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1Ki_12:1-24
To hesitate in such a crisis is ruin. Even a prompt refusal had been less dangerous than delay. But Rehoboam could not trust his own understanding. He asked three days for deliberation. Even consent after such delay would lose the generous aspect of spontaneous grace, and would have the appearance to the people of having been extorted from his fears. And it rendered refusal doubly ruinous. The indication of reluctance gave warning of the result that might be expected, and afforded time for the disaffected to mature their plans and preparations for revolt. We cannot doubt that these three days were among the busiest of Jeroboam’s life.
The first impulse of Rehoboam was good. He sought the advice of the reverend councilors who had “stood before his father.” Their counsel was good—unreserved and cheerful acquiescence in the wishes of the people—kind and gracious treatment of them now, in order to win them forever. It is clear that this counsel did not suit the king’s humor, or he would have acted upon it without seeking further. But it is manifest that he was in search of such advice as would afford a sort of sanction to the course he was most inclined to follow, and such as would bring in others to share the responsibility with him. He resorted to “the young men who had been brought up with him”—those who had been chosen for his associates, and who, by the fact of their having led the same kind of life as himself, were doubtless quite as inexperienced in state affairs. Their thought was all of royal prerogatives and imperial rights; and their advice was that he should give to the audacious varlets, who dared to exact conditions from their sovereign, such an answer as would teach them to know their master.
Accordingly, at the appointed time the king made his appearance before the assembled states of Israel; and, in a voice intended to be stern and awful, he stated their demand, and gave this answer, which reaches to the sublime of simpleness—“My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins. For whereas my father put a heavy yoke upon you, I will put more to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” This is to say—-if we are to explain the simile—that whereas his father had scourged them with simple whips, he would scourge them with twisted lashes armed with sharp and lacerating points; for to such the name of “scorpion” was given.
The almost insane fatuity of the man who could expect any good effect from an answer like this to an aggrieved and exasperated people, whom the mere fact of Jeroboam’s presence must, to an ordinary understanding, have shown to be ripe for any ulterior consequences—can scarcely be explained but on the interpretation that the king was subjected to judicial blindness—that wisdom and common sense had been withheld from him, in order that the doom which had already gone forth against the house of David might by accomplished.
The king’s answer was received with indignation and scorn by the people, to whom it indeed supplied a cause and justification for the course to which they were already well inclined. They at once renounced their allegiance to the house of David—indeed, cast it off with mingled wrath and derision as a worthless and abominable thing. Rehoboam could, however, not easily comprehend the extent of his misfortune: that a revolt could be so real and general—that it was indeed a fact accomplished, without its reality having been evinced by blows given and taken—was incomprehensible to him. Kingdoms are not usually broken up and divided in this quiet fashion; and the son of Solomon suffered himself to believe that he still reigned. There was clearly, no disposition to subject him to ill treatment; and he still remained at Shechem, in the very heart and head-quarters of the revolted district; and he might, perhaps, have remained there for some time longer, cherishing his delusions, had he not taken it into his head to set the most obnoxious person in the land (if we may judge from analogy rather than from document)—one Adoram, the head tax-gatherer—to collect in this very place the burdensome taxes which had brought things to this pass. This was too much for the forbearance of the naturally turbulent Shechemites. They rose upon this unlucky comptroller of the taxes, and pelted him with stones, till he died of the injuries he received. This very broad hint opened the king’s eyes; and he lost no time in mounting his chariot, and driving off full speed to Jerusalem, which he reached in safety.
Judah remained, as might be expected, faithful to the house of David; and since the establishment of the royal court and the temple at Jerusalem, the interests of Benjamin had become so much intermixed with those of Judah, that it naturally, and almost inevitably, adhered to the same side. Thus of the twelve tribes, only two remained to the house of David, and these not two of the highest importance—for although the one was the greatest of the tribes, the other was the least. Among the revolted tribes were those beyond the Jordan—so that all that extensive region was also lost, and with it the tributary nations in the eastern and northeastern borders. But although lost to Judah, it is not probable that any of these, except Moab, were preserved to Israel. These tributaries had been falling away in the time even of Solomon, and were not likely to neglect taking advantage of the further weakening of the realm which this division both occasioned and indicated. On the side of Judah, the only foreign possession that remained in some kind of dependence, was Edom; but it may be doubted if this dependency added much to the strength of the kingdom, though it enabled the sovereigns of David’s house, for some generations, to claim a dominion extending to the Red Sea, the ports of which must have become an unprofitable possession, now (if not before) that another realm was interposed between this kingdom and the Phoenicians.
Rehoboam was not likely to abstain from some efforts to regain the important portion of his dominions which had thus been rent from him. He called out an army—and with the ready resources of an organized state at his command, the two tribes might have been at that time more than a match for the ten. But when the army was about to march, a prophet appeared, and, in the name of the Lord, forbade them to go forth to fight against “their brethren,” seeing “the thing was from Him”—had been in conformity with His will and declared purpose. The king has received some compliments for his submission to the Divine mandate on this occasion—when he stood in all his kingly pride, with his arms and banners, ready to march forth against the rebels, and make a stroke for the heritage of his house. We have no wish to take this credit from him. But it seems to us, that there was more necessity than virtue in his resignation. The words of the prophet were addressed not only to the king but to the assembled warriors, and were imperative upon the latter—“Return every man to his house;” and, we are immediately told, “They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart.” There is no reason to suppose that they would have remained under arms after such a command, however much Rehoboam had wished them to do so. They obeyed the prophet, and he could not but do the same.