Israel and Judah, one nation divided
CONSTANT WAR
Israel and Judah live in perpetual hostility toward one another. They are brothers in blood, united to their common and revered ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But they remain bitter rivals for as long as they exist...until one at a time, invaders from what is now Iraq, erase them from the world map. JUDAH AND SYRIA FIGHT ISRAEL War between Israel and Judah continued throughout the lives of King Asa and King Baasha of Israel. King Baasha reinforced the border town of Ramah. He wanted to shut the door on anyone trying to come or go between Israel and Judah.King ASA BUYS AN ALLY
Asa collected all the silver and gold in the Temple treasury. He told some officials to deliver it to King Ben-hadad at Damascus in Syria. Ben-hadad was the son of Tabrimmon and grandson of Hezion. Asa sent this message to Ben-hadad: “Let’s become allies. King Baasha of Israel is trying to invade and defeat me. I need your help. Please accept this gift of silver and gold. Then walk away from your treaty with Baasha, join forces with me, and help me push Baasha back where he belongs.It's a deal
Ben-hadad agreed to Asa’s deal. Then he unleashed his commanders and their armies. They attacked Israel and captured the cities of Ijon, Dan, Abel-beth-maacah, and all the territory of Chinneroth and all the tribal land of Naphtali. When Baasha heard what Syria was doing, he stopped work on Ramah and retreated to the safety of his capital at Tirzah.Taking down Ramah
King Asa drafted all the men in Judah, no exceptions. He mobilized everyone to carry stones and timber that Baasha used to fortify Ramah. He used the material to fortify the town of Geba in the tribe of Benjamin, along with the town of Mizpah. (1 Kings 15:16-22)Israel, Judah: One nation divided
Pharaoh Shishak attacks Israel
Pharaoh Shishak attacks Israel
Pharaoh Shishak raids Judah, Israel
Egypt's ruler, Pharaoh Shishak, saw a chance to enrich his kingdom when King Solomon's Israel fell apart, collapsing into two competing nations. Shishak attacked scattered cities throughout both nations, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. Israel broke in half when Solomon's son and successor, Rehoboam, refused to lighten up on the forced labor and high taxes Solomon had imposed, to maintain his aggressive building projects. Instead, he threatened to get tougher. The northern tribes took a walk and never came back. Rehoboam was left ruling only his own tribe of Judah, in the south.On the Bible's record
Bible writers report only that Shishak threatened Jerusalem and that Judah's king Rehoboam saved the city by emptying the Temple treasury and giving it to Shishak. This payoff convinced the Egyptian to go home. The story appears in 1 Kings 14:25-28 and in 2 Chronicles 12:2-12."During the fifth year of King Rehoboam’s reign, Egypt’s King Shishak invaded and attacked Jerusalem. 26He stole everything of value from the Temple. And he took the golden shields Solomon had made. Rehoboam replaced the shields, but he used bronze instead of gold. And he ordered the royal palace guards at the front door to keep them safe. Whenever the king went to the Temple, the guards who escorted him brought the shields with them. When they returned, they stored the shields in a guarded room." (1 Kings 14:25-28)This could have been when the Israelites lost their most sacred relic, the chest with the stones of the Ten Commandments. The gold-covered chest is also known as the Ark of The Covenant. King Shishak, usually linked with Pharaoh Shoshenq I, allied himself with King Jeroboam of Israel instead of Rehoboam of Judah. Some of his war records were found, with lists of Judean cities he conquered. Jerusalem isn’t among them. Bible writers say he attacked with too many soldiers to count, a cavalry of 60,000, and a chariot corps of 1,200 (2 Chronicles 12).
