Bible, although Jeroboam retained the day of the month, the fifteenth, for the sake of the weak who took offence at his innovations. For we may see very clearly that many beside the Levites were very discontented with these illegal institutions, from the notice in 2 Chron. xi. 16, that out of all the tribes those who were devoted to the Lord from the heart went to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the God of the fathers there. " And he sacrificed upon the altar." This clause is connected with the preceding one, in the sense of: he instituted the feast and offered sacrifices thereat. In ver. 326 (from nby,3 onwards) and ver. 33, what has already been related concerning Jeroboam's religious institutions is brought to a close by a comprehensive repetition of the leading points. " Thus did he in Bethel, (namely) to offer sacrifice to the calves; and there he appointed the priests of the high places which he had made, and offered sacrifice upon the altar which he had made at Bethel, on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, which he himself had devised, and so made a feast for the children of Israel and sacrificed upon the altar to burn." T3?0 signifies scorsum, by himself alone, i.e. in this connection, i.q. " from his own heart." The Kcri ispp is therefore a correct explanation as to the fact; but it is a needless correction from Neh. vi. 8. The last clause, "VDpn?... bvi), leads on to what follows, and it would be more correct to take it in connection with ch. xiii. 1 and render it thus: and when he was offering sacrifice upon the altar to burn, behold there came a man of God, etc. Thenius has rendered?Vl\ incorrectly, and he stood at the altar. This thought would have been expressed by '&n?V_ ^to5!, as in ch. xiii. 1. By "^PP? we are not to understand the burning or offering of incense, but the burning of the sacrificial portions of the flesh upon the altar, as in Lev. i. 9, 13, 17, etc.
A prophet out of Judah announces to Jeroboam the eventual overthrow of the idolatrous worship, and attests his divine mission by miraculous signs upon the altar at Bethel and the hardened king (vers. 1-10); but on the way back he allows himself to be enticed by an old prophet out of Bethel to go into his house, contrary to the express command of the Lord, and while sitting at table with him has to hear from his mouth the divine threat, that on account of his transgression of the command of God he will not come into the sepulchre of his fathers. This threat was fulfilled on his way home; and the marvellous fulfilment made so deep an impression upon the old prophet, that he confirmed the testimony which he had given concerning the worship at the high places (vers. 11-32). These marvellous occurrences not only teach how Jeroboam brought about the overthrow of his dynasty by his thorough hardening against the word of God (vers. 33, 34), but they also show how false prophecy rose up from the very beginning in the kingdom of Israel and set itself against the true prophets of the Lord, and how it gained a victory, which merely displayed its own impotence, however, and foreshadowed its eventual and certain overthrow.
Vers. 1-10. Prophecy against the idolatrous worship at Bethel. — Vers. 1, 2. Whilst Jeroboam was still occupied in sacrificing by the altar at Bethel, there came a prophet (D^npx t^K) out of Judah " in the word of Jehovah " to Bethel, and pronounced upon the altar its eventual destruction. ni.T tyis does not mean " at the word of Jehovah " here, as it frequently does, but u in the word of Jehovah," as vers. 9 and 17 more especially show; so that the word of Jehovah is regarded as a power which comes upon the prophet and drives him to utter the divine revelation which he has received. It is the same in eh. xx. 35. Wpn!? is to be taken as in ch. xii. 33. — " Behold a son will be born to the house of David, named Josiah; he will offer upon thee (0 altar) the priests of the high places, who burn incense {i.e. kindle sacrifices) upon thee, and men's bones will they burn upon thee." According to 2 Kings xxiii. 15-20, this prophecy was literally fulfilled. The older theologians found in this an evident proof of the divine inspiration of the prophets; modern theology, on the other hand, which denies the supernatural inspiration of prophecy in accordance with its rationalistic or naturalistic principles, supposes that this prophecy was not more precisely defined till after the event, and adduces in support of this the apparently just argument, that the prediction of particular historical events is without analogy, and generally that the introduction either of particular persons by name or of definite numbers is opposed to the very essence of prophecy, and turns prediction into soothsaying. The distinction between soothsaying and prediction, however, is not that the latter merely utters general ideas concerning the future, whilst the former announces special occurrences beforehand: but soothsaying is the foretelling of all kinds' of accidental things; prophecy, on the contrary, the foretelling of the progressive development of the kingdom of God, not merely in general, but in its several details, according to the circumstances and necessities of each particular age, and that in such a manner that the several concrete details of the prophecy rest upon the general idea of the revelation of salvation, and are thereby entirely removed from the sphere of the accidental. It is true that perfectly concrete predictions of particular events, with the introduction of names and statement of times, are much more rare than the predictions of the progressive development of the kingdom of God according to its general features; but they are not altogether wanting, and we meet with them in every case where it was of importance to set before an ungodly generation in the most impressive manner the truth of the divine threatenings or promises. The allusion to Coresli in Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1, is analogous to the announcement before us. But in both cases the names are closely connected with the destination of the persons in the prophecy, and are simply a concrete description of what God will accomplish through these men. Hence the name 'UWfcO occurs primarily according to its appellative meaning alone, viz. " he whom Jehovah supports," from n*^tf, to support, and expresses this thought: there will be born a son to the house of David, whom Jehovah will support or establish, so that he shall execute judgment upon the priests of the high places at Bethel. This prophecy was then afterwards so fulfilled by the special arrangement of God, that the king who executed this judgment bore the name of Joshiyahu as his proper name. And so also Bhp was originally an appellative in the sense of sun. The judgment which the prophet pronounced upon the altar was founded upon the jus talionis. On the very same altar on which the priests offer sacrifice to the D vJJ? shall they themselves be offered, and the altar shall be defiled for ever by the burning of men's bones upon it. D*JK ntovy, " men's bones," does not stand for " their (the priests') bones," but is simply an epithet used to designate human corpses, which defile the place where they lie (2 Kings xxiii. 16). — Ver. 3. In confirmation of his word the prophet added a miracle (nsto, repas, portcntum, see at Ex. iv. 21): " this is the sign that the Lord hath spoken (through me): behold the altar will be rent in pieces, and the ashes upon it will be poured out." |kh is the ashes of the fat of the sacrificial animals. The pouring out of the sacrificial ashes in consequence of the breaking up of the altar was a penal sign, which indicated, along with the destruction of the altar, the desecration of the sacrificial service performed upon it. — Ver. 4. The king, enraged at this announcement, stretched out his hand against the prophet with the words, " seize him" — and his hand dried up, so that he was not able to draw it back again. B?J, to dry up, i.e. to become rigid in consequence of a miraculous withdrawal of the vital energy. Thus Jeroboam experienced in the limbs of his own body the severity of the threatened judgment of God. — Vers. 5, 6. The penal miracle announced in the word of Jehovah, i.e. in the strength of the Lord, also took effect immediately upon the altar; and the defiant kins was now obliged to entreat the man of God, saying, " Soften, I pray, the face of the Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may return to me," i.e. that I may be able to draw it back again, to move it once more. And this also took place at once at the intercession of the prophet. '" 'jBTOC n?n) lit. to stroke the face of God, i.e. to render it soft by intercession (see at Ex. xxxii. 11). — Ver. 7. As Jeroboam could do nothing by force against the prophet, he endeavoured to gain him over to his side by friendliness, that at least he might render his threat harmless in the eyes of the people. For this purpose, and not to do him honour or to make him some acknowledgment for the restoration of his hand, he invited him to his house, to strengthen himself with food pVD as in Gen. xviii. 5, Judg. ix. 5; for the form n"!VD) see Ewald, ^ 41, c) and receive from him a present. — Vers. 8 sqq. But this design was also frustrated, and the rejection of his worship on the part of God was still more strongly declared. " If thou gavest me," the man of God replied, " the half of thy house, I shall not go in with thee, nor eat bread and drink water in this place; for thus hath Jehovah commanded me," etc. The subject, Jehovah, is easily supplied to HTC from the context (vid. Ewald, § 294, b). God had forbidden the prophet to eat and drink " to manifest His detestation of idolatry, and to show by that fact that the Bethelites were so detestable, and as it were excommunicated by God, that He wished none of the faithful to join with them in eating and drinking " (C. a Lap.). He was not to return by the way by which he came, that no one might look out for him, and force him to a delay which was irreconcilable with his commission, or "lest by chance being brought back by Jeroboam, he should do anything to please him which was unworthy of a prophet, or from which it might be inferred that idolaters might hope for some favour from the Deity"
Vers. 1 1—3 2. Seduction of the man of God by an old prophet, and his consequent punishment. — Vers. 11-19. The man of God had resisted the invitations of Jeroboam, and set out by a different road to return to Judah. An old prophet at Bethel heard from his sons what had taken place (the singular fo3 W3J as compared with the plural D^^Sp^ may be explained on the supposition that first of all one son related the matter to his father, and that then the other sons supported the account given by the first); had his ass saddled; hurried after him, and found him sitting under the terebinth (the tree well known from that event); invited him to come into his house and eat with him; and when the latter appealed to the divine prohibition, said to him (ver. 1 8), " I am a prophet also as thou art, and an angel has said to me in the word of the Lord: Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat and drink," and lied to him (ft ^na without a copula, because it is inserted as it were parenthetically, simply as an explanation)— then he went back with him, and ate and drank in his house. — Vers. 20-22. As they were sitting at table the word of the Lord came to the old prophet, so that he cried out to the man of God from Judah: " Because thou hast been rebellious against the command of the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment,... thou wilt not come to the grave of thy fathers," i.e. thou wilt meet with a violent death by the way. This utterance was soon fulfilled. — Vers. 23 sqq. After he had eaten he saddled the ass for him, i.e. for the prophet whom he had fetched back, and the latter (the prophet from Judah) departed upon it. On the road a lion met him and slew him; " and his corpse was cast in the road, but the ass stood by it, and the lion stood by the corpse." The lion, contrary to its nature, had neither consumed the prophet whom it had slain, nor torn in pieces and devoured the ass upon which he rode, but had remained standing by the corpse and by the ass, that the slaying of the prophet might not be regarded as a misfortune that had befallen him by accident, but that the hand of the Lord might be manifest therein, so that passers-by saw this marvel and related it in Bethel. — Ver. 26. When the old prophet at Bethel heard of this, he said, " It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the word of the Lord; the Lord hath delivered him to the lion, so that it hath torn him (pi"T\ frangcre, confringerc, used of a lion which tears its prey in pieces) and slain him according to the word of the Lord, which He spake to him." — Vers. 27-32. He thereupon had his ass saddled, and went and found the corpse and the ass standing by it, without the lion having eaten the corpse or torn the ass in pieces; and he lifted the corpse upon his ass, and brought it into his own city, and laid the corpse in his grave with the customary lamentation: *1W,|in> alas, my brother! (cf. Jer. xxii. 18), and then gave this command to his sons: " When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried, let my bones rest beside his bones; for the word which he proclaimed in the word of Jehovah upon the altar at Bethel and upon all the houses of the high places in the cities of Samaria will take place " (i.e. will be fuliilled). The expression " cities of Samaria " belongs to the author of these books, and is used proleptically of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which did not receive this name till after the building of the city of Samaria as the capital of the kingdom and the residence of the kings of Israel (ch. xvi. 2 4). There is a prophetic element in the words " upon all the houses of the high places," etc., inasmuch as the only other erection at that time beside the one at Bethel was a temple of the high places at Dan. But after such a beginning the multiplication of them might be foreseen with certainty, even without any higher illumination.
