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Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted Isa 53:4 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Friday, May 2, 2025
Today's Passage : Today'sPassage:Israel after Solomon (2): Rehoboam, King of Judah BibleVerse1 Kings 12:21-33 "Rehoboam assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, 180,000 chosen warriors, to restore the kingdom. But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God: “Say to Rehoboam and to the rest of the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, You shall not go up or fight against your relatives the people of Israel. Every man return to his home, for this thing is from me.’” So they listened to the word of the Lord and went home again, according to the word of the Lord. And Jeroboam said in his heart, “If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam.” So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. " Message:
In the previous verses, two of Solomon’s sons had tussles over succeeding him. Eventually Jeroboam, who had no true claim to the throne, became King of “Israel”—the ten tribes in the north which constituted the bulk of land and people. Rehoboam became the King of “Judah”—comprising only the area around Jerusalem.
Rehoboam has not shown himself to be unusually pious, but (at least in this passage) he obeys the will of God. He certainly is not an outright apostate like Jeroboam. At God's command, Rehoboam accedes to the split kingdom and avoids civil war.
Jeroboam is, in every way, a villain. He has no claim to the throne of Israel. He rose to prominence as a civil servant under Solomon, then became a spokesman for the Hebrews disaffected by the severe forced labor imposed by Solomon in building first the Temple, and then various opulent secular buildings. When his rebellion failed, he fled to Egypt where he lived in exile; and when Solomon died, he returned, formed a great coalition of rebels, and usurped the throne. He was the Vladimir Lenin of Israel.
As we discussed previously, his religious views are Machiavellian. He does not want his subjects going to Jerusalem for feasts, for fear that they will be influenced favorably toward Rehoboam.
Baal and Asherah
Ba'al images from Babylon and
Sumeria, and a Canaanite El.
And so, the ten northern tribes, after everything that they have been through in the previous centuries, turn from God back to idolatry. Ironically, Jeroboam builds golden calves, unmistakably reminding us the Hebrews who built a golden calf at the base of Mt. Sinai and their violent destruction soon after. Idolatry seems to be the surest way in invoke God's terrible wrath.
There are three primary idols that the Hebrews will turn to, when they turn away from God. The golden calf is an emblem of El, the bull god, who is the father of gods in the indigenous Canaanite religion; El was connected to the Egyptian deities Ptah and (later) Osiris. (The bull is also the form of the hideous Ba'al of child sacrifice, Moloch, who would usually have an oven in his belly for burning infants alive.) The Hebrew word el was also the generic word for “god” and they used it as we do, as both a common noun to describe a god and, also, as a proper noun by which to address God.
The golden El statues might thus be the most offensive of all idols, since they were called “God” in Hebrew, just as Yahweh was.
The second name we hear in connection with Hebrew idolatry is Baal (or Ba'al); but again, this is a generic noun, not a specific deity. It was used as a title for any god who was a child of the bull-god El. But unlike “El”, “Baal” always refers to a pagan idol.
The third great target of idolatry in Canaanite Israel was Asherah, the wife-consort of El. She was embodied by the erection of poles, usually in high places, called asherim or Asherah poles. These were not symbols of a disembodied god, as a cross might be for us, but actual goddesses who governed human fertility.
Meditation : Prayer : Most High, Glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my mind. Give me a right faith, a firm hope and a perfect charity, so that I may always and in all things act according to Your Holy Will. Amen. |
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