1 Kings 11:26-40
The cloak torn in twelve
Ahijah takes hold of the new garment Jeroboam is wearing and tears it in the road. Ten pieces, and a conditional promise of a house as sure as David’s.
People of the Bible
Jeroboam
Was promised ten tribes and a sure house if he would listen, and built two golden calves in the first year.
Jeroboam is a capable young officer Solomon puts in charge of the labour of the house of Joseph. A prophet meets him on the road, tears a new cloak into twelve pieces and tells him to take ten, with a promise attached: if you listen and walk in my ways, I will build you a sure house as I built for David. Solomon tries to kill him and he goes to Egypt. He comes back for the assembly at Shechem, is made king of the ten tribes, and then does arithmetic. If the people go up to Jerusalem to sacrifice, their hearts will turn back. So he makes two calves.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Jeroboam
- 01
- 02
1 Kings 12:20-24
Made king over Israel
Rehoboam masses a hundred and eighty thousand men to take the tribes back. A prophet stops the war with one sentence: this thing is from me. They go home.
- 03
1 Kings 12:25-33
Two calves, and a feast he invented
Behold your gods, O Israel. One at Bethel, one at Dan, priests from anyone who wanted the job, and a festival in the eighth month, in the month he devised of his own heart.
- 04
1 Kings 13:1-6
The altar torn and the hand dried up
A man out of Judah cries against the altar while Jeroboam stands on it. The king points and orders him seized, and his arm stiffens where it is, and he has to ask for prayer to get it back.
Why it matters
Jeroboam is the man who got the promise and did not believe it. The phrase that follows him through both books of Kings, the sin of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin, becomes the standard measure of every northern king for two hundred years, and not one of them turns from it. The account is precise about the reasoning: he says it in his own heart, and every decision after it is a calculation about keeping what he was already given.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
