She asked Elijah, “Why, prophet, have you come to me to confront me with my sin and kill my son?”

Just then a prophet from Judah, sent by the Lord, arrived in Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing near the altar ready to offer a sacrifice.

The altar split open and the ashes fell from the altar to the ground, in fulfillment of the sign the prophet had announced with the Lord’s authority.

Their father asked them, “Which road did he take?” His sons showed him the road the prophet from Judah had taken.

The woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a prophet and that the Lord really does speak through you.”

When all Israel heard about the judicial decision which the king had rendered, they respected the king, for they realized that he possessed supernatural wisdom to make judicial decisions.

But the prophet said to the king, “Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I could not go with you and eat and drink in this place.

Now there was an old prophet living in Bethel. When his sons came home, they told their father everything the prophet had done in Bethel that day and all the words he had spoken to the king.

The old prophet picked up the corpse of the prophet, put it on the donkey, and brought it back. The old prophet then entered the city to mourn him and to bury him.

After he buried him, he said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in the tomb where the prophet is buried; put my bones right beside his bones,

After all, you picked them out of all the nations of the earth to be your special possession, just as you, O sovereign Lord, announced through your servant Moses when you brought our ancestors out of Egypt.”

When the king heard what the prophet cried out against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam, standing at the altar, extended his hand and ordered, “Seize him!” The hand he had extended shriveled up and he could not pull it back.

When the old prophet who had invited him to his house heard the news, he said, “It is the prophet who rebelled against the Lord. The Lord delivered him over to the lion and it ripped him up and killed him, just as the Lord warned him.”

So the prophet went back with him and ate and drank in his house.

When the prophet from Judah finished his meal, the old prophet saddled his visitor’s donkey for him.

The king then told Abiathar the priest, “Go back to your property in Anathoth. You deserve to die, but today I will not kill you because you did carry the ark of the sovereign Lord before my father David and you suffered with my father through all his difficult times.”

He then said to him, “Come home with me and eat something.”

That day he also announced a sign, “This is the sign the Lord has predetermined: The altar will be split open and the ashes on it will fall to the ground.”

He had 700 royal wives and 300 concubines; his wives had a powerful influence over him.

He removed the male cultic prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the disgusting idols his ancestors had made.