2 Chronicles 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Once Rehoboam's rule is secure, he and all Israel abandon the law of the LORD, and in his fifth year Shishak king of Egypt takes the fortified cities of Judah and reaches Jerusalem. The prophet Shemaiah tells the king and the leaders that God has handed them over because they abandoned him; when they humble themselves, God says he will not destroy them but will make them servants of Shishak so they learn the difference between serving him and serving other kingdoms. Shishak strips the treasures of the temple and palace, including Solomon's gold shields, which Rehoboam replaces with bronze ones. The chapter closes with the length of Rehoboam's reign, the judgment that he did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the LORD, and his death.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • Rehoboam established the kingdom
   • Rehoboam strengthened himself
   • When his kingdom was established and he was strong, Rehoboam forsook the law of the LORD
   • All Israel forsook the law of the LORD with him
2. 12:2
   • In the fifth year of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem
   • Shishak came up against Jerusalem because they had acted unfaithfully against the LORD
3. 12:3
   • Shishak came with twelve hundred chariots
   • Shishak came with sixty thousand horsemen
   • The people who came with him out of Egypt were without number
   • The people who came with him out of Egypt included Libyans, Sukkiim, and Cushites
4. 12:4
   • Shishak captured the fortified cities that belonged to Judah
   • Shishak came as far as Jerusalem
5. 12:5
   • Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam and to the princes of Judah
   • The princes of Judah had gathered to Jerusalem because of Shishak
   • Shemaiah said to them that the LORD says: You have forsaken me
   • Shemaiah said that the LORD says: I also have forsaken you into the hand of Shishak
6. 12:6
   • The princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves
   • They said, The LORD is righteous
7. 12:7
   • The LORD saw that they had humbled themselves
   • The word of the LORD came to Shemaiah
   • The LORD said they have humbled themselves
   • The LORD said he would not destroy them
   • The LORD said he would grant them a measure of deliverance
   • The LORD said his wrath would not be poured out on Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak
8. 12:8
   • The LORD said they would nevertheless become servants to Shishak
   • The LORD said this was so that they would know the difference between serving him and serving the kingdoms of the lands
9. 12:9
   • Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem
   • Shishak took away the treasures of the house of the LORD
   • Shishak took away the treasures of the king's house
   • Shishak took everything
   • Shishak took away the shields of gold that Solomon had made
10. 12:10
    • King Rehoboam made shields of bronze in place of the gold shields
    • Rehoboam committed the bronze shields to the hands of the commanders of the guard
    • The guard kept the entrance of the king's house
11. 12:11
    • Whenever the king entered the house of the LORD, the guard came and carried the shields
    • The guard afterward brought the shields back to the guard chamber
12. 12:12
    • When Rehoboam humbled himself, the anger of the LORD turned from him
    • The LORD did not destroy him completely
    • Also in Judah things were good
13. 12:13
    • King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem
    • Rehoboam reigned
    • Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign
    • Rehoboam reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem
    • The LORD had chosen Jerusalem out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there
    • Rehoboam's mother's name was Naamah
    • Naamah was an Ammonitess
14. 12:14
    • Rehoboam did evil
    • Rehoboam did evil because he did not set his heart to seek the LORD
15. 12:15
    • The acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer concerning genealogies
    • There were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually
16. 12:16
    • Rehoboam slept with his fathers
    • Rehoboam was buried in the city of David
    • Abijah his son reigned in his place

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

Rehoboam was Solomon's son. At the start of his reign the ten northern tribes broke away and made Jeroboam their king, leaving Rehoboam with only Judah and Benjamin in the south. Chronicles nevertheless keeps calling his people "Israel," so "all Israel" here means the people of his own southern kingdom, not the whole nation. "The law of the LORD" is the body of written instruction associated with Moses, the terms of the agreement between God and the nation, covering worship, justice and daily life.

