Rehoboam

Rehoboam (; Hebrew: רְחַבְעָם, Rəḥaḇʿām, transl. "an enlarged people"; Greek: Ροβοάμ, Roboam; Latin: Roboam) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the last monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel, though his reign over the unified state was brief; after the Northern and Southern kingdoms were divided, he became the first king of the Kingdom of Judah. He was a son of and the successor to Solomon and a grandson of David. In the account of I Kings and II Chronicles, Rehoboam saw his rule limited to only the Kingdom of Judah in the south following a rebellion by the ten northern tribes of Israel in 932/931 BCE, which led to the formation of the independent Kingdom of Israel under the rule of Jeroboam in the north. Extrabiblical evidence for Judah’s stability under Rehoboam is limited, with indications that the biblical accounts of Rehoboam and Jeroboam may be retrojections.