Now that Roboam was strong, and firmly seated on his throne, he defied the divine law, and all his people did the like.✻

Then, in his fifteenth year, their sin against the Lord was punished; Sesac, king of Egypt, marched on Jerusalem

with a thousand and two hundred chariots, with sixty thousand horsemen; nay, there was no counting the hordes that followed with him, Libyan and Troglodyte and Ethiopian all at once.

All the strongest cities fell before him, and at last he reached Jerusalem itself.

Thereupon the prophet Semeias came into Roboam’s presence, where he sat with all the chief men of Juda, that had taken refuge in Jerusalem at Sesac’s approach. This is the Lord’s message for you, he told them; You have abandoned me, and now I am abandoning you to the mercy of Sesac.

King and chieftains cried out in dismay, The Lord’s sentence is just.

And now, seeing them humbled, the Lord sent his word to Semeias, Their pride is humbled; I will spare them from ruin. A little aid they shall have from me, nor shall my vengeance rain down upon Jerusalem with Sesac for its instrument.

But he shall be their master; they shall learn the difference between serving me and serving an earthly king.

Thus Sesac, king of Egypt, raised the siege of Jerusalem, but not until he had removed all the treasures of temple and palace. Among the spoils he carried away were the golden shields Solomon had made,

and in place of these, Roboam made shields of bronze, which he handed over to the chief shield-bearers that kept guard at the palace entrance.

When he made a progress into the Lord’s house, they were brought in by the shield-bearers, and carried back afterwards to their armoury.

Well for the men of Juda that their pride was humbled; they were spared the Lord’s vengeance; were not doomed to perish, like a race in whom no good is to be found.

So Roboam took courage, and ruled his people yet. He was forty-one years old when he came to the throne, and for seventeen years he reigned at Jerusalem, the city the Lord chose, out of all Israel’s tribes, to be the shrine of his name. His mother was called Naama, an Ammonitess.

An ill life his; here was no heart that learned to have recourse to the Lord.

All he did, first and last, is to be found set out fully in the writing of the prophet Semeias and the seer Addo. All through his reign there was war between him and Jeroboam.

Then he was laid to rest with his fathers, with the Keep of David for his burying-place; and the throne passed to his son Abia.