The Oxford History of the Biblical World (51 page)

The Egyptian raid came in the fifth year of the Divided Monarchy, according to the Bible. What relation the raid bore to the loss of Solomon’s empire holdings cannot be said, but apparently the division of Israel from Judah cost the divided monarchies any grip on the entities surrounding them. Philistia (1 Kings 15.27), Ammon (by inference), Moab (to judge from the Mesha inscription, see below), and perhaps Edom all seem to have broken loose from Israel and Judah. One indicator of the loss of control is the report in 2 Chronicles 11.5–12 of the fifteen towns Rehoboam fortified in an arc around Jerusalem, none farther from the capital than Lachish (about 43 kilometers [27 miles]) or Adoraim (about 35 kilometers [22 miles]). Israel and Judah had become minor players within the larger international scene.

The DH and the Chronicler agree in assigning twenty-two years of reign to Jeroboam and seventeen to Rehoboam. But with that begins a problem of keeping clear the chronology. Two systems are available: either numbers of years for each king’s reign, such as could be derived from annals; or synchronisms between kings, for which parallels are harder to find. Data of both types are distributed throughout 1 Kings 14–22 and 2 Chronicles 12–18, which carry events down to the death of Ahab.
The difficulty is that although the synchronisms work out, the years from the division to Ahab’s death, synchronized with Jehoshaphat’s third year (1 Kings 22.12, though Ahab is not named), add up to eighty-three or eighty-four years. That would put Ahab’s death in 844
BCE
—more than a decade after the date suggested in Assyrian records. By the Assyrian reckoning, Jehu took the throne in 842, and there remain still two Israelite kings, Ahaziah and Jehoram, with nine years assigned to them, to fit in between Ahab’s death and Jehu’s rise. Even if an earlier starting date is chosen, usually 931
BCE
, the regnal years do not add up. Students of chronology have tried to resolve the difficulty by assuming co-regencies and varying dating systems, but no completely satisfactory solution has ever been worked out. Apparently neither the DH nor the Chronicler thought it necessary to clear up the problem.

The period from Jeroboam through Elah in the north (some forty-six years, 928–882) and from Rehoboam to the end of Asa’s reign in Judah (about sixty-one years, 928–867) receives little attention from the DH and only a little more from the Chronicler. Jeroboam’s son Nadab reigned for something under two years and was assassinated by Baasha, from the territory of Issachar, just north of the central hills on the other side of the Jezreel Valley. This was the first of three violent upheavals within a quarter century in the north, and it signals the region’s characteristic attitude toward the crown. In the south, which followed the dynastic principle of succession and where violent usurpation usually occurred within the Davidic family, Rehoboam was succeeded by Abijah for three years and then by Asa, Abijah’s son, for a forty-one-year reign. The DH and the Chronicler part company on the events they narrate, DH focusing on the north and the Chronicler on the south.

Baasha’s reign occurred within the span of Asa’s much longer one. Both sources report a struggle over the boundary between the two nations, and both introduce King Ben-hadad of Damascus (1 Kings 15.16–22; 2 Chron. 16.1–6). Baasha pushed down to Ramah in Benjamin first, but Asa persuaded Ben-hadad to break a previous alliance with Baasha and press his rival on the north; this diversion worked, so that Asa could move the boundary a few kilometers north of Ramah, to Mizpah and Geba, where it apparently remained for as long as the two kingdoms survived. The appearance on the scene of Ben-hadad meant the temporary loss of much of the far north of Israel, including Dan. The latter’s destruction appears to. have terminated the first phase of the Dan sanctuary. The date would have been in the decade prior to 882, although on this matter the Chronicler (2 Chron. 16.1) and the DH (1 Kings 16.5–8) flatly disagree. Syria has now become a part of the story for the northern kingdom.

Asa receives high marks from the DH, but in very general terms (1 Kings 15.9–15). The Chronicler fills out the story with a description of his religious reforms and of the peace over which he reigned, combined with narratives about prophets (Azariah ben-Oded in 2 Chron. 15.1–7; Hanani “the seer” in 16.7–10) and an account of an otherwise unattested combat with “Zerah the Ethiopian,” which has fabulous elements to it but certainly enhances Asa’s stature. It is noteworthy that archaeological work in Judah has found little to distinguish ninth-century remains from those of the eighth, and thus to illumine events told by the Chronicler for this stretch of time.

