Divided Monarchy

At Shechem, Rehoboam answers the northern tribes' plea for a lighter yoke with a threat of scorpions, and the kingdom splits (1 Kings 12:1–19). Jeroboam sets up golden calves at Bethel and Dan so that no one need go up to Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:28–30) — the sin that every northern king after him inherits. Two kingdoms now run in parallel: Israel in the north with nineteen kings and not one commended, Judah in the south holding the house of David through good reigns and bad.

The north's low point produces its greatest prophets. Ahab marries Jezebel and builds a house for Baal, and Elijah appears out of Gilead to shut the sky, to face the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and to hear the low whisper at Horeb (1 Kings 17–19). Naboth is stoned for his vineyard (1 Kings 21). Elisha receives a double portion, heals Naaman the Aramean, and anoints Jehu, who wipes out the house of Omri in a bloodbath at Jezreel (2 Kings 9–10). Amos and Hosea preach in the same country against injustice and unfaithfulness.

Judah's line runs through Asa and Jehoshaphat, through the murderous queen Athaliah and the boy king Joash hidden in the temple by Jehoiada the priest (2 Kings 11), to Uzziah, whose death year is the year Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1). Hezekiah tears down the high places, survives the siege of Sennacherib with Isaiah at his side (2 Kings 18–19), and shows the Babylonian envoys everything in his treasury. Manasseh reverses it all; Josiah, finding the Book of the Law, reforms harder than any king before him and dies at Megiddo (2 Kings 22–23).

Assyria takes Samaria in the reign of Hoshea and deports the north (2 Kings 17:6). A century later Nebuchadnezzar comes for Judah: Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and finally Zedekiah, who watches his sons killed before his eyes are put out (2 Kings 25:7). Jeremiah, with his scribe Baruch, preaches through the last years and lives to see the temple burned; Gedaliah is left as governor and assassinated. The era ends with the city in ruins and the survivors on the road east.