Chapter IV: , VII (142)

"The first war mentioned in the days of the Judges is with the
Syrians, at a time when the Israelites, or a northern portion
of them, were held in servitude for eight years by a king
whose name, Cushan-rish-athaim, which may be translated the
'Most Wicked Negress,' seems to place him in the region of
imaginary tradition rather than of history. … The next war
mentioned was an invasion by the Moabites, who, being joined
with a body of Ammonites, and Amalakites, harassed the
Israelites of the neighbourhood of Gilgal and Jericho. …
After a servitude of 18 years under the Moabites, Ehud, a
Benjamite, found an opportunity of stabbing Eglon, the king of
Moab; and shortly afterwards the Benjamites were relieved by a
body of their neighbours from the hill country of Ephraim. The
Israelites then defeated the Moabites, and seized the fords of
the Jordan to stop their retreat, and slew them all to a man.
While this war was going on on one side of the land, the
Philistines from the south were harassing those of the
Israelites who were nearest to their country. … The history
then carries us back to the northern Israelites, and we hear
of their struggle with the Canaanites of that part of the
country which was afterwards called Galilee. These people were
under a king named Jabin, who had 900 chariots of iron, and
they cruelly oppressed the men of Naphtali and Zebulun, who
were at that time the most northerly of the Israelites. After
a suffering of 20 years, the two tribes of Zebulun and
Naphtali, under the leadership of Barak, rallied against their
oppressors, and called to their help their stronger
neighbours, the men of Ephraim. The tribe of Ephraim was the
most settled portion of the Israelites, and they had adopted
some form of government, while the other tribes were
stragglers scattered over the land, every man doing what was
right in his own eyes. The Ephraimites were at that time
governed, or, in their own language, judged, by a brave woman
of the name of Deborah, who led her followers, together with
some of the Benjamites, to the assistance of Barak, the leader
of Zebulun and Naphtali; and, at the foot of Mount Tabor, near
the brook Kishon, their united forces defeated Sisern, the
general of the Canaanites. Sisera fled, and was murdered by
Jael, a woman in whose tent he had sought for refuge. … The
next war that we are told of is an invasion by the Midianites
and Amalakites and Children of the East. They crossed the
Jordan to attack the men of Manasseh, who were at the same
time struggling with the Amorites, the natives who dwelt
amongst them. Gideon, the leader of Manasseh, called together
the fighting men of his own tribe, together with those of
Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. The men of Gilead, who had come
over to help him, seem to have deserted him. Gideon, however,
routed his enemies, and then he summoned the Ephraimites to
guard the fords of the Jordan, and to cut off the fugitives.
… This victory of Gideon, or Jerubbaal, as he was also
named, marked him out as a man fit to be the ruler of Israel,
and to save them from the troubles that arose from the want of
a single head to lead them against the enemies that surrounded
them and dwelt among them. Accordingly, he obtained the rank
of chief of all the northern Israelites. Gideon had dwelt at
Ophrah, in the land of Manasseh; but his son Abimelech, who
succeeded him in his high post, was born in Shechem, in the
land of Ephraim, and had thus gained the friendship of some of
that tribe. Abimelech put to death all but one of his
brethren, the other sons of Gideon, and got himself made king
at Shechem; and he was the first who bore that title among the
Israelites.
{1900}
But his thus violently seizing upon the power was the cause of
a long civil war between Ephraim and Manasseh, which ended in
the death of the usurper Abimelech, and the transfer of the
chieftainship to another tribe. Tola, a man of Issachar, was
then made Judge, or ruler of the northern tribes. … After
Tola, says the historian, Jair of Gilead judged Israel. …
Jair and his successors may have ruled in the east at the same
time that Deborah and Gideon and their successors were ruling
or struggling against their oppressors in the west. Jephtha of
Gilead is the next great captain mentioned. … The Ammonites,
who dwelt in the more desert country to the east of Gilead,
had made a serious incursion on the Israelites on both sides
of the Jordan; and the men of Gilead, in their distress, sent
for Jephtha, who was then living at Tob, in Syria, whither he
had fled from a quarrel with his brethren. … It seems that
the Ammonites invaded Gilead on the plea that they had
possessed that land before the Israelites arrived there, to
which Jephtha answered that the Israelites had dispossessed
the Amorites under Sihon, king of Heshbon, and that the
Ammonites had not dwelt in that part of the country. In
stating the argument, the historian gives a history of their
arrival on the banks of the Jordan. On coming out of Lower
Egypt, they crossed the desert to the Red Sea, and then came
to Kadesh. From thence they asked leave of the Edomites and
Moabites to pass through their territory; but, being refused,
they went round Moab till they came to the northern bank of
the river Arnon, an eastern tributary of the Jordan. There
they were attacked by Sihon, king of the Amorites; and on
defeating him they seized his territory, which lay between the
Arnon and the Jabbok. There the Israelites had dwelt quietly
for 300 years, without fighting against either the Moabites or
the Ammonites, who were both too strong to be attacked. This
is a most interesting narrative, both for what it tells and
for what it omits, as compared with the longer narrative in
the Pentateuch. … It omits all mention of the delivery of
the Law, or of the Ark, or of any supernatural events as
having happened on the march, and of the fighting with Og,
king of Bashan. Og, or Gog, as it is spelled by other writers,
was the name of the monarch whose imaginary castles, seen upon
the mountains in the distance, the traveller thought it not
wise to approach. They were at the limits of all geographical
knowledge. At this early time this fabulous king held Mount
Bashan; in Ezekiel's time he had retreated to the shores of
the Caspian Sea; and ten centuries later the Arabic travellers
were stopped by him at the foot of the Altai Mountains, in
Central Asia. His withdrawing before the advance of
geographical explorers proves his unreal character. He is not
mentioned in this earlier account of the Israelites settling
in the land of the Amorites; it is only in the more modern
narrative in the Book of Numbers that he is attacked and
defeated in battle, and only in the yet more modern Book of
Deuteronomy that we learn about his iron bedstead of nine
cubits in length."

