The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (27 page)

These are the reasons why, throughout the description of the history of the northern kingdom, the Deuteronomistic historian transmits to the reader a dual, somewhat contradictory message. On the one hand he depicts Judah and Israel as sister states; on the other hand he develops strong antagonism between them. It was Josiah’s ambition to expand to the north and take over the territories in the highlands that once belonged to the northern kingdom. Thus the Bible supports that ambition by explaining that the northern kingdom was established in the territories of the mythical united monarchy, which was ruled from Jerusalem; that it was a sister Israelite state; that its people were Israelites who should have worshiped in Jerusalem; that the Israelites still living in these territories must turn their eyes to Jerusalem; and that Josiah, the heir to the Davidic throne and to YHWH’s eternal promise to David, is the only legitimate heir to the territories of vanquished Israel. On the other hand, the authors of the Bible needed to delegitimize the northern cult—especially the Bethel shrine—and to show that the distinctive religious traditions of the northern kingdom were all evil, that they should be wiped out and replaced by centralized worship at the Temple of Jerusalem.

The Deuteronomistic History accomplishes all of this. At the end of
2
Samuel, the pious David is shown establishing a great empire. At the beginning
of
1
Kings, his son Solomon comes to the throne and continues to prosper. But wealth and prosperity were not enough. To the contrary, they brought about idolatry. The sin of Solomon led to the death of the golden age. YHWH then chose Jeroboam to lead the breakaway state of the northern kingdom, to be a second David. But Jeroboam sins even more than Solomon and the northern kingdom misses its once-in-history opportunity. The rest of the history of the north is a sad decline to destruction.

Under Josiah, however, the time comes for Judah to rise to greatness. But in order to revive the golden age, this new David needs first to undo the sins of Solomon and Jeroboam. The path to greatness must pass through the cleansing of Israel, mainly the destruction of the shrine of Bethel. This will lead to the reunification of all Israel—people and territory—under the Temple of YHWH and the throne of David in Jerusalem.

The important thing to remember, then, is that the biblical narrative does not see the partition of the united monarchy of David and Solomon as a final act, but as a temporary misfortune. There can still be a happy ending. If the people resolve to change their ways and live again as a holy people apart from foreign idols and seductions, YHWH will overcome all their enemies and give them eternal rest and satisfaction within their promised land.

Violence, idolatry, and greed were the hallmarks of the northern kingdom of Israel as it is depicted in gory detail in the first and second books of Kings. After Jeroboam, the main villains of the story are the Omrides, the great northern dynasty founded by a former Israelite general named Omri, whose successors grew so powerful that they eventually managed to put one of their princesses on the throne of the kingdom of Judah as well. The Bible accuses the most famous Omride couple—King Ahab and his notorious wife Jezebel, the Phoenician princess—of repeatedly committing some of the greatest biblical sins: introducing the cult of foreign gods into the land of Israel, murdering faithful priests and prophets of YHWH, unjustly confiscating the property of their subjects, and violating Israel’s sacred traditions with arrogant impunity.

The Omrides are remembered as among the most despised characters of biblical history. Yet the new archaeological vision of the kingdom of Israel offers an entirely different perspective on their reigns. Indeed, had the biblical authors and editors been historians in the modern sense, they might have said that Ahab was a mighty king who first brought the kingdom of Israel to prominence on the world stage and that his marriage to the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal was a brilliant stroke of international diplomacy. They might have said that the Omrides built magnificent cities
to serve as administrative centers of their expanding kingdom. They might have said that Ahab and Omri, his father before him, succeeded in building one of the most powerful armies in the region—with which they conquered extensive territories in the far north and in Transjordan. Of course, they might also have noted that Omri and Ahab were not particularly pious and that they sometimes were capricious and acted brutally. But the same could be said of virtually every other monarch of the ancient Near East.

Indeed, Israel, as a state, enjoyed natural wealth and extensive trade connections that made it largely indistinguishable from other prosperous kingdoms of the region. As noted in the previous chapter, Israel had the necessary organization to undertake monumental building projects, to establish a professional army and bureaucracy, and to develop a complex settlement hierarchy of cities, towns, and villages—which made it the first full-fledged Israelite kingdom. Its character, goals, and achievements were dramatically different from those of the kingdom of Judah. Therefore, they have been almost totally obscured by the Bible’s condemnation, which supports the later claims of the southern, Davidic dynasty for predominance by demeaning and misrepresenting nearly everything that the northern, Omride dynasty did.

The books of Kings offer only a sketchy description of the first turbulent decades in the independent kingdom of Israel. After the twenty-two-year reign of Jeroboam, his son and successor, Nadab, was overthrown by a military coup in which all the surviving members of the house of Jeroboam were killed (thus neatly fulfilling the words of the prophet Ahijah that none of Jeroboam’s heirs would survive). The new king, Baasha, possibly a former military commander, immediately showed his bellicose nature by declaring war on the kingdom of Judah and advancing his forces toward Jerusalem. But he was quickly forced to lift his pressure on the southern kingdom when his own kingdom was invaded by the king of Damascus, Ben-hadad.

