One of the recurring refrains in the books of Kings is that later rulers of Israel “walked in the sins of Jeroboam.” The phrase appears so often that it becomes almost liturgical. Jeroboam’s actions are not treated merely as personal failures, but as a turning of the civilizational wheel that reshapes the moral and political trajectory of generations to come.

Oddly enough, one of the closest modern fictional parallels to Jeroboam may be Big Boss from the Metal Gear series.

This is not because the two men are aesthetically similar. One is a biblical king presiding over the fragmentation of ancient Israel; the other is a fictional soldier navigating the geopolitical chaos of the late Cold War. The similarity lies deeper. Both men respond to genuine crises of legitimacy by constructing alternative sovereignty structures that eventually perpetuate the very disorders they hoped to escape.

Importantly, the biblical narrative does not initially portray Jeroboam as a straightforward usurper or villain. The division of the kingdom emerges from a broader collapse already underway. Solomon’s reign had become increasingly burdened by excess, forced labor, and idolatrous accommodation. When the people ask Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, to lighten these burdens, he responds not with wisdom but........

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