God spoke to Solomon a fourth and last time, but no longer in blessing or in warning.  The gavel has dropped, the bell has rung, the sentence was pronounced:

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         "I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen" (1 Kings 11:11-13).

        

From this time on, God's hand was against His own nation, and He actively sowed division while vainly urging the people to remember their forefather David.  This was the beginning of the dispossession of their inheritance that Israel has endured for nearly 3000 years.  Now begins the subjection of the Jews to the Gentiles, and at the same time, in the words of the 8th Century prophets, a shift of focus from the creation of a Righteous Nation to the expectation of a Righteous Man, one who will deliver them from the hopelessness of their own disobedience.  But meanwhile, it is all disunion and devastation, and woe to the man who started the avalanche.