The conduct of the old prophet at Bethel appears so strange, that Josephus and the Chald., and most of the Piabbins and of the earlier commentators both Catholic and Protestant, have regarded him as a false prophet, who tried to lay a trap for the prophet from Judah, in order to counteract the effect of his prophecy upon the king and the people. But this assumption cannot be reconciled with either the divine revelation which came to him at the table, announcing to the Judsean prophet the punishment of his transgression of the commandment of God, and was so speedily fulfilled (vers. 20—24); or with the honour which he paid to the dead man after this punishment had fallen upon him, by burying him in his own grave; and still less with his con- formation of his declaration concerning the altar at Bethel (vers. 29-32). We must therefore follow Ephr. Syr., Theodor., Hengstenberg, and others, and regard the old prophet as a true prophet, who with good intentions, and not " under the inlluence of human envy " (Thenius), hut impelled by the desire to enter into a closer relation to the man of God from Judah and to strengthen himself through his prophetic gifts, urged him to enter his house. The fact that he made use of sinful means in order to make more sure of securing the end desired, namely, of the false pretence that he had been directed by an angel to do this, may be explained, as Hengstenberg suggests (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 149), on the ground that when Jeroboam introduced his innovations, he had sinned by keeping silence, and that the appearance of the Judsean prophet had brought him to a consciousness of this sin, so that he had been seized with shame on account of his fall, and was anxious to restore himself to honour in his own eyes and those of others by intercourse with this witness to the truth. But however little the lie itself can be excused or justified, we must not attribute to him alone the consequences by which the lie was followed in the case of the Juda^an prophet. For whilst he chose reprehensible means of accomplishing what appeared to be a good end, namely, to raise himself again by intercourse with a true prophet, and had no wish to injure the other in any way, the Jndaean prophet allowed himself to be seduced to a transgression of the clear and definite prohibition of God simply by the sensual desire for bodily invigoration by meat and drink, and had failed to consider that the divine revelation which he had received could not be repealed by a pretended revelation from an angel, because the word of God does not contradict itself. He was therefore obliged to listen to a true revelation from God from the mouth of the man whose pretended revelation from an angel he had too carelessly believed, namely, to the announcement of punishment for his disobedience towards the commandment of God, which punishment he immediately afterwards endured, " for the destruction of the flesh, but for the preservation of the spirit: 1 Cor. xv. 5 " (JBcrlcb. Bible). That the punishment fell upon him alone and not upon the old prophet of Bethel also, and that for apparently a smaller crime, may be accounted for " not so much from the fact that the old prophet had lied with a good intention (this might hold good of the other also), as from the fact that it was needful to deal strictly with the man who had just received a great and holy commission from the Lord" (0. v. Gerlach). It is true that no bodily punishment fell upon the old prophet, but this punishment he received instead, that with his lie he was put to shame, and that his conscience must have accused him of having occasioned the death of the man of God from Judah. He was thereby to be cured of his weakness, that he might give honour to the truth of the testimony of God. " Thus did the wondrous providence of God know how to direct all things most gloriously, so that the bodily destruction of the one contributed to the spiritual and eternal preservation of the soul of the other " (Berlcb. Bible). — Concerning the design of these marvellous events, H. Witsius has the following remarks in his Misccll. ss. i. p. 118 (ed. nov. 1736): " So many wondrous events all concurring in one result caused the prophecy against the altar at Bethel to be preserved in the mouths and memories of all, and the mission of this prophet to become far more illustrious. Thus, although the falsehood of the old man of Bethel brought disgrace upon himself, it injured no one but the man of God whose credulity was too great; and, under the overruling providence of God, it contributed in the most signal manner to the confirmation and publication of the truth."1 The heaping up of the marvellous corresponded to the great object of the mission of the man of God out of Judah, through which the Lord would enter an energetic protest against the idolatrous worship of Jeroboam at its first introduction, to guard those who feared God in Israel, of whom there were not a few (2 Chron. xi. 16; 2 Kings xviii. 3, xix. 18), from falling away from Him by joining in the worship of the calves, and to take away every excuse from the ungodly who participated therein.
Vers. 33 and 34. But this did not lead Jeroboam to conversion. He turned not from his evil way, but continued to make high priests from the mass of the people. W 2^1, " he re-
1 Compare with this the remark of Theodoret in his quxst. 43 in 3 libr. Reg.: " In my opinion this punishment served to confirm the declaration concerning the altar. For it was not possible for the statement of such a man to be concealed: and this was sufficient to fill with terror those who heard it; for if partaking of food contrary to the command of God, and that not of his own accord, but under a deception, brought such retribution upon a righteous man, to what punishments would they be exposed who had forsaken the God who made them, and worshipped the likenesses of irrational creatures? "
turned and made," i.e. he made again or continued to make. For the fact itself compare ch. xii. 31. "Whoever had pleasure (K?!?IJ, cf. Ges. § 109), he filled his hand, that he might become a priest of the high places." ^p"1? K.?P, to fill the hand, is the technical expression for investing with the priesthood, according to the rite prescribed for the consecration of the priests, namely, to place sacrificial gifts in the hands of the persons to be consecrated (see at Lev. vii. 37 and viii. 25 sqq.). The plural ntoa ^nh is used with indefinite generality: that he might be ranked among the priests of high places. — Ver. 34. " And it became in (with) this thing the sin of the house of Jeroboam, and the destroying and cutting off from the earth;" that is to say, this obstinate persistence in ungodly conduct was the guilt which had as its natural consequence the destroying of his house from the face of the earth, n*ri "O'na is not a mistake for njn "iyj'-> DU^? is used, as in 1 Chron. ix. 33, vii. 23, to express the idea of being and persisting in a thing (for this use of 3 compare Ewald, § 295,/).
Vers. 1-20. Beign of Jeroboam. — Vers. 1-18. Ahijalis prophecy against Jeroboam and the kingdom of Israel. — As Jeroboam did not desist from his idolatry notwithstanding the threatened punishment, the Lord visited him with the illness of his son, and directed the prophet Ahijah, to whom his wife had gone to ask counsel concerning the result of the illness, to predict to him not only the cutting off of his house and the death of his sick son, but also the thrusting away of Israel out of the land of its fathers beyond the Euphrates, and in confirmation of this threat caused the sick son to die when the returning mother crossed the threshold of her house again. — Vers. 1—3. When his son fell sick, Jeroboam said to his wife: Disguise thyself, that thou mayest not be known as the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh to the prophet Ahijah, who told me that I should be king over this people; he will tell thee how it will fare with the boy. njflKfy from nj?£ to alter one's self, i.e. to disguise one's self. She was to go to Shiloh disguised, so as not to be recognised, to deceive the old prophet, because otherwise Jeroboam did not promise himself any favourable answer, as he had contemptuously neglected Ahijah's admonition (ch. xi. 38, 39). But he turned to this prophet because he had spoken concerning him *P£?, to be king, i.e. that he would become king, over this people. *?\?vh stands for =£& T\vrh} -\vitli which the infinitive esse can be omitted (vid. Ewald, §336, &). As this prophecy, which was so favourable to Jeroboam, had come to pass (ch. xi. 29, 30), he hoped that he might also obtain from Ahijah a divine revelation concerning the result of his son's illness, provided that he did not know who it was who came to seek counsel concerning her sick son. To complete the deception, she was to take with her as a present for the prophet (cf. 1 Sam. ix. 8) " ten loaves and crumbs" and a jar with honey, i.e. a trilling gift such as a simple citizen's wife might take. According to the early versions and the context, a kind of plain cake, xoWvpi'Sa (LXX.), criistulam (Vulg.). It is different in Josh. ix. 5. — Vers. 4, 5. Ahijah could no longer see, because his eyes were blinded with aire. VQ? WV as in 1 Sam. iv. 15, an expression applied to the black cataract, amaurosis. It was therefore all the less possible for him to recognise in a natural manner the woman who was coming to him. But before her arrival the Lord had not only revealed to him her coming and her object, but had also told him what he was to say to her if she should disguise herself when she came. TO] nb; see at Judg. xviii. 4. 'W Fistha vn "let it be if she comes and disguises herself;" i.e. if when she comes she should disguise herself — Ver. G. "When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet entering the door (the participle HK3, according to the number and gender, refers to the ntft? implied in?VJ"!, vid. Ewald, v$ 317, c), he addressed her by her name, charged her with her disguise of herself, and told her that he was entrusted with a hard saying to her. HC'IJ (cf. ch. xii. 13) is equivalent to ni"p rmn - for the construction, compare Ewald, § 284, c. — Vers. 7 sqq. The saying was as follows: " Therefore, because thou hast exalted thyself from the people, and I have made thee prince over my people Israel (cf. ch. xi. 31),... but thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments... (cf. ch. xi. 34), and hast done worse than all who were before thee (judiccs nimirum ct duces Israelis — Cler.), and hast gone and hast made thyself other gods (contrary to the express command in Ex. xx. 2, 3),... and hast cast me behind thy back: therefore I bring misfortune upon the house of Jeroboam," etc. The expression, to cast God behind the back, which only occurs here and in Ezek. xxiii. 35, denotes the most scornful contempt of God, the strict opposite of " keeping God before the eyes and in the heart." "VpSl PTf *?, every male person; see at 1 Sam. xxv. 22. A synonymous expression is ">OT 3-iTyi, the fettered (i.e. probably the married) and the free (or single); see at Deut. xxxii. 30. "In Israel/' i.e. in the kingdom of the ten tribes. The threat is strengthened by the clause in ver. 10, "and I will sweep out after the house of Jeroboam, as one sweepeth out dung, even to the end," which expresses shameful and utter extermination; and this threat is still further strengthened in ver. 11 by the threat added from Deut. xxviii. 2G, that of those cut off not one is to come to the grave, but their bodies are to be devoured by the dogs and birds of prey, — the worst disgrace that could befall the dead. Instead of wild beasts (Deut, xxviii. 26) the dogs are mentioned here, because in the East they wander out in the streets without owners, and are so wild and ravenous that they even devour corpses (vid. Harniar, Beobachtungen, i. p. 198). BJQTv with p of relationship, equivalent to of those related to Jeroboam. It is the same in ver. 13. — Vers. 12, 13. After this announcement of the judgment upon the house of Jeroboam, Ahijah gave the wife information concerning her sick son. He would die as soon as she entered the city, and of all the male members of the house of Jeroboam he only would receive the honour of a proper burial, because in him there was some good thing towards Jehovah found. Ewald (§ 247, b) regards the form nsh:i as standing for B&P3, and refers the suffix to the following word "Vyn (vid. Ewald, § 309, c). But as this use of the suffix would be very harsh, the question arises whether HK3 is not to be regarded as a feminine form of the infinitive, after the analogy of njn in Ex. ii. 4 and m? in 2 Kings xix. 3, etc. From the fulfilment of this declaration in vers. 17 and 18 Jeroboam was to learn that the threatened destruction of his royal house would also be just as certainly fulfilled. The sick son appears to have been the heir-presumptive to the throne. This may be inferred partly from the lamentation of all Israel at his death (ver. 18), and partly from what follows here in the next verse. H}*1!"^ means in his relation to Jehovah. — Ver. 14. "Jehovah will raise Himself up a king over Israel, who will cut off the house of Jeroboam this day; but what (sc. do I say)? even now," sc. has He raised him up. This appears to be the simplest explanation of the last words of the verse, of which very various interpretations have been given, nt is placed before &vr\} to give it the stronger emphasis, as in Ex. xxxii. 1 (compare Josh. ix. 12, 13, and Ewald, § 293, b; and for nny D3 compare Delitzsch on Job, i. p. 290, transl.). — Vers. 15, 16. But in order that not only Jeroboam, but also the people who had joined in his idolatry, might perceive the severity of the divine judgment, Ahijah also announced to the nation its banishment into exile beyond the Euphrates. " Jehovah will smite Israel, as the reed shakes in the water," is an abbreviated phrase for: Jehovah will smite Israel in such a manner that it will sway to and fro like a reed in the water moved by a strong wind, which has not a sufficiently firm hold to resist the violence of the storm. " And will thrust them out of the good land," etc., as Moses threatened the transgressors of the law (Deut. xxix. 27), "and scatter them beyond the river (Euphrates)," i.e. banish them among the heathen, from whom God brought out and chose their forefather (Josh. xxiv. 3), " because they have made themselves Ashera-idols, to provoke Jehovah." B'nftW is used for idols generally, among which the goMen calves are reckoned. \n]\ that He may deliver up Israel, on account of the idolatrous forms of worship introduced by Jeroboam. For the fulfilment see 2 Kings xv. 29, xvii. 23, and xviii. 11. — In vers. 17 and 18 the exact fulfilment of Ahijah's announcement concerning the death of Jeroboam's sick son is described. According to ver. 17, Jeroboam was then residing at Thirza, whereas he had at first resided at Shechem (ch. xii. 25). Tliirza is probably the present Talluza, on the north of Shechem (see at Josh. xii. 24). — Vers. 19 and 20. End of Jeroboams reign. Of the wars, which were described in the annals of the kings (see p. 12), the war with Abijam of Judah is the only one of which we have any account (2 Chron. xiii. 2 sqq.). See also the Comm. on ver. 30. He was followed on the throne by his son JS"adab.
