A Kingdom Divided - The Fall of Israel | The Jewish Story | Unpacked

the jewish kingdom a glorious sympotico majesty nobility justice and holiness the jewish equivalent of king arthur's camelot spliced with the vatican take for instance uh war idolatry murdering of prophets civil war okay maybe the legendary jewish kingdom did have some problems how did what was once supposed to be the divinely gifted jewish nation fall apart [Music] so after moses died the jewish people conquer and then settle the land of canaan under the leadership of joshua the jews officially become israelites with their newfound residents and divide up the land by tribe there's usher naphtali in the north don benjamin and judah in the south menasha and god found a plush piece of land on the east side of the jordan and decided to settle outside the borders of the kingdom point is everybody kind of just keeps themselves for a while not a bad thing just a loose confederation of states if you will not too much central leadership except for the judges not the black robe and gavel type of judge but spiritual leaders who arose to whip the jews back into shape when they got lacks and maybe a little war here and there now that was by design a system to maximize personal responsibility and empower the individual idealistic utopian truly a freedom worth cherishing but then the jewish people say you know what would be nice to be ruled by a king i guess they were looking around and they saw all their neighbors with their froufrou and their crowns and their glorious robes and they thought i want a piece of that so the prophet samuel anoints an israelite name solomon and he's good reigning for about 2 years or 20 depending on whether you're going by the bible or the historian's guesstimate but who's counting saul is succeeded by king david who loves bullying overgrown barbarians and writing poetry this brings us to solomon the wisest of all men who according to jewish tradition is the author of proverbs ecclesiastes and the song of songs inventor of the infant bisecting maternity test and most notably the builder of solomon's temple imagine the elegance of buckingham palace the beauty of the sistine chapel and the magnitude of the pyramids with shorter lines than disney world yes israel finally had its wonder of the world where the priests conducted the daily sacrifices and drew the presence of god onto the earth it was king solomon's crowning achievement but it wasn't cheap that's okay we'll let the next guy worry about the budget deficit enter the next guy rehoboam solomon's son king rehoboam ascends the throne and right off the bat he gets hit with complaints from the 10 northern tribes see in order to build that temple solomon had to raise taxes and enforce labor but now that the temple was complete the 10 northern tribes didn't think it was unreasonable to ask for a tax cut rehoboam consulted his advisors now he has two sets of council there's the old wizard and weathered elders who served his father their suggestion ease up and speak to them gently and they will be your servants forever or he could listen to his young upstart advisors who felt he should show them who's boss guess which one he chose rehoboam comes down hard proclaiming quote my father chastise you with whips i will chastise you with scorpions so the northern tribes brexit forming the northern kingdom of israel one of solomon's former ministers jeroboam receives a prophecy that he not rehoboam would be the next king having led the israelites and asking for the reduced tax burden he takes up the charge to rebel and becomes king of the north meanwhile rehoboam is left with the southern tribes judah and benjamin known as the kingdom of judah so if saul was anointed in 879 bce and rehoboam got his shot at kingship in 796 it took less than a century for four kings to screw up the country so did the trial separation help no not at all on a religious level they both falter in the north jeroboam doesn't like that judah has the temple so jeroboam makes his own temple actually two of them one in the tribe of dun and one in bethel but he decides to go a little off-brand choosing for his mascot the golden calf word of advice when you're trying to make a name for yourself don't pick your nation's all-time biggest failure in the south rehoboam isn't doing much better he has about 17 years where he forsakes bible law and suffers attacks from the egyptians and the ethiopians oh and all the alliances that have been built with surrounding countries the philistines the moabites the they're out following the splitter a cascade of reigning kings all with varying degrees of success scandals overthrows and wars in the north jeroboam dies and his son takes over but then he's killed by one of his army officers they go through a few more reigns as one military commander kills the king assumes the throne and then is killed by another army general usurp prince repeat we land on omri in 884 who's an effective ruler increasing trade and commerce and even ambitiously builds a jerusalem of the north samaria with not a temple but a glorious citadel making it his new capital but possibly his most famous act is marrying off his son ahab to the phoenician princess jezebel we'll come back to this back in the south it's pretty much the same sort of marching monarch conga line eventually a man named assa assumes the throne of the south and rather than murder or war his way to securing power he makes the country pull a spiritual 180 ridding the southern kingdom of idols he even takes his grandmother's that's courage so asa is one of the few kings the bible actually praises but does that help him in his continual wars against the north not really as the northern kingdom's troops actually come as close as five miles from taking jerusalem and assa is forced to turn to damascus for help offering gold and silver from the temple and his own palace king ben haddad the first attacks from around damascus what today would be known as syria forcing the north to retreat and crushing defeat the whole jewish civil war jumps the shark when ahab and jezebel are confronted by the prophet elijah for their appalling institutionalization of idolatry throughout israel the book of kings even goes so far as to call ahab the worst king thus far these names may sound familiar as all three have persisted in jewish and popular culture ahab is the main character of hermann melville's moby dick and an obscure x-men villain but fiction can't compare to fact and the magnitude of evil as he and his wife rounded up and murdered over 300 jewish prophets and brought idolatry back to the land as wicked as ahab was jezebel was the ringleader she despised the tenets of judaism