“Nothing is completely worthless,” or so the saying goes, “it can always serve as a bad example.” I’ve always liked this old saw and have found it oddly comforting. In my own life, God has used my sins and to teach me some painful, negative lessons, which to this day I remember. But negative lessons are not unique to me. In fact, chastening from God is the common experience of Christians, for the author of Hebrews tells us that without chastening, we are illegitimate children and not sons.
But our opportunity to learn negative lessons is not limited to our own experience. God is a gracious God. It would be enough for him to provide us with bare commandments on how we ought to live, or just enough of the Gospel to be saved. But that’s not what he did. He gave us a whole library of 66 books, in which are found, not only his commandments, but example after example of what happens to those who heed his voice as well as to those who disobey.
Today, I’d like to focus on two negative examples found in I Kings 12-14. In particular, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the examples of Rehoboam king of Judah, Jeroboam king of Israel. Both individuals were in a position of great responsibility, both brought upon themselves the judgment of God by their own poor decision making, which in both cases was the result of their failure to take their ideas from the correct source.
Rehoboam: A Failure of Political Philosophy
Our first negative example is that of King Rehoboam, whose arrogance was the proximate cause of the political division of twelve tribes of Israel into a northern and a southern kingdom. Rehoboam’s failure was one of political philosophy. For rather than seeking to serve his people, he sought to lord it over them.
Scripture introduces Rehoboam in I Kings 12 just after the death of his father, King Solomon. The author of I Kings tells us that, “Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king” (I Kings 12:1). At this time, the northern tribes and their leader Jeroboam petitioned Rehoboam for what amounted to a tax cut. Their words were, “Your father made our yoke heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you” (I Kings 12:4).
120 years earlier the prophet Samuel had rebuked the Israelites for their sinful demand for a king. At that time (see I Samuel 8), he made clear to them that the monarchy they so desired would not work out as they hoped. A king, Samuel told the Israelites, would impose heavy burdens upon the people, and God would not spare them from the heavy load. In his recitation of the abuses the future king would heap on the people, Samuel repeatedly used the words “he [the king] will take.” Speaking about the behavior of the king, Samuel said,
- He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots
- He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks and bakers
- He will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants
- He will take a tenth of your gain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants
- He will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work
- He will take a tenth of your sheep
The people were not dissuaded from their demands by Samuel, and a monarchy was installed in Israel, Saul being the first anointed as king.
Solomon, the third king of Israel, is justifiably famous for his wisdom, but he had other traits that were less admirable. In partial fulfillment of Samuel’s prophecy about the oppressive behavior of the monarchy, Solomon laid heavy burdens on the people of his kingdom. Early in his reign, Solomon divided the nation into 12 administrative districts, each of which was required to provide one month’s provisions for the national government. But beyond the simple burden this new national tax imposed was the fact that it was not equally applied. In I Kings 4, we find that the tribe of Judah was spared this tax, meaning that Solomon was playing favorites.
Solomon also imposed forced labor on his own people. In I Kings 5:13 we read, “Then King Solomon raised up a labor force out of all Israel; and the labor force was thirty thousand men.” These individuals were required to work one month in Lebanon for every two months at home. He also made permanent forced laborers of the Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites who still lived among the children of Israel (I Kings 9:22).
The taxes and the forced labor were deeply resented by the people, and this was the impetus behind the petition the northern tribes brought to Rehoboam at the time he was anointed king in Shechem. Rehoboam sent the people away, telling them to come back in three days time for an answer. During that time, he sought advice, first from his father’s counselors, who urged him to heed the people’s request. Their words were, “If you will be a servant to these people today, and serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever” (I Kings 12:8).
The idea of government as servant did not originate in pagan Greece or Rome. Servant leadership is a Biblical idea. When the disciples were arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus responded to them by saying, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But no so among you, on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves” (Luke 22:25, 26). Solomon’s counselors gave good, Scriptural advise to Rehoboam, but he did not heed them. Instead, Rehoboam listened to the young men who grew up with him. In so many words, his friends told him to double down on Solomon’s harsh policies of heavy taxation and forced labor.
After three days, the people came back to hear Rehoboam’s answer. His words to them were, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!” (I Kings 12:11). Hardly the words of a servant-leader. The reaction of the people was predictable. Their response was,
What share have we in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel!
Now, see to your own house, O David! (I Kings 12:16)
Up until that time, the Bible records several hints of a general north/south division among the twelve tribes of Israel. But Rehoboam’s arrogant and foolish response to the petition of the northern tribes made this division both explicit and permanent. That Scripture tells us this division ultimately came from the Lord does not in any way excuse Rehoboam from responsibility for his words. His was the answer of a man impressed with his own might and power, not that of a humble servant of the people. His attitude was the exact opposite of what is proper to those in a position of power. Whether a man is head of his family, a church officer, a corporate manager, or a magistrate, he is to lead as a servant, not lord his authority over others. Our pattern for those in authority is Jesus Christ himself, who said, “[T]he Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
Jeroboam: Ethical Failure
Jeroboam’s failure was ethical. Ethics, as discussed in an earlier post, is the theory of conduct. Ethics is about what we ought to do. The apostle Peter summed up Christian ethics in his response to the Sanhedrin when he told them, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” In the case of Jeroboam, he obeyed his own ideas about what is right rather than God’s. The result was the end of this dynasty and the utter destruction of his family.
