Being left in a state of puzzlement is necessarily something I enjoy about reading the Bible. The more embroiled I am in parsing out the intricacies of certain stories or sets of admonishment in the Bible, the more I am convinced that I am doing something right. I should say my mode of revel in Bible study is a thorough attempt to practice what is often ONLY preached – “You gotta let God speak to YOU through the WORD of GOD. You gotta seek interpretation from the Holy Spirit. You have to stay with the silence of drinking in scripture like hot chocolate, if ever you are going to hear the voice, the still, small voice in the wind.” I don’t feel the urge to articulate the dire failure that has accompanied attempts to follow up on this instruction within the space of this writing, but it’s gotta to be mentioned that somehow, somewhat, the usual model of Christianic “Bibling” has been offering interpretations to believers especially in service to the scriptural architecture of a denomination as opposed to leading them, guiding them to the seeking of interpretations from the Bible. But hey, no blame-shame here; I am human enough to know that it is often difficult to genuinely, wholly, undilutedly give ourselves over to practicing what we preach, especially in a world that is merely a stage where both the acts of showing and telling, of preaching and practicing, of verbalizing and verbing, are performances.

Thus, in my zest to seek reasons behind confounding expositions into the life of a Biblical character or possibly attempt to contextually understand an uttered string of injunctions in the Bible, I always delude myself into thinking that I am working against the grain of merely receiving pre-cooked, parboiled interpretations. So, as I move through chapters in the Bible, I latch onto less obvious insights, the less profound stories, the subjects and matters that necessarily do not make it to the pulpits in the ways that matter. But, best believe, through these conduits, I often stumble on universal truths (shockingly so), agelong dictums, figments of the very core behind our proclivity to seek out a Divine through religion and religious practices. The general question that keeps sprouting from all the supposed divinely-led interpretations I deduce from my study of the KJV Bible handed down to us within the last few centuries is this: “Why do we worship God the way we do?” And if your interrputive question is “Pray you, Funmi, How do we worship God?” I will tell you that is a conversation for another day, but if I were to answer in shorthand, I would say, “It would seem worshippers of God, in any time, period, or medium, like to be told exactly what to do.”

I digress.

My latest quest in self-sought Bible interpretation has led me to latch onto the story of Jeroboam, with as much fervour as I once latched onto the stunning, intricate details of David and Jonathan’s friendship, or that story about that man born of a harlot and sent by his kinspeople to fight for them, was made judge, but had to inadvertently offer his daughter as a living sacrifice to God because of his vow. Oh damn, his name escapes me. Googled it, name is Jephthah, the son of Gilead. Oh wait, I was equally gripped by the story of the Levite from Ephraim in Judges 19 who saved his own skin from unruly sexual abuse by offering his concubine for sexual battering, then turning around to supposedly avenge her by cutting her into many pieces and sending her to the tribes of Israel. That story broke me on many levels. The Levite, The Old Man, The Men of Gibeah, The Virgin Daughter… every element of the story is not just some telltale sign of Isrealitish decadence; the characters, the events, they speak to modern day issues that underscore just how our humanity in all its foibles, fallibilities, and farcical manifestions has been on open, unabashed display since the beginning of times.

Again, I digress. I am locked in NOW more than ever on the story of Jeroboam, the all important, yet “by-the-way” king that was instrumentalized by God to rend Israel into ratio 10:1 or (Can’t recall the reason why it is 10:1 instead of 10:2 as I write this 🤔), the same king who was merely part of the efficient, organized labor force King Solomon had set up to actualize his ambitious projects, the same king labeled as ‘industrious’ in 1 Kings 11:28 who caught Solomon’s eyes first and then caught God’s eyes. Jeroboam creeps into the Bible like a deux et machina. Wisdom-filled yet much of an acute womanizer, Solomon wasn’t doing it for God anymore. He had become one of those mindless, boring worshippers of God, much like Saul, who, after gaining God’s blessings, forget God and his ways – the kind that they warn against in church. And so, there has got to be some catalyst of change and that person happens to be Jeroboam. In 1 Kings 11:26, He pops in like a blue collared union leader who, like many of the other opponents God raised against Solomon, “lifted up his hand against the king”. But even he becomes a yes-man (an industrious one, but a yes-man nonetheless), after getting a position from Solomon as “ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph”. I can imagine him mopping around like a supervisor who has money in the bags, but who still considers himself a union leader advocating for the emancipation of the masses from encumbering tax payments and labor recruitment. Jeroboam- a man who wishes to dance to the tune of revolution but still works for the emperor with no clothes on because, hey, he who pays the piper calls the tune. This Jeroboam, powerful, political, yet a polite worker, suddenly has his world rocked when he is told by Ahijah the prophet that he will be given, freely bestowed ten tribes of Israel. And when Ahijah explains why the kingdom is being wrenched out of Solomon’s hands, it is this: The children of Israel, empowered by the leader Solomon, “have not walked in my ways, to do that which is RIGHT in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, AS DID DAVID HIS FATHER.”

