Commentaria in II Paralipomenon
Chapter 12
1. And when the kingdom of Roboam was strengthened and established, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him. 2. And in the fifth year of the reign of Roboam, Sesac king of Egypt came up to Jerusalem (because they had sinned against the Lord) 3. with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen: neither was there any number of the common people that came with him out of Egypt, to wit, Libyans, and Troglodytes, and Ethiopians. 4. And he took the strongest cities in Juda, and came as far as Jerusalem. 5. Then Semeias the prophet came to Roboam, and to the princes of Juda, who were gathered together in Jerusalem, fleeing from Sesac, and he said to them: Thus saith the Lord: You have left me, and I have left you in the hand of Sesac. 6. And the princes of Israel and the king, being in consternation, said: The Lord is just. 7. And when the Lord saw that they were humbled, the word of the Lord came to Semeias, saying: Because they are humbled, I will not destroy them, and I will give them a little help, and my wrath shall not drop upon Jerusalem by the hand of Sesac: 8. yet they shall serve him, that they may know the difference between my service, and the service of the kingdom of the earth. 9. So Sesac king of Egypt departed from Jerusalem, having taken away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king’s house, and he took all things with him, and the golden shields which Solomon had made, 10. in place of which the king made brazen ones, and delivered them to the captains of the shield-bearers, and to them that watched before the porch of the palace. 11. And when the king went into the house of the Lord, the shield-bearers came and took them, and carried them back again to their armoury. 12. Nevertheless because they were humbled, the wrath of the Lord was turned away from them, and they were not utterly destroyed: for in Juda there were found good works. 13. King Roboam therefore was strengthened in Jerusalem, and reigned: and he was one and forty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord chose out of all the tribes of Israel, to set his name there: and the name of his mother was Naama an Ammonitess. 14. And he did evil, and prepared not his heart to seek the Lord. 15. Now the acts of Roboam first and last are written in the books of Semeias the prophet, and of Addo the seer, and diligently set forth, and Roboam and Jeroboam were at war against each other all their days. 16. And Roboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David. And Abia his son reigned in his stead.
Verse 2. Sesac king of Egypt—who is called Sesostris by Herodotus, book II, and Diodorus, book II (whom Josephus cites, book VIII, chapter IV) (a), and who, as they report, when he had conquered unwarlike and womanish men, set up a womanish trophy, and was wont to yoke the kings conquered by him to his triumphal chariot, to show that he was above kings, nay, above all men. Our Salmeron and Salianus suspect that the cause of the war was this: that Jeroboam, who fleeing Solomon’s anger had married in Egypt a kinswoman or daughter of Sesac, returning after the death of Solomon and being made king of Israel, stirred up his kinsman or father-in-law Sesac to attack the unwarlike, womanish, and timid Roboam, lest Jeroboam himself be attacked by Roboam and despoiled of his new kingdom, but rather add Roboam’s kingdom to his own, and possess it by the gift of Sesac his father-in-law. The Scripture gives a surer cause, namely the apostasy and idolatry of Roboam and the Jews: for this God destined to punish by Sesac. Herodotus and Diodorus add that Sesac, Jerusalem being conquered, went on to the rest of Asia and subjugated it, and occupied so much by land and sea that he surpassed Alexander the Great.
Verse 3. Troglodytes—are peoples of that part of Ethiopia which adjoins Egypt, whose king was Sesac, “possessing no wealth.” They “screech rather than speak,” says Mela, book I, “they go into caves, and are fed on serpents.” In Hebrew they are called suchim, that is, dwellers in hiding places and caves; in Greek trogloduontes, that is, men going down into and dwelling in caverns, for trogle is a hole, a nest, a cave. Hear Aristotle, book VIII On the History of Animals, chapter XII: “Cranes come from the Scythian plains to the marshes above Egypt, whence the Nile flows; in which place they are said to fight with the Pygmies: for this is not a fable, but certainly there is a race, both of men and of horses, that is small, as it is said, and they live in caves; whence they received the name Troglodytes from entering caves.” But this about the Pygmies fighting with cranes was once a common opinion received by tradition, yet fabulous, as I showed on Ezechiel, chapter XXVII, verse 11. Wherefore some less correctly think the Troglodytes to be Arabs dwelling in tents, and therefore wanderers, who are called Nomads. For it is established that they were Ethiopians.
(a) In 3 Kings, in the note to chapter XIV, I said it is hardly probable that Sesac is Sesostris.
Verse 7. My wrath shall not drop upon Jerusalem—namely any further through continual slaughters, plunderings, and massacres, which Sesac is preparing. See here how quickly God is appeased by any penance, such as it was, of Roboam and the Jews. For that the penance was either not true and serious, or not firm and stable, is clear from the fact that, at the instigation of his mother Naama the Ammonitess, and therefore an idolatress, he returned to idols.