¹At the Lord's command a prophet from Judah went to Bethel and arrived there as Jeroboam stood at the altar to offer the sacrifice.

²Following the Lord's command, the prophet denounced the altar: “O altar, altar, this is what the Lord says: A child, whose name will be Josiah, will be born to the family of David. He will slaughter on you the priests serving at the pagan altars who offer sacrifices on you, and he will burn human bones on you.”

³And the prophet went on to say, “This altar will fall apart, and the ashes on it will be scattered. Then you will know that the Lord has spoken through me.”

⁴When King Jeroboam heard this, he pointed at him and ordered, “Seize that man!” At once the king's arm became paralyzed so that he couldn't pull it back.

⁵The altar suddenly fell apart and the ashes spilled to the ground, as the prophet had predicted in the name of the Lord.

⁶King Jeroboam said to the prophet, “Please pray for me to the Lord your God, and ask him to heal my arm!” The prophet prayed to the Lord, and the king's arm was healed.

⁷Then the king said to the prophet, “Come home with me and have something to eat. I will reward you for what you have done.”

⁸The prophet answered, “Even if you gave me half of your wealth, I would not go with you or eat or drink anything with you.

⁹The Lord has commanded me not to eat or drink a thing, and not to return home the same way I came.”

¹⁰So he did not go back the same way he had come, but by another road.

The Old Prophet of Bethel

¹¹At that time there was an old prophet living in Bethel. His sons came and told him what the prophet from Judah had done in Bethel that day and what he had said to King Jeroboam.

¹²“Which way did he go when he left?” the old prophet asked them. They showed him the road

¹³and he told them to saddle his donkey for him. They did so, and he rode off

¹⁴down the road after the prophet from Judah and found him sitting under an oak tree. “Are you the prophet from Judah?” he asked. “I am,” the man answered.

¹⁵“Come home and have a meal with me,” he said.

¹⁶But the prophet from Judah answered, “I can't go home with you or accept your hospitality. And I won't eat or drink anything with you here,

¹⁷because the Lord has commanded me not to eat or drink a thing, and not to return home the same way I came.”

¹⁸Then the old prophet from Bethel said to him, “I, too, am a prophet just like you, and at the Lord's command an angel told me to take you home with me and offer you my hospitality.” But the old prophet was lying.

¹⁹So the prophet from Judah went home with the old prophet and had a meal with him.

²⁰As they were sitting at the table, the word of the Lord came to the old prophet,

²¹and he cried out to the prophet from Judah, “The Lord says that you disobeyed him and did not do what he commanded.

²²Instead, you returned and ate a meal in a place he had ordered you not to eat in. Because of this you will be killed, and your body will not be buried in your family grave.”

²³After they had finished eating, the old prophet saddled the donkey for the prophet from Judah,

²⁴who rode off. On the way a lion met him and killed him. His body lay on the road, and the donkey and the lion stood beside it.

²⁵Some men passed by and saw the body on the road, with the lion standing near by. They went on into Bethel and reported what they had seen.

²⁶When the old prophet heard about it, he said, “That is the prophet who disobeyed the Lord's command! And so the Lord sent the lion to attack and kill him, just as the Lord said he would.”

²⁷Then he said to his sons, “Saddle my donkey for me.” They did so,

²⁸and he rode off and found the prophet's body lying on the road, with the donkey and the lion still standing by it. The lion had not eaten the body or attacked the donkey.

²⁹The old prophet picked up the body, put it on the donkey, and brought it back to Bethel to mourn over it and bury it.

³⁰He buried it in his own family grave, and he and his sons mourned over it, saying, “Oh my brother, my brother!”

³¹After the burial the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in this grave and lay my body next to his.

³²The words that he spoke at the Lord's command against the altar in Bethel and against all the places of worship in the towns of Samaria will surely come true.”

Jeroboam's Fatal Sin

³³King Jeroboam of Israel still did not turn from his evil ways but continued to choose priests from ordinary families to serve at the altars he had built. He ordained as priest anyone who wanted to be one.

³⁴This sin on his part brought about the ruin and total destruction of his dynasty.

An Egyptian Invasion of Judah

¹As soon as Rehoboam had established his authority as king, he and all his people abandoned the Law of the Lord.

²In the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign their disloyalty to the Lord was punished. King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem

³with an army of twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand cavalry, and more soldiers than could be counted, including Libyan, Sukkite, and Ethiopian troops.

⁴He captured the fortified cities of Judah and advanced as far as Jerusalem.

⁵Shemaiah the prophet went to King Rehoboam and the Judean leaders who had gathered in Jerusalem to escape Shishak. He said to them, “This is the Lord's message to you: ‘You have abandoned me, so now I have abandoned you to Shishak.’”

⁶The king and the leaders admitted that they had sinned, and they said, “What the Lord is doing is just.”

⁷When the Lord saw this, he spoke again to Shemaiah and said to him, “Because they admit their sin, I will not destroy them. But when Shishak attacks, they will barely survive. Jerusalem will not feel the full force of my anger,

⁸but Shishak will conquer them, and they will learn the difference between serving me and serving earthly rulers.”

⁹King Shishak came to Jerusalem and took the treasures from the Temple and from the palace. He took everything, including the gold shields that King Solomon had made.

