1 Kings 16:29

The Punishment of Jeroboam's Sin.

We have already considered the true character of Jeroboam's sin It now remains for us to observe, first, the punishment which it provoked, and secondly, its workings in later generations. And its punishment was so great and so varied that it will of itself occupy the rest of this homily.

But let us remember, in the first place, that there were two parties to this sin. Jeroboam sinned himself and also "made Israel to sin." King and people alike were involved in the schism. If the one suggested it, the other embraced it. Originating with the former, it was approved and perpetuated by the latter. There were two parties, consequently, to the punishment. That was impartially shared between sovereign and subjects. We have to consider, therefore—

I. THE RETRIBUTION WHICH BEFELL THE ROYAL HOUSE .

II. THE RETRIBUTION WHICH OVERTOOK THE PEOPLE AT LARGE .

I. And in considering the pain and loss in which this sin involved those who sate upon the throne of Israel, we must discriminate between Jeroboam and his successors. Jeroboam was the prime, but not the only offender. If he was the author, subsequent kings were continuators of the schism. And as he had his punishment, so they had theirs. Let us therefore take account first of the sorrows and sufferings of the heresiarch, Jeroboam . Amongst these were the following:

1. The foreknowledge that his kingdom would be overthrown . This dismal foreboding must have clouded all his reign, for it dated from the day of that first sacrifice at Bethel. Then he learnt that a child of David's house should cover his schemes and memory with disgrace. He knew that the dynasty he had founded should not endure, and moreover that he was the author of its ruin, and he knew that others knew it too. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." What shall we say of the crowned head disquieted by such forebodings as these?

2. The foretaste of the destruction of his family . As he had learnt from the man of God of the triumph of his rival and the dishonour of his priesthood, so he learnt from Ahijah of the excision of his family. This ambitious prince knew that his posterity would be swept away like dung, would be devoured like carrion. And he was assured of this, not only by prophetic word and by signs following, but he had an earnest thereof in the death of his firstborn. He knew that that was but "the beginning of the end." It was a sharp pang, but it was the lightest part of his punishment ( 1 Kings 14:13 ).

3. Remorse and vexation . He could not fail to compare the two messages of Ahijah ( 1 Kings 11:31-39 ; 1 Kings 14:7-16 ). The first gave him dominion over ten tribes. The second left him neither subject nor survivor. God had promised to "build him a sure house." God now threatens him and his with annihilation. And why this change? He knew why it was. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." It was because of the calves ( 1 Kings 14:9 ). How he must have repented that piece of folly and faithlessness: how he must have cursed his infatuation—the more inexcusable, as he had the example of Solomon before him. It is possible that this remorse was so poignant that it shortened his days; that it was thus "the Lord struck him, and he died" ( 2 Chronicles 13:20 ).

4. The shameful murder of his family . We can readily believe that a parvenu like Jeroboam, a servant who had raised himself to the throne, would have been content to suffer for the rest of his days, if thereby he could have averted the dishonour of his name and the destruction of his posterity—of all evils the greatest in the eyes of a Jew. But no; he foresaw that butchery awaited his nearest and dearest, and he had not slept long in his grave before the knife of Baasha was at his children's throats. And this murder of his posterity, though after the manner of Eastern despotisms, would seem to have been marked by circumstances of peculiar cruelty ( 1 Kings 16:7 ). It was so truculent that it brought down vengeance on the instrument. Our history gives no details, but it is easy to picture the divans dripping with blood, the corridors choked with the corpses of Jeroboam's wife and children. The annals of Turkey and other Eastern kingdoms would supply many illustrations of this deed.

5. His own untimely end . For he died by the visitation of God—by a stroke of some kind or other. He may have perished like Antiochus Epiphanes, like Sylla, like Herod, like Philip of Spain. Or, like our Henry the First, he may have never smiled again after his son's death, but steadily drooped to his grave. Somehow his life was cut short. "The wicked shall be silent in darkness."

Such, then, was the fourfold penalty which Jeroboam paid for his sin. Let us now consider the punishment which befell his successors, who "walked in his way" and "departed not" from his heresy. We may trace it—

1. In the shortness of their reigns . Nadab, Elah, Ahaziah, all reigned two years. Zimri one week. None of the kings of Israel reigned like David and Solomon, or like Asa and other kings of Judah. In the 250 years that the kingdom of Israel lasted, nineteen kings occupied the throne, as against eleven kings of Judah. Asa saw seven kings in turn rise and fall during his reign; Uzziah saw six; and we have but to remember that long life was one of the principal sanctions of the Mosaic dispensation to be assured that these brief reigns were a manifestation of the righteous judgment of God.

