At that point, the reign of the Omri Dynasty, which ruled from 879 to
843, reinvigorated the Northern Kingdom. The strength of this dynasty is
attested to by the fact that Assyrian documents referred to the Northern
Kingdom as “House of Omri” long after the fall of this dynasty. The political
stability achieved by this dynasty resulted from a decidedly accommodation-
ist policy. Omri married his son Ahab to Jezebel, daughter of Ittobaal, king of
Tyre, allowing the Northern Kingdom to form a strong alliance against its
principal threat, the Kingdom of Damascus. Ahab, after defeating Damascus,
made an alliance with its king.
This alliance, however, came at a price: his consort Jezebel’s campaign
against Yahwism. While there had always been Israelite constituencies who
had worshiped Ba’al, Jezebel carried this trend a step further by actively per-
secuting anyone who worshiped Yahweh. The struggle between Ba’alism and
Jahwism spilled over into Judah. Jehosephat’s daughter in-law Athaliah, who
usurped throne when Jehosephat’s son was killed, introduced Ba’al worship
into Jerusalem.
The spread of Ba’al worship is the background for the prophetic careers of
Elijah and Elisha. Like the prophet Nathan, Elijah and Elisha provided a
check on royal authority and policy. Elijah, after predicting the death of Ahab
and Jezebel at the hands of his enemies, challenged the primacy of Ba’alist
priests in a dramatic ritual duel on the top of Mount Carmel in the presence
of a large Israelite mob. After defeating the Ba’alist priests, Elijah incited the
crowd to stone them to death, thus dealing a major blow to the royal support
of Ba’al worship. Several years later, Elisha incited Jehu’s bloody coup d’état
that ended the reign of the Omri Dynasty.
Following Jehu’s ascension in 843, the political-religious situation
inverted. By ridding the Northern Kingdom of the Tyrian Ba’al, Jehu effec-
tively ended the kingdom’s alliances with its neighbors. The purge of the
Omri Dynasty also eliminated most of the capable leadership. Thus, the lat-
ter half of the ninth dynasty was a period of religious reform but international
decline from which the Northern Kingdom would never fully recover.
Despite a brief period of resurgence under Jehoash after 800, the Northern
Kingdom was significantly weakened when it encountered the threat of
Assyria during the eighth century.
This was the background to the classical period in biblical prophecy, which
lasted from the mid-eighth through the mid-sixth century. Biblical prophets,
it should be noted, were not fortune-tellers, but purveyors of what were
believed to be messages of divine origin. Prophets were the most intuitive
social critics of their age, recognizing before anyone else, among other things,
the growing threat of Assyria in the eighth century and, in the case of
Jeremiah, Babylonia at the end of the seventh century. Since they often laid
bare the popular misapprehensions of the present – predicting impending
doom in times of prosperity, and redemption and hope in times of adversity –
18 The world of the Hebrew Bible