_S. Sharpe,
History of the Hebrew Nation,
pages 4-9._

"At the close of the period of the Judges the greater part of
the Israelites had quite lost their pastoral habits. They were
an agricultural people living in cities and villages, and
their oldest civil laws I are framed for this kind of life.
All the new arts which this complete change of habit implies
they must have derived from the Canaanites, and as they
learned the ways of agricultural life they could hardly fail
to acquire many of the characteristics of their teachers. To
make the transformation complete only one thing was lacking
—that Israel should also accept the religion of the
aborigines. The history and the prophets alike testify that to
a great extent they actually did this. Canaanite sanctuaries
became Hebrew holy places, and the vileness of Canaanite
nature-worship polluted the Hebrew festivals. For a time it
seemed that Jehovah, the ancestral God of Israel, who brought
their fathers up out of the house of bondage and gave them
their goodly land, would be forgotten or transformed into a
Canaanite Baal. If this change had been completed Israel would
have left no name in the world's history; but Providence had
other things in store for the people of Jehovah. Henceforth
the real significance of Israel's fortunes lies in the
preservation and development of the national faith, and the
history of the tribes of Jacob is rightly set forth in the
Bible as the history of that divine discipline by which
Jehovah maintained a people for Himself amidst the seductions
of Canaanite worship and the ever-new backslidings of Israel.
… In the end Jehovah was still the God of Israel, and had
become the God of Israel's land. Canaan was His heritage, not
the heritage of the Baalim, and the Canaanite worship appears
henceforth, not as a direct rival to the worship of Jehovah,
but as a disturbing element corrupting the national faith,
while unable to supplant it altogether. This, of course, in
virtue of the close connection between religion and national
feeling, means that Israel had now risen above the danger of
absorption in the Canaanites, and felt itself to be a nation
in the true sense of the word. We learn from the books of
Samuel how this great advance was ultimately and permanently
secured. The earlier wars recorded in the book of Judges had
brought about no complete or lasting unity among the Hebrew
tribes. But at length a new enemy arose, more formidable than
any whom they had previously encountered. The Philistines from
Caphtor, who, like the Israelites, had entered Canaan as
emigrants, but coming most probably by sea had displaced the
aboriginal Avvim in the rich coastlands beneath the mountains
of Judah (Deuteronomy ii. 23; Amos ix. 7), pressed into the
heart of the country, and broke the old strength of Ephraim in
the battle of Ebenezer. This victory cut the Hebrew
settlements in two, and threatened the independence of all the
tribes. The common danger drew Israel together."

