When we left off Solomon had just tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam had fled to Egypt. Solomon died shortly afterwards and Jeroboam decided to come back and take over as king. When he was crowned, everyone in Israel approached him and said, “Solomon, you’re father, was a fucking terrible ruler. He made us work our asses off so he could have more gold than any sane person can even imagine. Can you change things so that we don’t all have shitty lives?” Jeroboam thought really hard about this for three days and finally announced to the crowd, “I have heard your pleas. To all of you, I say, ‘Fuck you!’ If you thought Solomon was bad, then you’re in for a surprise. I’ll be an even worse king and I’ll make your lives even shittier!”
This is possibly the worst way to address your country. And surprisingly the people didn’t rise up against him. Just kidding. They totally did. They killed one of his main men Adoniram by throwing a bunch of stones at him until he was a bloody mess laying in the street. So Jeroboam ran on down to Jerusalem and gathered an army of 180,000 Benjamites to go squash the rebellion, but then god came down to, apparently everyone, and said, “Don’t kill other Israelites for this dipshit. Feel free to kill a lot of other people, and I might get back into my old habits and start killing thousands of ya’ll. But don’t partake in this civil war. Fuck Jeroboam.”
So Jeroboam ended up getting refuge in this super fortified city named Shechem and thought to himself, “If’m gonna change religions and convince everyone else to change religions too.” He built a golden calf because it worked out so well the last time someone had done that and convinced a bunch of people to slaughter and burn animals in honor of the golden calf instead of Jehovah. This pissed Jehovah off, because as we learned in Exodus, he’s like super jealous. Instead of saying it directly to Jeroboam he sent some nameless guy over to him to say, “Because you’re worshipping this random statue, god’s super mad. He’s going to break this statue because it makes him insecure. Also, he’s going to demand human sacrifice from all your current priests. Because god has no regard for human life.”
This pissed Jeroboam off and he pointed his finger out and yelled, “Hey! Fucking kill this guy because he’s pissing me off!” As soon as he did that his arm shriveled up like a rotten corpse and the golden calf broke in half and turned into ash. “Holy fuck,” Said Jeroboam, “I’ll start worshipping Jehovah again, i guess.” Then his arm started working again. He offered the unnamed stranger a bite to eat and he was like, “I fucking hate you. You’re a horrible person and I have no respect for you even a little bit. I won’t eat or drink with you and I won’t do it because god hates you, too and told me not to. Also, he told me not to eat of drink anything. I’m not sure why.”
The unnamed man walked away and eventually ran into a prophet while he was chilling under a tree. The prophet said, “Hey! We’re both prophets, let’s get some food!” The unnamed man was like, “I can’t. God told me not to.” The prophet convinced him it was a good idea and they got some dinner together. After the unnamed man ate, a lion attacked him and killed him. The prophet said out loud to nobody in particular, “This was a man who disobeyed god. That’s why god sent a lion to kill him.” What an asshole.
Anyways, back to Jeroboam. He was concerned about the future of his family and decided to disguise his wife and send her to a blind prophet named Ahijah. She went and Ahijah knew who she was anyways, because he was a prophet and putting on a disguise to fool a blind person is a stupid idea. She asked, “So what’s up with my son? He’s super sick.” The prophet replied, “God just told me all of this about Jeroboam. ‘I fucking hate you because you’re a shitty king and you cheated on me with a gold calf. Because you’re a dick, I’m going to kill every male that came out of your dick. Even the slaves you raped. Their kids? Yeah, I’m fucking killing them, too. Fuck you. Actually, fuck you so much, I’m going to have dogs eat all of your slaves. All the people that work for you against your will are going to be eaten by fucking dogs. The other ones, who live in the country, I’ll kill them, too, and have birds eat their corpses.’ So, as you can see, you’re fucking son is going to die.” Sure enough. The kid died.
So a bunch of kings came and went for a while, Israel and Judah became two separate countries. The first king of Judah was Rehoboam, Jeroboam’s brother, who lasted five years before Egypt sacked the shit out of Jerusalem and stole most of Solomon’s gold covered everything. Then came Abijah, who literally did nothing spectacular. Then came Asa, whose first act as king was to take everything golden that the Egyptians forgot and horde it.
For Israel, once Jeroboam died, one of his sons that survived named Nadab took over. He lasted two years accomplishing nothing and it doesn’t even say how he died. Then Baasha came to power and accomplished nothing. Then Elah, Baasha’s kid, got assassinated like right away, because he was drunk during the middle of a war. More shitty kings came and went, but they didn’t do anything and I’m tired of talking about them.
Anyways, eventually this guy Ahab took over Israel. He decided to change Israel’s religion to worship that cool god Baal, who didn’t care what kind of food you eat and whom you have sex with. This pissed god off, because he’s mad jealous.
So god found this guy named Elijah and told him to go drink water out of a very particular creek in a very particular place. Then he sent a bunch of ravens to bring him food for some reason. Eventually the creek dried up because there was a horrible drought, and god said, “Hey, now go down to this city called Zarephath and there’s gonna be a lady whose husband totally died picking up sticks outside. Even though this is probably against all your logic, go ask her for water and food. She’ll give it to you, because I fucking told her to already.”
