Judah After Zedekiah in 586 BCE? Or Israel After Hoshea in 721 BCE?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                       

We leave Judah and Israel, Our Israel divided into two. because of 2 distinct ways of continued living, which became their destruction.  Situated in a land bridge between the Babylonians and Egyptians, the two great powers of the day, Kings Jehoiakim (608-598 BCE) of Judah and Zedekiah (597-586 BCE) of Judah kept switching allegiance depending on which seemed the more powerful. Judah first favored Egypt, then Babylon, and then returned to Egypt. The Bible and the Babylonian Chronicles help us reconstruct the events that led to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.  

     JUDAH/JUDEA/JUDAEA/JEWS TO 70 CE

After Zedekiah's defeat in 586 BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was dissolved into a Babylonian province. King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire appointed Gedaliah as governor over the remaining impoverished peasants. However, Gedaliah was assassinated just a few years later, triggering a flight of refugees back to Egypt.  

1. Gedaliah: Appointed by King Nebuchadnezzar to administer the remnant of the Jewish population left in the land. He ruled from Mizpah until his assassination around 582 BCE by Ishmael, a member of the royal family. 

2. Ishmael ben Nethaniah: Briefly usurped local control after assassinating Gedaliah, plunging the region into further chaos before fleeing to the Ammonites. 

3. Nebuchadnezzar II: The Babylonian King who conquered Jerusalem, burned Solomon's Temple, and initiated the Babylonian exile. He held supreme imperial authority over the territory of Judah. 

4. The Achaemenid Empire: Following the fall of the Babylonian empire, the region passed into Persian (Iran) control in 539 BCE under Cyrus the Great, who eventually allowed exiled Jews to return and govern themselves under Persian oversight. Cyrus was a good ruler, and today is the one ruler that both the youth of Iran and Israel share as a great leader. So, almost half of the Israelites who came to Canaan in the first place were living in the Jerusalem area when the Romans attacked Jerusalem in 70 CE.  

After Cyrus the Great, the Israelites (Jews) were primarily ruled by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. They functioned as an autonomous province (Yehud) under a succession of Persian kings before falling to Greek and Roman conquerors over the following centuries.

       GREEK AND ROMAN CONQUERORS

Judah was always the largest in population, coming into Canaan with 76,500 men.  Evidently the 2 census's taken by Moses were only counting the men, who would have to defend the group as they moved along to Canaan from Egypt.  Simeon only arrived with 22,200.  The sequential progression of empires and rulers over the Israelites includes:

• The Persian Period (539–332 BCE): The returned exiles were governed directly by the Persian royal court, notably Darius the Great (who oversaw the completion of the Second Temple), Xerxes I (the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther), and Artaxerxes I (who authorized the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls). Local leadership was often managed by Jewish high priests and appointed governors, such as Zerubbabel. 
• The Hellenistic Period (332–167 BCE): Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the land of Israel fell under Greek rule. Upon Alexander's death, control of the region was contested by his generals, shifting between the Ptolemaic Kingdom (based in Egypt) and the Seleucid Empire (based in Syria). 
• The Hasmonean Dynasty (142–63 BCE): Led by the Maccabees, the Jewish people successfully revolted against Seleucid religious oppression, securing a period of Jewish self-rule and independence under the Hasmonean kings. 
• The Roman Period (63 BCE onwards): The Hasmonean kingdom was eventually annexed by the Roman Republic under Pompey the Great. The Romans ruled the area directly through governors and client kings, like Herod the Great, leading up to the First Jewish-Roman War and the destruction of the Temple. 
•         FATE of the 10 NORTHERN TRIBES

In the meantime, we have these 10 other northern tribes left in the hands of Jeroboam (933-912 BCE) of a leading tribe of Ephraim, (32,500)  who had had the job of superintendent of forced labor who had been working on building the Temple.  That's why the states split away.  They had enough of the forced free labor.  Solomon, usually a most fair of judges, had been in a panic to get the job done before he died.  He was not a well man, who hid it well.  

The Division: Jeroboam, a former overseer under Solomon, returned from exile in Egypt to lead the revolt of the 10 tribes (Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and Manasseh). 

Political & Religious Strategy: Fearing that his subjects would travel to Jerusalem (in the southern Kingdom of Judah) for religious festivals and eventually pledge loyalty to the Davidic dynasty, Jeroboam established rival cultic centers like the people they surrounded themselves with, Aram and Ammon. He set up golden calves in the cities of Bethel and Dan, declaring them also to be the gods of Israel, and appointed non-Levite priests. This was worse than saying oy vey!  Why did he go so far, a 180 degree turn-around???

Reign: His 22-year reign was marked by ongoing warfare with the southern kingdom of Judah. His dynasty ended shortly after his death when his son , King Nadab (913-911 BCE)  was assassinated in one report;  killed while fighting the Philistines in another who said that Baasha, his rival, murdered him; (I Kings 15-25)and Jeroboam's entire family line was wiped out. 

Archaeology: Excavations at Tel Dan have unearthed remains of the cultic shrines and high places that match the biblical accounts of Jeroboam's rule. 

Fate of the 10 Northern Tribes

• Continuous Idolatry & Instability: Following Jeroboam I, the Kingdom of Israel experienced severe political instability, frequent assassinations, and continued worship of foreign gods. 
• The Assyrian Conquest (722 BCE): The northern kingdom was ultimately conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians implemented a forced deportation and resettlement policy, removing thousands of Israelites and scattering them across the Assyrian Empire (including modern-day Iraq and Syria).
• "Lost" Status: Because these northern tribes were dispersed and integrated into surrounding cultures over the centuries, the historical records of their independent existence ceased. They are popularly known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
•                    NORTH MEETS SOUTH-UNITE
• Southern Migration: Many refugees from the northern kingdom migrated south to Jerusalem to escape the Assyrian destruction. Therefore, remnants of the northern tribes likely survived and intermingled with the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, continuing their identity into the Second Temple period.  
• The Second Temple period (516 BCE to 70 CE) was a transformative era of Israelite history defined by the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple, profound religious development, and successive foreign conquests. It ended catastrophically when the Romans destroyed the Temple during the First Jewish-Roman War in 70 CE. 
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  Following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jews faced massacres, enslavement, and displacement. Without a sacred center, Judaism transformed: sacrificial Temple rituals ended, and the surviving Pharisees shifted the faith to Second Temple period Torah study and communal prayer, cementing Rabbinic Judaism.
• After the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people adapted to survive the loss of their central holy site. They transitioned from a Temple-based, sacrificial religion to Rabbinic Judaism—focusing on Torah study, communal prayer, and synagogues—while many faced forced displacement from their homeland.
• Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Romans did not completely expel the Jewish population, but heavily displaced them through slavery, execution, and regional bans. While many were sold into slavery and sent across the Empire, surviving communities remained in their ancestral lands, while others fled to established diaspora centers.
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