ABIJAH ə bī’ je (אֲבִיָּ֔ה or אֲבִיָּ֑הוּ in 2 Chronicles 13:20, 21, Yahweh is [my] father; ABIJAM å bī’ jăm [אֲבִיָּ֥ם, in 1 Kings 14:31-15:1]; also KJV ABIA, ABIAH q.v.) 1. The seventh son of Becher, the son of Benjamin (1 Chron 7:8).
2. The second son of Samuel who, along with his older brother Joel, was appointed by his father to be a judge in Beersheba (1 Sam 8:2). However, the brothers took bribes, perverted justice and incurred the wrath of the people to such an extent that they came to Samuel and demanded a king (1 Sam 8:3-6).
3. According to 1 Chronicles 2:24, Abiah was the wife of Hezron, the grandson of Judah by Pharez, and the mother of Ashur, the father of Tekoa. The MT is difficult as the LXX, Syr. and Targum read differently. Some read Abiah as “his father.”
4. The eighth of the twenty-four priestly divisions appointed by lot for the service of the Temple in the time of David (1 Chron 24:10). The father of John the Baptist, Zechariah, belonged to the division of Abijah (KJV Abia—Luke 1:5).
5. A son of Rehoboam and the second king of Judah during the divided kingdom. In 1 Kings 14:31; 15:1, 7, 8, he is called Abijam, “father of (the god) Yam” or “father of the Sea (west)” rather than Abijah; however, at least ten MSS, Kennicott, and de Rossi read Abijah in the Kings’ passages and thus agree with the LXX reading of Abion or Abia, the chronicler’s parallels, Josephus and Matthew 1:7. The explanations given for the double spelling of this name are: (a) a scribal error whereby the final “h” is confused for a final “m.” This suggestion is made less attractive by the fact that the mistake is repeated five times in the Kings’ passage. (b) The older name “Abijam” was changed to Abijah, a Yahweh name which seemed to be more befitting to a king of Judah and the line of David than a name with the pagan Canaanite deity now known from the Ugaritic (Ras Shamra) tablets as Yamm, the god of the Sea. This is the more probable view unless the evidence increases for the third alternative. (c) Abijam could be the archaic hypocoristicon, abiya-mi, “my father is indeed (Yahweh).” Martin Noth (IPN, 234) had called attention to the name at Tell Tacannak-Ahiyami. One must also compare names like ăhūzzām and Bilcām along with such Ugaritic names as abm and sdqm (C. H. Gordon UT, 52).
Abijah (or Abijam) ruled for three years in Jerusalem (1 Kings 15:2) which E. R. Thiele reckoned to be from 913 to 911 b.c. While both the LXX and Lucianic revision of the LXX give the length of his reign as six years, this looks suspicious and possibly may be interpreted as an attempt to make the total number of years for the kings of Judah from Rehoboam to Ahaziah’s death (which according to the MT is ninety-five years) equal the total for the kings of Israel from Jeroboam to the death of Joram, which is ninety-eight years.
His mother is said to be “Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom,” i.e., David’s son Absalom (1 Kings 15:2; 2 Chron 11:20, 21) while 2 Chronicles 13:2 says rather that it was Michaiah, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. Absalom’s only daughter was named Tamar (2 Sam 14:27), who married Uriel of Gibeah and became the mother of Maacah (which was a scribal error Michaiah [2 Chron 13:2] but which 2 Chron 11:20, 21 has correctly Maacah). The word “daughter” (1 Kings 15:2; 2 Chron 11:20, 21) denotes “granddaughter” just as the “mother” (1 Kings 15:10) of Asa, Abijah’s son, denotes “grandmother,” for Abijah and Asa are not brothers but father and son. Josephus (Antiq. VIII. x. 1) has Rehoboam marrying one of his own kindred (second cousin on the father’s side), a daughter of Absalom by his wife Tamar named Maacah, and Josephus agrees with the above understanding of “daughter” as “granddaughter.” Uriel of Gibeah and Tamar may have named their daughter after her great-grandmother (2 Sam 3:3; 1 Chron 3:2). Willis Beecher (ISBE I, 10) shrewdly suggests that Solomon hoped by marrying his son Rehoboam to his second cousin Maacah, to conciliate the Absalom party in Israel who still were disappointed in Absalom’s abortive bid for kingship. Notice however, the introduction of paganism from the distaff side of the family, for Maacah comes from the half-pagan family of Absalom.
Abijah’s reign was marked by wickedness (1 Kings 15:3) with moments of piety as illustrated by the chronicler (2 Chron 13:4-12) on the occasion of his defeat of Jeroboam on the frontier of Ephraim. In his oration before the battle began he condemns the N for their apostasy and declares “God himself is with us as our captain.” Fighting at a disadvantage of two to one odds, he was nevertheless victorious and captured Bethel, Jeshanah and Ephron (2 Chron 13:19).
His fourteen wives bore him twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters (13:21) and “his ways and his sayings are written in the story of the prophet Iddo” ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2Chr.13.22 13:22]).
6. The son of Jeroboam I, king of Israel (1 Kings 14:1-18). When the son was taken by an illness, Jeroboam sent his disguised wife to the old prophet at Shiloh who had first announced to him that he would one day preside over ten of the twelve tribes of Israel—the prophet Ahijah. Jeroboam’s wife had no need to disguise herself, since the prophet was now old and blind. Nevertheless the prophet knew her even before she entered his house and he declared that Abijah would die as soon as she arrived home. He was the only one of the house of Jeroboam to receive a decent burial.
7. The mother of Hezekiah, king of Judah, is called Abi (2 Kings 18:2), an abbreviation for Abijah (2 Chron 29:1).
8. One of the priests in the days of Nehemiah who sealed the covenant of reform in which the people promised to serve the Lord (Neh 10:7).
9. A priest who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel (Neh 12:4). In the chronology of the priests given in Nehemiah 12:10-21, Zichri is listed as next descendant to rule the house of Abijah (12:17).
Bibliography C. F. Keil, Books of Kings (1950) 217, 218; E. R. Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1951), 57, 171, 184, 185; C. H. Gordon, World of the OT (1958), 89, 194; J. Gray, I and II Kings (1963), 68, 315f.; W. F. Albright, The Biblical Period From Abraham to Ezra (1963), 60, 61.