The United Kingdom; Northern Kingdom

From our study of the development of the history of Israel and the kings and what happens during the period of the divided kingdom, we learn that as goes Israel so goes the rest of the world. If Israel is walking in obedience to the Lord and therefore God is blessing them to increase their power the Gentile nations diminish in power. Then when Israel is disobedient to God, God raises up and empowers the Gentile nations so that He can use them as rods of correction on Israel. So the mechanism of human history is determined by the spiritual orientation of Israel. Everything depends on how Israel is related to the law and related to God. It is the spiritual dynamic that moves history. As goes the believer so goes the nation, so goes the history of the world, and that same principle is true today. As goes the believer in any nation so goes that nation. The ebb and flow of prosperity in any nation is directly related to what is taking place in the church in that particular country; and that is also related to God and His working out of His purposes and preparing things on the planet for the ultimate judgment of the Tribulation and the return of Christ. It is an invisible, unseen impact that we have.

Now as we look at the development of Israel’s history we will see where the prophets come in—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. We will see where the pre-exilic Minor Prophets and where they fit in, as well as the three post-exilic prophets.

The history of Israel can basically be divided into five distinct periods of history. The first is the period of the united kingdom which extends from Saul’s inauguration as king in 1051 down through 931 BC at which time there is the revolt of the ten northern tribes and they separate from Rehoboam, the heir to Solomon’s kingdom. The united kingdom has three kings: Saul, David and Solomon. David has a special covenant and that plays a role. If we understand what is happening in all of the confusing names and events that happen throughout Kings and Chronicles we always have to keep our eye on the ball. The ball is the seed of David. As long as we watch that then everything else is related to working out the seed of David and the outworking of God’s covenant promises. David has a heart for God; Solomon has a divided heart, he can’t really make up his mind where his priorities are. He is completely enamored with the details of life and spends the majority of his life in carnality, trying to find happiness in all the details of life. The key word is in 1 Kings 3:3, “except”: “Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except…” Solomon leaves a legacy. His heart is divided and it works itself out in what he bequeathed to the nation. The nation by the time he leaves is split. People are crushed because of the tax system, there is the wind of revolt in the air and people want to get out from under that heavy tax burden.

The kingdom divided in a revolt in 931 BC. Ten tribes go out under Jeroboam. Solomon’s son Rehoboam is inaugurated as king, and instead of being inaugurated in Jerusalem which is the capital he goes back to Shechem to be inaugurated. Shechem is the site where Joshua had called all of the people together after the conquest in order to renew their covenant with God and review all of what God said in the Mosaic law—what their responsibilities were and what the blessings and cursings were. He realizes that the nation is divided and goes to Shechem to be inaugurated. Then when he calls his advisors together he realizes that there is a group of citizens that come under Jeroboam, and they present a petition to Rehoboam to lighten the tax load. He calls his advisors together and the old men advise to lighten the load but the young men said let’s increase the tax load. So Rehoboam in a lack of wisdom decides to go with the young men and increase the tax burden on the people and there is a major revolt led by Jeroboam in the north. Ten tribes go out with him. Benjamin united with Judah in the south and so there are two nations now, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The northern kingdom separates itself politically, socially and theologically from the south and that lasts from 931-722 BC, just over 210 years. The southern kingdom lasts from 931-586 BC and they are taken out finally under Nebuchadnezzar. Judah in captivity goes from 586 BC to 536 BC when the first group begins to return from captivity. The past section is the post-exilic period.

The northern kingdom (931-722). The reason for beginning with the northern kingdom is because that is the way the writer of Kings develops this. From 1 Kings 14 on covers the period of the divided kingdom. Every single king in the north is bad, there is nothing good about anything in the north. They are all in idolatry, they are all in rebellion against God, so no king in the north is a good king. In the south there are six good kings. The first is Asa, then Jehoshaphat, Joaz, Uzziah, Hezekiah. Hezekiah was succeeded by Manasseh, the most evil king in the south and then there was a tremendous revival under Josiah.

The first king in the north is Jeroboam I. He is set aside and designated by a prophet even though he is a rebellious king, so God gives divine approval to Jeroboam because it is a part of discipline on the house of David for their rebelliousness, for Solomon’s divided heart. God is still going to be faithful to His covenant to David, there is still going to be a seed of David on the throne in the south; but He is no longer going to bless the nation fully because of their spiritual apostasy. God authorizes this split but He does not authorize Jeroboam to split in the fashion he does because what Jeroboam does—he is a masterful politician—is realize that in order to add legitimacy to his reign (rather than trust in God he is looking at things from pure human viewpoint) he has to give it some sort of spiritual legitimacy. He understands the role of religion in the history of Israel so he has to legitimize their independence. He can’t have all of his people trotting down to Jerusalem six times a year to participate in all of the religious festivals because that would continuously remind his citizens that they have this inherent connection to the south and that there should really be unity between the north and the south. He can’t have that, he wants to have unity so he must set up some sort of foundation politically and religiously in the north, so he rewrites history. He is one of the first historical revisionists. It is typical of politicians and people in power that if they want to legitimize their position what they do is rewrite history and if they can develop a religious system to legitimize their reign so much the better.