Elijah went over there and sure enough, she gave him some water. Then he asked her for some food and she replied, “Well I only have a little bit of flour and oil. I’m actually gathering these sticks so me and my son can eat one last time and then die of starvation.” Elijah said, “Well take some of that flour and make me a pancake. If you do that I’ll make sure that you’ll have unlimited flour and oil.” A fucking tall promise to someone who literally just told you she was planning on starving to death soon. Sure enough, she made him a pancake and her flour and oil turned into magic never-ending bland food suppliers.
Eventually, her son got really sick and died. She asked Elijah, “What the fuck? Why did you let us stay alive just to die later?” Instead of saying, “Everyone dies eventually dipshit.” to this poor lady, Elijah asked god, “Yeah god, what the fuck was the point of all that?” Then he laid himself over the dead child and screamed at god, “Make this fucking kid alive again.” This actually worked, so that’s cool. He swaggered up to the lady and said, “Your son’s alive again.”
So three years later god told Elijah to go talk to Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who had been slaughtering prophets left and right all over the place. Apparently there were a lot of prophets back then and they had been pissing Jezebel off. This guy Obadiah was like the Schindler of prophets and had hid about 100 of them away in a couple of caves. Obadiah and Ahab were wandering around the countryside trying to find some live grass to feed their animals when Obadiah ran into Elijah and was like, “Oh shit! We apparently know each other!” Elijah said, “Go tell Ahab that I’m fucking here.” Obadiah got scared because apparently Jezebel had been searching far and wide trying to kill Elijah. Elijah didn’t even care a little bit.
When Ahab saw him he said, “Are you the fuckwad who’s been fucking everything up.” Elijah was like, “Nah dude. I haven’t been fucking anything up. That’s you. You made god sad because you started worshipping a way chiller god and now he’s jealous. That’s why we’re having a drought right now.”
Elijah got all the higher ups and all 450 Baal prophets in Ahab’s kingdom together and they built two altars, one for Baal and one for Jehovah. Elijah said to the crowd, “I’m the only fucking Jehovah prophet left alive. Ya’ll got 450 Baal prophets. Those aren’t good odds, but i don’t even care. Get me a bull and them a bull. We’ll kill these bulls with a knife and sacrifice them. Whichever god sends a firestorm down first is the better god.”
The Baal prophets started chanting to Baal and dancing and whatnot. After a few hours Elijah started talking shit to them. He was like, “Maybe you should shout louder. I bet he’s meditating or on vacation or some shit.” The Baal prophets ignored him and started slashing their arms open with swords and bleeding everywhere in an attempt to get Baal to come down. Elijah was like, “That’s gross.” And started pouring gallons and gallons of water on his altar, which is a great thing to do in the middle of a drought.
Then he got everyone to come watch him and said, “Hey god, come burn this fucking bull.” At this point it seems less like Elijah was a prophet and more like he was god’s manager or coach or something, cuz right then, a fucking firestorm came down and torched the bull, evaporated all the water, and turned the altar into fucking dust. A flabbergasted crowd just started freaking the fuck out and screaming, “Apparently Jehovah is stronger than Baal and might makes right all the time!” Elijah told the crowd that he had literally just won over to slaughter all 450 Baal prophets. This wasn’t too hard because they had just been bleeding themselves dry.
So Elijah went on top of Mt Carmel and made his assistant run up and down the mountain down to the sea seven fucking times because he’s an asshole. The seventh time, the assistant said he saw a cloud no bigger than his hand. Instead of explaining how distance alters the perceptive size of things, Elijah told him to announce to Ahab that it was time to ride his chariot back home, lest he get rained on. This was huge news, cuz it hadn’t rained in like 3 years. Apparently Elijah was either pretty totally badass or Ahab had shitty horses, because it says he outran Ahab’s chariot all the way back to Jezrel.
Even though Elijah had apparently restored rainfall back to Israel, Jezebel still wanted to kill him. So he went into exile for a while and occasionally god brought him food. After not eating or drinking any water for 40 days, because god loves the number 40, god gave him instructions on getting a new protege named Elisha, who would slaughter a shitload of people. Then he told him to go back to Damascus and make this guy Jehu the new king.
Elijah walked up to Elisha when he was plowing and threw his robe on him. Elisha was like, “Okay! I’ll go with you, just let me say goodbye to my family.” It’s a good thing Elijah wasn’t like, “Oh I just thought you looked cold.” Cuz that would’ve been awkward. Elijah did reply, “What have I told you?” For some reason, Elisha must have heard, “Go kill all 12 of your dad’s oxen.” Because he did exactly that. Then he followed Elijah.
Meanwhile this Aramean king Ben-Hadad demanded that Ahab hand over “All of his silver and gold and all of Israel’s best females.” Ahab, being a shitty king, was totally fine with this until everyone else flipped the fuck out over it. Eventually he refused, they went to war and Ben-Hadad lost. Ahab let people who surrendered live and then they attacked again. He decided to let Ben-Hadad live again. This pissed Elijah off.
A prophet told a random guy to hit him with his sword. The guy didn’t, so the prophet made a lion eat him. I don’t know why they included this story, but it’s pretty fucked up. Anyways eventually Ahab wanted this guy Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth didn’t wanna give it up. Jezebel had Naboth killed. Elijah cursed Ahab with the very same curse that Ahijah gave to Jeroboam. It didn’t come true. Eventually Ahab died and actually the book of 1st Kings ends pretty abruptly. So I will too.
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