151 In the eighteenth year of the rule of Jeroboam son of Nebat, Abijah took over the throne of Judah. 2 He ruled in Jerusalem three years. His mother was Maacah daughter of Absalom. 3 He continued to sin just like his father before him. He was not truehearted to God as his grandfather David had been. 4 But despite that, out of respect for David, his God graciously gave him a lamp, a son to follow him and keep Jerusalem secure. 5 For David had lived an exemplary life before God all his days, not going off on his own in willful defiance of God's clear directions (except for that time with Uriah the Hittite). 6 But war continued between Abijah and Jeroboam the whole time. 7 The rest of Abijah's life, everything he did, is written in The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. But the war with Jeroboam was the dominant theme. 8 Abijah died and was buried with his ancestors in the City of David. His son Asa was king after him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on 1 Kings 15:1-8
Commentary on 1 Kings 15:1-8
(Read 1 Kings 15:1-8)
Abijam's heart was not perfect with the Lord his God; he wanted sincerity; he began well, but he fell off, and walked in all the sins of his father, following his bad example, though he had seen the bad consequences of it. David's family was continued as a lamp in Jerusalem, to maintain the true worship of God there, when the light of Divine truth was extinguished in all other places. The Lord has still taken care of his cause, while those who ought to have been serviceable thereto have lived and perished in their sins. The Son of David will still continue a light to his church, to establish it in truth and righteousness to the end of time. There are two kinds of fulfilling the law, one legal, the other by the gospel. Legal is, when men do all things required in the law, and that by themselves. None ever thus fulfilled the law but Christ, and Adam before his fall. The gospel manner of fulfilling the law is, to believe in Christ who fulfilled the law for us, and to endeavour in the whole man to obey God in all his precepts. And this is accepted of God, as to all those that are in Christ. Thus David and others are said to fulfil the law.