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Ahijah of Shiloh
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The little priestly settlement at Shiloh, where the Tabernacle stood for four centuries during the period of the Judges, had lain desolate since the disastrous day when the Ark of God was captured by the Philistines in the time of Eli and Samuel. It was still inhabited, but its glory had departed, for the Tabernacle had been hurriedly taken down and re-erected at Nob out of the Philistines' reach. Later it went to Gibeon, and now, in the middle of the reign of Solomon, it had for twenty years past been superseded by the magnificent Temple the Israelite king had built at Jerusalem. But Shiloh had still one claim to its credit; it was to produce the first of the long line of Hebrew prophets who rose up, one after another, to call kings, priests and people from their indifference and idolatry back to the worship of God and allegiance to the Mosaic Covenant. That line terminated in Malachi, who, four hundred years before Christ, foretold the coming of a Herald of Messiah and then Messiah himself, the Sun of righteousness, to arise with healing in his wings. Malachi was the last of those prophets, and the first, more than five hundred years before him, was Ahijah of Shiloh. Ahijah, like Malachi, recorded his prophecy in a book. Unlike Malachi, his book has not survived. All that is known of his preaching and work is contained in the First Book of Kings. From that brief record we can draw a picture of the man and his character, a picture which is tantalising because it is so dim. But the fact that he conveyed the Divine message to the principal figure in the secession of the Ten Tribes in the days of Rehoboam shows that he was a man of God and stalwart for the delivery of his message in a day of general apostasy. Although Ahijah's book has not survived, it is just possible that part of the First Book of Kings is from his hand. Chapter 11 vs.1 to chapter 14 vs.20 constitutes a self-contained account of Solomon's decline into idolatry and its consequence in the emergence of Jeroboam, with Jeroboam's own similar course, ending with his death. The details given can only have been known to someone familiar both with Solomon's reign and the intimate incidents of Jeroboam's life. A man of God, living in the northern kingdom, is indicated. It is to be noted also that only in this account is the story of Solomon's idolatry to be found. The remaining portion of 1 Kings, and the parallel narrative in 2 Chronicles, contains no hint of this and from these accounts it would be assumed that Solomon was faithful to God to the end of his life. It might well be, therefore, that these particular chapters in 1 Kings represent all that remains of the lost book of Ahijah the Shilonite. If that is so they constitute a testimonial to a faithful man who lived his life in obscurity but was used of God to do great things. Others writing at the time were the prophets Nathan and Iddo (2 Chronicles 9.29) It was at the time that King Solomon, at the height of his power and glory, had begun to relapse into idolatry himself that Ahijah comes on the stage. The great king had multiplied himself wealth and possessions beyond all kings of his own time and before, extended his dominion from the borders of Egypt to the Euphrates, increased the number of his wives and concubines, erected imposing buildings and splendid palaces, and now all these things had stolen his heart away from God. Among the people, who had been compelled to pay heavy taxes for all this glory, and labour at the arduous work involved, discontent was rife. The prediction of Samuel had come true, and the people who had clamoured to have a king over them like other nations were now paying the price. And God, looking down from heaven, foresaw unerringly the disruption to which all this must inevitably lead. So he sent Ahijah to declare his judgment. At a time which cannot be closely determined, but was probably about ten years before Solomon's death, his attention had been attracted to one of his servants, an upstanding, courageous and industrious young man named Jeroboam, an Ephraimite of Zereda, a village in the Jordan valley. Solomon needed a trusty man to supervise the forced labour levies in Ephraim; Jeroboam was given this commission and set out to assume his new duties. It may be he had no ambitions beyond earning a reasonable living and keeping out of trouble; better men than he had dabbled in politics and either succeeded or failed and that was not for him. The duty now laid upon him by the great king was an honour and a promotion and he considered himself fortunate but that was as far as his thoughts went. Until he met Ahijah! The way to Ephraim from Jerusalem led past Shiloh. As he drew near the almost deserted village he saw coming towards him a strange