1 Kings 12–13

Israel Turns Against Rehoboam

12Rehoboam went to Shechem, where all the Israelites had gone to make him king. ²Jeroboam son of Nebat was still in Egypt, where he had gone to escape from Solomon. When Jeroboam heard about Rehoboam being made king, he was living in Egypt. ³After the people sent for him, he and the people went to Rehoboam and said to him, ⁴“Your father forced us to work very hard. Now, make it easier for us, and don’t make us work as hard as he did. Then we will serve you.”

⁵Rehoboam answered, “Go away for three days, and then come back to me.” So the people left.

⁶King Rehoboam asked the elders who had advised Solomon during his lifetime, “How do you think I should answer these people?”

⁷They said, “You should be like a servant to them today. If you serve them and give them a kind answer, they will serve you always.”

⁸But Rehoboam rejected this advice. Instead, he asked the young men who had grown up with him and who served as his advisers. ⁹Rehoboam asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who said, ‘Don’t make us work as hard as your father did’?”

¹⁰The young men who had grown up with him answered, “Those people said to you, ‘Your father forced us to work very hard. Now make our work easier.’ You should tell them, ‘My little finger is bigger than my father’s legs. ¹¹He forced you to work hard, but I will make you work even harder. My father beat you with whips, but I will beat you with whips that have sharp points.’ ”

¹²Rehoboam had told the people, “Come back to me in three days.” So after three days Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam. ¹³King Rehoboam spoke cruel words to them, because he had rejected the advice the elders had given him. ¹⁴He followed the advice of the young men and said to the people, “My father forced you to work hard, but I will make you work even harder. My father beat you with whips, but I will beat you with whips that have sharp points.” ¹⁵So the king did not listen to the people. The Lord caused this to happen to keep the promise he had made to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah, a prophet from Shiloh.

¹⁶When all the Israelites saw that the new king refused to listen to them, they said to the king,

“We have no share in David!

We have no part in the son of Jesse!

People of Israel, let’s go to our own homes!

Let David’s son rule his own people!”

So the Israelites went home. ¹⁷But Rehoboam still ruled over the Israelites who lived in the towns of Judah.

¹⁸Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. When Rehoboam sent him to the people of Israel, they threw stones at him until he died. But King Rehoboam ran to his chariot and escaped to Jerusalem. ¹⁹Since then, Israel has been against the family of David.

²⁰When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they called him to a meeting and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah continued to follow the family of David.

²¹When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he gathered one hundred eighty thousand of the best soldiers from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. As son of Solomon, Rehoboam wanted to fight the people of Israel to take back his kingdom.

²²But God spoke his word to Shemaiah, a man of God, saying, ²³“Speak to Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the king of Judah, and to all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the rest of the people. Say to them, ²⁴‘The Lord says you must not go to war against your brothers, the Israelites. Every one of you should go home, because I made all these things happen.’ ” So they obeyed the Lord’s command and went home as the Lord had commanded.

²⁵Then Jeroboam made Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim a very strong city, and he lived there. He also went to the city of Peniel and made it stronger.

Jeroboam Builds Golden Calves

²⁶Jeroboam said to himself, “The kingdom will probably go back to David’s family. ²⁷If the people continue going to the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, they will want to be ruled again by Rehoboam. Then they will kill me and follow Rehoboam king of Judah.”

²⁸King Jeroboam asked for advice. Then he made two golden calves. “It is too long a journey for you to go to Jerusalem to worship,” he said to the people. “Israel, here are your gods who brought you out of Egypt.” ²⁹Jeroboam put one golden calf in the city of Bethel and the other in the city of Dan. ³⁰This became a very great sin, because the people traveled as far as Dan to worship the calf there.

³¹Jeroboam built temples on the places of worship. He also chose priests from all the people, not just from the tribe of Levi. ³²And he started a new festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, just like the festival in Judah. During that time the king offered sacrifices on the altar, along with sacrifices to the calves in Bethel he had made. He also chose priests in Bethel to serve at the places of worship he had made. ³³So Jeroboam chose his own time for a festival for the Israelites—the fifteenth day of the eighth month. During that time he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built in Bethel. He set up a festival for the Israelites and offered sacrifices on the altar.

