అధ్యాయం 6: ఒక రాష్ట్రం, ఒక దేశం, ఒక ప్రజలు?

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[ PART TWO ]

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel

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[ 6 ] One State, One Nation, One People? (c. 930–720 BCE) The course of Israel’s history—the books of Kings gravely inform us—moves with almost tragic inevitability from unity to schism and from schism to national catastrophe. After the glorious reigns of David and Solomon, when all Israel was ruled from Jerusalem and experienced a period of unprecedented prosperity and power, the tribes of the northern hill country and Galilee—resisting the tax demands of Solomon’s son Rehoboam—angrily break away. What follows is two hundred years of division and hatred between brothers, with the independent Israelite kingdoms of Israel in the north and of Judah in the south intermittently poised to strike at each other’s throats. It is a tale of tragic division, and of violence and idolatry in the northern kingdom. There, according to the biblical accounts, new cult centers are founded to compete with the Jerusalem Temple. New northern Israelite dynasties, rivals of the house of David, bloodily come to power one after another. In time, the northerners pay for their sinfulness with the ultimate punishment—destruction of their state and the exile of the ten northern tribes. This vision is central to the theology of the Bible—and to the biblical hope for an eventual reunion of Judah and Israel under the rule of the Davidic dynasty. But it is simply not an accurate representation of the historical reality. As we have seen, there is no compelling archaeological evidence for the historical existence of a vast united monarchy, centered in Jerusalem, that encompassed the entire land of Israel. On the contrary, the evidence reveals a complex demographic transformation in the highlands, in which a unified ethnic consciousness began only slowly to coalesce. And here we reach perhaps the most unsettling clash between the archaeological finds and the Bible. If there was no Exodus, no conquest, no united monarchy, what are we to make of the biblical desire for unification? What are we to make of the long and difficult relationship between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel for

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almost two hundred years? There is good reason to suggest that there were always two distinct highland entities, of which the southern was always the poorer, weaker, more rural, and less influential—until it rose to sudden, spectacular prominence after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. A Tale of Twelve Tribes and Two Kingdoms In the Bible, the northern tribes are consistently depicted as weakhearted failures, with a pronounced tendency to sinfulness. This is particularly clear in the book of Judges, where the individual tribes struggle with the idolatrous peoples around them. Among the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, only the tribes of Judah and Simeon succeeded in conquering all the Canaanite enclaves in their God-given inheritance. As a result, in the south there were no Canaanites left, no Canaanite women to marry and to be influenced by. The tribes of the north are another story. Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan did not accomplish what they had to; they did not finish off the Canaanites. As a result they would be tempted again and again. There is no question in the text that the northern tribes were more numerous and occupied a vast territory, and it is certainly no accident that the first king of Israel, Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, is said to have ruled over northern territories in the highlands. Yet Saul violated the laws of the cult and was driven to suicide after the defeat of his forces by the Philistines. God withdrew his blessing from this anointed northern leader, and the elders of the northern tribes duly turned to David, the outlaw-hero-king of Judah, and proclaimed him king over all of Israel. Despite their wealth and strength, however, the northern tribes are depicted in 1 Kings as being treated like little more than colonial subjects by David’s son Solomon. Solomon’s great regional capitals and store cities of Gezer, Megiddo, and Hazor were built in their midst and the people of the north were taxed and conscripted into public works projects by Solomonic appointees. Some northerners —like Jeroboam, son of Nebat, of the tribe of Ephraim—served under the Jerusalem court in positions of importance. But Judah is depicted as the stronger party, having the northern tribes as subjects. Upon the death of Solomon and the accession of his son Rehoboam, the northerners appealed for a reduction in their burden. But the arrogant Rehoboam dismissed the advice of his moderate counselors and replied to the northerners with the now famous words “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions” (1

