All right, well, this is really the second lecture of the divided kingdom era, last lecture, lesson 21. We looked at how the kingdom of David split because of Solomon's sin and his idolatry, how he broke the threefold prohibition laid out in Deuteronomy 17, doing to multiply for yourself, why this weapons and wealth. We saw how that was the reason why God took the 10 northern kingdoms from him, and then his son, Rehoboam, his stupidity, and what he did in order to trigger the split. And so we're going to focus the rest of the lecture, of course, on the highlights of the northern kingdom, and we looked at some of the highlights of the prophets, Elijah, and Alicia.
Well, now with the second part, we want to focus on the south. So before we jump in, let's just do a quick recap of the highlights, the characteristics of the northern kingdom. This little section of your notes was in the last lecture as well, but I think it's going to be very helpful if we recap the characteristics and these sort of biographical data for the northern kingdom, it'll make a lot of sense because we're going to immediately look at the same types of characteristics for the southern kingdom, and we'll be able to understand much better how they're different. So if you remember, the northern kingdom started in 930, in fact, of course, both kingdoms split in 930.
Now, the northern kingdom in all the way to 722, we haven't discussed the actual exile of the northern kingdom yet. We'll look at that in the next lecture, but it's known as Israel, right? And that could be really confusing, the northern kingdom of Israel. So if you're reading the scriptures, and you see something like Israel, does that mean it's like all that is sent into Abraham or is it the northern kingdom of Israel?
You have to really look at the context. So it could be known as the northern kingdom of Israel, or the kingdom of Ephraim, depending on what you're reading, where you're reading it. So be aware of that little detail there because the trip different readers of scripture are up. It was composed of 10 tribes, so all the tribes except for Judah and Benjamin, and it was called Ephraim because it was Jeroboam's tribe.
Remember that Jeroboam was an Ephraimite, so therefore they had these Egyptian ties way back when Joseph married this Egyptian princess and Ephraim and Massa therefore become half Egyptian. So Ephraim was Jeroboam's tribe, and it was arguably, depending on who you read, it was just as large and wealthy and powerful as Judah. That's certainly debated Judah, of course, because of the covenant with David and the capital in Jerusalem, it was super powerful, super wealthy. But Ephraim used nothing to sneeze at it.
It was a major, major tribe. And the capital was Samaria. Omri, if you remember now in the lecture, Omri was the one who moved the capital to Samaria, and afterwards, especially after the exile, the people in the territory around the capital of Samaria become known as the Samaritans, and we'll talk a lot more about who the Samaritans are later on. So this northern kingdom, it was not smooth sailing.
It had a lot of instability, political instability with the power changes, the kudatas, 200 years, it lasted with 20 kings and nine different dynasties. That is the definition of instable, okay? No political instability whatsoever. And the religious instability was just as significant.
They're in a state of constant sin, not a single king is righteous. They all persisted in what was known as Jeroboam sin, that apostate religion that false anti-religion that he set up with his own priests, his own calendar. He set up those two golden calves in Bethelen and Dan. And then of course many of the kings added sins of their own, like Ahab and his wife Jezebel bringing in the worship of Baal.
So it was an absolute mess in the northern kingdom. Well, now let's look here at the southern kingdom and see some of these characteristics by contrast. So the southern kingdom started in 930, of course, because that's when the split was, and it lasted much longer than the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom stopped in 722, but the southern kingdom went all the way to 586 BC.
And again, I repeat, we'll look at the details of that exile in the next lecture, lecture 23. But it's called, the southern kingdom is always called Judah, because it was David's tribe. David is from the tribe of Judah, and Benjamin, really quickly, because it's such a small little adjacent territory, ends up joining Judah. So it's really only Judah and Benjamin.
And of course, there are the Levitical priests who are still serving in Jerusalem, serving at the temple. So you could count them in the mix as well. But remember, the Levites are always extra, like a little bonus, a clerical tribe, the 12 tribes of Israel, those that inherit the land do not include Levites. So technically speaking, you would say it's just a Judah and Benjamin.
And the capital will always be Jerusalem, it always had been, always will be, with a temple there. And it's going to have the one dynasty of David the entire time. So the northern kingdom had nine dynasties, nine different houses. Well, the southern dynasty is only just David's.
And that's really, really important to keep in mind. Yes, there is going to be some political instability here and there. There's like three, three kings who are actually killed throughout the history, the long history of Judah, but by and large, and it's pretty stable, certainly in comparison to the northern tribe, or the northern kingdom of Judah. And this is because God promised that there would always be a descendant of David on the throne.
So I'm going to read to you second Samuel chapter seven verse 16. If you remember, second Samuel chapter seven was this beautiful chapter where God celebrates, establishes this covenant with David. There's a lot of characteristics we discussed the various characteristics that have been at covenant in a previous lecture. But I just want to read this one verse here because it demonstrates what I mean by this perpetual dynasty.
All right, so chapter seven verse 16 says, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever. So this is one of those characteristics God says, you'll always be one of your descendants on the throne. And sure enough, that's exactly what we have during the entire period of the Southern Kingdom. And that's actually really important when we look at Christ, because even Jesus is the son of David, right?
So God is faithful to his promises. And even in the dark period of the exile and the return, which we'll talk about, there's no king on the throne, the people are waiting for the new son of David. And that will, of course, be Christ. Okay, so not all the kings of Judah are bad, like in the north, there are a lot of bad kings in Judah.
