1Kings
14:1 ¶ At that time Abijah the son of
Jeroboam fell sick. 2 And Jeroboam said
to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known
to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get thee to Shiloh: behold, there is
Ahijah the prophet, which told me that I should be king over this
people. 3 And take with thee ten loaves,
and cracknels, and a cruse of honey, and go to him: he shall tell thee what
shall become of the child. 4 And
Jeroboam’s wife did so, and arose, and went to Shiloh, and came to the house of
Ahijah. But Ahijah could not see; for his eyes were set by reason of his age.
5 And the LORD said unto Ahijah, Behold,
the wife of Jeroboam cometh to ask a thing of thee for her son; for he is
sick: thus and thus shalt thou say unto her: for it shall be, when she cometh
in, that she shall feign herself to be another woman. 6 And it was so, when Ahijah heard the
sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said, Come in, thou wife
of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am
sent to thee with heavy tidings.
AHIjah
had given Jeroboam the word from God that he would rule over most of Israel. He
hoped that this now old and blind prophet would give him good news about his
sick son, ABIjah. However, such good news was not to be. The mistake that some
of these evil leaders like Ahab later make is to think that to honor a prophet
should guarantee a blessing when it is God they have offended and the prophet
is just a mouthpiece.
One
interesting thing here is how a man of God who does God’s will suffers the same
sicknesses and old age that all of us do and they typically get no special
consideration. This is stunning to me as part of me expects them to live to a
ripe old age full of health and happiness but it is not reality to think so.
The Bible tells the whole story, no matter how painful to us.
2Kings
13:14 Now Elisha was fallen sick of his
sickness whereof he died. And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him, and
wept over his face, and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel,
and the horsemen thereof.
1Kings
14:7 ¶ Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith the
LORD God of Israel, Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made
thee prince over my people Israel, 8 And
rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and yet
thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who
followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right
in mine eyes; 9 But hast done evil above
all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and
molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back:
10 Therefore, behold, I will bring evil
upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth
against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will
take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till
it be all gone. 11 Him that dieth of
Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall
the fowls of the air eat: for the LORD hath spoken it. 12 Arise thou therefore, get thee to thine own
house: and when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die.
13 And 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 some good thing toward the LORD God of Israel in the
house of Jeroboam. 14 Moreover the LORD
shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam
that day: but what? even now. 15 For the
LORD shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall root up
Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter
them beyond the river, because they have made their groves, provoking the LORD
to anger. 16 And he shall give Israel up
because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.
17 And Jeroboam’s wife arose, and
departed, and came to Tirzah: and when she came to the threshold of the
door, the child died; 18 And they buried
him; and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of the LORD, which
he spake by the hand of his servant Ahijah the prophet. 19 And 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
And the days which Jeroboam reigned were two and twenty years:
and he slept with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his stead.
The
child is to die but he will be the only one of Jeroboam’s offspring to be
buried honorably. The idea that a probable infant has some good thing toward
the LORD God of Israel gives us a glimpse, perhaps, of eternity in that our
character, mind, and heart; our spirit is apparent and readable to God even
when we are in a state where we have no understanding. What we are is not to be
defined Biblically as possessed in one moment of time but in our entire
existence. So, a person who is wicked now may come to Christ and be used by Him
later in some way and yet in our finite state we only see them as they
currently are, in our case perhaps a vile young person and in this case an unknowing
and seemingly innocent child. I’ve read the ancients looked at the character of
a child to see what they would be like as an adult and Augustine himself said
the only thing keeping a child from egregious sins was the incapacity of their
body.
In
verse 16 it is said that God will give up the people of Israel because of the
sins of Jeroboam. The prophecy of the ten northern tribes is sealed because
their first king in their rebellion against the house of David set the tone for
many years of rebellion against God after Jeroboam’s death like Adam and all
humanity after him.
This
would have been in approximately 954BC roughly, according to Ussher’s The
Annals of the World.
1Kings
14:21 ¶ And Rehoboam the son of Solomon
reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty and one years old when he began to
reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD did
choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother’s
name was Naamah an Ammonitess. 22
And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to
jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers
had done. 23 For they also built them
high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green
tree. 24 And there were also sodomites
in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the
nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel. 25 And it came to pass in the fifth year of king
Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: 26 And he took away the treasures of the house
of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all: and
he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. 27 And king Rehoboam made in their stead brasen
shields, and committed them unto the hands of the chief of the guard,
which kept the door of the king’s house. 28
And it was so, when the king went into the house of the LORD,
that the guard bare them, and brought them back into the guard chamber. 29 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? 30 And there was war
between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. 31 And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was
buried with his fathers in the city of David. And his mother’s name was
Naamah an Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.
Rehoboam,
whose mother, an Ammonitess, probably led him into idolatry, reigned for
seventeen years, the text says. Mothers have a huge influence over their sons. He
reigned over only two tribes after the rebellion he caused, Judah and Benjamin.
Jerusalem was the place where God chose to have His temple built.
1Kings 8:44 If thy people go out to battle against their
enemy, whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the LORD toward
the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy
name:
1Kings 11:36 And unto his son will I give one tribe, that
David my servant may have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which
I have chosen me to put my name there.
Judah
has followed Rehoboam in apostasy and among other abominations has permitted
homosexual temple prostitutes and it can be assumed heterosexual as well, male
and female temple prostitutes for every perversion among a wicked people. Their
ancestors had been warned.
Deuteronomy 23:17 There
shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of
Israel. 18 Thou shalt not bring the hire
of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any
vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
From Sodom we get the word sodomite for a male temple prostitute in
contrast to a whore which denotes a
female temple prostitute. Compare and contrast 17 and 18 for word definitions
provided for us by the contrasting words. Whore versus sodomite
and whore versus dog. God isn’t talking about a pooch.
The Egyptian king Shishak loots the
temple during this disastrous reign of Rehoboam which also includes constant
warfare with Jeroboam. The looting by Shishak is explained in 2Chronicles 12 in
more detail so I will save it for that commentary and Ussher says that it
probably happened in 971BC. The decline of Judah continues with the brass
replacements for the gold shields taken by Shishak as an example.
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