what led to israels split into two nations
Background
The experiment with the opulence and power of the bully eastern kingdoms had ended in disaster for Israel. Male monarch Solomon created the wealthiest and most powerful central regime the Hebrews would ever meet, but he did so at an impossibly high toll. Country was given abroad to pay for his extravagances and people were sent into forced labor into Tyre in the north. When Solomon died, between 926 and 922 BCE, the ten northern tribes refused to submit to his son, Rehoboam, and revolted.
From this signal on, there would be two kingdoms of Hebrews: in the north - Israel, and in the south - Judah. The Israelites formed their uppercase in the metropolis of Samaria, and the Judaeans kept their capital letter in Jerusalem. These kingdoms remained carve up states for over two hundred years.
The history of the both kingdoms is a litany of ineffective, disobedient, and corrupt kings. When the Hebrews had first asked for a king, in the volume of Judges, they were told that only God was their king. When they approached Samuel the Prophet, he told them the want for a rex was an act of disobedience and that they would pay dearly if they established a monarchy. The history told in the Hebrew book, Kings, bears out Samuel's warning.
The Hebrew empire eventually collapses, Moab successfully revolts against Judah, and Ammon successfully secedes from Israel. Inside a century of Solomon's expiry, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were left as tiny petty states - no bigger than Connecticut - on the larger map of the Middle East.
Equally history proved time and once more in the region, tiny states never survived long. Located directly betwixt the Mesopotamian kingdoms in the northeast and powerful Egypt in the southwest, the Hebrew Kingdoms were of the utmost commercial and military importance to all these warring powers. Being small was a liability.
The Conquest of State of israel
In 722 BC, the Assyrians conquered Israel. The Assyrians were aggressive and effective; the history of their dominance over the Middle East is a history of constant warfare. In order to assure that conquered territories would remain pacified, the Assyrians would force many of the native inhabitants to relocate to other parts of their empire. They about always chose the upper and more than powerful classes, for they had no reason to fright the general mass of a population. They would and then send Assyrians to relocate in the conquered territory.
When they conquered Israel, they forced the ten tribes to scatter throughout their empire. For all applied purposes, you might consider this a proto-Diaspora ("diaspora"="scattering"), except that these Israelites disappear from history permanently; they are called "the ten lost tribes of Israel." Why this happened is difficult to assess. The Assyrians did not settle the Israelites in 1 place, just scattered them in modest populations all over the Eye E. When the Babylonians later conquered Judah, they, too, relocate a massive amount of the population. However, they movement that population to a single location and so that the Jews tin can set a split up community and even so retain their faith and identity. The Israelites deported by the Assyrians, however, do not live in separate communities and before long drop their Yahweh religion and their Hebrew names and identities.
The Samaritans
One other effect of the Assyrian invasion of Israel involved the settling of Israel by Assyrians. This grouping settled in the capital of Israel, Samaria, and they took with them Assyrian gods and cultic practices. But the people of the Middle East were in a higher place everything else highly superstitious. Even the Hebrews didn't necessarily deny the beingness or ability of other peoples' gods—just in case. Conquering peoples constantly feared that the local gods would wreak vengeance on them. Therefore, they would adopt the local god or gods into their organized religion and cultic practices.
Within a brusk time, the Assyrians in Samaria were worshipping Yahweh as well equally their own gods; inside a couple centuries, they would be worshipping Yahweh exclusively. Thus was formed the only major schism in the Yahweh religion: the schism between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans, who were Assyrian and therefore non-Hebrew, adopted almost all of the Hebrew Torah and cultic practices; different the Jews, however, they believed that they could sacrifice to God outside of the temple in Jerusalem. The Jews frowned on the Samaritans, denying that a not-Hebrew had whatever right to be included among the chosen people and angered that the Samaritans would cartel to sacrifice to Yahweh outside of Jerusalem. The Samaritan schism played a major part in the rhetoric of Jesus of Nazareth; and there are still Samaritans alive today around the metropolis of Samaria.
The Conquest of Judah
"There but for the grace of god become I." Certainly, the conquest of Israel scared the people and monarchs of Judah. They barely escaped the Assyrian menace, just Judah would be conquered by the Chaldeans nigh a century later. In 701, the Assyrian Sennacherib would gain territory from Judah, and the Jews would have suffered the same fate as the Israelites. But by 625 BC, the Babylonians, nether Nabopolassar, would reassert control over Mesopotamia, and the Jewish rex Josiah aggressively sought to extend his territory in the ability vacuum that resulted. Just Judah soon fell victim to the power struggles between Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. When Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, became king, the king of Egypt, Necho (put into power past the Assyrians), rushed into Judah and deposed him, and Judah became a tribute state of Arab republic of egypt. When the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC, then Judah became a tribute state to Babylon. But when the Babylonians suffered a defeat in 601 BC, the male monarch of Judah, Jehoiakim, defected to the Egyptians. So the Babylonian male monarch, Nebuchadnezzar, raised an expedition to punish Judah in 597 BC. The new king of Judah, Jehoiachin, handed the city of Jerusalem over to Nebuchadnezzar, who and so appointed a new king over Judah, Zedekiah. In line with Mesopotamian practice, Nebuchadnezzar deported around x,000 Jews to his majuscule in Babylon; all the deportees were drawn from professionals, the wealthy, and craftsmen. Ordinary people were allowed to stay in Judah. This displacement was the beginning of the Exile.
The story should have ended there. However, Zedekiah defected from the Babylonians 1 more time. Nebuchadnezzar responded with another expedition in 588 and conquered Jerusalem in 586. Nebuchadnezzar caught Zedekiah and forced him to watch the murder of his sons; and then he blinded him and deported him to Babylon. Once again, Nebuchadnezzr deported the prominent citizens, only the number was far smaller than in 597: somewhere between 832 and 1577 people were deported.
The Hebrew kingdom, started with such hope and glory past David, was now at an stop. It would never appear again, except for a cursory time in the second century BC, and to the Jews forced to relocate and the Jews left to scratch out a living in their once proud kingdom, it seemed as if no Jewish nation would ever exist again. It also seemed as if the special bond that Yahweh had promised to the Hebrews, the covenant that the Hebrews would serve a special place in history, had been broken and forgotten by their god. This period of confusion and despair, a community together just homeless in the streets of Babylon, makes upwards one of the most significant historical periods in Jewish history: the Exile.
Sources: The Hebrews: A Learning Module from Washington State University, ©Richard Hooker, reprinted by permission.
Source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-two-kingdoms-of-israel
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