Chapter 23: A Nation Divided and Destroyed
How Israel was split in two and ultimately got destroyed completely
Last time we ended our story with God informing King Solomon that the nation of Israel will be split in two because of Solomon’s apostasy. We pick up the story in 1 Kings 11.
Towards the end of Solomon’s reign, one of his officials called Jeroboam receives a visit from one of God’s prophets named Ahijah. Ahijah tells Jeroboam that he will become king of 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel after Solomon dies and so when Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam becomes king, the scene is set for a civil war.
As Rehoboam takes the throne, his first act as king is to make life for his servants more difficult. Solomon had conscripted people and forced them into labour, but life was still relatively good for them. These same people now come to Rehoboam to ask him to lighten their load, but instead of listening to wise advisors who tell him to acquiesce, Rehoboam listens to his young friends and makes life for the labourers even more difficult. In response, the ten tribes in the north rebelled against Rehoboam, aligned themselves with Jeroboam and broke away to form a new northern nation (still called Israel). The two tribes who remained became the southern kingdom of Judah. So, after only 4 kings, Israel as a nation was broken in two.
The first thing Jeroboam does as the king in the north is to build two new altars in the northern kingdom to prevent people from going back down south to Jerusalem to worship God in the temple. In each of these places he installs a golden calf as a statue of the “God of Israel” and he tells the people “Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt”. (1 Kings 12:28). Alert readers will immediately recognize that this precisely what happened in Exodus 32, while Israel was waiting for Moses to come back down the mountain of God. This shows us how far Israel had fallen spiritually and sets the scene for Israel’s eventual destruction.
Up until this point, the story we have been following is the story of how God is going to rescue the world from the curse of sin. We saw that it was going to happen through Abraham’s offspring, that it was going to happen through the nation of Israel. We saw that it was going to happen through one of Israel’s kings. Saul, David and Solomon were all found wanting. Which king then would it be?
The rest of the two books of Kings goes about answering this question. These books cover the span of several hundred years of Israel and Judah’s history. As you read these books you see a repeated pattern: a king is introduced, we are told how old he was when he became king, how long he reigned for, and whether he was a good king or not. The test to see whether a king was a good king or a bad king depended entirely on whether the king was true to God or not. If a king promoted the worship of God by getting rid of the places of idol worship, and if he remained faithful to God, then he was seen as a good king. If, however, he promoted the worship of idols, then the king would be rated as bad.
One example that shows this pattern clearly is the 1 Kings 15:9-15.
9 In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa became king of Judah, 10 and he reigned in Jerusalem forty-one years. His grandmother’s name was Maakah daughter of Abishalom.
11 Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. 12 He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his ancestors had made. 13 He even deposed his grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive image for the worship of Asherah. Asa cut it down and burned it in the Kidron Valley. 14 Although he did not remove the high places, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life. 15 He brought into the temple of the Lord the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated.
The interesting thing is that in the northern kingdom of Israel, not a single king gets a good score. Every single king in Israel does evil in the eyes of the Lord and promotes the worship of idols in Israel. In the southern kingdom of Judah things are better, but still only eight kings get a good score. Of those eight, half are sort of a mixture between good and evil. The point is this, both Israel and Judah are on a downward trajectory, although Judah is doing somewhat better overall.
At this point it is important to remember what it is that Israel agreed to in their Covenant with God at Mt Sinai. They agreed that they would follow God, would worship him only and that would not turn to the gods of the land they inhabited. As part of this agreement, God told them, that if they break the covenant and follow after other gods, they would be cast out from the promised land and would be conquered by a foreign nation. You can read the full extent of the damage that would be caused to Israel if they rebelled against God in Deuteronomy 28 and 29. What the books of 1 and 2 Kings shows us is that the northern kingdom of Israel had in fact fully abandoned God. As they get worse and worse, the scene is set for the destruction of Israel. After hundreds of years of patience, God finally allows Israel to be conquered by the the kingdom of Assyria in 2 Kings 17:1-6.
The key part of the story though is the theological reflection that the author of kings offers right after Israel is destroyed (2 Kings 17:7ff). The author gives an extended reflection on why it is that Israel was destroyed and he highlights the fact that Israel rejected God, worshipped foreign idols, and continued to do so despite repeated warnings by God through his prophets that they should turn back to him. Since Israel heeded none of God’s warnings, and stubbornly refused to turn back to him, God finally allowed them to be conquered. Assyria not only conquers Israel, they relocate Israel’s people and replace the population of Israel with people from other parts of the world. After this point, the norther kingdom of Israel drops out of the story, and Israel as a nation would never again be restored. No longer is Israel the bearer of the promise that one day God would rescue the world. The promise now falls squarely in the lap of the southern kingdom of Judah.
With so few good kings in Judah, how will that work? That is a story for next time…