In the Shadow of the House of Omri(1) (c. 1000-722)

Your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you.
Ezekiel 16:46

Sometime in the Iron Age, Jerusalem was claimed as the capital of Judah, one of several small ethno-territorial states in Palestine and Transjordan that began to florish in the 9th century. Based on archeological evidence, settlement of the southern hill country and the urban recovery of Jerusalem occurred later than the lively settlement activity that characterizes the development of the northern hill country of the Israelites.

Aside from contemporary inscriptions and historical records from the states of the Levant and the adjacent regions, our main sources for this period are the biblical Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (the so-called deuteronomistic work of history or “Dtr”)(2) and some of the prophetic oracles preserved in the prophetic books where, however, the sorting of the genuinely contemporary material from later additions is always a matter of debate. Despite the fact that the deuteronomistic historians prefaced their synchronistic account of the Israelite and Judahite kings with an idealizing account of the first united kingdom under David and Solomo, they did not completely obscure the fact that Jerusalem’s actual role in the early history of the Judahite kingdom was that of a mere vassal of Israel and Aram-Damascus to its north. On one occasion, the king of Israel tears down the city’s walls, and the royal temple treasury is repeatedly plundered (raising the question how the coffers came to be substantially refilled every time this happened). By necessity, then, our overview of the history of the second stage in the history of ancient Jerusalem finds the city eclipsed by its northern neighbors, Samaria and Damascus.

c. 1230            An Egyptian stela lists “Israel” (a people, not a city or state) among other places in Canaan that were destroyed in a military campaign. The sequence of places mentioned on the Merenptah (or Merneptah) stela is consistent with the assumption that this Israel was located in the northern central highlands of Canaan (centered around the biblical Shekhem, modern Nablus).

1150-1050       Archeological surveys show a significant increase in rural settlements (first small villages, then towns, of agro-pastoral character) in the highlands of central Canaan and the northern Transjordan, the heartlands of the later Israelite monarchy. The boundary marker between these concentrated settlements and other ethno-cultural centers such as the Philistine Pentapolis is the absence of pig bones. In biblical terms, this corresponds to what would have been the time of the judges.

c. 1050-930     Emergence of a new political order. In archeological (material cultural) terms: Iron Age I. Jerusalem: remains of a monumental gate and remains of administrative buildings near a natural ridge to the north of the City of David but no evidence of residential buildings. (Hotly debated among archeologists: is “absence of evidence evidence of absence?”)(3) The Iron Age I city of Jerusalem may have served as the fortress or capital of a newly founded, small state.(4)

According to biblical chronology, this would be the time of the kingdom of Saul and of the united monarchy under kings David and Solomon. Despite intense archeological work in and around Jerusalem, there is no undisputed evidence of such an entity for the time in question that corresponds to what one would expect on the basis of Scripture.(5) It is therefore widely assumed today that the stories about David and Solomon were greatly embellished by authors who lived at the time of king Josiah of Judah or later. At the time of Josiah (640-609; see below) the city of Jerusalem was the only remaining city of Judah (all others having been destroyed by Sennacherib in 701) and it was vastly larger and differently designed than the small fortress that would have been taken by David of Hebron. Josiah, who ruled over an expanding state when Assyrian power was at its nadir and the Babylonian armies had as yet to appear at the gates of Jerusalem, may have harbored the ambitious plans of uniting all the YHWHistic territories that had once been ruled by the Israelites with the territories of the Arameans of Damascus (a revenge fantasy engendered by decades of the reverse domination?) and perhaps to bring all of Canaan under the rule of the “House of David.” The Judahite historians of the time of Josiah may be said to have described a novel historical situation in the terms of a mere restoration of the status quo ante. This does not preclude that their narrative may include genuine memories of an earlier period.