Jeroboam was a man possessed of several good qualities. Scripture tells us that he first came to Solomon’s attention
as an industrious young man. He is also described as a mighty man of valor. Because of these traits, Solomon appointed him as head over the forced laborers he had raised from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (I Kings 11:28). It seems likely that this experience is what prompted him to lead the northern tribes in their petition asking Rehoboam to reduce the burden Solomon had laid on them.
God’s charge to Jeroboam came from the mouth of the prophet Ahijah, who told him,
So I will take you, and you shall reign over all your heart desires, and you shall be king over Israel. Then it shall be, if you heed all that I command you, walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as my servant David did, then I will be with you and build for you an enduring house, as I built for David, and will give Israel to you (I Kings 11:37, 38).
After the kingdom was divided as a result of Rehoboam’s stubborn refusal to listen to the good advice of Solomon’s counselors, Jeroboam went about setting up his kingdom in the north. But instead of heeding the words of the prophet Ahijah, Jeroboam made the fatal error of doing what was right in his own eyes. Scripture records his thought process for us,
And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom may return to the house of David; If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam king of Judah.”
Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people. “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!” And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Now this thing because a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan. He made shrines on the high places, and made priests from every class of people, who were not of the sons of Levi.
So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month which he had devised in his own heart (I Kings 12:26-31, 33).
The prophet Jeremiah tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9). But many people, including Jeroboam, have great confidence in what their heart tells them. So great is their confidence in their own heart that, even if what they think conflicts with the clear Word of God, they will reject God’s precepts in favor of what seems right to them. This is especially clear in the life of Jeroboam. It’s not as if he were ignorant of what God required of him. Ahijah’s words were easy to understand. But Jeroboam rejected what the prophet told him in favor of what seemed right in his own eyes.
“How’s that working out for you?,” is a sarcastic rebuke people sometimes use on those suffering the consequences of their own foolishness. One could have asked this of Jeroboam. For when Jeroboam’s son became sick, he sent his wife to inquire of Ahijah the prophet, the same man who years earlier had Jeroboam he would be king of Israel. Ahijah’s response was a stinging condemnation of Jeroboam and his practices. He prophesied,
Thus says the LORD God of Israel: “Because I exalted you from among the people, and made you ruler over my people Israel, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it to you; and yet you have not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments and who followed me with all his heart, to do only what was right in my eyes; but you have done more evil than all who were before you, for you have gone and made for yourself other gods and molded images to provoke me to anger, and have cast me behind your back – therefore behold! I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male in Israel, bond and free; I will take away the remnant of the house of jeroboam, as one takes away refuse until it is gone. The dogs shall eat whoever belongs to Jeroboam and dies in the city, and the birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the field; for the LORD has spoken! (I Kings 14:7-11)
Jeroboam was a man who, at least in human terms, had everything going for him. He had talent such that it came to the attention of King Solomon. He had position. He had the blessing of God himself and the promise of an enduring kingdom. Yet Jeroboam threw all of this away, because he decided to do what was right in his own eyes rather than what he ought to have done, follow the commandments of the Lord as instructed by the prophet Ahijah.
Summary: Epistemological Failure
In the study above, we have looked at the failure of two contemporary rulers, Rehoboam King of Judah and Jeroboam King of Israel. Rehoboam’s failure was on the surface political. His harsh rejection of a reasonable petition by the northern tribes was the immediate cause of the breakup of the Hebrew United Kingdom. Jeroboam’s ethical failure, specifically his failure to respect right worship of God as specified in the law of Moses, led to the destruction of his dynasty and his family. But though these two rulers failed in different ways, their failure had a common root cause: their flawed epistemology.
Epistemology is a foot-and-a-half term for what is really a simple concept. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It answers the question, How do you know? In the history of philosophy, there have been only two ways of answering this question: empiricism (experience) and rationalism (ideas thought up on one’s own). Both are opposed to Christian epistemology. The Christian must always answer the question, how do you know?, by answering, “the Bible tells me so.” Rehoboam took his ideas on how to govern from his friends. Where they took their ideas, the Bible does not say. But in any case, they did not get their political theory form the Scriptures. On the other hand, Jeroboam clearly was a rationalist. He pulled his ideas out of thin air. I Kings 12:33 makes this obvious by stating that Jeroboam set up a feast, “in the month which he had devised in his own heart.” In both cases, their failure to have a sound epistemology grounded God’s revelation led them to make decisions that were contrary to his will and disastrous for themselves, their families and the nation as a whole.
Conclusion
Any action by any individual is always predicated on some prior idea. John Robbins put it this way, “Not only do ideas have consequences, but only ideas have consequences. Human actions are not independent of ideas but the results of ideas” (The Religious Wars of the 21st Century). This means our epistemology, the source of our ideas, is of utmost importance. If we follow the world’s ways of knowing truth, experience or independent ideas, this will lead us to the world’s wisdom, which is foolishness with God. What is more, we can be sure that this will have terrible consequences for us personally and perhaps for many others as well. This is the great negative lesson we can take from the examples of Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
In the end, there is only one source of truth, the Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible. Those who trust in it will never be put to shame.
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The contrast you make between the false psychologies of rationalism/empiricism vs the Scripture is obvious when you point it out. Yet for 40 years in Protestant churches, I have never heard the distinction made. In fact I have seen people criticise Clark as a rationalist! Perhaps Dr Robbins had the same label attached to him by the gainsayers.
By bringing out these examples from Scripture it becomes very clear that epistemology is key. Thx Steve.
You’re welcome, John. FWIW, I was in the same boat as you until I came across Clark and Robbins.