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Then King Rehoboam consulted with the elders who had served his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, "How do you counsel me to answer this people?"

So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of events from God that the LORD might establish His word, which He spoke through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

Then King Rehoboam sent Hadoram, who was over the forced labor, and the sons of Israel stoned him to death. And King Rehoboam made haste to mount his chariot to flee to Jerusalem.

'Thus says the LORD, "You shall not go up or fight against your relatives; return every man to his house, for this thing is from Me."'" So they listened to the words of the LORD and returned from going against Jeroboam.

For the Levites left their pasture lands and their property and came to Judah and Jerusalem, for Jeroboam and his sons had excluded them from serving as priests to the LORD.

He set up priests of his own for the high places, for the satyrs and for the calves which he had made.

Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom more than all his other wives and concubines. For he had taken eighteen wives and sixty concubines and fathered twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.

Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah as head and leader among his brothers, for he intended to make him king.

He acted wisely and distributed some of his sons through all the territories of Judah and Benjamin to all the fortified cities, and he gave them food in abundance. And he sought many wives for them.

"But they will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries."

So King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Now Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen from all the tribes of Israel, to put His name there. And his mother's name was Naamah the Ammonitess.

He did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the LORD.

And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David; and his son Abijah became king in his place.

He reigned three years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Micaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. Now there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

"Do you not know that the LORD God of Israel gave the rule over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?

"Yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon the son of David, rose up and rebelled against his master,

and worthless men gathered about him, scoundrels, who proved too strong for Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, when he was young and timid and could not hold his own against them.

"Now behold, God is with us at our head and His priests with the signal trumpets to sound the alarm against you. O sons of Israel, do not fight against the LORD God of your fathers, for you will not succeed."

Abijah and his people defeated them with a great slaughter, so that 500,000 chosen men of Israel fell slain.

Now the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways and his words are written in the treatise of the prophet Iddo.