Prophet: Ahijah

Ahijah the Shilonite was a Levite prophet of Shiloh in the days of Solomon. Although Solomon was a wise man, he disobeyed God by marrying many women. and many of those wives wives (and his several hundred concubines) were foreigners, from countries that worshipped other gods. To accommodate them, Solomon built temples for their gods, and eventually Israel began following those gods as well. Within one generation, this took Israel from being a nation that followed the one true god to one that followed many gods.

God rose up adversaries to fight against Solomon, one of them being Jeroboam son of Nebat. Jeroboam started out trusted by Solomon, and was given an important job over labor operations. One day when Jeroboam was traveling out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah stopped him. Ahijah then demonstrated what would happen to Israel by taking a new cloak and tearing it into 12 pieces, giving 10 pieces to Jeroboam. He explained that all but two tribes would desert David’s family after Solomon’s death. David’s family would continue to have a remnant “so that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my Name”.

Ahijah specifically cited the nation’s idolatry as the reason for this great split. When Solomon heard about Jeroboam’s plans to split the kingdom, Jeroboam fled to Egypt (1 Kings 11:40). Upon Solomon's death, 10 tribes did indeed separate from the House of David and made Jeroboam king of their northern state of Israel. Abijah's other prophecies also came true when the new king's son died, and many years later, the Northern Kingdom was carried off beyond the Euphrates by Assyria.