- Homeless, for people who know what that feels like,
it's a frightening word.
To be wandering, impoverished,
and subject to the whims of others,
without security or a clear picture of the future.
500 years after returning to their ancestral home,
the Jewish people faced the prospect
of being homeless, threatened with exile.
The risk was always there, if you were looking for it.
Since the death of King Solomon,
two Jewish kingdoms had lived side-by-side,
Israel in the north, and Judah in the south.
They were a divided people.
There were lots of ups and downs in this period.
And, although the Jewish people had some good times,
economically, spiritually, militarily,
they were often unfaithful to their God,
and they lived in a tough neighborhood.
Here, we'll be focusing on a period of about 150 years,
beginning in the late eighth century BCE.
It was the beginning of the end
for the Jews' first experience
in living as an independent nation.
The two kingdoms would eventually fall prey
to the territorial ambitions of the big regional powers.
The Jewish prophets had warned their kings
to trust in God alone and follow God's law,
but the rulers often relied on political alliances
as a defense strategy and disregarded the Bible.
The people were also often reluctant
to listen to the prophets,
who urged them to repent for their wayward behavior.
By the early sixth century BCE,
both regimes would lie in ruins
and the Jews would no longer have sovereignty
in the land of Israel.
In the ninth century BCE,
the Middle East was dominated by the Neo-Assyrian empire.
From what is now Iraq,
the Assyrians conquered vast amounts of territory,
including Babylon and Persia.
They also forced many other peoples,
including the Israelites, to pay them tribute.
The Assyrian army was feared by its neighbors,
it boasted of its brutality
and was the first to use iron weapons.
The Assyrians also introduced a policy
of mass deportations in the lands that they conquered.
They took the best and the brightest among their enemies
and relocated them across their vast empire,
forcing foreigners to assimilate into new populations
and eventually lose their national identities.
This strategy ensured that the conquered peoples
would never reassemble and rise up in rebellion.
In 735 BCE, Israel and its neighbor, Aram-Damascus,
decided to stop paying tribute
and fight together against Assyrian domination.
When the Kingdom of Judah refused to help the effort,
the king of Israel launched a devastating attack on them,
seeking to depose the Judean king Ahaz.
Thousands of Judean troops and officials
were consequently killed
in what has become known as the Syro-Efraimite War.
Ahaz grew desperate, but the prophet Isaiah assured him
that Israel's invasion would fail,
and God would provide a sign for Judah's survival.
Isaiah famously told Ahaz that a young pregnant woman
would give birth to a son that she'd call Immanuel,
and before the boy was old enough to know the difference
between good and evil,
the threat from Israel and Aram would disappear.
Well, Ahaz didn't listen to God's prophet.
Instead, he decided to appeal to the Assyrian king,
Tiglath-Pileser III, for protection
against his fellow Jews up north.
Assyria intervened and saved Judah from Israel,
but it will all end badly for both Jewish kingdoms.
The immediate and most dramatic result of this conflict
was that Assyria conquered the northern part of Israel,
i.e. the kingdom of Israel,
and made it an Assyrian province.
10 years later, another Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V,
besieged Samaria, the capital of Israel, for three years.
When he died suddenly, his brother Sargon II
finished the job and captured the city in 722 BCE.
In the end, the northern kingdom of Israel,
home to 10 of the 12 tribes,
was destroyed after 200 years as an independent kingdom.
According to King Sargon's own account,
he had deported more than 27,000 Israelites
from the northern kingdom
and scattered them throughout his empire.
The Assyrians, in turn, repopulated the area
with other peoples from their empire,
who became known as Samaritans,
as in "The Good Samaritan" story from the Christian Bible
that throws some shade at the Jews.
The exile of the northern kingdom was a cataclysmic event,
and it caused the first Jewish Diaspora.
It also created the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel,
since they were now scattered,
and in subsequent generations, they would disappear.
What happened to the descendants of Jews
whose ancestors lived in the northern Kingdom of Israel?
Over the years, people have unsuccessfully tried
to identify them among the Native Americans
and in places as far-flung as India,
China, Ethiopia, and Southern Africa.
Of course, time wasn't standing still
in the Kingdom of Judah,
and the Judeans weren't immune to the politics
and the military dangers of the times.
What happened to Judah?
It had survived, for the time being.
With Israel and Aram gone,
Judah was now the most important state
between Egypt to the south and Assyria to the north.
But, it immediately became a vassal of Assyria
and was forced to pay an annual tribute.
Yet, Ahaz's political skills couldn't hide the fact
that he had been a wicked king in Judah.
After the Syro-Efraimite War,
he swore allegiance to Assyria's gods,
as well as its leaders.
He copied their rituals
and even offered up his own son by fire
to the pagan god Moloch,
a likely allusion to the practice of child sacrifice,
which was common in antiquity.
Throughout his reign,
Ahaz essentially revealed himself to be an opportunist
whose actions degraded the character of his nation.
Ahaz died at 36, around the year 720 BCE,
and his son Hezekiah took over as king.
The contrast between the two could not have been greater.
Hezekiah shut down the forbidden private altars,
made renovations to the temple,
and removed the pagan elements
that his father had introduced.
He re-instituted daily offerings
and the pilgrimage festivals,
and he held a special Passover celebration
to restore ardent worship to the one true God
and denounce the people's idolatrous practices.
In short, he purified Jewish practice
and elevated the spiritual state of the people.
Sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree!
Well, with this kind of resumé,
it won't surprise you to hear
that Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah got along nicely.
In fact, Isaiah was something of a life coach to the king,
always reminding him to stay true to God and the Bible,
advising him on tricky political situations,
and lifting his spirits when the going got tough.
Toward the end of the eighth century BCE,
Judah was in danger of being annihilated by Assyria.
