At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick (v. 1). The name is usually taken to mean my father is the LORD — a striking name for a son of the man who set up the calves; the study offers the sense as likely, not certain. In real trouble Jeroboam does not send to Bethel or Dan. He sends to Shiloh, to the LORD's prophet, which told me that I should be king over this people. In the day of need he turns to the word he has otherwise set aside. This Abijah is not Abijam of Judah (14:31), whom Chronicles calls Abijah (2 Chronicles 13:1).

Disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam. The text does not say why. Perhaps he wished to hide from the people that the king had consulted the LORD's prophet, or hoped a stranger might hear a kinder word than the king's wife. The gifts — ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse of honey (v. 3) — are modest, the kind of present an ordinary person might bring a man of God (compare 1 Samuel 9:7-8). The plan undoes itself: Jeroboam trusts the prophet to see the future, but not to see through a disguise.

Ahijah could not see; for his eyes were set by reason of his age (v. 4). But the LORD had told him beforehand: thus and thus shalt thou say unto her: for it shall be, when she cometh in, that she shall feign herself to be another woman (v. 5). The disguise fails before she reaches the door. When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet — the blind prophet sees more than the king. Some readers recall blind Isaac, who was taken in by a disguise (Genesis 27:1, 22-23); here the blind man is not deceived, because the LORD has shown him.

Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Ahijah once tore his new garment to give Jeroboam ten tribes (11:30-31); now the same prophet must announce the end. The word he spoke then was conditional — if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee (11:38) — and the condition has not been met. Hebrews 4:13 says that all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. No disguise holds before God.

The charge begins with grace: I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, And rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee (vv. 7-8). Then the measure: thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart. David is the standard, as he was in 11:38. This verse names the sin bluntly: thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images. Whatever Jeroboam meant by the calves (12:28), the LORD's verdict calls them other gods.

And hast cast me behind thy back — a vivid picture of contempt, turning from God as from something unwanted. Ezekiel 23:35 uses the same words, thou hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back, and Nehemiah 9:26 speaks of those who cast thy law behind their backs. Done evil above all that were before thee begins a comparison Kings will repeat of Omri (16:25) and Ahab (16:30, 33). Each failure becomes the floor for the next.

The judgment on the house is severe: every male cut off (him that pisseth against the wall is a blunt Hebrew idiom for males, used also in 1 Samuel 25:22), the remnant swept away as a man taketh away dung, the dead left for the dogs and the fowls of the air (vv. 10-11). Him that is shut up and left is obscure; it may mean every male, whether bound or free. To lie unburied was the deepest disgrace. And the child? When thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die (v. 12).

Then this verse: he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward the LORD God of Israel. The text does not say what the good thing was. In a house given to idols, God saw it. The child's death is grief, yet it is told as mercy: he alone will be mourned by all Israel and buried in peace, spared the ruin to come. Isaiah 57:1 speaks of how the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. God notices the smallest good, even in the hardest place.

The LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: but what? even now (v. 14). The last words are hard in Hebrew and have been read in several ways, perhaps meaning that the judgment is already at hand. Baasha will carry it out (15:27-29). Then the word widens beyond one house: the LORD shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall root up Israel out of this good land... and shall scatter them beyond the river (v. 15) — the Euphrates, it seems. The exile of 2 Kings 17:6 is seen from far off.

Because they have made their groves — the Hebrew asherim, wooden poles or images linked with the goddess Asherah of Canaanite religion. He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin. This is the first time in Kings that the phrase made Israel to sin is used; it becomes the epitaph of the northern kingdom, and 2 Kings 17:21-22 looks back on it. A leader's sin became a people's path, though each who walked it remained responsible.

After the child's death at the threshold (v. 17) and the close of Jeroboam's two and twenty years (v. 20), the narrative turns to Judah. Rehoboam reigns seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD did choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. The description recalls 11:36: whatever the king does, the city remains the place of the name. Chronicles tells more of his reign — his fortified cities, his large family, and his humbling when Shishak came (2 Chronicles 11:5-12; 12:6-12). Kings tells it briefly.

And his mother's name was Naamah an Ammonitess. The note is given twice, here and in verse 31, which suggests the narrator wants it noticed. Solomon had loved strange women, Ammonites among them (11:1) and built a high place for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon (11:7). A mother from the nations was no bar to God's purposes in itself — Ruth was a Moabitess (Ruth 4:13, 17). Some readers connect the note with the worship described in the next verses; the text does not draw that line itself, and the study leaves it open.

And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins... above all that their fathers had done (v. 22). The south does no better than the north. They also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree (v. 23) — the kind of places Deuteronomy 12:2 had told Israel to destroy. The word also matters: Judah, with the temple and the line of David, followed the same path as Israel. Privilege does not keep a people faithful.

And there were also sodomites in the land. The KJV word translates the Hebrew qadesh, from a root meaning holy or set apart; it refers to people attached to the shrines of other gods. Their exact role is debated — many take it as ritual prostitution, others as a wider class of shrine functionaries. Deuteronomy 23:17 had forbidden it in Israel, and Asa (15:12) and Jehoshaphat (22:46) would later remove them. The verse sums up: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.

In the fifth year of king Rehoboam... Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem (v. 25) — the same king who had sheltered Jeroboam (11:40). He took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all (v. 26). Shishak is usually identified with the Egyptian king Shoshenq I, whose relief at the temple of Karnak lists many places he claimed, a number of them in Israel and the Negev; whether Jerusalem appears there is uncertain. The study offers the identification as widely held, not settled. 2 Chronicles 12:2-12 adds Shemaiah's warning and the king's humbling.

King Rehoboam made in their stead brasen shields. Solomon's shields of beaten gold (10:16-17) were gone within a generation; brass took their place, carried out when the king went into the house of the LORD and then returned to the guard chamber (v. 28). Readers have long seen a picture here: the outward show kept up, the glory gone. From a distance the display looked much the same; up close it was brass. Chronicles adds a word of grace — when he humbled himself, the wrath of the LORD turned from him (2 Chronicles 12:12) — while Kings closes with war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days (v. 30).