1 Kings 15:1

BRIEF SUMMARIES OF THE REIGNS OF CERTAIN KINGS OF ISRAEL AND OF JUDAH

The spiritual decline of Israel quickly followed the Division of the kingdom, and the principal interest of the sacred narrator was focused upon the question of whether or not this or that king did what was right or what was evil in the sight of God. In keeping with the general absence of any intense Christian interest in this list of kings, most of whom were evil, we shall discuss each of these very briefly.

THE REIGN OF ABIJAM; THE SON OF REHOBOAM

"Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat, began Abijam to reign over Judah. Three years reigned he in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Maacah the daughter of Abishalom. And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him; and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless for David's sake did Jehovah his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem, because David did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, and turned not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Now there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life."

Abijam's three years on the throne of Judah made no difference at all. The war between Israel and Judah was not settled, and Abijam walked in the sinful excesses of his father Rehoboam. In 1 Kings 15:3, David is referred to as his father, but there it means grandfather.

"For David's sake" (1 Kings 15:4). God had promised David a continuing dynasty, and that meant that God would necessarily accommodate himself to the extreme wickedness of some of the members of that dynasty to achieve God's ultimate purpose of bringing the Messiah into the world.

This, of course, is also the explanation of God's preservation of the people of Israel, the posterity of the patriarchs to whom God had promised that "in their seed" all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Israel became worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and deserved to be exterminated from the earth as much as Sodom and Gomorrah deserved it, but, as we have frequently pointed out, "God was stuck with Israel until the Messiah came."

Abijam's wickedness, the same as that of Jeroboam, deserved the same punishment that Jeroboam received, namely, the destruction of his house for ever, but it was for David's sake that God allowed his son Asa to stand in the dynasty. Cook's comment on this is instructive:

"Few things are any more remarkable than the stability of David's dynasty in Jerusalem and the excessive instability of the dynasties in northern Israel. A single family, that of David, held the throne in Jerusalem for almost four centuries, but in Israel there were nine changes in the dynasty in the space of 250 years."[1] Indeed, this is an eloquent comment upon the effectiveness of God's promise to David.