¹⁰To replace them, Rehoboam made bronze shields and entrusted them to the officers responsible for guarding the palace gates.

¹¹Every time the king went to the Temple, the guards carried the shields and then returned them to the guardroom.

¹²Because he submitted to the Lord, the Lord's anger did not completely destroy him, and things went well for Judah.

Summary of Rehoboam's Reign

¹³Rehoboam ruled in Jerusalem and increased his power as king. He was forty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen from all the territory of Israel as the place where he was to be worshiped. Rehoboam's mother was Naamah, from the land of Ammon.

¹⁴He did what was evil, because he did not try to find the Lord's will.

¹⁵Rehoboam's acts from beginning to end and his family records are found in The History of Shemaiah the Prophet and The History of Iddo the Prophet. Rehoboam and Jeroboam were constantly at war with each other.

¹⁶Rehoboam died and was buried in the royal tombs in David's City and his son Abijah succeeded him as king.

Abijah's War with Jeroboam

¹In the eighteenth year of the reign of King Jeroboam of Israel, Abijah became king of Judah,

²and he ruled three years in Jerusalem. His mother was Micaiah daughter of Uriel, from the city of Gibeah. War broke out between Abijah and Jeroboam.

³Abijah raised an army of 400,000 soldiers, and Jeroboam opposed him with an army of 800,000.

⁴The armies met in the hill country of Ephraim. King Abijah went up Mount Zemaraim and called out to Jeroboam and the Israelites: “Listen to me!” he said.

⁵“Don't you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, made an unbreakable covenant with David, giving him and his descendants kingship over Israel forever?

⁶Jeroboam son of Nebat rebelled against Solomon, his king.

⁷Later he gathered together a group of worthless scoundrels, and they forced their will on Rehoboam son of Solomon, who was too young and inexperienced to resist them.

⁸Now you propose to fight against the royal authority that the Lord gave to David's descendants. You have a huge army and have with you the gold bull-calves that Jeroboam made to be your gods.

⁹You drove out the Lord's priests, the descendants of Aaron, and you drove out the Levites. In their place you appointed priests in the same way that other nations do. Anybody who comes along with a bull or seven sheep can get himself consecrated as a priest of those so-called gods of yours.

¹⁰“But we still serve the Lord our God and have not abandoned him. Priests descended from Aaron perform their duties, and Levites assist them.

¹¹Every morning and every evening they offer him incense and animal sacrifices burned whole. They present the offerings of bread on a table that is ritually clean, and every evening they light the lamps on the gold lampstand. We do what the Lord has commanded, but you have abandoned him.

¹²God himself is our leader and his priests are here with trumpets, ready to blow them and call us to battle against you. People of Israel, don't fight against the Lord, the God of your ancestors! You can't win!”

¹³Meanwhile Jeroboam had sent some of his troops to ambush the Judean army from the rear, while the rest faced them from the front.

¹⁴The Judeans looked around and saw that they were surrounded. They cried to the Lord for help, and the priests blew the trumpets.

¹⁵The Judeans gave a loud shout, and led by Abijah, they attacked; God defeated Jeroboam and the Israelite army.

¹⁶The Israelites fled from the Judeans, and God let the Judeans overpower them.

¹⁷Abijah and his army dealt the Israelites a crushing defeat—half a million of Israel's best soldiers were killed.

¹⁸And so the people of Judah were victorious over Israel, because they relied on the Lord, the God of their ancestors.

¹⁹Abijah pursued Jeroboam's army and occupied some of his cities: Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron, and the villages near each of these cities.

²⁰Jeroboam never regained his power during Abijah's reign. Finally the Lord struck him down, and he died.

²¹Abijah, however, grew more powerful. He had fourteen wives and fathered twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters.

²²The rest of the history of Abijah, what he said and what he did, is written in The History of Iddo the Prophet.

¹I am only a wild flower in Sharon, a lily in a mountain valley.

The Man

²Like a lily among thorns is my darling among women.

The Woman

³Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my dearest compared to other men. I love to sit in its shadow, and its fruit is sweet to my taste.

⁴He brought me to his banquet hall and raised the banner of love over me.

⁵Restore my strength with raisins and refresh me with apples! I am weak from passion.

⁶His left hand is under my head, and his right hand caresses me.

⁷Promise me, women of Jerusalem; swear by the swift deer and the gazelles that you will not interrupt our love.

The Woman

⁸I hear my lover's voice. He comes running over the mountains, racing across the hills to me.

⁹My lover is like a gazelle, like a young stag. There he stands beside the wall. He looks in through the window and glances through the lattice.

The Man

¹⁰My lover speaks to me. Come then, my love; my darling, come with me.

¹¹The winter is over; the rains have stopped;

¹²in the countryside the flowers are in bloom. This is the time for singing; the song of doves is heard in the fields.

¹³Figs are beginning to ripen; the air is fragrant with blossoming vines. Come then, my love; my darling, come with me.

¹⁴You are like a dove that hides in the crevice of a rock. Let me see your lovely face and hear your enchanting voice.

¹⁵Catch the foxes, the little foxes, before they ruin our vineyard in bloom.

The Woman

¹⁶My lover is mine, and I am his. He feeds his flock among the lilies

¹⁷until the morning breezes blow and the darkness disappears. Return, my darling, like a gazelle, like a stag on the mountains of Bether.