of the Israelite religion. Later, rabbinic tradition would echo this dissent, not-
ing that, despite having hundreds of wives, Solomon was blessed with only a
single child (this claim ignores the obvious biological difficulty of trying to
impregnate several hundred wives concurrently), a divine punishment for
marrying outside the faith.
Yet perhaps the most lethal source of discontent was the political implica-
tions of Solomon’s policies. In order to tax the populace more efficiently,
Solomon reorganized his kingdoms along newly defined administrative lines
that cut across tribal divisions, thus blurring the premonarchic identity and
autonomy of the tribes. This gave the impression of refashioning the confed-
eration into a Greater Judah. This dissent was couched in religious terms –
that is, blurring the tribal lines violated the divinely ordained allotment of
land to each tribe described at the end of the Book of Joshua. This would
prove fatally divisive after Solomon’s death.
During his reign, however, his personal charisma, like that of his father,
held discontent and tensions in check. Indeed, if one measures a golden age as
a combination of political strength, economic prosperity, and cultural flour-
ishing, one could see the eighty-year tenure of the United Monarchy as a
golden age. The territorial expansion of the kingdom through the subjuga-
tion of every neighboring tribe under David, coupled with the expansion of
trade and the emergence of the Wisdom School under Solomon, warrant such
a description.
The United Monarchy’s fundamental weakness was its underlying organi-
zation. Judah, the other tribes, and the other territories of the monarchy were
held together by a common allegiance to David and Solomon. In the mid-
920s, Damascus revolted against Solomon, though he was able to suppress
the revolt. The growing tensions between Judah and the rest of the tribes
came to a head when Jeroboam, a royal official from one of the northern
tribes, attempted to revolt against Solomon and was exiled to Egypt. The
willingness of Egypt to grant Jeroboam asylum was a blow against Solomon
and signaled the return of Egypt to a preeminent position in the region.
These tensions remained latent under Solomon, owing largely to his divinely
sanctioned and proverbially wise leadership and charismatic personality. The
question remained after Solomon’s death: what happens to such a monarchy
when the king lacks the prestige of David or Solomon?
The Divided Monarchy
The period of the Divided Monarchy spanned the division of Solomon’s king-
dom into Israel and Judah in 922 to the destruction of Israel in 722. Divided
politically, Israel and Judah remained largely undivided religiously and
culturally. Israelites in both kingdoms worshiped the same deity (with the
same synchretic and monolatrous posture), and continued to make pilgrim-
ages to the temple in Jerusalem.
The world of the Hebrew Bible 15