1 Kings 12:24 Thus said the LORD, You shall not go up, nor fight against your brothers the children of Israel: return every man to his house… The Old Testament "philosophy of history" regards all events as at once the results of human forces and of God's purposes, and finds no contradiction in the double aspect. Rehoboam was no less a criminal fool, Jeroboam no less a crafty traitor, because they were both working out God's purpose. The possible co-existence of freedom of action, necessarily involving responsibility, and God's sovereignty, is inexplicable, and as certain as it is inexplicable. Metaphysicians and metaphysical theologians may fumble at, or cut, the knot till doomsday, but it will not be untied or denied. Rehoboam ran the ship on the rocks, but God willed that it should be wrecked. But another mystery emerges, for the Divine resolve to shatter the kingdom was due to the thwarting of the Divine purpose in establishing it. Sovereign as that Divine will is, man has power to oppose it and to block its course, and lead to changes of its direction, as we sometimes hear of an army of caterpillars stopping a train. God's methods vary, but His purposes remain the same. The ship tacks as the wind shifts, but it's always steering for the one port. The unifying of the tribes into a kingdom, and the disruption of the kingdom, were equally in the Divine plan, and were both, in a real sense, also the direct results of men's sin and opposition to God. Hence it follows that "the history of the world is the judgment of the world." The "natural" consequences of national acts are the punishments or rewards of these acts. Solomon's tyranny, Rehoboam's folly, the rebels' indifference to the unity of the nation worked out the catastrophe, which was both a political effect, produced by political causes, and a Divine judgment, and was the latter just because it was the former. For nations, and for individuals, God "makes whips to scourge" them of their "vices," and in the mighty maze of human acts, has so ordered the issues of things that "every transgression and disobedience receives its just recompense of reward." So the "undevout" historian "is mad." (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel: return every man to his house; for this thing is from me. They hearkened therefore to the word of the LORD, and returned to depart, according to the word of the LORD. |
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