The Unprepared Heart: Rehoboam's Epitaph Text: 2 Chronicles 12:13-16
Introduction: The Fatal Drift
There is a kind of spiritual condition that is far more dangerous than outright, flag-waving rebellion. It is the condition of the unmoored soul, the man who is not so much hostile to God as he is simply adrift from Him. He is not an atheist, not by a long shot. He might even show up to the temple when things get dicey. But his heart, the very center of his being, the seat of his affections and allegiances, is not fixed. It is not set. It is not prepared to seek the Lord. This is the condition of Rehoboam, and it is the besetting sin of our lukewarm and distracted age.
We come here to the end of a chapter that details a national humiliation. Shishak of Egypt came up against Jerusalem because Rehoboam and all Israel with him forsook the law of the Lord. There was a brief moment of clarity, a flash of repentance when the prophet Shemaiah confronted them. They humbled themselves, and God in His mercy relented from destroying them completely. But what we see in our text today is the final summary, the epitaph on the reign of Solomon’s son. And it is a chilling one. It is not the story of a monstrous tyrant, but rather the story of a weak, vacillating, and ultimately compromised man. His failure was not one of dramatic apostasy, but of a slow, fatal drift. And the verdict of Scripture is that this drift is, in fact, evil.
The modern church is filled to the rafters with Rehoboams. We have men who want the stability of Jerusalem, the chosen city of God, but they also want the exotic comforts of a foreign wife. They want the title of king, but not the daily discipline of seeking the King of kings. They want the blessing of God when the enemy is at the gates, but they do not want to set their hearts to seek Him when the sun is shining. This passage is a stark warning. God does not grade on a curve. The man who does not prepare his heart to seek Yahweh is a man who does evil, and the consequences of that evil ripple out through generations.
The Text
So King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Now Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which Yahweh had chosen from all the tribes of Israel to put His name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. And he did evil because he did not set his heart to seek Yahweh. Now the acts of Rehoboam, from first to last, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, according to genealogical record? Now there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David; and Abijah his son became king in his place.
(2 Chronicles 12:13-16 LSB)
A Propped-Up Kingdom (v. 13)
We begin with the summary of Rehoboam's tenure:
"So King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Now Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which Yahweh had chosen from all the tribes of Israel to put His name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess." (2 Chronicles 12:13)
The first phrase tells us a great deal. "Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem." After the scare with Shishak, he shored up his defenses. He reinforced his position. But notice where the emphasis lies: he strengthened himself. This is the story of a man who, having been graciously delivered by God, immediately turns back to trusting in his own strength and fortifications. He learned a lesson, but it was the wrong one. He learned that he needed stronger walls, not a stronger faith.
The Chronicler then gives us the vital statistics of his reign. He was forty-one when he began, a mature man, not some rash youth. He reigned for seventeen years, a respectable length of time. And he reigned from Jerusalem, the very epicenter of God's covenant dealings with His people. This is not some backwater. This is "the city which Yahweh had chosen from all the tribes of Israel to put His name there." This detail is piled on to heighten the tragedy. Rehoboam’s failure was not due to a lack of privilege. He sat at the controls of the entire covenant apparatus. He had the temple, the priesthood, and the promises. His sin was committed in the full blaze of God’s revealed presence.
And then, dropped in like a quiet bombshell, we are told of his mother: "Naamah the Ammonitess." Why is this important? Because the Ammonites were a pagan nation, descended from Lot's incestuous union, and they were explicitly excluded from the assembly of the Lord (Deut. 23:3). Solomon, in his latter days, had married a host of foreign women who turned his heart away from God, and here we see the fruit. Rehoboam is the product of a compromised home. He is the son of a covenant-breaking father and a pagan mother. This is not to excuse his sin, but to explain its genesis. Covenantal faithfulness is a generational project, and Solomon’s sin is now bearing its bitter fruit in his son. The slow poison of compromise that Solomon toyed with has now infected the heart of the next king. It reminds us that our private compromises never stay private; they become the public failures of our children.
The Root of the Rot (v. 14)
Verse 14 gives us the divine diagnosis, the spiritual autopsy of Rehoboam's reign.
"And he did evil because he did not set his heart to seek Yahweh." (2 Chronicles 12:14 LSB)
This is one of the most important verses for understanding the nature of sin in all of Scripture. The evil was not the primary thing; it was the consequence. The evil flowed from a deeper, internal failure. The fountain was poisoned, and so the stream was toxic. The evil was the "because" of something else. What was that something else? "He did not set his heart to seek Yahweh."
The Hebrew for "set" here is kun. It means to prepare, to fix, to establish, to make firm. It’s the word used for establishing a throne or preparing a sacrifice. It implies a deliberate, conscious, determined act of the will. Rehoboam’s failure was a failure of preparation. His heart was not prepared for worship. His affections were not fixed on God. His default setting was not "seek Yahweh." He was spiritually flabby. He sought the Lord when it was convenient, when he was in a jam, but he did not make it the settled disposition of his soul. His heart was like an untuned instrument, incapable of playing the music of righteousness.
