2 Ch. 12: Shishak Attak

2 Chronicles 12:10 "So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace."

Well, Rehoboam had gotten strong, but turned away from God. And this chapter shows what happens. With the covenant broken, there were any number of horrible things that could have happened, but in this case, God uses Shishak, Egypt's king, as His hand of judgement on Rehoboam and Israel. 

Shishak brings a powerful army, and ends up taking some cities. When Shemaiah the prophet hits Rehoboam with some knowledge about why this is happening, he humbles himself. Because of this sudden attack of common spiritual sense, the LORD spares Israel from utter annihiliation, which Shishak could have easily brought. Instead, Israel would become subject to Shishak, which meant serving him, paying tribute to him, and following his laws.

Why? So that Israel "may learn the difference between serving me and serving the kings of other lands." So I wonder how life was going to change for the Israelites. Shishak would not subject himself to God. But even Rehoboam probably didn't treat the Israelites as his slaves, he was loyal to them purely from a national point of view at least. Good luck Israel.

Also, its interesting that the gold shields placed in the temple by Solomon were plundered, and replaced with bronze. Semi precious, but no where near as beautiful or permanent as the gold ones. Not only that, the bronze shields were not just there for decoration, they were used in combat. Can you imagine that? They tried to make things back the way they were, but it just wasn't right. They could not match the original intent, once the original precious items were taken. Even when they were sort of replaced, they weren't even used the way they were originally intended. In no way could the replacements measure up.