It was during the oversight of Israel’s last great judge, the prophet Samuel of the tribe of Levi, that the next great step in Israel’s national destiny occurred. Following the demands of the people that they should have a king just like the other nations about them, and with God’s agreement, Samuel anointed Saul of the tribe of Benjamin to be the first king of Israel, thereby making the nation a monarchy. It should be noted here that because of Jacob’s prophetic blessing of Judah, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, not a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come", Saul’s dynasty was never intended to be established permanently in Israel.

Once Saul had established himself as king, and Israel had accepted the new set-up, God, remembering His curse on Amalek, instructed king Saul through His prophet Samuel, to go forth with his army and utterly annihilate the seed of Amalek, grandson of Esau. It was because of his failure to carry out faithfully his God-given instructions that the LORD determined to replace Saul’s dynasty by that of David, the son of Jesse of the tribe of Judah.

Samuel at God’s instruction forthwith travelled to Bethlehem, David’ home town, and secretly anointed him to be king in the presence of his father Jesse and his seven brothers.

Because of David’s popularity with the people and his great prowess as a warrior, Saul became insanely jealous of the young man and in a fit of rage sought to kill him. Following this attempt on his life, David fled to the wilderness for safety, and on his way he called in at the tabernacle then located at Nob, and there obtained provisions from the high priest for himself and his small party. This event was witnessed by Doeg, an Edomite.

On receiving Doeg’s report on this matter, Saul in a fury of jealous rage, summoned the priests of the Lord to meet him, and on their arrival ordered his bodyguard to slaughter them on the spot. Because these Benjaminites feared God, they refused to obey their king and kill the LORD’s anointed priests. Saul then, so insane was he in his jealousy, turned to the alien Doeg and asked him to carry out this blasphemous deed against Almighty God. Doeg the Edomite willingly complied. Not only did he murder the priests standing before Saul, but he took himself and his gang of cut-throats off to Nod and there sought to wipe out everything that breathed. Had this nefarious plan succeeded in its entirety, God’s covenant relationship with Israel as laid sown at Mt Sinai would have been rendered null and void as there would have been no priests to service the required sacrifices associated with the tabernacle worship and the annual atonement of the nation. However, one member of the high priestly family, Abiathar, escaped and fled to David.

Again the fixed intent of Esau’s race to prevent Jacob’s descendants from enjoying the birthright promises was demonstrated in this attempt to destroy God’s appointed priesthood in Israel. This vengeful event occurred about 700 years after Esau came to hate his brother Jacob.

After reigning over Israel for forty years, Saul and his son Jonathon were slain in battle by the Philistines. In the confusion that followed the loss of their ruler, the tribe of Judah went its own way and crowned David as their king. Seven years later he became king of all the House of Israel and after conquering Jerusalem he established his court on Mount Zion. It then became David’s intention to build a most magnificent temple to the Lord, but this was not to be for God had reserved this task for one of David’s sons, yet to be born.

At this time, however, although the Lord God of Israel did not allow David to build him a house for his name, he did make certain wonderful unconditional promises to him as summarised in Table 8.

Table 8

GOD'S UNCONDITIONAL PROMISES TO KING DAVID

1. God would give Israel a new home i.e. not Canaan.

27th identification of Israel

2. God Himself would establish Israel in their new home.

28th identification of Israel

3. Israel would dwell in their own place, alone.

20th identification of Israel

 4. Israel as a nation would not move again.

29th identification of Israel

 5. Israel would not be afflicted (overrun) by the wicked, i.e. those not in covenant relationship with God. Israel would continue to be saved by the Lord.

18th identification of Israel

 6. David's dynasty would be established forever.

3rd Davidic throne promise

  7. David's kingdom, i.e. 12-tribed nation of Israel, would be established forever.

4th Davidic throne promise

  8. David's throne would be established forever.

5th Davidic throne promise

David’s reaction to these wondrous promises was to kneel in prayer before his God in humility and wonderment. He did recognise even at this awesome moment in time, however, that

                    1. Israel was to be God’s chosen people forever, and

                    2. God had in fact become the God of Israel.

King David ruled with wondrous success. He walked in God’s ways with a singleness of heart and the LORD blessed him in all his undertakings.

