The Fallible Study Bible

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1 Kings14:19–20

Nadab Succeeds Jeroboam

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1 Kings 14:19–20 — Nadab Succeeds Jeroboam. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

19

As for the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he waged war and how he reigned, they are indeed written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wə·ye·ṯer diḇ·rê yā·rā·ḇə·‘ām ’ă·šer nil·ḥam wa·’ă·šer mā·lāḵ hin·nām kə·ṯū·ḇîm ‘al- sê·p̄er diḇ·rê hay·yā·mîm lə·mal·ḵê yiś·rā·’êl

Word by word15 · parsed
וְיֶ֙תֶר֙wə·ye·ṯerAs for the restH3499
√ yether — properly, an overhanging, iConjunctive wawNounmasculine singular construct
yether: an overhanging, a remainder The word that governs the whole closing formula of Kings. What follows it is never the trivial leftovers but, on the commentators' own showing, the bulk: ✦ Ellicott judges that Jeroboam's reign was probably "prosperous enough in peace and war," and ✦ Pulpit records Bahr's remark that the exploits of this long reign find no mention in Scripture at all. The yether is where a king's greatness is filed.
דִּבְרֵ֣יdiḇ·rêof the actsH1697
√ dâbâr — a wordNounmasculine plural construct
dâbâr: a word Hebrew has no separate noun for "deed" here. Dibrê Yârobʻâm is literally the words of Jeroboam, and the same construct reappears at i 11 inside the title of the royal annals. The inspired historian is therefore choosing among words, not inventing them, which is exactly the point ✦ Poole and ✦ Benson press when they insist the source was a civil daybook and the selection was the Spirit's.
יָֽרָבְעָ֔םyā·rā·ḇə·‘āmof JeroboamH3379
√ Yârobʻâm — Jarobam, the name of two Israelite kingsNounpropermasculine singular
אֲשֶׁ֥ר’ă·šerhowH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
נִלְחַ֖םnil·ḥamhe waged warH3898
√ lâcham — to feed onVerbNifalPerfectthird person masculine singular
lâcham: to feed on, to fight (Nifal) The Nifal stem carries the mutual sense: fighting that is done against someone who fights back. Perfect aspect sums the whole career of it in a single closed act. ✦ JFB's observation belongs here: none of the threatenings against this house altered its policy, so the wars run their full course while the verdict on the reign has already been pronounced in Ahijah's oracle earlier in this chapter (✦ Henry treats 14:7-20 as that single block of judgment).
וַאֲשֶׁ֣רwa·’ă·šerand howH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatConjunctive wawPronounrelative
מָלָ֑ךְmā·lāḵhe reignedH4427
√ mâlak — to reignVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
mâlak: to reign Qal perfect, matched to nilḥam by the repeated ʼăsher. War and rule are the two headings under which everything omitted is filed; the historian names the categories precisely so he can decline to open them.
הִנָּ֣םhin·nāmthey are indeedH2009
√ hinnêh — lo!Interjectionthird person masculine plural
hinnêh: lo! The interjection with a plural suffix, "behold them," is the formula's pivot. It concedes that a fuller, more flattering account of this king exists and is available, and in the same breath refuses it. Scripture here is openly a selection, and says so.
כְּתוּבִ֗יםkə·ṯū·ḇîmwrittenH3789
√ kâthab — to grave, by implication, to write (describe, inscribe, prescribe, subscribe)VerbQalQalPassParticiplemasculine plural
kâthab: to grave, to write, to inscribe Qal passive participle, masculine plural: not "someone wrote them" but "they stand written," a settled state. The root's first sense is to engrave. What a king does is cut into a surface and stays there, whether or not the canon repeats it.
עַל־‘al-inH5921
√ ʻal — above, over, upon, or against (yet always in this last relation with a downward aspect) in a great variety of applicationsPreposition
סֵ֛פֶרsê·p̄erthe BookH5612
√ çêpher — properly, writing (the art or a document)Nounmasculine singular construct
çêpher: writing, a document A scroll or dispatch, not a codex. ✦ Poole and ✦ Benson agree, almost word for word, that this is not the canonical book of Chronicles, which was written long after, but the royal annals kept daily by appointment; ✦ Gill adds the Roman parallel of the annals kept by the Pontifex Maximus and open to common reading.
דִּבְרֵ֥יdiḇ·rêof the ChroniclesH1697
√ dâbâr — a wordNounmasculine plural construct
הַיָּמִ֖יםhay·yā·mîm. . .H3117
√ yôwm — a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space of time defined by an associated term), (often used adverb)ArticleNounmasculine plural
yôwm: a day Plural with the article, inside the construct chain: the scroll of the words of the days. ✦ Pulpit gives the exact force of the title: a record of daily occurrences. The next verse opens with this very noun (wə·hay·yā·mîm), so the days that were written become the days that were counted.
לְמַלְכֵ֥יlə·mal·ḵêof the KingsH4428
√ melek — a kingPreposition-lNounmasculine plural construct
יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃yiś·rā·’êlof IsraelH3478
√ Yisrâʼêl — Jisrael, a symbolical name of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
20

