Jeroboam did not entirely forego his plan of a campaign against Judah,
but it was not executed until Abijah had succeeded his father Rehoboam
on the throne of Jerusalem. The Judean king was victorious. However, he
could not long enjoy the fruits of his victory. Shortly after occurred
his death, brought on by his own crimes. In his war against Jeroboam he
had indulged in excessive cruelty; he ordered the corpses of the enemy
to be mutilated, and permitted them to be buried only after
putrefaction had set in. Such savagery was all the more execrable as it
prevented many widows from entering into a second marriage. Mutilating
the corpses had made identification impossible, and so it was left
doubtful whether their husbands were among the dead.
Moreover, Abijah used most disrespectful language about the prophet
Abijah the Shilonite; he called him a "son of Belial" in his address to
the people on Mount Zemaraim. That in itself merited severe punishment.
Finally, his zeal for true worship of God, which Abijah had urged as
the reason of the war between himself and Jeroboam, cooled quickly.
When he obtained possession of Beth-el, he failed to do away with the
golden calves. (16)
In this respect his namesake, the Israelitish king Abijah, the son of
Jeroboam, was by far his superior. By removing the guards stationed at
the frontier, he bade defiance to the command of his father, who had
decreed the death penalty for pilgrimages to Jerusalem. More than this,
he himself ventured to go up to Jerusalem in fulfilment of his
religious duty. (17)