Beginning

Israel Rebels Against Rehoboam^(A)

12 And Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king. ² When Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was still in Egypt, heard of it (for he had fled from King Solomon and stayed in Egypt), ³ they called and sent for him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam, saying, ⁴ “Your father made our yoke unbearable. Now, therefore, make the grievous service to your father and the heavy yoke he put upon us lighter, and we will serve you.”

⁵ He said to them, “Depart for three days, and then come back to me.” And the people departed.

⁶ King Rehoboam consulted with the old men who advised his father Solomon while he was still alive and asked, “How do you advise me to answer the people?”

⁷ And they spoke to him, saying, “If you will be a servant to this people this day and will serve them and answer them and speak kind words to them, they will be your servants forever.”

⁸ But he rejected the advice that the old men gave him and consulted with the young men who grew up with him and who stood before him, ⁹ and he said to them, “What advice do you give on how we should answer this people, who have spoken to me saying, ‘Make the yoke your father put on us lighter’?”

¹⁰ And the young men who grew up with him said, “Thus shall you answer this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but make it lighter for us’; thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger will be thicker than my father’s loins! ¹¹ Whereas my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your burden. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions!’ ”

¹² So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, just as the king had appointed, saying, “Come to me again the third day.” ¹³ The king answered the people roughly and forsook the counsel the old men gave him, ¹⁴ and instead spoke to them following the advice of the young men. He said, “My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your burden. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” ¹⁵ Thus the king did not listen to the people, for the cause was from the Lord, that He might fulfill His saying, which the Lord spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

¹⁶ So when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people responded to the king, saying,

So the people of Israel departed to their tents. ¹⁷ But the people of Israel living in the cities of Judah were ruled over by Rehoboam.

¹⁸ Then King Rehoboam sent Adoniram, who was in charge of the forced labor, and all Israel stoned him to death. As a result, King Rehoboam quickly mounted his chariot and fled to Jerusalem. ¹⁹ So Israel rebelled against the house of David, and it remains so even to this day.

²⁰ When all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him before the congregation and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah followed the house of David.

²¹ When Rehoboam arrived at Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah along with the tribe of Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand chosen men who were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel and to bring the kingdom back to Rehoboam the son of Solomon.

²² But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying: ²³ Speak to Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin and to the remnant of the people, saying, ²⁴ “Thus says the Lord: You shall not go up, nor fight against your brothers the children of Israel. Every man is to return to his house, for this thing is from Me.” They listened therefore to the word of the Lord and turned to depart, according to the word of the Lord.

Jeroboam’s Golden Calves

²⁵ Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim and lived there and went out from there and built Peniel.

²⁶ Jeroboam said in his heart, “The kingdom will return to the house of David. ²⁷ If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.”

²⁸ At that point, the king got some advice and made two golden calves and said to the people, “It is too difficult for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” ²⁹ He set one in Bethel, and he put the other in Dan. ³⁰ This was a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even all the way in Dan.

³¹ He also made houses on high places and appointed priests from among all the people who were not Levites. ³² Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast in Judah, and he offered sacrifice on the altar. He did this in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made, and he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places he had made. ³³ So he made offerings on the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a holiday he imagined in his own heart, and ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and he sacrificed on the altar and burned incense.

The Man of God From Judah

13 A man of God came out of Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord while Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. ² He cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: ‘A child named Josiah will be born in the house of David, and he will sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and these men’s bones shall be burned upon you.’ ” ³ He gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign that the Lord has spoken: ‘The altar will be torn apart, and the ashes that are upon it will be poured out.’ ”

⁴ When King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God who had cried against the altar in Bethel, he reached out his hand from the altar, saying, “Arrest him!” And the hand that he put forth against him dried up so that he could not pull it back in again. ⁵ The altar also was torn, and the ashes poured out from the altar, just as the man of God had said it would as a sign of the Lord.

⁶ The king answered and said to the man of God, “Seek the face of the Lord your God, and pray for me, that my hand will be healed.” And the man of God interceded with the Lord, and the king’s hand was healed and became as it was before.

⁷ The king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.”

⁸ The man of God said to the king, “If you were to give me half your house, I would not go with you, nor will I eat bread nor drink water in this place, ⁹ for so I was commanded by the word of the Lord, saying: You shall eat no bread, nor drink water nor return by the same way that you came.” ¹⁰ So he went another way and did not return by the same way he came to Bethel.

¹¹ Now there lived an old prophet in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told their father the words that he had spoken to the king. ¹² Their father said to them, “What way did he go?” For his sons had seen the way the man of God who came from Judah had gone. ¹³ He said to his sons, “Saddle my donkey.” So they saddled the donkey for him, and he rode on it. ¹⁴ He went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak, and he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”

And he said, “I am.”

