Short answer: Rehoboam's son was Abijam, named at the end of 1 Kings 14:31, and 1 Kings 15:1–2 confirms that he began to reign over Judah and reigned three years in Jerusalem. Other passages call him Abijah. The name is not given as trivia: it closes a reign marked by idolatry, the loss of the temple treasures to Shishak, and continual war with Jeroboam. The successor inherited a compromised throne, yet God's promise to David continued through this flawed line rather than because of its goodness.
A reign measured by a verdict
First Kings 14:21–31 is a closing regnal notice, the standard formula that ends each reign in the books of Kings. It reads like the court record it draws on: Rehoboam's age and capital, the verdict on the nation's worship, a military disaster, a note about remaining sources, then burial and a successor. The setting is the divided kingdom, roughly two decades after Solomon. Rehoboam had inherited his father's throne and lost the northern tribes almost at once by answering their request for relief harshly. From that point Kings narrates the two kingdoms side by side, and here the two reigns are laid next to each other: Jeroboam ruled twenty-two years and was succeeded by Nadab; Rehoboam ruled seventeen years and was succeeded by Abijam.
The verdict formula carries the weight of the passage. Judah did evil in Yahweh's sight, and the text says the people provoked him to jealousy with their sins above all that their fathers had done. The specifics follow: high places, sacred pillars, Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree, and cult prostitution in the land, practices the text ties to the nations Yahweh had driven out before Israel. This is not a general statement of failure but a concrete charge about worship. The notice also names Rehoboam's mother, Naamah the Ammonitess, a detail that quietly reminds readers of the foreign influences in the royal house.
Then comes the disaster. In Rehoboam's fifth year, Shishak of Egypt came up against Jerusalem and took away the treasures of Yahweh's house and of the king's house, including the gold shields Solomon had made. Rehoboam replaced them with bronze, and the guard carried them whenever the king went into Yahweh's house, a small ceremony of diminished glory. War with Jeroboam continued all his days, and the closing formula hands that unresolved conflict to Abijam. The passage describes covenant unfaithfulness and its national cost; it does not teach that every present hardship is a direct payment for a specific sin. Grace remains God's initiative, and the text simply reports what happened to a kingdom that had turned from him.
The Son who reigned in his place
The account closes with the standard formula of these books: Rehoboam died, was buried with his fathers in David's city, and his son took the throne. The line about Abijam reigned in his place is not a comment on the young man's character. It is the ordinary succession language, the same wording used a few verses earlier of Jeroboam's son Nadab in the northern kingdom. The narrator is simply moving the story forward. Likewise, slept with his fathers means he died and was buried with his ancestors. It is a burial formula, not a lesson about the state of the dead.
One phrase in the opening description carries the weight of what follows. Jerusalem is named as the city which Yahweh had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. That is the place God claimed for his own honor. So when Shishak of Egypt comes up in the fifth year of Rehoboam and strips the temple, he is not merely looting a national treasury. He is carrying off what belonged to God's name. The gold shields Solomon made disappear, and Rehoboam replaces them with bronze, close enough to look right when the king walks into the house of the Lord.
Twice the text names Rehoboam's mother, Naamah the Ammonitess, at the start of his reign and again at his burial. The narrator states it without comment, but the repetition is worth noticing. Judah's decline is described plainly: high places, sacred pillars, Asherah poles, and cult prostitution, the practices of the nations God had driven out. The passage reports this without lurid detail and without claiming that every hardship is a direct payment for a particular sin. It simply shows a king who inherited a chosen city and left it poorer than he found it.
The record also notes continual war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, a divided kingdom that stayed divided. Then the same closing line returns: Abijam his son reigned in his place. The throne passes, the treasure is gone, and the story keeps moving under God's hand.
Who was rehoboam's Son? the name the text gives
The question has a plain answer in the text. The reign of Rehoboam ends with a burial notice and a succession line: his son Abijam reigned in his place (1 Kings 14:31). The next chapter picks up the same thread and dates the changeover to Jeroboam's eighteenth year, then says Abijam reigned three years in Jerusalem (1 Kings 15:1–2). Elsewhere in the Bible this king appears as Abijah. So Rehoboam's son was Abijam, also called Abijah. The passage does not offer the name as trivia. It gives it as the closing line of a reign, the way a ledger is balanced before the next entry begins.