On the Egyptian record
Egyptian records are more involved than the short snippet in the Bible. An ancient inscription on the Amon temple in the Egyptian city of Luxor reports a military campaign that took him throughout both nations of Judah and Israel. The inscription identifies many target cities by name.For more Bible features
Stephen M. Miller's website , The Casual English Bible, and Bible YouTube channelPharaoh Shishak attacks Judah, Israel
Tirzah to Shiloh
Tirzah to Shiloh
THE QUEEN’S SECRET MISSION
King Jeroboam’s son Abijah, got sick. The king told his wife, “I want you to disguise yourself and go to Shiloh. Find Ahijah, the prophet who predicted I would be king. Take him some gifts: 10 loaves of bread, a few of those little sweet cakes, and a jug of honey. Then ask him about our son. He’ll tell you what’s going to happen.”The queen and the prophet
Jeroboam’s wife went to Ahijah’s house in Shiloh. The prophet was old and blind by this time. But the LORD had told him, “Jeroboam’s wife will be coming to ask you about her son. He is sick. She will pretend she’s another woman. So, here’s what I want you to say.” And God gave him the message. Ahijah heard her footsteps when she stepped inside. He said, “Come on in. Jeroboam’s wife is welcome here. Why are you pretending to be someone else? I have some heavy news for you to carry home.GOD’S MESSAGE FOR THE KING
Here’s what you need to tell Jeroboam. Tell him this message comes from the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘I picked you out of the vast crowd and made you leader of my people, Israel. I tore a huge part of the kingdom away from David’s family. His children weren’t like David, and neither are you. David obeyed the law. He stayed devoted to me with all his heart. He wanted nothing more than to please me. You’ve got more evil in you than all the evil people who ever lived. You invented your own gods, stuck them in a mold, and turned them into statues. You made me angry, and you made me your enemy. I’m going to toss you out like yesterday’s trash. No male under your roof will survive—sons or slaves, it won’t matter which. Your family dynasty will disappear like dried manure thrown into a fire. If your people die in the city, their bodies will feed the dogs. If they die in fields, birds will pick them apart.’GOD’S MESSAGE FOR THE QUEEN
Now go back home to your family. When you step foot into the city, your son will die. Taken from 1 Kings 14:1-12For more Bible features
Stephen M. Miller's website , The Casual English Bible, and Bible YouTube channelBethel’s gold calf
Bethel's gold calf
Bethel's gold calf
After Israel split in two, Jeroboam, first king of the northern tribes set up gold calf shrines. Apparently, he didn't want his people of Israel going back to Jerusalem's Temple to worship. For if the northerners got too friendly with the southern tribe of Judah, they might want to reunite under a king from David's family. Excerpt from 1 Kings 13 1-6:PROPHET PREDICTS KING WILL SACRIFICE PAGAN PRIESTS
King Jeroboam went to the altar at the golden calf shrine at Bethel to burn some incense as a sacrificial offering. But a man, prompted by the LORD, had come up from Judah to criticize the pagan shrine. He spoke directly to the altar there. “Bad news for you, altar! I’ve got terrible news for you, and this comes from the LORD. A son is coming from David’s family—a boy named Josiah. He’s going to offer sacrifices here. But he’ll be sacrificing your priests who serve on hilltop shrines. They won’t be burning incense anymore. They’ll be burning. And they’ll leave behind a pile of their bones. Here’s how you’ll know the LORD has sent this message. This altar will get torn down. And the ashes of sacrifices burned on it will get thrown out as trash.” When the king heard that, he pointed at the man of God and said, “Arrest him!” But when the king stuck out his hand, it was bent up, withered, and paralyzed. He couldn’t even pull it back in. The altar collapsed and its ashes poured out onto the ground—exactly the sign the man had given. The king said to the man, “Ask your God to fix my hand and make it like it was before.” So the man did, and the LORD did. The king had his good hand back.For more Bible features
Stephen M. Miller's website , The Casual English Bible, and Bible YouTube channelBethel's god calf
Solomon’s wives on the map
Solomon's wives on the map
SOLOMON MARRIES IDOL-LOVING WOMEN
Putting Solomon's wives on the map: King Solomon loved women. He loved his Egyptian wife, the daughter of Pharaoh. But he loved hundreds of other women, too. He married many women who weren’t Israelites. He married women from the nations of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, as well as Hittites. These are the same nations the LORD told people in Israel to avoid. He said, “Don’t marry them. If you do, they’ll convince you to worship their gods.” But Solomon loved who he loved.Solomon's harem
Solomon married 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Dramatically outnumbered, Solomon lost the battle of the gods to his foreign wives. They turned him away from the LORD. By the time Solomon grew into an old man, his wives had completely eroded his devotion to the LORD. Solomon’s father, David, had stayed true to God. Solomon did not. He worshiped other gods. Solomon worshiped Astarte, goddess of Sidon. And he worshiped Milcom, the disgusting filth of a god that the people of Ammon worship. Solomon got it wrong. His father David got it right; he obeyed the LORD. But Solomon decided not to obey God.Pagan gods in Israel's hills
Solomon built a hilltop shrine for worshiping Chemosh, god of Moab. And on the Mount of Olives, the ridge of hills east of Jerusalem, he built a shrine to worship Molech, another repulsive god of Ammon. He built similar places of worship for all his foreign wives, so they could continue worshiping their own gods by burning incense and offering sacrifices. The LORD was furious with Solomon. The LORD had already appeared to Solomon twice and talked with him. Yet the king still decided to reject his own God, the God of Israel. Solomon did that even though God had personally told him not to worship other gods. (1 Kings 11:1-10, Casual English Bible) For features about the Bible Stephen M. Miller's website & YouTube channelSolomon’s portfolio
Solomon's portfolio
Solomon's portfolio
Solomon's portfolio grew and made him wealthy for at two important reasons. First, he takes the risk of building a fleet of ships to send abroad with Israel's products, to trade for exotic products he can't buy in Israel: jewels, African animals and ivory, horses from what is not Turkey, and chariots from Egypt. The ships return every three years, loaded with gold, silver, and other goodies for the king. It was a risk, though. Another king built a fleet for the Red Sea and somehow lost them all at Ezion-geber, in or near the port of origin"Jehoshaphat had a fleet built in the style of Tarshish [7] ships. He wanted to send them to Ophir [8] to bring back some gold. But the ships didn’t make it far. They wrecked in Ezion-geber" (1 Kings 22:48).Solomon also made a bundle off of caravans and locals traveling through his land, which was the only good land bridge between Egypt and other Africa nations in the south with nations in the north and the east, including what are now Turkey, and Greece, Iraq, and Iran.
