1 Kings 12 Study Notes

12:21-24 The divine oracle against fighting their brothers prevented hostilities for the moment, but this was just the beginning of recurrent, generally small-scale, border warfare.

12:25 The selection of Shechem as the capital should have pleased the northerners, for whom it was a natural site for conducting intertribal business. Then Jeroboam built or fortified Penuel, almost directly east across the Jordan rift from Shechem. This gave Jeroboam a fortified foothold on each side of the Jordan River.

12:26-27 Jeroboam’s astute scheming showed his doubt of God’s promises. The Lord promised Jeroboam ten tribes, but Jeroboam speculated that God might prove untrue and the people of the north might return to the house of David.

12:28 The most sobering point in this verse is that the king sought advice, and rather than being turned from error, was encouraged to make two golden calves. This act was not simply rebellion against David; it was also the rejection of the proper worship of the Lord by the leaders and counselors of Israel who advised Jeroboam. The king then set up a new system of worship for the people to keep them from going to Jerusalem for worship. It was a shrewd innovation. Such golden images typically consisted of an image made of cheaper material, usually wood, covered with gold foil or gold plating. Possibly Jeroboam did not intend these images to represent the Lord himself, but rather meant to imply that the Lord was the invisible deity riding above the calves. Thus, the king may have intended to produce an alternate, nonidolatrous manner of worshiping the Lord. However, his was still a disobedient, human-made system that had its origins in unbelief and fear rather than faith and obedience. Jeroboam’s words are identical to those of Aaron four hundred years earlier (Ex 32:4).

12:29 Dan already had a history of illegal, idolatrous worship of the Lord (Jdg 18). The calf shrine in Bethel was on the traditional border between Benjamin and Ephraim, barely ten miles north of the national temple in Jerusalem. This was a deliberate insult to Jerusalem and the worship conducted there.

12:30-31 The Bible briefly depicts the pomp and circumstance of these consecrations: the people walked in procession before the calf installed at Dan. Jeroboam also set up other illegal shrines throughout the country, which he staffed illegally with non-Levites. This dispossessing of the Levites from their assigned duties encouraged their emigration southward. Ironically, God may have used Jeroboam’s idolatry to concentrate the Levites where their influence for good would be most effective.

12:32-33 Again, with political astuteness but religious disobedience, Jeroboam changed the calendar. He established a festival like the festival in Judah, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. This festival apparently replaced the observances in the seventh month, Tishri, which included both the Day of Atonement and the Festival of Ingathering (Ex 23:16; also known as the Festival of Shelters). The text does not clarify whether Jeroboam’s illegal act of sacrifices was a one-time event when he initiated the worship or a habitual act on his part.