Israel emerged as one of the many smaller kingdoms surrounded by powerful neighbors, engaging in trade and waging small-scale wars depending on the circumstances. Solomon was an effective ruler, forming trade relationships with nearby kingdoms and overseeing the growing wealth of Israel. He also lived in a manner consistent with other Iron Age kings, with many wives and a whole harem of concubines as well. Likewise, he taxed both trade passing through the Hebrew kingdom and his own subjects.
His demands for free labor from the Hebrew people amounted to one day in every three spent working on palaces and royal building projects — an enormous amount from a contemporary perspective, but one that was at least comparable to the redistributive economies of nearby kingdoms. Thus, while his subjects came to resent aspects of his rule, neither was it markedly more exploitative than the norm in the region as a whole.
The most important building project under Solomon was the great Temple of Jerusalem, the center of the Yahwist religion. There, a class of priests carried out rituals and worship of Yahweh.
Likewise, the rituals were similar to those practiced among various Middle Eastern religions, focusing on the sacrifice and burning of animals as offerings to God. David and Solomon supported the priesthood, and there was thus a direct link between the growing Yahwist faith and the political structure of Israel.
After his death, fully ten out of the twelve tribes broke off to form their own kingdom, retaining the name Israel, while the smaller remnant of the kingdom took on the name Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel was larger, richer, and more cosmopolitan. The southern kingdom of Judah was poorer, smaller, and more conservative; it was in Judah that the Prophetic Movement see below came into being.
It is from Judah that we get the word Jew: the Jews were the people of Judah. With its riches, Israel was more attractive to invaders. When the Assyrian Empire expanded beyond Mesopotamia, it first conquered Israel, then eventually destroyed it outright when the Israelites rose up against them this occurred in BCE.
The inhabitants of Israel either fled to Judah or were absorbed into the Assyrian Empire, losing their cultural identity in the process.
Judah was overrun by the Assyrians, but Jerusalem withstood a siege long enough to convince the Assyrians to accept bribes to leave, and instead became a satellite kingdom dominated by the Assyrians but still ruled by a Hebrew king. Judah was saved in part due to a plague that struck the Assyrian army, but it still ended up a tributary of the Assyrians, paying annual tributes and answering to an Assyrian official.
In Judah, there were two prevailing patterns: vassalage and rebellion. Judah was simply too small to avoid paying tribute to various neighboring powers, but its people were proud and defensive of their independence, so every generation or so there were uprisings. Two generations later, when the Neo-Babylonian empire itself fell to the Persians, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great allowed all of the enslaved people of the Babylonians to return to their homelands, so the Babylonian Captivity came to an end and the Jews returned to Judah, where they rebuilt the Temple.
Since they continued to practice Judaism and carry on Jewish traditions, the notion of a people scattered across different lands but still united by culture and religion came into being. For most of the rest of their history, the Jews were able to maintain their distinct cultural identity and their religion, but rarely their political independence.
The Jews went from being ruled by the Persians to the Greeks to the Romans although they did occasionally seize independence for a time , and were then eventually scattered across the Roman Empire. There is no historical or archeological evidence that suggests a single unified religion in Israel or Judah during the period of the united Hebrew monarchy or post-Solomon split between Israel and Judah, however the Hebrew Bible itself was written down centuries later. The writer to the Hebrews showed these Jewish Christian believers that, though they were faced with suffering, they were indeed following a better way.
The ancients created idols fashioned of wood and stone. Modern society has set aside that type of idol in favor of new idols—idols of fancy gadgets, material wealth, a comfortable lifestyle, and even our children.
Human beings have seen and experienced the limitless bounty of idolatry, where we place some created object or person in the place of the one true God. What idols do you hold dear in your life? The letter to the Hebrews makes clear that only one Person deserves to hold the primary place in our lives.
While we are busy idolizing our move up the corporate ladder or placing all our hopes in our kids, Jesus offers us a better position, a better priest, a better covenant, a better hope, and a better sacrifice. Only when we give Jesus His rightful place in our lives will everything else in life fall into its rightful place.
View Chuck Swindoll's chart of Hebrews , which divides the book into major sections and highlights themes and key verses. Israel has produced many famous writers in its short history. Yehuda Amichai, Amos Oz, A. Yehoshua and many others have explored the joys and difficulties of modern Jewish existence, the birth of Israel, the Holocaust, Middle East conflicts, and more.
Hebrews teaches that he became a man, for us. It teaches us that the whole Bible declares the same message. It is all about Jesus. And, especially in Hebrews to , it warns us severely about an attitude of unbelief.
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