Extracts from my Kindle copy of Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman. The following are examples of Solomon’s policy toward northern Israel from pages 44 and 45.
- …the priests of Shiloh suffered the loss of their place in the priestly hierarchy under King Solomon. Their chief, Abiathar, was expelled from Jerusalem. The other chief priest, Zadok, who was regarded as a descendant of Aaron, meanwhile remained in power.
- Northern Levites’ lands were given to the Phoenicians.
- Traded Northern Cities for Help with Jerusalem – Solomon received help in building the Temple and the palace from Hiram of Tyre, king of the Phoenicians, who was Solomon’s father-in-law. (Actually, nearly every king in the ancient Near East must have been Solomon’s father-in-law.) Hiram provided the cedars of Lebanon and 120 talents of gold. In return, Solomon ceded to the Phoenician king a tract of northern Israelite territory containing twenty cities. In this action, too, Solomon was building up his own capital solely at the expense of the north.
- Solomon established twelve administrative districts, each of which was to provide food for the court in Jerusalem for one month of the year. The boundaries of these twelve new districts did not correspond to the existing boundaries of the twelve tribes. Solomon personally appointed the heads of each administrative district.
- Solomon’s redistricting, to make matters even worse, was only of the north. The twelve new districts did not include the territory of Judah.
- The Missim – Solomon established one more economic policy that could leave no doubt. He instituted the missîm. The term missîm in Hebrew refers to a sort of tax, not of money but of physical labor. Citizens owed a month of required work to the government each year.
Those policies lead to the split into Israel and Judah. Freidman explained the new leadership here.
The Shiloh prophet Ahijah instigated the northern tribes’ secession, and he designated Jeroboam as the northern king. The Shiloh priests’ hopes for the new kingdom, however, were frustrated when Jeroboam established the golden calf religious centers at Dan and Beth-El, and he did not appoint them as priests there. Pg. 72
The similarity of the two kings’ names, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, is no coincidence. Both names in Hebrew can mean that the people should become numerous or widespread. Each king apparently chose a throne name that suggested his interest in the expansion of his portion of the once-united nation. Rehoboam ruled from Jerusalem, the City of David. Jeroboam made Shechem (SHEE-kehm) the capital of the new northern kingdom.
