam; it was the seat of God's temple. If the people had the bond of a common worship, they might desire the bond of a common kingdom. To prevent the second wish, you must extinguish the first.

III. The setting up of the calves shows us why the separation of the kingdoms was a thing from the Lord. It asserted the real dignity of Jerusalem as the place in which it had pleased God to put His name; it asserted the real unity of the nation to be, not in a king, but in the King; it showed that the only basis of any political fellowship of the tribes lay in that name which was revealed to the first father of them.

F. D. Maurice, The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, p. 89.

References: 1 Kings 12:25-33.—W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 62; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xi., p. 62; Parker, Fountain, Jan. nth, 1877. 1 Kings 12:28.—J. D. Kelly, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 375; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 2nd series, p. 79. 1Ki 12—Parker, vol. vii., pp. 349, 354. 1 Kings 13:1-10.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 63.