Dividing the Kingdom

Dividing the Kingdom
THE WOMEN’S BIBLE COMMENTARY
(1 Kings 12-15)
From the death of Solomon at the end of 1 Kings 11 until the fall of the northern
kingdom in 2 Kings 17, the narrative generally alternates between accounts of the
kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel. The confrontation between Rehoboam,
Solomon’s son and successor, and Jeroboam, Solomon’s appointed supervisor of
forced laborers, initiates the division of the united kingdom and the narrative’s
concomitant alternation. Rehoboam’s refusal to lighten the load of the forced laborers
incites the rebellion of Israel, but his process of discernment on that issue echoes the
measure of masculinity- and, by extension, kingship- by sexual virility that the
encounter of David and Abishag illustrates. Rehoboam’s older advisers tell him to
lighten the laborers’ work to win their hearts and minds: “If you will be a servant to
this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer
them, then they will be your servants forever” (1 Kgs. 12:7). In contrast, his younger
advisers see the request as an affront to Rehoboam’s power: “Thus you should say
to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid
on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but
I will discipline you with scorpions’” (1 Kgs. 12:10b–11). In other words, Rehoboam
should see himself as “more of a man” than his father, and therefore he should not
bend to the requests of those under is power, nor to the aging- and, by implication,
less potent—elder advisers.
In his inability to consummate his relationship with Abishag, the aging David was
unable to demonstrate his masculinity via sexuality- specifically heterosexuality- and
therefore his kingship was deemed at an end. The narrative appears to endorse that
test, or at least not to make any overtly negative judgments about it. However,
Rehoboam’s assertion of his masculinity, metaphorical though his sexual imagery
may be, reads as an illustration of his arrogance. The imperial strategy of extraction
becomes intertwined with constructions of gender and power, so that a “manly man,”
ostensibly even more sexually potent than his father Solomon (a man with a
thousand sexual partners!), is also one who adds new levels of brutality to the
kingdom’s strategies of domination. Rehoboam’s decision backfires, of course; not
only does the kingdom split, but he incites a perpetual enmity between Israel and
Judah (1 Kgs. 12:19; 14:30). Keeping with the Deuteronomistic theological outlook,
the text attributes Rehoboam’s poor decision making to “a turn of affairs brought
about by the Lord,” so that Ahijah’s prophecy to Jeroboam would be fulfilled (1 Kgs.
12:15).
Despite the negative evaluation that the narrative gives to Rehoboam, its
assessment of Jeroboam is much grimmer. Jeroboam has already taken refuge with
King Shishak of Egypt to escape the wrath of Solomon in the wake of Ahijah’s
prophecy, thus creating an ironic association between Jeroboam and the site of the
Hebrews’ ancient enslavement (1 Kgs. 11:40). The same King Shishak later invades
Judah (1 Kgs. 14:25–28)—and Israel, according to archaeological sources—which
does nothing to rehabilitate the narrator’s opinion of either Egypt or Jeroboam.
Worried that regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem for sacrificial worship will entice the
people of the north to reunite with the southern kingdom (and kill him in the process),
Jeroboam fashions two golden calves, setting up one at Bethel and one at Dan (1
Kgs. 12:28–29). This establishment of alternate shrines is remembered throughout

