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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
14:21-31 The End of Rehoboam. The story of Rehoboam's reign, begun in ch. 12, has been delayed as the authors have followed Jeroboam through rebellion to idolatry and judgment, and on to death. They now return to what has been happening in Judah in the meantime.
14:22-24 Judah did what was evil. It is a marked feature of 1-2 Kings that each king mentioned is evaluated in terms of his commitment to the Lord, or lack of it, as evidenced by his religious policies (see note on 1 Kings 11:6; and chart). Here, however, the emphasis falls on the nation as a whole rather than simply on the king himself; the whole nation has become involved in idolatrous worship. The text thus looks ahead to the end of Judah, just as was the case with Israel (14:15). God will drive Judah out of the Promised Land just as he "drove out" the various peoples that lived there before because of their abominations.
14:23 High places and Asherim (see notes on 3:2; 14:15) as aspects of the idolatrous worship of Judah are mentioned alongside pillars (Hb. matstsebot), which Deut. 12:3 lists among the Canaanite cult objects that the people must destroy upon entry to the land. These pillars were upright standing stones of various sizes, dedicated to particular deities and sometimes bearing the image and inscription of a deity.
14:24 male cult prostitutes. One aspect of the syncretistic worship of Judah under Rehoboam was religiously legitimized prostitution within the sanctuary. It is possible that the sexual intercourse envisaged had a specifically ritual character, designed to persuade the gods and goddesses to act in a similar way and deliver, through their intercourse, fertility to the land and to the community (cf. Hos. 4:1-19).
14:25-26 Shishak king of Egypt has often been identified with the pharaoh Sheshonq I (), founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty in Egypt, whose army apparently passed through Judah on its way to fight in northern Israel. If Shishak is Sheshonq, one must imagine that he did not attack Jerusalem on his way north precisely because Rehoboam bought him off with the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house. This is the first of a series of notices in 1-2 Kings about the loss of treasure from the temple and the palace (1 Kings 15:18; 2 Kings 14:14; 16:8; 18:15-16; 24:13), the culmination of which will come in 2 Kings 25. A monumental relief on the Bubastite Portal of the main temple of Amon at Karnak (near Luxor, in Egypt) catalogs, town by town, Shishak's military incursion into Israel and Judah. The Karnak relief provides striking verification of the biblical account.
