1 Kings 12:25-33

II. THE GREAT APOSTASY 12:25-33

TRANSLATION

(25) And Jeroboam built Shechem in Mt. Ephraim, and dwelt in it. And he went out from there and built Penuel. (26) And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom will return to the house of David. (27) If this people go up to make sacrifices in the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, then the heart of this people shall turn unto their lord, unto Rehoboam the king of Judah. (28) So the king took counsel, and made two golden calves, and he said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. (29) And he placed one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan. (30) And this thing became a sin, for the people went before the one as far as Dan. (31) And he made houses on high places, and made priests from all classes of the people who were not from the house of Levi. (32) And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which was in Judah, and he went up to the altar! Thus he did in Bethel, offering sacrifices to the calves which he had made. And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. (33) And they went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month which he had devised from his own heart; and he made a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar to offer incense.

COMMENTS

Jeroboam's first concern as king of Israel was to strengthen his position by fortifying his capital at Shechem. Shechem was the most prominent city in the North, and was ideally located in Mt. Ephraim, i.e., the mountain district of the tribe of Ephraim. Not long after he had completed the rebuilding or fortifying of Shechem, Jeroboam was forced to temporarily move the seat of government across the Jordan river to Penuel in the area of Gilead (1 Kings 12:25). This sudden shift was made necessary by the invasion of Pharaoh Shishak concerning which the sacred historian will have more to say in chapter 14.

Another urgent concern of Jeroboam was the creation of a cult in the North which would rival the divinely revealed religion practiced in the South. That Jeroboam was uneasy and insecure in his new role as king is the clear implication of 1 Kings 12:26. He realized that if his people continued to travel to Jerusalem three times each year to keep the prescribed feasts, the religious sentiment would soon reassert itself and sweep him and his new dynasty away (1 Kings 12:27). With one religion, one sanctuary, one priesthood, there could not long endure two kingdoms. Furthermore, many of the psalms sung in the Jerusalem Temple worship centered on the divine promises made to the house of David. Jeroboam simply could not afford to have his people thus indoctrinated. When Jeroboam saw that the priests and Levites who were in the North were emigrating to Judah (2 Chronicles 11:13; 2 Chronicles 11:16), he knew he could wait no longer, and he began to implement the plan upon which he had been meditating for some time.

After taking counsel of his closest advisers, Jeroboam determined that the new religion should center about the images of two golden calves which he erected in the shrines at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:29). Propaganda poured forth from the palace in an attempt to persuade the people to change their religious affiliation. Jeroboam argued that it was inconvenient for the people to have to make the long walk to Jerusalem for worship. Besides, the golden calves which he had erected represented the divine personages who had led the nation out of Egypt (1 Kings 12:28). To further encourage the people to accept his counterfeit religion, Jeroboam placed his calves conveniently in Bethel in the southern part of his kingdom and at Dan in the north (1 Kings 12:29). Both of these cities were in some sense sanctuaries already. Bethel had been a holy place since the days when Jacob received his heavenly vision there (Genesis 28:11-19). A shrine had been set up at Dan during the days of the Judges by a grandson of Moses (Judges 18:31).

The establishment of the calf religion in the North was a sin, for it both set at nought the express prohibition of the decalogue (Exodus 20:4), and also disregarded the one sanctuary of God's choice (Deuteronomy 12:5). By thus establishing these calf centers, Jeroboam not only committed gross sin himself, but he provided an occasion for the people to sin (cf. 1 Kings 14:16; 1 Kings 15:26). The last clause of 1 Kings 12:30 is difficult, and there is no agreement among commentators as to its meaning. The people went to worship before the one even unto Dan is probably intended to convey the zeal with which the people pursued their new religion. If this interpretation is correct, the irony here becomes manifest. Ostensibly, Jerusalem had been rejected as a place of worship because of its distance; but the people became so addicted to the calf symbol that they willingly journeyed to distant Dan to engage in this worthless worship.

Further details of Jeroboam's counterfeit religion are presented in 1 Kings 12:31-33.

1. He built a house of high places. Some take this to mean that he built such a house at both Bethel and Dan, i.e., he built two temples for his calves (Keil; Rawlinson). Others think that a shrine already existed at Dan, and that 1 Kings 12:31 alludes to the construction of a similar shrine at Bethel (Hammond).

2. Jeroboam made priests of all classes of the people (lit., from the ends of the people). He thus violated the divine scheme of things which restricted the priestly rights to the tribe of Levi (1 Kings 12:31). No doubt Jeroboam would have gladly retained the Levitical priests in that capacity had they been willing to serve. But they had refused to serve and had gone over to Rehoboam as a body (2 Chronicles 11:13-14).

