2 Chronicles 10 – Rehoboam
goes to Shechem to be installed as king. When Jeroboam hears of it - he is down
in Egypt - he returns and with him “all Israel came.” Jeroboam
in an Ephraimite who was made overseer of the labor force of the tribes of
Ephraim and Manasseh – Joseph’s descendants - under Solomon. According to 1
Kings 11:29-39, the words of the prophet Ahijah prophecies that he will one day
rule over the ten tribes. He does and when his plot is discovered he flees to
Egypt under the protection of Pharaoh Shichak. When Solomon dies, the northern
tribes rebel against his son Rehoboam. They tell Rehoboam that his
father made their “yoke heavy,” and they ask him to lighten it. If he does,
they will serve him (10:4).
He asks for three days to answer them. He consults with “the older men” and they
advise him to be “kind to this people and please them, and speak good words to
them” (10:6), but he rejects this advice. The young men around him, his
friends, advise him to outdo his father in being harsh. When the people come to hear his answer, they
are very displeased; but the text tells us that the hardness of Rehoboam’s
heart (or head) in this matter is “a
turn of affairs brought about by God so that the Lord might fulfill his word .
. .” spoken by Ahijah to Jeroboam (10:15). They all leave.
It would do us good sometimes to see in our brokenness a
kind of fulfillment of God’s design. God’s
order in this universe is very complex – just look out the window and see how
crooked and dappled everything is. Yet we know that it is all ordered in a deep
and hard to discover way.
Rehoboam rules over only those Israelites who live in Judah.
Hadoram, the taskmaster over forced labor is stoned to death. So Israel has
been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. This is clearly an
apology for the separatists of Israel, justifying their rebellion against
the house of David.
2 Chronicles 11 – Rehoboam
assembles an army of 180,000 to fight the rebels, but “the word of the Lord
came to Shemaiah the man of God” forbidding Rehoboam to go up and fight his
kindred. “Let everyone return home, for this thing is from me” (11:4). They do.
Rehoboam goes to Jerusalem, builds up cities for defense in Judah
and Benjamin. Priests and Levites in all
Israel come to him, leaving their common lands and holdings “because Jeroboam
and his sons . . . prevented them from serving as priests of the Lord, and had
appointed his own priests for the high places, and for the goat-demons, and for
the calves that he had made” (11:15). Sincere seekers came after them from
all the tribes, strengthening Judah. For three years they walked “in the way of
David and Solomon” (11:17).
Rehoboam marries his cousin Mahalath, daughter of David’s
son Jerimoth. She has three sons. And later, he marries another cousin, Maacah (Absalom’s daughter) whom he loved
the most. In all he has 18 wives and 60 concubines, and they produce for
him 28 sons and 60 daughters. He wanted Maacah’s son Abijah to be king. He
“dealt wisely,” distributing his sons throughout the districts of Judah and
Benjamin.
Augustine’s Treatise
on the Profit of Believing
17 - "But
they seemed there to make absurd statements." On whose assertion? Forsooth
on that of enemies, for whatever cause, for whatever reason, for this is not
now the question, still enemies. Upon reading, I found it so of myself. Is it
so? Without having received any instruction in poetry, you would not dare to
essay to read Terentianus Maurus [a Latin grammarian and authority on writing
poetry in the 2nd c] without a master: Asper [Latin grammarian],
Cornutus [Stoic philosopher], Donatus [grammarian and teacher of rhetoric], and
others without number are needed, that any poet whatever may be understood,
whose strains seem to court even the applause of the theatre; do you in the case of those books, which,
however they may be, yet by the confession of nearly the whole human race are
commonly reported to be sacred and full of divine things, rush upon them
without a guide, and dare to deliver an opinion on them without a teacher;
and, if there meet you any matters, which seem absurd, do not accuse rather
your own dullness, and mind decayed by the corruption of this world, such as is
that of all that are foolish, than those [books] which haply cannot be
understood by such persons! You should
seek some one at once pious and learned, or who by consent of many was said to
be such, that you might be both bettered by his advice, and instructed by his
learning. Was he not easy to find? He should be searched out with pains.
Was there no one in the country in which you lived? What cause could more
profitably force to travel? Was he quite
hidden, or did he not exist on the continent? One should cross the sea. If
across the sea he was not found in any place near to us, you should proceed
even as far as those lands, in which the things related in those books are said
to have taken place. What, Honoratus, have we done of this kind?
And yet a religion
perhaps the most holy, (for as yet I am speaking as though it were matter of
doubt,) the opinion whereof has by this time taken possession of the whole
world, we wretched boys condemned at our own discretion and sentence. What
if those things which in those same Scriptures seem to offend some unlearned
persons, were so set there for this purpose, that when things were read of such
as are abhorrent from the feeling of ordinary men, not to say of wise and holy
men, we might with much more earnestness seek the hidden meaning. Perceive you
not how the Catamite of the Bucolics, for whom the rough shepherd gushed forth
into tears, men essay to interpret, and affirm that the boy Alexis, on whom
Plato also is said to have composed a love strain, has some great meaning or
other, but escapes the judgment of the unlearned; whereas without any sacrilege
a poet however rich may seem to have published wanton songs?
That there are such difficult and
perhaps offensive parts of the Old Testament, almost no one would deny. But I
think what Augustine is saying is that if the fruit of the faith – the orthodox
or what they called “catholic” [universal] version of Christianity that had
gained so many followers by the 4th century despite oppression and
persecution – is seen to be good, you should seek out the people who can best
teach it before you start making decisions about what you might throw out and
retain.
