I just finished my quiet time on I Kings 11. I’m a little full right now—physically, that is—because I went to the Indian buffet earlier this afternoon. So I’m stuffed and sleepy and lazy. But I’ll try to keep this quiet time coherent! Here are some issues:
1. My write-up in my notebook revolved mostly around the number of tribes that Jeroboam and Rehoboam got. The chapter says that Jeroboam will get ten tribes, whereas Rehoboam will get two. But there are problems with this. As I’ll read next week in I Kings 12, Benjamin went with Rehoboam, which means he had two tribes. But wait a minute! Simeon is also in the south, below Judah. So it had three tribes. At most, Jeroboam’s northern kingdom had nine tribes, and that’s when you count Ephraim and Manasseh as separate.
Ultimately, the commentaries I consulted were not much help. Keil-Delitzsch cited some information that may be important, right before dismissing it. For example, some say that Benjamin was an ambiguous tribe, for some of its cities belonged to the North. Joshua 18:21ff. gives Bethel, Ramah, and Jericho to Benjamin, yet they were cities that belonged to the Northern Kingdom (I Kings 12:29; 15:17, 21; 16:34). As I’ll see next week in I Kings 12, Bethel was actually a significant sanctuary for Jeroboam’s realm! So maybe there was a tradition that considered Benjamin to be part of the North.
Keil-Delitzsch also interacted with a view that said Simeon moved north. It happened with other tribes, such as Dan. And II Chronicles 15:9 mentions Simeon after it refers to Ephraim and Manasseh, which are northern tribes, and II Chronicles 34:6 also names Simeon after Manasseh and Ephraim, and before Naphtali (which is in the North). So could Simeon have been in the Northern Kingdom?
Keil-Delitzsch dismiss these proposals, maintaining instead that the number ten in I Kings 11 is symbolic, not arithemetical. Ten is supposedly symbolic of completion (i.e., the Ten Commandments), so its use in I Kings 11 serves to convey to Solomon that he (or, actually, his son) would lose all of his kingdom, with a few exceptions.
2. I’ll let that rest with you, even though it’s tough to digest because it appears to be a stretch! Meanwhile, here was another problem that I encountered. I Kings 11 talks about enemies of Solomon who find friendship in Egypt. One is Hadad the Edomite, who fled from Edom after David and Joab had slaughtered every male in Edom. Or so says vv 15-16. Actually, they didn’t slaughter every male in Edom, since Hadad and some servants managed to escape. So this may be hyperbole. The ancient world used this. If I’m not mistaken, the Pharaoh in the Merneptah Stele bragged about slaughtering entire populations, right before he mentioned survivors. But back to Hadad: Hadad was a child when he fled to Midian, but, at some point, he entered Egypt, found favor in the eyes of the Pharaoh, and married into the royal family.
Another enemy of Solomon who found refuge in Egypt was Jeroboam. He worked for King Solomon but fled when Solomon sought to kill him. Jeroboam stayed with Shishak, king of Egypt.
One of the commentaries I read stated that Egypt gave refuge to Solomon’s enemies so it could use them to whip Israel around. But here’s my problem: Solomon married the daughter of the Pharaoh. The reason Solomon had all his wives was to establish peace with other nations, even those who were his vassals, such as Moab (see II Samuel 8). If he had another king’s daughter in his house, then that other king would have a bond with him and wouldn’t try to harm him, since he’d be hurting his own family-member in doing so. That’s how rulers did things in those days.
For some reason, though, it’s not working, for Egypt is harboring people with an ax to grind against Solomon. My guess is that it’s because Shishak is Sheshonq I, who founded a new Egyptian dynasty. Solomon could have been married to a woman from the previous dynasty. Now, there’s a new king in Egypt who doesn’t care about Solomon, and has no stake in his prosperity. (But what about the trade routes that Solomon controlled? Sheshonq would want to suck up to Solomon to get his goods up north, right? Maybe, unless he realized that Solomon was becoming weaker and that Jeroboam could mount a successful rebellion against him. And why not weaken Solomon further by supporting a potential terrorist?)
But do the dates add up? The conventional date for Sheshonq I’s reign is 945-924 B.C.E. But Matthew Henry (who may be using Ussher’s chronology, if he’s even the ones who put the dates in his commentary!) dates Shishak’s invasion of Palestine in I Kings 14 to 960 B.C.E. I’d like to see what year Solomon built the palace for the Pharaoh’s daughter, and what year the king of Egypt accepted Hadad, for that could determine if the two kings are from separate dynasties. But Ussher dates everything so early, that I can’t make that determination with my current knowledge of chronology (which is meager).
But perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree. Sure, Shishak harbored Jeroboam. But maybe the Pharaoh who accepted Hadad was the same one whose daughter was married to Solomon, and he wasn’t trying to hurt Solomon! He just liked Hadad. And, when Hadad wanted to leave Egypt, Pharaoh asked him to stay. He didn’t want Hadad to whip Palestine around, if that was even on his radar!
3. What’s interesting about the story of Hadad is that he could’ve stayed in Egypt and healed from the havoc that David had wrecked on his nation. He could’ve been like Joseph, who, after his exaltation in Egypt, forgot all of his toil and his father’s house (Genesis 41:51). But God used his bitterness to make him a thorn in the side of Solomon, as punishment for Solomon’s idolatry. But, even here, I have a problem. Hadad decided to leave Egypt after he’d heard that David and Joab had died. He couldn’t have left Egypt right when Solomon became bad and started tolerating idol worship. There were years before that in which Solomon was good. Am I to assume that Hadad didn’t know about David’s death during that time, that he just discovered that Israel had a new king when Solomon started building temples to foreign gods? But Hadad had to know about Solomon before then. Hadad was part of the Egyptian royal family, which was intermarried with Solomon through the Pharaoh’s daughter! So wouldn’t Hadad have to leave Egypt before Solomon became bad? Did God allow Hadad to become a potential threat before Solomon degenerated to the dark side—keeping him around in case Solomon screwed up? Then, there’s another point: I Kings 11 doesn’t say Hadad became a terrorist immediately after he left Egypt!
4. Another issue I have: In I Kings 11:38-39, Ahijah (speaking for God) promises Jeroboam that God will make his dynasty eternal if he’s obedient, right before he says that God won’t afflict the house of David forever. Are these ideas mutually contradictory? Jewish commentators say that the part about God not afflicting David’s house forever means that a descendant of David will one day rule over all of Israel, North and South. But how can that happen, if Jeroboam obeys and gets his everlasting dynasty?
There’s a similar problem elsewhere in Scripture. God promised that the sceptre would belong to Judah (Genesis 49:10), yet he said that Saul the Benjamite would have had an everlasting kingdom had he obeyed God (I Samuel 13:13-14). How could both be true?
On I Kings 11:38-39, there may be a variety of ways that God can fulfill a prophecy. Perhaps, if Jeroboam had obeyed, God would’ve given him an eternal dynasty, but he would’ve kept his promise to the Davidic dynasty by making Judah a powerful kingdom, rather than the less-than-notorious kingdom that it was for many years. Jeroboam would’ve had his dynasty in the North, and the Southern kingdom would’ve been powerful too! But Jeroboam screwed up and forfeited his eternal dynasty. Now, God can make the Davidic dynasty prosperous by giving it all of Palestine!
5. There was another interesting detail that I got from my weekly quiet time. In I Kings 10, we read that Solomon gave a chariot and a horse to Aramean kings. Now, in I Kings 12, we read that an Aramean is afflicting Solomon. As one commentary asked, could the Aramean be doing so with the military equipment that Solomon gave him? We’ve seen that sort of thing throughout history!