And the length of Jeroboam’s reign was twenty-two years, and he rested with his fathers, and his son Nadab reigned in his place.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wə·hay·yā·mîm ’ă·šer yā·rā·ḇə·‘ām mā·laḵ ‘eś·rîm ū·šə·ta·yim šā·nāh way·yiš·kaḇ ‘im- ’ă·ḇō·ṯāw bə·nōw nā·ḏāḇ way·yim·lōḵ taḥ·tāw

Word by word14 · parsed
וְהַיָּמִים֙wə·hay·yā·mîmAnd the lengthH3117
√ yôwm — a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space of time defined by an associated term), (often used adverb)Conjunctive waw, ArticleNounmasculine plural
yôwm: a day The verse opens with the same word the annals title ended on. Days are the unit in which both the record and the reign are measured, and the accounting of them is the only summary this king gets.
אֲשֶׁ֣ר’ă·šerH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
יָרָבְעָ֔םyā·rā·ḇə·‘āmof Jeroboam’sH3379
√ Yârobʻâm — Jarobam, the name of two Israelite kingsNounpropermasculine singular
מָלַ֣ךְmā·laḵreignH4427
√ mâlak — to reignVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
mâlak: to reign Qal perfect, the reign viewed whole and finished, and it will be answered at i 12 by the consecutive imperfect of the same root for Nadab: one reign sealed, the next begun, with nothing in between but a man lying down.
עֶשְׂרִ֥ים‘eś·rîm[was] twenty-twoH6242
√ ʻesrîym — twentyNumbercommon plural
וּשְׁתַּ֖יִםū·šə·ta·yim. . .H8147
√ shᵉnayim — twoConjunctive wawNumberfd
שָׁנָ֑הšā·nāhyearsH8141
√ shâneh — a year (as a revolution of time)Nounfeminine singular
shâneh: a year, a revolution of time Twenty-two of them. ✦ Benson and ✦ Cambridge both fix the endpoint by synchronism: Jeroboam lived into the second year of Asa of Judah, so the reign that broke the kingdom outlasted Rehoboam and still ended inside a single generation.
וַיִּשְׁכַּב֙way·yiš·kaḇand he restedH7901
√ shâkab — to lie down (for rest, sexual connection, decease or any other purpose)Conjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
shâkab: to lie down The standing royal death formula of Kings, and its force is that death is posture, not defeat: the king lies down where his fathers lie. ✦ Poole weighs the two senses and doubts the literal one for a king, since royal sepulchres were separate; ✦ Geneva refuses the gentleness of the idiom altogether and glosses it from 2 Chronicles 13:20, that the Lord smote him and he died. ⚙ The narrator's quiet formula and Geneva's stroke are not in conflict: Kings records the posture, Chronicles the hand.
עִם־‘im-withH5973
√ ʻim — adverb or preposition, with (iPreposition
אֲבֹתָ֔יו’ă·ḇō·ṯāwhis fathersH1
√ ʼâb — father, in a literal and immediate, or figurative and remote applicationNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
ʼâb: father Plural construct with suffix. For a king of Judah this word gathers him to David; for Jeroboam son of Nebat it gathers him to no one the record has named. The formula is borrowed from a dynasty he left, and it is the last dignity the historian grants him.
בְּנ֖וֹbə·nōwand his sonH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine singular constructthird person masculine singular
bên: a son, as a builder of the family name The lexicon's own gloss is the irony of the verse. A son is the builder of the house; this son will be the house's demolition, murdered in his second year with all his father's line.
נָדָ֥בnā·ḏāḇNadabH5070
√ Nâdâb — Nadab, the name of four IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Nâdâb: Nadab, the name of four Israelites A rare name, standing in only twenty verses in the canon, and the other bearer everyone knows is Aaron's firstborn, who offered strange fire and was consumed (Leviticus 10:1). ✦ Cambridge notes that only Abijah and Nadab of Jeroboam's family are named, and infers from 1 Kings 15:29 that there were more; ✦ Gill guesses Nadab was the younger. ⚙ The echo of the earlier Nadab is mine, not theirs, and rests on the name alone.
וַיִּמְלֹ֛ךְway·yim·lōḵreignedH4427
√ mâlak — to reignConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
mâlak: to reign Consecutive imperfect: the narrative simply carries on. No anointing, no prophet, no promise; the verb that needed a whole chapter of Ahijah's oracle to explain in v. 7 now costs three words.
תַּחְתָּֽיו׃פtaḥ·tāwin his placeH8478
√ tachath — the bottom (as depressed)Prepositionthird person masculine singular
tachath: the bottom, underneath, in place of The closing word of the unit, followed in the text by the paragraph marker פ. Succession is written as substitution: Nadab occupies the space under a man who has lain down. ✦ Benson presses the sequel, that Nadab lost the crown, his life and every life of his family within ten years.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The wars Scripture will not narrate — 14:19