3. Jeroboam ordered that a great religious festival be held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. This was a deliberate imitation of the God-ordained Feast of Tabernacles held in Judah on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The switch from the seventh to the eighth month would make this feast more convenient for the farmers in the North where the harvest or vintage was a month later than in Judah.[327] The fifteenth day was retained because in lunar months, the fifteenth was the day of the full moon.

[327] It is unlikely that Jeroboam altered the month of the harvest festival merely for the sake of creating a distinction between his religion and that of the South as maintained by Keil.

4. Jeroboam himself seems to have officiated in the sacrificial service at Bethel. It would seem that the harvest feast just mentioned was conducted only at Bethel.
5. Jeroboam stationed his newly ordained priests in Bethel. They are contemptuously referred to as priests of the high places (1 Kings 12:32). The omission of reference to the sanctuary at Dan is somewhat surprising. Probably the two shrines did not have equal status. While the sanctuary at Dan was estab lished for the convenience of those living in the far north, Bethel was regarded as the royal sanctuary (cf. Amos 7:13).

The audacity of Jeroboam's ministering at the altar in person is underscored by repetition in 1 Kings 12:33. The king was probably motivated by the desire to invest the newly ordained feast with regal splendor and also by the idea of encouraging his new priests to enter on their unauthorized functions without fear. Previous history supplied concrete illustration of the dangers which attended the presumptuous assumption of priestly prerogatives (Leviticus 10; Numbers 16:40). The threats of the Law with respect to unlawful usurpation of priestly rights may have made Jeroboam's priests hesitant. To allay their fears, the king undertook to offer the first sacrifices on the Bethel altar.

Every phase of the religion of the North was devised in Jeroboam's own heart. Thus Jeroboam schemed to promote his own cause rather than the cause of God. In his religious innovations he went beyond God's design for him as an instrument of divine judgment upon David's house. Had Jeroboam trusted God and not tried to establish his own religion, God would have kept the promise made to him through Ahijah to give him an enduring dynasty.

The precise significance of the golden calves has been debated for years. At Mt. Sinai Aaron led the restless people in constructing a golden calf (Deuteronomy 32:4-8). Just why the calf figure was chosen is uncertain; but the bull appears in the art and religious texts throughout the ancient Near East. Some authorities believe that the calf symbol was borrowed from Egyptian religion. Several calf cults are attested in Egypt.[328] The calf or bull was the symbol of fertility in nature, and of physical strength. Other authorities link the Sinai calf with the cult of the moon god Sin whose worship was widespread in the ancient Near East. The shape of the animal's horns apparently symbolized the crescent of the moon.[329] In near-by Canaan, the calf was the animal of Baal or Hadad, god of storm, fertility, and vegetation. The gods of Syria are frequently represented standing upon a bull or calf.

[328] Kitchen, NBD, p. 180.
[329] Key, JBL, LXXIV (1965), pp. 20-26.

It is obvious that Jeroboam intended to link his calves to that Sinai calf. The expression, These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you out of the land of Egypt is common to both the present narrative and the Sinai account. But just what was the purpose, function, or theological explanation of these images?

Jeroboam's effort could hardly have succeeded if the calves erected at Bethel and Dan had been understood to be images of Yahweh;[330] the effort would have been absurd if Jeroboam had introduced the worship of Hadad-Rimmon, the Syrian deity, in the form of a bull. Possibly the calves represented pedestals or thrones upon which the invisible Yahweh was understood to be enthroned.[331] In such a case, the calves had virtually the same theological significance as the ark and Cherubim in the Jerusalem Temple.[332]

[330] The Semites never represented their gods zoomorphically.

[331] W. F. Albright, FSAC, pp. 299-300. If Albright is correct in assuming that the Biblical Cherubim were winged bulls, then the correspondence with the bulls (calves) of Bethel and Dan would be even more striking. For a discussion of the appearance of the Cherubim, see comments on 1 Kings 6:23.

[332] According to 2 Kings 19:15, God dwelled between the Cherubim, the ark with its golden mercy seat apparently thought of as God's earthly throne. See also Psalms 80:1; Psalms 99:1; Ezekiel 10:1.

Two negative results of the calf worship are attested in the history of Israel. First, the calf or bull was entirely too apt a symbol of fertility long to remain unrelated to the Canaanite fertility cult. The bulls at Bethel and Dan eventually led to syncretismthe adoption of pagan practices. Furthermore, the bulls could not long remain as a representation merely of Yahweh's pedestal or throne; they eventually became identified with Yahweh Himself in popular religious understanding. For this reason Hosea regarded the calves as idols (Hosea 13:2).

SPECIAL NOTE THE SCHISM OF 931 B.C.