_W. Robertson Smith,
The Prophets of Israel,
lecture 1._

JEWS:
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

"No one appeared again in the character at once of judge and
warrior, to protect the people by force of arms. It was the
Levite Samuel, a prophet dedicated to God even before his
birth, who recalled them to the consciousness of religious
feeling. He succeeded in removing the emblems of Baal and
Astarte from the heights, and in paving the way for renewed
faith in Jehovah. … It was the feeling of the people that
they could only carry on the war upon the system employed by
all their neighbors.
{1901}
They demanded a king—a request very intelligible under
existing circumstances, but one which nevertheless involved a
wide and significant departure from the impulses which had
hitherto moved the Jewish community and the forms in which it
had shaped itself. … The Israelites demanded a king, not
only to go before them and fight their battles, but also to
judge them. They no longer looked for their preservation to
the occasional efforts of the prophetic order and the
ephemeral existence of heroic leaders. … The argument by
which Samuel, as the narrative records, seeks to deter the
people from their purpose, is that the king will encroach upon
the freedom of private life which they have hitherto enjoyed,
employing their sons and daughters in his service, whether in
the palace or in war, exacting tithes, taking the best part of
the land for himself, and regarding all as his bondsmen. In
this freedom of tribal and family life lay the essence of the
Mosaic constitution. But the danger that all may be lost is so
pressing that the people insist upon their own will in
opposition to the prophet. Nevertheless, without the prophet
nothing can be done, and it is he who selects from the youth
of the country the man who is to enjoy the new dignity in
Israel. … At first the proceeding had but a doubtful result.
Many despised a young man sprung from the smallest family of
the smallest tribe of Israel, as one who could give them no
real assistance. In order to make effective the conception of
the kingly office thus assigned to him, it was necessary in
the first place that he should gain for himself a personal
reputation. A king of the Ammonites, a tribe in affinity to
Israel, laid siege to Jabesh in Gilead, and burdened the
proffered surrender of the place with the condition that he
should put out the right eyes of the inhabitants. … Saul,
the son of Kish, a Benjamite, designated by the prophet as
king, but not as yet recognized as such, was engaged, as
Gideon before him, in his rustic labors, when he learned the
situation through the lamentations of the people. … Seized
with the idea of his mission, Saul cuts in pieces a yoke of
oxen, and sends the portions to the twelve tribes with the
threat, 'Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after
Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.' … Thus urged,
… Israel combines like one man; Jabesh is rescued and Saul
acknowledged as king. … With the recognition of the king,
however, and the progress of his good-fortune, a new and
disturbing element appears. A contest breaks out between him
and the prophet, in which we recognize not so much opposition
as jealousy between the two powers. … On the one side was
the independent power of monarchy, which looks to the
requirements of the moment, on the other the prophet's
tenacious and unreserved adherence to tradition. … The
relations between the tribes have also some bearing on the
question. Hitherto Ephraim had led the van, and jealously
insisted on its prerogative. Saul was of Benjamin, a tribe
nearly related to Ephraim by descent. He had made the men of
his own tribe captains, and had given them vineyards. On the
other hand, the prophet chose Saul's successor from the tribe
of Judah. This successor was David, the son of Jesse. … In
the opposition which now begins we have on the one side the
prophet and his anointed, who aim at maintaining the religious
authority in all its aspects, on the other the champion and
deliverer of the nation, who, abandoned by the faithful, turns
for aid to the powers of darkness and seeks knowledge of the
future through witchcraft. Saul is the first tragic personage
in the history of the world. David took refuge with the
Philistines. Among them he lived as an independent military
chieftain, and was joined not only by opponents of the king,
but by others, ready for any service, or, in the language of
the original, 'men armed with bows, who could use both the
right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows
out of a bow.' … In any serious war against the Israelites,
such as actually broke out, the Sarim of the Philistines would
not have tolerated him amongst them. David preferred to engage
in a second attack upon the Amalekites, the common enemy of
Philistines and Jews. At this juncture Israel was defeated by
the Philistines. The king's sons were slain; Saul, in danger
of falling into the enemy's hands, slew himself. Meanwhile
David with his freebooters had defeated the Amalekites, and
torn from their grasp the spoil they had accumulated, which
was now distributed in Judah. Soon after, the death of Saul is
announced. … David, conscious of being the rightful
successor of Saul—for on him too, long ere this, the unction
had been bestowed—betook himself to Hebron, the seat of the
ancient Canaanitish kings, which had subsequently been given
up to the priests and made one of the cities of refuge. It was
in the province of Judah; and there, the tribe of Judah
assisting at the ceremony, David was once more anointed. This
tribe alone, however, acknowledged him; the others, especially
Ephraim and Benjamin, attached themselves to Ishbosheth, the
surviving son of Saul. … The first passage of arms between
the two hosts took place between twelve of the tribe of
Benjamin and twelve of David's men-at-arms. It led, however,
to no result; it was a mutual slaughter, so complete as to
leave no survivor. But in the more serious struggle which
succeeded this the troops of David, trained as they were in
warlike undertakings of great daring as well as variety, won
the victory over Ishbosheth; and as the unanointed king could
not rely upon the complete obedience of his
commander-in-chief, who considered himself as important as his
master, David, step by step, won the upper hand. … The
Benjamites had been the heart and soul of the opposition which
David experienced. Nevertheless, the first action which he
undertook as acknowledged king of all the tribes redounded
specially to their advantage, whilst it was at the same time a
task of the utmost importance for the whole Israelitish
commonwealth. Although Joshua had conquered the Amorites, one
of their strongholds, Jebus, still remained unsubdued, and the
Benjamites had exerted all their strength against it in vain.
It was to this point that David next directed his victorious
arms. Having conquered the place, he transferred the seat of
his kingdom thither without delay [see JERUSALEM]. This seat
is Jerusalem; the word Zion has the same meaning as Jebus."

_L. von Ranke,
Universal History:
The Oldest Historical Groups of Nations,
chapter 2._

{1902}

"After Saul's death it was at first only in Judah, where David
maintained his government, that a new Kingdom of Israel could be
established at all, so disastrous were the consequences of the
great Philistine victory. The Philistines, who must have already
conquered the central territory, now occupied that to the
north, also, while the inhabitants of the cities of the great
plain of Jezreel and of the western bank of the Jordan, fled,
we are very distinctly informed, across the river."

_H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 3._

But Abner, the strong warrior and the faithful kinsman of
Saul's family, took Ishbosheth, the oldest surviving son of
his dead king, and throned him in the city of Mahanaim, beyond
the Jordan, proceeding gradually to gather a kingdom for him
by reconquest from the Philistines. Thus the Israelite nation
was first divided into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah,
and there was bitter war between them. But that first division
was not to endure long. Abner and Ishbosheth fell victims to
treachery, and the tribes which had held by them offered
allegiance to David, who then became king over "all Israel and
Judah." By the conquest of the city of Jebus from its
Canaanite founders and possessors, he acquired a new,
impregnable capital, which, under the name of Jerusalem, grew
to be the most reverently looked upon of all the cities of the
world. "History has been completely distorted in representing
David as the head of a powerful kingdom, which embraced nearly
the whole of Syria. David was king of Judah and of Israel, and
that was all; the neighboring peoples, Hebrews, Canaanites,
Arameans and Philistines, as far as Mahul Hermon and the
desert, were sternly subjected, and were more or less its
tributaries. In reality, with the exception, perhaps, of the
small town of Ziklag, David did not annex any non-Israelite
country to the domain of Israel. The Philistines, the
Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Arameans of
Zoba, of Damascus, of Rehob and of Maacah were, after his day,
very much what they were before, only a little weaker.
Conquest was not a characteristic of Israel; the taking
possession of the Canaanite lands was an act of a different
order, and it came to be more and more regarded as the
execution of a decree of Iahveh. As this decree did not extend
to the lands of Edom, of Moab, of Ammon and of Aram, the
Israelites deemed themselves justified in treating the
Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites and the Arameans with
the utmost severity, in carrying off their precious stones and
objects of price, but not in taking their land, or in changing
their dynasty. None of the methods employed by great empires
such as Assyria was known to these small peoples, which had
scarcely got beyond the status of tribes. They were as cruel
as Assur, but much less politic and less capable of a general
plan. The impression produced by the appearance of this new
royalty was none the less extraordinary. The halo of glory
which enveloped David remained like a star upon the forehead
of Israel."

