Week 16 I Kings
In I Kings chapter eleven a pretty interesting thing is happening.
For starters, Solomon has turned renegade on the Lord, and because of that the Lord is going to take action, is going to take away the kingdom.
The rest of the chapter explains how the Lord will get that done.
First: the Lord raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.
Then: God also raised up another adversary to (Solomon), Rezon the son of Eliada.
And finally Jeroboam was told by the Lord: I will take you…and you shall reign over Israel.
So the Lord took indirect action by prompting three of Solomon’s enemies.
What’s pretty interesting here is that Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam were already natural adversaries of Solomon, with long preexisting hatreds against the king.
So on the one hand there is the Lord operating in the affairs of Israel by stimulating and animating three angry men.
And at the same time Hadad and Rezon and Jeroboam are operating too, already personally stimulated and animated, making personal decisions and choices, taking action, doing what they want because of who they are and what has happened in their pasts, scores to settle, personally driven by their own personal drivers in a way that looks pretty exclusive. People, not coded automates.
In the end the Chief Operator has the final say. And in their own way the sub-operators have a say, too.
Note: quotes from I Kings 11:14, 23, 37 (NASB version)