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Kingdom of Israel 𐤉𐤔𐤓𐤀𐤋 [1] | |||||||||
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c. 930 BCE–c. 720 BCE | |||||||||
Status | Kingdom | ||||||||
Capital | |||||||||
Common languages | Hebrew (Biblical, Israelian) | ||||||||
Religion | Yahwism, other Semitic religions | ||||||||
Demonym(s) | Israelite | ||||||||
Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
King | |||||||||
• 931–910 BCE | Jeroboam I (first) | ||||||||
• 732–c. 720 BCE | Hoshea (last) | ||||||||
Historical era | Iron Age | ||||||||
• Established | c. 930 BCE | ||||||||
c. 720 BCE | |||||||||
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The Kingdom of Israel (Hebrew : מַמְלֶכֶת יִשְׂרָאֵלMamleḵeṯ Yīśrāʾēl), also called the Northern Kingdom or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelite kingdom that existed in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Its beginnings date back to the first half of the 10th century BCE. [2] It controlled the areas of Samaria, Galilee and parts of Transjordan; the former two regions underwent a period in which a large number of new settlements were established shortly after the kingdom came into existence. [3] It had four capital cities in succession: Shiloh, Shechem, Tirzah, and the city of Samaria. In the 9th century BCE, it was ruled by the Omride dynasty, whose political centre was the city of Samaria.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the territory of the Twelve Tribes of Israel was once amalgamated under a Kingdom of Israel and Judah, which was ruled by the House of Saul and then by the House of David. However, upon the death of Solomon, who was the son and successor of David, there was discontent over his son and successor Rehoboam, whose reign was only accepted by the Tribe of Judah and the Tribe of Benjamin. The unpopularity of Rehoboam's reign among the rest of the Israelites, who sought Jeroboam as their monarch, resulted in Jeroboam's Revolt, which led to the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel in the north (Samaria), whereas the loyalists of Judah and Benjamin kept Rehoboam as their monarch and established the Kingdom of Judah in the south (Judea), ending Israelite political unity. While the existence of Israel and Judah as two independent kingdoms is not disputed, many historians and archaeologists reject the historicity of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah. [Notes 1]
Around 720 BCE, Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. [4] The records of Assyrian king Sargon II indicate that he deported 27,290 Israelites to Mesopotamia. [5] [6] This deportation resulted in the loss of one-fifth of the kingdom's population and is known as the Assyrian captivity, which gave rise to the notion of the Ten Lost Tribes. Some of these Israelites, however, managed to migrate to safety in neighbouring Judah, [7] though the Judahites themselves would be conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire nearly two centuries later. Those who stayed behind in Samaria following the Assyrian conquest mainly concentrated themselves around Mount Gerizim and eventually came to be known as the Samaritans. [8] [9] The Assyrians, as part of their historic deportation policy, also settled other conquered foreign populations in the territory of Israel. [9]
According to Israel Finkelstein, Shoshenq I's campaign in the second half of the 10th century BCE collapsed the early polity of Gibeon in central highlands, and made possible the beginning of the Northern Kingdom, with its capital at Shechem, [10] [11] around 931 BCE. Israel consolidated as a kingdom in the first half of 9th century BCE, [12] with its capital at Tirzah first, [13] and next at the city of Samaria since 880 BCE. The existence of this Israelite state in the north is documented in 9th century BCE inscriptions. [14] The earliest mention is from the Kurkh stela of c. 853 BCE, when Shalmaneser III mentions "Ahab the Israelite", plus the denominative for "land", and his ten thousand troops. [15] This kingdom would have included parts of the lowlands (the Shephelah), the Jezreel plain, lower Galilee and parts of the Transjordan. [15]
Ahab's forces were part of an anti-Assyrian coalition, implying that an urban elite ruled the kingdom, possessed a royal and state cult with large urban temples, and had scribes, mercenaries, and an administrative apparatus. [15] In all this, it was similar to other recently-founded kingdoms of the time, such as Ammon and Moab. [15] Samaria is one of the most universally accepted archaeological sites from the biblical period. [16] In around 840 BCE, the Mesha Stele records the victory of Moab (in today's Jordan), under King Mesha, over Israel, King Omri and his son Ahab. [17]
