1 Kings 13:1-34
13 And a man of God came out of Judah, by Jehovah’s commission, to Bethel, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to offer;
2 * and he proclaimed against the altar by Jehovah’s commission “Altar, altar, Jehovah says, a child is being born to the house of David, named Josiah; and he shall kill as sacrifices on you the height-priests that offer on you, and they shall burn human bones on you.”
3 And he gave a token that day, “This is the token that Jehovah spoke: the altar is to burst and the fat-ashes on it to run out.”
4 And when the king heard the words that the man of God proclaimed against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam put out his hand from the altar, saying “Arrest him”; and his arm that he put out against him hardened, and he could not draw it back to himself;
5 and the altar burst and the fat-ashes ran out from the altar in accordance with the token that the man of God had given by Jehovah’s commission.
6 * And the king answered by saying to the man of God “Propitiate your God Jehovah so that my hand will come back”; and the man of God propitiated Jehovah, and the king’s hand came back and was as it had been at first.
7 And the king told the man of God “Come into the palace with me and have something to brace you up and let me give you a present”;
8 but the man of God said to the king “If you would give me half your palace I would not go in with you, and I will not eat food nor drink water in this place;
9 for so I was commanded by Jehovah’s commission, ‘You shall not eat food nor drink water, nor go back the way you came.’”
10 And he went away by another road, and did not go back by the road by which he had come to Bethel.
11 And a certain old prophet was living at Bethel, and his sons came in and told him all about the deed the man of God had done that day at Bethel, and the words he had spoken to the king: they told their father,
12 and their father said to them “Which way did he go?” and his sons showed him the road that the man of God who came out of Judah had gone.
13 And he said to his sons “Saddle the donkey for me”; and they saddled the donkey for him, and he mounted it,
14 * and went after the man of God and found him sitting under the terebinth-tree, and said to him “Are you the man of God who came out of Judah?” and he said “Yes.”
15 And he said to him “Come home with me and eat a meal”;
16 * but he said “I cannot go back with you and go in with you, and I will not eat food nor drink water in this place;
17 for I was told by Jehovah’s commission ‘You shall not eat food nor drink water, nor go over again the way you went on.’”
18 But he said to him “I am a prophet the same as you are, and an angel told me by Jehovah’s commission ‘Bring him back home with you to eat a meal and drink water.’” He lied to him;
19 but he went back with him and ate a meal in his house and drank water,
20 and they were sitting at the table when Jehovah’s word came to the prophet who had brought him back,
21 and he called out to the man of God who had come out of Judah “Says Jehovah, Since you have disobeyed Jehovah, and not kept the commandment that your God Jehovah gave you,
22 and have gone back and eaten food and drunk water in the place of which he spoke to you the words ‘Do not eat food nor drink water,’ your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers.”
23 And after he had eaten a meal and had drunk, he saddled the donkey for himself and went again;
24 and a lion found him on the road and killed him, and his body lay thrown down in the road with the donkey standing by it and the lion standing by the body.
25 And there were men passing by who saw the body thrown down in the road and the lion standing by the body, and they went in and spoke of it in the city the old prophet lived in.
26 * And the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard of it and said “It is the man of God who disobeyed Jehovah; Jehovah has given him to the lion, which has struck him down and killed him in accordance with Jehovah’s word that he had spoken to him.”
27 And he said to his sons “Saddle the donkey for me”; and they did so.
28 And he went and found his body thrown down in the road, and the donkey and the lion standing by the body; the lion had not eaten the body nor struck down the donkey;
29 and the prophet lifted the body of the man of God and laid it on his donkey and brought it back to the city to bewail and bury it.
30 And he laid the body in his own tomb, and they bewailed him with “Alas, brother!”
31 * And after he had buried him he said to his sons “When I die bury me in the tomb the man of God is buried in; lay me beside his bones, so that my bones may escape with his; for the thing is to be,
32 the thing that he proclaimed by Jehovah’s commission against the altar at Bethel and against all the height-houses in the cities of Samaria.”
33 * After this affair Jeroboam did not turn back from his evil course, but made height-priests again out of the common people: whoever pleased, Jeroboam would install him, and they became height-priests.
34 And this thing became the sin of Jeroboam’s family, and effacement and extirpation off the face of the earth.
Footnotes
^ 13:2 Var. he shall burn
^ 13:6 Var. and pray for me so that
^ 13:14 Or oak-tree
^ 13:16 Var. omits and go in with you
^ 13:26 Var. omits all from Jehovah has given him to the end of verse 27
^ 13:31 Var. had bewailed him
^ 13:33 Lit. he would
