Kings of Israel & Judah Family Tree

today i'm going to show you the family tree of the ancient israelite kings i'll be starting with the kings of the legendary united monarchy which include david and solomon and then i'll be going through both the kings of israel in the north and the kings of judah in the south many of these later kings are known to be historical so along the way i'll be pointing out some of the archaeological evidence that we have for their existence this video is part of my series on biblical genealogy so if you haven't yet watched the earlier parts and want to do that first you can find a link to those in the description [Music] [Music] so the most famous king of ancient israel is king david on this chart i've used michelangelo's statue of him but david was not the first king of israel the first king was actually a man named saul prior to saul the 12 tribes of israel were said to have been ruled by a series of judges who were basically temporary leaders who led armies during times of crisis but according to the bible the people eventually got tired of that system and demanded to have a king so they drew lots and in the end saul from the tribe of benjamin was chosen this marked the beginning of what's referred to as the united monarchy which means that all 12 tribes of israel were united under a single king now as i mentioned in part 1 there is no evidence outside of the bible that a united israelite kingdom ever actually existed when we look at the archaeological record for this time period what we find is a bunch of small israelite villages with seemingly no centralized government this greatly contrasts with the biblical description of the period which paints israel as being a large powerful and extremely wealthy nation so the most likely conclusion is that these first few kings are more legendary than historical this means that they likely did exist but were perhaps more akin to local tribal chieftains than mighty kings and that the bible exaggerates their power with that said let's continue the story during saul's reign a young hero named david from the tribe of judah starts to grow in popularity after an incident in which david was able to kill an enemy giant named goliath after that event david joins saul's army becomes best friends with saul's eldest son jonathan and even marries one of saul's daughters named michael he then goes on to be very successful in several battles against the israelites main enemy the philistines eventually saul becomes jealous of david and tries to have him killed forcing david to go into hiding then both saul and jonathan die in a battle against the philistines at this point the tribe of judah declares david to be their king but the rest of the tribes choose saul's only remaining son ishbusheth there's a seven year civil war between the two sides and eventually abner who was saul's main general as well as his first cousin switches sides and supports david soon thereafter ishboshath is killed by his own men and david becomes king of all israel he makes jerusalem his capital and in total he reigns 40 years so let's now look at david's tree in more detail david was the youngest son of a man named jesse who in turn was the son of obid and obid was the son of boaz and ruth the two main characters from the book of ruth so basically ruth was david's great grandmother i'd also like to point out david's nephew joab who was the son of one of his sisters he becomes david's main general and features quite prominently in the story of david's life oh and remember david's best friend jonathan well jonathan had a disabled son named mephibosheth who david adopts after he becomes king now i've already mentioned that david married one of saul's daughters but he also married seven other women and had at least 18 children his firstborn son and heir was named amnon but there's a story in the bible in which amnon rapes his half-sister tamar who was the full sister of absalom absalom seeks revenge and has amnon killed later absalom instigates a coup against his father david and tries to take the throne but following a battle absalom gets his long beautiful hair stuck in the branches of a tree joab finds absalom and disobeying david's orders to take him alive kills him for which joab ends up losing his job another famous story associated with david is the story of david and bathsheba in which david sees bathsheba bathing on a rooftop and conspires to have her husband killed in battle so that he could marry her so yeah as literary figures go david is a pretty complicated character he does a lot of good things but he also does a bunch of bad things too but generally he's seen as a good guy because he always seems to repent and learn from his mistakes anyway he has a son with bathsheba named solomon and it is solomon that ends up becoming the next king now there's two other sons of david shown on the chart i include adenija because when david dies there is a failed attempt by him to take the throne and i show nathan because according to the gospel of luke it is through nathan that jesus links back to david i'll be doing a separate video on the genealogies of jesus so keep an eye out for that okay so solomon is mostly remembered as being the one who builds the first temple as well as for being really wise really rich and for supposedly having 1 000 wives one of his wives was possibly the queen of sheba she's mentioned only briefly in the bible but in ethiopian tradition the story is told in more detail there she is said to have had a son named menelik who becomes the king of ethiopia and the progenitor of the solomonic dynasty if you're interested to learn more about that line i've got a separate video on that topic which i'll link to in the description so like his father david solomon reigns for a total of 40 years the fact that both these kings have nice round very symbolic rain lengths is further evidence that they are likely legendary figures as opposed to strictly historical ones so after the reign of solomon the kingdom splits in two the tribes of judah and benjamin in the south continue to be ruled