The Oxford History of the Biblical World (50 page)

Example 1.
First Kings 12.1–16 (see also 2 Chron. 10.1–16) tells of an assembly at Shechem at which Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was to be made king by “all Israel.” Jeroboam had heard about the assembly and thereupon returned from Egypt, where he had fled when Solomon tried to kill him for rebellion (1 Kings 11.26–28, 40). Jeroboam and the assembly challenged Rehoboam to reduce Solomon’s burden of service; after consultation, Rehoboam chose instead to add to it. That was the breaking point, and “all Israel” ended the parley with the poetically structured proclamation:

What share do we have in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.

To your tents, O Israel!
Look now to your own house, O David.

(1 Kings 12.16)

The cry appeals to the theme of resistance to monarchy expressed in many passages in 1 Samuel, and recalls the ancient ideal of autonomy and freedom from exploitation expressed in Israel’s early self-definitions.

This conflict of perceptions about proper royal conduct must lie at the base of the disruption of the United Monarchy. But 1 Kings 12 is not a report; it is a well-told story. Ten of its twenty verses tell of Rehoboam’s advisors, the older ones from Solomon’s entourage who counsel reducing the burden, and Rehoboam’s young cronies who urge turning up the heat. This ironically comic diversion recalls a frequent motif in the DH: watch out whose advice you follow (note Ahithophel and Hushai in 2 Sam. 17, and 1 Kings 12.28). The drama is protracted by the use of a retarding device: having Rehoboam take three days to decide.

Second, the DH editor in verse 15 connects Rehoboam’s unwise decision to the prophet Ahijah’s divine designation of Jeroboam to receive ten tribes as a kingdom (1 Kings 11.29–39). Thus God fulfills the punishment promised in response to Solomon’s idolatry. This prophetic theme of injustice and its consequences is a strong DH concern.

Third, there is a question about Jeroboam’s participation in the assembly. The traditional Hebrew text of verse 2 says “Jeroboam stayed in Egypt,” not that he returned; this is inconsistent with verses 3 and 12, where Jeroboam is included in the assembly’s encounter with Rehoboam, and verse 20 indicates that Jeroboam was summoned to the assembly only after Rehoboam’s folly. The Chronicler’s parallel in 2 Chronicles 10.2 has “Jeroboam returned” and omits the note about Jeroboam’s being summoned and crowned, thus resolving the problem.

Moreover, another stream of tradition, the ancient translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek known as the Septuagint, has a twenty-six-verse elaboration
after 1 Kings 12.25. This addition provides details about Jeroboam: he had begun an insurrection against Solomon; he returned at Solomon’s death and fortified his hometown; he had already received the ill omen of his own failure (found in the traditional Hebrew text in chap. 14); it was he who initiated the assembly at Shechem.

Thus we see in these passages a number of elements. There is a story based on a historical event; there has been editorial work on this material emphasizing that a prophetic promise must be fulfilled; and there is a mix of competing textual traditions about Jeroboam’s part in the assembly. Out of such confusing material the modern historian coaxes data.

Example 2.
First Kings 20 and 22 tell of three conflicts between Israelite kings (with a Judean cohort in 22) and Ben-hadad of Damascus. In the traditional Hebrew text of 1 Kings 20 the Israelite king is named “Ahab” in verses 2, 13, and 14, but eleven other places in the chapter speak only of “the king of Israel”; other ancient manuscript traditions give Ahab’s name at other places as well. First Kings 22.1–38 names the Israelite king Ahab only in verse 20, going on to tell of his death in battle. Verses 39–40 are not part of the narrative; they contain the DH editor’s concluding formula, “Now the rest of the acts of Ahab…” and speak of Ahab “sleeping with his ancestors,” an expression used to signify a natural death.

The circumstances portrayed in the biblical text do not fit Ahab at all well. Israel’s military strength seems puny compared to what a text from Shalmaneser III reports Ahab as having contributed at the battle of Qarqar in 853
BCE
: a force of two thousand chariots and ten thousand infantry. The Syrians’ explanation in 20.23–25 of why they lost the first battle but will win the second—that they will engage Israel not in the hills but in the plains—implies that their advantage lies with chariotry whereas Israel’s does not.

A number of historians advocate relocating the three battles in these two chapters into the time of Jehoash or Joash a half century later, after Jehu had ended the Omri-Ahab dynasty and when Israel was less able to cope with the Arameans of Damascus.

