Open English Translation 2 CHR Chapter 11

11 When Rehaveam (Rehoboam) arrived in Yerushalem, he assembled the warriors of Yehudah and Benyamin: 180,000 chosen to fight against Yisrael to bring the kingdom back to Rehaveam. 2 But Yahweh spoke to the prophet Shemayah saying, 3 “Go and tell this to Shelomoh’s son King Rehaveam of Yehudah, and to all the Israeli people of the tribes of Yehudah and Benyamin: 4 Yahweh says that you musn’t go and fight with your relatives. Everyone should just go home again because everything that’s happened, came from me.” So they listened to the message from Yahweh, and called off the planned attack against Yeroboam.

5 So Rehaveam lived in Yerushalem and fortified the cities throughout Yehudah: 6 Beyt-Lehem, Eytam, Tekoa, 7 Beyt-Tsur, Sokoh, Adullam, 8 Gat, Mareshah, Zif, 9 Adorayim, Lakish, Azekah, 10 Zorah, Ayyalon, and Hevron (all in Yehudah and Benyamin). 11 He strengthened the fortifications in those cities and towns, appointed an army commander, and stocked their storehouses with food and oil and wine. 12 He also equipped each of them with shields and spears, and made them well-protected. So Yehudah and Benyamin were under his control.

13 The priests and Levites throughout all Yisrael supported Rehaveam from every part of the country. 14 The Levites abandoned their property and their pastureland and moved to Yerushalem and across the rest of Yehudah, because Yaraveam and his sons rejected them from serving as priests to Yahweh. 15 Instead Yaraveam established his own priests for his hilltop shrines and for the goat and calf idols that he’d made.[ref] 16 As well as the priests and Levites, people from all the Israeli tribes who wanted to serve Yisrael’s god Yahweh, came to Yerushalem to sacrifice to Yahweh, the god of their ancestors. 17 So they strengthened the kingdom of Yehudah, and as the people followed the ways of David and Shelomoh, they strengthened Rehaveam’s rule for three years.

18 Rehaveam married Mahalat. She was the daughter of David’s son Yerimot, and her mother was Avihayil, the daughter of Eliav and granddaughter of Yishay (Jesse). 19 They had three sons: Yeush, Shemaryah, and Zaham. 20 After her, he married Avishalom’s daughter Maakah, and they had four sons: Aviyah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomit. 21 Rehaveam loved Maakah the most out of his eighteen wives and sixty slave-wives. He fathered twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters, 22 but he appointed Maakah’s son Aviyah to be the leader of his older and younger brothers, because that would mark him as the future king. 23 He wisely sent his other sons to fortified cities across all the regions in Yehudah and Benyamin, where he set them up generously and asked the local people to give them wives.