Vers. 21-31. Reign of Rehoboam in Judah (compare 2 Chron. xL 5— xii. 16). — Ver. 21. Rehoboam, who ascended the throne at the age of forty-one, was born a year before the accession of Solomon (see at ch. ii. 24). In the description of Jerusalem as the city chosen by the Lord (cf. ch. xi. 36) there is implied not so much an indirect condemnation of the falling away of the ten tribes, as the striking contrast to the idolatry of liehoboam referred to in vers. 23 sqq. The name of his mother is mentioned (here and in ver. 31), not because she seduced the king to idolatry (Ephr. Syr.), but generally on account of the great influence which the queen-mother appears to have had both upon the king personally and upon his government, as we may infer from the fact that the mother's name is given in the case of every king of Judah (vid. ch. xv. 2, 13, xxii. 42, etc.). — Vers. 22-24. The general characteristics of Eehoboam's reign are supplied and more minutely defined in the account in the Chronicles. According to 2 Chron. xi. 5— xii. 1, he appears to have been brought to reflection by the announcement of the prophet, that the falling away of the ten tribes had come from the Lord as a punishment for Solomon's idolatry (ch. xii. 23, 24; 2 Chron. xi. 2-4); and in the first years of his reign to have followed the law of God with earnestness, and to have been occupied in the establishment of his government partly by the fortification of different cities (2 Chron. xi. 5-12), and partly by setting in order his domestic affairs, placing his numerous sons, who were born of his many wives and concubines, in the fortified cities of the land, and thus providing for them, and naming Abijam as his successor (2 Chron. xi. 18-22); while his kingdom was still further strengthened by the priests, Levites, and pious Israelites who emigrated to Judah and Jerusalem from the ten tribes (2 Chron. xi. 13-17). But this good beginning only lasted three years (2 Chron. xi. 17). When he thought that he had sufficiently fortified his kingdom, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel (i.e. all the covenant nation) with him (2 Chron. xii. 1). " Judah did that which was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; they provoked Him to jealousy more than all that their fathers (sc. under the Judges) had done with their sins." Wp, to provoke to jealousy (Num. v. 14), is to be explained, when it refers to God, from the fact that the relation in which God stood to His people was regarded under the figure of a marriage, in which Jehovah appears as the husband of the nation, who is angry at the unfaithfulness of his wife, i.e. at the idolatry of the nation. Compare the remarks on K3jp 7K in the Comm. on Ex. xx. 5. — Ver. 23. They also (the Judasans as well as the Israelites) built themselves bamoth, altars of high places (see at ch. iii. 3), monuments and Asheraidols. ntoJR? are not actual images of gods, but stones set up as memorials (Gen. xxxi. 13, xxxv. 20; Ex. xxiv. 4), more especially stone monuments set up in commemoration of a divine revelation (Gen. xxviii. 18, 22, xxxv. 14). Like the hamotli, in connection with which they generally occur, they were originally dedicated to Jehovah; but even under the law they were forbidden, partly as places of divine worship of human invention which easily degenerated into idolatry, but chiefly because the Canaanites had erected such monuments to Baal by the side of his altars (Ex. xxiii. 24, xxxiv. 13; Dent. vii. 5, etc.), whereby the worship of Jehovah was unconsciously identified with the worship of Baal, even when the mazzebotk were not at first erected to the Canaanitish Baal As the rri3¥0 of the Canaanites were dedicated to Baal, so were the B*WK to Astarte, the female nature-deity of those tribes. i™?*, however, does not mean a grove (see the Comm. on Deut. xvi. 21), but an idol of the Canaanitish nature-goddess, generally most likely alofty wooden pillar, though sometimes perhaps a straight trunk of a tree, the brandies and crown of which were lopped (ill*, and which was planted upon heights and in other places by the side of the altars of Baal The name mcfc was transferred from the idol to the goddess of nature (ch. xv. 13, xviii. 19; 2 Kings xxi. 7, etc.), and was used of the image or column of the Phoenician Astarte (ch. xvi. 33; 2 Kings xiii. G, xvii. 10, etc), just as nn_;s in Judg. iii. 7 alternates with TYrmpV in Judg. ii. 13. These idols the Israelites (? Jiuheans — Tk.) appear to have also associated with the worship of Jehovah; for the external worship of Jehovah was still maintained in the temple, and was performed by Rehoboam himself with princely pomp (ver. 2S). "On every high hill," etc.; see at Deut, xii. 2. — Ver. 2 4. " There were also prostitutes in the land." BHjj is used collectively as a generic name, including both male and female hierod via?, and is exchanged for the plural in ch. xv. 1 2. The male E^sn.i? had emasculated themselves in religious frenzy in honour of the Canaanitish goddess of nature, and were called Galli by the Eomans. They were Canaanites, who had found their way into the land of Judah when idolatry gained the upper hand (as indicated by BW). " They appear here as strangers among the Israelites, and are those notorious Cinoedi more especially of the imperial age of Eome who travelled about in all directions, begging for the Syrian goddess, and even in the time of Augustine went about asking for alms in the streets of Car-
This sinking into heathen abominations was soon followed by the punishment, that Judah was given up to the power of the heathen. — Vers. 25—28. King Shishak of Egypt invaded the land with a powerful army, conquered all the fortified cities, penetrated to Jerusalem, and would probably have put an end to the kingdom of Judah, if God had not had compassion upon him, and saved him from destruction, in consequence of the humiliation of the king and of the chiefs of the nation, caused by the admonition of the prophet Shemaiah, so that after the conquest of Jerusalem Shishak contented himself with withdrawing, taking with him the treasures of the temple and of the royal palace. Compare the fuller account of this expedition in 2 Chron. xii. 2-9. Shishak (P&W) was the first king of the twenty-second (or Bubastitic) dynasty, called Scsonchis in Jul. Afric, Sesonchosis in Eusebius, and upon the monuments on which Champollion first deciphered his name, Sheshonk or Sheshenk. Shishak has celebrated his expedition against Judah by a bas-relief on the outer wall of the pillar-hall erected by him in the first palace at Karnak, in which more than 130 figures are led in cords by Ammon and the goddess Muth with their hands bound upon their backs. The lower portion of the figures of this long row of prisoners is covered by escutcheons, the border of which being provided with battlements, shows that the prisoners are symbols of conquered cities. About a hundred of these escutcheons are still legible, and in the names upon them a large number of the names of cities in the kingdom of Judah have been deciphered with tolerable certainty.1 Shishak was probably bent chiefly upon the conquest and
1 Compare Max Duncker, Gesch. des Alterthums, Bd. i. p. 909, ed. 3, and for the different copies of this bas-relief in the more recent works upon Egypt, Ruetschi in Herzog's Cycl. (art. Rehohoam). The latest attempts at deciphering are those by Brugsch, Geogr. Inschriften in den agypt. Denkmalern, ii. p. 56 sqq., and 0. Blau, Sisaqs Zug gegen Juda aus dem Denkmale bei Karnak erlautert, in the Deutsch. morgenl. Ztschr. xv. p. 233 sqq. Champollion's interpretation of one of these escutcheons, in his Precis da systeme hierogl. p. 204, viz. Juda hammalek, " the king of Judah," has been rejected by Lepsius and Brugsch as philologically inadmissible. Brugsch writes the name thus: Judh malk or Joud-hamalok, and identifies Judh with Jehudijeh, which Robinson (Pal. iii. p. 45) supposes to be the ancient Jehud (Josh. xix. 45).
