1 Kings 12:26

26. Jeroboam said in his heart He earnestly soliloquized. The expression implies deep thought, and profound, far-sighted consideration. He not only thoroughly considered the subject within himself, but he also took counsel with his most intimate and interested advisers. He did not wish nor design to introduce heathenish idolatry into his kingdom, but he was apprehensive that if all his people went up to Jerusalem to worship their hearts would soon revolt from him, and turn to the government of Rehoboam. So the making of new sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, the institution of the calf-worship, and the establishment of a new priesthood, were undertaken, not with the design of countenancing idolatry, but professedly as modifications and reforms in the true worship of God demanded by the changed circumstances of the kingdom. They were dictated by a shrewd state-policy; not by the word of God. They were probably presented to the people as improvements on the temple worship, for it was not to be expected that a people so long accustomed to the worship of the invisible Jehovah, though they might have felt ever so bitter towards the government at Jerusalem, would consent to any semblance of idol-worship unless it were presented with a plausible show of argument. And doubtless the proposed reforms, when first presented to the people, lacked no show of reason. It was urged that it was too much for all the people to go to Jerusalem, (1 Kings 12:28,) and that the division of the old kingdom, which was of the Lord, ( 1Ki 12:15 ; 1 Kings 12:24,) required some corresponding changes in the place and modes of Divine worship.

Jeroboam might have maintained, with a skill worthy of the ratiocination of modern German Neology, that there was nothing in the place itself that need lead them to worship solely at Jerusalem, for Shiloh, Nob, and Gibeon had been sanctuaries before it was chosen; that the changing of the priesthood from one set of persons to another had a sufficient precedent in Solomon’s deposition of Abiathar, (1 Kings 2:27;) and that the setting up of the golden calves was not in itself wrong, but had the sanction of the blessed Aaron’s example, who set up one at Sinai, and taught the people to look upon it, not as an idol, but as a symbol of the Lord that brought them out of Egypt. Exodus 32:4-5. But just here was Jeroboam’s sin a one-sided construction and use of the facts of sacred history, and an arrogant assumption to improve the religious worship of the nation by most dangerous methods, that had no proper sanction from Jehovah or his prophets. He may be regarded as a type of the Romish hierarchy, which, in its efforts to bind the people to St. Peter’s chair, has verily set up graven images in connexion with its worship, and assuming to represent the sanctities of a holy antiquity, has, in fact, reproduced the forms of heathen idolatry. “The sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat,” says Stanley, “is the sin again and again repeated in the policy (half-worldly, half-religious) which has prevailed through large tracts of ecclesiastical history. Many are the forms of worship in the Christian Church, which, with high pretensions, have been nothing else but ‘so many various and opposite ways of breaking the second commandment.’ Many a time has the end been held to justify the means, and the Divine character been degraded by the pretence, or even the sincere intention, of upholding his cause; for the sake of secular aggrandizement; for the sake of binding together good systems, which, it was feared, would otherwise fall to pieces; for the sake of supporting the faith of the multitude from the fear lest they should fall away to rival sects, or lest the enemy should come and take away their place and nation. False arguments have been used in support of religious truth, false miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text defended. And so the faith of mankind has been undermined by the very means intended to preserve it.”