The Kingdom Divides

At Solomon’s death about 930 BC, the elders of Israel met his son Rehoboam at Shechem and asked him to lighten the heavy taxation and forced labour of his father’s last years. Rehoboam rejected the counsel of the old men who had served Solomon, listened instead to the young men who had grown up with him, and answered: "My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions" (1 Kgs 12:14). Ten of the twelve tribes broke away under Jeroboam son of Nebat, an Ephraimite official who had fled Solomon’s court for Egypt and now returned. The northern kingdom of Israel — ten tribes, capital eventually at Samaria — lasted from 930 BC until the Assyrians destroyed it in 722. Its line of nineteen kings is uniformly described as evil; Jeroboam himself set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan to keep his people from going up to Jerusalem (1 Kgs 12:28–29). The southern kingdom of Judah — the tribes of Judah and Benjamin under the line of David, capital Jerusalem — lasted until the Babylonians destroyed it in 586. The prophet Ahijah had foretold the division (1 Kgs 11:29–39); the LORD declared it His own discipline of Solomon’s idolatry (1 Kgs 11:11).