THE TWO LITTLE JEWISH KINGDOMS MADE WAR UPON EACH OTHER ALMOST INCESSANTLY AND THIS FRATERNAL STRIFE SO WEAKENED THEM THAT THEY WERE FOREVER AT THE MERCY OF THEIR NEIGHBOURS.THEIR FINAL MISFORTUNES,HOWEVER,DID NOT COME WITHOUT A WARNING.WHILE KINGS AND POLITICIANS AND PRIESTS WERE NEGLECTING THEIR DUTIES,A NUMBER OF COURAGEOUS MEN,KNOWN AS THE PROPHETS,STEPPED FORWARD IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO LEAD THE PEOPLE BACK TO THE TRUE WORSHIP OF JEHOVAH
The work of the Judges and that of David and Solomon stood undone.Their dream of a great Jewish empire had come to grief.A strong line of fortifications,running all the way from Gilgal near the river Jordan (once the headquarters of Joshua),to the city of Gezer on the Philistine border,divided the Jewish lands into a northern and a southern part.
United,they would have been able to maintain their common independence.
Divided,they were at the mercy of their powerful neighbours.
We are about to tell you the unhappy story of an unhappy people.Centuries of civil war and anarchy will be followed by two hundred years of exile and slavery.It will be a record of dark deeds—of sudden murder and futile ambition.But it will provide us with the proper background for the most interesting spiritual struggle of ancient days.
We must know the main events of this complicated period if we are to understand the life of the greatest of all the Prophets,who was born long after the last remnant of Jewish independence had been destroyed by the armies of Pompey.
Solomon the Magnificent died sometime between the years 940and 930B.C.
Five years later,the division of his empire had become an accomplished and generally accepted fact.
It was then possible to compare the strength of the two new nations.Israel was three times as large as Judah,and had twice as many inhabitants.Her pastures were incomparably richer than those of Judah where three-fourths of the land was barren wilderness.This did not mean that Israel was twice as strong or three times as rich as her southern neighbour.On the contrary,the very extent of her territory was a disadvantage to Israel.Judah,small and compact,enjoyed a more centralised form of government and was better prepared to resist invasion.
On the east,the rocky wilderness of the Dead Sea,sweltering in the salty heat of a valley situated 1200feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea,presented an almost insurpassable barrier against the aggressions of Moab and Ammon.
On the south,there was the desert,which stretched as far as Arabia.
The western frontier touched the land of the Philistines.These old Cretan fugitives had lost much of their former ferocity.They had settled down to the peaceful life of the farm and the workshop.They now rarely bothered their Judaean neighbours and they protected them against marauding expeditions on the part of the uncivilised barbarians who had just occupied the nearby peninsula of Greece.
Israel,on the other hand,was on all sides exposed to the attacks of her enemies.The river Jordan would have provided the country with a first class natural boundary.But a number of successful wars had extended the Israelitic sphere of influence several hundred miles towards the east.And the Chinese,thus far,are the only people who have ever had the patience to build protective walls across a desert.
Several times the Israelites seem to have been on the point of fortifying this region.The unsettled conditions at home made this impossible.Thereafter the Israelites trusted to luck and were of course defeated by their powerful eastern neighbours,whose faith was firmly based upon the efficiency of their archers and their cavalry.
The kingdom of Israel suffered,however,from another and serious disadvantage.It was composed of ten different tribes.The tribesmen talked much of Union and Cooperation,but they were as jealous of their own rights as the original thirteen colonies of our own country.They could not even decide upon a suitable capital.Shechem,in the land of the Ephraimites,seemed in many ways the right spot for the future centre of the Israelite nation.It was a famous old town.It had been visited by Abraham when he had gone west in search of the Promised Land,and was closely connected with the last ten centuries of Jewish history.
But Jeroboam,who had come to the throne by way of a successful rebellion (and who was for ever on the defensive against all sorts of real and imaginary enemies),did not think that Shechem offered sufficient safety.He removed his court to Tirzah,which was situated further towards the east.
Fifty years later,Tirzah was given up for the benefit of Samaria which was situated on the top of a hill and commanded a fine view of the surrounding landscape.
The lack of a well-established capital (which has ruined many a strong nation since the beginning of history),did much to retard the normal growth of the little kingdom.
The real underlying cause,however,of Israel's weakness had nothing to do with geographic boundaries or political centres.It was something very different.
From the very beginning,the Jewish state had been a theocracy.A “theocracy”is a country which is being ruled by a “theos”or god.As he cannot reside on this earth,he governs his domains by means of a class of professional priests who give expression to the divine will as it is revealed to them from time to time by dreams or by certain tokens,such as the whispering of the leaves of sacred trees or the signs which come from Heaven when an offering is being made.
