Chapter Fourteen

1–18. An announcement by the prophet Ahijah of God’s judgment on the house of Jeroboam and the beginning of its fulfillment in the death of Abijah, the son of Jeroboam. 19–21. Concluding remarks about the 22-year reign of Jeroboam. 22–31. The reign of Rehoboam: the spread of ungodliness; the invasion of Shishak, hostility with the Israelite kingdom, the death of Rehoboam.

1 Kings 14:1. At that time Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, fell ill. 1 Kings 14:2. And Jeroboam said to his wife: Rise and disguise yourself, that it may not be known that you are the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh. There is Ahijah the prophet; he spoke to me and said that I should be king over this people. 1 Kings 14:3. Take with you ten loaves of bread, and some cakes, and a jar of honey, and go to him; he will tell you what shall become of the child. 1 Kings 14:4. And Jeroboam’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 dimmed because of his age. 1 Kings 14:5. And the Lord said to Ahijah: Behold, the wife of Jeroboam comes to inquire of you concerning her son, for he is ill. Thus and thus shall you say to her; for she will come in disguised. 1 Kings 14:6. 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 feign to be another? I am sent to you with grievous tidings. The connection of chapter XIV with the preceding one is not so much chronological—rather, on the contrary, the narrative of chapter XIV refers to the latter half of Jeroboam’s reign—as it is logical and causal: the indifference of Jeroboam to the divine reproof through the prophet (ch. XIII) provoked a dreadful visitation from God—in the form of the illness of his favorite son, Abijah (cf. v. 13), and at the same time a prophetic announcement of the doom of Jeroboam’s entire house. Family sorrow prompted Jeroboam to remember the prophet Ahijah, through whom Jehovah once gave Jeroboam the promise to establish him with “a lasting house” (1 Kgs 11:38) and from whom he now expected confirmation of the continuation of his dynasty. But conscious of his own faithlessness to the covenants of Jehovah (1 Kgs 11:37-38), Jeroboam did not dare go to the prophet himself, from whom he could expect condemnation of his policy that had severed Israel from Jehovah and his temple; so he sent his wife, and even commanded her to disguise herself, so that she would not be recognized by chance passersby or by the prophet himself. Advising her to take—according to the Eastern custom of coming to honored persons, including prophets (1 Sam 9:8; 2 Kgs 5:15) with gifts—some gifts for the prophet, Jeroboam deliberately chose insignificant items, as gifts from the poor (in the LXX and Slavonic text v. 3 has an addition: τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτον καὶ σταφίδας, and “to his children, and grapes”). Deception, as might be supposed, could be more easily concealed since the prophet was blind from old age (cf. 1 Sam 4:15). But the prophet received a warning from Jehovah about the impending arrival of Jeroboam’s wife (the end of v. 5 according to the Hebrew and Russian texts—the end of God’s speech, according to the Greek-Slavonic—the continuation of the narrative). And the prophet directly reveals the secret to the queen and, warning her that he has dreadful news to announce, utters a speech about the doom not only of Jeroboam’s house, from which his promising son Abijah shall first die, but also of the entire Israelite kingdom, which has turned away from Jehovah together with its first king, Jeroboam.

