1 Kings 16:34 - Wesley's Explanatory Notes

In his days — This is added, as an instance of the certainty of divine predictions, this being fulfilled eight hundred years after it was threatened; and withal, as a warning to the Israelites, not to think themselves innocent or safe, because the judgment threatened against them by Ahijah, 1 Kings 14:15, was not yet executed. Or, as an evidence of the horrible corruption of his times, and of that high contempt of God which then reigned. The Bethelite — Who lived in Bethel, the seat and sink of idolatry, wherewith he was throughly leavened. He laid, &c. — That is, in the beginning of his building, God took away his first — born, and others successively in the progress of the work, and the youngest when he finished it. And so he found by his own sad experience, the truth of God's word.