Abijah Defeats Jeroboam

Before long God was ready to bring Jeroboam’s wicked deeds, and the punishment they deserved, down on his own head and on the heads of his whole house. A son of his named Abijah was lying sick at the time, and Jeroboam told his wife to lay aside her robes, put on the clothes of a private person, and go to the prophet Ahijah. He was a wonderful man at foretelling the future, Jeroboam said; it was he who had told him that he would be king. He also told her, when she came to him, to ask about the child as if she were a stranger, whether he would recover from this illness. So she did as her husband told her: she changed her clothes and came to the city of Shiloh, for that was where Ahijah lived. As she was going into his house—his eyes were then dim with age—God appeared to him and told him two things: that Jeroboam’s wife had come to him, and what answer he was to give to her question. So as the woman was coming into the house like a private person and a stranger, he cried out, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam! Why do you hide who you are? You are not hidden from God, who has appeared to me and told me that you were coming, and has commanded me what to say to you.” Then he told her to go back to her husband and say this to him: “Since I made you a great man when you were small, or rather when you were nothing, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, and you have forgotten these benefits, have abandoned my worship, and have made yourself molten gods and honored them, I will cast you down again in the same way. I will destroy your whole house and make them food for the dogs and the birds. For I am raising up a king over all this people who will leave none of Jeroboam’s family alive. The people too will share in the same punishment. They will be thrown out of this good land and scattered into the regions beyond the Euphrates, because they have followed their king’s wicked practices, worshiped the gods he made, and forsaken my sacrifices. But you, woman, hurry back to your husband and tell him this message. You will find your son dead, for as you enter the city he will depart this life. Yet he will be buried with the lamentation of all the people and honored with a general mourning, for he was the only good person in Jeroboam’s family.” [a]

When the prophet had foretold these things, the woman hurried away, distraught and deeply grieved at the death of the child he had spoken of. She lamented as she went along the road and mourned for her son, whose death was close at hand. She was truly in a miserable state over his death, which nothing could prevent. She hurried on, and yet in a most unhappy plight because of her son: the more haste she made, the sooner she would see him dead; yet she was forced to hurry for her husband’s sake. When she came back, she found that the child had died, as the prophet had said, and she told the king everything that had happened.

Yet Jeroboam took none of this to heart. He brought together a very large army and marched against Abijah the son of Rehoboam, who had succeeded his father in the kingdom of the two tribes; for he despised him because of his youth. But when Abijah heard of Jeroboam’s expedition, he was not frightened. He showed a courageous spirit, greater than his youth and greater than his enemy’s hopes. He chose an army from the two tribes, met Jeroboam at a place called Mount Zemaraim, pitched his camp near the other’s, and prepared everything needed for the fight. His army numbered four hundred thousand, but Jeroboam’s was twice as large. As the armies stood in battle order, ready for action and danger and just about to fight, Abijah stood on a high place and, beckoning with his hand, asked the people and Jeroboam himself to listen first in silence to what he had to say. When silence was made, he began to speak and told them, “God consented that David and his descendants should be your rulers for all time to come, and you yourselves know this well. So I cannot help wondering how you could desert my father and join yourselves to his servant Jeroboam, and how you are now here with him to fight against those whom God’s own decision has appointed to reign, and to take from them the rule they still keep; for Jeroboam holds the greater part of it unjustly. However, I do not suppose he will enjoy it any longer. When he has suffered the punishment God thinks due to him for what is past, he will stop the lawbreaking he has been guilty of and the injuries he has done to God, which he has gone on doing and has persuaded you to do as well. Yet my father did you no further wrong than this: he did not speak to you in a way that pleased you, and that only because he followed the advice of wicked men. Then in anger you deserted him, as you claimed; but in reality you withdrew yourselves from God and from his laws. And yet it would have been right for you to forgive a man who was young in years and not used to governing people—not only some disagreeable words, but even some unfortunate actions, if his youth and inexperience in affairs had led him into them—and to forgive him for the sake of his father Solomon and the benefits you received from him; for people ought to excuse the sins of the children because of the kindnesses of the parents. But you gave no thought to any of this then, and you give none now, but come against us with so great an army. And what do you rely on for victory? These golden heifers, and the altars you have on the high places, which are proofs of your impiety and not of religious worship? Or is it the vast size of your army that gives you such high hopes? Yet there is certainly no strength at all in an army of many tens of thousands when the war is unjust. We ought to place our surest hopes of success against our enemies in righteousness alone, and in piety toward God. That hope we rightly have, since we have kept the laws from the beginning and have worshiped our own God, who was not made by hands out of perishable matter, nor fashioned by a wicked king to deceive the people, but who is his own work, and the beginning and end of all things. So I advise you even now to repent and think better of it, to give up pursuing this war, to call to mind the laws of your country, and to reflect on what it is that has raised you to so happy a state as you are in now.” [b]

This was the speech Abijah made to the people. But while he was still speaking, Jeroboam secretly sent some of his soldiers to surround Abijah from certain parts of the camp that were not being watched. When Abijah was thus inside the enemy’s ring, his army was frightened and their courage failed them. But Abijah encouraged them and urged them to place their hopes in God, for God, he said, was not surrounded by the enemy. So they all together called on God for help, while the priests sounded the trumpet; and they raised a shout and fell on their enemies. God broke their enemies’ courage and cast down their strength, and made Abijah’s army stronger than they; for God granted them a wonderful and very famous victory. Such a slaughter was now made of Jeroboam’s army as is recorded of no other war, whether of Greeks or of barbarians: they overthrew five hundred thousand of their enemies. They also took their strongest cities by force and plundered them: Bethel and its district, and Jeshanah and its district. After this defeat Jeroboam never recovered himself as long as Abijah lived. Abijah, however, did not live long: he reigned only three years and was buried in Jerusalem in the tombs of his forefathers. He left twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters, whom he had by fourteen wives. His son Asa succeeded him in the kingdom; the young man’s mother was Maacah. Under his reign the land of the Israelites enjoyed peace for ten years. [d]

So much for Abijah, son of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, as his history has come down to us. But Jeroboam, king of the ten tribes, died after ruling them twenty-two years. His son Nadab succeeded him in the second year of Asa’s reign. Jeroboam’s son ruled two years and was like his father in impiety and wickedness. In these two years he made an expedition against Gibbethon, a city of the Philistines, and kept up the siege in order to take it. But while he was there, a friend of his named Baasha, son of Ahijah, conspired against him and killed him. Baasha took the kingdom after Nadab’s death and destroyed the whole house of Jeroboam. And it happened as God had foretold: some of Jeroboam’s relatives who died in the city were torn to pieces and eaten by dogs, and others who died in the fields were torn and eaten by the birds. So the house of Jeroboam suffered the just punishment for his impiety and his wicked deeds. [f]