We may never understand what God had in mind by dividing the Kingdom. What is not in doubt is that both sides of the division utterly failed to take the wiser path. What we have here is a tragedy of the highest order.
Today we use the term “corvee” (kor-vay) to describe the system of labor as feudal taxation in the Ancient Near East. We’ve already discussed how Solomon’s demands for labor were unconscionable. The Bible doesn’t say much about what would be reasonable, but we know for sure that Solomon was overbearing and the Israelis resented it.
Solomon had appointed Jeroboam as the minister of labor over Ephraim and Manasseh. At some point Solomon made yet another round of oppressive labor demands, and dispatched Jeroboam along with his peers over other tribes to drag in yet another army of workers. Jeroboam had met a prophet who told him God intended to tear away the Northern Tribes into a separate kingdom, and offered Jeroboam the same deal He had given David. Solomon found out about this and sought to execute Jeroboam to prevent a wider rebellion. The noble from Ephraim fled to Egypt.
Solomon anointed Rehoboam his heir and rested in his grave. Rehoboam decided to hold his coronation at Shechem. This is the ancient city that had been friendly to Israel since before the Conquest, an old sacred site between the two mountains Ebal and Gerizim where the Covenant was celebrated by reciting the blessings and curses. It was also a reasonable choice as midpoint for a meeting of the tribal and national elders between the northern and southern ends of the Kingdom.
The elders of Ephraim called Jeroboam back from Egypt to represent their interests. His message to Rehoboam was to lighten the excessive load that his father Solomon had levied on them. If he would do that, the Northern Tribes would agree to support his rule. Rehoboam responded that he needed three days to consider his answer. Upon consulting his father’s advisers, they quickly advised him to take them up on the offer. They would have been the first to warn anyone that Solomon had demanded far too much.
Then Rehoboam consulted with his age peers, who advised him to be even harder than Solomon had been. It’s hard to imagine the kind arrogance this represents, but Rehoboam took that message back to the tribal elders of Israel: His little finger would be thicker than Solomon’s thigh, and he would exchange the whips for scorpions.
So the Northern Tribes declared they would no longer serve under the House of David, but would form their own separate kingdom. When Rehoboam sent his chief tribute officer to collect the symbolic tribute the tribes had brought with them to Shechem, the elders captured him and stoned him to death. The noise of this wild response caused Rehoboam to flee back to Jerusalem.
He began the process of mobilizing the army to fight this rebellion, but was warned off this course of action by the prophet Shemaiah. Rehoboam heeded this warning and accepted the new state of affairs as the decision of God.
This was tragedy enough, but Jeroboam went back on his word to God. Not trusting in the promises of Jehovah, Jeroboam feared that having the people keep going down to Jerusalem to worship would weaken his position, so he commissioned two rival temples at Bethel and Dan. Being twice the fool, he used in both temples the failed image of the rebellion during Exodus: the Golden Calf. This was poking God in the eye. He also anointed priests who were not Levites.
It’s hard to overstate just how awful this whole situation was. Two idiotic kings now face fierce tension and neither was willing to listen to the God who brought them out of slavery. The shalom of Israel took a major hit that day. The Southern Kingdom was ruled by a fool and the Northern Kingdom had taken the first step to abandoning the Covenant.
