1 Kings 15

¹In the eighteenth year of Jeroboam’s reign, Abijah became king of Judah,

²and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel; she was from Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

³¹And Rehoboam rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the City of David; his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. And his son Abijam reigned in his place.

²and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel; she was from Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

²⁰After her, he married Maacah daughter of Absalom, and she bore to him Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith.

²¹Rehoboam loved Maacah daughter of Absalom more than all his wives and concubines. In all, he had eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and he was the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.

¹³He also removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made a detestable Asherah pole. Asa chopped down the pole and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

⁴For when Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been.

⁸⁰May my heart be blameless in Your statutes, that I may not be put to shame.

¹⁴So if you walk in My ways and keep My statutes and commandments, just as your father David did, I will prolong your days.”

³“Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before You faithfully and with wholehearted devotion; I have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

³³For they have forsaken Me to worship Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites. They have not walked in My ways, nor done what is right in My eyes, nor kept My statutes and judgments, as Solomon’s father David did.

²⁰So this is what Hezekiah did throughout Judah. He did what was good and upright and true before the Lord his God.

²¹He acted with all his heart in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law and the commandments, in order to seek his God. And so he prospered.

³⁶I will give one tribe to his son, so that My servant David will always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put My Name.

⁷Yet the Lord was unwilling to destroy the house of David, because of the covenant He had made with David, and since He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.

³²But one tribe will remain for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.

¹⁷There I will make a horn grow for David; I have prepared a lamp for My anointed one.

¹²Nevertheless, for the sake of your father David, I will not do it during your lifetime; I will tear it out of the hand of your son.

²I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

⁸I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you. But you have not been like My servant David, who kept My commandments and followed Me with all his heart, doing only what was right in My eyes.

¹⁵In the letter he wrote: “Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest battle; then withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and killed.”

¹⁶So as Joab besieged the city, he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew the strongest enemy soldiers were.

³And Abijam walked in all the sins that his father before him had committed, and his heart was not as fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his forefather had been.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.

²And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

⁶Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and decrees of the Lord.

³⁰There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam throughout their days.

²and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel; she was from Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

³Abijah went into battle with an army of 400,000 chosen men, while Jeroboam drew up in formation against him with 800,000 chosen and mighty men of valor.

²⁹As for the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, along with all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

¹Then Abijah rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David. And his son Asa reigned in his place, and in his days the land was at peace for ten years.

³¹And Rehoboam rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the City of David; his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. And his son Abijam reigned in his place.

⁹These were all the sons of David, besides the sons by his concubines. And Tamar was their sister.

⁷Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa.

⁸Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah.

¹At that time Abijah son of Jeroboam became ill,

²and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Maacah daughter of Abishalom.

²⁰After her, he married Maacah daughter of Absalom, and she bore to him Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith.

²¹Rehoboam loved Maacah daughter of Absalom more than all his wives and concubines. In all, he had eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and he was the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.

²and he reigned in Jerusalem three years. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel; she was from Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

¹³He also removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made a detestable Asherah pole. Asa chopped down the pole and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

²And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

¹⁷The high places were not removed from Israel, but Asa’s heart was fully devoted all his days.

¹¹Then Asa cried out to the Lord his God: “O Lord, there is no one besides You to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal prevail against You.”

³And Abijam walked in all the sins that his father before him had committed, and his heart was not as fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his forefather had been.

⁷At that time Hanani the seer came to King Asa of Judah and told him, “Because you have relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.

⁸Were not the Cushites and Libyans a vast army with many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand.

⁴⁶He banished from the land the male shrine prostitutes who remained from the days of his father Asa.

²³They also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.

²⁴There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land. They imitated all the abominations of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.

¹⁸For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers,

⁷At that time on a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.

⁸He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

²And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

³He removed the foreign altars and high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and chopped down the Asherah poles.

⁷In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.

²⁰Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, and scattered the powder over the face of the water. Then he forced the Israelites to drink it.

¹⁴When I saw that they were not walking in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

⁹He said of his father and mother, ‘I do not consider them.’ He disregarded his brothers and did not know his own sons, for he kept Your word and maintained Your covenant.

⁵Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.

⁵We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

⁶But as for the highly esteemed—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—those leaders added nothing to me.

⁶If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (which neither you nor your fathers have known,

⁷the gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, whether from one end of the earth or the other),

⁴³And Jehoshaphat walked in all the ways of his father Asa; he did not turn away from them, but did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. The high places, however, were not removed; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.

⁶¹So let your heart be fully devoted to the Lord our God, as it is this day, to walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments.”

³And Abijam walked in all the sins that his father before him had committed, and his heart was not as fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his forefather had been.

³Nevertheless, the high places were not removed; the people continued sacrificing and burning incense there.

¹⁷The high places were not removed from Israel, but Asa’s heart was fully devoted all his days.

¹⁸And he brought into the house of God the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated.

