2 Chronicles 13:17

17 And Abijah and his people put them to death with great destruction: five hundred thousand of the best of Israel were put to the sword.

2 Chronicles 13:17 Meaning and Commentary

2 Chronicles 13:17

And Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter,
&c.] 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

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FOOTNOTES:

F19 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 ^F20 makes the number but 50,000, and some copies of the Vulgate Latin ^F21, and Josephus Ben Gorion, as Abarbinel ^F23 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 had in his.

F19 Antiqu. l. 8. c. 11. sect. 3.
F20 Trad. Heb. fol. 84. M.
F21 So that of Sixtus V. in James's Corruption of the Fathers, p. 294.
F23 Comment in 1. Reg. xv. 6. fol. 250. 3.

2 Chronicles 13:17 In-Context

15 And the men of Judah gave a loud cry; and at their cry, God put fear into Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.

16 And the children of Israel went in flight before Judah, and God gave them up into their hands.

17 And Abijah and his people put them to death with great destruction: five hundred thousand of the best of Israel were put to the sword.

18 So at that time the children of Israel were overcome, and the children of Judah got the better of them, because they put their faith in the Lord, the God of their fathers.

19 And Abijah went after Jeroboam and took some of his towns, Beth-el with its small towns and Jeshanah with its small towns and Ephron with its small towns.