Abijah's reign; ongoing war with Israel

Abijah rules Judah for three years, and the assessment given is that he committed all the sins his father had done before him, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD. The reason he is not removed is stated separately: for David's sake the LORD gave him a lamp in Jerusalem by raising up a son to succeed him and by making Jerusalem strong. That formula, a lamp for David, recurs through the whole southern line and is the standing explanation for why an unbroken dynasty survives kings who deserve nothing.

The war with the north that had been running since the split comes to a head in a battle in the hill country of Ephraim, and the fuller version of it is preserved in the parallel history rather than in the main one.

Standing on Mount Zemaraim before the engagement, Abijah shouts an address across to Jeroboam's army, and it is the clearest statement anywhere of the southern case. He argues that the LORD gave the kingship over Israel to David and his descendants for ever by a covenant of salt, which is an idiom for a binding and permanent agreement. He accuses Jeroboam of taking advantage of Rehoboam when he was young and indecisive. He points out that the north has driven out the priests of Aaron and the Levites and appointed its own priests as the peoples of other lands do, so that anyone who turns up with a young bull and seven rams can become a priest of what are no gods. And he contrasts that with the temple in Jerusalem where the burnt offerings are made every morning and evening, the bread is set out on the table and the lamps are lit.

Then he tells them not to fight against the God of their ancestors, because they will not succeed.

Jeroboam has meanwhile sent troops round to attack from behind, and Judah finds itself engaged front and rear. The priests blow the trumpets, the men of Judah raise a battle cry, and the northern army is routed with very heavy losses. Bethel is captured along with two other towns and their surrounding villages.

Jeroboam never recovers his strength and dies shortly afterwards.

The covenant of salt he invokes needs a word of explanation. Salt was used to seal agreements across the ancient Near East because it does not spoil, and eating salt together created an obligation; the same phrase is used elsewhere for the permanent arrangement made with the priesthood. What he is claiming is that the promise to David was of that kind and cannot lapse.

The two histories of this period do not always agree in emphasis and this is one of the clearer cases. The main account gives Abijah three years, a bad verdict and a note that there was war between him and Jeroboam. The other supplies a speech, a battle, casualty figures and a territorial gain. Both are working from the same royal annals and selecting differently, one interested in the religious record of each king and the other in the temple, the priesthood and the southern dynasty.

The chronicler gives Abijah a long speech delivered from a hilltop before a battle, arguing that the northern kingdom has abandoned the legitimate priesthood and the proper worship, and reporting a victory in which five hundred thousand northern soldiers fall.

Those numbers cannot be right. The population of the whole region would not support armies of that size, and the Hebrew word for thousand can also mean a unit or a clan, which is one of the standard explanations offered for the inflated figures throughout these books.

What the two accounts agree on is that the war between the two kingdoms continued through his short reign and that he was buried in the city of David and succeeded by his son.