TEXT [Commentary]
B. Synchronistic History of the Early Divided Monarchy (1 Kgs 14:21–16:34)
1. Rehoboam rules in Judah (14:21-31)
21 Meanwhile, Rehoboam son of Solomon was king in Judah. He was forty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city the LORD had chosen from among all the tribes of Israel as the place to honor his name. Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman.
22 During Rehoboam’s reign, the people of Judah did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, provoking his anger with their sin, for it was even worse than that of their ancestors. 23 For they also built for themselves pagan shrines and set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 24 There were even male and female shrine prostitutes throughout the land. The people imitated the detestable practices of the pagan nations the LORD had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.
25 In the fifth year of King Rehoboam’s reign, King Shishak of Egypt came up and attacked Jerusalem. 26 He ransacked the treasuries of the LORD’s Temple and the royal palace; he stole everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. 27 King Rehoboam later replaced them with bronze shields as substitutes, and he entrusted them to the care of the commanders of the guard who protected the entrance to the royal palace. 28 Whenever the king went to the Temple of the LORD, the guards would also take the shields and then return them to the guardroom.
29 The rest of the events in Rehoboam’s reign and everything he did are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah. 30 There was constant war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. 31 When Rehoboam died, he was buried among his ancestors in the City of David. His mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman. Then his son Abijam[*] became the next king.
NOTES
14:21 Rehoboam. See the second note on 11:43 concerning the probable meaning of this name. Concerning the typical Judahite accession formula found here, with its inclusion of the king’s age at accession and the name of the queen mother, see “Literary Style” in the Introduction.
Naamah, an Ammonite woman. See the first note on 14:31.
14:23 sacred pillars and Asherah poles. The “sacred pillars” (matseboth [TH4676, ZH5167]) were made of stone (Cogan 2001:386-387; cf. Pritchard 1969: pictures 871, 872); they were features of the Canaanite cult as were the Asherah poles (cf. Deut 12:3), but they were not phallic symbols as some have maintained. (Concerning the Asherah poles, see the note on 14:15.) Hence, both stone and wood images are featured here.
14:24 male and female shrine prostitutes. The NLT has a full, and in my opinion, entirely accurate translation here for the single word qadesh [TH6945, ZH7728] “sacred (one[s]),” though in some contexts the word may refer simply to cultic personnel. Both masculine and feminine forms of this term are found in Deut 23:17 [18] in reference to temple prostitutes. Wiseman (1993:152) notes that in the Kings text here, the term is used for both sexes, and it is “taken to be a reference back to Canaanite ritual prostitution.”
detestable practices. Heb., to‘aboth [TH8441, ZH9359], a strongly negative term, traditionally translated as “abominations” or the like (cf. KJV). What was being condemned here was (heterosexual) fertility religion, not any sort of homosexual activity as many older translations have implied.
14:25 fifth year. This is an unusually precise chronological datum, probably from a royal or Temple chronicle (Cogan 2001:387-388; both Cogan and I [Barnes 1991:57-67] have concluded that the absolute date is c. 925 BC, or a bit higher, and that we cannot be certain that this campaign took place within a year or so of Shishak’s death).
King Shishak of Egypt. See the note on 11:40 concerning this important pharaoh. An excellent summary of the biblical and extrabiblical evidence may be found in Cogan 2001:390-391. As Wiseman (1993:152) points out, Shishak exacted tribute from the fortified areas of Judah, and he set up a stele in Megiddo (see Cogan 2001, figure 5 for a drawing of the surviving top corner of the originally 10-foot-tall stele [cf. Kitchen 1996:299]), thus indicating at least some significant pressure was placed on Jeroboam’s realm as well.
14:26 all the gold shields Solomon had made. See the note on 10:16-17 for details on these extravagant furnishings. This expensive attempt to buy off Shishak may have been at least partially successful: There is no record of Shishak claiming capture of Jerusalem, and it appears that Shishak himself died a year later (Wiseman 1993:152; following Kitchen 1996:293-300; 432-447; 575-576; but see the first note on 14:25).
14:29 are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah. See “Literary Style” in the Introduction.
14:30 constant war. This is sadly a repeated refrain during the early period of the divided monarchy (see 15:6, 7b, 16, 32; cf. 14:19a). The peace asked for back in 12:21-24 did not last all that long. (For further discussion of this refrain, see commentary on 15:1-8.)
14:31 His mother was Naamah. This is a curious repetition with the accession formula in 14:21b. Cogan (2001:388) takes this as an erroneous duplication, but I wonder if there is more to this notice than that. I have argued that the curious duplications of regnal formulas found in 2 Chr 21:5, 20 for Jehoram; 2 Chr 27:1, 8 for Jotham; and the familiar dual notice concerning Josiah’s 18th year (2 Kgs 22:3; 23:23, paralleled in 2 Chr 34:8; 35:19) signify in Chronicles every fifth monarch after Solomon in the Davidic king-list (see Barnes 1991:142-144). In short, repetitions are often intentional, and that may be the case here. Concerning the foreign origin of Naamah the Ammonite, cf. Cogan (2001:386), who follows Malamat in suggesting that David arranged this marriage for his son Solomon while the latter was still a prince at his father’s court (also see Sweeney 2007:188).
Abijam. Or “Abijah”; see note on 15:1.
COMMENTARY [Text]
We now move into several chapters featuring the “leapfrog” treatment of the northern and southern kings, with their order of presentation apparently based solely on chronological factors. For further discussion concerning these regnal accession notices, evaluations, discussions, and concluding summaries, see “Literary Style” in the Introduction.
The section begins with Rehoboam, who was certainly no Solomon (see commentary on 12:1-20). Rehoboam was, however, still in the Davidic line, and therefore the transmitter of the Davidic blessing for all nations (see, particularly, my comments on 2 Sam 7 under “Date and Occasion of Writing” in the Introduction). Two main observations are made about Rehoboam’s time as king: The people sadly grew even more heterodox in their worship (14:22-25); and King Shishak attacked Jerusalem early in Rehoboam’s reign, ransacking the treasuries of palace and Temple, and, in particular, removing Solomon’s ceremonial gold shields from the palace (14:25-28; cf. 10:16-17). We are clearly no longer in either Davidic or Solomonic times, for such things would not have taken place then. But we are probably seeing here the results of some of the later actions of David (cf. 2 Sam 11–20) and especially Solomon (1 Kgs 11), with resultant unrest within the realm and a successful attack from outsiders. All the Deuteronomistic commentator can do here is reflect on the necessity of bronze substitutes for the gold shields (literally a tarnishing of the memories of Solomon’s fabulous wealth), and note with careful restraint the sad measures Rehoboam must undertake to guard those replacement shields. Israel’s golden age was over.
Pharaoh Shishak represents a new, but soon to be all-too-familiar result of the end of the Davidic and Solomonic ages: foreign oppression. There seems, as well, to have been intermittent warfare between the northern and southern kingdoms (see commentary on 15:1-8). Suffice it to say that when one is hard-pressed from without, one particularly should seek peace from within; and although Rehoboam surely did not consider Jeroboam’s realm as in the category of “within,” it nonetheless was exactly that, for in 12:24, the Israelites are called the Judahites’ “relatives” (’akhekem [TH251, ZH278]). Sometimes, we fight needlessly those whom we should consider to be on our side (or at least as neutral). That was true then, and that is so often still the case in the church today.