And Jehovah said to Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done by thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes which I commanded thee, I will certainly rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant
Solomon's reign ends with a verdict, not a gift. God will tear the kingdom away and give it to one of Solomon's own servants. What is he charged with? Why does a whole nation pay? And is there any mercy left in it?
God's complaint is not vague. It names a covenant and laws Solomon knew and ignored. One writer shows how far the collapse had already gone.
Turn to 1 Kings 10 and 11 and you find King Solomon breaking down at every point. He collects many horses. He sends the people back to Egypt. He takes many wives for himself, and piles up silver and gold in great amounts. And though much is told us of Solomon's riches, wisdom and splendour, we are never told that he read the law of the Lord.
Before the kingdom was torn, something else was. His wives moved his heart first, and one writer explains why a heart never stays empty.
His heart was turned away from the Lord first, so when he grew old he gave in to the pull of idols. Our hearts are not empty spaces. If we push the Lord out of our hearts, they will soon take hold of some false substitute. These wives had many substitutes, and they could persuade Solomon that they were attractive.
God had spoken to Solomon twice before, at Gibeon and at Jerusalem. This third time the tone has changed.
Once more, and for the last time, Solomon heard the voice of his God. When He appeared to him at Gibeon, He said, "Ask what I shall give you," and He was pleased with the young king's reply (1 Kings 3). In Jerusalem He spoke to him in words of encouragement and warning (1 Kings 9). Now He could only pass sentence on His shamefully unfaithful servant... The kingdom of Israel should now be broken up. As a witness for God it had become worthless.
Solomon's father sinned too. The difference is what he did next.
When the Lord rebuked David for his sin, David repented deeply. God rebuked Solomon too, but nothing shows that he repented.
Later events give the servant a name, and show the split that followed.
The Lord was angry with him, and no wonder: He would tear the kingdom from him and give it to his servant (1 Kings 11:11). This came to pass, not in Solomon's reign, for God had respect to his father, David. It came in the reign of his very foolish son Rehoboam. The kingdom was split: ten tribes went with Jeroboam, Solomon's servant, and Judah and Benjamin stayed with Rehoboam. It was a big price to pay for his folly and sin.
Solomon heard the sentence and tried to stop it. That put him in company he would not have chosen.
He has become like Saul. Saul tried to kill David because God had given him the kingdom. In the same way Solomon tried to kill his servant Jeroboam, because God had given him ten tribes. In both cases it was rebellion against the decree of God.
The word "surely" sounds final. Yet the next verses soften both the timing and the extent. Neither mercy is owed to Solomon.
Yet the Lord would not do this while Solomon was alive, because He respected Solomon's father David. Solomon's son would suffer the shame of a broken kingdom (v.12). Even so, God would leave one tribe to that son — again for David's sake, not for Solomon's sake... This mercy was also for Jerusalem's sake. God's choice of that city stood, despite the failure and disobedience of all Israel.
This verse gives one cause for the split. It is not the whole account.
Ten of the tribes of Israel were torn from Rehoboam. In 1 Kings 11:11 we are told it was for the sin of Solomon. But verse 33 of the same chapter says it was for the idolatry of the people. And in chapter 12 we find the triggering cause was the harsh way Rehoboam met the people... The fact is that the sin of any one of the three named was enough by itself to bring all the harm that was done. So the responsibility is left at the door of each. Let me say again, though, that this judgment is only about God's government in this life. It does not always reach into eternity.
The story ends here only if the throne depends on men like Solomon.
As far as man is concerned, this is the end of the kingdom. But what a prospect for the future! ...the kingdom of the Divine Solomon will reappear like the sun shining in its strength. It will never again depend on the fallible obedience of man. It will rest on the King whom God will anoint on Zion, the mountain of His holiness, and He never fails in what He has taken up.
- Heart first. Nothing was torn from Solomon until something was turned in him; a heart emptied of God fills with substitutes.
- Charge next. God names the failure plainly: a covenant and laws Solomon was given and never kept.
