1 Kings 13:1-34
1 And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the LORD unto Bethel: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.
2 And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.
3 And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the LORD hath spoken; Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.
4 And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him.
5 The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the LORD.
6 And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Intreat now the face of the LORD thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again. And the man of God besought the LORD, and the king's hand was restored him again, and became as it was before.
7 And the king said unto the man of God, Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward.
8 And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place:
9 For so was it charged me by the word of the LORD, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest.
10 So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel.
11 Now there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel; and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel: the words which he had spoken unto the king, them they told also to their father.
12 And their father said unto them, What way went he? For his sons had seen what way the man of God went, which came from Judah.
13 And he said unto his sons, Saddle me the ass. So they saddled him the ass: and he rode thereon,
14 And went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak: and he said unto him, Art thou the man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am.
15 Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread.
16 And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place:
17 For it was said to me by the word of the LORD, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest.
18 He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.
19 So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water.
20 And it came to pass, as they sat at the table, that the word of the LORD came unto the prophet that brought him back:
21 And he cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of the LORD, and hast not kept the commandment which the LORD thy God commanded thee,
22 But camest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place, of the which the LORD did say to thee, Eat no bread, and drink no water; thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of thy fathers.
23 And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom he had brought back.
24 And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him: and his carcase was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it, the lion also stood by the carcase.
25 And, behold, men passed by, and saw the carcase cast in the way, and the lion standing by the carcase: and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet dwelt.
26 And when the prophet that brought him back from the way heard thereof, he said, It is the man of God, who was disobedient unto the word of the LORD: therefore the LORD hath delivered him unto the lion, which hath torna him, and slain him, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake unto him.
27 And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him.
28 And he went and found his carcase cast in the way, and the ass and the lion standing by the carcase: the lion had not eaten the carcase, nor tornb the ass.
29 And the prophet took up the carcase of the man of God, and laid it upon the ass, and brought it back: and the old prophet came to the city, to mourn and to bury him.
30 And he laid his carcase in his own grave; and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother!
31 And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones:
32 For the saying which he cried by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.
33 After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but madec again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.
34 And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth.
1 Kings 12:25 to 1 Kings 13:34. The Sin of Jeroboam. The Prophet at Bethel. The sources cannot be exactly determined. Some (see Cent.B) may belong to the annals of the northern kingdom, but the tone is decidedly Deuteronomic. The prophet's message to Jeroboam is certainly late.
Jeroboam's first act as recorded was to build or fortify Shechem (1 Kings 12:25). Then for some reason he transferred his seat of government to the E. of Jordan to Penuel. Possibly he was hard pressed by his former patron Shishak, who invaded Israel in his reign (1 Kings 14:25). There is no proof of this; but Abner after Saul's death set up Ishbosheth as king of Israel in the same district at Mahanaim (2 Samuel 2:8 f.). Jeroboam may have established himself at Penuel in anticipation of a Syrian invasion. 2 Samuel 2:26 f. tells of his apostasy. Fearing lest the Israelites would return to the house of David if they continued to visit Jerusalem, he built two sanctuaries, at Bethel in the S. and Dan in the N.
As Kings attributes Israel's spiritual ruin to his sin we must state what is here said to have been its features. (a) Dissuading the people from going up to Jerusalem; (b) setting up Bethel and Dan as sanctuaries; (c) making houses of high places; (d) ordaining priests who were not Levites; (e) keeping a feast in the eighth instead of the seventh month. The question is whether any of those offences could have been considered acts of apostasy in the days of Jeroboam, as they were undoubtedly in the reign of Josiah three centuries later. (f) The calf worship.
(a) Jerusalem was certainly not considered to be the one legal sanctuary. In the days of the Judges it was regarded as a heathen town to be avoided by Israelites (Judges 19:11 f.). Even the prophets shortly before the fall of Samaria never reproach the people for the sin of schism in deserting Yahweh's Judæ an Temple. (b) Bethel, connected with Jacob, was an ancient and honoured holy place (Genesis 28:19; 1 Samuel 10:3), and Dan was served by a priesthood which was descended perhaps from a descendant of Moses himself (Judges 18:30). (c) The high places or local sanctuaries had existed from the days of the patriarchs, and were part of the worship of ancient Israel (2 Kings 3:3 *). Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, made use of them for solemn sacrifices. (d) The Levitical priesthood was preferred to any other (Judges 17:9); but in early Israel the priestly office was certainly not confined to a tribe. In 2 Chronicles 11:13, the Levites are said to have deserted Jeroboam's kingdom and settled in Judah, but this is a very late view of the affair. (e) The feast in the eighth month is said to be the vintage festival or Feast of Tabernacles. In Nehemiah 8:17, it is said to have been kept in accordance with the Law, but that it had never been kept since the days of Joshua. (f) The only point remaining for discussion is the calves. The following points must be borne in mind: (i.) the second commandment was not at this time strictly interpreted, or cherubim, lions, and bulls would not have been allowed in Solomon's Temple and palace; (ii.) the bull for calf is not used in a contemptuous sense was the special symbol of the Joseph tribes (Deuteronomy 33:17), and even of Yahweh (Exodus 32:5); (iii.) calf-worship had existed even in the wilderness, and in Exodus 32, when Aaron made the golden calf, he proclaimed a feast to Yahweh. Indeed the whole story in Exodus has a remarkable affinity to that here related. (iv.) As Jeroboam was not an innovator in setting up altars at Bethel and Dan, he may here not have introduced a new worship, but one which was already common in Israel. He may have imitated an Egyptian form of worship; but this is highly improbable. The ceremony of kissing the calves is alluded to just before the fall of Samaria (Hosea 13:2). Calf-worship apparently never infected Judah.
The story of the prophet's visit to Jeroboam has been called one of the strangest in the OT (Cent.B). The prophet, who is not named, predicts the destruction of the altar of Bethel by a king of Judah named Josiah. The definiteness of this prediction would not necessarily render it impossible, any more than the mention of Cyrus, nearly two centuries before his birth, attributed to Isaiah (Isaiah 44:26). But the whole tone of this story, as of that of Isaiah 40 ff., forbids us to accept it as contemporary. To take but one instance, the allusion to the cities of Samaria (1 Kings 13:32) is a patent anachronism (1 Kings 16:24). That the tradition of a prophet's visit to Jeroboam was current may be witnessed to by 2 Kings 23:16. The prophet or man of God, as he is consistently called (except in 1 Kings 13:23, where the reference to the prophet is an obvious interpolation), in contrast with the old prophet, does not denounce Jeroboam but curses the altar. Apparently the punishment of the man of God, who was very excusably deceived, is intended to emphasize the extreme wickedness of rebellion against God. The story throughout is intentionally miraculous; the withering of the king's hand, the death of the prophet by a lion who refused to touch the corpse or to injure the ass, cannot be explained by any attempt to rationalise the story.
1 Kings 13:33. consecrated: lit. filled the hand (Leviticus 8*, Numbers 3:3 *, 1 Chronicles 29:5 *) of each new priest. This term (found also in Assyrian) is used of regular consecration, e.g. Aaron's (Exodus 28:41), and irregular, e.g. Micah's Levite (Judges 17:5). It probably means to put him in possession of the office.