Rehoboam’s son Abijah takes over Judah and there is a lot of tension along the border with Israel. Abijah committed all the same sins his father and grandfather had before him, but God didn’t strike him down because of how great David was. The family finally turns itself around after Abijah is succeeded by Asa, who does follow the Lord. He tears down almost all of the totems and shrines and puts all the treasure back in the temple that his forbearers had spread around Judah. He sends most of that treasure to a foreign king though to try to reestablish a treaty that David had created back in the day. With the foreign king backing Judah now in stead of Israel, Israel is forced to back off a little and quit skirmishing along the border.
These kings and the Israelite kings up north did a lot more than what’s covered in this book, but apparently all their other adventures were recorded in other books that we don’t have.
In Israel, Jeroboam’s son rules for a little while, but then Basha, the son of the very same prophet who told Jeroboam he and his family would be killed, kills Jeroboam and his family. Of course, Basha committed all the same sins as Jeroboam once he became king. This scene pretty much just repeats itself for a few generations until finally Ahab becomes king of Israel and sins more than any of the kings before him. He actually served another God and put a shrine to it in the temple.
Ahab’s rebellion was met with an equal and opposite series of acts by a prophet named Elijah. Elijah decreed that there would be no rain in Israel except on his word, and then he promptly ran away and hid from a nation of angry and hungry farmers and shepherds. God took care of Elijah on the banks of a small stream in the wilderness for a while, and then sent him to live with a foreign widow once his stream dried up.
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