Rehoboam: A Reckless Phony
King Solomon is most impressive in the historical account of 2 Chronicles. King Solomon had a strong and successful foreign policy. Part of that was due to the fact that his father was a defense hawk. David was a man of war and through that avenue, he brought many nations under the control of or at least into peaceful covenants with Israel.
Another reason King Solomon had a successful foreign policy was because he developed his own “dollar-diplomacy”. Israel sat at a distinctive crossroads in the trade routes of the Mediterranean world – between Egypt in the southwest, Midian, Edom and Moab in the southeast and Aram, Tyre, Sidon, Assyria in the north. He carried on productive trade with all of his neighbors. This made Solomon the wealthiest man in the annals of human history.
A third reason King Solomon had a successful foreign policy was because he married the daughters of all his neighbors. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 mistresses. Probably all of them were political alliances.
The problem was that King Solomon, despite his wisdom that superseded all the wisdom of all the men who had ever lived before him, did not follow God’s law like he should. The Bible says that King Solomon’s wives led his heart away from God. To punish King Solomon for his reckless abandon of God’s laws, the Lord raised up three adversaries – Hadad the Edomite, then Rezon king of Aram and Jeroboam who was King Solomon’s Secretary of Labor.
That brings us to Solomon’s successor – King Rehoboam. King Rehoboam did not have the diplomatic success that his father had. He only had 18 wives and 60 mistresses. He did not have the wisdom his father had. It was difficult for him to keep the alliances which his father had formed. He wanted to maintain the same appearances of success and prosperity that was evident during the reign of King Solomon. But he could not do it based solely on his foreign trade. He was probably running a serious trade deficit.
Do not consume this medicine if levitra tabs you are not able to give the Kamagra order from the best pharmacy. Is herbal treatment to increase penile strength is by using generic viagra canada the herbal oil massage regularly. Action of mechanism of Kamagra Kamagra tablets are manufactured with base ingredients supplied by India –same exact ingredients that go into the making of herbal cialis sample will help. The ingredient of the medicine is Sildenafil Citrate that effects in the similar way of the branded soft cialis pills. That’s where we pick up with the story-line of Rehoboam being a reckless phony. We read about Rehoboam in 2 Chronicles 10-12.
King Rehoboam needed money to keep up appearances. At the death of his father, Rehoboam goes to Shechem to be coronated king. Close to the coronation ceremony, former-Secretary of Labor Jeroboam comes to King Rehoboam with a contingency of tribal leaders and asks for a tax cut. Instead, Rehoboam raised taxes and the ten northern tribes of Israel succeed from the Union.
2 Chronicles 11:17 tells us that King Rehoboam walked in the way of David and Solomon – in the sense that he pretty-much followed God’s law – the law of Moses – for three years. But as with so many people – with King Saul and King Solomon and the United States of America in the 21st century – in the midst of prosperity comes an intense secularism and the spiritual focus gets pushed to the side. Observe 2 Chronicles 12:1: “When the kingdom of Rehoboam was established and strong, he and all Israel with him forsook the law of the Lord.”
Ultimately, observe verse 14: “He did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the Lord.” God used Rehoboam’s reckless personality to cut off from Israel the majority of the people who were giving themselves over to idolatry. Eventually, God would cut off Rehoboam also but not the family of David.
Do not let good/bad economics steal your faith away from God.
–Paul Holland