In the early-Iron Age coastal and alluvial plains, new city-states are established, and many older ones are modestly resettled or used as (Egyptian?) fortifications. Based on the evidence of material culture, only one type of community is certain to have arrived from elsewhere, namely, the Philistines and other descendents of the Sea Peoples whose ceramic ware (the major basis for archeological determination) is distinct from that used by other communities. Other settlements seem the result of a confluence of regional migrations that lead to the establishment of numerous small, unfortified villages in the north-central hill country of Canaan. These communities may have included refugees from the destroyed or abandoned Bronze Age cities and sedentarized pastoralists from Trans-Jordan and Northern Arabia. Egyptian influence continues, but to a more limited extent. The Philistine Pentapolis (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath) dominates the southern Levant, Phoenician port cities (Tyre, Sidon, Byblos) dominate the north. Signs of a “democratization” of Canaanite societies (as compared to Bronze-Age palace-based society) are the spread of the Phoenician alphabet, which was easy to learn and execute, and iron smithing, which was technologically simpler than the production of bronze and based on regional ore rather than on the import of copper from Cyprus and tin from the Zagros Mountains.

In the northern central highlands and alluvial plains of Canaan, including the Jezreel valley, across the Jordan, in the Negev desert, and in the southern hill country: various ethno-linguistic communities forge areas of territorial dominance (“states”) around their respective tribal sanctuaries and market towns. This includes the Arameans of Damascus, the Israelites (Ephraim and Manasseh), the Ammonites and Moabites, the north-Arabian Edomites, Amalekites, Ishmaelites, and Midianites and, in the southern hill country, the Benjaminites and Judahites.

931-913           The reign of Rehoboam of Judah, the son of Solomon b. David and Naamah the Ammonite (based on 1. Kings 14:21). Judah and Israel are at war (1 K 15:6). This and most of the following bits of information on the kings of Jerusalem (including the names of the queen mothers and their respective affiliations) are based on the biblical sources. Extra-biblical information is not available for the kings of this early period. While the Book of Kings and the second major biblical work of history, the Book of Chronicles, refer to royal records and other now lost sources for their synchronic history of the Judahite and Israelite kingdoms, much of the early history is either too idealizing or too sketchy to inspire much confidence in its reliability. Even where solid information is unavailable, however, we may still try to imagine, based on our general knowledge of era and circumstances, what happened and why.

c. 925              Pharaoh Sheshonq’s campaign through Palestine. As a datable event that allows correlating Egyptian records with archeological evidence of destruction levels in Canaanite cities mentioned in these records, this serves archeologists as the marker of transition from Iron Age I to Iron Age II. The campaign is mentioned in 1 K 14:25-26, where it is said to have occurred in the fifth year of king Rehoboam of Judah under whose reign the united kingdom is said to have broken up. This may reflect a genuine memory of the campaign of Shoshenq (Shishak) as an event that shook up the emerging new system of states that was in the process of formation. The date of Sheshonq’s campaign thus more or less coincides with what the biblical authors describe as the apostasy of the northern kingdom. Historians therefore conventionally begin the history of Judah and Israel as separate kingdoms with this date. Since Jerusalem was not affected by this campaign, one may speculate that the city had remained loyal to Egypt, as perhaps implied in the story about King Solomon’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter. (Cf. 1 K 3:1)(6)

913-911           Abijam b. Rehoboam of Judah and Maacah b. Abishalom (based on 1 K 15:2). According to 1 K 15:7, Judah and Israel are still at war.

9th century       Archeological evidence of beginning of urban renewal of Jerusalem and other Judahite cities.

911-870           Asa b. Abijam of Judah and Maacah b. Abishalom (1 K 15:10). Asa calls upon the Arameans of Damascus for help against the Israelites who continue trying to force Judah into vassalage (see 1 K 15:19).

