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true piety finds its respectful acknowledgment, even among a people so sunken as was
Israel at that time.
If it were necessary to show how unhappiness and sin go hand in hand, the history
about to be told would furnish ample evidence of it. The main reason of its insertion in
the Biblical record is, of course, that it gave occasion to announce the Divine
punishment upon the race of Jeroboam, as having traversed the fundamental condition
on which the possibility of the new dynasty rested (1 Kings 11:38). At the same time, it
seems also to cast an important side-light on the transaction between Ahijah the
prophet and Jeroboam, when the former first announced to him his future elevation to
the kingdom (1 Kings 11:29-39). Keil renders 1 Kings 14:7. "Thus saith Jehovah, the
God of Israel: Therefore, because thou hast elevated thyself from amongst the people,
and I have given thee ruler over My people Israel."
If this rendering is correct, it would imply that his elevation, or leadership of Israel,
was in the first place entirely Jeroboam's own act, and that, having so elevated himself
and assumed the leadership, God afterwards bestowed on him the rule to which he
aspired, leaving for future trial the fitness of his race for the kingdom.
But, besides the higher Divine meaning of this history, it possesses also a deep human
interest. It gives us a glimpse into the inner family life of the wretched king, as,
divested of crown and purple, and having cast aside statecraft and religious falsehood,
he staggers under a sore blow. For once we see the man, not the king, and, as each man
appears truest, when stricken to the heart by a sorrow which no earthly power can turn
aside. From Shechem the royal residence had been transferred to the ancient Canaanite
city (Joshua 12:24) Tirzah, the beautiful (Cant. 6. 4), two hours to the north of
Samaria, amidst cultivated fruit-and-olive-clad hills, up on a swelling height, with
glorious outlook over the hills and valleys of rich Samaria.^228
The royal palace seems to have stood at the entering in of the city (comp. 1 Kings
14:17 with ver. 12). But within its stately apartments reigned silence and sorrow.
Abijah, Jeroboam's son, and apparently the intended successor to his throne, lay sick.
He seems like the last link that bound Jeroboam to his former better self. The very
name of the child- Abijah, "Jehovah is my Father," or else "my Desire" - indicates this,
even if it were not for the touching notice, that in him was "found a good thing towards
Jehovah, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam" (ver. 13) We can conceive how
this "good thing" may have sprung up; but to keep and to cause it to grow in such
surroundings, surely needed the gracious tending of the Good Husbandman. It was the
one green spot in Jeroboam's life and home; the one germ of hope. And as his father
loved him truly, so all Israel had set their hopes on him. Upon the inner life of this
child - its struggles and its victories - lies the veil of Scripture silence; and best that it
should be so. But now his pulses were beating quick and weak, and that life of love and
(^)