1 Kings 13:2, commentary and pictures

At the dedication of the unconsecrated altar that Jeroboam the son of Nebat had established at Bethel in the days of the rending of the kingdom, a man of God from Judah cried against that altar in the presence of Jeroboam himself. The king was standing by the altar offering incense when the bold message was delivered to him. Jeroboam was at that time in bold defiance of God turning the hearts of the people away from the services of the temple in Jerusalem to new forms of worship that would in years to come seduce many into idolatrous practices. The Lord sent the man of God to appear before the altar at Bethel to set before the ten tribes the evils of disobedience.

The word denounced Jeroboam's unauthorized and strange worship and foretold that a child of the house of David, Josiah by name, would be born and would desecrate that same altar at Bethel. Upon that altar he would offer the priests of the high places who burn incense upon it, and men's bones, human bones, even the bones of the priests who had offered incense there, would be burned upon it, polluting it. The prophecy thus foretold the altar's later pollution and desecration by Josiah, a descendant of David named long beforehand.

The announcement was made when Jeroboam established the altar, about three centuries, many years, beforehand, naming Josiah by name in the presence of Jeroboam. It was accompanied by a sign that the word spoken was of the Lord: the altar would be rent, would split, and its ashes poured out, spilled out. The sign occurred as foretold, for the altar was rent as declared.

The message was a decisive rebuke, a reproof and entreaty, a warning and bold message that interrupted the profane and idolatrous sacrifices that were an abomination to God. Its words and the splitting of the altar were meant to make a solemn impression, to awaken awe, to show God's displeasure, to correct existing evils, and to lead the king and the people to repentance. The destruction of the altar served as a warning of what would happen to Israel's supposedly sacred but reproachful altars. God sought thereby not hastily to destroy Jeroboam in his idolatry but to awaken him, to lead him to repent and stop doing wrong and to abandon his plans that were turning the people from the worship of God.

The prophecy was literally fulfilled about three centuries later when Josiah in his reformation came to Bethel where the ancient altar still stood. He destroyed and broke down both that altar and the high place which Jeroboam who made Israel to sin had made, burned the high place, stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove. As he turned he took bones out of the sepulchers in the mount and burned them upon the altar and polluted it, burning human bones and the bones of the priests who had offered incense there, as had been declared. When told that the monument he saw was the sepulcher of the man of God from Judah who had proclaimed the word against the altar of Bethel, he commanded to let him alone and let no man move his bones, so his bones were left alone with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.

The rent altar was evidence that God's words were true, and together with the king's palsied arm and the death of the disobedient prophet it should have led Jeroboam to turn from evil and serve the Lord. The prophet's death served as further proof of the truth of the prophecy, since had he returned safely after disobeying God, Jeroboam could have used that to defend his own disobedience. The torn altar and the prophet's fate were thus warnings to Jeroboam of God's displeasure and a call to stop doing wrong. The word at Bethel was one of repeated warnings given through Elijah and Elisha and through Amos and Hosea, yet notwithstanding that reproof and entreaty Israel sank lower and still lower in apostasy.