Jeroboam’s Calves

After the death of Solomon, the kingdom of Israel fractures. Solomon’s son and successor Rehoboam is asked to lighten the “heavy yoke” his father had placed on the people. If Rehoboam will walk back Solomon’s policies, the people pledge to be loyal to him (12:4). Rehoboam ultimately refuses the people’s request, telling them that life under his rule will not get lighter, but heavier. His father will be nothing in comparison to him (12:10–11, 14).

Rehoboam’s unwillingness to lighten the people’s load results in a split between the Southern kingdom of Judah, where Jerusalem and the temple were located, and the Northern kingdom of Israel. While Rehoboam continued to rule in Judah, Jeroboam, who had previously been promised ten of the twelve tribes (11:29–40), ruled over the northern kingdom. Though God has given Jeroboam everything he had promised, Jeroboam is concerned that the people will not remain loyal to him if they still “go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem” (12:27).

Jeroboam’s anxiety is not unfounded in worldly terms, but is incoherent with respect to the covenant since the God whose temple he fears has already promised him the kingdom. In ancient Israel, the connection between the king and the cult expressed a sacred-social order, a way of arranging human life so that it aligns with the suprahuman authority of the God who established them. While it should be clear to Jeroboam that God is the one who has established him as king of the divided kingdom, he recognizes the ease with which worship at the temple might reinforce Rehoboam’s kingship while diminishing his own. When the people go to offer their sacrifices, they are recognizing their dependence on God and realigning their lives with him. Because the temple is in Jerusalem, they might begin to assume that the “true” earthly king is Rehoboam, not Jeroboam.

Fearing for his life and for the loss of his kingdom (12:26–27), Jeroboam takes steps to preserve his position as king over the Northern kingdom. Unfortunately, the step he takes involves a distortion of the sacred-social order. To do so, Jeroboam must redesign a cultic system without the temple or the Levites (2 Chron 11:13–17).

Whereas God had commissioned the Jerusalem temple (2 Sam 7:13; 1 Kgs 6:11–13), Jeroboam commissions two golden calves and establishes worship sites in Bethel and Dan. Dan served the northern tribes near the Syrian border; Bethel was situated on the path to Jerusalem, intercepting anyone traveling south toward Jerusalem. Jeroboam’s strategy was to make worship more convenient for the people by creating a sacred-social order in which God’s house in Jerusalem was de-centered and Israel could be established as a truly separate kingdom. That the Levites left the northern kingdom for Rehoboam (2 Chron 11:13–14) was a clear sign that those committed to the true order recognized the counterfeit. The Levites were the custodians of the sacred blueprint in Israelite society. They maintained the boundaries around God’s presence (Num 1:53), instructed the people in the law (Deut 33:10; 2 Chron 17:8–9), and handled the logistics and administration of the temple (1 Chron 23:4–5; 26:12–22). Set apart to God (Exod 32:26–29; Num 8:5–22), they were the priests who represented the priestly nation. They could not remain custodians of a sacred order that had been redesigned to displace the God it claimed to serve.

Jeroboam’s efforts reflect his desire to secure his kingdom and his disregard for reflecting the true sacred-social order. Under the true order, the Jerusalem temple remained God’s house, the Levites remained the keepers of sacred space, both Rehoboam and Jeroboam were subject to God’s authority and to the law, and the division of the kingdom was not intended to create a rupture among God’s people. As God himself communicates through Shemaiah, the division was his doing and should not result in war between Northern and Southern kingdoms. Essentially, God remains Sovereign over the North and the South. While the administration and governance have shifted with the institution of a new king in the North, the people are not separate. They are still to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6).

Jeroboam’s strategy is intelligible only on the assumption that the kingdom he has been given has become a larger reality than the Lord who gave it. Ahijah had promised him a sure house if he walked in the Lord’s ways; the calves at Bethel and Dan represent the moment Jeroboam concludes that this promise is insufficient to preserve what he already holds. He trades God’s promise for an engineered loyalty. He creates a distorted sacred-social order so the institution can stand without the God who established it. Jeroboam secures his political position by using rather than serving God. What Jeroboam builds at Bethel and Dan is the architectural form of a question every Christian institution will eventually need to answer: do the glorification of God and building up of Christ’s body demand that a given institution continue? If what may be done to preserve an institution runs counter to God’s will, the institution isn’t worth continuing.