With the establishment of the Law of Moses, Israel had no kingship for nearly five centuries. The Lord Himself was the King. Prophets, judges and elders were only executors of His will. This type of government is called theocracy(literally, the power of God). Being God and the Heavenly King of all nations, the Lord was in relation to His chosen people at the same time Tsar earthly. From Him came laws and regulations not only of a religious nature, but also of a family, social, and state nature.
When Samuel grew old, the elders of Israel gathered together and began to ask: set a king over us so that he judges us like other nations(1 Kings 8:5). Samuel did not like these words. The great prophet saw in them a threat to theocracy.
However, the Lord allowed Samuel to satisfy the people's desire, finding that the fulfillment of this may not contradict the form of government established among the Jews, since the earthly king of the theocratic state of the Jews could and should have been nothing more than a zealous executor and guide in the people entrusted to him with the laws of the King of Heaven .
The first king anointed to the kingdom by the prophet Samuel was Saul, son of Kis. It happened like this. Kish's best donkeys were missing, and he sent his son Saul and a servant to find them. After a three-day search, they came to the land of Zuph - the fatherland of the great prophet Samuel. The donkeys were not found, the servant advised Saul to ask the famous seer about them. So the Lord brought the future king to the prophet Samuel. God revealed this to Samuel the day before Saul came. The prophet Samuel took a vessel of oil and poured it on Saul’s head, kissed him and said: Behold, the Lord anoints you to be the ruler of His inheritance(1 Kings 10:1). Until now, the Old Testament spoke of anointing only the high priest with holy oil (see: Exodus 30:30).
Royal power places great responsibility on a person. Through myrrh (or holy oil) Divine spiritual gifts were given for the successful completion of this ministry.
As Saul was returning, he met a company of prophets, and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them. To prophesy in biblical language does not always mean to foretell. In this case the word prophesied can be understood in the sense that he glorified God and His miracles in enthusiastic hymns of praise, which implies a special rise in the spiritual powers of man. For everyone who knew Saul before, this was extremely unexpected, so the Jews had a proverb: Is Saul also a prophet?(1 Kings 10, 11).
In the early years, Saul was quite at the height of his rank. He won several victories over the Philistines and Amalekites, who were hostile to the chosen people. But gradually power intoxicated him. He began to act autocratically, disregarding the will of God which the prophet Samuel revealed to him.
Saul's self-will displeased Samuel. Samuel's final break with Saul occurred after the victory over the Amalekites. The Lord demanded that everything gained in battle be cursed, that is, completely destroyed. But Saul and the people spared the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fattened lambs, and everything of value that came to them. When Samuel rebuked him on behalf of the Lord, Saul said that he had kept the spoils to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel replied that obedience to God is better than any sacrifice, and disobedience is as sinful as magic.
Which has long raised doubts, left them. Every Jew began to doubt his neighbor and his destiny. Hatred arose, people began to attack each other. Some reached despair, and others reached hysteria. That was the end.
The Jewish mentor, Moshe, stood alone on the mountain and saw what was happening. He understood their feelings and was afraid to go down to them. But he was even more afraid that his students would not fulfill their role. He was responsible for them and was ready to bear punishment for each of the Jews.
It was then that he was able to comprehend the main law of the universe. Just as he revealed himself to his mentor Abraham in Babylon when there was hatred there. The law of universal love, the law of the Creator. Moshe knew that all the unfolding hatred did not happen by accident. But he already had the key to solving this.
This is how the thorny path of the people of Israel began to ascend in fulfillment of the most important and incomprehensible commandment, which combines all the others: love your neighbor as yourself.
YESHUA BEN NUN
Moshe was elderly and was looking for a successor. He has been teaching for 40 years. His students were already well acquainted with nature: why hatred arises between them, and what its purpose is. Why hate and love follow each other like day follows night. They knew how to rise above differences and live in unity.
But this was not enough for Moshe. He needed someone who could teach them further. He was already old, and the people of Israel had not fulfilled their destiny.
Then he drew attention to one of the students who did not know the laws of the Torah so well. But he understood better than anyone the principle that the main thing is unity and love for one’s neighbor. His name was Yeshua ben Nun.
While Moshe’s other disciples were sitting and learning from him, Yeshu brought them water and set up chairs. The sages describe: when he heard a bad word about his neighbor, it did not penetrate into him
This is the kind of student Moshe needed. The one who loves his people and is devoted to them even at the expense of his own importance. And he was not mistaken.
It was Yeshua who was able to bring and justify the people to. He can be considered the first ruler of Israel.
KING DAVID
Two generations later, the next star of Israel appears - King David. Its significance is so enormous that today it is recognized by all major world religions.
David was not the most prominent candidate for the role of leader, but the sage Samuel saw in the young shepherd the potential for a wise ruler. And then he anointed him as king.
King David made a strong independent state out of the divided Jewish people. Most of his time was spent resolving controversial issues of ordinary people, writing laws and defending the boundaries of the state.
He was a mentor and teacher to a generation. He conveyed his teachings in poems and songs. I didn’t write for fame. Through them he taught the people, as he writes.
He was a great sage and understood not only politics, but also understood human psychology well, thanks to which he could resolve even the most controversial issues, which earned him undeniable authority among the people for many generations to come.
KING SOLOMON
He was a son and a student. It was he who managed to lead the people to their dawn and fulfill the dream of his father. He was the one who built the First Temple, which became a symbol of love and unity of the people.
In his time, the wisdom of Israel was revered by everyone. This was the peak of national unity and the dawn of Israel. Greeks and Arabs came to study with the Israelis. And subsequently, they adopted many knowledge and customs from them.
With the death of Solomon, the era of ruler-teachers completely ended. The wisdom of the people was forgotten, which resulted in centuries-long exile that continues to this day.
WHAT SHOULD RULES BE TODAY?
So what distinguished the outstanding rulers of antiquity? All of them were not so much managers and leaders as teachers. People came to the rulers to study. They did not have to make an election campaign; they were chosen according to their wisdom. The door to the king's tent or palace was always open. Anyone could come. The king was always among his people and did not shy away from this. He was open to everyone because he was a teacher.
We are now at a transition when governments can no longer satisfy the people with their promises. People have become smarter. Surely we will see in the future how much the need for strict leadership disappears. People will want to be drawn to ideas, to minds. Towards greater cohesion among ourselves and unity. And for this we need people who know how to unite the people not under their own power, but under the common power of love, cohesion and unity.
This is our role. And sooner or later, we, the people of Israel, will have to remember our goal and purpose: to become a “light for the nations” - that is, to become mentors and teachers for all mankind, as it was before.
The key to understanding the passion and power of the great biblical historical saga is to understand the unique time and place in which it was originally composed. Our narrative now approaches a great moment in religious and literary history, for it was only after the fall of Israel that Judah grew into a fully developed state with the necessary set of professional priests and trained scribes capable of taking on such a task. When Judah itself was suddenly confronted with the non-Israelite world, it needed a defining and motivating text. This text was the historical core of the Bible, compiled in Jerusalem during the 7th century BC. It is not surprising that the biblical text, from the very beginning of Israel's history, repeatedly emphasizes the special status of Judah, because Judah was the birthplace of the basic writings of ancient Israel.