12:2

Shishak is generally identified with the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshonq I, founder of a new dynasty; a list of towns he claimed to have taken in this region was carved on a temple wall at Karnak in Egypt. Rehoboam's fifth year falls somewhere around 925 BC. "Unfaithful" translates a word used of a wife's betrayal or of stealing what has been dedicated to God: it describes breaking a bond of trust, not merely disobeying a rule.

12:3

Chariots and horsemen were the elite, expensive arm of an ancient army, the equivalent of armor; the numbers are the kind of round, impressive totals ancient records use for a great force. The Libyans were peoples west of Egypt, who by this period supplied many of Egypt's soldiers and had produced its ruling family. The Sukkites are named only here; the word may mean "tent-dwellers," and they were probably a desert people serving as scouts or mercenaries. The Cushites (the King James "Ethiopians") came from Cush, the land up the Nile south of Egypt, roughly modern Sudan, not the modern country of Ethiopia.

12:4

These are the fortress towns Rehoboam had spent the early part of his reign strengthening as a defensive ring around Jerusalem. Losing them meant the capital stood exposed with nothing between it and the invading army.

12:5

A prophet was a person understood to speak on God's behalf, delivering a message in the first person as a royal herald would deliver a king's words, hence the formula "This is what the LORD says." The Hebrew uses the same verb twice for pointed effect: you abandoned me, so I have abandoned you. The English "handed you over" softens a sentence that in Hebrew is deliberately a mirror image.

12:6

"Humbled themselves" translates a Hebrew word meaning to bow low or submit, to drop the posture of a ruler and take the posture of someone under authority. It is one of the key words of Chronicles. "The LORD is right in what he does" is legal language: it concedes the case, admitting the verdict against them is just.

12:7

The Hebrew phrase behind "some rescue" is genuinely unclear and has been read two ways: rescue that is partial (a limited reprieve rather than full deliverance) or rescue that comes soon. Both senses are defensible from the words themselves.

12:8

"Servant" here means a subject state: a defeated kingdom left on its throne but required to pay heavy annual tribute to the conqueror. The verse plays on one word: they will learn by experience what it costs to be a servant of God and what it costs to be the servant of a foreign king.

12:9

"The house of the LORD" is the temple Solomon had built in Jerusalem. The gold shields were ceremonial, made for display rather than battle, and hung in Solomon's palace hall; taking them, along with the temple and palace treasuries, was standard practice for a victorious king, both as plunder and as a public sign of who now held power.

12:10

Bronze looks like gold at a distance but is worth a small fraction of it. The replacement shields kept the ceremony going while quietly announcing that the wealth behind it was gone.

12:11

The shields were carried in procession by the guard as an escort of honor when the king went up to the temple, then locked away again: they were regalia, not equipment.

12:13

For the LORD to "put his name" somewhere is a Hebrew idiom of ownership and presence, like putting one's name on a property: the place is claimed as his and is where he can be approached. Naming the king's mother is standard practice in these records of Judah's kings; the queen mother held a recognized position at court. Ammon was a kingdom east of the Jordan, a neighbor and frequent enemy of Israel, so Rehoboam, like his father Solomon, had a foreign mother.

12:14

"Set his heart" is an idiom of settled resolve rather than feeling; the heart in Hebrew is the seat of thought and decision, closer to what English calls the mind or the will. The charge is that he never made up his mind to it.

12:15

"Seer" is an older word for a prophet, from seeing visions; Chronicles uses it interchangeably with "prophet." These records of Shemaiah and Iddo have not survived, the writer is pointing readers to sources available in his own day, as he does throughout the book. Jeroboam was the king of the breakaway northern tribes, Rehoboam's rival since the kingdom split.

12:16

"Slept with his fathers" is a set phrase for dying of natural causes and being buried in the family tomb, as opposed to being killed. The city of David is the oldest part of Jerusalem, the ridge David captured and fortified, where the kings of his line were buried.