Notice what Abijam inherited. The narrator sets the two thrones side by side: Jeroboam reigned twenty-two years and was followed by Nadab, while Rehoboam reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city Yahweh had chosen to put his name there (1 Kings 14:20–21). Even the chosen city did not protect the throne from covenant unfaithfulness. The verdict on Judah is specific: high places, sacred pillars, Asherah poles, and cult prostitution in the land, sins the text says went beyond what the fathers had done (1 Kings 14:22–24). In Rehoboam's fifth year Shishak of Egypt carried off the treasures of the temple and the palace, including Solomon's gold shields, and Rehoboam replaced them with bronze (1 Kings 14:25–28).
The bronze shields tell the truth about the succession. Each time the king went to the house of Yahweh, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guard room (1 Kings 14:28). The glory was now imitation, and the war with Jeroboam continued without resolution, so that Abijam received a contested kingdom rather than a settled one (1 Kings 14:30). Yet the line continued, and that is grace: God's promise to David was kept through a flawed house, not because of its goodness. The passage describes a national reckoning, not a rule that every hardship is payment for a particular sin. It calls readers to weigh covenant faithfulness and to trust that God's promises outlast the failures of the people who carry them.
Where readers disagree about rehoboam's Son and the verdict on his reign
The plain answer to the question is not in dispute. Rehoboam's son was Abijam, who reigned after him in Jerusalem, and 2 Chronicles calls the same king Abijah. Careful readers agree on this and on the fact that Chronicles retells the reign with material Kings does not include. The disagreement begins when we ask how to hold the two accounts together. Kings ends Rehoboam's reign under an unqualified verdict of evil, while Chronicles records a season of humility when the king and his officials bowed before the Lord. Neither account cancels the other; the question is which one sets the tone for how we read the whole reign.
The bronze shields sharpen that question. Shishak of Egypt carried off the gold shields Solomon had made, and Rehoboam replaced them with bronze. Some read the replacement as a small sign of repentance, since the king still went up to Yahweh's house and the guard still carried the shields. Others see only diminished glory, a dynasty keeping up appearances with cheaper metal. The text itself does not say which reading is right. What it does say is that the treasure of Yahweh's house was taken, and that the kingdom survived without its former splendor.
The notice about Naamah the Ammonitess is stated twice and explained nowhere. It is easy to build a case against her from the fact alone, but the passage never does. What stays central is that the Davidic line continued because God had committed himself to it, not because Rehoboam deserved it. Judah's worship was judged and not excused by the dynasty's survival. That pattern warns us against reading present hardship as a precise payment for particular sin, while still taking the text's verdict on worship seriously.
A failed king and the promise that outlasts him
Rehoboam ruled seventeen years in the city Yahweh had chosen to put his name there, and the text keeps that fact in view even while it lists the evil. Judah built high places, sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill, and the land sank to the practices of the nations God had driven out. Notice what the writer does not do. He does not say the promise failed. He says the king and the people failed inside the promise. That distinction matters for anyone reading a story like this, because it keeps us from turning every hardship into a direct receipt for a specific sin while still taking the text's moral seriousness at face value.
In Rehoboam's fifth year Shishak of Egypt came up and carried off the treasures of Yahweh's house and the king's house, including the gold shields Solomon had made. Rehoboam replaced them with bronze, and the guard carried the substitutes back and forth whenever the king went to worship. The throne still stood. The temple still had a guard. But the glory had been carted away, and the replacement was a visible admission of loss. The best available throne, kept by promise, produced bronze where gold had been. That is not an allegory; it is the plain record of what the line of David looked like when the king did not walk in David's ways.
The line continues anyway. Rehoboam is buried in David's city, and Abijam his son reigns, and Matthew's Gospel later traces Jesus through this same compromised family. The promise outlives the failures of the men who carried it. The plundered temple and the bronze shields make a reader long for a King whose reign is not propped up by substitutes, and for a temple where God's name dwells without the shame of continual war. Grace comes first here: God kept his word to David through a bad king, and he kept it all the way to a Son who would not fail.