It was in the ancient Jewish capital of Hebron that the respected patriarchs and foremothers were buried in the Cave of Machpelah, as we read in the book of Genesis. Among all the sons of Jacob, it was Judah who was appointed to rule over all the other tribes of Israel (Genesis 49:8). The Jews' devotion to God's commandments was unsurpassed by other Israelite warriors during the invasion of Canaan, only they are said to have completely eradicated the presence of the pagan Canaanites from their tribal inheritance. It was from the Jewish village of Bethlehem that David, Israel's greatest king and military leader, emerged onto the stage of biblical history. His described exploits and close relationship with God became important themes in Scripture. Indeed, David's conquest of Jerusalem symbolized the final act of the drama of the conquest of Canaan. Jerusalem, now transformed into a royal city, became the site of the Temple, the political capital of the Davidic dynasty, and the sacred center for the people of Israel forever.
However, despite the prominence of Judea in the Bible, until the 8th century BC. There is no archaeological indication that this small and rather isolated mountainous region, surrounded by arid steppe to the east and south, had any special significance. As we have seen, its population was meager, its cities (even Jerusalem) were small and few in number. It was Israel, not Judea, that initiated the wars in the region. It was Israel, not Judah, that carried out extensive diplomacy and trade. When the two kingdoms came into conflict, Judah typically went on the defensive and was forced to call on neighboring states for help. Before the end of the 8th century, there is no indication that Judea was a significant power in regional affairs. In a moment of revelation, the biblical historian quotes a fable in which he reduces Judah to the status of “the thistle of Lebanon” compared to Israel, the “cedar of Lebanon” (2 Kings 14:9). On the international stage, Judah was probably only a relatively small and isolated kingdom, which, as the great Assyrian conqueror Sargon II mockingly put it, “lies far away.”
But starting from the end of the 8th century BC. something extraordinary happened. A series of epochal changes, beginning with the fall of Israel, suddenly changed the political and religious landscape. The population of Judea reached unprecedented levels. Its capital became for the first time a national religious center and a bustling metropolis. Intensive trade began with surrounding peoples. Finally, a major religious reform movement - centered on the exclusive worship of Yahweh in the Jerusalem Temple - began to develop a new revolutionary understanding of the God of Israel. Analysis of historical and social events in the Middle East in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. explains some of these changes. The archeology of Judea at the end of the monarchy offers even more important clues.
Good kings and bad ones
There is no reason to seriously doubt the reliability of the biblical list of kings of the Davidic dynasty who reigned in Jerusalem during the two centuries following the times of David and Solomon. The Books of Kings intricately weave the histories of the northern and southern kingdoms into a single, combined national history, often making reference to now-lost royal chronicles called the "chronicles of the kings of Judah" and the "chronicles of the kings of Israel." The dates of the reigns of the kings of Judah are precisely compared with the dates of the reigns of the kings of Israel, as in the typical passage of 1 Kings 15:9, which reads: "In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa reigned over Judah". This cross-dating system, which can be verified by externally dated references to individual Israelite and Judah kings, has proven to be generally reliable and consistent—with a few minor chronological corrections to certain reigns and the addition of possible co-reigns.
KINGS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH*
| Rehoboam | 931 – 914 | Jeroboam I | 931 – 909 |
| Aviya | 914 – 911 | Nadav | 909 – 908 |
| Asa | 911 – 870 | Vaasa | 908 – 885 |
| Yoshaphat | 870 – 846** | Ela | 885 – 884 |
| Yoram | 851 – 843** | Zamvriy (Zimri) | 884 |
| Ahaziah | 843 – 842 | Famniy (Tivni) | 884 – 880*** |
| Athaliah (Atalia) | 842 – 836 | Omri (Omri) | 884 – 873 |
| Joas | 836 – 798 | Ahab | 873 – 852 |
| Amaziah | 798 – 769 | Ahaziah | 852 – 851 |
| Uzziah | 785 – 733** | Joram | 851 – 842 |
| Jotham (Yotham) | 743 – 729** | Jehu (Yehu) | 842 – 814 |
| Ahaz | 743 – 727** | Joahaz | 817 – 800** |
| Hezekiah | 727 – 698 | Joash | 800 – 784 |
| Manasseh | 698 – 642 | Jeroboam II | 788 – 747** |
| Ammon | 641 – 640 | Zechariah | 747 |
| Yosia | 639 – 609 | Shallum | 747 |
| Joahaz | 609 | Manaim (Menachem) | 747 – 737 |
| Joakim | 608 – 598 | Fakia (Pekahia) | 737 – 735 |
| Jeconiah | 597 | Fakei (Pekah) | 735 – 732 |
| Zedekiah | 596 – 586 | Hosea | 732 – 724 |
* According to Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume. 1, p. 1010 and Galil "Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah"
** Including joint management
***Simultaneous reign with another rival
So we learn that 11 kings (all but one heir to the Davidic dynasty) ruled in Jerusalem from the late 10th to the mid-8th century BC. The accounts of each reign are laconic. But in neither case is there the dramatic, murderous portrayal of character that we see in the biblical representation of the northern king Jeroboam or the idolatrous house of Omri. But this does not mean that theology plays no role in the biblical account of the history of Judah. God's punishment was swift and crystal clear. When sinful kings reigned in Jerusalem and idolatry was rampant, we learn that they were punished and Judah suffered military failures. When righteous kings reigned over Judah and the people were faithful to the God of Israel, the kingdom prospered and expanded its territory. Unlike the northern kingdom, which is described in negative terms throughout the biblical text, Judah is basically good. Although the number of good and bad kings of Judah is almost equal, the length of their reign is not. Most of the history of the southern kingdom is covered by good kings.
So even in the days of Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, “Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord,” and his people worshiped in high places “on every high hill” and imitated the customs of the foreigners (1 Kings 14:22-24). Punishment for this The apostasy was swift and painful.The Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in the 5th year of Rehoboam (926 BC) marched on Jerusalem and took a huge tribute from the treasures of the Temple and the royal palace of the Davidic dynasty (1 Kings 14:25-26).Lesson was not adopted by Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, who “walked in all the sins of his father which he had committed before him, and his heart was not devoted to the Lord his God” (1 Kings 15:3). Judah's misfortunes continued with periodic conflicts with the armies of the kingdom of Israel.
Things took a turn for the better during the reign of Asa, who ruled Jerusalem for 41 years beginning in the late 10th century. Asa reportedly “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, as David his father did” (1 Kings 15:11). Therefore, it is not surprising that at one time Jerusalem was saved from the attack of the Israeli king Baasha. Asa sought help from the king of Aram-Damascus, who attacked Israel's far northern borders, thereby forcing Baasha to withdraw his invading forces from the northern outskirts of Jerusalem.
