A Royal Claim Is Tested from Behind

Dating a king of Judah by the year of a northern king is the routine of Kings, but this is the only time the Book of 2 Chronicles does it. Jeroboam is the one northern ruler the book cannot keep out of view, because his whole reign ran against the house of David.

The mother given here, Michaiah daughter of Uriel, differs from Maachah daughter of Absalom in 11:20; the likeliest harmony makes her Absalom’s granddaughter. Gibeah was Saul’s town. Kings gives this reign eight verses and a flat verdict that Abijam “walked in all the sins of his father” (1 Kings 15:3); Chronicles passes over that verdict.

Eight hundred thousand is exactly the figure David’s census gave for Israel in 2 Samuel 24:9. Many scholars read the Hebrew eleph in such counts as a military unit or contingent rather than a literal thousand, which would shrink the armies drastically. Either way the proportion, two to one against Judah, is the point.

Zemaraim was a town of Benjamin near Bethel (Joshua 18:22), so Abijah speaks from the edge of the disputed border. Addressing an opposing people from a height recalls Jotham shouting his parable down from Mount Gerizim to the men of Shechem (Judges 9:7). The speech runs to verse 12 and has no parallel in Kings.

Salt was added to every offering as “the salt of the covenant of thy God” (Leviticus 2:13), and in the ancient Near East to share salt was to be bound by a meal. The question “Ought ye not to know?” treats the Davidic grant as common knowledge that the north has chosen to forget.

Jeroboam had been Solomon’s officer over the forced labour of the house of Joseph (1 Kings 11:28), so “servant of Solomon” is literal. Calling Solomon “his lord” turns the revolt into a servant’s betrayal of his master, not a people’s protest about a yoke.

“Vain men” is reqim, empty men, the word for the hired followers of Abimelech (Judges 9:4) and Jephthah (Judges 11:3). “Young and tenderhearted” is nearly what David said of Solomon, “young and tender” (1 Chronicles 22:5, 29:1). Applied to a man of forty-one, it is a generous excuse.

“The kingdom of the LORD in the hand of the sons of David” is Chronicles’ distinctive claim: the throne is the LORD’s, and David’s line holds it for him (1 Chronicles 28:5, 29:23). “Which Jeroboam made you for gods” echoes Aaron’s calf, “These be thy gods, O Israel” (Exodus 32:4).

“Consecrate himself” is literally “fill his hand”, the Hebrew idiom for ordaining a priest. The ordination in Exodus 29:1 required a young bullock and two rams; Abijah’s seven rams suggest the north had set a higher price, but opened the office to anyone who could pay, as 1 Kings 13:33 says: “whosoever would, he consecrated him.”

“We have not forsaken him” is spoken only one chapter after 12:1 and 12:5 said that Rehoboam and all Israel had forsaken the LORD. Abijah speaks for Judah’s worship as it stands now, the humbled and restored order, not for his father’s record.

Each item is out of the law: the morning and evening burnt offering of Exodus 29:38–42, the shewbread on the pure table of Leviticus 24:5–9, the lamps kept burning from evening in Exodus 27:21. Solomon had made ten candlesticks (4:7), but Abijah speaks of one, the lampstand of the tabernacle pattern.

“For our captain” is literally “at our head”. The priests’ trumpets carry out Numbers 10:9: when you go to war, “blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God.” The last appeal still names the enemy “children of Israel” and their God as their fathers’ God.

An ambush sent round behind the enemy is the tactic Joshua used at Ai (Joshua 8:2, 12). While Abijah was speaking, Jeroboam was moving troops. The Hebrew piles up the positions, before them and behind them, so the reader stands in the trap with Judah.

“Looked back” is literally “turned”, and what they turn to see is battle on both sides. The two actions that follow are the two the speech had promised: a cry to the LORD, and priests blowing trumpets. Nothing is said of Abijah giving an order.

The shout is the teruah, the war cry raised at Jericho before the wall fell (Joshua 6:20). The Hebrew ties the timing closely: as the men of Judah shouted, God struck. No weapon is used in the verse until God has acted.

“Delivered them into their hand” is the formula of Israel’s holy wars, used of Sihon, Og and the kings of Canaan. It is now applied to Israel itself, a telling reversal: the people once given victories over the nations are the ones handed over.

Five hundred thousand dead is more than Judah’s entire army in verse 3. Whatever the figure means, it records a battle of which Kings says nothing at all beyond “there was war” (1 Kings 15:7). The dead are still “of Israel”, the same name Chronicles gives Judah.

“Relied” is shaan, to lean one’s weight on something; it becomes the test of Asa’s reign in 16:7–8. “Brought under” is the verb kana, the humbling used of Rehoboam and his princes in 12:6–12. Israel is humbled by force here; Judah had humbled itself.

Bethel was the site of one of Jeroboam’s golden calves. “Towns thereof” is literally “her daughters”, the villages dependent on a walled town. Jeshanah may be the “Shen” of 1 Samuel 7:12, and Ephrain is probably Ophrah of Benjamin. Bethel was back in northern hands by Amos’s day, so the gain did not last.

Jeroboam reigned twenty-two years (1 Kings 14:20) and actually outlived Abijah by about two years, since Asa came to the throne in Jeroboam’s twentieth year (1 Kings 15:9). The verse sets side by side his lost strength and a death attributed directly to the LORD, “struck” being the verb used of plague.

Fourteen wives, twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters cannot all belong to a reign of three years; the figures cover his life. “Waxed mighty” is the verb hazaq again, the strength Rehoboam gained and then misused in 12:1.

The word the King James renders here is midrash, one of its only two appearances in the Old Testament; the other is 24:27. It meant a written study or commentary on something. Iddo has now been cited three times, for Solomon’s visions, Rehoboam’s genealogies and Abijah’s sayings.