First Kings Chapter Twelve
The Division of the ancient Kingdom of Israel set in motion the fulfillment of Latter-Day Events. Revisiting a classic nineteenth-century analysis of prophetic importance today.
The first lesson appointed to be read in the churches of the Establishment on Sunday, August 6, 1893, was 1 Kings 12, from the beginning to the end. Vast multitudes, therefore, of the laity of Israel, and very many of her clergy were obliged to listen to a chapter which contains a great number of Our Identity points, and which it seems impossible to spiritualise, or to understand in any but the plainly literal sense in which they are written. We propose to indicate a few of them for the benefit of our opponents, and to refresh the memory of those who think with us but are apt to listen to such a portion of the Word without really apprehending its meaning. The chapter opens with preparations for Rehoboam’s coronation. As the son of the late King Solomon, he was the lawful heir to the throne of Twelve-tribed Israel. But to whom appertained the power and privilege to consecrate and crown the new king? To “All Israel.” Not the twelve-tribed body, be it remembered, but the ten of the House of Israel. These ten were designated “All Israel” as a copyright proper name, and as the chief political power in the State they claimed the right to “make him king at Shechem.”
In 2 Samuel 19:41-43 we have the Ten Tribes and the Two contending for supremacy in respect to their sovereign David, and then “all the men of Israel”—“All Israel”—disputed with the men of Judah about the return of David from Absalom’s banishment. The men of Israel had “ten parts in the king,” they said, and they claimed the right as the majority to be consulted as to the restoration or “bringing back” of their king. The words of the men of Judah were fiercest on that occasion, but the action of ten-tribed “All Israel” prevailed when Rehoboam solicited them to crown him at Shechem, where he repaired for the purpose (1 Kings 12:1).
What followed was a sad picture of the perversity of men. We should wonder at the folly of the young king and his unwise and inexperienced advisers (verse 10), did we not know that God was guiding the matter, and through man’s folly and rashness worked out His purposes of wisdom in spite of it all. “This thing is from Me!” he declared (1 Ki. 12:24). The king and the silly advisers about him thought to force a high-spirited people to obey the young sovereign, but God used the high-handed proceedings, and All Israel’s rebellion, to effect a separation which has not yet, even today, been mended! In regard to wisdom, however, there was not much to choose between the two Houses of Israel!”
Judah and their king acted like madmen. But the men of “All Israel” of the Ten Tribes also employed a bad man and arch rebel, Jeroboam, to represent them, and presumed to declare before King Rehoboam that “they had no inheritance in Jesse, and no portion in David.” (1 Ki. 12:16; 2 Chron. 10:16) Whereas God’s Word and His prophets had declared even by the mouth of Solomon in 1 Kings 8:25, that “there shall not fail thee a man in My sight to sit on the throne of Israel.”
The chapter selected as the lesson thus clearly distinguishes “All Israel” from Judah, appropriates that name for the Ten-tribed House, and distinctly declares God’s providential arrangement in these events by stating that the separation “was from Him” (verse 24). But the chapter goes further and notifies the fact that the separation of the northern tribes from the southern was “a rebellion” against the House of David, which was not mended when the Babylonian captivity of Judah returned to Jerusalem in B.C. 538, as some of our opponents wish to prove. In 1 Kings 12:19 the words are express: “So Israel rebelled against the House of David unto this day”—that is, to the date when the writer of the narratives contained in the four Books of Kings and Chronicles compiled his records. That date is generally allowed to be some period of time after the return of Judah from Babylon had been effected. It is clear, then, that the Houses of Israel and Judah were not reconciled at that date, but there was rebellion still in progress against Judah on the part of Israel. In the chapter we are discussing, the position of the Tribe of Benjamin, one of the Ten Tribes (called the House of Joseph in 2 Samuel 19:20), comes clearly out.
The rebellion of the House of Israel, the descendants of Joseph, did not finally carry with it the Tribe of Benjamin. Verse 21 shows that on Rehoboam’s flight to Jerusalem, and subsequent appeal to arms against the rebels, he was supported by the Tribe of Benjamin, as it was likely he would be, seeing that the tribe occupied the capital and were much mingled with the men of Judah in the matter of domicile. The fact, then, that Benjamin remained loyal to Rehoboam becomes a beautiful illustration of how God by purely natural causes fulfilled the prophecy of 1 Kings 11:32, 34, 36, by giving to Solomon’s son one tribe out of the Ten-tribed “kingdom, for Jerusalem’s sake.” In 1 Kings 12:23 we have God Himself speaking to His prophet Shemaiah, and His words should have attention from us. He distinguished Judah from Israel in His message to “Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah,” and added a further description corresponding to the name “All Israel,” when He spoke “to all the House of Judah and Benjamin.” He drew a distinction between “All Israel” and all Judah, but united in the latter the Tribe of Benjamin. The Benjaminites were one of the Joseph tribes and did not actually belong to Judah, but to Israel, yet were joined for a time to the men of all Judah. (1 Ki. 11:36) In His injunction to Judah He commanded them not to fight against their brethren “the children of Israel.” (1 Ki. 12:24) The command was obeyed and henceforth Israel separated from Judah politically. Those who maintain that these Two Houses were reunited at the return of the Jews from Babylon, have an impossible task, for the chapter we are discussing contradicts them as we have shown.
Another and very important lesson this chapter teaches us is this: That the Ten Tribes thus separated off from Judah were in God’s sight, and even by name, known to Jeroboam and his people as “the kingdom.” The king of Judah wanted to bring back the revolted “kingdom” (verse 21). Israel’s king, Jeroboam, feared that “the kingdom” would lapse back to Rehoboam because Judah controlled the location of the sacred places in Jerusalem and Mount Zion (verses 26 & 27). In 1 Kings 11:35, the Ten Tribes are again described as “the kingdom.” Since they were “the kingdom,” the House of Israel claimed the right to make and unmake the king, and went to Shechem to crown Rehoboam (verse 1).
The disciples of our Lord knew that “the kingdom” was not with Judah in their day, and therefore asked Him after the resurrection, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). They knew what our clergy now hardly suspect, that the kingdom was in separation from the Jews at the time of the first advent, and was yet to be reunited by the power of Christ, the King. They knew, too, that the restoration had not been effected when the two tribes of the Babylonian captivity returned in 538 B.C. Nor was it restored in the time of the first advent, and we know that even now there has been no restoration that fulfills the biblical requirements of a redeemed people with everlasting joy (Isa. 35:10). But the fact remains that the kingdom is existing today, ready to be reunited with Judah, and it is worthwhile for our clergy to inquire whether “the kingdom” is now, as we allege, to be found in Britain and America. We have all the marks of “the kingdom,” and 1 Kings Chapter 12 gives much help to the earnest inquirer. To God be all the praise!
By Philo-Israel (Judge Edward Bird), reprinted from The Banner of Israel, vol. 18:30-31 (1894)
