We left the children of Israel wandering in the desert (would have been around 1,200 BCE), making their way to the Promised Land, the land Yahweh is “giving” them (always read the fine print, “giving” meant, “go in and conquer and I’ll be there to help”).
Moses does a second rock trick to get water for the people but this time not in a way Yahweh approves, so Yahweh says, Bud, you can look at Canaan from the top of a mountain but you ain’t a’gittin’ in. A reminder of who actually holds the power, I guess. Confusing story. More here.
(Brief digression: note what will be an ongoing theme — Yahweh’s people thinking they don’t really need Yahweh and, like petulant four-year-olds saying, “No, we can do it ourselves, we want to do it our way!”1 Of course, four-year-olds are developmentally and necessarily adorable little self-absorbed narcissists who know barely a tenth of an ounce of what they’ll eventually need to know and who are not fond of accountability. Fair comparison? You decide.)
Joshua takes over for Moses and leads the people into Canaan, there are bloody skirmishes and battles, a successful conquest.2 Okay, now we have a nomadic people settling in and becoming farmers, and you may recall sometimes the other inhabitants’ gods looked pretty tempting. Like, if the occasional orgy or child sacrifice is followed by badly-needed rain, well, I mean, what are we supposed to think? Ongoing issue.
Now, the twelve tribes organize themselves into what’s called an amphictyony or an agreement of loosely affiliated groups that center around defending each other and are held together by their religious belief. This was the time of “judges” (around 1,000 BCE) who were more heroes and leaders than how we think of actual judges in courts of law, but wisdom and discernment were definitely factored in as necessary qualities.
This was also the time of the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, so think about the new technologies that arose, in particular with regard to agriculture and warfare. (You might also take a moment and consider how new technologies historically drive development in cultures. Uh, AI, anyone? We’ll see where that goes. But I digress.)
Okay, there came a time when the people pestered God for a king, which initially God did not seem to prefer, remembering the whole Golden Calf incident,3 but “the other nations have kings, why can’t we have one” so along comes the judge/prophet Samuel who anoints the 1st king, Saul. Over the generations there come a succession of kings and rulers, during which time the people of Israel split up in a not very amicable divorce (around 930 BCE). The northern kingdom became Israel (10 of the 12 tribes) and the southern kingdom became Judah (the tribes of Judah and Benjamin).
The histories of both are in I and II Kings as well as I and II Chronicles — same basic history, different traditions, so a little like a family saga and the cousins who moved across the country respond with “well, we see it a little differently, so here’s how we tell the story.”
Big picture, Israel gets a worse overall review than Judah, but still, it’s not great for either kingdom — both have turned away from Yahweh and what Yahweh requires by:
Worshiping other gods.
Greed and the lust for power bringing heavy taxes to fund lavish lifestyles for those at the top
Ignoring the poor and downtrodden
Profound corruption in their systems instead of justice
Some prophets had been sent to announce the coming judgment, that greed and injustice put both Israel and Judah on trajectories of destruction, unless they changed their sinnin’ ways. In the end, their warnings go unheeded and their dire predictions come to pass.
Around 720 BCE Big Bad Assyria conquers and destroys Israel. In 587 BCE the Babylonians destroy the temple Solomon had built and burn and demolish Jerusalem. Into the despair of exile and the loss of their identity and homeland arrive new prophets who bring messages of the promise of restoration and hope.
More history next week.
I am now going to briefly eulogize my Old Testament seminary professor, Dr. Ron Hals, who also happened to be my Hebrew instructor as well as academic advisor, and one of the most genuine people you could ever hope to meet. He shopped at Goodwill (his neon, outdated dagger-collared polyester shirts were wondrous to behold) and happily lived with his wife in a double-wide trailer, because that way they had more to give to support ministries to the poor. His favorite comedian was Lenny Bruce, and he loved to start class with a groaner of a joke. And about halfway through the semester, when we’d been slogging through the regular cycles of the children of Israel refusing to listen to God, doing things their way, getting royally trounced, and then crying out to God in their affliction, Ron Hals showed up to class wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, and in the middle of his lecture he turned his back to us, unbuttoned his shirt, turned back around and flashed the t-shirt he wore underneath that read: DO IT YAHWEH. For this, Dr. Hals received a standing ovation from our class of 35 dazzled students. RIP to a freaking legend.
I mean, not really, there were likely ongoing skirmishes and land lost, land gained, land lost again, rinse, repeat. But the official story of course is one of glory. Remember “the intention of the material.” It’s not a textbook. It’s a compilation of stories about people of faith for people of faith to say, “This is how we got to be who we are and this is Who we worship.”
Remember, YHWH, whose name cannot be spoken but only breathed, is not a visible god like all the others. YHWH is beyond physicality. Yet God’s people struggle putting all their faith in what they cannot see, touch, hold.