Chapter 12
The Kings of Israel: The First Temple
In This Chapter
The rise of kings in ancient Israel
King David’s big scandal
Solomon the Wise builds the First Temple
A kingdom divided and conquered
About a bazillion years ago (give or take a few years), single-celled creatures figured out that they could fend off the attacks of other vicious single-celled creatures by huddling together, and thus multicelled life forms (such as people) were born.
Similar scenarios have been replayed countless times throughout history: the American states are stronger as a united country, workers can demand more rights when they band together in a union, and organizations can succeed where individuals fail. The situation was no different around 1100 BCE, when the 12 tribes of Israel were living in Canaan and fending off the attacks of the Philistines and other tribes (see the previous chapter). None of the individual tribes was big enough to fight off the intruders. This was a time of intense chaos. The tribes needed to band together and follow a single leader.
The tale of the joining of the tribes is told in the biblical books of Judges and Samuel, a story so full of war, sex, political machinations, sin, and repentance that many scholars argue that it should be read as literature rather than history. Read either way, it tells of a period of almost constant warfare between the 12 individual tribes and their neighbors, as well as internal conflicts among the tribes themselves.
Because there was no central government, each tribe was ruled by a Judge, Prophet, Prophetess, or Chieftain. It was a bit like having state governors but no president. This period of chaos lasted roughly from 1200 BCE to sometime around 1020 BCE, when the people of Israel became so tired of this loose confederation that they complained to God and demanded a united government with a single king.
Finding the Right Guy to Be King
Can you imagine these 12 tribes, who had such great difficulty coordinating their energies, ever agreeing on a king? No, the King of Israel could hardly be chosen by vote, debate, or even battle. Only a man perceived as chosen directly by God would suffice.
The First Book of Samuel (there are two books of Samuel in the Bible) describes how this Divine choice manifested: first by revelation and then by lots. The first account explains that while a rather shy, confused young man named Saul was wandering near home, unsuccessfully trying to find his father’s donkeys, he met the Prophet Samuel. God told Samuel, “This is the guy” (more or less) and instructed Samuel to anoint Saul with oil.
Next, because the people of Israel didn’t yet know that Saul, clearly someone with no leadership experience, was to be king, they decided to select a king using a kind of divine lottery. The idea was that because God controls everything, whoever won the lottery was obviously the chosen one. First, each tribe chose lots (like choosing numbers, or throwing dice, or picking the long straw) to decide from which tribe the king was to be found. The tribe of Benjamin was picked. Then lots were picked by the Benjaminites, and the family of the Matrites was picked. Finally, lots were thrown yet again, and Saul, the son of Kish, from the tribe of Benjamin, was revealed to be the king.
Whether or not Saul was chosen exactly as described in the biblical text, many scholars suspect that this story provided a way to reduce the strain among the tribes and prevent warfare. It’s far more likely that Saul, like King David and the other later kings, was a great warrior and charismatic leader.
Continuing War and Peace
As the first King of the Israelites, Saul had a tough job. Throughout his fifteen-year reign (beginning around 1020 BCE) he was almost constantly at war with the neighboring non-Israelite groups, particularly the Philistines.
Enter David, stage left
During the constant warfare under Saul, a young man named David became a war hero. The Bible says that David first became prominent when he defeated a veritable giant of a man named Goliath in combat by throwing a rock with his slingshot. Perhaps as a reward, or perhaps just to keep his eye on the young warrior, Saul invited David into his home and gave him one of his daughters as a wife. David soon became an essential part of the household, writing songs (psalms) and singing them while playing a harp to alleviate Saul’s terrible depressions. In fact, tradition ascribes many or all of the Book of Psalms to David, even though scholars find evidence that suggests otherwise.
Unfortunately for Saul, the Israelites began to think that David could keep the peace better than Saul. Saul, not the most secure person in the world, began to hate David because the people would shout, “Saul kills hundreds of Philistines but David kills thousands.” Perhaps Saul’s paranoia was justified, perhaps not. David’s extremely close relationship with one of Saul’s sons, Jonathan, must also have been difficult for Saul to watch. Whatever the reasons, Saul actually attempted to assassinate David on several occasions. David fled from Saul for the next 15 or more years, during which time he continued to fight the Philistines (sometimes after first pretending to be allied with them) as the leader of his own private mercenary army.
