Prophet Shemaiah The

The Prophet Shemaiah was an Old Testament prophet who lived in the 10th century BC, during the reigns of King Solomon and his son Rehoboam. After Solomon's death the united kingdom of Israel split: the ten northern tribes acclaimed Jeroboam I as king, leaving Rehoboam with only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. When Rehoboam mustered an army to force the breakaway tribes back under his rule, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, commanding him to tell the king and the people not to go to war against their kinsmen, for the division of the kingdom had come to pass by God's will (1 Kings 12:22–24). Rehoboam heeded the prophet and disbanded the army. Later, when Rehoboam and Judah forsook the law of the Lord, in the fifth year of his reign the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak invaded and marched on Jerusalem. Shemaiah declared to the king and the princes: "Thus says the Lord: You have abandoned Me, so I now abandon you into the hand of Shishak" (2 Chronicles 12:5). When the rulers humbled themselves, the prophet announced that the city would not be utterly destroyed, though it would be plundered. Shemaiah also recorded the acts of Rehoboam's reign (2 Chronicles 12:15), though this chronicle has not survived. The Church commemorates the Prophet Shemaiah on January 9/22.