We’ve noted before that the Northern Kingdom had long drifted farther and farther from the Covenant given at Mount Sinai. By the time Solomon passed the throne to his son, she also pulled away from the Davidic Dynasty. Despite the greatness of this tragedy, we could also say that God was doing Judah a favor by removing this massive morally dead weight.
Our narrative opens with King Jeroboam’s heir in distress with sickness. So the King directed his wife to visit the Prophet Ahijah in Shiloh, the one who had prophesied that Jeroboam would be king. But he wanted her to disguise herself as a subject, not appearing as Queen. The offering she bore was substantial, but not at all typical of royalty or nobles, who would bring animals or meat.
Keep in mind that virtually nobody did this stuff alone. An aged prophet would live in a larger household with servants and usually family, and the Queen would never travel alone and unguarded, though she might leave her entourage somewhere out of sight to approach the prophet’s dwelling with one or two servants carrying her gift. Aside from the lowest peasants, nobody in these narratives went anywhere alone, or did any physical work without assistance. Servants and/or slaves were always there, doing the actual labor attributed to the central characters. It was taken for granted that readers would understand this.
Despite being blind from age, Ahijah had hardly gone deaf to God’s Word. Jehovah warned him who was coming and what her mission was. So as she came into the room for an audience, he called out to her by name and gave her a harsh message. Her son was going to die for the sins of his father, but the Lord in His mercy would allow a proper public mourning and burial. No one else from Jeroboam’s household would be that lucky. They would all die violent deaths, and be eaten by scavengers.
The whole point was that the God of the Covenant had lifted Jeroboam to his throne, and wasn’t kidding about what He expected in return. Jeroboam had refused to serve Jehovah, and raised up his own competing temples with idols, as well as permitting every form of idolatry that had for so long been suppressed. Worse, God had decided already that this Northern Kingdom would someday be taken away into exile and dispersed among the Gentiles, never to be seen or heard again as a people.
Meanwhile, as soon as the Queen got home the boy would die. This happened just as the prophet had said. So the public burial ritual took place, also as he had promised. The narrative then telescopes out and tells us that Jeroboam reigned a total of twenty-two years and died. Another of his sons — Nadab — inherited the throne.
Now we jump to Rehoboam, whose conduct was no better. His reign was five years shorter than Jeroboam’s. He never cleaned up his father’s legacy of letting the people turn to idolatry. Instead, it got worse and God was highly embarrassed. So during Rehoboam’s fifth year on the throne, Pharaoh Shishak (Egyptian Sheshonq), who rose to power out of Libya, invaded Judah. Rehoboam bribed him off with the Temple treasures and some of the royal collection. To hide his shame, Rehoboam had bronze shields made to replace those of gold that Shishak had taken. They were guarded just as fiercely as gold.
The text notes in passing that the two rival kings had fought skirmishes off and on during their entire shared reigns. Rehoboam’s heir was named Abijam.
Over the next two centuries, the kings of Israel went through nine dynasties and nineteen rulers, and were carried away by Assyria. They had not a single faithful king. Judah continued under the dynasty of David with only one brief interruption, and lasted almost twice as long before their Exile under Babylon. Judah featured a handful of good kings who feared the Lord.
