The Two Kingdoms
(c.920 BCE - 597 BCE)
Background
The experiment with the opulence and power of the great
eastern kingdoms had ended in disaster for Israel. King Solomon created the
wealthiest and most powerful central government the Hebrews would ever
see, but he did so at an impossibly high cost. Land was given away to
pay for his extravagances and people were sent into forced labor into
Tyre in the north. When Solomon died, between 926 and 922 BCE, the ten northern tribes refused to submit
to his son, Rehoboam, and revolted.
From this point on, there would
be two kingdoms of Hebrews: in the north - Israel, and in the south - Judah. The Israelites formed their capital in the city of Samaria, and
the Judaeans kept their capital in Jerusalem.
These kingdoms remained separate states for over two hundred years.
The history of the both kingdoms is a litany of ineffective, disobedient,
and corrupt kings. When the Hebrews had first asked for a king, in the
book of Judges, they
were told that only God was their king. When they approached Samuel the Prophet,
he told them the desire for a king was an act of disobedience and that they
would pay dearly if they established a monarchy. The history told in
the Hebrew book, Kings, bears out Samuel's warning.
The Hebrew empire eventually collapses,
Moab successfully revolts against Judah, and Ammon successfully
secedes from Israel. Within a century of Solomon's death, the kingdoms
of Israel and Judah were left as tiny little states - no bigger than Connecticut - on the larger map of the Middle East.
As history proved time and again in the region, tiny states never
survived long. Located directly between the Mesopotamian kingdoms
in the northeast and powerful Egypt in the southwest, the Hebrew Kingdoms were of the utmost commercial and
military importance to all these warring powers. Being small
was a liability.
The Conquest of Israel
In 722 BC, the Assyrians conquered Israel. The Assyrians were aggressive and effective; the history
of their dominance over the Middle East is a history of constant warfare.
In order to assure that conquered territories would remain pacified,
the Assyrians would force many of the native inhabitants to relocate
to other parts of their empire. They almost always chose the upper and
more powerful classes, for they had no reason to fear the general mass
of a population. They would then send Assyrians to relocate in the conquered
territory.
When they conquered Israel, they forced the ten tribes
to scatter throughout their empire. For all practical purposes, you
might consider this a proto-Diaspora ("diaspora"="scattering"), except that these Israelites
disappear from history permanently; they are called "the ten lost
tribes of Israel." Why this happened is difficult to assess. The
Assyrians did not settle the Israelites in one place, but scattered
them in small populations all over the Middle East. When the Babylonians later conquered Judah, they, too, relocate a massive amount of the population.
However, they move that population to a single location so that
the Jews can set up a separate community and still retain their religion
and identity. The Israelites deported by the Assyrians, however, do
not live in separate communities and soon drop their Yahweh religion
and their Hebrew names and identities.
The Samaritans
One other consequence of the Assyrian invasion of Israel
involved the settling of Israel by Assyrians. This group settled in
the capital of Israel, Samaria, and they took with them Assyrian gods
and cultic practices. But the people of the Middle East were above everything
else highly superstitious. Even the Hebrews didn't necessarily deny
the existence or power of other peoples' gods—just in case. Conquering
peoples constantly feared that the local gods would wreak vengeance
on them. Therefore, they would adopt the local god or gods into their
religion and cultic practices.
Within a short time, the Assyrians in
Samaria were worshipping Yahweh as well as their own gods; within a
couple centuries, they would be worshipping Yahweh exclusively. Thus
was formed the only major schism in the Yahweh religion: the schism
between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans, who were Assyrian
and therefore non-Hebrew, adopted almost all of the Hebrew Torah and
cultic practices; unlike the Jews, however, they believed that they
could sacrifice to God outside of the temple in Jerusalem. The Jews
frowned on the Samaritans, denying that a non-Hebrew had any right to
be included among the chosen people and angered that the Samaritans
would dare to sacrifice to Yahweh outside of Jerusalem. The Samaritan
schism played a major role in the rhetoric of Jesus
of Nazareth; and there are still Samaritans alive today around the
city of Samaria.
The Conquest of Judah
"There but for the grace of god go I." Certainly,
the conquest of Israel scared the people and monarchs
of Judah. They barely escaped the Assyrian menace, but Judah would
be conquered by the Chaldeans about a century later. In 701, the Assyrian Sennacherib would gain territory
from Judah, and the Jews would have suffered the same fate as the Israelites.
But by 625 BC, the Babylonians, under Nabopolassar, would reassert control
over Mesopotamia, and the Jewish king Josiah aggressively sought to
extend his territory in the power vacuum that resulted. But Judah soon
fell victim to the power struggles between Assyrians, Babylonians, and
Egyptians. When Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, became king, the king of Egypt,
Necho (put into power by the Assyrians), rushed into Judah and deposed
him, and Judah became a tribute state of Egypt. When the Babylonians
defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC, then Judah became a tribute state
to Babylon. But when the Babylonians suffered a defeat in 601 BC, the
king of Judah, Jehoiakim, defected to the Egyptians. So the Babylonian
king, Nebuchadnezzar, raised an expedition to punish Judah in 597 BC.
The new king of Judah, Jehoiachin, handed the city of Jerusalem over
to Nebuchadnezzar, who then appointed a new king over Judah, Zedekiah.
In line with Mesopotamian practice, Nebuchadnezzar deported around 10,000
Jews to his capital in Babylon; all the deportees were drawn from professionals,
the wealthy, and craftsmen. Ordinary people were allowed to stay in
Judah. This deportation was the beginning of the Exile.
The story should have ended there. However, Zedekiah
defected from the Babylonians one more time. Nebuchadnezzar responded
with another expedition in 588 and conquered Jerusalem in 586. Nebuchadnezzar
caught Zedekiah and forced him to watch the murder of his sons; then
he blinded him and deported him to Babylon. Again, Nebuchadnezzr deported
the prominent citizens, but the number was far smaller than in 597:
somewhere between 832 and 1577 people were deported.
The Hebrew kingdom, started with such promise and glory
by David, was now at an
end. It would never appear again, except for a brief time in the second
century BC, and to the Jews forced to relocate and the Jews left to
scratch out a living in their once proud kingdom, it seemed as if no
Jewish nation would ever exist again. It also seemed as if the special
bond that Yahweh had promised to the Hebrews, the covenant that the
Hebrews would serve a special place in history, had been broken and
forgotten by their god. This period of confusion and despair, a community
together but homeless in the streets of Babylon, makes up one of the
most significant historical periods in Jewish history: the Exile.
Sources: The Hebrews:
A Learning Module from Washington State University, ©Richard Hooker,
reprinted by permission.
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