World English Bible · The divided kingdom
2 Chronicles 12
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When of was established and he was strong, he abandoned law, and all Israel with him. In the fifth year of King , king of came up against , because they had trespassed against , with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horsemen. The people were without number who came with him out of : the Lubim, the Sukkiim, and the . He took the fortified cities which belonged to Judah, and came to . Now the came to and to the princes of Judah, who were gathered together to because of , and said to them, " says, 'You have forsaken me, therefore I have also left you in the hand of .'" Then the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, " is ." When saw that they humbled themselves, word came to , saying, "They have humbled themselves. I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some , and my won't be poured out on by the hand of . Nevertheless they will be his servants, that they may know my , and the of the kingdoms of the countries." So king of came up against and took away the of house and the of the king's house. He took it all away. He also took away the shields of gold which had made. King made shields of bronze in their place, and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard, who kept the door of the king's house. 11As often as the king entered into house, the guard came and bore them, then brought them back into the guard room. When he humbled himself, turned from him, so as not to destroy him altogether. Moreover, there were good things found in Judah. So King strengthened himself in and reigned; for was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in , the city which had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. His mother's name was the Ammonitess. He did that which was evil, because he didn't set to seek . Now the acts of , first and last, aren't they written in the histories of the and of the , in the genealogies? There were wars between and Jeroboam continually. slept with his fathers, and was buried in city; and his son reigned in his place.
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The world at this moment · The divided kingdom, 931 BC to 745 BC ›
Israel in the north and Judah in the south, often at odds, with Aram of Damascus as the immediate threat and Assyria growing in the distance.
- Aram of Damascus
- The immediate enemy for most of two centuries, close enough to raid every campaigning season and strong enough to take territory. Most of the wars in Kings that read like national emergencies are border wars with Damascus.
- Assyria
- Growing steadily in the distance. Shalmaneser III fights a coalition at Qarqar in 853 BC and his own inscription lists King Ahab of Israel among his opponents with two thousand chariots, the earliest Assyrian mention of an Israelite king. A later monument shows Jehu bowing and paying tribute. Assyria is not yet the destroyer, but it is already taking notes.
- Egypt
- Divided and unreliable, capable of the occasional raid, such as Shishak stripping the temple in Rehoboam's fifth year, but no longer an empire that governs the Levant.
- Further afield
- The Greeks adopt the alphabet, hold the first Olympiad by tradition in 776 BC, and begin to compose the Homeric poems. Rome is founded by tradition in 753 BC, a village of huts at this point. This is the century in which the classical world begins.