These two chapters are narratives about prophets. They address the question of what it means to be a prophet who brings a message to a capable and self-confident court inattentive to God’s directives. The emphasis in both chapters is on the conduct proper for any and all kings. Again, a modern historian must assess their historical value in the light of such considerations.

Example 3.
In the summers of 1993 and 1994, three chunks of a basalt stela bearing portions of thirteen lines of Aramaic text came to light, incorporated into the ninth/eighth-century
BCE
fortification wall at the city of Dan. The arrangement of the fragments is nearly certain. The text’s content, as well as the ways in which the letters are formed, date it to the ninth century (recently published claims that it is a forgery are untenable). It celebrates victories of an Aramean king over many opponents, among them a king of Israel and a king of the “house of David.” The two smaller fragments contain the end of Jehoram’s name as king of Israel and the beginning of Ahaziah’s name as king of Judah. That points to 842
BCE
, when Ahaziah (who reigned only that single year) overlapped with Jehoram (Joram; 851–842). Clear indications in the early part of the text suggest the Aramean king’s identity: Hazael (a usurper, even though he refers to his predecessor as his “father”) gained the throne of Damascus in 842. Thus the stela recounts Hazael’s side of the battle mentioned in 2
Kings 8.25–29 and 2 Chronicles 22.5–9; it also makes plain that later in his reign Hazael could take Dan and there erect a celebrative stela. This is only implied by 2 Kings 13.3–5, 22.

The year 842 coincides with Jehu’s purge of the Omri-Ahab dynasty (see below). According to the stela, the Aramean king killed Ahaziah of Judah and apparently also Jehoram of Israel. This conflicts with the account in 2 Kings 9, where Jehu is reported to have killed both kings: Jehoram, recovering from wounds suffered in conflict with Hazael in 9.15, goes out to meet Jehu, who dispatches him, and Ahaziah, visiting Jehoram, flees but is shot down (see also 2 Chron. 22.5–9). The inscription shows that Syria held Dan at least briefly in the ninth century. But the stela’s shattered condition and its reuse as building stone attests to the Israelites’ recovery of Dan, unceremoniously nullifying an Aramean monument.

Example 4
. Excavations at Samaria produced over a hundred ostraca (inked notes on sherds) dating probably from the first part of Jeroboam H’s reign (roughly 770
BCE
). The notations on each contain all or part of a range of information: a date referring to the king’s reign, a place of origin, one or more personal names associated with a product, and the nature of the product (wine or oil). They probably record shipments to be credited to the account of persons resident at the capital. These are not receipts, but notes for a catalogue of incoming supplies.

These notations serve as the raw material for reconstructing life at the capital. Fine commodities are coming in charged to the credit of people who now live in the capital but obtain their produce from their country holdings—they are absentee landlords, or at least offspring of families holding property elsewhere. The commodities are luxury items, not basic provisions. The occupants of the capital complex are, then, functionaries who have come to live there at the behest of the king. It may be that they are provisioned from their own estates. Or, alternatively, the provisions may be imported from the towns and country districts, forming a semicircle with a radius of 15 kilometers (9 miles) to the south of Samaria, which had been laid out as royal lands by the king. From these records scholars have reconstructed a roster of the names of Samaria residents. These names furnish significant historical evidence. A large minority of them are compounded from the divine name
Baal,
but the majority are Yahweh-compound names. Thus the population was religiously cosmopolitan, confirming biblical indications of the kind of court the Israelite kings assembled in Samaria.

The Samaria ostraca give us a snapshot of social history. Since they date only a generation or so before Amos and Hosea, they tell us something about these prophets’ audience.

Having looked at these instances of the kind of sources historians must interpret, we can return to the sequence of events.

The Shechem assembly marked the collapse of the United Monarchy. According to 1 Kings 12.17–20, Rehoboam sent his supervisor of forced labor, Adoram, on a mission to enforce royal control over the north, but Adoram was stoned to death and Israel’s unrest turned into open rebellion. Rehoboam retained control over the tribal territories of Judah and Benjamin, the latter being a narrow strip stretching
hardly 15 kilometers (9 miles) north to south and 40 kilometers (25 miles) east to west, just north of Jerusalem. Jeroboam, meanwhile, asserted his rule in the north from points that had defined the Late Bronze Age city-state of Shechem, straddling the boundary between the tribal territories of Ephraim and Manasseh; he “built” (that is, fortified) first the city of Shechem and then Penuel, across the Jordan from the opening of the Wadi el-Farah, which leads down from the Shechem region to the river.

