The Heart Turns, and the Kingdom Begins to Tear

“Strange” means foreign, nokriyyot, the feminine of the nokri whose prayers Solomon welcomed in 8:41. The nations named are neighbours David had fought, so the marriages sealed treaties. Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah, an Ammonite (14:21), and he was forty one at his accession, so that match was made before Solomon was king.

The prohibition quotes Deuteronomy 7:3–4 and Exodus 34:16. “Clave” is dabaq, the verb of a man cleaving to his wife in Genesis 2:24 and of Israel cleaving to the LORD in Deuteronomy 10:20. Solomon clings with the very verb his loyalty belonged to.

“Princesses” means women of royal birth, diplomatic brides from foreign courts. Song of Songs 6:8 speaks of sixty queens and eighty concubines, a smaller court than this one. The line ends bluntly: the wives turned his heart.

“When Solomon was old” echoes the opening of the book, where David in old age is managed by others (1:1). The turning came late in a forty year reign, after the temple and the prayer, not in a young king’s ignorance.

Ashtoreth is Astarte, the Canaanite goddess, her name probably given the vowels of boshet, “shame”, by Hebrew scribes. Milcom, “their king”, was the national god of Ammon. “Abomination” is shiqquts, a detestable thing, a deliberately contemptuous term.

“Went not fully after” is literally “did not fill after”, the idiom used of Caleb, who “followed the LORD fully” (Numbers 14:24, Joshua 14:8). Caleb is the model of wholehearted following; Solomon falls short of it.

The hill before Jerusalem is the Mount of Olives, east of the city across the Kidron. Chemosh is the god named on the Moabite Stone of King Mesha. These shrines stood for three centuries until Josiah defiled them, on what 2 Kings 23:13 calls the mount of corruption.

The Hebrew participles describe a continuing practice: the wives kept on burning incense and sacrificing, and Solomon kept providing the places. Each foreign bride brought her gods, and each god got a shrine.

This is the first time in the Book of 1 Kings that the LORD is said to be angry with anyone. Ten chapters of favour, building and blessing pass before the word appears, and it is aimed at the king who built the temple.

“Kept not” is shamar, the verb of David’s deathbed charge: “keep the charge of the LORD thy God” (2:3). The indictment reads like a court record: a command given, a command broken.

“Rend” is qara‘, the verb Samuel used when Saul tore his robe: “The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day” (1 Samuel 15:28). The same sentence that ended the first king’s house now falls on the third. “Servant” here means a royal official.

Judgment is postponed a generation for David’s sake. The book will do the same with Ahab after he humbles himself: the evil will come “in his son’s days” (21:29). Delay is mercy to the father and no mercy to the son.

Jerusalem itself lay inside Benjamin’s allotment (Joshua 18:28), on the border with Judah. The city chosen for the name is kept with the house of David, and 12:21 shows Benjamin going with Judah.

“Adversary” is satan, the ordinary Hebrew word for an opponent. In 5:4 Solomon told Hiram he had “neither adversary nor evil occurrent”, using the same word. Now the LORD raises one.

David’s war in Edom appears in 2 Samuel 8:13–14, and the heading of Psalm 60 credits Joab with twelve thousand Edomites slain in the Valley of Salt. Joab stayed to bury Israel’s dead, which is how the killing stretched out.

Six months of systematic killing is a long occupation. “Every male” is a claim the next verse immediately qualifies, since at least one royal child escaped, and Edom would have kings again.

“A little child” is na‘ar qatan, the phrase Solomon used of himself at Gibeon: “I am but a little child” (3:7). Two royal boys, one who inherited a kingdom and one who fled from the wreck of his.

Midian lay east of the Gulf of Aqaba, Paran in the Sinai wilderness. The refugees cross the ground of Israel’s wilderness years in the other direction, down into Egypt, where Pharaoh gives them house, bread and land.

Tahpenes is not known from Egyptian records. Her name may be an Egyptian title, “the king’s wife”, rather than a personal name. Marrying Hadad to a queen’s sister bound a future Edomite king to the Egyptian court.

Weaning in the ancient world came around the age of two or three and was marked by a feast (Genesis 21:8). Genubath grew up among Pharaoh’s sons, as Moses had, an outsider raised inside Egypt’s royal house.

Hadad waits for two deaths, not one. David ordered the Edom campaign, but Joab carried it out, and the exile does not move until both men are gone.

