Second Book of Chronicles 12

¹ and no sooner was his royal authority securely consolidated than he, and all Israel with him, abandoned the Law of Yahweh.

² In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak the king of Egypt marched on Jerusalem, since it had been unfaithful to Yahweh.

³ With twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horses and a countless army of Libyans, Sukkiim and Ethiopians who came from Egypt with him,

⁴ he captured the fortified towns of Judah and reached Jerusalem.

⁵ Rehoboam and the Judaean captains, at the advance of Shishak, had mustered near Jerusalem; to them came Shemaiah the prophet. ‘Yahweh says this’ he said to them. ‘”You have abandoned me, now I have abandoned you into the hands of Shishak.”‘

⁶ Then the Israelite captains and the king humbled themselves. ‘Yahweh is just!’ they said.

⁷ When Yahweh saw that they had humbled themselves, the word of Yahweh came to Shemaiah. ‘They have humbled themselves,’ it said ‘I will not destroy them. In a little while I will grant them deliverance; my wrath shall not fall on Jerusalem through the power of Shishak.

⁸ Nevertheless they shall become his slaves, so that they may come to understand the difference between serving me and serving the kingdoms of foreign countries.’

⁹ Shishak the king of Egypt marched on Jerusalem. He took all the treasures from the Temple of Yahweh and the treasures from the royal palace, he took everything, including the golden shields that Solomon had made;

¹⁰ in place of them King Rehoboam had bronze shields made, entrusting them to the care of the officers of the guard who guarded the king’s palace gate.

¹¹ Whenever the king went to the Temple of Yahweh, the guards would come out carrying them, and return them to the guardroom afterwards.

¹² Since he had humbled himself, the wrath of Yahweh turned away from him and did not destroy him altogether. Indeed, things went well in Judah,

¹³ and King Rehoboam was able to strengthen his position in Jerusalem and to govern. Now Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he came to the throne and he reigned for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city chosen by Yahweh out of all the tribes of Israel, in which to give his name a home. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess.

¹⁴ He did evil, because he had not set his heart on seeking Yahweh.

¹⁵ The history of Rehoboam, from first to last, is not all this recorded in the Annals of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer concerning the grouping of the Levites and the incessant warfare between Rehoboam and Jeroboam?

¹⁶ Then Rehoboam slept with his ancestors and was buried in the Citadel of David; his son Abijah succeeded him.