King James Version · The divided kingdom
2 Chronicles 27
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was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in . His mother’s name also was Jerushah, the daughter of Zadok. And he did that which was right in the sight of , according to all that his did: howbeit he entered not into of . And the people did yet corruptly. He built the high of the , and on the wall of he built much. Moreover he built cities in the mountains of Judah, and in the forests he built castles and towers. He fought also with the king of , and prevailed against them. And gave him the same year an hundred of silver, and ten thousand measures of wheat, and ten thousand of barley. So much did pay unto him, both the second year, and the third. So became mighty, because he prepared his ways before his . Now the rest of the acts of , and all his wars, and his ways, lo, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. He was five and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in . And slept with his fathers, and they 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.