2 Chronicles 10-12

Here is another account of how the kingdom became divided..there is the revolt against Rehoboam....the taxes were too heavy a burden for the people and Rehoboam took the wrong counsel.  There is a huge spiritual downslide...Judah and  Benjamin are fortified and they are ready for war....the word of the Lord comes to Shemaiah, the prophet, that God does not want them to fight.   They return home.  The priests and Levites support Rehoboam-Rehoboam lives in Jerusalem which is the capital of Judah....for three years, Judah was secure because the priests did the sacrifices and walked in the ways of the Lord.

Rehoboam marries and appoints one son, Abijah to be the heir apparent.  Sadly, temptation and pride strike Rehoboam.  He abandons the way of the Lord and the prophet Shemaiah tells Rehoboam that Pharoah Shishak will take the kingdom.   The King and his officers humble themselves and the Lord takes mercy and doesn't destroy them, but they must bear the consequences of their sin.  The treasures are taken.....The shields of gold are taken and Rehoboam must replace them with a cheaper bronze.  ( Kind of  ironic that Rehoboam was going to tax his people even more heavily than his father did, and now all his glorious treasures of the kingdom are taken away.....a taste of his own medicine, perhaps?) If Rehoboam had been fully committed to the Lord with constancy, things may have been different....are we fully committed to the Lord?    God has a grand plan for us; will we live life as he wants us to?

Here is a neat thing from a commentary that gives some archaeological evidence as it relates to Shishak.....I love when the Lord does this, because He doesn't HAVE to prove anything to us, but sometimes He teases us a bit and rewards faith...

So he came up against Shishak. Shishak came up against Jerusalem, and then more or less bought him off. They took all of the gold that was in the temple, the golden shields and all of these things that Solomon had placed there, and they gave them unto Shishak, the king of Egypt. More or less just bought him out, and he plundered the city of Jerusalem of all of its gold, returning to Egypt.

Now the archaeologists discovered in 1939 in Egypt an account of this invasion of Israel or Judah. In the archaeological account there that they have discovered, it declares that they took a 169 of the cities of Judah. They also found the sarcophagus in which Shishak was entombed. And it was encased in silver. Actually, it was a silver sarcophagus encased in gold, solid gold. Probably the same gold that he took from the temple in Jerusalem that Solomon had established there. So it's an interesting sort of confirmation from the archaeologist's spade of what God's Word declares did indeed take place.