To the next king Jehoshaphat (the first Jewish monarch with a name consisting of a variation of the divine name Yahweh: Yeho + Shafat= "Yahweh judged") was praised for following the path of his righteous father Asa. He ruled Jerusalem for 25 years in the first half of the 9th century BC, made peace with the kingdom of Israel and joined it in a successful offensive operations against Aram and Moab.
Over the next centuries, the kingdom of Judah experienced ups and downs, reaching a low point when Jehoshaphat's son Jehoram became intermarried with the sinful family of Ahab and Jezebel. The predictable misfortune came: Edom (long dependent on Judah) rebelled, and Judah lost rich agricultural territories in the western Shephelah to the Philistines. Even more serious were the bloody consequences of the fall of the Omri dynasty, which shook the royal palace in Jerusalem. Ahaziah (son of Jehoram and Princess Athaliah of the House of Omri) was killed in Jehu's coup. Returning to Jerusalem and hearing the news of the death of her son and all her relatives at the hands of Jehu, Athaliah ordered the destruction of all the heirs of the royal house of David and took the throne herself. For 6 years, a Temple priest named Jehoiada waited. When the time came, he publicly announced that David's heir had been saved from the massacre of Athaliah, and presented the boy Joash, the son of Ahaziah by another wife. At the anointing of Joash as the rightful king of the Davidic dynasty, Athaliah was killed. The period of northern (Omrid) influence on the southern kingdom, during which the cult of Baal was introduced in Jerusalem (2 Kings 11:18), came to a bloody end.
Joash reigned in Jerusalem for 40 years and “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days” (2 Kings 12:2). His most important act was the renovation of the temple. At one time, Jerusalem was threatened by Hazael, the king of Aram-Damascus. He left the city alone only after demanding and receiving a crippling tribute from the king of Judah (2 Kings 12:18-19), but this was not as terrible as the destruction to which Hazael subjected the northern kingdom.
The Jewish pendulum of good and bad kings, and sometimes mixed ones, will continue. Amaziah, a moderately righteous king who "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not as his father David" (2 Kings 14:3), launched a successful war against Edom, only to be defeated and taken captive by the armies of the kingdom of Israel that invaded into the territory of Judea and destroyed the wall of Jerusalem. And so the story continues, through the reign of righteous Azariah (also known as Uzziah), who expanded the borders of Judah to the south, and his son Jotham.
A dramatic turn for the worse came with the death of Jotham and the coronation of Ahaz (743-727 BC). Ahaz is condemned by the Bible extremely harshly, far beyond the usual measure of apostasy:
And he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as David his father did, but walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, imitating the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the children of Israel, and he made sacrifices and incense on the high places and on the hills and under every shade tree.. (2 Kings 16:2-4)
The result was catastrophic. The restive Edomites took Elath from the Gulf of Aqaba, and Rezin, the powerful king of Damascus, and his ally Pekah, the king of Israel, went to war against Judah and besieged Jerusalem. Pressed against the wall, King Ahaz turned to the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III for help with gifts from the temple: “And the king of Assyria listened to him; and the king of Assyria went to Damascus, and took it, and moved its inhabitants to Cyrus, and put Rezina to death. " (2 Kings 16:9) Judah was, at least temporarily, saved by the clever ploy of a wicked king who turned to the mighty Assyrian Empire.
But the time for far-reaching religious change has come. The endless cycle of apostasy, punishment and repentance had to be broken. For Ahaz's son Hezekiah, who reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years, embarked on radical religious reforms, restoring the purity and loyalty to Yahweh that had been lacking since the days of King David. One of the most enduring forms of cult practiced in rural Judea was the popularity of high places (open-air altars), which were rarely disturbed, even by the most righteous kings. In the summary of the deeds of each king, the Bible, like a mantra, repeats the formula that “the high places were not abolished,” the people of Judah continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense on the high places. Hezekiah was the first to remove the high places, as well as other objects of idolatrous worship:
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord in all things, just as David his father had done; he abolished the high places, broke the statues, cut down the oak grove and destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it and called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; and there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, both after him and before him. And he clung to the Lord and did not depart from Him, and kept His commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him: wherever he went, he acted wisely. (2 Kings 18:3-7)
Therefore, the biblical picture of Judah's history is clear in its belief that the kingdom was once exclusively righteous but sometimes deserted the faith. Only the accession of Hezekiah could restore the holiness of Judah.
However, archeology suggests a very different situation, in which the golden age of tribal loyalty to Yahweh was a late religious ideal rather than a historical reality. Instead of restoration, the evidence suggests that a centralized monarchy and a national religion centered in Jerusalem developed over the centuries and was new in Hezekiah's time. The idolatry of the people of Judah was not a departure from previous monotheism. On the contrary, it was a custom that the people of Judah had worshiped for hundreds of years.
The Hidden Face of Ancient Judea
Just a few years ago, almost all biblical archaeologists accepted the biblical description of the sister states of Judah and Israel at face value. They portrayed Judah as a fully developed state from the time of Solomon and went out of their way to provide archaeological evidence of the building activities and effective regional administration of the early kings of Judah. However, as we have already shown, the supposed archaeological evidence for a united monarchy was nothing more than wishful thinking. This was the case with the monuments attributed to the successors of Solomon. Identification of forts reportedly built in Judah by Solomon's son Rehoboam (according to 2 Chron. 11:5-12), and linking the massive fortifications at the site of Tell en-Nasbeh north of Jerusalem to the defensive work undertaken by King Asa of Judah at the biblical city of Mizpah (1 Kings 15:22) turned out to be illusory. Like Solomon's gates and palaces, these royal building operations are now known to have taken place nearly two hundred years after the reign of these kings.