_E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2)._

David died about 1000 B. C. and was succeeded by his son
Solomon, whose mother, Bathsheba, secured the throne for him
by intrigue. "Solomon was a younger son, to whom the throne
had been allotted contrary to ordinary laws of succession,
whilst Adonijah, whom a portion of the people had recognised
as king, was considered the rightful heir. So long as the
latter lived. Solomon's government could not be on a firm
basis, and he could never feel himself secure. Adonijah had
therefore to be removed; the leader of the body guard,
Benaiah, forcibly entered his house and killed him. As an
excuse for this act of violence, it was asserted that Adonijah
had attempted to win the hand of Abishag, the young widow of
David, and thus had revealed his traitorous intention of
contesting the throne with his brother. No sooner had he
fallen than Joab, the former adherent of Adonijah, feared that
a similar fate would overtake him. This exemplary general, who
had contributed so considerably to the aggrandisement of the
people of Israel and to the power of the house of David, fled
to the altar on Mount Zion, and clung to it, hoping to escape
death. Benaiah, however, refused to respect his place of
refuge, and shed his blood at the altar. In order to excuse
this crime, it was circulated that David himself, on his
death-bed, had impressed on his successor the duty of
preventing Joab's grey head from sinking in peace to its last
rest. … Adonijah's priestly partisan, Abiathar, whom Solomon
did not dare to touch, was deprived of his office as high
priest, and Zadok was made the sole head of the priesthood.
His descendants were invested with the dignity of high priest
for over a thousand years, whilst the offspring of Abiathar
were neglected. The Benjamite Shimei, who had attacked David
with execrations on his flight from Jerusalem, was also
executed, and it was only through this three-fold deed of
blood that Solomon's throne appeared to gain stability.
Solomon then directed his attention to the formation of a
court of the greatest magnificence."

_H. Graetz,
History of the Jews,
volume 1, chapter 9._

"The main characteristic of Solomon's reign was peace. The
Philistines, allies of the new dynasty, and given profitable
employment by it as mercenaries, were no longer tempted to
cross the frontier. … The decay of military strength was
only felt in the zone of countries which were tributary to the
kingdom. Hadad, or Hadar, the Edomite, who had been defeated
by Joab and had taken refuge in Egypt, having heard of David's
death, and that of Joab as well, left Pharaoh, whose
sister-in-law he had married. We have no details of this war.
… We only know that Hadad braved Israel throughout the whole
of Solomon's reign, that he did it all the injury he could,
and that he was an independent ruler over a great part at all
events of Edom. A still more formidable adversary was Rezon,
son of Eliadah, an Aramean warrior who, after the defeat of
his lord, Hadadezer, king of Zobah, had assembled about him
those who had fled before the sword of David. … A lucky
'coup-de-main' placed the city of Damascus at their mercy, and
they succeeded in maintaining themselves there. During the
whole of Solomon's reign Rezon continued to make war against
Israel. The kingdom of Zobah does not appear, however, to have
been re-established. Damascus became henceforth the centre and
capital of that part of Aramea which adjoined Mount Hermon.
David's horizon never extended beyond Syria. With Solomon,
fresh perspectives opened up for the Israelites, especially
for Jerusalem. Israel is no longer a group of tribes,
continuing to lead in its mountains the patriarchal life of
the past. It is a well-organised kingdom, small according to
our ideas, but rather large judged by the standard of the day.
The worldly life of the people of Iahveh is about to begin. If
Israel had no other life but that it would not have found a
place in history. … An alliance with Egypt was the first
step in that career of profane politics which the prophets
afterwards interlarded with so much that was impossible. …
{1903}
The king of Egypt gave Gezer as a dowry to his daughter, and
married her to Solomon. … It is not too much to suppose that
the tastes of this princess for refined luxury had a great
influence upon the mind of her husband. … The relations of
Solomon with Tyre exercised a still more civilising influence.
Tyre, recently separated from Sidon, was then at the zenith of
its activity, and, so to speak, in the full fire of its first
foundation. A dynasty of kings named Hiram, or rather Ahiram,
was at the head of this movement. The island was covered with
constructions imitated from Egypt. … Hiram is the close ally
of the king of Israel; it is he who provides Solomon with the
artists who were lacking at Jerusalem; the precious materials
for the buildings in Zion; seamen for the fleet of Eziongeber.
The region of the upper Jordan, conquered by David, appears to
have remained tributary to Solomon. What has been related as
to a much larger extension of the kingdom of Solomon is
greatly exaggerated. … The fables as to the pretended
foundation of Palmyra by Solomon come from a letter
intentionally added to the text of the ancient historiographer
by the compiler of the Chronicles. The construction of Baalbec
by Solomon rests upon a still more inadmissible piece of
identification. … In reality, the dominion of Solomon was
confined to Palestine. … What was better than peoples kept
under by force, the Arab brigands were held in check from
pillage. The Amalekites, the Midianites, the Beni-Quedem and
other nomads were confronted with an impassable barrier all
around Israel. The Philistines preserved their independence.
… When it is surmised that Solomon reigned over all Syria,
the size of his kingdom is exaggerated at least fourfold.
Solomon's kingdom was barely a fourth of what is now called
Syria. … Solomon … built 'cities of store,' or warehouses,
the commercial or military object of which cannot well be
defined. There was, more especially, a place named Tamar, in
the direction of Petra, of which Solomon made a city, and
which became a calling-place for the caravans. … With very
good reason, too, Solomon had his attention constantly fixed
upon the Red Sea, a broad canal which placed the dawning
civilisation of the Mediterranean in communication with India,
and thus opened up a new world, that of Ophir. The Bay of Suez
belonged to Egypt, but the Gulf of Akaba was, one may say, at
the mercy of anyone who cared to take it. Elath and
Asiongaber, according to all appearances, had been of very
little importance in earlier times. Without regularly
occupying the country, Solomon secured the route by the Valley
of Araba. He built a fleet at Asiongaber, though the
Israelites had never much liking for the sea. Hiram provided
Solomon with sailors, or, what is more probable, the two
fleets acted together. On leaving the Straits of Aden, they
went to Ophir, that is to say, to Western India, to Guzarate,
or to the coast of Malabar."