The formula begins with וְיֶ֙תֶר֙ (yether), the overhang, what is left standing outside the account. ✦ Ellicott states the principle plainly: the preceding verse closed the detailed record, and Jeroboam's exaltation, his promise, his idolatry and its punishment are all the historian cares to narrate; everything else is summed up in "how he warred" and "how he reigned." ✦ Ellicott further judges that the reign was probably prosperous enough in peace and war, though the attempt on Judah failed. ✦ Barnes divides the wars into those with Rehoboam and the war with Abijam; ✦ Cambridge supplies the detail from 2 Chronicles 13, the defeat, the five thousand fallen, the captured cities; ✦ K&D observes that of all the wars described in the annals, the Abijam war is the only one of which we have any account. ⚙ Note what this means about the verb: nilḥam is a Nifal, mutual fighting, and the canon lets us see only the campaign Jeroboam lost. ✦ JFB adds the one moral fact the historian does keep, that none of the threatenings against this house produced any change in its policy or government.

ii. The scroll of the words of the days — 14:19

✦ Pulpit gives the title exactly: "the book of the words (or matters) of the days," a record of daily occurrences. ✦ Poole and ✦ Benson, in nearly identical wording, warn that this is not the canonical book of Chronicles, which was written long after, but a book of civil records kept by the king's command from day to day, out of which the sacred penman took, by the direction of God's Spirit, what was most useful for God's honour and men's edification. ✦ Gill agrees and reaches for a pagan analogue: at Rome, from the beginning to the times of Mutius, the events of every year were committed to writing by order of the Pontifex Maximus and lay open for common reading, and these, as Tully says, are what are called annals. ⚙ So the verse admits a documentary source and a human archive, and it does so with הִנָּ֣ם, "behold them," a finger pointed at a shelf the canon declines to copy. Inspiration here looks like selection under oath, not dictation without sources.

iii. He lay down, and Nadab reigned underneath him — 14:20

Twenty-two years, counted in שָׁנָ֑ה, the singular "year" repeated by the numeral. ✦ Benson and ✦ Cambridge both date the death to the second year of Asa. ✦ Pulpit reports Bahr's remark that the exploits of this long reign find no mention in Scripture, the historian dwelling exclusively on the sin whose consequences were of so much greater moment; ✦ Pulpit then offers his own conjecture, published elsewhere (his own citation: Homil. Quart. IV., p. 257), that the "stroke" of 2 Chronicles 13:20 was not improbably the death of Jeroboam's son, a bitter foretaste of the judgment to come. ⚙ That is a guess, and Pulpit marks it as his own. ✦ Geneva simply glosses the euphemism with the stroke; ✦ Poole weighs whether "slept with his fathers" means burial in an ancestral tomb, which he doubts for a king, or death as they died. ✦ Benson carries the account forward: the crown passed to Nadab, who lost it, his life, and the lives of all his family within ten years, for the triumphing of the wicked is short. ⚙ The Hebrew has already said as much in one preposition: Nadab reigns תַּחְתָּֽיו, underneath him, in the hollow left by a man who lay down.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. Two books are open in these two verses, and the whole theology of Kings lives in the gap between them. There is the scroll of the words of the days, where Jeroboam's wars and administration stand engraved (kᵉṯûḇîm, graven, settled), the archive ✦ Poole, ✦ Benson and ✦ Gill describe as a daily civil record; and there is the account you are reading, which points at that scroll and walks past it. The omission is the verdict. A man may fill twenty-two years of annals and receive, in the book that lasts, one clause of summary and one epithet.

