40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 14:1-18 (Episode 310)

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Jeroboam's son falls ill so he sends his wife to Ahijah the prophet to see if he can receive a good word from him. But it's all bad news from the prophet. And repentance can change history. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page because there's still time for you to register for the Here We Still Stand regional event in Northwest Arkansas. That's April 22nd and 23rd. It's a Friday and Saturday, Friday evening, all day Saturday. It's going to be great. Chad's going to be there. I'm going to be there. There's going to be a lot of other speakers. There's going to be a concert by Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips. There's going to be

lots of food, lots of fellowship, music, teaching. It's going to be a blast. There's a link in the show notes, or you can just go to 1517.org and find that event, and you can register up. It's only $99 for the two-day event, so you should come hang out. And there's not a lot of tickets left, so it will sell out. So if you want to come, go ahead and grab those. Chad, we are in 1 Kings chapter 14. Last week, we had a kind of strange story involving two prophets, one donkey, one lion. We had Jeroboam essentially getting a chance, it seemed like. I mean, God had said some things to Jeroboam, but then he sends a man of God up from Judah and gives him a word. And it seems that as hard as this word was, that perhaps God was carving out the space for Jeroboam

to repent. Perhaps he was giving him an opportunity to go, as you said, full Moses and tear down these golden calves and grind them into dust, mix them with some water, drink them, get the sackcloth and ashes out, whatever it takes. But Jeroboam is not going to do that. No, he's not. In fact, we were just visiting before we started recording that if the prophet's word to Jeroboam was pretty hard and severe before, well, what he's about to speak to him now is even worse. The situation is that some time has passed. We don't know how much time. It just says at that time in the first verse. So whenever this was, but it seems that some time has passed that Abijah, who was the son of Jeroboam, got sick. So, you know, we don't know how old he was. I don't know if this is a

child, if he's a teenager or anything else about him. We just know that he is the son of Jeroboam, presumably his firstborn just a guess there but that's the situation so jeroboam's been raining for a while and now his son is sick so jeroboam says to his wife arise and disguise yourself that it may not be known that you're the wife of jeroboam and go to shiloh shiloh is where abijah lived not excuse me shiloh is where ahijah i'm getting my names confused here so abijah is the son, and Ahijah is this prophet, the prophet who earlier spoke to Jeroboam. So he says, behold, Ahijah the prophet is there, who said of me that I should be king over his people. Take with you 10 loaves, some cakes, and a jar of honey, and go to him, and he will tell you what will happen to

the child. So we met Ahijah quite a while ago. This is when Jeroboam was just kind of a worker, an overseer for Solomon, and at that time Jeroboam was told by Ahijah, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take the kingdom, God's going to take the kingdom, he's going to split it up, he's going to give you 10 different parts, and he's going to reserve one or two parts for the south, the rest of them I'm going to give to you. And Ahijah said that God would establish a dynasty for Jeroboam should he remain faithful as David had remained faithful.

But of course, we know that he did not. So now, Jeroboam is thinking, you know, this guy once said a good word to me. God used him to give me this great promise that I would be king. And so why don't you go to where the prophet lives and find out what's going to happen to our child? And she disguises herself. This is, by the way, not the first and won't be the last time that you have royal figures who are in disguise. We saw one of these at the end of 1 Samuel. Remember when Saul was desperate to hear a word from God, and so he ends up going to a witch

and asking her to call up Samuel from the dead. Well, then he disguised himself. And we're going to see it again later on in Chronicles, as well as in Kings, where, for instance, Josiah at one point disguises himself as a regular warrior to go into battle, ends up being killed. And then Ahab does the same thing. He disguises himself in battle, and he gets killed as well. So not a good record with royal people putting on disguises so in this case as we'll see as the story develops it's not going to be the wife who ends up being killed but there will be will indeed be a death well you know one one big difference between jeroboam uh devising a plan to have someone go in disguise and seek out uh you know a prophet the difference between uh these are

