In 2 Chronicles 13, we find Judah about to face off in battle against Israel. Following the glorious, climactic reign of Solomon, the kingdom by this point had split in two.
We know that Rehoboam took foolish counsel from other young men and answered the people harshly. When the overburdened people asked for a lightening of Solomon’s heavy-handed rule, Rehoboam doubled down, walked into a fight with his words, and divided a nation. One man’s folly ended the golden age of Israel’s national existence.
Some years later, Abijah (Solomon’s grandson and David’s great grandson) led Judah in battle against Jeroboam and Israel. The wide angle view of Abijah’s life was hardly the picture of obedience to God’s law, yet in this snapshot he seems to have been in the right.
As the battle neared, Judah was outnumbered, with 400,000 set against Israel’s 800,000. Despite the fact that Jeroboam’s armies surrounded and began to ambush Judah’s fighting men, Abijah’s troops would win a stunning victory. In the end, some 500,000 Israelites—chosen men, the most valiant warriors—were slain. The victory went to Judah because unlike Israel, it had not forsaken God.
Despite the “victory,” it was ultimately tragic—a civil war that cost nearly as many lives as the American Civil War. You could trace all the senseless carnage and shattered lives back to the failure of leadership displayed by Rehoboam. One man’s soft character led to the death of three quarters of a million of his own people and changed the direction of the nation forever.
Abijah’s speech before the battle focuses in on this aspect of Rehoboam’s character and past actions.
Hard Words About a Soft Man
As the two armies formed battle lines, Abijah told Jeroboam that he, Jeroboam, was able to revolt against Rehoboam and divide the kingdom because Rehoboam was “young and irresolute and could not withstand them” (2 Chronicles 13:7).
You might pass over a word like “irresolute,” as I almost did, except that I noticed the ESV gives us a footnote. As an alternate meaning, the Hebrew word being used denotes that Rehoboam was “soft of heart.”
While the ESV translates the Hebrew word rak as “irresolute,” it means “tender, delicate, soft.” It can mean “tender, delicate, especially in body, implying weakness of undeveloped character.” It can also mean “weak of heart, timid,” or referring to “soft words.”
Keep in mind, at this pivotal time Abijah is speaking about his father. Maybe Rehoboam passed on the lesson of his own failure to his son so that he would not repeat it. Maybe Abijah simply knew his history. In any event, the son didn’t miss the point made by a generation-impacting failure of leadership: one man’s soft character can destroy a nation. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake.
Rehoboam altered the fate of his nation because he was a soft man. His softness seems to have come from a number of factors: his youth, inexperience, and perhaps the circumstances of his upbringing. He was weak of character and delicate, likely because he was raised in opulence, wealth, and comfort. We also know that he wasn’t faithful to God’s Word. Soft men come from soft places and soft people.
It reminds me of something John Piper once said in Chapel at Southern Seminary. He warned the students that the pristine and decadent campus could destroy their souls because it was so “posh and nice.” Those are the kind of surroundings that can make men soft, cowardly, and compromising when they should be hard, resolute, and courageous to oppose evil. Piper’s words were an accurate foreshadowing of what would happen to the seminary because of Critical Race Theory and Woke Politics.
You can also think of the Spartans, who realized hard warriors came from hard training and a hard life. Or John, who didn’t grow up with white collar amenities but in a wilderness with sparsity and danger.
John: The Hard Man Par Excellence
Compare Rehoboam’s softness to what Jesus said about John the Baptist in Matthew 11.
Speaking to the crowds about John, Jesus asked, ““What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses” (Matthew 11:7-8).
I’ve talked about this before, but the word here for soft in the Greek is malakos, which also translates elsewhere to effeminate. Soft men in soft places (king’s palaces) wear soft clothing. They live in, fellowship with, and adorn themselves with softness. Their environment and friends are soft, and it seeps into their bones—much like xenoestrogens that soften plastic & human skin tissue.
Rehoboam was that son raised in a king’s house. He was delicate and, as a result, dangerous to his people. He lacked the courageous character to confront rebellion with competence. Ironically, a wise, hard man would have spoken a soft word and would have saved the nation; instead, a soft man spoke a hard word and caused horrendous national division, death, and destruction. Too often, soft men wrongly think “tough talk” will make up for their own insecurity, when it actually works to fan the flames of conflict. A wise man knows when to use a gentle word of appeal and when to roar like a lion.

