And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king.
1Ki 12:1
Revolt of the Ten Tribes
The son of Solomon began his reign with a blunder, assuming that the throne was his by Divine right of succession and ignoring the ratification of the people. In this particular he is a good type of many young men at the present day, who think they see in the wealth and social position of their parents the claim to society's unquestioning homage to themselves. Real kinghood is personal. The true king, as Carlyle put it, is the canning—the man who can. The endorsement of a wealthy parent may carry a son's check; it will not carry him. Society recognizes drafts on personal deposits only. Rehoboam fancied that the son of Solomon could pass to the throne unchallenged. Not so thought the proud and jealous Ephraimites; not so thought nine other tribes: and the young aspirant's self-complacency was, rudely checked by the refusal of these tribes to come to Jerusalem and pay him homage, by their summoning him to Shechem, the tribe-center of Ephraim, and by their meeting him there, not with submission, but with a bill of rights. This very check was an opportunity for Rehoboam to show whether he was made of true kingly stuff. The crisis which exposes a man's mistake often develops his wisdom, if he has any. The crisis proved him to be lacking in one of the prime qualifications of a king. "He lived," as one has remarked, "in a fool's paradise, blind and deaf to what would have arrested the attention of a sensible ruler. At any rate, the emergency was one which he could not meet alone, and therefore he sought counsel. There are, however, different motives for asking advice. That a man consults with others does not disprove his self-conceit. Men often seek advice only to have their own opinion or their own course confirmed, and consequently choose their advisers from among their sympathizers; and a sympathizer is not, usually, the best adviser. Decency required that Rehoboam should advise with the old counsellors of his father, but he evidently did so merely for propriety's sake. In the first place, the old counsellors clearly discerned the issue in Rehoboam's mind. It was between two ideals of sovereignty, the despotic and the paternal. Should sovereignty mean being served or serving? Evidently, as the result showed, Rehoboam's ideal was the former. Christ rules more than Caesar because He put Himself at the world's service. The world's real rulers are invariably those who have served it. The world's thought is that power absolves from obligation; Christ's thought is that power emphasizes obligation. One of the most impressive pictures of history is that of the young Edward the Black Prince of England, after the victory of Poitiers, serving the captive king of France at table and soothing the mortification of defeat with praises of his bravery and with kindly assurances; and the spirit of that scene is condensed into his favorite motto interwoven with the faded ostrich-plumes about his tomb at Canterbury, "Hen mout; Ich dien:" "High spirit; I serve." Well says Dean Stanley, "To unite in our lives the two qualities expressed in this motto—high spirit and reverent service—is to be indeed not only a true gentleman and a true soldier, but a true Christian also." Liberty is essentially a social principle, and every social principle imposes limitations on the individual. Love brings the two ideas of liberty and service into their true relation. Love uses its free choice to choose service, and so makes service the very highest expression of liberty. The young king could not appreciate this lofty ideal of sovereignty. He could not read in service any higher meaning than servility. This advice appealed to a packed jury. He wanted encouragement rather than counsel, and therefore, having satisfied the proprieties of the occasion, he turned to another and more congenial class of advisers, the young men that were grown up with him—young men as proud, as shallow and as hot-headed as himself. There is nothing uncommon in chat. It is a fact of our time no less than of Rehoboam's—a fact that carries with it a strange inconsistency, for one does not always nor often reject what is ripe. Crudeness, in most eases, is a reproach. One wants ripe fruit on his table and seasoned timber for his house or his carriage. One does not trust a law student with the management of a fortune, nor put his child's life into the hands of yesterday's graduate in medicine. Youth seems to prefer the route through the shoals and rocks to that through the open sea to which ripened wisdom stands ready to direct it. Those shoals are strewn with wrecks. How few escape! The Bible, it is to be noticed, will not let the old past entirely lose its hold upon us. Enoch and Abraham and Moses appear as counsellors of the nineteenth century, which in so many respects is far in advance of them; and for the reason that they represent principles of life and character which are eternal. The consequences of Rehoboam's decision are familiar. We are indeed told that the cause was from the Lord, and that the catastrophe came about in fulfilment of his promise to rend the kingdom from Solomon's house; but it was in Rehoboam's power to have escaped all responsibility for that terrible result. God's decrees never relieve us of the duty of obedience. And this is a fair ground of appeal. The popular proverb is profoundly true: "A man is known by the company he keeps." Only let us be sure and emphasize the last word, "the company he keeps." We keep only what we like. The man is not truthfully indexed by the company in which he happens to be found at any particular time, not by the accidental contact of society, not by the circle into which he may have dropped in order to satisfy some conventional demand or to win some social prestige. That kind of company he does not keep; he only touches it. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)
Consider how expensive such senseless pride may become. It cost Rehoboam far the best part of his dominions. Israel rather than Judah fills the chief place in the history of the next few centuries. Henceforth until the fall of Samaria Israel is ever upon the historian's page. Judah occupying a subordinate place. The history of Israel is that of a nation—Judah consisted of but a single great and splendid city. Rehoboam's pride was an expensive luxury—it cost him the richest jewels in his crown.(J. B. G. Pidge, D. D.)
Ephraim had always been jealous of and restive under Judah's rule. "To the house of Joseph—that is to Ephraim, with its adjacent tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh—had belonged all the chief rulers of Israel, down to the time of David: Joshua, the conqueror; Deborah, the prophetess; Gideon, the one regal spirit of the judges; Abimelech and Saul, the first kings; Samuel, the restorer of the people after the fall of Shiloh. It was natural with such an inheritance of glory that Ephraim always chafed under any rival supremacy." And when "the Lord refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah," the old jealousy was intensified and ready to burst forth on any pretext.
(B. P. Raymond.)
The first step taken by the new king was a most judicious one. If anything could have removed the disaffection of the Ephraimites, and caused them to submit to the ascendancy of Judah, it would have been the honor done to their capital by its selection as the scene of the coronation. Shechem (now Nablous) lay on the flank of Mount Gerizim, directly opposite to Mount Ebal, in a position second to none in all Palestine. Though Abimelech had destroyed the place Jdg 9:45, it had probably soon risen again, and was once more a chief city, or perhaps "the" chief city, of Ephraim. Its central position made it a convenient place for the general assembly of the tribes, as it had been in the days of Joshua Jos 8:30-35; 24:1-28; and this would furnish an additional reason for its selection. (Barnes)
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