6 Then the chiefs of Israel and the king made themselves low and said, The Lord is upright.
Then Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, and said to them, I have done evil this time: the Lord is upright, and I and my people are sinners.
So the Lord has been watching over this evil and has made it come on us: for the Lord our God is upright in all his acts which he has done, and we have not given ear to his voice.
Make yourselves low in the eyes of the Lord and you will be lifted up by him.
But he gives more grace. So that the Writings say, God is against the men of pride, but he gives grace to those who make themselves low before him.
I say to you, This man went back to his house with God's approval, and not the other: for everyone who makes himself high will be made low and whoever makes himself low will be made high.
I will go back to my place till they are made waste; in their trouble they will go after me early and will make search for me.
The Lord is upright; for I have gone against his orders: give ear, now, all you peoples, and see my pain, my virgins and my young men have gone away as prisoners.
Even to this day their hearts are not broken, and they have no fear, and have not gone in the way of my law or of my rules which I gave to you and to your fathers.
Then Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and said to him, This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: How long will you be lifted up in your pride before me? let my people go so that they may give me worship.
The Lord is true: the cords of the evil-doers are broken in two.
He makes a song, saying, I did wrong, turning from the straight way, but he did not give me the reward of my sin.
He did not make himself low before the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done, but went on sinning more and more.
And the prayer which he made to God, and how God gave him an answer, and all his sin and his wrongdoing, and the places where he made high places and put up pillars of wood and images, before he put away his pride, are recorded in the history of the seers.
And crying out to the Lord his God in his trouble, he made himself low before the God of his fathers,
But then, Hezekiah, in sorrow for what he had done, put away his pride; and he and all Jerusalem made themselves low, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come on them in Hezekiah's life-time.
If there is no food in the land, or if there is disease, or if the fruits of the earth are damaged through heat or water, locust or worm; if their towns are shut in by their attackers; whatever trouble, whatever disease there may be: Whatever prayer or request for your grace is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, whatever his trouble may be, whose hands are stretched out to this house: Give ear in heaven your living-place, acting in mercy; and give to every man whose secret heart is open to you, the reward of all his ways; for you, and you only, have knowledge of the hearts of all the children of men:
And Adoni-zedek said, Seventy kings, whose thumbs and great toes had been cut off, got broken meat under my table: as I have done, so has God done to me in full. And they took him to Jerusalem, and he came to his end there.
And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me; So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins,
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on 2 Chronicles 12
Commentary on 2 Chronicles 12 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Rehoboam's defection from the Lord, and his humiliation by the Egyptian king Shishak . - 2 Chronicles 12:1. The infinitive כּהכין , “at the time of the establishing,” with an indefinite subject, may be expressed in English by the passive: when Rehoboam's royal power was established. The words refer back to 2 Chronicles 11:17. כּחזקתו , “when he had become strong” ( חזקה is a nomen verbale: the becoming strong; cf. 2 Chronicles 26:16; 2 Chronicles 11:2), he forsook the Lord, and all Israel with him. The inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah are here called Israel, to hint at the contrast between the actual conduct of the people in their defection from the Lord, and the destiny of Israel, the people of God. The forsaking of the law of Jahve is in substance the fall into idolatry, as we find it stated more definitely in 1 Kings 14:22.
In punishment of this defection ( בי מעלוּ כּי , because they had acted faithlessly to Jahve), Shishak, the king of Egypt, marched with a great host against Jerusalem. This hostile invasion is also briefly narrated in 1 Kings 14:25-28. Shishak (Sisak) is, as we have remarked on 1 Kings 14, Sesonchis or Sechonchosis, the first king of the 22nd dynasty, who has celebrated his victory in a relief at Karnak. In this sculpture the names of the cities captured are recorded on shields, and a considerable number have been deciphered with some certainty, and by them our account is completely confirmed. According to 2 Chronicles 12:3, Shishak's host consisted of 1200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen-numbers which, of course, are founded only upon a rough estimate-and an innumerable multitude of footmen, among whom were לוּבים , Libyans, probably the Libyaegyptii of the ancients (see on Genesis 10:13); סכּיּים , according to the lxx and Vulg. Troglodytes, probably the Ethiopian Troglodytes, who dwelt in the mountains on the west coast of the Arabian Gulf; and Cushites, i.e., Ethiopians. The Libyans and Cushites are mentioned in Nahum 3:9 also as auxiliaries of the Egyptians.