¹⁵ Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.”

¹⁶ He said, “I may not return with you or go in with you, nor will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, ¹⁷ for I was commanded by the word of the Lord: You shall eat no bread and drink no water there nor return by the way you came.”

¹⁸ He said to him, “I am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” But he had lied to him. ¹⁹ So he went back with him to his house and ate bread and drank water.

²⁰ Then as they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who brought him back, ²¹ and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord: Since you have disobeyed the mouth of the Lord and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you, ²² but instead came back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which the Lord told you to eat no bread and drink no water, your carcass will not be buried in the tomb of your fathers!”

²³ After he had eaten bread and had drunk, he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. ²⁴ As he was going, a lion met him on the way and killed him, and his body was thrown in the road, and both the donkey and lion stood by it. ²⁵ Some men passed by and saw the body thrown in the road with the lion standing by the body, and they came and told the story in the city where the old prophet lived.

²⁶ When the prophet who brought him back from the way heard about it, he said, “It is the man of God who was disobedient to the word of the Lord, and thus the Lord has delivered him to the lion, which has torn and slain him, according to the word of the Lord that He spoke to him.”

²⁷ He said to his sons, “Saddle my donkey,” and they saddled it. ²⁸ He then went and found his body thrown in the road, and the donkey and the lion were still standing by the body. The lion had not eaten the body nor attacked the donkey. ²⁹ The prophet picked up the body of the man of God and laid it on his donkey and brought it back. The old prophet came to the city to mourn and to bury him. ³⁰ He laid his body in his own tomb, and they mourned over him, saying, “Alas, my brother!”

³¹ And after he had buried him, he said to his sons, “When I am dead, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. ³² For the saying that he cried out by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel and against all the houses of the high places that are in the cities of Samaria shall surely come to pass.”

³³ After this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil ways, but made priests for the high places again from among all the people. Any who would, he consecrated to be priests of the high places. ³⁴ This matter became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut it off and to destroy it from the face of the earth.

Ahijah Prophesies Against Jeroboam

14 At that time, Jeroboam’s son Abijah became sick. ² Jeroboam said to his wife, “Please get up and disguise yourself, so that you will not be recognized as the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh. There you will find Ahijah the prophet, who told me that I would be king over this people. ³ Take ten loaves, cakes, and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what will happen to our child.” ⁴ Jeroboam’s wife did so and arose and went to Shiloh, to the house of Ahijah.

But Ahijah could not see, for in his old age he had gone blind. ⁵ The Lord said to Ahijah, “The wife of Jeroboam has come to ask you about her son, for he is sick. You shall say thus and thus to her, for when she comes, she will be disguised as another woman.”

⁶ And so when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why do you disguise yourself as another? I have been sent to you with bad news. ⁷ Go tell Jeroboam, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: I raised you up from among the people and made you prince over My people Israel, ⁸ and took the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it you. Yet you have not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart to do only that which was right in My eyes, ⁹ but you have sinned more than all who were before you, for you have gone and made other gods and molded images and provoked Me to anger and have cast Me behind your back.

¹⁰ “ ‘Therefore I will bring disaster upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam all males, both slave and free in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man takes away refuse until it is all gone. ¹¹ Descendants of Jeroboam who die in the city will be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field will be eaten by the birds of the air, for the Lord has spoken it.’

¹² “Arise therefore and go to your own house. When your feet enter the city, the child will die. ¹³ All Israel will mourn for him and bury him, for he alone from the house of Jeroboam will come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel.

¹⁴ “Moreover the Lord will raise up a king over Israel who will destroy the house of Jeroboam this day and from now on. ¹⁵ For the Lord will smite 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 the Lord to anger. ¹⁶ He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam who sinned and who led Israel to sin.”

¹⁷ Jeroboam’s wife arose and departed and came to Tirzah. As she arrived at 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 spoke by the hand of His servant Ahijah the prophet.

¹⁹ The rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he waged war and how he reigned, are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. ²⁰ Jeroboam reigned twenty-two years, and then he slept with his fathers, and Nadab, his son, reigned in his stead.

Rehoboam, King of Judah^(B)

²¹ 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 the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put His name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah, an Ammonitess.

²² Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the people provoked Him to jealousy with the sins they committed, even worse than their fathers had done. ²³ For they also built high places and images and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. ²⁴ There were also male cult prostitutes in the land, and they did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord cast out before the children of Israel.

²⁵ In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. ²⁶ He took away all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house, even all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. ²⁷ King Rehoboam replaced them with bronze shields and committed them to the hands of the chief of the guard who guarded the king’s house. ²⁸ And whenever the king entered the house of the Lord, the guards carried 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 There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. ³¹ 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 Abijah his son reigned in his stead.