It's pretty stark, considering that Saul did not have the same idolatry problem that Jeroboam had. Jeroboam is doing things that I don't think would have ever entered Saul's mind to do. No. Saul, at least in the evidence we have, never even considered idolatry as the way to go. Jeroboam, it seems like, that was the first thing he thought of. He was afraid he was going to lose his kingdom, so he was like, what should I do? well maybe i should just pull an air and move and make some golden calves yeah so very stark difference between those those two kings she takes with her uh some some sweets and some uh some starchy foods some some loaves of bread some some donuts a jar of honey and uh which is you

know what you took if you typically when you went to go see a prophet to inquire of that prophet you didn't show up empty-handed. You may remember when Saul and his companion were looking for the lost donkeys, and his companion said, hey, we should go check with this prophet who's over here. Saul's like, we can't do that. We don't have anything to give him. So, evidently, when you went to see the prophet, you didn't just show up. You needed to bring something with you. So, she's going to take this food and go and find out what the prophet has to say. so verse four says that that's what she did jeroboam's wife did so she arose and went to shiloh and came to the house of ahijah now a little bit about him we don't i wish we knew

the ages like when he first spoke to jeroboam and how old he is now uh we don't know how much time has passed but we do know that he's old because we're told that ahijah could not see for his eyes were dim because of his age this i was thinking this morning that uh this is this is kind of a an archetypical pattern isn't it you hear a lot in literature and in movies in an old poetry about the blind seer so this is just another one of one of those examples where you have a guy who who can't see and yet he can see so he can see much more clearly in fact jeroboam and his wife presumably both have good eyesight they can most see and yet in a way they're blind whereas this blind prophet he can't see with his eyes and yet he sees much more clearly than jeroboam and his

wife see you see that you see that theme all throughout the scriptures i mean you see jesus even in his ministry roll up on blind people and uh that can even though they can't see can see that this is the messiah and then he'll heal them in front of pharisees who have no problem seeing but cannot see that he is the Messiah, despite the fact that he just makes this guy who cannot see, who can see, actually see. Yes. This happens all the time,

especially in the Gospel of Mark. This happens a ton, where people whose eyes are fine are blind. Our eyes are fine. Those people are blind. And people who are blind, for some reason, they can see. Yeah, yeah.

It's that unexpected reversal that we see over and over. And, you know, joined with that, of course, the many examples where the people who should be getting it, who should be believing, who should be trusting, don't. And the people that you would never expect to believe, to trust, to become followers of the Lord, well, they're the ones who do. We see that especially in the case of all these Gentiles throughout the scriptures who actually do believe, and while the people of God end up rejecting him. So that's the situation with the prophet. He couldn't see, he was old,

and the Lord said to him, verse 5, the Lord said to Ahijah, behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son, for he is sick. Thus and thus you shall say to her. That's just kind of a stereotypical way that the Bible often will kind of leave us wondering, okay, what's about to go down? So we're not told ahead of time what it's going to say. We're just told in summary fashion that God told him this and that to say to her once she arrived. Of course, We're going to find out in just a minute what God told the prophet to tell her. And what he had to say was a very harsh and condemning word. So she shows up.

She says she came and she pretended to be another woman. It's a different Hebrew word, but it's very similar to the whole disguise thing. This is, by the way, when Joseph, back in Genesis 42, when Joseph disguised himself to his brothers by speaking harshly to them, that's the same verb that she used there. so he was he was as it were pretending by acting differently so she's pretending here and she's in disguise when she when she shows up verse 6 when ahijah the prophet heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door so he's not even going to allow her to speak first he says come in wife of jeroboam why do you pretend to be another for i am charged literally i have been sent with unbearable news for you.

So she's supposed to show up and say, here's the situation about my son, just wondering if you could tell me what's going to happen to him. She doesn't even get a chance to open her mouth. She's barely in the door when the prophet lets her know, hey, I know who you are. Come on in, wife of Jeroboam.

