The great divide. We’ve read about it before back in the Kings books, and this chapter does a quick summary of a few things that went down before the Kingdom of Israel split into the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. I had to go back to 1 Kings to refresh my memory about King Jeroboam. He was King Solomon’s right-hand man when it came to the king’s construction crews, and one day Ahijah the prophet approached him, defrocked himself, and tore his cloak into 12 pieces and proceeded to tell Jeroboam that he would be the next king. Wowzers. I had forgotten that story. After he received his proverbial crown, Jeroboam made a mad dash to Egypt before Solomon could kill him. Solomon was deep into the Ashteroth poles by then and ran a den of iniquity that housed dozens of concubines. God was seriously mad at Solomon, and he promised to take his kingdom away down the line, and that’s where Jeroboam came in. So, in today’s chapter, we can see that Rehoboam, Solomon’s “rightful” heir to the thrown, according to Solomon, was having none of this prophecy fulfillment thing. He took what he saw as his place on the throne when his father died, and had he been a little more gracious about it, instead of wielding his big, manly stick, he probably could have preserved the whole of Israel. But that wasn’t in God’s plans, was it? Nope. As I just said above, Rehoboam didn’t have a chance in Heaven because hot stuff papa Solomon blew it, big time, by worshiping other gods and letting his mess of wives negatively influence his relationship with God. Dang women! We didn’t actually talk about this chapter, but I hope your brain is at least refreshed enough to remember the events that got us to the events summarized in this chapter.
Writing prompt: this chapter
Write your thoughts about what you read today.
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