John Gill Commentary 1 Kings 14

At that time Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, fell sick .
] Being smitten of God with some disease, as a punishment of Jeroboam's sin; how long this was after the above things were done cannot be said.

And Jeroboam said to his wife
Who she was is not known:

arise, I pray you, and disguise yourself ;
put off her royal apparel, and clothe herself like a common person, mimic the dress and language of a countrywoman:

that you be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam :
by any that should see her on the road, or at the city she was to go to, or by the prophet to whom she wouldbe sent:

and get you to Shiloh ;
which, according to Bunting ^F7 , was twenty four miles, from Tirzah, where Jeroboam now lived, see(1 Kings 14:17)

behold, there is Ahijah the prophet :
called from thence the Shilonite, (1 Kings 11:29) ,

which told me that I should be king over this people :
and this coming to pass, proved him to be a true prophet, and to be credited in what he should say concerningtheir child.

Jeroboam desired his wife to go on this errand, because he did not care it should be known that he applied to any of the prophets of the Lord; nor did he choose it should be known whose child was inquired about, which another must have told, whereas his wife could speak of it as her own; and she was the fittest person to give an account of the child's illness, and would ask the most proper and pertinent questions, and bring him back a faithful report; and he would have her be disguised, lest the prophet, who bore no good will to him because of his apostasy, should refuse to give any answer at all, or else give a very rough and disagreeable one.

FOOTNOTES:

• F7: Travels p. 161.

And take with thee ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse
of honey, and go to him
It being usual to carry a present to a prophet when he was inquired of on any account, see (1 Samuel 9:7) and this being a plain present, and of such things as the country afforded, she might be taken for a plain countrywoman, and not for such a personage as she was: the ten loaves could not be large for a woman to carry, most probably made of wheat; the cracknels, according to the Greek version in Drusius, were for the prophet's children; they very likely were spiced, or were sweetened with honey, and might be somewhat like our simnels; they seem to have their name in Hebrew from having points and pricks in them for the sake of ornament; such as Plautus ^F8 calls "scribilitae", because as Turnebus ^F9 says, they were marked and pricked, and seemed as if they were written:

he shall tell you what shall become of the child ;
whether it should live or die, for that was all he wanted to know; he did not desire to know what should be done to the child for its recovery, nor to request the prophet's prayers for it.

FOOTNOTES:

• F8: Prolog. Poenulo, ver. 43.
• F9: Adversar. l. 23. c. 10.

And Jeroboam's wife did so, and went to Shiloh, and came to
the house of Abijah
Disguised herself, and took this long journey, and found the prophet's house; which she did partly in obedience to her husband, and partly from affection to her child: but Abijah could not see; her or anybody else that came into the room to him:

for his eyes were set by reason of his age ;
or "stood" fixed and immovable, as the eyes of blind men are; or the nerves and muscles of his eyes stood within the holes thereof, so that he could not see objects.

And the Lord said to Abijah
Either in a dream, or by an impulse upon his mind, before Jeroboam's wife came in:

behold, the wife of Jeroboam comes to ask a thing of you for her
son, for he is sick ;
to know whether he will recover or not:

thus and thus shall you say to her ;
as after expressed in some following verses:

for it shall be, when she comes in, that she shall feign herself to be
another woman ;
to the people that let her in, and introduce her to the prophet, and to the prophet himself; pretend herself to be a countrywoman come to ask a question of the prophet concerning her son that was ill of a disease.