- Sentence follows. The God who once said "Ask what I shall give you" now only pronounces judgment, and Solomon, unlike David, never repents.
- Mercy remains. The tearing is delayed past his lifetime and one tribe is spared — for David's sake and Jerusalem's, not his own.
- Hope outlasts it. One writer sees the broken kingdom pointing on to a King whose reign never rests on man's obedience.
notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father's sake; I will rend it out of the hand of thy son;
Solomon's long slide into idolatry ends with God speaking to him again — no longer with promises, but with a sentence: God will tear the kingdom away. Verse 12 holds a strange mercy inside that sentence: the loss is real, but God delays it, and the reason has nothing to do with Solomon himself.
God had told Solomon what turning to other gods would cost. Solomon ignored the warning, and God's own word bound Him to act.
God spoke to Solomon again, but now in judgment. He had warned Solomon what would come of turning away from following Him and keeping His commandments. If he served and worshipped idols instead, the result would be ruin. He must now act in faithfulness to His word. In Galatians 6:7 we read, "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." Solomon's wisdom, wealth and power could not turn aside God's just judgment. The kingdom would be torn from him and given to his servant.
The words "I will not do it in your days" sound like leniency toward Solomon. The reason attached to them says otherwise.
God acted in judgment as He must always do when the believer knowingly breaks Scripture. God delayed carrying out that judgment, not for Solomon's sake, but for his father David's.
Solomon keeps his throne whole; his son inherits the fracture. God grants even the one tribe left over on the same borrowed credit.
Yet the Lord would not do this while Solomon was living, because the Lord respected Solomon's father David. But Solomon's son would suffer the humiliation of a broken kingdom (v.12). God would still leave one tribe to that son — again for the sake of David, not for Solomon's sake. Judah was that tribe, though Benjamin, very small and weak, was included with Judah.
This pattern is not confined to kings, and it has a boundary worth knowing.
In the government of God, children have to suffer for the sins of their parents, and nations for the sins of their rulers. People may complain about this and call it injustice. But the fact remains. If a man wastes his inheritance and abuses his body, his children will suffer for it in poverty and weakness. But this does not extend beyond the present life, and the sorrows here on earth are short-lived. No one will undergo the judgment of hell for the sins of others, but only for those he has committed himself.
God sets two limits on the loss — one on its timing, one on its size. Both trace back to the same source.
God always acts in faithfulness to His word and in keeping with His character. So here God holds back from carrying out His judgment during Solomon's lifetime. He does this in line with His word to David, whom He calls "My servant," and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city He had chosen. God also softens its severity. He would not take away the entire kingdom. He would give Solomon's son one tribe, and so keep a lamp for David always in Jerusalem.
Solomon could have rested in that promise. Instead he went after the servant God had named.
Now Solomon faced another promise of God. This time God had promised Jeroboam that part of the kingdom would be his. God had assured him, "Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days." Solomon would not rest in that. Like Herod in a later day, he took the law into his own hands and tried to kill Jeroboam. But of course nothing could frustrate God's promises. Jeroboam fled into Egypt and stayed there until Solomon died.
When the split came, it looked like one king's blunder. Verse 12 had already named the deeper cause.
The obvious and immediate cause of the division was the foolishness of the king. He rejected the advice of the elders. But the underlying cause was Solomon's idolatry... The kingdom was never reunited, and will not be until the Lord comes.
- Sown — Solomon was warned. He sowed idolatry and reaped a torn kingdom. Wisdom, wealth and power could not turn it aside.
- Delayed — the mercy in "I will not do it in your days" was real, but God credited it to David, not to Solomon.
- Softened — the same reason that delayed the judgment also shrank it. God left one tribe and kept a lamp for David in Jerusalem.
- Inherited — the son bore the broken kingdom his father earned. Such consequences run through families and nations. But they belong to this life, not to eternity.
