When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard this (he was in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), he returned from Egypt. – 2 Chronicles 10:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 10, 2013): 2 Chronicles 10

In 1933, Albert Einstein took a vacation away from his home in Germany. He never returned. The newly elected German government (the Nazi’s) had decided that what Einstein had been teaching in the universities was wrong. This belief was not based on empirical data and experiments that had proved Einstein’s theories incorrect (we still have not been able to do that.) The new German government had decided that Einstein was wrong simply because of his Jewish background. It is still hard to believe that Albert Einstein was the subject of book burnings in Germany in the 1933. All of the product from this phenomenal and original mind was lost to a generation of German students.

Albert Einstein was also a noted pacifist. Even with everything that he was watching develop on the world stage, Einstein simply thought that war was wrong. A group of Hungarian scientists, who were refugees in the United States, had tried to warn the American government in 1939 that the German scientists were working on the Atomic Bomb. Their thought was that the United States needed to turn up the effort on their research toward the bomb. But the scientists were not taken seriously by the government officials. So they approached Albert Einstein to join with them in their effort to convince the President of the danger that was lurking in the not too distant future. Einstein ignored his own personal convictions on war and put his signature on a letter to President Roosevelt in regard to that state of the German research. Roosevelt took Einstein seriously and started to put more money in what was being called then “The Manhattan Project” – and the United States ended up winning the race to the bomb. All of this was made possible because they were willing to listen to the advice of a scientist that the Germans had discredited.

Unfortunately, the reality is that our decisions and mistakes often come back to haunt us. Jeroboam had been an official in King Solomon’s government. But he began to be tempted with the idea that he could be the ruler over the Northern tribes. The idea led Jeroboam to rebel against Solomon. And Solomon was forced to put down the rebellion. But the reality was that Jeroboam and his compatriots were never really dealt with – and the issues that caused the rebellion in the first place had never been resolved. Jeroboam himself simply left the country to live in exile in Egypt.

But when Solomon died, all of the issues came back – including Jeroboam. And what Jeroboam was unable to do under Solomon, he was more than ready to do during the reign of his son, Rehoboam. The problem that had never been dealt in the past with caused a significant problem for the future. For Nazi Germany, the problem was never Einstein, it was an unhealthy view of foreigners – specifically the Jews of central Europe. For Solomon, the problem was not really Jeroboam, but rather a significant feeling of disconnect that was growing among the Northern tribes – It had been present from the beginning of David’s reign but was now coming to head, possibly because of the massive commitment of resources that was necessary to build the Temple in Jerusalem in a single generation (Solomon’s Temple was one of a handful of major structures that was completed by the same ruler who started the process. Normally these projects in the ancient world took generations to complete.) It was this disconnect that set the stage for both Jeroboam’s rebellion under Solomon and for his return to Israel at the beginning of the reign of Solomon’s son.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 11