It is not the place of a commentator to indulge in lengthy historical analysis. Nonetheless, the schism of 931 B.C. is so important in the history of God's people that a brief note of this nature is in order. Three points regarding the revolt of the ten tribes need further treatment: (1) the causes of the secession; (2) the consequences of the secession; and (3) the conditions after the secession.

I. THE CAUSES OF THE SCHISM

A superficial reading of Kings might lead to the altogether unwarranted conclusion that it was Rehoboam's foolish decision at Shechem that led to the rebellion of the ten tribes. However, a careful scrutiny of the Biblical materials reveals that there were multiple causes for the division. These may be grouped under the following seven headings:

A. THEOLOGICAL FACTORS

The Scripture makes it clear that the schism of 931 B.C. did not catch God by surprise. The sacred historian declares that the rebellion was a turn of events from the Lord (1 Kings 12:15). Through the mouth of the prophet Shemaiah the Lord declared: This thing has come from Me. Thus it was the will of God that there be a division at this time among the tribes of His people. As part of His grand plan of redemption, God saw fit to keep Judah, the tribe of destiny, isolated as much as possible from the degradating influences of the Northern tribes. Furthermore, the division of 931 B.C. was an act of divine judgment upon the house of David for the idolatry and excesses of Solomon's reign (1 Kings 11:11-13; 1 Kings 11:33).

B. HISTORICAL FACTORS

As one reads the early Chapter s of the history of Israel, he can see the roots of the 931 B.C. schism. From the time of the Conquest, Ephraim constantly complained and created turmoil among the tribal confederacy. The Ephraimites complained to Joshua about their tribal allotment (Joshua 17:14), and to Gideon about not being included in the initial attack against Midian (Judges 8:1). Ephraim was involved in a civil war with the men of Gilead in the days of Jephthah (Judges 12:4). Ephraim gave allegiance to ill-fated bid of Ishbosheth to succeed his father Saul on the throne (2 Samuel 2:10). Further, the Northern tribes revealed their jealousy of and hostility toward Judah following David's victory over Absalom (2 Samuel 19:41-43). Many men of the Northern tribes joined in Sheba's rebellion against David (2 Samuel 20:2). From all of this it would appear there had always been an intense rivalry between Judah and the Northern tribes, particularly Ephraim.

C. GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS

C. F. Kent indicates the great importance of geographical factors in the schism of 931 B.C. when he writes: Thus that great schism between north and south. found its primal cause in the physical characteristics that distinguish the land of Judah from that of Samaria.[333] Kent refers to the geographical isolation of Judah and the mountainous character of the land which made effective communication between Jerusalem and the Northern cities very difficult. Judah was in effect a mountain fortress with natural barriers on all sides. Ephraim, on the other hand, stood exposed to every invader. The barrenness of Judah made that land unattractive to foreign invaders; the fertile hills of Ephraim beckoned the adventuresome plunderer. The commercial highways which skirted Judah ran through the heart of Ephraim. Kent feels these very different geographical environments produced two very different types of people. The inhabitants of Judah were for the most part sturdy, brave, intensely loyal and durable. The inhabitants of Ephraim, on the other hand, were luxury-loving, carefree, tolerant, eager for foreign ideas, cults and customs. Thus geography played a role in producing the schism of 931 B.C.

[333] Kent, BGH, p. 44.

D. POLITICAL FACTORS

It would be to the distinct advantage of Egypt to bring about division of Solomon's empire. Solomon's enemies Hadad and Jeroboam both took refuge in Egypt (1 Kings 11:17; 1 Kings 11:40). The fact that Pharaoh Shishak invaded Palestine shortly after the division of the kingdom (1 Kings 14:25) suggests that he had been working toward this goal behind the scenes.

E. RELIGIOUS FACTORS

The religious bond that held the various tribes together was weakened by the introduction of pagan forms of worship under Solomon. Furthermore, the role of the prophets in the schism must not be overlooked. The prophets, who played such a key role in the reigns of Saul and David, disappeared during the reign of Solomon. No doubt the prophets resented the introduction of paganism into Israel by Solomon as well as the encroachments on tribal prerogatives and individual liberties which characterized that reign. In Ahijah of Shiloh and Shemaiah of Jerusalem the prophets reappeared, but only as antagonists of the crown pronouncing prophetic judgment upon the house of David.

F. ECONOMIC FACTORS

The extravagance of Solomon and his ambitious building program, particularly in Jerusalem, resulted in heavy taxation and forced labor. The Northern tribes had no particular interest in the further beatification and enlargement of Jerusalem. It was from this burdensome tax load that the Northern tribes demanded relief from Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:4).

G. PETTY FACTORS

Finally, one cannot overlook the shrewd and ambitious leadership of Jeroboam, nor Rehoboam's foolish handling of the confrontation at Shechem as factors contributing to the schism.