figure, a man with flowing beard and burning eyes. Jeroboam knew that this was a prophet of the Lord and entitled on that account to some respect but he could have had no idea whatever of the message and the admonition he was to receive. The story is found in 1 Kings 11; "and at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him on the road. Now Ahijah had clad himself with a new garment; and the two of them were alone in the open country. Then Ahijah laid hold on the new garment that was on him, and tore it into twelve pieces." (vs.29-30). Rather strange conduct, and disconcerting, to say the least. But before he could so much as expostulate, Ahijah had thrust ten of the pieces into his unwilling hands and told him that God intended to sever ten of the tribes from the kingdom of Solomon and make Jeroboam king over them. Because Solomon had forsaken God, and worshipped the abominable gods and goddesses of the surrounding nations, and had failed to keep God's statutes as had David his father, then at his death this judgment would come upon his kingdom. Came the charge to Jeroboam "it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David, and will give lsrael unto thee" (vs.38). Then, abruptly, the prophet turned and stalked away, his gaunt figure receding rapidly into the distance, and Jeroboam was left standing alone, holding the torn pieces of the new garment helplessly in his hands. He had a lot to think about as he continued his journey. It has to be assumed that Jeroboam was at time a faithful worshipper of God and adhered to the Covenant. The Lord would hardly have called and appointed him otherwise. That mandate and exhortation which had just sounded in his ears could only mean one thing, that he was to have the opportunity with the ten tribes which both Saul and Solomon had had with all Israel, and both had thrown away. He was to be a king, and reign as king in Ephraim. But he was to lead the ten tribes in firm allegiance to the God of Israel. That was the condition; there is little doubt that at that moment of time Jeroboam fully intended to implement that condition. It must have been, almost immediately afterwards, either by overt action or indiscreet word, Jeroboam revealed abroad what Ahijah had told him, for news came to Solomon and he sent emissaries to execute Jeroboam; high treason in the kingdom was not to be tolerated. Jeroboam got away to Egypt and remained there until Solomon's death, but not before he had so impressed his fellow Ephraimites that he was marked out as their champion when the inevitable rebellion broke out. So soon as Solomon's son Rehoboam had ascended the throne, representatives of the ten tribes, with Jeroboam at their head, came to the new king with requests for the alleviation of the servitude his father had imposed on them. This part of history is well known, how that Rehoboam refused and promised them even greater burdens so that the Ten Tribes revolted from Rehoboam and set up a separate kingdom under Jeroboam as their first king. Thus the prediction of Ahijah was fulfilled. Now, for a span of years, Ahijah drops out of the picture. The sequel shows that he continued to dwell quietly at Shiloh. Rehoboam went to war in endeavour to regain his lost subjects but to no avail. Jeroboam was firmly in the saddle and he set about organising his new kingdom on a permanent basis. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity and endeavour to exalt the worship of the God of Israel among his subjects. There was one serious handicap. He had no centre of worship, no Temple as had Rehoboam in Jerusalem; instead, there was the opposition sanctuary in the town of Dan in the north, established several centuries previously by Jonathan and served still by his descendants, still nominally worshipping God but with many of the appendages of idol worship. It seems to have been this which gave Jeroboam his idea. To dissuade his people from going to Jerusalem to worship and becoming too intimate with the subjects of Rehoboam and perhaps repenting of the separation and so threatening his own kingship, he determined to institute two sanctuaries to Jehovah in his own territory, one at Dan where the existing establishment could be utilised, the other at Bethel in the south of his dominions where he would install a priesthood of his own creating. For each sanctuary he provided an image of Jehovah in the form of a golden bullock, and invited all his people to join him in worship. "And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan" and Jeroboam offered incense upon the idol altar (1 Kings 12.25‑33) and the people assented, and that day the fate of the Ten Tribes Kingdom was sealed. For how long Jeroboam thus led Israel away from God cannot be determined precisely, but the judgment of God was near and the erring king was once more to meet the man who at the first had conferred the