Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Two days ago in our reading, Solomon died and his son Rehoboam, or Ray, as we're calling him, took over the throne.

Today we launch into the reign of the new

King Ray. We've got a lot of important stuff to cover today, and it's a big day in Israel's history.

So if you're listening at a speed faster than one X, you may want to slow me down, and you may

even want to listen twice to make sure you catch it all. As soon as Solomon died and his son,

King Ray took the throne,

Jeroboam, or Jerry, as we're calling him, came back from hiding in Egypt. He fled there because

Solomon was trying to kill him, because he had received a prophecy that he would be king over

ten of the tribes. So Jerry has come back to Israel to see the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Then Jerry gathers a bunch of people to approach King Ray about a problem that had been developing

over the last few years, which was, Solomon had been so involved in his construction projects

that had started to treat his workers like slaves. The people know it isn't right, and they ask King Ray to lighten their load a bit.

King Ray confers with some of his counselors, and they say the people are right, but he doesn't like

their advice, so he asks his buddies for a second opinion. But these guys grew up in the palace

with him, and they have no idea what it's like to be a regular person who has to do

manual labor. They aren't compassionate and they have no experiential wisdom and leadership.

They suggest that he increased the people's workload.

King Ray does what his buddies suggest, and the text tells us that it was because God had ordained

that he would reject the people's request

as a part of God's plan to fulfill his prophecy to Jerry. And this is the moment when the kingdom

is divided. This part can get kind of confusing, and since we're going to be dealing with this

...