E_. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 3, chapter 10 (volume 2)._

The government of Solomon was extravagant and despotic; it
imposed burdens upon the people which were borne impatiently
until his death; and when his son Rehoboam refused to lessen
them, the nation was instantly broken again on the lines of
the earlier rupture. The two tribes of Judah and Benjamin,
only, remained faithful to the house of David and constituted
the kingdom of Judah. The other ten tribes made Jeroboam their
king and retained the name of Israel for their kingdom. The
period of this division is fixed at 978 B. C. Jerusalem
continued to be the capital of the kingdom of Judah. In the
kingdom of Israel several changes of royal residence occurred
during the first half century, until Samaria was founded by
King Omri and thenceforth became the capital city. "Six miles
from Shechem, in the same well-watered valley, here opening
into a wide basin, rises an oblong hill, with steep yet
accessible sides, and a long level top. This was the mountain
of Samaria, or, as it is called in the original, Shômeron, so
named after its owner Shemer, who there lived in state, and
who sold it to the King for the great sum of two talents of
silver."

_Dean Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
lectures 29-30 (volume 2)._

For two centuries, until the overthrow of the kingdom, Samaria
continued to be the queen of the land, and the seat of
government, often giving its name to the whole state, so that
the kings were called "Kings of Samaria." "Under the dynasties
of Omri and Jehu [10th-8th centuries, B. C.] the Northern
Kingdom took the leading part in Israel; even to the Judæan
Amos it was Israel 'par excellence.' Judah was not only
inferior in political power, but in the share it took in the
active movements of national life and thought. In tracing the
history of religion and the work of the prophets, we have been
almost exclusively occupied with the North; Amos himself, when
charged with a message to the whole family that Jehovah
brought up out of Egypt, leaves his home to preach in a
Northern sanctuary. During this whole period we have a much
fuller knowledge of the life of Ephraim than of Judah; the
Judæan history consists of meagre extracts from official
records, except where it comes into contact with the North,
through the alliance of Jehoshaphat with Ahab; through the
reaction of Jehu's revolution in the fall of Athaliah, the
last scion of the house of Ahab, and the accompanying
abolition of Baal worship at Jerusalem, or, finally, through
the presumptuous attempt of Amaziah to measure his strength
with the powerful monarch of Samaria. While the house of
Ephraim was engaged in the great war with Syria, Judah had
seldom to deal with enemies more formidable than the
Philistines or the Edomites; and the contest with these foes,
renewed with varying success generation after generation,
resolved itself into a succession of forays and blood-feuds
such as have always been common in the lands of the Semites
(Amos i.), and never assumed the character of a struggle for
national existence. It was the Northern Kingdom that had the
task of upholding the standard of Israel; its whole history
presents greater interest and more heroic elements; its
struggles, its calamities, and its glories were cast in a
larger mould. It is a trite proverb that the nation which has
no history is happy, and perhaps the course of Judah's
existence ran more smoothly than that of its greater neighbor,
in spite of the raids of the slave-dealers of the coast, and
the lawless hordes of the desert. But no side of national
existence is likely to find full development where there is
little political activity; if the life of the North was more
troubled, it was also larger and more intense.
{1904}
Ephraim took the lead in literature and religion as well as in
politics; it was in Ephraim far more than in Judah that the
traditions of past history were cherished, and new problems of
religion became practical and called for solution by the word
of the prophets. So long as the Northern Kingdom endured Judah
was content to learn from it for evil or for good. It would be
easy to show in detail that every wave of life and thought in
Ephraim was transmitted with diminished intensity to the
Southern Kingdom. In many respects the influence of Ephraim
upon Judah was similar to that of England upon Scotland before
the union of the crowns, but with the important difference
that after the accession of Omri the two Hebrew kingdoms were
seldom involved in hostilities. … The internal condition of
the [Judæan] state was stable, though little progressive; the
kings were fairly successful in war, though not sufficiently
strong to maintain unbroken authority over Edom, the only
vassal state of the old Davidic realm over which they still
claimed suzerainty, and their civil administration must have
been generally satisfactory according to the not very high
standard of the East; for they retained the affections of
their people, the justice and mercy of the throne of David are
favourably spoken of in the old prophecy against Moab quoted
in Isaiah XV., xvi., and Isaiah contrasts the disorders of his
own time with the ancient reputation of Jerusalem for fidelity
and justice (i. 21). … The religious conduct of the house of
David followed the same general lines. Old abuses remained
untouched, but the cultus remained much as David and Solomon
had left it. Local high places were numerous, and no attempt
was made to interfere with them; but the great temple on Mount
Zion, which formed part of the complex of royal buildings
erected by Solomon, maintained its prestige, and appears to
have been a special object of solicitude to the kings, who
treated its service as part of their royal state. It is common
to imagine that the religious condition of Judah was very much
superior to that of the North, but there is absolutely no
evidence to support this opinion."

