A Lamp in Jerusalem, and Another Northern Dynasty

The first synchronism in the book: a king of Judah is dated by the reign of Israel’s king. Rehoboam’s seventeen years (14:21) bring his son to the throne in Jeroboam’s eighteenth, and the two kingdoms’ clocks are now kept side by side.

Abishalom is Absalom, David’s rebel son, so Abijam is Absalom’s grandson through his mother. Second Chronicles 13:2 calls her Michaiah daughter of Uriel, which suggests “daughter” here means granddaughter, through Absalom’s daughter Tamar (2 Samuel 14:27).

Second Chronicles 13 gives this king a long and orthodox speech against Jeroboam’s calves before a battle he wins. The Book of 1 Kings passes over all of it in a single verdict on his heart.

The lamp is defined here by two results: a son set up after him, and Jerusalem kept standing. “For David’s sake” has now been given as the reason four times since chapter 11.

This is the only place the book names a flaw in David, and it names the one that matters most. The main Greek manuscript lacks the clause about Uriah, which suggests some copyists found the exception hard to leave in.

The verse repeats 14:30 about Rehoboam in the middle of Abijam’s reign, and many take it as a copying slip; some manuscripts read “Abijam” for “Rehoboam”. Either way the war is inherited along with the throne.

Second Chronicles 13 describes this war at length: a battle at Mount Zemaraim, a huge northern defeat, and Bethel taken from Jeroboam. The Book of 1 Kings gives it one clause.

Asa’s name may come from an Aramaic word for healing or a physician. Second Chronicles 16:12 says that in his last illness he sought physicians rather than the LORD, which gives the name an edge.

Abijam came to the throne in Jeroboam’s eighteenth year and died in his twentieth, which the book counts as three years. Partial years at each end were counted as whole ones.

Forty one years, roughly 911 to 870 BC, is the longest reign since the kingdom split. The same Maachah is named as mother, which is why most readers take her to be Asa’s grandmother still holding the queen mother’s office.

Asa is the first king since Solomon to be judged right in the LORD’s eyes. David is his great-great-grandfather, but Hebrew uses “father” for any ancestor.

“Idols” here is gillulim, a contemptuous word probably related to dung pellets, a favourite of Ezekiel’s. The expulsion answers the charge in 14:24 made against his grandfather’s reign.

“Queen” is gebirah, “great lady”, the queen mother’s title. Her idol is a miphletseth, “something to shudder at”, a word used only here and in the parallel in Chronicles. It was made for Asherah, so the grove is the goddess herself.

These high places were probably local shrines to the LORD, used before the temple existed (3:2), rather than altars to other gods. Nearly every good king of Judah is given the same qualification until Hezekiah finally removes them.

Chronicles records Asa’s victory over Zerah the Ethiopian (2 Chronicles 14:9–15), and the spoil from it may be what he dedicated; that is an inference. The treasury is refilled after Shishak emptied it.

Second Chronicles 15:19 says there was no war until Asa’s thirty fifth year, yet Baasha died in Asa’s twenty sixth (16:8). The two records count differently, and the discrepancy has long exercised chronologists.

Ramah lay about eight kilometres north of Jerusalem on the main road through the hill country. Fortifying it blocked the route south, and 2 Chronicles 15:9 says northerners had been defecting to Asa in large numbers.

“All that were left” means after Shishak’s plundering (14:26). Hezion may be the Rezon of 11:23, which would make this Ben-hadad the grandson of Solomon’s adversary. Ben-hadad, “son of Hadad” the storm god, is a name several Damascus kings will bear.

The word for “present” is shochad, the ordinary Hebrew word for a bribe (Exodus 23:8). Second Chronicles 16:7 has the seer Hanani rebuke Asa for relying on Syria instead of the LORD.

Ijon, Dan and Abel-beth-maachah lie in a line down the Huleh valley, the invasion route from Damascus, and Cinneroth is the land around the Sea of Galilee. Dan, with its calf shrine, is sacked by a foreign army. Assyria will take the same towns in 2 Kings 15:29.

Baasha withdraws to Tirzah, his capital. A fortress half built is abandoned where it stands, which is what makes the next verse possible.

“None was exempted” uses naqi, free of obligation: this is forced labour, the same system Solomon used. Jeremiah 41:9 mentions a great cistern Asa made at Mizpah “for fear of Baasha”, and massive walls survive at the site, Tell en-Nasbeh.

Second Chronicles 16:12 dates the illness to his thirty ninth year and says it became very severe. Modern guesses such as gout or gangrene are only guesses; Chronicles cares more that he did not seek the LORD in it.

Jehoshaphat means “the LORD has judged”. He will reign twenty five years and appear beside Ahab in the campaign against Ramoth-gilead in chapter 22.

Jeroboam named his sons Nadab and Abijah, strikingly close to Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who made the first golden calf. Aaron’s Nadab died for offering strange fire (Leviticus 10:1–2); this Nadab will not outlast two years.

The son walks in “the way of his father”, the same word “way” that 13:33 used for the evil way Jeroboam would not turn from. The path has become an inheritance.

Baasha’s father is also named Ahijah, a coincidence with the prophet who foretold this end. Gibbethon, in Dan’s old allotment (Joshua 19:44), was a Philistine stronghold; Israel’s army is besieging it again some twenty four years later when the next coup happens (16:15).

Nadab came to the throne in Asa’s second year and died in his third, which is how two years of reign can amount to little more than one. The coup takes place in the army camp.

“Any that breathed” is the language of Joshua’s conquest, where the kings of Canaan were destroyed with “all that breathed” (Joshua 10:40). The vocabulary of holy war is turned on an Israelite royal house.

“Provocation” and “provoked” render ka‘as, vexation, one of the book’s key words for what idolatry does to the LORD. Here it gives the reason for a massacre that was also a political coup.

Nadab’s only recorded act is the siege at which he died, yet he still receives the full closing formula and a citation of the Israel annals. The form is kept even for a reign of a few months.

This repeats verse 16 word for word. The duplicate frames Nadab’s short reign inside the long war between Asa and Baasha.

Twenty four years is the longest northern reign yet, two more than Jeroboam’s. Baasha rules “all Israel”, meaning the whole northern kingdom, from Jeroboam’s own residence at Tirzah.

The next chapter opens with a prophet, Jehu son of Hanani, bringing exactly this charge against Baasha. A new dynasty receives the same verdict and, soon, the same sentence.