Soon after the death of Baasha, his son Elah was deposed in yet another army uprising, in which the house of Baasha was annihilated (
1
Kings
16
:
8
–
11
). But the rebel leader, Zimri, a chariot commander, reigned for only seven days. The people of Israel rose up to declare Omri, the commander of the army, the next king of Israel. After a brief siege of the royal capital of Tirzah—and the suicide of the usurper Zimri in the flames of the palace—Omri consolidated his power and established a dynasty that would rule the northern kingdom for the next forty years.

In the twelve years of his reign, Omri built a new capital for himself at a place called Samaria and laid the foundations for the continued rule of his own dynasty. Omri’s son Ahab then came to the throne, reigning over Israel for twenty-two years. The biblical evaluation of Ahab was even harsher than its usual treatment of northern monarchs, detailing the extent of his foreign liaisons and idolatry, with an emphasis on his famous foreign wife, who led her husband to apostasy:

And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the L
ORD
more than all that were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the L
ORD
, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (
1
K
INGS
16
:
30
–
33
)

Jezebel is reported to have supported the pagan priesthood in Samaria, hosting at her spacious royal table “four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah.” And she further ordered that all the prophets of YHWH in the kingdom of Israel be slain.

The biblical narrative then goes on to devote most of its description of the Omrides to their crimes and sins—and to their ongoing battle of wits with Elijah and his protégé, Elisha, two famous prophets of YHWH who roamed throughout the north. Elijah soon confronted Ahab and demanded that all the prophets of Baal and Asherah “who eat at Jezebel’s table” gather at Mount Carmel for a contest of sacred wills. There, in front of “all the people,” each of the two sides constructed an altar to their god and sacrificed a bull upon it, crying to the chosen deity to consume the offering by fire. While Baal did not respond to the cries of his prophets, YHWH immediately sent a great fire from the heavens to consume Elijah’s offering. Seeing this, the assembled witnesses fell on their faces. “The Lord,
he is God,” they cried and seized the prophets of Baal, whom they slaughtered by the brook Kishon.

Queen Jezebel reacted in fury and Elijah quickly escaped into the desert. Reaching the desolate wilderness at Horeb, the mountain of God, he received a divine oracle. YHWH spoke directly to Elijah and pronounced a prophecy of doom on the entire house of Omri. YHWH instructed him to anoint Hazael as king of Israel’s most dangerous rival, Aram-Damascus. Elijah was also ordered to anoint Ahab’s military commander, Jehu, as the next king of Israel. Finally, Elijah was instructed to make Elisha prophet in his place. These three, YHWH had determined, would punish the house of Omri for its sins: “And him who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay” (
1
Kings
19
:
17
).

Yet YHWH gave the northern kingdom a second chance when he came to the rescue of Israel when Ben-hadad, king of Aram-Damascus, invaded the country and laid siege to Samaria. He gave it a third chance when he allowed Ahab to defeat Ben-hadad in a battle near the Sea of Galilee in the following year. But Ahab proved unworthy of this divine assistance. He decided to spare the life of his enemy in exchange for earthly rewards: the return of cities that had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Israel and the right to “establish bazaars” in Damascus. A prophet of YHWH told Ahab that he would pay with his life for not obeying YHWH’s demand that Benhadad be put to the sword.

The Bible then narrates a story about the immoral conduct of the wicked couple toward their own people—another sin for which they would have to pay with their lives. It so happened that a man named Naboth owned a vineyard near the palace of Ahab at Jezreel, and that vineyard got in the way of Ahab’s development plans. Seeking to take over the land for an expansion of his palace, Ahab made Naboth an offer he thought he could hardly refuse: he would take Naboth’s vineyard and give him a much better one, or if Naboth preferred, Ahab would pay him off in cash. But Naboth was not interested in giving away his family inheritance for any reason and he stubbornly refused. Ahab’s wife Jezebel had another solution: she fabricated evidence of blasphemy against Naboth and watched in satisfaction as the people of Jezreel stoned Naboth to death. No sooner
had Ahab taken possession of the vineyard than the prophet Elijah appeared once more on the scene. His prophecy was chilling:

Thus says the Lord: “Have you killed, and also taken possession? . . . In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood. . . . Behold, I will bring evil upon you; I will utterly sweep you away, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel; and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel the L
ORD
also said, ‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel. Any one belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and any one of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat.” (
1
K
INGS
21
:
19
–
24
)

At that time the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had concluded an alliance in which Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, joined forces with Ahab to wage war against Aram-Damascus at Ramoth-gilead, across the Jordan. In the course of the fighting Ahab was struck by an arrow and died on the battlefield. His body was brought back to Samaria for a royal burial and when his chariot was being washed, dogs licked his blood—a grim fulfillment of Elijah’s prophecy.