Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat, for the LORD has spoken it.”’
Ahijah the prophet has just warned Jeroboam's disguised wife that disaster is coming on her husband's whole family. Verse 11 spells out the end — no grave, only scavengers — and it raises two questions: why so harsh a sentence, and what the closing words about the LORD add to it.
A sentence of total dishonour
One writer spells out what this sentence meant for Jeroboam's family:
Leslie M. GrantHe would put to death every male descendant of Jeroboam, throwing them away as though they were only garbage. They would get no burial. The dogs would eat those who died in the city. Scavenging birds would eat those who died in the countryside. Then Ahijah added, "The LORD has spoken!"
The sin behind the sentence
Two verses earlier God named the charge. Jeroboam had made other gods and cast God behind his back. One writer asks whether people today are any different:
H. L. RossierJeroboam had done without God. He had despised Him as a useless object. And is it any different today? Man does without God as with something not worth counting. He banishes Him from his life, casting Him behind his back so as to see Him no more.
The same words spoken over later kings
The same words came back again. Later kings who walked Jeroboam's road heard them word for word:
H. L. RossierThat horrible curse takes the place of the joy so longed for, and it sounds again and again through this sad history of Israel. This was the judgment of Jeroboam, the judgment of Baasha, in the very same words: "Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat."
"For the LORD has spoken it"
The verse rests everything on God's own word. Jehu once gave orders to bury Jezebel, and the order failed:
William KellyMan's will has very little to do with fulfilling the word of God... Jehu had heard that word only a short time before, and he clearly meant to carry out his commission exactly. But how little man, good or bad, carries out the word of God! Now it seems the old sense of respect for one who was a queen — a king's daughter — rises in his mind. He says, "Bury her, for she is a king's daughter." But the word of God had spoken its own command before... They found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.
Slow to fall, complete when it falls
The sentence was not carried out at once. Delay is not cancellation:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinMore than fifteen years had passed since the LORD, through Elijah, had announced the doom of the house of Ahab and the doom of Jezebel. Now the hour of execution had come. God will judge in the end, though He is never in haste to carry out His threatened judgments.
With Jeroboam's own house, Baasha was the man who carried it out:
William KellyWhen he reigned, he struck down the whole house of Jeroboam. He left Jeroboam no one alive that breathed, until he had destroyed him. This was what the LORD had said through His servant Ahijah the Shilonite, because of the sins Jeroboam sinned and made Israel sin.
One exception, and it is mercy
Two verses later one child in that house gets what verse 11 denies to all the rest: a grave, and mourning. One writer calls it grace:
William Kelly"All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him. He alone of Jeroboam's house shall come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward the LORD, the God of Israel." What grace of God! He produced some good thing toward Himself in the house of the man who had done such things against Him. And in mercy He took the child away from the evil to come.
Summary
- Cause — Jeroboam made other gods and cast God behind his back. Verse 11 is God's answer to that.
- Sentence — his family would be thrown out like garbage, with no burial at all: dogs in the city, birds in the open country.
- Pattern — the same words later fell on Baasha's house and on Ahab's, one curse running through Israel's history.
- Certainty — "the LORD has spoken it" settles it. Jehu tried to bury Jezebel and failed. Man's will does not bend God's word.
- Exception — one child, in whom God found some good thing, got a grave and mourning. Mercy took him away from the evil to come.