plundering of the cities. But from Jerusalem, beside other treasures of the temple and palace, he also carried off the golden shields that had been made by Solomon Teh. x. 16), in the place of which liehoboam had copper ones made for his bodyguard. The guard, tftTJ, runners, are still further described as r\b®n IV3 nna DWn « who kept the door of the king's house," i.e. supplied the sentinels for the gate of the royal palace. — Ver. 28. "Whenever the king went into the house of Jehovah, the runners carried these shields; from which we may see that the king was accustomed to go to the temple with solemn pomp. These shields were not kept in the state-house of the forest of Lebanon (ch. x. 1 7) as the golden shields were, but in the guard-chamber (Nn; see at Ezek. xl. 7) of the runners. — Vers. 2 9-31. Further particulars are given in 2 Chron. xi. and xii. concerning the rest of the acts of liehoboam. " There was war between liehoboam and Jeroboam the whole time (of their reign)." As nothing is said about any open war between them, and the prophet Shemaiah prohibited the attack which Eehoboam was about to make upon the tribes who had fallen away (ch. xi. 23 s< [<[.), n?n?D can only denote the hostile feelings and attitude of the two rulers towards one another. — Ver. 31. Death and burial of liehoboam: as in the case of Solomon (ch. xi. 43). The name of the queen-mother has already been given in ver. 21, and the repetition of it here may be explained on the supposition that in the original sources employed by the author of our books it stood in this position. The son and successor of IMioboam upon the throne is called Abijam (D^.) in the account before us; whereas in the Chronicles he is always called Abijah (HJ3K, 2 Chron. xii. 1G, xiii. 1, etc., or fcTOK, 2 Chron. xiii. 21). B^tf, i.e. father of the sea, is unquestionably the older form of the name, which was reduced to nJ?N,
This Jelind in the tribe of Dan, Blau (p. 238) therefore also finds in the name; and it will not mislead any one that this city is reckoned as belonging to the tribe of Dan, since in the very same chapter (Josh. xix. 42) Ajalon is assigned to Dan, though it was nevertheless a fortress of Kehoboam (2 Chron. xi. 10). But Blau has not given any explanation of the addition malk or malok, whereas Gust. Roesch takes it to be -pD, and supposes it to mean " Jehud of the king, namely, of Rehoboam or of Judah, on account of its being situated in Dan, which belonged to the northern kingdom." But this is certainly incorrect. For where could the Egyptians have obtained this exact knowledge of the relation in which the tribes of the nation of Israel stood to one another?
Vers. 1-8. Eeign of Abijam (cf. 2 Chron. xiii.). — Abijam reigned three years, and his mother's name was Maacah, daughter {i.e. grand-daughter) of Absalom. We have the same in 2 Chron. xi. 20, 21; but in 2 Chron. xiii. 2 she is called Michajahu, daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. If DWUK was without doubt Absalom, the well-known son of David, as we may infer from the fact that this name does not occur again in the Old Testament in connection with any other person, since Absalom had only one daughter, viz. Thamar (2 Sam. xiv. 27), who was fifty years old when Solomon died, Maacah must have been a daughter of this Thamar, who had married Uriel of Gibeah, and therefore a grand-daughter of Absalom. This is sustained by Josephus {Ant. viii. 10, 1). The form of the name ^^9 is probably an error in copying for ^V.'1?, as the name is also written in 2 Chron. xi. 20 and 21, and not a different name, which Maacah assumed as queen, as Caspari supposes {Micha, p. 3, note 4). — Vers. 3, 4. Abijam walked as king in the footsteps of his father. Although he made presents to the temple (ver. 15), his heart was not D?B>, wholly or undividedly given to the Lord, like the heart of David (cf. ch. xi. 4); but (*3, after a previous negative) for David's sake Jehovah had left him a light in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him and to let Jerusalem stand, because (*^N) David had done right in the eyes of God, etc., i.e. so that it was only for David's sake that Jehovah did not reject him, and allowed the throne to pass to his son. For the fact itself compare ch. xi. 13 and 36; and for the words, " except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite," see 2 Sam. xi. and xii. — Ver. 6. " And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all his life;" i.e. the state of hostility which had already existed between Eehoboam and Jeroboam continued " all the days of his life," or so long as Abijam lived and reigned. If we take Vjn *&T?3 in this manner (not Bfflfpfi ver- 16), the statement loses the strangeness which it has at first sight, and harmonizes very well with that in ver. 7, that there was also war between Abijam and Jeroboam.
Under Abijam it assumed the form of a serious war, in which Jeroboam sustained a great defeat (see 2 Chron. xiii. 3-20). — The other notices concerning Abijam in vers. 7 and 8 are the same as in the case of Kehoboam in ch. xiv. 29 and 31.
Vers. 9-24. Keign of Asa (cf. 2 Chron. xiv.-xvi.). — As Asa ascended the throne in the twentieth year of the reign of Jeroboam, his father Abijam, who began to reign in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam (ver. 1), can only have reigned two years and a few months, and not three full years. — Ver. 10. Asa reigned forty-one years. " The name of his mother was Maacah, the daughter of Absalom." This notice, which agrees verbatim with ver. 2, cannot mean that Abijam had his own mother for a wife; though Thenius finds this meaning in the passage, and then proceeds to build up conjectures concerning emendations of the text. We must rather explain it, as Ephr. Syr, the Rabbins, and others have done, as signifying that Maacah, the mother of Abijam, continued during Asa's reign to retain the post of queen-mother or <"rpsnj £& sultana valide, till Asa deposed her on account of her idolatry (ver. 1 3), probably because Asa's own mother had died at an early age. — Vers. 11 sqq. As ruler Asa walked in the ways of his pious ancestor David: he banished the male prostitutes out of the land, abolished all the abominations of idolatry, which his fathers (Abijam and Behoboam) had introduced, deposed his grandmother Maacah from the rank of a queen, because she had made herself an idol for the Ashera, and had the idol hewn in pieces and burned in the valley of the Kidron. Dv9f is a contemptuous epithet applied to idols (Lev. xxvi 30); it does not mean stercorei, however, as the Eabbins affirm, but logs, from Sv3, to roll, or masses of stone, after the Chaldee hbi (Ezra v. 8, vi. 4), generally connected with V*W?> It is so in Deut. xxix. 16. ™p$Q, formido, from pa, tcrrcre, timere, hence an idol as an object of fear, and not pudendum, a shameful image, as Movers (Phoniz. i. p. 571), who follows the Eabbins, explains it, understanding thereby a Phallus as a symbol of the generative and fructifying power of nature. With regard to the character of this idol, nothingfurther can be determined than that it was of wood, and possibly a wooden column like the D*!^ (see at ch. xiv. 23). " But the high places departed not," i.e. were not abolished. By the rri£3 we are not to understand, according to ver. 12, altars of high places dedicated to idols, but unlawful altars to Jehovah. It is so in the other passages in which this formula recurs (ch. xxii. 24; 2 Kings xii. 4, xiv. 4, xv. 4; and the parallel passages 2 Chron. xv. 17, xx. 33). The apparent discrepancy between the last-mentioned passages and 2 Chron. xiv. 2, 4, and xvii. 6, may be solved very simply on the supposition that the kings (Asa and Jehoshaphat) did indeed abolish the altars on the high places, but did not carry their reforms in the nation thoroughly out; and not by distinguishing between the bamoth dedicated to Jehovah and those dedicated to idols, as Thenius, Bertheau, and Caspari, with many of the earlier commentators, suppose. For although 2 Chron. xiv. 2 is very favourable to this solution, since both H1D3 and "93H rrirtnTD are mentioned there, it does not accord with 2 Chron. xvii. 6, where ntoan cannot be merely idolatrous altars dedicated to the Canaanitish Baal, but unquestionably refer to the unlawful altars of Jehovah, or at any rate include them. Moreover, the next clause in the passage before us, " nevertheless Asa's heart was wholly given to the Lord," shows that the expression vid ao does not mean that the king allowed the unlawful JehoYsih-bamoth to remain, but simply that, notwithstanding his fidelity to Jehovah, the bamoth did not depart, so that he was unable to carry the abolition of them thoroughly out. — Ver. 15. He brought the sacred offerings of his father and his own sacred offerings into the house of Jehovah; probably the booty, in silver, gold, and vessels, which his father Abijam had gathered in the war with Jeroboam (2 Chron. xiii. 16, 17), and he himself on the conquest of the Cushites (2 Chron. xiv. 12, 13). The Keri 'KHjJI is a bad emendation of the correct reading in the Chethib Vftp, i.e. v^'np (VF1?) > for nirp JV2 is an accusative, and is to be connected with Kan. — Vers. 16, 17. The state of hostility between Judah and Israel continued during the reign of Asa; and Baasha the king of Israel advanced, etc. These statements are completed and elucidated by the Chronicles. After the great victory obtained by Abijam over Jeroboam, the kingdom of Judah enjoyed rest for ten years (2 Chron. xiii. 23). Asa employed this time in exterminating idolatry, fortifying different cities, and equipping his army (2 Chron. xiv. 1-7). Then the Cushite Zerah invaded the land of Judah with an innumerable army (in the eleventh year of Asa), but was totally defeated by the help of the Lord
(2 Chron. xiv. 8-14); whereupon Asa, encouraged by the prophet Azariah, the son of Oded, proceeded with fresh zeal to the extermination of such traces of idolatry as still remained in the kingdom, then renewed the altar of burnt-offering in front of the temple-hall, and in the fifteenth year of his reign held, with the whole nation, a great festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing to the Lord at Jerusalem (2 Chron. xv. 1-15). The next year, the sixteenth of his reign and the thirty-sixth from the division of the kingdom (2 Chron. xvi. 1), Baasha commenced hostilities, by advancing against Judah, taking possession of liamali, the present er Ram (see at Josh, xviii. 25), which was only two hours and a quarter from Jerusalem, and fortifying it. The occupation of Eamah is not expressly mentioned indeed, but it is implied in rrrirp py?vi), which affirms the hostile invasion of Judah. For Eamah, from its very situation in the heart of the tribe of Benjamin and the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem, can neither have been a border city nor have belonged to the kingdom of Israel. The intention of Baasha, therefore, in fortifying Eamah cannot have been merely to restrain his own subjects from passing over into the kingdom of Judah, but was evidently to cut off from the kingdom of Judah all free communication with the north. ^r9? 'U1 nn^ " that they might not give one going out or one coming in to Asa;" i.e. to cut off from the others all connection with Asa, and at the same time to cut off from those with Asa all connection with this side. The main road from Jerusalem to the north passed by Eamah, so that by shutting up this road the line of communication of the kingdom of Judah was of necessity greatly disturbed. Moreover, the fortification of Eamah hy Baasha presupposes the reconquest of the cities which Abijam had taken from the kingdom of Israel (2 Chron. xiii. 19), and which, according to 2 Chron. xiii. 19, were still in the possession of Asa. — Vers. 18, 19. In order to avert the danger with which his kingdom was threatened, Asa endeavoured to induce the Syrian king, Benhadad of Damascus, to break the treaty which he had concluded with Baasha and to become his ally, by sending him such treasures as were left in the temple and palace.1 Dnnian niay be explained from the
1 Asa had sought help from the Lord and obtained it, when the powerful army of the Cushites invaded the land; but when an invasion of the Israelites took place, he sought help from the Syrians. This alteration in his con- fact that the temple and palace treasures had been plundered by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam (ch. xiv. 2G); and therefore what Asa had replaced in the temple treasury (ver. 15), and had collected together for his palace, was only a remnant in comparison with the former state of these treasures. The name "H'!H?> i.e. son of Hadad, the sun-god (according to Macrobius, i. 23; cf. Movers, Phoniz. i. p. 196), was borne by three kings of Damascus: the one here named, his son in the time of Ahab (ch. xx. 1, 34), and the son of Hazael (2 Kings xiii. 24). The first was a son of Tabrimmon and grandson of Hezyon. According to ver. 19, his father Tabrimmon (good is Rimmon; see at 2 Kings v. 18) had also been king, and was the contemporary of Abijam. But that his grandfather Hezyon was also king, and the same person as the Rezon mentioned in ch. xi. 23, cannot be shown to be even probable, since there is no ground for the assumption that Hezyon also bore the name Eezon, and is called by the latter name here and by the former in ch. xi. 23. — Ver. 20. Benhadad consented to Asa's request, and directed his captains to advance into the kingdom of Israel: they took several cities in the north of the land, whereby Baasha was compelled to give up fortifying Bamah and withdraw to Thirza. Ijon (Psy) is to be sought for in all probability in Tell Dibbin, on the eastern border of Merj Ayun; and in Ajicn, although Ajun is written with Aleph, the name Ijon is probably preserved, since the situation of this Tell seems thoroughly adapted for a fortress on the northern border of Israel (yid. Eobinson, Bill. Res. p. 375, and Van de Velde, Man. p. 322). Dan is the present Tell el Kadi; see at Josh. xix. 47. Abel- Beth- Maachah, the present Abil el Kamh, to the north-west of Lake Huleh (see at 2 Sam. xx. 14). "All Ckinncroth" is the district of Chinnereth, the tract of land on the western shore of the Lake of Gennesareth (see at Josh. xix. 35). 'J H^"-3? ^, together with all the land of Naphtali (for this meaning of?V compare the Comm. on Gen. xxxii. 12). The cities named were duct may probably be explained in part from the fact, that notwithstanding the victory, his army had been considerably weakened by the battle which he fought with the Cushites (2 Chron. xiv. 9), although this by no means justified his want of confidence in the power of the Lord, and still less his harsh and unjust treatment of the prophet Hanani, whom he caused to be put in the house of the stocks on account of his condemnation of the confidence which he placed in the Syrians instead of Jehovah (2 Chron. xvi.