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Kings 12:14). The banner of rebellion was unfurled as the northerners rallied to the cry of secession: “And when all Israel saw that the king did not hearken to them, the people answered the king: ‘What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Look to your tents, O Israel! Look to your own house, David.’ So Israel departed to their tents” (1 Kings 12:16). The northerners proceeded to stone to death Rehoboam’s chief taskmaster, and King Rehoboam fled in terror back to the safety of Jerusalem. The northerners then gathered to proclaim for themselves a monarch and chose Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who had served in the court of Solomon. The united monarchy of David and Solomon was completely shattered. Two independent states were created: Judah, which was ruled by the Davidic dynasty from Jerusalem, with its territory limited to the southern part of the central hill country; and Israel, which controlled vast territories in the north. The first capital of the northern kingdom was set at Tirzah, located to the northeast of Shechem. The new king, Jeroboam, decided to set up rivals to the Temple in Jerusalem and ordered that two golden calves be fashioned and installed in shrines at the farthest corners of his kingdom—at Bethel in the far south and Dan in the north. Thus began a turbulent and fateful period in the biblical history of Israel. From the family solidarity of the patriarchal period, from the spiritual solidarity of the Exodus, and from the political unity of the united monarchy, the people of Israel were now torn in two. A Mistaken Scheme of Evolution? Archaeologists and biblical historians alike have generally taken the biblical narrative of the rise and disintegration of the united monarchy at face value. The ethnic unity and distinctiveness of the people of Israel as a whole were taken for granted. And the historical sequence was believed by most biblical historians to have run approximately like this (minus, of course, the occasional biblical mythmaking and heroic hyperbole): Whether by conquest or peaceful infiltration, the Israelites settled in the empty highlands. At first they organized themselves as a sort of egalitarian society, with charismatic military heroes who saved them from their foes. Then, mainly because of the Philistine threat, which was far more dangerous than the other local menaces, they opted for a monarchy, built a strong army, and expanded to establish a formidable empire under David and Solomon. It was a tale of steady political evolution of a unified people, from tribes to unified statehood, an evolutionary process that was essentially completed by the time of Solomon in the

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tenth century BCE. The breakup of the united monarchy was therefore seen as an unfortunate postscript to a story that had already run its course. It appeared as if only the arrogant and ill-advised tyranny of Solomon’s son Rehoboam destroyed the expansive grandeur of the Solomonic empire. This vision of the united monarchy and its downfall seemed to be confirmed by the archaeological finds. Scholars believed that the construction of the great “Solomonic” cities with their gates and palaces was indisputable evidence of full-blown statehood by the tenth century BCE and of Jerusalem’s iron-fisted control of the north. By the 1980s, even though the understanding of the initial period of Israelite history had become somewhat more nuanced, it was taken for granted that the united monarchy of David and Solomon —and its sudden breakup—were historical facts. In tracing the subsequent history of the two sister states of Judah and Israel, scholars followed the biblical story almost word for word, with most assuming that the two successor states shared a nearly identical level of political organization and complexity. Since both Judah and Israel had their origins in the full-fledged monarchy of Solomon, both inherited fully developed state institutions of court, fiscal administration, and military force. As a result, the two independent kingdoms were believed to have competed with each other, fought each other, and helped each other, according to the changing political circumstances in the region, but always on more or less equal terms. Certain regional differences did, of course, become apparent. But most scholars concluded that the rest of the history of the Israelite kingdoms was one of population increase, intensive building, and warfare—but no further dramatic social development. This widely accepted picture now appears to be wrong. North Versus South Through the Millennia The intensive archaeological surveys in the central hill country in the 1980s opened new vistas for understanding the character and origins of the two highland states of Judah and Israel. The new perspectives differed dramatically from the biblical accounts. The surveys showed that the emergence of the Israelites in the highlands of Canaan was not a unique event, but actually just one in a series of demographic oscillations that could be traced back for millennia. In each of the two earlier settlement waves—in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3500–2200 BCE) and in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1550 BCE)—the indigenous highland population moved from pastoralism to seasonal agriculture, to permanent

