Abia

Abia is the older English form of the Hebrew name Abijah, "Yahweh is my father." Several distinct biblical figures share the name. The verses gathered under the ABIA heading distribute across four people: a priestly head whose name labels one of the twenty-four service courses; the second son of Samuel; the son of Jeroboam who dies as a child in fulfillment of Ahijah's oracle; and the second king of Judah after the schism, who appears in the Davidic line of Jesus' genealogy. The umbrella does not name a single life but a name reused at four hinge-points across the canon.

The Priestly Course

The first Abijah belongs to the priesthood. When David sets the priests in rotation by lot, the eighth course falls to Abijah's house: "the seventh to Hakkoz, the eighth to Abijah" (1Ch 24:10). The course-name persists into the post-exilic period — the list of priests who came up with Zerubbabel records "Iddo, Ginnethoi, Abijah" (Ne 12:4), so the eighth course is still attested by name centuries later as one of the divisions ministering at the second temple.

Samuel's Son

The second Abijah is the second son of the prophet Samuel, set in office at Beer-sheba and remembered for the failure that triggers Israel's demand for a king. "And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abijah: they were judges in Beer-sheba" (1Sa 8:1-2). The narrator's verdict on the brothers is uncompromising: "And his sons didn't walk in his ways, but turned aside after greed for monetary gain, and took bribes, and perverted justice" (1Sa 8:3). Their misrule is the immediate occasion for the elders' approach to Samuel: "Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel to Ramah; and they said to him, Look, you are old, and your sons don't walk in your ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (1Sa 8:4-5). The Chronicler preserves the same pair in his Levitical genealogy: "And the sons of Samuel: the firstborn [Joel], and the second Abijah" (1Ch 6:28).

The Son of Jeroboam

The third Abijah is a child of the northern kingdom — the son of Jeroboam, identified by name only in the sickbed narrative that prompts his mother's disguised journey to the prophet Ahijah at Shiloh. "At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick" (1Ki 14:1). The oracle Ahijah delivers is double-edged. The wider judgment falls on Jeroboam's house — "look, I will bring evil on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam [every] one urinating against a wall, whether slave or free in Israel, and will completely sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweeps away dung, until it is all gone" (1Ki 14:10) — but the singular note about the child himself reserves him from that sweeping: "And all Israel will mourn for him, and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam will come to the grave, because in him there is found some good thing toward Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam" (1Ki 14:13). The death follows immediately on the wife's return: "And Jeroboam's wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: [and] as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. And all Israel buried him, and mourned for him, according to the word of Yahweh, which he spoke by his slave Ahijah the prophet" (1Ki 14:17-18). This Abijah is the only member of Jeroboam's line both mourned and granted a grave.

The King of Judah

The fourth and most fully attested figure is the second king of Judah after the division of the kingdom — son of Rehoboam, three-year reign in Jerusalem, succeeded by Asa. Rehoboam's own preference for him is recorded while the father still reigns: "And Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah to be chief, [even] the leader among his brothers; for [he was minded] to make him king" (2Ch 11:22). The accession formulas in Kings and Chronicles match: "And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David: and his mother's name was Naamah the Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead" (1Ki 14:31); "And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David: and Abijah his son reigned in his stead" (2Ch 12:16); "Now in the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam the son of Nebat, Abijam began to reign over Judah" (1Ki 15:1).

His central set-piece is the Mount Zemaraim confrontation with the north: "And Abijah stood up on mount Zemaraim, which is in the hill-country of Ephraim, and said, Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel" (2Ch 13:4). The reign closes with the same formula in both books: "So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David; and Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land was quiet ten years" (2Ch 14:1). The full reign — speech, battle, family, closing notice — is treated under Abijam, which is the canonical slug for this figure.

In the Genealogy of Christ

The same king reappears, this time named Abijah, in both biblical genealogies of the Davidic line that culminates in Jesus. The Chronicler's list runs the southern dynasty father-to-son: "And Solomon's son was Rehoboam, Abijah his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his son" (1Ch 3:10). Matthew picks up the same chain in the genealogy that opens his Gospel: "and Solomon begot Rehoboam; and Rehoboam begot Abijah; and Abijah begot Asaph" (Mt 1:7). The figure whose own evaluation in Kings is unfavorable is, for the genealogist, simply a link in the line preserved "for David's sake," carrying the name forward to Asa and ultimately to the Christ.