by the house of david in jerusalem and are known as the kingdom of judah whereas in the north the ten remaining tribes declare independence and become known as the kingdom of israel their first king is a man named jeroboam who was from the tribe of ephraim which was the largest of the twelve tribes let's look at the kingdom of israel first and then we'll go back and look at the kingdom of judah second so in israel we get several ruling dynasties jeroboam is followed by his son nadab but two years into his reign nadab is killed by one of his army captains named basha and basha becomes king instead basha was from the tribe of issachar but then history repeats itself he has a decently long reign and passes things on to his son ella but then after just two years ella is assassinated by one of his army commanders a man named zimri but zimri is unable to hold on to power and commit suicide after just seven days as king at this point there's a civil war some of the people support tiffany who was probably a relative of zimri but others support omri who was likely from the tribe of issachar like basha and ella eventually omri's side wins and he becomes the sole king now omri is a very important figure strangely unlike many other bible characters his name is not well known today however in my opinion he was one of the most important kings in ancient israel he holds the distinction of being the earliest known person in the entire bible for which we have evidence in the archaeological record so you'll notice that he has a red check mark next to his name kind of like the verification symbols you see on social media on this chart whenever you see a red check mark it means that we have a source outside of the bible that confirms the existence of that person in real life so let's talk quickly about how we know omri was a real historical king if you're ever in paris you can check out the following artifact at the louvre it's called the misha steely and comes from the ancient kingdom of moab which today would be part of jordan it dates to just a few decades after the reign of omri and describes omri king of israel capturing some moabite territory the name omri shows up on the black obelisk of shalmanese iii which is now housed at the british museum in london i'll be talking about this artifact more in a bit but for now note that it clearly mentions the phrase house of omri indicating that other nations at the time knew that the kingdom of israel was being ruled by a dynasty that started with omri omri is also important because he founded the city of samaria which went on to be the capital of the northern kingdom for the rest of its existence anyway omri was followed by his son ahab and the bible talks a lot more about him and also about his wife jezebel ahab and jezebel were the king and queen of israel at the time that the prophet elijah lived elijah being one of the more famous prophets in jewish history the bible paints ahab as being a very wicked king influenced strongly by his wife jezebel who was a phoenician and thus not an israelite from a literary point of view jezebel is an interesting figure because in most cases she is portrayed as the ultimate evil seductress but on the other hand those who see the evil seductress trope as being a dangerous stereotype and an attempt to discredit strong confident women jezebel has actually become somewhat of a feminist icon anyway we do not have any corroborating evidence for the existence of jezebel but we do have mention of her father and brother in a now lost history of tyre that was quoted by josephus her brother bal esser ii was supposedly the grandfather of the legendary queen dido who is said to have founded the city of carthage so that's an interesting link there one thing to keep in mind about the biblical account of the northern kingdom is that it was primarily written and edited much later by scribes from the southern kingdom so there's an obvious bias toward the monotheistic religion that developed at jerusalem and that went on to evolve into what's called second temple judaism which in turn led to the development of the better known rabbinical judaism as well as christianity and islam so basically from the southern kingdom's perspective the northern kingdom was seen as being disobedient to the one true god hashem ahab and jezebel were famous for promoting the worship of the god ball instead so whenever something went wrong the southerners blamed it on the fact that the northerners worshiped the wrong god or gods ahab has a red check mark because he shows up in a set of assyrian monuments known as the kirk monoliths currently located at the british museum in those inscriptions the assyrian king chalmeniser iii claims that he defeated two thousand chariots and ten thousand soldiers of ahab the israelite according to the bible he's killed during a war with the kingdom of judah and is followed by his sons ahazayah and jehoram jehoram's name appears on an artifact known as the tel dan steely which was discovered in the 1990s and currently is housed in the israel museum in jerusalem that inscription confirms a story told in the bible in which jehoram king of israel and ahaziah king of judah are defeated by hazil king of aram damascus i'll talk more about the tel dan steely when we talk about judah but in the bible's version a man named jehu ends up replacing jehoram as king of israel it's at this point that jezebel is killed by being pushed out of a window although the bible doesn't make it clear it's possible that jehu was a descendant of omri through a junior branch in fact his name appears on the black obelisk of the assyrian king chalmenisa iii where he is described as jehu son of omri most likely meaning jehu from the house of omri but the black obelisk is even more important because it actually includes an image of jehu bowing down and giving gifts to shalmaneser this is the first and only contemporary image we have of an ancient israelite king things seem to have stabilized at this point because after jehu's reign we get a series of four father-son successions i'll point out jehoiash because