Rehobo'am (Heb. Rechdbdm, C^'^rn, erilarger of the people [see Exod. xxxiv, 24, and comp. the name EvpiSiipoe,'] ; Sept. 'Poj3odfi ; Josephus, 'Pofioapoc, Ant. viii, 8, 1), the only son of Solomon, by the Ammonit- ish princess Naamah (1 Kings xiv, 21, 31), and his suc- cessor (xi, 43). Rehoboam's mother is distinguished by the title " the (not ' an,' as in the A. V.) Ammonite." She was therefore one of the foreign women whom Sol- omon took into his establishment (xi, 1). In the Sept. (I Kings xii, 24, answering to xiv, 31 of the Hebrew text) she is stated to have been the "daughter of Ana (i. e. Hanun) the son of Nahash." If this is a transla- tion of a statement which once formed part of the He- brew text, and may be taken as authentic history, it follows that the Ammonitisb war into which Hanun's insults had provoked David was terminated by a re- alliance. Rehoboam was born B.C. 1014, when Solomon was but twenty years old, and as yet unanointed to the throne. His reign was noted for the great political schism which he occasioned. (In the following account we chiefly follow that in Smith's Diet, of the Bible.)
From the earliest period of Jewish history we per- ceive symptoms that the confederation of the tribes was but imperfectly cemented. The powerful Ephraim could never brook a position of inferiority. Throughout the book of Judges (viii, 1 ; xii, 1) the Ephraimites show a spirit of resentful jealousy when any enterprise is un- dertaken without their concurrence and active partici- pation. From them had sprung Joshua, and afterwards (by his place of birth) Samuel might be considered theirs; and though the tribe of Benjamin gave to Israel its first king, yet it was allied by hereditary ties to the house of Joseph, and by geographical position to the territory of Ephraim, so that up to David's accession the leadership was practically in the hands of the latter tribe. See Ephraim, Tribe of. But Judah always threatened to be a formidable rival. During the earlier history, partly from the physical structure and situation of its territory (Stanley, Syr. and Palest, p. 162), which secluded it from Palestine just as Palestine by its geo- graphical character was secluded from the world, it had stood very much aloof from the nation [see Judah, Tribe of], and even after Saul's death, apparently without waiting to consult their brethren, " the men of Judah came and anointed David king over the house of Judah" (2 Sam. ii, 4), while the other tribes adhered to Saul's family, thereby anticipating the final disrup- tion which was afterwards to rend the nation perma- nently into two kingdoms. But after seven years of disaster a reconciliation was forced upon the contending parties; David was acknowledged as king of Israel, and soon after, by fixing his court at Jerusalem and bring- ing the tabernacle there, he transferred from Ephraim the greatness which had attached to Shechem as the ancient capital and to Shiloh as the seat of the national worship. In spite of this he seems to have enjoyed great personal popularity among the Ephraimites, and to have treated many of them with special favor (1 Chron. xii, 30; xxvii, 10, 14), yet this roused the jealousy of Judah, and probably led to the revolt of
Absalom (q. v.). Even after that perilous crisis was passed, the old rivalry broke out afresh and almost led to another insurrection (2 Sam. xx, 1, etc. [comp. Psa. lxxviii, GO, 07, etc., in illustration of these remarks]). Solomon's reign, from its severe taxes and other oppres- sions, aggravated the discontent, and latterly, from its irreligious character, alienated the prophets and pro- voked the displeasure of God. When Solomon's strong hand was withdrawn, the crisis came (B.C. 973). Reho- boam selected Shechem as the place of his coronation, probably as an act of concession to the Ephraimites, and perhaps in deference to the suggestions of those old and wise counsellors of his father whose advice he after- wards unhappily rejected. From the present Hebrew text of 1 Kings xii the exact details of the transactions at Shechem are involved in a little uncertainty. The general facts, indeed, are clear. The people demanded a remission of the severe burdens imposed by Solomon, and Rehoboam promised them an answer in three days, during which time he consulted first his father's coun- sellors, and then the young men '-that were grown up with him and which stood before him," whose answer shows how greatly during Solomon's later years the character of the Jewish court had degenerated. Reject- ing the advice of the elders to conciliate the people at the beginning of his reign, and so make them " his ser- vants forever," he returned as his reply, in the true spirit of an Eastern despot, the frantic bravado of his con- temporaries, "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. ... I will add to your yoke: my lather hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions" (i. e. scourges furnished with sharp points; so in Latin, scoipio, according to Isidore [Origg. v, 27], is "virga nodosa et aculeata, quia arcuato vul- nere in corpus infligitur" [Facciolati, s. v. ]). There- upon arose the formidable song of insurrection, heard once before when the tribes quarrelled after David's re- turn from the war with Absalom :