1 Kings 14

Living Bible

14 Jeroboam’s son Abijah now became very sick. ² Jeroboam told his wife, “Disguise yourself so that no one will recognize you as the queen, and go to Ahijah the prophet at Shiloh—the man who told me that I would become king. ³ Take him a gift of ten loaves of bread, some fig bars, and a jar of honey, and ask him whether the boy will recover.”

⁴ So his wife went to Ahijah’s home at Shiloh. He was an old man now and could no longer see. ⁵ But the Lord told him that the queen, pretending to be someone else, would come to ask about her son, for he was very sick. And the Lord told him what to tell her.

⁶ So when Ahijah heard her at the door, he called out, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam! Why are you pretending to be someone else?” Then he told her, “I have sad news for you. ⁷ Give your husband this message from the Lord God of Israel: ‘I promoted you from the ranks of the common people and made you king of Israel. ⁸ I ripped the kingdom away from the family of David and gave it to you, but you have not obeyed my commandments as my servant David did. His heart’s desire was always to obey me and to do whatever I wanted him to. ⁹ But you have done more evil than all the other kings before you; you have made other gods and have made me furious with your gold calves. And since you have refused to acknowledge me, ¹⁰ I will bring disaster upon your home and will destroy all of your sons—this boy who is sick and all those who are well.^[a] I will sweep away your family as a stable hand shovels out manure. ¹¹ I vow that those of your family who die in the city shall be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field shall be eaten by birds.’”

¹² Then Ahijah said to Jeroboam’s wife, “Go on home, and when you step into the city, the child will die. ¹³ All of Israel will mourn for him and bury him, but he is the only member of your family who will come to a quiet end. For this child is the only good thing that the Lord God of Israel sees in the entire family of Jeroboam. ¹⁴ And the Lord will raise up a king over Israel who will destroy the family of Jeroboam. ¹⁵ Then the Lord will shake Israel like a reed whipped about in a stream; he will uproot the people of Israel from this good land of their fathers and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, for they have angered the Lord by worshiping idol-gods. ¹⁶ He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made all of Israel sin along with him.”

¹⁷ So Jeroboam’s wife returned to Tirzah; and the child died just as she walked through the door of her home. ¹⁸ And there was mourning for him throughout the land, just as the Lord had predicted through Ahijah.

¹⁹ The rest of Jeroboam’s activities—his wars and the other events of his reign—are recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. ²⁰ Jeroboam reigned twenty-two years, and when he died, his son Nadab took the throne.

²¹ Meanwhile, Rehoboam the son of Solomon was king in Judah. He was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he was on the throne seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which, among all the cities of Israel, the Lord had chosen to live in. (Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah, an Ammonite woman.) ²² During his reign the people of Judah, like those in Israel, did wrong and angered the Lord with their sin, for it was even worse than that of their ancestors. ²³ They built shrines and obelisks and idols on every high hill and under every green tree. ²⁴ There was homosexuality throughout the land, and the people of Judah became as depraved as the heathen nations which the Lord drove out to make room for his people.

²⁵ In the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign, King Shishak of Egypt attacked and conquered Jerusalem. ²⁶ He ransacked the Temple and the palace and stole everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. ²⁷ Afterwards Rehoboam made bronze shields as substitutes, and the palace guards used these instead. ²⁸ Whenever the king went to the Temple, the guards paraded before him and then took the shields back to the guard chamber.

²⁹ The other events in Rehoboam’s reign are written in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ³⁰ There was constant war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. ³¹ When Rehoboam died—his mother was Naamah the Ammonitess—he was buried among his ancestors in Jerusalem, and his son Abijam took the throne.