⚙ Then comes the sentence that ought to unsettle any reader who has ever planned a succession. He lay down with his fathers, and his son reigned taḥtāw, underneath him. Every dynasty in the world is built on that preposition, and the preposition is a confession: a throne that must be handed on is a throne that has already been lost. (The pullquote beside this paragraph is our own line, not a verse.) The house of David is given the same formula throughout Kings, so the formula alone convicts no one. What convicts Jeroboam is that he was offered a sure house on David's own terms (1 Kings 11:38) and built calves instead, so his taḥtāw holds only ten more years and one more Nadab.

⚙ We do not claim the text moralizes the name Nadab, and no commentator in this brief does. We only observe what the Verifier's lexeme count makes visible: the name is rare, and the last man in Scripture to carry it into a sanctuary carried strange fire. Take that as resonance, not as proof.

A throne that must be handed on is a throne that has already been lost.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The closing formula, turned on Jeroboam's own son structural / thematic: confirmed

The three words that end this reign, יֶ֙תֶר֙ (yether, H3499), סֵ֛פֶר (çêpher, H5612) and כְּתוּבִ֗ים (kâthab, H3789), recur intact at 1 Kings 15:31 to close the reign of Nadab, the son named in the very next verse here. ⚙ The formula is not praise and not blame; it is the historian's way of saying that a life has been filed. ✦ Poole, ✦ Benson and ✦ Gill all insist the scroll it names is the royal daybook, not canonical Chronicles, so the repetition is an editorial habit drawn from a real archive rather than an inner-biblical quotation.

1 Kings 15:31

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3499 yether (in 95 vv), H5612 çêpher (in 174 vv), H3789 kâthab (in 212 vv). Real verbal overlap, but all three are common words inside a fixed editorial formula and neither passage cites the other, so the link is tiered structural rather than quotation.

Nadab reigns underneath him, and reigns two years structural / thematic: confirmed

The last clause here, וַיִּמְלֹ֛ךְ ... תַּחְתָּֽיו, is picked up at 1 Kings 15:25, where Nadab son of Jeroboam begins to reign over Israel in the second year of Asa and reigns two years. ✦ Cambridge, commenting here, infers from 1 Kings 15:29 that Jeroboam had more children than the two named, since the whole house is struck down. ⚙ The two verses together form the shortest possible dynasty: a man lies down, his son stands in the hollow, and within two years there is no house left to file.

1 Kings 15:25

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3379 Yârobʻâm (in 95 vv), H4427 mâlak (in 284 vv), H5070 Nâdâb (in 20 vv). Nâdâb is rare, but the shared items are a personal name and the common verb to reign, i.e. narrative continuation of the same persons, not a quotation; tiered structural.

The other Nadab: a rare name that already carried fire structural / thematic: confirmed

The Verifier's candidate list shows how narrow this name is. נָדָ֥ב (Nâdâb, H5070) stands in only twenty verses in the whole canon, and the lexicon itself notes that four Israelites bear it. Most of the occurrences the Verifier lists belong to Aaron's firstborn, the remainder falling in the genealogies of Judah and Gibeon: called up the mountain with the elders (Exodus 24:1, 24:9), set apart to the priesthood (Exodus 28:1), and then consumed for offering strange fire that the LORD had not commanded (Leviticus 10:1; Numbers 3:4). ⚙ The connection between the two men is the name and nothing more. No commentator in this brief draws it, and we do not claim the narrator intends it. But the reader who hears it is hearing something real about this chapter: Jeroboam's whole offence was unauthorized worship, and the son he leaves to guard it bears the name of the man who died for exactly that.

