The Divided Monarchy – 01

The Religious Policies of Jeroboam

Shechem, where Rehoboam had failed to win the allegiance of the northern tribes, became the site of Jeroboam’s government, but he soon moved his base of operations to Penuel, a town in Gilead that he is said to have fortified (1 Kings 12:25). Although historians have speculated that Jeroboam withdrew to Transjordan to seek refuge at the time of Shishak’s incursion, the biblical narrative provides no reasons for the move. Nor is there any explanation why he eventually returned west and established a capital at Tirzah, as is implied by 1 Kings 14:17. In any case, Tirzah (now usually identified with the extensive tenth-century ruins at Tell el-Far‘ah [North], northeast of Shechem) was the capital during the reigns of his successors, Baasha (1 Kings 15:33; cf. 1 Kings 15:21), Elah (1 Kings 16:8) and Zimri (1 Kings 16:15), until the sixth year of Omri, when Samaria was founded (1 Kings 16:23; cf. 1 Kings 16:24). The paucity of information about Jeroboam’s political headquarters in the biblical account contrasts sharply with the extended report on the national religious centers he established at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:26–33; see also 1 Kings 13:1–14:18). This contrast is an indication of the interests of the writers whose work is preserved in the Books of Kings, our principal biblical resource for the history of the monarchy. This literature was given its primary shape by a historian whom scholars describe as Deuteronomistic, because his perspective on the history of Israel is based on religious ideas preserved in the Book of Deuteronomy. Many scholars believe that the Deuteronomistic historian wrote during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (640–609 BCE) in support of the king’s program of religious reform and cultic centralization. In any case, the historian placed special emphasis on Jerusalem as the divinely ordained central sanctuary for all Israel and the only place where sacrifice could legitimately be offered to the God of Israel. It was, in his view, “the place that the Lord your God will choose,” foretold by Moses as the one acceptable place of sacrifice after the conquest of Canaan (Deuteronomy 12:13–14). From this perspective, Jeroboam’s installation of national sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel was a fundamental breach of religious law and a flaunting of the divine will.

As the Deuteronomistic historian saw it (1 Kings 12:26–33), Jeroboam established these two cult centers because he feared that if his people continued to make regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they might eventually renew their allegiance to Rehoboam. He therefore established northern sanctuaries to replace Jerusalem in direct violation of Yahweh’s instructions to Moses in Deuteronomy 12, and instituted a festival at Bethel beginning the fifteenth day of the eighth month—“a month that he alone had devised” (1 Kings 12:33), that is, without divine authorization—to rival the authorized festival of Sukkoth, which was celebrated in Jerusalem one month earlier (Leviticus 23:34; cf. Deuteronomy 16:13–17). He compounded this crime by fashioning two golden calves to be worshiped at the two sanctuaries and installing nonlevitical priests to officiate.

It is unlikely, however, that the people whose allegiance Jeroboam was trying to win, his contemporary Israelites from the northern tribes, viewed his actions as arbitrary innovation. For them, Jerusalem held no special claim to religious authority. A Canaanite enclave conquered by David, Jerusalem was the city of the Judahite kings Solomon and Rehoboam, and as such it represented outside rule and oppression. By contrast, Bethel was an ancient Yahwistic sanctuary, strongly associated with Israel’s patriarchs (Genesis 12:8, 28:10–22). Dan, too, was a long-established center of Yahwism. Even the bulls were probably old and authentic Yahwistic symbols. In any case, there is no suggestion, even in our hostile Deuteronomistic account, that Jeroboam introduced any kind of non-Yahwistic cult. Nevertheless, from the Deuteronomistic perspective that shapes the larger biblical narrative of the early Divided Monarchy, Jeroboam’s installation of the golden calves at Dan and Bethel was a heinous crime (“This thing became a sin,” 1 Kings 12:30), for which his kingship would be divinely rejected and his family condemned (1 Kings 14:9–11). In the Deuteronomistic interpretation of history, moreover, the disastrous consequences of Jeroboam’s crime spread beyond his own reign. “The sin of Jeroboam,” as the Deuteronomistic historian called it, was perpetuated by his successors (1 Kings 15:26, 34, etc.), and it eventually led to the fall of the northern kingdom and the exile of its people (2 Kings 17:21–23).