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villages, to complex highland economies in a manner that was strikingly similar to the process of Israelite settlement in the Iron Age I (1150–900 BCE). But even more surprising, the surveys (and the fragmentary historical information) indicated that in each wave of highland settlement, there always seemed to have been two distinct societies in the highlands—northern and southern—roughly occupying the areas of the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel. A map of Early Bronze Age highland sites, for example, clearly shows two different regional settlement systems, with a dividing line between them running roughly between Shechem and Jerusalem, a boundary that would later mark the frontier between Israel and Judah. Like the later kingdom of Israel, the northern settlement system was dense and possessed a complex hierarchy of large, medium, and small sites, all heavily dependent on settled agriculture. The southern region, like the later kingdom of Judah, was more sparsely settled, mostly in small sites, with no such variety of sizes. The south also had a relatively large number of archaeological sites with only scatters of pottery sherds, rather than permanent buildings; this suggested a significant population of migratory pastoral groups. Northern and southern regions were each dominated by a single center that was apparently the focus of regional political and economic centralization—and perhaps of regional religious practices as well. In the south, in the Early Bronze Age, it was a large site named Khirbet et-Tell (the biblical Ai), located northeast of Jerusalem. It covered an area of about twenty-five acres, which represented a full fifth of all the built-up area in the southern hill country. Its impressive fortifications and monumental temple underline its paramount status in the largely rural and pastoral south. In the north there were a few central sites, but a dominating one, Tell el- Farah, situated near a large freshwater spring and guarding the main road down to the Jordan valley, seems to have controlled the rich agricultural lands of the region. It is not pure coincidence—as we will see—that this city, later known as biblical Tirzah, became the first capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. In the succeeding Middle Bronze Age, the wave of settlement in the highlands possessed exactly the same characteristics. There were very few permanent settlement sites in the south, most of them tiny, and there were a large number of pastoral groups, evidenced by their isolated cemeteries not related to sedentary sites. The north was much more densely inhabited, with settled farmers in much greater proportion than pastoralists. The major urban site in the south was now Jerusalem, which was heavily fortified (as Ai had been in the Early Bronze Age), joined by a secondary center, Hebron, which was also fortified. The great center of the north was now Shechem. Excavations at the site of Tell Balatah on the eastern outskirts of

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the city revealed imposing fortifications and a massive temple. In addition to the archaeological indications of the north-south split there is some important textual evidence from Egypt. One source is the so-called execration texts—curse inscriptions, written on pottery fragments on statuettes of prisoners of war that were meant to be broken and buried ceremonially to bring misfortune upon the enemies of Egypt. Like ancient versions of voodoo dolls covered with angry graffiti, these texts offer us a glimpse at the political geography of Canaan during that era, in particular those places and peoples whom the Egyptians found most threatening. The texts mention a large number of coastal and lowland cities, but only two highland centers: Shechem and (according to most scholars) Jerusalem. Another Egyptian reference to the highlands adds to the picture. It is an inscription recording the exploits of an Egyptian general named Khu-Sebek, who led an Egyptian military campaign to the highlands of Canaan in the nineteenth century BCE. The inscription refers to the “land” (rather than “city”) of Shechem, and mentions Shechem as a parallel to Retenu—one of the Egyptian names for all of the land of Canaan. This seems to indicate that as early as the beginning of the second millennium BCE, Shechem—one of the most important centers of the kingdom of Israel—was the hub of a large territorial entity. We have no textual information about the southern territories in the Middle Bronze Age, but there is abundant information about their extent in the next period —the Late Bronze Age. The fourteenth century BCE Tell el-Amarna letters confirm the partition of the central hill country between two city-states, or actually early territorial states, Shechem and Jerusalem (Figure 19). A number of the letters refer by name to the rulers of these two city-states—a king named Abdi-Heba who reigned in Jerusalem and a king named Labayu who reigned in Shechem—each of whom controlled territories of about a thousand square miles. These were the largest areas held by a single local ruler, for at this time the Canaanite coastal plain and valleys were divided into many tiny city-states, each ruling a small territory with a relatively dense population. Although the political units in the highlands were much larger, their population was much smaller. Shechem and Jerusalem, Israel and Judah, were always distinct and competing territories. And there was good reason for the differences between them: north and south occupied dramatically different environmental zones. Two Worlds in the Highlands