Table 6. Kings of Judah from Rehoboam to Ahaz
| Kings | Reign dates | Biblical Assessment | Bible Testimony | Non-biblical data |
| Rehoboam | 934 – 914 | Bad | First king of Judah; strengthens cities | Bigwig Campaign |
| Aviya | 914 – 911 | Bad | Fights with the Israeli king Jeroboam |
|
| Asa | 911 – 870 | Good | Clears Judea of foreign cults; with the assistance of the king of Damascus, he fights with the Israeli king Baasha; builds two forts on the northern border of Judea |
|
| Jehoshaphat | 870 – 846** | Good | He fights with the Arameans with Ahab and with the Moabites with Joram; marries his son to Ahab's daughter |
|
| Joram | 851 – 843** | Bad | Edom rebels against Judah | |
| Ahaziah | 843 – 842 | Bad | Descendant of Omri; killed in Jehu's coup in Israel | Mentioned in the Tell Dan inscription? |
| Afalia | 842 – 836 | Bad | Kills many of the house of David; killed during a bloody coup |
|
| Joash | 836 – 798 | Good | Restores the temple; saves Jerusalem from Hazael; killed during the coup |
|
| Amaziah | 798 – 769 | Good | Edom wins; attacked by King Joash of Israel |
|
| Azariah (Uzziah) | 785 – 733** | Good | Isolated in a leper's house; times of the prophet Isaiah | Two seals contain his name |
| Jotham | 759 – 743** | Good | Oppressed by the kings of Israel and Aram; times of Isaiah |
|
| Ahaz | 743 – 727 | Bad | Attacked by the kings of Israel and Aram; calls Tiglath-pileser III for help; times of Isaiah | Pays tribute to Tiglath-pileser III, prosperity begins in the Judean Highlands |
* according to Anchor Bible Dictionary And The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah G. Gallil
** including years of joint rule
Archeology shows that the early kings of Judah were not equal in power and administrative ability to their northern counterparts, despite the fact that their reigns and even accession dates are intertwined in the books of Kings. Israel and Judah were two different worlds. With the possible exception of the city of Lachish in the Shephelah foothills, there is no sign of developed regional centers in Judah comparable to the northern cities of Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor. In addition, Jewish town planning and architecture were more rustic. In the south, monumental building techniques such as the use of cut stone masonry and proto-Aeolian capitals, characteristic of the advanced building style of the Omri dynasty in the northern kingdom, do not appear until the 7th century BC. Even if the royal buildings of the House of David in Jerusalem (supposedly destroyed by later buildings) achieved some measure of imposingness, if not grandeur, there is no evidence of monumental construction in the few towns and villages anywhere on the southern hills.
Despite the long-held claim that Solomon's luxurious court was the site of a flowering of fiction, religious thought, and historical writing, there is no evidence of widespread literacy in Judah during the divided monarchy. Not a single trace of the supposed literary activity in 10th century Judea has been found. Indeed, monumental inscriptions and personal seals - essential signs of a fully developed state - do not appear in Judea until 200 years after Solomon, at the end of the 8th century BC. Most of the known ostracons and inscribed weight stones - further evidence of bureaucratic accounting and orderly trading standards - did not appear until the 7th century. There is no evidence of mass production of pottery in centralized workshops or industrial production of olive oil for export until the same late period. Population estimates show exactly how unequal Judah and Israel were. As mentioned, archaeological research shows that before the 8th century, the population of the Judean highlands was about one tenth of the population of the highlands of the northern kingdom of Israel.
In light of these findings, it is clear that Iron Age Judea did not have any precocious golden age. David, his son Solomon, and subsequent members of the Davidic dynasty ruled over a small, isolated, rural area that lacked signs of wealth or centralized government. This was not a sudden decline into backwardness and failure from an era of unprecedented prosperity. On the contrary, it was a process of long and gradual development, lasting hundreds of years. The Jerusalem of David and Solomon was only one of a number of religious centers in the land of Israel; at the initial stage, it was, of course, not recognized as the spiritual center of the entire people of Israel.
So far we have given only negative evidence of what Judea was not. However, we have a description of what Jerusalem and its environs may have been, both in the times of David and Solomon and their early successors. This description does not come from the Bible. It comes from the Egyptian Late Bronze Age archive of Tell el-Amarna.
A distant city-state in the hills
Among more than 350 cuneiform tablets from the 14th century BC discovered in the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten (modern Tel el-Amarna), containing correspondence between the pharaoh of Egypt and the kings of the Asian states, as well as the minor rulers of Canaan, a group of 6 tablets suggests A unique glimpse into royal rule and economic opportunity in the southern highlands - exactly where the kingdom of Judah later emerged. Written by Abdi-Heba, king of Urusalim (the name of Late Bronze Age Jerusalem), the letters reveal the character of his kingdom as a sparsely populated highland region, loosely controlled from the royal citadel in Jerusalem.
As we now know from research and recognition of repeated cycles of settlement over millennia, Judea's distinctive society was largely determined by its remote geography, unpredictable rainfall, and rugged terrain. Unlike the northern highlands, with its wide valleys and natural overland routes to neighboring regions, Judah had always been agriculturally insignificant and isolated from major trade routes, offering only meager opportunities for wealth to any would-be ruler. Its economy was centered around the self-sufficient production of an individual farming community or pastoral group.
A similar picture emerges from Abdi-Heba's correspondence. He controlled the highlands from the area of Bethel in the north to the area of Hebron in the south - an area of about 2,300 square kilometers, in conflict with neighboring rulers in the northern highlands (Shechem) and Shephelah. Its land was very sparsely populated, with only 8 small settlements having been discovered so far. The settled population of the Abdi-Heba area, including people living in Jerusalem, probably did not exceed 1,500 people; it was the most sparsely populated area of Canaan. But in this remote mountainous frontier zone there were many pastoral groups, perhaps outnumbering the settled village population. It can be considered that the main power in the remote parts of Abdi-Heba territory was in the hands of bandits known as Apiru, Bedouin-like Shasu and independent clans.
Abdi-Heba's capital, Urusalim, was a small mountain fortress located on the southeastern edge of ancient Jerusalem, which would later be known as the City of David. No monumental buildings or fortifications from the 14th century BC were found there. and, as historian Nadav Naaman has suggested, the capital of Abdi-Heba was a modest settlement for an elite who dominated several agricultural villages and a large number of pastoral groups in the surrounding area.
We do not know the fate of the Abdi-Heba dynasty, and we do not have sufficient archaeological evidence to understand the changes that occurred in Jerusalem during the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. And yet, from the broader point of view of the environment, settlement patterns and economics, nothing seems to have changed dramatically over the subsequent centuries. Several agricultural villages existed on the central plateau (though in slightly increased numbers), pastoral groups continued to follow seasonal cycles with their herds, and a tiny elite exercised nominal rule over them all from Jerusalem. Of the historical David, little can be said except to note the uncanny resemblance between the rabble of bands of Apiru who threatened Abdi-Heb and the biblical accounts of the bandit chief David and his band of brave knights roaming the hills of Hebron and the Judean desert. But whether David actually conquered Jerusalem in a swashbuckling raid like Apiru, as described in the books of Kings, or not, it is clear that the dynasty he founded represented a change in rulers, but was unlikely to change the basic way of ruling the southern highlands.
All this suggests that the institutions of Jerusalem - the Temple and the palace - did not dominate the life of the rural population of Judea to the great extent implied by the biblical texts. In the early centuries of the Iron Age, the most obvious characteristic of Judea was continuity with the past, rather than sudden political or religious innovation. Indeed, this should be clear even in the religious practices with which later historians of the kingdom of Judah seem to have been so particularly obsessed.
Traditional religion of Judea
The books of Kings are frank in their description of the apostasy that brought so much misery to the kingdom of Judah. In the report of Rehoboam's reign it is set out in typical detail:
And Judas did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked Him more than all that their fathers had done by the sins which they had committed. And they built themselves high places and statues and temples on every high hill and under every shady tree. And there were also fornicators in the land, and they did all the abominations of those nations whom the Lord drove out from before the children of Israel. (1 Kings 14:22-24)
Likewise, in the time of King Ahaz, 200 years later, the nature of sins seems to have been largely the same. Ahaz was a famous apostate who walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even put his son through fire (2 Kings 16:2-4).