If one blends traditions found in Kings and Samuel, one gets the following rather intriguing picture of Asa’s pedigree. His mother Maacah was also his father’s mother and hence his grandmother. As the daughter of Abishalom (= Absalom) she was therefore herself a granddaughter of King David who had married another Maacah. According to 2 Sam 3:3, this presumably older Maacah was the daughter of a King Talmai of Geshur (a region to the north-east of the Sea of Galilee). It appears then that Maacah, the daughter of David’s son Absalom by Maacah the Elder married the son of Solomon, her first cousin. Such a marriage could have served the purpose of cementing the diplomatic union between Jerusalem and Hebron (represented by Absalom) or with the northern region of Beth Maacah.(7) Solomon’s son by Naamah of Ammon (another diplomatic marriage with a neighboring kingdom), Rehoboam, marries the daughter of Absalom, who is also his first cousin and his son Abijam marries his own mother. The remarkable position of this younger Maacah is underscored by the fact that her son Asa is said to have deposed her as “queen mother” (1 K 15:13). That “queen mothers” played an important political role is suggested by a number of other cases, namely, the case of Bathsheba whose intrigues help to establish her son Solomon on the throne (indicating a victory of Jerusalemite over Hebronite families), the case of Athalia (see below), and that of the queen mother of Jehoiachin, daughter-in-law to Josiah, who was among those exiled in 597.

Asa’s forty-year reign(8) in Jerusalem provides a mere background to more detailed information about the north.(9) The northern territorial-ethnic community seems to have been beset by a feud over its leadership. According to the Book of Kings, the founder of the kingdom, Jeroboam, passed the kingship to his son who is soon assassinated and all the other descendents of Jeroboam with him. The usurper, Baasha, who ruled for a respectable twenty-four years at Tirzah, had a similar fate when his son is murdered by Zimri who, after only seven days, dies in a fire, and is replaced by Omri, the founder of the first lasting dynasty among the Israelites.

Under Omri and his successors, Judah and Moab are reduced to vassals of Israel. Israel expands to the east of the Jordan, gaining control of a stretch of the King’s Highway, which provides the state with access to the steady stream of luxury goods (including elephant hides, ivory, and incense) and the gold, silver, and tin exchanged between southern Arabia and Mesopotamia. Internationally, the Israelite state is henceforth known as the “House of Omri,” even after that dynasty is wiped out in a YHWHistic coup d’etat (see below).

885-841                Jerusalem is vassal to the kingdom of Israel, which greatly expands under the dynasty of Omri, colorfully represented by king Ahab and the biblical Jezebel. Biblical literature describes the rule of the Omrides as a period of apostasy from YHWH to Baal. In historical terms, Ahab may have attempted to reintegrate the Israelite community of the highlands with the Canaanite society of the alluvial and coastal plains, culturally and economically reorienting the hitherto exclusivist ethno-territorial state (founded on a narrative of rejection of the Bronze Age city-states and their immoral ways) toward the more mundane Mediterranean society represented by his Phoenician princess. This sound political program would have entailed some form of cultic and ritual communion, which may have met with the resistance of Israelite cult personnel and the nascent prophetic movement.

The Omrides of Israel, consisting of Omri himself, his son Ahab, and Ahab’s sons Ahaziah and Joram (who, incidentally, bare good YHWHistic names), oversaw the territorial expansion of the state from its ancient base in the highlands and the beginning of prosperity for an emerging new palace society. Remnants of monumental buildings at Hazor and Megiddo may date to this period.(10) The newly established capital of this kingdom is Samaria, which grew to twice the size of the Jerusalem of the time and eclipsed the ancient Israelite sacred center at Shekhem. A decisive victory at Aphek over the Aramean king Ben-Hadad (see 1 K 20:29-30), established Israel and its Mediterranean-based Phoenician ally as the dominant powers in Syro-Palestine, whose hegemony also extended over Moab and Judah. At this time, the houses of Omri and David are allied by marriage. On his mother Athalia’s side, king Ahaziah of Judah is the great-grandson of Omri, and he is also a son-in-law to the house of Ahab (2 K 8:25-27).
                       
