Matthew Henry on 2 Chronicles 13:13–end
We do not find that Jeroboam offered to make any answer at all to Abijah's speech. Though it was much to the purpose, he resolved not to heed it, and therefore he heard it as though he heard it not. He came to fight, not to dispute. The longest sword, he thought, would determine the matter, not the better cause. Let us therefore see the issue, whether right and religion carried the day or no.
I. Jeroboam, who trusted to his politics, was beaten. He was so far from fair reasoning that he was not for fair fighting. We may suppose that he felt a sovereign contempt for Abijah's harangue. "One stratagem," thinks he, "is worth twenty such speeches; we will soon give him an answer to all his argume…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Chronicles 13:13
But Jeroboam caused an ambushment to come about behind them--The oration of Abijah, however animating an effect it might have produced on his own troops, was unheeded by the party to whom it was addressed; for while he was wasting time in useless words, Jeroboam had ordered a detachment of his men to move quietly round the base of the hill, so that when Abijah stopped speaking, he and his followers found themselves surprised in the rear, while the main body of the Israelitish forces remained in front. A panic might have ensued, had not the leaders "cried unto the Lord," and the priests "sounded with the trumpets"--the pledge of victory (Num 10:9; Num 31:6). Reassured by the well-known signal…
Read the whole note in the consoleAdam Clarke on 2 Chronicles 13:17
Slain - five hundred thousand chosen men - Query, fifty thousand? This was a great slaughter: see the note on Ch2 13:3, where all these numbers are supposed to be overcharged.
John Gill on 2 Chronicles 13:17
And Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter,.... As they fled, pursuing them:
so there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men; such a slaughter as is not to be met with in any history, as Josephus (s) observes; though Abarbinel wonders he should say so, and affirms that he had read of larger numbers slain at once; but he is the only man that ever pretended to it; Jerom (t) makes the number but 50,000, and some copies of the Vulgate Latin (u), and Josephus Ben Gorion, as Abarbinel (w) relates; but the true Josephus, the Targum, and all the ancient versions, agree with the Hebrew text; more than half Jeroboam's army was cut off, and 100,000 more than Abijah…
