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The First Book of Kings 14

14 Shortly after Jeroboam chose to ignore Yahweh’s warning about the hilltop shrines, his son Abijah became very sick. 2 Jeroboam told his wife, “I want you to disguise yourself so that no one will recognize that you are my wife. Then go to the city of Shiloh. That is where the prophet Ahijah lives. He is the man who met me and told me that I would become the king of Israel. 3 Take with you ten loaves of bread, some small flat cakes, and a jar of honey. Give them to him as gifts. Tell him about our son, and he will tell you whether he will become well again.” 4 So that is what his wife did. She went to Shiloh, to Ahijah’s house. Ahijah was not able to see, since he was very old and his eyes were no longer healthy. 5 But before she got there, Yahweh told Ahijah that Jeroboam’s wife was coming to inquire about their son, who was very sick. He told him that when she arrived, she would be pretending to be someone else. Yahweh told Ahijah what he should say to her.

6 So when Ahijah heard her footsteps as she entered the doorway, he said to her, “Come in. I know you are Jeroboam’s wife, so do not pretend that you are someone else. Yahweh has told me to tell you some bad news. 7 Go back and tell Jeroboam this message from Yahweh, the God whom we Israelites worship: ‘I chose you from among the common people and enabled you to become the king of most of my Israelite people. 8 I stopped David’s descendants from ruling most of the people of the kingdom of Israel, and I allowed you to become the king of those Israelites instead. But you have not been like David, who served me very well. He obeyed my commandments very sincerely and wanted to do only things that I considered to be right. 9 But you have done more wicked things than any of the men who were kings of Israel before you. You have rejected me, and you have made me very angry by making metal images of other gods so that you and others could worship them. 10 Therefore, I am going to make terrible things happen to your family. I will allow someone to kill all of the males in your household, whether they are family members or servants, no matter where they live in your kingdom. I will completely destroy your family, just as fire completely destroys dung when people burn it. 11 Dogs will eat the bodies of any members of your household who die in cities. Scavenger birds will eat the bodies of any members of your household who die in the countryside.’ This will surely happen, since Yahweh has said that it will happen. 12 So go back home. As soon as you return to the city where you live, your son will die. 13 People throughout Israel will mourn for him, and you will be able to bury him. He is the only one in Jeroboam’s family who will receive a proper burial, because he is the only person in Jeroboam’s family whose actions have pleased Yahweh. 14 Yahweh will enable a different man to become the king of Israel. That man will kill all of Jeroboam’s family. This will happen very soon. In fact, Yahweh has already begun to make it happen. 15 Yahweh will punish the people of Israel. He will unsettle them, just as the strong, flowing water of a river unsettles the reeds that grow on its banks. He will finally expel the Israelite people from this good land that he gave to our ancestors. The Israelites have worshiped statues of the goddess Asherah, and by doing that, they have made Yahweh very angry. As a result, he will allow enemies to take them as captives into lands on the far side of the Euphrates River. 16 Yahweh will abandon the Israelite people because Jeroboam committed these sins of idolatry and led the Israelite people to commit them as well.”

17 Then Jeroboam’s wife got up and left, and she traveled back home to the city of Tirzah. Just as she was walking through the door of her house, her son died. 18 People throughout Israel mourned for him, and his family was able to bury him. That is just what Yahweh had told the prophet Ahijah, his servant, to say would happen.

19 The book in which the kings of Israel recorded what happened during their reigns describes further things that Jeroboam did, including the wars that his army fought and how he ruled. 20 Jeroboam ruled for 22 years. Then he died, and his son Nadab became the next king.

21 Meanwhile, Solomon’s son Rehoboam was ruling Judah. He had been 41 years old when he started to rule, and he ruled for 17 years. He ruled in Jerusalem, the city that Yahweh chose to be the place where the Israelites would worship him. Rehoboam’s mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. 22 The people of the kingdom of Judah did many things that Yahweh had told the Israelites were evil. They committed more sins than their ancestors had committed. This made Yahweh very angry, because they were worshiping idols, and they should have been worshiping only him. 23 Just as the northern Israelites had done, the Judeans built places to worship foreign gods. On high hills and under big trees, they built shrines and set up stone pillars and made wooden images to represent the goddess Asherah. 24 There were also male shrine prostitutes at these places of worship. The Israelite people did the same disgraceful things that the people had done whom Yahweh had forced to leave so that the Israelites could possess the land.

25 When Rehoboam had been ruling for almost five years, King Shishak of Egypt came with his soldiers to attack Jerusalem. 26 They defeated the Judeans, and then his soldiers took away the valuable things they found in Yahweh’s temple and in the royal palace. They also took many other valuable things they found. Because they took the gold shields that Solomon’s workers had made, 27 King Rehoboam had his workers make bronze shields to replace them. He had the officers of the soldiers who guarded the entrance to his palace take care of these shields. 28 Every time that the king went into the temple, those guards carried those shields, and after he left the temple, they returned the shields to their storeroom.

29 The book in which the kings of Judah recorded what happened during their reigns describes further things that Rehoboam did. 30 The armies of Rehoboam and Jeroboam were continually at war with one another. 31 Then Rehoboam died, and people buried him in the part of Jerusalem that people call the City of David. That is where people had buried his ancestors. Rehoboam’s mother Naamah was an Ammonitess, and that is why he became devoted to idol worship. After Rehoboam died, his son Abijam became the next king.

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UST by section 1 KI 14:1

The First Book of Kings 14

UST by section 1 KI 14:1