According to the fragments of an Aramaic victory stela from the middle of the 9th century BCE found at Tel Dan (formerly a northern border city of the Israelite kingdom) and deciphered in light of the biblical account in 2 K 8:28-29, king Hazael of Damascus boasted to have killed Joram, the son of Ahab, and Ahaziah, the king of Judah, in battle. According to 2 K 9:14-28 it was not Hazael himself but Jehu, a general who had turned sides, who personally assassinated the two kings in an act attributed to his YHWHistic zeal. The Tel Dan Stela is regarded as significant for other reasons as well. In fact, it has been the cause of an ongoing debate. If the widely accepted interpretation of the fragments is correct, it contains the earliest epigraphic reference to the House of David whose existence would thereby be confirmed by extra-biblical evidence.(10)

841                  The Israelite general Jehu accomplishes a coup by realigning Israel with the Arameans of Damascus. His rejection of the coalition with the Phoenicians seems to have been ideologically supported by a group of YHWHistic traditionalists represented by the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

We know of prophets Elijah and Elisha only from Scripture. They are literally the central characters in the Book of Kings in that their exploits appear in the very middle of the narration and signify a turning point in the history of the YHWHistic kingdoms. They mark the middle point in a narrative that begins with the golden age of the united monarchy and ends with the reestablishment of a unified kingdom under Josiah. Ahab and his successors figure in this story as the evil apostates and their punishment for ignoring the prophets of YHWH is the destruction of their kingdom. Elijah and Elisha represent what the authors of Kings and perhaps the deuteronomistic school as a whole held dear, namely, the belief that the weal and woe of the Israelite commonwealth depended on reliance on YHWH alone. Although the political history of Israel thus appears as a struggle for religious exclusivism (e.g.: the biblical authors describe Jehu’s murderous actions as a return to YHWH-worship and a rejection of the Baal cult associated with the Phoenician princess Jezebel; 2 K 10:28: “Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel.”), the underlying political concern may have been the preservation of national unity and independence or the privilege of a particular class or clan, though cast in prophetic terms.

841-743           The rule of the dynasty of Jehu was a period of prosperity for Israel. Toward the end of this period, Jeroboam II (783-743) attains independence from Damascus but the Assyrians are already lurking and Amos, “dresser of sycamore trees” (Am 7:14) from Tekoa in Judah, prophecies at the southern Israelite royal sanctuary at Bethel, warning of impending doom.

c. 841-835       The murder of the Omrides in Samaria had important consequences for Jerusalem. Just as Jehu killed off the members of the royal household, Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah of Judah, launched an Omride counter-coup in Jerusalem, wiping out the entire royal family and ruling in her own name for seven years. Meanwhile—according to 2 Kings 11—her grandson Joash (or Jehoash), ostensibly the infant son of Amaziah and the sole surviving heir to the Davidic line, is hidden by the YHWHistic priest Jehoiada, possibly a member of the older royal household himself, in the “house of the LORD.” After seven years, Jehoiada enters into a pact with a group of mercenaries (possibly Cretans, i.e., Philistines) who murder Athaliah and proclaim the seven-year-old Joash king. A general convention of the “people of the land” (am ha’arets) then confirms the new king of Judah. (Cf. 2 K 21:23-24 where the same type of assembly is said to have put Josiah on the throne after the assassination of Amon.)(12)

From this point on, at least according to our biblical sources, the YHWHistic priesthood and the landed aristocracy appear more frequently as the institutions that compensated for the lack of continuity and the occasional disruption in the royal succession. This may also have been the point at which members of the royal family ceased to function as priests or priest-kings, (13) a separation of powers, but this cannot be said with any certainty. Kingship had always been associated with divine rule in the sense that the king ruled as the “son” or representative of the deity. This meant the very opposite of what we might think. Far from conveying absolute power, divine sonship may have kept the king dependent on those who articulated the will of the deity (and hence of the polity), namely the priests and the prophets. Hence the priests could step in when the royal succession was endangered. Similarly, prophecies pertaining to a “messianic” ruler may indicate that other criteria than literal blood succession were called for in an able ruler. The cultic notion of divine sonship of the king indicated that the human ancestry mattered little as long as the king could be said to be the son of the deity, i.e., the truly authorized ruler, the one who had been begotten to serve as a conduit for the blessing of the ultimate power that lorded over the land and decided the fate of the nation.

The story of Joash contains another possible indication of the interests that the YHWHistic priesthood and the landed aristocracy of Judah shared in common. The usurper Joash is reported to have been the son of Zibiah of Beersheba. In this and later cases, the prince installed on the throne tended to represent the western and southern border cities of Judah where a stricter form of YHWHism may have prevailed than in the somewhat more cosmopolitan society of Jerusalem.