To defend Jerusalem from attack, Hezekiah built towers
and a broad defensive wall around the city.
One of Hezekiah's most ingenious projects, however,
was the construction of an 1,800 foot aqueduct
that transported water beneath the city of Jerusalem.
In the event of a long siege,
this tunnel could carefully conceal
an ample supply of water from the enemy,
as it flowed in from the Gihon spring
right outside the city wall.
Hezekiah also forged military alliances
to protect his kingdom
because he didn't want to see what happened in Israel
also occur in Judah.
He was determined to stand with God
and also take practical measures to keep his country safe,
it's here when his record gets a little complicated.
In 705 BCE, the Assyrian king Sargon II died,
and his son Sennacheriv became king.
Hezekiah participated in a rebellion,
together with the Babylonians and Egyptians,
to resist the Assyrian domination.
But the prophet Isaiah indicated that at that time,
relying on national alliances
was incompatible with relying on God.
Self-defense was one thing,
but to think that Egypt or Babylon would rescue Judah
from the Assyrian enemy, that was a step too far.
Well, the Assyrians made quick work of Babylon,
and in 703 BCE,
Sennacheriv turned his attention to the West.
His army captured all of the fortified cities of Judah.
It now stood in Lachish,
a major town only 40 miles or so from Jerusalem.
Hezekiah was desperate.
He even offered to pay the Assyrian king
to spare what remained of his battered country.
Hezekiah then took silver and gold from the temple
to satisfy the Assyrian demands.
But far from appeasing Sennacheriv,
the payment only emboldened him
to order his army to demand unconditional surrender
from the outskirts of Jerusalem.
In one of the most dramatic speeches recorded in the Bible,
Sennacheriv's spokesman, Rav-Shakeh,
addressed the Jews assembled there, threatening them,
and mocking their king, their reliance on their God,
and their alliance with Egypt.
After hearing this speech, Hezekiah consulted with Isaiah
who urged him not to give up,
for the Assyrian army would miraculously depart
without even attacking Jerusalem.
What happened next is somewhat mysterious,
all agree that the Assyrians
did in fact leave Jerusalem alone
and return to their own land.
The Bible records that many thousands of Assyrian soldiers
died that night.
The Bible has attributed this to a plague.
The Bible also suggests that the Assyrians
could have been distracted by a rumor
of a possible battle to fight elsewhere.
What we can say is that Judah was spared
under unlikely circumstances.
Somehow, Judah had survived another crisis
and still remained an independent nation.
Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, succeeded his throne
and is known as one of the most wicked kings of Judah.
He not only brought back paganism and child sacrifice
but also ended up offending the Assyrians,
leading to his arrest.
Manasseh's son Amon reigned for only two years,
until he placed statues
to the Assyrian sun-god in the temple
and was murdered by his own officials.
As if to symbolize how desperate things had become,
Amon's son Josiah took over at the ripe old age of eight.
But it was best not to delay,
Josiah would eventually be known
as the most righteous Judean king.
He repaired the temple, abolished human sacrifice,
and destroyed the pagan altars and idols
that his grandfather and father had set up.
In short, Josiah followed in the righteous footsteps
of his great-grandfather, Hezekiah.
During Josiah's reign, as Babylon began to displace Assyria
as the dominant power in the Near East,
a Jewish female prophetess named Huldah
had warned Josiah that Jerusalem would be destroyed by God
because of its wickedness.
After Josiah's death, Judah became a vassal of Egypt
and paid large sums of tribute to them.
By 605 BCE, the Babylonian army under King Nebuchadnezzar
had conquered all of western Asia down to Gaza.
And again, Judah was under threat.
Its king, Jehoiakim, paid a special tribute
to the Babylonians, which included items from the Temple.
In 598 BCE, after Jehoiakim had switched his loyalties
from Babylon to Egypt, a bad move,
Nebuchadnezzar once again went on the attack against Judah,
and Jehoiakim, and his family
were taken to Babylon and imprisoned.
Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem for a second time
and looted the Temple.
He also made Jehoiakim's younger brother, Zedekiah
the new king of Judah.
And after playing nice with the Babylonians for a few years,
paying them tribute, Zedekiah rebelled.
By this point you won't be surprised to hear
that Jeremiah's recommendation was,
yup, again, no resistance.
But this time, the king listened to the prophet,
he abandoned the rebellion
and reassured Babylon's forces of his loyalty.
The last 150 years of the First Temple period
were filled with tragic episodes
that had wide-ranging impacts.
It was a time highlighted by a series of rulers
who were not faithful to God's commandments.
As a result, there was often friction
between these kings and God's prophets
over the direction of the Jewish people
and their independent nation.
In the eighth century BCE,
the Assyrian conquest of Israel's northern kingdom
caused the first Jewish diaspora.
The 10 Lost Tribes have never been positively identified,
but we are left with the promise that in messianic times,
they will return to live in Israel with the Jewish people.
The Babylonian invasion of Judah in the sixth century BCE
brought destruction and displacement
that left all of the Jewish people homeless.
And although the exile of Judah ended after 70 years,
most of the Jews chose not to return to the land of Israel.
We now commemorate the siege and destruction of the Temple
and associated events with fast days on the Jewish calendar.
The ninth day of the month of Av marks the date
when both the first and second temples
are said to be destroyed, as well as other calamities,
such as the Romans' capture
of the town of Beth Tor in the second century,
and the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290,
and Spain in 1492.
Tisha b'Av, as it is called, is the saddest day of the year.
In addition to fasting,
the Jewish people traditionally spend this time
reflecting upon their deeds
and reciting special poems
called Kinot or dirges in the synagogue.
In Israel, people throng to the place where it all happened,
the Western Wall that once stood
at the center of Jewish religious and national life
before the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
If you like this video,
make sure to check out other ones that we made.