dead. Jeroboam was indeed of an ambitious turn of mind, particularly after he had been raised by Solomon from a low station to a place of great honour and authority'; but it was the declaration of God's purpose that called it forth into activity, and directed all the ten tribes to look to liim as their future head.
Every step of its progress must also be traced to the same source. The complaints of the tribes, and the infatuation of the young monarch, might be supposed to originate wholly with themselves, and to spring entirely from the discontent of the one, and from the other's pride : and it is true, that God did not infuse these evil dispositions into their minds : but it is also true that he suffered these dispositions to rage, and the collision to arise, on purpose that he might accomplish his own purposes by them. This is expressly asserted in the history before us : " The king hearkened not unto the people ; for the cause ivas from the Lord, that he might perform his saying, which the Lord spake hij Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the son of Nehat^"
That its terinination was from him is plainly declared in the words of our text ; " This thing (from first to last) is from, me ;" and, that it was from him, he shewed, by constraining Rehoboam, and the whole army that he had raised, to acquiesce immediately in the loss they had sustained, and to rest satisfied with having all the other tribes for rivals and enemies, whom hitherto they had had for friends and brethren.
Now this kind of statement is by no means uncommon in the Holy Scriptures. God is often represented as overruling both men and devils for the accomplishment of his own purposes. God had determined to deliver the Amorites into the hand of Israel, though he would not deliver into their hand either Moab or Edom. Hence he influenced the minds of both the Moabites and Edomites to supply his people with food for money, that they might be spared ; and equally influenced the minds of the Amorites to refuse that succour, that they might be destroyed'. In like manner he left king Amaziah to disregard the warnings of the prophet, whom he had sent to remonstrate with him about his idolatries ; "because God had determined to destroy him™." The agency of evil spirits is also sometimes called in for the same end. In the case of Ahab, a whole host of them were permitted of God to stimu- late the false prophets to give such counsel to Ahab as should infallibly terminate in his ruin". In a word, the whole con- spiracy of Jews and Gentiles against our blessed Lord, under the same infallible direction, accomplished in every particular,
i 1 Kings xi. 37. ^ ver. 15. i Deut. ii. 28—30.
n' 2 Chron. xxv. 14— IG. " 1 Kings xxii. 22, 23.