Chapter 11.
CONCERNING THE DEATH OF A SON OF JEROBOAM.
HOW JEROBOAM WAS
BEATEN BY ABIJAH WHO DIED A LITTLE AFTERWARD AND WAS SUCCEEDED IN HIS KINGDOM
BY ASA.
AND ALSO HOW, AFTER THE DEATH OF JEROBOAM BAASHA DESTROYED HIS
SON NADAB AND ALL THE HOUSE OF JEROBOAM.FJAJ 8.77
1. HOWEVER, God was in no long time ready to return Jeroboam's wicked
actions, and the punishment they deserved, upon his own head, and upon
the heads of all his house
And whereas a soil of his lay sick at that
time, who was called Abijah, he enjoined his wife to lay aside her robes,
and to take the garments belonging to a private person, and to go to Ahijah
the prophet, for that he was a wonderful man in foretelling futurities,
it having been he who told me that I should be king
He also enjoined her,
when she came to him, to inquire concerning the child, as if she were a
stranger, whether he should escape this distemper
So she did as her husband
bade her, and changed her habit, and came to the city Shiloh, for there
did Ahijah live
And as she was going into his house, his eyes being then
dim with age, God appeared to him, and informed him of two things; that
the wife of Jeroboam was come to him, and what answer he should make to
her inquiry
Accordingly, as the woman was coming into the house like a
private person and a stranger, he cried out, "Come in, O thou wife
of Jeroboam! Why concealest thou thyself? Thou art not concealed from God,
who hath appeared to me, and informed me that thou wast coming, and hath
given me in command what I shall say to thee." So he said that she
should go away to her husband, and speak to him thus: "Since I made
thee a great man when thou wast little, or rather wast nothing, and rent
the kingdom from the house of David, and gave it to thee, and thou hast
been unmindful of these benefits, hast left off my worship, hast made thee
molten gods and honored them, I will in like manner cast thee down again,
and will destroy all thy house, and make them food for the dogs and the
fowls; for a certain king is rising up, by appointment, over all this people,
who shall leave none of the family of Jeroboam remaining
The multitude
also shall themselves partake of the same punishment, and shall be cast
out of this good land, and shall be scattered into the places beyond Euphrates,
because they have followed the wicked practices of their king, and have
worshipped the gods that he made, and forsaken my sacrifices
But do thou,
O woman, make haste back to thy husband, and tell him this message; but
thou shalt then find thy son dead, for as thou enterest the city he shall
depart this life; yet shall he be buried with the lamentation of all the
multitude, and honored with a general mourning, for he was the only person
of goodness of Jeroboam's family." When the prophet had foretold these
events, the woman went hastily away with a disordered mind, and greatly
grieved at the death of the forenamed child
So she was in lamentation
as she went along the road, and mourned for the death of her son, that
was just at hand
She was indeed in a miserable condition at the unavoidable
misery of his death, and went apace, but in circumstances very unfortunate,
because of her son: for the greater haste she made, she would the sooner
see her son dead, yet was she forced to make such haste on account of her
husband
Accordingly, when she was come back, she found that the child
had given up the ghost, as the prophet had said; and she related all the
circumstances to the king.FJAJ 8.78
2. Yet did not Jeroboam lay any of these things to heart, but he brought
together a very numerous army, and made a warlike expedition against Abijah,
the son of Rehoboam, who had succeeded his father in the kingdom of the
two tribes; for he despised him because of his age
But when he heard of
the expedition of Jeroboam, he was not affrighted at it, but proved of
a courageous temper of mind, superior both to his youth and to the
hopes of his enemy; so he chose him an army out of the two tribes, and
met Jeroboam at a place called Mount Zemaraim, and pitched his camp near
the other, and prepared everything necessary for the fight
His army consisted
of four hundred thousand, but the army of Jeroboam was double to it
Now
as the armies stood in array, ready for action and dangers, and were just
going to fight, Abijah stood upon an elevated place, and beckoning with
his hand, he desired the multitude and Jeroboam himself to hear first with
silence what he had to say
And when silence was made, he began to speak,
and told them, - "God had consented that David and his posterity should
be their rulers for all time to come, and this you yourselves are not unacquainted
with; but I cannot but wonder how you should forsake my father, and join
yourselves to his servant Jeroboam, and are now here with him to fight
against those who, by God's own determination, are to reign, and to deprive
them of that dominion which they have still retained; for as to the greater
part of it, Jeroboam is unjustly in possession of it
However, I do not
suppose he will enjoy it any longer; but when he hath suffered that punishment
which God thinks due to him for what is past, he will leave off the transgressions
he hath been guilty of, and the injuries he hath offered to him, and which
he hath still continued to offer and hath persuaded you to do the same:
yet when you were not any further unjustly treated by my father, than that
