Our Lord and Savior had come for this end, to take on himself humanity’s sins. God made him who had committed no sin to be sin for our sake.^[1] For this reason, he came down into the world and took on the person of sinners and depraved people. He willed to be born from the stock of Solomon, whose sins have been recorded,^[2] and from Rehoboam, whose transgressions are reported, and from the rest of them, many of whom did evil in the sight of the Lord.^{[3] [4]} PROSTITUTION SPREAD BY DEMONS. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: There was also prostitution in the land. [The Scripture] does not refer to the mere [prostitution] of bodies, nor to that of the soul, which is idolatry, but to that [prostitution] spread by demons among the Gentiles in order to corrupt God’s creature and work, namely, humanity. And this [form of prostitution] did not exist among the people. It is in this regard that the Fathers warned the children of the church, [to abstain] from prostitution, from anything that has been strangled and from blood.^[1] This is a first form of that prostitution: before being united in marriage according to the law,^[2] the virgins had intercourse with the priests of the demons. A second form took place when in the course of one or two years the virgins devoted themselves to prostitution for the satisfaction of Satan and later became property of men, that is, they sat along the roads and sold their bodies. ^[3]

Rehoboam spread and increased the idolatry introduced by Solomon after being instigated in this sin by his Gentile mother Naamah. And this seems to be hinted at in the Scripture which reports Rehoboam’s apostasy just after mentioning his impious mother. Many examples that occur in this book, such as those of Maacah,^[1] Jezebel^[2] and Athaliah,^[3] amply demonstrate how the marriages made with foreign women had the power to corrupt the customs of the Israelites in this regard. Therefore, since God wanted to punish the offense caused by the violation of piety, he allowed Shishak, the king of Egypt, to enter Judea with a huge army, to conquer Jerusalem, to plunder the temple and the royal house and to destroy everything.

Now in the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam son of Nebat, Abijam began to reign over Judah, and under his rule the Jews obtained a magnificent victory over the Israelites in a battle, which was greater than all those fought before in their civil wars. It is said that after the two multitudes of soldiers were drawn up in fighting order, Abijam appeared to have four hundred thousand men, and Jeroboam eight hundred thousand. The Jews won, while the number of the Israelites who fell in action was larger than five hundred thousand, which is an extremely rare occurrence in history.