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A. Division of the Kingdom (1 Kings 12-16)

Solomon was able to keep the kingdom together during his lifetime, but trouble was simmering. The seeds of dissatisfaction, primarily the cession of land in the north, high public taxation, and the use of Israelites in forced labor, prompted those in the northern districts to cast elsewhere for leadership. They found it in the figure of Jeroboam.
    Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, had been the foreman of one of Solomon's labor crews. Being an Ephraimite, he seems to have shared in northern dissatisfaction with the Davidic administration. With the prophetic support of Ahijah from Shiloh (located in the north, it was the religious center of the tribal federation during the period of the judges), Jeroboam organized resistance to Solomon. Solomon recognized him as the ring leader and sought to kill him, but Jeroboam survived.

Ahijah is the first in a line of northern prophets mentioned in Kings; see Table 9.A for a list of northern prophets.

    After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam ascended the throne. He met with leaders from the north at Shechem, but support from the north was not forthcoming. Led by Jeroboam, the people demanded that Rehoboam humanize his policies and lighten the burden of taxation and government service. Rehoboam refused to change royal policy; in fact, encouraged by his closest counselors, with bravado he threatened to make the load even heavier. The northern delegation declared their independence.

16 When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king, "What do we have to do with David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse! To your tents, Israel! Take care of your own house now, David!" (12:16)

    The Deuteronomistic writer framed the conflict in terms of rival administrations and national ideologies. The northern territories refused any longer to accept Davidic rulers and Zion theology. They had agreed to Davidic rule only after the house of Saul had let them down. Now they wanted out. But the Deuteronomistic writer's sympathies are clearly with the Davidic line.
    Rehoboam did not have the military power or strength of will to force them to accept his rule. And the kingdom, while spared a protracted and bloody civil war, for all intents and purposes now became two nations. The northern entity, consisting of some ten tribes, kept the name Israel. As you read narratives that date to this period, note that the term Israel designates the Northern Kingdom rather than the entire twelve-tribe nation. The Southern Kingdom of Judah was just Judah, the sole tribe that remained loyal to the leadership of the house of David (see Figure 9.5). The twelfth tribe, Levi, did not have tribal territory, so Levites were found in both Israel and Judah.

Figure 9.5 House of David Inscription

An inscription found at Tell Dan in northern Israel contains the first reference outside the Hebrew Bible to the dynasty of David. This fragmentary thirteen-line inscription written in early Aramaic and dating to the middle of the 9th century B.C.E. appears to celebrate the victory of the king of Aram in Damascus over a king in Israel. In it the phrases "king of Israel" (upper box) and "house of David" (lower box) are found. See Biran and Naveh (1993) for a full description of this text.

    An important order of business for Jeroboam was to consolidate his hold on Israel and give it a distinctive national identity. To that end he (re-)built Shechem and made it his capital. Attached to that site were all the associations of Israel's tribal beginnings, the good old days of the Joshua covenant.

Tell Dan High Place

This open-air platform, called a high place (Hebrew bamah) goes back as early as the 10th century B.C.E. and may be related to Jeroboam's religious program. Sacrifices and rituals would have been performed here.

    Jeroboam had to put together a religious system that was independent of Judah's. He was especially worried that his citizens would feel compelled to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem to fulfill their religious obligations, as had become their practice under the Davidic administration. To counteract such a need, Jeroboam strategically located worship centers in his kingdom at its northern and southern boundaries, at Dan and Bethel respectively.

Bethel. Bethel had a long religious history. The forebears Abraham and Jacob had special connections with Bethel (see Chapter 2). Abraham built an altar near Bethel as he made his way to the Negev (Genesis 12:8), and Jacob had his dream of the stairway to heaven at this spot (Genesis 28:10-22), thus proving that it was a point of contact between heaven and humanity--hence, a suitable place for a sanctuary.

    The shape that the religious system of Israel assumed under Jeroboam called for special condemnation by the Deuteronomistic writer. Jeroboam built golden calves as the centerpieces of these shrines. The mere mention of these idols immediately recalls the fiasco at Mount Sinai that Aaron engineered (see Exodus 32). Just as heinous in the eyes of the Deuteronomistis writer, Jeroboam employed non-Levites as priests and set up a religious calendar with festivals that differed from those utilized in Jerusalem, as specified in Deuteronomic legislation. For all of these transgressions, Israel, and Jeroboam himself, could not escape God's condemnation.
    An unnamed "man of God from Judah," a prophetic figure of sorts (13), voiced Yahweh's dissatisfaction by condemning Jeroboam and the Bethel shrine. But in the end the Judean prophet was himself deceived by a Bethel holy man, resulting in his own execution by God. Clearly the message was this: Beware of the prophetic tricksters in the north, and stay away from Bethel. Although he reigned a healthy twenty-two years, Jeroboam was punished by the premature death of his son Abijah.
ToC | Reading the Old Testament. . . Chapter 9. Kings | ToC