835-796           Early on in the reign of Joash (Jehoash) of Judah, King Hazael of Damascus personally led a campaign to assure that Judah remained a loyal vassal. The heavy tribute he extorted was, once again, taken from the royal temple treasury (see 2 K 12:17-18). We further hear about Joash that he was killed by two members of his own court at the “Millo” in Jerusalem (2 K 14:5.19-21), perhaps a sign that the installation of the new dynasty was not accepted without resistence or that vassalage to Damascus fuelled resentment among Joash’s nobles.

796-781           Amaziah b. Joash began his reign by avenging the death of his father.

According to 2 K 14:7, Amaziah further distinguished himself by the following feat. He “killed ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt (the Arabah) and took Sela by storm; he called it Jokthe-el, which is its name to this day.” This may indicate that Amaziah was the first Judahite king to establish a foothold along the so-called King’s Highway, which then and later saw heavy traffic carrying extremely valuable goods from Arabia to Mesopotamia and to the Phoenician coastal cities. This may explain why, within a few decades, sufficient revenue was available to launch the first great expansion of Jerusalem since the Bronze Age, to fortify the cities of the Shephelah (the plains bordering Philistine territory), to establish colonies in the Negev desert and still to afford the heavy burden of bullion and luxury goods extorted by the Assyrians.

Emboldened by his success against the Edomites, Amaziah challenged Joash b. Joahaz of Israel, believing himself ready to gain independence for Jerusalem and Judah. In the event, he lost the battle of Beth Shemesh and could not prevent the punitive action launched by King Joash of Israel who tore down the walls of Jerusalem (“from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate”) and exacted tribute from the temple treasury (see 2 Kings 14:13-14). This defeat was to have dramatic consequences; the next time an Israelite army was to appear at the gates of Jerusalem, the king of Jerusalem was to take drastic countermeasures that ultimately led to the destruction of Israel. (See below.)

Since Amaziah’s failure was bound to breed contempt among his own people, his end is, not surprisingly, ignominious. A conspiracy against him drives him from Jerusalem to the border fortress of Lachish where the conspirators catch up with him and kill him. His body is brought back to Jerusalem “on horses” and, after he is laid to rest, a popular assembly makes his sixteen-year old son Azariah the next king. (2 K 14:17-21)

781-736           Azariah b. Amaziah, whose mother is named Jecoliah of Jerusalem, was struck with leprosy, forcing him to spend years of his reign in quarantine. The person in charge was his son Jotham (see 2 Kings 15:1-7), who took the royal title after Azariah’s death, ruling in his own name until his death in 736.

While Judah inched toward greater wealth that was to fuel dreams of independence, the northern kingdom was beset by internal turmoil that resembled its early years. The last scion of the dynasty of Jehu, Zechariah b. Jeroboam, is assassinated only six months after he takes the throne of Samaria. His murderer, Shallum b. Jabesh, reigns just a month before he, in turn, is killed by Menahem b. Gadi (747-738) who presided over a period of relative stability but whose son Pekahiah was assassinated by Pekah b. Remaliah.

According to Assyrian records, Menahem of Samaria and Rasyan (Resin) of Damascus are forced to pay tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III, the Great King of Asshur/Assyria. According to 2 K 15:19-20, Menahem’s payment buys Assyrian protection of his hold on the throne. To pay for it, he imposes a poll tax of fifty silver shekels on the wealthy landowners.

It was at the time of Menahem and to some degree because of his own initiative that Israel encountered a new power of unprecedented speed and efficiency in forcing every nation to submit to its will: Assyria. Menahem himself ushered in the process that was to lead first to vassalage and ultimately to the loss of Israel’s independence and statehood. In 722, Samaria was reduced to an Assyrian province, an event from which the commonwealth never fully recovered. Inadvertently, this turn of events propelled Jerusalem out of the shadow of the House of Omri and onto the stage of history. This was preceded by a series of miscalculations, most of all by the underestimation, on the part of the last kings of Samaria and Damascus, of Assyria’s power and her resolve to crush any disloyalty on the part of her vassals.

