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1Ki_12:24-33
Shechem he fortified and made his capital. But he soon perceived that Jerusalem, as the seat of the temple and of all ritual service, was the real metropolis of the whole nation, and would remain a center of union to all the tribes, notwithstanding the political separation which had taken place. Thither, to the metropolis of the rival state, his subjects would repair at the yearly festivals, and thither convey their dues and offerings. This alone would give an immense superiority of dignity and prosperity to Judah; and was it to be expected that the ten tribes, continually thus reminded of their separated state, and of the disadvantageous position in which it placed them, would be long content to remain in this condition of religious inferiority and separation? Unless some means can be found of counteracting this influence, and of rendering his kingdom independent, not only in government, but in ritual worship, was it not to be feared that the coincidence of a popular king and prosperous reign in Judah, with an unpopular king and unprosperous reign in Israel, might in some future, and perhaps not remote day, induce the ten tribes to return to their allegiance to the house of David?
Thus Jeroboam reasoned—and the danger seemed to him so serious that no means were to be neglected in order to avert it. It appeared clear to him that no effectual remedy could be found but in such alterations of the law—or rather in a departure from so much of the ritual law, as was based on the unity of the nation. This he determined to do—scrupling at nothing that might in his judgment tend to the establishment of his kingdom. We have no right to suppose that he reached this conclusion without hesitation; but having once decided upon it as his only means of safety—having once committed himself to this policy, he carried it out with that unshrinking boldness which is indicated in most of his doings. He was perhaps the more stimulated to this by observing that in Egypt the king himself was high priest, and exercised the priestly functions, with the supreme power in ecclesiastical matters. This seemed to him a covetable power to possess, as it may have appeared to him that the priesthood as established in Israel, with an independent high priest, possessed a degree of power which might prove an inconvenient check upon that of the crown.
Under these views, Jeroboam concluded to establish two places of ritual worship, one in the north, and the other in the south of his kingdom—at Dan and Bethel—under the plausible excuse to his people, that Jerusalem was inconveniently distant for their visits at the annual festivals. In the absence of ark and cherubim, he set a golden calf or young bull at each place, as a symbolical figure consecrated to Jehovah, and not, as we may be apt to imagine, as an idolatrous representation of any other god. In this point of view, it might have seemed to him as lawful as the cherubim—and indeed it may have been intended as a partial substitute for the compound cherubic figures of the temple and tabernacle. But the words that he employed in inviting the attention of the people to this image—being the wine that Aaron employed in the wilderness with regard to the golden calf—“This is thy God, O Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” show that he had that case in view, and knew the history connected with it, and how severely that act had been condemned and punished. The views under which that symbol was adopted in the wilderness, apply equally here, and it is not necessary to repeat what has been already stated in reference to it. It was not idolatry as to the worship of strange gods, and hence is not mentioned with such strong condemnation and burning resentment by the prophets, as the subsequent introduction of foreign gods under Ahab. But it was an infraction of the law, which forbade any representation or symbol of Jehovah. It was a degradation “to liken the glory of the invisible God to an ox that eateth grass;” and it was a step towards that direct idolatry against which the law so sedulously guarded. This applies to the representation merely; but in Jeroboam’s case there was the added sin of schism, brought in among a people intended to be religiously united beyond any other, and whose most important institutions were framed with reference to that object. We may do this man the credit of believing, that he did not mean to go further with his innovations, than might seem to him barely necessary to secure his object. It was probably his design merely to establish local shrines to Jehovah, with little alteration in the mode and circumstances of worship. But having begun in this evil way, he felt compelled to proceed farther than he had contemplated, unless he would abandon his object altogether, and for this he was not prepared. As many of the Levitical cities were in his dominions, he concluded that many priests and Levites would be found to conduct this worship, rather than abandon all they possessed in the world. In this, like other worldly calculations upon the weakness and corruption of human character, he was mistaken. The world was not quite so bad as he thought it, and men were a little better and more honest than he judged. The Levitical body repudiated the whole concern, and refused to lend it the prestige of their name and influence; and when, in resentment for this, Jeroboam forbade them to attend in their regular courses to discharge their duties at the temple of Jerusalem, they abandoned their cities, their fields, and pleasant homes, where they had been born and brought up, and shaking the dust of a polluted land from their feet, departed to the southern kingdom. The accession of so large a body of learned and religious persons and teachers, and of the numerous right-minded and conscientious persons who followed them, added materially to the fixed population, and more to the moral strength and character of the southern kingdom, while it in the same degree weakened that of Jeroboam.
He was at first confounded by this movement, which at once doomed his establishment to the stamp of inferiority by its ministers. He had to abandon his project, or to seek other priests out of the non-clerical tribes. But he found no persons of character willing to undertake the office; so that he had to ordain priests from “the lowest of the people,”—persons in such condition in life, that the emoluments of the office were an inducement, and the credit of even a degraded priesthood an honor to them. To keep them in countenance, at least at first, Jeroboam himself assumed the office of high priest, and as such officiated in the solemn ministrations when present at Dan or Bethel at the three yearly festivals.
Perhaps the most generally popular and best frequented of these festivals was that of autumn—the Feast of Tabernacles; being held at the close of the agricultural year, after the vintage came, when men were at leisure and disposed to commemorate enjoyments.
The time of this festival was changed by Jeroboam to a month later—a most unauthorized and high-handed innovation, for which it is difficult to account, but by supposing that he was at length led on to wish to widen the difference as much as possible. The distinction produced by a difference in the time of observing a great festival is very serious indeed—and may be partly illustrated by the less considerable difference, exhibited in the Holy Land at this day, between the time of observing Easter, and indeed (through the Gregorian reform of the calendar) of Christmas, by the eastern and western churches. It has at times occurred to us, that Jeroboam may have partly been influenced by the consideration, that the agricultural labors of the year were not nearly so soon over in some parts of his dominion as in the territory of Judah, and that hence he might in this also allege public convenience as the ground of the alteration. It is at all events certain, that both harvest, ingathering, and vintage, are two, three, and even four weeks later in the northern parts of Israel than in the southern parts of Judah.
We must not conceal from ourselves that there are many persons who, at the bottom of their hearts, will think that Jeroboam acted wisely in the course he took, and cannot see how he could have got over the serious difficulty in his path but by some such course as that which he adopted. How could he otherwise have managed? The answer is—he need not have managed at all. He had been appointed king under the Divine sanction. He held his crown under the condition of obedience; and on that condition the continuance of the crown to his house was pledged to him. Nothing was wanted on his part but unreserved faith in that promise. If Jeroboam had that faith, he would have been free from any anxiety on the subject; he would have felt that it was safer to incur an apparent danger in the career of duty and right-doing, than to seek exemption from it by unlawful doings and tortuous policy. The Lord had given him every reason to trust in the sufficiency of His protection, when He had compelled king Rehoboam to dismiss the forces with which he was prepared to fall upon him in his comparatively helpless condition. If it be asked how he was to be secured from the danger which stood so distinctly before him, we can only answer, “We do not know.” Jeroboam had no need to know. God knew; and it was his clear course to do right, trusting all the rest to God.