Rehoboam is said to have first asked the counsel of the old men,12 the “grey-beards” who had acted for many years as his father’s counsellors, and who might be expected to have derived from their contact with the “wisest of men,”13 and from their long experience of affairs, something of that calm spirit of true worldly wisdom, which had characterized a large part of Solomon’s rule. Their advice was that he should adopt a mild and conciliatory tone, that he should “speak good words,” yield, at any rate, to some extent, or seem to yield, and thus please the malcontents, who, they ventured to say, would be peaceable and tractable subjects thenceforth, if they seemed to themselves to have got their way under the existing circumstances (ibid. ver. 7). The advice was probably not palatable. At any rate it was not taken. Rehoboam turned to the younger men, the men of his own standing—bold spirits, who had none of the timidity of age, and who might well seem to him more competent interpreters of the temper of their own day than persons who belonged to a generation that was just dying off. The young men were imbued with all the contempt for popular demands, and all the pride and insolence of a narrow and exclusive aristocracy. Their counsel was that Rehoboam should not yield an inch. A fool was rightly “answered according to his folly.”
“Thus shalt thou speak unto them,” they said: “My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins. Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with cat-o’-ninetails.”
It was rash and foolish counsel; but the king followed it. He “forsook the old men’s counsel that they had given him, and spake to the people after the counsel of the young men”—“roughly,” rudely, cruelly (vers. 13, 14). Not only, they were told, should there be no alleviation of their burdens, but the weight of them should be aggravated. Rehoboam’s “little finger should be thicker than his father’s loins.” It was a proud, fierce, foolish answer; and the consequences were such as any man of moderate prudence might have anticipated. Disappointed and disgusted, the multitude burst out into the cry —
“What portion have we in David?
Neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse:
To your tents, O Israel —
Now see to thine own house, David!”
The tribal spirit was strong among the Hebrews. The supremacy of Judah had never been otherwise than grudgingly accepted. Reuben, Ephraim, Manasseh, perpetually kicked against Judæan sovereignty. Thus there was always a latent discontent, which any breeze might any day blow into a flame. At this time Rehoboam’s silly threats were the spark which fired the train, and produced a sudden explosion. On hearing them all the tribes excepting three burst out into open revolt. Judah remained firm in its allegiance to the house of David; Benjamin, satisfied with the distinction accorded it by the emplacement of the capital within its borders, threw in its lot with Judah; Levi, thoroughly content with its grand position at the head of the religion of the kingdom, gave its sympathies to the Davidic cause, and ultimately gravitated to the southern kingdom. But Reuben, which claimed the right of the first-born; Ephraim, which had given to the nation Joshua, the conqueror, Deborah the Prophetess, and Samuel, the last and the greatest of the judges; Manasseh, which shared largely in the glories of its brother tribe, Ephraim (Gen. xlviii. 19; Deut. xxxiii. 17); Zebulun, which “sucked of the abundance of the seas” (Deut. xxxiii. 19); Gad, which “dwelt as a lion” (ibid. ver. 20); Dan, the “lion’s whelp” (ibid. ver. 22); Issachar, the “strong ass couching down between two burthens” (Gen. xlix. 14); Naphtali, the “hind let loose” (ibid. ver. 21); and Asher, the dweller in the far north, threw off the Davidic yoke, declared themselves independent of Judah, and proclaimed their intention of placing themselves under a new king. Still failing to appreciate the situation, and imagining that compromise was even yet possible, Rehoboam resolved on one more effort to prevent the disruption, and sent an envoy—no doubt with an offer of some sort of compromise—to his revolted subjects; but, with the wrongheadedness which characterized all his proceedings at this period of his life, he selected for envoy one of the persons most obnoxious to the malcontents—no other than his father’s chief director of the forced labours which were so unpopular—Adoram or Adoniram (1 Kings xii. 18; 2 Chron. x. 18). The rebels seem to have considered that this was adding insult to injury; and, without waiting to hear the terms which Adoniram had to offer, they threw him down and stoned him to death. Deeply shocked, and alarmed for his own safety, Rehoboam mounted his chariot, and quitting Shechem fled hastily to Jerusalem.
The Tribes proceeded to elect a king, and to constitute themselves a separate state. The condition of things was re-established which had prevailed after the death of Saul, when David reigned over Judah in Hebron, and Ishbosheth over Israel in Mahanaim. But Rehoboam was not inclined to submit tamely to this defection. From Jerusalem he sent out his mandate throughout all Judah and Benjamin, summoning to his standard the men of war of both tribes, and succeeded in gathering together an army of 180,000 men, with whom he proposed to effect the subjugation of the rebel kingdom (1 Kings xii. 21). An internecine war would have broken out; but at the decisive moment, Shemaiah, the great prophet and historiographer of the day (2 Chron. xii. 15), received a commission to interpose, and in the name of God commanded Rehoboam to lay aside his purpose, disband his troops, and remain at peace with his Israelite brethren. “The thing,” he said, “was from God.” God had rent the kingdom of Solomon into two parts to punish Solomon’s idolatries (1 Kings xi. 33), and it was vain for man to attempt to oppose His will. The disruption, decreed in the Divine counsels, must take effect, and it was true wisdom, as well as true piety, to acquiesce in it, and seek to make the best of the new situation established by the new circumstances.
The situation was critical. The northern kingdom, even if left to itself and not made the object of an organized attack, would necessarily be a hostile kingdom, and would require careful watching, and the perpetual maintenance of an attitude of defence. But this was not the worst. It would be supported by a southern kingdom of very much greater power, which might at any moment exchange a passive support for active intervention, and which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to resist. Egypt, which had protected Jeroboam from the hostility of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 40), would be likely to lend him effectual aid if invited to do so, and under the energetic rule of an ambitious prince, who had founded a dynasty, might even aspire to resume, on her own account, the rule of Asiatic conqueror which she had laid aside for so many centuries. Awake to these perils, Rehoboam, after his return to Jerusalem, lost no time in strengthening the defences of his kingdom, more especially in the quarters which were most open to invasion from Egypt. He “built cities for defence in Judah” (2 Chron. xi. 5), “fortifying the strongholds, and putting captains in them, with store of victual, and of oil and wine” (ibid. ver. 1 1). Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa, Beth-zur, and Hebron, upon the south Shocoh, Adullam, Azekah, Gath, Lachish, and Mareshah towards the south-west, Zorahand Aijalon on the west, were “made exceeding strong” (ibid. ver. 12); ample provisions and a goodly supply of spears and shields were laid up in them, and all that was possible was done to check the progress of an invader from Egypt, should one appear.
Three years of peace followed. The only notable occurrence during this tranquil interval was the gradual exodus of the Levites from the northern kingdom, where they were subject to indignities, and their