Absolutely. Some some kings are good, and there's even a couple of them has a cayah and Josiah will look at them. They're incredible reformers. They really did everything that they could to try to stem the tide and bring reform back into the city to the people with reforms, unfortunately, are really, really short lived.
Okay, so as far as their religion is concerned, well, they're in Jerusalem, so certainly they're going to be observing the temple worship and the divinely revealed sacrificial system and worship system that God gave to the Israelites through Moses, and they persisted in that they did worship Yahweh. But the problem was there was a lot of other idolatry that was mixed into it, right? So you kind of have this sort of syncretism, syncretism is the blending of religions and kind of a pan-themes of polytheism rather, where you're going to worship Yahweh, but you're also going to worship some of the other gods around the surrounding nations as well. Okay, so they did persist in true worship, but it was very much tainted for many of these kings and for many of the people during a particular decade or whatever it might be because they were worshiping other gods as well.
And there were also 20 kings, if you were missed to say, so the northern kingdom has 20 kings, nine dynasties, the southern kingdom has 20 kings, but like I said, just a one dynasty of David. And then also one last little point, just to make sure that we get our terminology straight. Those inhabitants or citizens of the kingdom of Judah would therefore be called Jews. So it's at this period, kind of the beginnings of this divided kingdom and certainly at the return from exile that the term Jews, to be identified with the people who worship Yahweh really took place because you know, they're all all the descendants of Abraham or the descendants of Jacob are Israelites, but only the Jews come from the tribe of Judah and the kingdom of Judah, right?
And we had discussed that in the previous lecture as well, so the bears were peeding. So hopefully you can now see this contrast here and how different the northern kingdom is from the southern kingdom. There's a lot of similarities, obviously they're cousins, they're all brothers and cousins here, but they split and you've got these characteristics that will help you understand what's going on as you read first and second kings and all the prophets for that matter. So really quickly let me just remind you that what I chose to do with these lectures is to separate the focus of the northern kingdom in last lecture, southern kingdom in this lecture.
When you're reading the Bible, of course, it's going to go back and forth. So it's northern kingdom, northern kingdom, northern kingdom, and sort of the chronological narrative flow of what's going on in the story. So that can get kind of confusing. So beware of that as you're reading for his king, second kings, it is flipping back and forth.
But for the sake of our purposes, I just wanted to focus now on splitting them up into two different lectures. So that being said, let's dive in here to the history of the southern kingdom with a recap on really fast of Rehoboam since it's been a little bit of time since we talked about him. But if you remember, when Rehoboam Solomon's son became king, the various elders of the other tribes of Israel came to him and said enough's enough. Your father imposed a heady burden on us, lightened the burden, lightened the yoke, and were going to serve you.
And Rehoboam rejected the wise advice of Solomon's counselors, those guys who'd been around the block who really understand the wisdom of the matter and the heat against the Rehoboam rejects their wisdom and pals up with his frat buddies, the guys he grew up with and he's trying to show off and be all, you know, how about his bravado. And he foolishly claims that he's going to lay a heavier burden on the people. And as a result, the Israelites decide we're done with you, right? This is a political divorce, which of course, it becomes a religious divorce as well with Jeroboam sins.
So a complete breaking away of the royal bridegroom of Judah. So that's what's happened here with the split. And last lecture, we look at what happened with Jeroboam and some of the other kings. So now where have all what happens to him?
Did he learn his lesson? Did he do what was right? And unfortunately, he did not. He persisted in the sins of his father.
So let's take a look here at 14 verses 22 through 24. It says that Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins, which they committed more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and ushering on every high hill and under every green tree. And there were male cult prostitutes in the land.
And they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drove out of the sons of Israel. So here you have after the righteous king David and installment of course, hits rock bottom towards the end of his reign. But now you find the idolatry, the high places, the pillars, the occult prostitutes, and there's mentions male cult prostitutes here, but you better believe there are female cult prostitutes as well. When you're worshiping these fertility pagan gods, you're going to be engaging all kinds of orgiastic rituals.
Okay, so it's no surprise it became super popular, right, to worship all these various gods. So you offer your sacrifice, you know, you have your dinner, you have your entertainment, let's just say, and these popped up all over the land. And they did according to the abominations of the nations. So that's a huge problem.
We saw way back when, with Joshua and Moses, you got to drive out the inhabitants of the land and they failed to do that during the time of the judges. They failed to remove the near occasion of sin and now it's going to be super easy to fall into the idolatry. So Raya Boem here, down south, his own mother was a foreigner, right? So the queen mother, the Gedirakh was an Ammonite, and that's going to be a big problem because as I explained before, the queen mother has real legitimate power and authority.
So she's going to bring in idolatries into the kingdom and into the into the court of the king. As we're going to see in just another king here down the line, who will remove his queen mother. So that's a big problem. And then in verse 25, it goes on to explain how Egypt came up against Jerusalem and sacked it and plundered the temple in the city and making Jerusalem a tributary to Egypt.
Now that is a clear indication of the reversal of the Exodus. Judah, the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem now is sacked and conquered by Egypt. This theme that I ended off our last lecture on with all the Exodus reversal imagery is powerful even with this lecture as well, really for the north and the south. They have fallen into spiritual bondage again.
And you can even see the political or social bondage takes place all the time, but it begins immediately with Egypt giving the upper hand here with Raya Boem's reign. So it's such a tragedy, it's such a disaster, what happens and God just simply wants to free them again and bringing the people back to himself and that's the recurring theme we see with the prophets. Okay.