II. CONSEQUENCES OF THE SCHISM

The schism of 931 B.C. had ramifications in three different areas: political, economic, and religious.

A. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

The first and most obvious consequence of the 931 B.C. schism was the break-up of the Solomonic empire. Signs of decay were present even during the closing years of Solomon's reign. Damascus seems to have been the first vassal state to throw off the yoke of Jerusalem. As a result of the 931 schism, Ammon and Moab in Transjordan broke away from Israel. In the southeast, Edom gained independence. In the southwest, the Philistines for the most part seem to have regained their freedom. The once mighty empire was so weakened that Pharaoh Shishak met little resistance when he invaded the land in 926 B.C.

B. ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

Solomon's wealth was derived mainly from his wide-ranging naval operations and from revenues derived from merchant caravans which traversed his land. With the schism of 931 B.C. the seaport at Ezion-geber was lost, and neither of the two miniature kingdoms was strong enough to control the major trade routes along the coast and in Transjordan. This lost revenue, plus the burden of now having to pay political bribes to foreign powers (1 Kings 14:26; 1 Kings 15:18), put a severe strain upon the economy of the two kingdoms. What little economic strength that was internally generated was dissipated in the forty or so years of intermittent warfare between Israel and Judah.

C. RELIGIOUS CONSEQUENCES

Growing directly out of the schism of 931 B.C. was the emergence of a counterfeit brand of Yahwism with shrines located in the North at Bethel and Dan. This watered-down version of revealed religion was not able to resist the energetic invasion of the worship of the Baal of Tyre in the days of Ahab. Furthermore, the state of hostilities between the two rival nations prevented thousands of people in the Northern Kingdom from attending the sacred festivals in Jerusalem. Many of the faithful in the North did emigrate to Judah. This population drain at one point became so severe that king Baasha attempted to blockade the main road to Jerusalem (1 Kings 15:17).

III. THE CONDITIONS AFTER THE SCHISM

Each new state had certain advantages and disadvantages after the disruption of 931 B.C.

A. THE ADVANTAGES OF ISRAEL OVER JUDAH

The Northern Kingdom had five times the territory and twice the population of Judah. Three popular and ancient sanctuaries (Bethel, Dan, and Gilgal) helped compensate for being cut off from the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Israel was a far more fertile and wealthy land than Judah. Throughout the parallel histories of the two kingdoms Israel was of much more political and military consequence than Judah could ever hope to be.[334]

[334] North, OTIH, p. 10.

B. THE ADVANTAGES OF JUDAH OVER ISRAEL

The advantages of Judah are five in number. First, Judah had a stable monarchy. Judah held unflinchingly to the succession of the house of David. Throughout the history of the Southern Kingdom, the throne passed on, for the most part without difficulty, to the king's eldest son. In the Northern Kingdom there was no orderly arrangement for the succession of kings. A future king would be proclaimed by a prophet, and then he would await his opportunity to seize the throne.
A second advantage lies in the fact that Judah had a royal city. Jerusalem remained the place of royal residence for kings of Judah until the end of that kingdom. Israel had no such city and the Northern capital moved from Shechem to Penuel to Tirzah and finally to Samaria. Even after Omri built Samaria, other cities (e.g., Jezreel) seem to have served as secondary capitals.
Thirdly, Judah had a genuine religious center and a magnificent Temple which contained the ancient sacred ark. That this was no small advantage is proved by Jeroboam's determined effort to keep his subjects from making the trip southward to worship.
From one point of view Judah's geographical isolation may be counted as an advantage. Since none of the major highways passed through her, and since she was no great military prize, Judah was able to pursue her modest way of life for the most part without outside interference.[335]

[335] Ibid.

Finally, although Judah's population was smaller than that of Israel, it was -more homogenous. Many Canaanite enclaves existed in the North; but those living in Judah were for the most part of pure Israelite stock.

THE KINGDOMS CONTRASTED

ISRAEL

JUDAH

Northern Kingdom

Southern Kingdom

Ten Tribes

Two Tribes

First King: Jeroboam

First King: Rehoboam

Capitals: Shechem, Samaria

Capital: Jerusalem

Worship: at Dan, Bethel, Samaria

Worship: Jerusalem

Nine dynasties

One dynasty

Nineteen kings

Nineteen kings and one queen

All bad kings

Good and bad kings

Shorter reigns

Longer reigns

Lasted about 210 years

Lasted about 344 years

Kingdom fell in 722 B.C.

Kingdom fell in 587 B.C.

Taken into Assyria by Shalmaneser-Sargon

Taken into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar

Longest Reign: Jeroboam II - 41 years

Longest Reign: Manasseh - 55 years

Shortest Reign: Zimri - 7 days

Shortest Reign: Jehoahaz - 3 months

Last King: Hoshea

Last King: Zedekiah