World English Bible · The divided kingdom
2 Kings 12
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began to reign in the seventh year of , and he reigned forty years in . His mother's name was Zibiah of . did that which was right in eyes all his days in which the priest instructed him. However, the were not taken away. The people still and in the . said to the priests, "All the money of the things that is brought into house, in current money, the money of the people for whom each man is evaluated, and all the money that it comes into any man's to bring into house, let the priests take it to them, each man from his donor; and they shall repair the damage to the house, wherever any damage is found." But it was so, that in the twenty-third year of King the priests had not repaired the damage to the house. Then King called for the priest, and for the other priests, and said to them, "Why aren't you repairing the damage to the house? Now therefore take no more money from your treasurers, but it for repair of the damage to the house." 8The priests consented that they should take no more money from the people, and not repair the damage to the house. But the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid, and set it beside the , on the right side as one comes into house; and the priests who kept the threshold put all the money that was brought into house into it. When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king's and the came up, and they put it in bags and counted the money that was found in house. They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of house; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on house, and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the damage to house, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. But there were not made for house of silver, snuffers, basins, , any vessels of gold or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into house; 14for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired house with it. Moreover they didn't demand an accounting from the men into whose hand they the money to give to those who did the work; for they dealt faithfully. The money for the trespass and the money for the was not brought into house. It was the priests'. Then king of went up and fought against , and took it; and set to go up to . king of Judah took all the things that and and , his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own things, and all the gold that was found in the of house, and of the king's house, and sent it to king of ; and he went away from . Now the rest of the acts of , and all that he did, aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? His servants arose and made a conspiracy, and struck at the house of , on that goes down to Silla. For Jozacar the son of Shimeath, and the son of , his servants, struck him, and he ; and they with his fathers 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.