Abi'jall (Heb. Abiyah' ' , fl*'2S..father [i. e. possess- or or worshipper] of Jehovah ; also in the equivalent protracted form Abiya'liu, ^in^HX^ 2 Chron. xiii, 20, 21 ; Sept. and N. T. 'Afiid, but 'Ajiia in 1 Kings xiv, 1 ; Neh. x, 7 ; 'Afiiac in 1 Chron. xxiv, 10 ; Neh. xii, 4, 17 ; 'Afiiou v. r. 'AfiiovS in 1 Chron. vii, 8 ; Jo- sephus, 'A/Sicrc, Ant. vii, 10, 3; Auth. Vers. "Abiah." in 1 Sam. viii, 2 ; 1 Chron. ii, 24 ; vi, 28 ; vii, 8 ; " Abia" in 1 Chron. iii, 10; Matt, i, 7 ; Luke i, 5), the name of six men and two women.
1. A son of Becher, one of the sons of Benjamin (1 Chron. vii, 8). B.C. post 1856.
2. The daughter of Machir, who bore to Hezron a posthumous son, Ashur (1 Chron. ii, 24). B.C. cir. 1612.
3. The second son of Samuel (1 Sam. viii, 2 ; 1 ( hron. vi, 12). Being appointed by his father a judge in Beer- sheba, in connection with his brother, their corrupt ad- ministration induced such popular discontent as to pro- voke the ciders to demand a royal form of government for Israel, B.C. 109;!. See Samuel.
4. One of the descendants of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, and chief of one of the twenty-four courses or orders into which the whole body of the priesthood was divided by David (1 Chron. xxiv, 10), B.C. 1014. Of these the course of Abijah was the eighth. Only four of the courses returned from the captivity, of
ABTJAII
17
ABILA
which that of Abijah was not one (Ezra ii, 36-39 ; Neh. vii, 39-42; xii, 1). But the four were divided into the original number of twenty-four, with the original names ; and it hence happens that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, is described as belong- ing to the course of Abijah (Luke i, 5). See Priest.
5. The second king of the separate kingdom of Ju- dah, being the son of Rehoboam, and grandson of
•Solomon (1 Chron. iii, 10). He is also called (1 Kings xiv, 31 ; xv, 1-8) Am jam (q. v.). He began to reign B.C. 956, in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, and he reigned three years (2 Chron. xii, 16; xiii, 1, 2). At the commencement of his reign, looking on the well-founded separation cf the ten tribes from the house of David as rebellion, Abijah made a vigorous attempt to bring them back to their allegiance (2 Chron. xiii, 3-19). In this he failed; although a signal victory over Jeroboam, who had double his force and much greater experience, enabled him to take several cities which had been held by Israel (see J. F. Bahrdt, Be bello Abice et Jerob. Lips. 1760). The speech which Abijah addressed to the opposing army before the battle has been much ad- mired (C. Simeon, Works, iv, 96). It was well suited to its object, and exhibits correct notions of the theo- cratical institutions (Keil, Apolog. d. Chron. p. 336). His view of the political position of the ten tribes with respect to the house of David is, however, obviously erroneous, although such as a king of Judah was like- ly to take. The numbers reputed to have been pres- ent in this action are 800,000 on the side of Jeroboam, 400,000 on the side of Abijah, and 500,000 left dead on the field. Hales and others regard these extraor- dinary numbers as corruptions, and propose to reduce them to 80,000, 40,000, and 50,000 respectively, as in the Latin Vulgate of Sixtus V, and many earlier edi- tions, and in the old Latin translation of Josephus ; and probably also in his original Greek text, as is collected by De Vignoles from Abarbanel's charge against the historian of having made Jeroboam's loss no more than 50,000 men, contrary to the Hebrew text (Kennicott's Dissertations, i, 533 ; ii, 201 sq., 564). See Number. The book of Chronicles men- tions nothing concerning Abijah adverse to the im- pressions which we receive from his conduct on this occasion ; but in Kings we are told that " he walked in all the sins of his father" (1 Kings xv, 3). He had fourteen wives, by whom he left twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters (2 Chron. xiii, 20-22). Asa suc- ceeded him (2 Chron. xiv, 1 ; Matt, i, 7). See Judah. There is a difficulty connected with the maternity of Abijah. In 1 Kings xv, 2, we read, " His mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom" (comp. 2 Chron. xi, 20, 22) ; but in 2 Chron. xiii, 2, " His mother's name was Michaiah, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah." Maachah and Michaiah are varia- tions of the same name ; and Abishalom is in all like- lihood Absalom, the son of David. The word (P2) rendered " daughter" (q. v.), is applied in the Bible not only to a man's child, but to his niece, grand- daughter, or great-granddaughter. It is therefore possible that Uriel of Gibeah married Tamar, the beautiful daughter of Absalom (2 Sam. xiv, 27 ), and by her had Maachah, who was thus the daughter of Uriel and granddaughter of Absalom. See Maachah.
6. A son of Jeroboam I, king of Israel. His se- vere and threatening illness induced Jeroboam to send his wife with a present [see Gift] suited to the dis- guise in which she went, to consult the prophet Abi- jah respecting his recovery. This prophet was the same who had, in the days of Solomon, foretold to Jeroboam his elevation to the throne of Israel. Though blind with age, he knew the disguised wife of Jero- boam, and was authorized, by the prophr tic impulse that came upon him, to reveal to her that, because there was found in Abijah only, of all the house of Jeroboam, "some good thing toward the Lord," he