Conflict

AFTER the death of Solomon, tensions increased between the ten tribes in the north and the two tribes in the south, where power and wealth were concentrated around Jerusalem.

Solomon’s son Rehoboam made matters worse. He regarded the northern tribes as rebels and set about subduing them with a program of forced labor. The northern tribes responded by declaring their independence and crowning Jeroboam, their rebel leader, as king.

This sad division among God’s people was very significant. God had promised to bless people from every nation through a king from the line of David. When the northern tribes crowned their own king, they were separating themselves from that promise and from the blessing of God.

Religion, Politics, and Violence

Jeroboam was a shrewd leader. He saw that if faithful people from the north kept visiting Jerusalem to worship the Lord in the temple, they would be reminded of God’s promise and might renew their allegiance to the line of David. So he crafted two golden calves and established his own center of worship in the north (1 Kings 12:28).

Jeroboam had no interest in obeying the Lord. He was merely using religion to strengthen the identity of his people. And when that is the aim, any religion will do.

In the south, where the royal line of David continued, a king typically transferred power to his son as he approached death. But in the north, there was no established royal house and no recognized line of succession. So political intrigue and violence abounded, and most of the kings came to power by murdering their predecessors.

Persecuting God’s People

Ahab was the most notorious of the northern kings. His wife, Jezebel, led a furious persecution in which the prophets of God were hunted and killed. In half a century Israel had gone from a people united in worshiping the Lord to a nation confused and divided. Fifty years after the cloud of God’s presence had filled Solomon’s temple, the knowledge of God was all but lost, even among His own people.

The social results of turning from God and His laws were disastrous. The prophet Amos described conditions in the northern kingdom in these words: “They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name” (Amos 2:6–7).

The sad story of the northern kingdom continued for about two hundred years (920–722 BC). There were nineteen kings altogether, and every one of them “did evil in the eyes of the LORD” (see 2 Kings 15:9).

Eventually, God allowed enemies to overrun the northern kingdom. The king of Assyria deported the entire population in 722 BC, dispersing them across the breadth of his kingdom. Later, he repopulated the area with immigrants, who became known as the Samaritans.

The Story in the South

The two tribes in the south, often referred to as Judah, benefited from better leadership than their brothers and sisters in the north. Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham were all commended by God. But none of them eliminated the places of worship to other gods that had been erected in the days of Solomon. These centers of idolatry continued to be an offense to God.

Things took a turn for the worse in Judah when Manasseh came to power shortly after the northern tribes were scattered. Manasseh reigned for fifty-five years, and he led God’s people into more evil than the nations God had driven out of the land (2 Kings 21:1, 9).

Manasseh promoted the worship of Molek, which included an evil rite in which children were sacrificed in a fire. He “consulted mediums and spiritists,” and in an ultimate act of defiance toward God, he built altars to pagan gods in the temple of the Lord (2 Kings 21:4–6). God had called His people to be lights in the world, but Manasseh led them into deep darkness.

Changing Laws and Changing Hearts

Some years later Manasseh’s grandson Josiah began to seek after the Lord. Stirred by the rediscovery of a manuscript of God’s Law that had been lost in the temple, Josiah led a national campaign of reformation. He toured the country and personally supervised the destruction of all the altars to idols in the land (2 Kings 23). Some of these had been built in the time of Solomon and had been standing for three hundred years.

Josiah’s reform was the greatest onslaught against pagan practices in the history of Israel. He eliminated idolatry. But changing laws is not the same as changing hearts, and soon after the death of Josiah, the altars to idols were rebuilt, and the patterns of sin associated with them resumed.

A View from the Fourth Valley

The tragic story of the divided kingdom teaches us that when a nation turns away from God, dark powers of evil are unleashed. God’s people chose to worship gods of their own making. They turned from the light and eventually were devoured by darkness.

But God never abandoned His people. He kept speaking to them through the prophets, even when they turned to other gods. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, and Habakkuk all called God’s people to repentance during these dark years of the divided kingdom. But God’s people were not listening to God’s Word.

So, after repeated warnings, the time for God’s judgment on His own people finally came. The Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem and remained there for nearly two years, until the city fell in 586 BC. The suffering of God’s people was indescribable. Many lost their lives, and most of those who survived were taken to resettlement camps in Babylon.

The city of Jerusalem became a smoldering ruin. The temple where God had chosen to meet with His people was totally destroyed. The great kingdom that had been the envy of the world in the time of David and Solomon was reduced to a small community of war prisoners in Babylon. But even in this darkest hour, God had not forgotten His people or His promise.