During his reign he overran Edom, and Esau’s seed became his servants as prophesied by Isaac as he blessed Esau.

Shortly before his death, David foiled an attempted coup by crowning Solomon king; and so Solomon sat on David’s throne, variously described as

                    1. The Throne of the Lord (1 Chronicles 29:23)

                    2. The Throne of the Kingdom of the Lord (1 Chronicles 28:5)

                    3. The Throne of the Kingdom (1 Kings 1:46), and

                    4. The Throne of David (1 Kings 2:12).

Solomon ruled over the whole House of Israel for forty years. Unfortunately he failed to obey God's "Rules for Kings of Israel", in particular rule 5 (Table 7), with the result that idolatry was introduced into the nation. God’s judgement on Solomon’s backsliding was to divide the nation of Israel into two parts, and this separation occurred upon his death.

Following King Solomon’s death, representatives of that part of the nation of Israel which had accepted David as their king seven years after the tribe of Judah, approached Rehoboam, Solomon’s son and heir apparent, with the request that he moderate his father’s excessive exploitation of the people. Rehoboam's refusal to accede to this request resulted in ten of the tribes revolting against the Davidic dynasty and setting up their own king, King Jeroboam; thus bringing to pass God’s judgement on Solomon as mentioned above. The nation of Israel was thereby divided into two separate kingdoms:

1. The House of Judah, also known as the Southern Kingdom, which was made up of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and part of the tribe of Levi. Jerusalem remained the capital of this portion of the nation, and descendants of king Solomon continued to reign over this section until Jerusalem was finally destroyed by the Chaldean, King Nebuchadnezzar.

2. The House of Israel, also known as the Northern Kingdom, which was made up of the tribes of Rueben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh and the rest of Levi. No permanent dynasty arose in this northern section of the House of Jacob and it was only after a considerable passage of time that Samaria was established as its capital.

Although some ambiguity may arise in the use of the phrase "The House of Israel" after this division of the nation, careful consideration of its context will eliminate any confusion. Two phrases which also occur in the Old Testament — "The House of Jacob" and "The Whole House of Israel" — without exception embrace all thirteen tribes.

Jeroboam, on being made king of the House of Israel, sought to strengthen his position against the Davidic kings by establishing centres of worship in his kingdom to discourage his subjects from going down to Jerusalem to worship the Lord God of Israel. Accordingly, he set up two golden calves and caused the people to worship them as the gods that brought Israel up out of Egypt (compare Exodus 32:4).

Because of this sin, God, through the prophet Ahijah, stated that the House of Israel would be removed from the promised land (Canaan) and scattered beyond the river (i.e. the River Euphrates).

Sometime later, Jehoram, after establishing himself as the seventh Davidic king, murdered his brothers and certain other princes of the realm to secure his accession. He also married the daughter of Queen Jezebel, the Zidonian (wife of Ahab, the then king of the House of Israel), who had led Israel into the idolatrous worship of Baal. As was Ahab, so too was Jehoram led into depraved idolatrous practices by their strong-willed wives. During his iniquitous reign, Edom revolted and cast off Judah’s yoke, yet again confirming Isaac’s blessing of Esau.

Amaziah, 10th Davidic king of Judah, went to war with Edom and won a notable victory. However, this foolish man brought the idols of this defeated nation back to Jerusalem and set them up as his own gods and worshipped them. He refused to hearken to the warning of the prophets of God and finally he was assassinated.

In the meantime, the Northern Kingdom was steadily declining. Not one of the kings of the Northern Kingdom walked in the ways of God with the inevitable result that, as Moses had warned so long ago, the Lord began to distress Israel by allowing their enemies to defeat them. During the reign of Jehu, 10th king of the Northern Kingdom, God began to allow the reduction of this kingdom to occur. King Hazael of Syria attacked the borders of the House of Israel, and in particular overran that part of the nation to the east of the River Jordan, i.e. the territory inhabited by the tribes of Gad, Rueben and half the tribe of Manasseh. These people had lived there since the time of Moses (Numbers 32:33), i.e. for over 600 years.

At this time in Israel’s history, Assyria had become the pre-eminent nation in that region, and King Pul, anxious to extend his empire, as was the wont of great conquerors, came up against the Northern kingdom. Menahem the 15th king of the House of Israel submitted to Pul as his lord and raised a levy to be paid to the Assyrians by taxing his own subjects.

