God’s Word for You
2 Chronicles 11:13-17 Goat idols
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, November 12, 2024
13 The priests and Levites from all throughout Israel took their stand with Rehoboam. They left their allotted districts. 14 The Levites even left their pasturelands and property, and they came to Judah and Jerusalem because Jeroboam and his sons had removed them from being priests of the LORD.
Remember that the difference between priests and Levites is simply that all priests were to come out of the tribe of Levi, and from 30 to 50 they served as priests. But not all of the Levites served this way. A man was not able to serve if he had even a minor physical defect. According to the Law of Moses, he could eat the holy food of the offerings, but he could not approach the altar to make the offerings himself (Leviticus 21:21-23). Therefore: A priest was a Levite with no physical defects (such as a missing an eye, ear, toe, or finger), but the rest of the tribe were referred to as Levites and they assisted the priests in many ways.
The Levites and the priests did not have their own tribal territory, but they had homes and fields scattered here and there all throughout Israel and Judah. Those priests and Levites who were in the northern tribes—all ten of them—began to go south in the beginning of Rehoboam’s time as king. In verse 14, we find out that this was because the king in the north, Jeroboam, had removed all of them from the priesthood there.
15 Jeroboam appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat idols and calf idols he had made. 16 Those who set their hearts on seeking the LORD, the God of Israel, followed the Levites to Jerusalem. They came from every tribe of Israel to offer sacrifices to the LORD, the God of their fathers. 17 The people strengthened the kingdom of Judah and supported Rehoboam son of Solomon three years, for they walked for three years in the way of David and Solomon.
As soon as he was made king, Jeroboam forced the northern tribes to abandon the Lord altogether. He understood the meaning of the temple in Jerusalem. He himself had been in charge of the forced labor that provided a great deal of the workforce for the temple and for other projects that Solomon undertook (1 Kings 11:26). He reasoned that if he kept people from going south to the temple, he would control their allegiance, so he made up his own religion. It was a mockery of the true faith and besides calf idols, he involved the worship of goat idols (sagirim), a practice that is mentioned only one other place in the Bible, after the people came out of Egypt and were told not to do that anymore (Leviticus 17:7). It must have been a carry-over from an Egyptian practice. When I used to milk goats I sometimes saw them walking on their hind legs—and to see a thing standing more than six feet tall with horns walking on its inhuman hind legs out of the fog is enough to put a lot of fear into your heart, but why would you worship the thing? There is nothing more to be said about the “theology” of Jeroboam’s religion, since it was based on nothing but thin air. But people forced into a habit will continue in the habit for a long time if they are not turned away by someone with wisdom.
I encountered an example of this in a Catechism lesson a few weeks ago; the student said he wouldn’t mind if I mentioned it. The student answered a question in a handout in a series of questions about Jesus. The question was: “What did God do about our sinful condition?” His answer was, “He sent them to die for our sins.” He has become so conditioned by our society to default to using “they” for any pronoun that he created a new false theology without meaning to. The pattern is always the same: Some group will insist that they be noticed and respected. Then they will make outrageous demands once they are noticed. Then they will insist that simply respecting them is not enough; everybody else has to change or they will be punished in some way. We see it happen again and again. The student has been conditioned not only to use “they” as a pronoun for certain individuals who want it, but now it is his default pronoun for EVERY individual, whether they want it to be or not. I told him that it would be better to say “he” for Jesus than “they,” to be sure that he is not only understood, but to that he cannot be misunderstood. He laughed and agreed with me.
We know that at some point Rehoboam also turned away from the Lord and the temple worship just as Jeroboam had done (2 Chronicles 12:1). We are helped here in our chronology by the inspired prophet telling us that his faithfulness lasted for three years. Rehoboam didn’t necessarily worship the goat idols of the north, but he surely became delinquent in his worship in the temple.
What does regular, weekly worship do? It reminds us of the message of God’s love and forgiveness. It reminds us of those things that are sins, and of what God has done about our sins. We are helped along by seeing other people, people who are our family and friends, worshiping alongside us, encouraging us. We also pray together, speaking out loud those things that trouble us, hurt us, or are missing from our lives. We understand each other better, and our love for our loved ones grows deeper and deeper, just as our love for God grows deeper and deeper. We sing, we pray, we listen, we confess, we are forgiven, we learn, we are built up, and our confidence matures and becomes more and more secure. “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.