14 At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick. 2 14:2And Jeroboam said to his wife, “Arise, and disguise yourself, that it not be known that you are the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh. Behold, Ahijah the prophet is there, who said of me that I should be king over this people. 3 14:3Take with you ten loaves, some cakes, and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what shall happen to the child.”
4 14:4Jeroboam’s wife did so. She arose and went to Shiloh and came to the house of Ahijah. Now Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were dim because of his age. 5 14:5And the Lord said to Ahijah, “Behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son, for he is sick. Thus and thus shall you say to her.”
When she came, she pretended to be another woman. 6 14:6But when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why do you pretend to be another? For I am charged with unbearable news for you. 7 14:7Go, tell Jeroboam, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: “Because I exalted you from among the people and made you leader over my people Israel 8 14:8and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, and yet you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes, 9 14:9but you have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back, 10 14:10therefore behold, I will bring harm upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam, as a man burns up dung until it is all gone. 11 14:11Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat, for the Lord has spoken it.”’ 12 14:12Arise therefore, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. 13 14:13And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. 14 14:14Moreover, the Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today. And henceforth, 15 14:15the Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water, and root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their fathers and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the Lord to anger. 16 14:16And he will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin.”
17 14:17Then Jeroboam’s wife arose and departed and came to Tirzah. And as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. 18 14:18And all Israel buried him and mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Ahijah the prophet.
19 14:19Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. 20 14:20And the time that Jeroboam reigned was twenty-two years. And he slept with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his place.
21 14:21Now Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. 22 14:22And Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. 23 14:23For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, 24 14:24and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.
25 14:25In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. 26 14:26He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house. He took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made, 27 14:27and King Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze, and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard, who kept the door of the king’s house. 28 14:28And as often as the king went into the house of the Lord, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guardroom.
29 14:29Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 30 14:30And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. 31 14:31And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. And Abijam his son reigned in his place.
The short note of the death of Jeroboam (in which Israel mourns for the dead king “according to the word of the Lord”) is then followed by a longer “tribute” to Rehoboam. When measured against both his father and his grandfather, Rehoboam comes up short. The fulfillment of 2 Samuel 7, it seems, will have to wait. Rehoboam’s moral and spiritual failure establishes a basic pattern repeated throughout the rest of the book of Kings and provides a template against which all other kings, good and bad, will be evaluated.
Response
After the interlude of chapter 13 we finally return to Jeroboam—who brazenly and astonishingly tries to call on God when he really does need him. But our God has the habit of turning the tables on people who simply try to use him, who treat God as a prostitute. The verdict of 14:16 is chilling: “He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin.”
This last phrase is actually the refrain of the rest of Kings. Old Ahijah’s words to Jeroboam’s wife are repeated sixteen times in the rest of Kings (15:30, 34; 16:2; etc.). Jeroboam, the man who calls on God only when he is desperate, becomes a byword for rebellion. His actions lead to the death of his son, the end of his dynasty, and the exile of his people—all of which unfold in the rest of this chapter and the rest of this book, starting in the very next verse, as Jeroboam’s child tragically dies.
At one level this chapter is simply a vivid picture of bad behavior. We want to see stupidity? Arrogance? Inconsistency? Selfishness? We need not look any further. But these chapters are not just about such behavior. They are about how people like Rehoboam and Jeroboam—and even the prophets of Yahweh—themselves respond to God’s word.
As we have seen before (cf. Response section on 12:1–33), we are not in the same position as either Rehoboam, the anointed Davidic king, or Jeroboam, the rebel. We do not have the same significance in salvation history that they do. But in many ways we have greater privileges than they had, because we have “seen” the Lord Jesus (cf. John 20:18). Despite the continuity of God’s gracious covenantal commitment to his people throughout the whole Bible, there is also a sense in which those of us who have tasted the blessings of the new covenant established by Jesus’ death and resurrection are in a far superior position to that of these OT kings. We are sons and heirs (Gal. 4:3–7), which means that we above all people must listen to and obey our gracious God and king. Yet we sometimes struggle to do so. But the incredible thing is that in the same way he showed such patience even to Jeroboam, our God does not treat us as our sins deserve but lavishes his grace on us. Make no mistake: God is speaking to us. Day by day. Week by week. Month by month. As his Spirit takes his Word and applies it to us, our God is challenging us, warning us, correcting us, wooing us, teaching us, disciplining us for our good—if we will listen, which Rehoboam steadfastly refused to do.
