King James Version · The divided kingdom
2 Chronicles 12
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And it came to pass, when had established , and had strengthened himself, he forsook of , and all Israel with him. And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king king of came up against , because they had transgressed against , With twelve hundred chariots, and threescore thousand horsemen: and the people were without number that came with him out of ; the Lubims, the Sukkiims, and the . And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came to . Then came the to , and to the princes of Judah, that were gathered together to because of , and said unto them, Thus saith , Ye have forsaken me, and therefore have I also left you in the hand of . Whereupon the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, is . And when saw that they humbled themselves, to , saying, They have humbled themselves; therefore I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some ; and my shall not be poured out upon by the hand of . Nevertheless they shall 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 the , and the of the king’s house; he took all: he also the shields of gold which had made. Instead of which king made shields of brass, and committed them to the hands of the chief of the guard, that kept the entrance of the king’s house. 11And when the king entered into the , the guard came and fetched them, and brought them again into the guard chamber. And when he humbled himself, the of turned from him, that he would not destroy him altogether: and also in Judah things went well. So king strengthened himself in , and reigned: for was one and forty 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. And his mother’s name was an Ammonitess. And he did evil, because he prepared not to seek . Now the acts of , first and last, are they not written in the book of the , and of the concerning genealogies? And there were wars between and Jeroboam continually. And slept with his fathers, and was buried in : and his son reigned in his stead.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
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.