Archaeological finds, ancient Near Eastern texts, and the biblical record testify that in the time of the Omrides, Israel ruled in the mountainous Galilee, at Hazor in the upper Jordan Valley, in large parts of Transjordan between the Wadi Mujib and the Yarmuk, and in the coastal Sharon plain. [18]
In Assyrian inscriptions, the Kingdom of Israel is referred to as the "House of ʻOmri". [15] The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III mentions Jehu, son of ʻOmri. [15] The Neo-Assyrian emperor Adad-nirari III did an expedition into the Levant around 803 BCE mentioned in the Nimrud slab, which comments he went to "the Hatti and Amurru lands, Tyre, Sidon, the mat of Hu-um-ri "land of ʻOmri", Edom, Philistia, and Aram (not Judah)." [15] The Tell al-Rimah stela of the same king introduces a third way of talking about the kingdom, as Samaria, in the phrase "Joash of Samaria". [19] The use of Omri's name to refer to the kingdom still survived, and was used by Sargon II in the phrase "the whole house of Omri" in describing his conquest of the city of Samaria in 722 BCE. [20] It is significant that the Assyrians never mention the Kingdom of Judah until the end of the 8th century, when it was an Assyrian vassal state: possibly they never had contact with it, or possibly they regarded it as a vassal of Israel/Samaria or Aram, or possibly the southern kingdom did not exist during this period. [21]
One traditional source for the history of the Kingdom of Israel has been the Hebrew Bible, especially the Books of Kings and Chronicles. These books were written by authors in Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. Being written in a rival kingdom, they were inspired by ideological and theological viewpoints that influence the narrative. [18] Anachronisms, legends and literary forms also affect the story. Some of the recorded events are believed to have occurred long after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. Biblical archaeology has both confirmed and challenged parts of the biblical account. [18] According to the Hebrew Bible, there existed a United Kingdom of Israel (the United Monarchy), ruled from Jerusalem by David and his son Solomon, after whose death Israel and Judah separated into two kingdoms.
The first mention of the name Israel is from an Egyptian inscription, the Merneptah Stele, dating from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1208 BCE); this gives little solid information, but indicates that the name of the later kingdom was borrowed rather than originating with the kingdom itself. [22]
According to the Hebrew Bible, for the first sixty years after the split, the kings of Judah tried to re-establish their authority over the northern kingdom, and there was perpetual war between them. For the following eighty years, there was no open war between them, as, for the most part, Judah had engaged in a military alliance with Aram-Damascus, opening a northern front against Israel. [23] The conflict between Israel and Judah was temporarily settled when Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, allied himself with the reigning house of Israel, Ahab, through marriage. Later, Jehosophat's son and successor, Jehoram of Judah, married Ahab's daughter Athaliah, cementing the alliance. [23] However, the sons of Ahab were slaughtered by Jehu following his coup d'état around 840 BCE. [24]
After being defeated by Hazael, Israel began a period of progressive recovery following the campaigns against Aram-Damascus of Adad-nirari III. [25] This ultimately led to a period of major territorial expansion under Jeroboam II, who extended the kingdom's possessions throughout the Northern Transjordan. Following Jeroboam II's death, the Kingdom experienced a period of decline as a result of sectional rivalries and struggles for the throne. [26]
In c. 732 BCE, king Pekah of Israel, while allied with Rezin, king of Aram, threatened Jerusalem. Ahaz, king of Judah, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III, the king of Assyria, for help. After Ahaz paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser, [27] Tiglath-Pileser sacked Damascus and Israel, annexing Aram [28] and the territories of the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh in Gilead including the desert outposts of Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. People from these tribes, including the Reubenite leader, were taken captive and resettled in the region of the Khabur River system, in Halah, Habor, Hara and Gozan (1 Chronicles 5:26). Tiglath-Pilesar also captured the territory of Naphtali and the city of Janoah in Ephraim, and an Assyrian governor was placed over the region of Naphtali. According to 2 Kings 16:9 and 2 Kings 15:29, the population of Aram and the annexed part of Israel was deported to Assyria. [29]
