1 Kings 12 · a question people ask
If it was "brought about from the LORD", did Rehoboam really choose?
The chapter says both. Rehoboam chose: "he abandoned the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and took counsel with the young men" (12:8), and "The king answered the people roughly" (12:13). And the chapter says why he didn't listen: "for it was a thing brought about from the LORD, that he might establish his word" (12:15). 2 Chronicles tells it the same way: "for it was brought about by God" (2 Chronicles 10:15). Other verses hold the same two things together. Joseph told his brothers, "you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20), and Peter said that Jesus was "delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). Christians agree that the choice was Rehoboam's and that the LORD's word stood. They explain how the two fit together in two main ways, the same two set out at Absalom's choice, where "the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel" (2 Samuel 17:14). The honest questions on 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Samuel 16:14 ask the same kind of question about the LORD's hand in what people did.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The LORD's hand in the choice itself
Those who read it this way take "a thing brought about from the LORD" (12:15) to reach Rehoboam's choice itself, so that what he chose was what the LORD had purposed. They point to "The king’s heart is in the LORD’s hand like the watercourses. He turns it wherever he desires" (Proverbs 21:1), to the LORD's own word in this chapter, "for this thing is from me" (12:24), and to God "who does all things after the counsel of his will" (Ephesians 1:11).
1 Kings 12:15 · Proverbs 21:1 · 1 Kings 12:24 · Ephesians 1:11
The LORD working through what people did
Those who read it this way stress the steps the chapters record. The LORD told Solomon why he would tear the kingdom away: "Because this is done by you, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes" (11:11), and he gave his word to Jeroboam by Ahijah (11:31). Rehoboam asked for counsel twice (12:6, 12:9), "abandoned the counsel of the old men" (12:8), and spoke "according to the counsel of the young men" (12:14). On this reading the LORD established his word (12:15) through Rehoboam's real choice, as "A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9).
1 Kings 11:11 · 1 Kings 11:31 · 1 Kings 12:6-9 · 1 Kings 12:14-15 · Proverbs 16:9
The verses
“But he abandoned the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him, who stood before him.”
“The king answered the people roughly, and abandoned the counsel of the old men which they had given him,”
“So the king didn’t listen to the people; for it was a thing brought about from the LORD, that he might establish his word, which the LORD spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.”
“So the king didn’t listen to the people; for it was brought about by God, that the LORD might establish his word, which he spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.”