1 Kings 14:7. Go and say to Jeroboam: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because I exalted you from among the people and made you leader of my people Israel, 1 Kings 14:8. And I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you; yet you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes. 1 Kings 14:9. But you have done worse than all who were before you; you have gone and made yourself other gods and molten images, to provoke me, and me you have cast behind your back. 1 Kings 14:10. Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, bound or free in Israel, and will utterly consume the house of Jeroboam, as one consumes dung. 1 Kings 14:11. Anyone from the house of Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and anyone who dies in the field the birds of the air shall eat. So the Lord has spoken. 1 Kings 14:12. Arise, go to your house; when you set foot in the city, the child shall die. 1 Kings 14:13. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he alone of the house of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good toward the Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. 1 Kings 14:14. Moreover, the Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam on that day; and what? even now. 1 Kings 14:15. And the Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water; and he will uproot Israel out of this good land which he gave to their fathers, and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the Lord. 1 Kings 14:16. And he will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which he made Israel to sin. The very speech of the prophet Ahijah is divided into two parts: v. 7–11 and 12–16, each presenting a periodic structure. V. 7–9 speak of Jeroboam’s transgression: “you have done worse than all who were before you, and have gone and made yourself other gods and molten images” (v. 9). “Those who were before you”—not his predecessors as king, Saul, David, and Solomon—they could not be called models of ungodliness—but those who held power and ruled the people in general; “other gods and molten images” (Heb. molekhot, cast images) may mean both the cult of the golden calves (although Jeroboam and the Israelites wished to worship Jehovah in them), as calf worship easily could pass into pure idolatry; and the latter was probably taking place in the Israelite kingdom under Jeroboam (v. 15). “Me you have cast behind your back” (literally: “behind your back”): an expression of conscious and stubborn disdain for the worship of Jehovah. “I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, bound or free in Israel” (v. 10)—a common expression in speaking of the destruction of a house, posterity, dynasty, or people (1 Sam 25:22; 1 Kgs 16:11; 2 Kgs 9:8); “every male”—originally an epithet of a dog, and then male as distinguished from female; “bound or free”—Heb. atzur ve-azuv, LXX: ἐπεχόμενον κ. καταλελειμμένον, Slavonic: “held and left,” Vulg.: clansum et novissimum, according to the most probable interpretation: “young and grown” (Sebast. Schmidt: a boy still kept in the house and one who is emancipated. According to Filaret, “from an infant to an adult”). The complete destruction of the posterity or house of Jeroboam was indeed accomplished by the third king of Israel, Baasha (1 Kgs 15:28-29). To be deprived of burial (v. 11) was a matter of horror to the ancient Hebrew (Deut 28:26; Jer 8:2 and others). V. 12–13: properly the answer to the question about the sick son. He shall die immediately, but only he—because something good was found in him before the Lord (v. 13)—shall be laid in a tomb (v. 13), while all the other members of Jeroboam’s house shall be deprived of burial (v. 11). The end of v. 14 presents fragmentary speech; the thought is: the death of Abijah is only the beginning of calamities upon Jeroboam’s house and Israel. V. 15–16 speak of coming judgment upon the entire Israelite kingdom, where the words: “Israel shall be” “as a reed shaken in the water” remarkably precisely characterizes the entire history of the Israelite kingdom from its separation from the Judahite kingdom to its downfall—an image of political instability, confusion of Israel, which led to his exile from the land of his fathers and scattering beyond the Euphrates (cf. 2 Kgs 15:29). “Because they have made their Asherim,” Heb. asherot, LXX: τὰ ἄλοη, Vulg.: lucos, Slavonic: “groves”; thus the ancient versions consider asherah the name of a sacred grove of idolatrous worship: such meaning is confirmed, for example, (Judg 6:25) (Gideon cut down an asherah—the sacred tree of Baal) or (Deut 16:21) (forbidden to plant an asherah—a grove); in other places asherah means also a wooden statue or idol of the goddess (Isa 27:9; Deut 7:5), though usually in connection with groves (Hos 4:13; Ezek 6:13; Isa 1:29; Jer 17:2). According to most commentators and archeologists, Asherah is merely another name for Astarte, since both names are often joined and confused (Judg 2:13; 1 Sam 7:4). See in M. Palmov, Idolatry among the ancient Hebrews, pp. 308–322.

1 Kings 14:17. And Jeroboam’s wife arose and departed, and came to Tirzah; and as soon as she crossed the threshold of the house, the child died. 1 Kings 14:18. And they buried him, and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by his servant Ahijah the prophet. The exact, word-for-word fulfillment of the prophet’s prediction in v. 12. “Tirzah” (in the LXX Θαριρα; Slavonic: “Sarira”; in the Complutensian Bible: Θέρσα; Vulg.: Thersa)—formerly the capital of one of the Canaanite kings (Josh 12:24); now, from Jeroboam to Omri, became the capital of the Israelite kings (1 Kgs 15:21; 2 Kgs 15:14), was known for the beauty of its location (Song 6:4), (cf. Onomast. 504. Guerin. Samarie I, 365, identifies Tirzah with the village of Talluzah near Nablus).

1 Kings 14:19. And the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? 1 Kings 14:20. And the length of Jeroboam’s reign was twenty-two years; and he slept with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his place. The end of Jeroboam’s twenty-two-year reign. The details of the reign were described in the “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel”; it also spoke of how Jeroboam warred, of which the Third Book of Kings does not speak, but of which (precisely the war of Jeroboam with the Judahite king Abijah) (2 Chr 13:2-20) speaks in detail; according to (2 Chr 13:20), the Lord struck Jeroboam, and he died—probably from a severe or sudden illness. The son and successor of Jeroboam in the Hebrew text and in the Vulgate is named Nadab, in the LXX and Slavonic-Russian Ναβάτ, Nadab (in the Complutensian: Ναδάβ): the latter came about through a confusion of the name of Jeroboam’s son with the name of this king’s father (1 Kgs 11:26).