Biblical scholars have demonstrated that they are not arbitrary isolated pagan rites, but are part of a complex of rituals for appealing to the heavenly powers for the fertility and well-being of people and the earth. Their appearance resembled the methods used by neighboring peoples to honor and receive the blessings of other gods. Indeed, archaeological finds throughout Judea of clay figurines, incense altars, libation vessels, and offering stands suggest that religious practice was highly varied, geographically decentralized, and certainly not limited to the worship of Yahweh only in the Temple of Jerusalem.
Indeed, for Judea, with its relatively undeveloped state bureaucracy and national institutions, religious rituals were carried out in two different places, sometimes working in harmony and sometimes in open conflict. The first site was the temple in Jerusalem, for which there are numerous biblical accounts from different periods, but (since its site was destroyed in later construction works) there is virtually no archaeological evidence. The second branch of religious practice was used by clans scattered throughout the countryside. There, all stages of life, including religion, were dominated by a complex network of kinship relationships. Rituals for the fertility of the land and blessings of the ancestors gave people hope for the well-being of their families and sanctified their ownership of their rural fields and pastures.
Biblical historian Baruch Helpern and archaeologist Lawrence Stager compared the biblical description of clan structure with the remains of Iron Age mountain villages and revealed a distinctive architectural picture of extended family holdings, whose inhabitants likely performed rituals sometimes quite different from those used in the Jerusalem Temple. Local customs and traditions insisted that the Jews inherited their homes, their land, and even their graves from their God and their ancestors. Sacrifices were offered at shrines within the domain, at family graves, or on open altars throughout the countryside. These places of worship were rarely disturbed even by the most "pious" or aggressive kings. It is therefore not surprising that the Bible repeatedly notes that “the high places were not taken away.”
The existence of high places and other forms of tribal and household worship of God was not - as the books of Kings imply - a departure from an earlier and purer faith. This was part of the timeless tradition of the mountain settlers of Judah, who worshiped Yahweh along with various gods and goddesses known or adapted from the cults of neighboring peoples. In short, Yahweh was worshiped in a variety of ways, and was sometimes depicted along with a heavenly retinue. From the indirect (and demonstrably negative) evidence of the books of Kings, we learn that in rural areas, priests also regularly burned incense to the sun, moon and stars on high.
Since the heights were probably open areas or natural elevations, no definite archaeological traces of them have yet been identified. So clear archaeological evidence of the popularity of this type of worship throughout the kingdom is the discovery of hundreds of figurines of naked fertility goddesses in every village in Judea at the end of the monarchy. More suggestive are inscriptions found at the early 8th century village of Kuntillet Ayrud in northeastern Sinai, a site that shows cultural ties to the northern kingdom. They apparently refer to the goddess Asherah as the consort of Yahweh. And lest we suggest that Yahweh's married status was only a sinful northern hallucination, a somewhat similar formula speaking of Yahweh and his Asherah appears in an inscription of the end of the monarchy from the Jewish Shephelah.
This deeply rooted cult was not limited to rural areas. There is ample biblical and archaeological information that the syncretic cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem flourished even at the end of the monarchical period. The condemnation of various Jewish prophets makes it abundantly clear that Yahweh was worshiped in Jerusalem along with other deities such as Baal, Asherah, the heavenly hosts, and even the national deities of neighboring lands. From Solomon's biblical criticism (probably reflecting the realities of the end of the monarchy), we learn of the worship in Judah of the Ammonite Milcom, the Moabite Chemosh, and the Sidonian Asherah (1 Kings 11:5; 2 Kings 23:13). Jeremiah tells us that the number of deities worshiped in Judah equaled the number of cities and that the number of altars of Baal in Jerusalem equaled the number of market stalls in the capital (Jeremiah 11:13). Moreover, cult objects dedicated to Baal, Asherah and the heavenly host were installed in the Jerusalem temple of Yahweh. Chapter 8 of the book of Ezekiel details all the abominations practiced in the Jerusalem Temple, including the worship of the Mesopotamian god Tammuz.
Thus, the great sins of Ahaz and the other wicked kings of Judah should not be regarded as in any way exceptional. These rulers simply allowed rural traditions to pass unhindered. They and many of their subordinates expressed their devotion to Yahweh in rites performed at countless tombs, shrines, and high places throughout the kingdom, with occasional and ancillary worship of other gods.
Sudden coming of age
For most of the 200 years of the divided monarchy, Judea remained in the shadows. Its limited economic potential, its relative geographic separation, and the traditional conservatism of its clans made it much less attractive to Assyrian imperial exploitation than the larger and wealthier Kingdom of Israel. But with the arrival of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BC) and the decision of Ahaz to become his vassal, Judah entered the game with huge stakes. After 720, with the conquest of Samaria and the fall of Israel, Judah was surrounded by Assyrian provinces and Assyrian vassals. And this new situation will have consequences for the future far greater than could have been imagined. The royal citadel of Jerusalem was transformed in a single generation from the seat of a very minor local dynasty into the political and religious leadership center of regional power, both due to dramatic internal events and due to the thousands of refugees from the conquered kingdom of Israel who fled to the south.
Here archeology has made an invaluable contribution in charting the pace and extent of Jerusalem's sudden expansion. As first proposed by the Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi, excavations carried out here over the past decades have shown that suddenly at the end of the 8th century BC. Jerusalem underwent an unprecedented population explosion as its residential areas expanded from their former narrow spine - the City of David - to cover the entire western hill (Figure 26). In order to cover the new suburbs, a formidable defensive wall was built. Over the course of several decades - certainly within a generation - Jerusalem grew from a modest mountain town of 4-5 hectares into a huge urban area of 60 hectares of densely packed houses, workshops and public buildings. From a demographic point of view, the city's population was expected to increase by as much as 15 times, from about 1 thousand to 15 thousand inhabitants.
Rice. 26. Expansion of Jerusalem from the City of David to the Western Hill
A similar picture of enormous population growth comes from archaeological research in the agricultural outskirts of Jerusalem. Not only were numerous estates built in the immediate vicinity of the city at this time, but in areas south of the capital, the previously relatively empty countryside was flooded with new agricultural settlements, large and small. The old sleepy villages grew in size and became, for the first time, real cities. Also in Shephele, a big step forward was made in the 8th century, with a sharp increase in the number and size of villages. Lachish, the most important city in the region, serves as a good example. Until the 8th century it was a modest city; it was surrounded by a formidable wall and turned into the main administrative center. Additionally, the Beersheba valley far to the south witnessed the creation of a number of new cities in the late 8th century. Overall, the expansion was astounding; at the end of the 8th century, Judea had about 300 settlements of all sizes, from the metropolis of Jerusalem to small hamlets where there had once been only a few villages and modest towns. The population, which had long hovered at several tens of thousands, has now grown to approximately 120 thousand.