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At first glance, the highlands between the Jezreel and the Beersheba valleys seem to form a homogeneous geographical block. But the environmental and topographical details offer a very different picture. The north and south have distinct ecosystems that differ in almost every aspect: topography, rock formations, climate, vegetation cover, and potential economic resources. Judah was always the most remote part of the hill country, isolated by topographical and climatic barriers. By contrast, the northern part of the highlands consisted of a patchwork of fertile valleys nestled between adjoining hilly slopes. Some of those valleys offered enough fertile farmland to support the inhabitants of several villages. It was thus a relatively productive region, with the inner valleys and the eastern marginal land of the desert fringe cultivated mainly for grain growing, while the hilly areas were cultivated with olive and vine orchards. Though a casual traveler through this region today may find it much hillier in appearance than the south, communication and transport of agricultural produce are immeasurably easier. The slopes to the west are much more moderate and, in fact, facilitate rather than obstruct passage down toward the cities of the Mediterranean coastal plain. On the northern edge of this region lay the broad expanse of the Jezreel valley, an extremely rich agricultural area that also served as the major overland route of trade and communication between Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the east, the desert steppe area was less arid and less rugged than farther south—enabling the relatively free movement of people and commodities between the central ridge, the Jordan valley, and the Transjordanian highlands to the east.

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Figure 19: The two highland entities in the fourteenth century BCE (the Amarna period).

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Any territorial unit that arose in the northern highlands had a far greater economic potential than those of the south. Even though the basic process of highland settlement in both regions was similar—shifting from herding and seasonal farming to an ever greater dependence on specialized agriculture—the north had more resources and a richer climate to exploit. In the early stages of each wave of settlement, when the bulk of the highland population was concentrated in the eastern fringes of the steppe and eastern highlands valleys, they maintained a balanced, essentially self-sufficient economy. Each village community provided its own supply of both agricultural crops and animal products. But when population pressure and the temptation of economic opportunities forced expansion to the western edge of the hill country, the northerners had a distinct advantage. They were able to develop a more specialized and sophisticated economy because the western slopes of the northern hill country were less precipitous and rocky than those in the south—and far more suitable for growing olive and vine orchards on small, terraced plots on the hillsides. The initial specialization in olive and grape growing encouraged the development of the technology to process these products efficiently into oil and wine. It also gave rise to the economic institutions of markets, transport, and exchange in order for the wineand oil-producing villages to obtain vitally needed grain and animal products in return for their own produce. The result was increasing complexity of the northern highland societies and, eventually, the crystallization of something like a state. Export trade to the people of the lowlands and, more important, to the markets in the great cities of Egypt and the ports of the Phoenician coast pushed things still further. Thus, in the beginning of the Iron Age, the northern highlands were poised to become richer and more populous than the highlands in the south. State Formation in the Biblical World The evolution of the highlands of Canaan into two distinct polities was a natural development. There is no archaeological evidence whatsoever that this situation of north and south grew out of an earlier political unity—particularly one centered in the south. In the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, Judah was still very thinly inhabited, with a limited number of small villages, in fact not much more than twenty or so. There is good reason to believe from both the distinctive clan structure and the archaeological finds in Judah that the pastoral segment of the population was still significant there. And we still have no hard archaeological evidence—despite the unparalleled biblical descriptions of its grandeur—that

