And it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was come again, that they sent and called him unto the congregation, and made him king over all Israel: there was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only.
When all Israel heard that Jeroboam was come again. This verse closes the parenthetical narrative begun at 1 Kings 12:2, and 1 Kings 12:21-24 resume the history from 1 Kings 12:1.
They sent and called him unto the congregation, х 'el (H413) haa`eedaah (H5712)] - the assembly of representatives.
And made him king over all Israel. There was no consultation of Yahweh in this national emergency, and Jeroboam was a stranger to the character or qualities of a ruler "raised up" by the Divine Head and King of Israel. The people, denationalized by the vitiating influences of Solomon's court alienated by the centralizing policy which had drawn the chief wealth and produce into the capital, and reduced themselves to the condition of serfs, or feudal villains, who were compelled to labour for the pleasure and aggrandizement of one man, were open to the agitation of a designing demagogue, like Jeroboam, who addressed their passions, and, comparing their actual condition to that of the servile caste in Egypt, from which he had newly arrived, stirred them up to secret discontent in the king's lifetime, and to open revolt at his death. Had he possessed the spirit of a true Israelite, he would have seen that the sure way of preserving the Hebrews from sinking into the oppressed and degraded state of the helots in Egypt, was to keep them from the ignorance and superstitions of that country.
But Jeroboam did not know the importance of restoring among the people a more devoted allegiance to their covenant God; and, looking upon religion merely as an engine of state, as a powerful instrument which could be used in the furtherance of his contemplated policy, he gave no promise of being a constitutional king under the theocracy. The elevation of this man to the throne, with the disruption of the tribal unity which was involved in it, was permitted in the divine anger to take, place as a judicial punishment of the nation's complicity in the innovations and the sins of Solomon; and yet, under the overruling providence of God, it was effected by the natural operation of human passions and human agency. "All Israel" must henceforth be understood in a restricted sense, as the title arrogantly assumed by the northern kingdom. It was often called 'Ephraim,' from its principal tribe, whose ambition was the moving cause of the secession, and whose great population and wealth, together with its central position, naturally placed it at the head of the associated tribes.