2. In the revolution and assassination which often closed them . In these 250 years the dynasty was changed no less than seven times, and we know what a change of dynasty meant, in that and a later age. It was one of its traditions that "the man was a fool who when he slew the father spared the children." Six times this tragedy of Tirzah was repeated. Once an unhappy prince, to escape the butchery awaiting him, devoted himself and his household to the flames. Once seventy ghastly heads, in two heaps at the city gate, witnessed to the work of extermination.

II. But now let us note the share of the people in this dispensation of suffering. What befell the priests who ministered at Dan and Bethel—what the worshippers who resorted thither? They or their children suffered these six penalties at least.

1. Misgovernment . Of the kings of Israel there was not one who did not "do evil" in the sight of the Lord. By which we are not only to understand that he worshipped the calves; oppression, exactions, intolerable cruelties may be comprehended under the words. The case of Naboth ( 1 Kings 21:1-29 .) was probably not the only one of its kind. We may be sure, too, that when Elah was drinking himself drunk, injustice was being practised in his name. Incapacity—on the part of the king—may have been the cause of some insurrections, but oppression is a much more .probable reason. We know what Rome was like when the purple fell to military adventurers. Probably Israel fared no better at the hands of its Baashas, Omris, and Menahems. What suffering a change of dynasty involved on the people we may gather from 2 Kings 15:16 . An Eastern kingdom at the best was a despotism, at the worst a devildom.

2. Civil war . The four years' struggle between Omri and Tibni and their respective partisans, which was a war to the death ( 1 Kings 16:22 ), entailed no less miseries on the country than civil war always does. Lands ravaged, homesteads fired, women violated—these were some of its incidents. It has been said that no one can give any adequate description of a battle. What shall be said of a battle lasting over four years? for in a country not so large as Yorkshire civil strife would mean unceasing conflict.

3. Invasion .

Shishak was primarily appointed to chastise Judah, Syria was the lash of Israel. Observe that in the invasion of 2 Kings 13:4 , 2 Kings 13:19 , Bethel was captured by the men of Judah, whilst in that of 2 Kings 15:20 , Dan—Jeroboam's other shrine—was among the first to suffer. The priests of Dan and the inhabitants of the surrounding territory, the worshippers at its temple, bore the brunt of Benhadad's invasion. But the bands of Syria were always invading the land (ch. 20; 2 Kings 6:1-33 .) And many a "little maid" ( 2 Kings 5:2 ) was carried off to dishonour.

"Many a childing mother then

And newborn baby died."

What a picture of the horrors of war have we in 2 Kings 8:12 . Yet such horrors must have been of common occurrence in Israel. And they culminated in the sack of Samaria and the captivity of the nation.

4. Loss of territory . Israel was "cut short" ( 2 Kings 10:1-36 :82). In 2 Kings 1:1 (cf. 1 Kings 3:5 ) Moab rebels. Syria, its great adversary, was once an appanage of Israel. Now Israel is made a dependency of Assyria ( 2 Kings 15:19 , 2 Kings 15:20 ).

5. Famine . It was the Lord called for this ( 2 Kings 8:1 ). It was one of His "sore judgments" ( Ezekiel 14:13 , Ezekiel 14:21 ). And it would seem to have been almost chronic in Israel (cf. 1 Kings 17:1 , 1 Kings 17:12 ; 1 Kings 18:2 ; 2 Kings 4:38 ; 2 Kings 6:25 sqq.; 7.; 2 Kings 8:1 ). And the terrible straits to which the people were reduced thereby may be inferred from 2 Kings 6:25 , 2 Kings 6:29 ; cf. Deuteronomy 28:56 , Deuteronomy 28:57 .

6. Captivity . For the carrying away beyond Babylon into the cities of the Modes was part of the reckoning for Jeroboam's sin, and for the allied sin of idolatry ( 1 Kings 14:15 ; 2 Kings 17:22 , 2 Kings 17:23 ). The "carrying into captivity"—these are familiar words on our lips. But which of us can form any conception of the untold, unspeakable miseries which they cover? The gangs of prisoners tramping to Siberia give us but a faint idea. "Hermann and Dorothea" is a tale of modern times, and the flight it pictures conveys no just impression of the horrors of a wholesale transportation. When the land was swept as with a drag net (cf. 2 Kings 21:13 , and compare Herod. 3:149, 2 Kings 6:31 , where the manner in which the Persians carried away the population of some of the Greek islands is described), and the entire population marched in gangs across the burning plains, under brutal and lustful overseers—men in comparison with whom a "Legree" would be mildness itself—we may imagine some of the horrors of that journey, Nor did those sufferings end in the land of their captivity. Before the people was absorbed amongst the neighbouring nations, and so effaced from the page of later history, we may be pretty sure they paid a constant tribute of suffering for their sin. Vae victis, this was the unvarying law of ancient warfare, and the exiles of Assyria proved it in their own persons. Two hundred and fifty years after the schism, the seed sown by Jeroboam was still reaped in cruelty and agony and blood.