Magic and mayhem
Poor Saul. Things just went from bad to worse—until he wound up breaking his own law and seeking answers from the dead. As the story goes, Saul was greatly outnumbered by the Philistine enemies. Saul sought counsel directly from God, but God wouldn’t answer him. So he tried to talk to the judge and prophet Samuel. Unfortunately, Samuel had recently died. But this is the king! A little thing like death shouldn’t get in his way, so Saul visited the Witch of Endor and begged her to raise Samuel’s spirit from the dead. Saul himself, in line with earlier prohibitions, had outlawed witchcraft and necromancy, so the witch of Endor wasn’t eager to violate the law. After Saul promised that she wouldn’t be punished for practicing her craft, she reluctantly agreed.
Samuel’s sprit arose from the dead and spoke to Saul, asking, “Why have you disturbed me? God has turned away from you and appointed another, David.” This wasn’t the news Saul had been hoping for. Old, tired, and renounced by God, Saul and all but one of his sons died in their next battle against the Philistines.
Living under the Lion of Judah
After Saul’s death, his only surviving son ruled for a very short time. David quickly claimed his place as the most loved leader and the undisputed king over the land (see Figure 12-1).
While Saul was a Benjaminite, David’s ancestral tribe was Judah (whose tribal symbol was a lion). This new kingdom was called the Kingdom of Judah and later became known as Judea. Sound familiar? If David had never become king, this book might be called Benjaminism For Dummies.
Many people think of King David as a beautiful, beloved, and kind ruler who played his harp and sang all day. But David’s rule, from around 998 until 967 BCE, was far from easy. He fought many wars with the Philistines and the other neighboring nations, in particular the Jebusites, from whom he acquired the city of Jerusalem, centrally located between the northern and southern halves of his kingdom. This city became the crown jewel in his empire, his political capital, and the new home of the Ark of the Covenant, thus the religious center of his empire.
David didn’t just defend the land, he sought to expand it. In fact, he was so successful at conquest that the Israelites had control of more land than ever before — a vast empire that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the desert to the east, and from the Sinai desert all the way north toward Tyre and northeast to the Euphrates.
However, after David conquered the land, he spent the remainder of his life struggling to keep it. Not only did he have to fight “foreign” invaders trying to capture and recapture land, but he also got bad press from a sex scandal.
David’s weakness was Bathsheba, a married woman whom he greatly desired, and whose husband David sent on a military suicide mission. Needless to say, his action didn’t exactly place him in God’s best graces, and the prophet Nathan came to confront David with his misdeeds. To his credit, David heeded the message Nathan brought, and he deepened his own commitment to a more appropriate rule. However, that rule wasn’t without its special pains. Even his beloved son, Absalom, rebelled against him, and David was forced into civil war.
When David grew old and was unable to rule, the question of which of his sons would rule after him was in doubt. After much plotting and manipulation, it was Bathsheba’s son, Solomon, who became the heir and eventual king of Judea.
Figure 12-1: Israel’s boundaries (in the dashed lines) during the time of King David and then the later Northern and Southern Kingdoms.
The Wisdom of Solomon
Solomon ruled from around 967 until 928 BCE. The Bible says that God came to Solomon in a dream and asked him what he wanted more than anything, and Solomon asked for wisdom. God is supposed to have given him special divine wisdom along with the promise that as long as his line obeyed the law, kingship would reside with them.
Solomon is described as a wise ruler, judge, and diplomat. To battle various palace intrigues, Solomon’s first “wise” decision was to have a number of men put to death, including his father’s general and his own half-brother, with whom he had competed for the throne.
His reign wasn’t all bloodshed, though. Solomon could be the poster boy for the slogan “Make love; not war.” The Bible states that Solomon had 700 royal wives and 300 concubines from just about every neighboring kingdom. Many stories have been told about Solomon’s relationship with the Queen of Sheba, a beautiful and wise woman who visited Jerusalem and Solomon. Some folks believe that she converted to Judaism and converted the people in her own kingdom in Africa, too. In fact, some scholars argue that the Ethiopian Jews are the descendants of Solomon and Sheba.
Building the Temple
Although today Solomon is probably best remembered for his decision to cut a baby in half to settle a dispute between two alleged mothers (the false mother agreed and the real mother screamed), to the Jews, he’s known as the man who built the First Temple in Jerusalem. This had been the dream of his father, King David, who wanted to build a giant Temple around the Ark of the Covenant, but God wouldn’t let him. The ancient rabbis note that because David was too bloodied by battle, it was fated that he wouldn’t build the Temple, but his son would.