The remainder of the northern kingdom of Israel continued to exist within the reduced territory as an independent kingdom until around 720 BCE, when it was again invaded by Assyria and more of the population was deported. Not all of Israel's populace was deported by the Assyrians. During the three-year siege of Samaria in the territory of Ephraim by the Assyrians, Shalmaneser V died and was succeeded by Sargon II, who himself records the capture of that city thus: "Samaria I looked at, I captured; 27,280 men who dwelt in it I carried away" into Assyria. Thus, around 720 BCE, after two centuries, the northern kingdom came to an end. Some of the Israelite captives were resettled in the Khabur region, and the rest in the land of the Medes, thus establishing Hebrew communities in Ecbatana and Rages. The Book of Tobit additionally records that Sargon had taken other captives from the northern kingdom to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, in particular Tobit from the town of Thisbe in Naphtali.[ citation needed ]
The Hebrew Bible relates that the population of the Kingdom of Israel was exiled, becoming known as the Ten Lost Tribes. To the south, the Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Simeon (that was "absorbed" into Judah), the Tribe of Benjamin and the people of the Tribe of Levi, who lived among them of the original Israelite nation, remained in the southern Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah continued to exist as an independent state until 586 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The tradition of the Samaritan people states that much of the population of the Kingdom of Israel remained in place after the Assyrian captivity, including the Tribes of Naphtali, Manasseh, Benjamin and Levi – being the progenitors of the modern Samaritans. In their book The Bible Unearthed , Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only a fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II. [5] : 221 Many members of these northern tribes also fled south to the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem seems to have expanded in size five-fold during this period, requiring a new wall to be built, and a new source of water Siloam to be provided by King Hezekiah. [7]
In their book The Bible Unearthed, Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only a fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the northern Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II. [5] No known non-Biblical record exists of the Assyrians having exiled people from four of the tribes of Israel: Dan, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun. Descriptions of the deportation of people from Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, Ephraim and Naphtali indicate that only a portion of these tribes were deported, and the places to which they were deported are known locations given in the accounts. The deported communities are mentioned as still existing at the time of the composition of the Books of Kings and Chronicles and did not disappear by assimilation. 2 Chronicles 30:1–18 explicitly mentions northern Israelites who had been spared by the Assyrians, in particular people of Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, Issachar and Zebulun, and how members of the latter three returned to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah. [33]
The religious climate of the Kingdom of Israel appears to have followed two major trends. The first was the worship of Yahweh; the religion of ancient Israel is sometimes referred to by modern scholars as Yahwism. [34] The Hebrew Bible, however, states that some of the northern Israelites also adored Baal (see 1 Kings 16:31 and the Baal cycle discovered at Ugarit). [34] The reference in Hosea 10 to Israel's "divided heart" [35] may refer to these two cultic observances, although alternatively it may refer to hesitation between looking to Assyria and Egypt for support. [36]
The Jewish Bible also states that Ahab allowed the cult worship of Baal to become acceptable of the kingdom. His wife Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre and a devotee to Baal worship (1 Kings 16:31). [37]
History of Israel |
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Israelportal |
History of Palestine |
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Palestineportal |
According to the Bible, the Northern Kingdom had 19 kings across 9 different dynasties throughout its 208 years of existence.
The table below lists all the historical references to the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in Assyrian records. [38] King Omri's name takes the Assyrian shape of "Humri", his kingdom or dynasty that of Bit Humri or alike—the "House of Humri/Omri".
