Jeroboam's wife is a character in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
. She is unnamed in the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...
, but according to the
Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...
, she was an
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
ian princess called Ano:
:''And
Sousakim
Shishak, Shishaq or Susac (, Tiberian: , ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, an Egyptian pharaoh who sacked Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. He is usually identified with the pharaoh Shoshenq I.Troy Leiland Sagrillo. 2015.Shoshenq I and bi ...
gave to Jeroboam Ano the eldest sister of
Thekemina Tahpenes (; תַּחְפְּנֵיס/תַּחְפְּנֵס ''Taḥpənēs''; LXX Θεκεμιμας ''Thekemimas'', or Θεχεμινας ''Thekheminas''; possibly derived from Egyptian '' tꜣ ḥmt nswt'', meaning ''the wife of the king'', Late ...
his wife, to him as wife; she was great among the king's daughters...''
[1 Kings 12:24e]
New English Translation of the Septuagint
The ''New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title'' (NETS) is a modern translation of the Septuagint (LXX), that is the scriptures used by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews of ...
She is mentioned in
1 Kings 14, which describes how she visited the prophet
Ahijah the Shilonite
Ahijah the Shilonite ( ''ʾĂḥīyā'' meaning " Yah is my brother") was a Levite prophet of Shiloh in the days of Solomon, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible's First Books of Kings. Ahijah foretold to Jeroboam that he would become king ().
Th ...
. Her son
Abijah Abijah ( ') is a Biblical HebrewPetrovsky, p. 35 unisex nameSuperanskaya, p. 277 which means "my Father is Yah". The Hebrew form ' also occurs in the Bible.
Old Testament characters Women
*Abijah, who married King Ahaz of Judah. She is a ...
was sick, and on her husband
Jeroboam
Jeroboam I (; Hebrew: ''Yārŏḇə‘ām''; el, Ἱεροβοάμ, Hieroboám) was the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The Hebrew Bible describes the reign of Jeroboam to have commenced following a revolt of the ten northern ...
's instructions she disguised herself and went to Ahijah. Although Ahijah was blind, God had told him that she was coming and had given him a message for her. This included the death of her son, who was to die as soon as Jeroboam's wife came back home to
Tirzah. He would be the only one of Jeroboam's offspring who would be buried, "because something good was found in him, to
Yhwh
The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', ''waw'', and '' ...
the God of Israel". According to 1 Kings 14:17, her son died as soon as she stepped over the threshold.
In the Septuagint, the story is found in I Kings 12 after verse 24, and differs somewhat from the Masoretic text.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia the good that Abijah did: "Rabbinical Literature:The passage, I Kings, xiv. 13, in which there is a reference to "some good thing
ound in himtoward the Lord God of Israel," is interpreted (M. Ḳ. 28b) as an allusion to Abijah's courageous and pious act in removing the sentinels placed by his father on the frontier between Israel and Judah to prevent pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Some assert that he himself undertook a pilgrimage."
The wife of Jeroboam does not speak at all in the biblical narrative. Robin Gallaher Branch calls her "flat, vapid, and overwhelmingly sad", while
Adele Berlin
Adele Berlin (born May 23, 1943 in Philadelphia) is an American biblical scholar and Hebraist. Before her retirement, she was Robert H. Smith Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Maryland.
Berlin is best known for 1994 work ''Poeti ...
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".
Branch also argues that Jeroboam's wife was
abused by her husband.
[Branch, ''Jeroboam's Wife'', p. 96.]
References
{{reflist
Women in the Hebrew Bible
Queens consort of Israel and Judah
House of Jeroboam
Princesses of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt
Unnamed people of the Bible