Don't Be Lazy! (Ch. 12, Qst. 1)

After reigning over Israel for forty years, King Solomon departed from this life into the next and kingship befell his son Rehoboam who had grown up in the court of his father and had known nothing but a life of luxury. Now Solomon had harshly reigned over his people, laying on them much suffering and difficult labor. When Solomon died, the elders came to his son asking if he might lighten their burden.

Sending them away, Rehoboam brought in his father’s counselors; some very wise old men. He asked how he should respond to the elders. They advised him to become a servant to his people and speak good words to them and if he did this he would be rewarded in that they would never leave him and always be his faithful servants. This advice did not sit well with Rehoboam, a man who had been accustomed to living a life of laziness in the grandness of the his father’s court. Hoping for an alternative, Rehoboam turned to the young men who befriended and grew up with him sharing in his idleness and wasting themselves away. Of course, being accustomed the same ways of living as their friend they told him to add more weight to the people’s burden. It was going to be worse for the people under the reign of Rehoboam than it had been under King Solomon! In making this decision, he was displaying a want of being more powerful than his father and proving it to the people under him by adding more weight to their already heavy burden.

The decision of Rehoboam resulted in disaster, but it also marks one of the seven capital sins – the sin of covetousness. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that this is not a grievous sin, except in certain conditions which involve offense of God or the neighbor. In other words, “when one is prepared to employ illicit or unjust means to satisfy the desire of riches”. Rehoboam was prepared to burden the people more heavily and to “chastise them with scorpions”. In doing this, he was refusing to serve them or to take some of their labor upon himself. They instead would work more in order that his riches and comfort in his vast halls would grow larger than they were in the reign of his father.

Besides the sin of covetousness, Rehoboam was also adding to his idleness almost to the point of slothfulness. He wanted to continue lying around in his court wasting his life away with his friends. The last thing he wanted to do was to take some of Israel’s work upon his own shoulders.

The lives of the people of Israel were made almost worse after King Solomon died and King Rehoboam took over. He succumbed to the evils of greed and slothfulness in order that he might be more comfortable in his court and keep his fair share of work down to a minimum. We can compare the sins of Rehoboam to two of the seven capital sins: covetousness and slothfulness. As human beings trying to conform ourselves to the perfection of God, we need to avoid these two sins that we might get along peaceably with our neighbors and be able to love God as he loves us by serving one another.