The Wars of the Early Divided Monarchy

 The early years of the Divided Monarchy were characterized by almost constant warfare between Israel and Judah. When Rehoboam died after a reign of some 17 years (1 Kings 14:21), he was succeeded by his short-lived son, Abijam (c. 913–911 B.C.E.) or Abijah (as he is called in Chronicles), about whom little is said except that he was victorious over Jeroboam in a major battle fought on the southern boundary of Ephraim (2 Chronicles 13:3–20; cf. 1 Kings 15:7).

Jeroboam died a few years later, and his son, Nadab (c. 908–907 BCE), after only a couple of years rule, was assassinated by Baasha son of Ahijah, a member of the tribe of Issachar and one of Nadab’s senior officers (1 Kings 15:25–31). The coup took place during an Israelite siege of the Philistine-controlled fortress of Gibbethon. This may be taken as an indication of ongoing border disputes between Israel and Philistia in this period, especially in view of the fact that Gibbethon (usually identified with Tell el-Malat, just west of Gezer) was under Israelite siege again a generation later when Baasha’s son was unseated in another military coup (1 Kings 16:8–10). Baasha, having quickly secured his position by a massacre of the remaining members of the family of Jeroboam (1 Kings 15:29), was able to stabilize the situation and establish himself in Tirzah as the new king. He ruled for a substantial number of years (c. 907–884 BCE), though we are told in 1 Kings 15:16 that his reign was troubled by constant warfare with Judah, which was now ruled by the even more long-lived Asa (c. 911–870 BCE), Rehoboam’s grandson.

At some point in the long reigns of these two kings (Baasha in the north and Asa in the south)—the year is uncertain and disputed—a series of events drew Damascus into the hostilities between Israel and Judah (1 Kings 15:17–22 = 2 Chronicles 16:1–6). Baasha’s forces had captured and fortified the border fortress of Ramah (modern er-Ram) and imposed an embargo on Jerusalem, a few miles to the south. Asa sought the help of Ben-hadad, the king of Damascus.

Asa, appealing to a former or still-existing treaty between Jerusalem and Damascus, asked Ben-hadad to invade Israel. He enticed the Aramean king with a large gift of silver and gold collected from the Jerusalem Temple and his own royal palace. Although Ben-hadad seems also to have had a treaty with Baasha (see 1 Kings 15:19), he accepted Asa’s invitation and sent an Aramean army south to ravage Israelite cities in the region north of the Sea of Galilee. Thus, Asa’s strategy was successful, and Baasha was forced to withdraw from Ramah and lift the embargo. The Israelite withdrawal gave Asa the opportunity to strengthen the northern border of Judah. According to 1 Kings 15:22, the Judahites took the building materials with which the Israelites had fortified Ramah, transported them to Geba and Mizpah16 and fortified those places, thus shoring up the Judahite frontier against Israel.

Although the silver and gold with which Asa is said to have bribed Ben-hadad might have been enough to entice him into action, it is also clear that the region he attacked had strategic importance to Damascus. The cities listed in 1 Kings 15:20 as having been conquered by Ben-hadad, “Ijon, Dan, Abel-beth-maacah,” lie at the northern extreme of Israelite territory, on or beneath the western slope of Mt. Hermon in the direction of the watershed of the Litani River. Control of this region provided Damascus with passage into the river valley and thus to the Phoenician port city of Tyre, situated only 6 miles south of the mouth of the Litani. Having access to Tyre without having to negotiate with Israelite intermediaries was a major advantage for the merchants of Damascus in the ongoing struggle for control of the important trade routes of northern Palestine.

Baasha’s son and successor, Elah (c. 884–883 BCE), succumbed to a coup early in his reign (1 Kings 16:8–20). He was assassinated in his palace at Tirzah while his army, commanded by Omri, was away from the capital besieging the Philistine city of Gibbethon. The assassin, a chariot officer named Zimri, quickly massacred the rest of Baasha’s family, as Baasha himself had done to the family of Jeroboam. When word reached Gibbethon, however, the Israelite army proclaimed Omri king and set out for Tirzah. Zimri, after only a week’s rule, took his own life. There followed a brief struggle for the crown when Omri’s followers were challenged by a group who favored a certain Tibni son of Ginath (1 Kings 16:21–22), but the Omri party prevailed and he became king of Israel in Tirzah.