1 Kings 12 Bible study: A servant to this people

At Shechem the people come with Jeroboam and say to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke difficult. Now therefore make the hard service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, lighter, and we will serve you." (12:4) (tap yoke). In Hebrew hard service is avodah qashah (tap service and hard), two words used together of Israel's slavery in Egypt. The Egyptians "made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick" (Exodus 1:14). The people "didn’t listen to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage" (Exodus 6:9), where cruel bondage is the same two words. And Israel was to say, "The Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and imposed hard labor on us" (Deuteronomy 26:6), again the same two words. Earlier chapters told of the labor: "King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel" (5:13), and Solomon put Jeroboam "in charge of all the labor of the house of Joseph" (11:28). Chapter 9 also says, "But of the children of Israel Solomon made no bondservants" (9:22); its honest question sets these verses side by side, and so do these notes. The request ends with a promise: "and we will serve you" (12:4).

1 Kings 12:14→leads toLuke 11:46

The people asked the king, "make the hard service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, lighter" (12:4). The old men said, "If you will be a servant to this people today" (12:7), but the king answered, "My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke" (12:14). At a Pharisee's table (Luke 11:37), Jesus said, "Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens that are difficult to carry, and you yourselves won’t even lift one finger to help carry those burdens." (Luke 11:46). Jesus doesn't cite 1 Kings 12, and he is speaking to the lawyers of his day, not about a king, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: those set over God's people who make their burdens heavier instead of lighter. Some hear in Jesus' woe a word on what Rehoboam did: asked to lighten the load, he promised to add to it. Others read Luke 11:46 in its own setting, Jesus' answer to a lawyer who said, "in saying this you insult us also" (Luke 11:45), and read 1 Kings 12 as the account of how the kingdom was torn, "that he might establish his word" (12:15), without looking from one to the other.

עֹלolsay OHL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "yoke". Strong's: a yoke "as imposed on the neck". The people's request turns on it: "Your father made our yoke difficult", and "his heavy yoke which he put on us" (12:4). The Hebrew Bible has ol forty times, and eight of them are in this chapter (12:4 twice, 12:9, 12:10, 12:11 twice, 12:14 twice), the only place 1 Kings uses it. 2 Chronicles 10 tells the same meeting with the same word (2 Chronicles 10:4-14). The LORD had said to Israel, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you walk upright" (Leviticus 26:13).