Temple Times (Part 1 of 3)
A reconstruction of the Temple
After the death of Joshua, no new leader emerged naturally to take his place. Some of the Jews fell off the straight and narrow path under the influence of the few Canaanites they had (wrongly) allowed to remain in the land.
As a result, in the second chapter of the Book of Judges, God’s anger was roused against them and He no longer offered them Divine protection from their enemies.
When the Jews did repent, He sent them guidance in the form of judges, who were to be both military and spiritual leaders. One of the most famous of these judges was Samson – a nazirite, who had vowed not to drink wine, come into contact with a dead body or cut his hair. In Samson’s case, this last vow was the source of a superhuman strength, that he directed against the Jews’ enemy, the Philistines.
Unfortunately, temptation came in the form of a Philistine woman Delilah, who cut his hair when he was sleeping one night. Ultimately, he was able to kill many of the enemy, but at the price of his own life.
Kings
It was during the time of the last of the judges that the first king of Israel was anointed. On the request of the people and under Divine instruction, Samuel anointed Saul, who ruled for two years but came to a tragic end in yet another battle against the Philistines in the year 877 BCE.
Although by this time Samuel was no longer alive, he had anointed David as the next ruler before his death. David was crowned in Hebron and ruled for 40 years. During his reign, the city of Jerusalem, which the Jews had previously been unable to conquer from the Canaanites, came into their hands and was made the eternal capital of the land of Israel.
The First Temple
Before David’s death, he appointed his son Solomon, known as the wisest of all men, to rule after him. King Solomon’s 40-year reign was something of a golden age, topped off by his building of the Temple in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Solomon made the mistake of marrying too many wives – he had 700 of them, as well as 300 concubines – which was something Moses had warned specifically against in Deuteronomy. As a punishment, God told him that after his lifetime, the kingdom would be torn in two, with only one line staying with his descendants.
The Kingdom Splits
Solomon’s son Rehoboam was crowned king after his father’s death in 796 BCE. But he displayed a certain amount of arrogance towards his people and in that same year, the 10 tribes who lived in the north of the land, split off and created their own kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Israel. The remaining two tribes, under Rehoboam, were known as the Kingdom of Judah. Over the course of the next 240 years, a succession of corrupt kings led the Kingdom of Israel, until the land was overrun by the Assyrian army in the 6th century BCE. The Jews were driven out and the 10 tribes were scattered and lost to the Jewish people.
Down South
The southern Kingdom of Judah lasted for 134 years longer than its northern counterpart. After the Assyrians victory, King Hezekiah made the sensible decision to fortify Jerusalem – although the Assyrians did besiege the city they were not successful in conquering it. But in the year 434 BCE, a new world power, the Babylonians, took 10,000 Jews into exile and set their sights on Jerusalem. After two years of siege, on the 9th Av 422 BCE, the Temple, along with the entire city, was razed to the ground.
By the Rivers of Babylon
In many ways the Babylonian exile turned out to be a less difficult experience for the Jews than they might have expected – the original 10,000 exiles had already created a healthy Jewish infrastructure. But in 371 BCE, the kingdom of Babylon was conquered by the Persian Empire.
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