2 Chronicles 10:5

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.

Verse 5. - This first reply of Rehoboam was not necessarily inauspicious. Yet sometimes, as it proved now, the caution that takes time to consider heralds fatal mistake. This is when either a generous, instinctive impulse, asking an instantaneous obedience, is chilled by some self-regard; or yet worse, when the offended Spirit is restrained, and no inner guiding voice is heard, as Saul found, to his ruin. 2 Chronicles 10:5

Verse 5. - All Judah brought presents to Jehoshaphat . These presents were, of course, voluntary gifts, though, like not a few others, custom may have taken off from them something of the bloom of spontaneousness ( 1 Samuel 10:27 ; 2 Samuel 8:2 ; 1 Kings 4:21 ; 1 Kings 10:25 ; Psalm 72:10 ). 2 Chronicles 17:5

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.