Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 12:13-16

So yes, once again in 2 Chronicles chapter 12 beginning in verse 13. Verse 13 begins, so King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. So it doesn't mean that he strengthened himself in Jerusalem, this is a phrase that gets used repeatedly to talk about building up cities and getting more political weight, more people on his side, more things that he has built up.

And how does this relate to the preceding context? Well, it summarizes everything that we've seen in the past couple of chapters. He's built up the cities, he secured the Levitical priesthood, you remember what happened there?

All the, at first he just had Judah, but then Benjamin stayed with him, and then all the Levites came out of the north to join him. So he's got the Benjamites, he's got the Levites, he's put his sons in positions of power, and then he was threatened by Shishak, but repented, and the Lord gave him some mercy there.

He wasn't completely destroyed by Shishak, so he had some good things, as it said in the previous verse. There were some good things found in Jerusalem. All right, the last time the word strengthening was used was in 1117, where it said, they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and for three years they made Rehoboam the son of Solomon secure, for they walked for three years in the way of David and Solomon.

And this was talking about the Levites, this was talking about the Levites giving right worship to God and everything. So last time we heard about Rehoboam strengthening the nation, it was particularly in his following of the Lord that he is strengthening himself and his kingdom.

Rehoboam’s Reign, Jerusalem, and the Meaning of “Strengthened Himself”

All right, 13b, for Rehoboam was 41 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city which Jehovah had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, put his name there. And his mother's name was Naamah the Ammonitess.

Who remembers how long David reigned and how long Solomon reigned? These are numbers that are simple enough, might be worth committing to memory, yes. Forty, yes, forty years each of them, right? And so in comparison, it's not nearly as long of a reign, the fact that they each reigned forty years you are supposed to take as being, you know, God's hand of blessing on David and Solomon in particular.

So when you see that their son only reigned 17, that's notable. What is the significance of Jerusalem being chosen? Yeah, God has picked it. We have repeatedly pointed out that the Chronicler lets you know that though Judah and Israel have separated ways, Judah is the true Israel.

It's actually not the kingdom that goes by Israel that is the true Israel, but Judah is the true Israel. And Jerusalem is the city that God has chosen. Why pointing out that his mother's an Ammonitess?

This isn't ever said directly, but the suggestion does seem to be that this is where his toleration of idolatry is coming from, the fact that his mother is pagan, or comes from a pagan background would make him tolerate paganism.

Rehoboam’s Evil and His Failure to Seek Jehovah

All right, verse 14, and he did that which was evil because he did not set his heart to seek Jehovah. All right, what evil did he do? Well, he participated in or at least tolerated idolatry. What does it mean that he did not set his heart to seek the Lord?

Seeking the Lord refers to consistent worship of the Lord. So if he's not seeking that, seeking the Lord, then that means he is occasionally seeking after false gods. Yeah, and then how does this relate to him humbling himself?

The fact that he humbled himself, as it says elsewhere, does not mean that his humility was absolute. There were a number of times that he's...well, there was this significant portion where he had strayed away from the Lord and so needed to be chastised.

All right, 1 Kings 14, 22 to 24, let me go ahead and read that, 1 Kings 14, and Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they had committed more than all their fathers had done, for they also built for themselves high places and pillars and ashram on every high hill and under every green tree.

And there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations that the nations of the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. All right, what is...the Chronicler's statement is much shorter.

Yeah, anybody make some observations from this? Did anybody do the comparison and see what sorts of differences there were? Yet the Chronicler's admitting the specific charges of evil. So, the building of the ashram, he doesn't mention that exactly.

The toleration of what's here in the ESV is the male cult prostitutes, if you read an older translation like the ASV, it talks about the sodomites. He tolerated them and then...and didn't chase them out of the land.

Let's see.

Yet moreover, the Chronicler speaks of the evil of Rehoboam instead of that of Judah more generally. Remember, part of what is going on here is that the Chronicler is consistently putting the kings of Judah in a positive light.

And so, pinning that on Judah rather than Rehoboam in particular and omitting some of the charges, it could just be brevity, but he's also...and telling the people of their need for a Messiah and their need for the restoring the King of David while he's honest about Rehoboam's faults.

He's not going to overemphasize them, certainly. All right, verse 15, now, the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not written in the histories of Shemaiah the prophet and of Edo the seer after the manner of genealogies?

All right, so the Chronicler is pointing out that he's getting all this from ample sources. These are different sources than 1 Kings is getting everything from. Although, obviously, the Chronicler is reading from 1 Kings because so many of the words are identical.

He also consistently says, as you read through this, you can tell that there are different idioms at this point post-exile than there were at the beginning of exile. He says first and last repeatedly in these sections at the end of the reigns.

All that the king did from first to last, as opposed to all that he did, which is what 1 Kings says. All right, and then who is Shemaiah? Does anybody remember who Shemaiah was? Yes? No, no, you're thinking of, why am I blanking, Nabal.

You're thinking of Nabal? Yeah, no, Shemaiah warned, yes, yeah, so he there, he was the one who had given the prophecy about Jeroboam that's not recorded in 2 Chronicles, it's recorded in 1 Kings. But then in 2 Chronicles, he has warned Rehoboam about pursuing war against Israel and then about his situation with Egypt that he needed to repent in order to be able to resist Shishak.

