Jeroboam’s Sick Son (1-3)

The 22 years of Jeroboam’s reign (22) are covered in three basic points. Jeroboam moved the capital from Shechem west of the Jordan to Penuel east of the Jordan and then to Tirzah back west of the Jordan (12:25) (17). He devised an idolatrous system of worship, and when his son Abijah fell sick, Jeroboam sensed it was punitive (1). Realizing he had fallen into disfavor with Yahweh for developing another worship system, he could not go to the prophet Ahijah, who he knew spoke for Yahweh. Ahijah was the same prophet who, for Yahweh, gave 10 pieces of garments to Jeroboam as a sign that the 10 tribes would be taken from Solomon and given to him (2) (1 Kings 11). Jeroboam sent his wife in disguise with a poor man’s offering to try to deceive a favorable prophecy from Ahijah, obviously treating prophecy more like purchasable, superstitious optimism than a word from Yahweh (3).

Jeroboam’s Wife Goes to the Prophet (4-6, 10-13)

The old prophet was blind and could easily have been deceived by the queen, except God interrupted the pretense with revelation and told Ahijah what Jeroboam and the queen were up to, giving him the news of Jeroboam’s sick son (4-5). As soon as Ahijah heard the feet of the queen coming up the path toward his door, he greeted her as the queen and then gave her the unwelcome news (6). Not only would their son die as soon as the queen entered the city (12), but Jeroboam’s dynasty would never have a chance to get started. First, all he had amassed would be burned to the ground, and second, his family would have no one who cared for them enough to bury them—they would be thrown away like worthless dung (10-11). The only descendant from Jeroboam’s family to be honored as pleasing to the Lord would be the son who would die when the queen entered the city (13).

Yahweh’s Judgment of Jeroboam (7-9)

Yahweh’s judgment against Jeroboam was based on five realities:

• Yahweh had given Jeroboam a portion of the house of David as an act of mercy and grace.

• Jeroboam, having been given a portion of David’s house, had not kept wholehearted faithfulness in the ways and the heart of David.

• Jeroboam had done what was right and expedient in his own eyes, in complete neglect of fidelity to Yahweh (7-8).

• Jeroboam had led the nation into degenerate idolatry.

• Jeroboam had done more evil than any evil ruler or judge who had gone before him, including Saul (9).  

Prophesied National Disgrace (14-18)

The prophet was not finished with Jeroboam’s wife. Ahijah decreed a violent end to any hope Jeroboam had of a dynasty. Ahijah’s prophecy made it clear: 

• Yahweh was giving up on Israel because of Jeroboam’s sins. 

• Yahweh was raising up another king to cut off Jeroboam’s reign.

• In so doing, Yahweh destabilized the nation of Israel, causing many to leave their homes and scatter north of the Euphrates River, seeking a place of peace for some level of prosperity (14-16).

The ultimate scattering of Israel—the consequence they paid for Jeroboam’s cancerous affection for idolatry—becomes the leading prophecy for the rest of the history of Israel. From 1 Kings 14, a prophetic word is unleashed that finds its conclusion in 2 Kings 17, when the Assyrians come and remove Israel for being a people shaped in the image of Jeroboam. This is why the phrase “the sins of Jeroboam” is repeated again and again. The discordant symphony of Israel begins to play in 1 Kings 14 and finds its final movement in 2 Kings 17. Israeli history is bent to Ahijah’s word. 

As the prophet had said, when Jeroboam’s wife entered the capital at Tirzah, the child died, was buried, and all Israel mourned (17-18).  

The Death of Jeroboam (19-20)

Nadab (Israel)

Jeroboam died, and his son Nadab reigned in his place (19-20). The author’s summary is clear. It is repeated over and over that the author was not seeking to give a detailed accounting of the reign of the kings of the northern tribes; neither was he seeking a detailed history of the kings of Judah. He was not interested in the details, but just to hear the message over and over: “the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin.” The end was in the beginning. 

