Study Desk

But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God:

While Jeroboam was standing by the altar to offer incense, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel

When the king heard what the man of God cried out against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, "Seize him!" But the hand that he stretched out against him withered so that he could not draw it back to himself.

The altar also was torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the Lord .

The king said to the man of God, "Entreat now the favor of the Lord your God, and pray for me, so that my hand may be restored to me." So the man of God entreated the Lord ; and the king's hand was restored to him, and became as it was before.

Then the king said to the man of God, "Come home with me and dine, and I will give you a gift."

But the man of God said to the king, "If you give me half your kingdom, I will not go in with you; nor will I eat food or drink water in this place.

Now there lived an old prophet in Bethel. One of his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel; the words also that he had spoken to the king, they told to their father.

Their father said to them, "Which way did he go?" And his sons showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone.

He went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak tree. He said to him, "Are you the man of God who came from Judah?" He answered, "I am."

Then the man of God went back with him, and ate food and drank water in his house.

and he proclaimed to the man of God who came from Judah, "Thus says the Lord : Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord , and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you,

After the man of God had eaten food and had drunk, they saddled for him a donkey belonging to the prophet who had brought him back.

When the prophet who had brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, "It is the man of God who disobeyed the word of the Lord ; therefore the Lord has given him to the lion, which has torn him and killed him according to the word that the Lord spoke to him."

The prophet took up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to the city, to mourn and to bury him.

After he had buried him, he said to his sons, "When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones.

Go, tell Jeroboam, ‘Thus says the Lord , the God of Israel: Because I exalted you from among the people, made you leader over my people Israel,

All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him; for he alone of Jeroboam's family shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the Lord , the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.

He committed all the sins that his father did before him; his heart was not true to the Lord his God, like the heart of his father David.

Nevertheless for David's sake the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him, and establishing Jerusalem;