You would think that Jeroboam who went on a self-exile to Egypt to hide from Solomon, Jeroboam who was called back to do union leader stuff for the Israelietes (like poor old Jephthah), Jeroboam who was made king based on the goodwill of people and God’s will would, at least, become some Walmart version of David, considering he faced a mini-version of David’s afflictions and successes. But no, man woke up one day and thought to himself that it was a great idea to build high temples in Bethel and Dan so the children of Israel won’t go to Jerusalem to worship God. Like even a ‘grade 1 believer’, ‘a fed-of-milk-not-of-strong-meat’ believer would know that was a stupid thing to do. So Jeroboam due to this brainless, un-make-sense action, loses God-tiered privileges and becomes cannon fodder in the ranking of God’s favorites. He literally doomed his entire lineage to a wrath that even the space of 2000 more years cannot contain. Just like Saul, just like Solomon, just like many others who came after Jeroboam who probably did right along the lines of leadership but “who were not perfect in the sight of God. Same old, same old, nothing new. Now, Jeroboam has sort of become a cautionary tale for today’s believers to not unfollow God or unsubscribe from his newsletter, the one he specifically mails to Jerusalem, just because we wish to feed the anxiety of losing the privileges and blessings we have gotten from this same God. It makes sense to do this, to preach of Jeroboam in this manner.

But you know what makes absolute, perfect sense? What Jeroboam did. Once we demystify Jeroboam and bring him to the level of a politician trying to secure his polling units, it makes complete sense for him to have thought it necessary to shift the places of worship to the very goalposts he is trying to secure. Entire national administrations do that now. It’s why we have redlining in the US today. Point is, Jeroboam could simply be deemed an anxious, yet strategic player in the already muddled game of politics. But then, how did Jeroboam not know to involve the business of God in his political gamifications? How did he not think that this is God we are talking about, ke. A whole God. To broaden the scope, how did kings like Saul and Solomon particularly manage to just go batshit crazy against God, when this God was in their corner, rooting for them (initially at least), speaking for them, speaking through them, speaking to them. Just how? And then there is David. Good old David, who swooned God just by existing, just by living and unliving and disliving and misliving. David who became the man to God’s heart, the man in God’s heart, from his humble beginnings to his lavish, extravagant, ghastly end. I am not seeking direct, ABC answers to this question, but I have managed to refract a sliver of wisdom from this puzzlement. And that’s the wisdom of simply living life with the intent of knowing God for yourself. This wisdom kicks against the much embraced notion of following after the faith of our fathers, that much holy faith, that lives still, the one to which many hope to be true to till death (words from the hymn initially written by Frederick William Faber in 1849.

Knowing God for yourself is again some axiom that is thrown around in church sermons, but has merely become one of those things you say but don’t do or even know to do. It’s hard to know what this actually means especially within the context of current Christian practice that is already oversaturated with content, communities, and calls to action that already point the way to who God is and how God should be known. Not to complicate the knowing of God with denominational differences and doctrinal dilemmas, at the very basic, you know you have to praise, you have to pray, you have to live holy, you have to study God’s word and all these will lead you to knowing him. In fact, most folks come into the practice of Christianity (even other religions that lay claim to the knowledge of God) through generational inheritance. You can finesse this understanding through an acclaimed experiential discovery of God, but it often starts with some sort of societal, culturally specific, place-based perception about God passed down through generations. The life of the likes of Jeroboam, Solomon, and Saul in juxtaposition with the life of David actually show that knowing God for oneself might actually be more primal and bare than we have (mis)construed it to be.

Jeroboam knew God, but he didn’t know God for himself, it would seem. He knew God as the means to an end.

Simply basking in the presence of a God or basking in the knowledge of having an idea that this person is might not be enough; asking the hard questions about this God pushes you to a deeper knowledge that will come handy and serve as a muscle memory on the days remembrance eludes you.