Commentaries:
I Kings 12:25-33 records the beginning of the Kingdom of Israel's apostasy. Fearing that he might eventually lose political control over the ten tribes because of their long-standing religious ties to Jerusalem, capital of the Kingdom of Judah (verse 27), Jeroboam I instituted a state religion designed to meet his peoples' needs for convenience - and his own need for power. He built two shrines, one in Bethel, at the southern extremity of his kingdom, the other in Dan, near its northern boundary (verse 29). If not de jure, at least de facto, he exiled the Levites, the priestly tribe established by God, and installed in their place a priesthood of his own devising (verse 31). Finally, he moved the fall holy day season from the seventh month to the eighth, thereby effectively setting aside the Sabbath commandment, since the holy days are God's Sabbaths (see Leviticus 23:1-3, 23-44). All this "became a sin" for Israel (I Kings 12:30).
Jeroboam's apostasy, his movement to false religious practices, took deep root. In fact, the house of Israel never departed from the practices he established. II Kings 17:21-23 records this fact:
Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD, and made them commit a great sin. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them, until the LORD removed Israel out of His sight. . . .
Having abandoned the Sabbath, the God-given sign marking them as His people (Exodus 31:13-17), the folk of the northern tribes eventually lost their identification. That is why most Israelites do not know who they are to this day. The forefathers forsook the sign that denoted their connection to God.
Take this line of thought to its logical conclusion: The Sabbath is a memorial to creation and, by extension, to the Creator God (see Exodus 20:11). Modern-day Israelites do not know who they are today because their forefathers, generations ago, abandoned this memorial to the Creator God. Therefore, modern-day Israelites have come to abandon more than the sign: They have abandoned the God to whom the sign points. They no longer know God.
This is not an overstatement. Make no mistake: Failure to recognize who Israel is today is failure to recognize the God who made Israel! The distressing secularism running rampant in the modern nations of Israel today has its roots in Sabbath-breaking. The antidote for secularism in America is not an inane Constitutional amendment requiring the teaching of creationism in the state schools. The panacea some offer, prayer in the public schools, will not do the trick. Increased Sunday church attendance will not stanch the flood of secularism; after all, most Sunday worshippers accept the doctrines of biologic and economic determinism (i.e., evolution and socialism, respectively) just as avowed atheists do. Attempting to unite a people with its God through these measures is surely akin to building a wall with "untempered mortar" (see Ezekiel 13:9-23). In the coming storm, such a wall will fall.
However, one will never find a Sabbath-keeper who is a secularist, for the Sabbath-keeper has maintained his link with the Creator God. Sabbath-keeping and secularism mix about as well as oil and water.
Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Twelve): The Sign
Jeroboam, in an effort to bolster his power over the northern tribes, instituted religious changes which "became a sin" (I Kings 12:30) for Israel.
»Fearing that he could eventually lose control over the people as they journeyed to Jerusalem for religious festivals, he built two shrines, one in the southern region of his kingdom, Bethel, and the other in Dan, near its northern boundary. He put golden calves in both sites, asserting, "Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!" (I Kings 12:28).
»He changed the fall festival season from the seventh month, Tishri (see Leviticus 23:33-43), to the eighth (I Kings 12:33).
»He "made priests from every class of people, who were not of the sons of Levi" (I Kings 12:31). Since the Levites had no land as a part of their inheritance (see Joshua 13:33), they migrated south to the kingdom of Judah, where they served in the Temple. The dearth of priests in the north was filled by people who were not Levites.
Jeroboam intended to build his own "designer religion" from the ground up, complete with its own traditions and shrines. He was astute enough to grasp the importance of establishing a priesthood loyal to the government.
"And this thing was the sin of the house of Jeroboam, so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth" (I Kings 13:34). Because of his refusal to obey God, Jeroboam never realized the conditional promise God made him in I Kings 11:38: "I will be with you and build for you an enduring house, as I built for David." Jeroboam's son and heir, Nadab, died by assassination after only two years of rule, and Baasha from the tribe of Issachar took the throne of Israel and slaughtered all of Jeroboam's progeny (I Kings 15:25-30).
Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Six): Israel Is Fallen, Is Fallen
The religion of Israel began with a man, Jeroboam I, who changed the true worship of God.
• He established a feast in the eighth month to replace the true Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh.