And then he says to her, I have been sent. And that kind of is technical language. when God sends a prophet, he shalachs him. And here he says, I am sent. I've been charged with unbearable news for you. So you think that your husband sent you to ask of me what was going to happen to your child. Well, you're wrong. Actually, what's happening is that God has sent me to you to tell you not only what's going to happen to your son, but much more than that, what's going to happen, in fact, to the dynasty of your father, of your husband, what's going to happen to your son and then even farther down the road in a couple hundred years what's going to happen to

the entire kingdom down which your husband has led the people to to destruction so he kind of introduces it that way and then verse 7 he actually begins to deliver the speech that god told him to give verse 7 go tell jeroboam so she's actually going to become kind of the messenger the prophet's going to say this to her and now she's going to go back and say this to jeroboam thus says the lord the god of israel because i exalted you from among the people and made you leader that could also be translated prince made you leader or prince over my people israel and tore the kingdom away from the house of david and gave it to you and yet you have not been like my servant david who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart doing only that which was right in my

eyes but you have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made yourself other gods and metal images provoking me to anger and have cast me behind your back so that's a long introduction we're going we're getting to the therefore so because this happened because you did that therefore behold i will bring harm upon the house of jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam, every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam as a man burns up dung until it is all gone. So that's not the entire speech, but that's a long introduction to the rest of the speech. So we're going to pause there for a second. So he begins by reminding Jeroboam of what he's done for him. So he exalted him. He lifted him up

over all the other people. He put him in front of the people of Israel. That's a literal meaning of that Hebrew word for leader. It's nagid. It's related to the word neged, which means in front of. So I put you in front of these people. That is, I made you leader. I made you head, we might say, over my people Israel. So I did that for you. I didn't choose anybody else. I chose you. And I tore the kingdom away from the house of David. So I split it, just like the prophet had torn or had ripped that garment into the 12 different pieces. I tore, I ripped the kingdom away from the house of David, and I passed it on to you. So that's what I did. And then we have the contrast. So I did that, but here's what you did. You have not been like my servant David,

who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which is right in my eyes. One of the things you have to ask is, why did God tear the kingdom away from the house of david it had nothing to do with david it had to do with the idolatry of david's son and jeroboam knows this because he's already been told this so it's there yeah so what god is looking for is somebody who's going to be like david only in the sense that he wasn't an idolater he didn't build altars to false gods he did not lead the people into the worship of false gods that's what he's looking for Solomon didn't do that Rehoboam wasn't going to do that and so he's given this to you hoping that you would be a guy not to do that he told you not to be a guy

that did that and the first thing that you went and did is this exact same thing that caused the kingdom to be torn away from the house of david in the first place that's the setup here so you went and did the very thing that got you the kingdom in the first place you did the bad thing that the other guy did that got you the kingdom it sounds like the definition of insanity yeah i was gonna say i was gonna say sinners are the most irrational creatures that god has god has ever made of it it just so much of sin is just utter stupidity yes really i mean i know it's rebellion i know it's a lot of other things but so much of sin is just utter stupidity uh it's like hey there's fire there and if you put your hand in the fire you will get severely burned and and and

because because of the fire yeah it's always a sinner dude i'm gonna put my hand in the fire i mean like forget about you know uh forget about sin for a second pragmatically this doesn't make any sense no it makes no sense to do this no it makes no sense whatsoever which is you know why it's uh why it's irrational why it's why it's just a um just on the sheer face of it a stupid decision and it is interesting that the the language that is used you know the language that god uses if you want to know how he feels about this it's that and he brings it up like You've done evil above all who were before you, and what is that evil?

What's the worst kind of evil that you could possibly, the evil that's more evil than anything that anyone was doing before you? It's you've gone and made for yourself other gods. Mm-hmm, yeah. It's the worst. It's not only just to kings, but to all the people who have come before him

who were in a position like his, right? Aaron, Solomon. Yeah, you've seen what they did, and then you've taken it a further step. Yeah, and this is how God says this feels to him, is that you have cast me behind your back. That's how idolatry feels to God, that you have totally disregarded me,

that you have cast me aside. And the language of you've cast me behind your back is that you've moved on. It sort of feels like, I mean, this is like fidelity language, right? Like casting your wife aside or something like that. But it really is that you have placed me behind you and moved on to something else. You have moved forward without me. Yeah, I mean, we would say in colloquial English, you turned your back on me, is the idea.