1 Kings 14:21. And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king; and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord chose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. 1 Kings 14:22. And Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. 1 Kings 14:23. For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 1 Kings 14:24. There were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did all the abominable things of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites. The reign of Rehoboam, its duration—seventeen years, and its general character; the departure of the king and people from the pure worship of Jehovah, which occurred in Rehoboam probably under the influence of his mother, the Ammonite Naamah (the twofold mention of her, v. 21 and 31, may point to this). However, the brief, compressed account of Rehoboam’s reign in the Third Book of Kings must be filled out by the detailed (2 Chr 11:5-23), from which, among other things, it can be seen that (2 Chr 11:17), in the first three years of his reign Rehoboam and his subjects walked in the way of David and Solomon (in the best period of the latter’s life), which contributed to the strengthening of the Judahite kingdom; only when “Rehoboam’s kingdom was established and he became strong, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him” (2 Chr 12:1). Manifestations of ungodliness in Judah now were not only the ancient high places, pillars, and sacred poles (which had spread in the latter half of Solomon’s reign) (1 Kgs 11:4-8), but also the most abominable form of idolatrous worship: religious prostitution and debauchery at the temples of certain deities, for example, Astarte-Asherah (as also of the Babylonian Belitis): “effeminate ones,” Vulg.: effeminati, Heb. qadeš, qedešim, literally: consecrated (corresponding to Greek ἱερόδουλος)—men who engaged in debauchery in honor of the deity (Deut 23:17; 1 Kgs 22:46; 2 Kgs 23:7); likewise, and even primarily, women also engaged in this, qedešot, (Hos 4:14; Deut 23:18; Gen 38:21). The LXX and Slavs give a different, very obscure reading of the beginning of v. 24: σύνδεσμος ἐγενήθη ἐν τῆ γῆ, “a mixture came into the land” (cf. blessed Theodoret, question 45).

1 Kings 14:25. In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak the king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, 1 Kings 14:26. And took the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house [and the gold shields that David had taken from the servants of Hadadezer, king of Zobah, and brought to Jerusalem]. He took all; he also took all the gold shields which Solomon had made. The consequence of the ungodliness and licentiousness that arose in the Judahite kingdom under Rehoboam was the devastating invasion in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak, Heb. Sheshonk (in Manetho Σεσοτγχις). He was a patron and perhaps a relative of Jeroboam (cf. 1 Kgs 11:40); hence his invasion of Judah and Jerusalem is explained by the influence or request of Jeroboam. But on the surviving inscription of Sheshonk on the walls of the Karnak temple of Amun, among the captured cities, several strategically important cities of the Israelite kingdom are named; Aijalon, Taanach, Megiddo, Shunem, and others; consequently the campaign touched the northern kingdom and reached at least the Valley of Jezreel. Among the precious things taken by Shishak are mentioned the golden shields made by Solomon (1 Kgs 10:16). Under the expression “he took all” (v. 26) the rabbis understood mainly the throne of Solomon. In the more detailed account of this invasion in (2 Chr 12:2-9), it is mentioned that a terrible reproof by the prophet Shemaiah to Rehoboam and his princes at the time of Shishak’s invasion aroused repentance in the government and people and softened God’s wrath, so that the people and Jerusalem were saved (cf. Josephus. Jewish Antiquities VIII, 10, 2–4).

1 Kings 14:27. And King Rehoboam made in place of them shields of bronze, and entrusted them to the hands of the commanders of the guard, who kept the door of the king’s house. 1 Kings 14:28. And whenever the king went into the house of the Lord, the guard carried them, and afterwards brought them back to the guardroom. Instead of the precious gold shields taken by Shishak, Rehoboam made bronze or copper shields and gave them to the guards, Heb. ratzim—runners (1 Kgs 1:5), also the king’s guards, his bodyguard (cf. 1 Sam 22:17; 2 Kgs 10:25), apparently replacing the former Cherethites and Pelethites. According to Rabbi Kimhi, Rehoboam’s order about the shields was intended to prevent an assassination attempt which he feared. More probably, the shields were used when the king went to the temple for the solemnity of the procession. Rehoboam’s shields were kept in a special room (Heb. ta), not in the house of the forest of Lebanon as Solomon’s (1 Kgs 10:17); it is assumed (Kittel) that the house of the forest of Lebanon was plundered by Shishak.

1 Kings 14:29. 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? 1 Kings 14:30. And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. 1 Kings 14:31. 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 Abijah his son reigned in his place. (2 Chr 11:18-23) supplements the Third Book of Kings with information about Rehoboam’s family life: he had eighteen wives and sixty concubines, twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters; he sent all his sons to fortified cities, but gave Abijah, the son of his beloved wife Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, the first place among them; and Abijah became Rehoboam’s successor to the throne. According to (2 Chr 12:15), “the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are recorded in the chronicles of the prophet Shemaiah and of Iddo the seer, according to genealogy”: hence we see that the book of the kings of Judah was a work of prophets. The war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam (v. 30) appears to be understood merely as a hostile disposition,—actual war broke out only under Abijah (2 Chr 13:2-20). * * * According to the rabbis, the good thing found in Abijah was that he eased the Israelites’ access to visit Jerusalem and the temple. The LXX also mention shields which David had once brought from Syria (2 Sam 8:7); so the Slavonic and Russian Synodal translation has this addition in brackets.