• He may have replaced the Sabbath with Sunday worship.
• He replaced the Levitical priesthood with men of his own choosing.
• Lastly, he replaced God with golden calves in Bethel and Dan.
A religion with such a beginning was doomed to fail, bringing the nation down with it.
When religion is ungodly, its power is destructive, and every institution in the nation suffers. For instance, Amos 2:7 describes a deliberate act of ritual prostitution in a pagan temple: "A man and his father go in to the same girl, to defile My holy name." What was the rationale behind this perverse, immoral act?
Because Baal was neither alive nor a moral force, his worshippers felt they could communicate with him only by ritual actions that portrayed what they were asking him to do. Since Baal was, like almost all ancient deities, a fertility god, the human act of intercourse demonstrated that they wanted Baal to prosper them. But what was its real effect on the participants and the nation? Ritual prostitution only served to erode the family, eventually leading to the destruction of the nation.
Baal was different from his adherents merely in that he was above them. God's difference from us is that He is holy; He is moral and we are immoral. After we accept His calling, He commands us to become moral as He is.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prepare to Meet Your God! (The Book of Amos) (Part Two)
Where Does the Bible Say Israel's Worship Changed From the Seventh Day to the First?
There is no direct statement in Scripture that says Jeroboam, king of the northern ten tribes of Israel, changed worship from the seventh day to the first day of the week. However, there is plenty of biblical proof that he did so.
When the twelve tribes of Israel split into two kingdoms, Jeroboam became fearful that his people would eventually reunite with the tribes of Judah, the southern kingdom. He said to himself, "Now the kingdom may return to the house of David: If these people go up to offer sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me" (I Kings 12:26-27).
Jeroboam knew that if his people considered Jerusalem to be their religious center, they would soon return their allegiance to the house of David. To retain control over the people, Jeroboam devised his own religious system. He made two idols—setting them up in the towns of Dan and Bethel, which he made the centers of worship—hired the lowest of the people to be his priests, and created a counterfeit Feast of Tabernacles for the people to observe in the eighth month, not the seventh, as God had ordained in Leviticus 23:34 (I Kings 12:28-33).
The people followed him and served the pagan god Baal (II Kings 17:16). The word Baal means "lord," and he was worshipped as the lord of the sun. It should be no surprise that the sun-god was worshipped on the day we now call Sunday. This can be verified in any reliable reference work on the subject, such as Webster's Rest Days. Sunday, of course, is the first day of the week.
The fact that Israel turned to Baal worship is proof in itself that the nation began to observe the first day of the week. Did they also forget God's seventh-day Sabbath? Indeed, Israel "left all the commandments of the LORD their God" (II Kings 17:16). This, of course, includes the fourth commandment, the one governing the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11).
Some 200 years later, they were still observing the first day of the week. God warn in Hosea 2:11, "I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her New Moons, and her Sabbaths—all her appointed feasts." He condemns Israel for keeping their own, not His, days of worship. There is no doubt as to the real source of the days Israel kept: "I will visit punish her for [observing] the days of the Baals to which she burned incense" (verse 13).
Because of Jeroboam's actions, Israel abandoned God's Sabbath for the pagan "Lord's Day," the day of the sun-god Baal, and never returned to keeping the true Sabbath. The evidence is that Jeroboam made the day of Baal the national day of worship. Notice this brief summary of his actions: "Then Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD, and made them commit a great sin" (II Kings 17:21). Jeroboam is the only king the Bible records to have "made Israel sin" (same verse, and 20 additional passages). He deliberately and actively turned Israel away from the true worship of the true God, doing away with the seventh-day Sabbath by instituting Baal worship. Ezekiel says this sin, idolatry combined with Sabbath-breaking, was the primary cause of their defeat and captivity (Ezekiel 20:1-24; see Nehemiah 13:15-22; II Kings 17:5-18).
Additional Reading:
Are the Sabbath and Holy Days Done Away?
The Fourth Commandment (Part One) (1997)
Sabbathkeeping (Part 2)
Prepare to Meet Your God! (The Book of Amos) (Part Two)
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing 1 Kings 12:32:
1 Kings 11:42
1 Kings 12:25-33
2 Chronicles 11:13-17
Amos 3:13-14
Amos 7:7-9
Amos 9:1-6
Mark 7:8
