2 Chronicles 10:18

10:1-19 The ten tribes revolt from Rehoboam. - Moderate counsels are wisest and best. Gentleness will do what violence will not do. Most people like to be accosted mildly. Good words cost only a little self-denial, yet they purchase great things. No more needs to be done to ruin men, than to leave them to their own pride and passion. Thus, whatever are the devices of men, God is doing his own work by all, and fulfilling the word which he has spoken. No man can bequeath his prosperity to his heirs any more than his wisdom; though our children will generally be affected by our conduct, whether good or bad. Let us then seek those good things which will be our own for ever; and crave the blessing of God upon our posterity, in preference to wealth or worldly exaltation.

2 . Shishak ] The Egyptian king has commemorated this expedition in a pictorial inscription on the wall of the temple of Karnak. It appears that the Northern kingdom suffered as well as the Southern, but no permanent conquest of Canaan was attempted. (Maspero, Histoire Ancienne , ed. v. pp. 360, 1.) because they had trespassed ] A touch characteristic of the Chronicler; cp. 2 Chronicles 13:18 ; 2 Chronicles 21:10 ; 2 Chronicles 24:24 ; 2 Chronicles 25:20 ; 2 Chronicles 27:6 ; 2 Chronicles 28:19 ; and 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 . The Chronicler sees the working of temporal rewards and of temporal punishments everywhere.

Verse 18. - Hadoram that was over the tribute ... stoned him... Rehoboam made speed... to flee. Hadoram was perhaps the same as Adoniram, son of Abda ( 1 Kings 4:6 ; 1 Kings 5:14 ), but on the arbitrament of age this is less likely, and certainly it is very unlikely that he was one with Hadoram of 2 Samuel 20:24 . Rehoboam must be supposed to have sent Hadoram either to make some "tribute" summons, or try some arrangement respecting it, or respecting conciliatory steps. The reception he met warns Rehoboam to make the quickest escape possible, and no doubt opens his eyes fully to what he has done. It was the remanet of his delusive self-confidence to send this collector of taxes to those who had begged some remission of taxation. 2 Chronicles 10:18

15-17. the king hearkened not unto the people, for the cause was of God—Rehoboam, in following an evil counsel, and the Hebrew people, in making a revolutionary movement, each acted as free agents, obeying their own will and passions. But God, who permitted the revolt of the northern tribes, intended it as a punishment of the house of David for Solomon's apostasy. That event demonstrates the immediate superintendence of His providence over the revolutions of kingdoms; and thus it affords an instance, similar to many other striking instances that are found in Scripture, of divine predictions, uttered long before, being accomplished by the operation of human passions, and in the natural course of events.

This event is narrated in our chapter, except in so far as a few unessential differences in form are concerned, exactly as we have it in 1 Kings 12:1-19 ; so that we may refer for the exposition of it to the commentary on 1 Kings 12 , where we have both treated the contents of this chapter, and have also discussed the deeper and more latent causes of this event, so important in its consequences.