Jeroboam's temple at Dan
The past few days have shoved into my mouth a heavy dose of writer’s block. In an effort to spit back up what the Devil has been pushing inside, I joined a couple of new friends at the local Irish pub (yes, in Jerusalem). We sat down amidst the smokey leather, faded incandescent light and wood-grain motif that only an authentic Irish pub (in Jerusalem) can produce.
My friend Ryan pulled a book out from under his coat, “101 Great Poems.” We took turns reading. John Eldridge would have been so proud.
For some reason I got to thinking about Jeroboam. I suppose Biblical characters or more easily pulled out of thin air when one walks the same rocky sod their ancient feet scrambled across.
Jeroboam was the first king of Israel (after the nation split). Since most of the Old Testament was written from the perspective of Judah (south), this pioneering king is often demonized as a sort of standard against which the northern kings were judged by southern prophets. Generally, northern kings were either evil or exceptionally evil.
1 Kings 11 tells us that amidst Solomon’s disobedience (for some reason the guy thought God would be cool with him marrying 1,000 women) God promises that the Kingdom would not remain united. Jeroboam steps into the spotlight as Solomon’s servant (serving as taskmaster over a large contingent of slaves). One day, Jeroboam meets a prophet while wandering down an unnamed road. The prophet, rather dramatically, proclaims that Jeroboam will eventually serve as king over the yet-to-secede northern kingdom. Solomon finds out, and (understandably) the news isn’t counted as a warm fuzzy by the declining king.
Jeroboam is forced to flee to Egypt, where we can imagine it would have been rather difficult to hold onto faith in the LORD amidst the pull of the Egyptian pantheon.
We have no idea how long Jeroboam lived in Egypt, but upon learning of Solomon’s death, he returns in haste to Shechem (the city that would soon become one of two capital cities in the northern kingdom [the other being Penuel]). After a monumental parting of ways with Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, Jeroboam is confirmed as king and quickly gets down to business building his Egyptian-esque legacy,
“And Jerboam said in his heart, ‘Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah. So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’ And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan” (1 Kings 12:26-29).
The Spring of Dan (below Mount Hermon)
Obviously, Jeroboam’s idol building antics were as much politically as they were religiously motivated. He wanted to ensure that the entirety of his subjects’ lives were centered on the North. With the establishment twin temples at Dan and Bethel (the northern and southern most points of the northern kingdom), Jeroboam could eliminate any legitimate reason why Israelites would need cross into Judah.
As I walked the wooded paths of Dan, I found myself pondering the many ways we fashion idols in our minds, deities that conform to our every whim and make life exceeding comfortable. Our little gods protect us from whatever it might look like to retire from the bow and trust the vast mystery of God to captain our hearts–a mystery that peers out from under the veil in order to ground Himself atop a cross driven into the rocky hill at Golgatha, chisel love into our hearts, before rising again into mystery.
We may not worship golden calves at hilltop shrines, but we each harbor little gods in our hearts. The narrative of Scripture is (among other things) a living, breathing commentary on the human condition. We are all Jeroboam. We create gods out of fear, out of a scrambling to maintain control; but these gods cannot save us.
So, in the spirit of Irish pub poetry readings, and amid a solemn confession that there are golden calves living and breathing beneath my skin…I offer you a poem.
“Dan to Bethel”
In Dan, beneath Mount Hermon’s sneer
My dying heart coughed up a god
Whose burnished curves breathed empty speech
Of swelling peace and ebbing fear
I forced a smile like baker’s dough
Pressed and drug across the grain
In hope that what I’d praised would rise
And touch the crystal river’s flow.
In Bethel, my eyes pulled curtains down
A sleeping child amid the storm.
Whose signing chest and hissing breath
Hung velvet between which cities drowned
As dawn’s ascent pulled back the tide
Her weeping gaze considered how
My silent gods, their gold and bronze
Cast me no closer to the riverside.
