25 In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. 26 He carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. 27 So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace. 28 Whenever the king went to the LORD’s temple, the guards bore the shields, and afterward they returned them to the guardroom.
According to “Who’s Who in the Ancient Near East” (there really is a book by that name: by Gwedolyn Leick : TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall (England): 1999), Shishak or Shoshenq I as he is also known was the first pharaoh of the Twenty-second Dynasty in Egypt. He was not an Egyptian by birth, but a Libyan from further west along the north African coastline. He was educated in Egypt and was a capable military officer. Shishak made his capital the city of Tanis (Biblical Zoan) in the eastern part of the Nile Delta. The Pharaohs of the previous dynasty (also Libyans) had done the same.
The city of Tanis vanished after Shishak’s reign, although the “sandstorm that lasted a whole year” mentioned in Raiders of the Lost Ark was an exciting fictional explanation for the city’s more mundane disappearance. Actually, later Pharaohs moved their capital again, and after Shishak’s time, the Nile’s silt covered the abandoned city, and the tombs of several Pharaohs were undisturbed by tomb raiders who may not have known that any royal burials were there under the grassy mounds. The tomb of Shishak was discovered intact in the Twentieth Century.
Shishak saw that Israel was weakened by its breakup under Solomon’s son, and he went on a raid into Canaan (he remained on peaceful terms with the kings of Tyre and Byblos [Beirut]). When our text tells us that he took “everything,” we can infer that Solomon’s great temple was empty when Shishak left; perhaps even the curtain dividing the Holy Place from the Holy of holies was even torn down, like the Grinch stealing everything except “a few hooks and some wire.” Our author only mentions the items that were on public display—the shields used for official ceremonies that had to have cheap bronze replacements, and even those were hoarded under lock and key.
There is no mention of the Ark of the Covenant after this point in the Bible, and it’s possible that Shishak’s soldiers took it to Egypt. The Pharaoh may never have known that he had it, or what it was that he had. Today there are a few groups in Africa, including Libya, who claim to have the Ark, and perhaps one of them really does.
29 As for the other events of Rehoboam’s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 30 There was continual warfare between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. 31 And Rehoboam rested with his ancestors and was buried with them in the City of David. His mother’s name was Naamah; she was an Ammonite. And Abijah his son succeeded him as king. (NIV)
Bible scholar Edwin Thiele noticed that for the first seven or eight kings of Israel, the synchronisms to Judean kings fall behind by one year for each king. He saw this as evidence that the northern and southern kingdoms were using different calendars for measuring the reigns of their kings. Israel in the north was counting the first calendar year of a king’s rule as year 1, but Judah in the south counted the same year as “year zero.” After Thiele processed this theory and looked at the rest of the synchronisms in Kings and Chronicles, he worked out a problem that had perplexed Bible scholars for centuries: The two kingdoms were using different calendars, but evidently the man or men who transferred that information into the Bible didn’t adjust what they found in the official records. The Kings of Israel have Biblical information using the “northern” calendar, and the Kings of Judah have information using the “southern” calendar. It’s not really that simple, but that’s the basic issue.
Both Rehoboam and Jeroboam had sons named Abijah. Remember that Jeroboam’s son Abijah died, but Rehoboam’s son became King of Judah. It’s possible that the boys’ names were not a coincidence; their fathers were about the same age, and may have been friends before Jeroboam left. One of the Abijahs could have been named in honor of the other. This chapter began with Jeroboam’s son, and it is ending with Rehoboam’s son. King Abijah was not doomed to failure because of his father’s mistakes or his country’s sins. What would he do with his chance to serve God and rule God’s people?
What will you do with another year to serve God with every part of your life? Pray for his wisdom and guidance, and pray for his forgiveness, too.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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