The Kingdom Splits

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This is Day 25 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king of Israel. So the people, led by Solomon's old enemy Jeroboam, came and asked Rehoboam to treat them more kindly. They complained that Solomon had laid a heavy yoke on them and asked Rehoboam to lighten it. Rehoboam replied that his yoke would be even heavier. "My father chastised you with whips," he told them, "but I will chastise you with scorpions!"

So Jeroboam led the northern tribes to secede, leaving Rehoboam to rule over only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. And Rehoboam assembled the warriors of Benjamin and Judah and sought to invade the northern tribes but the Lord stopped them. He told them He had caused the split, it was punishment for their turning to different gods.

The northern kingdom became known as Israel and they married foreign women and worshipped foreign gods and it would eventually come to be called Samaria. The southern kingdom became known as Judah and it is where Jerusalem and the Temple stood.

Joeroboam was concerned that the people would eventually return to Rehoboam because they would want to worship God in the Temple at Jerusalem. So he made two golden calves and presented them as gods to the people, claiming, "these are the gods that led us out of Egypt!" He built altars to these golden idols, but the true God sent a man from Judah to prophesy to Jeroboam that he needed to repent and return to God. But Jeroboam screamed for his men to seize the prophet and when he did he pointed his hand at the man, his hand withered up.

Jeroboam begged the man of God to pray for him that his hand would be restored and the prophet did. God restored his hand, but He cursed the house of Jeroboam saying that anyone of that house who died would have his body eaten by the dogs and birds. And God said that He would strike Israel for their unfaithfulness and He would give up Israel for the sins which Jeroboam brought upon the people.

Next: Fire From the Sky.

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!