_W. Robertson Smith,
The Prophets of Israel,
lecture 5._

In the year B. C. 745 the throne of Assyria was seized by a
soldier of great ability, called Pul, or Pulu, who took the
name of Tiglath-pileser III. and who promptly entered on an
ambitious career of conquest, with imperial aims and plans.
"In B. C. 738 we find him receiving tribute from Menahem of
Samaria, Rezon of Damascus, and Hiram of Tyre. … The throne
of Israel was occupied at the time by Pekah, a successful
general who had murdered his predecessor, but who was
evidently a man of vigour and ability. He and Rezon
endeavoured to form a confederacy of the Syrian and
Palestinian states against their common Assyrian foe. In order
to effect their object they considered it necessary to
displace the reigning king of Judah, Ahaz, and substitute for
him a creature of their own. … They were aided by a party of
malcontents in Judah itself (Isaiah viii. 6), and the position
of Ahaz seemed desperate. … In this moment of peril Isaiah
was instructed to meet and comfort Ahaz. He bade him 'fear
not, neither be fainthearted,' for the confederacy against the
dynasty of David should be broken and overthrown. … But Ahaz
… had no faith either in the prophet or in the message he
was commissioned to deliver. He saw safety in one course
only—that of invoking the assistance of the Assyrian king,
and bribing him by the offer of homage and tribute to march
against his enemies. In vain Isaiah denounced so suicidal and
unpatriotic a policy. In vain he foretold that when Damascus
and Samaria had been crushed, the next victim of the Assyrian
king would be Judah itself. The infatuated Ahaz would not
listen. He 'sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of
Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up and
save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the
hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.'" The
king of Assyria responded to the call (B. C. 734). He defeated
Rezon in battle, laid siege to Damascus, swept the tribes east
of the Jordan into captivity, overran the territory of Israel,
captured Samaria and put to death Pekah the king. In place of
Pekah he set up a vassal-king Hoshea. Six years later,
Tiglath-pileser having died, and the Assyrian throne having
been seized by another strong soldier, Shalmaneser IV., Hoshea
attempted a revolt, looking to Egypt for help. But before
Sabako king of Egypt could move to his assistance, "Hoshea was
defeated by the Assyrian king or his satraps, and thrown into
chains. The ruling classes of Samaria, however, still held
out. An Assyrian army, accordingly, once more devastated the
land of Israel, and laid siege to the capital. For three years
Samaria remained untaken. Another revolution had meanwhile
broken out in Assyria; Shalmaneser had died or been put to
death, and a fresh military adventurer had seized the crown,
taking the name of Sargon, after a famous monarch of ancient
Babylonia. Sargon had hardly established himself upon the
throne when Samaria fell (B. C. 722). … He contented himself
with transporting only 27,280 of its inhabitants into
captivity, only the upper classes, in fact, who were
implicated in the revolt of Hoshea. An Assyrian satrap, or
governor, was appointed over Samaria, while the bulk of the
population was allowed to remain peaceably in their old
homes."

_A. H. Sayce,
Life and Times of Isaiah,
chapter 3._

"Much light is thrown upon the conditions of the national
religion then and upon its subsequent development by the
single fact that the exiled Israelites were absorbed by the
surrounding heathenism without leaving a trace behind them,
while the population of Judah, who had the benefit of a
hundred years of respite, held their faith fast throughout the
period of the Babylonian exile, and by means of it were able
to maintain their own individuality afterwards in all the
circumstances that arose. The fact that the fall of Samaria
did not hinder but helped the religion of Jehovah is entirely
due to the prophets."

_J. Wellhausen,
Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah,
chapter 6._

"The first generation of the exiles lived to see the fall of
their conquerors. … After this it is difficult to discover
any distinct trace of the northern tribes. Some returned with
their countrymen of the southern kingdom. … The immense
Jewish population which made Babylonia a second Palestine was
in part derived from them; and the Jewish customs that have
been discovered in the Nestorian Christians, with the
traditions of the sect itself, may indicate at any rate a
mixture of Jewish descent. That they [the 'lost Ten Tribes']
are concealed in some unknown region of the earth, is a fable
with no foundation either in history or prophecy."

_Dean Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
lecture 34 (volume 2)._

See, also, JERUSALEM.

{1905}

JEWS: B. C. 724-604.
The kingdom of Judah to the end of the Egyptian domination.

Three years before Sargon's destruction of Samaria, "Hezekiah
had succeeded his father Ahaz upon the throne of Jerusalem.
… Judah was tributary to Assyria, and owed to Assyria its
deliverance from a great danger. But the deliverer and his
designs were extremely dangerous, and made Judah apprehensive
of being swallowed up presently, when its turn came. The
neighbouring countries,—Phœnicia on the north, Moab, Ammon,
and the Arabian nations on the east, Philistia on the west,
Egypt and Ethiopia on the south,—shared Judah's
apprehensions. There were risings, and they were sternly
quelled; Judah, however, remained tranquil. But the scheme of
an anti-Assyrian alliance was gradually becoming popular.
Egypt was the great pillar of hope. By its size, wealth,
resources, pretensions, and fame, Egypt seemed a possible
rival to Assyria. Time went on. Sargon was murdered in 705;
Sennacherib succeeded him. Then on all sides there was an
explosion of revolts against the Assyrian rule. The first
years of Sennacherib's reign were spent by him in quelling a
formidable rising of Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon. The
court and ministers of Hezekiah seized this opportunity for
detaching their master from Assyria, for joining in the
movement of the insurgent states of Palestine and its borders,
and for allying themselves with Egypt. … In the year 701,
Sennacherib, victorious in Babylonia, marched upon Palestine."

