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SHEMAIAH THE PROPHET VERSUS KING REHOBOAM: TWO OPPOSED INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SCHISM (1 KINGS XII 21-4)

Just after the mention of Jeroboam's coronation as king over Israel ( Kings xii 20) appears a passage' that describes a chain reaction: Rehoboam makes ready an army to attack the rebels, and the prophet Shemaiah calls on him to relinquish the endeavour. The confrontation of two opposed interpretations of the schism is implied by the handling of this passage. We are told in v. 21 (actually a direct continuation of v. 18) that when Rehoboam comes to Jerusalem he plans a war against the rebels. For this purpose he enlists highly skilled warriors (bahur milhama)2 in huge numbers, 180,000 men. Against these prepara- tions sounds the prophetic word that forbids the war: "Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel" (v. 24).3 Before the explicit reason ("for this thing is from me") is given, another reason is hinted at by the word "brethren" for it expresses kinship4 and also equality of status. This contrasts sharply with the views of Rehoboam and his advisers throughout the narrative of xii 1-20.5 Rehoboam's intention is "to bring the kingdom again (lehasib )et-hammelûkâ) to Rehoboam the son of Solomon" (v. 21). In con- tradiction, the prophet orders, "Return every man to his house" (v. 24)-not lehasib but rather The obedience of the king and his warriors to this command is also indicated by the root "They ... returned (ze?ayyasubu) 6 to depart, according to the word of the Lord" (v. 24). Alongside the word-play of lehasib against there appears a play upon the meaning of "house" (bayit). At the end of v. 20 we hear of the rule of bêt daze?ad, and here bayit it used in its metaphorical sense of "dynasty" . bet diiwid holds sway only over the tribe of Judah. Rehoboam desires to bring the northern tribes under his suzerainty as well, but he is ordered by the prophet to return to his bayit in the literal sense of ` `house" : lebet0. 8 There appears in this passage an interesting use of " naming" . At the beginning of v. 21 the king is named simply as "Rehoboam". At the end of the same verse his name is repeated, although a formulation with a pronoun, "to bring the kingdom again to him", would be quite sufficient-and in a surprisingly 467 expanded form, "to Rehoboam the son of Solomon", which is repeated in v. 23. Is there any reason for this enlargement after the several plain references to "Rehoboam", which begin at xii 1 ? It seems to intensify the contrast between the points of view of king and prophet: Rehoboam justifies his actions in terms of his position as Solomon's son: "to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam the son of Solomon",9 whereas in the prophetic conception, which interprets the schism as a punishment for Solomon's misdeeds (cf. v. 15 and xi 29-39), Rehoboam's being Solomon's son is on the contrary the reason why he has no right to proceed: "Speak unto Rehoboam, the son of Solomon ..." (v. 23). In this verse he is defined as "king of Judah", since in the eyes of the prophet he is indeed a king, but not over the whole of Israel, only over Judah. V. 21, by contrast, reflects Rehoboam's own point of view, in which he is defined quite differently. Against the political interpretation of events held by Rehoboam,'° Shemaiah presents a religious view: the schism has come about in accordance with the Lord's will and therefore Rehoboam must reconcile himself to it. His obedience ("They hearkened therefore to the word [debar] of the Lord") contrasts with his previous failure to respond to the people during the negotiations (v. 15: "Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the people ... that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake [dibber] "), and it is put into effect by a dispersal of his warriors which forms a parallel to the scattering of the northern tribes from Shechem (v. 16). This acceptance of the prophetic inter- pretation by the king, which involves an acceptance of the schism as a legitimate fact, is the actual end of the schism narrative. Ramat-Gan Amos Frisch

1 While most scholars consider this passage a late insertion, J. H. Gronbæk dissents; see VT 15 (1965), pp. 421-36. This short note is not the proper place for dealing with this question. Yet in the light of the literaty features of the passage and its connections with the body of the story pointed out throughout the present note, we consider this passage not as an artificial insertion but rather as a deliberate artistic conclusion to the narrative as a whole. 2 See Z. Weisman, VT 31 (1981), pp. 443-4. 3 S. Zalevsky, in Fest. Baruch Ben-Yehuda(Tel Aviv, 1981), pp. 112-13 (in Hebrew), has established a significant resemblance between this passage and the story of the rash warriors in Deut. i 42-3, and has even raised the possibility that there existed a pattern of prophecy which forbade going to war.