This wonderful, faithful preacher made a grave error and then, when in the face of an outpouring of grief, has tried to defend his position with a misuse of Scripture—something Jesus would never approve. 

Alistair Begg’s preaching has been one of the most strengthening gifts to me over the past 20 years. The bit of New York where I live seems like the part of Ohio where he pastors, though his parts are probably flatter with better restaurants. Gently decaying towns and depressed cities, people whose families built the infrastructure that now so desperately needs renewal, middle-class, hard-working, as they say, salt of the earth. Listening to Begg preach to his congregation over the airwaves helped me to become acclimatized to living here. I gradually learned not to despise ways of life I didn’t understand and didn’t yet appreciate. It took me seven years to stop hating the hometown of my six children, and another seven beyond that to feel content about the garden. At the 21-year mark, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night anxious that God will force me to move somewhere awful and hot, like Florida. Begg’s preaching cadence somehow made the sanctifying medicine of accepting a people and a place go down more smoothly.
Listening to this latest recording, it seems that the aftermath of the interview he gave—what he called a storm in a teacup—has aged him. His voice is shaky. He sounds on the edge of tears. Obviously, he did not expect what he said to be so controversial and was therefore deeply grieved to find an outpouring of, from his perspective, opprobrium, with some small amount of praise.
Before I go any further, I should say that I am grateful and heartened that Begg reiterated his orthodox position on human sexuality, and that he is not giving a blanket council for Christians to go to the weddings of same-sex people. I hope that someone he trusts is sparing no effort to try to work through the complexity of these issues, to help him understand why people who listen to him and love him are so upset.
I am grieved, though, that he was caught off guard. For a portion of the sermon, he recounts how often he has been at the forefront of preaching about sexuality. He has recently gone through Romans 1. In the past has gone up against some of the biggest cultural influencers on the subject of sexuality, people like Ellen DeGeneres. If that’s so, how does he not have a sense of how volatile this subject is, how what we say and do is under a microscope, how every day more famous and notable Christians are capitulating to the lie?
Which brings me to my problems with his sermon. Begg falls into at least one, if not more, category errors. Many Evangelicals today, he says, have succumbed to the trap of the first-century Pharisee who acted like the older brother in Luke 15. When the younger brother came home, the older brother would not come and greet him, but in anger sent a servant, and then accused the father of ungenerosity towards himself. The choice, Begg says, for Christians today is between condemnation and compassion. The grace of God is for both the younger and the older. In this vein, he spoke movingly on the subject of the grace of God.
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Observing what’s not said is definitely an art and not a science, so you need to use common sense. Identify what you might expect from a passage. Then make sure to observe how (and whether) the text subverts those expectations to sharpen its argument. The biblical authors are constantly working to subvert our expectations so they might better persuade us to trust the Lord and seek first his kingdom.

We’ve mentioned it a thousand times: When we observe a passage of the Bible, we’re trying to figure out what it says. However, sometimes we won’t fully grasp what it says without first observing what it doesn’t say. Ryan has made this point in two recent posts with respect to characters’ names. But what’s not said applies to many other types of observation as well. Here are three examples.
Example #1: Luke 15:11-32
The parable commonly known as “The Prodigal Son” is really about Two Brothers. We’re told of the bad choices of the younger son (Luke 15:12-16), and his risky decision to come back home (Luke 15:17-19). We’re told about what happened upon his return (father runs to meet him, throws a party, etc., in Luke 15:20-24).
Then we’re told of the bad attitude and choices of the older son (Luke 15:25-30). We hear the father’s appeal to his grumbling son (Luke 15:31-32). But we never find out what he decided or what happened.
The two brothers are parallel to one another. Their stories are parallel. Up to the point where we expect to hear the choice and results of the older son’s decision. But that choice and its results are left unsaid. The parable simply ends on a cliffhanger.
What is the point of the omission? Jesus lets the end of the story play itself out in the response of the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling (Luke 15:2). Luke 13-14 was all about the feast and joy of the kingdom of God. Will these grumbling scribes and Pharisees enter? Will those who are saved be few (Luke 13:23)?
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