Hadad’s answer is one Hebrew word, lo’, “no”, and then a doubled verb, “sending, send me”. A foreigner asking Pharaoh to let him leave Egypt reverses the plea of Exodus, though the book does not draw the comparison itself.

Hadadezer of Zobah, an Aramean kingdom north of Damascus, was defeated by David in 2 Samuel 8:3–8. Rezon deserted his own master in the collapse and built something for himself from the wreckage.

“A band” is gedud, a raiding troop, the kind of outlaw company David himself had led when fleeing Saul (1 Samuel 22:2). Damascus becomes the seat of the Aramean kingdom whose kings, the Ben-hadads, will trouble Israel through the rest of the book.

“Syria” is Aram in Hebrew. The Hebrew letters for Aram and Edom differ only by resh and daleth, which look alike, and the Greek applies the last clause to Hadad reigning in Edom. The two adversaries are easily confused on the page.

“Ephrathite” here means Ephraimite. His mother’s name Zeruah means “leprous”, possibly a slur preserved by his enemies, and some Greek manuscripts call her a harlot. Like Hiram the craftsman (7:14), he is a widow’s son.

“Repaired the breaches” is literally “closed the breach” in the wall of the city of David. The verse promises the cause of the rebellion and gives only its setting: a building site, with a breach closed in the wall while one opens in the kingdom.

“Mighty man of valour”, gibbor chayil, is Gideon’s title (Judges 6:12). The house of Joseph is Ephraim and Manasseh, Jeroboam’s own people. Solomon put him in charge of his own tribe’s forced labour, the people most likely to resent it.

Shiloh was where the tabernacle stood in Eli’s day. Solomon had banished Abiathar, Eli’s descendant, from the priesthood (2:27), and now a prophet from Shiloh announces the loss of Solomon’s kingdom. The clothing belongs to Ahijah, the likeliest reading of the Hebrew.

“Garment” is salmah, a word that sounds close to Shelomoh, Solomon; scholars have long noted the play. The garment is new, never worn thin, and still it is torn apart.

“Take thee” makes Jeroboam an active party: he has to pick up the pieces. From here on, “Israel” will increasingly mean the ten northern tribes, while the south is called Judah.

Ten and one make eleven, leaving a piece unaccounted for, and some Greek manuscripts read “two sceptres” here. The King James sets the verse in brackets, an aside inside the oracle protecting David’s house before the reasons are even given.

The Hebrew verbs are plural, “they have forsaken”, while the Greek and Syriac read “he”, Solomon. The same three deities of verses 5 and 7 are now called “god” and “goddess” rather than “abomination”, in the flatter language of an indictment.

“Prince” is nasi’, a leader’s title lower than king. Solomon keeps his royal seat for life, but the oracle describes his remaining years in reduced terms, held for another man’s sake.

It will happen fast. Rehoboam loses the ten tribes at Shechem within days of claiming them (12:16), in the very assembly called to crown him.

“Light” is nir, a lamp. A lamp still burning in a house meant the household still lived, and David’s men called him “the light of Israel” (2 Samuel 21:17). The phrase returns in 15:4 and 2 Kings 8:19 as the reason Judah survives bad kings.

“According to all that thy soul desireth” suggests Jeroboam already wanted a throne. Abner used almost the same words to David (2 Samuel 3:21): a promise that a man’s ambition would be met.

The promise is of a “sure house”, bayit ne’eman, the same terms as David’s in 2 Samuel 7:16. But Jeroboam’s lacks the words “for ever”, which David’s repeated again and again; this dynasty is conditional from the start.

“Afflict” is ‘anah, to humble or bring low, the verb used of Egypt afflicting Israel (Exodus 1:11). The last words set a term on the humbling, and the book will hold David’s line to that promise through many reigns.

Shishak is Sheshonq I, founder of Egypt’s Twenty Second Dynasty and the first pharaoh in the Bible who can be named and dated from Egyptian records. A new dynasty explains why Egypt now shelters Solomon’s enemies instead of sending him brides.

“The book of the acts of Solomon” is the first source the Book of 1 Kings cites, and the only one named for a single king. Later reigns refer to the chronicles of the kings of Israel or of Judah. None of these works survives.

Forty years matches David’s reign (2:11) and the round figure for a generation. On the usual chronology it runs from about 970 to 930 BC.

“Slept with his fathers” is the book’s formula for a death in peace. Rehoboam’s name probably means “the people is enlarged”; he will preside over its shrinking to a single tribe and a half.