¹Then it so happened that a man of God came from Judah with the word of the Lord to Beth-El, while Jeroboam was standing at the altar about to burn incense. ²And he called out at the altar with the word of the Lord and said, “O altar, O altar, this is what the Lord says: ‘Behold, a son is to be born in the house of David, and his name will be Josiah, and he will sacrifice on you the priests of the idolatrous raised sites who now burn incense on you, and man's bones will burn on you.’ ” ³And on that day he performed a miracle and said, “This is the miracle which the Lord has pronounced. Behold, the altar will split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.” ⁴And it came to pass, when the king heard the word of the man of God, who had called out at the altar of Beth-El, that Jeroboam stretched out his hand over the altar and said, “Seize him.” But his hand which he had stretched out over it withered, and he was not able to retract it. ⁵And the altar was split, and the ash was poured out from the altar, as a miracle which the man of God performed with the word of the Lord. ⁶Then the king reacted and said to the man of God, “Plead with the Lord your God, please, and pray for me that my hand may be restored to me.” And the man of God pleaded with the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him, and it became as it was at first. ⁷And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and dine, and I will give you a gift.” ⁸But the man of God said to the king, “Even if you were to give me half of your house, I would not go with you, and I would not eat bread or drink water in this place. ⁹For that is what the Lord commanded me by his word when he said, ‘You shall not eat bread, and you shall not drink water, and you shall not return by the way you came.’ ” ¹⁰So he went by another way, and he did not return by the way by which he came to Beth-El. ¹¹Now a certain elderly prophet lived in Beth-El, and his son came and told him the whole proceeding which the man of God had carried out on that day in Beth-El – the words which he spoke to the king – and they told them to their father. ¹²Then their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” For his sons had seen which way the man of God, who had come from Judah, went. ¹³And he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him, and he rode on it. ¹⁴And he went after the man of God, and he found him sitting under a terebinth tree, and he said to him, “Are you the man of God who has come from Judah?” And he said, “I am.” ¹⁵Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” ¹⁶But he said, “I am not able to return with you and to go with you, and I shall not eat bread, and I shall not drink water with you in this place. ¹⁷For the word to me, by the word of the Lord, was, ‘You shall not eat bread, and you shall not drink water there. You shall not return by going back by the way you came.’ ” ¹⁸Then he said to him, “I too am a prophet like you, and an angel has spoken to me by the word of the Lord and has said, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, and he will eat bread and drink water.’ ” But he was lying to him. ¹⁹And he returned with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. ²⁰Then it came to pass while they were sitting at the table that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back, ²¹and he called out to the man of God who had come from Judah and said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Since you have been disobedient to the utterance of the Lord, and you have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded, ²²but you went back, and you have eaten bread and drunk water in a place for which he said to you, «Do not eat bread and do not drink water there», your corpse will not enter into the sepulchre of your fathers.’ ” ²³And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him – for the prophet whom he had brought back. ²⁴And as he was travelling, a lion came across him on the way and killed him, and his corpse was discarded on the road, but the donkey stood next to it, and the lion stood next to the corpse. ²⁵Then it so happened that some men were passing by, and they saw the corpse discarded on the road and the lion standing next to the corpse, and they went away and reported it in the city in which the elderly prophet lived. ²⁶And the prophet who had brought him back when he was on his way heard it, and he said, “It is the man of God who was disobedient to the utterance of the Lord, and the Lord gave him over to the lion, and it tore him to pieces and killed him, according to the word of the Lord, who had spoken to him.” ²⁷Then he spoke to his sons and said, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled it. ²⁸Then he set out and found his corpse which had been discarded on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside the corpse. The lion did not eat the corpse, and it did not tear at the donkey. ²⁹Then the prophet took the corpse of the man of God, and he placed him on the donkey and brought him back, and the elderly prophet went to the city to mourn for him and to bury him. ³⁰And he placed his corpse in his grave, and they mourned for him, saying, “Alas, my brother.” ³¹Then it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spoke to his sons and said, “On my death, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried. Place my bones next to his bones. ³²For the words will surely come to pass which he called out by the word of the Lord at the altar which was in Beth-El and in all the temples of the idolatrous raised sites which were in the cities of Samaria.” ³³After this affair Jeroboam did not turn back from his evil way, and he again appointed priests for the idolatrous raised sites from the common people. He installed whoever wished it, who then became priests of the idolatrous raised sites. ³⁴And this affair became the sin of the house of Jeroboam, and it was cause to destroy it and to obliterate it from the face of the earth.