_M. Arnold,
Isaiah of Jerusalem,
introduction._

Sennacherib advanced along the Phœnician coast. "Having
captured Ascalon, he next laid siege to Ekron, which, after
the Egyptian army sent to its relief had been defeated at
Eltekeh, fell into the enemy's hand, and was severely dealt
with. Simultaneously various fortresses of Judah were
occupied, and the level country was devastated (Isaiah i.).
The consequence was that Hezekiah, in a state of panic,
offered to the Assyrians his submission, which was accepted on
payment of a heavy penalty, he being permitted, however, to
retain possession of Jerusalem. He seemed to have got cheaply
off from the unequal contest. The way being thus cleared,
Sennacherib pressed on southwards, for the Egyptians were
collecting their forces against him. The nearer he came to the
enemy the more undesirable did he find it that he should leave
in his rear so important a fortress as Jerusalem in the hands
of a doubtful vassal. Notwithstanding the recently ratified
treaty, therefore, he demanded the surrender of the city,
believing that a policy of intimidation would be enough to
secure it from Hezekiah. But there was another personality in
Jerusalem of whom his plans had taken no account. Isaiah had
indeed regarded the revolt from Assyria as a rebellion against
Jehovah Himself, and therefore as a perfectly hopeless
undertaking, which could only result in the utmost humiliation
and sternest chastisement for Judah. But much more distinctly
than Amos and Hosea before him did he hold firm as an article
of faith the conviction that the kingdom would not be utterly
annihilated; all his speeches of solemn warning closed with
the announcement that a remnant should return and form the
kernel of a new commonwealth to be fashioned after Jehovah's
own heart. … Over against the vain confidence of the
multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the
darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted
their present depression with its bright reverse;
faintheartedness was still more alien to his nature than
temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of
good courage, and urged that he should by no means surrender.
The Assyrians would not be able to take the city, not even to
shoot an arrow into it, nor to bring up their siege train
against it. 'I know thy sitting, thy going, and thy standing,'
is Jehovah's language to the Assyrian, 'and also thy rage
against Me. And I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle
in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which
thou camest.' And thus it proved in the issue. By a still
unexplained catastrophe, the main army of Sennacherib was
annihilated on the frontier between Egypt and Palestine, and
Jerusalem thereby freed from all danger. The Assyrian king had
to save himself by a hurried retreat to Nineveh; Isaiah was
triumphant. A more magnificent close of a period of
influential public life can hardly be imagined."

_J. Wellhausen,
Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah,
chapter 7._

"We possess in duplicate, on the Taylor Cylinder, found at
Nineveh in 1830, and now in the British Museum, and on the
Bull-inscription of Kouyunjik, Sennacherib's own account of
the stages of his campaign. Sidon and the cities of Phœnicia
were the first to be attacked; and, after reducing these, and
receiving homage from several of the kings of the countries
bordering on Palestine, who apparently were not this time
implicated in the plan of revolt, Sennacherib started
southwards, aiming to recover similarly Ashkelon, Ekron, and
Jerusalem. In Ashkelon he deprived Zedek of his crown, which
he bestowed upon Sarludari, the son of a former king,
doubtless on the ground that he was friendly to Assyrian
interests: at the same time four subject-cities belonging to
Zedek, Beth-dagon, Joppa, Bene-Barak, and Azuru were captured
and plundered. Sennacherib next proceeds to deal with Ekron.
The people of Ekron, in order to carry through their plan for
the recovery of independence without hindrance, had deposed
their king Padi, who remained loyal to Assyria, and sent him
bound in chains to Hezekiah. Upon news of the approach of the
Assyrians, they had summoned the Egyptians to their aid; they
arrive now 'with forces innumerable;' the encounter takes
place at Altaku (probably not far from Ekron); victory
declares for the Assyrian; and the Egyptians retire without
effecting the desired relief. After this Sennacherib soon
reduces Ekron; he obtains, moreover, the surrender of Padi
from Jerusalem, and restores him to his throne. Now follows
the account of the aggressive measures adopted by him against
Judah and Jerusalem. 'And Hezekiah of Judah, who had not
submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities,
fortresses and smaller towns round about their border without
number, with laying low of the walls, and with open (?)
attack, with battle … of feet, … hewing about and
trampling down (?), I besieged, I took 200,150 people, small
and great, male and female, horses, mules,' asses, camels,
oxen, and sheep without number, from the midst of them I
brought out, and I counted them as spoil.
{1906}
Himself, as a bird in a cage, in the midst of Jerusalem, his
royal city, I shut up. Siege-works against him I erected, and
the exit of the great gate of his city I blocked up. His
cities which I had plundered, from his domain I cut off; and
to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, to Padi, king of Ekron, and to
Zilbel, king of Gaza, I gave them; I diminished his territory.
To the former payment of their yearly tribute, the tribute of
subjection to my sovereignty I added; I laid it upon them.
Himself, Hezekiah, the terror of the splendour of my
sovereignty overwhelmed: the Arabians and his dependents, whom
he had introduced, for the defence of Jerusalem, his royal
city, and to whom he had granted pay, together with 30 talents
of gold, 800 talents of silver, bullion (?) … precious (?)
stones of large size, couches of ivory, lofty thrones of
ivory, elephant-skins, ivory, … wood, … woods of every
kind, an abundant treasure, and in addition, his daughters,
the women of his palace, his male and female
harem(?)-attendants unto Nineveh, my royal city, he caused to
be brought after me. For the payment of tribute, and the
rendering of homage: he sent his envoy.' Here the account on
the Inscription closes, the lines which follow relating to the
campaign of the subsequent year."