The first phase of the lives of the two divided nations ends with the assassination of Baasha’s son Elah, who reigned less than two years, and the concluding years of
Asa. While short on political detail, the brief portrayals in the biblical histories display the ideologies at work as the two kingdoms go their separate ways.

The first pointer to the distinction in ideologies between Israel and Judah is the role of Shechem in the story of the division. This city, which in the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries
BCE
contained the largest Canaanite temple structure preserved from ancient Palestine, played a powerful role in Israel’s memory. Successive phases of the old sanctuary lasted down to about 1150
BCE
. Traditions about crucial events from the days of the tribal confederation cluster about Shechem: the covenant ceremony in Joshua 24; the story in Judges 9 of Abimelech’s attempt to reestablish a Canaanite city-state entity there, with oath taking at the temple of El/Baal of the Covenant; the directive to Moses in Deuteronomy 27.4 to place the stones with the terms of the covenant at an altar on Mount Ebal, just above Shechem, and the fulfillment of this directive by Joshua (Josh. 8.30–35); and the cursing and blessing ritual of Deuteronomy 11.26–32 (see also 27.11–26). In the traditions of Israel’s forebears, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph all find their way to Shechem. Narratives about Abraham (Gen. 12.6–7) and Jacob (Gen. 33.18–20 with 35.1–4) both involve sacred sites there.

So deeply does the theme of covenant at Shechem pervade the book of Deuteronomy and the work of the DH that a modern historian must offer a judgment about the heritage of the Deuteronomic tradition and its part in shaping the royal ideologies of Israel and Judah, as well as in forming the prophets’ perspective and in creating the expectations of the people who called themselves Israel.

Virtually all scholars agree that the book of Deuteronomy—or at least a good part of it (chapters 5–26 and 28 are often nominated)—was the scroll found in the Temple when Josiah was carrying out his reforms in the last quarter of the seventh century
BCE
. Its concerns, however, do not suggest that it was a Jerusalem-oriented document. It focuses primarily on the Levites from the countryside. It is full of attention to the Mosaic covenant at Horeb, and it speaks of a prophet like Moses. Its theological perspective emphasizes worship at a central location where Yahweh has placed the “name” that gives people access to the divine. But Deuteronomy never designates that central location as Jerusalem. On the matter of how Israel is to be governed, it carries an ideology at odds with that of Jerusalem. In only one passage does it discuss kingship (Deut. 17.14–20), and there its tone evinces opposition to the way Solomon conducted his reign.

All these indicators suggest that Deuteronomy originated outside Jerusalem—among Levites of the “Moses” rather than the “Aaron” leaning, steeped in the ancient Exodus-Sinai covenantal tradition, suspicious of many of the accommodations that monarchy entailed. Levites were distributed throughout the land. Joshua 21 lists the Levitical cities, a list that antedates the United Monarchy, although it was augmented and schematized under David and probably subsequently revised. The geographical listing implies differences in perspective among Levitical groups, related to their family connection.

Shechem stands out both as a Levitical city and as a “city of refuge” (Josh. 21.20–21; 20.9), with a family connection to the Kohathites among the Levites. It is quite plausible that Levites at Shechem leaned toward the Moses perspective, which had
been nurtured at an ancient sanctuary with covenantal ties. Such is the perspective reflected in 1 Kings 12—dubious of monarchy at least in its Davidic-Solomonic manifestation, and egalitarian in social perspective. At Shechem Jeroboam began his reign. But here Jeroboam finally did not stay, probably because of the accommodations he felt he needed to make in maintaining his style of monarchy. He moved his capital to Tirzah (1 Kings 14.17; 15.21, 33), and placed his sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan.

Shechem emerges, then, as a candidate for the place of origin and maintenance of early Deuteronomic thought. A modern historian must resort to indirect reasoning to reach this conclusion: both the DH and the Chronicler display a powerful Jerusalem bias, and they obviously adapt ancient traditions in validating Jerusalem and the Davidic line. Fortunately, the DH especially chose the path of adaptation, not fabrication, and so left the footprints of Shechemite/Levitical perspective to be discerned in his finished product.