the principal fortresses of the land of Naphtali, with which the whole of the country round was also smitten, i.e. laid waste. — Ver. 21. 3^5, and remained at Thirza, his place of residence (see at ch. xiv. 17). — Ver. 22. Asa thereupon summoned all Judah *pj P#j ncminc immuni, i.e. excepto, no one being free (cf. Ewald, § 286, a), and had the stones and the wood carried away from Raman, and Geba and Mizpah in Benjamin built, i.e. fortified, with them. Gcba must not be confounded with Gibeah of Benjamin or Saul, but is the present Jeba, three-quarters of an hour to the north-east of Ramah (see at Josh, xviii. 24). Mizpah, the present Nebi Samwil, about three-quarters of a geographical mile to the south-west of Ramah (see at Josh, xviii. 26). — Vers. 23, 24. Of the other acts of Asa, the building of cities refers to the building of fortifications mentioned in 2 Chron. xiv. 5, 6. The disease in his feet in the time of his old age commenced, according to 2 Chron. xvi. 12, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign; and he sought help from the physicians, but not from the Lord; from which we may see, that the longer he lived the more he turned his heart away from the Lord (compare 2 Chron. xvL 10).
Vers. 25-32. The Reign of Nadab lasted not quite two years, as he ascended the throne in the second year of Asa, and was slain in his third year. — Ver. 6. He walked in the ways of his father (Jeroboam) and in his sin, i.e. in the calf- worship introduced by Jeroboam (ch. xii. 28). When Nadab in the second year of his reign besieged Gibbethon, which the Philistines had occupied, Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house, i.e. the family or tribe, of Issachar, conspired against him and slew him, and after he became king exterminated the whole house of Jeroboam, without leaving a single soul, whereby the prediction of the prophet Ahijah (ch. xiv. 10 sqq.) was fulfilled. Gibbethon, which was allotted to the Danites (Josh. xix. 44), has not yet been discovered. It probably stood close to the Philistian border, and was taken by the Philistines, from whom the Israelites attempted to wrest it by siege under both Nadab and Baasha (ch. xvi. 16), though apparently without success. $b noBb"?| TK5?n as in Josh. xi. 14 (see the Comm. on Deut. xx.
16). — Ver. 32 is simply a repetition of ver. 16; and the remark concerning Baasha's attitude towards Asa of Judah immediately after his entrance upon the government precedes the account of his reign, for the purpose of indicating at the very outset, that the overthrow of the dynasty of Jeroboam and the rise of a new dynasty did not alter the hostile relation between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah.
Ver. 33-ch. xvi. 7. The Eeign of Baasha is described very briefly according to its duration (two years) and its spirit, namely, the attitude of Baasha towards the Lord (ver. 34); there then follow in ch. xvi. 1—4 the words of the prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani (2 Chron. xvi. 7), concerning the extermination of the family of Baasha; and lastly, in vers. 5-7, his death is related with the standing allusion to the annals of the kings. The words of Jehu concerning Baasha (ch. xvi. 1-4) coincide exactly mutatis mutandis with the words of Ahijah concerning Jeroboam.1 The expression " exalted thee out of the dust," instead of " from among the people" (ch. xiv. 7), leads to the conjecture that Baasha had risen to be king from a very low position, irrvoa (his might) in ver. 5 refers, as in the case of Asa (ch. xv. 23), less to brave warlike deeds, than generally to the manifestation of strength and energy in his government. — Ver. 7 adds a supplementary remark concerning the words of Jehu (vers. 2 sqq.), not to preclude an excuse that might be made, in which case 031. would have to be taken in the sense of nevertheless, or notwithstanding (Ewald, § 354, a), but to guard against a misinterpretation by adding a new feature, or rather to preclude an erroneous inference that might be drawn from the words, " I (Jehovah) have made thee prince "
1 "There was something very strange in the perversity and stolidity of the kings of Israel, that when they saw that the families of preceding kings were evidently overthrown by the command of God on account of the worship of the calves, and they themselves had overturned them, they nevertheless worshipped the same calves, and placed them before the people for them to worship, that they might not return to the temple and to Asa, king of Jerusalem; though prophets denounced it and threatened their destruction. Truly the devil and the ambition of reigning blinded them and deprived them of their senses. Hence it came to pass, through the just judgment of God, that they all were executioners of one another in turn: Baasha was the executioner of the sons of Jeroboam; Zambri was the executioner of the sons of Baasha; and the executioner of Zambri was Oniri." — C. a Lapide.
(ver. 2), as though Baasha had exterminated Nadab and his house by divine command (Thenius). DJ1 simply means " and also" and is not to be connected specially with KtflJ T3, but to be taken as belonging to the whole sentence: " also the word of Jehovah had come to Baasha through Jehu,... not only because of the evil, etc., but also (?V)...?V)) because he had slain him (Jeroboam)." With regard to this last reason, we must call to mind the remark made at ch. xi. 39, viz. that the prediction of the prophet to Baasha gave him no right to put himself forward arbitrarily as the fulfiller of the prophecy. The very fact that Baasha continued Jeroboam's sin and caused the illegal worship to be perpetuated, showed clearly enough that in exterminating the family of Jeroboam he did not act under divine direction, but simply pursued his own selfish ends.
Vers. 8-14. The Beign of Elah. — As Baasha reigned from the third to the twenty-sixth year of Asa, i.e. not quite twentyfour years, but only twenty-three years and a few months, so his son Elah reigned from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-seventh year of Asa, i.e. not quite two years. — Vers. 9, 10. Zimri, the commander of the half of his war-chariots, conspired against him, and not only slew him, when he was intoxicated ptaP ™ffi at a drinking bout in the house of Arza, the prefect of his palace, but after ascending the throne exterminated the whole family of Baasha to the very last man. The prefect of the palace was no doubt a party to the conspiracy, and had probably arranged the drinking bout in his house for the purpose of carrying it out. " He did not leave him T*jja PAPD (see at ch. xiv. 10), either his avengers (iyX3, blood-relations, who might have avenged his death) or his friends." These words simply serve to explain Vp3 pntPB, and show that this phrase is to be understood as relating to males onlv. — Vers. 12, 13. " According to the word of the Lord;" see at vers. 1 sqq. rviKttrra?X} with regard to all, i.e. on account of all the sins (compare ver. 7, where?JJ is used). Dn^an^ through their nothingnesses, i.e. their idols, by which the golden calves are meant.
Vers. 15-22. The Eeign of Zimri lasted only seven days. As soon as the people of war (DVJi), who were besieging Gibbethon (see at ch. xv. 2 7), heard of his conspiracy, his usurpation of the throne, and his murderous deeds, they proclaimed
Omri king in the camp of the military commanders, and he at once, with all Israel, i.e. all the army, raised the siege of Gibbethon, to lay siege to Thirza. Now when Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the castle of the royal palace and burned the king's house over his own head, as Sardanapalus did, according to Justin {Hist. i. 3). |to"]X does not mean harem (Ewald), but the high castle (from tnx, to be high); here and in 2 Kings xv. 25, the citadel of the royal palace, which consisted of several buildings. — Ver. 19 is connected with nbj in ver. 18:" and so died for his sins," i.e. as a punishment for them. — Vers. 21, 22. But Omri did not come into possession of an undisputed sovereignty immediately upon the death of Zimri. The nation divided itself into two halves; one half was behind Tibni, the son of Ginath (i.e. declared in favour of Tibni), to make him king, the other adhered to Omri. Nevertheless Omri's gained the upper hand over the party of Tibni, and the latter died, whereupon Omri became king after four years, as we may see from a comparison of vers. 15, 16 with ver. 23. The "people of Israel" (ver. 21) are probably the fighting people, so that the succession to the throne was decided, by the military. "nnK rrrj as in 2 Sam. ii. 10. P[n, with an accusative instead of with?y, in the sense of to overpower, as in Jer. xx. 7. According to Josephus (Ant. viii. 12, 5), Tibni was slain by his opponent; but this is not contained in the words; on the contrary, all that is implied in the connection of nbjl with 'til ptnjj is that he met with his death in the decisive engagement in which the opposing party triumphed.