The image of Jeroboam, not fashioned in the image of God, but after the idols he had fashioned, damned the entire northern ten tribes. The author of 1 Kings signed off, “If you want more details, there are other places to read.” He was interested in one detail: how it was that a nation clothed with such glory, split in two, high-tailed it from their mission to be formed into the image or people of God, and ended up devastated by exile. The author did not care about the battles, the might, the enterprise of this leader; he cared only about Jeroboam’s relationship to God’s covenant and his fidelity to Yahweh. 

All that anyone pours into building something great in the end will not matter. It will not be written, “He lived in this amazing home, he accomplished these gargantuan feats, he owned these properties, he had that many followers, or he lived shrouded in these titles.” All that will be written, all that will matter is: were they content with God, was their fidelity to worship intact, and who came to reign in their place?

Nadab only reigned for two years and strengthened Israel’s idolatrous ways. In the end, Baasha, with some troops from Issachar, conspired to kill Nadab. Nadab was busy expanding territory by laying siege to Gibbethon to take back the Levitical city in Dan, which had fallen under Philistine control (15:25-27).

Eventually, Baasha fulfilled Ahijah’s prophecies by massacring Jeroboam’s descendants so no rivals to his power and the throne would remain in Israel (15:28-31).  

Judah’s National Sin and Disgrace (21-24)

Within a few short years after Rehoboam began to reign, his mother’s influence began to affect Rehoboam and Israel’s fidelity toward Yahweh. Her name, “Naamah,” would become infamous, for she would begin to sculpt the image of Judah as a tribe bent toward idolatry. The old boring story is lived out again and again: leaders fashion a nation after their own idol-worshiping image, destroying ever further the yearning of Yahweh for a humanity fashioned in His image (21). As Israel had, so Judah committed greater acts of sin than their fathers had ever thought of. They erected pillars to Baal and poles to Asherim anywhere that suited them. 

On those dedicated sites, they welcomed pagan celebrations involving not only female but male prostitutes, who were paid to engage the participants in ritual sexual worship. What is being hinted at cannot be mistaken—both heterosexual and homosexual religious rites were commonplace in Judah’s corrupted worship practices. It is likely Judah was acting worse than Israel, but certainly they were acting like the people called the Canaanites, whose land God had given them. The demise of Judah, like Israel, was seeded in its first king, and the author edited the details to chronicle the great fall of the people called to bring salvation to the world (22-24).

Judah’s Defeat and Humiliation (25-28)

Eventually, with Israel and Judah divided, Egypt realized its goal of invading and controlling Palestine. History accounts that the invasion was widespread and expensive. 

Shishak’s Karnak, founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt, left inscriptions claiming the Egyptians fought in about 150 places, both in Israel and Judah. They battled as far in the north as the Plain of Esdraelon, then to the extreme south in the land of the Negeb. Cities, great and small, were affected by this Shishak’s invasion (25). 

Rehoboam was eventually forced to relinquish the Temple treasures as a payoff for Shishak to withdraw his invasion troops and discontinue the oppression. Rehoboam, with Judah, humbled themselves before the Lord and admitted their wrong (2 Chronicles 12:2-9). Sadly, Judah was left, after all David and Solomon had done, a vassal state of Egypt, pillaged of its gold, including their prized gold shields (26). 

As a side note, the author recorded that Rehoboam replaced the shields of gold with bronze to conceal from the nation just how humiliating the losses had been. The gold shields were kept under watch in the House of the Forest of Lebanon (10:17); by comparison, the bronze shields were so worthless that after every ceremonial use, they were left in the guardroom (27-28). The important point is that the show of strength had to go on, the ruse of power and majesty had to still be given their stage, but the nation had been stripped of its divine and royal strength through its idolatry, and no bronze shield could change that reality.

The Death of Rehoboam (29-31)

Verse 29 brings to our attention that if one wants greater detail, other records give such an accounting, but here the author sticks to the details of how kings traded the fashioning of Yahweh’s image within them for the fashioning of images of sensuality, affluence, and power, which they longed to make up their own identity (29).

The account of Rehoboam ends in a notation of the constant war between Israel and Judah, the honorable burial afforded to Rehoboam, and the influence of Rehoboam’s mother on him and the nation. Abijam then reigned in Rehoboam’s place (30-31).