Foolishness South and North

1 Kings 12

            In contrast to his dad’s wisdom, Rehoboam shows himself foolish, heeding the advice of young, inexperienced advisors instead of Solomon’s seasoned ones. The result is civil war. Well, the result is division anyway; a prophet of the Lord tells the men of Judah to go home and they do, so there’s no fighting. The whole incident shows that Israel’s national loyalty was never strong. The northern tribes had allegiance among themselves; Judah was loyal to itself; and even the people of Judah weren’t terribly loyal to their king.

            This is the kind of story that bothered me when I was younger. I came out of seminary full of knowledge and ideas and, frankly, full of myself. It took me a long time to learn the difference between knowledge and wisdom. I’m afraid to say that when I was fresh out of school I probably would have been more likely to listen to my peers than to older, more experienced pastors. These days, I’m the older, more experienced pastor, and I realize that experience is as an important a teacher as anything. We truly learn from our mistakes, and, God willing, grow into wisdom. I look at this story now, and I say, “Rehoboam should have listened to the elders of Israel.”

            For his part, Jeroboam should have listened to, well, anybody. His rationale for building two golden calves was to keep his people from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem and shifting their loyalties back to the south. So, he did what seemed right to him. In addition to the shrines at Bethel and Dan, he made worship convenient by establishing high places, local shrines. If he had paid any attention to Israel’s history, he would have remembered that a golden calf was the first of a series of poor choices that Israel made after coming out of Egypt, and he would have heard the prophets telling Israel to shun the high places. Yet, here he was with alternates—both major and minor—to the temple and even an alternate to one of the festivals of the Lord. (Given the timing it might have been an alternate to the festival of booths.)

            So, foolishness abounds in the south and in the north. In the south it’s a political foolishness, a king out of touch with his people. In the north, it’s religious foolishness, a king out of touch with the Lord. May the Lord save us from both!