Vers. 23-28. The Keign of Omri. — Ver. 23. Omri reigned twelve years, i.e., if we compare vers. 15 and 23 with ver. 29, reckoning from his rebellion against Zimri; so that he only possessed the sole government for eight years (or, more exactly, seven years and a few months), viz. from the 31st to the 38th years of Asa, and the conflict with Tibni for the possession of the throne lasted about four years. " At Thirza he reigned six years," i.e. during the four years of the conflict with Tibni, and after his death two years more. — Ver. 24. As soon as he had obtained undisputed possession of the throne, he purchased the hill Shomron (Samaria) from Shcmcr (Semer) for two talents of silver, about 5200 thalers (£780 — Tr.), built houses upon it, and named the town which he built after the former owner of the hill tf">p'^, rendered by the LXX. Se/iTjpdyv here, but everywhere else Safidpeta (Samaria), after the Chaldee form P.P^ (Ezra iv. 10, 17). This city he made his seat (Residenz, place of residence, or capital), in which he resided for the last six years of his reign, and where he was buried after his death (ver. 28). Samaria continued to be the capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes from that time forward, and the residence of all succeeding kings of Israel until the destruction of this kingdom after its conquest by Salmanasar (2 Kings xviii. 9, 10). The city was two hours and a half to the north-west of Sichem, upon a mountain or hill in a mountain-hollow (Bergkessel, lit. mountain-caldron) or basin of about two hours in diameter, surrounded on all sides by still higher mountains. " The mountains and valleys round about are still for the most part arable, and are alive with numerous villages and diligent cultivation." The mountain itself upon which Samaria stood is still cultivated to the very top, and about the middle of the slope is surrounded by a narrow terrace of level ground resembling a girdle. And even higher up there are marks of smaller terraces, where streets of the ancient city may possibly have run. After the captivity Samaria was retaken and demolished by John Hyrcanus, and lay in ruins till Gabinius the Eoman governor rebuilt it (Joseph. Ant xiii. 19, 2, 3, and xiv. 5, 3). Herod the Great afterwards decorated it in a marvellous manner, built a temple there to the emperor Augustus, and named the city after him Sefiao-Trj, i.e. Augusta, from which arose the present name Sebuste or Sebustieh, borne by a village which is still standing on the ancient site: " a pitiable hamlet consisting of a few squalid houses, inhabited by a band of plunderers, notorious as thieves even among their lawless fellow-countrymen" (V. de Velde, i. p. 378). — But by the side of this there are magnificent ruins of an ancient Johannite church, with the reputed grave of John the Baptist and remains of limestone columns at the foot of the mountain (cf. Bobinson, Pal. iii. p. 136 sqq.; Van de Velde, Syria and Pal. L p. 374 sqq.; and C. v. Baumer, Pal. pp. 159, 160). — Vers. 25, 26. Omri also walked in the ways of Jeroboam, and acted worse than his predecessors upon the throne. — For vers. 26 and 27, compare vers. 13 and 14.
2. From Ahab's Ascent of the Throne to the Death of Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah.
In this epoch, which embraces only thirty-four years, the history of the kings of Judah falls so far into the background behind the history of the kingdom of Israel, that it seems to form merely an appendix to it; and the history of the monarchy is so controlled by the description of the labours of the prophets, that it seems to be entirely absorbed in them. These phenomena have their foundation in the development of the two kingdoms during this period. Through the alliance and affinity of Jehoshaphat with the idolatrous Ahab, the kingdom of Judah not only lost the greatest part of the blessing which the long and righteous reign of this pious king had brought, but it became so entangled in the political and religious confusion of the kingdom of Israel in consequence of the participation of Jehoshaphat in the wars between Israel and the Syrians, and other foes, and the inclination of Joram and Ahaziah to the worship of Baal, that its further development during this period was almost entirely dependent upon the history of Israel. In the latter kingdom the prophets maintained a fierce conflict with the idolatry introduced by Ahab and Jezebel, in which the worship of Baal did indeed eventually succumb, but the pure lawful worship of Jehovah did not attain to full supremacy, so that this great spiritual conflict was no more followed by a permanent blessing to the kingdom as such, than the single victories of Ahab and Joram over the Syrians by outward peace and rest from its oppressors. To guard against the spreading apostasy of the people from the living God through the exaltation of the worship of Baal into the ruling national religion, in Israel, the Lord raised up the most powerful of all the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, with his fiery zeal, who worked so mightily upon the formation of the spiritual life of the covenant nation and the fate of the kingdom, not only in his own person in the reigns of Ahab and Ahaziah (ch. xvii— 2 Kings ii.), but indirectly in the person of his successor Elisha under Joram (2 Kings iii.— ix.), and also under the succeeding kings of Israel, that the labours of these prophets and their disciples form the central and culminating point of the Old Testament kingdom of God during the period in question.
The ascent of the throne of Israel by Ahab (ver. 29) formed a turning-point for the worse, though, as a comparison of ver. 30 with ver. 25 clearly shows, the way had already been prepared by his father Omri. — Vers. 30, 31. Whereas the former kings of Israel had only perpetuated the sin of Jeroboam, i.e. the calf-worship, or worship of Jehovah under the image of an ox, which he had introduced, Ahab was not satisfied with this. ^3J ^i?.jn ™., " it came to pass, was it too little V* i.e. because it was too little (cf. Ewald, § 362, a) to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took as his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal the kin^ of the Sidonians, and served Baal, and worshipped him. ip*\ before tj83, " he went and served," is a pictorial description of what took place, to give greater prominence to the new turn of affairs, ^nx (i.e. with Baal) is the EiOwfiaXo? (py2 ins or 'I#o/3<z\o?: Jos. Ant. viii. 13, 1) mentioned by Menander in Josephus, c. Ap. i. 18, who was king of Tyre and Sidon, and priest of Astarte, and who usurped the throne after the murder of his brother, king Pheles, and reigned thirty-two years. Jezebel (*3J*t, i.e. probably without cohabitation, cf. Gen. xxx. 20,= untouched, chaste; not a contraction of '?f?K> as Ewald, § 273, b, supposes) was therefore, as tyrant and murderess of the prophets, a worthy daughter of her father, the idolatrous priest and regicide. Baal (always PJOn with the article, the Baal, i.e. Lord tear i^o^r/v) was the principal male deity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and generally of the western Asiatics, called by the Babylonians?3 =:?y$ (Isa. xlvi. 1), BrjXos, and as the sun-god was worshipped as the supporter and first principle of psychical life and of the generative and reproductive power of nature (see at Judg. ii. 1 3). Ahab erected an altar to this deity?yan jV2t in the house (temple) of Baal, which he had built at Samaria. The worship of Baal had its principal seat in Tyre, where Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, had built for it a splendid temple and placed a golden pillar (xpvaovv klovo) therein, according to Dius and Menander, in Joseph. Ant. viii. 5, 3, and c. Ap. i. 18. Ahab also erected a similar pillar (n?^) to Baal in his temple at Samaria (vid. 2 Kings iii 2, x. 27). For statues or images of Baal are not met with in the earlier times; and the 0 y?a are not statues of Baal, but different modifications of that deity. It was only in the later temple of Baal or Hercules at Tyre that there was, as
Cicero observes (Vcrr. iv. 43), ex cere simulacrum ipsius Herculis. quo non facile quidquam dixcrim me vidisse pulcrius. — Ver. 33. " And Ahab made rng^fTTIWt, i.e. the Asherah belonging to the temple of Baal " (see at Judg. vi. 25 and Ex. xxxiv. 13), an idol of Astarte (see at ch. xiv. 23). — Ver. 34. In his time Hid the Bethelite ffrgft JV3; compare Ges. § 111, 1 with § 86, 2. 5) built Jericho: * he laid the foundation of it with Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates with Segub his youngest, according to the word of Jehovah," etc. (for the explanation see the Comm. on Josh. vi. 26). The restoration of this city as a fortification, upon which Joshua had pronounced the curse, is mentioned as a proof how far ungodliness had progressed in Israel; whilst the fulfilment of the curse upon the builder shows how the Lord will not allow the word of His servants to be transgressed with impunity. Jericho, on the border of the tribe of Ephraim (Josh. xvi. 7), which was allotted to the Benjaminites (Josh, xviii. 21), had come into the possession of the kingdom of Israel on the falling away of the ten tribes from the royal house of David, and formed a border city of that kingdom, through the fortification of which Ahab hoped to secure to himself the passage across the Jordan.
When Ahab, who was not satisfied with the sin of Jeroboam, had introduced the worship of Baal as the national religion in the kingdom of the ten tribes, and had not only built a temple to Baal in his capital and place of residence, but had also appointed a very numerous priesthood to maintain the worship (see ch. xviii. 19); and when his godless wife Jezebel was persecuting the prophets of Jehovah, for the purpose of exterminating the worship of the true God: the Lord God raised up the most powerful of all the prophets, namely Elijah the Tishbite, who by his deeds attested his name *nj?K or TOK, £& whose God is Jehovah. Eor however many prophets of Jehovah arose in the kingdom of the ten tribes from its very commencement and bore witness against the sin of Jeroboam in the power of the Spirit of God, and threatened the kings with the extermination of their house on account of this sin, no other prophet, either before or afterwards, strove and worked in the idolatrous kingdom for the honour of the Lord of Sabaoth with anything like the same mighty power of God as the prophet Elijah. And there was no other prophet whom the Lord so gloriously acknowledged by signs and wonders as Elijah, although He fulfilled the words of all His servants by executing the judgments with which they had threatened the rebellious, and whenever it was necessary accredited them as His messengers by miraculous signs. — Although, in accordance with the plan of our books, which was to depict the leading features in the historical development of the kingdom, all that is related in detail of the life and labours of Elijah is the miracles which he performed in his conflict with the worshippers of Baal, and the miraculous display of the omnipotence and grace of God which he experienced therein; yet we may see very clearly that these formed but one side of his prophetic labours from the passing notices of the schools of the prophets, which he visited once more before his departure from the earth (2 Kings ii); from which it is obvious that this other side of his ministry, which was more hidden from the world, was not less important than his public ministry before the kings and magnates of the land. For these societies of " sons of the prophets," which we meet with at Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho (2 Kings ii. 3, 5, iv. 38), had no doubt been called into existence by Elijah, by associating together those whose souls were fitted to receive the Spirit of God for mutual improvement in the knowledge and fear of Jehovah, in order to raise up witnesses to the truth and combatants for the cause of the Lord, and through these societies to provide the godly, who would not bow the knee before Baal, with some compensation for the loss of the Levitical priesthood and the want of the temple-worship. Compare the remarks on the schools of the prophets at 1 Sam. xix. 24. — The more mightily idolatry raised its head in the kingdom of Israel, the more powerfully did the Lord show to His people that He, Jehovah, and not Baal, was God and Lord in Israel. In the prophet Elijah there were combined in a marvellous manner a life of solitude spent in secret and contemplative intercourse with God, and an extraordinary power for action, which would suddenly burst forth, and by which he acted as a personal representative of God (see at ch. xvii. 1). In his person the spirit of Moses revived; he was the restorer of the kingdom of God in Israel, of which Moses was the founder. His life recalls that of Moses in many of its features: namely, his flight into the desert, the appearance of the Lord to him at Horeb, and the marvellous termination of his life. Moses and Elijah are the Coryphaei of the Old Testament, in whose life and labours the nature and glory of this covenant are reflected. As the thunder and lightning and the blast of trumpets and the smoking mountain bare witness to the devouring fire of the holiness of the God who had come down upon Sinai to give effect to the promises He had made to the fathers, and to make the children of Israel the people of His possession; so does the fiery zeal of the law come out so powerfully in Moses and Elijah, that their words strike the ungodly like lightning and flames of fire, to avenge the honour of the Lord of Sabaoth and maintain His covenant of grace in Israel. Moses as lawgiver, and Elijah as prophet, are, as Ziegler has well said (p. 206), the two historical anticipations of those two future witnesses, which are " the two olive-trees and two torches standing before the God of the earth. And if any one will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must therefore be slain. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy, and have power over waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with all kinds of plagues, as often as they will " (Eev. xi. 4 sqq.). Elijah was called to this office of witness to turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and of the sons to their fathers (Mai. iii. 24), so that in his ministry the prophecy of the future of the kingdom of God falls quite into the background. Nevertheless he was not only a forerunner but also a type of the Prophet promised by Moses, who was to fulfil both law and prophets (Matt. v. 17); and therefore he appeared as the representative of prophecy, along with Moses the representative of the law, upon the mount of the Transfiguration, to talk with Christ of the decease which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke ix. 31; Matt. xvii. 3). — To continue his work, Elijah, by command of God, called Elisha the son of Shaphat, of Abel- Meholah, who during the whole of his prophetic course carried on with power the restoration of the law in the kingdom of Israel, which his master had begun, by conducting schools of the prophets and acting as the counsellor of kings, and proved himself by many signs and wonders to be the heir of a double portion of the gifts of Elijah.