his name appears in the archaeological record as well he is mentioned in the steely of adad narari iii now located in baghdad at the iraq museum there he is referred to as the king of samaria which is the earliest reference we have outside of the bible of that particular city we don't have any direct evidence outside of the bible for a king named jeroboam ii however in one verse it describes an earthquake that occurred during jeroboam ii's reign and according to the geological record we know that there was indeed a big earthquake in the region around 760 bce which fits so following jeroboam ii things start to go downhill his son zachariah is assassinated in his first year and replaced with an army commander who in turn is assassinated after just one month and replaced with another army commander named menohem meneham is mentioned in the annals of tigaloth palesar iii as being one of the many kings who paid him tribute he was eventually followed by his son pekka haya who like so many israelite kings was eventually assassinated and replaced with one of his army commanders that king named pekka is also mentioned in assyrian records as paying tribute to ticolat policer and guess what happened to pekka yep he was assassinated and replaced by one of his army commanders this fact is confirmed in assyrian records that king named hoshiya would be the last king of israel he made a deal with egypt in the hopes of avoiding paying tribute to assyria that was a bad move because assyria now led by shalmaneser v responded by conquering the kingdom for good and destroying their capital at samaria so over here i've been pointing out several of the assyrian kings unlike the ancient israelite kings the existence of all of them can be confirmed by the archaeological record so instead of giving them all a red check mark what i've done instead is give the ones that are mentioned by name in the bible a little blue check mark so that's what those symbols mean okay let's now look at the southern kingdom of judah there king solomon was followed by his son rehoboam whose mother was a non-israelite named nama she came from the nearby kingdom of ammon now located in jordan and interestingly rehoboam married a granddaughter of absalom so in a way absalom's line did end up on the throne in the end he was followed by their son abhija and then by assa who had a long and peaceful reign generally the bible describes the kings of judah as being good kings who destroyed idols and encouraged the worship of the one true god in contrast with the kings of israel who did the opposite and were therefore punished with more internal conflict next in line in judah comes jehoshaphat who was a contemporary with elijah ahab and jezebel in fact his son jehoram married a daughter of ahab and jezebel together that couple had a haziah who as i mentioned earlier allied with his uncle king jehoram of israel against the king of aram damascus which brings me back to the tell dan steely which describes the incident in that inscription it appears to read amaziah son of jehoram of the house of david this is important because it is the earliest reference in the archaeological record to the house of david but note that it doesn't directly reference david as king nor does it describe anything that david did instead it simply references the existence of a royal dynasty named after someone called david this is a bit different from the reference to the house of omri being that omri lived just a few decades before the earliest mention of his name whereas david lived over a hundred years before the earliest mention of his name this is why david is still considered to be more of a legendary figure whereas omri is considered more of a historical figure anyhow ahazaya died following the conflict with arum damascus at this point his mother queen athalia became the ruling monarch the only monarch of the kingdom of judah that was a female and the only one that did not belong to the paternal line of david remember she was the daughter of ahab and jezebel she proceeded to kill all the possible claimants to the throne of judah but she missed one because unbeknownst to her a relative smuggled away and hid one of ahaziah's sons who was just a baby at the time when that child named joash was seven he was revealed and with the help of the priests he was made king thus re-establishing the line of david he would be the first of two child kings who feature prominently in the biblical story of ancient israel he was followed by amaziah azaya jotham ahaz and hezekiah most of whom are attested to somehow in the archaeological record for example a royal seal has been found belonging to ahaz son of jotham thus confirming the names of these two kings hezekiah is generally considered to be one of the greatest kings in the history of ancient israel he reigned shortly after the fall of the northern kingdom and he used the opportunity to reorganize and strengthen the kingdom of judah prior to this the kingdom of israel was by far the larger and more important of the two kingdoms this is why the idea of a united monarchy ruled by a southern dynasty the house of david is most likely just a legend that was created later in order to make judah seem more important either way it was definitely at this point that the kingdom of judah did become larger and more important one can imagine that there were likely lots of refugees streaming down from the ruins of the northern cities and that this led to a population boom in the southern cities there is certainly a lot of archaeological findings from this period both from assyrian records as well as from evidence found in jerusalem for example we know that hezekiah rebuilt the walls around jerusalem in preparation for an assyrian attack remnants of these walls can still be seen today it is also thought that he is the one who ordered the construction of the salom tunnel another feature in jerusalem that still exists today the bible also mentions two major historical figures who existed at the same time as hezekiah sanakrib king of assyria and taharka king of cush who was also a pharaoh of