14 Then Abijah [the little] son of Jeroboam became sick.
2 And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray you, and disguise yourself, that you may not be recognized as Jeroboam’s wife, and go to Shiloh. Behold, Ahijah the prophet is there, who told me that I should be king over this people.
3 Take ten loaves, some cakes, and a bottle of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what shall happen to the child.
4 Jeroboam’s wife did so. She arose and went [twenty miles] to Shiloh and came to the house of Ahijah. Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were dim because of his age.
5 And the Lord said to Ahijah, Behold, the [a]wife of Jeroboam is coming to ask 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 But 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 heavy news for you.
7 Go, 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 And rent the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you—and yet you have not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments and followed Me with all his heart, to do only what was right in My eyes,
9 But have done evil above all who were before you; for you have made yourself other gods, molten images, to provoke Me to anger and have cast Me behind your back—
10 Therefore behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from [him] every male, both bond and free, in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam as a man sweeps away dung, till it is all gone.
11 Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and any who dies in the field the birds of the heavens shall eat. For the Lord has spoken it.
12 Arise therefore [Ano, Jeroboam’s wife], get to your own house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die.
13 And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam’s family shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good and pleasing to the Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.
14 Moreover, the Lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam this day. From now on
15 The Lord will smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; and He will root up Israel out of this good land which He gave to their fathers and will scatter them beyond the [Euphrates] River, because they have made their Asherim [idolatrous symbols of the goddess Asherah], provoking the Lord to anger.
16 He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam which he has sinned and made Israel to sin.
17 So Jeroboam’s wife departed and came to Tirzah. When she came to the threshold of the house, the child died.
18 And all Israel buried him and mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord spoken by His servant Ahijah the prophet.
19 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 Jeroboam reigned for twenty-two years, and he slept with his fathers; and Nadab his son reigned in his stead.
21 And Rehoboam 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 the Lord chose out of all the tribes of Israel to put His Name [and the pledge of His presence] there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess.
22 And Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, Whom they provoked to jealousy with the sins they committed, above all that their fathers had done.
23 For they also built themselves [idolatrous] high places, pillars, and Asherim [idolatrous symbols of the goddess Asherah] on every high hill and under every green tree.
24 There were also sodomites (male cult prostitutes) in the land. They did all the abominations of the nations whom the Lord cast out before the Israelites.
25 In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt [Jeroboam’s brother-in-law] came up against Jerusalem.
26 He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house; he took away all, including all the shields of gold which Solomon had made.
27 King Rehoboam made in their stead bronze shields and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard who kept the door of the king’s house.
28 And as often as the king went into the house of the Lord, the guards bore them and brought them back into the guardroom.
29 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 There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually.
31 Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried with them in the City of David. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. Abijam (Abijah) his son reigned in his stead.
Footnotes
- 1 Kings 14:5 The Hebrew text gives no particulars about the background of Jeroboam’s wife, but there is an insertion in The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament), found in the Vatican manuscript after I Kings 12:24, in which we find further information about her. When Jeroboam, then taskmaster over the forced labor of the house of Joseph, fled to Egypt to escape death at the hands of King Solomon, he went to King Shishak of Egypt and was with him until the death of Solomon. Jeroboam asked permission of King Shishak to return to his own land, and the king told him, “Ask of me a request, and I will give it to you.” And he gave to Jeroboam Ano, the elder sister of his own wife Thekemina (Tahpenes), to be his wife. She was great among the daughters of the king, and bore to Jeroboam Abias (Abijah) his son [who in this chapter lies dying in the palace of Jeroboam while Queen Ano, his mother, is about to hear what the old prophet has been required by God to tell her] (Charles Ellicott, A Bible Commentary).