Leviticus 10:1 · Numbers 3:4 · Exodus 24:9

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5070 Nâdâb (in 20 vv), a rare lexeme. The shared item is only a personal name, so no verbal or quotation claim is made; the strange-fire resonance is ⚙ synthesis, unsupported by any voice in this unit.

Two registers of the days structural / thematic: confirmed

The unit's central image is a written register of a man's days, סֵ֛פֶר דִּבְרֵ֥י הַיָּמִ֖ים, which ✦ Pulpit renders exactly as the record of daily occurrences. The New Testament keeps the image and moves the archive: books are opened and the dead are judged from what is written in them, and a second book of names is opened beside them (Revelation 20:12); the Lord tells the seventy to rejoice not in their works but that their names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). ⚙ The two testaments agree that a life is written down, and disagree about which register decides it. Jeroboam's deeds are in the Israelite annals in full, and it does him no good at all.

Revelation 20:12 · Luke 10:20

basis: Cross-Testament (Hebrew to Greek), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible and no verbal claim is made. This pair is not in the Verifier's candidate list; the recorded basis is the shared motif of a written register of a person's deeds and names, and the link is ⚙ synthesis offered as motif only.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

Reigning taḥtāw: the throne that keeps needing a replacement ancient/widely-held

The unit ends on תַּחְתָּֽיו (tachath, H8478), whose plain sense is underneath. Nadab reigns in the space his father vacated by lying down. ⚙ That is what every throne in Kings does, and the book records the machinery breaking again and again; ✦ Henry states the pattern for the northern kingdom, that after they left the house of David the government never continued long in one family, but one undermined and destroyed another. Against this stands the promise to David of a house, a kingdom and a throne established forever (2 Samuel 7:16), which the angel applies to Mary's son: the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:32-33). The difference is not dynastic luck. It is that one king never has to lie down and be replaced. ⚙ The contrast with Jeroboam specifically is our framing; the Davidic reading of 2 Samuel 7 fulfilled in Christ is the ancient and widely held one.

2 Samuel 7:16 · Luke 1:32-33

He lay down with his fathers, and saw corruption ancient/widely-held

וַיִּשְׁכַּב֙ עִם־אֲבֹתָ֔יו (shâkab, H7901, with ʼâb, H1) is the standing death formula of Kings, used of David himself at 1 Kings 2:10 as it is used here of the man who tore the kingdom from David's son. ✦ Poole notes the idiom can mean either burial with the ancestors or simply dying as they died. Paul preaches on precisely this idiom at Antioch: David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised again saw no corruption (Acts 13:36-37). ⚙ The Greek is not a citation of this verse and the link cannot be lexical across the testaments; what Paul takes up is the formula itself, the one sentence Kings can write about every king it has. The gospel claim is that one man reached the end of the formula and did not complete it.

Acts 13:36-37 · 1 Kings 2:10

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

⚙ Honesty notes for this unit. (1) The brief supplies no textual variants for either verse; the only apparatus mark carried in the interlinear is the paragraph marker פ attached to taḥtāw at the close of v. 20, which sets off the section. We make no claim about the Greek tradition of 1 Kings, since nothing in this brief documents it.

(2) Every historical detail here about Jeroboam's wars comes from the commentators, not from these two verses: ✦ Barnes, ✦ Cambridge, ✦ Gill and ✦ K&D all supply the campaigns against Rehoboam and Abijah from 1 Kings 14:30, 1 Kings 15:6 and 2 Chronicles 13, which lie outside this unit's sourced interlinear. The verse itself names no enemy.

(3) The manner of Jeroboam's death is disputed by the voices themselves. ✦ Geneva and ✦ Cambridge read it through 2 Chronicles 13:20, that the Lord struck him; ✦ Benson supposes a sudden and sore disease; ✦ Pulpit canvasses a lingering illness or a sudden one and then adds his own published conjecture that the "stroke" was his son's death. 1 Kings 14:20 says only that he lay down with his fathers. Treat the rest as inference.

(4) ✦ Poole's and ✦ Benson's notes on the book of the chronicles are nearly identical in wording; they are one tradition, not two independent witnesses, and we have said so at the voice.

(5) The Nadab thread rests on a shared proper name and on our own reading. The Verifier confirms the lexeme and its rarity; it confirms nothing about intent, and we do not claim any.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)