Abijam (; ; ) was, according to the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' House of David and the second of the

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

. He was the son of

Rehoboam Rehoboam (; , , ; , ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Judah after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel. He was a son of and the successor to Solomon and a grandson of David. In the account of I Ki ...

and the grandson of

Solomon Solomon (), also called Jedidiah, was the fourth monarch of the Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy), Kingdom of Israel and Judah, according to the Hebrew Bible. The successor of his father David, he is described as having been the penultimate ...

. The

Books of Chronicles The Book of Chronicles ( , "words of the days") is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Chronicles) in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third section of the Jewish Ta ...

refer to him as Abijah.

In the Talmud

Family

Abijam is reported in the books of Kings and Chronicles as being the son of

Maacah Maacah (or Maakah; ''Maʿăḵā'', "crushed"; Maacha in the Codex Alexandrinus, Maachah in the KJV) is a non-gender-specific personal name used in the Bible to refer to a number of people. *A child of Abraham's brother Nahor, son of Terah, Nacho ...

or Micaiah and father of King

Asa of Judah Asa (; ; ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the third king of the Kingdom of Judah and the fifth king of the Davidic line, House of David. Based on the Biblical chronology, Biblical scholars suggest that he reigned from the late 10th to earl ...

. Some scholars believe the biblical accounts of Abijam's family to be contradictory; however, a study of Hebrew linguistics may remove any seeming contradictions. One of the alleged contradictions is that Maacah is sometimes described as the daughter of

Absalom Absalom ( , ), according to the Hebrew Bible, was an Israelite prince. Born to David and Maacah, who was from Geshur, he was the only full sibling of Tamar. He is described in the Hebrew Bible as being exceptionally beautiful, as is his siste ...

, and elsewhere the daughter of Uriel. Absalom is described as only having one daughter, Tamar. Apologists have countered by arguing that in Hebrew, "daughter" and "granddaughter" are the same word. Similarly, Maacah is initially described as Abijah's mother, but subsequently described as the mother of his son Asa. Apologists argue similarly for the ambiguity of the term "mother". Abijah married fourteen wives, and had 22 sons and 16 daughters. No attempted harmonization has found acceptance with scholars.

Reign

Following the death of

, his son Abijah succeeded the throne as

King of Judah The Kings of Judah were the monarchs who ruled over the ancient Kingdom of Judah, which was formed in about 930 BC, according to the Hebrew Bible, when the United Kingdom of Israel split, with the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel rejecti ...

. He began his three-year reign (2 Chr. 12:16; 13:1, 2) with a strenuous but unsuccessful effort to bring back the ten tribes of the

northern Kingdom of Israel The Kingdom of Israel ( ), also called the Northern Kingdom or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelite kingdom that existed in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Its beginnings date back to the first half of the 10th century BCE. It c ...

to their allegiance, a path which in his father had chosen not to follow. Following Abijah's ascension to the throne in the 18th year of King Jeroboam I of Israel, he marched north to win Israel back to the Davidic kingdom. Jeroboam surrounded Abijah's army, engaging in the Battle of Mount Zemaraim. Abijah rallied his troops there and went on to capture the Israelite cities of Jeshanah, Ephron (now Taybeh, Ramallah), and

Bethel Bethel (, "House of El" or "House of God",Bleeker and Widegren, 1988, p. 257. also transliterated ''Beth El'', ''Beth-El'', ''Beit El''; ; ) was an ancient Israelite city and sacred space that is frequently mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Bet ...

Commentaries

Non-conformist minister

Alexander Maclaren Alexander Maclaren (11 February 1826 – 5 May 1910) was a Scottish Baptist minister and writer. Biography Maclaren was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of David Maclaren, a merchant and Baptist lay preacher.Edwin Charles Dargan (1912) '' ...

considers Abijah "a wiser and better man than his father". According to the

Deuteronomist The Deuteronomist, abbreviated as either Dtr or simply D, may refer either to the source document underlying the core chapters (12–26) of the Book of Deuteronomy, or to the broader "school" that produced all of Deuteronomy as well as the Deutero ...

, "Yet, for the sake of David,

YHWH The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, a ...

his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, by raising up his descendant after him and by preserving Jerusalem." (1 Kings 15:4). The wording in the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

is "the Lord gave him a remnant". Thus the unconditional covenant blessing of God guaranteed his promise to

King David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damas ...

to stabilize the kingdom despite its ruler. The Chronicler also emphasizes YHWH's promise as seen by Abijah's success against every effort by Jeroboam to defeat him according to 2 Chronicles 13:18. God had given the Kingdom to David and his descendants according to 1 Chronicles 17:14 by a covenant of salt, meaning "of permanence" (cf. Leviticus 2:13).

Rabbinic literature

Although Abijah took up God's cause against Jeroboam, the idolatrous king of Israel, he was not permitted to enjoy the fruits of his victory over the latter for any considerable time, dying as he did shortly after his campaign (Josephus, ''Ant''. viii. 11, § 3). The rabbis recount many transgressions committed by Abijah against his fellow men, drawing God's vengeance upon him more speedily than upon Jeroboam's idolatries. It is stated that he mutilated the corpses of Jeroboam's soldiers and would not permit them to be interred until they had arrived at a state of putrefaction. Nor did Abijah show himself zealous in God's cause, for when, by the conquest of Bethel (II Chron. xiii. 19), the golden calves came into his possession, he did not destroy them as the law (Deut. vii. 25) enjoined. The rabbis also point out that it was improper for Abijah to accuse the whole of Israel of idolatry and to proclaim the appointment of Jeroboam as king to have been the work of "vain men, the children of Belial" (II Chron. xiii. 7) since it was the prophet

Ahijah the Shilonite Ahijah the Shilonite (; ) was a Levite prophet of Shiloh (biblical city), Shiloh in the days of Solomon, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible's Books of Kings, First Books of Kings. Ahijah foretold to Jeroboam that he would become king (). The Hebre ...

who prophesied that Jeroboam would be king (I Kings, xi. 37). For these reasons Abijah's reign was a short one.''Jewish Encyclopedia'', "Abijah"

Chronological discrepancies

According to , Abijah became king of Judah in the 18th year of the reign of

Jeroboam Jeroboam I (; Hebrew language, Hebrew: ''Yārŏḇʿām''; ), frequently cited Jeroboam son of Nebat, was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), Kingdom of Israel following a Jeroboam's Revol ...

, and reigned for three years.

William F. Albright William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 – September 19, 1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars ...

has dated his reign to 915–913 BCE. E. R. Thiele offers the dates 914/913 – 911/910 BCE. As explained in the

article, Thiele's chronology for the first kings of Judah contained an internal inconsistency which later scholars corrected by dating these kings one year earlier, so that Abijah's dates are taken as 915/914 to 912/911 BCE in the present article.

Notes

References

Works cited

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