Jeroboam sets up an altar in Shechem and establishes his capital city there. But he is a spiritual apostate, he has no concern for the things of the Lord. God had promised him that He would have established a permanent dynasty for Jeroboam in the north if he had been obedient to God’s Word, but he was not. In fact, in the short 200-year history of the northern kingdom there were five different dynasties. That spells instability and divine discipline. Jeroboam decides to establish a new religious system and he sets up a center point of that religion in two places: Bethel in the south and Dan on the north. There he erected idols of golden calves, just as Aaron had built a golden calf coming out of Egypt, and he said, “This is the God who brought you out of Egypt.” Notice how he is going back and picking up partial truth and partial error, typical of historical revisionists. It isn’t the truth that gets people; it is the error that is the problem. Dan is significant because three generations removed from Moses there was his grandson Jonathan who was a complete idolater and he goes up to Dan during the period of the Judges and he established a religious center and developed a new religion of idolatry. Jeroboam appoints a new priesthood and does away with the Levitical priesthood. In fact, most of the Levites during this time decide to head south to Judah.

Jeroboam is on the throne from 931-910 BC and then is succeeded by his son Nadab who doesn’t last long because the house of Jeroboam is under divine discipline. After two years he is assassinated Baasha who is on the throne from 909 to 886. His son Elah takes the throne from 886-885 and is assassinated by Zimri who lasts about 6 days. The army which is under a brilliant man by the name of Omri decides it doesn’t want Zimri to reign and assassinates him. By accolades they proclaim Omri to be king. Omri sets up a dynasty that has the most devastating consequences for both the north and the south. He is crucial for understanding what happens from his reign on. He reigned for 11 years, 885-874, but what he does changes Israel’s destiny in the north and the south for the next few hundred years. He is a very powerful, influential king. In fact, he is so powerful that there are records from Syrian monuments and other monuments that continue for the next 100 years to refer to the ruling house of Israel as the house of Omri, even though Omri’s house goes out under Jehoram, the last of his line. He established stability in the land and he began to enter into various alliances with the surrounding powers.

Just north of Israel was the land of Tyre and Sidon which was the seat of the old Canaanite culture. Remember they were not annihilated as God had mandated by Joshua or the tribes in the conquest and so the Canaanites had now taken refuge up north in Tyre and Sidon. The king of Tyre and Sidon was a man by the name of Ethbaal. He was the king priest of the Canaanites and he had a daughter by the name of Jezebel. In order to cement the economic ties, trading ties, Omri has his son Ahab marry the daughter of Ethbaal. Jezebel came down to Israel and introduced and legitimized Baal worship and outlawed the worship of Yahweh in the northern kingdom. That meant that everything had reversed. God had called the Israelites to be a witness for Him, a witness for truth. Instead of being a witness for truth they succumbed completely to the Baal worship that they were supposed to annihilate when they came into the land. Ahab and Jezebel have a daughter named Aathaliah who them marries Jehoram in the south and becomes the queen of Judah, and at one point everyone in the Davidic line is wiped out except for a six-month-old baby. Athaliah is the queen and her agenda is to unite the south under the north and to, again, outlaw the worship of Yahweh. So we see how Satan is working behind the scenes to destroy the ability of God to fulfill His covenant promises to David and consequently His covenant promises to Abraham and to prevent the messianic line. Satan always thinks he can do that but God in grace always takes evil and in grace finds a solution.

There were three main periods of religious apostasy in the north. The first deals with the sin of Jeroboam when he sets up a state religion and he uses the name of God to do it. He said it was the true worship of Yahweh, the golden calf they were worshipping, and everyone talked about the fact that they were worshipping Yahweh. It is like a game which deceives people by changing the meaning of terms. He used all of the biblical terminology but he gave it new meaning. He was very crafty, very deceptive and extremely successful. He rejected the Mosaic covenant, rejected Jerusalem as the center of worship, rewrote all of their history, but he continued to attach the name of Yahweh to everything that they did so that people thought that they were orthodox when they were actually in apostasy. The second period of religious apostasy took place under the influence of Jezebel and Ahab, 1 Kings 16ff. Ahab, next to Manasseh in the south, is probably the worst king in the entire history of Israel because of what he does spiritually: the introduction of Baal worship and everything that that entailed. The third period in the north is after Jehoram. God anoints Jehu from a different line to be king, and Jehu wipes out and kills all the descendants of Ahab but he doesn’t takes the northern kingdom back to the true worship of God.

The next great king in the north is Jeroboam II. There is a restoration of economic prosperity in his time but it is accompanied by tremendous moral collapse. This is God’s grace before judgment. Jeroboam II dies in 753 BC and by then the Assyrians were the ominous dark cloud on the eastern horizon. They had now become a dominant military player. The last few kings were increasingly evil and wicked until just 31 years after the death of Jeroboam II the northern kingdom is destroyed by the Assyrians during the reign of Hoshea. That wiped out the northern kingdom. The prosperity seen under Jeroboam II was merely a recognition of the principle of grace before judgment.

The prophets at that time: Jonah in the south, Amos in the north. Amos brought the warning of the last grace provision for them as a nation, the last opportunity for them to repent, turn back to God and avoid the judgment. They didn’t and God destroyed the nation, and that is the end of the nation in the north.