Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Now Rehoboam son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, November 3, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I wonder about this Naamah. 1 Kings calls her out specifically as Rehoboam’s mother not once, but twice in this passage. Possibly it’s because she’s an Ammonite—evidence that Solomon took wives who were not from the Israelites, something that he did later in life that undermined his legacy in a huge way. And after all, as we read, Rehoboam sins so egregiously against God (by worshipping other gods) that it says his actions provoked God to jealousy and anger “more than all their ancestors had done.” This sets the stage for the disastrous string of kings that followed David and Solomon, eventually leading Israel to split into two nations and then to be conquered repeatedly by other nations. Can it all be traced back to this poor Naamah? That’s giving her an awful lot of credit, when the decisions were ultimately to be made by her son, the king. Still, even in acutely patriarchal societies like this one, women can have a great deal of influence, especially over their sons. On the other hand, the records of such societies are often quick to blame women for the misdeeds of men, so there’s that. I suppose I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about this—it’s just a noticing and a wondering, and sometimes that’s the best thing that comes out of reading the Bible. It ought to make us think.
What scripture passages do I find curious? Why?