the rest of Kings as “the sin of Jeroboam.” His proclamation, “Here are your gods, O
Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” echoes almost word for word the
cry of the Hebrews in the wilderness when Aaron makes a golden calf for them
(Exod. 32:4). The parallels in the presentation make compelling rhetoric against
Jeroboam. Having come up from Egypt himself and having delivered the enslaved
Israelites from their bondage under Rehoboam, Jeroboam shows himself to be no
Moses, instead making the same idolatrous mistake as Aaron. Though God relents
from his wrath in the wilderness episode (Exod. 32:14), the outcome is still
wrenching; at Moses’ direction, the sons of Levi kill three thousand people in the
camp, and a plague from God follows (Exod. 32:25–29, 35). Any reader familiar with
the exodus traditions, as the first audience of Kings surely would have been, knows
that no good can come from golden calves. To compound Jeroboam’s sin, he
establishes high places, declares festival days of his own accord, and appoints
priests who are not of a priestly caste to work at Bethel. In the view of the
Deuteronomistic voice of the text, his apostasies run deep and wide.
Jeroboam’s wife is never named, nor does she ever speak. Nonetheless, she is the
agent whose actions deliver the prophecy promising the doom of Jeroboam, his
house, and the kingdom of Israel altogether. She is also the one whose step across
the palace threshold signals the moment of her child’s death. The narrator never
specifies whether the wife of Jeroboam who acts in 1 Kings 14 is also the mother of
Abijah. The reader learns of that familial tie only when God tells the blind Ahijah that
“the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son” (1 Kgs. 14:5).
In the narrator’s framework, “Abijah son of Jeroboam” and “the wife of Jeroboam” are
described only in relation to Jeroboam, never in relation to each other. This trend is in
keeping with the point of view of the text, which constructs nearly all the characters in
Kings in terms of what they can contribute to the portrait of the kings themselves.
Jeroboam instructs his wife to disguise herself and approach the prophet Ahijah at
Shiloh in order to discover the fate of the child. Despite the prophet Ahijah’s
blindness, her identity- still only “wife of Jeroboam”- is discovered. Ahijah, who had
once declared the division of the kingdom because of God’s displeasure with
Solomon’s religious infidelities, now proclaims, “Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who
dies in
the city, the dogs shall eat” (1 Kgs. 14:11a). Jeroboam’s lineage will be cut off, and
the death of Abijah will be the first of many. Ahijah does have a word of comfort to
offer to Jeroboam’s wife: Abijah alone of Jeroboam’s family will receive a proper
burial, because of some unspecified quality God has found pleasing in him. Even so,
her re-entrance into the city will mark the moment of the child’s death, leading
readers to imagine how long she lingered at the threshold before crossing over to her
inevitable grief.
Through its failure- or refusal- to name Jeroboam’s wife (regardless of whether the
author had access to her name in any source), this episode underscores how
ultimately the women of the Israelite and Judean monarchies can earn a place in the
historical memory recorded in Kings only by contributing an heir, or else by
association with remarkable apostasies. The book of Kings quite consistently names
the mothers of the kings of Israel and Judah (see below) to identify their genealogical
heritage. Jeroboam’s wife has borne an heir to Jeroboam, or perhaps two, if Nadab is
also hers. But because the prophet has already declared that “the Lord will raise up
for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today” (1 Kgs.
14:14), it is as if her name is now a moot point. The end of the line of Jeroboam is
imminent, and so the genealogical precision that would otherwise preserve her name
is no longer required. She is a casualty of the Deuteronomists’ historical polemic.

The book of Kings’ march through the regnal history of Israel and Judah employs a
regular formula to identify each monarch. This formula identifies the year of
accession with reference to the king of the opposite kingdom, tells how long the
king’s reign lasted, reports his mother’s name, and provides a summary evaluative
statement about the king’s faithfulness or lack thereof. The formula for the accession
of Abijam is typical: “Now in the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam son of Nebat,
Abijam began to reign over Judah. He reigned for three years in Jerusalem. His
mother’s name was Maacah daughter of Abishalom. He committed all the sins that
his father did before him” (1 Kgs. 15:1–3a).
Including the name of the king’s mother provides genealogical clarity about the king,
but it does not serve to introduce the woman herself (e.g., 1 Kgs. 22:42; 2 Kgs.
21:19). There does, however, appear to have been an official role for the “queen
mother,” evidenced by King Asa’s removing Maacah from that position because she
made an image of Asherah (1 Kgs. 15:13). It is unclear what kind of power the queen
mother would have held, or whether that position was afforded to every mother of a
king in either kingdom. It does seem that “queen” was neither role nor office in Israel
or Judah. The narrative presents only stories with wives of kings who may take more
or less active roles, but the title of “queen” is not afforded to them as it is, for
example, to the queen of Sheba. Even Athaliah, whom the narrative reports “reigned
over the land [of Judah]” (2 Kgs. 11:3), is not called “queen,” though she is probably
the daughter of Jezebel, and the narrative does not view her rule as legitimate
anyway.
Taken from THE WOMEN’S BIBLE COMMENTARY by Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley