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, it 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 for a while,

I want to explain a bit about how the divided kingdom works and give you some tips for remembering

the important parts. Ten of the tribes become the divided kingdom works and give you some tips for remembering the important

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