This is the essence of so much of what passes for Christianity today. It is a religion of crisis, not a life of constancy. We seek the Lord when the diagnosis is bad, or the bank account is empty, or the nation is in turmoil. But what about the daily, disciplined business of setting our hearts? What about the preparation of our minds through Scripture, the fixing of our affections through prayer, the establishing of our lives in the rhythms of corporate worship? Rehoboam proves that you can be surrounded by all the external paraphernalia of religion in the chosen city of God and still have an unprepared heart. And an unprepared heart will always, eventually, do evil.
God's Infallible Record (v. 15)
Next, the Chronicler points to his sources, which are themselves a theological statement.
"Now the acts of Rehoboam, from first to last, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, according to genealogical record? Now there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days." (2 Chronicles 12:15 LSB)
History is not just a random collection of events. History is a story being told by God. And who does God use to write His-story? He uses His prophets. The official court records of Israel were not kept by secular historians or political analysts. They were kept by prophets like Shemaiah and Iddo. This means that the history of God's people is an inspired, theological interpretation of events. God provides the action, and He provides the commentary. He doesn't leave it up to us to figure out what it all means.
Shemaiah was the prophet who confronted Rehoboam during Shishak's invasion. Iddo was another seer active at the time. Their records were the final word on Rehoboam's reign. This tells us that the ultimate judgment on any man's life, especially a king's, is not the judgment of politics or economics, but the judgment of the Word of God. God is keeping the books, and His prophets are His bookkeepers.
The verse ends with a grim summary: "there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days." This was the fruit of his unprepared heart and the division of the kingdom. Unfaithfulness to God in the vertical dimension always results in conflict and strife in the horizontal dimension. When the king is not at peace with God, the kingdom will not be at peace with its neighbors. It was a long, grinding, seventeen-year slog of conflict, a constant reminder of the consequences of sin.
The Unremarkable End (v. 16)
The passage concludes with the standard formula for the end of a king's reign.
"And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David; and Abijah his son became king in his place." (2 Chronicles 12:16 LSB)
He "slept with his fathers." He died. For all his self-strengthening, for all his fortifications, he could not hold back the final enemy. He was buried in the city of David, given the honor due to his office, but his legacy was one of failure. And the cycle continues: "Abijah his son became king in his place." The covenant continues, the throne of David endures, but it is passed to another flawed man who will have his own story of compromise and conflict.
This is the dreary, repetitive cycle of the kings of Judah. A flash of faithfulness here, a long stretch of failure there. Each king is a placeholder, a stand-in, pointing to the deep need for a true and better King. Each reign ends with "he slept with his fathers," reminding us that these were mortal men who could not ultimately save God's people. They were all shadows, and the people needed the substance.
Conclusion: The Prepared Heart of the True King
The story of Rehoboam is a sober warning, but it is not the final word. His epitaph is that "he did not set his heart to seek Yahweh." But this failure serves to magnify the glory of the one King who did. Jesus Christ is the true Son of David, the greater Solomon, who came to reign from the true Jerusalem.
Where Rehoboam was the compromised son of a pagan woman, Jesus was born of a virgin, a holy vessel, set apart for God’s purposes. Where Rehoboam strengthened himself in a city of stone, Jesus set His face like flint to go to Jerusalem to be crucified, strengthening Himself in His Father's will. Where Rehoboam had an unprepared, unfixed, unset heart, Jesus's heart was perfectly and perpetually set to do the will of His Father. "My food," He said, "is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work" (John 4:34).
Rehoboam's reign was characterized by endless war. Christ’s reign brings true peace. He is the Prince of Peace, who has conquered not just a rival kingdom, but sin and death itself. Rehoboam slept with his fathers, another dead king in a long line of them. But Jesus Christ, after sleeping for three days in the tomb, rose from the dead, and He reigns forever. He does not pass His kingdom to a flawed son; He gives His kingdom to all who are His sons by faith.
The application for us, then, is plain. We are called to do the one thing Rehoboam failed to do. We are called to set our hearts to seek the Lord. This is not a suggestion; it is the fundamental business of the Christian life. To be a Christian is to have a heart that has been prepared by the Holy Spirit and is now being deliberately fixed, day by day, on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to tune the instrument every morning. It is to prepare for worship before you arrive. It is to establish your thoughts on the Word of God. It is to seek Him first, not as a last resort.
Rehoboam’s evil was not spectacular, but it was damning. It was the evil of spiritual laziness, of an unprepared heart. Let us therefore take heed. Let us not be propped-up Christians in a fortified Jerusalem, trusting in our own strength. Let us be a people whose hearts are firmly set to seek the Lord, because our King’s heart was set to save us, and He has made us His own.