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Jerusalem was anything more than a modest highland village in the time of David, Solomon, and Rehoboam. At the same time, the northern half of the highlands— essentially the territories that reportedly broke away from the united monarchy— was thickly occupied by dozens of sites, with a well-developed settlement system that included large regional centers, villages of all sizes, and tiny hamlets. Put simply, while Judah was still economically marginal and backward, Israel was booming. In fact, Israel was well on the way to fully developed statehood within a few decades of the presumed end of the united monarchy, around 900 BCE. By fully developed we mean a territory governed by bureaucratic machinery, which is manifested in social stratification as seen in the distribution of luxury items, large building projects, prospering economic activity including trade with neighboring regions, and a fully developed settlement system. In Israel, regional administrative centers developed in the early ninth century. They were fortified and provided with elaborate palaces built of ashlar blocks and decorated with stone capitals. The best examples are found at Megiddo, Jezreel, and Samaria. Yet in the south, ashlar masonry and stone capitals appear only in the seventh century BCE, in smaller sizes, showing less foreign influence, and with lesser quality of construction. There is also a great difference in the layout and development of the capital cities. Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, was established as a large, palatial government center as early as the ninth century. Jerusalem was fully urbanized only in the late eighth century. In addition, the olive oil industry developed in Israel as early as the ninth century. But in Judah, olive oil production shifted from local, private households to state industry only in the seventh century BCE. Finally, we should look at the settlement history of the highlands, in which the north was settled earlier than Judah and reached much higher levels of population. In sum, it is safe to say that the northern kingdom of Israel emerged as a fully developed state no later than the beginning of the ninth century BCE—at a time when the society and economy of Judah had changed but little from its highland origins. All this is also supported by the historical record. In the next chapter we will see how the northern kingdom suddenly appeared on the ancient Near Eastern stage as a major regional power in the coalition that confronted the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III at the battle of Qarqar in the year 853 BCE. There is no doubt that the two Iron Age states—Israel and Judah—had much in common. Both worshipped YHWH (among other deities). Their peoples shared many legends, heroes, and tales about events in the distant past. They also spoke

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similar languages, or dialects of Hebrew, and by the eighth century BCE, both wrote in the same script. But they were also very different from each other in their demographic composition, economic potential, material culture, and relationship with their neighbors. Put simply, Israel and Judah experienced quite different histories and developed distinctive cultures. In a sense, Judah was little more than Israel’s rural hinterland. The Age of Israel Begins Throughout all the millennia of Canaan’s human history, the northern highlands may have been richer than the southern highlands, but they were not nearly as prosperous and urbanized as the Canaanite city-states of the lowlands and the coastal plain. What made possible the initial independence of the highlands was the fact that, as we have seen, the city-state system of Canaan suffered a series of catastrophically destructive upheavals at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Whether caused by the depredations of the Sea Peoples, or intercity rivalries, or social unrest, the lowland economy was dealt a crushing blow. In time, the Canaanite inhabitants of the lowlands again began to prosper. By the eleventh century BCE, the Philistines, who had previously settled along the southern coast, consolidated the power of their cities. The Phoenician successors of the coastal Canaanites occupied the maritime ports of the north. In the northern valleys, while major sites such as Megiddo suffered destruction in the course of the twelfth century BCE, life in the less urbanized countryside continued uninterrupted. After a few decades of abandonment even the major sites were reoccupied, apparently by the same population—the local Canaanite inhabitants of the lowlands —and some of the most important Canaanite centers were rejuvenated and continued well into the tenth century BCE. Megiddo is a good example of the process. A few decades after the destruction of the Late Bronze Age city with its elaborate palace, settlement at the site was resumed in a modest way. After a few more decades there were significant signs of building and population growth, to the point that Megiddo once again became a substantial city (called stratum VIA), with almost all the features of its former Canaanite culture. The styles of pottery resembled those of the twelfth century BCE; the plan of the town resembled the size and plan of the last Late Bronze city at Megiddo; and most important, the Canaanite temple was still functioning. Excavations at other major sites in the valleys and the northern coastal plain, such as Tel Dor (on the coast to the west of Megiddo) and Tel Rehov (to the south of the Sea of Galilee),