The Man of God Speaks Against Bethel

13The Lord commanded a man of God from Judah to go to Bethel. When he arrived, Jeroboam was standing by the altar to offer a sacrifice. ²The Lord had commanded the man of God to speak against the altar. The man said, “Altar, altar, the Lord says to you: ‘David’s family will have a son named Josiah. The priests for the places of worship now make their sacrifices on you, but Josiah will sacrifice those priests on you. Human bones will be burned on you.’ ” ³That same day the man of God gave proof that these things would happen. “This is the Lord’s sign that this will happen,” he said. “This altar will break apart, and the ashes on it will fall to the ground.”

⁴When King Jeroboam heard what the man of God said about the altar in Bethel, the king raised his hand from the altar and pointed at the man. “Take him!” he said. But when the king said this, his arm was paralyzed, and he could not move it. ⁵The altar also broke into pieces, and its ashes fell to the ground. This was the sign the Lord had told the man of God to give.

⁶Then the king said to the man of God, “Please pray to the Lord your God for me, and ask him to heal my arm.”

So the man of God prayed to the Lord, and the king’s arm was healed, becoming as it was before.

⁷Then the king said to the man of God, “Please come home and eat with me, and I will give you a gift.”

⁸But the man of God answered the king, “Even if you gave me half of your kingdom, I would not go with you. I will not eat or drink anything in this place. ⁹The Lord commanded me not to eat or drink anything nor to return on the same road by which I came.” ¹⁰So he took a different road and did not return on the same road by which he had come to Bethel.

¹¹Now an old prophet was living in Bethel. His sons came and told him what the man of God had done there that day. They also told their father what he had said to King Jeroboam. ¹²The father asked, “Which road did he use when he left?” So his sons showed him the road the man of God from Judah had taken. ¹³Then the prophet told his sons to put a saddle on his donkey. So they saddled the donkey, and he left.

¹⁴He went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak tree. The prophet asked, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”

The man answered, “Yes, I am.”

¹⁵The prophet said, “Please come home and eat with me.”

¹⁶“I can’t go home with you,” the man of God answered. “I can’t eat or drink with you in this place. ¹⁷The Lord said to me, ‘Don’t eat or drink anything there or return on the same road by which you came.’ ”

¹⁸Then the old prophet said, “But I also am a prophet like you.” Then he told a lie. He said, “An angel from the Lord came to me and told me to bring you to my home. He said you should eat and drink with me.” ¹⁹So the man of God went to the old prophet’s house, and he ate and drank with him there.

²⁰While they were sitting at the table, the Lord spoke his word to the old prophet. ²¹The old prophet cried out to the man of God from Judah, “The Lord said you did not obey him! He said you did not do what the Lord your God commanded you. ²²The Lord commanded you not to eat or drink anything in this place, but you came back and ate and drank. So your body will not be buried in your family grave.”

²³After the man of God finished eating and drinking, the prophet put a saddle on his donkey for him, and the man left. ²⁴As he was traveling home, a lion attacked and killed him. His body lay on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing nearby. ²⁵Some men who were traveling on that road saw the body and the lion standing nearby. So they went to the city where the old prophet lived and told what they had seen.

²⁶The old prophet who had brought back the man of God heard what had happened. “It is the man of God who did not obey the Lord’s command,” he said. “So the Lord sent a lion to kill him, just as he said he would.”

²⁷Then the prophet said to his sons, “Put a saddle on my donkey,” which they did. ²⁸The old prophet went out and found the body lying on the road, with the donkey and the lion still standing nearby. The lion had not eaten the body or hurt the donkey. ²⁹The prophet put the body on his donkey and carried it back to the city to have a time of sadness for him and to bury him. ³⁰The prophet buried the body in his own family grave, and they were sad for the man of God and said, “Oh, my brother.”

³¹After the prophet buried the body, he said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in this same grave. Put my bones next to his. ³²Through him the Lord spoke against the altar at Bethel and against the places of worship in the towns of Samaria. What the Lord spoke through him will certainly come true.”

³³After this incident King Jeroboam did not stop doing evil. He continued to choose priests for the places of worship from among all…