2 Chronicles 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Rehoboam, Solomon's son, goes to Shechem to be made king, and the people ask him to lighten the hard labor and heavy demands his father placed on them. He rejects the advice of Solomon's older advisers to answer kindly and follows the young men who tell him to threaten even harsher treatment. When he answers harshly, the northern tribes break away, stone the officer he sends over the forced labor, and Rehoboam flees to Jerusalem. The chapter says this turn of events came from God, to fulfill what he had said through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam, and that Israel has been in revolt against David's family line since then.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • Rehoboam went to Shechem.
   • All Israel had come to Shechem to make Rehoboam king.
2. 10:2
   • Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it.
   • Jeroboam was in Egypt at the time.
   • Jeroboam had fled to Egypt from the presence of King Solomon.
   • Jeroboam returned from Egypt.
3. 10:3
   • They sent and called Jeroboam.
   • Jeroboam and all Israel came.
   • They spoke to Rehoboam.
4. 10:4
   • The people said Rehoboam's father made their yoke hard.
   • The people asked Rehoboam to lighten the hard service of his father.
   • The people asked Rehoboam to lighten the heavy yoke his father had put on them.
   • The people said that if he did so they would serve him.
5. 10:5
   • Rehoboam told them to come back to him after three days.
   • The people departed.
6. 10:6
   • King Rehoboam took counsel with the elders who had stood before his father Solomon while Solomon was alive.
   • Rehoboam asked the elders what counsel they gave for the answer to return to this people.
7. 10:7
   • The elders told Rehoboam that if he would be good to this people, and please them, and speak good words to them, they would be his servants always.
8. 10:8
   • Rehoboam forsook the counsel the elders gave him.
   • Rehoboam took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and who stood before him.
9. 10:9
   • Rehoboam asked the young men what counsel they gave for the answer to return to this people.
   • Rehoboam said the people had asked him to lighten the yoke his father put on them.
10. 10:10
    • The young men who had grown up with Rehoboam spoke to him.
    • The young men told Rehoboam how to answer the people who had said his father made their yoke heavy and asked him to lighten it.
    • The young men told Rehoboam to say that his little finger is thicker than his father's loins.
11. 10:11
    • The young men's answer said that Rehoboam's father loaded a heavy yoke on them.
    • The young men's answer said Rehoboam would add to their yoke.
    • The young men's answer said Rehoboam's father disciplined them with whips.
    • The young men's answer said Rehoboam would discipline them with scorpions.
12. 10:12
    • Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day.
    • The king had told them to come back to him on the third day.
13. 10:13
    • The king answered the people harshly.
    • King Rehoboam forsook the counsel of the elders.
14. 10:14
    • Rehoboam spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men.
    • Rehoboam said he would make their yoke heavy.
    • Rehoboam said he would add to it.
    • Rehoboam said his father disciplined them with whips.
    • Rehoboam said he would discipline them with scorpions.
15. 10:15
    • The king did not listen to the people.
    • The turn of events was from God.
    • The purpose was that the LORD might fulfill his word.
    • The LORD had spoken that word by the hand of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.
16. 10:16
    • All Israel saw that the king did not listen to them.
    • The people answered the king.
    • The people asked what portion they have in David.
    • The people said they have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
    • The people called Israel to go each to his tents.
    • The people told David to look to his own house.
    • All Israel went to their tents.
17. 10:17
    • Rehoboam reigned over the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah.
18. 10:18
    • King Rehoboam sent Hadoram, who was over the forced labor.
    • The children of Israel stoned Hadoram with stones.
    • Hadoram died.
    • King Rehoboam hurried to get up into his chariot to flee to Jerusalem.
19. 10:19
    • Israel rebelled against the house of David.
    • That rebellion has lasted to this day.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1

Shechem was a town about thirty miles north of Jerusalem, in the hill country of the northern tribes, long used as a place of public assembly. Rehoboam was Solomon's son and heir, but he had to go north to be accepted there: 'all Israel' in this chapter means the northern tribes as a body, as distinct from Judah in the south.

10:2

Jeroboam had been one of Solomon's officials, put in charge of forced-labor gangs from the northern tribes. He fled to Egypt after a prophet told him he would rule over most of the tribes, and Solomon tried to kill him.

10:4

A yoke is the wooden beam strapped across the necks of oxen to harness them to a plow or cart; used of people it means being worked like an animal. The complaint is about specific things: heavy taxation and compulsory unpaid labor on royal building projects, which Solomon had imposed on the northern tribes.

10:6

These are the senior officials who had served in Solomon's court; 'stood before' him is the ordinary Hebrew phrase for holding a post in someone's service.

10:8

These young men grew up with Rehoboam in the king's house. They were his friends.

10:10

A boast in the form of a crude comparison: even my smallest part outweighs the whole of my father. The King James 'loins' means the waist or hips, the thickest part of the body.

10:11

'Scorpions' here is most likely a name for a whip whose lashes were weighted or barbed, so that they tore the skin rather than merely bruising it, a worse instrument than a plain whip, not literal insects.

10:15

Ahijah of Shiloh was a prophet who had earlier torn a new cloak into twelve pieces and given ten of them to Jeroboam, telling him he would rule ten of the tribes. Shiloh was the northern town where the tent-shrine had once stood.

10:16

This is a formal declaration of secession, using set phrases. 'What share do we have in David' means we have no stake in his dynasty and owe it nothing. Calling David 'the son of Jesse' rather than 'the king' is deliberately dismissive. 'Everyone go home' is literally 'to your tents, Israel', an old muster-and-disperse cry from the days of camping in the field, meaning the assembly is over and we recognize no further claim on us.

10:17

The break was territorial: the ten northern tribes went their own way, and Rehoboam kept only the southern territory of Judah, together with Benjamin, and any northerners living inside it.

10:18

Hadoram ran the forced-labor system that was the very thing the people were protesting about, which is why sending him was inflammatory. Stoning was a killing carried out by a whole crowd together, with no single executioner.

10:19

'Ever since' means down to the time the writer was working, centuries later, the split never healed. 'The house of David' means his royal line and its descendants, not a building.