Map – Divided Kingdom (923 – 732 BCE)

TIME PERIOD: 923 – 732 BCE

“Upon Solomon’s death at about 923 B.C., the united monarchy split into a northern kingdom, Israel, based on ten tribes and having Shechem (near the modern village of al-Balatah) as its capitol [and later Samaria c. 880], and a southern one, Judah, based on the remaining two tribes and using Jerusalem as capital.”

Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, p. 97, 99, D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1961

“The little southern state [Judah] was more or less limited to the tribal portions of Judah, Simean and Benjamin, with some possessions in Edom in the east and along the coastal plain in the west. In the north there was the kingdom of Israel, with Shechem as its fist capital, larger than Judah both in population and in size. Encompassing the portions of a majority of the tribes and the most fertile parts of the country, including the Sharon, it retained Moab, and apparently Ammon as well, as vassal-states.”

Hanoch Reviv, “The Canaanite and Israelite Periods (3200-332 B.C.),” A History of Israel and the Holy Land, p. 81, The Continuum Publishing Group Inc. 2001

“The two tiny kingdoms fell into the complex political and belligerent developments of the general area and became rivals, at times enemies. Repeated uprisings and mounting intrigues in both states contributed to their final undoing. Israel experienced nine dynastic changes, involving nineteen kings, in its two-century existence. The throne of Judah was occupied by twenty kings, but the southern kingdom out lived the northern by about a century and a third. The way was paved for their final destruction one by Assyria and the other by Neo-Babylonia.”

Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History, p. 97, 99, D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1961

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