I was researching something called the repetition principle. In general, this principle is that if something is repeated often enough, it’ll have an effect. Think of commercial jingles or slogans that are constantly repeated. These repetitions create patterns that our mind easily grasps, and in the case of advertising, the idea is that if your mind associates a jingle with a product, you’ll be more likely to buy that product.

I don’t know that I’m fully on board with that. I have a certain brand of car insurance, though I can more quickly and easily sing the jingles from other insurance companies. You would not want to hear me sing these jingles, but I could.

But repetition does have an effect on us.

When things are repeated in Scripture, are they more important than things that are just mentioned once? It could be unwise to take that perspective, because all of God’s Word is important. But repetition in the Bible is God’s way of saying: “Hey, people, I mentioned this before. Pay attention, and remember this.” God taps us on the shoulder to remind us.

Who was the best king of Israel? Most accounts point to David as this king. In the book of Acts it says that David was a “man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). We are also told twice in Ezekiel that David will have a leadership role in the Kingdom (Ezekiel 34:23-24; 37:24-25) That’s a pretty big deal.

But there’s a measuring rod that the Bible gives us to determine the best king of Israel. David is used as a standard of comparison when the legacies of five other good kings are defined. Solomon (1 Kings 3:3), Asa (1 Kings 15:11), Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:3), Josiah (2 Kings 22:2) and Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:3-4) were all compared to David at the end of their reign.

Being compared to David was the Bible’s measuring rod of a good king, and no other good king is used more often as the standard. By this yardstick, David was the best king of Israel.

This same measuring rod can be used to determine the worst king of Israel. There was one bad king who was used 14 times in the same way that David was used as a standard of comparison. This king was Jeroboam.

These 14 kings were Baasha (1 Kings 15:33-34), Zimri (1 Kings 16:18-19), Omri (1 Kings 16:25-26), Ahab (1 Kings 16:30-31), Ahaziah (1 Kings 22:51-52), Jehoram (2 Kings 3:1-3), Jehu (2 Kings 10:31), Johoahaz (2 Kings 13:1-2), Johoash (2 Kings 13:10-11), Jeroboam, son of Joash (2 Kings 14:23-24), Zechariah (2 Kings15:8-9), Menahem (2 Kings 15:17-18), Pekahiah (2 Kings 15:23-24) and Pekah (2 Kings 15:27-28).

That is quite a list. These 14 bad kings were all compared to Jeroboam when the legacies of these kings were defined. Sadly, the bad far outweigh the good. And as man has advanced in his ways, and not in God’s ways, it may not even be that close in a study of today’s modern rulers.

In addition to being compared to Jeroboam, 13 times in the examples cited for these kings, the phrase “who had made Israel sin” is repeated. Christ has a warning for those who lead children, or people in general for that matter, astray (Matthew 18:6-7).

Jeroboam, son of Nebat, was the first king of Israel after God tore apart the house of Solomon during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam. At this time Rehoboam remained king in Jerusalem over Judah and Benjamin. In 2 Chronicles 13, we also read that the tribe of Levi was under the rule of Rehoboam. And that makes perfect sense, in what we will uncover, because Jeroboam was making up his own rules when it came to defining holy days and priests. The Levites would not have taken the reign of Jeroboam in stride because of this. The other 10 tribes made Jeroboam their king.

So what made Jeroboam such a bad king? There are six verses in the Bible that do well to describe the man Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:28-33). In reading of the evil of Jeroboam here, one can compile a pretty scary list of sins. He made idols and worshiped them. He made priests of his own choosing (including himself in 1 Kings 13:33). He established his own holy days. He put himself in the place of God. He lacked humility.

In looking at Jeroboam’s sin of creating and worshiping idols, one may find this puzzling. A golden calf is such a memorable event of the children of Israel in the wilderness (Exodus 32). Wouldn’t Jeroboam have read about this or heard about this at some point in his life? Besides, this is such a clear infraction of the Second Commandment. So either he willfully proceeded making two golden calves, or one may come to the baffling conclusion that Jeroboam knew one golden calf was wrong, but perhaps two (he made two!) would be ok.

In 2 Kings 22:8, Hilkiah, the priest during Josiah’s reign in Judah, finds the “Book of the Law” of Moses. It is unclear how long Scripture had been lost, and may have been lost prior to the reign of Jeroboam. So perhaps Jeroboam did not know the story of Aaron and the golden calf, or the Ten Commandments. But even if he did know the writings of Moses, Jeroboam seemed intent on following his own ways, and the ways of men. In 1 Kings 12:28 it reveals that he asked for advice—certainly he did not ask this of God or God’s appointed priests or prophets.