This sad and disappointing narrative is in the Bible to say something terribly important about people like Rehoboam and Jeroboam. About people like us. Left to ourselves, we find it terribly easy to choose death rather than life and to choose sin rather than obedience. Part of the reason the OT is so long and so full of people like us, making an almighty mess of things, is to get it into our thick heads that we are not as clever as we like to think we are, not as strong as we would like to think we are, not as powerful, not as consistent, not as selfless, not as far-sighted, not as able, not as anything as we would like to think we are—we are always just a couple of bad decisions, a couple of thoughtless sentences, a couple of rash choices away from complete disaster!
It is possible to be paralyzed by the fear of failure, or to use the fear of failure as an excuse—like the guy in the parable of the talents, who buries his investment in a hole (Matt. 25:24–25). And that is neither wise nor good. But there is a sense in which the rest of our lives really should be marked by at least a tinge of this fear. If we find a partner, we really should be just a little afraid that we will wreck the marriage. If we ever have children, we really should be afraid that we will make a mess of being a parent—and will mess up the children forever. If we ever take up leadership in a church, whether with kids or adults, whether paid or unpaid, we really should be just a little bit afraid that we will blow it by making selfish or damaging choices.
We all have important things to do, we all have responsibilities under God, but we all have the propensity to get it horribly wrong. This is why Paul exhorts,
This is a very real possibility. We need to remember that.
But this is not the end of the story. The glorious truth, which comes as an enormous relief to us, is that even though this is true of us, it is not true of the Lord Jesus. He has obeyed perfectly, and has done so for us. Our fears are relieved because not only did he die to pay for the penalty of our sin and to satisfy the wrath our sin has rightly provoked in God; he has actually obeyed for us. The mystery of the cross is that God has found a way both to pardon us and to give us Christ’s perfect and beautiful record (Rom. 3:21–26). This is why we can read even the darkest chapters of Scripture knowing that we are ultimately (and utterly) secure in the Lord Jesus Christ.
14:4–6 The plot thickens when we read that “Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were dim because of his age.” On the one hand, this elevates the chances that Jeroboam’s wife will succeed in deceiving the failing prophet. On the other hand, it highlights the fact that even though the “seer” cannot “see” from a human perspective, it does not matter, for the word of the Lord comes from God himself and not from human abilities. God intervenes directly to ensure that Ahijah has a clear understanding of what is happening: “The Lord said to Ahijah, ‘Behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son, for he is sick.’” As we have already seen repeatedly, the talking God is in complete control of the destiny of the now-split nation.
Tension is maintained in the story by glossing over the content of the revelation to Ahijah at this point (“Thus and thus shall you say to her”), but it is soon resolved as the prophet cuts through all of her efforts to deceive. On hearing the “sound of her feet” as she enters, he says, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why do you pretend to be another?” With the deception exposed, it quickly becomes clear that the news she will receive is not good: “I am charged with unbearable news for you.” The word “charged” is the normal expression of prophetic commissioning (“sent”), and the news is literally “harsh,” like the experience of the people under Solomon (cf. 12:4, 13).
14:7–9 The message for the king is highly confrontational. It begins by rehearsing what God has done for Jeroboam: “I exalted you from among the people and made you leader over my people Israel and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you.” Then the prophet moves on to expose the shortfall in Jeroboam’s personal response to the divine initiative: “And yet you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes.” As in 3:6, David is held up as the “royal standard” against which all subsequent kings of Judah and Israel are measured. David, of course, committed great sin, but in terms of having a life directed toward Yahweh and ensuring national faithfulness to Yahweh (and not to idols), he was indeed a model of which Jeroboam has fallen well short.
The prophet then goes on to announce God’s verdict on Jeroboam’s “overall performance” and on his specific acts of evil. He begins by stating, “You have done evil above all who were before you.” It is not entirely clear to whom Jeroboam is being compared (Solomon? David? Perhaps the judges, or even the previous Canaanite occupants of the land?), but the fact that Jeroboam has perverted the worship of Yahweh is obviously in view. This is made clear in the following statement, for Jeroboam has “gone and made for yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back.” Given the clear instructions Jeroboam had been given at the time of Ahijah’s first oracle, this is a damning indictment. Yahweh has been infuriated (“provoking me to anger”) for the first time, but not the last (cf. 14:15; 15:30; 16:2, 7, 13, 26, 33; 21:22; 22:53; 2 Kings 17:11, 17; 21:6, 15; 22:17; 23:19, 26).