The first Assyrian campaign against Israel and its Aramean ally may have been the result of a policy decision made in Jerusalem. Against the counsel of prophet Isaiah, king Ahaz (736-716; see below) called for help from the Assyrian king against the Syro-Ephraimite coalition, whose combined forces were about to appear at the gates of Jerusalem to force Ahaz to join them in a rebellion against Assyria. Precipitated by Rasyan of Damascus and Pekah of Samaria’s attempt to force him to join their coalition, king Ahaz of Judah voluntarily entered into Assyrian vassalage but saved his kingdom from ruin. The Assyrian response is swift. It staves off the impending Syro-Ephraimite assault on Jerusalem (1 K 16:5-9). The ensuing dismantling of the disloyal vassal states and the eventual destruction of Israel are all in a day’s work for an empire of hitherto unprecedented speed, force, and efficiency.

In 733 the outlying regions of Israel are integrated into the Assyrian provincial system. Damascus is conquered in 732. Rasyan is killed. The Israelite state is punished less harshly and it survives for another ten years, albeit reduced to the Ephraimite hill country and the city of Samaria. In 724, Pekah’s successor, Hosheah b. Elah, cancels his agreement to pay tribute to Shalmaneser and enters into an alliance with Egypt (either with the Ethiopian dynasty, ruling upper Egypt, or with some of the Libyan princes of the Delta; “King So” mentioned in 2 K 17:4 has not been identified), a misstep of colossal proportions, though not untypical for countries on the fringe of the Assyrian empire. Samaria was captured after a siege of three years.

722                  In 722, shortly before the death of Assyrian king Shalmaneser V or shortly after the beginning of the reign of Sargon II, the House of Omri, or what was then left of it, falls.

The fall of Samaria was the indirect result of the decision on the part of Ahaz of Judah to submit to the Assyrian empire and to call on Assyria for help. Israel, a kingdom of fellow YHWHists, with whom the Judahites were connected at the hip, was destroyed as a political entity and never regained independence. Yet the name  “Israel” survived. Those who went into exile after the fall of Jerusalem (in 586) carried it with them, identifying themselves both as Jews (i.e., people from Judah) and as Israelites. The name also survived in the Land of Israel. Here, the mixture of old and new populations in and around Samaria considered themselves Israelites as well, either because that is simply who they were or because that is what they had become; in the Levant, place names often conferred identity. The descendents of these people are the Samaritans, today a small congregation measuring in the few hundreds but once a serious challenger to the claim of Jerusalem’s establishment to the exclusive ownership of the mantle of “Israel.”

According to 2 Kings the former Israelite elite was resettled in regions east of the Tigris (along the Habur and Gozan rivers and in the cities of the Medes; 2 K 17:6) and people from elsewhere were settled in the new Assyrian province of Samerina. The Book of Kings contains a reminiscence of the misfortune that befell the first generation of “new Israelites:” a plague of lions. To ameliorate their situation, a priest was called back from among the “old Israelites” to teach them the ways of the land (2 K 17:24). According to an inscription by Assyrian king Sargon II, the first people to be resettled in Samaria came from Arabia: I crushed the tribes of Tamud, Ibadidi, Marsimany, and Haiap, the Arabs who live, far away, in the desert (and) who know neither overseers, nor official(s) and who had not (yet) brought their tribute to any king. I deported their survivors and settled (them) in Samaria. These Arab deportees were later joined by other settlers who were brought here by Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal (see 2 K 17:24, Ezra 4:2 and Ezra 4:10), but it is likely that the community was also joined by Judahite refugees from the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. (Until today, the Samaritans live by the Mosaic Torah and consider Mt. Garizim, near Shekhem, rather than Jerusalem the place YHWH chose from among all the tribes for his name to reside.)

While the history of the Israelite state had come to an abrupt and irretrievable end, the history of the people of Israel continued; the mantle of YHWH’s favor was claimed by Jews and Samaritans. But the rise of Jerusalem as the city YHWH chose from among all tribes really begins here, and it begins with king Ahaz who precipitated the fall of Samaria.