And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.
A whole royal house stands under judgment, yet God finds one good thing inside it — a dying boy. That raises the hardest question of the chapter: why does the good child die while his guilty father lives on?
Good found where nobody would look
The setting makes the verse startling. Jeroboam brought idolatry back into Israel, and almost every one of the eighteen kings after him kept to his ways. Against that background, one writer points out how the contrast itself is the point:
An Outline of Sound WordsWho then would have looked for anything for the Lord in the house of Jeroboam? Yet one was there with something good in him. It gave pleasure to the heart of the God of Israel. The very darkness of that idol-worshipping household made this little bit of goodness stand out — goodness that God could take account of.
The good thing was God's own work
The ESV says God found "something pleasing" in the boy. Older translations read "some good thing toward the LORD" — the wording most of these writers use. Scripture never tells us what Abijah did. No sermon, no protest, no reform — only that God found something. Commentators read this as God recognising what He Himself had planted:
An Outline of Sound WordsWe are not told much of Abijah. The Bible does not present him as a powerful witness to the true God. It does not show him standing up against what was going on in Israel. He seems to have been quite young, only "a lad" or "a child." Yet God had marked him out for Himself. He had begun His good work within him, the only work in which God can find His pleasure.
The wonder is not the size of the good but its address. William Kelly ties the two halves of the verse together — the good produced, and the child removed:
William KellyWhat grace of God — to produce some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of the man who had done such things against the Lord, and to show His mercy in taking him away from the evil to come!
Why the good child dies first
One death meant two opposite things to two people:
An Outline of Sound WordsWhen God takes away one of His own by death it is not always in judgment. We see this when God took away the son of king Jeroboam, because He found some good thing in him toward the Lord God of Israel. God, in His goodness, took away the lad from the evil to come. It was God's severity to the wicked Jeroboam, but His goodness towards his son.
Rossier goes further and treats the boy as evidence that God keeps a remnant even in a condemned family:
H. L. RossierThe eyes and heart of God rested upon this weak offshoot of a family given up to destruction. There too God had a remnant according to the election of grace. The child could not remain in Israel. God would take him out of the scene of judgment to have him with Himself.
One grave, and a nation's grief
Judgment would burst on the rest of Jeroboam's house. One member is the exception:
Eugene P. Vedder Jr.The Lord had found something good toward Himself in this boy. He took him home to Himself before the day of judgment burst upon the rest of the house of Jeroboam. This boy was the only member of Jeroboam's family to get a proper burial, and the only one Israel mourned. In His wrath against the ten-tribe kingdom, God still remembered mercy toward this boy.
What the mother carried home
Behind the message stands a grieving mother. Her errand was bitter, but not without comfort:
An Outline of Sound WordsHow very sad for the poor mother! She was sent on such an errand and forced to pretend to be another woman. The prophet exposed her before she said a word. Then she heard the hard news from his lips, both about the child and about the house of her wicked husband. Still, she must have found comfort mixed in as well, hearing that God had taken account of "the good thing toward the Lord God of Israel" in her child.
The same God still
Writers apply the verse to families today, where one person alone knows God:
An Outline of Sound WordsThe God who claimed one for Himself from the house of Jeroboam is still the same. How often we find one from a whole house in whom there is some good thing found towards the Lord Jesus and His God and Father. Scripture also shows God's judgment falling on the sons of good men, as with the sons of Aaron and the sons of Eli, because of their evil ways. How wonderful, then, that God, in His goodness, also selects from an evil house those in whom He shows His goodness.
Summary
- Dark background. In a house that led a nation into idolatry, the darkness only made the one small good thing stand out.
- God's planting. Abijah is no hero and no preacher — just a lad in whom God had begun His own work, the only work that gives Him pleasure.
- Mercy, not punishment. One death meant two things: severity toward Jeroboam, and goodness toward his son, taken from the evil to come.
- The only grave. He alone in his family got a grave and a nation's tears — wrath on the house, mercy on the child.
- Still the same. God still claims one out of a whole household; the good He finds is the good He first put there.