1 Kings 14:21 - Meaning and Application

Judah’s story and Israel’s story are woven together in this book. Jeroboam outlived Rehoboam by four or five years, yet his history is given first so Rehoboam’s reign can be told as one complete story. And it is a sad story.

There is nothing good said here about Rehoboam, the king of Judah. The account begins only with the fact that he was forty-one years old when he started to reign. That means he was born in the last year of David, and he grew up in the best years of Solomon. He had every advantage, yet he did not live up to them. Solomon’s later unfaithfulness did more to corrupt him than Solomon’s wisdom and devotion did to shape him well.

He reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city where God had placed his name. There he had every chance to learn his duty, if only he had been willing to obey. His mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman, and this is mentioned twice (1 Kings 14:21, 1 Kings 14:31). It was strange that David would let Solomon marry an Ammonite woman while he was still alive, though it is likely Solomon loved her because Naamah means “beauty,” and David was unwilling to oppose him. But that marriage had very bad effects on later generations.

She may have been the daughter of Shobi the Ammonite, who had shown kindness to David (2 Samuel 17:27). David may have wanted to repay that kindness by joining his son to that family. No one can fully imagine how lasting and how destructive it can be to marry against God’s will, especially by joining with unbelievers. Rehoboam also had constant war with Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:30), which must have made his life deeply troubled. After only seventeen years, he died and left the throne to his son. His father, grandfather, and grandson, who all ruled well, each reigned forty years. Sin often shortens both a person’s life and his peace.

There is also much evil said here about the people under him, both in their character and in their condition. Their wickedness is described in a very sad way (1 Kings 14:22-24). Judah, the only people in the world who openly claimed to belong to God, did evil in his sight. They did it with contempt for him and for the signs of his special presence among them. They provoked him to jealousy, like an unfaithful wife who breaks her marriage promise. Their fathers had been bad enough, especially in the days of the judges, but they did even worse than their fathers had done.

The splendor of their temple, the display of their priests, and all the outward advantages of their religion could not keep them faithful. Nothing less than the Spirit of God being poured out from above can keep God’s people loyal to him. The account of Judah’s sin is much like the apostle’s description of the Gentile world’s sin (Romans 1:21, Romans 1:24), so that both Jew and Gentile are shown to be under sin (Romans 3:9).

They became empty in their thoughts about God and exchanged his glory for an image. They built high places, sacred pillars, and groves of trees (1 Kings 14:23), abusing God’s name by attaching it to idols and corrupting his worship with idolatry. They foolishly imagined that they were honoring God by worshiping on high hills, and that they pleased him by worshiping under the pleasant shade of green trees.

They were also given over to shameful desires, like the idolaters described in Romans 1:26-27. There were men in the land who practiced sodomy, that is, sexual sin between men, something too vile to describe lightly, much less approve. They dishonored God by one sin, and then God gave them over to dishonor themselves by another. They abused the privileges of being a holy nation, so God gave them up to their own desires, until they copied the abominations of the cursed Canaanites. In this, the Lord was just. If they acted like the nations that had been driven out, how could they expect anything other than to be driven out as well?

They were also weak and poor, and that was the result of their sin. Sin always leaves a people exposed, drained, and weakened. Shishak, king of Egypt, came against them and, either by force or by surrender, made himself master of Jerusalem itself. He carried off the treasures of both the temple and the royal treasury, the wealth that David and Solomon had gathered (1 Kings 14:25-26). These riches likely tempted him to attack. To save the rest, Rehoboam may have given them up, as Ahab later did (1 Kings 20:4).

Shishak also took the golden shields that had been made in Solomon’s time (1 Kings 14:26). He carried them away as trophies of victory, and Rehoboam replaced them with bronze shields. His guards carried these before him when he went in state to the house of the Lord (1 Kings 14:27-28). This showed how much his glory had fallen. Sin makes gold lose its shine, turns the finest gold into bronze, and brings down what once seemed rich and strong.

We can praise Rehoboam for going to the house of the Lord, perhaps even more often because he had been humbled. We should not blame him for going in royal splendor. Great men should honor God with their honor, and in doing so they are themselves most honored.