_S. R. Driver,
Isaiah: His Life and Times,
chapter 7._

"Between the retreat of Sennacherib's army and the capture of
the capital by Nebuchadrezzar there was an interval of little
more than a century, yet, meanwhile, upon the basis of the
prophetical teaching, the foundations of Judaism were laid.
… But though Sennacherib had retreated from Palestine, Judah
still remained the vassal of Assyria. The empire of Assyria
was scarcely affected by the event which was to change the
face of the world, and for more than half-a-century its power
was undiminished and supreme. Yet, as regards the internal
condition of Judah, the great deliverance was the occasion of
a reform which at first may well have made Isaiah's heart beat
high. … Influential as he was at the court and with the
king, and with reputation enormously enhanced by the
fulfilment of his promise of deliverance, he probably urged
and prompted Hezekiah to the execution of a religious reform.
The meagre verse in the Book of Kings which describes this
reform is both inaccurate and misplaced. There is no hint in
the authentic writings of Isaiah or Micah that any religious
innovations had been attempted before the Assyrian war. It was
the startling issue of Sennacherib's invasion which afforded
the opportunity and suggested the idea. Moreover, wider
changes are attributed to Hezekiah than he can actually have
effected. … The residuum of fact contained in the 18th
chapter of the Second Book of Kings must be probably limited
to the destruction of the Nehushtan, or brazen serpent, that
mysterious image in which the contemporaries of Hezekiah,
whatever may have been its original signification, doubtless
recognized a symbol of Yahveh. Yet indirect evidence would
incline us to believe that Hezekiah's reform involved more
than the annihilation of a single idol; it is more probably to
be regarded as an attempt at a general abolition of images, as
well as a suppression of the new Assyrian star-worship and of
the 'Moloch' sacrifices which had been introduced into Judah
in the reign of Ahaz. Whether this material iconoclasm
betokened or generated any wide moral reformation is more than
doubtful. … Hezekiah's reign extended for about fourteen
years after the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701. To the early
part of this, its second division, the religious reformation
must be assigned. A successful campaign against the
Philistines, alluded to in the Book of Kings, probably fell
within the same period. Beyond this, we know nothing, though
we would gladly know much, of these fourteen concluding years
of an eventful reign. In 686 Hezekiah died, and was succeeded
by his son Manasseh, who occupied the throne for forty-five
years (686-641). The Book of Kings does not record a single
external incident throughout his long reign. It must have been
a time of profound peace and of comparative prosperity.
Manasseh remained the vassal of Assyria, and the Assyrian
inscriptions speak of him as paying tribute to the two kings,
Esarhaddon (681-669), Sennacherib's successor, and Asurbanipal
(669-626), till whose death the supremacy of Assyria in
Palestine was wholly undisputed. Uneventful as Manasseh's
reign was in foreign politics, it was all the more important
in its internal and religious history. In it, and in the short
reign of Amon, who maintained the policy of his father, there
set in a period of strong religious reaction, extending over
nearly half-a-century (686-638). Manasseh is singled out by
the historian for special and repeated reprobation. In the
eyes of the exilic redactor, his iniquities were the immediate
cause of the destruction of the national life. Not even
Josiah's reformation could turn Yahveh 'from the fierceness of
his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against
Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had
provoked him withal.' Jeremiah had said the same. Exile and
dispersion are to come 'because of Manasseh, the son of
Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem.'
… What were the sins of Manasseh? It has already been
indicated that the Assyrians made their influence felt, not
only in politics, but also in religion. It was the old
Babylonian worship of the luminaries of heaven which was
introduced into Judah in the eighth century, and which, after
receiving a short check during the reign of Hezekiah, became
very widely prevalent under his son. … There are many tokens
in the literature of the seventh century that the idolatrous
reaction of Manasseh penetrated deep, making many converts.
… Manasseh would apparently brook no opposition to the
idolatrous proclivities of his court; he met the indignation
of Isaiah's disciples and of the prophetical party by open and
relentless persecution. … The older historian of the Book of
Kings speaks of 'Manasseh shedding innocent blood very much,
till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.' This
innocent blood must have mainly flowed from those who opposed
his idolatrous tendencies. … From the accession of Manasseh
to the death of Amon (686-638), a period of forty-eight years,
this internal conflict continued; and in it, as always, the
blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. In 638, Amon was
succeeded by his son Josiah; then only eight years old.
{1907}
It is possible that his accession brought about some
amelioration in the condition of the prophetical party, and
that active persecution ceased. But the syncretistic and
idolatrous worship was still maintained for another eighteen
years, though those years are passed over without any notice
in the Book of Kings. They were, however, years of great
importance in the history of Asia, for they witnessed the
break-up of the Assyrian empire, and the inroads of the
Scythians. The collapse of Assyria followed hard upon the
death of Asurbanipal in 626: Babylon revolted, the northern
and north-western provinces of the empire fell into the hands
of the Medes, and the authority of Assyria over the vassal
kingdoms of the west was gradually weakened."

_C. G. Montefiore,
Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion,
as illustrated by the Religion of the ancient Hebrews,
(Hibbert Lectures, 1892), lecture 4._