Abijah of Judah: 913-910 BC

A King With Two Names  ∙  The Enthronement of Judean Kings  ∙  Ministers of the King  

∙  The Battle of Mount Zemaraim

an artist's depiction of Abijah of Judah

Abijah followed in his father's footsteps in his tolerance of Canaanite practices. This isn’t surprising, given the atmosphere in which he grew up: his mother Maacah was Rehoboam’s favorite of his eighteen wives, and she advocated pagan worship. Despite these religious errors, Yahweh gave Abijah a ‘lamp’ (or successor) for the sake of his great-grandfather David. Abijah, by the time of his death, had fourteen wives and thirty-eight sons and daughters. The biblical text emphasizes that Abijah’s short, three-year reign was scarred, from beginning to end, by warfare against Israel. 

It’s interesting that the parallel accounts of Abijah’s reign in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles give Abijah different names: the Chronicler names him as ‘Abijah’ (which means my father is Yah, or my father is Yahweh) and 1 Kings names him as ‘Abijam’ (which means father of the sea or my father is Yam, a Canaanite sea-god). It’s been suggested that Abijam is the Canaanite version of his name whereas Abijah is the Israelite version. Another explanation is Abijam was his given name; his pagan mother, in this instance, named him after the Canaanite sea god. Or, perhaps, Abijah was his real name – his father naming him according to Judean religious customs – but the writer of Kings corrupts his name to Abijam because his life and religious practice was thoroughly pagan. Ultimately no one knows why he’s given one name in Kings and another in Chronicles, but it’s fun to conjecture.

IN 2 Kings 11 we're given a snapshot of the Judean practice of crowning a new king. Because these practices were likely instituted during the United Monarchy (acknowledging that, of course, there would be variation down the halls of time), we’ll examine it here in the context of Abijah. The king’s enthronement gave him the power to run the government and granted him the title to the royal properties, as well as setting him apart as Yahweh’s elected choice in leading the nation. In the Kingdom of Judah, enthronement also represented a renewal of the Davidic Covenant. In 2 Kings 11.12-20 we see the enthronement of Jehoash (or Joash), and the enthronement ceremony had five specific acts, three of which took place in the Temple and two in the royal palace:

1. In the Temple, the king was crowned with the royal crown and presented with the ‘testimony,’ which has been interpreted as regulations governing the conduct of kingship, the covenant between Yahweh and the Davidic king, and the obligations associated with kingship. At this point the king would be given a copy of the Mosaic Law and the demands Yahweh made of him as king.
2. The king would then receive the anointing of the priest. The anointing indicated that Yahweh had chosen him.
3. Next came his proclamation as the anointed king and the acclamation of the people, which was accompanied with the shout ‘Long live the king!’
4. After the proclamation by the people, everyone paraded to the royal palace, where the king was seated on the throne. This marked the assumption of his power.
5. Finally, the king received the highest officials of the state, who declared their loyalty.

The biblical narrative doesn’t give us all the ins-and-outs of the bureaucratic structure of the Judean government, but there are snapshots throughout Kings and Chronicles that allow us to piece together some of the highest officers of Judah under the king. These officers would present themselves before the new king in the royal palace and pledge their loyalty to him. The king, of course, had the right to dismiss them from office and appoint new men in their stead, if he so desired. The Minister of the Palace was the highest position in the land, second only to that of the king. He wore a distinctive belt and had the ‘key to the house of David’ so that he could open and close the gates of the king’s palace and so control the official court day and appointments on the king’s calendar. The Royal Secretary ranked just below the Minister of the Palace; as the king’s private secretary, he oversaw both foreign and domestic correspondence and served as the head of the royal archives, which were located in the king’s palace. The archival room is called ‘the scribe’s chamber’ in Jeremiah 36.12. The Royal Secretary also acted as something akin to a Secretary of State: in 2 Kings 18.17-37, the Royal Secretary Shebna negotiated between King Hezekiah and King Sennacherib of Assyria. The Royal Herald directed communications between the king and his people; he announced visitors to the king and proclaimed the king’s words to the people. The Supervisor of District Governors was created by Solomon; during the days of the Solomonic Empire, the kingdom was divided into twelve tax districts, and he placed an officer over each. Over all these district governors he appointed a supervisor who oversaw the whole bureaucratic system and ensured that it functioned correctly. Though this specific title isn’t directly mentioned during the days of the divided kingdom, there are hints throughout Kings and Chronicles that both Israel and Judah utilized a system similar to that created by Solomon. The officers listed above – as well as many other officers whom are lost to history – would’ve pledged their loyalty to Abijah during his enthronement.

modern day Mount Zemaraim

Abijah's three-year reign was marked by warfare. Though the ‘state of war’ between Judah and Israel had been relegated to border disputes during the days of his father, Abijah took this a step further and launched an invasion of Israel in the hope of achieving a reunification of the United Monarchy. 

