2 Chronicles 11:18

REHOBOAM'S SIXTY CONCUBINES AND EIGHTEEN WIVES

"And Rehoboam took him a wife, Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, and of Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse; and she bare him sons: Jeush, and Shemariah, and Zaham. And after her he took Maacah the daughter of Absalom; and she bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Zizi, and Shelomith. And Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines (for he took eighteen wives and threescore concubines), and begat twenty and eight sons and threescore daughters. And Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah to be chief, even the prince among his brethren; for he was minded to make him king. And he dealt wisely, and dispersed of all his sons throughout all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fortified city: and he gave them victuals in abundance. And he sought for them many wives."

There is no parallel passage with this in Kings; and we are thankful for this intimate glimpse of what life must have been like in the harems of Jewish kings. One may only imagine the intrigues, jealousies, outright hatreds, and bitter rivalries that resulted from a large compound filled with a total of seventy-eight women competing with each other for their husband's affections, and secretly hating the king for his partiality, first to one, and then to another.

There was no spiritual compatibility whatever with such an arrangement as that revealed here; and by the Chronicler's placement of this paragraph just prior to the mention of Rehoboam's shameful apostasy, he might indeed have considered this as contributory to that apostasy. Indeed, it could hardly have been otherwise.