During the reign of Ahaz, 13th king of the Davidic dynasty, the House of Judah was brought very low indeed. This man utterly rejected the God of Israel, shut up the temple and gave his heart over wholly to idol worship even to the extent of sacrificing some of his children as burnt offerings to his alien gods. Accordingly God, faithful to His promises, brought judgement upon him in that the king of Syria came down against the Southern Kingdom and removed a great multitude of the people (i.e. of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi) as captives to Damascus.

Again the King of Assyria (this time Tiglath-pileser, considered by some scholars to be the same person as Pul) invaded the House of Israel, and at this time took captive a section (mainly the tribe of Naphtali) to the land of Assyria.

Yet again Tiglath-pileser, King of Assyria, invaded the region near Israel and at that time he conquered the kingdom of Syria whose capital was Damascus. As was the custom of these invaders, they moved the conquered people to Assyria. It should be carefully noted that a large portion of these displaced persons would be from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi taken captive to Damascus by the Syrians during 737 B.C. (see above).

Finally with the coming of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, against Samaria in the year 676 B.C., the Northern Kingdom was finally overrun and its peoples were all carried away to the northern regions of Assyria. There is no further reference, it is claimed, to these Israelitish people in secular history, hence the term "The Lost Ten Tribes". In general, historians consider that these descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob intermarried with the others peoples round about and so eventually lost their identity.

Some twenty-odd years after some of the House of Israel had been taken captive into Assyria, Isaiah prophesied the remarkable promise; "No weapon that is formed against thee (the whole House of Israel) shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn"

In the 14th year of King Hezekiah’s reign, the Assyrian King Sennacherib invaded Judah and deported a large part of those people to Assyria. However, when he sought to capture Jerusalem, God hearkened unto the prayers of the righteous Hezekiah and annihilated Sennacherib’s army of 185,000 men in one night.

Following the long and incredibly evil reign of Manasseh, 16th king of the House of Judah, God, through the prophetess Huldah revealed to Josiah, his son, that

1. The House of Judah would be removed from the promised land, even as was the house of Israel,

                            2. Jerusalem would be destroyed,

                            3. Solomon’s temple would be razed to the ground, and

                            4. All the curses in Deuteronomy chapter 28 would come upon Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, during his reign, Josiah walked in the ways of the Lord God of Israel. He purged Judah of idolatry, restored the temple and re-instituted the worship of God as detailed in the law of Moses. However, this last bright light in the history of the Southern Kingdom was quenched when Josiah was mortally wounded in battle with the army of the Pharaoh, king of Egypt. The details of Josiah’s descendants are shown in Table 10.

Table 10

DESCENDANTS OF KING JOSIAH

A summary of the last kings of the Davidic line who reigned in Jerusalem [circa 700-586 B.C.]

After his father’s death and his brother’s exile (605 B.C.) into Egypt, Eliakim (Jehoiakim) was made king by the Pharaoh. Unfortunately this young man did not follow in the footsteps of his father, but in those of his grandfather. After Eliakim had reigned for eleven years, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon or the Chaldean empire, took him in chains to Babylon and installed Jehoiachin (Coniah) in his place. This, however, was only a temporary arrangement, as this evil seeking man was also taken to Babylon a few months later and his uncle Mattaniah (Zedekiah) was made king in his stead.

Even though Jehoiachin (or Coniah) only ruled in Jerusalem for a little over three months, such was his wickedness, that God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah said that:

                    1. Coniah would die in captivity, and that

                    2. None of his descendants would ever sit upon the Throne of David.

It follows directly from this prophecy that if Joseph were the father of Jesus Christ, as many modern theologians implicitly (or directly) maintain by denying His virgin birth, then he could never sit upon the throne of His father David because of Joseph’s descent from Coniah (i.e. Jechonias, see Matthew 1:11). This would then render the great and wonderful promises of the Lord God of Israel null and void (see Isaiah 9:6-7, Luke 1:30-33) and as a consequence the credibility of the Bible, God’s Word, would disappear.