In the wake of the Assyrian campaigns in the north, Judah experienced not only sudden demographic growth, but also real social evolution. In a word, it became a full-fledged state. Starting from the end of the 8th century, archaeological signs of a mature state formation appeared in the southern kingdom: monumental inscriptions, seals and seal impressions, ostracons for the royal administration; sporadic use of cut stone masonry and stone capitals in public buildings; mass production of ceramic vessels in central workshops; other crafts, as well as their spread throughout the countryside. Equally important was the emergence of medium-sized cities serving as regional capitals, as well as the development of a large oil and wine pressing industry, which transformed from local, private production into a state-owned industry.
Evidence of new burial customs, mainly but not exclusively in Jerusalem, shows that a national elite emerged at this time. In the 8th century, some residents of Jerusalem began carving elaborate tombs into the rock of the ridges surrounding the city. Many were extremely elaborate, with peaked ceilings and architectural features such as cornices and capped pyramids elaborately carved from the rock. There is no doubt that these tombs were used for the burial of nobles and high officials, as indicated by a fragmentary inscription on one of the tombs in the village of Siloam near Jerusalem (east of the city of David), dedicated to “[...]yahu, who is in charge of the house." It cannot be ruled out that this was the tomb of Shebna (whose name, perhaps combined with the divine name, became Shebnayahu), the royal steward whom Isaiah (22:15-16) condemns for his arrogance in cutting the tomb in the rock. Elaborate tombs have also been found at several sites in Shephelah, indicating the sudden accumulation of wealth and division of social status in Jerusalem and the surrounding area in the 8th century.
The question is, where did this wealth and apparent movement towards full public education come from? The inevitable conclusion is that suddenly Judah was united and even integrated into the economy of the Assyrian Empire. Although King Ahaz of Judah began to cooperate with Assyria before the fall of Samaria, the most significant changes undoubtedly took place after the collapse of Israel. A sharp increase in settlement far to the south in the Beersheba valley may hint that the Kingdom of Judah took part in the increased Arab trade in the late 8th century under Assyrian rule. There is good reason to believe that new markets opened up for Jewish goods, stimulating an increase in the production of olive oil and wine. As a result, Judea went through an economic revolution from a traditional system based on villages and clans to export production and industrialization under state centralization. Wealth began to accumulate in Judah, especially in Jerusalem, where the diplomatic and economic policies of the kingdom were determined and where national institutions were controlled.
The birth of a new national religion
Along with the extraordinary social transformation at the end of the 8th century BC. came an intense religious struggle directly related to the emergence of the Bible as we know it today. Before the kingdom of Judah became a completely bureaucratic state, religious ideas were varied and scattered. Thus, as we have already mentioned, there was a royal cult in the Jerusalem temple, countless ancestor and fertility cults in the countryside, and a widespread mixture of worship of Yahweh along with other gods. As far as we can tell from the archaeological evidence of the northern kingdom, there was a similar variety of religious practices in Israel. Apart from mentioning the harsh preaching of figures like Elijah and Elisha, the anti-Omrid puritanism of Jehu, and the harsh words of prophets like Amos and Hosea, there was never any concerted or sustained effort on the part of the Israelite leadership to establish worship of Yahweh alone.
But after the fall in Samaria, as the kingdom of Judah became increasingly centralized, a new, more focused approach to religious law and customs began to emerge. Jerusalem's influence - demographic, economic and political - was now enormous and linked to a new political and territorial agenda: the unification of all of Israel. And the determination of its priestly and prophetic elites to determine the "correct" methods of worship for all the inhabitants of Judah - and even for those Israelites who lived in the north under Assyrian rule - grew accordingly. These dramatic changes in religious leadership have led biblical scholars such as Baruch Helpern to suggest that during a period of no more than a few decades in the late 8th and early 7th centuries B.C.E. The monotheistic tradition of Judeo-Christian civilization was born.
It is a great claim to be able to pinpoint the birth of modern religious consciousness, especially when its central scripture, the Bible, places the birth of monotheism hundreds of years earlier. But even here, the Bible offers a retrospective explanation rather than an accurate description of the past. Indeed, the social developments taking place in Judea in the decades following the fall of Samaria offer a new perspective on how traditional stories of the patriarchs' journeys and the great national liberation from Egypt gave rise to religious innovation - the emergence of a monotheistic idea - within the newly transformed Judean state.
Sometime at the end of the 8th century BC. a more vocal school of thought arose which insisted that the cults of the countryside were sinful, and that Yahweh alone was worthy of worship. We can't be sure where this idea originated. It is expressed in the cycle of stories about Elijah and Elisha (set down in writing long after the fall of the Omri dynasty) and, more importantly, in the writings of the prophets Amos and Hosea, both of whom were active in the north in the 8th century. As a result, some biblical scholars have suggested that this movement arose in the last days of the northern kingdom among dissident priests and prophets who were overwhelmed by the idolatry and social injustice of the Assyrian period. After the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, they fled south to propagate their ideas. Other scholars point to circles associated with the Jerusalem Temple intent on exerting religious and economic control over the increasingly developed countryside. Perhaps both of these factors played a role in the densely packed atmosphere of Jerusalem after the fall of Samaria, when refugees from the north, the priests of Judah, and royal officials acted together.
Whatever its composition, the new religious movement (dubbed the "Yahweh One Movement" by the iconoclastic historian Morton Smith) engaged in a bitter and ongoing clash with adherents of older, more traditional Jewish religious customs and rituals. It is difficult to assess their relative strength in the kingdom of Judah. Even if they were probably initially in the minority, they were the ones who later created or influenced much of the surviving biblical historiography. The moment was favorable for this; with the development of bureaucratic management came the spread of literacy. For the first time, written texts, rather than narrated epics or ballads, gained enormous influence.
As should be clear by now, passages in the books of Kings about the righteousness and sinfulness of the former kings of Judah reflect the ideology of the “Yahweh-one movement.” If the proponents of the traditional modes of syncretistic worship had ultimately prevailed, we might have had a completely different Scripture, or perhaps none at all. For it was the “Yahweh One movement” that was determined to create an unquestionable orthodoxy of worship and a unified national history centered in Jerusalem. And this was brilliantly achieved in the creation of what would later become the legislation of Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic history.
Biblical scholars tended to emphasize the strictly religious aspects of the struggle between the Jerusalem factions, but there is no doubt that their positions also embraced strong positions on domestic and foreign policy. In the ancient world, as today, the sphere of religion could never be separated from the spheres of economics, politics and culture. The ideas of the "Yahweh One" group had a territorial aspect - the search for the "restoration" of the Davidic dynasty over all of Israel, including over the territories of the defeated northern kingdom, where, as we have seen, many Israelites continued to live after the fall of Samaria. This would lead to the unification of all Israel under one king ruling from Jerusalem, the destruction of the cult centers in the north, and the centralization of Israelite cult in Jerusalem.
