1   As Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn the sacrifice, a man of God from Judah, moved by the word of the Lord, appeared at Bethel. 2   He inveighed against the altar in the Lord's name, crying out, ‘O altar, altar! This is the word of the Lord: “Listen! A child shall be born to the house of David, named Josiah. He will sacrifice upon you the priests of the hill-shrines who make offerings upon you, and he ^note will burn human bones upon you.”’ 3   He gave a sign the same day: ‘This is the sign which the Lord has ordained: This altar will be rent in pieces and the ashes upon it will be spilt.’ 4   When King Jeroboam heard the sentence which the man of God pronounced against the altar at Bethel, he pointed to him from the altar and said, ‘Seize that man!’ Immediately the hand which he had pointed at him became paralysed, so that he could not draw it back. 5   The altar too was rent in pieces and the ashes were spilt, in fulfilment of the sign that the man of God had given

The divided kingdom at the Lord's command. 6   The king appealed to the man of God to pacify the Lord his God and pray for him that his hand might be restored. The man of God did as he asked; his hand was restored and became as it had been before. 7   Then the king said to the man of God, ‘Come home and take refreshment at my table, and let me give you a present.’ 8   But the man of God answered, ‘If you were to give me half your house, I would not enter it with you: I will eat and drink nothing in this place, 9   for the Lord's command to me was to eat and drink nothing, and not to go back by the way I came.’ 10   So he went back another way; he did not return by the road he had taken to Bethel.

11   At that time there was an aged prophet living in Bethel. His sons came ^note and recounted to him all that the man of God had done in Bethel that day; they also told their father what he had said to the king. 12   Their father said to them, ‘Which road did he take?’ They pointed out the road taken by the man of God who had come from Judah. 13   He said to his sons, ‘Saddle an ass for me.’ They saddled the ass, and he mounted it and went after the man of God. 14   He found him seated under a terebinth and said to him, ‘Are you the man of God who came from Judah?’ 15   And he said, ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘Come home and eat with me’, said the prophet. 16   ‘I cannot go back with you or enter your house,’ said the other; 17   ‘I can neither eat nor drink with you in this place, for it was told me by the word of the Lord: “You shall eat and drink nothing there, nor shall you go back the way you came.”’ 18   And the old man said to him, ‘I also am a prophet, as you are; and an angel commanded me by the word of the Lord to bring you home with me to eat and drink with me.’ 19   He was lying; but the man of Judah went back with him and ate and drank in his house. 20   While they were still seated at table the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back, 21   and he cried out to the man of God from Judah, ‘This is the word of the Lord: “You have defied the word of the Lord your God and have not obeyed his command; 22   you have come back to eat and to drink in the place where he forbade it; therefore your body shall not be laid in the grave of your forefathers.”’

23   After they had eaten and drunk, he saddled an ass for the prophet whom he had brought back. 24   As he went on his way a lion met him and killed him, and his body was left lying in the road, with the ass and the lion both standing beside it. 25   Some passers-by saw the body lying in the road and the lion standing beside it, and they brought the news to the city where the old prophet lived. 26   When the prophet who had caused him to break his journey heard it, he said, ‘It is the man of God who defied the word of the Lord. The Lord has given him to the lion, and it has broken his neck and killed him in fulfilment of the word of the Lord.’

The divided kingdom 27   He told his sons to saddle an ass and, when they had saddled it, 28   he set out and found the body lying in the road with the ass and the lion standing beside it; the lion had neither devoured the body nor broken the back of the ass. 29   Then the prophet lifted the body of the man of God, laid it on the ass and brought it back to his own city to mourn over it and bury it. 30   He laid the body in his own grave and they mourned for him, saying, ‘My brother, my brother!’ 31   After burying him, he said to his sons, ‘When I die, bury me in the grave where the man of God lies buried; 32   lay my bones beside his; for the sentence which he pronounced at the Lord's command against the altar in Bethel and all the hill-shrines of Samaria shall be carried out.’

33   After this Jeroboam still did not abandon his evil ways but went on appointing priests for the hill-shrines from all classes of the people; any man who offered himself he would consecrate to be priest of a hill-shrine. 34   By doing this he brought guilt upon his own house and doomed it to utter destruction.

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