⁴Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away, and the people continued sacrificing and burning incense on the high places.

⁵¹So all the work that King Solomon had performed for the house of the Lord was completed. Then Solomon brought in the items his father David had dedicated—the silver, the gold, and the furnishings—and he placed them in the treasuries of the house of the Lord.

¹³Then Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. The Cushites fell and could not recover, for they were crushed before the Lord and His army. So the people of Judah carried off a great amount of plunder

²⁶This Shelomith and his brothers were in charge of all the treasuries for the things dedicated by King David, by the heads of families who were the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, and by the army commanders.

²⁷They had dedicated some of the plunder from their battles to the repair of the house of the Lord.

¹⁸And he brought into the house of God the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated.

³²And there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel throughout their days.

¹In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.

²So Asa withdrew the silver and gold from the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the royal palace, and he sent it with this message to Ben-hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus:

⁶And there was war between the houses of Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of Abijam’s life.

⁷As for the rest of the acts of Abijam, along with all his accomplishments, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? And there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam.

³⁰There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam throughout their days.

²⁷If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, their hearts will return to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah; then they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.”

¹In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.

²So Asa withdrew the silver and gold from the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the royal palace, and he sent it with this message to Ben-hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus:

²⁵Gibeon, Ramah, Beeroth,

²¹When Baasha learned of this, he stopped fortifying Ramah and withdrew to Tirzah.

²²Then King Asa summoned all the men of Judah, with no exceptions, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and the timbers Baasha had used for building. And with these materials King Asa built up Geba of Benjamin, as well as Mizpah.

³⁴Then Samuel went to Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul.

¹³Moreover, the priests and Levites from all their districts throughout Israel stood with Rehoboam.

¹⁴For the Levites left their pasturelands and their possessions and went to Judah and Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them as priests of the Lord.

²⁶He seized the treasures of the house of the Lord and of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields that Solomon had made.

¹⁸So King Joash of Judah took all the sacred objects dedicated by his fathers—Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah—along with his own consecrated items and all the gold found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the royal palace, and he sent them to Hazael king of Aram. So Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem.

¹⁵And he brought into the house of the Lord the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated.

²³And God raised up against Solomon another adversary, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had fled from his master, Hadadezer king of Zobah,

²⁴and had gathered men to himself. When David killed the Zobaites, Rezon captained a band of raiders and went to Damascus, where they settled and gained control.

¹⁵During the night, Abram divided his forces and routed Chedorlaomer’s army, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus.

¹Now Ben-hadad king of Aram assembled his entire army. Accompanied by thirty-two kings with their horses and chariots, he marched up, besieged Samaria, and waged war against it.

²Then he sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel,

³¹They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.

⁷At that time Hanani the seer came to King Asa of Judah and told him, “Because you have relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.

⁸Why not say, as some slanderously claim that we say, “Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved!

¹Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the Lord.

¹³He took a member of the royal family and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath. Then he carried away the leading men of the land,

¹⁴so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to lift itself up, surviving only by keeping his covenant.

²At this, David summoned the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not Israelites, but a remnant of the Amorites. The Israelites had taken an oath concerning them, but in his zeal for Israel and Judah, Saul had sought to kill them.)

²⁹In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, including all the land of Naphtali, and he took the people as captives to Assyria.

²⁹They named it Dan, after their forefather Dan, who was born to Israel—though the city was formerly named Laish.

²to the kings of the north in the mountains, in the Arabah south of Chinnereth, in the foothills, and in Naphoth-dor to the west;

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

¹⁴Sheba passed through all the tribes of Israel to Abel-beth-maacah and through the entire region of the Berites, who gathered together and followed him.

¹⁵And Joab’s troops came and besieged Sheba in Abel-beth-maacah and built a siege ramp against the outer rampart of the city. As all the troops with Joab were battering the wall to topple it,

³as well as the Arabah east of the Sea of Chinnereth to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea), eastward through Beth-jeshimoth, and southward below the slopes of Pisgah.

¹⁷Then Jeroboam’s wife got up and departed for Tirzah, and as soon as she stepped over the threshold of the house, the boy died.

¹⁵In the twenty-seventh year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Zimri reigned in Tirzah for seven days. Now the troops were encamped against Gibbethon of the Philistines,

¹⁶and the people in the camp heard that Zimri had conspired against the king and struck him down. So there in the camp that very day, all Israel proclaimed Omri, the commander of the army, king over Israel.

⁵When Baasha learned of this, he stopped fortifying Ramah and abandoned his work.

¹⁷Baasha king of Israel went to war against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.

⁴You are as beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah, as lovely as Jerusalem, as majestic as troops with banners.

¹⁷And from the tribe of Benjamin they gave them Gibeon, Geba,

²⁴Chephar-ammoni, Ophni, and Geba—twelve cities, along with their villages.

⁶Then King Asa brought all the men of Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and the timbers Baasha had used for building. And with these materials he built up Geba and Mizpah.