and wished to wipe out god from the kingdom of israel once and for all in addition to the prophet purge she framed a law-abiding landowner executing him to cease his land she incited her husband to build an altar to the canaanite god baal in the sumerian capital and had him bring in 450 priests to the pagan deity ball and another 400 of the pagan god of shera so on the evil scale of that food critic from ratatouille to thanos she's somewhere between maleficent and the guy who came up with alternate side parking tickets jezebel was the ultimate temptress frequently referenced in pop culture to this day in songs movies tv and the self-proclaimed supposedly feminist website jezebel.com when the prophet elijah first confronts the duo he foretells of a two-year drought which indeed comes to pass plaguing the land as he labors to hide the few remaining prophets ahab and jezebel only grow more wrathful refusing to repent after three years elijah has had enough and proposes a showdown the sage mount carmel the audience all the jews of israel challenge the 450 priest zabal would make an offering on their altar while elijah alone would make an offering to the jewish god no fire no burning incense whoever's god comes down from heaven and consumes the offering first would be the winner the priests of baal set up their altar and beseech their god for the better part of an afternoon while elijah waits cool calm and collected the priests grow desperate screaming to their god and even cutting themselves hoping the blood and affliction would rouse their sleeping deity but no response elijah then begins to mock shout louder maybe your god is chatting with his other god friends maybe he stepped out for a coffee maybe he's having a godly afternoon nap i'm paraphrasing a little when the priests give up elijah confidently douses water in his offering not once not twice but thrice and even has a ditch full of more water dug to stifle any possible flame that might ignite his sacrifice from the ground level this guy knows how to put on a performance then in front of the massive crowd elijah prays to the god of the jewish people within seconds a pillar of fire shoots down from the heavens consuming the offering the pyre the stone altar and even the mode of water the audience immediately cheered praises to god chanting the lord he is god the lord he is god with a nation again on his side elijah has all the prophets of baal rounded up and executed you'd think at this point the tides would turn in a wave of repentance would overwhelm the nation but miracles hit people on an emotional level and often as soon as the emotion dissipates so does that person's resolve this is how jezebel is able to watch elijah's victory and respond so may the gods do to you as you have done to my priests and so this time tomorrow i will make your life like the life of one of them basically she's saying she's going to kill him and elijah knows in a couple of days the jews aren't really going to care so elijah hightails it out of dodge and goes into hiding once again he names elisha as the new top prophet and then appoints jihoo as the new successor and rightful heir to the throne it's not long before elijah dies i use air quotes because many of the great rabbis in the talmud believe he didn't actually die the book of kings relates the story that one day while walking with alicia a firestorm swirls around the two in a chariot of fire gallops down welcoming elijah aboard on which he ascends to heaven but like loki jon snow or wade wilson elijah just won't stay dead as a big part of rabbinic tradition it's believed that elijah still wanders the earth helping those in need and attending every boy's circumcision and when the messiah comes he will be the one to announce it not a bad gig for calling out an evil queen in 853 bce while facing the mounting threat of the assyrians ahab dies in battle amidst the chaos jihu still glistening from elijah's anointing oils makes his claim to the throne of the north first he slays ahab's son jehoram with a well-aimed arrow to the heart then sets his sights on queen jezebel despite her grief jezebel doesn't flee she does her hair and gets made up all prim and proper as she overlooks the encroaching monarch was she trying to seduce the murderer of her son or did she just want to die with dignity and fashion hard to say but when jihu arrives she calls out for support from her most trusted and loyal eunuchs who toss her out the window then the horses trample on her corpse and all but her hands head and feet get devoured by stray dogs which elijah totally called to be a prophecy a few chapters earlier jehu eradicates baal from all of israel as well as those golden calves of bethel and don though jehu's actions were righteous according to the bible his kingdom would have trouble fighting off king shamanism iii of assyria and hazaa'al king of aram the kingdoms drag on for a few more reigns but it isn't long before the northern kingdom was decimated piece by piece and the southern kingdom was conquered leading to the first exile in 422 bce unity has always been a bit tricky for the independent-minded jewish people whether wandering through the desert or debating politics of modern israel or as golda meir put it so plainly to richard nixon you are the president of 150 million americans i am the prime minister of six million prime ministers they had a great moment of utopian unity at mount sinai but within 40 days they had already had the golden calf debacle perhaps that explains the prophecy of ezekiel that the nation's true long-term unity will only happen at the end of days but despite the upheaval the jewish people of the great kingdoms of judah and israel never completely lost their bonds to their culture history pride and a return to religious fidelity even if it had to come about through exile but you'll have to catch the next video for that if you like this video make sure to subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so you'll know when we upload new videos

Channel: Unpacked

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Keywords: israel, divided kingdom, jeroboam, old testament, bible, rehoboam, unpacked, the jewish story explained, Jewish history, Judaism, bible stories, tanakh, elijah, prophet elijah, ahab, jezebel, jewish educational media, conservative judaism, bible study, judaism 101, torah, theology, elisha, abrahamic religions, jewish story, hebrew bible, mishnah, oral torah, mount carmel, orthodox judaism, jewish, tanach, torah study, reform judaism, jewish people, israelites, jewish videos

Id: SKyHim19xTQ

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020

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