egypt it was during the reign of hezekiah that the prophet isaiah lived the first of the four so-called major prophets it is thought that isaiah was probably a grandson of king josiah and thus a member of the royal family it is also possible that he was hezekiah's father-in-law however the most important thing to mention about hezekiah is that the assyrians did in fact attack the king of judah during his reign which was a logical next step after having destroyed the kingdom of israel however hezekiah was able to hold them off and thus judah survived and went on to become the main power in the levant over the next century he was followed by his son manasseh who is also mentioned in assyrian records and then by ahaz who was assassinated after just two years on the throne this led to an eight-year-old boy named josiah becoming king although josiah is not nearly as famous as kings david and solomon i would actually argue that he was much more important for it was josiah who laid the foundation for what became second temple judaism which in turn as i mentioned earlier was the religion from which rabbinical judaism christianity and islam all stemmed from biblical scholars have concluded that it was during the reign of josiah that the original parts of the book of deuteronomy were written and some scholars even believed that this core part of deuteronomy was actually the earliest part of the bible to be written one theory is that the story of joshua's conquest of canaan was invented in order to inspire the people living during josiah's time to conquer the lands to the north that had recently been laid waste by the assyrians and that the story of the united monarchy was invented in order to legitimize the house of david's rule over the entire land of israel whether or not this is true we do know for certain that josiah did try to conquer the northern areas during his reign but unfortunately he failed and in fact he died in the process according to the bible he was killed by a pharaoh named nico who we know from egyptian records was in fact a historical pharaoh that had just recently come to power at that exact time after the death of josiah judah started to decline rapidly three of his sons and one of his grandsons followed him as king and it was his third son zedekiah who would be the final king of judah by this point the babylonians had conquered syria and were now the major power in the middle east their famous king nebuchadnezzar defeated the kingdom of judah and destroyed jerusalem along with its temple in 586 bce at this point most of the jews were transported to babylon where they then lived in exile the second and third of the four major prophets are jeremiah and ezekiel they both lived during the final days of judah and during the early part of the exile jeremiah was the son of the high priest hilkiah who served during the reign of king josiah the fourth and final major prophet is daniel he is thought to be a literary invention not a historical figure according to most scholars the book of daniel was the last book of the hebrew bible to be written and it's usually dated to the maccabean period however the story places daniel and his three companions shadrach meshach and abednego as members of the jewish royal family living in exile in babylon and later persia although the reign of the house of david officially came to an end in 586 bce there was a position known as the exolark that survived much longer the exo-arc was basically the leader of the jewish community in babylon early exolarks include jechoniah's son sheltiel and grandson zarabobel the genealogy given in the gospel of matthew traces the line leading to jesus back to zerubbabel information on the exo arcs after zerubbabel and their exact genealogy is pretty sketchy however they are mentioned on and off in historical records all the way up to the year 1258 ce which is when baghdad fell to the grandson of genghis khan another title that has been used throughout jewish history both in the levant and in the european diaspora is nasi which means prince whether or not certain individuals who used the name nasi or anyone else for that matter our direct mail-line descendants of the house of david is something that cannot really be proved one way or another there are lots of fanciful theories that try to connect various dynasties back to the davidic line such as the merovingians but none of these are taken seriously by historians so that was a look at the kings of ancient israel and judah be sure to check out the links in the description for the other videos in this series on biblical genealogy if you're enjoying this series another series you might like is the jewish story explained produced by the youtube channel unpacked i highly recommend it and i'll put a link to that series in the description be sure to check it out thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: undefined

Views: 336,010

Rating: 4.7362442 out of 5

Keywords: israelite kings, ancient israelite, bible kings, biblical kings, biblical family tree 2

Id: KbQ5Mvy0jz0

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rnev64]

this is such a great channel.

his previous video "Which Bible Characters are Historical? (vs Mythological or Legendary)" is excellent too.

[u/dog_cat_rat]

Hateful comments in 3...2...1...

"ahh sabat hayom"

[u/[deleted]]

The character of Cercei Lannister was inspired by Izevel I swear it's the same personality.

[u/liorshefler]

i think we need to put much more emphasis on learning real history of ancient israel. before all we had to rely on was the tanakh for our story, but with today’s modern advancements in archeology and anthropology, we know so much about our actual history. i think learning this history will strengthen our identity and help the rest of the world also see us for who we are.

[u/TrueSnoWolf]

A very interesting video, thank you for sharing!

[u/101stjetmech]

Still wrapping my head around the fact that David married at least 8 women, but he supposedly learned his lessons. :)

[u/ignisterracaeli]

no black hebrew israelites to go with this one XD XD XD