²⁶Mizpeh, Chephirah, Mozah,

⁵Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord on your behalf.”

⁶So Jeremiah went to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah and stayed with him among the people who were left in the land.

⁷As for the rest of the acts of Abijam, along with all his accomplishments, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? And there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam.

⁸And Abijam rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David, and his son Asa reigned in his place.

¹⁰The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we are strong—yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

¹¹Now the acts of Asa, from beginning to end, are indeed written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

¹²In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his disease became increasingly severe. Yet even in his illness he did not seek the Lord, but only the physicians.

²⁹As for the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, along with all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

³⁰There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam throughout their days.

⁸Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah.

⁴¹In the fourth year of Ahab’s reign over Israel, Jehoshaphat son of Asa became king of Judah.

⁴²Jehoshaphat was thirty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-five years. His mother’s name was Azubah daughter of Shilhi.

¹Asa’s son Jehoshaphat reigned in his place, and he strengthened himself against Israel.

²He stationed troops in every fortified city of Judah and put garrisons in the land of Judah and in the cities of Ephraim that his father Asa had captured.

²⁰And the length of Jeroboam’s reign was twenty-two years, and he rested with his fathers, and his son Nadab reigned in his place.

¹²As for you, get up and go home. When your feet enter the city, the child will die.

¹⁶So He will give Israel over on account of the sins Jeroboam has committed and has caused Israel to commit.”

³⁴And Baasha did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit.

³⁰because of the sins Jeroboam had committed and had caused Israel to commit, and because he had provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger.

²⁸After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

³³Even after these events, Jeroboam did not repent of his evil ways, but again he appointed priests for the high places from every class of people. He ordained anyone who desired to be a priest of the high places.

³⁴And this was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its extermination and destruction from the face of the earth.

⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham and asked, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such tremendous guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done.”

⁴⁴Eltekeh, Gibbethon, Baalath,

²³From the tribe of Dan they were given Elteke, Gibbethon,

¹⁴Moreover, the Lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who will cut off the house of Jeroboam. This is the day—yes, even today!

¹⁵In the twenty-seventh year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Zimri reigned in Tirzah for seven days. Now the troops were encamped against Gibbethon of the Philistines,

⁹However, while Elah was in Tirzah getting drunk in the house of Arza the steward of his household there, Elah’s servant Zimri, the commander of half his chariots, conspired against him.

¹⁷Then Omri and all the Israelites marched up from Gibbethon and besieged Tirzah.

³⁵Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is coming quickly.”

⁹You have done more evil than all who came before you. You have proceeded to make for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me, and you have flung Me behind your back.

¹⁰Because of all this, behold, I am bringing disaster on the house of Jeroboam: I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both slave and free, in Israel; I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns up dung until it is gone!

²⁵Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble.

⁷And you are to strike down the house of your master Ahab, so that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets and the blood of all the servants of the Lord shed by the hand of Jezebel.

⁸The whole house of Ahab will perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, both slave and free, in Israel.

³¹Yet Jehu was not careful to follow the instruction of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.

³⁶So they went back and told Jehu, who replied, “This is the word of the Lord, which He spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite: ‘On the plot of ground at Jezreel the dogs will devour the flesh of Jezebel.

³⁷And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’”

¹⁰Know, then, that not a word the Lord has spoken against the house of Ahab will fail, for the Lord has done what He promised through His servant Elijah.”

¹¹So Jehu killed everyone in Jezreel who remained of the house of Ahab, as well as all his great men and close friends and priests, leaving him without a single survivor.

²⁶And he did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit.

²²And Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and by the sins they committed they provoked Him to jealous anger more than all their fathers had done.

⁹You have done more evil than all who came before you. You have proceeded to make for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me, and you have flung Me behind your back.

¹⁰Because of all this, behold, I am bringing disaster on the house of Jeroboam: I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both slave and free, in Israel; I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns up dung until it is gone!

¹⁹As for the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he waged war and how he reigned, they are indeed written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.

²⁷As for the rest of the acts of Omri, along with his accomplishments and the might he exercised, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

¹⁴As for the rest of the acts of Elah, along with all his accomplishments, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

²⁰As for the rest of the acts of Zimri and the treason he committed, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

⁵As for the rest of the acts of Baasha, along with his accomplishments and might, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

¹⁶Now there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel throughout their days.

⁸In the twenty-sixth year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Elah son of Baasha became king of Israel, and he reigned in Tirzah two years.

²⁶And he did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit.

²⁸After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

¹⁶So He will give Israel over on account of the sins Jeroboam has committed and has caused Israel to commit.”

³³Even after these events, Jeroboam did not repent of his evil ways, but again he appointed priests for the high places from every class of people. He ordained anyone who desired to be a priest of the high places.

³⁴And this was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its extermination and destruction from the face of the earth.

⁴Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him.