Modern theology, which has its roots in naturalism, has taken offence at the many miracles occurring in the history of these two prophets, but it has overlooked the fact that these miracles were regulated by the extraordinary circumstances under which Elijah and Elisha worked. At a time when the sovereignty of the living God in Israel was not only called in question, but was to be destroyed by the worship of Baal, it was necessary that Jehovah as the covenant God should interpose in a supernatural manner, and declare His eternal Godhead in extraordinary miracles. In the kingdom of the ten tribes there were no priestly or Levitical duties performed, nor was there the regular worship of God in a temple sanctified by Jehovah Himself; whilst the whole order of life prescribed in the law was undermined by unrighteousness and ungodliness. But with all this, the kingdom was not yet ripe for the judgment of rejection, because there were still seven thousand in the land who had not bowed their knee before Baal. For the sake of these righteous men, the Lord had still patience with the sinful kingdom, and sent it prophets to call the rebellious to repentance. If, then, under the circumstances mentioned, the prophets were to fulfil the purpose of their mission and carry on the conflict against the priests of Baal with success, they needed a much greater support on the part of God, through the medium of miracles, than the prophets in the kingdom of Judah, who had powerful and venerable supports in the Levitical priesthood and the lawful worship.1 It is only when we overlook the object of these miracles, therefore, that they can possibly appear strange. " If," as Kurtz has said,2 " we take the history of our prophet as one living organic link in the whole of the grand chain of the marvellous works of God, which stretches from Sinai to Golgotha and the Mount of Olives, and bear in mind the peculiarity of the position and circumstances of Elijah, the occurrence of a miracle in itself, and even the accumulation of them and their supposed externality, will
1 " Where the temple was wanting, and image-worship took its place, and the priesthood was an unlawful caste, it was only by extraordinary methods that the spreading evil could be met. The illegitimacy, which was represented here by the monarchy and priesthood, was opposed by the prophetic order as the representative of the law, and therefore also as a peculiarly constituted and strong body divided up into societies of considerable scope, and having a firm organization. And this prophetic order, as the only accredited representative of the law, also took the place of the law, and was therefore endowed with the power and majesty of the law which had been manifested in wonders and signs. Not only was the spirit of Moses inherited by Elijah and others, but his miraculous power also." — Haevernick, Einl. in d. A. Test. ii. 1, pp. 166, 167. Compare Hengstenberg, Dissertation, vol. i. p. 186 sqq.
appear to us in a very different light. — Without miracle, without very striking, i.e. external miracles, their ministry would have been without basis, without a starting-point, and without hold." — The miracles are still more numerous in the history of Elisha, and to some extent bear such a resemblance to those of Elijah, that the attempt has been made to set them down as merely legendary imitations of the latter; but considered as a whole, they are more of a helpful and healing nature, whereas those of Elijah are for the most part manifestations of judicial and punitive wrath. The agreement and the difference may both be explained from Elisha's position in relation to Elijah and his time. By the performance of similar and equal miracles (such as the division of the Jordan, 2 Kings ii. 8 and 14; the increase of the oil, 2 Kings iv. 3 sqq. compared with 1 Kings xvii. 14 sqq.; the raising of the dead, 2 Kings iv. 34 sqq. compared with 1 Kings xvii. 19 sqq.) Elisha proved himself to be the divinely-appointed successor of Elijah, who was carrying forward his master's work (just as Joshua by the drying up of the Jordan proved himself to be the continuer of the work of Moses), and as such performed more miracles, so far as number is concerned, than even his master had done, though he was far inferior to him in spiritual power. But the difference does not prevail throughout. Eor whilst the helpful and healing side of Elijah's miraculous power is displayed in his relation to the widow at Zarephath; the judicial and punitive side of that of Elisha comes out in the case of the mocking boys at Bethel, of Gehazi, and of Joram's knight. But the predominance of strict judicial sternness in the case of Elijah, and of sparing and helpful mildness in that of Elisha, is to be accounted for not so much from any difference in the personality of the two, as from the altered circumstances. Elijah, with his fiery zeal, had broken the power of the Baal- worship, and had so far secured an acknowledgment of the authority of Jehovah over His people that Joram and the succeeding kings gave heed to the words of the prophets of the Lord; so that Elisha had for the most part only to cherish and further the conversion of the people to their God, for which Elijah had prepared the way.
The prophet Elijah predicts to Ahab, as a punishment for his idolatry, the coming of a drought and famine. During their continuance he is miraculously preserved by God, first of all at the brook Cherith, and then at the house of a widow at Zarephath (vers. 1-16), whose deceased son he calls to life again (vers.
Ver. 1. Elijah the Tishbite is introduced without the formula " The word of the Lord came to...," with which the appearance of the prophets is generally announced, proclaiming to king Ahab in the name of the Lord the punitive miracle of a drought that will last for years. This abrupt appearance of Elijah cannot be satisfactorily explained from the fact that we have not the real commencement of his history here; it is rather a part of the character of this mightiest of all the prophets, and indicates that in him the divine power of the Spirit appeared as it were personified, and his life and acts were the direct effluence of the higher power by which he was impelled. His origin is also uncertain. The epithet "2^:nn is generally derived from a place called Tishbch, since, according to Tobit i. 2, there existed in Upper Galilee a Sia^ri etc he^iwv Ku67&>?, " on the right, i.e. to the south of Kydios" probably Kedesh in the tribe of Naphtali, from which the elder Tobias was carried away captive, although this description of the place is omitted in the Hebrew version of the book of Tobit issued by Fagius and Minister, and in the Vulgate. And to this we must adhere, and as no other Thisbe occurs, must accept this Galilean town as the birthplace of Elijah; in which case the expression " of the settlers of Gilead " indicates that Elijah did not live in his birthplace, but dwelt as a foreigner in Gilead. For 3*J;in in itself by no means denotes a non-Israelite, but, like ">?., simply one who lived away from his home and tribe relations in the territory of a different tribe, without having been enrolled as a member of it, as is clearly shown by Lev. xxv. 40, and still more clearly by Judg. xvii. 7, where a Levite who was born in Bethlehem is described as i? in the tribe of Ephraim.1 The expression " as truly as Jehovah
1 The supposition of Seb. Schmidt, with which I formerly agreed, namely, that Elijah was a foreigner, a Gentile by birth, after further examination I can no longer uphold, though not from the a priori objection raised against it by Kurtz (in Herzog's Cycl), namely, that it would show a complete misapprehension of the significance of Israel in relation to sacred history and the history of the world, and that neither at this nor any other time in the Old Testament history could a prophet for Israel be called from among the Gentiles,— an assertion of which it would be difficult to find any proof, — but because we are not forced to this conclusion by either ^CTin or njta \nCTi9. For the God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand (i.e. whom I serve; see at ch. i. 2), there shall not fall dew and rain these years, except at my word," was a special application of the threats of the law in Deut. xi. 16, 17, xxviii. 23, 24, and Lev. xxvi. 19, to the idolatrous kingdom, npxn D^#n "these (ensuing years," does not fix any definite terminus. In s*)?1 ^P there is involved an emphatic antithesis to others, and more especially to the prophets of Baal. " When I shall say this by divine authority and might, let others prate and lie as they may please " (Bcrlcb. BibcT). Elijah thereby describes himself as one into whose power the God of Israel has given up the idolatrous king and his people. In Jas. v. 17, 18, this act of Elijah is even if the Thisbeh in Tob. i. 2 should not be Elijah's birthplace, it would not follow that there was no other place named Thisbeh in existence. How many places in Canaan are there that are never mentioned in the Old Testament! And such cases as that described in Judg. vii. 7, where the Levite is said to have left his birthplace and to have lived in another tribe as a foreigner or settler, may not have been of rare occurrence, since the Mosaic law itself refers to it in Lev. xxv. 41. — Again, the LXX. were unable to explain "ac'riD lyb), and have paraphrased these words in an arbitrary manner by 6 U Qtafiay tv; Toc^axl, from which Thenius and Ewald conjecture that there was a Thisbeh in Gilead, and that it was probably the Tisieh (<UwjJ?) mentioned by Robinson (Pal. iii. 153) to the south of Busra=Bostra. The five arguments by which Kurtz has attempted to establish the probability of this conjecture are very weak. For (1) the defective writing 'O^'fiD by no mean3 proves that the word which is written plene (3^'in) in every other case must necessarily have been so written in the stat. constr. plur.; and this is the only passage in the whole of the Old Testament in which it occurs in the stat. constr. plur.; — (2) the precise description of the place given in Tobit i. 2 does not at all lead " to the assumption that the Galilean Thisbeh was not the only place of that name," but may be fully explained from the fact that Thisbeh was a small and insignificant place, the situation of which is defined by a reference to a larger town and one better known; — (3) there is no doubt that " Gilead very frequently denotes the whole of the country to the east of the Jordan," but this does not in the least degree prove that there was a Thisbeh in the country to the east of the Jordan; — (4) "that the distinction and difference between a birthplace and a place of abode are improbable in themselves and not to be expected in this connection," is a perfectly unfounded assumption, and has first of all to be proved; — (5) the Tisieh mentioned by Robinson cannot be taken into consideration, for the simple reason that the assumption of a copyist's error, the confusion of \ with j, (Tisieh instead of Thisbeh), ascribed to the power of his prayers, since Elijah " was also a man such as we are," inasmuch as the prophets received their power to work solely through faith and intercourse with God in prayer, and faith gives power to remove mountains.