Yeah, so I am no longer—well, how do you worship? You worship before the face of God, right? That's the whole—that's the language of worship. You appear before the face of God. so when you cast god behind your back or you turn your back on god that's basically what you're doing you're walking away from the one true god as you say you are it's it's spiritual adultery you're going whoring after after other gods and that's precisely what of course jeroboam has done he's this evil that he's done is and it's spelled out here in the text you made for

yourself other gods and these metal images in hebrew that's a maseca and a maseca is the same language that occurs repeatedly in the torah and it's also the language that is used to describe the the golden calf is is literally in exodus 32 for a molten calf and the word that is used there for molten is the same one that's used here so it was a metal image so it's god himself is hearkening back to what aaron did at the foot of mount sinai so you made yourself other gods and metal images provoking me to anger which we're gonna we're gonna have that language that seems like it's important too because what that tells you is that god is not looking to be angry god does not want to be angry you are talking about the god who will describe himself as very slow to anger

one translation has vex vex for that so you've vexed me but God is basically saying like listen I've had I have no choice in this you have provoked me you have done something that is impossible

for me not to be angry about I don't want to be angry I would prefer to bless you and to be your God the provoking language it means that whatever's about to happen this is all your fault like you this provoke like when you provoke someone this means that you have brought something upon yourself yeah he's not he's not acting with regard to a capricious

deity in other words god is predictable in that way so it's not like oh you never know what kind of god you're going to get with with with yahweh no i mean he's he uh he is faithful he's loving he's forgiving but when you provoke him to anger with idolatry then you know exactly what's going to happen and what's going to happen is well he says it here he says you have done evil above all who were before you and so god says therefore behold i will well the esv has bring harm this is where i wish they would translate it more literally in these cases because the word for evil and the word for harm are basically the same thing there's flip sides of the same hebrew coin so what is being communicated is okay here's what you've done you've done evil therefore i will bring

evil upon the house of jeroboam this is the path that you have chosen so i'm basically going to give you what you've asked for i'm going to hand you over to the very evil that you have brought into your kingdom you've done evil so i'm going to bring this evil this harm upon the house of Jeroboam, upon house of Jeroboam, and I will proceed from there, he goes on, to cut off from Jeroboam every male. Now, if we were using the KJV, we would have a different translation. You may be familiar with this phrase that I checked this morning. I didn't see, there might be some out there, but I didn't see any other modern translations that translate this phrase literally like the kjv does and the the so if you look this up if you look up first kings 14 this

verse in the kjv i think also the new king james version it will be translated he that pisseth against the wall now i know a lot of jokes are made about this uh because of course it is kind of a coarse and and somewhat humorous humorous image but it's every time this expression is used and there are six occasions in the old testament every time it's used it's in a highly negative pejorative sense so it's not just a standard designation for guys oh yeah yeah guys the you know the ones who urinate against the wall now every time that's used it's used in the context of destruction so it does have that it's a it has a very negative overtone to it i don't know what i don't know what an english equivalent uh would be probably something that we can't say on the

podcast, but you get the idea. So every time this is used, and the first time it was used was by David back in 1 Samuel 25, when remember he was mad at Nabal, Nabal, whatever you want to call him. And he said he was going to destroy every male in his household. Well, that was the expression that David used back then. So it's kind of a vulgar expression, but it's always used in these contexts where there's going to be destruction. And that's exactly what's going to happen here. He says, I'm going to cut off from Jeroboam every one that pisses against the wall, every male that goes on to say both bond and free in Israel. Yeah, the idea here is it's a way, as opposed to just saying every man or every son, it's a little more callous than that. So you're basically saying, I'm going to cut off.

