2 Chronicles 13 (NIV)✞: Abijah King of Judah
Passage
In this passage we have another example of the author(s) of Chronicles focusing on the good – in fact, a rather extreme example! When Abijah is covered in 1 Kings 15:1–8✞ the author(s) tell us only that he didn’t follow the LORD wholeheartedly (as his father1 David had done), and… actually, that’s it – that’s all we’re told in Kings! Here, however, we’re told of a particular incident in Abijah’s life in which he did follow the LORD, and… actually, that’s it – that’s all we’re told.
And that incident is easy to follow: Abijah and the soldiers from Judah line up for battle against Jeroboam and the soldiers of Israel, but there are twice as many soldiers from Israel as from Judah. Nonetheless, Abijah trusts in the LORD and believes that this trust will pay off. How can Jeroboam and his people possibly defeat the LORD?!? He even gives a speech in verses 4–12✞ in which he says so: the people of Israel have abandoned their God and are worshipping idols instead; if they war against God, they will fail.
Before the battle even commences, however, Jeroboam has sent some of his troops around to the rear of the troops from Judah, surrounding them, so the next thing Abijah knows he’s fighting a battle on two fronts!
It was at this point that I fully expected to see Abijah getting defeated. (Shows how well I remember my Bible from reading to reading…) He is written off in Kings as… well, not a bad king, but not a good one either, and God had given Jeroboam the northern kingdom of Israel, so I expected this to be a story of a king’s hubris coming back to bite him: he thought God was on his side, but was He really?
I was wrong: not only does God defeat the people of Israel on behalf of the people of Judah, but the casualties end up being higher than the number of soldiers originally brought by Judah in the first place. (That is, we’re told that there are 800,000 soldiers from Israel, 400,000 from Judah, but after the battle we’re told there are 500,000 casualties from Israel!)
Verse 18 sums it up nicely:
The Israelites were subdued on that occasion, and the people of Judah were victorious because they relied on the LORD, the God of their ancestors.
The chapter summarises the rest of Abijah’s reign by saying that he grew in strength, taking a number of wives and having a number of sons.
Thoughts
I keep mentioning it over and over, but very few of the people in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, are wholly “good” or “bad.” They’re usually a mix of the two – just like everyone else who has ever lived! So for a book like Chronicles, which is trying to highlight the ways God has provided for His people, there are a lot of instances that can be called out, even for kings that weren’t “good” kings.
And, again, we must remember who Chronicles was written for: God’s people have been pulled out of their land for hundreds of years, under the Assyrians then the Babylonians and then the Persians (and I might be missing an empire or two), but when Chronicles was written a remnant of them were finally returning back to the land God had given them. What would those people need more than anything? Reminders of times when their ancestors had trusted in God, and that trust had been rewarded.
So when I add up all that we know of Abijah’s reign, he ends up being… so-so. Not a great king, but not a terrible one. Not faithful to God the way his father David had been, but not evil like so many other kings were. He’s so middle of the road that the author(s) of Kings can dismiss him as not good while the author(s) of Chronicles can highlight his successes – and both are right!
Footnotes
- Remember that the Bible sometimes uses the term “father” rather loosely, meaning “ancestor,” not necessarily literal, direct father. ↩
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