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have revealed a similar picture of the continuation of the Canaanite city-state world, with large towns or cities dominating the prosperous countryside. But this late blooming of Canaan was not to last long. The northern cities would be destroyed by violence and fire. The devastation was so overwhelming that they never recovered from the shock. This was Canaan’s last gasp. What happened? Egypt, which had gone through a long period of decline and withdrawal from the international stage, was at last ready to reassert its power over the lands to the north. Near the end of the tenth century BCE, the pharaoh Shishak, founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty (known as Sheshonq in Egyptian inscriptions), launched an aggressive raid northward. This Egyptian invasion is mentioned in the Bible, from a distinctly Judahite perspective, in a passage that offers the earliest correlation between external historical records and the biblical text: “In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem; he took away the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king’s house; he took away everything. He also took away the shields of gold that Solomon had made” (1 Kings 14:25–26). Yet we now know that Jerusalem was hardly the only or even the most important target. A triumphal inscription commissioned by Sheshonq for the walls of the great temple of Karnak in Upper Egypt lists about one-hundred fifty towns and villages devastated in the operation. They are located in the south, through the central hill country, and across the Jezreel valley and the coastal plain. The once-great Canaanite cities of Rehov, Beth-shean, Taanach, and Megiddo are listed as targets of the Egyptian forces, and indeed a fragment of a victory stele bearing the name of Shishak was found at Megiddo—unfortunately in the dump of previous excavations, so its precise archaeological connection was unclear. Thick layers of conflagration and collapse uncovered in these and other major sites in the north provide dramatic evidence for the sudden and total demise of this late Canaanite system in the late tenth century BCE. And Shishak, who campaigned in the region in 926 BCE, is the likeliest candidate to have caused this wave of destruction.1 The Karnak list and the results of recent excavations seem to indicate that Shishak struck at the developing network of early Israelite villages in the highlands as well. But Shishak’s campaign did not result in lasting Egyptian control of Canaan. When the dust settled, it was clear that the strike in the highlands was only glancing (with the only apparent effects being the abandonment of some villages north of Jerusalem). Yet the blow struck at the revived Canaanite cities in the Jezreel valley was terminal. This had enormous implications, since the destruction of the last vestiges of the Canaanite city-state system opened a window of opportunity for the

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people of the northern highlands, who were already experiencing a period of intense economic and demographic growth. It opened the way for the rise of a full-fledged kingdom to expand from the northern hill country to the adjoining lowlands in the very late tenth century, or more probably in the beginning of the ninth century BCE. Far to the south, the southern highlands—the few villages around Jerusalem— continued the old regime of dispersed villages and pastoralism. Despite the later biblical narratives of the great empire of David and Solomon that would conquer and administer the country from northernmost Dan to southernmost Beersheba, true statehood would not arrive there for another two hundred years. Four Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Why does the Bible tell a story of schism and secession of Israel from Judah that is at such great odds with the historical evidence? If the age-old rhythms of life in the highlands of Canaan dictated two distinct regional cultures—and if the states of Israel and Judah were so different in their nature from the very beginning—why were they so systematically and convincingly portrayed in the Bible as twin states? The answer is hinted at in four divinely inspired predictions of the future that are skillfully woven into the narrative of the breakdown of the united monarchy and the establishment of the independent kingdom of Israel. These oracles—written in the form of direct communication between God and a number of prophets— represent the efforts of a later generation of Judahite interpreters to explain the unexpected twists and turns of history. The people of Judah believed that God had promised David that his dynasty would be secure forever, based in Jerusalem. Yet for centuries Judah found itself in the shadow of Israel, whose kings paid little heed to Jerusalem. How could this have happened? The biblical narrative puts the blame squarely on the religious infidelity of a Judahite king. And it promises that the division of Israel into two rival kingdoms will be only a temporary punishment for the sins of a senior member of the divinely blessed Davidic dynasty. The first prophecy flatly blamed the personal transgressions of David’s son Solomon for the breakup of Israel’s unity. Though Solomon was portrayed as one of the greatest kings of all times, wise and wealthy, ruling from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt, he was also a sinner, taking foreign women as wives in his royal harem, precisely the kind of liaisons that YHWH strictly prohibited for the Israelites, lest the marriages with idolatrous women turn their heart to the worship of other gods. And that is precisely what the Bible reports:

