In 2 Chronicles 13, we find Judah about to face off in battle against Israel. Following the glorious, climactic reign of Solomon, the kingdom by this point had split in two.

We know that Rehoboam took foolish counsel from other young men and answered the people harshly. When the overburdened people asked for a lightening of Solomon’s heavy-handed rule, Rehoboam doubled down, walked into a fight with his words, and divided a nation. One man’s folly ended the golden age of Israel’s national existence.

Some years later, Abijah (Solomon’s grandson and David’s great grandson) led Judah in battle against Jeroboam and Israel. The wide angle view of Abijah’s life was hardly the picture of obedience to God’s law, yet in this snapshot he seems to have been in the right.

As the battle neared, Judah was outnumbered, with 400,000 set against Israel’s 800,000. Despite the fact that Jeroboam’s armies surrounded and began to ambush Judah’s fighting men, Abijah’s troops would win a stunning victory. In the end, some 500,000 Israelites—chosen men, the most valiant warriors—were slain. The victory went to Judah because unlike Israel, it had not forsaken God.

Despite the “victory,” it was ultimately tragic—a civil war that cost nearly as many lives as the American Civil War. You could trace all the senseless carnage and shattered lives back to the failure of leadership displayed by Rehoboam. One man’s soft character led to the death of three quarters of a million of his own people and changed the direction of the nation forever.

Abijah’s speech before the battle focuses in on this aspect of Rehoboam’s character and past actions.

Hard Words About a Soft Man

As the two armies formed battle lines, Abijah told Jeroboam that he, Jeroboam, was able to revolt against Rehoboam and divide the kingdom because Rehoboam was “young and irresolute and could not withstand them” (2 Chronicles 13:7).

You might pass over a word like “irresolute,” as I almost did, except that I noticed the ESV gives us a footnote. As an alternate meaning, the Hebrew word being used denotes that Rehoboam was “soft of heart.”

While the ESV translates the Hebrew word rak as “irresolute,” it means “tender, delicate, soft.” It can mean “tender, delicate, especially in body, implying weakness of undeveloped character.” It can also mean “weak of heart, timid,” or referring to “soft words.”

Keep in mind, at this pivotal time Abijah is speaking about his father. Maybe Rehoboam passed on the lesson of his own failure to his son so that he would not repeat it. Maybe Abijah simply knew his history. In any event, the son didn’t miss the point made by a generation-impacting failure of leadership: one man’s soft character can destroy a nation. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

Rehoboam altered the fate of his nation because he was a soft man. His softness seems to have come from a number of factors: his youth, inexperience, and perhaps the circumstances of his upbringing. He was weak of character and delicate, likely because he was raised in opulence, wealth, and comfort. We also know that he wasn’t faithful to God’s Word. Soft men come from soft places and soft people.

It reminds me of something John Piper once said in Chapel at Southern Seminary. He warned the students that the pristine and decadent campus could destroy their souls because it was so “posh and nice.” Those are the kind of surroundings that can make men soft, cowardly, and compromising when they should be hard, resolute, and courageous to oppose evil. Piper’s words were an accurate foreshadowing of what would happen to the seminary because of Critical Race Theory and Woke Politics.

You can also think of the Spartans, who realized hard warriors came from hard training and a hard life. Or John, who didn’t grow up with white collar amenities but in a wilderness with sparsity and danger.

John: The Hard Man Par Excellence

Compare Rehoboam’s softness to what Jesus said about John the Baptist in Matthew 11.

Speaking to the crowds about John, Jesus asked, ““What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸ What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses” (Matthew 11:7-8).

I’ve talked about this before, but the word here for soft in the Greek is malakos, which also translates elsewhere to effeminate. Soft men in soft places (king’s palaces) wear soft clothing. They live in, fellowship with, and adorn themselves with softness. Their environment and friends are soft, and it seeps into their bones—much like xenoestrogens that soften plastic & human skin tissue.

Rehoboam was that son raised in a king’s house. He was delicate and, as a result, dangerous to his people. He lacked the courageous character to confront rebellion with competence. Ironically, a wise, hard man would have spoken a soft word and would have saved the nation; instead, a soft man spoke a hard word and caused horrendous national division, death, and destruction. Too often, soft men wrongly think “tough talk” will make up for their own insecurity, when it actually works to fan the flames of conflict. A wise man knows when to use a gentle word of appeal and when to roar like a lion.