Antiquities of the Jews — Book 8, Chapter 11

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 son 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 Abijah 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.

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, 28 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."

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 29 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.

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.