The writer of 1 Kings did not leave us to figure out for ourselves how the encounter and its outcome should be viewed. He both wrote what happened and explained why it happened. This, he said, was an occurrence that took place because the Lord was in charge of the situation and brought it about so that his word spoken by the prophet Ahijah was fulfilled.
It is obvious that each of the persons involved was following the dictates of their own wills, but overseeing their free actions was the Lord’s divine will. God planned all that occurred so that His own plan and purpose would be put in place.
This is one of the places in Scripture that shows that God’s plan and purpose makes use of the free agency of humans as second causes.
Human beings are not able to fully understand the interaction between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Yet it is at the foundation of the understanding of God’s providence over all of his creation, including the responsible actions of the moral beings who inhabit it.
We may ask, How did the writer know of the prophecy?
The meeting between Jeroboam and Ahijah occurred when they were alone in a field. It was also Ahijah who led Jeroboam out into the field, which might have been done for the sake of privacy.
Scholars tend to search for human or natural sources
as an explanation. Indeed, Ahijah could be the source of the writer’s knowledge. The writer of 2 Chronicles 9:29 lists the writings of Ahijah the Shilonite
as one source for additional information on the life of Solomon. We ought to be open, however, to the possibility that the writer knew this because of the direct communication of the event in the process of inspiration.
15 So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the LORD that he might fulfill his word, which the LORD spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.