Shishak Plunders Jerusalem

Rehoboam the son of Solomon, who, as we said before, was king of the two tribes, built strong and large cities: Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa, Beth-zur, Soco, Adullam, Ipan, Mareshah, Ziph, Adoraim, Lachish, Azekah, Zorah, Aijalon and Hebron. These he built first of all in the tribe of Judah. He also built other large cities in the tribe of Benjamin. He walled them all around and put garrisons and commanders in every one of them, with a great deal of grain, wine and oil, and he furnished each of them plentifully with the other provisions needed to live on. He also stored in them shields and spears for many tens of thousands of men. The priests throughout all Israel, and the Levites, and any of the common people who were good and righteous men, gathered to him, leaving their own cities so that they could worship God in Jerusalem; for they were not willing to be forced to worship the heifers Jeroboam had made. And for three years they strengthened Rehoboam’s kingdom. [a]

After he had married a woman of his own family and had three children by her, he married another woman of his own family as well, the daughter of Tamar, Absalom’s daughter; her name was Maacah, and by her he had a son whom he named Abijah. He had many other children by other wives, but he loved Maacah above them all. He had eighteen lawful wives and thirty concubines, and twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters were born to him. But he appointed Abijah, his son by Maacah, to succeed him in the kingdom, and already entrusted him with the treasures and the strongest cities.

I cannot help thinking that the greatness of a kingdom, and its rise to prosperity, often become the occasion of harm and of wrongdoing to men. For when Rehoboam saw that his kingdom had grown so much, he turned from the right way to unrighteous and irreligious practices and despised the worship of God, until the people themselves imitated his wicked actions. This is what usually happens: the morals of subjects are corrupted at the same time as those of their rulers. The subjects then lay aside their own sober way of living, as though it were a reproach to their rulers’ intemperate ways, and follow their wickedness as if it were virtue; for there is no way to show that one approves of what one’s kings do except by doing the same things with them. That is what now happened to Rehoboam’s subjects. When he had grown impious and become a lawbreaker himself, they took care not to offend him by insisting on staying righteous. [d]

But God sent Shishak, king of Egypt, to punish them for their insolence toward him. Herodotus was mistaken about this king and attributed his deeds to Sesostris. For this Shishak, in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign, made an expedition with many tens of thousands of men: twelve hundred chariots followed him, with sixty thousand horsemen and four hundred thousand foot soldiers, most of them Libyans and Ethiopians. When he fell on the country of the Hebrews, he took the strongest cities of Rehoboam’s kingdom without a fight, and when he had put garrisons in them, he came last of all to Jerusalem.

When Rehoboam and the people with him were shut up in Jerusalem by Shishak’s army, they begged God to give them victory and deliverance, but they could not persuade God to take their side. The prophet Shemaiah told them that God threatened to forsake them, just as they had forsaken his worship. When they heard this, they were at once thrown into dismay. Seeing no way of escape, they all earnestly set themselves to confess that God might justly disregard them, since they had been guilty of impiety toward him and had let his laws fall into confusion. When God saw them in that frame of mind, acknowledging their sins, he told the prophet that he would not destroy them; but he would make them servants to the Egyptians, so that they might learn whether they would suffer less by serving men or by serving God. So Shishak took the city without a fight, because Rehoboam was afraid and let him in. Yet Shishak did not keep the agreements he had made. He plundered the temple, emptied the treasuries of God and of the king, carried off gold and silver by tens of thousands beyond counting, and left nothing at all behind. He also took away the gold bucklers and shields that King Solomon had made; he did not even leave the gold quivers that David had taken from the king of Zobah and dedicated to God. When he had done all this, he returned to his own kingdom. [e]

Herodotus of Halicarnassus mentions this expedition, mistaking only the king’s name. He says that this king made war on many other nations as well, brought Syria of Palestine into subjection, and took its people without a fight. It is plain that he meant to say that our nation was conquered by him; for he says that in the land of those who surrendered to him without fighting he left pillars engraved with the private parts of women. And our king Rehoboam surrendered our city without fighting. Herodotus also says that the Ethiopians learned to circumcise their private parts from the Egyptians, adding that the Phoenicians and the Syrians who live in Palestine admit that they learned it from the Egyptians. So it is evident whom he means, for no other Syrians who live in Palestine are circumcised except us alone. But on such matters let everyone say what he thinks.

When Shishak had gone, King Rehoboam made bucklers and shields of bronze in place of the gold ones and handed the same number of them over to the guards of the king’s palace. So instead of military expeditions, and the glory that comes from such public deeds, he reigned in great quiet and in fear all the while, since he was an enemy of Jeroboam. He died at the age of fifty-seven, having reigned seventeen years. He was by nature a proud and foolish man, and he lost his dominion by not listening to his father’s friends. He was buried in Jerusalem in the tombs of the kings, and his son Abijah succeeded him in the kingdom, in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam’s reign over the ten tribes. That was the end of these affairs. Our task now is to relate the affairs of Jeroboam and how he ended his life. For he never stopped or rested from offending God, but every day set up altars on high mountains and went on making priests from among the common people. [h]