About ten years after Solomon became king, and with God’s approval, he decided it was time to start building. Where David settled Jerusalem as the center of Israel, Solomon, with the building of the Temple, established the city once and for all as the central location for the worship of God.
Tradition holds Solomon in high regard as the writer of the Book of Proverbs, Song of Songs, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. Other scholars argue that although Solomon may have written some Proverbs and songs, the versions in the Bible were probably compiled if not composed at a later date by someone other than Solomon.
Telling a Tale of Two Kingdoms
Expanding an empire and embarking on massive building projects takes lots of human labor, preferably cheap human labor. In order for King Solomon to carry out his ambitious building projects throughout Judea, he raised taxes and drafted a number of people into enforced labor. Not a popular move, but it seemed to work out for a while.
Unfortunately, when Solomon died (around 928 BCE), his son Rehoboam became king. The Bible recalls that upon Solomon’s death, the people went to Rehoboam to ask him to ease the workload Solomon had imposed. The king responded quite rudely, even comparing his own father’s private anatomy to his little finger. The answer was clear: longer hours, no pay.
Strangely, Rehoboam was surprised when almost all the tribes rebelled against him — with the exception of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, the Temple priests, and some of the Levites. The rebelling tribes invited a man named Jeroboam to be their new king, and they declared a separate Israelite kingdom, also called the Northern Kingdom (as opposed to the Southern Kingdom of Judea).
A hundred years of unity were shattered, and from then on, the Israelite Kingdom and the Judean Kingdom were almost constantly at war with each other. Jeroboam built two Temples in the Israelite Kingdom in order to keep his subjects from visiting Jerusalem, which was in Judea. These Temples, however, were considered idolatrous to the people of Judea.
Many different families ruled the Northern Kingdom over the next two centuries with no one family maintaining the kingship for very long. The various Biblical accounts depict most of these kings and their wives as terrible human beings who led the people into idolatry, sin, and mistreatment of the poor and the unfortunate.
For just over 200 years, the Northern Israelite Kingdom ruled and fought off invaders. They survived in large part by paying a tribute (some might call it “protection money”) to the larger and more powerful Assyrians, who lived farther to the North. When, in 722 BCE, the Israelite Kingdom decided to stop paying the tribute, the Assyrians swept down, easily overthrew the Israelite army, and deported the ten tribes of Israel (see the sidebar Where are the Lost Tribes?).
The Southern Judean Kingdom continued to be ruled by descendants from the house of David (who, by the way, did learn from others’ mistakes: They kept paying the Assyrians the protection money). Most of the kings were, according to the Books of Kings and the works of various prophets, bad kings who led the people into idolatry and questionable ethics. Perhaps such temptations come with the job — those with the greatest power too often misuse that power for their personal enjoyment.
A notable exception to this line of poor rulers was King Josiah, a very innovative king who began to rule around 640 BCE. During his rule, a missing book of the Bible (probably the book of Deuteronomy), was “miraculously” recovered, leading to great religious changes. The biggest change was the emphasis on the centrality of Jerusalem. All sacrifice was outlawed except at the Temple in Jerusalem, a decision that was probably quite good for the economy.
The Fall of the First Temple
When the Israelite Kingdom was destroyed and the Judean Kingdom was left standing, several prophets and kings argued that the Judeans were vindicated. Unfortunately for them, Judea was still caught in the land struggles of three much-larger empires: Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria. The final endgame reads like a New York-style mafia story: Josiah tried to help the Babylonians by holding back the advancing Egyptians. The tactics worked for a time, but then Josiah got killed, Egypt took over the Judean “turf,” and Babylonia invaded, pushing out the Egyptians.
At first, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar imposed taxes but left the ruling power intact; however, he became less patient after the Judean King Yehoyakim began a rebellion against Babylonia. It wasn’t long before Yehoyakim was killed and Nebuchadnezzar charged in once again. Still somewhat patient, Nebuchadnezzar initially left the Temple standing. He placed Zedekiah, a son of Josiah, on the thrown as a puppet king but left everything else pretty much alone.
Around 587 BCE, Zedekiah, supposed to be a king in name only, rebelled against the Babylonians. After a long siege, Nebuchadnezzar’s troops broke through the walls of Jerusalem. They killed Zedekiah’s children in front of him, blinded him, burned down the king’s palace, and, more importantly, burned down the first Temple. The jig was up, the game was over, and Nebuchadnezzar dragged just about anyone who was anyone off to exile in Babylon.