Okay, so yeah, twice Shemaiah warned Rehoboam of the foolishness of his actions. Edo was mentioned previously as being responsible for some of the material behind Solomon's history, so back in 929, there was a statement that some of this was coming from Edo.

The manner of genealogies as describing the genre of texts that Edo writes in, that doesn't mean that it's all just straight family trees. There's probably a lot more that's in Edo, but this is specifying that this is work that has family trees and that kind of thing.

So he's getting all this information from a variety of different materials. It is worth noting that citation standards back then are different what they are now. Like he's letting you know that he's getting it from reliable sources, but he's not citing chapter and page number for all these things.

Yeah, a lot of people have very modern sense of what plagiarism standards are that aren't really biblical things. Like, you know, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they weren't citing everything with that kind of.

Specificity.

But the Chronicler is citing even more than some of the other works that you would see.

In Scripture.

There's a lot more specificity. It's interesting how that is, that, yeah, the Chronicler is concerned to let you know that these are all from reliable sources. All right, 1 Kings 14, 30, sorry. And there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually.

Significance of these being wars, okay, they lost the peace that they had. Remember, David was a man of war. He established peace for Solomon. Solomon had peace, but now all that's lost. We've talked before about how the Chronicler, in the way he frames it, it's less clear that this is Solomon's fault, and it appears more to be Rehoboam's fault.

In 1 Kings, you see Solomon's the one who has many wives, and because of that, he has enemies that chase him during the end of his days. The Chronicler doesn't talk about Solomon's many wives. Instead, he talks about Rehoboam's many wives.

So, the suggestion, you know, there's just a lot of presenting Solomon in the best possible light, and Rehoboam here has lost these things and is at war with Jeroboam. For those that are joining us newly now, the point of all these things, you know, the Chronicler is preparing us.

He's writing way after 1 Kings, this is basically the last book written in the Old Testament. He's preparing us for the need for a Messiah, and in describing David and Solomon as ideally as possible, you know, not saying anything untrue, but in highlighting their best qualities and diminishing their worst qualities.

And then the same thing with all the other kings, but most especially David and Solomon. He's letting them know we need someone to sit on the throne to do the things that they did because they were the hope for Judah.

One interesting difference with 1 Kings, he talks about wars instead of singular war. There was war. He said there were wars. Yeah, I think it's highlighting the need for peace. Verse 16, and Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David and Abijah, his son reigned in his stead.

Okay, so Rehoboam buried in the city of David, his reign is blessed with continuing in the chosen city. You know, what does he admit? He admits the mention of Rehoboam's parents, likely to shorten the context.

Yeah.

Yeah, there is one example of that that I'm forgetting who it was, but yes. Yeah, there's, gosh, I forget who it is, but yeah, there's one king later that doesn't get honored that way.

Okay.

I think I've pointed this out before, but Abijah is known as Abijam in 1 Kings. Does anybody remember why that is? Okay, Jeroboam had a son. His name was Abijah. The fact that, okay, so if these names are like different forms, like Dave versus David, that kind of stuff, remember one of the chroniclers' agenda is to show that Judah is the true Israel and what's he doing?

All this focus that was in 1 Kings on Abijah, now he takes Abijam, uses the form of his name that's Abijah, and what's he doing? He's taking the king of Judah and replacing the heir of Israel, right, Jeroboam's, he's replacing Jeroboam's son with Rehoboam's son just by using the different form of the name.

You just, there's just lots of little things that he's doing like this to prop up Judah in the Davidic king over Israel and the line of Jeroboam or the line of, there's not a single line in Israel, sorry, I'm blanking on the, it starts with an O, but there's other kings that Ahab, for example, comes from, okay, Omri, Omri, yeah.

Any questions on that? All right, so reflection, what is the danger of evil in your life? What is the danger of evil in the church? How can you avoid evil? Pretty simple questions for this time because, yeah, you see that here in 2 Chronicles, Rehoboam had strengthened himself, but then he, in verse 14 it says, and he did evil for he did not set his heart to seek the Lord.

This is why you have the, a lot of the things taken away. You had all the gold shields taken away that he had to replace with bronze because Shishak came and took all his treasure, things like that. You can really swiftly lose a lot.

I was, in our family worship we recently went through the passage in Ezra where Ezra becomes aware of all the foreign wives that the people have married, and in his prayer he talks about how they had sinned against the Lord, they had lost the land, they had lost the temple, and now God has been merciful and given them back to it, and it's like they're just about to, they're about to throw it all away, right?

It's really, you can really quickly throw away blessings of God by walking into sin. It's important to be vigilant. As a church, I think we should be vigilant, we should be humble. You know, God will not, yet we shouldn't expect blessings from God if we are not seeking Him humbly.

I do often, when I pray for God to bless our church, especially with growth and things like that, I pray that we would be a humble people that would be able to receive His blessings without growing in pride and attributing these things to ourselves or being confirmed in our own sin.

Those are things worth considering. Anybody have any other thoughts on this passage? Or any questions?

Anything else?

All right, well let's go ahead and transition to prayer.