Assyrian King | Inscription | Year | Transliteration | Translation |
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Shalmaneser III | Kurkh Monoliths | 853 BCE | KUR sir-'i-la-a-a | "Israel" |
Shalmaneser III | Black Obelisk, Calah Fragment, Kurba'il Stone, Ashur Stone | 841 BCE | mar Hu-um-ri-i | "of Omri" |
Adad-nirari III | Tell al-Rimah Stela | 803 BCE | KUR Sa-me-ri-na-a-a | "land of Samaria" |
Adad-nirari III | Nimrud Slab | 803 BCE | KUR <Bit>-Hu-um-ri-i | "the 'land of [the House of] Omri" |
Tiglath-Pileser III | Layard 45b+ III R 9,1 | 740 BCE | [KUR sa-me-ri-i-na-a-a] | ["land of Samaria"] |
Tiglath-Pileser III | Iran Stela | 739–738 BCE | KUR sa-m[e]-ri-i-na-a-[a] | "land of Samaria" |
Tiglath-Pileser III | Layard 50a + 50b + 67a | 738–737 BCE | URU sa-me-ri-na-a-a | "city of Samaria" |
Tiglath-Pileser III | Layard 66 | 732–731 BCE | URU Sa-me-ri-na | "city of Samaria" |
Tiglath-Pileser III | III R 10,2 | 731 BCE | KUR E Hu-um-ri-a | "land of the House of Omri" |
Tiglath-Pileser III | ND 4301 + 4305 | 730 BCE | KUR E Hu-um-ri-a | "land of the House of Omri" |
Shalmaneser V | Babylonian Chronicle ABC1 | 725 BCE | URU Sa-ma/ba-ra-'-in | "city of Samaria" |
Sargon II | Nimrud Prism, Great Summary Inscription | 720 BCE | URU Sa-me-ri-na | "city of Samaria" |
Sargon II | Palace Door, Small Summary Inscription, Cylinder Inscription, Bull Inscription | 720 BCE | KUR Bit-Hu-um-ri-a | "land of Omri" |
Ahab was the son and successor of King Omri and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon according to the Hebrew Bible. He was widely criticized for causing "moral decline" in Israel, according to the Yahwists. Modern scholars argue that Ahab was a Yahwist and introduced Yahweh to the Kingdom of Judah via imperialism. This mostly occurred in the latter half of his reign.
The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millennium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millennium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
Jehu was the tenth king of the northern Kingdom of Israel since Jeroboam I, noted for exterminating the house of Ahab. He was the son of Jehoshaphat, grandson of Nimshi, and possibly great-grandson of Omri, although the latter notion is not supported by the biblical text. His reign lasted 28 years.
The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries. Jews are named after Judah, and primarily descend from people who lived in the region.
Omri was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the sixth king of Israel. He was a successful military campaigner who extended the northern kingdom of Israel. Other monarchs from the House of Omri are Ahab, Ahaziah, Joram, and Athaliah. Like his predecessor, king Zimri, who ruled for only seven days, Omri is the second king mentioned in the Bible without a statement of his tribal origin. One possibility, though unproven, is that he was of the tribe of Issachar.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel, named after Judah, the son of Jacob. Judah was the first tribe to take its place in the Land of Israel, occupying its Southern part. Jesse and his sons, including King David, belonged to this tribe.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Manasseh was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. After the catastrophic Assyrian invasion of 720 BCE, it is counted as one of the ten lost tribes. Together with the Tribe of Ephraim, Manasseh also formed the House of Joseph.
Hoshea was the nineteenth and last king of the northern Kingdom of Israel and son of Elah. William F. Albright dated his reign to 732–721 BCE, while E. R. Thiele offered the dates 732–723 BCE.
Jotham or Yotam was the eleventh king of Judah, and son of Uzziah and Jerusha, daughter of Zadok. Jotham was 25 years old when he began his reign, and he reigned for 16 years. Edwin R. Thiele concluded that his reign commenced as a coregency with his father, which lasted for 11 years. Because his father Uzziah was afflicted with tzaraath after he went into the Temple to burn incense, Jotham became governor of the palace and the land at that time, i.e. coregent, while his father lived in a separate house as a leper.