And by the way, you can correct me if you think I'm wrong here, Chad. So the cutting off, so you're talking about a circumcised people. and this is i think this is part of why you're going to use this peeing language so yeah i'm going to fully cut off everyone who pees standing up yeah i think that's probably the the intent of this the hebrew karat uh which is which is used for cutting a covenant used for cutting other things as well so that probably is kind of between the lines here yeah it's gonna be a full cutting off yes there will be no progeny in other words everything is going to be cut off everything is going to be destroyed and then he goes on to say he's going to burn up the house of jeroboam

as a man burns up dung until it's all gone that's a pretty common image too uh and always almost always a negative image sometimes you'll hear the prophets talk about the corpses lying like dung on the ground so you got scatological language here you got reference to urine you have reference to dung. The impression seems to be that God is saying to the prophet that the whole house of Jeroboam has become basically a restroom. It stinks. All it is is urinals and toilets with the stench that comes with them. And God says, well, if it's been reduced to that because of the grossness of the idolatry, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to burn the thing to the ground i'm just going to destroy it i promised you that i would make you like the house of david

and all i asked for was you to just to keep me as your god well you threw me behind your back you walked away you've made your whole house in your your castle into an outhouse more or less so if that's what you want that's what i'm going to give you and so the result is going to be pour on the gasoline strike the match it's all going to go up in flames so that's takes us through verse 10 and that's as far as we'd read before let's pick up with what he's not done yet it seems like uh he should be done but he's got even more to say and it gets in some way even worse he says verse 11 anyone belonging to jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat

for the lord has spoken it yeah that's pretty it's pretty brutal man that is yeah that is that's very brutal i mean it's it's no different today of course we we would just we would never dream of just kind of leaving a corpse out there to to rot in the field for scavengers to to come upon it of course we we have our various ways of of taking care of the the bodies of our of our loved ones and of course the israelites did as well and so to think of these people just you know lying there dead in the street for your uh uh your feral dogs to eat or on the in the country for for vultures to pick out i mean that that's just that's a degradation of the body that was i think is probably universally rejected by uh or at least almost universally rejected by cultures and

religions. In fact, if you're familiar with the book Tobit, which is in the Apocrypha, in the very opening chapter, Tobit talks about how his act of piety was to bury his fellow Jews who were left, who were killed, who were martyred, and then were left unburied. That was like his thing. He would sneak out at night and he would bury their bodies because he was trying to not let happen to them the same thing that here is being spoken of of the household of Jeroboam. he talks about all this stuff's going to happen while you're alive and he says in death this is what's going to happen in other words you're not with me in life you are not going to be with me in death either yeah absolutely it's it's like a it's just total destruction basically you're not

you're not going to have peace you're not going to have rest even in burial you're not going to you're not going to have that so that's that's verse 11 then uh that that's kind of the end i supposed of that section of the prophet's speech to the wife of Jeroboam, he has some more words to say. He says then in verse 12, you notice he hasn't even directly addressed the whole sick child issue. I mean, he's kind of talked in general about, of course, the sons of Jeroboam and his household, but he's about to tell him what's going to happen to this sick child. That was the whole reason that she came to see the prophet to begin with. Verse 12, arise, therefore, go to your house when your feet enter the city the child shall die and all israel shall mourn for him

and this is important bury him for he only of jeroboam shall come to the grave because in him there was found something pleasing to the lord in hebrew that's literally just tov good we're not told what was good or pleasing to the lord in him but anyway in him there was found something good pleasing to the Lord, the God of Israel in the household of Jeroboam. So, I mean, of course, the death of the child is a grievous thing to be mourned. The only good thing about this is that this child will at least be given a proper burial. I think that's what's being communicated here. So the child will die, but he will be mourned for. He will be buried, unlike what's going to happen

to so many other descendants of Jeroboam. There's a tie-in by the... It seems that, even though this seems extremely harsh, this seems like there's any mercy in this sort of text that's here. I mean, what is it

