Wife of Jeroboam

Depiction of Ahijah and Jeroboam's wife, by Charles Horne, 1909.

The wife of Jeroboam is an unnamed character in the Hebrew Bible. She is mentioned in 1 Kings 14, which describes how she visited the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite. Her son Abijah was sick, and on her husband Jeroboam's instructions she disguised herself and went to Ahijah. Although Ahijah was blind, he immediately recognised her and gave her a message of judgement. This included the death of her son, who was to die as soon as Jeroboam's wife came back home. According to 1 Kings 14:17, her son died as soon as she stepped over the threshold.

According to the Septuagint, she was an Egyptian princess called Ano: "And Sousakim gave to Jeroboam Ano the eldest sister of Thekemina his wife, to him as wife; she was great among the king's daughters..."[1]

The wife of Jeroboam does not speak at all in the biblical narrative. Robin Gallaher Branch calls her "flat, vapid, and overwhelmingly sad",[2] while Adele Berlin says that she is "intentionally not portrayed as a real individual in her own right", but that her characterization should be viewed as "the effective use of an anonymous character to fill an important literary function".[3]

Branch also argues that Jeroboam's wife was abused by her husband.[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1 Kings 12:24e, New English Translation of the Septuagint
  2. ↑ Robin Gallaher Branch, Jeroboam's Wife: The Enduring Contributions of the Old Testament's Least-Known Women, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Adele Berlin, "Wife of Jeroboam" in Women in Scripture, p. 272.
  4. ↑ Branch, Jeroboam's Wife, p. 96.
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