It is easy to understand why the biblical writers were so upset about idolatry. It was a symbol of chaotic social diversity; clan leaders in the surrounding areas managed their own systems of economics, politics, social relations without direction or control from the royal court in Jerusalem. However, this rural independence, respected for centuries by the people of Judah, began to be denounced as a "return" to the barbarism of Israel's previous times. Thus, ironically, what was most sincerely Jewish came to be labeled as the Canaanite heresy. In the arena of religious disputes and polemics, what was old suddenly began to be seen as foreign, and what was new suddenly began to be seen as correct. And what could only be called an extraordinary outpouring of retrospective theology, a new centralized kingdom of Judah, and the worship of Yahweh centered in Jerusalem, was carried back into the history of the Israelites as what should have always been.
King Hezekiah's reforms?
It is difficult to understand when the new exceptionalism theology first had a practical influence on the state of affairs in Judea; various reforms towards worshiping Yahweh alone are mentioned in the books of Kings as early as the time of King Asa in the early 9th century BC. But their historical authenticity is questionable. One thing seems fairly certain: the ascension of King Hezekiah to the throne of Judah in the late 8th century BC. was remembered by the authors of the books of Kings as an unprecedented event.
As described in 2 Kings 18:3-7, the ultimate goal of Hezekiah's reform was to establish exclusive worship of Yahweh in the only legitimate place of worship, the Temple in Jerusalem. But Hezekiah's religious reforms are difficult to verify with archaeological evidence. The evidence found for them, especially at two sites in the south (Arad and Beersheba), is controversial. In this regard, Baruch Helpern proposed that Hezekiah prohibited rural worship, but did not close the state temples in the administrative centers of the kingdom. However, there is no doubt that profound changes came to the land of Judah with the reign of King Hezekiah. Judah now became the center of the people of Israel. Jerusalem became the center of Yahweh's worship. And the members of the Davidic dynasty became the only legal representatives and means of Yahweh's rule on earth. The unpredictable course of history chose Judea for special status at a particularly important moment.
The most dramatic events were yet to come. In 705 BC. The venerable Assyrian king Sargon II died, leaving his throne to his largely untested son Sennacherib. Troubles ensued in the east of the empire, and Assyria's once invincible façade seemed in danger of toppling over. To many in Jerusalem, it must have seemed that Yahweh was miraculously preparing Judah, just in the nick of time, to fulfill his historical destiny.
Main article: Rulers of Ancient Israel and Judah This page provides a list of the kings who, according to the Bible, ruled the Kingdom of Judah in 922,586 CE. BC e. The reigning dynasty was one of the descendants of King David. In... ... Wikipedia
Tsar (from tsar, tsѣsar, Latin caesar, Greek kαῖσαρ) is one of the Slavic titles of the monarch, usually associated with the highest dignity of the emperor. In allegorical speech to denote primacy, dominance: “the lion is the king of beasts.” Contents 1... ...Wikipedia
KINGS OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL (EPHREM)- ISRAEL JUDAH Jeroboam I 931–910 Rehoboam 931–913 Nadab 910–909 Abijah 913–911 Baasha 909–886 Asa 911–870 Elah 886–885 Jehoshaphat 870–848 Omri 885–874 Jehoram 848–841 Ahab 874–853 Ahaziah 841 Ahaziah 853–852 Athaliah 841–835 Jehoram … … Bibliological dictionary
Wikipedia has articles about other people with the name Hosea (meanings). Portrait from the collection of biographies Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553) Hosea (Hebrew ... Wikipedia
David דָּוִד Pedro Berruguete, David, XV century ... Wikipedia
Ahaziah Hebrew Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people named Zechariah. Portrait from the collection of biographies Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553) Zechariah (Hebrew ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people named Joash. Portrait from the collection of biographies Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553) Joash (Hebrew ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people named Joram. Portrait from the collection of biographies Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553) Joram (... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people named Jehoahaz. Portrait from the collection of biographies Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553) Jehoahaz (Hebrew: יְהו ... Wikipedia
Books
- Kings and Prophets. Newest translations of the Old Testament. Set in 2 books: Leaders and Kings of Israel. Prophets of Israel (number of volumes: 2), Desnitsky Andrey Sergeevich. The set includes two books: “Leaders and Kings of Israel” The books of the Old Testament presented in this edition tell the story of the ancient Israelites: from tribal society to monarchy and…
- Leaders and Kings of Israel, Andrei Desnitsky. This book contains translations of most of the historical books of the Old Testament, made by the famous Russian biblical scholar Andrei Desnitsky. These books tell the story of the ancient...
The history of the kingdom of Israel and all the kings of Israel begins with the reign of the first king - Saul; this demand of the people was not according to the heart of God, since they rejected the rule of the Lord over themselves. As the book of Kings says, the first king did not remain God's faithful servant and servant of the people of Israel for long. He did not follow the orders of the Lord, and therefore was deprived of the Lord’s protection and his affection. The reign of the first king Saul ended with the fact that in the next war with the Philistines, Saul’s son died, and the first king of Israel himself also died.
The Lord God commanded Samuel to anoint the young shepherd David, who was tending his father’s flocks at that time, to the royal dignity. After David defeated the giant Goliath in battle, which determined the outcome of the battle between the Israeli army and the Philistines, the popularity of young David increases sharply among the people of Israel. Saul is afraid 
that David, taking advantage of the right of the winner, would remove him from the royal throne, and raised persecution against David, but the God of Israel was with him and his kingdom lasted 40 years. David made the city of Jerusalem the capital of the state. He expands the city, builds new neighborhoods and streets. David plans to build the Temple. David's plans for the construction of the Temple were later implemented by one of the kings of Israel - Solomon, David's son and successor. Solomon went down in the history of Israel as the wisest and richest king; he became the creator of the Jerusalem Temple. The reign of Solomon - 40 years - became the best time of Israel.
There were many kings of Israel in the subsequent history of the country. But, the heyday of Israel and its golden age occurred at the time when the kings of Israel David and Solomon ruled the kingdom. After the death of Solomon, the united state of Israel ceased to exist. Since then, the kings of Israel ruled over two states, each of which had its own King. The ruling dynasties began to change one after another during coups d'etat. Two tribes remained loyal to the throne of David and his son, and 10 tribes formed another state in the north of Israel. In 722 BC. ten tribes were captured by Assyria and taken into slavery, after which their fate is unknown. The southern kingdom of Judah existed for more than 300 years, and in 606 it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. All its inhabitants were resettled to Babylon, and according to prophecy, in 536, the Persian king Cyrus issued a decree on the return of Israel and the restoration of the temple, which was accomplished 70 years after the destruction - in 516 BC.
The kings of Judah represented one dynasty of David
Rehoboam (932-915) - 17 years old, bad. He had Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, as his wife. The Egyptian Susakim captured Jerusalem and plundered the wealth of its father Solomon.
Avia (915-913) - 3 years, bad. He had Ana as his wife, his mother’s sister, the daughter of Absalom.
Asa (913-872) - 41 years old, good. He led a pious life, eradicated idolatry, for which he also deprived his mother Anu of the title of queen.
Jehoshaphat (872-850) - 25 years good. He taught the people the law of God and had a large army.
