King James Version · The divided kingdom
2 Chronicles 22
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And the inhabitants of made his youngest son king in his stead: for the band of men that came with the to the camp had slain all the eldest. So the son of king of Judah reigned. Forty and two years old was when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in . His mother’s name also was the daughter of . He also walked in the ways of the house of : for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly. Wherefore he did evil in the sight of like the house of : for they were his counsellors after the of his to his . He walked also after their , and went with the son of king of Israel to war against Hazael king of at : and smote . And he returned to be healed in because of the wounds which were given him at , when he fought with Hazael king of . And the son of king of Judah went down to see the son of at , because he was sick. And the of was of by coming to : for when he was come, he went out with against the son of Nimshi, whom had to the house of . And it came to pass, that, when was executing upon the house of , and found the princes of Judah, and the sons of the brethren of , that ministered to , he slew them. And he sought : and they caught him, (for he was hid in ,) and brought him to : and when they had slain him, they : Because, said they, he is the son of , who sought with all . So the house of had no to keep still . But when the mother of saw that her son was , she arose and destroyed all the royal of the house of Judah. But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took the son of , and stole him from among the king’s sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in a bedchamber. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king , the wife of the priest, (for she was the sister of ,) hid him from , so that she slew him not. And he was with them hid in the house of six years: and reigned over the land.
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.