Jeroboam’s control north of the central hill country, extending into the Galilean hills, receives virtually no attention in the biblical record. Only one detail stands out: he established as sanctuary centers Dan at the northernmost limit of the land and Bethel on the border between Ephraim and Benjamin. Dan lies about 135 kilometers (85 miles) from Bethel, but it is only 29 kilometers (18 miles—a day’s trek) from Bethel to Shechem.

It is plausible that, as 1 Kings 12.28 has it, Jeroboam needed to provide alternatives to worship in Jerusalem. The iconography of the sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan consisted of a gilded bull calf forming a throne or pedestal for God. The biblical account relates that Jeroboam established a priesthood for these sanctuaries, choosing his priests from among the people rather than from Levites (who alone, according to the DH, would have been legitimate). Moreover, Jeroboam is said to have appointed an autumn feast day “on the fifteenth day of the eighth month,” a month out of synchronism with the festal schedule in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8.2). Jeroboam also established “high places,” a term that for the DH symbolizes apostasy on the part of Israelite as well as Judean kings, and rejection of which is the ultimate criterion of remaining faithful.

These details were supplied by the DH but omitted by the Chronicler, who presumed at least some of them in 2 Chronicles 11.13–17 and 13.8–10. Both streams of historical interpretation denigrate the northern religious establishment for introducing idolatry and violating the appropriate priesthood.

From a more neutral point of view, Jeroboam probably intended to employ earlier iconography of Yahweh drawn from that of El; El as a designation for the god of Israel was doubtless current in the north—hence the validity of using the name
Isra-El
for the northern political entity. Jeroboam’s move, then, was not idolatrous or even newly syncretistic, but probably invoked ancient Israelite traditions, including a legitimate enlistment of priests from among the people. Frank Cross has proposed that Bethel and Dan served a compromise agenda. Jeroboam, he surmises, reestablished the Bethel sanctuary as the locus of Aaronite priestly family hegemony, and Dan (Judg. 18.30) for priests of the Moses line—the two families whom David had placed in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 8.15). In short, Jeroboam’s moves were calculated but (from a non-Jerusalem perspective) legitimate. Only from the perspectives of the DH and Chronicles were they idolatrous.

At Bethel, archaeology has provided no information on the Jeroboam sanctuary. At Dan, however, Avraham Biran’s excavations have recovered an elevated platform showing at least two phases of development. The core of the platform, some 19 meters (62 feet) long by about 9 meters (29 feet 6 inches) wide and constructed in ashlar masonry, belonged to the Jeroboam era, and was destroyed in the early ninth century
BCE
. With it went a 5 meters × 6 meters (16 feet 6 inches × 19 feet 9 inches) altar,
a plastered pool, and an oil press—an appropriate feature of a sanctuary, since fine oil was needed for religious observance. It is unclear whether a masonry superstructure rose above this platform, or a structure of less permanent material; conceivably what sat on the platform conformed to the tabernacle, not the Solomonic Temple, in contrast to the Jerusalem religious establishment but in accord with “Moses” standards.

From 928 to roughly 882, a conflict raged between the two divisions of the land, both of which also faced an external threat. Rehoboam had returned to Judah: and although the DH had him assemble a vast army (1 Kings 12.21–24) which was deflected from its purpose on orders from Yahweh, the DH offers no detail of battles between north and south. The Chronicler presents one theologically rationalized battle account in 2 Chronicles 13.13–21 involving Jeroboam and Rehoboam’s son and successor, Abijah (Abijam), emphasizing the religiously valid south over the invalid north and claiming that Bethel was taken. Such an assertion is hard to credit as historical.

What is reported by both historians is the campaign of Pharaoh Shishak (Shoshenq I) of the Egyptian Dynasty 22 (1 Kings 14.25–28; 2 Chron. 12.2–12). The campaign took the form of a lightning raid that ranged through both north and south. The degree of devastation is hard to assess, either from biblical indications or Shishak’s own depiction at Karnak; he claimed to have taken over 150 locales, though whether by destroying them or receiving their capitulation is not clear. The Chronicler reports Rehoboam’s capitulation of Jerusalem. Archaeology shows that a number of sites in the central Negeb highlands, which Solomon had established as fortresses, were put out of commission. Towns all along the coastal route show signs of having been attacked, and Megiddo, in the pass through the Carmel range, suffered extensive damage; Shishak left a victory stela there. An Egyptian foray into the central hills attacked Shechem and other upland locales, though the Bible says nothing of how this affected Jeroboam. It would seem that Shishak raided the north as a show of strength but let it go at that, or at least could not follow up any advantage he had gained.