Saturday - 2nd Chronicles 11 - Lots of Levites & A Distracted King

There were 2 tribes who originally remained loyal to Rehoboam: Judah and Benjamin.  As the 10 tribes to their north went their own way, those 2 stuck together.  But, they were not to remain completely alone. The Levites began to move into Judah and Jerusalem out of all of the other tribal lands in Israel. Jeroboam, the king of Israel, took his people in a new and evil religious direction... so the Levites lost their significance there. Clearly, Rehoboam's kingdom was the place to be. Rehoboam had promptly strengthened his kingdom by establishing 15 fortified towns complete with captains, supplies, munitions and members of the royal family.   And, he did pretty well as king, at first.

This is not to say that Rehoboam was perfect. He had a weakness. And, his primary weakness was women (2^nd Chronicles 11:23). He wasn't quite as bad as his father had been, but still, he did have 78 lovers (2^nd Chronicles 11:21). We can commend him for listening to God's warning and thereby allowing the 10 northern tribes to separate from his jurisdiction (2^nd Chronicles 11:4). We can commend him for following after the example of his dad and granddad (2^nd Chronicles 11:17)... for a while.  What we can't do is excuse his faults.  We will read about those in the next chapter.