that's good in him? Well, God has decided to have mercy. And, you know, of course you would be thinking if there's anyone whose fault this isn't, of course it would be the the the baby son of uh of jeroboam that this child and so god is is showing you that while he is not going to sort of continue jeroboam's lineage into uh you know and raise

up all these mighty kings uh because this child is not to blame for this that he is like this is not going to begin with him like that the death is going to begin with him but because he is taken to the grave, there's reason to believe that God says, your son is going to end up with me, but the rest of you are not. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the clear message here. And I was thinking, too, when I was going over this this morning, there's a tie-in with David, too. Of course, after he and Bathsheba had intercourse and she became pregnant, the first child born to her died as well. And so he was supposed to inherit the dynasty of David. He's not going to inherit that. But like David, because of Jeroboam's sin, his child, because he's created

this whole situation, his child is going to die as well. And David gives you reason, of course, in his mourning to believe that the same thing is true of that child as well, that while that child dies, David certainly believes that he is going to see his son again, therefore believing that his son is with God. Yeah, he will not come to me, but I will go to him. We will both find our resting place in the mercy of our Lord. So that takes us through verse 13. He goes on, verse 14, Moreover, the Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel. He's talking here about the northern kingdom who shall cut off the house of jeroboam today and henceforth the lord will strike israel as a reed is shaken in the water and root up israel out of this good land that

he gave to their fathers and scatter them beyond the euphrates in hebrew that is just hanapar the river but that's uh anytime that you have the river referred to i think every time in the old testament it's not talking about just a random river it's talking about the euphrates That happens to just be the way it's designated, so beyond the Euphrates. Why is God going to do this? Because they have made their asherim, provoking the Lord to anger. And he will give up Israel because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin. So this king that's prophesied here, we're going to meet him in 1 Kings 15.

so we'll be getting to him in a probably a couple more episodes his name is baasha so what's going to happen is jeroboam is going to have one son called uh nadab or nadab and he's going to reign for a very short time i think it's like two years and he's going to be assassinated by this guy named baasha who's going to be the third king of the northern kingdom so what the prophet is here saying is going to happen about this guy who's going to be raised up by God to cut off the house of Jeroboam. That's going to happen rather quickly. It's going to happen just a few years down the road. And he's going to strike down the whole household of Jeroboam, as we read in 1 Kings 15, 27 and following. And he goes on to say he's going to

use a couple of different images here. He's going to strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water. So reeds were, of course, Jesus even uses this imagery when he's talking about John the Baptist, right? Once you got in the wilderness to see a reed shaken by the wind. So these reeds are evidently just kind of uh you know often used metaphorically to describe how someone is easily easily swayed easily moved so god's going to strike israel as a reed is shaken in the water so it's going to be going to be moving violently back and forth like a reed would be in the wind and he's going to root up israel out of this good land i was interested as to whether this was the language that was used earlier in the curses in deuteronomy and lo and behold it was if you look

in Deuteronomy 29 verses 25 through 28. It's talking about what happens after Israel, should Israel rebel against God's covenant. And part of what it says is the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath. So what's happening here is basically the fulfillment of what God had said in the curses back in Deuteronomy. So he's going to uproot them. He's going to send him into exile beyond the euphrates this is going to happen about 200 more years so 722 bc when god sends the assyrians to destroy the northern kingdom and interestingly it doesn't say because of the golden calves but it specifies here the asherim those are the means by which they provoke god to anger we haven't encountered any reference to asherah i think since the book

of Judges. Asherah was the consort of Baal, so the popular Canaanite goddess. And you read about the Asherah poles in several different places in the Old Testament, which were the iconic representations of her. So you kind of have this duo. You've got Baal and you have Asherah, and they are the two common, the common god and goddess that are linked together in idolatrous worship in the old testament so not only were they worshiping baal under the the iconography of the golden cast but also his consort asherah and because of this he says i will give up israel due to the sins of jeroboam which he sinned and in so doing goes on to say made israel to sin all right so wrapping up this section uh we have a couple of verses where we're going to

say what happened after the speech was given after the wife of Jeroboam went back home. It says, verse 17, Jeroboam's wife arose and departed and came to Tirzah, which was the capital city for a while of the northern kingdom.