The pathway of “proto-Deuteronomy,” northern and Levitical in perspective, moves on through the ninth and eighth centuries
BCE
(Hos. 6.9). It is carried south to Jerusalem by Levite refugees fleeing from the fall of Samaria in 722. What was by then a “book” went underground after the time of Hezekiah, reemerging with Josiah’s reform and thereafter guiding and disciplining the work of the historian who composed the DH.

A second pointer to ideological distinctions between north and south, related to the Shechem covenantal one, is the attitude toward kingship characteristic of the north. In 1951, the historian Albrecht Alt contrasted a “dynastic” style in the south and a “charismatic” style in the north, at least until the Omri dynasty came to the throne. We now must give nuance to this contrast. In the northern kingdom Jeroboam’s son Nadab succeeded his father to the throne, and although a number of disruptions occurred (beginning with Baasha), the expectation of dynastic succession applied. The story of the north is filled with indications of God’s displeasure with various kings’ actions, often expressed by prophetic figures; sometimes these prophets help stimulate the removal of kings—note Ahijah’s interventions with both Jeroboam and Baasha. But it is not the case that each king is installed solely on the basis of popular acclamation and divine approbation, with no expectation of dynastic succession; sons can and do succeed fathers. Furthermore, repeated indications of accommodation to pragmatic considerations filter through the DH’s account. Jeroboam emerges as both a good leader and a failed one; so will Omri and Ahab. No northern king will receive the DH’s blanket approval, but there are indications that many in the north considered dynastic kingship valid. Standards had to do with religious compromise and with whether the king cared for the poor and the needy, the widow and the orphan.

There was, then, a continuum of ideology about kingship. The Deuteronomy tradition sketched above was one articulation, dubious about kingship, with the passage about kings in 17.14–20 as a grudging concession (unless it is a late addition tailored to the reign of Josiah, which would leave “original” Deuteronomy silent on the issue of monarchy). Others in the north emphasized the validity of a kingship that practiced righteousness, placing beside the king the equally potent institution of
the prophet as an established office in the ideology of governance. Theologically, this view was wedded to the claim that God, who desired a righteous realm, would intervene to promote peace and justice.

An expression of this assertion of God’s freedom, only slightly different from that of the Deuteronomic stream, may be the northern stream of tradition about Israel’s origin. This strain is known in literary analysis as E, the work of the “Elohist.” Although it is difficult to isolate E in Genesis and Exodus, and it may not be present at all in Leviticus and Numbers, it emphasizes the themes of righteousness and accountability. The Elohist history strives to protect God’s transcendence and freedom to act; it features prophetic persons and prophetic action; it emphasizes the fear of God (Hebrew
’elohim)
as motive for vocation and living; and it can condone rebellion if a leader’s behavior demands it. It presents stories of the north, enhancing the portrayal of Jacob and featuring Joseph and his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and it gives particular attention to the founding of religious centers of the north, notably Shechem and Bethel.

As with proto-Deuteronomy, E’s origins and agenda glimmer dimly through the dominant Jerusalem perspective. Was the Elohist work a stream of tradition independent of J, the Yahwist stream, which supported the Solomonic monarchy? Most scholars have seen it that way. But recently Robert Coote has proposed instead that E is a statement of Jeroboam’s political ideology, composed under the aegis of his court and consisting of an augmentation of J, turning it toward support for the northern style of monarchy. Coote’s view has the virtue of accounting for E’s qualified approval of a certain governance style, and it gives E a time, a place, and a purpose. But the more widely held alternative view—that E came from prophetic circles in the north and dates from the ninth century after some experience of monarchy—can still be defended.

The shortest “dynasty” to sit on a biblical throne was Zimri’s: “In the twenty-seventh year of King Asa of Judah [ca. 882], Zimri reigned seven days in Tirzah” (1 Kings 16.15). Commander of half of Elah’s chariot corps, Zimri struck down Elah, who is pictured as drunk and incompetent, and wiped out the heirs of the Baasha family. Omri, the army commander, who was out fighting Philistines, was proclaimed king by the army in the field. He led the troops to Tirzah, where he torched the city and the citadel, burning Zimri to death.