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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
14:1-20 The End of Jeroboam. Jeroboam had been promised a dynasty ("house") just like David's (11:38). His desire also to have a temple ("house") just like David's, however, led him into disobedience, and ch. 13 has just revealed what happens to the disobedient. First Kings 14:1-20 now describes what happened as a result of Jeroboam's desire to have the two "houses" he wanted instead of the one he was promised.
14:2 disguise yourself. In spite of the events of ch. 13, Jeroboam still thinks he can control his world, using religion to his own advantage. He apparently believes that he can fool the old prophet Ahijah into giving him a positive message about his son. The theme of royal disguise appears in other places in the OT where the point is made that God, not the king, will determine the course of events (e.g., 1 Samuel 28; 1 Kings 20:35-43; 22:29-38; 2 Chron. 35:20-27).
14:6 I am charged with unbearable news. Jeroboam's wife has been sent to Ahijah to find out about her sick child; she discovers when she arrives at the prophet's house that he has also been sent to her with a message about the kingship.
14:10 Since Jeroboam has failed to be like David (v. 8) and has worshiped other gods as Solomon did (v. 9), his dynasty will come to an end for lack of male descendants. The Hebrew behind "every male" is literally "he who urinates against a wall" (see also 1 Sam. 25:22, 34; 1 Kings 16:11; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8), and the imagery is thus connected to that of God's judgment (as a man burns up dung or excrement until it is all gone). God is going to clean up Jeroboam's house. The Hebrew behind bond and free appears on four other occasions in the OT (Deut. 32:36; 1 Kings 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8; and, in a slightly different form, 2 Kings 14:26). It is a difficult phrase to interpret, but probably is an idiom for the ability of the males of the royal house to be of strong help to the king; neither those who are important to Jeroboam in this regard nor those who are not will be able to assist him. A contrast with David's dynasty is seen here: David "shall not lack" (lit., "there shall not be cut off for David") a descendant on the throne (1 Kings 2:4; 8:25; 9:5), but Jeroboam's descendants will be cut off.
14:11 Jeroboam's dynasty will come to a dishonorable end, since the bodies mentioned will not be buried but will be eaten by dogs and birds (cf. 1 Sam. 31:8-13 for the importance of proper burial in Israel). Only Jeroboam's son Abijah will escape this fate (1 Kings 14:13).
14:15 the Lord will strike Israel. Ahijah turns from the immediate situation to what will happen in the distant future. In the absence of a strong dynasty to rule Israel, this nation is destined to know only the instability of a reed . . . shaken (or "swaying") in the water. Eventually the Israelites will suffer exile from the good land that he gave to their fathers to a land beyond the Euphrates River. The political instability of which Ahijah speaks is well described in the following account of the northern kingdom; the land beyond the Euphrates, it will turn out, is Assyria (2 Kings 17:1-6, 21-23). The idolatrous worship that lies at the root of Israel's problem is here summed up in terms of the making of Asherim, or Asherah poles. The goddess Asherah is known from Ugaritic texts under the name Athirat, the wife of the chief god El and the mother of the gods. In syncretistic Israelite circles she inevitably appears as the wife of the Lord. The Asherim were cult symbols connected with the worship of this goddess, probably wooden artifacts representing a tree (cf. Deut. 16:21, which suggests that sometimes an "Asherah" could actually be a tree; Hos. 4:12).
14:17 Jeroboam has apparently moved his royal court to Tirzah, although this was not previously mentioned in the narrative.
14:19 the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. The authors of Kings specifically claim to have had access to written sources of information about the monarchic period, both for Israel and for Judah (v. 29; 15:7, 23, 31; 16:5, 14, 20, 27; 22:39, 45; 2 Kings 1:18; 8:23; 10:34; 12:19; 13:8, 12; 14:15, 18, 28; 15:6, 11, 15, 21, 26, 31, 36; 16:19; 20:20; 21:17, 25; 23:28; 24:5). The reference here is to Israelite royal annals, preserved in palace archives and temple libraries or archives along with foreign annals and inscriptions of various kinds. No copy of any of these chronicles remains today; they are not found in the Bible, and they are different from the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles. By the , literacy was widespread in and around Palestine, and writing was being employed in legal, business, literary, and religious texts. In Iron Age Israel itself, from all the way to the fall of Judah in , writing was a pervasive phenomenon.