- Wasted — God gave Solomon a lifetime of grace. He spent it hunting Jeroboam instead of resting in God's word. The split he tried to stop came anyway, and it has never healed.
only, I will not rend away all the kingdom I will give one tribe to thy son, for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen.
God's word to Solomon here is both a sentence and a reprieve. He will tear the kingdom away, but not all of it. His reason has nothing to do with Solomon. It points to David, long dead, and to a city God had chosen.
The judgment stands. What limits it is God's faithfulness to His own word.
God always acts in faithfulness to His word and in keeping with His character. So here God holds back His judgment during Solomon's lifetime. He does this in line with His word to David, whom He calls "My servant," and for the sake of Jerusalem, which He had chosen. God also softens its severity. He would not take away the entire kingdom, but would give Solomon's son one tribe, and so keep a lamp for David always in Jerusalem.
God gives David's name as the reason, twice over. Nothing in Solomon, and nothing in the nation, earned what He leaves behind.
Yet the Lord would not do this while Solomon was living because the Lord respected Solomon's father David. But Solomon's son would suffer the humiliation of a broken kingdom. God would still leave one tribe to that son, also for the sake of David, not for Solomon's sake. Judah was that tribe, though it also included Benjamin, which was very small and weak. God granted this for Jerusalem's sake too, since His choice of that city stood despite the failure and disobedience of all Israel.
One tribe sounds like almost nothing left. Yet what is left carries a promise the ten tribes never had.
What mercy! "a light always." The kingdom was greatly reduced in size and in glory. But there was a very marked difference from the ten tribes, the much larger part that passed to the other man. They would change rulers from time to time. Their governing family kept changing, and one man after another rose up... Not so with Judah. God calls it only one tribe, to state their utter loss of glory in the strongest possible way. Yet the light shall be there always. This was how the Lord God of Israel dealt with them: merciful, and at the same time completely righteous.
God says the same thing again later in this chapter, when He speaks to Jeroboam. One writer draws from that repetition what God prizes most.
In verse 34 God comes back once more to the grace He had shown to David. He adds in verse 36: "Yet to his son I will give one tribe, that David My servant may always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put My name." Grace is more in God's eyes than all glory. Or rather, grace is the most precious part of glory, for it stands, so to speak, at the head of all divine perfections.
This is not a one-off mercy. The phrase becomes a refrain running through the later history of the kings.
Would the royal house of David be true to its trust as witness for God among the nations? Sadly, we know the answer. Yet the patience of God was wonderful. In His anger He told Solomon that He would tear his kingdom away. Then He added, "but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David My servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen" (1 Kings 11:13). To Jeroboam He said that David His servant was to have a lamp always before Him in Jerusalem, "the city where I have chosen to put My name" (1 Kings 11:36). Later God recorded the unfaithfulness of Abijam, Solomon's grandson. Even then He said, "Nevertheless, for David's sake the LORD his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him, and establishing Jerusalem" (1 Kings 15:4).
God's word to Jeroboam sets a limit on the affliction that follows. It also points to a kingdom built on different ground from Solomon's.
But God makes one reservation: "And I will afflict the offspring of David because of this, but not forever" (v. 39). In due time that grace, on which David's kingdom rested, would assert its rights again. Jeroboam's kingdom and Solomon's own stood not on grace but on responsibility. The promises of God are without repentance; He delights in grace. So the future kingdom of the true King of Glory will rest on a new covenant, a covenant of grace where God alone is under obligation.
- Cause. God keeps His word, so the sentence falls: He tears the kingdom from Solomon, and Solomon's son bears the loss.
- Limit. God does not take the whole kingdom. The judgment is real, but He holds it back and softens it.
- Reason. God spares that one tribe for David's sake and Jerusalem's sake, not for Solomon's. The mercy rests on someone other than the man He is judging.
- Refrain. "For David's sake" comes back again and again in the later chapters, keeping a lamp in Jerusalem for generation after generation.
- End. God afflicts David's line, but "not forever." The kingdom He intends at last rests on grace, where He alone is under obligation.