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From Monarchy to Return from Exile

#4c Overview Diagram
Part of the series on the Flow of OT History

From Monarchy to Return from Exile

UNITED KINGDOM
  1. King Saul - The people demanded for a king to lead them into battles like all the other nations (1 Sam. 8:4-5, 20). But this was ahead of God’s time. It was always in God’s plan for a king to govern the nation someday (Gen 17:6, 16, 35:11; 49:10). Nevertheless, God told the prophet Samuel to grant their request. Saul was chosen to be Israel’s first king but he was soon rejected because he disobeyed the commands of God (1 Sam 13:8-11; 15:22-23).
  2. King David - David was anointed as the next king by Samuel. In David, God found a man after His own heart (1 Sam. 16:7b; Acts 13:22). David had to wait approximately 15 years from the time he was first anointed to the time he became king over Judah (2 Sam. 2:4).

    David desired to build a temple for God but God turned the tables on David and told him that He would build a dynasty for David ... a perpetual reign of his descendants. God also told David that his son would build the temple (2 Sam. 7:12-16). Nevertheless, David made preparations by accumulating building materials for the building of the temple (1 Chron. 22:5).
  3. King Solomon - David’s son, Solomon built a magnificent temple and God showed his approval ... filling the temple with the glory of the LORD, in the form of a cloud (2 Chron. 7:1).

    Part of Solomon's diplomatic success with other nations had come through his marriages with foreign royalty. In all, he had 1,000 wives, many of them foreign. These wives led to his worship of foreign gods (1 Kgs. 11:1-3). 

DIVIDED KINGDOM - After Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam was made king in Judah (two tribes of Judah and Benjamin). But the remaining 10 tribes of Israel made Jeroboam their king.

Jeroboam set up a false system of worship involving golden calves, his own priests and an alternate feast. He became the prototype of an evil king and remembered as the king “who caused Israel to sin”; all the 19 kings of the northern kingdom were bad. The southern kingdom also had 19 kings and one queen; most were bad but a few did “what was right in the eyes of the LORD”.

EXILE - God sent prophets to both kingdoms, Israel and Judah to remind them of His law, and of what it meant. They also warned the kings and the people of the consequence of disobedience ... that God would send them out of the land. But the people would not listen; these prophets were not received with open hearts; they were persistently rejected and persecuted.

Just as God had warned, the northern kingdom of Israel was the first to be taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 721 BC (2 Kgs. 17:6). The people of the southern kingdom of Judah, who witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, were warned that they were not immune to God’s wrath and were, in fact, on the same road to destruction. But they would not listen. In 586 BC, Babylon attacked and destroyed Jerusalem; the king and the people except the poorest of the land were taken into captivity. Thus the northern kingdom of Judah came to its end!

RETURN FROM EXILE
  1. In 538 BC, King Cyrus of Persia issued a decree to allow the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. About 50,000 people returned under the leadership of Zerubbabel and the temple was dedicated 22 years later, in 516 BC.
  2. 57 years after the completion of the temple, a smaller group of about 2,000 returned under the leadership of Ezra. Ezra brought renewal to the first returnees who had assimilated with the heathen through intermarriage.  
  3. In the third return, Nehemiah challenged the people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. In spite of opposition, the walls were completed in 52 days! Even their enemies acknowledged that it could not be done without the help of God.
Your assignment, should you decide to accept it is to draw the above diagram and explain it to someone else who is not in the course. God bless you.

© April 2018 by Alan S.L. WONG