The Kingdom That Tore in Two

Solomon grew old, and his heart wandered. He had married wives from many faraway lands, and to please them he built altars to their gods, little tables for idols that could not hear or love or save, set up on the hills of the land where the true God had put his name. The wisest man in the world let go of the first and simplest thing he knew.

So God told him plainly: because of this, the kingdom will tear. Not in your days, but in your son's.

When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king, and the people came to him with one request. "Your father made our work heavy. Make it lighter, and we will serve you gladly." The old advisors told him to answer kindly. His young friends told him to answer harder than his father ever had. Rehoboam chose harsh.

And the kingdom tore like worn-out cloth. Ten tribes in the north walked away and crowned their own king, and kept the name Israel. Two tribes in the south stayed in Jerusalem with David's family, and were called Judah. One people, promised to God together, now two kingdoms glaring at each other across the hills.

Then the northern king did something you have heard before. Afraid his people would drift back to Jerusalem to worship, he made two calves of gold. "Here are your gods," he said, "who brought you up out of Egypt." As if a metal cow had split the sea. Long ago at the foot of Sinai the people had danced around a golden calf, and now a king built that same old lie into the middle of the land.

King after king followed, north and south, and the books of Kings toll the same sad line over them like a bell: he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. A few kings in Judah loved God with their whole heart. Most did not. Idols stood on every hill, and the people God had carried out of Egypt slowly forgot whose they were.

Watch what God did about it. He sent voices. Prophets, one after another, year after year: men who stood in front of kings and told the truth, who warned and wept and pleaded, "Come back. Come home. Your God still wants you."

And underneath all the tearing, one promise held. God had sworn to David that his family would carry a forever King, and though the crowns tarnished and the kingdom lay in two pieces, that promise ran on beneath the years like a stream under ice. One day a Son of David would come whose heart would never wander, a King who gathers torn-apart things and makes them whole.

But first, the voices. The next pages belong to them, and to the God who would rather send a prophet into the fire than lose his people without a fight.