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. 
• 
  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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Northern Tribal Areas of Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                                                                     

                               Jacob and 1st wife Leah were parents of : Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah
                             Issachar, Jebulun and daughter, Dinah.
                              Jacob and 2nd wife, Rachel were parents of Joseph and Benjamin.
                              Jacob and Leah's handmaiden, Zilpah were parents of Gad and Asher.
                              Jacob and Rachel's handmaiden, Bilhah were parents of Dan and Naphtali.
                              Jacob, Leah and Rachel were 1st cousins.

     Leah and Rachel were sisters born in Aram.  Laben and his wife Adinahand were their parents.  Laben's father was Bethuel.
                        Bethuel's 2 children were Rebekah and Isaac.  Isaac was the father of Jacob.
                 
 Therefore, Jacob's uncle was Laben, and he had to work for 7 years to receive Rachel, his love, for his wife, but was tricked into marrying the older sister, Leah, first.  Then he had to work for
another 7 years to receive Rachel in marriage.
                                                                   

Tribal changes a little later  : under Joshua        

       10 tribes of Jacob (Israel) were attacked and taken from their homeland in 721 BCE by the Assyrians.  They were the northern tribes.  They evidently made their way eventually to today's Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India.
                                                                   

Judah taken by Babylonians 

 Judah and some of Benjamin were in the south, with Judah being the largest of all 12.  They were left, only to be taken away about 200 years later by the Babylonians to Babylon.  
                                                                           

Israel had left the union with Judah after King Solomon had died  in 920 BCE.  Judah's capital remained Jerusalem. 

 Israel took  Samaria as their capital in 890 BCE.   The northern tribes were led by the tribe, Ephraim.  Most of their future kings came from Ephraim.  The tribes with them were:
Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher, Dan; and in the other side of the Jordan River lived Reuben, Gad, and part of Manasseh.  Their kingdom was much larger than Judah.  They had greater wealth and political importance.  Israel, standing alone this way, was born into violence and was in the state of constant revolution.  After King Solomon had died, they followed Jeroboam as king who was not the son of Solomon but one of his important men, the superintendant of forced labor.  He had led the revolt against the burden imposed on the people by the king.  He led the northern tribes and met with King Rehoboam, Solomon's son and heir.  They demanded changes in taxation and forced labor.  Rehoboam would not give in.  Israel declared their independence and broke away from Judah.  They then took Shechem as their 1st capital.  .  He was from the tribe of Ephraim.  

For these 210 years Israel had 19 kings that were part of 9 different dynasties.  The prophets Elijah and Elisha worked hard to check idolatry and social injustice with them.  Their last king was Hoshea from 730 to 721 BCE when the Assyrians attacked and ended it all.  
                                                     

The land lay for 2,000 years and turned into weeds and sand, swamps and mosquitoes,  and was called Palestine by the Romans to attacked Judah and burned down Jerusalem in 70 CE. Nobody lived there.  Bedouins rode camels through the land.  World War I in 1914 changed everything.  Jews, for the Judeans were called that, were promised to have a Jewish Homeland after 2,000 years of being homeless and suffering from anti-Semitism.  
                                                

The British then gave away 80% of the land to a Saudi Arabian prince and it is Jordan today.  

                                                                           

                                                   
On May 14, 1948, Israel was again born. It is our Jewish Homeland. The UN had decided to give half of our 20% to the Palestinian Arabs including Jerusalem, taking it away from the Jews!  By 1949 and the War of Independence that started in 1947, we got back Jerusalem.  The purple section is Jewish Israel.
                                                             

Israel has been attacked many times:  1948, 1956, 1967-a big war, 1972, and then in 1982, and lots of fights in between.  America's past president Obama wanted Israel to back to the pre-1967 War Armistice Lines, and Prime Minister Netanyahu explained that it is impossible to defend with those lines today.  

                                                      

Today's Israel looks like this: Our Israel is cut up and not very large.  Jordan named Judea and Samaria the West Bank.  The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza govern themselves.  
                                                          

You can see how small Israel is.  It's about the size of New Jersey, USA, one of the smallest states of the 50.  
                                                    
                                                        

Israel's Civil War,Ceding From the Family Union:

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                          So, it all started with King Solomon.

King Solomon, son of King David and Bathsheba
and from the tribe of Judah
Reigned from 961 BCE to 920 BCE
Known for building the first Temple in Jerusalem
and his wisdom in judging people's problems
He was known to have 1,000 wives and concubines.
His kingdom stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates River.
However, his forced labor policy impoverished the country.
Edomites and Arameans began to revolt.  

                                                        

Solomon deciding on who the mother of a child was of 2 women

The problem started with King Solomon's death in 920 BCE.  He had been taxing all the 12 tribes heavily in building the Temple.  His  superintendant of forced labor during Solomon's reign, Jeroboam, an Ephraimite,  succeeded him as king of Israel ruling from 933 to 912 BCE. 

Joseph wasn't given any tribal land.  Instead, his allotment went to his 2 sons.  His first son was Manasseh. the other-Ephriam.
Jacob, Joseph's father, had conferred on them an equal portion along with his own 11 other sons in the division of Canaan.  . Jacob also blessed Ephraim over his older brother (Genesis 48:20).Joseph had been kidnapped earlier and wound up in Egypt as the Viceroy with important duties.  

