14:9 But hast done evil above all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and {i} molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back:
(i) That is, two calves.
14:9 Above all - Above all the former kings of my people, as Saul, and Solomon, and Rehoboam. Images - Namely the golden calves: not as if they thought them to be other gods in a proper sense; for it is apparent they still pretended to worship the God of their fathers, but because God rejected their whole worship, and, howsoever they accounted it, he reckoned it a manifest defection from him, and a betaking themselves to other gods, or devils, as they are called, 2Chron 11:15, whom alone they served and worshipped therein, whatsoever pretences they had to the contrary. To provoke - Whereby thou didst provoke me. For otherwise this was not Jeroboam's design in it, but only to establish himself in the throne. Hast cast - Despised and forsaken me, and my commands, and my worship, as we do things which we cast behind our backs.
14:7-20 Whether we keep an account of God's mercies to us or not, he does; and he will set them in order before us, if we are ungrateful, to our greater confusion. Ahijah foretells the speedy death of the child then sick, in mercy to him. He only in the house of Jeroboam had affection for the true worship of God, and disliked the worship of the calves. To show the power and sovereignty of his grace, God saves some out of the worst families, in whom there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel. The righteous are removed from the evil to come in this world, to the good to come in a better world. It is often a bad sign for a family, when the best in it are buried out of it. Yet their death never can be a loss to themselves. It was a present affliction to the family and kingdom, by which both ought to have been instructed. God also tells the judgments which should come upon the people of Israel, for conforming to the worship Jeroboam established. After they left the house of David, the government never continued long in one family, but one undermined and destroyed another. Families and kingdoms are ruined by sin. If great men do wickedly, they draw many others, both into the guilt and punishment. The condemnation of those will be severest, who must answer, not only for their own sins, but for sins others have been drawn into, and kept in, by them.
