Dividing the Kingdom
Taken from The Women's Bible Commentary
Description
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)…
Taken from THE WOMEN’S BIBLE COMMENTARY by Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley