Verse 1
SAVAGE CIVIL WAR BETWEEN NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN ISRAEL
II. ABIJAH (915-913 B.C.)
VAST ARMIES CONFRONT EACH OTHER
"In the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign over Judah. Three years reigned he in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Micaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam, And Abijah joined battle with an army of valiant men of war, even four hundred thousand chosen men: and Jeroboam set the battle in array against him with eight hundred thousand chosen men, who were mighty men of valor."
There are a number of variations here as compared with 1 Kings 15:1-8, for different spellings of the king's name and the names of his mother and of her father; and we have no good explanation of this. As frequently noted, many people in that day were known by more than one name. His mother's name, as given here, is that of a man.
For some, these tremendously large numbers of the troops on each side of the conflict are also considered to be a problem. One common understanding of it is the very great possibility that the word thousand was from a technical word that really meant a military unit that could have been much smaller than a literal thousand. We accept the numbers as given here, because they are far more trustworthy than 20th-century guesses by critical scholars.
The big point in this paragraph is that Jeroboam's army outnumbered Abijah's two to one.
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