Divine commission upon him and declared the condition. Considering that he first built his new capital of Shechem and spent probably a few years organising his political framework before thinking about his religious sanctuaries the apostasy would not have come at once. It is recorded that Shishak of Egypt, first Pharaoh of the 23rd dynasty, invaded Judah in the fifth year of Rehoboam and forced the Hebrew king to surrender all his treasures; since Jeroboam had been given refuge in Egypt by this same Shishak it is probable that these two had formed a political alliance aimed at embarrasing Rehoboam, and if this be so it might well have been fifteen years or so before Jeroboam's apostasy at last incurred its inevitable retribution. The son of Jeroboam fell sick, and the sickness seemed to be unto death. He must have been at least a youth for it is stated that "in him there is found something pleasing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam" (1 Kings 14.13 RSV) It would seem that his father had brought him up in the nurture and fear of the Lord, to such good effect that the son had not followed his father into apostasy. He was probably heir to the throne, and Jeroboam was deeply concerned. In this concern, he bethought himself of the prophet Ahijah whose prediction so many years ago had come so startlingly true. He told his wife to disguise herself, go to Ahijah and ask what would be her son's fate; "he shall tell thee what shall become of the child. " This is where the prophet comes back into the picture It does not seem to have occurred either to the king or to his wife that if the prophet could read the future he could also see through any disguise. And, of course, the disguise was useless. "When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? For I am sent to thee with heavy tidings." Then, in all its awful solemnity, came the judicial sentence "Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it to thee; and yet thou hast not been as my servant David but hast done evil above all that were before thee ... made thee other gods, and molten images … therefore I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam ... and I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam ... for the Lord hath spoken it. Arise, get thee to thine own house, and when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die." (1 Kings 14.6-12). So the unhappy woman returned, and as she entered her house, her son died, and all Israel mourned for him, for he was well loved. But Ahijah had said that he only of all the house of Jeroboam would go to his grave in peace because he only was righteous in the Lord's sight and he was to be taken from the wrath to come. And from that day to the time two centuries later when Shalmaneser of Assyria overran the Ten Tribe Kingdom, and brought it to an end, and transported its people to remote corners of his empire, there were no good kings, only bad ones, and the people sank further and further into idolatry. There were many prophets sent to them after Ahijah, but they heeded them not, and at last the penalty of the violated Covenant was exacted from them. Of Ahijah we hear no more. He probably died at Shiloh, and
with his passing a light went out of Israel. He wrote his prophecies in a
book, for it is referred to in 2 Chron.9.29 and from that reference it
would appear that he must have lived through the reign of Solomon. The
story in 1 Kings reveals that he was old and blind when Jeroboam's wife
visited him. As a youth he probably saw the rise of the kingdom under
David and shared in the high hopes of so many at that time that the
kingdom would endure forever under David and his successors, by the power
and blessing of the God of Israel. As a mature man he lived through
Solomon's reign and witnessed the gathering worldliness and indifference
to the things of God which increasingly characterised king and people. He
must have spoken out against that. Then came his mission to Jeroboam and
perhaps he had high hopes of this enthusiastic and upstanding young man
whom God had appointed to make a fresh start with Israel, only to have
those hopes dashed when he saw the old evils, and more, creeping in again.
So, as an old man whose life's work was nearly done, he became the
messenger of judgment and knew that after his death final disaster must
come. Perhaps, though, it was also revealed to him, as it was to Daniel at
a much later date, that despite all these apparent failures of God's
purposes with Israel, there would at the end come success, a day when
Israel shall have learned the lessons and come wholeheartedly to God in a
loyalty that will thenceforth never falter. Like so many of his
fellow-prophets, he must have died in supreme content, assured that evil
will one day pass away and everlasting righteousness be supreme.
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