14:10–11 The response from Yahweh is as swift as it is staggeringly decisive: “Therefore behold, I will bring harm upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam, as a man burns up dung until it is all gone.” It turns out that Jeroboam’s concern for his son and heir is well placed, for his entire line stands under the judgment of God. The “harm” that God will bring is a response to the “evil” in the previous verse. These words come from the same Hebrew root, which underlines that the punishment fits the crime. The language is deliberately shocking and vivid: “every male” is literally “everyone who urinates against a wall” (cf. 16:11; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8) and, along with the reference to “dung,” creates a vivid picture of the stench in God’s nostrils that Jeroboam’s regime has become. The reference to both “bond and free” in Jeroboam’s line may indicate anyone of any social class, may imply that some of his line are in servitude, or may mean “weak and incapacitated.” In any case, the fate of his progeny will underline Yahweh’s rejection. In line with Deuteronomy 28:26, they will be denied a decent burial as an expression of the fall of the covenant curse upon them: “Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat, for the Lord has spoken it.” For similar judgments, see 1 Kings 16:4; 21:19, 23–24. Once again, the word of the Lord is the determinative factor in the unfolding history of his people.
14:12–13 At this point the prophet addresses the fate of Abijah specifically, now that it is clear that his fate is bound up in Yahweh’s judgment of Jeroboam’s “house” as a whole: “When your feet enter the city, the child shall die.” The death of a child strikes deep in all of us, but this is no ordinary situation. This child is caught up in a rebellion against the power and purposes of God himself. Yet, in a strange note of tenderness, the prophet announces that “all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.” This is the only place in which any northern royalty is commended by God. It seems that Yahweh spares this boy from experiencing the full force of the covenant curse. All kinds of questions remain for us: Why do all of the males suffer for the sin of one, their leader? If this child is so commendable, why is he not spared? But our writer is not interested in helping us through our angst-ridden questions; these answers remain enveloped in the sovereign purposes of God. Instead he makes clear that, even in the midst of judgment, our God remembers mercy.
14:14–16 The old prophet, however, is not quite finished, as Yahweh announces precisely how he will bring his sentence to bear on the house of Jeroboam: “The Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today.” The tone is set by God himself for the litany of violence and failure that will dominate the northern kingdom. In fact, even here, at the very beginning, it appears that the fate of the nation is sealed: “The Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water, and root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their fathers and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the Lord to anger.” In Exodus 15:17 God promised to plant his people in a “good land” (cf. Deut. 11:17), but now they will be uprooted as easily as water reeds and scattered far beyond the distant Euphrates because of idolatry. Whether the reference to “Asherim” (cf. Deut. 12:3; 16:21) is at this point a metaphor for the faithlessness of Israel or a reference to actual practices in the kingdom of Jeroboam matters little. Israel’s fate is sealed: the Lord “will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin.” Israel will be “given up” (or “given away,” or “disposed of”; cf. the fate of the prophet in 1 Kings 13:26) despite being Yahweh’s “treasured possession” (Ex. 19:5).
14:17–18 There is no recorded response from Jeroboam’s wife, who simply “arose and departed and came to Tirzah.” This highlights the inevitability of the events about to unfold. “And as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died.” In keeping with the words of Ahijah, “all Israel buried him and mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Ahijah the prophet.” Neither Jeroboam’s idolatry nor his deception can halt the advance of the word of Yahweh in both judgment and salvation.
14:19–20 In a manner that will become the recurring chorus of the book of Kings, the demise of this first king of Israel is noted. The typical assessment of Yahweh reflected in Kings has a sharp focus on the king’s moral and spiritual leadership, whereas the court annals contain significant extra material: “The rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.” The divine verdict is one of departure from the ways of the Lord. It is then simply recorded that “the time that Jeroboam reigned was twenty-two years,” and then he was buried in the family tomb. The fact that Jeroboam named his son “Nadab” (cf. Lev. 10:1) both recalls his propensity for worshiping God in unauthorized ways and also sounds a further ominous note regarding the future of his dynasty.
14:21–24 The account of the sundering of the kingdom and the first rulers of the now-separate nations of Judah and Israel is brought to a close by a similar (but longer) summary of the reign of Rehoboam. The salient facts of Rehoboam’s reign are listed, culminating in the fact that “his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite.” The choices of Solomon are seen to have had massive ramifications for the people of God.
Despite having the wisest father in history, Rehoboam soon proved himself to be a fool. As soon as he ascended to the throne, everything in Judah began to fall apart. As is his practice, our narrator whispers his verdict on Rehoboam. The fact that Rehoboam’s mother is mentioned at both the start and the end (vv. 21, 31) of this conclusion is clearly a way of saying that he took after his foreign, idolatrous mother rather than his God-fearing, if flawed, father. And then we read this subtle but damning indictment in the middle of verse 21: “He reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there.” Rehoboam grew up in the shadow of the temple built by his father, Solomon. It was a bold statement of God’s sovereignty. But Rehoboam had chosen to defy this God. Instead he listened to his Ammonite mother and led the people of Judah away from the Lord.
