1 Kings 14

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Ahijah's word against Jeroboam's house

¹ At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick. ² And Jeroboam said to his wife, "Arise, please, and disguise yourself, so that they will not know that you are the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh. See, Ahijah the prophet is there, who told me that I would be king over this people. ³ Take with you ten loaves, some cakes and a jar of honey, and go to him; he will tell you what will happen to the boy." ⁴ 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 set because of his age. ⁵ And Yahweh had said to Ahijah, "See, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son, for he is sick. Thus and thus you shall say to her. When she comes in, she will pretend 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? I am sent to you with hard news. ⁷ Go, tell Jeroboam, 'Thus says Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel: Because I exalted you from among the people and made you leader over My people Israel, ⁸ and 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, to do only what was right in My eyes, ⁹ but you have done evil above all who were before you, and have gone and made for yourself other gods and cast images to provoke Me to anger, and have cast Me behind your back, ¹⁰ therefore, see, I am bringing disaster on the house of Jeroboam, and I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, bond and free in Israel, and I will sweep away the house of Jeroboam as one sweeps away dung, until it is all gone. ¹¹ Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the field the birds of the heavens shall eat; for Yahweh has spoken.' ¹² As for you, arise, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. ¹³ And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he alone of Jeroboam's family shall come to a grave, because in him something good toward Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel, has been found in the house of Jeroboam. ¹⁴ Moreover, Yahweh will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam. This is the day; and what is more, even now! ¹⁵ For Yahweh will strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and He will uproot Israel from this good land which He gave to their fathers, and will scatter them beyond the River, because they have made their Asherah poles, provoking Yahweh to anger. ¹⁶ And He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and by which he made Israel sin."

¹⁷ Then Jeroboam's wife arose and departed and came to Tirzah. As she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. ¹⁸ And they buried him, and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of Yahweh which He spoke by His servant Ahijah the prophet.

The death of Jeroboam

¹⁹ Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he made war and how he reigned, see, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. ²⁰ The time that Jeroboam reigned was twenty-two years; and he lay down with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his place.

Rehoboam king of Judah

²¹ Now 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 which Yahweh had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put His name there. His mother's name was Naamah the Ammonite. ²² Judah did evil in the sight of Yahweh, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. ²³ For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. ²⁴ There were also male shrine prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which Yahweh drove out before the children of Israel.

Shishak plunders Jerusalem

²⁵ In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. ²⁶ He took away the treasures of the house of Yahweh and the treasures of the king's house; he took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. ²⁷ And King Rehoboam made shields of bronze in their place, and committed them to the hands of the commanders of the guard who kept the door of the king's house. ²⁸ And whenever the king went into the house of Yahweh, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guardroom.

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 continually. ³¹ And Rehoboam lay down 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.

Notes

• 14:10 "Every male" is literally "one who urinates against a wall," the same blunt Hebrew idiom as in 1 Samuel 25:22. "Bond and free" ('atsur ve'azuv, "shut in and let go") is an expression of totality whose exact sense is debated; it also appears in Deuteronomy 32:36. "Sweep away" is ba'ar, a verb used both for burning and for clearing something out completely, here pictured as dung cleared away. The word was fulfilled when Baasha struck down the whole house of Jeroboam (15:29).
• 14:14 The end of the verse is very terse in Hebrew, literally "this the day, and what? even now" (zeh hayyom umeh gam-attah), and its exact sense is debated. It seems to say that the judgment is not far off but already beginning, as the child's death that same day would show (verse 12); the king who cut off Jeroboam's house was Baasha (15:27-29).
• 14:15 Here Ahijah announces that the northern kingdom would be uprooted from its land and scattered "beyond the River," the Euphrates, which came true when Assyria carried Israel away (2 Kings 17:6). Joshua had reminded the tribes, "Long ago your fathers lived beyond the River" (Joshua 24:2): exile would send Israel back to the land from which Abraham had been called. Asherah poles were wooden poles or trees set up for the goddess Asherah, which the Torah forbade (Deuteronomy 16:21).
• 14:19 "The book of the chronicles" is literally "the book of the matters of the days" (sefer divre hayyamim), a royal record that the writer of Kings names again and again as a source for those who want to know more. It has not survived, and it is not the same as the biblical books of Chronicles, which were written later and carry the same Hebrew title.
• 14:24 "Male shrine prostitutes" translates qadesh, from qadosh, "set apart, consecrated": a man "consecrated" to the service of a pagan shrine. The Torah had said, "nor shall there be a shrine prostitute among the sons of Israel" (Deuteronomy 23:17); what such persons actually did is debated. Asa and later Jehoshaphat removed them from the land (15:12; 22:46).
• 14:25 Shishak is generally identified with the Egyptian king Shoshenq I, founder of Egypt's twenty-second dynasty; it was Shishak who had sheltered Jeroboam (11:40). On a wall of the temple of Amun at Karnak, Shoshenq left a list of places he claimed to have conquered, many of them in the land of Israel and the Negev; Jerusalem is not clearly named in the surviving list, part of which is damaged. A stone fragment bearing his name was also found at Megiddo. The campaign is commonly dated to about 925 BC; 2 Chronicles 12:2-12 tells the event at greater length.
• 14:31 Rehoboam's mother, an Ammonite, is named twice (verses 21 and 31); since he was forty-one when he began to reign and Solomon reigned forty years (11:42), on these figures Solomon had married her before he became king. The Hebrew here calls Rehoboam's son Abijam, while 2 Chronicles 13:1 calls him Abijah, "Yah is my father"; and the Greek of Matthew 1:7 likewise has Abia, that is, Abijah.

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