And as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. And, just like the prophet had said, all Israel buried him and mourned for him according to the word of the Lord, which is spoken by his servant Ahijah the prophet. You mentioned at the beginning of this episode that Jeroboam had a chance when the prophet first told him that what he was doing was

evil and he was leading Israel astray, that Jeroboam had a chance. I think, and I could be wrong, but I think even at this stage, there was a chance. You notice that Jeroboam's wife didn't say anything there was no speech by her she arose and departed it's like she listened to the prophet she went home walked into the house the child died how much better would it been to as soon as the prophet said this to you know tear your garments put on sackcloth throw ashes and dirt on your head cry out confess lament repent all that stuff that is supposed to happen and maybe it would have changed things maybe it wouldn't have but that's the biblical model you don't just simply hear the prophet's words acquiesce and in a kind of a spartan sort of way

so well that's i guess that's what's going to happen no well it's not as though there is god relenting is unprecedented so there's there's lots of times where god says this is what's going to happen, and people repent, and it doesn't. God doesn't speak a word of judgment that is final and cannot be changed. That's not how God works at all in the Old Testament. He says things all the time that he's going to do, and the people repent, and he doesn't do it. I mean, God relented is a pretty common phrase in the Old Testament. Yeah, that's why you never stop with the preaching of the law you can't simply condemn and say these are god's commands you broke them therefore you are under the judgment that's that's not the final word the final word is the word of grace and mercy

god relenting and showing showing mercy to his people so yeah it's it's not unprecedented it happens all the time but it doesn't happen here because there is no repentance there's no lamentation there's no confession there's nothing she just gets up walks home crosses the threshold of her house and her child child dies it's kind of a it's kind of a reverse passover the passover they put blood the blood of the lamb on the the doorpost lentils in order what to keep the children specifically the sons of the israelites safe so that the destroyer would pass over their houses here the opposite happens when she gets to the threshold instead the child inside the house dies. So in that case, it kind of comes full circle. Jeroboam starts out as a Moses figure

to deliver his people from the oppression of the Pharaoh-like Rehoboam, who had been oppressing them like a taskmaster. Well, then he becomes an Aaron, and here at the very end, instead of his child living like happened at the original Passover, his child dies. So it's a sad ending is something that could have been could have been much different uh if if jeroboam had walked in the ways of david and and actually held on to the one true god and not become an erin-like figure who went the way of idolatry then the whole history of the northern kingdom would would have been different yeah and and he even has a word from a prophet much like david did and david's like sort of chief sin moment uh david gets a pretty harsh word from a prophet and he repents

uh in this situation this does not happen no i i have sinned against the lord the lord has taken away your sin that is always the response you know when when you when you hear a harsh word from god uh the the desired outcome is not despair or just simply throwing up your hands and saying i guess i'm damned what god desires is uh for confession for repentance uh so that god can do what god always does he relents concerning the calamity which he said would happen to to his people because what makes god happier than that right to to forgive to love to show mercy that's what that's what god is always desirous to do which is why he calls people to repentance in the first place not because he wants to be on their case about something because he wants he wants him

home he wants to be able to to show him that love and mercy to uh that he desires to give to all people isn't this isn't this funny that or isn't this interesting that god says that he has been placed behind jerry bowman's back and so what does jerry bowman need to do he needs to repent literally needs to turn yes that's right yeah that's a that's a perfect way to wrap things up Yeah, if God's behind your back, here's the thing to do. Turn around. That's right. Which in Hebrew, that's what repentance is.

You're going the wrong way. What do you need to do? Well, shuv, turn around, because what's right behind your back? Who's right behind your back? God, who's ready and willing always to forgive. That's right. And that's it, man. We're out of time, so we'll leave it right there.

Next week, we'll get into the death of Jeroboam, and we'll hear some more about Rehoboam. Chad, I'll see you next week. All right, see you then.