I don’t know how public Solomon was with his discontent, but I doubt he kept his secrets any better than other politicians.  Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion, he wrote in the end of Ecclesiastes.  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God will evaluate every deed, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.¹

The title of the movie “As Good as It Gets” comes from a small scene that marks the turning point for the main character played by Jack Nicholson.  As he exits his psychiatrist’s office and sees people waiting in the waiting room, people who presumably believe their own visit to the psychiatrist will improve their lives in some way, Nicholson’s character blurts out, “What if this is as good as it gets?”  The storyline in the movie follows Nicholson’s character out the door, but I want to sit for a moment with those stunned patients in the waiting room.  For they seem a lot like the rebellious Israelites of Solomon’s day.

Solomon was their beloved king.  He had built their kingdom into something grander than they had ever seen.  They served him lovingly with all their might.  He was the object of their pride and joy, yet they heard rumors that all their faithful service was ultimately profitless—like chasing the wind.²  He possessed the wealth and power, the wisdom and ability to acquire or procure all the things the Israelites believed (and not only the Israelites believed) would bring them happiness, a better life.  Their fathers, their grandfathers and great grandfathers had hoped that a king like this would save them from the monotonous cycle of fearing God and keeping his commandments, and they had instilled this hope apparently in many of their offspring.  So when Solomon found the only meaning of his life in the simple terms of Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, it is much more than a slap in their faces.  This was no crank who breezed through their lives as quickly as one passes through a waiting room.  Solomon represented their hope and their ambition to be free of this very obligation.  But Solomon turned on them, dashed their hopes and crushed their ambitions when he declared essentially, “This is as good as it gets!”

But were the Israelites really free to articulate such things in a theocratic state?  Was it even possible to think them clearly and coherently?  Or would they simply say, not even to Solomon but to his son, Your father made us work too hard?

Rehoboam took three days to consider the ultimatum his subjects made: Now if you lighten the demands…and don’t make us work as hard, we will serve you.³  His father’s advisers counseled Rehoboam to acquiesce to the people’s demand.  His own advisers counseled him to stand firm through this first challenge to his reign.  The text seems to imply, and given the outcome the author may have believed, that the older advisers gave Rehoboam the better advice.  But I wonder.  Had Rehoboam heeded his father’s advisers would the outcome really have been different?  What about the next time his subjects came to the obviously weakened king with their next ultimatum and their new demands?

Conspicuous by its absence is the ordinary, mundanely wise counsel that might have addressed both the people’s concerns and the legitimacy and integrity of the king’s reign.  Let’s not even mention the superlative, Solomonic style wisdom that might have proposed a hypothetical or a series of adroit questions to unmask and reveal the Israelite’s disingenuousness to all—even to themselves.  My point is that I would be disingenuous to claim that God was intervening in Israel’s history on the one hand and then blame Rehoboam for the result on the other.  The king refused to listen to the people, because the Lord was instigating this turn of events,⁴ [See Addendum below] the text states directly.

Rehoboam mustered a large army, but the Lord sent a prophet to speak to him and all his people:  The Lord says this: “Do not attack and make war with your brothers, the Israelites.  Each of you go home, for I have caused this to happen.”⁵  Rehoboam and his loyal subjects obeyed the Lord and went home.  Jeroboam, king of the rebel kingdom, created his own religion to keep his subjects from returning to Jerusalem for worship.  If I consider that Jeroboam’s rebel people didn’t mount any protest worth mentioning in the Bible it is not too hard to imagine that God could have comforted Solomon and Rehoboam with the same words He spoke to Samuel: It is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king.⁶

Addendum: September 6, 2021
I’m not sure why I cut this quotation short.  Now it seems pertinent to point out the pattern of the truth of God’s word.

Tables comparing Ecclesiastes 12:13; 12:14; 1 Kings 12:15 and 12:24 in the Tanakh, KJV and NET, and tables comparing the Greek of Ecclesiastes 12:13; 12:14; 1 Kings (3 Reigns, 3 Kings) 12:15 and 12:24 in the Septuagint (BLB and Elpenor) follow.