What rehoboam's line teaches about inheritance, substitutes, and grace
The closing verses of this account read almost like a family record. Rehoboam's mother is named twice, once when he begins to reign and again when he is buried, and his son Abijam takes the throne after him. Set alongside Jeroboam's line, this is a call to honesty about what we inherit. Families and churches pass on both faithfulness and failure, and Judah's story shows a son repeating and even exceeding the sins of his fathers. Naming what we have received, the good and the damaging, is not disloyalty. It is the truth that makes repentance possible and keeps us from pretending the inheritance is all gold.
The gold shields Solomon made were carried off by Shishak king of Egypt, and Rehoboam replaced them with bronze. The guard still carried them when the king went into Yahweh's house, so the ritual looked intact while the substance was gone. That is a picture worth sitting with. Where have we settled for a visible substitute after a real loss, in worship, in work, or in family life? Bronze shields are not nothing, but they are not gold, and the text does not pretend otherwise. Honest grief over what was lost is better than dressing the replacement up as if nothing happened.
The chapter ends with continual war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and Rehoboam dies without the conflict resolving. Faithful living does not guarantee that opposition will lift on our timetable, and this passage promises no safety, wealth, or relief. What it does show is that God kept his promise to David despite Rehoboam's record. Our hope rests on that same undeserved faithfulness, not on our own. Grace comes first, and it is the ground on which any ordinary obedience stands, including the honesty to name our inheritance and the patience to keep walking while the war continues.
Biblical fidelity check
A careful reading of 1 Kings 14:21–31 starts with the plain succession line: Rehoboam died and his son reigned in his place, named in 1 Kings 15:1 as Abijam, the same king called Abijah in Chronicles. The risks here are specific. It is easy to read the bronze shields of 14:27–28 as a repentance story when the text only reports a substitution, and easy to treat the repeated notice about Naamah the Ammonitess as a verdict when the passage states the fact without comment. The closing formula in 14:31 uses the ordinary succession language found elsewhere in these books.
The real disagreement is how to weigh Chronicles' reform language against the unqualified evil verdict of 14:22, and whether the Shishak invasion in 14:25–26 shows covenant discipline producing humility or simply diminished glory. Both readings have defenders, and the text does not settle it. What stays central is that the Davidic line continued because God had chosen Jerusalem for his name, not because the king deserved it, and that the verdict on Judah's worship stands unsoftened. Abijam inherited a throne held by promise, not by merit.
Where 1 Kings 14:21-31 connects to the rest of Scripture
For further study, compare the parallel account of this king in 1 Kings 12: Rehoboam's Folly and Jeroboam's Idols, trace the promise to David that shaped Judah's hope in 1 Kings 14: Jeroboam's Son Dies, Rehoboam's Folly, and read the earlier account of Solomon's gold shields in 1 Kings 15: Kings of Judah and Israel: Abijam to Baasha. The reign that follows Abijam is taken up in 1 Kings 1: David Acts as Adonijah Rebels.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Rehoboam's son and successor, and what does the Bible call him?
Rehoboam's son and successor was Abijam, named in 1 Kings 14:31, and 1 Kings 15:1–2 confirms that he began to reign over Judah in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam and reigned three years in Jerusalem. The same figure appears elsewhere as Abijah. The passage gives the name at the close of Rehoboam's reign, so the reader meets the heir as the record of a failed king ends. The point is not a bare genealogy but the continuation of David's line through a son who inherited its problems.
Why does 1 Kings call him Abijam while other passages call him Abijah?
The two names refer to the same king, and the difference is a matter of how the name is written rather than two different sons of Rehoboam. First Kings consistently uses Abijam, while the parallel account in Chronicles uses Abijah. The passage itself gives no explanation for the variation, and the text does not depend on it. What matters for the reader is that the son named at the end of Rehoboam's reign is the same man who reigns at the start of the next chapter.
What happened to the gold shields Solomon made, and why does the text mention the bronze replacements?
Shishak king of Egypt carried off the treasures of Yahweh's house and of the king's house, including all the gold shields Solomon had made, as recorded in 1 Kings 14:26. Rehoboam then made bronze shields in their place and committed them to the captains of the guard, who carried them whenever the king went into Yahweh's house and returned them to the guard room. The swap is a visible measure of the loss: what was gold became bronze, and the glory of Solomon's reign was reduced to a substitute. The text does not present the bronze as a recovery but as a reminder of what had been taken.