After the capture of the fenced cities of Judah, he marched against Jerusalem. - 2 Chronicles 12:5. Then the prophet Shemaiah announced to the king and the princes, who had retired to Jerusalem before Shishak, that the Lord had given them into the power of Shishak because they had forsaken Him. בּיד עזב , forsaken and given over into the hand of Shishak. When the king and the priests immediately humbled themselves before God, acknowledging the righteousness of the Lord, the prophet announced to them further that the Lord would not destroy them since they had humbled themselves, but would give them deliverance in a little space. כּמעט , according to a little, i.e., in a short time. פּליטה is accusative after ונתתּי . My anger shall not pour itself out upon Jerusalem. The pouring out of anger is the designation of an exterminating judgment; cf. 2 Chronicles 34:25.
But ( כּי after a negative clause) they shall be his servants, sc. for a short time (see 2 Chronicles 12:7), “that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries” (cf. 1 Chronicles 29:30); i.e., that they may learn to know by experience the difference between the rule of God and that of the heathen kings, and that God's rule was not so oppressive as that of the rulers of the world.
With 2 Chronicles 12:9 the account of the war is taken up again and continued by the repetition of the words, “Then marched Shishak ... against Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 12:4). Shishak plundered the treasures of the temple and the palace; he had consequently captured Jerusalem. The golden shields also which had been placed in the house of the forest of Lebanon, i.e., the palace built by Solomon in Jerusalem, which Solomon had caused to be made (cf. 2 Chronicles 9:16), Shishak took away, and in their place Rehoboam caused brazen shields to be prepared; see on 1 Kings 14:26-28. - In 2 Chronicles 12:12 the author of the Chronicle concludes the account of this event with the didactic remark, “Because he (Rehoboam) humbled himself, the anger of Jahve was turned away from him.” להשׁחית ולא , and it was not to extermination utterly ( לכלה , properly to destruction, i.e., completely; cf. Ezekiel 13:13). And also in Judah were good things. This is the other motive which caused the Lord to turn away His wrath. Good things are proofs of piety and fear of God, cf. 2 Chronicles 19:3.
The length of Rehoboam's reign, his mother, and the judgment about him. Cf. 1 Kings 14:21 and 1 Kings 14:22 . ויּתחזּק here, as in 2 Chronicles 13:21, can, in its connection with what precedes, be only understood to mean that Rehoboam, after his humiliation at the hands of Shishak, by which his kingdom was utterly weakened and almost destroyed, again gained strength and power. Cf. also 2 Chronicles 1:1, where יתחזּק is used of Solomon in the beginning of his reign, after he overcame Adonijah, the pretender to the crown, and his party. - As to the age of Rehoboam, etc., see on 1 Kings 14:21. הרע ויּעשׂ , 2 Chronicles 12:14, is defined by the addition, “for he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord.” For the expression cf. 2 Chronicles 19:3; 2 Chronicles 30:19; Ezra 7:10.
Close of his reign. On the authorities, see the Introduction, and in reference to the other statements, the commentary on 1 Kings 14:29-31. מלחמות , wars, i.e., a state of hostility, was between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all days, can only be understood of the hostile attitude of the two rulers to each other, like מלחמה in Kings; for we have no narrative of wars between them after Rehoboam had abandoned, at the instance of the prophet, his proposed war with the Israelites at the commencement of his reign.