Queen of Sheba on a shopping spree
Some scholars say the Queen of Sheba came for more than curiosity and a desire to test Solomon's wisdom, as the Bible reports."The queen gave Solomon two and a half tons (4,000 kg) of gold and jewels. And she gave him more spices than Solomon or any other king of Israel ever got or would ever get again in one huge shipment" (1 Kings 10:10).It probably wasn't just a gift. In those times, gifts were reciprocated.
"King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba everything she said she wanted, with royal gifts on top of it. Then he sent her on her way back home" (1 Kings 10:13).For feature articles about the Bible
Stephen M. Miller's blog and YouTube channel
Solomon's international portfolio
Solomon’s Galilee
Solomon's Galilee
SOLOMON GIVES AWAY 20 CITIES IN GALILEE
From 1 Kings 9:10- 14. Solomon spent 20 years building two houses. One house for God, the Temple. One house for himself, the palace. 11King Hiram of Tyre supplied Solomon with all the wood he needed for these building projects. Hiram sent gold along with cedar and cypress from the Lebanon forests. In return, Solomon gave him a bonus gift of 20 towns in Galilee, along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.Hiriam's reaction: "Worthless"
12But when Hiram saw the 20 villages he got as a gift for his 20 years of trouble, he felt cheated. 13He told Solomon, “My friend, you call these cities?” Hiram decided to call them “Worthless.” And that’s what he named the region. 14But Hiram felt obligated to give Solomon a gift in return. He sent a little less than four tons of gold.Tallying the gold
Four tons of god would be about 720 gold bars today, weighing a total of 9,000 pounds or 4,000 kilograms. In ancient Hebrew measurement, it was 120 talents, at an estimated 75 pounds or 34 kilograms per talent. The weight of a talent varied by era and location. To haul that much gold today, it would take about five of the half-ton pickup trucks or seven well-built minivans or 60 Radio Flyer classic red wagons. When the writer used the word "worthless" he wrote it in Hebrew, the language of the Israelites. And in Hebrew the word is Cabul. It seems that the name stuck. There’s an Israeli city called Kabul, near the northwest border with Lebanon. The population is mostly Arab. Some scholars suggest this was one of the 20 cities Solomon gave to Hiram. Israel captured the city in 1948 in Operation Dekel, an offensive that also led to the capture of Nazareth and about 30 other Arab towns in western Galilee.Good Galilee
The fertile part of Galilee is south, at the Jezreel Valley. Solomon kept that for himself.Entrance to Solomon’s Temple
Entrance to Solomon's Temple
Model of Entrance into Solomon's Temple
The makers
This 1883 architectural model of Solomon's Temple follows a design by a British Bible scholar named Thomas Newberry. It's carved from wood and gilded in silver and brass.