he did not speak to you so as to please you, and this only in compliance
with the advice of wicked men, you in anger forsook him, as you pretended,
but, in reality, you withdrew yourselves from God, and from his laws, although
it had been right for you to have forgiven a man that was young in age,
and not used to govern people, not only some disagreeable words, but if
his youth and unskilfulness in affairs had led him into some unfortunate
actions, and that for the sake of his father Solomon, and the benefits
you received from him; for men ought to excuse the sins of posterity on
account of the benefactions of parent; but you considered nothing of all
this then, neither do you consider it now, but come with so great an army
against us
And what is it you depend upon for victory? Is it upon these
golden heifers, and the altars that you have on high places, which are
demonstrations of your impiety, and not of religious worship? Or is it
the exceeding multitude of your army which gives you such good hopes? Yet
certainly there is no strength at all in an army of many ten thousands,
when the war is unjust; for we ought to place our surest hopes of success
against our enemies in righteousness alone, and in piety towards God; which
hope we justly have, since we have kept the laws from the beginning, and
have worshipped our own God, who was not made by hands out of corruptible
matter; nor was he formed by a wicked king, in order to deceive the multitude;
but who is his own workmanship, (29)
This is a strange expression in Josephus, that God is his own workmanship,
or that he made himself, contrary to common sense and to catholic Christianity;
perhaps he only means that he was not made by one, but was unoriginated.
and the beginning and end of all things
I therefore give you counsel even
now to repent, and to take better advice, and to leave off the prosecution
of the war; to call to mind the laws of your country, and to reflect what
it hath been that hath advanced you to so happy a state as you are now
in."FJAJ 8.79
3. This was the speech which Abijah made to the multitude
But while
he was still speaking Jeroboam sent some of his soldiers privately to encompass
Abijab round about, on certain parts of the camp that were not taken notice
of; and when he was thus within the compass of the enemy, his army was
affrighted, and their courage failed them; but Abijah encouraged them,
and exhorted them to place their hopes on God, for that he was not encompassed
by the enemy
So they all at once implored the Divine assistance, while
the priests sounded with the trumpet, and they made a shout, and fell upon
their enemies, and God brake the courage and cast down the force of their
enemies, and made Ahijah's army superior to them; for God vouchsafed to
grant them a wonderful and very famous victory; and such a slaughter was
now made of Jeroboam's army (30)
By this terrible and perfectly unparalleled slaughter of five hundred thousand
men of the newly idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes, God's high displeasure
and indignation against that idolatry and rebellion fully appeared; the
remainder were thereby seriously cautioned not to persist in them, and
a kind of balance or equilibrium was made between the ten and the two tribes
for the time to come; while otherwise the perpetually idolatrous and rebellious
ten tribes would naturally have been too powerful for the two tribes, which
were pretty frequently free both from such idolatry and rebellion; nor
is there any reason to doubt of the truth of the prodigious number upmost:
signal an occasion.
as is never recorded to have happened in any other war, whether it were
of the Greeks or of the Barbarians, for they overthrew [and slew] five
hundred thousand of their enemies, and they took their strongest cities
by force, and spoiled them; and besides those, they did the same to Bethel
and her towns, and Jeshanah and her towns
And after this defeat Jeroboam
never recovered himself during the life of Abijah, who yet did not long
survive, for he reigned but three years, and was buried in Jerusalem in
the sepulchers of his forefathers
He left behind him twenty-two sons,
and sixteen daughters; and he had also those children by fourteen wives;
and Asa his son succeeded in the kingdom; and the young man's mother was
Michaiah
Under his reign the country of the Israelites enjoyed peace for
ten years.FJAJ 8.80
4. And so far concerning Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon,
as his history hath come down to us
But Jeroboam, the king of the ten
tribes, died when he had governed them two and twenty years; whose son
Nadab succeeded him, in the second year of the reign of Asa
Now Jeroboam's
son governed two years, and resembled his father in impiety and wickedness.
In these two years he made an expedition against Gibbethon, a city of the
Philistines, and continued the siege in order to take it; but he was conspired
against while he was there by a friend of his, whose name was Baasha, the
son of Ahijah, and was slain; which Baasha took the kingdom after the other's
death, and destroyed the whole house of Jeroboam
It also came to pass,
according as God had foretold, that some of Jeroboam's kindred that died
in the city were torn to pieces and devoured by dogs, and that others of
them that died in the fields were torn and devoured by the fowls
So the
house of Jeroboam suffered the just punishment of his impiety, and of his
wicked actions.FJAJ 8.81