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1 Kings 12 — One meeting, one arrogant answer, centuries of consequences
9 min read
fresh.bible editorialis dead. The golden age of is over. And now his son is heading to for what should be a straightforward coronation. The entire nation has gathered to make him king. All he has to do is show up, say the right things, and keep the his built.
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He doesn't. What happens next is one of the most consequential leadership failures in the entire Bible — a single conversation that tears a nation in half and sets off centuries of division. And the worst part? It was completely avoidable.
arrived at for the coronation, but there was someone else in the room nobody expected. had been hiding out in ever since he fled from King . But the moment he heard Solomon was dead, he came back. The people sent for him, and together — Jeroboam and the whole assembly — they came to Rehoboam with one request:
"Your father worked us to the bone. The labor was brutal and the burden was crushing. Lighten the load, and we'll serve you."
That's it. They weren't asking him to step down. They weren't staging a revolt. They were saying: we're willing to follow you — just show us you care. Rehoboam told them to come back in three days and he'd give them an answer.
Three days. That's all the time he had to make the most important decision of his reign. And he spent those three days asking the wrong people.
First, went to the — the men who had actually served under , who had decades of experience and had watched leadership up close. He asked them what he should do:
"If you serve these people today — if you're a servant to them, speak kindly to them, answer them well — they will be your servants forever."
That's remarkable advice. They were telling him the secret to lasting leadership: serve first. You want loyalty? Earn it. You want people to follow you? Show them you're for them, not above them.
But Rehoboam didn't like that answer. So he went to his friends — the guys he'd grown up with, who had the same privilege, the same blind spots, the same need to prove something. He asked them the same question. Their response was completely different:
"Here's what you tell the people who are complaining about your father's heavy hand. You say: 'My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. You think my father was tough? I'll make him look gentle. My father used whips on you — I'll use scorpions.'"
Read that again. These weren't seasoned leaders tested . These were guys who had never carried real responsibility, telling Rehoboam to flex harder. And he ate it up. It's the oldest leadership mistake in the world — surrounding yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear.
The word "scorpions" in their advice is worth pausing on — it tells you everything about where these young advisors' heads were at.
Three days later, and the people came back just as had asked. And the king gave them his answer — harshly, arrogantly, word for word from his friends' playbook:
"My father made your burden heavy? I'll make it heavier. My father disciplined you with whips? I'll discipline you with scorpions."
He abandoned the of the . He chose intimidation over empathy. And in doing so, he lost almost everything.
But here's the line that stops you in your tracks: the king did not listen to the people, because this turn of events was from the Lord. God had already told a named that Jeroboam would be given ten tribes of . Rehoboam's arrogance wasn't catching God off guard — it was fulfilling what God had already said would happen. That doesn't excuse the decision. But it does mean God was working even through this disaster.
The Hebrew word here is "sibbah", and its meaning runs deep.
When the people realized the king wasn't going to listen, they were done. The response was immediate and final:
"What do we owe to David's family? Nothing. We have no stake in Jesse's son. Pack up and go home, Israel! Let David's house take care of itself."
And just like that — the nation split. walked away. was left ruling only the tribe of .
Then he made things worse. He sent Adoram — his taskmaster over the forced labor, the literal face of everything the people were angry about — as his representative. The people stoned Adoram to . Rehoboam scrambled into his chariot and fled back to .
Meanwhile, the northern tribes called to an assembly and made him king over all of . Only remained with family. The united that David built and expanded was gone. One bad meeting. One arrogant answer. Centuries of consequences.
Think about what happened here. The people asked for compassion. They got contempt. And when the leader doubled down instead of listening, they left. It happens in families. It happens in organizations. It happens in . People don't usually leave because things are hard — they leave when they realize the person in charge doesn't care.
got back to and immediately did what you'd expect — he assembled an army. 180,000 soldiers from and the tribe of , ready to fight the northern tribes and take the back by force.
But then God spoke through a named :
"Tell Rehoboam king of Judah, and all the people of Judah and Benjamin: this is what the Lord says — do not go to war against your own relatives. Every man go home. This whole thing is from me."
And here's the surprising part: they listened. 180,000 soldiers turned around and went home. Rehoboam, for all his stubbornness, obeyed when God said stop.
That phrase — "this thing is from me" — is one of the hardest things in to sit with. God isn't saying He approves of Rehoboam's foolishness or the coming . He's saying this fracture is part of His plan. Sometimes the thing falling apart is exactly what God said would happen. It doesn't make it painless. But it does mean it's not pointless.
now had everything he'd been promised — ten tribes, a , a fresh start. And almost immediately, fear started running his decisions.
He fortified in the hill country of and made it his base. Then he built up . But his real problem wasn't military — it was theological. Jeroboam started thinking:
"If these people keep going up to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, eventually their hearts will drift back to Rehoboam. They'll kill me and reunite with Judah."
So instead of trusting the God who gave him the kingdom, he built his own version. He made two golden calves — an echo of the worst moment in history — set one up in and the other in , and told the people:
"You've been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here are your gods, Israel — the ones who brought you out of Egypt."
And the people went along with it. They traded the real for convenient counterfeits. They traded the God who actually delivered them for golden statues that made the trip shorter.
It's a pattern that never gets old. When we're afraid of losing what we have, we start building systems we can control — and calling them worship. Jeroboam didn't reject God outright. He just redesigned the to serve his agenda. That's almost always how works. Not a dramatic rejection — a quiet replacement.
didn't stop with the calves. He built all over the country. He appointed from anyone who wanted the job — not from the , who God had set apart for that role. He created a brand-new festival on a date he picked himself — the fifteenth day of the eighth month — designed to look like the real in , but entirely under his control.
He went up to the he'd built in . He offered to the calves he'd made. He installed his hand-picked priests. Everything looked like . Everything felt like religion. But every single piece of it came from his own imagination, not from God.
The month he chose? From his own heart. The Hebrew text emphasizes this — "the month he devised from his own heart". The priests? His own picks. The gods? His own design. A whole worship system that looked spiritual on the surface but had no connection to the God it was supposed to honor. That's the danger Jeroboam represents — not atheism, but DIY religion. A custom-built to fit your comfort zone, where you never have to submit to anything you didn't choose. It's the kind of religion that feels good and costs nothing. And it's everywhere.