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For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. (1 KINGS 11:4–8) Punishment was thus inevitable for a Davidic heir who “did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.” Therefore YHWH said to Solomon: “Since this has been your mind and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However I will not tear away all the kingdom; but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.” (1 KINGS 11:11–13) Thus the original promise to David was compromised—though not entirely suspended—by Solomon’s sin. The second prophecy dealt with the “servant of Solomon” who would rule in place of David. He was Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite, who served in the Solomonic administration as officer in charge of recruiting forced labor among the tribes of the north. One day on his way out of Jerusalem he was confronted by the prophet Ahijah from Shiloh, who ripped up the garment he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces, handing Jeroboam ten of the shreds. Ahijah’s prophecy was dramatic and fateful: “Take for yourself ten pieces; for thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and will give you ten tribes (but he shall have one tribe, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel), because he has forsaken me, and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites, and has not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, as David his father did. Nevertheless I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand; but I will make him ruler all the days of his life, for the sake of David my servant whom I chose, who kept my commandments and my statutes; but I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand, and will give it to you, ten tribes. Yet to his son I will give one tribe, that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put my name. And I will take you, and you shall reign over all that your soul desires, and you shall be king over Israel. And if you will hearken to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you, and will build you a sure house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you. And I will for this afflict the descendants of David, but not for ever.’ ” (1 KINGS 11:31–39) Unlike the promise to David, God’s promise to Jeroboam was conditional: YHWH would secure his state only as long as he did what was right in the eyes of

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God. But he did not: Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and dwelt there; and he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David; if this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. And this thing became a sin, for the people went to the one at Bethel and to the other as far as Dan. (1 KINGS 12:25–30) The newly installed King Jeroboam soon received a shocking vision of doom. In the midst of officiating at the golden calf shrine of Bethel, at an autumn festival probably meant to divert pilgrims from the celebrations at Jerusalem, Jeroboam was confronted at the altar by a prophet-like figure who is identified in the biblical text only as “a man of God.” And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the LORD to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. And the man cried against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and he shall sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you, and men’s bones shall be burned upon you.’ ” (1 KINGS 13:1–2) This is an unparalleled prophecy, because the “man of God” revealed the name of a specific king of Judah who would, three centuries later, order the destruction of that very shrine, killing its priests and defiling its altar with their remains. It is something like reading a history of slavery written in seventeenth century colonial America in which there is a passage predicting the birth of Martin Luther King. And that is not all: Jeroboam was deeply shaken by the prophecy, and soon afterward his son Abijah fell ill. Jeroboam’s wife proceeded immediately to the old cult center at Shiloh to confer with the prophet Ahijah—the very prophet who had predicted that Jeroboam would soon reign as king of the northern tribes. Ahijah had no words of reassurance for the worried mother. Instead he issued the fourth prophecy, one of the most chilling the Bible contains: “Go, tell Jeroboam, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: “Because I exalted you from among the people, and made you leader over my people Israel, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you; and yet you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments, and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes, but you have done evil above all that were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods, and molten images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back; therefore behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will utterly consume the house of Jeroboam, as a man burns up dung until it is all gone. Any one belonging to

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Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and any one who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat; for the LORD has spoken it.’ ” Arise therefore, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him, and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. Moreover the LORD will raise up for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today. And henceforth the LORD will smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and root up Israel out of this good land which he gave to their fathers, and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the LORD to anger. And he will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which he made Israel to sin.” (1