 He had led a northern tribe  revolt and had left to be in Egypt.  He returned when Solomon had died, leading  a delegation of the northern 10 tribes  demanding changes in forced labor.  This was refused  by Solomon's son, King Rehoboam and the northern tribes declared a ceding from the union.  Since this important meeting was in Shechem, Shechem became their capital. 
                                                        ,

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem with the help of the king of Tyre

 The tribe of Judah had been fighting with the others over this so had their own king being Solomon's son, Rehoboam.   His mother was Naamah, an Ammonite,  Rehoboam was king  from 933 to 917 BCE.   Judah, Simeon  and most of Benjamin remained loyal to him and back him in his refusal to let up on the taxation Solomon had put in place, even though the the northern tribes had demanded relief from it.  Then  King Shishak of Egypt (originally of Libya) took advantage of the split and overran Judah and plundered the Temple for riches in Rehoboam's 5th year as a king.  When Jeroboam had fled to Egypt, he had stayed with Shishak!  
                                                            

Ethiopian Jewish immigrants on the last flight to Israel

Assyria attacked the 12 tribes in 722 BCE and the next year in 721 BCE, taking away the best of the people.  From Eldad Hadani who reported their history, the tribe of Dan that lived along the coast, was a strong warrior tribe that went into voluntary exile when the Israelite kingdom was divided after Solomon's death because they didn't want to participate in the imminent civil war between the Kingdoms of Judah and the Kingdoms of Israel.  He was right.  A war was waged later, and according to the report we read in Chronicles 13, half a million people were killed.  Dan had migrated from Israel to Egypt and continued along the Nile to Ethiopia.  This tradition has been supported by the great Sages down the ages.  Today Israel has taken in Ethiopians as citizens who have claim to be Jewish.  The Radbaz, a past sage, wrote "Those who come from the land of Ethiopia are certainly from the tribe of Dan, and because there were no sages and Cabbalists among them they only followed the written law of Moses.  Rabbi Jacob Kastro, the Maharikas, wrote, "We are commanded to redeem and restore the Ethiopian Jews, although they behave like the Karaites, because they are of the Dan tribes and didn't learn from Zadok and Boethus."  As for DNA, the Ethiopians do not show a connection to others, but their culture does.  Perhaps DNA doesn't show ancient DNA at the time of their testing for comparisons with today.  Give it time.  It will.  However, the rabbis have concluded according to reliable evidence and testimonies that the Ethiopian Jews do come from the tribe of Dan and in light of this halakhic tradition agreed with by the Chief Rabbi of Israel the Jews of Ethiopia have already begun to immigrate to Israel.  By 2012, their numbers in Israel are estimated at some 80,000 which does include converts to Christianity who are called the Falashmura.  Most have already reached Israel and have become Israeli citizens.  The Amishav Organization has information about them, but many other organization have been involved in bringing them to Israel.  They were facing dangerous times being persecuted for their religion by the surrounding peoples.  

King Saul was Israel's first king and was a Benjamite.  After the brief period of the united kingdom of Israel, Benjamin became part of the southern kingdom of Judah following the split into two kingdoms.  After the destruction of the northern kingdom, Benjamin was absorbed into the southern kingdom. When the southern kingdom was destroyed in the early sixth century BCE by the Babylonians,  Benjamin as an organized tribe faded from history.  But DNA remains.  Pashtuns claim to be from the tribe of Benjamin and from King Saul's grandson, Afghani.  
                                                     

Bnei Menashe community of northeastern India is returning to Israel.  These

belong to the Tribe of Manasseh who had been dispersed from Israel by the Assyrians some 2700 years ago.

The tribe of Manasseh was made up of a half of a tribe and were carried away by Pul, King of Assyria and Tiglath-Pilneser, also king of Assyria along with the Reubenites and the Gadits and brought them to Halah, Habor and Hara, and to the river Gozan.  (This is found in 1 Chronicles, 5:23-26.)

As for Manasseh,  several modern day groups claim descent, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support. The Samaritans claim that some of their adherents are descended from this tribe. Further afield, in northeast India, the Kuki-Chin-Mizo Jews claim descent from Manasseh, and call themselves Bnei Menashe; in 2005 Shlomo Amar, Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, announced that he regarded this claim to be true, which under the Law of Return allows them to emigrate to Israel, as long as they formally convert to Judaism in accordance with halachic standards.

The Reubenites were one of three tribes (Gad, East Manasseh) occupying land east of the Jordan River. These three tribes became known as the Transjordan Tribes.

The tribe of Reuben, as well as those of Gad and East Manasseh, were known for their large herds and flocks. They, thus, required much grazing land. Did they find the same sort of place to live in Afghanistan or Pakistan?  

                                                         

Descended from the Tribe of Dan 2,739 years ago
at least when Assyrians attacked our Northern Tribes
They have been living in Ethiopia

I had the amazing experience of seeing the Ethiopian Jews in Israel as they lived across the street from my apartment in Safed.  They came in being quite ill and were taken to the hospital for treatment before living in the apartments.  Now, Safed is in the North, and it is cold in the wintertime.  Of course, this would happen that people from Africa would be placed in the colder northern part of Israel. As it turned out, this was the place where there were empty apartments.   They came dressed in sheets and were barefooted.  The community of Safed opened an empty apartment and turned it into a clothing shop so the new arrivals could pick and choose clothing themselves.  Soon, they were acting just like the rest of Israelis in the supermarket.  There was an art exhibit of their work in a center that I remember.  Such beautiful people, I remember, with a delicate bone structure and beautiful faces.  
                                                                       

Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi in Jerusalem, a Pashto.
Behind him is the Wall, the Kotel where Jews say prayers
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217356628/last-flight-of-ethiopia-to-israel-jewish-migration-program
Book:  The Tribes of Israel-The Lost and the Dispersed, by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, from Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Manasseh
http://navrasaafreedi.blogspot.com/2010/01/pashtun-clue-to-lost-tribes-of-israel.html