Humility is an important character trait, pointed out by many verses in the Bible (1 Peter 5:6; Proverbs 22:4; Psalm 147:6). This is just three mentioned here, but I’m certain I’d be exhausted at the end of a search of verses addressing humility.

In those few verses from 1 Kings 12, we see Jeroboam violated the First, Second and Fourth Commandments. He did not put God first, he made idols and worshiped them, and he created his own Sabbaths. In addition, he was quite proud of himself. And it’s not hard to imagine that he used the name of God casually, or without reverence, so let’s just say he spit on the first four commandments, along with a host of biblical principles.

These sins were bad, but they were not the evil that God wants us to recognize and remember. Any one of these sins, or a combination of them all, is not why God chose to single out Jeroboam 14 times for us. The true evil of Jeroboam is identified in what comes next.

This shortcoming, this sin of Jeroboam, this attribute that God so effectively warns about, is in 1 Kings 13. A “man of God” visits Jeroboam, basically to tell Jeroboam of the awaiting doom for his behavior. As God wishes all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), He will extend opportunities—even to the wicked and wayward. Perhaps God extends opportunities especially to the wicked and wayward.

Far from responding to God’s grace, Jeroboam points to the man of God, and says, “Arrest Him!”

It’s not mentioned what awaited the man of God. I picture Jeroboam firing up a big vat of oil so he could throw the man into it. Telling a proud man that he’s wrong doesn’t generally go so well, and I think we all have our own examples of how ineffective it is. But telling a proud king that he is wrong is quite dangerous. Remember the king from the book of Esther? The law was that anyone who even went into the inner court to visit the king without being invited would be put to death. It’s possible that in both of these cases—the man of God here and Esther—God’s hedge of protection was raised.

We’re told then that Jeroboam’s hand withered. Distraught, Jeroboam asks the man of God to pray to “your” God—not Jeroboam’s god or gods, but the man’s God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The man of God does, and Jeroboam’s hand was restored.

Now, we believe in miracles. But when a healing happens to someone else, it’s not always certain that there was divine intervention. It could be time and chance, or some other reason or factor to explain it. But when a healing happens to us personally, we know more clearly that God chose to intervene. We all have personal examples of when we know we’ve had God’s hand of mercy or protection on us.

My dad had something wrong with his shoulder for years. I was involved with a wallpaper-hanging project or two at their house because he could not lift his right arm above his head without some extreme discomfort. I hung enough wallpaper to actually get pretty good at doing it, but let’s be clear: I’m not offering up any wallpaper hanging services.

My dad was among a group of people who were praying for him, and he lifted his right arm, and felt a pop. He lifted it again, and he felt another pop. After that, he was completely healed. While I can suggest alternatives, try telling my dad that a miracle did not take place there. You won’t have much success suggesting otherwise.

So you would think that this would have registered to Jeroboam. Two miracles, back-to-back—first, the hand was withered, and then the hand was restored. Wouldn’t the God of Israel have stood out as the God, the One to worship and follow? Well, we read of Jeroboam’s reaction:

1 Kings 13:33-34: “After this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but again he made priests from every class of people for the high places; whoever wished, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places. And this thing was the sin of the house of Jeroboam, so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth.”

So here is the great sin of Jeroboam: He did not repent. He did not repent.

However ugly and ungodly our lives have been, and continue to be, there’s a way out. There is everlasting life, and a joy and peace that we are just not able to comprehend as humans. Our imagination of the new heaven and new earth does not qualify in any way to give us a proper insight of what awaits.

But it all hinges on repentance.

It is very easy to contrast David’s life with the ways of Jeroboam. David did not fashion idols, or put himself in place of God. David was an example of humility for us all. He listened to the prophets and repented profusely. It is abundantly clear what made David a good king and Jeroboam a bad king. And it is equally clear why these two kings became standards of their kind.

Jeroboam sinned, David sinned, and we all sin. But the legacies of 14 bad kings include a comparison to Jeroboam for the purpose of pointing out the treachery of an inability or unwillingness to repent.

One day our own legacies will be written down. If they include an absence of repentance, they will likely end with the statement, “And we did evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jeroboam did.” God wants us to remember this. So He effectively reminds us of the importance of repentance, with these 14 taps on the shoulder. 

Mike Pischke