Joram (850-843) - 8 years old, bad. He had Athaliah as his wife, and probably, following her teaching, killed all his brothers. Died from a cruel illness.
Ahaziah (843) - 1 year, bad. Named probably after his mother's half-brother Athaliah, the son of Ahab. He was killed while visiting Joram in Jezreel.
Athaliah (843-837) - 6 years old, bad, daughter or granddaughter of Omri, also called the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. After the death of her son, Ahaziah killed all her descendants. She was killed in the conspiracy of the priest Jehoiada.
Joash (843-803) - 40 years old, good, was hidden for 6 years from Athaliah by his aunt Joshabetha. At the age of 7 he reigned and, under the leadership of Jehoiada, cleansed Judea of idols. After the death of Jehoiada, he turned to idolatry and killed his son Zechariah. Died from a conspiracy.
Amaziah (803-775) - 29 years old, started out not bad, until after the victory over the Edomites in the salt valley he brought their idols to Jerusalem and began to worship them. Joash of Israel destroyed and plundered Jerusalem and maimed Amaziah. Amaziah died from a conspiracy.
Uzziah (775-735) - 52 years old, good. The name Uzziah was a common name and his throne name was Azariah. (Brackhaus encyclopedia). The first years he reigned with his father Amaziah, the last years of his life he became proud and was a leper, and his son Jotham was on the throne.
Jotham (749-734) - 16 years old, good. He was practically a co-ruler with his father Uzziah.
Ahaz (741-726) - 16 years old, bad. At the beginning he was co-ruler with Jotham, and changed the altar according to the model of Damascus. 
Hezekiah (726-697) - 29 years old, good. In the fourth year of his reign in 722, the northern kingdom of Israel fell. In the 14th year, Sennacherib went to the whole land of Judea, God granted a miraculous deliverance from the king of Asyria and a miraculous recovery from illness with a sign.
Manasseh (697-642) - 50 years old, bad. Because of his wickedness, God did not want to forgive Judas. According to legend, he sawed down the prophet Isaiah.
Ammon (642-640) - 2 years, bad. Killed in a conspiracy.
Josiah (639-608) - 31 years old, good. At the age of 8 he became king and carried out pious reforms among the people. Killed by Pharaoh Necho.
Joahaz (608) - 3 months, bad. Captured by Pharaoh.
Joachim (608-597) - 11 years old, bad.
Eliakim was appointed Pharaoh in place of his brother Jehoahaz. At first, he paid tribute to the pharaoh and 3 years later, after the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, to Babylon.
Jehoiachin (597) - 3 months, bad. He went out to Nebuchadnezzar and was taken to Babylon, where he lived for 37 years. He was taken out of prison and received support from the king until the day of his death.
Zedekiah (Matthania) 597-586) - 11 years old, bad. (Matthanah), Jeconiah's uncle, was taken to Babylon where he was put on trial. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and remained in ruins for 70 years.
Gedaliah, the last ruler of Judah, installed as king of Babylon, ruled for 2 months and was killed, he was not from the royal family of David
After the death of Solomon, the kingdom was divided, ten tribes made up the northern kingdom called “Israel”; Judah and Benjamin formed the southern kingdom, called "Judah."
Israel's 19 kings comprised 9 different dynasties
Jeroboam (932-911) - 22 years old, bad. Founder of the Northern Independent of Judah. Jeroboam, like the Jews on the way from Egypt, introduced Egyptian idolatry of the calf into the country. Probably in memory of work in copper mines, where often after a dying candle the exit depended on the instinct for a fresh stream of oxen that pulled heavy loads. All 19 kings worshiped the calf.
Navat (911-910) - 2 years, bad. He walked in the ways of his father and was killed by Baasha and all the house of Jeroboam.
Vaasa (910-887) - 24 years old, bad. Conspired against Navat and fought with the Kingdom of Judah.
Ila (887-886) - 2 years, bad. He was a libertine, killed in a drunken state by Zamri, who destroyed the entire house of Ila.
Zimri (Jehu) (886) - 7 days, bad. Burned in the fire.
Omri (886-875) - 12 years old, bad. Under him, Israel began to act worse than the surrounding nations.
Ahab (875-854) - 22 years old, bad. He married the daughter of the Sidonian priest Ethbaal, who destroyed the prophets of the Lord and introduced in Israel the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, which was eradicated by the prophets Elijah, Elisha and Ju.
Ahaziah (855-854) - 2 years, bad. He followed the path of his mother, and under mysterious circumstances fell through the bars of a house and died.
Joram (854-843) - 12 years old, bad. Killed by the military commander Jehu.
Jehu (843-816) - 28 years old, bad. The commander of Ahab's bodyguard, he destroyed his entire house and the worship of Baal.
Joahaz (820-804) - 17 years old, bad. He walked in the ways of his father Jehu. 
Joash (806-790) - 16 years old, bad. He fought and destroyed the walls of Jerusalem.
Jeroboam 2 (790-749) - 41 years old, bad.
Zechariah (748) - 6 months, bad. Publicly killed by Sellum.
Sellum (748) - 1 month, bad. Killed by Menaim from Tirzah.
Menaim (748-738) - 10 years old, bad. He paid off Phul, the king of Assyria.
Fakiya (738-736) - 2 years, bad.
Fakei (736-730) ~ 20 years old, bad. In 734 BC. Tiglathpileser took northern and eastern Israel into captivity.
Hosea (730-721) - 9 years old, bad. The Assyrian king Shalmaneser imposed tribute on him after his death in 721 BC. Samaria and the rest of Israel were taken and carried into captivity by Sargon in 722.
Captivity and return from Babylon of Israel
The Babylonian captivity of Judah occurred in three stages:
1) In 606 BC.
2) In 597 BC.
3) In 586 BC.
The Babylonian captivity lasted 70 years, from 606-536 BC.
In 516 70 years later from the destruction and burning of the temple in 586, it was restored.
The return of Israel took place in three stages:
1) from the decree of Cyrus in 538-536;
2) under Artharxerxes the First and the priest Ezra in 458;
3) in the 20th year of the reign of Artharxerxes I, with cupbearer Nehemiah in 445.
What was the beginning of the time of allotment determined for Israel in 69 weeks until the death of Christ: “Know therefore and understand: from the time the commandment goes out to restore Jerusalem, until Christ the Lord, there are seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and [the people] will return and streets and walls will be built, but in difficult times. And at the end of sixty-two weeks Christ will be put to death” (Dan.9:26)
In the IV century. conquest of the Greek Empire by A. Macedonian
IN III-II century Maccabean Wars with the Kings of Syria
In Iv. BC Formation of the Roman Empire, conquest of Pompey (63 BC)
37-4 to R/X. the kingdom of Herod Idumea, who destroyed the royal family of the Hasmoneans. To give his dynasty the royal connections of the Hasmonean family, Herod married the granddaughter of the high priest Hyrcanus IIMariamne, who was subsequently ordered to be executed with her two sons and her mother.
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