7 Go and deliver this message I received firsthand from God, the God of Israel, to Jeroboam: I raised you up from obscurity and made you the leader of my people Israel. 8 I ripped the kingdom from the hands of David's family and gave it to you, but you weren't at all like my servant David who did what I told him and lived from his undivided heart, pleasing me. 9 Instead you've set a new record in works of evil by making alien gods - tin gods! Pushing me aside and turning your back - you've made me mighty angry. 10 "And I'll not put up with it: I'm bringing doom on the household of Jeroboam, killing the lot of them right down to the last male wretch in Israel, whether slave or free. They've become nothing but garbage and I'm getting rid of them. 11 The ones who die in the city will be eaten by stray dogs; the ones who die out in the country will be eaten by carrion crows. God's decree! 12 "And that's it. Go on home - the minute you step foot in town, the boy will die. 13 Everyone will come to his burial, mourning his death. He is the only one in Jeroboam's family who will get a decent burial; he's the only one for whom God, the God of Israel, has a good word to say. 14 "Then God will appoint a king over Israel who will wipe out Jeroboam's family, wipe them right off the map - doomsday for Jeroboam! 15 He will hit Israel hard, as a storm slaps reeds about; he'll pull them up by the roots from this good land of their inheritance, weeding them out, and then scatter them to the four winds. And why? Because they made God so angry with Asherah sex-and-religion shrines. 16 He'll wash his hands of Israel because of Jeroboam's sins, which have led Israel into a life of sin." 17 Jeroboam's wife left and went home to Tirzah. The moment she stepped through the door, the boy died. 18 They buried him and everyone mourned his death, just as God had said through his servant the prophet Ahijah. 19 The rest of Jeroboam's life, the wars he fought and the way he ruled, is written in The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. 20 He ruled for twenty-two years. He died and was buried with his ancestors. Nadab his son was king after him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on 1 Kings 14:7-20
Commentary on 1 Kings 14:7-20
(Read 1 Kings 14:7-20)
Whether we keep an account of God's mercies to us or not, he does; and he will set them in order before us, if we are ungrateful, to our greater confusion. Ahijah foretells the speedy death of the child then sick, in mercy to him. He only in the house of Jeroboam had affection for the true worship of God, and disliked the worship of the calves. To show the power and sovereignty of his grace, God saves some out of the worst families, in whom there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel. The righteous are removed from the evil to come in this world, to the good to come in a better world. It is often a bad sign for a family, when the best in it are buried out of it. Yet their death never can be a loss to themselves. It was a present affliction to the family and kingdom, by which both ought to have been instructed. God also tells the judgments which should come upon the people of Israel, for conforming to the worship Jeroboam established. After they left the house of David, the government never continued long in one family, but one undermined and destroyed another. Families and kingdoms are ruined by sin. If great men do wickedly, they draw many others, both into the guilt and punishment. The condemnation of those will be severest, who must answer, not only for their own sins, but for sins others have been drawn into, and kept in, by them.