The kings of Israel and Judah

King Rehoboam

The kingdom of Judah (the south) · Reigned seventeen years (1 Kings 14:21) · Evil before God · 1 Kings 12 to 14; 2 Chronicles 10 to 12

Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was the king in whose reign the kingdom split in two. When the people asked him to lighten the heavy burden his father had laid on them, he listened to his young companions instead of the elders and answered harshly, and ten tribes broke away to form the northern kingdom of Israel, leaving him only Judah and Benjamin. He did evil, for he did not set his heart to seek the LORD.

And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD.2 Chronicles 12:14 (KJV)

The foolish answer that split a kingdom

When Solomon died, all Israel came to Shechem to make Rehoboam king, and Jeroboam spoke for them, asking that the heavy yoke of taxes and forced labor be lightened. Rehoboam took three days to answer. The old men who had served Solomon counseled him to speak kindly and serve the people, and they would be his servants for ever. But he forsook their counsel and listened to the young men he had grown up with, and told the people, My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.

It was a fatal folly. Israel answered, What portion have we in David? To your tents, O Israel, and the ten northern tribes went home. Only Judah and Benjamin stayed loyal to the house of David. Rehoboam gathered an army to force them back, but the prophet Shemaiah brought the word of the LORD: Ye shall not go up nor fight against your brethren, for this thing is from me. The division was God's judgment on Solomon's idolatry, and it would never be healed.

A reign that drifted from God

Rehoboam fortified cities in Judah and for a time the faithful priests and Levites who fled the north strengthened his kingdom, and for three years the people walked in the way of David and Solomon. But when he was established and strong, he forsook the law of the LORD, and all Israel with him. Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and built high places and images and groves on every high hill.

In the fifth year of his reign, because they had transgressed, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem and stripped the treasures of the house of the LORD and the golden shields Solomon had made. When the judgment fell, Rehoboam and the princes humbled themselves and said, The LORD is righteous, and God granted them some deliverance rather than total destruction.

The biblical verdict

Chronicles gives the plainest summary of the man: And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD. That single sentence weighs his whole reign. He was not the worst of kings, and there were moments of humbling, but his heart was never fixed on God, and so his life drifted with the current. There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually.

The books of Kings and Chronicles tell his story with slightly different emphases, Kings stressing the sin of Judah and Chronicles adding the early faithfulness and the later humbling, but both agree on the verdict and the split. He was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and his son Abijah reigned in his place.

Where it points

Rehoboam is a warning about the danger of pride and the company we keep. A single harsh answer, chosen out of vanity, tore the kingdom of David nearly in two, and the wound never closed. Behind it stood a deeper problem: a heart not prepared to seek the LORD, so that even a man raised in Solomon's court and taught the law drifted into idolatry when he grew strong.

Yet God kept a lamp for David in Jerusalem, for the sake of his promise. The tribe of Judah, from which the Messiah would come, was preserved even through a foolish and faithless king, because God's covenant did not rest on Rehoboam's faithfulness but on his own. The line to Christ ran on, held by grace and not by the worth of the kings who carried it.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Solomon · Abijah · Jeroboam I · All the kings of Israel and Judah