KINGS 14:7–16)

The precision of the earlier prophecy of the “man of God” gives away the era when it was written. The Davidic king Josiah, who conquered and destroyed the altar at Bethel, lived at the end of the seventh century BCE. Why does a story that takes place in the late tenth century BCE need to bring in a figure from such a distant future? What is the reason for describing what a righteous king named Josiah will do? The answer is much the same as we suggested in explaining why the stories of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the conquest of Canaan are overflowing with seventh century allusions. The inescapable fact is that the books of Kings are as much a passionate religious argument—written in the seventh century BCE—as they are works of history. By that time the kingdom of Israel was already a fading memory, with its cities destroyed and large numbers of its inhabitants deported to far corners of the Assyrian empire. But Judah was, in the meantime, prospering and developing territorial ambitions, claiming to be the only legitimate heir to the extensive territories of Israel. The ideology and theology of the late monarchic historian was based on several pillars, one of the most important of which was the idea that the Israelite cult must be totally centralized in the Temple in Jerusalem. The rival northern cult center at Bethel, not so far from Jerusalem, must have been seen as a threat even before the destruction of the northern kingdom. And worse, it was still active in the early seventh century, probably attracting people living in the territories of the ex–northern kingdom, most of them Israelites who did not go into exile. It posed a dangerous competition to the political, territorial, and theological ambitions of Judah in the days of King Josiah. And the inevitability of Israel’s fall— and Josiah’s triumph—became a central theme in the biblical account. A Most Cautionary Tale These are the reasons why, throughout the description of the history of the northern kingdom, the Deuteronomistic historian transmits to the reader a dual,

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somewhat contradictory message. On the one hand he depicts Judah and Israel as sister states; on the other hand he develops strong antagonism between them. It was Josiah’s ambition to expand to the north and take over the territories in the highlands that once belonged to the northern kingdom. Thus the Bible supports that ambition by explaining that the northern kingdom was established in the territories of the mythical united monarchy, which was ruled from Jerusalem; that it was a sister Israelite state; that its people were Israelites who should have worshiped in Jerusalem; that the Israelites still living in these territories must turn their eyes to Jerusalem; and that Josiah, the heir to the Davidic throne and to YHWH’s eternal promise to David, is the only legitimate heir to the territories of vanquished Israel. On the other hand, the authors of the Bible needed to delegitimize the northern cult—especially the Bethel shrine—and to show that the distinctive religious traditions of the northern kingdom were all evil, that they should be wiped out and replaced by centralized worship at the Temple of Jerusalem. The Deuteronomistic History accomplishes all of this. At the end of 2 Samuel, the pious David is shown establishing a great empire. At the beginning of 1 Kings, his son Solomon comes to the throne and continues to prosper. But wealth and prosperity were not enough. To the contrary, they brought about idolatry. The sin of Solomon led to the death of the golden age. YHWH then chose Jeroboam to lead the breakaway state of the northern kingdom, to be a second David. But Jeroboam sins even more than Solomon and the northern kingdom misses its once-in-history opportunity. The rest of the history of the north is a sad decline to destruction. Under Josiah, however, the time comes for Judah to rise to greatness. But in order to revive the golden age, this new David needs first to undo the sins of Solomon and Jeroboam. The path to greatness must pass through the cleansing of Israel, mainly the destruction of the shrine of Bethel. This will lead to the reunification of all Israel—people and territory—under the Temple of YHWH and the throne of David in Jerusalem. The important thing to remember, then, is that the biblical narrative does not see the partition of the united monarchy of David and Solomon as a final act, but as a temporary misfortune. There can still be a happy ending. If the people resolve to change their ways and live again as a holy people apart from foreign idols and seductions, YHWH will overcome all their enemies and give them eternal rest and satisfaction within their promised land.