'The children of Judah prevailed, because they relied upon the Lord
God of their fathers.'--2 CHRON. xiii. 18.
These words are the summing-up of the story of a strange old-world
battle between Jeroboam, the adventurer who rent the kingdom, and
Abijah, the son of the foolish Rehoboam, whose unseasonable blustering
had played into the usurper's hands. The son was a wiser and better
man than his father. It is characteristic of the ancient world, that
before battle was joined Abijah made a long speech to the enemy,
recounting the ritual deficiencies of the Northern kingdom, and
proudly contrasting the punctilious correctness of the Temple service
with the irregular cult set up by Jeroboam. He confidently pointed to
the priests 'with their trumpets' in his army as the visible sign that
'God is with us at our head,' and while charging Israel with having
'forsaken the Lord our God,' to whom he and his people had kept true,
besought them not to carry their rebellion to the extreme of fighting
against their fathers' God, and assured them that no success could
attend their weapons in such a strife. The passionate appeal had no
effect, but while Abijah was orating, Jeroboam was carrying out a
ruse, and planting part of his troops behind Judah, so as to put them
between two fires and draw a net round the outnumbered and
outmanoeuvred enemy.
Abijah and his men suddenly detected their desperate position, and did
the only wise thing. When, with a shock of surprise, they saw that
'behold! the battle was before and behind them,' they 'cried unto the
Lord, and the priests sounded with the trumpets.' The sharp, short cry
from thousands of agitated men ringed round by foes, and the blare of
the trumpets were both prayers, and heartened the suppliants for their
whirlwind charge, before which the men of Israel, double in number as
they were, broke and fled. The defeat was thorough, and, for a while,
Rehoboam and his kingdom were 'brought under,' and a comparatively
long peace followed. Our text gathers up the lesson taught, not to
Judah or Israel alone, by victory and defeat, when it declares that to
rely upon the Lord is to prevail. It opens for us the secret of
victory, in that old far-off struggle and in to-day's conflicts.