to the Lord at its center. A seven-day feast followed and then Solomon sent
everyone home, and although it is said that they “blessed the king” we also
read that the people “went to their tents, glad and good of heart on account of
all the goodness that Jehovah had done to David his servant, and to Israel His
people” (I Kings 8: 66)
The building of the temple had been a seven-year project early in Solomon’s
reign, which means that David had been gone for at least that long. Yet it is still
David, seven or more years later, who is seen as the focus in the kingdom of the
blessings the Lord was providing His people.
In the time soon after the death of Solomon, the kingdom was split into
two: a northern, 10-tribe kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah.
Jeroboam, who had been a loyal servant of Solomon, was chosen by the Lord
as the first king of the new kingdom of 10 tribes. He was informed of this in a
meeting with the prophet Ahijah outside the city of Jerusalem.
Ahijah showed Jeroboam that the kingdom had been “torn” from Solomon
and put into his hands. But the Lord also said (as Ahijah declared): “But I will
not take all of the kingdom out of [Solomon’s] hand . . . for the sake of David
My servant, whom I chose, who kept My commandments and My statutes . . .
And to his son will I give one tribe, so that David My servant may have a lamp
all the days before My face in Jerusalem.” (I Kings 11: 34, 36)
Later in the same meeting, Jeroboam is told by the Lord (again, as Ahijah
reports), that “if you . . . will walk in My ways, and do that which is upright
in My eyes . . . as did David My servant, I will be with you and will build you
a faithful house, as I built for David.” (I Kings 11: 38) In other words, now a
second generation removed from King David and his reign, he still remained
a central figure (or even, arguably, THE central figure) in the history of Israel
and its kings.
Because Solomon’s heart had been turned away from the Lord in his later
years, the whole kingdom was taken away from his son, King Rehoboam,
but not entirely – because of David. And a promise was made that the new
breakaway kingdom could endure if its kings follow the Lord – just like David.
The northern kingdom did not, in the end, endure. We have seen (in the
story that I was reading out loud to those sixth-graders about the man of God’s
curse), that King Jeroboam had established worship of golden calves as a way
of keeping his people from traveling to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. In
fact, in the line of kings of the northern kingdom, not a single one was ever
described as doing what was right in the Lord’s sight (as David had done!) and
eventually the kingdom fell to the Assyrians.
But the legend of David as the exemplary king in Israel was never forgotten
in the southern kingdom of Judah. There were some Judean kings in the line
descended from David who managed to do what was right, but one of the
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