During the days of the House of Judah’s death throes (the House of Israel had already "disappeared" over a hundred years previously), God, through His prophet Jeremiah, yet again made some staggering unconditional promises concerning the future glory and blessing of the whole House of Israel:

1. Only when day and night cease will God cast away the Seed of Jacob (i.e. the thirteen tribes) from Him and The whole House of Israel cease to be a nation before Him forever.

2 Only when day and night cease will the Seed of David cease to rule over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (i.e. the thirteen tribes)

                    3. God would restore Israel as a nation.

4. After the impending Babylonian conquest of the Southern Kingdom, the House of Judah would never again be separated from the rest of Israel, but David's heir would eventually rule over the whole House of Jacob.

The inevitability of God's judgement on Jerusalem and the remnant of the House of Judah was finally brought to pass when Zedekiah rebelled against his overlord in the ninth year of his reign. Subsequently Nebuchadnezzar and all his host came up against Jerusalem and took it after a siege lasting about eighteen months. The city was then broken up, Solomon's temple utterly destroyed and the defensive walls were broken down. Zedekiah's sons were slain before his eyes, after which he was blinded and taken with almost all the other survivors of the siege back to Babylon where he was imprisoned until his death.

Included in the small group of survivors that were left behind were Jeremiah the prophet, Baruch his scribe and the two daughters of King Zedekiah. Because only kings ruled in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar probably assumed that Zedekiah's dynasty ceased with the death of him and his sons and so he spared the daughters.

As far as secular history is concerned, with the fall of Jerusalem and the death of Zedekiah and his male heirs the Davidic dynasty ceased to exist.

Edom's attitude to Jerusalem's evil fortune was one of satisfaction and an aiding and abetting the oppressors of Jacob's seed. God, through His prophet Obadiah, rebuked Edom because:

                    1. Edom joined forces with the Chaldeans,

                    2. Edom rejoiced over the destruction of the Children of Judah,

                    3. Edom pillaged, and

4. Edom captured those who fled. God's judgement was that Edom should be cut off from Him forever.

God also spoke of Edom through His prophet Jeremiah. God revealed that Edom would eventually be made desolate, and never again would the descendants of Esau posses a national home of their own.

In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, King of Persia, a decree was issued in which the House of Judah was encouraged to return to the ruins of Jerusalem and rebuild the temple of God. Of the multitude taken into captivity by the Assyrians and Chaldeans, only 49,697 responded to this call. These people became known as Jews.

The fact that only a small remnant of the House of Judah returned from captivity is confirmed in the biblical Book of Esther. Haman the Agagite, in his plot to annihilate all Jewry throughout the whole of the great Persian empire, made known to king Ahasuerus (Xerxes) that a "certain people" (i.e. those of the House of Judah) were dispersed throughout all the provinces of his realm. It should be noted that many of those taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon had intermarried with non-Israelites. This trend to mingle in marriage with other nations, contrary to God’s law, was to have important repercussions at the time of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed down to this very day. The implacable hatred of Israel by the descendants of Esau is again illustrated by the story of Queen Esther.

Haman the Agagite (see above), who was direct descendant of Esau through Agag and Amalek, determined to wipe out the whole of Jewry because of a personal feud with the Jew ( Judahite) Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle. As well as presenting King Ahasuerus with false information, he also offered to pay into the king's treasury the amount of 10,000 talents of silver (i.e. $300,000,000 assuming silver sells at $15 an ounce)

providing that the king would authorise the extermination of this people. God’s wonderful deliverance of Mordecai and his people and the hanging of Haman on the very gallows he had built for his planned execution of Mordecai are recorded in this book of Esther. In addition Haman had ten sons who also died, i.e. there were eleven males in Haman the Agagite’s family.

Yet again through Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, the God of Israel again expressed His indignation, abhorrence and anger towards Esau and the nation that came from him (see Malachi 1:2-3). In the period of time between Malachi’s ministry and the birth of Jesus Christ, Edom, then known as Idumea (Greek for Edom) was conquered by the Jewish people  who had resettled in Canaan. This progeny of Esau became integrated into the Jewish society as did many of the other nations round Jerusalem. This Idumean element had largely taken control of the nation by the time Jesus was born, with the result that when the "King of the Jews" appeared, they were in a position to stir up the incredible hostility as described in the New Testament against the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David, Israel’s  king.