The biblical narrative doesn’t say that Abijah hoped to achieve unification; this aim is deduced from the speech he gave to his assembled troops and to Jeroboam’s troops nearby. Abijah fielded a good-sized army, but King Jeroboam’s was twice his size (not surprising, given that Israel consisted of ten tribal territories whereas Judah consisted of two). The Judean men marched into Israel and were opposed by Jeroboam’s forces somewhere near Bethel in southern Israel. Abijah climbed Mount Zemaraim and gave a defiant speech to Jeroboam and his enemy troops. The bible tells us that while Abijah was ranting and raving, Jeroboam was peaceably soaking it all in – he wanted Abijah’s attentions concentrated on him, as he’d dispatched a large portion of his troops to stealthily maneuver around Abijah’s soldiers in a pincer movement. So long as the Judean soldiers’ attentions were on Abijah, and so long as Abijah’s attention was on Jeroboam, the Israelite troops had better odds of completing their encirclement of the enemy army. 

Thus as the Israelite troops snaked their way around the Judean soldiers, Abijah loudly defended the right of the House of David to rule over all Israel. All Israel, the Judean king insisted, had been entrusted by Yahweh to the House of David by a ‘covenant of salt’ (when treaties or alliances were made in the ancient Near East, salt was used to symbolize that the terms would be preserved for a long time, as salt was a staple preservative; ‘covenants of salt’ are seen in Babylonian, Persian, Arabic, and Greek contexts). Abijah mocked Jeroboam and the ‘scoundrels’ who’d assisted in intimidating the ‘young and timid’ Rehoboam. He sarcastically remarked that the Israelites were confident in their ability against the House of David, since they had larger numbers and ‘bull calves of gold that Jeroboam has made for idols.’ The mention of the Golden Calves (see the chapter on Jeroboam of Israel) may imply that Jeroboam had brought these idols (or at least the idol from Bethel, or representations of the idols) to the battlefield. In ancient Near Eastern armies, armies often carried their divine images with them into battle; battles were seen not merely as contests between armed men but as contests between opposing gods – the victors celebrated their triumph as a victory for their gods. In older days, the Ark, as Yahweh’s standard, represented God clearing the way before the Israelites and leading them into Canaan; Jeroboam may have brought the bulls (or representations of them) along with his army for the same purpose. Armies of this time often included priests and diviners, prophets, and (as mentioned) sacred objects. Abijah went on to point out that the true and proper Mosaic worship was being faithfully conducted in Judah (though he was careful, of course, not to highlight how he tolerated pagan worship outside the Temple). He warned the northern troops that they were fighting Yahweh; their Golden Calves couldn’t help them! 

the Battle of Mount Zemaraim: Judah Surrounded

Abijah’s rambling speech ended when he received news that the Israelites had crept around his forces. In horror the Judean king realized his outnumbered army was surrounded. The Judeans, realizing that death was on their doorstep, cried out to Yahweh. The priests blew the sacred trumpets, and the battle was joined – and Yahweh delivered Judah from complete destruction. Despite being outnumbered 2:1, the Judeans were victorious – but only by the skin of their teeth. The victory was costly for both sides: Jeroboam was crippled by his losses, and his reign after the Battle of Mount Zemaraim (albeit short, as he died in 910 BC) was a shadow of what it’d been before; Abijah, though triumphant, was only able to seize a few towns in southern Israel (Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron along with their surrounding villages). His army was so depleted that he lacked the manpower to follow up his victory with reunification. Judah’s gains were both small and temporary: though Abijah gained control of two major trade routes crossing from the territory of Judah into Israel, the total land won was only about twenty square miles; and it was temporary, for twenty years later, King Baasha of Israel would win back the territory during the reign of Abijah’s son Asa. 

the Battle of Mount Zemaraim: Judah Victorious

Again we must note a problem with the numbers presented. As mentioned in the chapter on Rehoboam of Judah, the Chronicler writes that the total size of both armies was 1.2 million men. This is clearly an exaggeration (though the Chronicler is not alone in doing this: Herodotus reported that Xerxes’ army against the Greeks numbered five million!). In comparison to these numbers, the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War had only 165,000 participants. The Chronicler tells us that half a million men died during the afternoon battle; if this were true, it would outdo some of the most of the bloodiest battles in history! The 1916 First Battle of the Somme lasted six months and cost just a little more lives than the Battle of Zemaraim; combined Union and Confederate losses at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg were around 50,000, just a tenth of what was reported after the couple-hour battle of Mount Zemaraim. How do we approach the biblical text when it gives such astronomical and impossible numbers? We must bear in mind that (a) numbers often serve as symbolism – in this case, both nations fielded large armies, the Israelite army was twice the size of the Judean army, and casualties were horrific – and (b) the Hebrew word that translates ‘thousands’ can also mean ‘divisions’ or ‘companies.’ In the latter case, we can surmise that Judah brought four hundred divisions to the field whereas Israel brought eight hundred; and the casualties for both were five hundred divisions. These ‘divisions’ could consist of as many as one thousand men or as little as ten.