called "hard tidings."  229

All the more deeply must the aged prophet have felt them, that it was he who had announced to Jeroboam

his future elevation. They concerned Jeroboam; but they also touched every heart -string in the wife and the

mother, and must well nigh have torn each one of them as they swept across her. First:230 an

uncompromising recital of the past, and a sternly true representation of the present - all glare, dazzle, and

self-delusion dispelled, until it stood in naked reality before her.

Only two persons are in this picture, Jehovah and Jeroboam - all else is in the far background. That is

enough; and now once in full sight of those two persons, the wife, the mother, must hear it all, though her

ears tingle and her knees tremble. Not this child only, but every child, nay, every descendant, down to the

meanest, whether it be child or adult  231 - swept away: "And I will sweep out after the house of Jeroboam, as

one sweepeth out dirt until it is quite gone" (1 Kings 14:10).232

And not only this, but also horrible judgment; the carcasses of her children lying like carrion in street and

on field, their flesh torn and eaten by the wild, unclean dogs that prowl about, or picked from their limbs by

birds of prey who swoop round them with hoarse croaking.233

Thus far for Jeroboam. And now as for the child that lay sick in the palace of Tirzah - it shall be in God's

keeping, removed from the evil to come. As her feet touched the threshold of her doomed home, it would

die. As it were, such heavy tidings shall not be brought within where he sleeps; its terrors shall not darken

his bed. Before they can reach him, he shall be beyond their shadow and in the light. But around that sole -

honored grave all Israel shall be the mourners, and God Himself wills to put this mark of honor upon His one

child in that now cursed family. Lastly, as for apostate Israel, another king raised up to execute the judgment

of God - nay, all this not merely in the dim future, but the scene seems to shift, and the prophet sees it

already in the present.234

Israel shaken as a reed in the water by wind and waves; Israel uprooted from their land, - cast away and,

scattered among the heathen beyond the river, and given up to be trampled under foot. Such is the end of

the sins of Jeroboam and of his people; such, in the bold figure of Scripture, is the sequel of casting

Jehovah "behind their back."  235 Of the further course of this history we know no more. The queen and

mother went back, stricken, to her home; and it was as the prophet had told her from Jehovah. And this

literal fulfillment would be to her for ever afterwards the terrible pledge of what was yet to come.

Nor do we read any more of Jeroboam. It almost seems as if Holy Scripture had nothing further to say of him,

not even concerning his later and disastrous war with the son of Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 13:2-20). That is

told in connection with the reign of the second king of Judah. Of Jeroboam we only read that he "reigned

two and twenty years," that "he slept with his fathers," and that "Nadab his son reigned in his stead."  236