Jehoram was the ninth king of the northern Kingdom of Israel. He was the son of Ahab and Jezebel, and brother to Ahaziah and Athaliah.
According to the Deuteronomistic history in the Hebrew Bible, a United Monarchy or United Kingdom of Israel existed under the reigns of Saul, Ish-bosheth, David, and Solomon, encompassing the territories of both the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
The Twelve Tribes of Israel are, according to Hebrew scriptures, the descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob, who collectively form the Israelite nation. The tribes were through his twelve sons through his wives, Leah and Rachel, and his concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. In modern scholarship, there is skepticism as to whether there ever were twelve Israelite tribes, with the use of the number 12 thought more likely to signify a symbolic tradition as part of a national founding myth, although some scholars disagree with this view.
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts is a 2001 a book by Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine. The book discusses the archaeology of ancient Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the Hebrew Bible.
The Omride dynasty, Omrides or House of Omri were the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Samaria founded by King Omri. The dynasty's rule ended with the murder of Zechariah of Israel by Shallum in 752 BCE, who was then killed by Menahem in the next month.
Samaria was the capital city of the Kingdom of Israel between c. 880 BCE and c. 720 BCE. It is the namesake of Samaria, a historical region bounded by Judea to the south and by Galilee to the north. After the Assyrian conquest of Israel, Samaria was annexed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and continued as an administrative centre. It retained this status in the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Persian Empire before being destroyed during the Wars of Alexander the Great. Later, under the hegemony of the Roman Republic and the subsequent Roman Empire, the city was rebuilt and expanded by the Jewish king Herod the Great, who also fortified it and renamed it "Sebastia" in honour of the Roman emperor Augustus.
The article deals with the biblical and historical kings of the Land of Israel—Abimelech of Sichem, the three kings of the United Kingdom of Israel and those of its successor states, Israel and Judah, followed in the Second Temple period, part of classical antiquity, by the kingdoms ruled by the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties.
The Assyrian captivity, also called the Assyrian exile, is the period in the history of ancient Israel and Judah during which several thousand Israelites from the Kingdom of Israel were dispossessed and forcibly relocated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. One of many instances attesting Assyrian resettlement policy, this mass deportation of the Israelite nation began immediately after the Assyrian conquest of Israel, which was overseen by the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V. The later Assyrian kings Sargon II and Sennacherib also managed to subjugate the Israelites in the neighbouring Kingdom of Judah following the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC, but were unable to annex their territory outright. The Assyrian captivity's victims are known as the Ten Lost Tribes, and Judah was left as the sole Israelite kingdom until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, which resulted in the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people. Not all of Israel's populace was deported by the Assyrians; those who were not expelled from the former kingdom's territory eventually became known as the Samaritan people.
2 Kings 8 is the eighth chapter of the second part of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah by a Deuteronomic compiler in the seventh century BCE, with a supplement added in the sixth century BCE. This chapter records Elisha's acts in helping the family of Shunammite woman to escape famine, then to gain back their land and in contributing to Hazael's ascension to the throne of Syria (Aram) in verses 7–15; then subsequently records the reigns of Joram and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah.
1 Kings 16 is the sixteenth chapter of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the First Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah by a Deuteronomic compiler in the seventh century BCE, with a supplement added in the sixth century BCE. 1 Kings 12:1-16:14 documents the consolidation of the kingdoms of northern Israel and Judah. This chapter focusses on the reigns of Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri and Ahab in the northern kingdom during the reign of Asa in the southern kingdom.
The Tribe of Naphtali was one of the northernmost of the twelve tribes of Israel. It is one of the ten lost tribes.
[T]he growing proto-Israelite power in the central hill country, out of which would emerge the Northern Kingdom of Israel, [that] should be dated to the first half of the 10th century BCE.