Flowing on from this, it is no surprise that “Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their fathers had done.” Given the dubious record of the nation from their departure from Sinai onward, it is no little thing for this generation to exceed the sins of all its forebears. The issue is idolatry. Verses 22–24 are interesting in that they not only condemn Rehoboam but extend the verdict to all of God’s people in both Israel and Judah. In the northern kingdom, God’s people rebelled at once. In the southern kingdom of Judah, things are not much better. From the beginning of these two kingdoms we are given a bleak picture of idolatry in both! It is true, as we shall see, that occasional godly kings slow the slide into idolatry south of the border, but it is a case of delay rather than of marked difference.
As the “Asherim” proved a decisive issue in the north, so also in the south God’s people under Rehoboam rapidly embraced other gods:
It is both startling and sobering that so soon after the apparently idealistic days of Solomon, with the nation united in the land under God’s anointed king, idolatry has taken deep root in both kingdoms. Even in Judah, idolatry appears enshrined in the national psyche of Yahweh’s people from the very beginning. And although it is clear that these are the sins of Judah as a whole, the context makes clear that the responsibility for this falls on Rehoboam, the king.
14:25–28 An extended comment on a specific incident in the reign of Rehoboam is included at this point to illustrate the problems endemic among God’s people. Despite his family connections with Egypt through his father, “in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem.” Around 922–921 BC, Pharaoh challenged the weakened Israelite states and “took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house. He took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made.” The Lord who gives now takes away.
In Kings, the plundering of the house of Yahweh is always a sign of coming judgment (1 Kings 15:18; 2 Kings 12:18; 14:14; 16:8; 18:15), meaning that, as with Israel, the announcement is made early that the fate of Judah is in the balance. For those reading in the exile, it is clear that the roots of national catastrophe stretch all the way back to the birth of the Judahite kingdom.
The fact is hard to miss that the son’s efforts to recover the splendor of his father’s reign were pathetic:
Rather than permanent lavish displays of gold, they then had limited displays of bronze (which did not even make it into the inventory of precious metals in Solomon’s day, such was the surplus of gold and even silver; cf. 1 Kings 7:47; 10:21), and even then the bronze was so precious that it could not be left lying around.
In a mere five years, Rehoboam had so weakened Judah that Shishak from Egypt had invaded and plundered the temple. The diplomatic legacy of his father (including both marriage treaties and horse trading with Egypt) was undone. Even the treasures of the temple were gone. In his father’s day, there were more golden shields than wall space—now Rehoboam was left with a few bronze shields that were so precious that they needed to be carefully secured. On top of that, Rehoboam was continually at odds with Jeroboam in the north (14:30), the kingdom he had effectively created through his own arrogance.
14:29–31 The final summary of Rehoboam’s reign matches that of Jeroboam, which can hardly be a good thing: “Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?” The tragedy is that these two ungodly kings split the kingdom between them and ensured that idolatry would be at the heart of the life of God’s people, even as they warred against each other: “And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually.” Rehoboam’s demise is then noted in what will become the standard form: “And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. And Abijam his son reigned in his place.” The downward trend is clear: Rehoboam is a much worse king than his father, Solomon, who in turn did not live up to the example of his father, David. Rehoboam may have been buried with his “fathers in the city of David,” but there is little sign of the kind of king God’s people so desperately need.
1 Hebrew the River
1 In Hebrew the meaning is “My father is Yahweh”; that is, “Yahweh is a father to me.”
2 See the NET marginal note.
3 In verse
12 she is warned in general terms that going to Tirzah will trigger these awful events (“when your feet enter the city”). Verse
17 provides more specific detail, as the terrible fulfillment occurs as she actually enters the house.
4 The book referred to here seems to be an official court record, not the biblical book known in English as Chronicles.
5 Cf. Introduction: Genre and Literary Features: Regnal Formulas.
6 At this point it is worth taking a moment to review the standard pattern of the summaries of the reigns of the Israelite and Judahite kings (“regnal formulas or summaries”) punctuating the rest of the book of Kings. Appreciating the basic template or pattern will enable the reader to spot the deviations or added emphases the writer introduces in order to underline the key lessons emerging from the reigns. Cf. Introduction: Genre and Literary Features: Regnal Formulas.