Abijah versus Jeroboam

"Ought ye not to know that the LORD God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt?" "And now ye think to withstand the kingdom of the LORD in the hand of the sons of David; and ye be a great multitude, and there are with you golden calves, which Jeroboam made you for gods."

"But as for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken him; and the priests, which minister unto the LORD, are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business." "O children of Israel, fight ye not against the LORD God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper."

Jeroboam's ambush surrounds Judah. "They cried unto the LORD, and the priests sounded with the trumpets… God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah." Five hundred thousand chosen men fall. Abijah takes Bethel, Jeshanah and Ephron. "And the LORD struck him, and he died."

Different verdicts

1 Kings 15:3 says Abijam "walked in all the sins of his father." Chronicles shows him as champion of the true temple and priesthood. Chronicles also calls him Abijah ("my father is the LORD"), Kings Abijam.

Huge armies

1,200,000 soldiers and 500,000 dead far exceed what Iron Age Israel and Judah could field; the total population of both kingdoms was probably a few hundred thousand. Proposals: 'eleph as a unit; rhetorical or schematic numbers; textual inflation. The site reports them as the biblical figures. See the passage page.

Covenant of salt

Salt symbolized permanence (Numbers 18:19); a "covenant of salt" is an unbreakable one.