The photo is courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of New YorkModel based on the Bible’s description
The museum describes it as an exhibit of skilled craftsmanship and exquisite artistry, as well as architectural ingenuity and conceptual brilliance. Artisans based on this model on biblical descriptions of the Temple. The built into the model the following architectural layout: Porch, Holy Place, Holy of Holies, side chambers and galleries. They added the Altar of Burnt Offerings, the Brazen Sea, ten Lavers, Golden Altar of Incense, ten Lamp Stands, ten Tables for Shew Bread, Ark of the Covenant, two Great Cherubim, two pillars (called "Jachin and Boas"). And they provided a sense of the size of the Temple by including and numerous figures, such as the robed priests. They covered all the important details known of the Temple. Displayed as the centerpiece of the groundbreaking Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition in the Royal Albert Hall (April 4th – August, 1887), this model promoted the exhibition’s key goals . Those were including reviving interest in the preservation of Jewish material culture and to encourage awareness of the prominent role of Anglo-Jewry in nineteenth-century England. An object of rich historical value and superb artistry, this model – especially its intriguing domed-roof not directly mentioned in the biblical descriptions of the Temple – continues to fascinate architectural and biblical scholars." Solomon's Temple follow the basic style of temples at the time. Ruins of pagan temples in Philistine territory show a similar layout, with a sacred room in the back, like Solomon's Most Holy Place. It's also called the Holy of Holies.Angels for the Most Holy Place
For the Most Holy Room, Solomon added two identical cherubim, 15-feet high, carved from the hard wood of olive trees. 24The cherubim had wings, with a wingspan as wide as they were tall. Each wing measured 7 ½ feet to the tip. 25Each cherub looked like the other. Identical twins with wings. 26One cherub was 15 feet tall, and so was the other" (1 Kings 6:23-27).Model Entrance to Solomon's Temple
Solomon’s Temple and Palace
Solomon's Temple and Palace
Solomon's Temple and Palace
Solomon spend two decades building the Jerusalem Temple and his Palace...7 years on the House of the LORD and 13 years on the house of the king.Excerpt from 1 Kings 7
2“Home of the Lebanon Forest” [2] was largest room in the palace. Builders erected cedar pillars everywhere. They shaped the room into a huge rectangle around three rows of cedar pillars, 15 pillars in each row. That totaled 45 pillars. The room measured 50 yards long, 25 yards wide, and 15 yards high. [3] 3For a roof, builders put 45 rafters—huge beams—across the tops of all 45 pillars. Then they covered the rafters with cedar. 4Builders cut three rows of windows on each side of the room, with them facing each other. [4] Workers cut three doorways on each side, close to the entrance at the front of the room. 5They framed all the doorways with four-sided posts and placed the doorways across from each other.PILLAR HALL AND JUSTICE HALL
6Solomon built a room called Pillar Hall. He laid it out 25 yards long by 15 yards wide. [5] Then he added a front porch with pillars supporting a roof. 7He paneled the courthouse, Justice Hall, entirely of cedar—from floor to ceiling. This is where he would judge court cases. 8Solomon ordered his house built behind Justice Hall, and along the same design. He followed that pattern, too, for the home of his Egyptian bride, Pharaoh’s daughter. 9All these buildings were made of cut stone, chiseled, and sawed to fit. For feature articles about the Bible Stephen M. Miller's blog and YouTube channelSketch of Solomon's Temple and Palace
Model of Solomon’s Temple
Model of Solomon's Temple
Model of Solomon's Temple
The makers
This 1883 architectural model of Solomon's Temple follows a design by a British Bible scholar named Thomas Newberry. It's carved from wood and gilded in silver and brass.
The photo is courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of New YorkModel based on the Bible's description
The museum describes it as an exhibit of skilled craftsmanship and exquisite artistry, as well as architectural ingenuity and conceptual brilliance. Artisans based on this model on biblical descriptions of the Temple. The built into the model the following architectural layout: Porch, Holy Place, Holy of Holies, side chambers and galleries. They added the Altar of Burnt Offerings, the Brazen Sea, ten Lavers, Golden Altar of Incense, ten Lamp Stands, ten Tables for Shew Bread, Ark of the Covenant, two Great Cherubim, two pillars (called "Jachin and Boas"). And they provided a sense of the size of the Temple by including and numerous figures, such as the robed priests. They covered all the important details known of the Temple. Displayed as the centerpiece of the groundbreaking Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition in the Royal Albert Hall (April 4th – August, 1887), this model promoted the exhibition’s key goals . Those were including reviving interest in the preservation of Jewish material culture and to encourage awareness of the prominent role of Anglo-Jewry in nineteenth-century England. An object of rich historical value and superb artistry, this model – especially its intriguing domed-roof not directly mentioned in the biblical descriptions of the Temple – continues to fascinate architectural and biblical scholars." Solomon's Temple follow the basic style of temples at the time. Ruins of pagan temples in Philistine territory show a similar layout, with a sacred room in the back, like Solomon's Most Holy Place. It's also called the Holy of Holies.Angels for the Most Holy Place
For the Most Holy Room, Solomon added two identical cherubim, 15-feet high, carved from the hard wood of olive trees. 24The cherubim had wings, with a wingspan as wide as they were tall. Each wing measured 7 ½ feet to the tip. 25Each cherub looked like the other. Identical twins with wings. 26One cherub was 15 feet tall, and so was the other" (1 Kings 6:23-27).For feature articles about the Bible
Stephen M. Miller's blogModel Solomon's Temple