¹Rehoboam came to Jerusalem and assembled the house of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand chosen men who waged war, to fight with Israel, to bring back the kingdom to Rehoboam.

²The word of Yahweh came to Shemaiah, the man of God, saying:

³Say to Rehoboam, son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying:

⁴Thus says Yahweh: You shall not go up, and you shall not fight against your brothers. Return, each man to his house, for this word has come about from me. And they heeded the words of Yahweh and turned back from going against Jeroboam.

⁵Rehoboam dwelled in Jerusalem and built cities as strongholds in Judah.

⁶He built Beth-lehem, Etam, and Tekoa,

⁷and Beth-zur, and Socoh, and Adullam,

⁸and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph,

⁹and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah,

¹⁰and Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin, stronghold cities.

¹¹He strengthened the strongholds, and set rulers in them, and storehouses of food and oil and wine.

¹²And in every city, city by city, were shields and spears, and he made them exceedingly strong; and Judah and Benjamin belonged to him.

¹³And the priests and the Levites who were in all Israel took their stand beside him from all their territory.

¹⁴For the Levites forsook their pasture lands and their possession, and went to Judah and to Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them from serving as priests to Yahweh.

¹⁵He appointed priests for himself for the high places, and for the goats, and for the calves which he had made.

¹⁶And after them, from all the tribes of Israel, those who set their heart to seek Yahweh the God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to Yahweh, the God of their fathers.

¹⁷They strengthened the kingdom of Judah and made Rehoboam son of Solomon secure for three years, for they walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years.

¹⁸Rehoboam took for himself a wife, Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, and Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse.

¹⁹She bore him sons: Jeush, Shemariah, and Zaham.

²⁰After her he took Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, and she bore him Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith.

²¹Rehoboam loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom more than all his wives and his concubines, for he had taken eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and he fathered twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.

²²Rehoboam appointed Abijah son of Maacah as head, as ruler among his brothers, for he meant to make him king.

²³He showed discernment and spread out some of all his sons into all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, to all the stronghold cities, and gave them sustenance in abundance, and asked for a multitude of wives.