Vers. 2-9. After the announcement of this judgment, Elijah had to hide himself, by the command of God, until the period of punishment came to an end, not so much that he might be safe from the wrath and pursuit of Ahab and Jezebel, as to preclude all earnest entreaties to remove the punishment. " For inasmuch as the prophet had said that the rain would come at his word, how would they have urged him to order it to come! " (Seb. Schm.) He was to turn TO"lp0 eastward, i.e. from Samaria, where he had no doubt proclaimed the divine judgment to Ahab, to the Jordan, and to hide himself at the brook Cherith, which is in front of the Jordan. The brook Cherith was in any case a brook emptying itself into the Jordan; but whether upon the eastern or the western side of that river, the ambiguity of W7& which means both " to the east of" (Gen. xxv. 18) and also " in the face of," i.e. before or towards (Gen. xvi. 12, xviii. 1G), it is impossible to determine with certainty. That it must signify " to the east of the Jordan " here, does not follow from J"11?"1 p. with anything like the certainty that Thenius supposes. An ancient tradition places the Cherith on this side of the Jordan, and identifies it with the spring Phasaclis, which takes its rise in the slope of the mountains into the Jordan valley above the city of Phasaclis, and empties itself into the Jordan (cf. Ges. thes. p. 719, and V. de Velde, Reise, ii. pp. 273-4); whereas Eusebius,in the Onom. s.v. Chorat (Xoppa), places it on the other side of the Jordan, and Thenius thinks of the apparently deep Wady Rajib or Ajlun. All that can be affirmed with certainty is, that neither the brook Kanah (Josh. xvi. 8, xvii. 9), which flows into the Mediterranean, nor the Wady Kelt near Jericho, which Robinson {Pal. ii. p. 288) suggests, can possibly come into consideration: the latter for the simple reason, that the locality in the neighbourhood of Jericho was unsuitable for a hiding-place. Elijah was to drink of this brook, and the ravens by divine command were to provide him with bread and meat, which they brought him, according to ver. 6, both morning and evening. It is now generally admitted that B^-Tyn does not mean either Arabs or Orebites (the inhabitants of an imaginary city named Oreb), but ravens. Through this miracle, which unbelievers reject, because they do not acknowledge a living God, by whom, as the Creator and Lord of all creatures, even the voracious ravens are made subservient to His plans of salvation, Elijah was not only cut off from intercourse with men, who might have betrayed his place of abode to the king, but was mightily strengthened himself, through the confidence inspired in the almighty assistance of his God, for his approaching contests with the worshippers of idols, and for the privations and sufferings which awaited him in the fulfilment of his vocation. — Vers. 7-9. After some time this brook dried up for want of rain. Then the Lord directed His servant to go to the Sidonian Zarephath, and to live with a widow whom He had commanded to provide for him. WW ypp does not mean post annum, for E"1^ merely derives this meaning in certain passages from the context (cf. Lev. xxv. 29; 1 Sam. xxvii. 7; Judg. xvii. 1 0); whereas in this instance the context does not point to the space of a year, but to a longer period of indefinite duration, all that we know being that, according to ch. xviii. 1, the sojourn of Elijah at Cherith and Zarephath lasted at least two years. Zarephath (2ape7rra, LXX.) was situated on the Mediterranean Sea between Tyre and Sidon, where a miserable Mohammedan village with ruins and a promontory, Surafend, still preserve the name of the former town (Eob. iii. p. 413 sqq., and V. de Velde, Syria and Palestine, i. pp. 101-3, transl.). Vers. 10—16. When Elijah arrived at the city gate, he met a widow engaged in gathering wood. To discover whether it was to her that the Lord had sent him, he asked her for something to drink and for a morsel of bread to eat; whereupon she assured him, with an oath by Jehovah, that she had nothing baked (ytyft — naj^ iytcpvcplas, a cake baked in hot ashes), but only a handful of meal in the "i? (a pail or small vessel in which meal was kept) and a little oil in the pitcher, and that she was just gathering wood to dress this remnant for herself and her son, that they might eat it, and then die. From this statement of the widow it is evident, on the one hand, that the drought and famine had spread across the Phoenician frontier, as indeed Menander of Ephesus attests;x on the other hand, the widow showed by the oath, " as Jehovah thy God liveth," that she was a worshipper of the true God, who spoke of Jehovah as his God,
1 Josephus gives this statement from his Phoenician history: uj3po%ict re tx' ccvtov [SC. ' I^o/SaAoy) eytuero oc7r6 rou 'Y Trep (leper oiiov /xrivog tag rov tp^o/nivou irovg 'l7rip[iipiTa,iov {Ant. viii. 13, 2). Hyperberetseus answers to Tislirl of the Hebrews; cf. Benfey and Stern, die Monatsnamen, p. 18.
because she recognised the prophet as an Israelite. — Vers. 13 sqq. In order, however, to determine with indisputable certainty whether this believing Gentile was the protectress assigned him by the Lord, Elijah comforted her, and at the same time desired her first of all to bake him a little cake D#o i.e. of the last of the meal in the Kad and of the oil in the pitcher, and then to bake for herself and her son, adding this promise: Jehovah the God of Israel will not let the meal in the Kad and the oil in the pitcher fail, till He sends rain upon the earth again. And the widow did according to his word. She gave up the certain for the uncertain, because she trusted the word of the Lord, and received the reward of her believing confidence in the fact that during the whole time of the drought she suffered from no want of either meal or oil This act of the pious Gentile woman, who had welcomed with a simple heart the knowledge of the true God that had reached her from Israel, must have been the source of strong consolation to Elijah in the hour of conflict, when his faith was trembling because of the multitude of idolaters in Israel. If the Lord Himself had raised up true worshippers of His name among the Gentiles, his work in Israel could not be put to shame. The believing widow, however, received from the prophet not only a material blessing, but a spiritual blessing also. For, as Christ tells His unbelieving contemporaries to their shame (Luke iv. 25, 26), Elijah was not sent to this widow in order that he might be safely hidden at her house, although this object was better attained thereby than by his remaining longer in Israel; but because of her faith, namely, to strengthen and to increase it, he was sent to her, and not to one of the many widows in Israel, many of whom would also have received the prophet if they had been rescued by him from the pressure of the famine. And the miraculous increase of the meal and oil did not merely subserve the purpose of keeping the prophet and the widow alive; but the relief of her bodily need was also meant to be a preparatory means of quieting her spiritual need as well. On the Chethib W)y see at ch. vi. 19. In ver. 15 the Keri »WTJ K\l is an unnecessary emendation of the Chethib torn Wfl j the feminine form?2#r\\ is occasioned primarily by the preceding verbs, and may be taken as an indefinite neuter: " and there ate he and she." The offence which Thenius has taken at D^t (days) has no foundation, if we do not understand the sentence as referring merely to their eating once of the bread just baked, but take it generally as signifying that in consequence of their acting according to the word of Jehovah, they (Elijah, the widow, and her family) ate for days, i.e. until God sent rain again (ver. 14).
Vers. 17—24. The widow's deceased son raised to life again. — Ver. 17. After these events, when Elijah had taken up his abode in the upper room of her house, her son fell sick, so that he breathed out his life, 'til "ibw ny, literally till no breath remained in him. That these words do not signify merely a death-like torpor, but an actual decease, is evident from what follows, where Elijah himself treats the boy as dead, and the Lord, in answer to his prayer, restores him to life again. — Ver. 18. The pious woman discerned in this death a punishment from God for her sin, and supposed that it had been drawn towards her by the presence of the man of God, so that she said to Elijah, " What have we to do with one another (TJPJ v'HD; cf. Judg. xi. 12; 2 Sam. xvi. 10), thou man of God? Hast thou come to me to bring my sin to remembrance (with God), and to kill my son? " In this half-heathenish belief there spoke at the same time a mind susceptible to divine truth and conscious of its sin, to which the Lord could not refuse His aid. Like the blindness in the case of the man born blind mentioned in John ix., the death of this widow's son was not sent as a punishment for particular sins, but was intended as a medium for the manifestation of the works of God in her (John ix. 3), in order that she might learn that the Lord was not merely the God of the Jews, but the God of the Gentiles also (Rom. iii. 29). — Vers. 19, 20. Elijah told her to carry the dead child up to the chamber in which he lived and lay it upon his bed, and then cried to the Lord, " Jehovah, my God! hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, to slay her son? " These words, in which the word also refers to the other calamities occasioned by the drought, contain no reproach of God, but are expressive of the heartiest compassion for the suffering of his benefactress and the deepest lamentation, which, springing from living faith, pours out the whole heart before God in the hour of distress, that it may appeal to Him the more powerfully for His aid. The meaning is, " Thou, 0 Lord my God, according to Thy grace and righteousness, canst not possibly leave the son of this widow in death." Such confident belief carries within itself the certainty of being heard The prophet therefore proceeds at once to action, to restore the boy to life. — Ver. 21. He stretched himself 0"?.°^.) three times upon him, not to ascertain whether there was still any life left in him, as Paul did in Acts xx. 10, nor to warm the body of the child and set its blood in circulation, as Elisha did with a dead child (2 Kings iv. 34), — for the action of Elisha is described in a different manner, and the youth mentioned in Acts xx. 1 0 was only apparently dead, — but to bring down the vivifying power of God upon the dead body, and thereby support his own word and prayer.1 He then cried to the Lord, " Jehovah, my God, I pray Thee let the soul of this boy return within it." fsnj? '£, inasmuch as the soul as the vital principle springs from above. — Vers. 22, 23. The Lord heard this prayer: the boy came to life again; whereupon Elijah gave him back to his mother. — Ver. 24. Through this miracle, in which Elijah showed himself as the forerunner of Him who raiseth all the dead to life, the pious Gentile woman was mightily strengthened in her faith in the God of Israel. She now not only recognised Elijah as a man of God, as in ver. 18, but perceived that the word of Jehovah in his mouth was truth, by which she confessed implicite her faith in the God of Israel as the true God.
As the judgment of drought and famine did not bring king Ahab to his senses and lead him to turn from his ungodly ways, but only filled him with exasperation towards the prophet who had announced to him the coming judgment; there was no other course left than to lay before the people with mighty and convincing force the proof that Jehovah was the only true God, and to execute judgment upon the priests of Baal as the seducers of the nation.
Vers. 1-19. Elijah's meeting with Ahab. — Vers. 1 and 2a. In the third year of his sojourn at Zarephath the word of the Lord came to Elijah to show himself to Ahab; since God was about to send rain upon the land again. The time given, " the third year," is not to be reckoned, as the Eabbins, Clericus,